Of Acid Baths and Cherries
Liberties: More liberties taken with Shepard's biotics. Let's also play pretend that things will burn when CO2 and nitrogen are liberally applied… O.o Science? Pfft. We don't need no stinkin' science… XD
Now let's kick this thresher's ass…
But first… Therum…
As the sweltering heat of Knossos beat down upon the surface of Therum, Daphne Morris rubbed the sweat from her brow with the back of her gloved hand. When she had first arrived on the volcanic world, she had just been transferred off the Eldfeld-Ashland Energy mining installation on Luna. The novelty of Therum had quickly worn out. Even encased in her company-issued uniform with its built-in microprocessors circulating coolant within the layers closest to her skin, the miner couldn't get over how hot it was on the volcanic world. She thought she would get used to it, but after seven months, she was more than ready to leave.
Should have taken that engineering job at Chemical Astromotors of Arcturus.
"One more week." The voice came from the project lead, Jackson al Qatr, as he fell in beside her, matching her stride for stride as they made their way past the main gate and towards the gun turrets.
Daphne nodded, too tired from the heat to do much else, thinking that no matter how much her uniform worked her, she couldn't stay cool in the harsh heat. Daphne tugged her auburn-colored, sweat-slicked ponytail tighter as they reached the first turret, and she activated her omni-tool to interface with it.
As the chief engineer of the Therum mining facility, it fell to her to begin the process of disabling the turrets so that Elanus Risk Control Services could pack them when they pulled out the week following the evacuation of Eldfeld-Ashland employees.
"Why do we have to do this, again?" she grumbled to Jackson who only smiled benignly. She entered a series of commands into her omni-tool and waited while the device relayed the commands to the turret.
"The company didn't pay for set up and take down," he told her with a shrug. "Saved creds."
Daphne snorted. "Oh, happy day."
The omni-tool suddenly beeped and a series of binary scrolled across the screen. It scrolled much too fast for her to translate, but she caught the last few words: sovereign will reap the heathens
Puzzled, she reentered her commands:
UserInfo=(LogIn="KPryde.007", PWrd="shadowCat")
Command=(VI="Whedon", InputMode=pEpsilon, Name="Initiate Shut Down Protocol Epsilon", Control=True, Shift="0.8", Alt=False)
The turret didn't respond. Daphne groaned in frustration, jamming her finger against her omni-tool. Just her luck. Her brow furrowed as she studied the device.
There had to be something…
She was not looking up when the other turret turned and tracked the two humans. She was too absorbed in hacking the turret at her location to notice when the other turret's main gun came online. When it fired a lone rocket at the unsuspecting humans, she was too shocked to move, her eyes wide. She was dead before she could comprehend what was happening or even to scream as the rocket detonated against her, igniting her flesh, shredding her body as the concussive force radiated in a violent shockwave.
Daphne Morris and Jackson al Qatr were not the first organic casualties of the geth invasion force, nor would they be the last.
God sure made some weird things. It was one of the great mysteries of the cosmos. And Ash knew that she would never be able to figure out why this particular creature was a part of the cosmic food chain. Why the hell did they need thresher maws anyway?
Like junjun on Amateratsu. Damn space fleas. No purpose served but to annoy the living hell at out of her. She wished the evil giant centipede would just die already.
They took cover again as Alenko fired the Mako's machine guns from his kneeling position while acid from the thresher's maw soared over their heads and their guns cooled down. Ash used the short reprieve to patch an area on her leg that was beginning to breach from an earlier spatter near the Mako's nose.
"How much more?" she questioned. She had lost track of how many shots they had fired at the thresher's face parts—its four glowing eyes, its pincer-like mandibles—and even with her genetic enhancements, she was beginning to feel fatigued.
Shepard looked at her sharply, sidestepped the question. "How badly are you hit, Williams?"
"It just splashed on my leg, ma'am," the Chief replied, watching as the omni-gel cooled and sealed the ablative coating once again. "I've got enough ablative to keep it from breaching all the way through. I'm running out of omni-gel to use as patches though. I've already gelled my pistol and most of my shotgun." To Shepard's dismay, all Williams had left of her Hahne-Kedar Storm was its inertia bolt and the high explosive rounds.
Shepard snagged the rounds and emptied her HMWSG's magazine, replacing the old inferno with the new ammo. This she could use. This would do some good. If only she had had one of these on Akuze…
This was no time to get stuck in the goddamned past. The past was over. Done. It was the present, and in the present, Shepard determined grimly, she was going to shove her boot so far up this thresher's ass it was going to spit her toenails instead of acid.
Of course, high explosive rounds and carnage mortar worked much better than any boot, she thought as she charged around the Mako's nose and fired a shot before diving for cover once again. The chitinous hide of the gargantuan creature ruptured, but it beast didn't show any signs of feeling it. And then there was her last grenade, but they still had the Mako's main gun. She wasn't about to use their last resort prematurely.
Shaking her head to clear it, she called up her hardsuit's VI and adjusted her helmet's comm. to dim down the clamor of weapons fire. Helmets' comms. were designed to pick up outside noise so that when in scaba gear, the soldier wasn't taken unaware of their environment. She normally didn't get headaches, but ever since Feros…Hell, ever since that damned beacon on Eden Prime…
"Alenko," she called over her comm., putting the issue out of her mind. Now was not the time to deal with it. Chakwas had said she was fine.
"Yes, ma'am?" He didn't look up from his omni-tool. She hadn't expected him to.
"Got any explosive rounds?"
"No, ma'am. Inferno, cryo and Tungsten." Kaidan grinned despite himself, knowing she couldn't see his face anyway, as he tracked the thresher in his HUD. "Wasn't expecting a giant worm of death today."
Shepard snorted. "SNAFU, Lieutenant."
"Expect the unexpected." Kaidan's grin stretched his face more as he received another snort from Shepard. "Shall we decree that explosive rounds are a requirement to serving with humanity's first Spectre?"
The Commander rounded the nose of the Mako, fired, and rolled back before another acidic spray hit the vehicle. "So it is decreed: Explosive ammo," she confirmed panting. He could almost see her smile. "And bigger guns."
"There's nothing wrong with my gun, Commander," Kaidan told her defensively. To demonstrate, he depressed the trigger switch on his omni-tool, firing the Mako's main gun. The shell smashed through the chitin of the creature, blowing off one its fore claws. It gave a shriek and spit more acid.
"Well, well," Williams drawled, "touchy there, aren't we LT?" She sprang up, caught the thresher in her sights, pulled the trigger and popped back down again within seconds, lurching out of the way of another corrosive projectile, bumping into Private Fredericks whose shotgun was smoking.
When Private First Class Charles "Gun Dog" Fredericks signed up for the Systems Alliance Military, he never imagined that his first posting would be aboard the experimental SSV Normandy or that he would serve along side Commander Shepard, the Savior of Terra Nova, the Sole Survivor of Akuze and humanity's first Spectre.
He also never imagined that his first combat experience would be in the middle of B.F.E. fighting a dinosaur worm that spit acid at them.
What the hell?
Or that the mother fucking monster would be so… so grabby.
Damn it.
Or that he would be ordered to kill it on foot.
Fuck!
Or that, according to his commanding officer, this was the easy way.
Easy, my left nut.
But there was the young Private—in full scaba gear on a barren world with no breathable air, holding his overheated shotgun to his chest, crouched by the front tire of the Mako ducking away from the beast's green stomach juices with Commander Shepard and Gunny Williams. And they were joking. Joking! The acid spit hit the dirt less than a meter from his position sending up dust particles, and Edolus' perpetually dry ground greedily soaked up the moisture, leaving holes where the corrosive fluid ate away at the rock beneath the upper layer of silicate.
Fredericks took a deep breath reigning in his fear to drop everything and run like a Venusian chicken. He imposed iron control over himself as he shoved another mortar round into the bore under the barrel of his shotgun. The Commander needed him. He mentally willed the overheated weapon to be ready to fire again to no avail. Carnage was all well and good, but waiting for the gun to cool down was a bitch.
Fredericks respected the hell out of Commander Shepard and Lieutenant Alenko. It was an honor serving with both of them. Even without military training ingrained into his will, if either one asked him to kiss their ass, he would giddily ask which cheek. But, if this was some kind of weird initiation thing to test his bravado, he was going to be fucking pissed. He joined the military to see space and fight pirates and aliens. Not an acid-spitting uglisaurus graboid buried on a rock in the Traverse. This was not what he signed on for!
Gunny Williams had her head up her ass too much to be bothered with, but he obeyed her instructions whenever she gave them—that was the way the military worked. Personally he was tired of playing danger nut or fetch-the-whatever-invisible-object-the-superior-officer-could think-of-as-a-prank game. (That game got old real quick when there were twenty-five people who outranked him. Especially when some were just sadistic enough to rouse him from his sleeper pod at Oh-Dark-Thirty—usually Gunny Williams, Joker, or Corporal Guo.)
"Wouldn't you like to find out, Chief," Lieutenant Alenko's voice was even in Fredericks ear.
"Bring it, sir," Gunny Williams shot back.
It surprised Fredericks that the Commander laughed.
The staccato of weapons fire, the boom of the Mako's main gun, the playful banter between the marines, and the blast of carnage mortar from the Commander's shotgun brought Fredericks back to the fight. He stood, pointed his Storm, and pulled the bore trigger, the resulting fireball immediately overheating his weapon again. The round hit its mark splattering one of the glowing blue… Were those its eyes? Hell, he didn't care. The round took out the blue spot and the thresher bellowed, flailing its wicked looking mandibles, scratching the ground with its remaining fore claw.
And then it hawked up another acidic loogey.
The marines hunkered down avoiding the spray, and the Mako's main canon was covered in an acid bath.
"That's it, Commander," Kaidan reported as his HUD went red. "Main guns offline. One remaining machine gun. Limited mobility."
"Hardy, where'd you train at?" Shepard asked suddenly, and Kaidan's head whipped around to look at her incredulously. He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped his it closed again. She knew what she was doing. It wasn't his place to ask.
"Ma'am?" Hardy's voice cut over the comm. The younger man sounded just as confused as Kaidan felt.
Shepard's voice was clipped. "Biotics. Training. Where. Which Program."
"Project: BIAT, ma'am. Biotic Indoctrination, Adjustment and Training on Piazzi Station," Hardy answered as Guo jumped up and took a shot at the thresher. The crack of his weapon was followed by him diving away as more acid splattered. "Is there a reason—"
"Damn it," Kaidan grumbled, when the Mako's HUD suddenly went blank. Bye, Lenny. "The Mako's offline, Commander. No more heavy firepower."
"Now mine's bigger than yours," Williams crowed, darting out to take a shot and right back in again.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he looked over to find the Commander glowing with dark energy. Reflexively, he performed the mnemonic for his own barrier. "Commander?"
Without answering, Shepard sprang to her feet priming a grenade.
"Eat this," she hissed. Kaidan paled a little at the venom that dripped from her voice.
She hurled the grenade and followed up by executing a mnemonic Kaidan had only seen her do on Eden Prime, just after Jenkins' death. With that move, she had single handedly taken out the assault drones that had killed the kid.
To Kaidan's amazement the grenade soared the distance between the Mako and the thresher, and attached itself to one of the creature's mouth pinchers.
The beast's mandible detonated seconds later in a fiery ball that took out the pincher and great chunks of its other mandible, the thermal paste of the incendiary explosive clinging to the thresher's head, disintegrating everything it touched. The creature roared, its sonic assault suddenly delving into the infrasound range. Kaidan's hardsuit's systems nearly winked out. The thresher bucked, clawing at the ground as the thermal paste continued to burn though its head.
"Keep firing! It's not dead yet. Use your assault rifles," Shepard commanded, as she abandoned her shotgun and yanked out her assault rifle. Kaidan's brought out his assault rifle and took aim at the creature, splaying rounds into its blue eyes. The inferno rounds weren't as effective as Shepard's grenade, but appeared to be working.
"Hardy," Shepard barked, "freeze it."
Hardy surged out from cover, his body rippling in unnatural light. The Corporal's quickly executed mnemonic surprised Kaidan so much that the Lieutenant fumbled with his rifle, nearly dropping it. As he brought the scope back up, images of the past flashed across his mind's eye.
Slender hips.
Gentle brown eyes.
Shiny black hair.
An elfin grin.
Then it was gone in an instant as Kaidan focused on the present with a forceful shake of the head.
"Double Victor," Shepard ordered, leading the charge on the right. "Move it! On the double, Marines!"
The six marines sprinted from around the Mako, forming a V-shaped infantry line, Kaidan leading on the left. They inverted their V-shape with Kaidan and Shepard standing less than three meters apart. No one lowered his or her weapon as they waited with baited breath for Hardy's stasis to wear off.
Stasis was a funny thing. Nothing could move inside it, but the thermal paste of Shepard's grenade and the inferno rounds that riddled the gravitationally-challenged creature kept burning. Even when the creature stopped glowing with dark energy, its body oozing viscous green fluid.
The thresher didn't move.
They continued to wait.
It still didn't move, only burned and oozed.
Shepard was the first of the line to do something. She tossed her overheated assault rifle down and headed back towards the Mako to fetch her HMWSG. It was entirely too expensive to leave behind. "Fredericks, now that your cherry's popped, pinpoint the origin of the distress signal."
"Aye, aye, Commander."
Thresher: PWND
Gun Dog definition: Bird Dog. Fredericks knows how to fetch. :D
Double Victor: infantry/platoon formation used in World War II (I'm not sure about modern times.)
Eilam Wordsmith: Thanks for the back and forth PMs and the plot bunnies. It was good talking with you. This chapter took a decidedly different direction because of our conversation. XD Hope you enjoy!
Reviewer fortunesque: Thank you! I'm so glad you're enjoying. I hope I can continue to entertain you. And I wholeheartedly agree: Not enough build-up. Oooh! Exploitation of dirty minds is always fun! XD Unfortunately, ff dot net edited out the URL you were kind enough to leave… and, alas, anonymous!review, so I couldn't PM to ask. Just so you know, any love/romance scenes will be written in 2 versions—an edited one for this site and a more… provocative (but tasty, er, tasteful) one that will be posted under an 18 + header on my LJ. (IMO the in-game zug-zug footage after the grabby-smoochies is at least at or around Round 3. They are genetically enhanced with increased stamina, after all. hurrhurrhurr)