Author's Note: Okay sorry for the wait But I'm just interpreting this as proof that I need to take time off from publishing for a while. Hopefully literal Months to help me build up chapters and start publishing again next year will do the trick. For Now, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy! And don't forget to check out my new story that I will be publishing for Na No Wri Mo.
Chapter 65: The Punitive Fleet Part 3
14M 30D 03H Until the Colossus Fires
Smok placed the turret he retrieved into a containment tube, after that a wormhole device pulled the pod across hundreds of light years and into range of a retrieval team. The contraption had gotten worst since Smok put it into the tube, small crab like legs with a shell of crystal was clawing at the sides of the tube and a slitted reptile like eye was rolling around where the turret's laser-sight/IFF device used to be. After spotting the members of the retrieval team the machine let out a snake like hiss and opened fire spitting slugs out of an opening that was equal parts fetal maw and six barrelled machine gun, luckily this container went a step beyond bullet proof, it didn't even crack after taking the shots at point blank range. If Mordin wasn't so certain that it would kill him the moment he opens up that tube it would make for a fascinating dissection, as it stood he wasn't even sure he could even drug the thing to render it unconscious, or even what unconsciousness means for it. For now he'd have to settle for watching it finish it's transition into whatever it was becoming.
14M 30D 02H Until the Colossus Fires
The Ship was filled with a wiggling mass of psionics brushing against their minds, not like a crew full of psykers but rather more like a sprawling hive mind like the Rachni but with less of a guiding intelligence. What's worse was that it was spreading. The metals of the ship was being eaten away by the growing organic presence, minerals and alloys consumed and replaced with exotic gas based fat, coiled muscles of metal and rare crystal nerves. How much and in what form the crew was left was hard to say, the longer this went on the more their bodies would decay gradually dissolving into the ship itself alongside the ship's supply of food and waste material as it transformed into... whatever this was.
Shepard was looking at one of the extra's for the ship, a satellite that made up part of the ship's long distance sensor array, or at least it use to be, now, in-between the competition between the various things released into the ship and competing to transform it, it was starting to look like the Baol's Tree of Life.
"Hey guys I got a question." Shepard stated pressing her finger into her coms.
"Shoot." Kaiden replied in-between the sound of his cutting blade.
"Do we know what's powering this transformation the ship is undergoing?" Shepard asked tapping her foot as she looked up at the massive, and still growing, psychic transmitter. "Cause something's fuelling it, exotic gas fat only goes so far."
"Perhaps it's the Synthorg we're looking for with the infinite energy source?" Ashley replied with a touch of sarcasm.
"Theoretically infinite energy source." Shepard corrected but it was a moot point. "So she's still on board somewhere?"
"Or she's built another bigger version of the heart core and planted it somewhere." Smok chimed in at this point in time.
"The likelihood that she's still onboard the ship is extremely high." Sam reported in between the sound of gunfire. "Also I could use some help in here."
"Right then. All of our suits are sealed right?" Shepard asked resulting in a chorus of 'Right' from her fellow Dragoons. "And power to ship systems is still down so the fire suppression system can't kick in right?"
"I believe so." Kaiden affirmed and he was already sighing at the mention of fire being brought up.
"Smok. Torch the ship."
Normally, if a fire breaks out on a ship a force field immediately appears around the affected area to cut off it's oxygen supply and smother it to death, the unfortunate thing about force fields being that they require power to work. Smok was surrounded by flamable materials, the air was vibrating with his power and the walls were being eaten away to produce the flammable exotic gas fat. The entire hallway was soon a massive length of fire and exotic plasma, Smok was protected from the flames thanks to his dragon scale armour. With his telekinesis Smok pushed the plasma away from him down the hallways and into the corridors with the shambling undead crew members. Shepard cut her psychic probing when she felt the hive mind inside of the ship scream in pain.
"Try to keep that stuff away from me." Kaiden stated as the sound of a click going into place sounded. "I have the servers and I'm making my way back for retrieval."
"Well that's good, as long as we don't run into anything unexpected." The ship shook. "Me and my big mouth." Part of the hull broke away, a huge tendril lashed out and shook flaming plasma off, the whole thing resembled a Tiyanki tentacle, though only more shiny with different kinds of crystal and stretches of husk like skin patches. "Well it's nice to see that you're dedicated in your ongoing efforts to be a pain in my ass."
14M 29D 23H Until the Colossus Fires
The new Stealth ship used the latest technology that had been developed by the Union and then improved upon by Lawson, the Union and Council used a heat sink to store the emissions from the ship, Lawson routed the emissions trapping system into the Ship's Zero Point Module, turning the Emissions into energy as it neutralised the exotic particles within. On top of that the ship was covered in a layer of active camo so that in theory anyone who looked directly at it would instead see right through it. On top of that they were also approaching the Bismark from the opposite direction that Liara had parked her ship, that said getting spotted was the least of their concerns at the moment. The Bismark was looking less the part of a Modern sophisticated Union warship and more so a barge from the depths of hell with the way that it was covered in fleshy Thorian Spores and different colours of crystals, the entire ship was glowing with the fires of exotic plasma like the entire ship had been set on fire.
"Is big sis going to be alright?" Karen wasn't the youngest of the girls but she and Alpha were close.
"We'll need to find out where on the ship she is." Lawson held his chin in thought as he mused the situation. "Her mind has clearly been damaged by the abuse of her captors." If Lawson had to guess, Alpha was locked in a cell that was designed to kill her in the event she tried to escape, Lawson has been trapped in similar cells over the years. Now couple that with the fact that she had been taken captive by psychics and it's easy to imagine how her mind had been so badly damaged that it would result in... this. Now what had Alpha found that led her to confront her future captors and give a opening to do this to her?
The ship was in shoddy shape, and Lawson suspected that it wasn't entirely do to the Union's shoddy mass produced engineering and more to do with the fact that it was actively being torn apart and repurposed into a new organism. That and it was on fire, which considering this was the void of space was impressive. Their ship docked with the larger far more fiery one in it's cargo bay. The Union or their annoying Shadow Broker might've gotten here first but they had something they don't, access to the tracking signal built directly into Alpha's body that would allow them to make their way to their missing family member directly. And they fully intend on taking that short cut in due time. But first they need a distraction. A large crate was unloaded into the cargo bay before the group loaded themselves back onto the ship and got the heck out of dodge before the crate itself self destructed.
14M 29D 22H Until the Colossus Fires
Every alarm in the Dragoon's suits went off at once. Knowing what they know about Alpha they set their censors to notify them if they picked up a Unbidden's energy signature, this promptly became useless with the discovery that Unbidden Crystal was crawling over every inch of the ship they got a huge mass of weak false positives. This wasn't a false positive though, this was a massive spike of raw psionic energy released directly onto the ship, someone had turned an Unbidden loose on the ship, Liara immediately suspected that she knew who.
"The Cargo bay are you sure?" Shepard asked as she began making her way through the ship, she found a unexpected short cut in the form of a elevator shaft that was no longer in service, which to her basically meant a hole that she could climb down in Zero G and get to any floor in the entire ship through. The Other Dragoons had the same idea and soon all six of them were gathered together at the Cargo bay at the rear of the ship, where the concentrated psionic energy of all the newly spawned unbidden had made itself known. Shepard nodded to the members of their group, Kaiden set up repulsion type Mass Effect barrier, effectively a one way barrier everything that comes into contact with their side of the barrier gets drawn in and pushed out through the other side, but if anything tried to enter through the other side of the barrier it would be immediately pushed away. The Barrier was additionally augmented with a Rare crystal laser beam that would, if necessary, fry anything that tried to come into contact with the barrier.
"We have a limited amount of power for this thing-" 'Limited' in this case being its own in built ZPM battery that could probably power a city in the citadel for over a year. "Let's try and clean this mess up before we run out of power." For weapons the group choose the classical Claymore, wide spray dispersal of powdered Mot to utterly smash the relatively delicate forms of the Unbidden.
"Open Up!" Shepard was tempted to say they were part of the FBI but she didn't want a lecture from EDI. When the doors opened the entire room was crowded to the brim with Unbidden Warlocks and Wyrms. "Open fire folks!" A Cacophony of gunfire echoed out as the Mot Dust from the Claymores was spewed into the barrier, the force of the shots were significantly amplified, the Unbidden in front were shattered and turned into shrapnel tearing apart the ones behind. Soon the majority of the enemy forces had been crushed into fine dust which now covered the floor of the cargo bay up to the ankles, leaving only one of the energy monsters left standing.
"Oi, New guy." Ashley stated indicating the figure that was in the middle of the carnage. A predominantly orange figure, not that the Unbidden itself was orange but rather was covered in a layer of tech armour complete with dual omni-tools and the omni-gauntlet's preferred by the Batarians, aside from that there were several circuits of nano-tech that were cut through the figure, like a husk, less like a normal Unbidden and more along the lines of a android made using their technology. "What do we even call something like that?" The 'New Guy' raised his arms and lightning flew out into the ship's systems, across the room things like automated turrets forced their way out of the walls, hybrids of physical technology and Unbidden disentegrators. "A Technomancer?"
"Too wordy." Kaiden immediately rejected Ashley's proposed name. Heedless to the carnage that had ground its comrades to dust the unidentified unbidden floated forward.
"WHo ArE yOu~?" The Creature spoke in a distorted voice like it had been badly auto-tuned.
"It can talk?" Leo was more disturbed by that than he was anything else.
"WhO aRe Yooooooouuuuuuu~!" The Unbidden slammed it's arms into the barrier as it spoke.
"It can sing!" Shepard was amused by the notion more than anything else. "If we follow the pattern of the others then this would end up being called a 'Bard.'"
"Is that really the priority here?" Smok rasped as he watched the creature beat its fists against the barrier.
"WHO ARE YOU~! WHO ARE YOU~! WHO ARE YOU~!" The 'Bard' continued to slam into the barrier trying to break through.
"The Stellar Union's Dragoon unit." Shepard started to indicate each member of her team. "Ashley, Kaiden, Smok, Leo, Sam and Jane myself." The creature got quiet all of a sudden, real quiet, as if it didn't know what to do after the first question was answered. "Normally you guys don't talk too much, this is the first time we've been able to get a coherent answer out of one of you guys." A thought occurred to Shepard. "Oi are you Alpha?" The Bard tilted it's head confused.
"'-Alpha?'" Shepard's voice echoed back at the group.
The Group let out a sigh. They know for a fact that most of the meat and potatoes of memories are contained within the actual meat of a person's body, if this was the Unbidden that Alpha's body played host to then it was entirely possible that she lost her memory with the lost of her physical body.
"Hey." Shepard started to play with the holo-projector on her arm, soon she produced the holographic head of a highly familiar and hated man: Henry Lawson. A loud buzzing noise echoed out, a electronic growl, cracks and crackles appeared from the gauntlets of the Unbidden as it began forcing it's way through the barrier, all the while maintain eye contact with the holograph, as if it was forcing it's way through the barrier just to get to Lawson.
"So clearly it knows Lawson." Ashley stated as Shepard nodded in agreement.
"I can appreciate the feeling of wanting to strangle Lawson." Shepard took a holo-decoy out of her belt and uploaded Lawson's specs into the device before dropping it on the ground and walking away, the addition of Council minature Fabricators to their suit's equipment has significantly increased their array of tools and weapons they have on hand, particularly the disposables like this one. Soon a full body Lawson hologram appeared in front of the field, by the looks of things the Bard was either going to break through right then and there or kill itself trying, however suddenly the holograph was shot in the head by Shepard, in full view of the Bard, which made the holograph disappear from view. The Bard suddenly backed away, confused. "So you're definitely not Lawson's friend." Shepard stated as she turned to face Kaiden. "Drop the Barrier. We need to get our guest here back to the ship."
"Is that wise?" Ashley asked voicing the thoughts of literally everyone present, including chances were good the Bard.
"First contact protocols." Shepard stated as if it were obvious.
"Isn't it a little late for that?" Unbidden have been around for decades, Kaiden was in pre-school when he first heard of them rearing their ugly heads across union space.
"This is the first time we've been able to hold a conversation with one of these things let alone talk. We need to get it back to someone in the diplomatic divisions." Shepard explained though Smok raised his hand to speak.
"I have a question. If this isn't who we came here to find in the first place, then where is she?" Smok's question left the entire group stunned into silence.
14M 29D 19H Until the Colossus Fires
Alpha was in horrible shape, they ultimately had to take the captain's chair along with her on account of her body breaking down and fusing into it. It will take weeks of work to peel her off of that, weeks more to get her into shape again, not to mention the mutations her body had undergone seemingly in response to the massive quantities of energy that passed through her body like the horns that had grown out of her head.
"So how long do you think the distraction will last for?" Karen asked while she pressed her face into the containment cell that Alpha had been loaded into.
"Do you mean how long their 'discovery' of an Unbidden with the capacity for logic, Language and reason will grab someone from the Union's attention for?" Lawson scoffed at the entire notion.
He creates a device the way to protect the masses against indoctrination and he gets put on the most wanted list. He created a hyper sophisticated AI program that is near single handily managing the Union's entire fleet of ships and he's deemed a threat to galactic security. He has no doubt in his mind that the Experimental Unbidden that he created will be the key to establishing positive relationships with the Unbidden in the future, and yet someone will take issue with his methods and the determination to see him and everyone he gives a damn about will be destroyed. Henry looked back on the ship, the experimental Unbidden he left onboard would be yet another golden boon that he gifted to the Union on a silver platter, so in addition to that he left behind a little something to help cover their trail. And it was as he was thinking that that said cover up decided to rear it's ugly head.
The entire front section of the ship dislodged itself, probably trying to get away from the rest of the burning mass. Chunks of the hull broke away, joined with huge lashing tendrils in great meaty limbs, lashing in the opposite direction that the creature wanted to go, which is to say away from the hull that it just discarded like a swimmer kicking off from the wall to get a head start on their swimming.
"Let's get out of here. If we're lucky no one will know that we were here."
14M 29D 19H Until the Colossus Fires
The trek back to the ship was ultimately short lived as the group was suddenly interrupted by the entire wreck spontaneously breaking in half, flailing tendrils and burnt flesh pushing the newly formed beast away.
"Well we found Alpha." Kaiden voiced his completely valid opinion on the matter. "The Question is do we bring him along or do we drop him with Liara first?" The Bard had been following them along, the fact that it hasn't tried to kill them yet was being interpreted as a good sign at least.
"The Seven of you are mosquito's to that thing." Liara's voice echoed throughout all of their helmets.
"Leave dealing with it to me." Liara's ship seemed to nearly split in half as a excess of bristling fire power made itself known. To begin with: a tractor beam, a Biotic field focused via a Rare Crystal Laser fired through a Super Conductor Barrel reinforced with a Mass Effect Field. The Beam carried the Mass Effect field all the way over to the creature across the void of space, the weightless particles pushed even farther via anti gravity. The Beam connected, wrapped the creature in a Mass Effect Barrier, and then the current was reversed, the beam went from pushing to pulling, and the creature from within the barrier was pulled towards Liara, and then she really let him have it.
Turrets popped from the main weapons deck of Liara's ship, inside Neutron density Uranium, Iron and Tungsten was decompressed and subjected to mass augmenting fields as they were divided into chunks the size of refrigerators before promptly being spat out of the turrets in bursts every five seconds. Zero Point Modules, very small ones with the minimal amount of space possible, were converted into Neutron tipped war heads and loaded onto VI controlled missiles, entire racks of them were deployed and fired in a swarm. On the sides energy draining weapons, salvaged directly from the Unbidden, were on standby to break any paltry attempt at defence over the knee. Most Devastating of all, the spinal weapon, the Mass Tear Cannon, an experimental weapon developed by Liara's scientists, Two Enormous Tractor Beams Twin Linked to fire at the same time, the kicker being that one pushes and the other pulls, the weapon was the battlefield equivalent of taking a sheet of paper in two hands and tearing it in half. The Monster that used to be the Bismark died screaming under a hail of weapons fire.
"Yeouch." Was Shepard's succinct summarisation of the Carnage that she and her adoptive siblings bore witness to.
14M 26D 07H Until the Colossus Fires
Once the smoke cleared and the team was back aboard Liara's ship things proceeded smoothly. For about three and a half days, Shepard once heard that the whole point of Bureaucracy was to stall the people in charge from making decisions so that they would have time to reconsider their decision. Should she feel proud of her mother that it only took her three days to get onto Liara's ship so that she can have a look at the creature that they had captured.
"Where is it?" The Admiral was accompanied by the somewhat familiar Councillors, of the three of them Shepard only recognised Tevos, and she smelled like cheap wine. She guessed this was important enough to have the tag along's join in, she didn't see Sparatus around though. A pity, but politics was no longer his job. Skeletor was present too, as well as the Union's leading Unbidden expert Dr. Adolpho, though his crown as leading expert might be taken from him depending on how the next few days panned out. Lawson had done something to the creature, but they weren't sure about what.
"This way." Shepard wasn't dressed in her armour today, either it was out for repairs or she didn't think it was necessary, which hopefully meant the 'Bard' or whatever stupid Tebrid name it was called was behind several layers of security. "Follow the sound of music."
"Your report said that it knows how to sing!?" The Salarian looked incredulous. "Were you Serious!?"
"We can't get it to shut up." Shepard stated bluntly. "It doesn't even pick a song either, just string together sentences from multiple sources."
"And it only speaks using Music?" Dr. Adolpho asked sounding fascinated.
"There was one time that it played my voice back to me. I think that was its way of saying 'the hell you talking about?'" Shepard explained as she looked between the additional mad scientists her mother brought aboard to study the Bard.
"Have you tried singing back to it?" Skeletor asked, actually physically unable to believe those words just came out of his mouth.
"We're trying to talk to it not kill it." Shepard joked prompting a glare from her mother. "Um. I haven't personally talked to it since we got it off the wreck no, Liara and her team have been trying to see what they can get out of it." As Shepard led the group into the laboratory several screens were in play depicting various images that have been taken of the Bard. X-Rays, Ultrasounds, and more, the creature itself was in a large room sized containment chamber off to the side as Mordin was looking down at various samples strewn out before him. Time to see the fruits of his labours.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Pretty much. One does not tell jokes, jokes make themselves known when they are ready. *Shrugs Shoulders*
Monster King: I'm trying to.
Acegaming: About that...