Permiatic was a swirl of white, mint-green, and blue thanks to her methane atmosphere. Del wondered at how pretty it was as the Aswa dropped out of FTL, closing in on the battle.
Everyone on board was in a full hard-suit again, a safety measure. Shepard was almost getting used to the weight of the stiff thing, and the information scrolling almost endlessly around her HUD. She felt her gut loosen ever so slightly in relief when she saw the dreadnought was still in upper orbit- the fleet had managed to keep her from descending to the caldera, at least so far. Floating debris and damaged wrecks of the ships that had been destroyed at the edge of Osco's light weapon littered visible space, Jura having to plot a careful course through it so as not to collide with anything large enough to harm their shields.
Like a shark through the ocean, the sleek silver ship swam toward the fight, the whale of the dreadnought lumbering and badly wounded. From the communications feed, they could tell that Kohaku was still projecting the recording of Ruth's interrogation and confessions, but there was no way to tell if Osco was actually receiving it, or if she had simply shut off her monitoring to block it out.
As they sailed in closer, the dreadnought fired, a molten stream of green light carving a small support ship in half. A bloom of orange and blue lit up the area for just a heartbeat, riding on the oxygen released from within the ship, before it faded and left only a cloud of spreading debris.
"Her shots are clumsy," Liara told Jura. "Keep moving and get between her and that planet."
"Clumsy?" Del asked, astonished. Both Jura and Liara ignored her.
"How long until the Terminus ships get here?" Liara asked.
"Less than an hour."
"We need to her down by then, get our own surviving ships headed back to Council space. As soon as you are between her and the planet, hit her with everything we have got. You are going to have to do some fencing."
Jura grinned. "I was two-time seniors champion in Nos Astra. Fencing I can do."
Liara turned to Shepard. "Merah, I need you to search that beautiful brain of yours. Work with Deefa. We need to find anything that will give us an edge, any way we can break through her defenses and take her down."
Del nodded, turning and hurrying to the station where Deefa was already working, making sure their weapons and shields were at optimal, and freeing up Jura for more vital tasks.
"She's injured, we know that much," Deefa said as Shepard got to her side. "That transmission is still projecting, so we know she's lost at least a little bit of an edge, even if she's just cut off communications monitoring."
"Unfortunately, that means that she is going to become desperate very quickly," Shepard replied. "Desperation leads to tragedy. If she decides to just plow on ahead and physically just drive through any ship that gets in her way, she will."
"So why hasn't she yet?" Deefa asked. "She's hell bent on this brasa mission, isn't she? She's got very little in the way of her humanity left, and even when she had it, it's not like she was a big respecter of life. Why isn't she just plowing through now?"
"That's…a very good question. Are you able to access her shields? Perhaps her forward shields are spotty or even down- she'd risk severe damage mowing through our frigates if she's got no barriers."
Deefa's fingers flew, and she shook her head. "Barriers and shields are showing at high levels, no gaps. They drop in power a bit whenever she fires that weapon of hers, or moves-she's obviously damaged and allocating her power reserves where she needs them most- but there's nothing stopping her that I can see from just putting all power into those shields and driving in."
"Something is stopping her," Del murmured thoughtfully. "Whether it's that she fears damage or she's too distracted, or it's some shred of morality left…something is stopping her."
"We are still very unfamiliar with her tech," Deefa said. "Could it be possible her fore-ship barriers are actually down, and she's just fooling our instruments into thinking they're still intact?"
"Is there any way we can test that theory for sure?"
Deefa shrugged, uncertain. "Shoot her on the nose. That's all I can think of. If her barriers are down it'll cause damage- if not it'll just deflect. Either way, it's likely to piss her off and focus her attention on whoever does the shooting."
The quarian regarded her instruments again, then considered. "You know, it may not be that she can't ram through us…it may be that she's charging up again."
"Explain."
"Well, she was heading for the planet but she stopped when ships got in her way to engage them. Firing her weapons takes power, but so would driving through them- she'd have to drastically reinforce her shields to do so and that would drain a lot of energy. She's holding on to power like gold, trying to maintain a balance."
"Go on."
"Well, a ship that big is going to need a tremendous amount of power just to enter even a small planet's gravity well and atmosphere. Methane isn't exactly a gentle bath, and her mass is incredible. She would need enormous energy to get her to that caldera safely once she enters the gravity well. She may have had enough and started her run hoping she could get to her destination before she had to reallocate that power somewhere else- but the moment the fleet ships got in the way she had to stop and return the power to her shields and weapons. She doesn't have enough now to actually land, she has to gather more."
"So she's trying to charge up again to have the energy she needs to actually get to that caldera safely…" Del said, eyes brightening.
"Which means, the best course of action right now may be to drive her toward Permiatic, get her in the atmosphere and let gravity do its job."
Shepard clapped her on the shoulder and headed back for Liara. "Captain!"
Liara turned. "What is it?"
"We need to drive Osco toward Permiatic, get her in the planet's gravity well."
"Isn't that exactly where we don't want her to go, Doc?" Sam asked.
"We have a hunch that she doesn't have enough power at the moment to sustain her mass enough to withstand the planet's gravity…or to enforce her barriers enough to protect against the methane and heat of entry. We drive her into it before she can repower-"
"-and the planet itself will tear her apart," Liara finished. "Jura, we need to get Osco into the planet. Notify Kohaku to get all his ships behind her, hit her with everything they have. We will cut her across the nose and see if we cannot get her to follow."
"She'll know what we're doing," Sam said.
"Yes, you are correct. We cannot bank on her insanity blinding her sense," Liara said, then looked at Del. "We need to get her into a blind rage, do something to make her sense leave and her madness take the reins."
"Let me talk to her," Shepard said. "If she hasn't shut off her monitoring she'll hear me."
"If she has, all your talking isn't going to make a difference, and we won't be able to tell if she's receiving or not," Feris pointed out.
"Oh, we'll know fairly quickly if she's receiving," Del said. "If she doesn't start after us in sixty seconds then she's shut off and we'll have to think of something else."
"You are that confident you can anger her?" Liara asked, her brows knit.
"I was brought onto this job to begin with because I know the woman. Believe me, I know what buttons to push. Let me talk to her. Sixty seconds. That's all it will take."
The Aswa moved in, amazingly quick under Jura's careful guidance, just as the fleet opened up with all they had on Osco's flank. Two heavy shots over Osco's bow showed her barriers were truly still operational, if not fully powered. The strikes got her attention and perhaps drained those shields at least somewhat, but that was the extent of their impact.
Osco lanced a strike toward the Aswa, which Jura managed to avoid, then sent another toward the fleet hitting her hard in the rear. As she did, Liara opened the communications line, and Del began to speak.
"Gellian, this is Dr. Shepard. I figure we don't have very much longer to live so I thought I'd get a few things off my chest. Firstly, I wanted to tell you how angry I was when your incompetent soldiers attacked my home. Then again, I suppose their incompetence isn't their fault…they're all clones, and after all a clone is only as good as its manufacturer. Given who that is, I'm not surprised they were all moronic buffoons who couldn't even kill an unarmed doctor properly."
Another shot lanced toward the Aswa, and Shepard grinned, putting the transmission on hold a moment. "She can definitely hear me."
"So it would seem. Jura, keep nimble. She is going to start coming after us with everything she has got. Lead her into the gravity well but I would prefer not getting destroyed in the process."
Jura nodded, and Del resumed transmission. "Jesus Christ, you don't even know how to aim properly! That's all right, gives us more time to talk. Perhaps someone a bit smarter could have integrated with that tech more smoothly, but you can only work with what you have. Speaking of which, I used to be in awe of you, Gellian…you know that? That was in the beginning, before I realized that what other people took as genius was honestly just the fact you were bug-fuck bonkers. That's the real reason our funding was cut off. The moment the Alliance realized what a drooling idiot you were and how off your nut you could be, they wanted nothing to do with you. All of this only proves that."
Another shot, then another, all aimed at the Aswa. The fleet was still hitting her, wearing down her rear barriers, but Osco's firepower had concentrated toward the Aswa. Then, the dreadnought started to move.
"She is advancing on our position," Jura said.
"Good, it is working. Move us back slowly but steadily toward Permiatic. Draw her in. Shepard, keep it up."
"You can't kill me, Osco," Shepard continued. "Your goons couldn't kill me, that top-of-the-line assassin you hired couldn't kill me…twice. Wait, she was your work too, wasn't she? No wonder she couldn't take down a geneticist."
Another shot, this one cutting close enough Jura had to cut sharply to avoid it. The Aswa shook slightly and Liara's head snapped around. "Deefa!"
"Very minor heat score along our starboard barriers, we're all right," she shouted back.
Del didn't miss a beat. "I figured out your PMD…PMD you can't even take credit for! You had to rape technology from a species thousands of years more advanced! That's why you wanted me dead, isn't it? You were afraid I'd figure it out. You knew that I am smarter than you."
Two more shots. The dreadnought was picking up speed, the Aswa moving closer and closer to the edge of Permiatic's atmosphere.
"We are entering the gravity of the planet, compensating for conditions. Thirty more seconds and she will be within the gravity well also," Jura said. "If her power resources are down too far, she will not be able to get her mass back into space once she crosses that line."
"Ruth knew I was smarter than you. She knew she was backing a losing horse…that's why she left. You heard her confessions, Jelly. She betrayed you. She knew that I would beat you and she betrayed you."
"The dreadnought has increased speed. She will be in the gravity well in ten seconds," Jura said.
"Maintain your distance," Liara said. "Keep reeling her in."
"You are worthless, Osco. You were worthless to your parents, you were worthless as a doctor, you were worthless to the woman you loved, and you were worthless as a human being."
"She has crossed the line. She is now in Permiatic's gravity well. Her speed has decreased and she is attempting to change course."
"Looks like she just realized what we were doing," Liara said. "Hopefully it is far too late for her to do anything about it."
"I've outsmarted you one last time, Gellian," Shepard said. Though her voice sounded triumphant, Liara could see the paleness of her cheeks, the way her hands were shaking slightly. It was clear she was not enjoying this cruelty. "I danced you right into your trap and you and your so-called 'great brain' didn't even notice! I win, Osco!"
Then, several things happened at once, those words seeming to launch a devastating chain of events that happened so quickly, at points they almost seemed to occur simultaneously.
Jura suddenly shouted, "She's returning course toward us, going to top speed! Firing!"
Two slashes of green light flared in the viewscreen, so close and so bright that for a moment Del thought that was it, that they were dead. The Aswa shuddered hard.
"Damage!" Liara cried out.
"Fore barriers are gone!" Deefa called back. "We have sustained damage to-"
The combined fire of the fleet which had been dogging Osco the entire way finally tore through her aft shielding, then into the side of the dreadnought itself. As the green flash from her weapons' impact faded, a horrible high-pitched screech tore through the com, causing everyone to slap their hands over their helmets and wince in pain.
"Cut it off! Cut it off!" Liara shouted, barely audible. Jura shouted something back, but Del couldn't make it out.
The dreadnought tore in half as some kind of explosion ripped through its midsection. Still pulled by the Permiatic's gravity, the front of the ship rolled and turned, plunging deeper into the atmosphere and directly toward the Aswa. Jura pulled the ship around, attempting to get out of the way of the huge dying wreck sweeping toward them. Due to the damage the small ship had taken, riding through the high winds this far up in atmo shook her hard. Del was hanging on to the console and happened to look up out of the viewscreen just in time to see something unimaginable.
They seemed to be out of the path of the falling dreadnought now, Jura just starting to bank upward to get back into space. Alarms were beeping from nearly every quarter, and Liara was shouting something Del couldn't make out. The screaming sound had stopped, but her ears were still ringing and felt muffled with cotton.
She could see the huge front half of the ship, ripped and tumbling, shedding parts and trailing rivers of viscous fluid behind it. Then it seemed to shift, twisting a bit, the dark hull writhing, buckling, and twisting on itself.
Part of the debris tore away, huge black tentacles peeling from the main hull, a section the size of the Aswa herself breaking loose and lunging at them. Shepard could see a horrible face with a single, mirror-like dome eye…twenty times the size of a human face. Hands reached out from a bulbous torso, and everything else was tentacles, some the size of trees.
The thing that had once been Osco, grown far larger as she had adopted the dying ship's substance into her own, launched itself away from the falling debris, reaching toward the tiny silver ship.
Alarms blared as the thing crashed into the Aswa, the impact knocking the ship into a hard roll. Del grabbed for the console to keep from flying to one side, staring as something black shattered the viewscreen, reaching inward. Another shriek of metal, the sound blending around her until she felt she was caught in the eye of a hurricane, unable to distinguish one thing from another.
Everything was shaking. The world seemed to be ripping apart. Pain lashed through her and she lost her grip.
Then a tremendous sound erased the world.
Delilah Shepard woke up to agony, and confusion. A heavy mist seemed to blur her vision at every quarter, save the flashing red displays on her HUD which seemed crystal clear. She could taste copper in her throat, feel the burning, heavy drum of pain that twisted deep into her body. When she tried to shift, that pain focused sharply to very specific points. Her shoulder. Her elbow. Her left leg and knee. A band across her chest, against the back of her shoulders. She tried again, and a dagger made of pure fire sank into her chest. She cried out, tasting more blood, and slumped back, consciousness swimming around her again.
When it passed, leaving her feeling cold and sick, she laid still and tried her best to look around.
Metal formed broken bones that loomed out of the thick mist, disjointed and tortured. It took her some time to realize she was looking at the remnants of the Aswa's CIC, every familiar piece warped into surreal abstraction. She could also see rock, broken and scorched, and realized she was laying on dirt.
She could not see very far, perhaps twenty feet, before the methane mist swallowed everything up. It was clear the Aswa had been torn completely apart, the debris possibly scattered over hundreds of yards.
For the moment she could see no one else, alive or dead. Swallowing the taste of blood back again, she shakily lifted a hand to the side of her helmet, activating her radio. Her voice sounded weak and wet, even to her ears.
"Th-this is Dr. Shepard…can anyone hear me?"
Silence. Not even the hiss of interference. She tried again. "P-please…if anyone can…Liara. Liara, please be out there. Please…"
Silence.
Thin trails of heat slid over her temples, her eyes blurring with tears. They could all be out there, dead. Her friends. Liara. She could have killed them tears grew worse, bringing that painful ache back to her chest, threatening to close off her air.
Get yourself together! Think this through.
Tali and Delphine had been left behind at the Alliance moon base for treatment. They were safe. Everyone else, even Helen, had been hard-suited before they'd gone into battle. Shepard had survived. It wasn't that far a stretch to think that some of the others might have as well.
They could be hurt, in need of your help. Get a grip on yourself, Shepard, and find them!
Gingerly, carefully, she managed to push herself up again, trying to ignore the grinding in her chest, choking back on the vomit that wanted to rise in her throat. Inch by painstaking inch, she moved until she was somewhat seated, propped on her right arm which seemed in far better shape than her left. From her new position, she could see the heavy console bank that had pinned her left leg hard to the ground. She groaned.
There was no way she could move it on her own, not healthy- and certainly not with the injuries she had. Doing her best she tried to wiggle, to slide back, but the effort only renewed the pain in her leg to dizzying proportions, and she slumped back, gasping for air as dizziness spun the world into a haze.
As it started to solidify again and she became confident she would neither throw up nor pass out, a sound rattled out. Startled, she held her breath, straining to hear.
A rasp. Something nearby shifted a little. Through the fog she thought she saw a brief shadow, making eddies in the mist.
Someone was alive.
"Hello? Hello! I'm over here!"
Calling out made her throat wet again, and she gulped blood down, trying to lever herself up again. "Hello? Liara? Sam?"
The shadow moved again, directly in front of her and past the ragged bones of the CIC wall. Then, it grew darker, loomed larger, and her thrill of hope turned to confusion, and then horror.
Dark tentacles snaked out of the methane fog, coiling about the CIC wall and casting it away. Another groped over the bank keeping her leg pinned, lifted it, and flung it away like a child tossing a toy. Cold infused with impossible strength coiled around Del's body, winding up her legs, hips, then her torso, lifting her up and off the ground.
Out of the gloom, the bulk of the thing that had once been Gellian Osco dragged itself, pulling along with a dozen different appendages. Part of that great mirror-like eye was shattered and fogged, and as it drew close Del could see blood and meat mingled with circuitry and metallic threads.
The tentacle binding her gripped tighter, and she gasped in a tortured breath, feeling blood spill down her chin and neck. With almost beneficent joy, the thing moved its broken Eye closer until it clicked against the face plate of her helmet.
Then, the beast smiled.
