Chapter 25
"Team two, this is team one. We've got ourselves a mess," Tyr said with irritated alarm in his voice.
Kevin and Arla quickly looked at each other and switched their comms to the cross-communication cycling algorithm. "How bad?" Arla asked.
"Local geth coming off of nodes for the moment. We were able to take most of them down, but enough have gotten away that they can easily put the entire ship on full alert. Expect trouble at your location too, just to be sure."
"Understood," Arla replied before she turned to talk to Kevin. But... He wasn't there. "Kevin?"
"Over here, behind you," he replied. She turned to look at him as he was placing his last explosive high up in a corner of the junction.
"What are you doing? We have to set off the others," she said as she quickly went to set hers on the opposite corner.
"Not yet," Kevin said after stepping back to the center of the junction.
"Why not? This is what our only objective is! To pull geth troops from them to us!" She finished setting hers and stepped back to the middle with Kevin.
"Think about it, Arla. If we light these explosives now, we'll wake the entire ship regardless of whether they have or not. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not prematurely find out just how many combat ready geth are available right now."
"But we-"
Kevin put his hands on her shoulders. "They can handle themselves quite well for now. It's not until the pressure on them gets much higher that our distraction will have the most benefit for both teams."
Kevin caught her trying to hide her clenching fists, but she quickly let them go and looked off to the side. "Then we should be prepping, not wasting time here." She broke free of Kevin's point-making grasp and started down one of the three hallways they hadn't been down yet.
"I'm glad you see things my way?" he said as he began chasing after her.
They both pulled out their main weapons as they headed down the hallway. Suddenly, the dim ambiance brightened from a deep blue to a white-blue. They paused their run for a moment to look back down the hallway passed the junction and saw that it wasn't just the hallway they were in, either. It seemed the entire section of the ship was lighting up. Kevin was pretty sure at this point that it was in response to team one's ruckus, but kept his gun ready anyways. There was no telling where geth were being stirred from their zombie-like silence.
Almost as if his thoughts were the unfortunate cue, a door ahead of them on the right opened up and the stuttering buzz of geth communication echoed into the hallway. This particular hall was sorely lacking in protrusions and crates for cover, so Kevin and Arla both ducked low and to the side of the hallway with Kevin crouched just in front of Arla. Her hand rested on his shoulder palm up with the long barrel of the her sniper rifle resting on that.
"I've got the rapid fire weapon, so I'll make you a deal," Kevin said.
"You whittle down the shields and I make the killshot?" she asked.
"Deal," Kevin responded as three geth troops emerged from the doorway.
None of them were prepared for a firefight, as they had yet to pull out their weapons. This gave Kevin and Arla plenty of time to litter the tightly packed group of three with a rain of projectiles, followed by three incredibly powerful mass accelerator sniper shots, each to the head. Kevin was surprised how quickly she pulled off such accurate hits. Impressed, even.
They didn't wait to see if more geth were going to pop out. They didn't hear any more of the trademark stuttering sound the geth always made, so they picked up and headed forward. As they passed the room the geth came from, Kevin briefly looked inside for confirmation that there were none left. He expected to find a room with a node, but what he saw was fairly different. Enough for him to stop to examine it further.
"Wait," he called to Arla.
"We don't have time to wait," she spat back.
"Then make time. This could be important. Look."
Arla sighed and took a look in the room, probably expecting to see what Kevin expected. "Well, we certainly haven't seen that yet."
They both stepped into the room to get a better look. The room was much smaller than the one they passed through earlier with the nodes, and it was empty. There was, however, one major difference. The far wall wasn't just a wall – it had an equidistant set of three square holes spanning its length. They were each the same size – big enough for Kevin to crawl in with no effort – and not irregular enough to be maintenance tunnel entrances. As they stepped closer, they could see something moving inside. It looked like there was an active rail system moving at very high speed, but there was nothing on the rails.
"What do you make of this?" Arla asked.
Kevin, against his better judgment, poked his head inside the hole to get a look at the rail system and where it was coming from. He couldn't see much, however. It was not lit.
"Well, this is somewhat similar to something that high volume distribution centers moving hundreds of thousands of crates of goods a day would have. Why would the geth... Ah, crap. I think I know what's going on here."
"What? What this is-"
Arla's question was cut off by Kevin suddenly pulling his head in. Mere milliseconds afterwards, a bunch of large silvery objects flew by the holes so fast that neither of them could get a good look. Kevin then stepped off to the side of the holes, as if expecting something to happen.
"Might want to stand to the side. Just in case," he suggested.
But before Arla could act on that, one of the same silvery objects shot out of each of the holes in the wall. Startled, the quarian jumped off to the side to avoid a crushing blow. She was only able to keep her footing upon landing because she had stumbled into the adjacent wall. Both of them looked intently at the objects that shot out as they came to a skidding stop on the floor. The very moment they recognized the objects, they started to unfold. They were geth, folded up the way they often were when shot from transports. Kevin and Arla were smart enough to keep them from unfolding completely, though, and a few shots at the currently unshielded, half-folded geth were enough to destroy them.
"I guess I know now," Arla said, still breathing heavily from being startled.
Several more objects flew by the holes, continuing on to other destinations.
"Those are probably on their way to harass team one," Kevin deduced. "There's got to be a way to disable this, but we used up all of our explosives."
Arla didn't seem to have any answers either, and said nothing. Kevin thought of the rail system though, and how he heard stories about an occasional catastrophic accident whenever a strong, solid object jammed up the rails. He didn't have anything that could jam up rails of this speed, but he did have a gun. He took aim through one of the holes at what he gathered were the most crucial parts and shot enough times to make sure that the parts were obliterated. He ejected a heat sink and turned to Arla.
"Let's get moving," Kevin said. "I don't want to be in this room when the next geth hits that."
"Right behind you," Arla said with an agreeing nod.
As soon as the door automatically closed behind them, they heard some loud metallic crashes and sounds of cascading destruction. The lights around the door started blinking red and a strange sound filled the air with it's repetition. Kevin figured that was some sort of alarm. With that in mind, he and Arla promptly continued down the hall in hopes of finding an area with more usable cover than this one. At the end of the hallway, they came to a T junction, with one hall heading right and one hall heading left. Their maps only showed a right path, but the path on the left had more immediate cover. Kevin and Arla looked to each other to pose the same silent question.
"Normally I'd choose the left path, but..." Arla began to reason.
"But getting lost here is not something we want to have to deal with. Our plan relies on us knowing where we are going at least a little bit."
"Agreed," she quickly replied and they both moved on.
It turned out that the hallway they headed down eventually sported fairly good cover as well. Their arrival at that particular area was timely, as they also ran into a small group of armed geth. Both groups stared at each other for a brief moment before team two dived behind massive capacitors on opposite sides of the hallway. As if that wasn't enough to focus on, Tyr contacted them on the comms again.
"Any time you kids want to stop making out and employ that distraction would be nice. We're starting to get overwhelmed up here! Our progress is going to grind to a halt if we don't get some relief!"
Arla responded first. "We're not making out-"
Kevin quickly cut her off from her banter. "Sit tight for one more minute, team one. We're just about ready to execute."
"Hmph. Apparently destroying that delivery system wasn't enough to get their attention," Arla said as she took some shots at the oncoming geth troops.
"That's because they didn't know it was us. This should seal the deal, though!" Kevin switched his suit's audio so that the geth could actually hear him. "Hey, you goons, you like explosives? Well we've got a nice treat for you! Say cheese – I mean bbrbrrbrrbrrbrbrrrt!"
Kevin switched back an lifted his arm with the omni-tool lit up high enough to clear the capacitor so that the geth could see him press the button. "Arla, light 'em up."
Simultaneously, they both detonated the first set of explosives – the ones in the room with all the uplink nodes. The area quaked and a loud explosion echoed all around them. Kevin risked a peek at the geth ahead of them and noticed a fairly major change – the light on their head was now red, and they were no longer just fighting defensively.
"Looks like that did it," Kevin said to his counterpart.
"Great," she said without surprise. "By the way, what was that supposed to be?"
"That was the explosions. You know, from the bricks we set?" He quickly leaned out and unloaded a burst of shots at the leading geth, who had decided that it was close enough to storm Kevin's position. Big mistake.
"No, I mean that noise you made. What in Keelah's name was that?"
"It was. . . My horrible attempt at geth-speak." Another burst of shots. "Give me a break, I'm not equipped with digital data projection!"
Arla fired twice, pulled back behind her cover and ejected a heatsink. "You have to admit, though. That was a pretty bad impersonation."
"Oh for the love of GOD." Kevin hopped up and finished off another storming geth. Two left. "How about we discuss this after we're not being shot at? Hmm?"
"But I just can't get over how bad it was!" Two more shots from her and another geth hit the floor in a shower of sparks.
"Alright, you win. It was bad. But you know what? I was insulting them. Now can we just drop it?"
Kevin popped up as the final geth ejected a heatsink and dropped its shields with several well placed shots. As he lined up the final shot, the geth's head exploded and it crumpled to the ground.
"Wha- You stole my kill!"
Arla stepped out from behind her cover and posed haughtily at Kevin being a slower shot. She was about to add to it with words, but Tyr boomed on the comms again.
"Good work, team two. We're mopping up and moving on. We felt that rumble all the way from here just before the geth got rather distracted. A bunch left to relocate, so I... (static)... your way. (static)... hope you can (static)..."
"Team one?" Arla called. "Garloh? Anyone? Please respond!"
Kevin tapped a few commands into his omni-tool. "Bad news. Looks like the geth figured out we were using cycling channels. They're jamming all of it now. All of it. Except for what I assume is the geth general network."
"We're on our own then."
"For now. In the meantime, lets keep up the distraction and file on over to the server room after we think they should have made it. We still have a job to do."
"Right. You lead. You're the one with the assault rifle, after all."
"Anything you say, your majesty."
As they resumed their trek down they hallway, Kevin prepared to detonate the last charge. "Might as well keep them from using that junction to overwhelm our backside."
Arla nodded and set to detonate hers too. With another deafening boom and a quick rocking of the hallway, the last sets of explosives tore into the ship. Kevin was fairly certain that the geth was focusing on them now. He wondered how long it would take for the ship to get any and all geth troops up and running. He was sure there was some level of manufacturing going on somewhere, especially after seeing the rail delivery system. He gave it about a half an hour, maximum, before they would have to make their final retreat to the server room. Until then, it was going to be a game of 'leapfrog' for cover and 'keep away' from the geth. He thought about adding 'don't step on the lava-filled separations on the floor' for old time's sake, but he reasoned that would be a bit difficult to keep track of while under fire.
The next four-way junction they arrived at presented a fairly unique and decent blockade position. There were two areas just before the corner of the junction at the end of their hallway that provided some pretty good cover from both in front as well as behind. The one on the right side was blind to and completely covered from the right hall, but could easily see and shoot down the left hall. The same was the case for the left side cover. Both could shoot down the forward and backward hallways.
"This looks like an excellent place to hold up for a few minutes," Kevin pointed out. He immediately stepped on over to the cover on the right side of the hall. "As long as we know when to move and to keep an eye out for troops behind, we should be able to hold this junction for a bit. According to the map, we might even be able to wrap around back here later if we're still doing well."
"I'll set a timer for seven minutes. Any longer than that is too long," Arla said as she tapped on her omni-tool. She crouched in the left side cover and not a moment to soon.
"Fair enough. Here comes our first wave."
About six geth started approaching from the center hall. They didn't seem aware right away that Kevin and Arla were waiting in ambush at the opposite side of the junction, but they had their weapons ready nonetheless. Arla nodded to Kevin and they both popped up and opened fire on the wide open geth group. Two dropped right away and the rest scattered while unleashing covering fire. Kevin spotted one towards the back that was a distinctly different color than the others, and slightly larger.
"Arla! Juggernaut in the back!"
Kevin was familiar with several different types of geth, at least enough to know them on sight. He often encountered them on his trips between missions, usually being fought off by groups of mercenaries or small bands of pirates. He's had his own run-ins in the past, most of which consisted of him being outnumbered and forced to retreat or with groups that were small enough to take down on his own. The juggernaut was one of his least favorites, mainly because of strong shielding and the fact that they could periodically fire distortion rockets from their pulse rifles. On any normal world, air resistance and gravity would cause the rockets to only be useful in short and medium range. But here? The lack of air and gravity meant that any distortion rocket fired would likely only be stopped by a wall, a piece of cover, a quarian, or himself. Arla knew this as well, and they both focused fire on it whenever they could.
It wasn't easy with the barrage of fire coming in from the other geth, and the juggernaut was able to launch one distortion rocket before they could finally take it down. The rocket hit the capacitor that Kevin was hiding behind, so he was able to escape that with only a nick to his shields. After that, the focus was back on keeping the regular geth troopers and the occasional shock trooper busy and dead.
One thing Kevin was quickly noticing, however, was that there didn't seem to be an end to the geth. As four went down, four or five slowly filled their place. He and Arla were working as fast and as hard as they could to keep their shields regenerated and to keep the geth from regenerating theirs, but it was becoming clear that Tyr's estimations about being able to handle a large volume of geth with only two people were right on the money.
"Arla, how long?" Kevin shouted above the constant back and forth fire.
"Six minutes!" She said just before popping up to take out another shock trooper before it could get in close.
"We need to move! It's getting too hot at this location!"
"I was hoping you were going to say that!"
The problem was clearing out enough of the geth that were there to move without getting shot to death. This became even more complicated when three geth showed up behind them.
"Arla, if you can somehow disable the three directly across the hall, our shields should be able hold long enough for us to make a break for it straight across!"
"And what do you propose we do about those three behind us?" Arla stayed ducked for the moment. The three behind them were creating crossfire right over their heads.
"I'll handle them. Just do what you can about the three there before more show up! Trust me on this!" Kevin flinched as a shot from a pulse rifle hit the capacitor right next to him and sent sparks all over his armor. Without waiting for confirmation from Arla, Kevin started gathering dark energy to himself. He wasn't going to be able to make it through this mission without using his biotics, that was certain.
"Okay! Their shields are low. I'll cause one of them to overload, which should knock out the two next to it! Ready?"
"Do it!" Kevin shouted.
Arla promptly popped up and hit a button on her omni-tool. The geth in the middle of the three across the junction sparked and jostled before bolts of electricity shot out of it when it exploded. The shock and shockwave smacked the other two hard against the walls and they rattled to the ground. Meanwhile, as Arla was busy with disabling the geth ahead of them, Kevin let loose a furious wave of dark energy at the clustered group of geth quickly catching up to them. All three were lifted off of their feet as they were violently thrown and ultimately pulverized somewhere down the hall.
Arla looked backward to see how Kevin was faring with the three behind them, but all she saw were the distant flashes of sparking geth bodies on the floor further than the hallway they had appeared from.
"What-"
"Go! Go now!"
Arla and Kevin both hurdled their cover and risked taking shots from the two or three that remained in the two side hallways. They took a couple hits a piece, but their shields were able to hold. Thank God for those stupid Cerberus soldiers, Kevin thought. Without them, we wouldn't have these shield upgrades. They continued to sprint down the hall until they took a sharp turn to the left around a corner. Just ahead in the hallway was another door on the right side. It opened and Kevin could hear that trademark geth sound he was apparently so bad at impersonating.
He didn't give these geth any chance to react – he sprinted right up beside the door. As soon as the synthetic bodies barely stepped beyond the threshold of the door, Kevin barraged the first with a smattering of projectiles at point blank range where its kinetic barriers proved useless. His heatsink was getting too hot to unleash another barrage, so without even thinking about it, he reached for his knife and took a swipe at the second geth. It cut clean through a set of cables running up to its head, which caused the geth to sputter and stagger about. Kevin wasn't done, though. He had to make sure it was not going to try to shoot them afterwards. He brought the knife around after the horizontal slash at its neck and buried the blade in the single lens on the head. The geth immediately fell backwards and stopped moving.
Kevin sheathed his knife and looked into the room. It was another delivery room with an all too familiar rail setup on the far wall. "Another one of these. Come on, lets get this one too before the others catch up to us." Kevin turned to Arla and flicked his head toward the room.
"Oh, right. Sorry." She was clearly distracted.
"Am I losing you already? Going to fast, maybe?" He said it in a playful tone, or at least, what he thought was a playful tone.
"Hardly. Just watching your CQC skills in action was impressive, that's all."
"Were they?" Kevin folded his arms and looked off to the side. "Pfft. I've had to use more advanced moves than that just to train you. Besides, we need to keep moving if we want to stay ahead of the next wave. Let's bust this thing and go. I'll keep an eye on the hall if you'd like to do the honors. You know where to shoot it, right?"
"I'm not a child, Folner. Just give me a couple seconds." Arla pulled out her pistol and aimed into the holes in the wall. She shot six times and moved away. "Done, let's go."
Similar to the first time, there was a lot of loud crashing and further destruction as soon as the next set of geth passed into that portion of the rails. The lights around the door blinked red, and that was their cue to get a move on. At the very least, that should keep some of the pressure off when they come face to face with the next wave. Down the hall they ran, pausing only once to take some shots at a few geth coming up behind them. They damaged one and killed a second, but didn't hang around to finish the job.
They came to yet another bland four-way junction. This time the corridor straight ahead was missing from their maps. It wasn't a huge deal to them, as long as the direction they intended to move in was there. According to that same map, the hall to their right should almost immediately lead to a room with a door on the backside. Kevin thought that a perfect staging area to slow down the geth, assuming that there was some form of cover inside. It was also only one corridor hop away from a maintenance entrance that they could use to get in close to the server room. They only had to hold out a little longer.
"We can bunker down for a couple minutes here," Arla pointed out. "We don't want to wait too long, though. We almost didn't make it out of that last one."
"Agreed. The geth are getting more numerous and aggressive far earlier than I gave them credit for." Kevin wedged himself between a protruding capacitor and a large opaque tube that went from the wall and into the floor of the same corner.
There were a lot of crates in this area. It seemed to Kevin that they were likely near some storage rooms or larger repository. He didn't have a lot of time to think about it, as geth were already beginning to bear down on them. So much for that half an hour expectation. At this rate they'll be retreating in a total of twenty minutes.
Kevin found it a bit hard to maneuver in this spot. There was far less room to move and shift according to what he was aiming at. Depending on how bad things got, he figured he might just end up calling it early to get into the next room. Once the shots started flying, he thought of something else. What, exactly, was running through that pipe he was pressed against? Was it a cable with gigawatts of power running through it? Was it a canal for coolant? None of these things sounded pleasant to be in the presence of should there be a breach, but the geth didn't seem concerned at all – if they could even be concerned. They just laid down the shots, causing sparks and small wisps of smoke dance over him. All there was to do was shoot back and try not to die.
The problem of geth coming up behind them happened a lot sooner this time, too. Only two at first, but Kevin knew that there would be plenty more to follow. He wriggled himself around to take some shots at the geth trying to flank their rear. He didn't want them to get any lucky shots on Arla while she was busy holding the oncoming geth at bay, and an injury would complicate things beyond what he wanted to bother thinking about right now. The two geth shot back, but only managed to graze his shields from around his cover. A few bursts of rounds later, they dropped. He turned back around to see how Arla was doing. Interestingly enough, there was a slight lull in the waves of geth troopers. After some focused fire, they were able to briefly get themselves a breather.
"We can't stay here. They're already flanking our position," Kevin stated.
"I know, but we can't keep running. Our distraction won't hold up if we just run straight to the server room."
"It'll hold up even less if we're dead, and that means less people to help the others get out. Come on. Next room. We'll be able to hold them better there."
Arla sighed and broke from her cover. "Alright."
Just as they left their spots, the sound of unusually high numbers of geth troops could be heard heading their way from all directions.
Kevin's head fell back in exasperation. "Ah crap. No wonder the number of geth dropped. They're gathering to overwhelm us in one push."
"I'll get the door. Cover me!"
While Arla moved to the door to work her technological magic, Kevin stepped up right behind her and faced out towards the halls. He only saw one or two geth at first. It was a one on one duel to see who could do the most damage to the other first. Thankfully, Kevin's assault rifle had a one up against the geth pulse rifle, but that wouldn't stack up too well against two or three geth. Even worse when destroyers, juggernauts and other specialized geth would start to show up. By now he had taken down two geth in one on one undefended firefights. The rest had yet to arrive.
"Arla, I could really use an open door right about now!"
"It's not reacting to Tosh's program. I'm trying something else."
"Try something else faster, woman! I can't cover you from six geth at once!" Another geth peered around the corner and got the best of Kevin's burst fire. As good as it felt to down a geth so quickly, that feeling was abruptly washed away when he saw the main groups of geth coming up the halls.
Kevin held a breath and took aim. Not even his biotics could save him from the onslaught of ten geth from three directions. Just as he was about to pull the trigger and pray for a miracle, he was fiercely yanked from behind into the room they so desperately needed to be in. He was also caught a bit off-guard and fell backwards from the pull. The very second he hit the ground, he rolled to the side to clear himself of the line of sight of the geth massing outside the door. Shots rained into the room after Kevin, but he was well clear of the open space by then. And just like that, the door shut.
"Keelah. That was too close," Arla said as she leaned against the wall the door was in.
Kevin hopped up and looked to Arla to see what she had done. It looked to him like she had jarred open a panel and quickly threw together a hardwire hack to get the door to shut despite all the geth outside telling it to open. Kevin stepped up to it and placed three shots into the hole in the wall littered with wires. A lot of sparks jumped out just then, and there might have even been a lick of fire for a split second.
"Well, looks like we aren't going back that way," Arla said.
"I'm going to take another look at this door. Make sure there are no backup systems that I can find. See if you can get the other door open."
"Yes sir," she spat and stepped away to take care of the other door.
Kevin began a brief visual and omni-tool scan of the door. He was looking for anything the geth could use to get it open prematurely. Fortunately, it didn't seem there was much in the way for backup systems on doors.
"Kevin. . ."
"Hold on, almost done."
"Kevin!"
"What?"
"There's no door."
". . . What?"
Kevin spun around to get a better look. The room was littered with the same huge metal boxes that he saw out in the hallway. Down at the other side of the room was Arla, both hands up on the wall where their map said there should have been a door into another corridor.
"No. No no no no!" Kevin ran across the room and felt around the bare wall.
He was looking for some non-existent switch. Something traditionally hidden to open secret doors. But the geth didn't use those. This was, in fact, just a wall. Their map was finally wrong in the biggest of ways. He let his head hang while he leaned all his weight to his hands on the wall. A feeling of dread came over him. He looked over to Arla to see if she had any ideas, but she looked defeated.
Why wouldn't she? They were trapped, and the only way out was though a massive collection of geth of multiple varieties, each one seeking to rid their vessel of the organic infestation. Kevin slowly turned around and leaned back against the wall.
"Okay. Okay, there's got to be a way to salvage this situation. We definitely used up all of our explosives, right?"
"Yes," Arla quietly replied.
"Can we cut through this wall here? It could be a retrofit. Maybe it was done poorly."
"Geth don't poorly retrofit their own ships, Kevin."
Just then, the bright spark of a cutter pierced the door. It started at the top center and started working its way around the outside. They were going to cut the entire door right off. Their progress was slow, however – the door was thick and they had a lot of door to cut.
"This sucks," Kevin stated while shaking his head.
"This wasn't how it was supposed to end," Arla whispered. She wasn't crying or whimpering, her voice told of extreme disappointment.
"I don't know about you, Arla, but I'm not done yet."
"What can you expect to accomplish? We're trapped here because of our own faulty intel, and a horde of geth is punching their way in just to slaughter us for invading their home." Kevin could swear he heard her voice falter.
Kevin went face to face with her. "Okay, so this is our end. This is where we die. Do you think I'm just going to put my hands up and be executed? Not by a bunch of machines, I'll tell you that much. I'm going to make sure they regret cutting that door open. You can either help me with my final stand, or you can give up, lay down and die."
Arla said nothing. She simply looked down at the floor.
"Argh!" Kevin grabbed the top of her hood and pulled it down over her visor as far as the fabric would let him pull. "I can't even look at you anymore. You're not the stubborn, prideful Arla that I'd been training in CQC. You're not the intelligent, witty Ms. Tavval that's been tirelessly teaching me tech. You're just a defeated wannabe. Sorry, but marines don't quit, no matter their race or situation. I'm done with the pep talk. I have a last stand to prep for."
Kevin quickly turned away and started trying to push some of the metal crates around. He found that even in this low gravity, they were heavy. They must have been loaded with collected minerals and metals. The geth were almost halfway through, and he wasn't sure if he could arrange a more suitable setup in time.
That was when Arla stepped up next to him and started pushing.
"You're not pushing hard enough," she grumbled.
"So, have you finally decided what you're going to do?"
"I don't want to die, but if I have to do it, I'd rather go down alongside a squadmate fighting with everything I have."
Kevin smiled. "Like a warrior. That's my Arla."
"Do you have a plan that hopefully doesn't involve straight up suicide, then?"
"Mostly. I'm thinking we can use these crates to funnel them in. We'll set up a couple of the smaller ones down at the end for us to use as cover, and we'll just keep firing down the line. Granted that means that all of their fire will be concentrated in this general direction, but that's going to happen anyways."
"It's much better than lying down and waiting to die, I'll give you that."
"That's all you can compare it to? You're making me feel special, Tavval."
They both set to work right away shoving the crates around the room to make a solid, coverless hallway from the door to about halfway into the room. At the far end. They tipped over two of the smaller crates for them to use as their cover. By the time they had finished, they had just enough time to exchange thermal clips and give each other a nod.
It felt strange to Kevin. Fighting side by side with someone, knowing neither were going to make it out alive. Such a thought process tended to open the minds of those about to meet their end, and he was no exception. He drew in one deep breath and let it go whilst looking straight at Arla. His counterpart. His partner in death. Her being willing to stand at his side and fight until her death caused Kevin to gain a whole different level of respect for her.
And then the door busted in.
Geth began to pour into the makeshift corridor that they had set up, firing the moment they could see into the room. Without hesitation or inhibition, Kevin and Arla started firing back. Kevin's rapid fire assault rifle combined with the high powered shots of Arla's mass accelerator made an absolute mess of the first sets of geth to step down the hallway of doom. When those fell, more stepped in to replace them without any inherent fear of death or pain. They just kept on pushing in. When Kevin's shields took extra hits, he sometimes let them recharge and sometimes supplemented with a biotic barrier. He held back as much as he could on the biotics, though. He was worried that they would exhaust him before he could fully unload his fighting capacity on the geth attackers.
The mountain of broken and dead geth in the hallway started making it difficult for the geth to simply shoot at Kevin and Arla, and likewise them at the geth. That was remedied in a matter of seconds when the powerful blast of a rocket from a geth rocket trooper hit the pile. The bodies and crates surrounding them scattered about the room and slowly bounced off of the walls and ceiling before coming down to rest haphazardly about the whole place. So much for the hallway of doom.
Now the geth were pouring into the room too fast for Kevin and Arla to control. The synthetics were now shooting from several angles instead of just one, and they had to separate their concentrated fire to keep the geth from filing up the sides of the room and flanking their only defensible position. If that wasn't bad enough, Kevin just remembered a fatal flaw in their plan that they didn't have time to account for – rockets.
He popped his head up to search for the rocket trooper that caused this whole mess, and he spotted the red colored geth just off to the left of the entrance to the room. He threw one of his EMP grenades into the fray, aimed in the direction of the rocket trooper. When it detonated, all of the geth in the room locked up and convulsed in place. Kevin took this opportunity to concentrate his fire on his red colored target long enough to take it down before it could do any more damage. The others were quick work as well since the EMP stripped them of their shields. The problem was, even as those affected by the EMP were being torn apart and destroyed, a new flood of fully functioning geth replaced them in a matter of seconds. Those certainly didn't waste any time in opening fire.
Kevin's shields took a lot of hits and they went down. He gathered some dark energy and released it in the form of a barrier focused on protecting him from the area between him and Arla and the entrance. Another geth tried to slip to his side, but he caught the not-so-sneaky synthetic in the open. A few rounds of burst fire took him out. Another thermal clip down. His shields were finally back up just as his barrier failed.
He peeked over the crate to prioritize his targets when he saw a massive geth stepping into the room. It was not a type he had ever seen before. It was in white armor, easily twice the size of normal geth troopers, had a huge pulse rifle in its hands and sported multiple antennae rising off of its back. It started to open fire at Arla, then at him without even letting off the trigger. It was no ordinary pulse rifle, either. It worked like a machine gun, coating their cover in powerful pulse blasts. Kevin could see both his and Arla's cover getting whittled down and chipped away under the unforgiving barrage. To top it all off, it launched a rocket dead center between the two of them. When it detonated, it shattered his shields and knocked him off his feet.
He was quick enough to get back behind his failing cover. His shields weren't going to recharge for a while now. That blast hit them hard. If they had been any weaker, he'd probably be dead right now. He looked over to Arla to see how she was faring. She looked unharmed, but she was sitting with her back against the crate, flinching at every shot that hit in her general vicinity.
"Arla! How are you holding up?" Kevin yelled above the deafening constant rain of fire.
"My shields are done, Kevin! If I even look out to take a shot, I'm. . . "
Kevin had to think. He still had breath in his lungs and a gun in his hands. He wasn't about to give up. The world around him started to slow and the smallest details of every surface, sound and thought began to clear up in his head. His heightened mental state was coming upon him once more.
"Ah!" Arla fearfully yelled as a pulse rifle shot ricocheted off of her right pauldron. In response, she hugged her rifle tight against her chest.
For some reason, that caused Kevin's mental state to come crashing back to reality. He barely peeked over the edge of his breaking cover to see the massive geth lining up another rocket blast. This time it was going for a killshot, not aimed between the two but rather aimed at the wall just behind Arla's cover.
Kevin didn't have any time to find solutions or alternatives. There was only one thing he could think to do. A last resort. He lunged at Arla from behind his battered cover and screamed her name at the top of his lungs as the rocket left the barrel of the geth's rifle. Arla shut her eyes tight, knowing that her end had finally come.
Arla slowly opened her eyes, wondering if she was dead. Around her was the chaos of the heavily one-sided battle. Blurred, but there. The deafening sounds were reduced to muffles and softened impacts. She looked down half-expecting to see her mutilated body, but she only saw the floor. Alright, so she wasn't dead. Good news. But why wasn't she dead? She heard the launch of the rocket that was surely to end her life. Her broken down metal crate she had been using for cover wasn't even there anymore.
That was when she looked to the side and saw Kevin. He was was on his knees and hunched over with his gun on the ground and his hands up in the air. They were shimmering, as if he was somehow radiating immense heat through his environmental suit. Strangest of all, when he looked up to her with obvious strain, she could see his eyes.
She could see his eyes glowing.
She had been in a stupefied mental state until this point. She shook her head to make sure she wasn't hallucinating from battle fatigue. She wasn't. Whatever was causing the room to appear blurry was stopping all of the pulse rifle shots and explosions that were tearing up the area of the room immediately surrounding them. Was. . . Was Kevin a biotic? Had he just saved both their lives with some kind of strong biotic barrier? It wasn't clear to her what he was doing, exactly, but she did know this. He was the reason she was still breathing right now.
"Guess we really. . . screwed this. . . one up," Kevin said. His voice was strained, as if he was bearing the weight of one of those crates on his back in normal gravity.
Arla managed a half-chuckle. "Yeah." She picked up her gun and sat it on its stock, pointing straight up.
She looked up to the tip of her gun and contemplated how many times she shot geth today. More than she had in the past, for certain. The only time that even remotely compared to this was when they crash landed. They survived that ordeal because of this human, too. Looks like she owed him one again. She looked back down to his face, still taken aback by those eyes. It was like she was actually looking at a quarian now. But that was wasn't what was hitting her the hardest. She could see the strain in his eyes as he poured every ounce of his remaining strength into protecting her with that shield. Why wasn't she doing anything to help? What could she do? She'd never really seen much for biotics, much less experience any of it. She felt so helpless. But there was something she could do.
"But I'm not done yet," she said softly, quoting his words. He simply knelt there, looking up at her. There wasn't much else he could do.
She turned around and got onto one knee. She poked the barrel of her mass accelerator through the barrier and started openly firing at the mass of geth. She started chewing through heatsinks like never before. One by one the geth started to fall, but still more came. At times the barrier started to ripple heavily with each shot it took, like if it was about to turn to water and fall apart. Each time that happened, however, she heard Kevin grunt and it solidified once again. So she just kept on firing.
Two thermal clips gone. Three. Four. She was starting to eat into her bandolier of thermal clips, something she had only done once before. After a while, she began to think she was hearing things. There was a second set of explosions and shots from guns that weren't geth pulse rifles. There were glowing orbs flying about the room, all harassing the geth and drawing their fire away from her and Kevin. She squinted as she tried to make out what was going on through the blurry barrier, and then it hit her. There was someone else here.
There was someone else here!
Arla was suddenly filled with renewed vigor and started making shots for the heads of the geth left in the room again. She almost didn't need to. They all filed out of the room and were quickly dispatched. Even the huge geth that ruined their day so abruptly. Moments later, the sounds of chaotic battle were gone.
Arla leaned over to Kevin and spoke softly. "It's alright. They're gone now."
"We. . . We won?" he said with strained hope.
"Yes. You can let the barrier down now."
"G-good. It's. . . Kind of heavy. . . "
The glow in Kevin's eyes faded and the barrier around them fell away like a bubble popping in slow motion. It was then that Arla got a look at what the walls and floor outside the barrier looked like. It was charred, torn into. Like a crater from a high velocity impact, but not uniform. It was jagged and rough from all the shots and explosions. Arla looked up to the door and she saw the captain, Tyr, Riik, Ralik and everyone else running into the room.
"Keelah! They're alive!" the captain shouted.
"Alive? How. . ." Tyr and Riik looked at the utter destruction torn into the walls and floor around their resting spot. They looked at each other, flabbergasted.
"Kevin! Arla! You're alive! Oh Keelah, I thought you were paste!" Bela ran in and knelt beside Arla.
"I don't know how you two survived all that," Siri said with a shake of her head. "But holy crap I would swear you had half the entire ship after you."
"Kids these days," Tyr stated. "Always trying to overachieve and make us older generations look like tools."
Kevin stood up. "I love you guys so much right now."
And then he passed out.
When Kevin awoke, it wasn't on a bed. It wasn't a slow, groggy come-to with hazy memories. He woke up on a jagged floor rather suddenly thanks to a shot of adrenaline and a kick to the side.
"Oh GOD the geth!" He sprung up to a sitting position to see all of his squadmates hovering over him. "Oh wait. We won. You guys have impeccable timing. Slow to arrive, but you certainly couldn't have arrived at a better time!"
"Sorry about the jolt back to life, Folner," Tosh said. "I know you're probably not in the best of conditions right now judging by your vitals here, but we still have a job to do and it's only a matter of minutes before the geth regroup."
"Right. The servers. Are we close?" Kevin asked. Ralik offered a hand and he helped the human to his feet.
"A few corridors down, actually," Ralik mentioned. "It looks like you stumbled upon a mineral repository of some sort. Don't rightly know what you were thinking heading in there."
"Our intel was off," Arla piped in. "A lot of it was. I don't know if the ship has been redesigned since the scan or if this is a different ship entirely."
"Yes, I certainly have noticed a few discrepancies," Siri said with a thoughtful chin-tap. "Regardless, we can get to the objective now. Let's hurry and get this over with."
"Yes ma'am!" everyone shouted before they filed out of the room.
As they walked, Siri came up close to Kevin. "Arla tells me you did something amazing back there and saved her life. I don't doubt that for a second, especially after seeing the state of that room."
"Ahh, it was just a spur of the moment kind of thing-"
"Thank you," she whispered to him.
"Heh. No problem."
"Okay, that I have trouble believing."
The short trip to the server room at the heart of the ship was surprisingly devoid of geth. Alarms were still sounding, but the only geth they saw were scrapped bodies shoved to the sides of the halls. That was good enough for Kevin. If he didn't see another active geth for the rest of his life, it would be too soon.
They eventually got to a room that retained its serene, deep blue-white color scheme. Through a window, Kevin could see into an inner, isolated room with rows and rows of what must have been the servers. The ultimate objective. He was also surprised to find all the doors already unlocked and open. Had they just walked right in?
"Everything's already open?" he asked.
"We've been here at the servers long enough to crack all the doors and prep the server room for deployment," Riik stated.
"When you two didn't arrive as planned and we couldn't get a hold of you on the comms, we found the shortest way to your selected evasion route and started to backtrack," Ralik commented. "Fortunately, we didn't have far to go, since the sounds of the geth attacking you guys could almost be heard from here."
"See that, Arla? We were so close," Kevin said.
"Hey! Hey hey! The bomb pieces need to be in here to work!" Bela snapped impatiently from the inner room.
Those who were carrying the pieces stepped into the server room and handed Bela them one at a time. With relative ease, she snapped them all back together and pressed a button on top. The button caused a number of metallic leads to drop and dangle from the top of the sides of the irregularly cylindrical device. She grabbed each one and attached them or had them touch each server somewhere.
"Just have to arm it. Shouldn't take more than a minute," Bela confidently stated as everyone filed out of the inner room.
"I certainly hope not," Riik said. He had moved over to the door and was staring down the corridor they just came from. "They're on their way already."
Kevin stepped up next to Siri and hoisted up his assault rifle. "I take it this is where things get ugly." He checked his shield level. It looked like it had been enough time for the kinetic barrier system to reset and correct itself. He suspected Arla's was back up as well.
"I certainly expect as much," she replied. "We're about to fry everything that allows them to exist."
"Then let's do it and get off of this infernal ship," Arla said stepping up next to Kevin. "I think I can safely speak for both Kevin and I when I say that we're ready to be away from these geth."
"As am I," Siri said. She sighed and placed one hand on Kevin's shoulder and the other on Arla's. "No more scares, either. My heart stopped dead when we found your room inundated with geth. I thought I had lost two more precious crew members. Rest assured, I will not make the mistake of sending two off to counter odds like that ever again."
"Bomb's armed and powering up!" Bela shouted.
Siri stepped to the center of the outer server room. "Let's make this exfil quick and clean, marines! I will not be losing any of you on the way out, understood?"
"Yes ma'am!"
"I want a tight push formation! Shotgunners up front! Tavval, your sniper rifle puts you dead center! Assault rifle specialists take up the flanks! Folner, you'll be bringing up the rear with me. Form up and wait for Bela's word on the device!"
Behind them in the inner server room, the cylindrical device began emitting a high-pitched and fairly loud whine. Bela looked at her omni-tool and raised her shotgun in preparation. "Device is powered! Fry, you bosh'tets!"
"Move, marines!" the captain yelled.
With an eerie level of synchronization, the team quickly moved out of the room in a tightly packed, but well maintained formation. The sound of thrashing electricity bolts came from behind them and the ship shook. The seemingly perpetual white-blue lights around them started flickering and pulsing. Behind them, just outside the server room, one of the capacitors jutting from the wall violently burst in a surge of electrical current well beyond its normal limits. Kevin seemed to be the only one who saw that, though. Everyone else was focused forward.
He decided that it might be a good idea to warn them. "Avoid the exposed capacitors if at all possible! They're exploding under the uncontrolled electrical load! Violently!"
Nobody responded vocally, but everyone nodded. The sounds of explosions and overloading electronics were overtaking most of the other sounds. In response to Kevin's warning, they started weaving back and forth between the left and right sides of the hall as they progressed to distance themselves from any capacitors they passed by.
It didn't take very long for the first signs of geth resistance to begin to show. They were popping out of any door the team passed with increasing number. However, as long as they kept their movement up and continued to shoot all that they could, they were leaving a vast majority of them behind. This was good, because they couldn't afford to slow down. The entire ship was quickly descending into utter chaos. The more they pushed forward, the worse it got. The worse it got, the more their formation started to fall apart due to everyone paying more attention to shooting and not falling over rather than to where they positioned themselves.
The geth behind them were struggling to keep up, but weren't simply falling out of sight. They shot wildly at the group, occasionally causing Siri and Kevin to backpedal while firing at them to at least give them cause to take cover. Usually they didn't and opted to take all the shots to the face while firing back. This became particularly troublesome when destroyers, juggernauts and rocket troopers got into the mix.
Kevin's shields were slowly being worked down by several grazes of lucky shots, as were Siri's. Kevin supplemented his shields again with a biotic barrier in case one of them hit too close to home. They came to a straight, long corridor that turned left at the distant end. Everyone broke into full sprint, knowing that staying in this hallway too long would allow the geth behind them to to take a lot of pot shots, all of which had some chance to hit them.
"Hustle, hustle, hustle! Don't stop for anything!" Siri shouted. She and Kevin had fallen some short ways behind the others by now thanks to their occasional shots at their pursuers, but they were starting to gain on the rest of the team.
But the two stragglers didn't even make it halfway down the length of the hall when a distortion rocket fired by a destroyer flew between them at knee height and detonated on the floor right in front of them.
Kevin's eyes shut by instinct and his ears rung from the shockwave of the blast. His gun was ripped from his hands, too. He could feel himself hurtling slowly through the extremely thin air until he smacked into a wall and bounced back where he landed. He was hurt, but it seemed his shields combined with his barrier took the nearly all of the blow. Nothing was breached and nothing was broken. If he was lucky, he could just pick up and continue running. He opened his eyes and found himself lying in the middle of the hallway amidst a cloud of smoke from the explosion. Refusing to let panic set in, he grasped the second of his three EMP grenades and tossed it so that it should have landed right in the middle of the geth crowd when it detonated.
It did, and Kevin quickly searched for his main gun. It was off to his side, almost behind a stack of crates on the side of the room where Siri had just finished crawling to. He rolled on the floor and grabbed his gun as he rolled over it. He got up and crouched behind the cover with Siri, gun at the ready. He looked down the hall where he and Siri were supposed to be heading and saw that his squadmates had intelligently continued on, or were unaware of their predicament and continued on anyways. He had to stop letting this happen any time he saw a geth squad.
"Alright, if we hurry, we can make it to the end of the corridor before the EMP stops affecting their systems," Kevin quickly said as he made ready to sprint. When Siri didn't say anything back, Kevin turned to look at her.
Siri was sitting slumped against the crates, holding her legs. Only now did he hear her extremely well reserved grunts of pain. Her right leg was bent in a way that suggested it had been broken in at least three different areas. Her left leg appeared fine, aside from several visible wounds leaking blood into the thin atmosphere. Her suit was a mess and her visor was cracked on the right side. It didn't seem to Kevin like the crack was deep enough to vent, though.
"Oh no."
"Blasted. . . synthetics. . ." Siri said between tightly clenched teeth. "Ruining my day. . ."
"Hang in there, captain. I'll- I'll get the others and bring them back. We'll get you aboard the Kellius for emergency treatment."
"Don't be. . . an idiot, Folner. There's not enough time to come back."
Kevin knew she wasn't even referring to the geth. The disablement device was still sowing destruction through the geth ship. "Then I'll carry you to the ship."
"Stop being. . . rash. I, a captain of the quarian people and of a Xelvas'taersh squad. . . will not permit you to carry me."
"This is hardly the time for pride, captain!"
"Kevin, if you try to carry me to the ship, neither of us will make it there. I'll not be losing any of you on the way out, understood?" She coughed, and it sounded as though something came up with it. Her voice was weary and very pained, but still held a distinct determination. "It doesn't matter anyways. We don't. . . Ah. . . We don't have any medics aboard."
"So you're just going to give up and die? I'm certainly not having any of that. I just had this friggin' talk with Arla."
"Who said anything about. . . Giving up?" Siri asked as she grabbed her assault rifle and held it against her chest. She even managed a chuckle. "I'm not dead yet. You all are going to have serious trouble getting everyone into that small hole we cut open if geth are shoving their rifle barrels up your backside while trying to get aboard."
"So a captain is just going stay behind and sacrifice herself for the good of her squad. That's. . . Captian, that's too cliché for your style." Kevin knelt at his captain's side. He knew he wasn't going to talk her out of it, because she was right. If tried to save her in any way, he'd end up getting himself and her killed, and who knew what might happen to the rest of the crew.
"Now's a good time to learn something about clichés, Folner. Some acts are considered cliché because they are done often. Those acts are done often because a group of like-minded people like the idea, or because it simply works. Perhaps because it provides the most efficient or sufficient outcome. Like right now, there's more to this than me simply wanting to go out in style. You need, need, need to reach the others and tell them to go on with the mission. If you don't, they will wait for me – even as the Kellius gets overwhelmed by geth or fried by the powerful surge heading in its direction. I. Am. Not. Losing. Any. More. Marines." Kevin could clearly hear her voice getting choked up as she explained.
"Yes. . . Yes ma'am," Kevin solemnly replied.
"Help me up. My left leg is still good enough to stand on."
Kevin did so, and he could hear the sound of the geth resetting themselves. They only had a few more seconds before they'd be bearing down on them again.
"Now go tell the others that the mission is in all of your hands now." Siri ripped off her Xelvas'taersh icon and handed it to Kevin. "You've quickly become one of my favorite marines, Kevin. Try not to miss me too much, understood?" When Kevin looked into her eyes, he could barely make out the reflections of small pools of liquid reflecting the faint glow. They were starting to lose integrity and overspill down her face.
"I- No guarantees. One more thing before I go, captain." Kevin pulled out his last EMP grenade and he put it in her open hand. "Not until the fat lady sings."
"What does that mean?" She forced a chuckle.
"You'll know when the time comes. I trust you can figure it out."
"I see." The sounds of the geth down the hall indicated that they were operational again. She wasn't going to waste any more time. "Kevin."
Kevin, who was busy gathering dark energy to himself turned to hear her last words. "Yeah?"
"Take care of Arla."
Kevin had to pause at that final request. In all reality, he didn't know what to say to that except the obvious. "I will. Goodbye, captain."
Kevin stepped forward and erected a powerful barrier behind him. The geth weren't packed tightly enough for several of his biotic moves to be effective, so this at least allowed him to run down the hallway without taking any hits. He knew that there would continue to be geth ahead of him, so he braced himself and readied for more fighting. He stopped at the corner of the corridor and looked back to the lone quarian, broken and ready to fight. She rested her head back against the crate and pulled her assault rifle up. It was his orders as well as the most logical thing to do, but he still couldn't shake the depressing feeling that he was abandoning her to let her die alone. The very fact that this was true just made it more difficult for him. He grit his teeth, clenched his fists and pressed on.
This was not going to go over well with the others.