Currents in Chaos
Killing her was the easiest thing he had ever done. It happened so fast, how could anyone blame him… but himself?
As Han Olar and Dr. Zoneua prepared to go to lunch for the day, killing was indeed on Han Olar's mind. It disgusted him.
But he wasn't thinking of killing her.
Two laboratory technicians sat manning the telescoping arms of an advanced automated articulating surgical system vivisecting one of the creatures within the containment zone. The creature, the rachni—such an amazing discovery—let out a shriek that had Han Olar adjusting the audio sensors of his envirosuit. His eyes wanted to cross for the pain it gave him. His mind rang—a tingling at the base of his skull. Could it be—? The technicians hadn't bothered with anesthetics. The humans thought them only to be animals. The research never sat well with him. From all reports of the Rachni War era, the rachni were an intelligent species. And yet, science prevailed. The research took place on Noveria for a reason.
And Binary Helix paid very well.
The other rachni in another portion of the containment area beat against the shielding apparatus. Little good it will do them, Han Olar thought. The apparatus would to hold up to weapons' fire. The only thing that could breach it was a neutron detonation.
And possibly biotics. But the rachni so far hadn't shown any inclination towards biotics. There were still rumblings of debate among the science team about exposing a small variable group to element zero. To test the biotic capabilities of the species. And possible brain cancer therapies designed for other species should the rachni fall to the tumors associated with refined eezo exposure.
The rachni's hard shell cracked open under the AutoArt's mechanical arms, interstitial fluid leaking, pouring down the gully of the examination table. Disgusting. It twitched, the monitors squawking as the alien squirmed for the technicians, ripping two of its arms off to try to escape. Olar watched a moment more, adding another note to his company-issue omni-tool—self-preservation instinct high, shows willingness to lose limbs to escape—then turned and left with Dr. Zoneua.
They always took their lunch together. Who knew why? He couldn't stand the Earth-clan woman. She was noisy and nosy and liked the experiment far too much for her own good. Nothing good would ever come out of this experiment. Yeah. A thousand-year old derelict and this is what they were doing with it? The rachni died because they wanted to eat everything in the galaxy. They were supposed to be dead. Binary Helix should have left well enough alone.
Behind them, the rachni shrieked again. The shrieking stopped abruptly as Dr. Zoneua tapped the elevator controls. Han Olar took a moment to adjust his audio again.
Dr. Zoneua bared her teeth in a smile. "They're so interesting," she said, eyes alight. "Don't you think so, Olar?"
Han Olar only nodded thinking it might be best to turn the audio down again. What could it hurt? "Interesting," he agreed as he tapped his foot. Why hadn't Dr. Thoennes let the lift down yet? Damn him. Always two minutes late. If he wasn't so bloody brilliant, Binary Helix would have terminated his contract years ago, Han Olar thought.
"Olar." She rolled her eyes towards her heavens in a way that made him want to kick the earth-clan's shins and knock her off her long legs. "You never agree with me. There must be something wrong with you."
"Yeah. Very wrong. My envirosuit is too tight around my gonads. It's causing all sorts of discomfort. A 'suit should allow a man to breathe and move how he likes."
He was always crude with her. It never fazed her either. He was beginning to wonder if her translator malfunctioned regularly or if she just wanted him to talk dirty to her. The former he could handle; the latter made him want to vomit. He set the idea forcibly aside. He did not even like Dr. Zoneua. She was, as the earth-clan said, a pain in the arse.
The elevator's chime rang just as the sound of shattering glass cut across the Hot Labs. Someone—human, Han Olar thought—screamed; volus weren't capable of making such a high-pitched racket. As Han Olar turned to see what the commotion was, he gasped, his heart lurching in fear.
Surrounded by the flashing lights of the containment breach alarm, six rachni soldiers stormed through the broken containment field with many more behind them. The two technicians operating the AutoArt were dead, sliced to ribbons by the soldiers. Han Olar hadn't heard them die. He only heard his quickening gasps for air inside his envirosuit.
The rachni trampled the bloody remains and scurried towards them. Han Olar took three steps backwards as the elevator door opened. Shouldn't he hear more than his own breathing? Shouldn't there be scuttling noises or the like? Shouldn't he hear the rachni shrieking? Shouldn't he hear the Hot Labs' alarms?
"NO! Oh, no!" She stood frozen, expression awash in terror. "Oh, god. Oh, god."
He heard Dr. Zoneua, her fear. But he couldn't hear the rachni. Shouldn't he hear the rachni? They were right there. He backed up further as the rachni loomed closer, pinchers thrusting. Shouldn't he hear the alarms? The lights were flashing. When Han Olar reached the back of the car, he calmly reached out and depressed the elevator door button. The door slid shut; Olar couldn't hear the sound of hydraulics, just his desperate gasps for air. Shouldn't he hear more? What was wrong with his audio?
Dr. Zoneua pressed her face against the glass and beat it with the palm of her hand. She might have yelled something, but he couldn't hear her. Breathing too hard. Yeah. Spots began to swim in front of his vision.
A rachni pincher sliced through the back of her skull and opened like a flower, a macabre blossom of red gore and gray matter. Like a melon, he thought. Red blood sprayed the glass as the flower-like pincher tapped the elevator door.
Laboring for breath, Olar calmly reached out and depressed the tram station button. The elevator car began its ascent away from the horror, the blood. The gore. Dr. Zoneua's bloody remains. He stared at the streaks on the glass as the blood ran down. Gravity.
The spots overpowered his vision, and he dropped, out of breath, to the floor of the elevator. When he awoke an hour later, he lay in another part of Peak 15 and told he was the only one that had made it out of the Hot Labs, and many of the scientists had died in the first wave.
I closed the door. It was the easiest thing he had ever done.
Yeah. Easiest.
"She's dead," he told Captain Ventralis when the Captain had asked what happened. "And I'm not."
I killed her.
Yeah.
"Shit!"
Kaidan pulled his head out from under Garrus's ass as the Mako hurdled towards the green valley below. They were falling at incredible speed - and gaining speed as they went. He had to lighten the rover, slow them down. Get thrusters under them. Like a regular planet drop. Right now they were in free fall, and Zero Gee wasn't agreeing with him. He pushed off and crawled forward, his body floating. He knew his blood cells were no longer the flattened shape now but were rounded globules. That idea didn't agree with him either. Kaidan forced back a shudder as he pushed aside floating debris.
The Commander crawled along the seats toward the controls. "Precious, emergency eezo core override. Reduce mass: maximum percent."
Precious's computer-generated voice was pleasant as they were all about to die. "Unable to comply. Manual key sequence required, Commander Shepard."
"What?" A failsafe. Shit.
"Negative," Shepard said. "Eezo core override. Emergency Authorization: Shepard. Foxtrot Yankee. Reduce mass: maximum percent. I say again, Shepard. Foxtrox Yankee. Reduce mass: maximum percent."
"Emergency Authorization accepted. Eezo core override in progress. Mass reduction at ten percent."
Fuck.
"Anyone hurls, I'll throw your ass out of the tank," Shepard warned coldly as she made it to her seat and strapped in. Free fall was really a no-brainer as they spun around to their doom. Free fall she could handle.
A dinosaur, though? Tossing them into free fall? Really?
Did that really just happen?
What the fuck?
Dinosaurs were low on her list of things she knew what to do with. However, they did make her list of Do Not Want. Right next to Thresher Maws, vomiting in helmets, and changing shitty drawers.
Because fuck that.
"Aren't we already hurling?" Liara asked. "Downwards?" Her voice was shaky and thin. She snapped her safety harness into place, her face pale.
"Vomit, Liara. Vomit," Garrus made it to his seat after getting Williams' knee in his face and strapped in. His visor tumbled around the cockpit. "Make a note: Shepard — and I, also— will throw anyone out of the tank on your ass if you vomit. And let's just be clear with the definition: to throw. A verb. Imagine that. The meaning? To cast, fling or heave to the ground. Right on your ass.
"Anyone vomits, you'll have a real short lesson in learning to fly. Free fall and body fluids do not mix."
"Oil and water," Alenko agreed. He nabbed Garrus's visor and handed it to the sulking turian.
"Wait." Liara sounded confused. "What do oil and water have to do with body fluids and free fall?"
"Everything," Williams, Shepard, Alenko and Garrus said emphatically at the same time.
Even with the banter typical of her team in a heart-pounding predicament which required a strategic retreat (even if said strategic retreat had been the equivalent of screaming like toddlers on a sugar rush), Shepard was still baffled by what had just happened. Not so much scared shitless as she had been while running from the stampede of space cows and the gargantuan beast that feasted on them. Nor still pissed off that a damn space cow had stolen her credit chit…
…Okay, maybe she was still pissed that a damn space cow had stolen her credit chit. After all, you never knew if the damn things were going use it to take over the galaxy. Who knew what was intelligent out here. There were intelligent machines and turians. Why the hell not intelligent space cows? Especially since the thieving cow had grabbed her chit from a secured—Swear to God—pocket on her armor.
But what the hell? They'd gotten thrown over a cliff by a fucking dinosaur. After landing the Mako on its goddamned head. She'd seen some shit while on ops. She'd been in some shit on ops. Thresher Maws were right up there with the shit, but never had she ever had to go up against anything that huge.
And she wasn't going to do it again.
Ever.
Nope, nope. Nope.
Precious continued its pleasant-voiced countdown. "Mass reduction at twenty percent."
Shepard watched as Alenko and Williams strapped themselves in. "Isn't this some shit?" she asked them, still in disbelief. She couldn't quite keep her voice from sounding utterly bewildered. They tumbled head over ass toward a raging river a few kilometers down, and she struggled to figure out how the hell they'd managed to survive this long.
Fucking-A.
Alenko's grin was contagious. "Flying shit. Ma'am."
"Super flying shit, ma'am," Williams agreed. She grinned as well.
All three humans were currently high on their adrenaline rush. Or, possibly, they were all dead and this was that weird dream state just before the brain clicked off and she crapped herself for the final time, Shepard thought. That, at least, would explain how she managed to get mugged by a damn cow.
Well, no. Her drawers were still clean. Still living.
Damn it.
And surely to God her dying subconscious would come up with something better than that when her ticket got punched.
"We should charge admission," Garrus said. His voice was calm, reaffirming Shepard's previous though: Free fall was a no-brainer. "'Commander Shepard's Normandy Safari Tours. Rides daily.'"
"'Explore uncharted worlds,'" Alenko said.
Liara chimed in. "'Learn how to dodge shifty-looking cows.'"
Shepard glared at Liara, who only grinned cheekily at her, anger rising again at the goddamned space cow. She knew how to handle a cow, damn it. It was the dinosaur that had stopped her.
Yeah.
She watched the ground get closer, judged the distance. She hit the manual override on the eezo core to increase the mass at the rear of the tank. She couldn't deploy the thrusters if the Mako's ass hung in the air. They could fly into the cliff and crush the top of the tank. Or something like that. Didn't sound like a pleasant way to go. And besides, they needed the canon for next part of the mission. Goddamned dinosaur.
"Shields at ninety percent," Precious announced unexpectedly.
"What's happening?" Liara asked, gripping the back of Shepard's seat.
"The mercs at the base are shooting at us," Shepard said as she studied the readouts. "Heavy-duty fire power to punch through these shields." Easy pickins, my ass.
It took several minutes to get Precious under control, several more to slow the tank enough and keep them from splattering on the ravine floor — they missed landing in the river by half a meter. When the tank finally slammed into the ground with the teeth-jarring thud of a normal planet drop, Shepard took a look around at her crew.
"That was not on my bucket list," she announced once she'd gotten her breath back. Although… She thought maybe, just maybe on the next mission she'd vault off a cliff to experience the general reaction of everyone. Keep the crew on their toes and what not. Because.
Everyone looked fine, if a little shaky. Despite the stampede, the goddamn dinosaur, and the fall, they'd landed right-side up and not squished, splattered or otherwise hurt. A definite plus. The shields shimmered again as Precious took another direct hit from a sniper round. Well, that's irritating. "Garrus, can we do something about that sniper?"
"Not from this distance or angle."
"Of course not." She spun the Mako around and aimed for the ninety-degree cliff. Then noticed a problem on one of the diagnostic screens in front of her. "And here we are with low tire pressure in the front right wheel."
"Poor us," Alenko said, deadpan as Shepard forced the Mako to crawl up the cliff.
Ash watched as the final mercenary erupted into a fireball from the incendiary ammo of Precious' 150 mm canon.
"That was kind of anticlimactic, Skipper," she complained as Shepard opened the door and jumped out of the Mako.
"You know, I think that's all the climaxes I can take for one mission, thank you very much," Liara said as she got out, earning her a look from everyone else. She blinked at them, completely perplexed by their expressions. "What?"
She felt grateful they could quickly move in on the base, but still. Ash wanted—needed—to impress upon the bad guys her ability to use her boom stick. Using the canon sucked most of the fun out of it.
Shepard hooked a thumb at the other side of the ravine. "Tell that to the other guy, Williams."
Across the ravine the "other guy" in question —the dinosaur that had tried to eat them— was currently being chewed by two more of the same type triangular-headed teeth-o-saurs. A river of blood flowed over the side of the cliff in an orange waterfall. The two creatures looked somewhat smaller than the carcass they were gnawing on.
"Damn," Alenko said. "They didn't waste any time."
Shepard shrugged. "Nope. Nature's Law. Circle of life and all that."
Ashley shuddered and looked away when the monsters began to fight over the leftovers. She couldn't wait to get inside the building and start laying down Ash's Law.
"Kind of like reporters, if you think about it." Garrus turned one of the ExoGeni security guards over, studied him and opened his omni-tool to update his mission notes.
Shepard only grinned with a shake of her head. "Carnivores." Her pale face was sunburned, highlighting freckles across her upturned nose. "What I want to know is why preserve the megafauna if same usually die out anyway? Why? Why do that?" She sounded truly aggrieved as she leaned in and looked at the bunker's door. The locking mechanism was green — unlocked. Security was disabled so they couldn't see anything inside. It was hard to tell if it was an inside job, but from the bodies of security that were strewn about, Ash doubted it.
"Let's see what we have behind Door Number One." The door opened when Shepard activated it.
On alert, the team entered the bunker single file with Garrus closing the airlock door behind them. The coolness of the bunker nearly made Ash weep for joy. Damn, it felt good against her face. She knew her nose had to be sunburned just as Shepard's face was. Or was it moon-burned? The skin felt raw and stretched across her face. Though freckles looked good on Shepard, Ash felt glad she didn't freckle. She'd look like something out of horror vid.
The bunker was a standard ExoGeni underground model. Like all ExoGeni models, it had an airlock even on a world with enough O2 in atmo to keep humans alive. The bunkers were guaranteed to stand up to most hazardous environments—or your credits back. And, Ashley realized, the catalog team more than likely chose the underground version because of the megafauna tromping around topside. She suppressed a shudder, remembering the teeth—and, here, she thought she hated all slithering, elbow-less things—as she lined up against the next door opposite Alenko and T'Soni—low since Shepard liked going in high—rifle at ready and waited for the airlock to cycle and pressurize.
The short hall that slanted down to the next compartment was vacant except the body of a scientist in white lab coat dyed crimson and a pool of congealed blood underneath her. The scientist's young face held the shocked expression of the dead. Her eyes, once deep-set and brown, were glazed over in death. Shield-less, the scientist didn't stand a chance against the two slugs that killed her—there were two holes in her chest the size of Ashley's fist. Blood and meat splattered the closed door.
Shepard stopped briefly to close the woman's eyes and take her fingerprints. "Darlene Hollenberg, age 24. Laboratory technician, third grade. Heyuan Genomics Ontarom Catalog Team, Human Systems Alliance. Logged into ExoGeni Corp's bunker at oh six hundred, local time. Must have just cycled through the airlock before the hit squad came in." She shook her head. "Just got in the way, didn't you, Darlene?"
"Damn shame," Garrus said as they pushed on and stepped over the body. "Always hated working Homicide."
The next room was clear except for bodies of a few security guards and four other scientists. Same MO— two slugs to each chest. The security guards fared better— if that's saying anything. The first slug took out the shields; the second took out the guards. Ashley figured the hit squad had swarmed in and overwhelmed the security team in a blitz attack.
"You work Homicide for very long, Garrus?" Shepard checked the bodies, taking fingerprints and notes for her report to the Council and Admiral Hackett.
"Five years was long enough. You learn in a very short amount of time what horrific things people can do to each other for reasons they think are justified. And you learn in a very short amount of time that paperwork and red tape will stop a case cold before you can bring the murderer to justice."
"Like Dr. Saleon?" Shepard asked. Ash had no idea who they spoke of but apparently Garrus did because he all but shouted "Exactly!"
Ash made her own notes on her Nexus as did the others. She tried unsuccessfully to block the images from her mind as she made quick notations. IDs, how the room looked, how they appeared to have died – the Nexus even had a scanner that told her time of death. It didn't stop her from remembering the dead colonists on Eden Prime or Feros, and she had to shake her head to clear her mind. This was not Eden Prime. Nor was it Feros. Just another mission report. Just a bunch of dead bodies.
Like it was that easy, she thought derisively. After this mission, she'd need a drink. Or three.
And, no, she wasn't inviting Sir Ignoramus Moreau either. Ugh. How could she have been so stupid to think—
God.
An asari?
Really?
What was she, chopped liver?
"You were a homicide cop when you worked the Saleon case, right?" Shepard closed the eyes of an aged ExoGeni Corp xenobiologist.
"No, Narcotics Division actually," Garrus said. "I'd just transferred in as a lieutenant when the case landed in my lap. That guy's liver I was telling you about? The one we thought missing? Pumped full of Red Sand, Easy, Hypnotic, Blast Off, and a new drug with the street name of Whore. Well, it was new then…"
The LT shook his head. "Jeeze. Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?"
Garrus just shrugged and Ashley's eyes bugged out when Garrus told them. "Considering Dr. Saleon was growing extra organs inside the man's body and then removing them for black market sales, it was probably to combat the pain. Not sure why he took Whore –it turned out to be a date-rape drug. That was about a six months before medi-gel was safe for turian use. Dr. Saleon had just stitched him up with dermal adhesive. He was leaking everywhere, inside and out. It was just our luck he bled out in Interview."
Ashley winced. "Oh, my God" was all she could think to say.
"Damn," Alenko said before his HUD flashed at him. "Commander, enemy signatures, next compartment." Ash was thankful they were back into the mission and not Garrus' creepy case. Growing extra livers? Inside someone? Eeuw. She knew the calm of the Citadel was wrong. Peaceful, my ass. She imagined the next thing Garrus would probably tell them was they dragged dead bodies out of the lake all the time.
"This door's good. The next one looks to be rigged."
"Explosives?" Shepard, on full alert, jogged over to him from the body of a female security guard.
Alenko shook his head. "Negative. EMCs. It'll still pack a punch, but shouldn't blow us up." He waited a beat. "Hopefully."
"Suggestions?"
"Use another EMC to take them out. 'Bout all we can do. The backlash will still knock out the shields of whoever throws the EMC from our side. For a minute or two."
Shepard nodded and held out her hand. "Give me one of yours. I'll do it."
"Commander." He started to argue, but the look she leveled him had him reaching for the cartridge.
"I still have my barrier," she told him. "And it's stronger than yours."
He nodded, handing over the EMC. "Good luck, ma'am."