Author's Note: Not a hell of a lot to say here, which is ironically something I say a lot. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 49: Terminus System Part 2
Confusion seemed to be the name of the game right now, you can imagine the Reaper's general feeling of having the denizens of the galaxy on the ropes having successfully chased out the Union from the Terminus Sector. Then all of a sudden, the planets seemed to yawn open and eat hundreds of their ships, and the union deployed some kind of mystery weapon that turned so many of them into shrapnel, shrapnel that then flew into the bodies of the other reapers around them smashing them apart too. Needless to say they had suffered enough mass casualties to warrant retracting the advance team before it was completely wiped out. And then this fascinating little creature showed up. Their censors picked up a spike of pure energy like a attack, it gave off a strong psionic signal like a high level psionic, most bizarrely of all it was floating in the void of space, approaching them from the front as if it intended to have a chat. They should destroy this thing, everything they could tell about it told them that it was another union weapon, but they did not know what it did. But it was information that they would soon come to know.
Some of the Reapers were in poorer shape than others, a few glancing hits by the unions explosives managed to tear off a couple of legs and left a hole in the side of the ships in question. The Energy Being flew inside of the Reaper. This far into the invasion? Each of the Reapers would be full of a plethora of husks, under normal circumstances that is, but the Reapers have received few beatings as severe as the ones that they had received in the past few weeks. The Energy being soon found what it was looking for, the crunchy synthorganic treat in a ship sized wrapper, and more energy inside one place than what his people had consumed during the entire invasion of the material plane.
Don't mind if he does. An incalculably huge amount of energy flew off of the reaper and entered the body of the energy being, a material resembling crystal was mass produced out of thin air and assembled into a new form, one that looked like it was drawn into existence out of neon light and made out of colourless transparent glass. The Reaper shell was torn apart as the new ship was born out of the wreckage, built around the limitless supply of psionic energy they had just found. Not only that but a vast number of similar neon constructs explosively came into existence building up more and more, trapping the other reapers between them as the constructs joined together.
The Reapers didn't go down without a fight, and thus soon discovered the shocking frailty of the energy constructs as Thanix projectiles pulverised the energy constructs into dust, only occasionally repelled by shielding. Then the Reaper's felt a familiar tingle dance across their shells. Disentegrators! Yet more of the Union's cursed weapons! And energy siphons, the matter growing at an even more dramatically accelerated rate now as the energy beings worked to tear them apart.
Sparatus, and the rest of the assembly, looked at a hologram before him, and watched as an entire world was consumed in a inter-dimensional fog while the outlines of neon ships formed in orbit above the world in question.
"What are we looking at?" Sparatus asked watching the bizarre looking ships as they formed seemingly out of thin air, or the fog that covered the planet.
"The Unbidden, extra-dimensional energy beings that originally became aware of this plane of existence through the jump drives." Admiral Hackett explained bluntly.
"What are they doing?" Aethyta asked liking absolutely nothing about what was happening here.
"Feeding." The Admiral stated bluntly. "They eat energy. But for reasons we haven't entirely understood they only feed off of the energy of living things, with a clear preference for the psionically capable." A pause for a few moments. "It appears that Reaper's also serve as a excellent source of nutrition."
"What is that fog?" The Salarian Brat asked having not taken her eyes away from the screen since the hologram started up.
"Near as we can tell, it's a recreation of their native environment, a by product of their feeding. We call it 'Shrouding.'" Admiral Hackett stated bluntly.
"'Shrouding?'" Oh they all heard that before, anyone who have read the briefing about the Lich's and hasn't dismissed the claims as utter non-sense. "Then this is...?"
"The shroud or an extension of it?" Which would make these Unbidden whatever the Lich's shove into corpses to make more of their own kind. "The short answer is: we don't know. Probing that dimension is extremely difficult, getting anything back from it of value effectively impossible." The Science Fleet Admiral explained tentacles clicking on multiple data pads.
"The Ability to drain energy." Aethyta was reading the information being given to them about the Unbidden. "And matter disentegration weaponry?" Oh now that was a riot! "These are the creatures you took your anti-reaper technology from aren't they?" Aethyta practically growled at the revelation she had just learned.
"Yes." Admiral Hackett explained bluntly. "Which together with their ability to make ships with alarming efficiency is the main reason why we spared them and put one on Aratoht in anticipation of the Reaper's arrival."
'Them' plural, 'one' singular the Salarian girl noted.
"You sent only one of these creatures up against several reapers?" The psyker in question stated voicing her doubt. "And expected them to win?"
"Give them enough energy and they'll reproduce stupidly fast." Admiral Hackett stated bluntly. "We gambled that the Reapers would be more interested in trying to figure out what they were than trying to kill them." The Admiral continued clinically. "That and the fact that they wouldn't have died when the Reaper's levelled our facility." It was a gamble, one they didn't know if they won yet. Even though they said that the Union still took an appropriate number of precautions.
"Admiral." Case in point. "The advance team has images of the Reaper's retreating form, from a safe distance of course." EDI reported as the hologram shifted, by the looks of the new one the team in question took the picture from the next solar system over. The Hologram continued to shift and produced a side by side image of the solar system before the Unbidden was released in the area and afterwards. Shining like a star was a neon coloured object that was only in one of the pictures. "Zooming in." Locked in a jagged ball outlined by several neon lights was several Reapers, or parts of them anyway. By the looks of things the two sides had gotten into a brawl, and the Reapers lost.
"The Unbidden." Admiral Hackett confirmed and everyone at the table groaned. "So far the only things these energy monsters have done so far is incapacitate the Reapers." The Salarian psyker pointed out indicating the hologram. "Does that mean they are a ally?"
"EDI if you would." Admiral Hackett was shutting that non-sense down right now.
"Total number of worlds plunged into the shroud: 34. Total number of ships destroyed by the extra dimensional invaders 187. Total life lost..."
"The energy monsters aren't our friends we get it!" Sparatus snapped as he glared at Admiral Hackett. "And you turned them loose in what should be a neutral zone."
"So we did." The bastard didn't even have the audacity to defend himself. "Between all three of those monsters living in that sector of space we can safely assume that the Reapers aren't entering the galaxy through that sector." Sparatus slammed his fist down on the table.
"If you go on about the Reapers one more time when there's a real and present threat to the safety of both of our people that you unleashed and have yet to clean up I swear...!"
"We're predicting a deadlock. Gestalt organic acid weaponry is effective against the hardened armour of our ships but weak against shielding. Our ships armaments, now hijacked by the Reaper's virus, were chosen specifically to kill Reapers and the Unbidden after that which means energy siphons and kinetic bombardment, the Unbidden in the mean time will eat the Gestalt, literally, leading to them to mass produce their extremely fragile space craft, which we're also hoping they'll send back through the Alpha Relay in addition to spreading into the Terminus Sector." It was a mess but it was a mess that for the time being was being contained. For the time being. "In the mean time our own engineers will send you designs on weapons that should be effective against the monsters, provided that we can keep them locked in their own region of space you should have time to upgrade your own ships." Admiral Hackett explained though he was soon interrupted.
"Admiral the Scout team has informed you that now that they've finished the task assigned to them then they are going to go pick up their payment." EDI informed in a neutral tone.
"Payment?" Sparatus asked sounding suspicious.
"We were only able to find a single scout team both willing to volunteer and qualified and with the appropriate equipment. It would seem that they are attempting a rescue mission while 'in the neighbourhood.'"
Garrus had returned to the Hierarchy so that he could give his expert opinion on the Reapers. Tali went to see what kind of damage control she can do with her own people. Grunt had gone back to Tuchanka. The Dragoons were off wreaking havoc somewhere. That left only Liara to figure out a way of getting Shepard back out of the hole to hell that she had been trapped in, luckily though the Shadow Broker had considerable resources at her disposal. A cargo ship was prepared and retrofitted with a built in green house, powered by a slew of ZPM's, as well as a factory and the latest technology that the Union has to offer, not to mention the slew of mercenary forces. After taking the Omega 4 Relay Liara was spat back out in the middle of what use to be the Collector's base, now a yawning gaping void leading into a place of unreality.
The Shadow Broker's ship was a marvel of engineering, a sophisticated array of capacitors, shields and lightning rods meant that not only could the ship survive Hagath's raging lightning storms but also siphon the energy produced in the process and power those very same shields with said lightning. Now Liara had gathered together that same team with one very specific set of orders: create a similar array to protect this ship from the unreality beyond the gap. Their task was hard ahead of them, but luckily they had their own personal factory to mass produce the components.
The Terminus Sector continued to slide off into chaos the longer that the situation had devolved. The combined weight of several mountains dropping across a variety of different planets caused a huge shift in the planet's in question weight, Neu Eezo Cores were being desperately fired to force planets away from their suns while volcanoes belched into Gestalt controlled wormholes around the clock to expel excess matter back into space. As if guided by some unknown intelligence the planets and moons were dragged into a six pointed star formation, their respective gravitational pull yanking them into a shared orbit.
The Reaper's corpses were being picked clean in space, Prethoryn were eating them, their own digestion track reinforced by Lithoid material to process and refine materials from the Reaper bodies into Unstable Mots, Rare Crystal and Exotic Gasses, the first was being left behind as explosive meteor-esque dung, the second was growing out of the backs of the giant space monsters as a crude point defense system reflecting the light of the suns, the third was being gathered together into gas giants in the now emptied up region of space.
The Contingency had found quite the prize from the shrapnel of the Collector base, blackholes, the ones the Collectors had set up their matter decompressors to harvest for material. The Contingency was working at an explosive rate to build their own, their ships and other vehicles were made using Union Standardised components, the Geth had access to Council Fabricators. Under the influence of a massive controlled Mass Effect field the Union ships disassembled themselves and reassembled into a massive Matter Decompressor around a Neu Eezo core with the fabricators making new parts as needed using Reaper scrap as materials, soon a seemingly limitless supply of neutron matter was being pulled out of the black holes, the Neu Eezo being discarded and experimented on as needed. Soon a massive fleet of contingency controlled Union pattern ships appeared and was released into the Terminus Sector.
As hard as it was to believe, the Unbidden now had their own planet, their only regret being that they didn't act in time to catch more reapers. No matter. It took them a while to figure out how the Mass Relay's worked, 'borrowing' parts from the Reapers, specifically their IFF devices, allowed them to gain entry both to the main Galaxy and through the Alpha Relay to more Reapers. With more troops than they knew what to do with, one group was sent through the Alpha Relay to see what tasty treasures laid beyond, the other into the wider galaxy.
Soon a three way brawl broke out, to the Contingency, the Unbidden were easy pickings and a potent energy source, the sheer amount of psionic energy going around only continuing to propagate their numbers, to the Gestalt particularly the Prethoryn they were the greatest delicacy that they have even seen or known, so now both factions were hunting them their numbers propped up only by their seemingly limitless ability to manufacture them.
"I've seen that look before." Aria T'loak was lounging about in what use to be and what would be once more the Afterlife's lounge. The massive hacking attack by the Contingency led to a wide spread disabling of remote implants particularly those that connected to dead man switches, one second later and they would be all dead. Aria took advantage of that, had all the implants that could lead to her demise removed, coupled with the sudden death of the Parasitic brain fungus that had stuck itself into her brain she was now enjoying her newly regained freedom. "In the eyes of a thousand desperate junkies. What's wrong with them?" The Union left Aria with quite the gifts, not only advance military grade technology, but also combat ready personnel nearly thrice what she had access to before, among them was the Tebrid doctor that she just had remove her implants 'The Count'. Now she was consulting with him on the state of the Prethoryn that were rampaging about the Terminus Sector.
"That's because they're junkies." The Count explained shrugging his shoulder equivalents. "Now anyway. They show all the signs of it too, first time users who just tried it out for the first time but have no idea as to what they're getting into." That intrigued Aria. "They're addicted to those hologram looking things?" Aria asked indicating the Prethoryn in question.
"Oh yes quite. Back when they were making a huge pest of themselves powdered extra-dimensionals made for one heck of a drug we called 'Zro' gives telekinetic abilities and hits you like crack cocaine." Aria never tried Cocaine herself, the humans she talked to swear by it though. This sounds more like Red Sand, and now Aria wants to see her people mix the two together. "It's also used as a psi-amplier agent such as in shields or in implants but honestly that's the more boring application." Did the Union shove bits of those aliens into her body? Whatever.
"Fortify the station, get some volunteer groups together, lets see what we can scrape together from the left overs." The only thing the Unbidden had going for them was their explosive rate of reproduction, it was time to make some money.
The Days turned into weeks, The Terminus sector was burning. A limitless supply of experimental drones were being sent into the gaping void in order to stress test their ability to withstand punishment. So far the record had been about ten minutes, that was about as far in as they could map of the unreality. Someone mentioned how if they can't even get a drone inside then a comparatively fragile human wouldn't stand a chance, he was locked in the airlock.
It wasn't like Liara wasn't working either, she had been hard at work gathering intelligence one the movements of the Gestalt, Contingency and Unbidden and feeding them wherever could do the most damage to the bastards. The contingency would often discover a sudden sensor read telling them where the Gestalt or Unbidden had made their appearance known, the Gestalt would pick up on a telepathic signal leading them to Unbidden or Contingency, the Unbidden would follow the signal of a psi beacon usually to their deaths but occasionally they would swarm some unusually powerful target. In the mean time Union, Council and occasionally Omega forces would receive intel on specific targets to knife strike to cut down on a significant amount of the enemy forces.
Course as the Shadow Broker Liara was being tipped generously for her services, usually in credits that in turn turned into parts and supplies delivered to her base to fuel her obsession. And when it became clear that what she needed was a guide, she got that too.
"I was wondering what the corpses did with Morinth's body." Liara should've been surprised, but she wasn't though.
"Is that what her name was?" Mor'gan was an odd case, a Lich infected with a experimental Thorian Mixture, and even more than that, a former Ardat Yakshi. The Thorian had went to work reinvigorating Morinth's body into what it was now. Apparently in the past there had been some Lich's who experimented with trying to impart their consciousnesses onto a living body, but such experiments had been banned, and not for the moral implications. Mor'gan could barely move, her neck in particular was swelling with strange tissues. It had to be removed surgically several times already, it was as if her body was swelling into a new Thorian, and the decay was only going further out of control as time went on.
"Cut to the Chase. What do I need to enter the void?" Liara asked making her lack of amusement known.
"You need to leave your current body." Mor'gan stated bluntly. "I survived there for millions of years without one, you can survive there long enough to grab your girlfriend and leave."
This would be a long couple of weeks it would seem.
The Batarian people had been robbed. The War in Heaven was here, not only were they not able to claim their sacred temple the Citadel, Not only had they unable to help their gods in battle, and indeed if the reports hold true several of their own, traitors that they are, fought alongside the Union and the Citadel alike against their gods, no the worst part was that when their gods had arrived they had been chased out of the Galaxy by monsters unleashed by the Union, far worst than what they claimed their gods to be! Now here the once proud Batarian race sits, in the ruins of their home-world not a single slave in sight, the Treacherous Union continued to reveal their true nature when the synths they left behind to 'police' and 'help rebuild' suddenly turned against them and attempted to wipe them out!
The monsters attacked from the sky and there was little they could do to resist, and then all of a sudden the abominations were all killed off. The Contingencies software was fried, the Gestalt was drained by the the Unbidden, and then the Unbidden were smashed like so much dust their remains now falling like snow on Khar'shan. The Priests were few in number, many had been executed for so-called 'crimes against sapient life' their religion gutted, only the youngest apprentices had been spared the purge, only able to carry on a bastardisation of their scriptures, and only in secret. Karesh Amon, currently the eldest of the Priest caste surrounded by what few soldiers they've been able to train in secret, armed with crude weapons, looked up to the sky as he watched a Union drop ship land in front of him. Already the day had gotten worse.
"Whoever you are-" The Young Priest was nearly crushed to death when the door of the shuttle slammed open, spared at the last second by one of his men pulling him to safety. "Whoever you are, you should know that we've had enough of the Union for the entire future of our people!" From the open door a grey haired and wrinkled human walked through, his muscular frame barely contained by a black business suit his eyes concealed behind a black visor.
"Then I consider myself lucky I'm not with the Union." The man in the suit stated as he pulled out a business card. "Henry Lawson, Entrepreneur, Scientist, Programmer and Engineer." The man in question held his card out to the young priest, who over the next few moments made a show of not taking the card in question. "To answer the unspoken question of why I am here..." Henry started to walked around as he slipped the card back into the pocket that he took it from. "I've seen an opportunity, an opportunity that the Stellar Union is intent on letting slip by, and indeed going as far as to crusade against in their 'War in Heaven.'" Karesh heard Henry mutter something about 'damn religious fanatics' which he took personally.
"And what opportunity are you talking about exactly?" The impatient priest asked as he tapped his arm. Henry smiled like the fisherman who got a bite.
"Fulfilling your masters grand vision of the Galaxy." The Self proclaimed Entrepreneur, Scientist, Programmer and Engineer stepped aside and gestured into the depths of his shuttle. "I have vision, you have hands and feet, resources of all kinds are floating in order about this system waiting to be exploited."
"Do you think I am stupid enough to step on board a Union Shuttle?" No but Henry does think that the Priest is stupid enough that if he wanted to do him harm he had a thousand possible ways of doing so and over 90% of them didn't even involve stepping foot onto this planet.
"Oh heavens no. You don't quite trust me that much yet. No as I said earlier I have a vision." A hand reached out and gripped the edge of the door as if supporting them-self as they stepped out. Grey coloured skin, as if the colour of wet concrete, but with a pattern as if scales, pulling the rest of the figure through the doorway to reveal a short human, barely dressed with short shorts and a piece of string with two cloth patches tied around their chest only barely hiding a pair of tits if she was a Asari, a long unbuttoned coat hanging off of her small figure. The almost total lack of clothing revealed silver lines across her thighs, abdomen, chest and face, probably more underneath the coat on her arms. She had long fur coming off of her head like a human, tied up into two masses that were otherwise able to freely hang off her head down to her shoulder.
"This is your vision? A child?" The Priest didn't sound impressed, at most there were minor signs of cybernetic augmentation through the lines of chrome and silver that he could make out through the grey skin. "It's good that you can't tell the difference at first glance. that will make things so much easier." With that, Henry Lawson unleashed his monster on Khar'Shan.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Thank you. I have some ideas. If it's raw information, EDI has the advantage, if we're talking problem solving then Mordin.
Guest: Eventually yes.
D3Diton: They figured it would give the Reaper's a hard time.
