DISCLAIMER – I do not own Mass Effect franchise, the story, or any of its characters. All rights go to Bioware.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
You may have noticed in the first chapter that I had altered the layout of the Normandy to an extent. This is in part because the in-game Normandy inner layout doesn't match the ship's external and general shape. Additionally, I find the idea of a sleeping coffin – I mean pod; sleeping pod – to be completely idiotic. That area up to the front could have been used to actually make small four-bunk bedrooms. It is details such as this that the engineer in me likes altering and will be altering a lot throughout this story, so expect that.
I encourage you to leave a review for me – not just so I could know whether you like the story or not, but to see whether there are flaws. Unless it's tech aspect of the story; in that regard just trust me – I'm an engineer.
I am not a native English speaker, and it is entirely possible that I may be messing up certain forms of writing – such as the form in which dialogues are displayed, meaning errors in commas or such. If you happen to be an English literature major (or something of the sort) and see any errors there, I'd appreciate it if you simply notified me about the matter.
Chapter posted on 18.11.2016.
Tags: Action, Sci-fi, Adventure, Friendship building, Love.
Rated M – for mature and adult themes.
Enjoy…
Chapter 3 – Strike Back
As he entered the cargo hold with Nihlus, Marcus saw Jaina and Kaidan in their suits of armor, performing the final weapons and gear checkup next to the gearing and armory section of the hold. He saw that Kaidan wore a standard Alliance light armor along with standard-issue weapons; he didn't like that. The standard grunt armor and gear that Alliance equipped its soldiers with was sub-par when compared to others.
Jaina, however, was an entire matter altogether. Her armor and gear were of much higher grade, and he was grateful to himself for having the insight to persuade the suit engineering division to provide for the female version of the armor suit that he wore as well.
As he checked her out wearing that armor for the first time, though, he became acutely aware that she was the one that wore that armor better than he ever could; and he would most certainly not complain. The armor seemed to be almost purposefully streamlined to her figure, hugging her female curves like armored and plated skin, with the sections emphasizing them to a great extent. He would need to personally thank those engineers.
Tearing his eyes off her figure, he checked out the rest of her gear, his eyes passing critically over the weapons he already knew she used.
Her weapon of choice was a powerful semi-automatic sniper rifle intended for taking out heavy targets, but with reduced size and weight to that of a sniper-support rifle. No other quite such weapon existed; he was the one that made it for her. That weapon was slung over her back in its compact form, though, and instead of it, in her arms was a heavily enhanced M-12 Locust SMG for close engagements. Even then, that weapon outclassed Alenko's M-7 by a longshot, which spoke volumes of Lieutenant's poor gear. He rumbled grimly; he'd have to take closer care of him on this mission.
Nihlus returned from his locker where he had grabbed his weapons and rejoined the group just as Marcus activated his omnitool and showed a 3D model of the terrain.
"The terrain is too forested for the Mako," he said. "We'll have to approach on foot and use the cover as much as possible."
"What about the beacon, then?" Alenko asked. "How're we supposed to secure and extract it?"
"The hover-trailer should still be there," he replied. "The three of us are biotics. We'll lighten the mass of the whole thing as we push it along. The trailer already has its hover system, so it shouldn't be too taxing."
Nihlus spoke up as he pointed out a section of the map, "It'd be best if I drop here before the rest of you, and go along this ridge. It has plenty of cover and offers a clear line of sight for miles in all directions; I can alert you of the enemy presence and any other development. Meanwhile, this forested area here provides excellent cover for the three of you, and will be an adequate retreat path once you secure the beacon."
Jaina nodded as she examined the map. "I like that. With any luck, we may even remain unseen."
Nihlus nodded and marked the drop points, sending the request to CIC.
Joker called out throughout the ship:
"Prepare for atmospheric entry…"
Not even a slightest shift or a rumble was sensed as the ship pierced the upper layers of the atmosphere and dove into the turbulent air currents.
"Really impressive dampeners," Nihlus murmured under his breath.
"Sir," Alenko called. "What about survivors?"
Marcus shook his head. "The beacon is our top priority, Lieutenant. We're not equipped for a rescue mission, and we must do this without attracting attention. If we encounter any, all we can do is order them to stay hidden."
"Understood, sir," Alenko replied.
Marcus grabbed his plate-mask helmet and pulled it over his head. The inner suit layer and soft armor weave sealed up around the separation point, activating the HUD and giving him the full awareness of his surroundings and his teammates' statuses.
"Approaching drop point one," Joker called out over the comms.
The claxons sounded, and a pair of yellow warning lights on either side of the cargo bay doors started pulsing. A moment later, an increasing roar of rushing wind marked the lowering of the massive hangar doors, and orange afternoon light blazed in, with a barrier blocking the air currents from surging into the cargo hold.
The ship decelerated, and hovered a dozen meters above ground. Nihlus sprinted forward and leaped over the edge into the open air. The ship's infantry-drop system immediately launched a mass effect field that enveloped him and braked his descent before he hit the ground, depositing him as lightly as if he had vaulted a fence.
The Normandy moved immediately, continuing down the path to the drop point two. Joker called it out over the comms, and the three-person group ran toward the opening, jumping and dropping down to the grown in the same manner as Nihlus did a minute earlier.
The moment they landed, Marcus activated his helm's integrated cam recording system and made sure everything he saw or heard was being recorded, including his vitals' status and HUD. He looked at Jaina, and she nodded back, signaling wordlessly that she had done the same. Kaidan didn't have that gear on him; only spec ops personnel had the practice of using it.
The team advanced quickly toward the first nav-point that was marked on their HUD-s, as Nihlus reported in:
"This place has been hit hard, Commander," he said. "I can see lots of fires burning from my vantage point; destroyed vehicles, houses, trams… lots of tracer rounds flying through the air. There must be significant resistance by the civilians; I can't imagine it being anybody else."
"Makes sense," Jaina spoke quietly. "Ever since Mindoir, the colonies have intentionally lax laws pertaining weapon permits. Wouldn't be surprised if half the adults had a rifle."
"Also," Nihlus continued slowly, "I've spotted that strange vessel we saw on the distress call. It's standing right next to the star port. The damn thing's gigantic. Over two kilometers tall if my VI's visual comparison to the star port control tower is accurate."
"Any activity from it?" Marcus asked.
"In a manner of speaking," Nihlus said grimly. "It's as if it's swaying gently on its legs, which shouldn't be possible judging by its size. That thing looks almost like a living thing. Proceed with utmost caution, Shepard; I'm thinking this might actually be a first contact scenario with some alien species."
The line went off, and Marcus motioned his squad to continue through a wooded gully until they came upon a rising slope filled with large rocky outcroppings.
He signaled a halt, then motioned Jaina into a sniping position. He moved across the clearing first, taking up an aiming stance once he reached the safety of the rock wall. Kaidan followed, but before he was halfway to his cover, Marcus heard whizz of multiple hover engines approaching them fast.
Suddenly, a group of odd gray hover drones stormed out of the copse on top of the hill and launched a hail of blue bolts toward the single man out in the open. With lightning speed, Marcus channeled a biotic pull and yanked Alenko out of the way of the bolt hailstorm just as his shielding collapsed, sending the man plowing through the dirt behind his position – grunting in impact, but unharmed.
Loud blasts of semi-automatic sniper rifle filled the air, and drones started dropping one by one in rapid succession – each bullet claiming one drone with uncanny precision, each round blasting through the drones' shields and armor as if they weren't there. More drones swooped out of the trees, joining the remaining ones as they turned and started peppering Jaina's cover with rounds, putting pressure onto the sniper that was picking them off.
Seeing this, Marcus calmly raised his left fist over the cover and launched a wide-beam EMP blast toward the group of drones. There was a wave of sizzling pops, followed by a sound of mass clanging against the rocky ground, and then – nothing.
Marcus peered over the edge, and made sure there was no movement, before calling out:
"Status!"
"Check," Jaina called calmly.
"Check," Kaidan groaned from where he was crouching as he sputtered dirt out of his mouth.
Marcus stormed forward with his rifle at the ready, before taking position behind cover at the top of the hill, overlooking the copse and scanning for the enemy.
"On me!" he called.
"Coming to ya!" came Jaina's report, and both she and Kaidan ran up to him before they crouched down behind cover and began examining one of the downed drones.
"Jesus, they just ripped right through my shields," Kaidan spoke with a sense of dread. "And to think I actually amped them with the mod you provided me with!"
"No wonder when your shield emitter maxes out at two hundred kilojoules," Jaina commented absently as she picked up the drone and looked it over. "There's not much a mod can strengthen up, to begin with."
"We're getting you some real gear the first chance we get," Marcus added. "I won't be losing men under my command. Jaina, what do you have?"
"Never saw anything like this, Marc," she said. "No standard template parts, markings… only something that looks like some alien q-code…" she swiftly rammed her black N7 KA-bar knife through the seam where the plates joined, splitting the drone effortlessly with the flick of her wrist. "Nope, definitely not standard-manufactured parts."
Marcus tapped his comm link and spoke:
"Nihlus, we have hostile drones of unknown make. Their weapons fire bolts of what is most likely phased plasma – it rips right through ordinary shields."
"Copy that," the flanged voice responded back. "I have noticed what appear to be enemy troops close to the spaceport, but they're too far away for me to give an accurate assessment of who they are."
"Understood," Marcus spoke, then cut the link. "Alenko, maintain your biotic barriers up at all times. Forget about biotic offence, and focus on tech support. I think we obviously have synthetics for enemies. You have the gear to overload their weapons and shields, right?"
"Yes, sir," Kaidan nodded.
"Good. Move out!"
The team advanced quickly through the wooded grove, moving at a quick trot and with their senses alert, with Jaina switching to her SMG and Kaidan using his shotgun for the expanse of the forest. They double timed down the open slope that was there when they exited the expanse of the copse when the sounds of alien phasic gunfire reached them just as they reached the bottom.
Jaina vaulted up onto the nearby boulder with feline grace and fell into sniper cover, and Marcus stormed toward a boulder with augmented speed, sliding down into the low cover with a slide-kick, the dirt and pebbles launching into the air. He pushed up on the knee of the sliding leg, his rifle already up and aiming toward the gunfire as he sighted a woman in armor as she ran from the pair of enemy drones in close pursuit.
The first drone fell to Jaina's powerful rifle, not half a second after it came in view, the second one following just as quickly before Marcus launched a series of quick bursts from his rifle. The drones blasted out of the air with staggering speed, causing the fleeing woman to dive into a combat roll, grab her pistol, and unleash a rapid staccato of bullet fire into the remaining drone as she fell back.
Just as Marcus was about to call out to her, a group of what appeared to be no less than six non-standard mechs raced out from behind a curve in the path and started firing toward the marine who was scrambling to get up amidst the puffs of dirt launched by incoming bullets around her feet.
Taking matters into his own hands, he instantly unleashed a biotic push into the woman, sending her flying into the safety of the nearby cover with an audible "hhuugh" on her part. Without any preamble, he leveled his Mattock toward the enemy and unleashed a full and sustained burst of high-explosive rounds into the tightly grouped enemy, immediately being joined by Jaina's similarly-modded Locust, and Kaidan's Lancer.
Enemy shields were shredded as if they never were, explosive blasts striking all over their armor, twisting metal, ripping limbs apart and sending bodies flying, ending when Marcus launched a single guided concussive shot, detonating a massive blast of fire and shrapnel that finished the entire group, and then another one for good measure.
And then everything went quiet. For a few fleeting moments, there was silence broken only by clinks of falling metal.
"Clear!" Kaidan called.
"Clear!" Jaina finished.
Marcus flicked his hand toward the sides of the perimeter, pointing Jaina and Kaidan toward defensive covers from which they had a sweeping overlay of the area. As the two moved wordlessly to a defensible sentineling position, he walked briskly toward the soldier woman they've just saved as she raised herself shakily on her feet.
"Stay down," he demanded, pointing a finger to her authoritatively as he approached. "I pushed you pretty hard; you might be injured!" He crouched next to her, grabbing her chin and leaning in to check her eyes. "How do you feel?" he asked when he was satisfied.
"Ready and able, sir," she said readily as she tried to catch her breath. "Gunnery Sergeant Ashley Williams of the 212th. You just saved my life there; I assure you, I have nothing to complain about! Are you in charge here?"
"I am," he nodded. "Commander Marcus Shepard, of the SSV Normandy."
He then motioned with his head toward Jaina who had picked a sniping position from a nearby cover.
"This is Commander Jaina Shepard –"
"The wife," Jaina called – to the other woman's confusion,
"And that is Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko," Marcus finished.
"Commander Shepard of Eden Prime?!" Williams asked, her eyes wide as she eyed the N7 logo on his chest. "Well – daymn! – it must be really big if they've sent you here… you are here for that Prothean beacon, aren't you?"
"That's the idea, Chief," he confirmed as he walked toward the burning wreckage of the enemy mechs whose remains were strewn around.
"Tell me, Chief, what happened here," he said as he holstered his rifle and crouched next to the mech of which only an upper part of the torso with arms and a head remained, and launched a complex omni-tool scan, examining the wreck closely.
Williams took a deep breath and swallowed as she crouched down next to him.
"Oh, man. Uh… We were patrolling the perimeter when the attack came," she said and pointed in a general direction of their intended path. "They virtually came out of nowhere. One moment everything was normal, and the next – bombardment blazing everywhere."
"Artillery?" he asked.
"No, sir," she shook her head. "It was aerial, coming from the ships. They were these weird things, too, all metal gray, sleek and curvaceous – like wasps without legs or wings. I've never seen anything like them. They bombarded the GARDIAN turrets, taking them out during the first volley. That's when these things started dropping en masse," she said as she nodded toward the mangled remains of the mech. "They tore into us, shock and awe. We tried to fight back, but there were just so many of them. I got separated from my unit after a flanking maneuver failed. I think… I think I'm the only one left."
Marcus silently listened as he closely examined the remains of the synthetic, then called out to Jaina as he pointed toward the mech:
"Hey, Jay, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Geth, no doubt about it," she said with finality, not taking her eyes off the area she was sighting down.
"I-I thought so, too, sir, but I couldn't be sure," Ashley said.
"If that's truly Geth," Kaidan spoke up, "then what are they doing all the way out here?"
"It's only four primary relay jumps from the Perseus veil to here, Lieutenant," Jaina spoke. "And it leads through the sparsely-populated region of the Terminus and the Traverse. They could hide a fleet as close as the Voyager Cluster, and none would be the wiser."
"Yes, but why here?" Alenko pointed out with genuine puzzlement. "Geth space is almost halfway across the Galaxy, and they haven't been seen outside of the Perseus Veil in over three hundred years. One would think the one they attack would be the quarians or someone in the Terminus, not us all the way over here."
"I can think of a number of good reasons, but we don't have the time to discuss it," Marcus said, then activated the comm and signaled Nihlus. "Nihlus, the enemies are Geth. I repeat: the enemies are Geth."
"Understood, Commander," Nihlus replied. "Will adjust accordingly."
Marcus closed the channel, then took a spare disruptor ammo mod out of his belt pocket and called out, "Alenko, install this into your rifle!" and then he tossed it his way. "Now, Williams, you were assigned to guard duty at the dig site, yes?"
"Yes, sir," she replied.
"Do you consider yourself fit enough to take us to the Prothean beacon they've uncovered?"
"Ready and able, sir!" she replied sharply.
"Give me your rifle," he said, to what Williams promptly handed over her Lancer. With skilled swiftness, Marcus removed the upper cover casing, took out the final spare disruptor mod from his belt pouch, clicked it in place over the bared rifle bore, and resealed the casing.
"Take it," he said, handing over the improved gun. "You'll be staying close to Alenko. With you in that Phoenix armor, neither one of you has enough shields to protect you from more than a few direct shots, so you two are to stay back and provide thick support and suppressive fire, and nothing else. I don't want to see you anywhere near the enemy. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!" the two answered as one.
"Move out!"
The team moved quickly down the path in an organized staggered formation: Marcus up front, Jaina to his left and back wielding the Locust, followed by Ashley to the right, and finally Kaidan to the back, both with their Lancers at ready.
They wasted no time on finding cover, trusting Marcus's and Jaina's superior shielding boosted with their biotic barriers to take the brunt of any sudden assault. There were no enemies, though, even though the sounds of battle were thick in the distance.
After a few minutes of progress, they climbed over the crest of the hill and were greeted with the impressive sight of the excavation itself.
"Someone was doing a lot of digging here," Alenko commented.
He was right; the excavation was not a mere hole in the ground. The thing covered a vast expanse of surface, well over two hundred meters in diameter and two dozen meters deep, and looked like someone had simply stripped a whole layer of earth away. Angular structures that looked like a mix of stone and metal rose up from where a concrete bottom could be seen among the dirt, looking like remnants of some gigantic structure.
But that's not what had Marcus's attention. It was the enormous dark blue-gray metallic structure in the distance beyond the site, which towered like a spire over everything within dozens of miles. He couldn't see the lower half from his point, but it was clear that it was that alien ship they saw land in the transmission.
"It's that freak ship that landed," Williams pointed out when she noted where everyone had their attention. "Look at the friggin' size of it! It's bigger than any building I've ever seen! I don't know how it managed to land."
"We can't worry about it now," Marcus said. "Come on… show us to the beacon."
"Right! It should be over there, behind that wall of excavated dirt" Williams pointed. "We can get there quickest if we follow that path."
Marcus nodded. "Take point," he commanded, and then followed right behind her, holding his one hand on her back and the other aiming with his rifle over her shoulder, exerting control over her advance and movements.
They descended quickly down into the ancient ruins, and just as they had swung the bend that should have taken them to where the beacon apparently was located, a group of enemy geth started pouring rounds in their direction.
"Down!" Marcus barked, his hand that was on Williams' back pushing her readily into a cover, and mentally activating his neural stim-implants.
Before she was even halfway down into the cover, Marcus's blood was flooded with epinephrine and tetraezonine, the implant chip causing his neural processing power to skyrocket. Time slowed down to a crawl, and it took him a microsecond to realize that the geth were heavily entrenched.
Nine hostiles were spread in strategic positioning. Two snipers, four shock troopers, two heavies, and geth turret analogue were already moving to begin their spray toward them. They were aware of them coming, most likely because of the loss of their group that had chased Williams. He knew it would be hard for them to flush the Geth out. The group needed to be shocked into breaking their cover.
The biotic power swirled around him as he focused the mass effect polarities between him and a single geth soldier's position on the farther end of the area, and a protective bubble-barrier formed around him a split second before the biotic Charge unleashed.
In that split second of time dilation, he felt nothing. It was like a free-fall through a gravity well of a star – fast, powerful, and utterly weightless.
And then the biotic power slammed brutally into the cover of the farther geth he had targeted, blasting the concrete into pieces and launching the geth soldier backwards. Wasting no time, he detonated a powerful biotic nova, blasting whatever was left of the geth, and sending a shockwave that knocked the closest geth shock troopers out of their cover.
He made a strafing pirouette, dodging the sudden barrage of phasic rounds and sliding low behind an ancient wall-beam, letting the rounds pepper his position and trusting his team to come through. Just then, he heard a tell-tale sound of a biotic power being launched in his vicinity, followed by a warp detonation and a concussive shot, and then a furious barrage of a pair of Lancer rifles.
He glanced at his HUD, taking in the exact enemy positions that were highlighted by his smart VI before he swung out of his cover and sprayed a short burst of explosive rounds into a nearby geth. He followed through by rolling out and sending a concussive shot toward another, and then an EMP blast toward the turret that had pinned Alenko and Williams.
Alenko didn't waste time and launched an EMP pulse of his own, overloading the destabilized turret into a massive explosion of lightning sparks. Williams followed suit with a concussive shot toward geth sniper positions, forcing them into breaking their position and end up straight in the sights of Jaina's sniper. A single round cut each of them down like a puppet without strings.
A moment of silence followed suit, interrupted only with the last sounds of dying robotics.
"Clear!" Marcus called.
"Clear!" came the response from Alenko.
He raised himself from the new cover he had assumed, and looked around the excavation site. Other than alien concrete walls and a bunch of portable reflector lights, the site was empty.
"Where's the beacon?" he demanded.
"It was right here!" Williams pointed with dismay at the exact spot. "Shit. They must've moved it."
"Our side or the geth?" Alenko asked rhetorically.
"Doesn't matter," Marcus said. "There's only one other way leading out of here."
"Right, there's a scientist camp just over the edge," Ashley pointed up the wall of the dig site, near what appeared to be a vehicle pathway up. "Maybe we'll find more clues there!"
"If the geth took the beacon, they must then be transporting it to the extraction point," Jaina pointed out. "That huge ship would have been my transportation of choice if I was looking for a high-priority target extraction. Something that big that can land on a planet definitely has monstrous kinetic barrier protection."
Marcus merely nodded. "Move out," he called, immediately setting a brisk pace up the slope.
As soon as they climbed all the way up, they saw that it was just as Ashley had said. The scientist camp was just on the edge of the excavation. Wrecked and burning prefabs littered the place, few of them seeming to be intact. Charred human bodies were lying everywhere.
Marcus's comm link crackled to life, followed by Nihlus's voice:
"Commander, what's your status?"
"I've reached the scientist's camp, and it doesn't look good. The beacon was moved – we don't know by who or where – but we think the destination is the spaceport."
"I am looking at the spaceport now," Nihlus said. "There is some activity on the far side; I see geth troops loading up in what must be their transport ships. Little activity on the side where I'm at. Gonna go down to check it out. Meet you there."
"Roger that," Marcus said, just as he heard Kaidan's disturbed voice exclaim from somewhere to the side.
"Commander! You need to see this!"
Marcus turned his head sharply to look at where Kaidan pointed and saw a bunch of tall metal spikes. With humans impaled on them.
"What did the geth do to them?" Jaina whispered as she took in the glowing blue cybernetics that seemed to invade the ashen-gray skin of the impaled corpses.
"The bigger question is – why?" Marcus retorted cautiously, his senses alert.
Suddenly, one by one, the spikes started to retract into their three-foot base, and as the corpses slid down from the spikes, everybody witnessed the bodies landing on their feet – hunched over and with their arms hanging limply, yes – but standing solidly. The atrocious, mummified heads turned toward them, their disturbing neon blue gazes seeming to look through them.
"My god, they're still alive!" Kaidan shouted before an unearthly howl interrupted him.
The creatures started shuffling toward them like a bunch of cybernetic zombies, their eyes dead despite eerie blue light that emanated from the goggle-like orbs and depths of their mouths, howling madly like the shriek of the damned.
"Open fire!" Marcus roared as he unleashed a barrage into the creeps that began running mindlessly towards them, being immediately followed by others.
The rounds slammed into them, breaking their desiccated cyber-bodies with impunity, but the creatures seemed to completely disregard the damage they were receiving, their self-preservation instincts seemingly destroyed by the invasive cybernetics.
Deciding to take no chance, Marcus unleashed several concussive shots in quick succession into the midst of the advancing shamble, knocking the still-moving creeps from their feet before the successive concussive shots blasted them all into chunks of mummified flesh and cybernetics.
When the battleground finally fell silent, Marcus approached what was one of the less destroyed cybernetic corpses.
"They weren't human anymore," he said grimly as he crouched and examined the body with his omni-tool. "Their skin, organs, nervous system – all of it was invaded by the cybernetics. Whoever these people were – now they're just husks."
"What were the geth trying to achieve by this?" Kaidan wondered in disgusted astonishment. "Why would they want to do this?"
"Makes sense to me," Jaina said, her tone grim as well. "This was to use our people against us – cannon fodder, psychological warfare, you name it. Humans would be repulsed by the idea to shoot someone that was their friend or their neighbor, even if it is just a dead body that moves."
"I don't know about you," Ashley spoke with venom in her voice. "But these geth are due for a major payback, and its due with interest!"
"You'll get your chance, Williams," Marcus said calmly. "We need to link up with Nihlus; we'll need all the firepower we can get."
The team moved quickly out of the encampment toward the spaceport, and before they even passed the final housing units, they heard nearby sounds of gunfire – the high-pitch wheezing of geth rifles interspersed with bursts of standard weaponry.
"Double time!" Marcus commanded, breaking into a full run.
As the buildings of the port came into view, a loud noise sounding like deep-pitched horn reverberated through the air and into their very skulls. Their heads shot up, and they all saw then that the huge alien ship had begun ascending rapidly into the red skies.
The pair of glowing red lights around its central tentacle bared an uncanny resemblance to a pair of hate-filled eyes that seemed to glare back at them.
Not a hand – Marcus thought somewhere in the back of his head as he watched the silhouette of the retreating ship – a huge squid. A cuttlefish.
The ship ascended without using any visible thrusters, the horning noise ceasing with its departure, leaving only bursts or rifle fire that brought everyone out of their brief reverie.
Marcus motioned them toward the source with a cutting flick of his hand, and the team moved quickly down, quickly coming up on several colonists in cover behind some large crates, with a group of geth advancing toward their position and putting out suppressive fire. The three colonists weren't having any of that, though, as they were lobbying frag grenades and firing intermittently with pistols and semi-automatic rifles.
In a brief moment, Marcus's eyes locked with Jaina's, and an unspoken thought passed between them: that it was no wonder to them now as to why the fighting could still be seen and heard all over the area. People – rugged, hardened colonists – were rising to defend their homes, no matter how futile it seemed.
With the clueless geth preoccupied with the colonists, the team descended upon their exposed flank like a stampede of barrage fire, concussive shots, and biotics. The force of the rounds launched the geth out of their cover, piercing large holes in their armor before the explosion of the round tore large chunks of metal and shrapnel.
"Incoming!" Jaina shouted suddenly, before bounding up the roof of the nearby prefab unit with feline grace, landing on her belly, and began sending sniper rounds downrange.
Marcus charged across the small open space and slid on his hip into a cover, before popping up to see what Jaina was firing at.
He saw an entire platoon of geth heading their way.
"Stay down!" he commanded the surviving civilians before he aimed down the slope into the oncoming geth and unleashed a long barrage, ending four geth before his Mattock approached overheating, and then sent several concussion missiles into the throng as he allowed his heat sinks to compensate. The small guided missiles that were the concussive round slammed into the burning mass, causing massive explosions in quick succession that sent geth either reeling or dying.
Jaina's semi-automatic sniper was downing any geth that managed to remain standing, and she was already switching to farther targets.
Marcus advanced slowly, alternating between bursts and concussive shots, not giving the geth any chance for respite. Kaidan and Ashley were following closely as they scuttled from cover to cover, providing thick suppressive fire with their Lancers.
The geth countered by erecting a wall of large hexagonal shields that began absorbing large amounts of fire before a blue biotic field began yanked them up into the air.
"Way to go, Kaidan!" Marcus exclaimed as he invoked an unstable warp bolt into the floating throng, the detonation sending the geth in all directions.
The battle was joined by a group of rocket launcher wielding geth, along with three geth that were significantly larger than others.
"Shit," Marcus muttered as the first missile flew toward him.
He activated his stim-implant, the adrenaline boosting his entire organism and seemingly slowing time, giving him the opportunity to react properly.
He dodged under the first missile and evaded the next, both of which exploded harmlessly when they impacted far behind him. Waiving the use of the rifle, he channeled biotics and targeted the path of the new incoming missiles. Tiny warp fields formed in the paths down which the missiles were approaching him, and as the missiles flew through, the disruptive force of the warps twisted the material, detonating the missiles long before they reached any of his teammates.
Channeling last of his biotic energy he could manage before the stim-induced acceleration faded, he sent a light shockwave into the missile wielding geth, staggering them only so much to disrupt their actions.
He launched himself into a combat roll, ending up behind a rocky cover and activating his emergency bio-boost. The suit's dispensers immediately injected him with a pre-prepped nutrient cocktail, the pure-calorie nutrients going straight into his bloodstream and replenishing his body's energy for his biotic usage. He felt an immediate relief as his veins were flooded with badly-needed energy, and he clenched his teeth as he ignored the wave of pinpricks on his face.
Ashley and Kaidan did their suppression job diligently, denying the geth opportunity to aim, allowing Jaina to pick them off with ease from her perch.
The three large geth that were with the group, though, didn't move to hide like the others. Their shielding and armor seemed to be leaps and bounds above that of ordinary geth they encountered so far, and the huge synthetics completely ignored Ashley's and Kaidan's rifle barrage.
Jaina took quick and steady aim, sending a round into each of their faces with laser precision. The high-caliber round pierced through their shields and slammed straight into their flashlights, exploding on impact and splitting the geth heads like flower blossoms. The three huge robots just fell to the ground like the puppets with cut strings.
"Phew!" Jaina exclaimed playfully through the comms. "Those three were real juggernauts! Didn't stand a chance against this mean machine here, though," she patted her sniper rifle, before jumping down from several meters of height onto the ground as if it was nothing, and racing to join up with the group that had pressed on forward.
She caught up with them just as they had reached a dead body lying on the ground. It was Nihlus.
"Damn it!" she cursed when she saw Marcus crouching next to the dead turian Spectre.
"I take it that that turian was one of ours?" Ashley asked as she took to securing the perimeter with Alenko. "The one Commander was speaking with through the comms?"
"Yeah," Kaidan provided grimly, taking a quick glance back before he returned to scouting the area down the sights of his rifle. "His death means this mission just went fubar."
"He was shot at point blank range in the back of the head," Marcus said as he examined the wound. "The wound is burnt by heat, which means the murder weapon's muzzle was inside his shields."
"Capture and execution?" Jaina asked.
Marcus looked pensive then nodded toward Nihlus's shotgun that was still clutched in dead turian's hand. "Not if he was holding his weapon."
"That would mean someone snuck up on him," Jaina pointed out, her tone clearly voicing her disbelief to that scenario.
"I doubt it too," Marcus said. "A Spectre wouldn't be that kind of an amateur to let that happen."
Jaina bit the inside of her cheek, disconcerting thoughts floating up to the surface.
"That would mean he was offed by someone he knew," she said slowly.
Marcus could only agree with her. He was silent for a moment until they heard a slight clutter that came from where a group of large containers and crates stood.
They all pointed their weapons toward the source, while Marcus and Jaina switched to thermal detection display of their visors.
"Come out!" Marcus barked roughly as he sighted the heat of a crouching human form behind crates.
A man slowly rose, holding his hands up.
"Alright, don't shoot!" he spoke quickly. "I'm human! I hid behind these crates when the attack came! Look, my name is Powel, I work here at the spaceport."
"There are human bodies around here," Ashley spoke with suspicion as she nodded toward another couple of human corpses not too far from there. Her eyes narrowed at him. "How come you're the only one who managed to hide behind these crates?"
"Look, I was already here when the attack came, okay?" he said as he lowered his hands. "I hid here to take a fucking nap during work hours, what do you care?"
"You lazy fuck –" Ashley started, before Marcus interrupted her:
"Lay it off, Chief," he said coolly. "It's not our concern what other people do with their time and money."
"Yes sir," Ashley replied with a lot less heat to her voice.
"What interests me," Marcus continued, "is what did you see happen here. The attack was hours in the lasting by that time, so you were obviously awake by that time. I need to know what happened to that turian over there."
Powel sighed, looking uneasily at the corpse, then back at Marcus's masked visage, licking his lips.
"Didn't saw it, exactly," he said slowly as he leaned forward onto the crate. "But I heard it all. That turian? He was your friend or something?"
"He was on our team, yes," Jaina clarified simply.
"Yeah, well," Powel took a deep breath and huffed. "See, when the attack came I was here, just hoping to stay alive. They were everywhere! I couldn't see them, but I figured they were mechs from the weird electronic sound they were letting. Then suddenly, I hear a voice ordering them around! And make no mistake: that voice was turian!"
"You sure?" Jaina squinted at him.
"Positive!" Powel replied. "It's that metallic flange in their voices – it stood out like teeth on a vorcha, you couldn't miss it!"
"And the geth were listening to him?" Kaidan asked in disbelief.
"Geth? Is that what they were?" Powel asked. "Damn! Uh, yeah, they were obeying him. As I was saying, he was around doling out orders to them."
"Did he say anything that stood out?" Marcus asked intently. "Something that wasn't simple military command?"
"Uh… yeah, there was something," Powel said slowly, thinking. "You know that new excavation site over there? Well, one of the geth spoke to him that they've found this beacon. Then this turian said to take it to the docking bay. That's over there on the far side. I remember that they did return with cargo – I could hear the sound of a hover trailer. He didn't mention anything else other than giving orders. The geth left to do as he told them, but he stayed around. It was then that your friend came. Nihlus – that's how the other turian called him."
"What happened next?" Jaina prompted.
"Well, your friend called him by name: Saren. He wanted to know what Saren was doing here since, apparently, this wasn't his mission. Saren told him he was sent by the Council to help him. Your friend then let his guard down – he started talking about the situation, how things were bad, and about that time I hear – BANG! I heard Saren leaving, and that was when the geth came back. A few minutes later I hear these sounds of battle, thinking an entire Alliance platoon was blasting its way toward this place. Imagine my surprise when all I saw was you four."
Jaina turned to Marcus.
"If this Saren claimed he was sent by the Council, and Nihlus believed him, then he might be a Spectre," she said grimly.
"We should take this to the Council then," Kaidan provided.
"Not gonna hold any weight," Marcus shook his head. "The war trauma clause can make this evidence inadmissible. We have no recording of voice, nor video."
"Yeah, you do!" Powel spoke quickly, then pointed to a corner of the building. "The entire spaceport is surrounded by a security system on an independent powergrid!"
Marcus quickly looked that way, zooming in with his helmet optics, and saw a small broad-view camera that could be missed entirely. He quickly activated his omnitool and scanned the device from the distance. It was in working order and transmitting.
"The cameras only record visual, but they feed to security offices," Powel continued. "It's on the side where they took the beacon. You can get the recording there, and see that all that I told you is true! You're going to fight those bastards, right?"
"We are," Marcus spoke. "You should clear out while you can. We saw a few civilians up on the hill, over there. They have weapons, and could give you a better chance of survival."
"Yeah, that must be Carson," Powel said. "I sold him those grenades I heard exploding all the way from over here about three months ago. Good thing he had them."
"Wait!" Ashley said with her eyes widened. "Are you telling me that you're The Smuggler? The guy who provides illegal weapons to half the city?!"
Powel frowned at that, then shrugged. "Yeah, of course, everybody knows that. Captain Luciano knew that. It's not like I did it for some major profit; the people need to be able to protect themselves out here in the Verge."
Ashley couldn't hide her disbelief.
"That's not the point!" she yelled out. "It shouldn't be your job to protect yourselves, but the job of the Alliance to protect you instead!"
Powel grimaced at her as if she sprouted horns.
"Well, no offence to your devotion, miss, but your Alliance has proven time and again that they can't do squat when it comes to protecting its colonies," Powel retorted pointedly, then spread his arms. "And this particular case just drives the nail in your coffin. Just look around you! You had a whole battalion down here, armored vehicles and all, and they just steamrolled right over you. You didn't even see them coming! Your early warning systems have utterly failed in their jobs, and you want us to rely on you? Thanks, but no thanks! We're not putting our faith into someone who's not even able to defend himself. Besides, us colonists are not morons out to start gang wars with those weapons; we know we need to rely on each other out here! That's why we want these weapons, that's the reason I provide them with weapons, and I will keep doing so whether you like it or not. Captain Luciano knew that, and that's why he let me continue."
Powel vented the air out of his lungs, then continued:
"Look, some of these crates and containers contain weapons; I can help you with them."
"I think we're stocked up just fine," Jaina raised her hand.
Powel grinned maniacally. "Oh, no, I'm not talking about ordinary guns. I have something even better," he said with a glint in his eye, then motioned for them to following as he ran to the large shipping container that was parked nearby. He punched in the code, pulled the lever, and opened the doors to show a Triton walker.
"Holy shit!" Ashley exclaimed.
"You smuggle walker mechs?" Kaidan asked in utter astonishment, measuring the shabby-looking man up and down.
"What?! No, are you crazy?!" Powel exclaimed as he looked at Kaidan as if he sprouted horns. "These mechs are military stuff; I just know they came this morning! There are four of them in these containers. They were supposed to go to the 212th, and they're all yo –"
"LOOK OUT!" Jaina yelled out suddenly as she pushed Powel away from them, and erected a massive biotic bubble around them all as a single missile slammed into it, with other missiles approaching rapidly.
"Honeeeeyyy?!" Jaina called with concern.
Marcus did his thing with tiny warp barriers, causing missiles to detonate as the rest of the squad dove for cover. He raised his rifle along with Kaidan and Ashley, putting down suppressive fire toward the distant geth troops that were advancing their way, until Jaina crouched into a sniping position behind the fence, and began picking them off.
"Williams, into that Triton, now!" Marcus roared as he sent short bursts from his rifle toward the advancing geth.
"Yes, sir!" Ashley shouted, then ran into the container and hopped into the closest Triton's seat.
The cockpit canopy closed down, with combat HUD immediately popping out. The large turbine on the walker's back spun into action with a rising whine, and as the interface in the cockpit showed maximum power, Ashley grabbed the controls and the combat walker exited the container.
"Eat this, tin cans!" Ashley shouted out, wrinkling her nose.
Whiiiiiiirrrrr-BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
A hailstorm of high-caliber rounds rained down on the geth from the Triton's minigun, followed by a launch of a guided missile that destroyed the cover geth took to hiding behind. The walker moved steadily forward in large strides, its shields shrugging off lesser geth rounds, while the rest of the team moved behind it, Marcus taking care to protect it with his micro-warps against incoming missiles, and Jaina taking shots of opportunity against larger geth.
As they reached the far side, they encountered stairs and elevated catwalks and bridges from which geth were shooting down at them. Without any ado, Ashley activated the mech's thrusters, launching the machine into the air, arcing down onto the catwalk, and landing right on top of a couple of geth units that were there, crushing them under her feet.
"Daym, this is fun!" she crooned with a grin that threatened to split her face in half, before trailing her gun to the other geth and depressing the machinegun trigger.
The rest of the team stormed up the stairs and into the walkways, giving what little support was needed as Ashley's walker crossed the bridge, all the while pounding the geth mercilessly, not giving them chance to regroup.
She continued down that path, demolishing the geth until she reached the balcony overlooking the docking area, and spotted a large cylindrical device lying down on the floor. And she stopped cold.
"Uh, Commander?" she called out through the comm, her voice laced with panic. "Do you know how to disarm a nuclear bomb?"
"Don't worry about it," Marcus said with absolute cool as he approached the device. "You just worry about shooting."
"Y-yes, sir," she replied with a gulp.
As Ashley returned to gunning down the few remaining geth and humanoid husks that accompanied them, Marcus raised his omnitool and scanned the bomb. The device was straightforward, without any hidden traps; he figured the geth didn't have much time, nor were they expecting there would be anyone left to disarm the device.
He used his omnitool to bypass the active power flow, and then disabled the specific circuitry, finishing with unhooking the few wires.
"All done!" he called just as the sounds of firefight ended.
"Area clear!" Jaina called out.
"And, there's the beacon!" Ashley said with satisfaction as she punched the command to open the cockpit canopy. She jumped out, then turned around to look appreciatively at it. "Wish we had you five hours ago," she spoke to the mech ruefully.
The team descended the stairs to the large platform, approaching the beacon and scanning the perimeter. The beacon glowed brightly, and visible waves of energy were emanating from it.
"It wasn't doing anything like that when they dug it up," Ashley spoke as she took a few steps closer to the beacon.
Marcus punched in a code, then made a comm link to their ship.
"Normandy, we've secured the beacon," he said. "We need a pickup at our coordinates."
A sudden pulse of an activating mass effect field interrupted whatever he was going to say next.
His head shot toward the beacon with an alert frown, only to see Ashley being pulled toward the obelisk and desperately trying to stop her slide.
He raised his hand, channeled his biotics, and yanked her out and away from the field.
"Nobody approaches it!" he ordered brusquely as he circled it at a safe distance while Ashley was raising herself from the ground in shock.
He activated all of the sensors that his suit had, and watched the overlay the HUD was displaying. He raised his omnitool and made a few sweeps before his HUD blinked a warning indicator against the beacon.
"Ahh, dammit, it's not only active; it's overloading!" he growled.
The beacon's integrated mass effect fields were burning through energy reserves at an alarming rate, sending off EM waves, and raising the heat of integral components beyond what any piece of electronic would call safe, and it was approaching critical fast.
He quickly tapped a few commands on his omnitool, sending out another sweep across the beacon, collecting structure data, then once more as he corrected the second sweep with new frequencies, drawing the complete picture.
"Kaidan, Jaina, get over here!" he called the two. "Omni-tools, now!"
The two raised their wrists to his and synched their omnitools as Marcus sent them a stream of data.
"Kaidan, maintain a dampening wave on the beacon using that frequency," he said. "Jaina, begin with the energy drain. Keep alternating with the phase variance I gave you."
As the two proceeded to do so, Marcus made a couple more quick sideway sweeps with his omnitool, monitoring what it was telling him, altered the few parameters, and then raised his omnitool high and slowly began lowering it as the active signal from his omnitool began sweeping across the beacon.
As his arm lowered, the active electric force of the three external sources gently disrupted the energy flow within the beacon, depriving it of the energy that was trapped in a loop of dangerous power increase.
The massive explosive overload never happened.
The bright green waves that the beacon emanated gently subsided and the beacon powered down, shutting down the remaining lights.
"You can stop now," Marcus said, and the other two teammates cut of their phased field signals.
"Was that a smart thing to do, Commander?" Kaidan asked with a worried voice. "The Council was very eager to have this beacon active. If we've shut it down now, we may never turn it back on!"
"No, we will," Marcus stated confidently. "Looking at this thing now, I know that this beacon wasn't actually powered on when they found it; it must've been one of the scientists that accidentally powered it on – which means if they did it, the process can be repeated in a more controlled environment."
"How can you be so sure, sir?" Ashley asked. "I mean – weren't the Protheans, like – super-advanced?"
"They may have been advanced, but they were bound by laws of physics, Chief," Marcus replied as he walked slowly around the beacon, checking the thing up and down. "If you want to produce enough energy to feed something with active mass effect fields for fifty thousand years, then you'd need energy reserves that couldn't possibly fit into a device this small. Period."
"So, why did it went into overload?" Kaidan asked as he too looked the beacon over.
"The thing was degraded with time," Marcus replied, shrugging. "It's as simple as that. Some of the circuitry went haywire, making it overload on energy and heat. Should be fine now, though."
"Makes sense, I suppose," Kaidan acquiesced, nodding.
"Jaina," Marcus called out to her as he pointed up toward the spaceport control center. "Why don't you go up there and see if you can find that security camera feed that showed Nihlus's death?"
"Right," she said, then turned and trotted up the stairs toward the entrance.
"You really think this Saren or the geth didn't destroy those records, sir?" Kaidan asked.
"Remember the nuke we defused on the way, Lieutenant?" Marcus pointed out. "He did prepare to destroy those files, alright."
Realization dawned on Kaidan's face. "Ah," he said.
Just as she did, they heard the distant sound of spaceship engines, and the Normandy rounded the nearby hill slope and approached the docking bay in a quick swoop, positioning next to the landing pad.
"Normandy," Marcus called. "The package is hot, and I mean literally! We need to let it cool off before transport."
"Roger that, ground team," Captain Anderson replied. "What's your team status?"
"We lost Nihlus, sir," Marcus replied.
There was a pause.
"That complicates things," Anderson said finally. "Come aboard, Commander; we have things to discuss."
REVIEW RESPONSES:
Indecisive Bob – Thanks for your reviews. And yes, you've actually guessed right that one of my goals here is to patch up the holes in the story of ME1. On another note, my story is not the only one on the Fanfiction that features a romantically involved MShep and FemShep. I've read a decently written one; it's just that for the life of me, I cannot remember what the story's name was.
CaedmonCousland – Thanks for the large review message. I like having them far more than simple "I liked it, keep up" – and that goes as an encouragement to anyone who reads this and wishes to leave a review. As for your thought on camera recordings that (and I quote you) "…there is always the risk of those videos being hacked or stolen…", you need to realize that government field operatives use camcorders regardless of that. The secret services know what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's something called 'leverage'.
Expect next chapter during the course of the following week.