Chapter 33
The morning after the team had returned to the yet unnamed planet, Ralik landed the Kellius in its usual spot and was pleasantly surprised to see that their 'locked down' camp hadn't been disturbed in the least. He and Riik were the only ones awake at the time, so they went out to bring the base back to operational status. A few hours later, they were joined by everyone except for Tyr, who was working on a report in the crew quarters, and the usual two – Kevin and Arla. No one seemed to notice, however, as they were all intentionally distracting themselves with some work to try and ease the mind away from the unbelievable events that occurred within the past day. Perhaps this would have been easier to do if the scientifically curious pair weren't prattling on about it the whole time they were working.
"Ralik, what did you make of the nanotechnology embedded in the infiltration unit?" Tosh asked as he paused his work to concentrate on his train on thought.
"I looked at some samples while everyone slept," the eager salarian replied. "Exceedingly alien in design, like nothing I've ever seen before."
"I'll want to look at those samples later. What did you find?"
"Terrifying, yet fascinating. As near as I can tell, they're purposely designed to function like a virus. Alone, these little machines sit dormant. Once organic tissue is placed in proximity, they attack it furiously, modifying the DNA within by unknown means then replicate themselves off of the newly adapted cells. Each DNA modification makes the cells more and more. . . synthetic. They might possibly be nanofactories that build synthetic material on the cells, but it happens too fast for me to make anything but an inference."
"Speaking of synthetics," Tosh said, derailing the conversation in favor of direct relevance, "Kar's suit finally came back online this morning. He's alive, but he appears to be in a comatose-like state. His body might be trying to account for and repair damage done to vital organs."
"How long do you estimate he was infected for?"
"It was difficult to tell due to all the modification to his body, but from the meager data I had actually gathered, he seemed to be infected for no more than three hours."
"That much alteration in three hours?" Ralik said, amazed and horrified at the same time. "Think of what damage that could do to one of your homeships if they got infected."
"Don't remind me, Ralik. I know we stalled them for a while, but they won't sit content here beyond the edge of the galaxy forever."
"But at least they have the same logistical problem of returning like we do."
Bela cleared her throat. "SO. . . I notice Kevin and Arla still aren't out here. What's up with that?"
Tosh and Ralik stopped and stared at Bela and her obvious attempt to change the subject. They looked back at each other and shrugged at the same time, silently agreeing to postpone their discussion until they could have it without sensitive ears. "They're having training sessions like they always do, Bela. This is nothing new," Tosh stated.
"Hmm. Maybe, maybe not," she said, falsely disinterested.
"You imply they're doing something else," Ralik said.
"Well yeah. I mean they can't really be running tech and combat lessons the entire time. Minds wander and all. . ."
Tosh rolled his eyes and started tapping on his holographic keyboard. "I see where this is going. Bela, you know it's not polite to make such unrefined and baseless accusations. We've talked about this. Pointless gossip, remember?"
"It's not baseless, actually," she replied with a near-audible smirk.
"You mean to tell me you've been in there while they were doing something other than combat training?" Ralik asked with a raised brow.
"Yes. Yes I have."
"I don't know whether I want to see this conversation through to the end," Tosh muttered.
Bela nodded and leaned up onto the terminal she was working on, putting her head through the blue, glowing interface. "Some days back, I went in to let them know that they were being called up to be briefed."
"Uh-huh," Tosh said dismissively.
"When I walked into the club room, I saw them-"
"Combat training?" Ralik finished for her.
"No! Kevin and Arla were. . . Err. . . They were-"
"We were what?" Kevin asked as he, Arla, and Tyr pushed the tent entryway flaps aside and walked in.
Bela fell back off of her terminal, nearly failing to land on her feet. She tangled her fingers behind her back as she regained herself and looked awkwardly at the entering trio. "Uh. . . Just doing your usual morning routine! Combat training and all that!"
Kevin and Arla looked at each other, suspicious. "Okaaaay. . ."
"Bela, are you telling stories again?" Arla asked, hand on hip. She caught a glimpse of Tosh nodding his head while staring at his screen.
"Nothing out of the ordinary, really, heh," Bela continued to tangle her fingers behind her back as if it wasn't obvious.
"Keelah, you're such a child sometimes!" Arla shot out, only marginally upset. "I thought maatfel Kiru'Yeland taught you about the harsh reality of spreading rumors back on the Neema."
"Old habits die hard, Tavval, you know that! He wasn't my maatfel anyways."
"Listen up, team," Tyr jumped in, halting this nonsense. "Our new priority is to discover possible ulterior motives for the geth gathering on this planet. Research on the planet itself will continue only as long as we don't have new data to research as far as the geth go."
"How do you propose we go about finding said data?" Tosh asked.
"We'll have to go on what little evidence we have. Right now, our best bet is to search out the source of those odd signals centered around the mountain range to the northeast. That's all we have to go on at this time. Votis, Rolush, Dolannus, Folner, we're going on a field trip."
"To the mountain range?" Kevin asked.
"Underneath, actually. I looked over the geographical data that you and the lieutenant collected for that area. It appears there are cavern entrances at the base of those mountains dotting the entire perimeter about eight kilometers apart. We'll take the Skimmer over and reconnoiter."
"And us?" Bela asked, also gesturing to Arla.
"Keep the camp secure and monitor Welkas. He could wake up at any time, and we don't know if the overload did the trick yet. Are we all clear?" A round of acknowledgments sounded off and the team headed back into the Kellius. The five on the recon mission each grabbed their armaments and one of the five seats on the Skimmer while the remaining two went up a deck. The Skimmer roared to life as Kevin powered it on and the took off at high velocity towards the northeast.
Kevin greatly appreciated Tyr getting everyone focused on work. That was some nasty business back on the geth sphere, enough to mess up a soldier's head. Especially if that soldier came from the Migrant Fleet. The revelation that the geth were planning on inserting themselves into the flotilla to infect quarians from the inside was bad enough, but the fact that they had no real way of communicating that danger with their fleet was even worse. Then there was the question of geth advancement. If the quarians were that far behind the curve out here in the middle of nowhere, how far behind were they compared the main bulk of the geth fleets?
"Kevin!" Tyr shouted, snapping Kevin out of his thoughts.
Kevin zoned back in fast enough to see the pillar of rock he was about to smack into. A hardy leftsided lean got the Skimmer around without incident, though none of his teammates were so hopeful. They all uncurled themselves from the thought of the dooming impact and gripped something tight. Anything.
Tyr shoved Kevin's shoulder in irritation. "Keep your head in it, Folner! I'm not ending up a smear on the mountainside because you felt like daydreaming about the flowers!"
Kevin apologized and brought them around to the nearest hole in the ground that Tyr had mentioned. The Skimmer was parked out of sight of the open field and the armed squad took a peek at the cave. Immediately, their sights were focused on geth bodies. These were not active geth bodies, though. These infantry units were face-down on the rim of the entrance and it looked like they had been there at least a few weeks before the team had even arrived. There didn't appear to be any physical damage to the units, which only made things stranger. If there was a hostile beast hiding in these caves, it certainly wasn't what killed these geth.
"Looks clear," Riik reported.
Tyr flicked his gun towards the cave. "Dolannus, on point."
Ralik looked back and forth between the cave and Tyr. "Just. . . Just give me a minute or two."
Kevin wasn't up for being stalled by Ralik's unnatural propensity to be mentally unprepared. "I'll take point. Ralik, you cover our backs." Ralik gave Kevin a glance of thanks while Tyr gave Kevin the glance of a soldier bypassing the chain of command. Nevertheless, they moved on.
They noticed a thick bundle of cables that ran from somewhere higher up on the mountain out of sight into the cave along the ceiling. Tyr nudged Tosh to keep an eye on it as they moved down. Inside, the cave was barren of vegetation – a stark contrast to the world just beyond the edge outside. The light from the entrance quickly fell away to pitch-black darkness, and the group used their omni-tools to provide directional light. The floor wasn't natural, as though it had been shaved down to make walking through a much simpler task. The geth never did like inefficiency.
The depth of the cavern didn't seem to end. It wound and turned about, but kept a fairly steady angle of descent. It was quickly becoming obvious that communication with the Kellius was soon to be out of the question, if it wasn't already. Every now and then they'd come across another squad of fallen geth, all face-down and without visible damage. Stalactites and stalagmites that normally would get in the way of the path had been removed, apparently by cutting lasers. Several times the cave branched off into other directions, but the team had unanimously decided to follow the cables to their source.
They had been traveling steadily downward for near an hour by now. Tosh had estimated that they were near two kilometers beneath the surface at this point. Not more than a minute later, the cave branched again, but this time with an interesting difference. Three of the four outward branches had been shaven down to promote travel, and each had an assortment of geth lying face-down on the hard ground. The team took a brief break while they decided on what to do.
"Finally, something worth noting," Kevin grumbled as he sat down on the flat surface of a cut stalagmite. He shivered to shake off the ever so slight tingling feeling he had been experiencing for the past ten minutes or so.
"What's our plan, chief?" Riik asked as he leaned against the wall.
Tyr took a deep breath and let it go nice and steady. "We have two choices here, I suppose. We can stay together or we can split and investigate several meters into each tunnel."
"I vote split," Ralik said. "I'd like to see where these geth were going."
"I'm heading along with the cables, then," Kevin stated. There's bound to be machinery around here somewhere."
"Cables for me," Riik said.
"Me as well," Tosh announced.
"I'm curious about the end of these cables myself," Tyr added. "Let' move then. Keep your weapons and your guard up – something caught these geth with their suits off, let's not make the same mistake."
A round of nods and the team went about their chosen paths. Kevin took point down the tunnel with the cables along the ceiling, nearly tripping over more piles of geth. In fact, there were so many bodies in the opening down the tunnel cluttered by the entrance that they had to walk on the bodies until they bypassed the unmoving clutter. The tunnel had opened up into a large natural room and the whole place was littered with geth bodies.
"Good lord," Kevin said. "They're everywhere."
"Very few of them are adequately armed," Riik noted. "This must have been a project site or something."
"What happened to these geth?" Tosh wondered aloud, adding emphasis to the already burning question.
"Over here, Tosh!" Kevin called out with ample echoes. He was standing by a collection of large equipment that were geth in origin. "The cables run here. I saw these on the valesh'saat. Uplink nodes, right?"
Tosh skipped on over to get a better look with more light. "Correct. This was likely their primary source of communication with the clusters on the surface. This here is a server. I'm going to see if I can tap in and look at some data. Hopefully, we'll get some answers."
As Tosh worked, the others walked around the room to see if there was anything else to be found. Riik had caught up with Kevin and started walking with him as they searched. "Something about this place isn't right," Riik stated warily.
"What do you mean?" Kevin asked.
"Look at the way these geth are laid out. Think about all the geth we came across on the way down here. They all fell facing the same direction – the way to the surface. All of these geth were running from something. They can't feel fear, right? So. . ."
"What was so dangerous that they collectively decided to pull out without even closing up shop?" Kevin said, finishing the thought. It sent chills down his spine.
"No good," Tosh called out. "The whole system is fried. It's all blown out due an overwhelming power surge. I'm willing to guess that's what happened to the geth as well."
"But from what?" Tyr questioned.
"Dolannus to the cable team."
"What is it, Ralik? This better be important," Kevin replied.
"You guys. . . You might want to see this. I. . . Uh, I took the second tunnel to the left of yours."
Everyone in the room looked at each other for a moment before collectively heading out of the room. "We'll be there in a sec. Kevin out."
They made it back to the junction and headed down the tunnel that Ralik had pointed out with weapons at the ready. There were considerably fewer bodies to step over down this tunnel, which made Kevin question all the more what Ralik had found. As they neared a corner, he could actively tell that there was an ambient blueish-white light spilling from the room beyond. Preparing himself for anything, he paused once before rounding the corner before walking in.
Interestingly, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
Kevin's jaw dropped. Directly in front of him was Ralik staring off away from the team amongst what looked like a deactivated geth mining operation. The real eye-catcher here, though, was beyond the dropoff right in front of Ralik; a solid sea of blue-white luminescence bathing the entire room in the same color light. There seemed to be an almost intangible mist constantly rising off of the source which generally faded to transparency in a short distance. The room – if it could be called that – stretched on so far that it actually had a horizon, with the sky being replaced by the underside of an upper layer of rock. Intermittently throughout the massive sea, or field, or whatever, were massive pillars both of natural and distinctly unnatural origin connecting the floor and ceiling. Small arcs of what appeared to be blue electricity occasionally curled around these pillars before returning to bounce around on the sea of light like a child giddily playing in a field of grass.
"Wow. . ." was all Kevin could muster under his breath, and his squadmates' reactions were largely similar. "Is. . . Is that what I think it is?"
"Confirming," Ralik spoke as he scanned the vista, still in shock. "Yeah, that's element zero. One hundred percent pure element zero."
Tosh shook his head. "Keelah. None of the civilizations in the galaxy, not even the protheans had one-hundred percent pure eezo."
"I suppose this answers the question of the geth's recent foray into expending eezo on infantry," Tyr noted. Despite his continuing objective observance, one could tell that even he was awestruck by the sight before him just based upon the slack way he was holding his rifle. "Look at it all."
Once the shock wore off on Tosh, he was quick to get his favorite tool out. "Whatever was preventing our scans from orbit isn't working now. I can scan the eezo and below, or rather, as far as my omni-tool goes. It's all eezo from here down. Maybe even the core too."
"That can't be right," Ralik said, shaking his head. "Element zero isn't dense enough to create this much gravitational pull."
"Could be that the entire planet's gravity well is artificial – there's a small positive charge running through the entire mass of eezo from the magnetic north pole to the south that's causing it to increase its own mass enough to actually have one. Possibly related to the strong magnetic field?"
Kevin leaned on a small wall of rocks that acted as a natural railing before the dropoff. "So. . . What you're telling me is that we're standing on a planet that by all accounts of physical science shouldn't actually exist?"
Tosh stopped scanning and looked over at Kevin. ". . . Yes."
"Well then thank God for stellar miracles, because I'm rather glad to have this celestial screw-up under my feet."
"Indeed," Tyr muttered.
"We're still left with the question of how the geth died," Riik pointed out.
Ralik and Tosh both put hands over their chins in thought. Ralik walked over to the mining equipment and drew in a breath. "If the geth were actively mining the eezo using these drills and mining lasers, it's very possible they contributed static charge to the eezo itself. Because of how pure it is, it's likely extra sensitive to any changes in charge, and as we all know, such a charge naturally seeks a ground."
"But it is the ground," Riik said.
"Not quite," Tosh replied. "I see where Ralik is going with this. He's saying that the entire eezo mass discharged the static buildup to the only other possible ground – the magnetosphere. That's likely why we saw geth bodies throughout the trip. The path of least resistance is through the air in the cave tunnels and up into the sky."
"The upwards lightning," Kevin said, recalling some of the spectacular lightning storms he and Arla saw. They were riddled with a mix of cloud-to-ground and ground-to-cloud strikes.
"Precisely. It's likely the geth had enough time to realize that the electricity was about to discharge into their face but not enough time to get out of the cave."
Kevin then realized what was causing the tingling in his body. There was static charge in the eezo right then and his nervous system, along with the eezo nodules throughout,was being affected. It may not have been enough to discharge right then, but he wasn't about to stick around to figure out what that threshold was. "And suddenly," Kevin said, "I don't quite feel like hanging around this cave anymore. Anyone else for heading to the surface?"
"We need to get back to report our findings anyways," Tyr said. "Move out."
Relieved, Kevin anxiously and eagerly led the team to the exit of the cave. They boarded the Skimmer and headed back to the Kellius to see if there was any news on Kar yet. As the vehicle crawled into the loading bay, they crew found no one there to greet them. Ralik and Tosh headed into the camp's lab to see if they could come up with more information regarding the caves while everyone else went up a few decks.
A peek inside the medbay windows showed that Kar was currently alone, now visibly breathing, but still out cold. Kevin stepped into the briefing room to see if the two left behind were there. He saw them casually talking away in the bridge with renders of the current system smothered in lines on some of the terminals. Not wanting to interrupt, Kevin took a seat at the table and brought up another render of the solar system up over the table. However, sitting in relative silence as he was, he found it harder and harder to ignore the chattering girls in the bridge.
"What do you think linking suit environments is like?" Bela asked.
"I wish I knew," Arla said. "I don't think there's any quarians out there who'd want to link with me anyways."
"That's because you have a tendency to kick any potential suit-linkers in the groin." They both laughed.
"Hey, if they couldn't avoid that then they probably couldn't handle me anyways. It's my physical litmus test."
"Tavval, your ego's popping out again."
"Ugh, alright, I get it."
"You know. . . Folner's got a suit like ours, and I'm willing to stake some creds that he'd be able to beat your groin punt."
"Bela! Stop that! Keelah, you're going to make it hard for me to train with the guy."
"Hah. For all I know, you two have already had a go at each other. All that 'training time' in the club room. . . Makes for a lot of time to link suit environments. Or body parts."
"I'd be bothered if I didn't know you were trying to get a rise out of me. Not going to happen this time, Merni."
"Is that a challenge, Tavval? Just so you know, I've barely gotten started!"
"Great. I've unleashed the great perverse nightmare known as Bela'Merni vas Kellius," Arla said, almost disinterested.
"At least you know what you're getting into. Speaking of getting into things, how's Kevin feel?"
"Alright, I'm out of here," Arla quickly said, getting up from her chair. "Need to check on Kar." The moment she turned, as Bela was celebrating victory, she spotted Kevin quietly sitting there minding his own business. After that conversation, how was she supposed to just walk by him? She decided to try anyways in hopes he didn't hear.
"Oh, hi Kevin!" Bela blurted out as Arla stepped into the briefing room, blowing her cover. "I don't suppose you heard any of that, did you?"
"Hey Arla, how do I feel? I don't suppose you've got any words for her about our 'training sessions', do you?" Kevin turned his head enough to look at Arla and gave her a discrete thumbs up – the more visible alternative to a wink.
She gave a slow nod in agreement and sidled up close to Kevin. "Oh, it's intense. All that moving around. . . I get bruises every time."
"So you two like it rough?"
Kevin gave a sagely nod. "It's mutual. It helps us release our. . . Aggression. Among other things."
Bela huffed. "Well, it's a good thing I know you two aren't. . . Like that. I'd be tempted to join." She started her way towards the briefing room hurriedly, looking to make an exit.
"I don't know Bela, you sure you could handle it?" Arla asked, hanging over the back of Kevin's chair.
Kevin agreed. "I'd be afraid I'd hurt you. Or break you in half. How's your agility? How much can you. . . Bend?"
It seemed like they had actually gotten the upper hand – Bela failed to retort. She simply continued on her way towards the doors, looking a little miffed in her movements. As she passed them, Kevin reached out and gave Bela a good game slap on the butt. She jumped.
"Hey!" Bela and Arla shouted at once.
"What?" Kevin asked, arms up. "Too far?"
The girls simply exchanged looks and eye-based daggers before Bela finally made her exit.
"Uh oh, did I actually manage to piss her off?" Kevin said as he pivoted the chair to face Arla's general direction.
She lifted herself off of the chair as it pivoted. "Probably, but you know her. It's temporary. She's just not used to be being one-upped like that. Or tag teamed. Great job by the way, ganging up on a little girl like that."
Kevin shook his head at the short joke. "Do I really give you bruises?"
"At first. I wasn't all that accustomed to taking hits back then, mind you."
"Not so much now. You're good enough to give me bruises from time to time. So is that how you two spent your entire time here? Talking about quarian foreplay?"
"No, no. We got bored staring at the star system monitor. I made the mistake of letting her start a conversation."
"Must be rough if all you can do to show affection is link suits," Kevin said, kicking his feet up on the table.
"Oh, that's not all we can do. It's just all we can do with some relative safety. Linking suit environments shows the highest level of trust and it still keeps us somewhat safe from major infection. We still get a little sick, though. But yes, it's one of the more. . . intimate things we can do."
Kevin crossed his arms. "So that's why Nor dodged the question when I asked her."
"What?"
"Nor. When we were faced with the situation of the life support systems failing in our disabled ship, she mentioned linking suit environments because my hardsuit wasn't designed to be a long term life support device. Said it'd help my chances of lasting long enough for rescue. She got all bashful about it when I asked for details. I didn't press the issue as I figured it was just a touchy subject. Huh. How literal."
"Is that so."
"Yeah." There was a moment of awkward silence. The conversation had run its course and neither had anything else to say on the subject. Kevin switched gears to something a little less emotional. "So are we having a meeting or something to discuss our findings? I figure you girls had a reason for looking at that render of the system."
"Ah, right. Tyr didn't say anything about a briefing?"
"He mentioned making a report, but. . . What the heck, I'll call him up."
"I'll try to get Bela back in here as well. We do actually have things to report."
They called everyone to the briefing room to share their data and within the minute, all but Kar had assembled. Tyr's team went first, describing the unthinkably massive chamber a couple kilometers down that they estimated went all the way around the planet. They talked about the absurdly pure eezo just lying in there as well as the geth mining setup with the plethora of fried bodies. Arla and Bela could hardly believe the report, insisting they were making stories up to enhance a boring trip. Not surprising. Once the guys were done with their presentation, it was the girls' turn.
Bela stood up and switched the hologram hovering over the table to the one she and Arla had been monitoring. It was coated in a mess of lines tracking ship movements around the system. "Since I had some time, I decided to watch the movements of the geth in case they were getting aggressive due to our incursion. This map here shows an hour before we left for the geth sphere." She switched the hologram to show one with roughly half the lines spread around. "This is one about an hour after we had been discovered." She switched it one last time, showing only about four or five lines left. "And this is ten minutes ago. As you can see, geth activity has decreased by a whole lot. Nearly ninety percent."
Arla continued. "We think the geth have recalled all of the mining vessels to help with reparations. Either that or they're actively limiting liabilities they send out because they haven't fully assessed how much of a threat we are. They're going to have a tough time repairing that structure after Ralik hit the inside with the main cannon, though. Good work on that."
"I aim to please. And kill. Mostly the first one," Ralik stated.
"That's good news," Kevin said, leaning in. "At least we won't have to worry about them murdering us in our sleep. Interesting that the geth in the valley next door haven't bothered with us either. I wonder why."
"The collection of anomalous readings Welkas picked up when we first arrived blankets that entire area. . ." Tosh pointed out. "It could have something to do with that. We won't know until we get some recon in there to study the readings from inside the affected field. I can throw together a device that can be dropped in the field by said recon team to get far better data than anything we're getting from the ship sensors."
"Good idea, Rolush," Tyr said, looking off to the side. "We need a small recon team to make the drop. I don't suppose I even have to ask for voluntee-"
Kevin stepped over to Arla and pulled her to his side in an overly dramatic one-armed hug. "Don't worry, chief, we'll take care of this! Heck, we'll even scout the edge of the geth cluster on foot if necessary."
"Let's not push our luck, Folner," Arla grumbled as she strained to break free.
Tyr nodded. "I'm not opposed to you two investigating. I trust you can handle yourselves well enough, but exercise caution nonetheless, clear? The rest of us will stay here and work on more of the research. I'll monitor Kar's health remotely and alert everyone if anything changes."
With the plan understood and laid out, the team broke to their respective areas. Kevin and Arla prepped their gear and weapons before heading down to the cargo bay with everyone else. They hopped into the Skimmer and turned it on with little hesitation. It almost seemed to the others as if they couldn't wait to get out on the Skimmer again, what with the enthusiasm, the chuckling, and the speed at which they were already heading out the loading ramp.
"Hey, stop!" Tosh shouted at them from the top of the loading ramp.
Kevin paused the Skimmer's movement and turned it to face Tosh. "What?"
"Where are you going? Not to survey the energy field without my field reader, I hope."
Kevin and Arla looked at each other then back at Tosh. Arla shook her head. "Of course not. We're going to scout a way over the mountain while you build it. Let us know when it's done, alright?" Before Tosh could get another word in, they turned and flew off to the northeast. Ralik walked up next to Tosh from the cargo bay and crossed his arms.
"Sometimes I wonder if assembling that vehicle was a good idea."
Tosh shook his head and sighed in response before turning around heading to work on his survey device.
Meanwhile, Kevin and Arla were speeding off towards the mountainside. Kevin was happy to be out of the Kellius again, but not because he was sick of the ship. It was more because he needed some time away from all the insanity and reality that was collapsing in on the entire team since they left the An'Ramini Expanse. Complete isolation from the galaxy had forced him to change his plans on how he spent his time here. His mission to get data for Tarsil was already deemed a failure in his eyes, so he was less motivated to gather generic data and more interested in discovery and good times.
It was crushing enough to know that he had only as long to live as their rationed food lasted. It was doubly so to know that they had information that could possibly save the quarian race from certain annihilation, and they had no possible way of getting it to them in time. He needed some time away from all that. He found that flying off on a 'recon mission' with Arla helped him get away just fine. He looked over to Arla just to have a look, something he hadn't done for a while. He stared, watching her hood – held down by her right hand – flap and flow in the wind. She noticed.
"What's wrong?" she asked over the sound of the wind.
"What? Oh, nothing. Just. . . Thinking."
"Are we actually going to scout the mountainside?"
"Sure. I'm guessing we'll find a path over long before Tosh can finish his device anyways."
"Any ideas where to start?"
"I saw an area the Skimmer should be able to hop to near the cave we scouted earlier. I'm going to try there first."
Their brief conversation went silent for the remainder of the trip. When they arrived at the cave entrance, Kevin slowed down and passed by it where he could get a second look. The first remnants of the geth corpses could be seen reflecting the sun from the maw of the cave. Kevin only glanced in once, it was all he needed. Arla took a look down and shook her head.
"Tch. Bosh'tets got what they deserved."
"I'd take you down to see it if I wasn't so worried about getting fried. It's quite the jaw-dropper."
Kevin then brought his attention to the landing on the mountain that he spotted earlier. "Ready for a little fun?" He asked his comrade.
"I suppose. Why, what are you-"
Kevin slammed the accelerator down and the Skimmer took off towards the mountainside at breakneck speeds. Arla let loose a brief squeak as the vehicle left the ground and climbed altitude towards what looked like a craggy rock face. It turned out to be an optical illusion, though, and a relatively flat landing appeared out of the rock face. From there, Kevin found several landings and short paths that he could use to reach the summit. The trees didn't grow very much at this altitude and the ground was rounded as opposed to flat or sharp. Kevin had a thought and he shut the Skimmer down behind a chest-high rock wall. Arla watched him hop out without saying a word, confused as to why they stopped. Kevin climbed the rock wall and laid down on the top, facing the northeast.
"Kevin?" Arla wondered aloud.
"Come on up. Bring your sniper rifle."
She tossed her gun up to him and climbed much the same way he did. She laid down on the rock next to him and looked around. From here, they could see all the way down the other side of the mountain as well as the sizable collection of geth structures and units. There didn't seem to be any movement, at least none they could see from here. Kevin aimed the scope of the rifle down at the shining sea of metal, curious. He searched the edges and bases of the mountain range as well.
"I don't see any thing all that weird down there. Geth uplink nodes, broadcast towers, storage buildings. . . Doesn't look like there's anything that could be causing those readings. Hopefully Tosh's thingamabob can detect location on top of content."
"Kar mentioned that the signals seemed to radiate from the largest mountain. That one over there." Arla nudged Kevin and pointed towards the only peak taller than the one they were currently on.
Kevin changed his focus to the base of the mountain range that sat in the shadow of that tallest peak. "I see a cavern entrance down there. Looks a bit more natural than those other holes in the dirt, like it travels more laterally than going deep underground. It looks like the geth aren't just ignoring it, they're staying the heck away from it. Their movements give it a wide berth. I wonder why."
"Let me see," Arla demanded, holding her hand out for the rifle. Kevin handed it over so she could have a look.
"I think we should start there. First find out if the cave connects to the eezo chasm underneath or not. Then we find out why the geth are avoiding it. It's one thing to not repeat the mining disaster, it's another to keep away from caves because of that. Especially since geth don't have fear."
"There's no weaponized platforms in that cluster. That's why they're avoiding us – these geth aren't equipped to fight a military battle. With so few ships making trips around the system now, I'm guessing they won't get them any time soon, either. We could wipe them out. Right now. Just the two of us."
"Easy on that trigger finger, precious. We don't want to start anything yet, we're just here to figure out what's going on. I'm itching to blow up some synthetics too, but starting a fight down there may destroy our chances of finding the source. We'll have to opt for stealth this time around. I need that again."
Arla reluctantly handed the rifle back to the human. "Fine, fine. How are we getting down there?"
"Looking at that now. . . Crap. I don't see any paths concealed enough to hide the Skimmer. We may have to park it here and climb down. I can see some accessible paths, but it'll be at least an hour and a half climb down, then as much back to get to the Skimmer."
"I already hate this plan."
Kevin handed the sniper rifle back to its rightful owner. "Me too, but there isn't much for alternatives." He sighed and rolled onto his back so that he could let his head dangle backwards over the edge of the wall they rested on.
Arla did likewise after setting the rifle off to the side. "You know, this is nice. We quarians don't really get to look at such a beautiful horizon and know that it could be ours."
"If we can find some way to get the word out, your people could use this place. I don't know any race that could use it more. The turians certainly don't need another dextro-based planet."
"Mmm. If we played our cards right, we could actually start a colony up here."
"If by 'a colony' you mean 'half the Migrant Fleet', then yes, I suppose."
"No, I mean us, here and now. We could learn to plant crops, grow our own food. . . It'd take some adjusting, but we could rough it."
"Well, you could rough it. I'm, well, I'm kind of screwed. I can't really. . ." Kevin's voice depressingly trailed off as that surety of doom forced itself back into his mind.
"Oh. . . Sorry, I didn't mean to. . ." She rolled onto her side to face Kevin and she brought a free hand over to turn his gaze toward hers. "I'm so sorry."
Kevin forced a chuckle. "What are you apologizing for? It's not like you had a hand in my being levo-protein dependent. I'm just a victim of circumstance, I guess. Life sucks sometimes. It just means I'll be out of your hair sooner. Figuratively speaking."
Arla knew Kevin well enough by now to know that the speech he had just given was but a messy cover-up to what was really bothering him. Unfortunately, it bothered her just as much. "But I don't want. . . Kevin, I'd rather you weren't. . . Out of my hair sooner, I mean."
"What?" He sat up.
"You're a great asset to the squad, and you're a boost to morale, not to mention your biotics have saved my life more than once."
Kevin was silent, but he stared at her as if he knew that speech she just gave was a messy cover-up to was really bothering her. He saw her draw in a long breath to say something.
"Rolush to the scouting party."
Kevin watched Arla turn her head away as though she were disappointed. He raised a brow, but decided he had to check in. "Folner here. What's going on, Tosh?"
"The device is just about ready, kids. Return as soon as you can so we can get this deployed before sunset."
"Alright, we're on our way." Kevin cut comms and looked to Arla. "Hey, are you alright?"
She turned away once more. "I'm fine. Let's just get back to camp and get that toy of his."
Kevin stared at her for a moment longer then complied. Back in the Skimmer hopping down from landing to landing, Arla tried for a different conversation. "So Folner. . ."
"Yeah?"
"What was all that back in the geth structure?"
"What was what? All that weird tech?"
"No, I mean that moment you suddenly went combat ineffective. I couldn't find a hit on you, or anything wrong for that matter. You like just dropping out of fights?"
"Oh, that. It's. . . Complicated. I'm not sure if I can explain it."
"Give it a try anyways. I need to know in case it happens again."
"God willing, it won't." He drew in a breath, knowing the only way it wouldn't was if he starved first. "Okay. You know how I have biotics, right?" She nodded. "Right. Did you know I'm a natural biotic?" She shook her head this time. "Natural biotics are those that don't need amplifiers to perform significant biotic feats, like asari. Humans, turians, and even krogan I think, need biotic amps in order to do this."
"I'm aware of that much," she said while bringing a hand up to hold her hood in place again.
"So yeah. Human natural biotic. There are only six of us in the galaxy. Comes with problems, though. One is occasional memory loss. Nobody's sure what causes it, and meds don't help. The second is the extremely nasty neural episodes. That's what you saw on the structure."
"What causes something so horrible?"
"It's hard to say. There's no leading research or anything that has this spelled out for us already or anything, so we're running blind with this. If I had to guess, though, I'd blame it on my nervous system."
"Why?"
"As far as I can tell, the human nervous system isn't strong enough to power the eezo nodules inside our bodies enough to get feasible results from our biotics. That's what the amps are for. For us naturals, our nervous system was genetically enhanced in utero to put out as well as handle much more powerful synapses so that we can control eezo at a higher level without amplification. The most significant drawback from this is an occasional overwhelming backlash of nervous system activity. It's like a rubber band getting stretched until it snaps, only it takes a few seconds to kick in."
"It looked like it was a miserable experience. Any long term effects from this?"
"Just one, usually. It's associated with most biotics, but doubly so for us. No one knows how to cure it for naturals."
"Are you going to tell me what it is, or do I have to beg for it?"
"I'd like to see you beg for a change, hah. It's. . . Premature death by neural breakdown."
Arla recoiled slightly. She just couldn't avoid the whole topic of death today. "Keelah, I'm sorry for pressing. I didn't realize it was that bad."
"I'm used to the idea. I think other things are going to get me first out here anyways."
Arla lowered her head. She was done making conversation for now. The last two ended up pointing out how Kevin was going to die an early death and she didn't want to try for three. Much to her relief, however, they were arriving back at camp. Hopefully after this, they could go back to thinking about things other than grisly endings.
Kevin pulled the Skimmer up to the end of the loading ramp where Tosh was waiting. The quarian on the ramp tossed a lighter-than-expected torso sized device with a bunch of scanning modules crudely welded to it. The top was spiked with a myriad of antennae for additional readings as well. The bottom sported four legs which were nothing more than bent metal beams welded in place.
"Make sure to place it on a solid surface!" Tosh shouted over the roar of the Skimmer's idling engines.
"Got it. Anything else?"
"Not in terms of the device. It's already on, so sit it down somewhere in the energy field's range and you're set to go!"
"Alright, thanks!"
"Kevin! One more thing! Those files you wanted unlocked? I've finished unlocking them. Just let me know when you want them!"
Kevin debated delaying the mission in order to take some time to look over those files. This was the first time in two years he's had the opportunity to look at them. He looked over at his passenger who looked back at him and reached for the survey device. "I'll look at them later, Tosh. Thanks a ton for helping me with that!"
Kevin handed the device to Arla and spun around to go back the way they came. The trip back was done so in silence – Arla was too afraid to start up another conversation and Kevin was content to just drive towards the mountain in the light of the waning sun. When they reached the peak they had previously scouted, they set the device down where they had laid earlier. Tosh reported getting strong readings in that position, so they left it there. They linked their omni-tools with the data stream so they could monitor the readings themselves as well.
"Well, I suppose we should kick back to the Kellius for the night," Kevin suggested as he stared into the northeastern sunset over the geth cluster, which was was falling into the shadows of the surrounding mountain range. The sky had taken on warm hues of orange, red, purple, and deep blue, all of which were slowly diminishing the further down the horizon the sun fell.
Arla stood next to Kevin and watched the sunset with him. She didn't answer his suggestion – not yet. Kevin was wondering why, but he didn't feel like pressing it, though the point became clear when he felt a pair of arms wrap around his right forearm.
"It's a beautiful sunset," she said quietly.
Kevin was wary of things getting a little too 'mushy' for his taste, but for the moment, he was alright with it. They both had a lot of things they had to take a step away from, and this was very relaxing. That's just what they needed.
"Someday it'll be yours," he said. "Just have to work for it a bit."
She nodded and the nod fell onto his shoulder. They watched the rest of the sunset quietly, simply enjoying the moment and the company. When the bright orb fell beneath the horizon and the sunset colors patiently gave way to an aurora, they finally broke from their comforting pose. Kevin took a slow breath and turned to look down at the cave he had spotted earlier.
"Okay, quiet time is over. What do you say we go explore that cave now?" he said.
The quarian straightened out her hood. "Shouldn't we be getting back to the Kellius like you suggested?"
"Nah. I'm curious about what's going on down there. That cave has to lead somewhere, right? Besides, I haven't been on a night mission in forever."
Arla paused to weigh the pros and cons of the decision. She looked back towards the Kellius, a faint dot resting on the rolling fields in the distance, then back to Kevin. "Alright, but we should at least report in first."
"Awesome. Let them know we're continuing with our mission. We'll be back in a few hours."
She nodded and did so. The team back at the Kellius wasn't all that enthusiastic about the plan since it was after nightfall, but they also knew they couldn't stop them. After some resistance, they finally let Kevin and Arla get on with their mission.
The two started down the sharp side of the mountain, careful to mentally track their starting place. Using trees, rocks, or each other as balances to keep gravity and momentum from bringing them to the base the hard way, they descended with caution. "Watch your footing. The moving colors of the aurora make tracking edges hard. It's freakin' disorienting," Kevin warned.
Their descent didn't take them quite as long as Kevin had first predicted – only around forty-five minutes. At the base, they had clear line of sight to the geth compound. There was no movement aside from an occasional geth moving from console to console. Like Arla, Kevin noticed that there didn't seem to be any real armaments anywhere. These geth were practically defenseless compared to how ready for combat he and Arla were. Sticking to the plan, the two interlopers made their way along the base of the mountain silently until they reached the cave of interest.
Kevin's initial observations about the cave appearing more natural than the others proved true. In fact, this cave looked more like a fissure in the mountainside than an actual cave. Still, it seemed to go deep enough to warrant exploration. Lights on, the duo entered with curiosity at the front of their minds. Inside, the walls and floor were rough. The ceiling came to a triangular point, and the lack of decent footing continued to solidify Kevin's hunches that the geth hadn't been in here. Arla was running some scans as they trekked, also looking for signs of geth activity.
"It looks like you were right, Folner."
"About what?" he responded with a bit of strain in his voice from crouching under a low-hanging outcropping.
"The geth haven't touched this place. At all. Not a single trace of their materials scuffed on the rocks, no mining or leveling attempts." Each collapsed their weapons and holstered them on their backs. The geth seemed to be the only threat this planet had to offer, and without them to get in the way, they didn't need guns.
"Curious. . . I guess that disproves the idea of the geth being lured here by the signals. It also proves this isn't a mining route like the other cave."
As the duo trekked further into the abyss, the cave's messy nature evened out a bit. Eventually the cave's open space began to shrink and the staggered reverberation of their activity grew stronger. It came down to the point where the once several meter high head clearance was down to only one or two. There was an area where the only way to continue was to squeeze through a waist-high hole in the wall of the cave. The two stopped there for a moment to collect their thoughts, as something had been bothering them.
"Kevin, I've suddenly got a nasty headache, like a painful itch in the back of my head," Arla said while resting a hand on top of her hood.
"Yeah, I've been building one too. Not my usual kind, either. Tosh hasn't said anything about the energy field yet, has he? Detrimental or radiation-based?"
"No, not yet."
"It's probably the tight spacing messing with our heads, then. It'll pass. Hey, check this out. Definitely not natural."
Intrigued enough to shake off the scratching in her head, Arla had a look. It appeared to be a conduit of some kind. A massive pipe made of a strange material with a broken side open enough to show off that it was filled with cables. Whether they were for data or for power, they couldn't tell yet – it seemed to be shielded from scans. "So there is something down here after all. We'll have to bring a terminal next time so we can see if there's data we can tap. If so, we might get some answers."
"I wonder what the source is. It's embedded into the rock pretty well and it heads that way, beyond that crawlspace. I don't suppose you want to go first?"
"And let you get a good long chance to stare at my backside?" She ran a hand down the curve of her right hip to her thigh. "I think not."
"Pfft. I don't need crawlspaces for that. Fine, I'll go first, just keep a gun ready in case something grabs me with its teeth. No fear, right?" Kevin sported a wide grin after that, knowing full well that it would cause her to hesitate about going through the crawlspace at all. Kevin slid his assault rifle in barrel-first and crawled into the natural hole in the wall. He wriggled his way through, stopping every now and again to make sure the quarian behind him was alright.
At the other side of the minute-long crawl, Kevin fell forward and rolled into a large natural chasm. He checked his immediate surrounding and saw nothing coming at him, so he turned around to give Arla a hand. With both of them on the ground and shooting light everywhere, they could see just how big the chasm was, and even then they both expanded the cones of their light to illuminate more. It was easily taller than the Kellius, and about as long and deep. It wasn't empty space entirely, the stalactites here went all the way to the cavern floor to create huge natural pillars. Sticking out of the rock wall across the cave was the obvious outcroppings of some ancient building. Three dark pillars of some sort, crooked in their angle, evenly spaced throughout the wall of the cave. That's where Kevin and Arla focused their attention.
"Wow. All this empty space under a mountain," Kevin said. "That structure over there has to be under the center of it all." He made his way in that direction, taking in the wonder of the entire place.
"Maybe that's where the weird signals are coming from," Arla deduced.
"I don't understand how it gets out beyond the mountain. I'm pretty sure we lost contact with our ship when we headed underground. Maybe we'll figure that out when we find the source."
"If we find it," she reminded him.
When they reached the far side, they found that the crooked pillars didn't simply run up and then stop in mid-air, they turned inward and disappeared into the rock. Kevin knocked on the pillar twice, causing metallic pangs to echo about the room. He did determine, though, that the pillars weren't made of rock. Arla stepped on over to scan it with her omni-tool. After a brief pause, she turned around to look at Kevin.
"I wonder how long this stuff's been here. My omni-tool can't even get a date on this material. It keeps scaling past 'millions of years'."
"Holy crap. It's that old?" Kevin looked around. Interestingly, there were holes in the rock face behind the pillars big enough for them to pass through without resistance. Continually compelled to go deeper by an unquenchable curiosity, the duo stepped beyond the rock wall and into the structure.
The inside was, simply put, awe-inspiring. The building was massive in height, length, and depth, though it wasn't exactly one room. Everything in it was to scale, that is, everything in the building seemed scaled up two to three times what they normally saw. Oddly, there didn't seem to be any designated hallways, paths, or rooms. In fact, it reminded Kevin quite a bit of some of the massive factories and refineries he had been to throughout his years as a merc, but with much, much less spatial coherence. It wasn't designed to be aesthetic, it was designed to be efficiently utilized. They spotted more of those huge conduits running neatly from all visible areas to others, eventually converging on one one area and disappearing inside a rectangle-shaped hole. To Kevin, it felt like the empty space he was standing in was more of a convenient off-chance rather than a design element. He wondered what kind of species would build a structure in this fashion, unless they had no reason to be in there to begin with.
"Keelah. This is incredible," Arla half-whispered as they climbed up some conduits to use as paths. They figured that the conduit pipes had to go somewhere.
"Why would somebody build this down here? Do you think whoever built it was trying to stay hidden?"
"It almost seems that way, doesn't it? But then why radiate energies like this to give it away?"
"It's not like the reading we got were typical. They're unknown variants. The only reason we detected them at all was because we were paranoid and scanning everything with absurd detail."
They went quiet as they tried to come up with some logical explanation for all of this. The silence reminded Kevin of his brief asteroid-bound spacewalk, terrifying and deafening at the same time. Arla must have sympathized with him, as she was quickly growing anxious. The silence didn't last, but it wasn't exactly planned to be cut short.
"Whoa WHOA! Holy. . . !" Kevin shouted as he focused his light on an area far behind Arla.
"What? What?" She turned around to search for the cause of his outburst, but there was nothing they hadn't already seen.
"Over on that wall, the one behind you and to the left. . . It looked like it was. . . I don't know, morphing. The wall grew bulbous and was bending in weird directions."
They focused on the area he was talking about, but there was no evidence of such behavior. Arla looked back to Kevin and cocked her head to the side. "Kevin, are you feeling alright?"
"Other than this irritating headache, yeah. Augh, nevermind. Come on, let's look a bit more. I feel like there's something in here worth finding."
The trek continued on uninterrupted for several minutes more. The deeper into the building they went, the more closed in everything became. Kevin started mapping their progress, as it was becoming increasingly easy to lose all sense of direction. The next interruption came when Arla shrieked at something off to their left.
"What is it?" Kevin promptly asked, looking in the direction of her focused light.
"It was right there! I saw. . . The floor was moving as though it were soft and multiple large entities were moving underneath it. A bunch of huge mounds on the floor of that open space there were heading right towards us."
Kevin looked out to where she was pointing. There was nothing to see but a small open space with a walkable, flat floor made of the same alien metal that the rest of the building was made of.
"Now you know how I feel," Kevin said.
"But there was. . . Okay, this place is officially starting to creep me out. Can we head back now?"
"Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on, but we probably don't want to find out without some backup." That said, the two started back the way they came in, cautious now for strange happenings and unusual material anomalies. They had only gotten far enough back to step out to where it opened back up before something skittered in the distant shadows created by their lights.
"Kevin, you saw that, right?"
"Yeah, I saw it. Good to know I'm not going crazy yet."
Both of them pulled their weapons out and stood still, listening. Indeed, they could hear something clawing its way around the walls of the area they were standing in. A few more seconds of focusing in on the sound allowed them to locate its approximate location and illuminate it. They only caught a brief glimpse of it as it crawled behind a sizable cylindrical protrusion on the ceiling. It didn't stop there, though. They could hear it continuing to scratch a path around objects out of sight above them. Aiming high, Kevin sighted his assault rifle on an area he thought the creature might appear and flicked his head to alert Arla to do the same.
His instincts were correct, and the creature crawled into a small shaft directly above them where it immediately turned downward to move in close. Kevin wasn't about to waste time trying to figure out if this was a friendly creature or not – it's behavior didn't give them any reason to hold fire. Kevin took a few shots at it and witnessed the impacts. Arla let a couple shots connect as well, but the creature took it all in stride and continued its frenzied approach. The second time Kevin took some shots, he let forth a fully automatic barrage of projectiles. He watched the creature lose its grip on the wall and it started to fall. The two below each jumped to the side to avoid getting squashed, weapons trained to kill on the mass as it crashed to the floor.
"What the crap is that thing?" Kevin asked rhetorically.
Erring on the side of caution, he slowly stepped towards the seemingly lifeless creature and nudged it with his foot to ensure it had been killed. When the thing didn't respond to his foot, he gave it a kick to flip it over so they could get a better look at it. Their weapons didn't lower until after they had processed what they saw. It was an arachnid-like creature, sporting eight limbs. Half of its body was upturned, like if four were meant to be walked on and four were to be used as arms. On the ends of all the limbs were a series of multi-jointed claws. Where the mouth or mandibles normally would have been, the body was unnaturally transformed into a technological cave.
Kevin tilted his head. "What the. . . It. . . It reminds me of a keeper from the citadel, only less boring and without the backpack."
Arla knelt down with one knee next to the creature. "But it's entire body is full of tech. Glowing, blue tech. Like a husk. Isn't that geth technology?"
Kevin felt a shiver go up his spine. "That's what I thought, since they use the dragon's teeth. But wait, I thought you said there hasn't been any geth activity in here whatsoever."
Arla, visually disturbed, slowly looked up from the corpse to Kevin. "There hasn't."
Just then, the sound of mechanical roars echoed all around them. They jumped up, still trying to shake off the implications that had just been presented, and prepared to face off against whatever unknown was about to attack. In the distance, they saw many more of these creatures crawling out of all sorts of spaces, all heading in their direction.
"Holy crap! Back it up a bit! We'll funnel them if we can!" Kevin shouted. Immediately, they headed back towards the more enclosed section they had just been to. It was much easier to deal with a horde of hostiles by funneling them into a killzone. They backtracked just in time, too. When these things wanted something dead, they moved fast. With lights keeping the 'creeper keepers' – as Kevin had decided to call them – visible, he and his companion fired away. These buggers were tough as nails, though, and they could take several shots before they went down. With how many there was, the two defenders were forced back time after time, barely getting enough of a look behind them to see if there was a wall that would ruin their day. Things were made considerably worse when there was little cover to hide behind; as it turned out, that cave replacing their mouth served as a beam weapon, and was utilized any time Kevin or Arla were caught without cover. Thank God for ablative plating.
Eventually, they backed themselves into a room of some sort. They were too focused on not getting shredded to bits by claws and not getting cauterized in half by beam weapons to notice how far they got pushed. Fortunately, they saw that the number of beasts were limited, as no new ones had joined the fray in a while. Kevin focused on one in the middle of the horde bunched up in the hallways and he enveloped it in a low-mass effect field, causing it to float. With a second gathering of dark energy aleady in the works, he used a biotic distortion to cause a chain reaction in the low-mass field, which resulted in a powerfully concussive biotic explosion. The force of the explosion crushed the other creepers into the walls and floor, killing them instantly.
Just as they figured they were clear and Arla had turned around to investigate the room, she saw two creepers right behind Kevin. Reflexes forced her to gasp in and shout, "Kevin! Look out behind you!" Only after the warning had been issued did she raise her sniper rifle.
Kevin's eyes went wide and his trained reflexes and muscle memory kicked in. First he let go of the handle of his gun. Second, he turned his head to the right to try and locate the enemy. Third, he reached for his knife. Fourth, he juked left, both to get a glimpse of his left flank as well as build momentum. He identified two hostiles during this initial process. One directly behind him, the other, just outside arms length to the left of the first. Furthering the momentum of his spin, he pulled his knife from its sheath and swung it wide around towards the enemy behind him. The knife cut through the 'neck' of his first victim so fast that the thing didn't even shut down right away. It took a planned follow-up kick to jostle the body enough to dislodge the head. Kevin didn't waste a fraction of a second keeping the momentum up. Another spin towards the second enemy landed him right in the middle of all its arms, but they had lashed out with expectation that Kevin would have stopped from getting too close to the abomination. With two of four of its arms extended at Kevin's sides, he swiped up with his knife at its left arm and spun one hundred and eight degrees to come down on the other one. Both limbs were separated from the body. Since Kevin's spinning momentum had finally died while facing away, he took to making very deliberate, aimed stabs at the creature in three locations – the head, the 'chest', and the front of the abdomen. The creature could not withstand the damage and it crumpled to the floor.
Panting, Kevin wiped his blade off on the corpse before sheathing it. He looked over to Arla, who had ceased bothering to raise her rifle. She was staring at him, but he couldn't tell what for. "Arla, what's wrong? Is there more?"
She snapped to. "What? Nothing. I, err. . . Nevermind. It's nothing."
Kevin raised a brow at her, but decided to let it go. Again. She was all sorts of strange today. "Man. How many of those things are in here?" Kevin wondered aloud. He sat down on a conduit pipe nearby to catch his breath. Biotic explosions were very effective, but they were subject to the potential for accidental collateral damage and took a lot of effort to execute due to the need to draw up double the dark energy in a very short time span.
"Hopefully that was all of them," Arla said. She began to walk around to figure out where they ended up. The room was significantly more open than the area they just came through, and it was relatively symmetrical for a change. Perhaps there was something to find here.
While Arla was doing that, Kevin shone his light around the room out of curiosity as well. He found that on the far side of the room was an area that dropped off. He made his way over to the abyss, lit it up, and found that the open area in front of him was circular in design. A large number of conduit pipes ran from around the diameter to the center where a three meter wide pillar rose off the sunken floor. It went about one meter higher than Kevin's head and there was a massive mechanical sphere sitting on top of it.
"Wow," Kevin said, bring Arla's attention over. "What do you suppose that's all about? It almost looks like. . ."
Arla walked next to Kevin and scanned the area with her omni-tool. "Keelah."
"No way."
She nodded. "That's an enclosed mass effect drive core. A huge one, too."
"Why would someone build a huge mass effect drive core under a mountain? That seems pointless."
"Unless it's to do something other than drive a ship." She placed a hand on her chin in thought. "We should get this information back to the others. Whoever built all this had mass effect technology too, but it can't be prothean. Not millions of years ago."
"Agreed. Maybe they had a way back to the galaxy from here. Come on, let's get out of this place before something else happens."
The two took one more look at the ancient mass effect device. Despite how old it was, there was very little evidence of aging. The material hadn't fallen apart or shown any signs of natural decay. The strangeness of the device didn't interest Kevin anymore. Maybe, just maybe, they had found something that could get them back home.