Author's Note: Okay so One more Chapter until NaNoWriMo, after that don't expect anything again until January. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 64: The Punitive Fleet Part 2
15M 01D 09H Until the Colossus Fires
When Admiral Shepard arrived at the Shanxi Orbital Security centre, the entire area was the scene of chaos, various desks and cubicals were lined up against a single hallway in the form of makeshift barriers, behind which various officers were decked out in tactical hard suits and had their rifles aimed at a single interrogation room down the hallway, all non essential personnel were evacuated from the premises. The Admiral just shook her head in the negative as she was handed her tablet by one of her assistants.
"Biometrics, DNA, Fingerprints and even Psi-readings all come back positive." Said assistant stated simply, having used every conceivable measure to ascertain the man behind the door's identity.
"Bio-printing, Clone, Bio-printing, Grey Box." The Admiral stated in no uncertain terms.
Modern cloning technology stores a person's genetic information digitally, assembles strains of genetic code on a molecular level, and from there cultivates a subject's biological matter before an advanced and sophisticated 3d printer system assembles the material together into the exact layout of the person having their body recreated, right down to the finger prints. Said modern Cloning technology is paired with modern Grey Box technology, made using Crystal Hive brand rare crystal that records all of its host's memories and thought patterns, as such almost everything a person is can be scientifically recreated and reassembled to the point that the difference is negligible. Lawson might even have more than one of himself running around.
"And as for you clowns! Stand down and clean this place up!" Admiral Shepard was not remotely amused by the notion that Lawson can make the entire Union look absolutely ridiculous just by walking in the front door. "He's made each and every one of you look like fools! If no one here can keep calm under a little bit of pressure then I need to look into having whoever is in charge here replaced!" The various men scattered while Amanda Shepard walked forward into the room holding one of the most wanted men in the galaxy prisoner, and immediately her mood worsened just a tiny bit more.
"Good evening Admiral." Lawson was seated alone in the interrogation room, apparently the people outside had been very thorough in searching him and as a result the only thing he had to protect his modesty was the large news paper that he had been reading, that someone doubtlessly went through the trouble of printing off for him, which meant that he got someone to do it for him. "As you can see I have nothing hidden on or in my person." Just to emphasise his point the nudist stood up and gestured to various surgical scars lining his body, and well defined muscle tone though the admiral saw no point in indulging the man's ego or his bio-printed anatomy by commenting on it. "Your people have even removed my sub-dermal implants." The Admiral threw an orange jumpsuit onto the table as she snapped her fingers and gestured downwards.
"Pants!" Once the matter of Lawson's non-existent modesty was addressed they could get down to the reasons behind this three ringed circus. "What are you doing here you egotistical loser?"
"You may have seen the news." Lawson held up the newspaper, featuring an 'artist's rendition' of a certain draconic monster making way through the punitive fleet. "You've been treating my daughter quite poorly."
"Don't you mean your science experiment?" Amanda asked as she let out a snort of derision. "As I understand it you didn't even use your own genetic material this time. Even then it's only barely your experiment, or do we need to go over how much mot you begged, borrowed, and stole to make your little project a reality?"
"I have never claimed credit for another's work." Lawson shrugged his shoulders as if he did nothing wrong. "As for my daughters: Miranda and Oriana can both be considered educational failures in my mindset, I am not insane enough to continue repeating my mistakes over and over again."
"And why would you?" Amanda smoothly countered. "You have clearly escalated your capacity for mistakes since custody of Miranda and Orianna were taken away from you." Which looped the conversation back from the beginning. "Why are you only appearing right now?"
"I had to make arrangements for the rest of my kin before I went out to address the problem of Alpha's condition." Lawson stated annoyed. "You may recall that the last time one of my daughters entered your custody she ended up tossed into a gas giant and mutating into a dragon Unbidden hybrid, and the time before that you ended up destroying her mind and uploading my failure of a AI into her body. You'll excuse me if I don't trust the idea of leaving them unprotected while I clean up the mess you people made." Lawson glared at Amanda hands folded together.
"Our mess!?" Amanda snapped glaring at her opponent balefully. "Your 'Daughters' have been rampaging across the Terminus System snatching up Turians, picking fights with Union personnel and making off with reaper technology! For Dragon's sake I don't even know if you've been indoctrinated or not!"
"If I was the shot of Thorian your people gave me would have taken care of it." Lawson stated as if his logic was infalible. "It's not easy trying to conduct my research with you people chasing after me all the time."
"Most people's 'research' doesn't involve manufacturing suped up monsters and treating them like your own children." Amanda snapped this situation wearing thin on her.
"How is your daughter by the way? Not having any problems keeping herself together after all the alien organs that were shoved into her body?" The table broke, Amanda's fist was one of the few mysteries of the Universe Henry had no desire to trifle with. "Ah yes, bludgeoning your problems into submission, the Union way. Fine then, allow me to be the mature one here and steer this conversation back on track shall I?" That didn't mean that he was above snarking at it though. "Your attempts to kill or recapture Alpha are thus far failing correct?" Henry stated while he folded his hands together and leaned back into this chair, thanks to his newspaper he already knew the answer.
"And you believe you can do better?" Amanda stated as she leaned back into her chair. "You intend to do what? Use us as a taxi to get aboard the punitive fleet and retrieve your favourite attack dog before we put her down?" The Admiral scoffed at the notion. "And then what? Hope that we don't kill the two of you?" Amanda was in no mood for this man's schemes. "Hope that we don't get rid of the two of you once your usefulness has expired?" The Admiral's eyes drained of emotion, in that way in which you reach the point beyond fury and loop back to calm. "At this point there's an entire wing of the punitive fleet that's already a write off because of your 'daughter.' What's one or two more ships flown off into the sun just to put you out of our misery?" Henry cocked his brow.
"You don't sound like someone who needs help. Which is again odd because..." Henry held up the newspaper again in response.
"'Horizon Colony.'" Amanda didn't need to memorise after mission reports, when it comes to this man she's lived them. "Site of an illegal laboratory using the colonists as experimental subjects in studying the effects of Reaper indoctrination." After all without the Thorian there's a limit to what can be done for those affected by the Reaper's brainwashing. "740 individuals humanely terminated as a result of indoctrination. 285 Soldiers of the Union lost their lives in the resulting police action! An entire city glassed! All. Because. Of You!"
"Science requires sacrifice. Or have you forgotten that the Union still utilises my creations to this day? My Research-"
"Is an abomination and so are your creations." Amanda stated looking down coldly at Lawson. "You will be tried for your actions, and eventually executed. No Pardon and no Parole."
Henry just shrugged his shoulders in response.
"I'm sorry we couldn't come to an arrangement."
Lightning divided the room, the security force-field that is designed to telefrag incoming wormhole users, in this case a single canister was shoved through. A nanite cocktail was released into the room, entering not Lawson or Amanda but rather attacking the walls and the camera's ultimately disabling the security force-field along with all the other electronics in the room. Amanda took out her personal side arm, locked to her biometrics so that Lawson couldn't turn it against her and opened fire, she was however interrupted by a new worm hole and the mechanical grasper of a tendril inside of it, the biotic field it produced blocked the shots from Amanda's weapons and allowed Henry to be pulled through to the other side of the portal as it closed. Amanda let out a sigh, frustration and exasperation mixed together.
"Great. Now we have to rethink security protocols again." Amanda was more annoyed than anything else. This is the main reason why the Salarian's have such difficulty in infiltrating their security is because they have to deal with this crud all the time.
15M 01D 08H Until the Colossus Fires
Henry was given a towel to help him dry off his cold sweat, surrounded by his collection of misfits and monsters of his own making.
"Well, I would want to say that could've gone better..." He knows full well that the Union hates him, run by small minded individuals that they are, they fail to see the potential and importance in the work that he is doing, well it matters little to him, he still has his priorities, skewed and weighed by emotion they may be.
"Are we still going to help Big sis?" Anna asked as she took the Towel from Lawson who let out a sigh.
"We'll have to dismiss the easy way for now." Henry stated as he held his chin.
"Then we do this the hard way." A nearby voice growled out, one of the newer additions sitting in the Shadows.
"Yes speaking of which did you at least get the item I asked for while I had planetary security up in arms?" Henry's attention was directed to a display case. The case had a indoctrination blocker attached to the side, designed specifically to neutralise any signals coming out out of the contents of the case, itself made out of a special smart glass that blocked the occasional energy beam that the device emitted. The artefact within was a large crystal obelisk, identical to the one that Alpha found on Palaven, and identical in function. Lawson was a excellent multitasker, his attempt to sue for peace made a excellent distraction while his extended family raided the Reaper corpse that was buried on the planet. "Does it still work?" Henry asked his hand on the glass.
One of the Synthorg's held up a small plastic cage, inside was a white haired red eyed lab rat with the familiar blue circuit lines and other bits of technology that was covering the individual, in other words a Husk.
"It doesn't seem to affect us." Which made sense to a degree, as the Synthorgs were merely better more advanced Husks. Small miracles.
"Don't take any chances." Henry stated bluntly. "Further experimentation is on hold until we can get Alpha back, and only after we know that she's safe and sound again." With that the group went off to their own business.
14M 30D 22H Until the Colossus Fires
It's been a while since all six of them were together, particularly since one of them was thought to be dead. Ashley and Kaiden in particular were shooting their old unit leader all kinds of dirty looks for not checking in with them. To be fair terminators and apparently Synthorg's have been a thing that they have to deal with now.
"Can you two have your temper tantrum later?" Shepard asked as she rolled her eyes annoyed. "Sam, you're taking point." The Chozo Dragoon was the one most familiar with boarding and fighting on a ship in the void of space. "The rest of you, let's try and get the crazy thing off the ship without destroying it please?"
Thus the Six Dragoons boarded the ship in question. Once it became known what had boarded the Punitive fleet's ship, drastic measures had been taken. While security personnel were deployed to try and isolate the intruder in question the other ships in the fleet had been pulled away to evacuate. The good news was that the sacrifices of the security team weren't going in vain as the ship had been powered down, and no other worm holes leading to other ships had been opened, nor had the Dragon reappeared. By all appearances this 'Alpha' was thoroughly contained on the ship which was now drifting through space. Each of the six Dragoons had been deployed to a different deck of the ship and were now clearing it floor by floor looking for Alpha, their search coordinated by Shadow Broker Liara from her personal head quarters, theoretically floating out of the effective range of Alpha's wormholes.
Liara watched the proceedings on several screens, one from each Dragoon featuring footage from the point of view of their helmets.
"Hey the bodies of the crew that this thing killed were left aboard the ship right?" Leo asked stalking through the corridors as he looked for any trace of the dead, and came up empty.
"Yeah I haven't seen them yet either." Sam stated the lights on her helmet lighting up the empty corridor. "I can tell where they died though." Dents in the walls from bodies being slammed into them, blood from where they were bleeding, ashes from where they got the life drained out of them. "What do you think she's doing with the bodies?"
To their knowledge the only beings that should be running free on the ship is them and Alpha. So who or what would be taking away the bodies and why?
"Think you guys can find the local server?" With the return of the Reapers and the use of their husk technology it had now become common practice to create back up copies of people's grey boxes. The technology existed for a long time but was limited by certain laws in place to prevent the mass production of singular individuals for the purpose of raising an army, cheap slave like labour from/for unscrupulous companies. Now however exceptions were being made considering the nature of the threats that the combined Union Council forces faced, which meant that regardless of the state of their bodies it might still be possible to save their minds if not their souls.
"Working on it." Kaiden was the most tech savvy of the six Dragoons, so when they had a large computer terminal that they needed ripped out of somewhere or a bomb they needed to defuse or some other form of technological madness they needed to address he usually ended up being the one to do it. There's a big difference between having an instruction manual downloaded into your head and having the actual skill to put it to use.
"Oi Radar's picking up movement." Compensating for low visibility was radar and night-vision. The latter was self explanatory in what it was showing Smok, the first on the other hand? "Lot's a movement. Whatever is going on down here I think I just tripped on it." Which meant that now was the time to lay a trap. Liara watched on the monitor as Smok planted mines on the sides of the wall connected to a familiar charge, recyclers, harmless to the ship's integrity, deadly to everything that got caught in their path reducing them to any combination of organic, synthetic, mineral and exotic matter. As an added bonus they basically ignore anything too big to pull in, so the ship itself would remain intact from the burst, in theory.
"Liara I'm leaving control of the detonation to you." Smok stated as he continued down the hallway.
"Then this might be a bad time to mention I found the armoury, or a good time depending on how you look at it." Ashley was the one to pipe in next, and Liara had to agree with the second part of her assessment.
"Smok, something's cleaned out the armoury." Liara warned after seeing the empty room full of weapons racks that Ashley had found. "Which means whatever it is has guns." Lovely. That's exactly what they needed to hear at this point in time. "You get that Smok?"
"Yeah. Kaiden Remind me the Armory has turrets in it right?" Leo asked as he took a slightly more cautious attitude when it came to corners.
"Busy right now." Just because the power was out didn't mean that Kaiden didn't have to be careful about removing the servers. On the contrary it's precisely because there was no power that many of the automated systems that would help him access the Ship's servers were not working, meaning he had to take the can opener approach, and so pulled out his blade and started using the high frequency weapon to begin making a hole.
"Yeah there's turrets, I can see the recharging stations that they use to be plugged into." Ashley's monitor on the other hand opened into a empty room, racks of weapons were empty and dust patterns in the floor indicated that something had been moved away. "I'm going to start sweeping the other rooms now."
"Duly noted, moving on." Liara looked up at Shepard's monitor, she hadn't heard back from her in a while and she was starting to get concerned. "Shepard?" Then Liara noted that the footage was of outside of the ship. "How'd you get outside?"
"Hole torn into the ship, big fat one, cut me off from the rest of the deck." Shepard explained while she passed by the ship's external attachments, using them for cover as she found one of the things she was looking for. "Hey Liara you seeing this?" Unbidden Crystal was growing out of part of the ship, not enough to notice from a distance but when you get closer it's like a thousand shards of broken mirror sticking out of the surface of the ship. "Our favourite monster is doing some 'creative edits' of the ship."
A sound of gun fire from Smok's section of the screens drew Liara's attention.
"Found the turrets." Liara had to actually rewind and rewatch the footage to get an idea of what was going on, by the looks of things it was a little bit of everything, bits of organic matter that was most likely from the Thorian, either the one from the ship's in house colony, the various spores inside of the bodies of the crew or hell, even from inside of Alpha's own personal supply, crystal that was either Zro or Lithoid Rare Crystal in origin most likely both, and with glowing lines of familiar bright blue nanotech stuck out of and lined the Turret at seemingly random intervals, which could be a indicator of the crude hack job done on the turret, or it could be a indicator of something much, much worst.
"I want that turret intact!" Liara broke no room for argument, and the unfortunate part was that Smok really couldn't argue with her.
"I figured that." The Dragoon was more resigned than anything else. The good news was that if they were based on the turrets that Smok knows of then they should be relatively easy to deal with. The Dragoon breathed deep and concentrated on using his telekinesis.
A telekinetic grip grabbed the Turret by its actual gun portion and turned it around to face the other way. Replaying the footage from his helmet again for confirmation Smok was reasonably certain that there was only the one turret here, which now that it was pointing in the other direction and couldn't shoot him he walked up to it and grabbed it where he was lifting it with his mind and started to tamper with it, eventually finding and pressing a button that folded the turret into a small box resembling a cooler, when you ignore the mold like substances growing on the side, or the needlessly sparkly crystals, and so naturally picked up the deactivated turret by it's handle.
"I've captured the Turret, I'm heading off to the drop off point." Smok didn't like the idea of the damned thing breaking while he had to fight something else, nor did he like the idea of whatever transformation this thing was in the middle of finishing said transformation while he was busy with something else.
"Found the Crew." Sam's voice was a whisper, which Liara correctly interpreted as a bad sign.
Reaper Husk Nanotech, Thorian Spores, and while the Unbidden might not be able to directly manipulate a corpse but one that's learned necromancy might be able to. A combination of all of that looked like it was occurring all at once to... something that was wearing the uniform of one of the crew-members but the flesh was swelled with Thorian fungus and scar tissue was formed from unbidden crystal, veins of nanotech manipulating the corpse. It had a disturbing amount in common with the turret that Smok was in the midst of dragging back to the drop off zone, complete with the body slowly being transformed. What was even worst though was that there were several of them, all in varying states of disarray as their bodies decayed and the array of different substances competed. Sam counted about 20 of them here, they needed one of them, not to mention that there were the bodies of hundreds of more crew men around here somewhere, so losing a few in a well placed trap was an acceptable loss in the long run. Luckily for Sam Smok marked down where he put the trap full of recycler charges and made her move.
"Engaging the unknown entities." Sam stated as stepped out into the open.
"Oi!" To Sam's shout the creatures immediately turned around to face her, and wasted no time run up to her, some were swinging wrenches and pipes as crude weapons. So not friendly, which by the standards set by the union's First contact policies, Sam is now legally allowed to wipe out all the 'Hostile Unknown Entities' in sight. The hover pack activated as Sam started to fly backwards, holding up her weapon and unloading into the heads of the undead as she did so. "Head shots don't seem to work as well as they used to point of interest!" The slugs were definitively making contact, material was flying off of their bodies, each bang was accompanied by the undead creatures and/or the ones behind them staggering for a few moments. The issue here was that no matter how many of them were shot they just didn't stay down. "Approaching the trap!" Sam flew by the mines that Smok had attached to the walls, the IFF devices built into the censors didn't blow for the Chozo, they did for the hoard of screaming monsters that ran by. The mines didn't explode so much as implode, a Mass Effect Field gripping the individuals caught in its path and sucking them inside, after a single flash of light a stream of balls of different materials were spat out, organic, minerals, metals and mixed balls of dark purple and bright turquoise. The Mines weren't set to go off all at once, but each of them were spaced far enough apart to not get in each others way or cross over blast zones either. The bad news was that they didn't get any of the crew men to take back to the ship with them.
"AAAUUUOOOAAAAGGGHHH!" The Really bad news was that based on the howling that came out of every corner of the ship they'd get lots more opportunities to collect specimens.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: More of the same probably, I wouldn't be opposed to the same ideas I've mentioned before being added in.
Guest: Enhanced teletpathic range from a combination of Thorian spores and Unbidden Zro amplified with the energy of the Exotic gas picked up on the crew from the science team. As soon as she detected them she abandoned her Dragon body, I already showed the Synthorg's can survive the vacuum of space, then the accordian'd space gave her a short cut to wormhole her way over to the Punitive fleet. As for Henry he made an attempt to resolve the situation with Alpha diplomatically, a scene I borrowed from one of the DCAU movies where they fought the evil alternate universe Justice League.