Author's Note: So I was already behind in my writing last week, and Now I'm really behind. So Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 50: Terminus System Part 3
Take a Roller Coaster, throw it into a hurricane, toss the hurricane into a black hole, watch the experience through a Kaleidoscope while on Zro and you might have some idea of what Shepard was going through right now. Every fibre of her being and that of her cybernetic implants were firing on all cylinders to keep her alive, keep her moving forward, the warped reality twisted the flesh around her bones three times already, her face at least five. Dead tissues were devoured by the Thorian spores while in built cybernetics worked to realign all of her body parts in their correct orientation, and were failing. She was reliant on her suit's in built systems to keep moving forward, to see where she was going, and most of them had already failed. The energy of the suit that was struggling to keep up was at it's limits already, bits of flesh were already being siphoned away to keep several other systems going, the closed circuit of the suit allowing the Thorian to recycle material into more fuel but without an external energy source there was only so much that could be done. Sadly they found some external sources, or rather they found them.
The first Liches were born by accident, souls ripped from their bodies and thrown back inside out of sheer bloody minded will power, She had as much going for her as they had, but that wasn't the only factor in play here. The first Lithoids were born from much the same phenomena, instead of corpses their souls freshly ripped out they hit unique mineral patterns that then learned how propagate along a self repeating pattern, an organic mineral. Rare Crystal extracted from the hive was used to build her Grey Box, Golema fragments were used to reinforce her bones, her body was the perfect ready made receptical for a soul of the shroud. Still as long as her Lithoid parts didn't receive any more material other than what was already inside of her body and in her armour then they wouldn't be able to grow too wildly, sadly then came along the second source of outside energy.
The Collector's base had been sucked into the void, alongside the hundreds of thousands of husks that were aboard at the time, and the newborn reaper that they had attempted to bring into the world. Reaper nano-technology wasn't designed to survive the extremes of the Shroud, it was designed to warp whatever being it came into contact with into a syntho-organic zombie, even if the nano-tech wasn't completely destroyed, she had saliva glands that could break down the raw inorganic material mixed in with the organic material. No the issue here was that the broken down material was being fed into self replicating minerals that had just learned how to make more of itself again.
If every moment of her continued existence wasn't already pain and agony she might wonder what she looked like right now with limbs swollen from the Thorian, a broken and twisted body and her bones and cybernetics having decided to grow by themselves. Drifting through the Shroud on the twisted hulk of the Collector's base she finally found the way out through another hole in space time like the one she had arrived in, and was once more greeted by hell as she emerged on a giant neon landscape.
Liara snapped out of her meditations with a gasp, trying to suck oxygen into her body as she processed what was happening.
"Huu. Huu."
"Are you-?"
"I KNOW WHERE SHE IS!" Liara screamed at the top of her lungs, not even Mor'gan could contain her now. "Attention all crew, prepare to depart immediately!" Liara shouted at the top of her lungs.
The newest development was sent to the joint Union and Council command as they reviewed what they were looking at. Aetheyta and the avatar of the Salarian hive were both off doing their own thing while the majority of the Union admirals were off containing the chaos that the three monster fleets were creating in the Terminus System.
The technical term was a space hulk, a massive stretch of wrecked space debris that the shroud had chewed up and spat back out as a singular giant hulk. Wrecks like these are relatively common in Union territory, tens of thousands of ships, stations, reapers and other space debris was hit by the mass relay detonations, smashed together and spat out millions of years later. Under normal circumstances it would be treated as a massive archaeological find, a look into the distant past, a chance for insight into forgotten or unknown technology, but if the Shadow Broker's intel is correct: this was what's left of the Collector's base, and the rotting corpse of the monster that was being born inside of it.
"The Broker is under the impression that this wreck contains the body of Dragoon Shepard." Admiral Hackett stated indicating the Space Hulk displayed in a hologram in question. "I personally don't believe that it's worth the effort to get back, especially considering the systems full of monsters that would have to be crossed to get there, and the fact that said hulk is attracting even more of the abominations, swarming it for food."
"Lately I'm more concerned about this new drug that's coming out of the Terminus sector. I think you are familiar with it." The hologram switched over to one depicting a translucent neon coloured sand. Zro. "Not only does it drive people nuts, but it also grants them or enhances on telekinetic ability as well, which makes it doubly dangerous." Sparatus explained while folding his arms.
"It's also a key component in building psi enhancing implants, similar to how you yourselves use Eezo to make biotic implants." Which means that it's legitimately useful and important that they get their hands on it. Sparatus sighed in response as he knew precisely where this crap had been coming from.
"Please don't tell me that we are once again reliant on Aria Bloody T'Loak and her black market to get a steady supply of pivotal materials?" He already received a severe blow that they've spent billions of credits to buy Eezo from Omega when the Union has basically been treating the material as landfill waste, he'd really like to not have to go back to relying on T'loak for this.
"For now?" The Admiral shrugged his shoulders. "Buy off Aria's stock. All the credits that she's currently accruing are being put to use to fighting to contain the chaos of the Terminus system. But make it clear to her dealers that you are to be their exclusive buyer, and if they don't get the message the first time, arrest anyone who uses it recreation-ally and anyone who is selling it as a drug and the rest will get the hint." Sparatus let out a groan, such was life.
"Your plans to clean up the Terminus system?" Sparatus asked though he expected he already knew what the answer would be.
"Wait until the Reapers come back and crack open the dam on either side." Admiral Hackett stated shrugging his shoulders. "Assuming that our attempts to force them to retreat were more effective than what we thought and they've decided to try and wait us out? We have three enemies that we need to take apart, the Contingency, the Gestalt and the Unbidden. We believe we have an effective weapon against at least two of them." The hologram was replaced by one depicting a massive ship, a familiar roughly hewn surface the entire construct split into several diamond shapes around a centralised core. "You remember our talk about Colossi?"
"A giant super weapon designed to change the layout of a planet that you strapped an engine to for the convenience of transportation. I also recall that you classified most of said weapons as 'crimes against sapient life' with the one that you didn't classify as such being designed to blow up planets." If that was what the Legal one did... "What does this one do?" Sparatus almost shuddered to ask.
"We are proposing the use of the Divine Enforcer. A weapon that is capable of changing the spiritual beliefs and loyalty of an entire planet." A giant brainwashing laser, well now the council can add that to the list of horrors that the Union is capable of unleashing onto the galaxy. The sad part was at this point it didn't even reach the top five. "In the case of the Gestalt, if it doesn't directly bring them back under control then it will at minimum cure their insanity, after a few tweaks. As for the Contingency, while we do not as of yet have a method to bring them back under control the neutron pulse released as a by product destroys all the electronics on a affected planet." Tough love.
"You were the ones going on about how the machines have rights and such nonsense. You supposedly even upload your people's minds into them. You aren't working on a way to bring them back into the fold too?" The hologram was replaced by a read out of computer coding that was disappearing and reappearing at a fast pace.
"This is from an experimental AI, designed specifically to delete and replace its own coding as a way of adapting to and evolving its intelligence over a period of time. It's a technically accurate description of the Contingency, except that there is a ongoing war between two separate AI's that are competing for ownership of the same body, the core of the enemy the flawed coding that created the Reapers themselves and our own allied AI's and VI's." It was a practise strongly discouraged by the Union, but some philosophers have taken a look at the Reaper's propaganda from the previous cycle in a effort to try and discern their motives, at the least the ones given. "'Advance AI capable of independent thought will inevitably rebel against their creators and seek to wipe them out.' This is the argument that went around the last cycle apparently. Based on the hostility from the Contingency we can assume that this goes beyond propaganda and is part of the core belief system of the Reapers." Except that no, that's not how it works, if you don't want a slave rebellion then you shouldn't have slaves. "If the Contingent shares Reaper coding then we can assume that they also share the same belief." Which ironically enough means that the Reapers themselves, their claims to the contrary besides the point, are not free thinking AI's and are instead slaves to faulty programming. "Short of some pretty extreme revamping of their coding there's no way that we can tell to save those who have been affected." An acceptable loss at this point.
"Are you waiting to turn these monsters loose on the Reapers again or is there a legitimate reason why you haven't turned this thing loose yet?" Sparatus asked sounding suspicious.
"It doesn't currently exist." Admiral Hackett stated letting out a sigh. "It is in our honest opinion, an abomination and the Galaxy would be better off without it. So the ones that did exist were dismantled or destroyed." Well Sparatus couldn't argue with that logic. "There are three other major flaws with the Divine Enforcer. The first, as is the case with all Colossi it can only be used planet side, the second is that it's hyper specialisation in supporting it's super weapon means that it cannot be equipped with any other systems other than it's propulsion systems making it a giant target to enemy forces. Most severe of all though, is that we do not know, and don't think, that it can affect the Unbidden."
Those were rather severe flaws. With limitations like those Sparatus wouldn't want to deploy a Colossus either. And looking over it he had a sinking suspicion that he really didn't want to use this colossus.
"Looks like it's made out of Neutron matter, not the Dragon Scales that you people are so proud of." Sparatus stated bluntly, already voicing his worst fears.
"That's because it is." Which means that the Unbidden could tear it apart if they wanted to.
"Of course it is." The Politician in him wasn't surprised. "Lemme guess, the compromise you people made with the rocks for letting them have a colossus to use for their mining to begin with is that it would be easy to destroy?"
"Pretty much." Admiral Hackett stated mirroring the Turian's sigh.
"So to rephrase the earlier question then: how long until you can get the colossus ready to deploy and it actually be in a fit state to make it to the key targets in one piece?" Sparatus asked sounding annoyed.
"If we stripped off all of our ships of Dragon scale and refitted them to go over the hulls of this colossus? 12 months." Years were so difficult to get exact with the different rates that planets moved around their suns. "If we do it right and don't do a crude patch job and keep up a decent escort? 18 months. By that point in time by our estimates we'll be a year into the Reaper war, the machines might've already joined forces with the Reapers while the Gestalt and the Unbidden will have spiraled out of control, or worse went extinct thereby rendering all the work getting the Colossus ready obsolete."
Sparatus wanted to slam his head against the table until he woke up from this nightmare.
Liara spared no expense with her customised warship. Even though efforts had been made to scrub as much malicious code from the Reaper's IFF's as possible the fact of the matter remained that they couldn't be completely cleaned. This as it turned out was a boon. The Reaper code upgraded the systems of the Stealth drive it had been directly attached to, once the end result was studied a new technological innovation was made possible: Stealth-ed warships, anything without the eyes to look directly at them would not be able to see them so long as the stealth drive was active. A layer of Dragon's scales, energy weapons, strike drones, missiles, shields and psi-shields, a Mass Effect Driver, if there was something the Liara could use to cross the void, she got and strapped it to her ship. She was getting a mountain of hazard pay for sitting out here in the void spying on monsters and she had nothing better to spend it on.
"There's another one coming towards us." Unfortunately Liara was learning that the Prethoryn had lots of eyes.
"Kill it." Liara had no time for foolishness.
At once the factories inside of the ship whirled, between the Contingency and the Gestalt the Reaper junk was mostly cleaned up, so it was reasonably safe to use Synth's again. Liara's drones were flat diamond shaped, each one of them one solid mass of Dragon Scale with a in built Ion drive engine and a linked VI program to help guide and coordinate their actions, their edges could vibrate like a high frequency blade to cut through a target, it's in built Mass Effect generator adding more weight behind each attack, at Liara's commands they could cluster together into a huge ball to smash with more force or link together into a giant barrier to defend with. For now, energy weapons, burning jets of plasma and lasers fired from rare crystal to burn and tear away the enemies and their strike craft. The Gestalt were unimportant in the grand scheme of things, only where they are going.
The Space Hulk was easily as massive as a continent, if not bigger, a giant slab of meat and metal that was now rotting away as the scavengers came to drag it away, Gestalt feeding on the flesh, Contingency scavenging it's technology, and the Unbidden who was locked in a three way brawl with the other two spreading their dusty remains all over the wreckage as they continuously sucked the life out of their targets. And yet upon arrival Liara soon found that she hadn't even managed to get fourth place, a Union ship had already parked itself on the wreckage and she could feel... something moving within the space hulk. Something with a level of psionic power Liara has never seen before.
"I'll be in the POl-E chamber if anyone needs me." Liara was in a familiar room with a familiar friend, a AI that was part Thorian, Liara connected to the psychic scanning device and began looking through the memories of the people on board the space ship, to her surprise there was a heavy Batarian presence, constantly chanting Reaper scripture in their minds and curses against the Union and Council. A textbook example of how to block out telepathic mind reading, just replace blocks and blocks of useless or misleading information with Reaper religious texts, so just a different flavour of uselessness. That same textbook also explained how it was possible to by-pass that block anyway at a cost, luckily it wasn't one Liara would have to pay.
"I shouldn't have to emphasise to all of you the importance of this mission." Henry Lawson stood in front of his salvage team, a motley crew of Batarians, as he explained their objectives, or rather lack there of. "Aboard that space hulk is a creature born of a combination of Lithioid, Thorian and advanced cybernetics that have become mangled into one another." The human scientist paced in front of the group. "Now while it isn't pivotal to our long term plans, it does offer insight to problems we may face down the line, and so thus a dissection will be quite enlightening."
"Plans that you have yet to share with us." One of the Batarians piped up, and so Henry rounded on him and glared.
"Psychics are on every ship in the Union, when they get here and see you they will rip whatever information of any value that is inside of your head, so it's wise for your heads to be as empty as possible!" Henry snapped rapping his knuckles on the four eyed alien in question's head and letting the insult sink in for a moment. "Now we will arrive on that hulk within the next few hours, as for information on your target that I can both give and is of any real value: it's useless to me dead!"
So Henry Lawson is a Reaper Cultist too, on top of his existing crimes against Sapient life? Good to know. In the mean time Liara could sense several more intel packets she had yet to liquefy, and she intended to go through all of them.
Once again, the Union has damned them all! It wasn't enough to have their entire civilisation destroyed, it wasn't enough to have entire fleets of civilisation destroying monstrosities to contend with, it wasn't enough to see their gods cowed and humiliated, no now they had to deal with this creature too!
The vision ended with the abrupt liquefication of the Batarian's brain, not from Liara's probing but from having his head beaten off. Liara continued to look at what the Batarian's had been fighting through their many eyes. A rough mishappened body, it's entire right side of it's torso a mass of flailing tentacles, it's left leg an inflated stone heap. What was left of the roughly human parts of the body was covered in familiar golden scales. The head had a mass of mushroom like spores and rare crystals coming out of it that was firing energy beams in different directions. Most important of all, bits of a familiar human like face that resembled a corpse.
Liara broke away with a gasp holding her chest as she processed what she just saw. Shepard was alive! Sort of? Not in any way that she wants to be that's for sure? Is she even still capable of rational thought at this point? All of these questions needed answers, immediately. Like most importantly what did Henry Lawson want with her? Liara did not come unprepared for a fight, not against this specific opponent but she was still more than willing to fight. The Shadow Broker kept a sizable force of mercenaries on standby, ready to head into war on his behalf at a moments notice, or in a million different locations ready to reek havoc at his command, now united under Liara's leadership.
Liara didn't let them know who she was of course, POL-E would do for a temporary Shadow Broker, instead she was simply a high ranking Shadow Broker Mercenary inside of a Fenrir mech suit. The outside of the Space Hulk and it's surface was in utter chaos. Geth and Valhallan synths were in a three way shoot out with energy beings wielding life sapping whips of lightning and acid chucking Rachni based abominations. And deeper inside of the Space hulk, something was screaming. They were in the vacuum of space, sound should not be able to travel, and yet something was screaming. A Batarian fleeing for his life was impaled and picked up by a fleshy tendril as something came shuffling out of the darkness of the space hulk and into view of the warring factions. A familiar broken and misshapen body that looked to be made out of parts from different aliens, growing over one another as they competed for dominance.
"Kill the Batarians, but take the creature alive!"
The Mercs didn't need to be told twice, even once was probably too much considering that the creature that they came here for blasted one and skewered the other three on fleshy tendrils. From here it would be easy, Liara would knock Shepard out using psionics just as Shepard had showed her, they would drag her off to Tuchanka where Mordin could help put her back together again and then they would figure out the rest of this mess. That was the plan, but then a new figure slammed down like a meteorite in between her and the figure that she had come there for. Last time Liara checked, they were in the vacuum of space, so seeing a girl slammed down between her and her prize not even fully dressed let alone wearing a suit and not pop like a zit in the airless void left her a little stunned.
"I believe that individual to be a synthetic." EDI piped up.
Her words made sense, that ass Tor looked almost indistinguishable from a human if not for the lines of silver that cut through his body, the same lines of silver on her body. And yet something didn't make any sense to her, it could just be that the body was meant to simulate involuntary movement to make it more life like, but Liara could swear she saw the girl's chest rising and lowering almost as if she was breathing. Still Liara didn't care about what she looked like. She was obviously an enemy, and she was clearly in the way. Liara got her main gun on the Fenrir ready to fire.
"Sod off." The first thing Liara got was a telepathic message, which she was pretty certain couldn't come from a synth, and the second was the girl raising her hand and letting out a familiar glow of biotics. Liara's gun was wrenched down as a round was fired into the ultra dense material of the hull of the ship.
"Your synthetic is both telepathic and biotic." Liara noted as she liked absolutely nothing about how this situation was shaping up.
"So it is." EDI noted and quickly concluded that what was already a long night was going to stretch on.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: No it isn't, and it never was.
D3Diton: The Union already wiped those out.
Guest: The Batarians were a mistake, born from the leaking genetic material of a Reaper.
