Chapter 31
"Keelah. . ." Arla uttered under her breath at the sight before them.
The Kellius drifted silently away from the dark nebula towards the point of interest as depicted by the coordinates sent by the beacon. The object currently being viewed by the crew was both expected and unexpected at the same time. They expected to find some form of geth ship or structure, and they clearly did. What they didn't expect was the style or scale.
The ominous object they all observed appeared to be an enormous, partially constructed metal sphere. The areas unfinished were sharp, jagged, and concave, with no visible form of atmospheric containment. The sphere appeared to be two-thirds of the way complete based on external observation, but how much of that was complete on the inside was impossible to tell at the moment. The external surface bore no significant features of any kind, lacking weapons and sensor arrays. Geth ships – all of them mining vessels – came and went, frequently disappearing inside large unloading bays on the completed eastern hemisphere. It seemed Riik's hunch was spot on. They had found a geth resource repository.
"Can't we see into that thing?" Tyr asked all authoritative-like.
"What?" Kar absentmindedly asked before snapping to attention and mashing on his haptic screens. "Oh, right! Sorry, sorry. Penetrative scans are running now." A few seconds had gone by and Kar shook his head. "Ergh. It's messy. Not blank like the planets, just. . . Patchy. Like something's interfering with our scans, but not stopping it completely. Here's the best render I can get. Other scans show minimal activity. Nothing's really going on in there right now."
A familiar wireframe image took its place on the terminals around the bridge, only this time it was of the unfinished sphere rather than a huge ship. Kar's interpretation of 'patchy' was a little off. Some areas of the render were clearly defined – rooms, hallways, and equipment were clear-cut. A large portion, however, spread randomly throughout the render, was a messy mishmash of lines as if hundreds upon hundreds of structural beams were haphazardly crisscrossing through all manner of open space.
Enough of the render was clear for them to come to a few important realizations, though. For one, there was a fairly massive power core at the southern pole – far more than was needed for simple refining and storing operations. Second, there was a huge room at the center full of equipment whose purpose was ominously unclear. Third, there was a large room at the northern pole that had enough of it clear to be identified as a manufacturing plant.
Kevin's relaxed stance stiffened. "Good Lord. This isn't a repository, it's a bona fide geth central hub. A full-on base of operations."
"Bad, bad news," Riik said as he crossed his arms and shook his head.
Tyr laid the reality of this discovery out on the table. "Given the time and resources of the system, they could amass an entire armada out here and not one soul would have any idea what's going on until they decided to go on the offensive. We have do something about this."
The team all looked at each other silently in light of this statement. Last time they voluntarily assaulted a huge geth structure, they lost who they believed to be the most important person on the squad. "But what?" Bela finally asked. Again, silence reigned. Eyes trickled back to the irregular sphere. It's daunting size intimidated them and it radiated an unnatural authority-demanding fear and awe.
Kevin's mind momentarily flashed to the scorched Xelvas'taersh emblem laying on the desk in his quarters. He felt that rising heat of hatred for the geth returning. He wondered if that's what Siri had felt when they found the valesh'saat. Acting almost against his own will, he spoke up.
"We go in and blow it from the inside." All eyes focused on him, begging for some reason why they should follow through with such an obscene suggestion. "It's what captain Kortel would have wanted." The line was cliché, and he knew that. The only thing for him to do now was be ready to handle whatever sort of response the rest of the squad had. There was a minute of silence as everyone debated the issue inside their minds. It felt like an hour.
"He's right," Arla said. "That's exactly what she'd have wanted. As it stands, this structure alone is a priority two threat to the Migrant Fleet. The captain would have us disable it somehow." There were subtle nods throughout the quarian members of the squad, showing solidarity of thought.
Tyr stepped forward. "Then let's make our captain proud. The Xelvas'taersh are handling this now, so let's get it done right like the Xelvas'taersh do."
The level of confident agreement rose sharply – well, all except for Ralik. In typical fashion, he wasn't keeping up with the level of readiness. Kevin would deal with that in time. For now, he had to build off of the existing momentum if anything was going to get done before cognitive dissonance set in.
"Let's get a plan set up real quick-like," Kevin suggested. "It's crunch time, ladies and gents. Bela, we need a way to disable the entire structure. Explosives, electricity like last time, whatever. Do you have any ideas?"
Bela leaned in to study the render for a moment. "That looks like some sort of power generator at the southern end, right? Well, fortunately, power generators and catastrophic chain reactions go hand in hand like cliché lovers."
"How about delivery?" he pressed.
"Easy as pie. I can combine a few special projectiles meant for my launcher to provide an adequate boom. Explosives are a lot more friendly than dischargers size-wise, so I'll be able to carry it in myself."
"That's why I like you Bela. Always ready for that climactic fire," Kevin added, to which Bela winked. "Tyr, how do you suggest we get it there?"
"Same way as the last time, Kevin," he confidently replied. "We walk it in. There's good news and bad news on this front, however. The bad news is that we don't have any preexisting maps, for obvious reasons, and our current intel on the interior is sketchy at best. The good news is that the factory doesn't appear to be fully functional yet, and we might have better success at simply walking in and planting our bomb. Since all of the construction appears to be on the side facing away from the main lines of activity, we should be able to easily settle in an unfinished portion of the structure and make our way from there, barring any alarms."
"Tosh, Ralik?" Kevin shot out. He was doing everything he could to keep this rolling the way Siri did.
"It's interesting you mention that, Tyr," Tosh started. "I won't be able to tell for certain until we leave the Kellius, but. . . It appears that there aren't any internal alarms or sensors. Either they haven't added them in yet, or perhaps they believed that no one would make their way here."
Riik gestured to speak and leaned in. "I may be going ahead of myself here, but why not simply make this a two-commando mission? It seems to me there is very little immediate threat here."
"Tepka no," Tyr spat. "We'll have none of this splitting up nonsense. The only person that will not be a part of the boarding team will be the one watching the ship."
"That's me, I suppose," Kar said, finally making his presence known.
Tyr nodded. "We're not sure what to expect here, Welkas. I expect you'll keep a sharp eye on things external and internal to the structure as best you can."
"Will do, sir," Kar said with a salute.
"Arm up, team," Tyr ordered in his usual fashion. "Let's get this done right and get it done quick. The sooner we put this devilish place to rest, the better. Bela, you have five minutes to get that bomb together."
"Got it. Tosh, I'll need you to throw together a quick gizmo for me." Tosh nodded in response.
Tyr straighted up. "Everyone clear on their objective?"
"For the captain," Arla stated as she slammed her palms together.
"For the captain!" the team resounded as they broke from the bridge.
Kevin was grateful for the the show of bravado – it indicated that his work on keeping the momentum up was successful by some measure. He knew, however, that this was a front used by most to cover up feelings of anxious uncertainty. He himself wasn't immune, either. The gut feeling he had was now wrenching knots out of his innards. Tyr was right – the sooner they were rid of this place, the better.
Within minutes, the team had gotten themselves as equipped as remaining stockpiles would allow. Bela's many suit-sewn hooks and latches had the parts of her bomb dangling from them and she looked much the same way she did when Kevin first met her on the downed Forverna. The only one not armed to the teeth was Kar, and he was only amongst the others as they gathered by the airlock to send them off.
"Be careful in there, guys," the youngest quarian muttered. "You'll do the Migrant Fleet no good if you're dead. Okay, I've got the airlock level with the edge of a partially completed room. I didn't land in there for a lot of obvious reasons, one of them being that the airlock is easier to defend than the loading ramp if crap hits the fan. There's a door at the far side, likely sealing off any pressure, if any. Watch out for the exhaust when you open it – I can't guarantee any miracle life-saving dangling catches from inside the cockpit." Kar cast a sideways glance at Arla for good measure.
"Alright, let's get to it," Arla ordered. Everyone nodded and turned to the opened airlock.
After the team filed out of the ship, they activated the magnets designed to keep them anchored to the floor. There was no gravity well out on the edges of the incomplete areas, but this was expected. During their approach to the door, Tosh was mashing away at his omni-tool, running any sort of scan he could to detect alarm systems and sensors. When they made it, the team split into lines against the wall on either side of the door in typical military breach fashion. Arla nodded at Tosh and he switched his attention of his omni-tool to the door power-cycling program he had written for the last mission in geth territory. Interestingly, the program needed no adaptation to successfully perform its duties here, and the door opened. There was a slight constant exhaust from the door, but it was more equatable to a breeze than a fierce rush of wind and the invaders found little trouble pushing inside before the power cycle had finished.
The team paused a moment to analyze their new surroundings once the door closed behind them. The atmosphere was chillingly similar to the inside of the geth homeship – dimly lit, lacking in significant atmosphere and gravity, and quiet. The area they stepped into was a large square hallway, some ten meters tall and around six or seven meters wide. The walls and ceiling were lined with exposed cable and tubing to a much higher and more haphazard degree than the geth ship, indicating that this area was indeed still unfinished. It even reminded Kevin and Arla of the path they initially took in the homeship in that there were several holes large enough for one or two people to pass through lining the corners of the hall along the floor. The place where this differed from the ship the most was apparently in a number of the 'rooms' connected to the holes on the floor a ways down the hall. These ones had light flooding out of them as if there were construction crews illuminating their workspace at night.
"Nothing," Tosh muttered in withheld surprise.
"What?" Riik wondered aloud.
"There's nothing," Tosh said again. "No sensors, no alarm systems at all. It's like we caught the geth with their suits off. I'd still recommend suppressed comms, but unless we run into some active geth platforms, we're invisible."
"How convenient. And here I was hoping for a challenge," Kevin said nonchalantly. He was met with a few glares. "What? I'm obviously kidding."
"Regardless, weapons at the ready," Tyr ordered. "We don't need any surprises. Let's move."
The squad each brandished their primary weapons and proceeded down the hallway. Their maps indicated a somewhat convoluted path to the primary power source, since they had to account for the fact that the areas that the scans couldn't read correctly might not be passable. For starters, though, they had to pass to the other end of the hallway. This might have been simple if it were not so long.
"Guys, I probably shouldn't say this, but this place gives me the creeps," Bela admitted.
"It's just your nerves. Calm yourself, girl," Arla encouraged.
As they came upon the areas where there were lit rooms through the holes, several members of the team broke off to investigate. Most of them had strange-looking equipment strewn about, and there were small crates of unknown materials or items. Some had unused or deactivated geth bodies neatly lining the walls, but they were of a completely unfamiliar build. They were clearly not built for combat – they had no identifiable weapons or ablative plates. Their optics were visibly more complex, and their arms, though typical of any geth footsoldier, were thin and lined with strange plugs. This did little to settle the nerves of the team.
"What kind of place is this?" Ralik asked, his voice coated in tones of nervous wonder. "This is looking less and less like a manufacturing plant or base of operations. These aren't infantry or construction-based geth we're seeing here."
"Agreed." Tyr said as he moved on with the team.
Not more than a minute later, an astounded Tosh called everyone to attention. "Keelah. Everyone. . . Over here. You have to see this."
Everyone moved in on Tosh without hesitation. It was rare enough to hear that much vocalized emotion come from him that no one doubted the significance of his discovery. What they found in that room didn't disappoint.
The collective gasps and muttered words confirmed the seriousness of the situation. The room beyond this particular aperture was easily more than double the size than that of the others. It had the same strange equipment scattered about the room, but this time they were grouped into separate areas. More significantly, there were active geth in this room. It was the same unknown profile as before, each bouncing back and forth from station to station. More shocking than this, however, was that there were geth bodies latched to vertically mounted tables with their chest cavities opened up. Wires and synthetic innards were completely exposed as they were being worked on by several of the new geth. They didn't appear to be active at the time, but this was hardly surprising. The physical configuration of these opened geth were different as well – they were bulkier than those working on them, they had ablative plating, a 'backpack' attachment similar to larger builds, and they were around the size of a juggernaut-class. Their upper bodies were coated in a different material inside and out which gave them a metallic pastel purple sheen.
"Good God, is this a research station?" Kevin asked under his breath.
"Can't be," Riik muttered.
"Why not?" Ralik asked. "All species must perform research in order to learn new things. It seems the biggest disadvantages these geth have are lack of connection to the main fleet and no previous research on synthetics like we have previous research of our own kind."
"This. . . This is bad," Arla stated ominously.
"Why?" Kevin wondered.
"These geth here in this system are clearly estranged from the main fleet in the An'Ramini Expanse. Despite this, they've already built enough neural network capacity to actively experiment on their own to discover new capabilities."
"The lieutenant's right," Tosh added. "This level of advanced insight into discovery and application requires a high process count and is not normally intrinsic to the average geth node cluster. There's a lot more going on in this structure than we probably realize. These geth here may even be more advanced than the ones in the known galaxy, given their clustered topology in this system."
"That is one scary thought," Tyr said. "Combine that with the potential I outlined earlier, and this quickly becomes increasingly problematic."
Just as Tyr finished conveying his thoughts, one of the geth that previously had been opened and disabled was closed up by its respective worker and unlatched from its metal bonds. It stood upright and it looked around. Naturally, this garnered the silent attention of the team. The two geth exchanged digital information in the familiar medium of stuttered blips and the worker stepped aside. The experimental geth unit turned to face down to the opposite end of the room, took two steps forward, paused, then flicked a hand out towards a small stack of crates between it and the far wall. Kevin recoiled as he saw the familiar shimmer of dark energy barrel towards the crates. Upon impact, the crates blew apart and smashed into the far wall with enough force to put serious dents in it.
Everyone jumped out of surprise. It was only afterward that they all realized what had just happened: the geth had just figured out how to adapt biotics to their synthetic platforms.
"Did he just. . ."
"Was that what I thought that was?"
"Dear God, this is bad."
"Impossible."
"Not impossible, just implausible."
Each member of the team had to actively calm themselves down as to not reveal themselves to the workers below.
Ralik shook his head. "Yes, impossible. How could they have overcome the hardware limitations that prevent precise control of the dark energy? If we knew it was possible to do such a thing, we'd be using element zero for far more than simple distortion field creation for launching projectiles and FTL."
"It's always been theoretically possible, Ralik," Tosh pointed out. "Clearly these geth have some advantage that neither we nor the geth within the galaxy have come across. This has to be a recent development, however, or we would have seen it during the attack on the citadel. No one reported such a thing."
"Or these geth simply can't get back to the galaxy," Riik spouted. Despite the weight of the statement, the theories continued on anyways.
"They must have also developed ways to deal with static buildup from the element zero. . ." Ralik pondered.
"Question," Kevin said, interrupting the two theorists. "Why would they waste precious eezo on expendable infantry instead of using it for interstellar fleets? Are they not planning an armada-based assault like we hypothesized?"
"That's a curious question indeed," Tosh remarked. "The geth favor efficiency above almost everything, as far as we know. It's how they protect their existence, being synthetics and all. This. . . This just not line up with that behavioral process at all. It almost seems backwards, which is made that much more significant given all this advancement."
Kevin sighed. "Either way, geth biotics are bad news for us in all sorts of ways. If we find another reason to take this place out, we might as well use WMDs. Let's hope we don't come across any of these; dealing with error-prone organic biotics is dangerous enough."
Ralik nodded. "Indeed. Let's get in and get out as fast as we can."
They all backed away from the opening and continued on their way down the long, empty hall. There were more lit up rooms, but they didn't bother to stop; they had already seen enough. Once they had made it away any room with any noticeable activity, the only sounds they could hear were their own throbbing heartbeats and the echoes of their footsteps. After what they had just seen, this quietness was maddening. It felt to Kevin as though this place should be high security, full of guarding bodies and abuzz with controlled chaos. This was, to him, the equivalent of a military intelligence and research center. Always moving, always alert, always guarding secrets. This was why the complete and total lack of this made no sense to him. Ironically, it was believable to think that the geth expected no intelligent beings other than their own to make it out here so soon, but that train of thought did little to change Kevin's automatic expectations of the place.
The rest of the winding trip was made in relative silence. Nobody dared speak, lest they get themselves worked up about their current situation and make a mistake. Fortunately, the rest of the trip was also made without contact with any geth-inhabited machinery. It was almost too easy, given the sensitive nature of the structure. They quite literally walked into the massive chamber where the power generators sat. Like the room, they were also massive – two huge unfamiliar machines hummed away as they worked, creating an audible frequency that did not resonate with the material of the walls at all to the point where it reverberated around the room so much that the team had to use their comm system to talk to each other. There was likely a fair amount of infrasonics involved, and Kevin felt nauseous the moment he stepped into the room. Additionally, there was almost no light to be had in here, so they had to utilize the photon-creating abilities of their omni-tools to illuminate the room.
Satisfied that they were able to get to their objective without any incident, the squad immediately started looking for the optimal place to set down Bela's package. No one was quite sure how the power was being generated, so finding a spot proved difficult. After Ralik and Tosh went about the room with omni-tools working overtime, they were able to see how it was all working. It seemed that some of the materials that the geth were mining from the asteroids could be easily transformed into an isotope that gave off massive amounts of radioactive and thermal energy. A few blocks of these isotopes were stored in each humming machine as they bled their energy. All of it was carefully contained and collected to power the entire structure. After Bela had worked out some math with Tosh, they selected a location roughly between the two structures that, according to their calculations, should disable both machines enough to cause a cataclysmic meltdown. Since neither system had physical damage fallbacks in place likely due to its unfinished nature, the meltdown should render the entire structure obscenely radioactive – enough to the point where electrical systems, such as a geth unit or server, would not be able to function. All the data would be lost along with the servers, and the geth would lose huge amounts of technological advancement as well as an important nerve center for their operations out here in the near-void of space. Not a bad plan for an on-the-fly observation.
Bela set her bomb down in the calculated position and rigged it with a remote detonation system that could be triggered from the Kellius. They had little worry of interference with the geth at this point because as far as they knew, the geth had no idea they were even in there at all. All they had left to do was exfiltrate and watch the fireworks. With the bomb rigged up and armed, the team backed out of the noisy and dark room to start their way back to the ship. By the time they had reached the final stretch of the long hallway, some of the overbearing tension had fallen off and hushed conversation was being made.
"Do you think the geth on the planet will come looking for us once this is done?" Bela asked.
"That's hard to say," Kevin replied. "I would imagine so."
"Guess our job is about to get a little less boring," Riik stated. Bela nodded in agreement.
"Let's just focus on getting out of here first," Ralik stated anxiously.
Tosh looked down into his face-up open palms. "Those geth are so different from what we know. . . If only I had a chance to study it up close, or-or get a look at that programming. It'd be invaluable to our understanding of how the geth have progressed after all this time. Plus, I'd like to get another chance to try out my platform pilot program. . ."
"Easy there, private," Arla said. "We can think about kidnapping some geth on the planet, where we'll have some solid ground under our feet and we're less likely to be overwhelmed."
"Right, right. But. . . The opportunities!"
"Tosh."
"So much to learn! I need to get a sample of their processes! Admiral Xen would never let me live this down!"
"Rolush! Bring it down a notch!"
Tosh responded by knocking his knuckles against his visor.
"I still can't believe how easy this all was," Tyr commented. "I was sure we'd come up against at least some resistance."
"Don't jinx it, chief," Kevin said. Joking, of course. "Let's just be glad this mission turned out alright."
"I'll take whatever I can get," the older quarian replied.
The conversation died down as they paused at the single door standing between them and their ship. Tosh ran his powercycle program and it performed as expected, allowing the team temporary passage. Anxious frowns throughout the squad turned to smiles of relief as the Kellius came into view, stealthily parked where they left it.
Kevin took the lead in heading for the airlock door. "Awesome. Let's get out of here." He stepped up to the airlock and tapped on his omni-tool to send the 'open' command. That's where the mission's perfect track record ended.
When the airlock wooshed open, there was a figure standing at the far side, waiting to get into the Kellius. Instinct took over and Kevin brought up his pistol with the usual lightning speed. He didn't fire, however. He wanted to know exactly what was in there. The silhouette, surprisingly, wasn't geth. No. It was quarian. Kevin's initial thought was that it was Kar, but that made no sense. Kar had no reason to leave his position in the bridge, and he knew the boy had no intentions of jeopardizing the mission by disobeying orders. As the rest of the team reacted to Kevin's actions by pulling weapons of their own on the figure, he had a few seconds to get a better look at it. It wore cloths and armor like a Migrant Fleet Marine, but many areas on the suit were patched with synthetic materials as though it had taken some serious damage. It dawned on him that the colors were familiar to him – frighteningly familiar. It was at that moment that the figure finally turned around to face the squad.
Kevin felt blood leave his face. The quarian figure standing before him was familiar. Not just familiar, it was the captain. Captain Siri'Kortel. Red flags shot up everywhere in his mind, but he forced himself to stay focused on what was going on in front of him.
"Tepka Keelah. . ." Riik said, stunned. "Captain? Captain Kortel? I know that's you! I'd- I'd recognize those pauldrons anywhere!"
It was true, the captain's uniquely etched pauldrons were there in full, not replicated. They bore numerous scorch marks from the battle on the geth homeship. Kevin shook his head in wavering disbelief. He saw her ravaged body. He saw her disabled in combat. He was there. Some of the others, spurred on by Riik's comments, had lowered their weapons. Kevin had to say something. "Wait guys! It can't be the captain. She's dead, remember!" In some amount, it worked. Weapons were up, but it was clear that the bearers were completely unsure of whether or not they should be. Not that he could blame them, as he was doubting as well. For all intents and purposes, she was standing right there.
Riik took a step forward. "Really? That's not what I'm seeing standing in front of us! Besides, none of us saw her die! We went entirely on your word!"
"Think about it, Riik!" Kevin shot back. "Her suit – it's covered in patches made of geth materials!"
"What else was she going to use to fix the damage to her suit she likely sustained after you abandoned her in the middle of that onslaught?"
Kevin grit his teeth. He knew something about this was all wrong, but he just couldn't bring himself to fire. His trigger finger, trained for years to kill upon the slightest whim of his mental command, was quivering on the trigger from the internal conflict. Why was he suddenly so unable to shoot? This wasn't how he dealt with red flag situations back home. Resolved in his mind that he had to fire regardless, he steeled himself to pull the trigger. . .
But it was too late. The figure inside had made use of its omni-tool and shut the airlock door before Kevin could pull the trigger far enough to initiate a shot. He saw red for a moment and thrust himself at the shut door in vain. After he had rebounded off of the cold metal, he spun around and mashed on his omni-tool to open the door. He slammed a fist against the hull when the message "ACCESS DENIED" returned on his screen. His next thought was to get in contact with Kar before it was too late.
"Kar! Kar'Welkas, respond!" he shouted into his comms. "Kar, intruder alert, intruder alert!" Staring blankly at the rest of his squad, they waited for a reply. Without shutting off his comms and turning his manual audio back on, he called to Tosh. "Tosh, can you hack this open? We need to get in, NOW."
Tosh didn't respond at all. It was as if he never said anything. Once more he called to Tosh, and once more he went without a response. He quickly realized his audio mix-up and he switched back to analog audio. "Tosh, what the crap's wrong with you? Listen to me!"
"Kevin, you haven't said a word since you tried to call Kar aboard the ship."
"Our comms are jammed," Ralik deduced with alarm in his voice. "When did they jam our comms?"
"Ah, crap. Team, we need a way in twenty seconds ago!" Tyr quickly moved up to the door in attempts to figure out how to get it open while the rest of the team scrambled for a solution. Tosh took multiple stabs at trying to regain control of the airlock doors, but to no avail. After a minute or so of futile omni-tool mashing, the team finally settled on the last resort plan of cutting their way in. Just as Tosh and Arla positioned themselves, however, the Kellius began pulling away from the structure. Heavily dismayed, the helpless onlookers could only back away from the edge of the platform and watch as their sole means of escape disappeared among the pitch blackness of space.
-In the Bridge of the Kellius. . .-
Kar sat in his helmsman's seat and vigilantly kept a close eye on geth movements external to the ship through the bridge monitors. He wanted to be extra sure that he could spot trouble in time to warn his squadmates so that they might be able to make it back before he had to dislodge from the structure. He had seen that his comrades had already been to their apparent destination and were on their way back, so his focus was external. There hadn't been any alarms raised or any ruckus over the comms, so he could only guess that they had completed the mission without any incident. He was glad for that – he didn't want to have to hear that another close shipmate of his had perished at the hands of the geth. Once was enough. He breathed a sigh of relief and he guessed that they were doing the same.
He was definitely looking forward to talking about what they had seen inside over a nice meal in the mess. He loved those group meals. They were good times, even if they weren't among the flotilla.
He heard the inner airlock door behind him open and subsequently shut. Someone must have gotten back a bit early. He didn't even bother to turn around yet – he was focused on making sure the geth were content to not bother with them at all. That changed when he heard something on the comms.
"Kar! Kar'Welkas, resp-" Kevin had yelled. There was a lot of alarm in his voice, so he stood from the seat to ask whoever had entered what was going on.
Kar did a pretty complete triple-take when he saw what he believed to be his late captain approaching him from the airlock. She was all beaten up and patched with a strange synthetic material. Geth material?
"C-captain? Is that you? It can't be, Kevin said you're dead!"
There was no response from the captain other than the fact that she barreled right toward him. He wasn't sure what was going on, so he didn't know if he was supposed to brace for an attack or brace for a hug. It didn't matter anyways. The captain yanked his back-of-the-head tubing hard enough to cause him to lose balance. The moment he hit the floor, the captain laid a hand on his lower left shoulder. He felt a sharp, piercing pain under her grasp as though he had just been stabbed by a bladed weapon, and he screamed. The feeling of the stab was quickly overwhelmed by a burning sensation that was swiftly expanding through his body from the wound site. He feared he had just been poisoned by his captain and he struggled to fight back. Overcome by the searing feeling coursing through his veins, he could only watch through tunneling vision as his assailant sat in his most precious and sacred seat and took control of his ship. The last thing he heard was the various alarms of his suit warning of foreign entities within and the notice of the automatic clamping system closing off the wound site.
-On the Geth Structure. . .-
"No, no, no, no, no, no!" Bela cried out after the Kellius had disappeared from sight. "We're trapped now!"
Kevin gave Riik an all-too-obvious death glare, laced inside and out with accusation for their current predicament. "Care to explain, Riik?"
Riik stammered and struggled for an answer, but failed to make one materialize.
"I can see you thought this through for consequences, Riik," Kevin blasted, nearly giving away the anger that he was having trouble keeping in check.
"We're all at fault," Tyr interjected. "None of us took the shot, Kevin. Even you."
Kevin clenched a fist out of sight from the others. Tyr was one hundred percent right, but it was the very thing Tyr called him out on that made him so upset. Was he losing his touch?
"So what now?" Arla asked.
"We need to disarm my bomb," Bela said, frantic and disheartened. "If a geth tampers with it enough, it could go off while we're still stuck here. I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather not melt inside my suit due to excessive exotic radiation."
"Right," Tyr said accompanied by a nod. "Team, listen up. Things look bad right now, but we wouldn't be Xelvas'taersh if the Admiralty Board didn't think we could handle ourselves. Let's focus on getting that bomb disabled first, then we'll decide where to go from there."
Kevin already knew what they had to do after the bomb was collected – they had to get off of the station. This red flag situation had already shown itself to be just that, and like back home, he knew it was time to get out of dodge. There was just one glaring problem: they had no ship with which to disembark. Kevin looked up from his thoughts to see everyone coming to grips with the situation and doing their best to own it emotionally. After the collective resolve had been mustered, the team finally made their way into the long hallway.
"What do you suppose happened to Welkas?" Ralik asked in a surprisingly gentle fashion.
Everyone looked at each other, unwilling to admit the worst. Bela finally laid it down straight. "Welkas was in the bridge. If the Kellius was flying away, it was because he was no longer in control. We have to assume that he's, well, dead."
"Bela!" Arla chastised.
Kevin placed a hand on Arla's shoulder. "We're all thinking it. She's just saying it." There were a few nods and the group fell silent again. The silence remained until they had gotten to the bomb. Once again, they were unopposed the entire way. Arla and Tyr focused their light on the bomb so that Bela could work at disarming and disassembling the device. She shook her head in pure irritation as she took each piece off, as if disassembling the completed and once-armed bomb was the most insulting thing anyone could make her do.
As she worked, everyone began brainstorming on a new plan of action. Focus was, not surprisingly, on finding a viable way back to the planet. Deliberations continued for several minutes after Bela had gathered the pieces and hooked them all back on her suit. For the most part, ideas were unreasonable to an extreme or simply unlikely to work. That is, until one thing that Tosh had said earlier in the mission had struck Kevin.
"Tosh, I heard you say something about a pilot program. What was that about?"
"That? Oh, the pilot program is something I had been working on for a while. It's designed to tunnel into an unoccupied geth platform and run enough emulated instances to essentially allow me to control the platform while receiving all the normal inputs that it can."
"Sounds dangerous," Kevin replied.
"It would be if I wasn't already prepared for such problems. It cannot communicate with any geth process, cluster, or server as long as my emulations are in control. This is a double-edged sword, unfortunately, as it makes it so other geth can't communicate with it at all. This pretty much identifies it as a rogue platform from the get-go, so no infiltration. Additionally, you have to understand that I am the one in control, not the software emulations. All they are doing is providing me with workable interfaces to the input/output layer of the hardware so I can use them. Finally, it cannot 'take over' an active geth platform – I have other programs for that, and that's very temporary. Technically, I can maintain this pilot program as long as I have a stable connection to the node or platform. It can-"
"Excuse me for interrupting, Tosh, but I think that'll do," Kevin said. "This is perfect, then. We just need to find a dormant geth transport or mining vessel and use it to get back to the planet. All we have to do is hole up in whatever cargo space there is."
"What if we can't all fit? Geth are normally transported in a collapsed state," Arla pointed out.
"Then Tosh can give a bunch of us the program in case we have to take multiple ships."
Tosh placed two fingers on the chin of his helmet. "It sounds possible, in theory. I can upload the program to a few omni-tools, but I must warn any potential users that it is huge, data-wise; complex, software-wise; and not exactly user friendly, interface-wise."
"I'm in," Kevin said right away. "Hit me."
"Anyone else?" Tosh asked. "I'm only doing this once – ever. Oh, as an addendum to my earlier disclaimer, there are no tutorials. If we get separated, you're entirely on your own."
"I'll take a copy," Arla said.
Seeing that there were no other takers, Tosh nodded and began uploading copies to Kevin and Arla's omni-tools. It was going to take a while to upload, so they decided to keep moving.
"Now we just have to figure out where they keep spare ships," Ralik noted. "This is a problem, considering we don't have a better picture of this structure. I don't believe we identified any hangars in the render Kar'Welkas got us."
"We don't have a lot of options right now," Tyr stated. "We'll simply have to perform recon duties until we find a feasible target. No splitting up – we're moving as a single unit on this mission, understand? It's too easy to get lost and we have no idea if the hive has been stirred up." A round of nods confirmed the order.
At this point, they gathered together and moved out. They had quite an assortment of intersections, criss-crosses, and unfinished areas of the structure that they could use to move in directions not previously taken, so it was simply a matter of figuring out which direction seemed to fit best. They had a general idea of where the active geth were, which was the far side of the structure. They had no idea how to get there, however, though they guessed it was more or less a matter of finding the paths that cut through the center of the sphere. Their major worry right now was whether or not they'd have to fight their way there. Tosh was running a mapping application on his omni-tool, which recorded their movement and direction overlaid onto the incomplete scan from the Kellius. This was to prevent unintentional backtracking. As it turns out, geth internal design lacks clean aesthetics in any form – each hallway wall was lined with an amalgam of tubes, massive pipes, bulbous outcroppings, and unfinished bulkheads. That didn't leave much in the way of identifiable landmarks.
As they cautiously trekked down the dark corridors, Riik broke the tense silence. "Okay. So maybe that wasn't the captain. Then I have to ask: How did the geth perfectly recreate a quarian envirosuit, complete with unique etchings and all, from a quarian aboard a ruined vessel?"
"There's nothing saying that it's a replication at all," Ralik postulated. "In fact, since the vessel was never outright destroyed, there's a possibility that. . ." Ralik cut himself off. The possibility he nearly vocalized was disturbing, at best. "Err, they could have gathered the suit from the ship and sent it out here?"
"Possible," Tosh reluctantly agreed. "It's been over a week since that event."
"Shut it!" Arla ordered with as much volume suppression as she could muster. "Movement ahead!"
Everyone reacted most professionally and pressed themselves against the right side of the wall behind any obstruction they could find. The movement was clearly heading this way, judging by the low hum emanating from whatever was approaching. Around a corner down the hall, a hovering rack nearly reaching the uneven ceiling appeared and slowly floated towards them. Behind it looked like a 'research class' geth pushing the rack along. The rack itself was loaded top to bottom with collapsed geth bodies, all with the purple sheen from the strange material used in the biotic geth from the research room. There had to be at least twenty of those things on there. The geth effortlessly pushed the rack by the unseen interlopers and took a left into a room down the hall behind the team. They waited for the geth to return and head back the way it came before any of them bothered to breathe, much less move.
Everyone looked at each other for a moment, then Bela spoke up. "There's no way they were able to perfect the design for manufacturing that quickly. No way. We saw them testing it when we first got here! That was hardly more than an hour and a half ago!"
"They must be devoting a lot of resources into this," Tosh contemplated aloud as he walked past everyone towards the room the rack was dropped off in. "I have to take a moment to analyze these up close, guys. This is invaluable as part of our mission."
"I don't think now's the best time, Tosh," Kevin said.
"He's right, Kevin," Riik said. "Part of our mission is to destroy the geth, but part of it is also to look for more information about them. We know no one back home is even aware of these new developments. We at least need to get what we can."
Some of the other squadmates approved and Kevin sighed. "I'm just trying to get out of here. If you guys want to stop for an intellectual potty break, fine. Just don't come crying to me when the crap hits the fan."
There was very little reaction to Kevin's statement. Kevin looked to Ralik and the salarian shrugged back before they both followed the others to the room. Once inside, Kevin's eyes widened. There wasn't just one rack of geth, there were at least ten. Not all of them were biotic geth, but they were all specialized types, such as Hunter class, Juggernaut class, and even a rack of four geth primes.
"Did anybody check off the "military storage" box yet? No? I got it," Kevin said. He held up an imaginary datapad and made a big checkmark gesture with his other hand.
"Is there any way to disable all of these without alerting the rest?" Arla asked.
"I don't think so," Tosh answered as he stepped further into the room, omni-tool at the ready. "A geth body, by default, sends an alert to the nearest node when it's moved, jostled, or has its innards cut. It's a basic hardwired alarm, there's no AI involved. I learned this the hard way last time I tried my pilot program. It, uh, stirred up the geth on the valesh'saat. But I've accounted for that, so it will never happen again."
Kevin and Arla stared at Tosh as he walked over to a rack of the unfamiliar, new geth class.
"Don't give me that look. I know that look. Trust me, I've fixed that." Tosh meddled with his omni-tool and one of the geth snapped up as if it was called to attention in a military line. It unfolded gently and hopped to the floor. It looked at Bela and pulled a weapon, but failed to aim. Nevertheless, everyone instinctively prepared to fire at the potential threat.
"Wait!" Tosh yelled. "It's under my control. I apologize, I ran a prep routine. It just happened to be a combat prep routine."
"Quit fiddling around, Tosh," Kevin again chastised.
Kevin's remark once again fell on deaf ears as Tosh analyzed information fed to his omni-tool. "Hmm. Definitely a change in the hardware. A pretty significant change, actually. There's more room for processes in this model. It likely takes a large number of simultaneous processes to control the biotic subsystem alone. Lots of data architecture modifications as well. This is significantly more advanced a setup than the geth we have on file. I hypothesized that this would be the case, but this is still disturbing news. We're falling way behind their technology curve."
"If you're done, Rolush, we do need to get moving," Arla said, sympathizing with Kevin's uneasiness.
"I've got all I need here for now. I'll take a deeper look at it later."
"Assuming there will be a 'later'," Riik tossed out.
"None of that, Votis," Tyr reprimanded. "Alright, team, let's move out." Tosh nodded and ordered the empty geth to fold itself back up on the rack and he followed the rest out of the room.
Back out into the dark, deafeningly quiet hallways of the structure, the squad wandered around for a good twenty uneventful minutes before they were finally able to locate a walkable path that lead to the far side. As they expected, this path seemed to cut through the middle, hopefully minimizing their travel time. They quickly bypassed several doors and openings along their way as they had only one objective right now – get out.
They stopped at a three-way intersection at the end of a long hall to survey the new direction options. It wasn't so much a T split as it was a Y split, and both directions went on for quite a while. Arla utilized her sniper scope to get a better look, but she stopped abruptly and handed Kevin the weapon. Confused, Kevin simply stared at her. She silently responded by flicking her head in the direction she was just looking, signaling Kevin to have a peek. Kevin shifted over and did so. Down the hall, he saw a squad of about six or seven geth heading up the corridor towards them. They were diverse in their classes, with the only missing class being a geth prime. Weapons were drawn.
"Crap," Kevin said aloud. "The factory's operational and churning out active military geth. A squad of some seven units are heading this way now."
"Probably a recon and force team," Riik explained. "They might know we're aboard, but they probably don't know our exact locations. We should back it up, now. I don't have to tell you guys what will happen if they locate us."
"Why can't things just go our way for once?" Bela asked as she stood up to head back the way she came.
"Do you want the philosophical answer to that, or the spur-of-the-moment one?" Kevin asked jokingly. He too was backtracking at a speedy pace.
"Kevin, why do you always have to say something when I'm speaking out of disdain for our problems?" Bela asked again.
"You get used to it," Ralik stated.
"Do you want the philosophical answer to that or the-" Kevin grinned as he spoke, but was cut off.
"Shut up!" Bela interrupted as she slapped the side of Kevin's helmet.
The team mutually agreed to turn into one of the rooms they bypassed earlier, and they looked for one that wasn't lit up. They ducked into the first one they came across, which was a doorless room that was pitch black inside. They hid directly inside, but fearing that the search squad would peek just inside the threshold and see them all, they opted to move into the room and find something – anything – to hide behind. With personal lights on, they were able to see that the room, down a slight ramp right after the door, was littered with strange and large containers spaced out as if on a grid. With no time to lose, everyone quickly moved in and found a container to obscure themselves with. The plan was a good one – some of the geth team had broken off and stepped into the doorway they had just filed through. They stood there a while, likely attempting to detect thermal signatures or movement. Seeing that there was nothing there for them to detect, the geth eventually moved on and the team breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Each broke out of their hiding spot one at a time by illuminating their immediate spot with their omni-tool-based light. After a minute or two, they all congregated back together at the center of the room. Kevin shone his light around him as he walked to the group to get a better idea of his surroundings. Conversations had already started without him.
"Should we keep moving?" Riik asked.
"No, we don't want to expose ourselves just yet," Tyr replied. "We'll lay low a few minutes and hopefully give the search teams reason to believe we're not here anymore."
"Where are we?" Arla inquired of the group.
"Get this," Ralik said. "Remember that room at the center full of unknown equipment? That wasn't the room we saw on the way in. That's this room right here."
"What weird equipment?" Tosh asked.
"Hey guys," Kevin called out from a short ways away, somewhat interrupting the conversation. "Any idea what these container-like things for?"
Everyone looked in his direction to see him shining his light up at one of the containers. It was now clear that they weren't large storage crates, vats, or anything of the like. They had huge, rounded backsides, flat tops, and a concave front side with a smaller rounded extrusion in the middle of the front. They reminded Kevin of cryo-stasis holding cells he learned about while researching a target a few years back, but these clearly had no cryo-based technology involved. They were arranged side-by-side into long rows of somewhere near 20 each, and each in a row had a second across the 'aisle' facing back. Curious, the human stepped up the short ramp of the one he was currently investigating to see if there was any indication of what was inside on or around the extrusion. Likewise, some of the other members of the team did as well.
There was a small window hardly taller than Kevin's face, and it was only slightly wider. He looked in to see if there was anything to be seen, but all he saw was black darkness. Bela, one container to Kevin's right, shown her light into the window. Immediately following that, the shrill screech of the short quarian filled the room and reverberated several times before it finally died. She backed away, momentarily terrorized from what she saw.
Tyr ran over, "What? What is it, Merni?"
"K-K-Keelah. N-No way!" Bela muttered as she stared at the container and gathered her composure.
Kevin, fueled even more by morbid curiosity now than he was before, shone his light into the container, and he was greeted by the familiar reflection of light off of a quarian's visor. "What. . ." He looked around to see if he could find an 'open' button, only then realizing that geth would never need such a thing. "Tosh! Can we get one of these open?"
Tosh looked to Bela, who was only now standing straight up again. "I can give it a shot. No guarantee we won't alert them, though."
"I think this might be important enough to take that risk," the human replied. His tone was coated in dire seriousness. For those that knew Kevin, that meant something big.
"Alright," Tosh replied after a deep sigh. The savvy quarian tapped away at his commands, looking up at the container once in a while. After a few moments, he made one final, exaggerated tap and then looked at the container Kevin was slowly giving room to. There was no hiss, no lights, no gurgles or roars. The extrusion on the front lifted from the bottom as though it was hinged at the top. All lights focused in on the subject within, and Kevin's hesitant and morbid suspicions were confirmed.
It was a quarian exosuit.
". . . My God," Kevin said, shaking his head.
Tosh froze. Bela shuddered. Arla recoiled. Ralik tilted his head. Riik and Tyr brought fisted hands to their chins in thought. The sight was more than just disturbing, it was chilling. It stiffly rested in place against a flat, moderately back-tilted metal bed. There were no hooks keeping it up or straps holding it in place, yet it didn't slump or slide. Something was inside, filling it out. It had all of the things one would usually expect to see on a non-military quarian, including knickknacks, clan colored cloths, and tubes and wires. The suit itself looked dated, though. It was bulkier in a way that described a less efficient model.
"That's a three-generation-old suit," Tosh said, breaking the shocked silence. "Looks around twenty years old."
Riik leaned in. "And those are Harruth clan colors. I knew some from the clan."
"Do. . . Do you guys think this is an actual quarian?" Bela asked.
"His omni-tool ID still works. Let me run an archive search," Tyr said. After a few moments of watching the projected screen, Tyr stiffened up. "Mel'Harruth vas Dyrin nar Joreek, Ship Filter Engineer, died 2161 when his suit's filters failed during a bad outbreak on the ship. Probably while he was fixing a ship filter problem."
Other containers were opened up to verify the idea that all of them held suits like this one did. It seemed to be the case, as each one held a unique quarian suit that belonged to one of their dead.
"How would the geth get ahold of your deceased?" Kevin questioned fervently.
"We space our dead," Arla explained. "We cannot afford the space to keep our dead in the flotilla, so we space them during a mournful ceremony."
Ralik tapped his chin. "But with their suits on? You guys don't use the suit later? I mean no offense, it just seems something a people would do in your race's current situation."
"You forget the emphasis our people place on ancestry," Tyr wisely noted. "There are a lot of traditions surrounding death, especially since our exile. We space our dead in the direction of our homeworld for two reasons. One is that so they can join our current ancestors in watching over it, and the second is so that we might have a chance of finding the caskets later when we retake the homeworld to give them a more proper burial ceremony. To remove the suit would be an insult to the individual. Almost like stripping them of honor. Besides, no one would want to use the suit of a dead quarian – it's a little rough on the mind, don't you agree?"
"Alright, alright, alright," Kevin said, hands up. He turned towards the suit in the open container and stepped up to it. "So you jettison your dead into the Perseus Veil. Why bring them here? Why collect them at all? I can't think of any reason the geth might have for doing such a thing. I mean, it's not like they have sentiments for the dead, right?"
"It is curious," Tosh said, stumped. "I can't even think of a processing error that might lead to. . ." He threw his hands out to his sides, gesturing to all of the containers in the room. "To this."
"I wonder what they fill out the suits with," Kevin muttered as he looked into the visor. In order to get a better angle with his light, he put a finger under the chin of the helmet and lifted it up a tad. Suddenly, the 'mouthpiece' light turned on and a pair of ghastly glowing eyes appeared within the helmet. It looked Kevin square in the visor before he literally jumped backwards, startled. "Gyaah! What!"
Weapons were drawn. There was something all wrong about this. The once-dead quarian stepped out of the container and stared down the entire squad. Suddenly, the lights in the room turned on, revealing just how big the room was. This, however, was the least of their worries. Barely a few moments after the lights came on, the sound of opening hatches echoed about the room in staggering quantities. A quick look around confirmed this bad, bad news. Containers all around were opening up, their residents waking. Kevin had one response for this.
"Oh balls."