Author's Note: I got an eye Infection, I don't have the time or interest in a large note today. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 55: Omega Part 3
17M 12D 10H Until the Colossus Fires
Omega was a fortress but it wasn't a fortress without its flaws. The giant hollowed out half sphere shell of neutron matter remained for centuries impenetrable, manoeuvring thrusters worked to keep the shield in front of the Reapers while strike craft and point defence worked to buy time until the main weapons of Omega could fire. Concentrated weapons fire from a dozen Reaper ships changed that, the legendary shield that not even the Protheans in the age of old could crack was punched straight through when the Reaper's grew tired of Omega. Blessings were taken where they could. For the first time the people of Omega could expand past the bulwark barrier and Aria was reinforcing the neutron shell with shields, deflectors, point defence turrets and other weapons so that Omega could fight and defend at the same time.
And then the bloody Unbidden showed up to wreak their ugly heads with bloody matter disintegrators! Omega's prided shell has thus fallen to ruins, grotesque tumours of expanded matter having been strewn all over it's body as people work to clear away the rubble and expand their defences. And yet the nightmarish creatures kept coming, the countless mines of Omega once hid the Vorcha inside, now they hide countless Unbidden warlocks, and worst yet the Wizards, Unbidden whose immaterial bodies have mixed with powdered Eezo that still cakes the mines of Omega. The Wizards combine the precise psionic fields of the Unbidden with the mass manipulating powers of biotics, calling scrap debris down from above or casting defenders into the void.
Such was the case when yet more of the abominations were called forth it was all hands on deck to wipe them out. Eclipse made up the Vanguard, heavy armour met Sentinel omni-armour and omni-shield met strong biotic training, Vorcha charged around the battlefield running interference as they attacked with heavy weapons and Monster X shattering the fragile psionic constructs and shroud born creatures, intending to drown out the enemy monsters, Talon Snipers attacked from afar, firing magnetised charges of hot exotic plasma to blow the enemy up after they've been immobilised. With every engagement the Unbidden wreak devastation on the surface of Omega.
With every squadron of soldiers killed a new Unbidden is spawned, some times a wizard sometimes a warlock, everyone who falls to the latter a familiar is spawned, a wyrm of blue crystal to flush the defenders from their holes. But the defenders weren't going anywhere, not even the afterlife. Every-time a defender falls Omega's medical suite comes to life, a cybernetic frame of metal muscle wire is assembled inside of a incubation tube, Thorian spores matched to the subject is flushed inside until a body has been fully formed. The Thorian body is slowly fed fungicide and replaced with medi-gel until a fully realised clone of the deceased has been prepared, only then does the subject get a fresh upload of memories.
The entire process is like a junkie's wet dream, over and over again they get to experience the fresh high of their favourite combat stims. It was an experience Aria was familiar with, climbing into her personal Fenrir mech and getting ready to go into battle. Usually she doesn't even bother, anything less than a warship wasn't honestly worth the effort it would take to bring the Fenrir to the surface. There was one above them right now, so time to whip out the big boys.
"Injecting Monster Now. I want to be blasting those bastards outta... the..." What Aria didn't plan for was that someone had come along and replaced her favourite Stim cocktail with an anesthetic. "Fuuu..." And then Aria fell unconscious as the Fenrir breached what she believed to have been the surface.
In actuality one of Liara's ship's had fitted itself over the airlock that Aria had been using, in a few short moments Aria had been extricated from her machine and in her place was the terminator that Garrus's group had been working on for the past several weeks. After that the Fenrir was released to wreak havoc while stage two went into action.
"You have done this before right?" Garrus asked while Looking at Shepard suspiciously who only rolled her eyes in response.
"I am a professional!" Shepard stated bluntly as she cracked her fingers. "And I fixed your failed attempt at making a Terminator!"
As Garrus recalls Liara was the one who provided the parts necessary to match Aria's biometrics and the hyper realistic skin to fool everyone that the machine would get close to. Right now EDI was the one who was reprogramming Aria's grey box while building a remote AI program to puppet the Terminator that they had made in her likeness.
"What are you doing again?" Garrus asked as he thought over the situation looking confused.
"Erasing Aria's actual memory so that she thinks that she was taken prisoner by the Contingency before she started shipping drugs out to the citadel." Then Garrus and his team 'rescues' Aria and she turns her attention to eliminating the contingency out of spite instead of sabotaging the citadel government by feeding the civilian populace with combat stims to make them rampage. "And why did the Contingency keep her alive in this scenario?" Garrus asked sounding rather suspicious.
"Prod her for responses and torture her for information? Prevent any failsafes that would auto clone her a new body with Lich based technology, either one works in all honesty." Shepard replied while she shrugged her shoulders. And Shepard accused them of coming up with a bad plan.
"Gentlemen please." Liara asked from above. "Try to remain civil while the rest of us are busy working." Some of them have to control the Fenrir just as a point of reminder.
17M 12D 5H Until the Colossus Fires
Tali had spent days studying telemetry of the Contingencies movements, and her biggest conclusion was that she liked absolutely nothing about what was happening. The Quarian had consulted with the Lithoids, various guesstimates were made on the ratio's of Eezo to Neutron matter the Contingency were pulling out of worm holes and how much of that matter could be used to make the Custodian ships. The short answer was 'not good' The long answer was 'very not good.' With the amount of material that was moving around several fleet worth of material had been gathered together, and if Xen's theory was correct then they would've had time to build them all by now, and yet they weren't, the same sized raiding parties were being sent out with minor improvements to their technology occurring each time. The list of possible answers as to what they were building with the technology in question was short and unpleasant.
1. A megastructure, something to expand their reach, increase their energy capacity, or another matter decompressor.
2. A Colossus, a gargantuan union ship designed to break worlds over it's knee, brainwashing, weaponized terraforming, or outright destruction was all part of the potential arsenal of devastation that they could wield. Right now they needed to find out, which meant getting through the waves of altered gravity coming off of the area.
"Preparing test ship #8." Copying the Contingencies ships or repurposing the ones they caught would offer them no quarter, like the Reapers before them, and much like the council after them, the Contingency preferred neutron carbon cubrate for their hulls, reinforced with Mass Effect barriers, the hulls would become molecularly locked in place and ride the currents of anti-gravity to their destination, a proverbial one way trip. Which also meant that they couldn't ride them back. Instead they had to prepare to take advantage of a single opening to probe the enemy defences, a unmanned ship coated in Dragon Scales, equipped with a jump drive and Zero Point module containing enough power to jump into the heart of the phenomena and jump back, most pivotal of all, an extensive sensor array and high capacity data core designed to specifically to soak in all the information in the immediate area. Right now there was one of the few breaks in the Mass Effect tides that kept distorting their sensor feeds, so now was the time to act.
"3. 2. 1!" Tali clicked the button and the unmanned probe disappeared in a flash. Now here's hoping they can get it back this time.
17M 11D 19H Until the Colossus Fires
The reprogramming process took the better part of a day to do but right now the group had stumbled across a new problem. Sitting on a trey between the members of the operation was a eyeball, attached to the side a device that was rather common among STG operatives, a ocular flashbang designed so that if your eyes blink a certain sequence a small explosion occurs that destroys the head of the person it was inside, this specific device was extracted from Aria, along with her eye, after Shepard pulled out the memory of her getting it implanted and it left them with a conundrum.
"So there's no way for the Contingency to have figured out that this thing was there?" Shepard asked as she summed up the latest money wrench in their plan.
"None." Which means that there's no way they could've prevented Aria from detonating it, thus triggering the appearance of another of her clones, and by extension their 'rescue.'
"Well this plan is a failure." Shepard stated as she let out a sigh.
"So what are we going to do with her?" The Dragoon turned to face their prisoner, the one eyed Asari who they had taken captive in a bizarre plot to seize control of Omega. A plan that at this point looked like it was going to fall apart at any moment. "Huu. EDI is there anyway that you can think of to dismantle this mess?" Shepard asked looking up at the ceiling like it had owed her money.
"Keep your eye on the battlefield and off Aria at the same time that her Fenrir gets destroyed." EDI stated bluntly. "Worst case scenario: Aria remains roughly as ornery as she is right now and we have to call in Union forces to seize the station." A pause for dramatic effect presumably. "But in the best case Scenario? Aria focuses her wroth on making life difficult for the Contingency. You saw her after the destruction of the Arena, all of her people are too terrified of her to disagree with what she does."
"You hear what she just said Liara?" Shepard asked looking up at a surveillance camera.
"Just make sure Aria stays unconscious, and try to direct her thoughts away from the Citadel and the Union." Liara stated as they went to work. Credit where do, the Fenrir was fast, dodging through the waves of Wizard's debris storms, Matter Disentegrators, the terrain spontaneously expanding and falling apart as tunnels beneath them were crushed with artificial meteor storms, but being attacked alone does not a battle make, 'Aria's' main gun blazed to life and let out a cacophony of tank shots aimed at the bulk of the Unbidden ship the explosions shattering the hull into blue dust, the rest quickly disintegrating into blue powder. Thus the 'Kill Aria doppleganger by crushing her with unbidden debris' plan ended in a abrupt and rather messy failure.
"So... plan B then?" Garrus asked as Shepard just let out a sigh.
They needed to destroy the doppleganger in a way that won't lead back to them, otherwise Aria is going to renew her campaign against the joint Citadel/Union forces with vigour.
"Huu." It was in that moment, that singular solitary moment, where Shepard complete and utterly lost her patience with this situation. Walking up to Aria Shepard picked her up by her neck and looked directly into her face and slapped her awake.
"Wha!?"
"Are you awake now sleepy head? Good." And then Shepard went into Aria's mind.
The universe was vast and filled with countless horrors.
When Aria regained consciousness she was greeted by the feeling of her entire body dissolving in acid. The pain was unbearable, intense, agony like nothing she had ever comprehended before wracked every fibre of her being and when she was on the verge of unconsciousness?
Aria was in the grip of a Unbidden warlock, the creature looking at her with a feeling of malicious glee as it fed on her, all of the bioelectricity going through her system, her body rapidly breaking itself down to provide more energy, the monster deliberately slowing down it's feeding to draw out it's victim's agony while forcing them to stay awake until the moment of her death.
Aria now found herself wandering the shroud, forced to consume the flesh of the Reaper's victims for sustenance, her mind and body going through constant and agonising torture as her flesh warped, grew and underwent other unpleasant mutations.
In the ship Aria's head had caved in, clear soup like fluid flowed out of her ears, tear ducts and nose before Shepard unceremoniously dropped her corpse on the ground.
"Liara. My armour!"
Perhaps if Shepard was more patient or a paragon of virtue or had more time she would've found a better way. As things stood? The galaxy was on the cusp of an extra galactic war against literally the oldest civilisation to ever exist, three different brands of horrors were carving apart the Terminus System for territory, and she was stuck wasting time dealing with a glorified drug kingpin. Patience is a fixed resource and Shepard was fresh out.
It was a surprise, to put it mildly when the personal cloning chamber of Aria T'Loak whirled to life and started to assemble a fresh body for Omega's tyrant, considering the fact that at last report she was still alive and was being brought back celebrating the latest victory against the Unbidden's attacks. The Asari warlord in question collapsed out of her tube and landed on the ground dry heaving and naked. Then as she tried to get up again she saw a golden boot, leading up to a warrior dressed in a the scales of a dragon, and considering she was inside of her lounge at Afterlife Prior to Omega's makeover this was the inside of her mind.
"I have a complaint." Shepard stated bluntly.
"Oh you have a complaint?" Aria asked glaring hatefully. "Well as long as we have the chance to-" Agonising screeching pain like nails on a pane of glass echoed out.
"We do not. I am going to complain and you are going to listen." The Dragoon stated bluntly.
"And If I do not?" That horrible agonising pain that Aria had been through already? The one that literally liquefied her brain? She got another dose of it to the same result. For the second time in as many minutes Aria's cloning chamber whirled to life and she found herself back in her precious afterlife, though it was a little different, cracks were in the walls like glass being strained.
"What... would you like to complain about?" Being tortured to death twice in a row has a way of making people shut up and listen.
"I'm so glad you asked. You see you are wasting my time. The galaxy is somewhere between on the brink of war or already at it and you are sabotaging our allies. You will cease doing this immediately." Shepard stated in simple terms, like she was speaking about some immutable fact.
"And if I don't?" In the cloning room Aria once again dropped dead leaking brain soup out of her face directly on top of her previous corpse and the cloning machine whirled to life once again, a new body was half built and half grown and Aria was once again pulled into her own inner world.
"Do you understand your situation yet?" Aria looked around, the cracks in the club were bigger, furniture started floating on its own, and the edges of her vision had started to fray.
"Oi!" Aria snapped forward at attention. "Do you understand your situation yet?" Aria started breathing heavily as she looked around fearfully. "I'm so glad that you do. Oh and keep the Terminator that Garrus and his friends were going to use to replace you. After all if your minions realise you suddenly turned chicken shit they might get ideas on trying to replace you."
And thus Aria was released from her cloning chamber, tripping over her other two corpses as she scrambled around in a panic. In the days that followed a message was sent out from Omega to all of Aria's associates in Citadel territory telling them to immediately pull and destroy all of their stocks of Monster X. Some followed that order, others did not. Within the week each of them had died in horrible pain and Agony. Sale of Monster on the Black Market immediately ceased after that, instead a steady supply of Zro was being funnelled into Citadel and Union space in order to manufacture psionic weapons.
17M 4D 11H Until the Colossus Fires
Aria in the mean time had to take a few days to recover her wits before she could make a public appearance again, admittedly though she had help, basically being handed two clones of herself and being given free reign to replace their melted brains with the Thorian Medigel combo and implanting their own Grey Boxes with linked VI programs essentially meant that she had her own private hive mind going, which she was mostly applying to the generally depraved in a attempt to wipe away Shepard pumping her brain full of madness.
Once the group knew for a fact that Omega was no longer a concern Garrus loaded his entire crew onto the Shadow Broker ship, some had already made plans for their own future elsewhere, others would be going directly under Liara's employment. Shepard was both catching up and catching Garrus up.
"A 'Synthorg?'" Garrus asked for the sake of confirmation.
"That's what EDI's calling it. The Union doesn't really have a word for 'Synthetically engineered Cyborg.'" Shepard stated bluntly.
"And they're describing it as a flat upgrade?" Garrus asked bluntly.
"I would make a Chimpanzee and a Human comparison but the reference would be lost on you so instead, Yes, from what I have been told what has been put into this thing and the level of work on it is vastly superior to any Borg that has ever borged before." Garrus made a mental note to look up a Chimpanzee later.
As Shepard entered the mess hall she was greeted by Liara, who was sitting next to a young half naked roughly human like creature with grey scaley skin and several tendrils coming out of her back wearing short shorts, a bikini top and little else. EDI's new body was still recognisable to Shepard, the issue here was that she was recognisable in the way where you see a old childhood friend again after being apart for years.
"What the Hell EDI? You looked like a teenager the last time I saw you? What has it been a week a week in an half?" Shepard asked making her blatant confusion at the newly unfolded situation known.
"It would appear that whatever lifeform this is it grows at an accelerated rate. Rather fascinating I should note." EDI explained looking down at her features.
"Speaking of which your new gas mask is ready." Liara stated as she tossed EDI a mask with two tubes of green liquid attached which EDI secured around her face.
"This organism also seems to prefer an Oxygen Exotic gas based atmosphere as well." While the Synthorg continued to discover new and exciting details of her body Garrus tapped Shepard on her shoulder.
"Why is she half naked?" The Turian's confusion was rather abundant.
"Because every inch of her body sprouts weapons." Liara stated letting out a sigh. "We've been trying to figure out what this form is actually for. So far we've eliminated infiltration." The metal Lizard skin and Tiyanki tendrils do make that a little hard. "A weapons platform." Because why the hell would you make one that looked like a little girl. "We believe I maybe a attempt to engineer a superior life form, but with the exotic gas requirement I would be a rather expensive one. Then there's my biometrics and muscle memory programmed via Nano Technology."
At once EDI stood up and with a biotic push opened up an area in the cafeteria. Standing on her tiptoes EDI proceeded pirouette, leap through the air gracefully before abruptly switching into a roundhouse kick and a flurry of blows.
"Ballet and Martial arts?" Shepard asked sounding confused before the proverbial ballet slipper dropped. "Ah damnit!"
"That is most likely the case." EDI seemed to agree with Shepard's assessment, having realised where else she saw EDI's current face before.
"Can someone fill me in?" Garrus asked having not yet been let in on whatever everyone was talking about. "She's Miranda, or at the very least a good Approximation of her." Another name that Garrus had to look up later. "Which also means that we know who made this thing and sent it after Shepard."
"Henry Bloody Lawson! I swear if I ever see you again I'm putting one right between the eyes!"
17M 4D 11H Until the Colossus Fires
Sparatus used his omni tool to cross out a picture of Aria that was in a holo display. The other three pictures was a Unbidden Warlock, a Prethoryn Hive Queen, and a Contingency Synth.
"The last reports from the Quarians?" Sparatus asked sounding more annoyed than anything else.
"Still no update on what the Contingency is trying to do." Sparatus's secretary stated bluntly.
"The Quarians haven't even been able to get a probe past them yet." Sparatus raised a mandible and ground his teeth in frustration.
"The Gestalt?"
"The Krogan have had more luck. They're somewhat familiar with the creatures that the Hive Fleets are basing their monstrosities on." The Secretary explained bringing up Data on what strategies the Krogan were using.
16M 30D 12H Until the Colossus Fires
The technical term was a Spiral of Death. Klixen are hive minded creatures, not in the telepathic way that most intelligent races seem to be, but rather in the ant like pheromones that they produce to communicate and cooperate kind of way. Worker Klixen mark paths to food with pheromones which they and other worker ants then follow back to the food source to carry back to their nests, occasionally, far more regularly depending on the size of the Quad's on the Krogan scouts trying the stunt, the Scent Pheromones end up creating a circle that the Klixen in question are forced to follow going around and around over and over again continuously releasing a fresh trail of trail scent until they eventually either stumble upon food or die of exhaustion, in the latter the Klixen that drop are torn apart and eaten by the others.
Currently it wasn't just the Klixen that was being subjected to this phenomena, after the Thorian took over Tuchanka's eco system various animals modified to respond to these Pheromones in order to make micromanaging the various animals easier. The Thorian didn't need a massive well organised army it needed a giant mob of violence that it could sick on any Reaper that got planet side and not turn on itself in the process, now that the Gestalt's hive mind had gone mad they had become easy to manipulate like this. And right now Grunt was off to the side of this mass slowly dying giant insects and other unfortunates, beaten, battered and bruised, a gash in his arm where his Omni-tool use to be as he glared directly at the face of Jane Shepard holding a gun on him.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: First, and I cannot emphasise this enough, BETA TEST! You hire speed runners, you hire gamers, you hire all kinds of people who professionally find bugs for a living so that when you release your product it's not an unplayable abomination. Second, Base building, the entire point of the game is that you are going onto into a largely uninhabited sector building a colony for people to live on, so you include base building mechanics ala Fallout 4 with modular snap together pieces or Star Hawk with prefab buildings being dropped out of the sky. Thirdly, the Kett, their entire schtick is that they are supposed to be genetically engineered hybrids of every race that they have encountered or conquered, do not make their entire government out to be cartoonishly evil super-villains bent on Galactic domination, include more variants that are not just humanoids with bones glued to their faces, use them to introduce other races in the galaxy, like snake like, insect like, fish like, if the new Kett variants look like a person can make a costume out of them and wear it, then go back and do it again!
Monster King: Thank you for saying so.
