RAMNAGEO
TERMINUS OUTLAW COLONY
MID-SEPTEMBER 2188
SHE ARRIVED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. Embarking from her ship on the hill behind the main area of the colony wrapped around it's port, she eyed the lights of the town below with condescension. Places like these were more active at night, like any port of criminals and outlaws, and she noted the differences between this place and the one she knew, and she knew this one was only a façade for something much darker than simple pirates and criminals.
The Pathosis.
It had escaped or been deliberately released, but it could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to spread. Once acclimated to the various environments of this Galaxy, it would go from killing – as it was now, just small colonies and towns – to entire planetary populations. A genocide where the populations would do its work for it and kill themselves.
With exceptions, that was. She wasn't sure why there were exceptions, but it could go very badly for them as well, as populations being killed became resentful, suspicious or desperate.
A quick diagnosis on her armor revealed a small control error which she easily corrected. Her armor would likely make the assorted militaries of this Galaxy envious – it was coated on a molecular level with something the lab boys called "lapsed valences" – she had no clue what that meant, but it made the surface of her armor virtually frictionless, when activated. It kept any enemy from getting a grip, made the percentage of deflected projectiles go up and biotics splash off her like water on a duck. It didn't make her invulnerable, by any means, but it got her damn close, under certain circumstances.
It also kept the Pathosis from seizing her and 'conforming' her into a Vector, allowed her to combat it effectively. When activated, her built-in helmet folded out from a container on her chest and from behind her head, completely sealing her in.
In style it made her look like some ancient warrior, a series of steel-grey over-locking plates, woven together with an intricate wiring – mirrored under her skin – of the control mesh that gave her precise control over her biotics matched only by very able asari matriarchs. She had such precision that she could "harden" her biotic "edges" – for the Pathosis was resistant to dark energy – and give her powers cutting edges that could destroy the Vectors as well as any physical bladed weapon. Her favorite attacks consisted of her "swords"; "chainsaw" and "sawblade" attacks, the first self-explanatory, the second a palmed, head-sized singularity with hardened spiky edges that could hew through targets as named, and her flung flat hardened-edged discs that cut and ricocheted like their namesake. These were especially effective against Vectors. Her arsenal also included biotic "bolas" - chained miniature singularities that exploded when they contacted each other, a "flechette" attack consisting of a dozen biotic spikes, and a spear with a point that contained another unstable singularity that could punch the driver of an Atlas cleanly out of its cockpit.
Her particular favourite was what she called her "bowling ball" – a hardened sphere of energy (which she could also use as a defensive shield) that she could roll down a corridor to flatten any opposition – or pop open a door or ten. She could even pick locks, unzip things, flip pages, or any of a hundred other intricate tasks.
When she'd been told that she was volunteering for the augmentation, she'd resisted. Biotics were an asari thing, but she knew the best way to combat an enemy was to co-opt their weapons and tactics, to improve them, be better with them. Given how many matriarchs she and her teams had humiliated and taken out, humans had done just that.
She absolutely loved being a biotic, loved putting those arrogant blue bitches in their places.
It was all covert, of course. The last thing the asari needed was the unhappy news their fearsome and formidable matriarchs could be matched and beaten.
She smiled ruefully into the starry sky. She was a long way from home.
The warrior shook herself from her reverie and got back to the moment, palmed a scansphere and activated it, released it above her head. The little silver orb shot up to twenty metres and hovered. After two minutes or so, the probe chimed and she linked it directly to her armor's onboard computer. Yes. The Pathosis was here. Dusted over everything, people, animals, plants – everything - atom-sized particles of death, creating their agents - Vectors - spreading that death across inhabited worlds. This was the largest concentration she'd found so far. Kill this, and she was that much farther ahead. It would not stop it – anywhere more than a single Vector appeared, the Pathosis already lay in wait, but it would hamper its spread, and its strength. If there was only one, there was time for a populace, time for remedial action.
She knew she couldn't hesitate. It was coalescing here and there, collapsing, reforming, going through the motions that all here was as it seemed. The people it covered, and her scans showed that they had long since been infected with the Pathosis, could not be saved. They were now just the animated dead, infiltrated by molecule-sized machines that scanned them down to the atomic scale and used them as living power sources while precisely duplicating and replacing their cells. She knew that horror, had seen it before, too many times. To be transformed into a virulent replica of yourself, and not even realize it until it began to consume you.
Better any death than that.
When the time came, when whatever unknown signal spread through it, the Pathosis would consume every last one and form into Vectors, which would then disperse and kill. The Cull would begin.
Once coated, there was no escape and no remedy. The Cull could only be delayed, not stopped.
Locking down her armor, she sent a mental command to the e-nodes inside her, brought her amps to full active status, and smiled fiercely behind her helmet's visor. Her one frivolity, the grinning skull painted on her faceplate, glowed as she powered up.
It all had to go. It would look bad to the universe at large, but that was hardly her concern. She remote-keyed her ship, and it rose behind her, shaped like a dark shark.
"Standby on dispersion charge." She told it. Above her, ports opened on the ship's flanks, began to glow. The blast would scatter a great deal of it, give her a reasonably clean path to the heart of the colony.
"Hit it." The ship fired one eye-achingly white-blue blast that stopped precisely over the town's centre and detonated with a shock that caused her anticipatorily-planted feet to slide back half-a-metre.
"Dispersion at 92 percent." Her ship's AI informed her. "Good fortune."
She didn't answer, as figures started pouring from the shadows below, came silently up the hill at her, hundreds of them.
So. The Pathosis had them all.
It was going to be a long, grim morning.
Without a word, she charged.