Nickeli collapsed back into the worn, grey chair with an audible wheeze, its feet loudly scraping a few inches across the infirmary's grooved metal floor. Prying off his helmet, the medic deposited it on the table beside his rifle. Fumbling momentarily to find the tube tucked along his collar that connected to his hydration pack, he gulped down water greedily.
That settled it.
The next time he had to drag a sedated lunatic through half a kilometer of dark, debris-strewn tunnels and up a dozen flights of crumbling stairs, he was recruiting some help first. He'd bring along Tali, or perhaps a couple of colonists to help carry a stretcher. Or maybe he'd tame some varren. Those were supposed to be pretty big, right? He'd train a few to pull a sledge.
Nick glanced to where his patient dozed on one of the medical beds, still aside from the steady rise and fall of his chest and the occasional twitch or faint moan. The trip back to the colony had been rather arduous with the man tossed across his back and had included a few brief pauses to allow the medic to retighten tourniquets or catch his breath, but the colonist he had recovered was still heavily sedated. He'd remain that way for as long as it took Vandas to arrange transport to the Normandy's medical bay, sparing the medic any more of his incoherent rambling.
Given how badly the man had carved up his forearms, Chakwas would need to evaluate him for nerve damage before he was stitched up. It was likely extensive, the corpsman noted grimly. In all probability, the colonist would never fully recover use of his hands unless he went off-world for specialized care, yet another consequence of Feros being an isolated frontier world.
But that was a problem for another time—for now, Nickeli was concerned with getting his wounds cleaned and getting him evacuated.
"Normandy, this is Witch Doctor." The corpsman spoke into his radio, cupping a hand over the ear where his almost invisibly small earpiece sat. "Casualty report to follow, requesting you patch me through to the medbay."
After a few long moments, one of the bridge crew answered. "Standby, Witch Doctor."
"Affirm." Vandas replied with a frown, his hand falling away from his ear a moment later.
That wasn't encouraging. If Chakwas was too busy to respond, it might've meant that one or more of the colonists that had been evacuated to the ship weren't faring well. The tone of voice the crewman used had been... uncertain? Worried? Or had the enlisted man just imagined it?
Maybe something had gone wrong.
Most of the wounded had been in stable condition when he'd had them evacuated, but a few of them were more seriously injured. He'd seen to it they were he first moved to the Normandy and he had faith in Chakwas' abilities, but there was still the possibility that something may've happened. Had he overlooked something when he'd checked them over? Or perhaps someone condition had worsened while durng the move?
The flood of worries and concerns continued until eventually Nick brought his spiraling train of thought to a halt, forcing himself to take a breath. Despite himself, a rueful smirk pulled at his lips.
It was a horrible habit of his, overthinking things.
Any decision could be worried about, every casualty could be fussed over. It made him a bad corpsman, at least as far as he was concerned. Even after four years, he still second-guessed himself almost obsessively. He'd never really developed that uncanny confidence that radiated from more senior medical specialists, and he privately had always wondered if it somehow affected his ability to save lives. But doubt was part of the job—there were people counting on him, and they were the ones that bore the consequences of every small mistake or momentary lapse of judgement.
But right now, it wasn't helping anyone. Chakwas was fine—probably just getting herself a cup of coffee or taking a break. Though he was still very much getting to know his new supervisor, he had no doubt she would've laughed if she knew he was fretting over the situation in the medbay. The sudden arrival of half a dozen casualties was practically nothing to a doctor of her experience—the woman had probably handled far worse without changing out of her pajamas. Regardless, it meant his new friend would be with him for a bit longer than initially planned.
Rummaging through a few bins in the infirmary's storage area, the medic quickly collected what he needed, waddling back to the exam table cradling a couple large rolls of bandages with a large bottle of saline in one hand and a steel collection basin tucked under one arm. He was certain it was all rather quaint by "modern" standards, but the colony's simple infirmary was still a marked improvement over the plywood walls and half-empty shelves of the spartan aid stations he'd grown accustomed to in Afghanistan.
Carefully dumping the supplies on the exam table, Nick grabbed a pair of disposable gloves and began to pull them on. They were a bit oversized, but they'd do.
A few gentle squirts of saline steadily washed away grey cement dust and coagulated blood, a steady trickle of red-brown liquid collecting in the basin the corpsman had placed beneath the man's arm. Repeating the process on the colonist's other arm, he set the bottle aside.
With the wounds cleaned and the bleeding stemmed, Nick could finally make a more detailed assessment of the man's injuries. They were, as the corpsman had expected, rather grisly. Under the harsh light of the inspection lamp, he could nearly count each stroke as the man had feverishly worked his crude knife back and forth, peeling away muscle and severing tendons—a mental image that made the enlisted man's skin crawl. Eventually, the colonist had reached bone, carving a few shallow notches before either giving up or losing the strength to continue.
Despite this, the colonist would, as far as the medic could tell, most likely survive. Despite his frenzied state, he'd either been aware or simply fortunate enough to avoid seriously damaging any major blood vessels, preventing him from bleeding to death before help could find him. Barring a serious infection—which was still very much a possibility—the man would live long enough to bear the scars from his ordeal.
That seemed to be the way it worked—the really crazy ones were always fantastically lucky. Vandas paused, shking his head. He supposed that hinged on one's definition of "luck," come to think of it.
Spotting a few tiny, black of debris still lodged in the wound channel, the corpsman grabbed the white bottle again. Washing the area down with a generous stream of saline, he noted with mild annoyance that the dark specks remained firmly in place. Some metal shavings from the knife, or perhaps some flecks of concrete that the man had worked deeper into the tissue in his frenzy.
Quickly locating a pair of forceps, Nickeli plucked one of the strange slivers from the damaged flesh where it was embedded, leaving behind a tiny dark mark on the rose-colored muscle tissue. The small, cylindrical oddity, as big around as a pencil lead and no longer than the width of his index finger, had a wet, slippery-looking coating, glistening faintly in… the light of the…
The corpsman blinked, cinching his eyes shut momentarily and shaking his head, not certain they weren't playing tricks on him. Grabbing the head of the exam lamp, he pulled it down until it was only a few inches from the miniscule cylinder pinched in his forceps. Scrutinizing it a moment more, his eyes widened in shock.
He hadn't been imagining it.
The tiny thing; wet, black, and alive, squirmed back and forth in the intense white light. Dropping the tiny creature in the silver dish, he watched it roll around a bit before quickly propelling itself to one side and latching onto the side of the dish.
Nick found himself utterly confounded. He'd encountered a few medical oddities during his comparatively brief time in Afghanistan, but nothing quite like this—he'd just dug something out of someone's forearm that looked like it belonged in a murky pond. Shifting his attention to the other dark flecks, his went about carefully plucking them from the wound.
In short order, nearly half a dozen of the minuscule worms had been collected in the dish, wriggling around in the soup of blood and saline. In a very short window of time, any confusion Vandas felt had been replaced with a growing sense of dread. Rising to his feet, the medic ventured back to the storage area. Hopefully, that there was a medical file or perhaps some kind of note from the settlement's late doctor that would help him make sense of what he'd seen.
Was it some kind of parasite? Were they what had driven the colonist insane? What kind of danger did they pose to the rest of the colony? As he worked his way through the wall of shelving units, questions were piling up faster than he was finding answers.
After nearly five minutes of fruitless searching, Nick forced himself to stop and step back, breathless as he surveyed the mess of spilled storage bins and scattered datapads he'd created.
Nothing.
There was absolutely nothing that explained what the hell he'd just stumbled across.
Moving back to the table where he'd put his rifle and helmet, Vandas took a breath. This was all incredibly bizarre and well above his paygrade, but he couldn't lose his head and he didn't have time to sit and ruminate on the matter.
Right now, he needed to get back to the Normandy and explain to Chakwas what he'd found. The doctor would have some idea of what to do—the Alliance would have some sort of protocol for dealing with potential alien pathogens, and once they had some sense of what threat it might pose to the ground team, they'd raise Shepard and bring her up to speed. In the meantime, the wounded colonist would have to remain secured and sedated in the clinic. Nick didn't particularly like the idea of leaving the man unattended, but he hadn't been left with ton of options for the time being.
The medic was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of the infirmary door opening, turning his attention to the approaching footsteps.
He found Fai Dan, the colony's de facto leader looking less than pleased as he marched in. Glancing briefly at the unconscious man on the medical cot, he scowled as he set his sights on the Alliance corpsman tending to him. "What the hell is going on here?"
Nickeli turned to face the man, caught off guard by his sudden hostility. The only thing that jumped to mind was the truth. "I found him in the tunnels like this. I assume he's from the colony, but I couldn't find any records on him."
"His name is Ian, he's very sick." Dan answered tersely. The man shook his head slowly, running one hand back and forth through his short black hair. He seemed agitated, almost frantic. He mumbled, seeming to speak to no one in particular. "You have no idea what you've done…"
Vandas scowled, but elected to ignore the second part. Right now, it didn't matter what Fai Dan's problem was. The corpsman had potentially much bigger issues to deal with at the moment, not that the medic expected trying to explain would calm the man down. "At any rate, his injuries are fairly serious. He's gonna' stay here for now, but I'm arranging to have him evacuated to the Normandy."
"No." The colonist snapped. "He should've stayed in the tunnels, but he absolutely will not leave the colony. I won't allow it."
Nick expression contorted into a mix of bewilderment and irritation, fixing the smaller man with a glare. The marine considered pointing out that he wasn't in a position to be making demands, but thought better of it, his gaze flickering to the compacted pistol stowed on the colonist's hip.
"We'll see." Vandas replied quietly. Breaking his gaze away from the man, the marine turned to collect his helmet and rifle from the table where he'd laid them.
Nickeli didn't have time for this. Between his startling discovery and Fai Dan's sudden change in demeanor, it was clear that there was a lot more at stake than one colonist having a psychotic episode, but for right now, his first priority was returning to the Normandy and reporting to Chakwas—the rest would have to wait.
The corpsman didn't have the answers, but the possibilities scared him. In his head, part of him knew that he was out of his depth—that he should regroup with the rest of the team and pull back to the ship.
There was something wrong here, and Nick's gut told him it was only a matter of time before things went pear-shaped. For his money, Zhu's Hope could keep its secrets. He wasn't exactly planning to buy a timeshare in this little slice of paradise.
Lost in thought as he began to collect, his helmet, he almost didn't hear the faint whine of a mass driver powering up. The sound sent a jolt of ice though him.
The pistol shook in Fai Dan's hands, the man wide-eyed and trembling as he leveled it at Vandas. The marine stood frozen in place, staring over his shoulder at the man without turning around, his hand fixed on his holstered sidearm but making no move to draw.
"Put it down." Nick commanded, the hint of a tremble in his voice.
"I-I can't let you." The colonist sputtered, and for a fateful moment the medic saw his finger begin to curl around the trigger. "I'm sorry."
...
...
"Hah!" Tali shouted triumphantly as she flipped the breaker, drawing a few curious glances from passing colonists as the generator she'd been working on thrummed to life. Closing the access panel, she placed the hydrospanner back into the borrowed toolbox beside her knee, using a shop rag to wipe the thick black grease off of her gloves.
The colony's generator, a battered hydrogen-cell reactor half the size of an aircar and older than she was, had been the machinist's project for the better part of the afternoon. It had been caught in the line of fire during one of the earlier geth attacks and a hasty repair job had shorted out some components. Not that it had taken her this long to fix it—that had taken all of ten minutes. Instead, she'd gotten her hands on some spare parts and converted the generator to accept modern power cells. The conversion wasn't exactly pretty, but it would last—after all, she did damn fine work. It had been a fun little distraction, actually.
The engineer liked working on human equipment. Having spent most of her adolescence in the Rayya's engine room under the tutelage of the liveship's chief engineer, she'd come across and taken apart more than most quarians. It may've lack the cutting-edge technology of salarian hardware or the elegantly designed internals of asari gear, but human tech was rugged and easy to modify—essential qualities when you were working on a ship held together by three-hundred years' worth of repurposed parts and quarian ingenuity. 'Make do' was the Migrant Fleet's way of life.
Then again, maybe she was just biased because it sort of reminded her of home.
Packing the rest of the tools back into the rusty red toolbox she'd been given use of, she started back toward the colony's impromptu workshop, though it was really little more than some aging machining equipment and endless piles of scavenged parts with a battered sheet of metal overhead for a roof. When she'd first arrived, Tali had blurted out that it reminded her of a quarian workshop. Fortunately, the colony's head mechanic, an old starship maintainer, had taken the remark in good humor, welcoming her help and doing his best to find any tools she'd needed.
The man glanced up briefly from the disassembled irrigation pump he'd been working on, greeting her with a nod. He flashed a broad smile, the pale gleam of his teeth set in contrast to his face, the mottle spots and wrinkles giving it the appearance of weathered bronze. The colonists had managed to cobble together a functioning pump system and power grid from the freighter's wreckage, coaxing enough water from the tower's ancient irrigation system to supply the settlement and a number of hydroponics bays. But it wasn't easy—life had been difficult enough before, and the loss of so many people at hands the geth would further strain things.
Restoring the water supply and bringing the power back online was a good start, but making the Zhu's Hope livable again in the aftermath of the geth attack would be a massive undertaking, one that the remaining colonists would take on largely without help. That was the way of life on the frontier. However, Tali was happy to help wherever she could—quarians knew the isolation of places far from civilized space all too well to do otherwise.
Setting down her borrowed toolbox on top of a storage bin with a heavy clunk, she started in the direction of the infirmary on the far side of the settlement. She hadn't heard from Nick since he'd started making his way out of the tunnels, but she'd overheard a group of colonists talking about the wounded colonist the medic had brought back to the colony in hushed voices. Apparently, it had quickly developed into something of a local scandal.
Regardless, Tali still felt the need to check in on her squadmate. With Shepard taking most of the ground team and pushing across the causeway to investigate the Exogeni facility on the other side and the Normandy's marines withdrawing to the hangar to secure the ship, the two of them were the only members of the crew remaining at the colony. Williams had stayed behind as well, but she'd only caught a glimpse of the gunnery chief as she returned to the settlement with a pair of freshly-killed varren slung over her shoulder before she disappeared into the tunnels once again, off to investigate rumors of a geth signal jammer.
The engineer, to her disappointment, had only been allowed to come ashore after the geth had been driven back and the colony itself had been declared secure. She of course respected the commander's orders and understood her reasoning well enough—the quarian wasn't a soldier, after all—but she couldn't help be feel a tinge of frustration. She knew more about the geth than anyone else on the Normandy, but she'd still been left behind to make repairs around the settlement, occasionally collecting samples from destroyed geth platforms to examine later.
It was a rather confusion feeling, Tali realized. Even after nearly being killed a dozen times over by Saren's men, a part of her wanted the danger. As vain and crazy as it sounded, she knew she wouldn't have been satisfied returning home with an adequate gift and stories of a Pilgrimage mostly spent quiet and safe working as an assistant engineer aboard an incredibly advanced Alliance warship.
Even with the perpetual scarcity of resources aboard the Migrant Fleet, as an admiral's daughter she'd reaped the benefits, and worn the stigma, of a privileged upbringing. Better education, preferential assignments—all things that Tali hadn't asked for but nonetheless found herself scrambling to prove herself worthy of. She'd constantly had to be exceptional to stand half a chance of being judged by her own merits, instead of by the shadow her father cast. Too much was expected of the daughter of Rael'Zorah for her to spend her Pilgrimage safe and comfortable.
After a quiet walk along the dusty avenue between cargo pods that served as the colony's main thoroughfare, Tali arrived at settlement's tiny hospital. The battered grey building, not much bigger than the Normandy's comm room, was one of only a few structures that was an actual prefab instead of a converted cargo pod from the crashed freighter.
The automatic door slid opened and Tali froze as she was met by a rush of cool air that carried the sharp tang of fresh weapon discharge and another metallic, almost sweet smell that she couldn't quite place. There was a jolt of sickening comprehension as she realized it was blood that she was smelling—human blood.
"Nick?" The quarian called hesitantly as she stepped inside, feeling her stomach tighten as her hand closed around the grip of the pistol at her hip. The engineer jumped as she found herself staring down the barrel of a raised handgun.
In an instant, the weapon's muzzle fell, much to her relief. "Tali?"
Vandas and the infirmary around him were both a mess, with medical supplies and glass from a destroyed inspection lamp scattered across the floor. There was a spattering of fresh blood across the corpsman's face and one of his cheeks was red and beginning to swell. He looked as though he might stammer out an apology as his pistol disappeared back into the holster on his thigh, seeming out of breath and a bit shaken.
"Keelah, what happened?" She gasped, drawing closer.
The smell of blood suddenly became overwhelming, and at last Tali found the source.
Following a slow, meandering path along through the grooves of the metal floor, the steady tide of crimson flowed around the front of her boot when the quarian found herself too shocked at the sight of it to step back. A few empty brass casings formed tiny islands in the growing sea at her feet as it continued its journey to the metal drain in the center of the room, and she felt a wave of nausea as her stomach clenched.
There was a body in the infirmary's storage area, just out of view from the door. It was a human, one of the colonists, it looked like. They had collapsed on their side at the base of a shelving unit, blood splattered across the jumbled rows of medical stores at chest-height and some supplies still sitting on the ground where they'd been scattered. Half a dozen bright crimson blobs grew on the man's chest, bloody froth erupting from a few. Another bullet had hit him in the face, blasting away his right eye and tearing a ghastly hole in the side of his head that stretched back to his ear. His remaining eye stared blankly at the opposite wall.
It was Fai Dan, Tali realized at last. If it hadn't been for the grey coveralls he'd been wearing, he would've been utterly unrecognizable.
How had this happened? The question was the only coherent thought in her racing mind.
Suddenly, Fai Dan stirred, taking a horrid, rasping gasp, and the engineer choked back a scream. He was still alive!
In an instant, her hands were digging through her cargo pockets, searching for medigel and trauma dressings to stem the bleeding as she stepped forward. The quarian wasn't sure what she was going to do, but she knew she had to do something.
"Tali." She froze as Nick's hand fell on her shoulder, his tone soft but grave, and she turned to look at him. It didn't make sense—he was a medic, he was supposed to help people. W-Why wasn't he doing anything? Why was he just standing there?
The quarian's searching gaze met the corpsman's blue eyes, silently demanding explanation, and she heard him take a slow, wincing breath. But he said nothing, his expression locked in a grim frown. After a few long, agonizing seconds, she saw him slowly shake his head and his hand fell from her shoulder. For a moment, the mask slipped, a flash of pained resignation crossing his face before disappearing.
Realization was a bitter taste in her mouth. The young pilgrim's gaze fell to the floor, a silent, reluctant nod signaling her understanding.
Neither of them said anything. There was only the muted hum of the building's climate control system interrupted Fai Dan's abrupt, choking gasps and Tali shuddered, closing her eyes.
Death was a new and unpleasant spectacle for her, and even Nickeli seemed unsettled. She'd seen good quarians die when Saren's men had attacked them on Illium and hadn't hesitated to kill the salarian mercenaries in the alleyway, but this wasn't a split-second glance at one of her fallen crewmates as she bolted for the airlock nor a grenade hurled behind her to make good her escape deep into the Citadel's winding alleys.
This was something personal, intimate. The graphic show of someone's life slipping away as their body strained and choked. She and the grim-faced corpsman watched in cold silence—a gruesome audience waiting and watching for the moment when the man's existence was snuffed out.
The engineer heard the muffled shift of equipment, and she opened her eyes at the sound of Nick disengaging the retention clasp on his holster. The marine's expression was hard as he stared at the dying man, lost in deep contemplation with his right hand closed around the grip of his sidearm. After a few seconds, he glanced up, his resolve vanishing when he saw Tali looking at him. The pistol snapped back into its holster.
She didn't know how long the two of them stood there, watching and listening—it was probably only a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours. The quarian was aware of little other than the sight of the dying man in front of her, her suit administering a dose of anti-nausia medication to ward off the rising need to vomit.
Eventually, Nickli spoke, explaining what had happened in a low voice—Fai Dan pulling a gun, Nick pulling his. Even more quietly, the medic admitted that he didn't understand why the man had attacked him, and Tali could hear the confused regret in his voice. Eventually, there was nothing left to explain and the pair lapsed back into silence.
Finally, the gasping stopped, and there was merciful silence. The flood of relief that accompanied it shamed her.
Vandas pulled away, collecting a folded blanket from an empty cot. Moving to the fallen man's side, he draped across it the body, pooled blood quickly soaking through the edges of the thin sheet. A few solemn moments were spent adjusting it until it covered everything but his battered work boots. Tali, not sure how to be of any real help, simply stayed quiet and out of the way. His task finished, Nick rose to his feet and went to retrieve his gear from where he'd laid it, leaving the still and shrouded form of the fallen colonist alone in the storage area.
For a moment their gazes locked as the corpsman turned, and it seemed there was a flash of something in his eyes, but it passed so quickly the quarian wasn't sure she'd seen it at all.
Standing with his back turned to her, the medic carefully pulled on his helmet and Tali watched his shoulders rise sharply and then slowly fall as he took a deep breath. Silently, he was pulling all of the pieces back together—shoving aside the regret and hesitation to be sorted out later when it was safe. When he turned around with the stock of his rifle tucked under his right arm, there was only the expressionless gleam of his sun visor and the tone of soldierly emotionlessness in his voice.
"We need to get back to the Normandy."
...
...
"You know Vakarian, you're not like other turians I've met—most are too busy being the Council's leashed varren to have much of an opinion on anything."
"Funny should you say that, because you're exactly like every other krogan I've ever met." The sharpshooter deadpanned, though his barbed tone indicated he was severely unamused.
Wrex snorted. Garrus scowled. Shepard rolled her eyes.
With Wrex's biotics and close-range lethality and Garrus' technical skills and long-range firepower, the pair actually made an excellent team. Not that either of them would quit sniping at each other long enough to realize it. With the two of them usually occupying opposite sides of the cargo bay while aboard the Normandy, Shepard had to wonder if she wouldn't inevitably find herself breaking up a brawl sooner or later.
Not five minutes ago, they'd finished clearing the last of the geth out of the Exogeni tower and they were already back at it. Admittedly, Shepard had at first privately found the snide banter somewhat amusing and ignored it. Then she'd just ignored it. Now, after only a few hours planetside, she just wanted it to stop.
Garrus, characteristically, was mostly amendable to her request not to instigate. On the other hand, Wrex was exactly the ornery, stubborn dinosaur he looked to be, and he knew how to get a rise out of the turian.
Privately, Shepard kicked herself. On the Citadel, she'd been so focused on finding evidence against Saren and grateful for any help she could get she hadn't stop to consider the ramifications. In her defense, she'd found herself rather swept up in the whirlwind of Council politics—a few days ago, Jane was the Normandy's executive officer and utterly unaware she was being evaluated as a Spectre candidate. With that in mind, perhaps she could be forgiven for her lack of foresight.
Still, the Normandy was a small ship, and she found her in a rather awkward position. Pressely and Williams had expressed some misgivings about the team Shepard was assembling, but they were part of the Alliance. While the commander had never felt as strongly about protocol as Anderson, she could still rely on discipline and the chain of command to ensure the two remained professional. Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple with her newly acquired krogan.
With Wrex, she could avoid taking him on missions or throw him off the ship if he became a serious problem, but both seemed rather self-defeating. So, what was she supposed to do? Angrily stomp her foot until the millennia-old warlord started to behave?
Shepard groaned as the two continued to bicker as they made their way back to the Mako, using her glove to wipe away the mix of sweat and concrete dust that clung to her forehead. After several hours of fighting through the planet's crumbling ruins, she wasn't in the mood to tryto get the pair to quit arguing, and they still had a plenty of mission ahead of them. Once this was all wrapped up and she'd had the chance to get a hot shower and warm meal, then she'd deal with the ship's interpersonal issues. If the rest of the crew could politely wait until then to start tearing into each other, she'd have been immensely grateful.
For now however, they had to contend with what they'd uncovered in ExoGeni's labs—the Thorian, the ancient creature that the corporation had discovered buried under Zhu's Hope and subsequently allowed to take control of the colonists. It meant they'd finally found what Saren had come to Feros for—now it was just a matter of figuring out why.
As the team returned to the same level they entered the tower from, an icon flashed on her omni-tool, indicating her hardsuit had patched itself back into the communication net. Under most circumstances, they wouldn't have lost signal at all, but with the Normandy landed and no tactical satellite overhead, comms were spotty inside the concrete towers. They'd briefly been radioed by Joker after the geth jammer had been destroyed, but they'd lost contact again on the return journey through the ExoGeni tower.
Evidently, the situation back at Zhu's Hope had rapidly deteriorated in her absence. The colonists had turned against the Alliance team and Lieutenant Alenko, unwilling to stomach the civilian casualties necessary to hold the docking bay, had made the decision to order the Normandy's marines back onto the ship and into lockdown. She was told that Ouder had briefly objected, demanding he be allowed to lead a team to rescue Vandas and Tali who were still inside the settlement. The sergeant major had only begrudgingly withdrawn after the corpsman had reported the pair were safe. Jane hadn't gotten all the details, but they had reportedly locked themselves in the colony's infirmary.
Activating her radio, Shepard opened a comm channel. "Nick, what's your status?"
"Ma'am!" The corpsman on the other end sounded somewhat surprised, albeit pleasantly so, to hear from his commander. "Good to hear from you. I'm afraid we've got a bit of a situation."
Jane sighed wearily. "Of course we do."
...
...
It had been a simple plan, Tali mused.
Nickeli was going to quickly collect the rest of his equipment and then they were both going to quietly return to the Normandy. There wasn't going to be a fuss or a commotion, they were just going to leave through the infirmary door and walk back to the ship. Even now, Tali could imagine herself politely waving to the colonists as the pair leisurely strolled by. They were just going to get some equipment, after all, there was no need for alarm. Then, from the relative security of the Normandy's command deck, they could begin to review the facts of what the corpsman had discovered and then decide what needed to be done.
It was a simple plan that had lasted for only a handful of steps.
Exactly seven, in fact—Nick's six steps to the infirmary door followed immediately by an enormous step backwards when he was greeted by rifle fire the moment it opened, the armored soldier backing into Tali and almost landing on top of her when she fell. In the handful of seconds it had taken the quarian to input a few commands into her omni-tool and seal the entrance from halfway across the room, Vandas had regained his balance and begun returning fire, answering the continuing stream of incoming fire with deliberate bursts from his rifle as he methodically retreated from the door.
When it finally closed, the pair had hastily scrambled to the far side of the cramped infirmary, Nickeli upending the silver exam table in a storm of flying medical supplies and polished steel instruments clattering across the metal floor to create a sort of impromptu barricade. Its worn metal surface would offer little protection against hypervelocity mass driver rounds, but it offered a good place to rest his rifle as he kept it trained on the door. Similarly, Tali had taken cover behind the metal partition that separated the storage area from the rest of the clinic, her shotgun at the ready. They had a five, maybe six minutes before the colonists got through the door—despite their sturdy appearances, unarmored doors like the one of the prefab were generally little more than a simple hydraulics system sandwiched between thin metal plates. Most weren't even rated for vacuum, much less weapon fire.
The young engineer knew the situation was bad. Surrounded, alone, and trapped in what amounted to a large storage shed, she had done her best to brace herself for the imminent assault. The quarian would've been lying if she said that the prospect of being forced to fight for her life against the colonists didn't frighten her, but she was prepared to do so if it meant surviving.
That had been almost twenty minutes ago.
It seemed the colonists were content to leave the pair sealed in the infirmary, and Tali had listened in while Vandas had gone back and forth on the radio with both Shepard and the Normandy, eventually coming to the agreement that the two of them would sit tight. Williams, who had been in the tunnels when the colonists had turned, would link up with the rest of the team and retrieve them once the area had been secured.
It was a decent plan, considering the circumstances, but it still left them trapped for as long as that took to accomplish.
Tali, with the long days spent stowed away in the hold of a turian freighter still fresh in her mind, was understandably anxious about the prospect. Nickeli, however, seemed largely satisfied with that—once it became clear that the colonists weren't going to storm the clinic, he'd relaxed significantly. Presently, the human medic was sitting with his back against the overturned table, with his arms folded across his chest and his rifle in his lap. His helmet sat on the floor beside him and his head was tilted slightly downward as he dozed. He'd been periodically checking on the unconscious colonist in one of the cots and, evidently satisfied with the man's condition, had elected to settle down for a bit of shut-eye himself. While how exactly he could sleep at a time like this was entirely beyond her, she'd decided to make the most of their time spent waiting for Shepard to arrive.
While the colony didn't have much in the way of remotely-accessible systems, she'd distracted herself by attempted to hack into anything that might be useful, eventually taking control of a grainy, black and white video feed. The feed, coming from a fixed security camera on the exterior of the crashed cargo ship, offered only a limited view of the settlement's main plaza, but what little the quarian could see was enough to disturb her.
The colonists were still out there, but there was something wrong with them—their motions were jerky and unnatural, sometimes standing absolutely still in one place for minutes at a time. Occasionally, the camera caught glimpses of dark, gaunt figures that dashed in and out of view, though the dismal quality of the video meant it was impossible to make out any details. She'd been trying to clean up the footage, but so far it had yielded nothing but frustration.
"Relax." Tali looked up from her omni-tool, and was surprised to see that Vandas hadn't even opened his eyes when he spoke.
The quarian turned, staring blankly in the human's direction. She couldn't have possibly heard him correctly. During the briefing, Shepard had seemed troublingly casual at the prospect of fighting geth, and though the commander was proving herself to be atypical in any number of ways, it was utterly inconceivable that all humans shared her skewed sense of what constituted mortal danger.
There were dozens of people outside who suddenly wanted to kill them, and the two of them were completely cut off from help if they tried to storm the building. So, given their present situation, there was no possible way he was encouraging her to relax.
"How can yousleepat a time like this?"
Nickeli popped one eye open, a smirk forming as he looked in the quarian's direction. "Practice."
She could only roll her eyes with a huff, something that didn't go unnoticed by the human, despite her visor. He offered a casual shrug, sounding a bit amused. "I can start worrying and going stir-crazy too, if you think it'll help."
Tali began to object to the jab, but quickly clamped her mouth shut when she decided it wasn't an argument worth having. Even so, while the medic may have had a point about her being worried, just because she didn't like the idea of sitting idle and helpless while they waited on Shepard didn't mean she was going stir-crazy.
"Just forget it." She relented as she went back to her omni-tool.
"Hey now, I don't mean it like that." Vandas said as he sat up. He gave a long groan as he took a moment to stretch out before continuing. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you're gonna' find yourself in a lot of shitty situations in a combat zone. In the really shitty ones you can't do anything about, you've just got to keep your head and have faith in your team to dig you out. You trust Shepard, right?"
The quarian nodded. She didn't exactly appreciate the implication she'd lost her head, but she would concede that he had a point.
"So relax." Vandas repeated emphatically, making a show of folding his hands behind his head and reclining against the overturned table. "Grab a cot, or crack open an energy bar, or whatever—just don't stress out."
Tali couldn't help but laugh, the marine acting as if the infirmary were some sort of exclusive lounge or luxurious spa. She took back what she said before—skewed priorities or not, his demeanor was refreshing. "Has all your folksy wisdom come from your time being shot it?"
"Just the good stuff." He admitted with a chuckle. "What about you? You military?"
"What? O-oh, no." She clarified quickly. "I'm just an engineer."
The corpsman paused to consider this for a moment, seeming a little bit surprised. "Huh. I mean, everybody talks about how going after Saren is crazy dangerous, but you sort of jumped aboard, so I just kinda' assumed."
Tali could detect the underlying question of 'Why?' in the medic's tone. It wasn't prodding, nor calling into question her place aboard the Normandy, simply curious. He was very much correct that it was dangerous—she'd only been on the periphery of Saren's betrayal of the Council, and she'd still very nearly been killed a number of times, and yet her she was.
She could only shrug—it was something Shepard had brought up when she'd asked to join the mission, and she wasn't certain she had come up with a better answer since then. In truth, she'd have been lying if she said she didn't ask herself the same question more than a few times.
When the quarian had stumbled across the damning evidence among the geth data, she'd sworn to bring it to the Council, and she had. Despite the terrible cost, she had accomplished her mission. And yet, here she was.
Given the tired, defeated young woman Nick had first met in a C-Sec interrogation room, it was an understandable question. Privately, she wondered what he thought of her—what any of the crew must've thought of her. Did they think she was foolhardy? That she was brave? Were they suspicious of her?
Regardless, she couldn't leave him without an answer.
"The Council may've turned its back on my people when the geth drove us from our homeworld, but I won't stand by while they do the same to the rest of the galaxy."
Nickeli's expression suddenly became quite solemn. He his voice was quiet, but he sounded genuinely shocked when he spoke. "The geth drove you from your homeworld?"
It was rather telling that his confusion didn't surprise her in the slightest, not that she blamed him. The galaxy at large had written off her people as vagrants and scavengers long before humanity had even taken its first, tottering steps into space, and had been happy to consign the quarian race to the pages of history after they lost their worlds. Most only knew the story of the Morning War as a sort of fable, warning against the dangers of artificial intelligence—for those who had been driven from their homes centuries ago, it was a daily reality.
"My people created them as a labor force, but almost three-hundred years ago, they became self-aware and attacked. Within a year, all of our worlds had fallen to them and anyone who couldn't escape was killed. Our people went to the Council, but they refused to help—they said they considered it 'just consequences' for our actions and stripped us of our embassy. Since then, we've just been migrants."
Vandas was silent for a time as he ruminated on the subject. Humans, Tali had found, were very expressive—much like quarians—and she could actually watch the rapid succession of emotions play across his face; disbelief followed by a flash of anger before tepid resignation finally settled in. Very few people cared to hear her people's history during the course of her Pilgrimage, and, having quickly become accustomed to the uncomfortable silences and awkward "apologies" that usually followed, was Tali surprised when he responded, speaking in a low voice.
"For a long time, a lot of humanity had a very..." He struggled briefly to find the appropriate word. "Romanticized view of alien life—not even necessarily finding it, just sort the idea. We looked at the last five-thousand years of human civilization with all the atrocities and all the times we'd nearly wiped ourselves out and wondered if it was really the only way. We hoped somebody else out there had done it better, and that maybe they'd help us figure it out." Nickeli took a long moment to ruminate on the subject, a distant look on his face. Finally, he gave a resigned shake of the head, as if the matter were one of some personal regret to him. "But, since guys like me still have a job, I suppose not. I guess we met alien life and saw a lot more of ourselves staring back than we liked."
The quarian began to reply, but was interrupted by the sound of gunfire outside, and Nickeli shot to his feet, rifle at the ready as he turned for the door.
Tali reactivated her omni-tool, watching as the colonists moved as one toward the settlement's perimeter to confront the approaching threat. It seemed their rescue had finally arrived.
"Alright, nap time's over." Nick quipped, the soft undertone in the marine's voice replaced by steely calm as he pulled on his helmet. "Let's get back to work."
...
...
The gunfire outside ceased abruptly after several minutes, leaving the pair waiting in the uncertain silence of the infirmary. The radio net had been silent and during the firefight outside, and the camera Tali had been monitoring had been knocked out, leaving some doubt as to who was actually assaulting settlement. Presumably, it was Shepard and the rest of the team, but it would be a rude awakening if they barged out there to discover the geth had rallied and counterattacked.
Nick tensed as a pair of large and decidedly heavy-sounding boots made their way up the short set of stairs just outside the clinic, sparing a glance in Tali's direction. That was either Wrex, or they were both about to be in some serious trouble.
A massive impact shook the door, the force shaking the entire prefab and sending the pair scrambling to defensible positions. A second quickly crash followed, and Nickeli pulled his rifle even tighter into his shoulder, his fingers drumming against the trigger assembly in steady anticipation.
The third blow knocked the door off its track and created a small gap along one side, the green access panel distorting and beginning to flash orange and red. A tri-digit hand lunged through the narrow breach and seized the edge of the door, the metal groaning as it was forced open. One final effort defeated the damaged locking mechanism and sunlight flooded in.
Standing in the doorway and with his armor covered in some sort of black ichor, Wrex regarded the pair of figures that stood with weapons leveled at him with a distinct indifference. Both of the building's occupants were visibly relieved to see that it was a friendly, enormous walking tank that had taken interest in their door.
"You could've just knocked." Tali sighed as she lowered her shotgun, no doubt thinking of the poor, beleaguered engineers responsible for repairing the colossal trail of destruction the krogan left in his wake.
"I did." Wrex observed dryly with a deep chuckle. Scanning the room and apparently seeing nothing of further interest, the old warrior departed, his boots drumming heavily back down the stairs.
Nick laughed as the tension ebbed away, the sound tinny and strange coming out of his helmet. Offering Tali an exaggerated shrug, he started for the door.
The corpsman halted at the base of the stairs, a pit forming in his stomach as he surveyed the settlement.
The ground team had returned the way they came under heavy opposition by the colonists, forced to assault the very same barricades they had manned earlier that morning. The air was ripe with the smell of fresh weapon fire and throughout the area, he could see the fallen colonists, still clutching their weapons, lying... alive?
Taking a moment to confirm that the nearest colonist was, indeed, breathing, he realized it didn't even appear they'd been shot.
"Gas grenades."
The corpsman turned to find Shepard standing there, sweaty and covered in concrete dust, but grinning like the cat that ate the canary all the same. Even with his helmet on, she must've been able to see the awed expression of his face.
Suddenly, her expression darkened, as if she'd remembered something. She jerked her head in the direction of the town center. "Come take a look at this."
Nick obliged, following her a short distance until she halted in front of a crumbled figure on the ground. The corpsman wasn't even sure it was human.
The body had dark, almost black skin, and blood the color of used motor oil ran from the half dozen holes mass driver rounds had punched through its torso. Despite the wounds, the fatal blow seemed to have been the stomp that left the deep, krogan-sized outline of a boot in the center of its chest. The shriveled, gaunt creature looked troublingly like the husks he'd encountered on Eden Prime.
"We encountered them when we got back to the colony—they don't go down easy and I'm not sure where they came from." Shepard explained, a hint of consternation in her tone, and Vandas couldn't help but quietly agree. The team hadn't seen any sign of dragon's teeth like they had discovered during their first encounter with the geth, and the creature looked radically different, meaning the synthetics were unlikely to be responsible.
The medic's thoughts took a dark turn. Perhaps it was the bizarre, black parasite, he'd discovered? But how? It wasn't exactly a subtle transition, and the team had seen nothing like it since they'd arrived. Even the colonist who'd been driven completely insane hadn't looked nearly this bad, and there was no other source on the planet.
Unless...
Nick's face fell. "The bodies."
The commander turned. "What?"
"There were almost two-hundred people in Zhu's Hope before the geth attacked. Fai Dan said they were storing bodies in the tunnels beneath the colony before they had to seal them off." He closed his eyes, a shiver crawling down the length of his spine. "These... things, are the bodies of the colonists the geth killed."
The corpsman felt his stomach clench. That was the nightmare of this place; the contorted, repulsive abomination before them had once been a human being. Someone's son, or sister, or husband.
Was this what all of the colonists would eventually end up as? Desecrated corpses turned into monsters—a final insult heaped onto innocent people who'd been murdered by the geth. But how the hell had they escaped the tunnels?
"Shepard, over here!" Garrus called from the colony's central plaza, waving the pair over.
The colonists had apparently used the ship's external freight crane to move one of the cargo pods, revealing a staircase the disappeared into the maze of tunnels that ran beneath the settlement. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it seemed they were about to test the medic's theory.
Glancing to Jane, he received a hesitant but approving nod, the rest of the squad falling in behind him in short order as he moved for the stairs.
Vandas gave a disgusted hiss, activating the light on the end of his rifle and pointing it into the darkness as he started down. The unmistakable stench of decomposition filled the tunnel. Reaching the landing half way to the bottom, the medic turned. Aiming the beam of his flashlight further down the stairs, he found the source of the smell.
"Commander, we've got a body here."
A corpse sat at the base of the stairs, its head hung downward and its back leaned against the wall. It looked to be a male colonist with a gaping hole where his sternum had used to be, wearing what the corpsman guessed might've been a pair of coveralls or perhaps a laboratory jumpsuit. One hand rested in its lap, palm smeared a shade of red so dark it was almost black.
It was strange, the medic thought. By the look of things, he'd been down here a while—he would've expected all the corpses down here to have been transformed into those gaunt, black husks by now.
Carefully stepping over the man's legs as he negotiated the confines of the stairwell, Nickeli sighed.
What a lonely place to die, he pondered, surveying the slate grey walls of the empty tunnels. Poor bastard. He hoped it had been quick.
"Nick," Shepard called, nodding toward the body. "You're up."
In the privacy of his helmet, the medic snorted. He must've forgotten the part where he had suddenly became the team's forensic pathologist.
Carefully stowing his rifle, he crouched beside the body and activated the light on his omni-tool.
The corpse's sunken, lusterless eyes stared back at him, its grey skin taut across the ridges of its cheekbones. It was the usual collection of sights and smells associated with early decomposition—the indescribable yet unmistakable stench of death, the strained and contorted expression on the man's face, frozen for eternity.
At some point during the corpsman's first deployment in Afghanistan, the sight of dead bodies had ceased to be all that shocking.
Dealing with them was still thoroughly unpleasant and generally disgusting, but the novelty had utterly worn off after a particularly grisly afternoon spent dragging waterlogged insurgents out of irrigation ditches and trying to collect biometrics. The stupid bastards had tried to ambush a unit of Canadian special forces passing through the area, and after two unseasonably hot spring days his platoon had been sent out to investigate the aftermath. He could still remember the smell.
So, while the dead colonist wasn't exactly a pretty sight, it was old hat. Looking over the body, the enlisted man offered a shrug. "Well, the chest wound's obviously what killed him."
The beam of his flashlight fell to the dried blood on the floor around him, following the trail of handprints on the wall and dark blotches on the floor a short distance down the corridor before it disappeared from sight. It looked like he'd reached the bottom of the stairs but didn't have the strength to go any farther.
Privately, Nick wondered if he'd still been alive when the colonists above had sealed the exit and turned this place into his tomb. Dry and free from insects, he'd have likely stayed here for as long as it took for a larger scavenger, like a varren, to find him.
"He's been here… a week, maybe?" He ventured, thankful for his helmet. It didn't block out everything, but it made the smell manageable up close like this.
With one gloved hand, the corpsman used his thumb to scrape away the dust and dried gore that caked the dead man's chest, revealing the black print of a name beside an ExoGeni logo on the breast of his jumpsuit. What had brought him here, the medic pondered. Had he been looking for a new start on Feros? Had it just been a job to him?
Vandas made a thoughtful sound, examining the dried blood on his glove as he idly rubbed it off the pad of his thumb. With a quiet gasp, he froze, holding his open palm beneath the light of his omni-tool for a long moment.
"Nick?" Shepard questioned with a mix of alarm and confusion as the marine pulled his combat knife from his chest rig. He didn't answer, instead quietly hoping he was wrong, a pit forming in his stomach.
Turning the blade downward, he put it just beneath the colonist's chest wound and carefully sliced open his jumpsuit, peeling it open with his free hand. Taking a breath, he slowly peeled it away.
The inside surface of the coveralls was coated with wet, black ooze that had seeped from the open wound. The sea of tiny black tendrils, like the ones he'd seen the infirmary, squirmed under the intense light from his omni-tool.
"Jesus," Nickeli hissed, recoiling from the body. Behind him, he heard the rest of the team gasp.
"What the hell is that?" Asked Williams.
"The Thorian." The cold certainty in Shepard's voice made Nick turn. Still standing a few steps above the landing, it wasn't a revelation the commander seemed particularly happy to be sharing. "It's a creature ExoGeni found in the tunnels. It's what Saren came here for, and it's what's taken control of the colonists. We're going to find out what it gave him, and then we're going to kill it."
Tali spoke, quiet concern in her voice. "What will that do to the colonists?"
"Free them." Jane answered, though the N7 no longer seemed sure. "I hope."
Her words hung in the air, the team lingering for a few long moments in uneasy silence. Finally, Shepard gave a nod, signaling that it was time to move on. Nick rose to his feet, stowing his knife before wordlessly unslinging his rifle and starting down the next flight of stairs.
The unfortunate reality of their mission was that if Shepard said the Thorian had to be destroyed, then that was exactly what was going to happen, regardless of what that meant for the colony above. The whole team knew it, but not having any other choice somehow failed to allay their fears of what the consequences might be. They'd just have to hope it all worked out—blind optimism was much more palatable than informed indifference.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, the marine scanned his surroundings, the tactical light on the end of his rifle illuminating the worn concrete walls. The tunnels ahead of him had been cleared of the larger pieces of debris and several of the corridors had work lamps lining the walls, though they had evidently lost power. In a few places, metal columns had been installed to brace the ceiling where it seemed in danger of collapsing. Casting the beam of his light further down one of the tunnels, Nick spotted a few equipment carts and workstations in the distance, though it was apparent that whoever was down here had left in a hurry.
"Exogeni was busy." Garrus remarked, keeping a watchful eye on the shadows as he brought up the rear of the squad.
"They let the Thorian infect the colonists to study the effects of its mind control." Shepard explained, keeping her voice low as they moved. "I guess this is where they were doing it from."
Nick deactivated his tactical light as the tunnel ahead grew brighter, natural light spilling in from around a corner a few dozen meters ahead.
"Somethin' stinks." Wrex grumbled.
Nick silently agreed, his nose curling as the stale air of the tunnels was suddenly replaced with a pungent, earthy stench that seemed strangely out of place in the labyrinth of broken concrete beneath the colony. It reminded him of the reek of fresh compost and rotten meat.
Pausing briefly, the marine glanced over his shoulder to ensure the rest of the team was ready before rounding the corner with quick, efficient steps. Sweeping his surroundings, Vandas found himself in a massive circular chamber with numerous levels that stretched all the way to the surface where sunlight streamed in through holes in the roof. An enormous chasm dominated the space, disappearing into the darkness a dozen levels below.
Above it, suspended from a web of thick, fleshy cables attached to the walls, was a… was…?
"Huh." Nickeli grunted, the flat, somewhat confused noise the closest he could come to any meaningful reaction to what he was looking at.
A bulbous, organic-looking mass the size of a cargo container hung above the massive pit, a wet sheen across its surface from the steady cascade of groundwater that fell from the upper levels. A dozen tendrils dangled from its underside, coiling and grasping at the empty air. The medic supposed it must be the Thorian.
"Well, I guess now we know what smells." Wrex commented drolly, seeming rather amused by the development.
Judging by the dumbstruck expressions of the remainder of the squad as they gawked, he was rather alone in the sentiment. Though for Garrus, who had been accompanying Shepard and presumably subject to the old warrior's flippant chatter for much of the afternoon, the remark seemed to be the final straw. "Could you take things seriously for a minute?!"
"I'm not sure," The krogan rumbled slowly, as if he were considering the question. Turning to the turian that had rounded on him, he flashed a broad, flat-toothed grin. "I've never tried."
Shepard remained uncharacteristically silent as the two began to bicker, and out of the corner of his eye Nick saw her carefully surveying the chamber. One armored finger perched on the edge of her lip, she scrutinized the ancient concrete pillars the creature had anchored itself to, and he noted a dangerous gleam in the commander's eye when her gaze settled on a nearby supply cart Exogeni had left behind.
Garrus and Wrex abruptly stopped arguing as she wove between them, joining the rest of the team in staring at their commanding officer as she inspected a set of portable power cells; round, grey containers with red warning labels the size of jerrycans. Brushing the accumulated concrete dust off one of the metal cylinders, she began looking over the casing for any visible damage as the rest of the squad continued to silently look on.
Reaching into a pouch on her hardsuit's webbing belt, she produced a disk-shaped, self-adhering demolition charge—the same type she insisted on hurling like grenades on the grounds that they were "dual-purpose"—and, entirely too casually, attached it to the side of the power cell.
Hefting the container back to where the team—who all, save Wrex, had taken a generous step back—was gathered, she presented it to Vandas. "Here."
The corpsman, though visibly reluctant, accepted the fuel cell, stowing his rifle on his back and taking the canister by the handle on top. Glancing wincingly first at the rather sizable bomb he'd just been handed and then to Shepard, he spoke in a tone of such pointed and rising concern that it approached insubordinate. "Ma'am?"
"Trust me, I've got a plan."
Nick grimaced, not feeling particularly reassured. During all his time in the military, "I've got a plan" had never once amounted to anything good.
"Wrex, Nick, Tali—circle a quarter of the way around the right side." The commander instructed, pulling her rifle off of her back. "Garrus, Ash, you're with me, we're going left and up a floor." She pointed to the improvised demolition charge she'd handed to Vandas. "We're going to—"
Shepard was interrupted as the Thorian stirred, loosing a deafening, guttural groan like a ship's horn that thundered through the chamber, echoing off the concrete walls and racing down the sprawling network of tunnels that went in every direction. From the darkness, a chorus of snarls and hunting calls answered.
It seemed the rest of the creature's thralls had found them.
"Move! Now!" Jane barked as the sound of scrambling feet on stone grew nearer.
Nickeli drew his pistol as the team divided up, moving as fast as the weight of the canister would allow. He couldn't use his rifle effectively one-handed, meaning he'd be hard-pressed to defend himself and move at the same time. Fortunately, Tali seemed keenly aware of this, sticking close with her shotgun held at the ready. She gave the marine a stout nod when he glanced at her.
The corpsman spotted movement in the shadows of one of the branching corridors behing them, feeling his stomach drop as a tide of wiry black figures rushed forward. An orb of biotic energy checked their advance, tossing aside the first half dozen in a storm of flying bodies and mangled limbs.
"Run, you pyjacks!" Wrex ordered the two of them, purple energy still licking at his armor as he brought his enormous shotgun to bear on the encroaching creatures. The warlord slowed to a walk behind them as the trio withdrew through a doorway, forming a one-krogan rearguard while Nick and Tali kept moving. The weapon's deafening report echoed off the concrete walls, cleaving one of the thralls in half at the waist.
Looking to the opposite side of the chamber, Vandas could see the other half of the team dealing with a similar situation one level higher, still making good headway. Unfortunately, the medic's relief was short-lived, when shrived, black hands began to appear on the edge of the pit as husks started to climb up from the lower levels. One of the creatures raised its head only to catch a shot from his pistol, the upgraded Beretta creating a respectable hole in left side of the thrall's forehead and sending it plummeting off the edge.
"Look out!" Tali called.
Nick whirled, seeing another group of the husks dropping through a hole in the ceiling some distance ahead of them. A blast from Tali's shotgun peppered the closest with a storm of shot, stumbling it momentarily and leaving one arm dangling from a narrow strip of black flesh, but otherwise failing to notably slow the thrall down. Nickeli found similar results, dropping one with two neatly grouped headshots only to watch it scramble back to its feet, pounding four more well-placed rounds into its chest and head before it finally stayed downed.
The medic grimaced. He didn't have nearly enough ammo for this. They still had another thirty yards to cover, and he only had one fresh reload and one partial left for his pistol—at this rate, he'd be empty before they made it half way there.
"These things won't die!" Tali growled through clenched teeth, lighting arcing from her omni-tool and dancing back and forth between the enemy ranks. The shock sent half a dozen of them to the ground, and the pair used the opportunity to unleash a combined salvo of shotgun and pistol fire to devastating effect as they slowly pressed forward.
Nick's empty magazine clattered to the ground as he reloaded, tucking the handgun under his left arm and deftly pulling his last fresh magazine from his right thigh. Slamming it home, he used the edge of his left pauldron to rack the slide, snapping off two more rounds to finish of a thrall that had gotten uncomfortably close. Sidestepping the falling body as its momentum sent it tumbling toward him, the marine put a final round into the things head before turning his attention forward.
They'd nearly reached their objective, but they'd been forced to halt and engage to avoid being overrun. Setting down the canister, Vandas pulled his rifle off his back and opened fire, the creatures now so close they landed almost at his feet when they fell. Beside him, Tali's rate of fire was growing frantic.
Mentally, Nick was walking through his next steps for when his rifle overheated; drop carbine, right hand draws Beretta, twelve more shots, and then he was empty unless he found a chance to reload. The medic clenched his teeth as he continued to pour fire onto the closing wall of gaunt corpses. They couldn't keep this up much longer.
Suddenly, a blur of dark red armor passed by as Wrex charged headlong into the crowd with a triumphant roar, bowling a path through their ranks. Blood seeped from a series of shallow on his neck, rolling down the creases in his leathery hide in thick drops, but there was a grin spread across his face, gleeful and ferocious.
"C'mon!" The corpsman called to Tali, snatching up the fuel cell and rushing forward. With the krogan leading the way, they finally started making headway, firing frantically as they ran.
"Ma'am! We're in position!" Nickeli called into his radio, setting down the container and dropping to one knee as he resumed firing with his rifle. The thralls continued to advance, stumbling over their own casualties. Their numbers were beginning to thin, and with the added firepower of Wrex's shotgun, they were no longer getting so dangerously close. Still, a steady trickle of them kept emerging from side tunnels and gaps in the walls, and the team didn't seem any closer to dealing with the enormous, sentient biological weapon hanging from the ceiling.
Nick just hoped Shepard's plan was going to kick in here pretty soon—he didn't relish the prospect of having to fight it out with a couple hundred more of these things.
Looking out across the chasm, he saw that the rest of the squad had also reached their objective, standing their ground as they poured withering fire into the lines of advancing husks. Oddly, Shepard wasn't firing and was instead crouched behind Garrus and Williams as she hastily worked on something.
After a moment, the commander stood, the medic struggling to conceal his surprise when he spotted a grappling hook in her hands. Tugging at the hook to ensure it was firmly attached, she began to whirl it around.
Leaning precariously over the edge and slinging the hook upwards, she successfully looped it over a j-shaped piece of rebar protruding from one of the chamber's massive support columns. Grabbing the hanging cable, Shepard quickly retrieved the hook, now eyeing the opposite side where the corpsman was standing and his radio crackled to life. "Nick! Attach this to the fuel cell!"
With an impressive heave from her vantage point, the officer threw the line over the Thorian, reaching the other side and, after a bit of scrambling by the medic, Vandas' waiting hands. Quickly pulling the cable through the handle on the top of the canister and looping it back on itself, he wrapped the line around the hook several times. "Alright, it's secure!"
To his growing bewilderment, Nick spotted Shepard pushing a sizable block of broken concrete toward the pit. The medic regarded the commander with a confused tilt of the head. What was she doing, clearing space for a running start? She wasn't going to try to zipline across, was she?
It was only as the chunk of debris began to tip over the edge that the he noticed the other end of the cable tied to it, his eyes widening as all the pieces suddenly came together.
The canister vanished from in front of him, the improvised pulley system whisking it upwards across the chasm as the counterweight fell. Nickeli had just enough time to clench his teeth before it reached the other side.
The fuel cell exploded in a brilliant fireball when it slammed into the support column on the opposite side. The concussive force of the blast felt like a kick in the chest, sending the corpsman stumbling back a step as the audio dampeners in his helmet activated to prevent him from going deaf.
When his hearing finally returned a moment later, he could make out the sound of crumbling concrete, and looked up in time to see a section of the support pillar the size of the Mako break away. The enormous piece of debris came crashing down on the Thorian, snapping the fleshy cables that anchored it in place and sending the creature plummeting into the endless darkness. While Nick didn't claim to be particularly knowledgeable about ancient, sentient houseplants, he expected that had gotten the job done.
Unfortunately, there was little time to celebrate as falling concrete continued to rain down, another piece of the pillar sending the team scrambling as it threatened to come down on top of them like a felled tree.
Nickeli dove out of the way as it collapsed onto the platform he was on, destroying a section of it in a roar of shattering concrete and groaning steel.
Eventually, the sound died away and the medic gingerly rose to his feet, groaning quietly.
The scene he found himself in was rather surreal, surrounded on all sides by a shroud of white-grey concrete dust that made the enormous chamber suddenly feel quite claustrophobic. Picking carefully through the rubble, he located his rifle. The front half had been crushed by debris into an unrecognizable mass of broken polymer and ben alloy, and the medic tossed it aside—he was certain a long, difficult conversation awaited him back on the ship.
As the dust slowly began to settle, Tali emerged from the haze, she appeared unhurt, though she was covered from head to toe in chalky grey powder. Nick snorted, certain that he must've been something of a sight as well. A few moments later, Wrex appeared, announced by the heavy tread of his boots through the rubble. The krogan looked positively delighted, surveying the aftermath with a smile.
The radio crackled to life in Nickeli's ear, Garrus calling Shepard over to something they'd found. Glancing between his teammates, the marine hitched his thumb in the direction of the entrance, more than happy to finally return to the ship and get the hell off this planet.
A/N: You know, I was just looking at some screenshots and realized that Zhu's Hope (or at least the area where the freighter is crashed) is actually in an unroofed section of the tower rather than I covered area, as I'd written it. Oh well, I'm not too torn up about it if you aren't.
Anyway, that's Feros wrapped up.
Additionally, as you may (or may not) have noticed, an earlier chapter has been removed. After much deliberation, I've decided that I'll be scrapping my existing plan for a parallel story arc and will be reworking it into something else. As this arc would've been fairly distant anyhow, I don't anticipate this will have any cause any issues.