Gas Bags

When Kaidan hit the ground on Eden Prime, the last thing he expected was for Commander Shepard, an N7 Shock Trooper, to yank off her helmet as they took cover against a boulder. He didn't understand, but he didn't question it either. He wanted to believe it was because he was a good soldier, but a little voice in the back of his mind whispered that it was because he wanted to see her coppery-colored eyes again. He inwardly winced. Hearing whispering voices in his head was not a great way to phrase it. He hadn't gotten the crazy; he'd gotten a lesser side effect to being biotic: Migraines.

"Shepard, clear," she confirmed when she hadn't seen anything that would kill or eat them. He and Corporal Richard Jenkins followed suit and gathered around as she threw her helmet down and unclipped her shotgun.

"Commander?" Jenkins inquired just as surprised as Kaidan as both men unclipped their own preferred weapons—Jenkins, his assault rifle; Kaidan, his pistol.

"Tossing your cookies in your helmet isn't a fun thing to do," she told him with a shrug, standing and having a better look at the surroundings, watching with her odd-colored eyes as the Normandy left the atmosphere.

The first thing Shepard had noticed about Eden Prime was the smell: smoke and cooked flesh. It was the type of smell that went straight to her brain and hung out around her implant. She wanted to gag, so she prepared herself for such an event. The helmet must go. She'd smelled the same thing on other missions, and it would never be a smell she associated as adherently good. Cooked flesh, no matter whose it was, was never a good thing. Even the enemy's cooking flesh smelled ungodly. She blinked back the smoke that hung in the air, tried to get a sense of the area.

Only the three of us. Let's hope there's not too much resistance.

"Should I take off my helmet?" Jenkins asked, drawing her attention to his pale blue eyes. Jenkins' demeanor had changed since she'd spoken with him earlier. He was much more subdued, looking as though he'd aged ten years under the harsh light of Eden Prime's sun, Utopia. Having no intention of bringing up the Corporal's family, she gave each man a hard look before stating, "You heard the Captain; we're here for the beacon. We stay focused; we stay alive."

She was not losing another unit. She would do better this time.

"Aye, aye, Commander," Jenkins said without hesitation, his face grimly determined. "If—if there are survivors," he began and gulped.

Shepard's face softened. "I'll do everything in my power to keep them safe, and I expect you to do the same," she affirmed, and Kaidan's eyebrows shot up, "but that's still secondary. If that thing holds information about a weapon—possibly the same weapon that wiped out the Protheans—then everything this colony stands for is a moot point."

Jenkins nodded. "Understood, ma'am."

"Move out, Marines," she ordered, striding away.

Kaidan was stunned as he watched her, her hips swaying. She got the job done, and she was diplomatic about it. Wow. As much as he was appreciating her figure, he shook himself and trotted to catch up with them. He followed closely behind Jenkins as they rounded a clearing and stopped by a boulder. Using the boulder as cover, Shepard peered around.

"Oh, God," Jenkins breathed as his gaze fell beyond the boulder. A charred body lay along the path. He closed his eyes. "What happened here?"

The path led past a lake and up over a rocky outcropping. Burned trees sprouted from the ground. Beyond that Kaidan could see a tall skyscraper burning in the distance. The statistics floated in his head. The colony was made up of over three million people—people who lived in the buildings overlooking their crops. He wondered about the casualties. It hadn't taken whatever it was very long to wipe out a unit of trained soldiers. His throat constricted. Civilians. They were going to find a lot of dead civilians. It wasn't right. Marines were trained to fight and die. Not civilians.

"You feeling ill, Corporal?" she asked, and Kaidan wished she had asked him instead, because, yeah, he was feeling ill. And a migraine was not something he needed right now.

"The smell will take some getting used to, ma'am," Jenkins answered after a moment. Kaidan felt sorry for the Corporal. This was his home world. He hoped they wouldn't run into any of the kid's family members. "It used to be so peaceful here."

Kaidan shook his head. "Smells like smoke and death."

Shepard nodded, was silent a moment.

Kaidan was going to say something more but at that instant Shepard turned around and froze, her eyes wide, her mouth forming an o, staring at whatever was behind him. He sucked in a breath as something brushed up against his back, nudging him slightly. In a fluid motion, Shepard regained control of herself and unclipped her pistol, fired a shot. Whatever was there exploded with a foul slurpy pop sending green goo flying everywhere.

"Damn!" he shouted, belatedly throwing himself to the ground. The smoky charred stench of Eden Prime was overpowered by the smell of what Kaidan reminded him of rotten turnips.

Nothing was worse than turnips. Not shit. Not smoke. Not burnt hair. Not even charred skin. As far as Kaidan was concerned turnips were the bane of humanity. Especially cooked. Being rotten made them that much worse. His mother had once brought him turnips on one of her many visits to make sure he wasn't going to stay single forever ("Kaidan, honey, don't you think it's time for you to settle down with a nice girl? You aren't into men are you? Here, eat these. They'll make you more virile."), and, being the loving son he was, had taken them to please her and had forgotten all about them. After a two month cruise, he'd returned to base to find the rancid container in his refrigeration unit. Since then, he hadn't even been able to be in the same room when his mother cooked them ("But, sweetie, I thought you loved turnips. They make you so virile. Are you sure you're not into men?").

Kaidan was picking himself off the ground and shaking off the memory (and the foul smelling goo) when Shepard demanded, "What the hell was that?"

"Just a gas bag, ma'am," Jenkins said in reply. "They're harmless. We used to have one as a pet. We called him Bob."

"Did I just kill someone's equivalent of a dog?" Shepard asked, going a little pale.

The Corporal shook his head. "No, ma'am. Not this far out anyway."

Shepard nodded, wrinkled her nose at Kaidan. "That reeks." She stood and holstered her pistol and brought her shotgun back up to bare. "Sorry, Lieutenant." She listened intently as Nihlus' voice sounded over their comms and told them that he was scouting out ahead, but Kaidan didn't pay much attention. He didn't think she sounded all that sorry. She wasn't the one whose backside was covered in foul-smelling green goo.

"Good thing you were wearing your hard suit, Lieutenant," Jenkins told him as Shepard signaled them to move again. "If that stuff got on your clothes, skin or hair, you'd stink for a week."

Terrific.

Kaidan shook his head and shuddered. There was no way in hell that he was going on another mission with armor that smelled like rotten turnips. Just as soon as he got back to the ship he was going to put in an order with the Requisitions Officer. Burns owed him a favor anyway.

Codex

Aliens: Non-sapient Creatures: Gas Bags

Prior to the discovery of the Prothean ruins and the Eden Prime War, the garden world of Eden Prime was known for two things: the hybridization of the Eden Prime Turnip and the benign Gas Bags.

Gas bags, the colloquial name for velolepis spiritalitas, are omnivorous, floating, lophotrichous creatures native to the planet of Eden Prime. The creatures have a number of protuberant gas-filled growths on their backs and heads. They have long hind legs with two toes each, shorter fore legs with four toes each, and four rear tendrils that resemble bacterial flagella in function. Gas bas travel by means of propelling themselves using the four rear tendrils via lophotichous locomotion. The creatures can grow to the size of a fully-grown adult human, and they have a short breeding cycle.

They are harmless to humans, though are thought to be carriers of a parasite called the Eden Prime Tick, which carries a harmful bacterium with no known vaccine. Once contracted, Eden Prime Tick Disease is easily treated with a round of antibiotics; however it has proven fatal in infants and the elderly.

Trivia/Geekery: velolepis is the result of my terrible language skills and an online English-Latin dictionary. Velo is from velum, meaning "to sail or sailing" and lepis meaning "hare or rabbit"; ventulus meaning "soft wind". No, I don't know what I was thinking, except "sailing rabbit on a soft wind" sounded like a good thing at the time, lol that's funny because they don't look anything like rabbits, and HULK WORD SMASH. Word-nerds, I'm so sorry. ;_;