Author's Note: And that's Mass Effect 1 done, Now onto Mass effect 2!
Chapter 24: Citadel Part 1
The Normandy was heading straight for the coordinates given for them by the Rachni. Until a sensible system of long distance travel across this corner of the galaxy could be established the Mass Relay Grid would have to do by way of substitute. They didn't stop long enough for a bathroom break let alone to receive communications, and even if they had the Council already had the right to the Union's communication signals revoked after the stunt that Desolas and Vasir pulled. They had no idea what was happening at the heart of the Mass Relay grid, only that they were one relay away from Ilos when it shut down.
"Well that's inconvenient." Joker stated as his hands flew over the console in front of him.
"How inconvenient?" Saren asked looking at the pilot suspiciously. Some how rather than 'Oh snap this has crippled the entirety of Citadel space!' kind of inconvenient Saren thought he meant 'Oh no, now we have to use the thing we've been hiding from the Spectre all week' kind of inconvenient.
"Boss." Joker spoke into the coms system. "Relay's are down, we're gonna have to use the jump drive for the rest of the trip."
"Do it." Shepard ordered by way of reply.
On that note the Joker opened a panel and turned a key inside of it. Suddenly a massive hole opened up in front of the Normandy and the Ship went through to the other side. Bloody worm holes. Spirits Saren hates the Union.
To answer why the Relay network has shut down all of a sudden one must look ahead of the group's destination to Ilos. Sovereign, in a reckless disregard for archaeology, blew a hole into the facility where the conduit was buried and directly hot wired the device to itself, the last of the Geth, Collectors and other husks they had prepared were all ready to charge through to the other side. The first Geth walked through and then the rest of the Geth stopped, their quantum entanglement link with the rest of the Husks telling the zombies of what happened so naturally they stopped too.
"What are they doing!" Desolas got another headache as Sovereign spat the contents of what had occurred to the Cybernetically enhanced Turian.
Councilor Valern and Admiral Kraken both went over to the sparking Geth platform that had just been sliced to pieces by the security field.
"Well. That's somewhat anti-climatic."
Suddenly the Conduit spat out streams of black, bright fiery orange syntho-organic insects swarming every inch of the block, frying themselves on security fields as they went. The insects used the sheer mass of their numbers to brute force their way through said security fields destroying them in the process, biotics attempted to push them away with fields but not everyone were so lucky. The insects melted through armour and burrowed themselves into unprotected flesh wherever they could find it, the afflicted individuals screamed as their eyes lit up a bright whitish blue. The Insects pumped themselves out with brute force, burrowing into consoles and chewing through them until the security fields around the conduit vanished and the enemies swarmed through.
Back over Ilos everyone was gearing up to land boots on the ground and wreck all of Desolas's plans, in the mean time Shepard was relaying the contents of the translated Beacon to the others.
"The conduit is a jump gate?" Kaiden asked looking surprised at Shepard.
"A very small one, but yes, the Protheans were able to apparently scale it down using mass effect based technology." Shepard replied as she got the heavy weapons ready.
"What's a jump gate?" Tali asked this sounding like an extremely pertinent conversation that she was currently missing out on.
"It's like your Mass Relays, only not under the control of ancient genocidal war machines." Shepard stated which explained nothing. "They're a system of solar system spanning teleporters that are capable of punting a target directly from one gate to another. Also the Conduit's not as good as one since it only works one way."
"Yes but can you imagine the potential about if we could-" Shepard made an abrupt cutting motion across her neck. "Oh..."
"We can discuss the Conduit after we find it." Saren stated bluntly looking down at a crater the size of a city block presumably made by Sovereign. "The Last time Sovereign ran out of use for something they destroyed it." A familiar flash opened up in the crater, of a hole in space time opening up and something disappearing through it. Sovereign. "And by the looks of things they've run out of uses for it."
"Can we do that?" Liara asked aware of the fact that they just did something that visually looked very similar.
"Before Sovereign gets there?" Kaiden asked by way of reply before shaking his head in the negative. "Our jump drive needs to be charged before we can use it."
"Looks like we'll have to take the big one." Shepard stated patting the two aliens on their shoulders while smirking nastily.
"The big one?" Garrus sounded both excited and concerned.
The Hammer head was a light mobile battle tank, a combination of stealth, speed and fire power suitable for guerrilla warfare. The Mako on the other hand was huge and loud, enough space to fit all three dragoons and their four alien companions inside, and enough room left over to keep a fully loaded Mjornir heavy rail gun and three mounted anti-material rifles handy. Following Shepard's instructions everyone climbed inside while she went into the driver's seat.
"Are we going to use this thing to charge the Conduit?" Liara asked looking around them after being strapped into place with a safety harness.
"Close." Shepard stated as she used the coms to contact EDI. "EDI I need the vehicle bay doors open right this instant." Both Ashley and Kaiden simultaneously grabbed nearby safety bars.
"Sir, you are aware that we're in orbit around a planet right?" A thought occurred to the alien passengers, Liara was now struggling to free herself of her harness, Tali was already trying to use her omni-tool to dismantle the harness, without success.
"EDI, sometimes you have to run before you can walk."
"Acknowledged." The nearby bay doors opened, and Shepard drove the tank into the nearby vacuum of the void, directly into a free fall into Ilos's atmosphere.
"SHEPARD! ARE YOU INSANE!?"
"ABSOLUTELY!" Shepard replied laughing.
The Mako briefly caught fire going through orbit before slowing down and cooling off as they hit the atmosphere.
"Shepard! If this thing has a parachute or something of the like now would be a good time to use it!" Garrus screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Haven't you ever been sky diving before!?" Shepard shouted back. "If we want to reach the conduit in time we have to pull at the last moment!" That said Shepard noticed that they were off course. "People on the left! I need you to pull down the para-scopes above you and man the guns!"
"Do we have enemies!?" Garrus asked as he looked through the item in question.
"No! I need you guys to help me steer this thing!" Of course she does. Then Shepard saw a flashing notice on the screen. "Also we have enemies!" Of course they do.
The Creatures flying at them were the Praetorian guard of the enemy forces, a mass of organic bodies fused together with the Collector's insectoid DNA as the basis resulting in giant insect type monsters. This Praetorian creature was now flying at them, several of them in fact, they should count themselves lucky that Sovereign hadn't opted to possess one of them as it had with the Breeder and the Banshee, but that probably just meant they were screwed in a different way. As in 'There is nothing you can do to stop my evil plan' kind of way. Shepard barked orders for course correction, firing the guns at the precise angles they needed to reach the landing zone she had designated to get to the conduit, though at the same time the others also belched their weapons into the Praetorian's, often at point blank range, which also necessitated more course correction. At one hundred feet in the air Shepard pulled on a lever, from the roof of the Mako three chutes were deployed each of them wrangling balloons full of lighter than air gasses breaking their fall in the process, and leaving them sitting ducks.
"I hate you some days." Saren stated looking like he was ready to puke.
"You're gonna hate me a lot more here in a second." Shepard stated as everyone made simultaneous looks of horror at what Shepard was about to do.
The Armour of the Mako was too thick for the Praetorian's to cut through with lasers, they'd need to get up close and personal for this. So several of them zoomed after the Mako at the same time, then, as if waiting for the last moment, the Mako disconnected it's chutes and the Praetorian's crashed into each other as the Mako resumed it's free fall. While the rest of the squadmates loudly cursed Shepard out the Mjolnir turned around to face the bundle of Praetorian's and fired, their barrier's and Mass Effect based hovering getting blown up by the Exotic Plasma canister in the process.
"Attention passengers if you look at the front of the vehicle you'll see the rapidly approaching lake that was probably a reservoir a few hours ago, if any biotics on board would like to soften our fall?"
Liara fearfully cast a lift onto the entire Mako, fear and adrenaline pushing every fibre of her being to squeeze out Mass manipulating fields with everything she has in order to keep the Mako from turning into a wreck of twisted metal, in the mean time with two final shots the group was over the artificial lake that Shepard had been aiming for, and slammed into the water. Everyone was lucky that they were strapped into their seats as firmly as they were otherwise they would probably be dead, or at worst severely injured.
"Are we alive?" Tali asked sounding and looking like she was going to be sick, more so than usual.
"Yep!" Shepard stated by way of reply as she proceeded to flip several switches.
"Are we going to suffocate?" Garrus asked and then heard something tremble and shift above them. "Or drown? Turian's are not good swimmers."
"Fear not!" Shepard finished flipping the sequence of switches. "The Mako is a certified all terrain vehicle, rated for land, sea and now air!" If the Mako handles itself as well on land and in the water as it does in the air then they're doomed.
As Shepard finished flipping the switches the built in screws in the underside of the Mako flipped out and started to propel the Mako forward. After a few moments everyone let out a sigh of relief, then the Mako shook, the Praetorian's again, Shepard quickly flipped a switch and fried the Synthorganic creature off of their ride. Aside from that it was smooth sailing, quickly arriving on land at which point the screws folded back inside the Mako and they charged forward. The path to the conduit itself was swarmed with husks, but they weren't anything that some peppering with the Mjolnir and the anti-material rifles couldn't solve. Saren cast a charge on the Mako increasing the speed by which it was moving and plowed through the enemy forces before ultimately crashing through to the other side of the conduit.
"Well this explains why the Mass Relay's aren't working anymore." Kaiden stated as they looked through to the other-side of the Mako's windshield.
Hundreds of people were midway through husk transformations, screaming in both agonising pain and synthetic voices as they howled.
Turian's had their legs grown to exaggerated lengths as they attempted to jump around and shoot the defences set up around the barriers blocking the way out like a bunch of Marauders.
Giant hulking Brutes wearing the remains of Krogan Bloodpack armour were charging at the barriers trying to knock them down with brute force.
Four eyed Husks barring a loose resemblance to Batarian's were kneeling over the bodies of other husks stabbing their hands into their fellow Husks and pulling the synthorganic material into themselves manifesting as turquoise blue cancerous organ sacks strapped to their backs and oversized synthorganic guns coming out of their right arm.
Volus had been warped into rolling Abominations their bodies filled with exotic gasses covered in biotic fields and rippling with sinister red energy, they were charging towards the various gates cutting off access to the rest of the citadel but they kept getting cut down by sniper fire, usually resulting in massive explosions that took out groups of husks that were trying to protect them.
Which is also why groups of Collectors were flying through the air trying to take out the defenders on the enemy side.
Salarian's had been stretched into tall spindly figures as they flickered back into visible light spectrums in a hail of slug fire like a bunch of Phantoms.
Aside from the new variants the familiar Rachni Ravagers and Asari Banshee's were also tearing the place apart with Biotics.
Most significant of all, a short squat six eyed and six limb creature that was using long cables to hack directly into the citadel proper to seize control over the Mass Relay Network.
"Admiral?" Shepard asked with a horrified realisation on her features.
"Admiral?" Saren asked looking over the area. "Your Mother?" Shepard indicated the short squat figure that was inside of the main console for the entire Citadel and the Mass Relay network. "A Tebrid, you actually left one of those creatures in charge of other people!?"
"He's the head of the Scientific fleet." Saren thought about the situation briefly before he let out a sigh.
"Which means that Sovereign now knows all about your people's technology." Shepard nodded her head as she let out a sigh. "Crap." They can worry about the apocalyptic implications of this scenario later, right now they need to deal with the actual apocalypse that was going on as they speak, which means destroying everything that Sovereign has used to take over the Citadel.
"Unless the Citadel has a serious bug problem we need to assume those are from Sovereign." Shepard indicated the bugs that were in the air, and that were trying to eat their way through the Mako. "And that they're responsible for this."
"They look like they're floating through the air using biotic fields. I bet we can block them using a field of our own." Tali observed watching the swarm of insects that were going through the air.
"Well if they're biotics..." The Mako's main gun fired canisters of Unstable Mots and Exotic Gases fired out of a rail gun, right now the Mako was on it's side after getting thrown through a tumble through the conduit's portal the Mjolnir could only fire straight up into the air. The Unstable mot exploded, igniting the gas inside the canister and spreading the ensuing exotic plasma around the area in the middle of the swarm of Reaper insects, as soon as the plasma came into contact with the insects a chain reaction of explosions were set off burning off not only the bugs but also a significant portion of the husks as well. Now that it was somewhat safe to come out again the back door of the Mako was torn open and the thugs inside spilled out.
"Exotic plasma weapons need to become standard issue." Saren muttered and he got his own guns ready.
"That shouldn't be too hard right?" Garrus followed up as he got his rifle ready. "I mean you guys got a whole race of them that basically fart the stuff don't you?"
"We'll discuss the logistics of why it takes so long for Lithoids to reproduce later." Shepard stated bluntly as she indicated the individual that was watching them from above. "Right now we got a insane turian to kill."
Desolas made a grinding sound as he walked, his legs had been replaced with the long legs of a Geth Leaper, his hands with claws, rifles had been attached directly to his side via synthorganic grafts while chunks of his head had been replaced by glowing circuitry.
"Wow that's a lot of implants. Do you even have a brain left underneath all that metal?" Even though Shepard was mocking Desolas her focus was actually on the Tebrid husk that was in plain sight. A single bang of a gunshot later and the admiral was put out of his misery.
"You're too late." Desolas's remaining flesh burnt off exposing a Turian skeletal structure and the full extent of his body's cybernetics in the process. "The Citadel is already ours."
In the artificial sky of the Citadel Sovereign came down and locked itself onto the main tower of the Citadel, it's arms closing behind it forming a massive protective shell in the process, the admiral already disabled the manual override the Prothean's had installed into the citadel. Now it just needed to reactivate the Alpha Relay to bring the rest of the Reapers through. It would be faster if it could just focus all of it's attention on the Citadel but odds were good that miserable bitch down there had another annoying weapon up her sleeve to stop it, that was just assuming that she didn't take the opportunity to just blow up some critical system to permanently cripple the Citadel. So Sovereign seized control over both the Citadel and Desolas to slow them down.
Desolas jumped through the air, a rifle mounted directly to his back was armed and fired a single shot bouncing off of Shepard's helmet in the process. Shepard was about to return fire when Saren raised his arm to stop her.
"Go. He's a distraction! Our priority needs to be on dislodging that fat tick on the Councilor's tower before it reopens the relays!" Shepard nodded her head, herself, Kaiden and Ashley crouched low and jumped through the air, Desolas went to intercept them but got hit by a slam from Liara.
Outside of the Citadel, it's protective fleet wasn't doing so hot, Sovereign came out of no where and went through them like a hot knife through butter. Then it got even worse. As soon as Sovereign clamped around the main tower of the citadel and the arms closed up functions that they didn't even knew the Citadel had opened up, guns, lots of guns, guns that began chewing through the citadel fleet. The Destiny Ascended, it's brave councilors, the ones that weren't killed in the opening moments of the Reaper's invasion, had already evacuated on board, and were now once again the verge of death as the citadel's hidden weapon systems began chewing through the flagship of the Citadel. Then back up arrived.
"What the Void is that!?" Sparatus eloquently summarised the thing that had come to save them.
Shepard and company weren't being very subtle as they came to fight with Sovereign, jumping across roof tops as they went. At the same time the newly arrived reinforcements made contact with Shepard and company.
"Smok? It's good to hear from you again but we're in the middle of something right now."
"I know." Smok's oddly serene voice sounded in their heads. "You remember our old lessons about threading the needle?"
Threading the needle was a tactic that saw use after the invention of the Jump Drive, the idea that with either very precise timing or a signal beacon set up by a third party it's possible to open a path directly into a exceptionally large enemy structure, including most gigastructures, some ships and some planetary defences.
"She isn't very good with this tactic, we need someone to activate a beacon for us."
Shepard and her fellow Dragoons nodded their heads as they went to work. Of course Sovereign wasn't just taking the group's plan to kill it lying down either, although it required dividing it's attention even more then what it already had it got one of it's legs ready to blast them with one of it's mini-black holes, then paused. If it releases the black-star in here then the entire station would face severe structural damage potentially rendering the entire thing utterly useless. Splitting it's attention like this had been costly. This split moment of hesitation cost it one target and replaced it with three.
"Ally-"
"-oops!"
The three Dragoon's put their feet together and pushed each other away, telekinetically pushing themselves to circle around Sovereign, while one went up higher. Shepard landed on Sovereign's hull and slammed a brightly shining beacon down on top of it.
"Hit it!"
Outside the head of the Draconian reinforcements was currently dedicating their full telekinetic power to protecting the Destiny Ascendant, not a Flag Ship, for this was no ship, what had actually come to the Citadel Fleet's protection was a massive turquiose blue serpentine creature with six bright yellow eyes, the Draconian People's goddess Thuban. Then it heard the sound of the psi booster coming from inside of the Citadel and immediately locked onto it, it's powers tearing open a worm hole inside, and like a serpent she so resembled Thuban jumped into the worm hole, massive jaws clamping around one of Sovereign's legs and hitting the monster ship hard enough that it was broken off of the council's tower before being yanked back out into the void of space. Naturally Sovereign angrily peppered lances of Tungstun, Iron and Uranium composite at the Dragon Goddess, who in turn grabbed the projectiles with her powerful telekinesis and pushed them away from herself and her charges, not only the broken Council Fleet, but also the Stellar Union fleet behind her as well.
The Lich's tussle with Sovereign was educational, very educational. The Stellar Union now had a clear understanding of Sovereign's layers of defence and how to best strip them away. As a start, Lithoid ships opened fire spewing lances of exotic plasma against the biotic barriers of Sovereign and causing them to detonate. This was then followed up by Custodian ships, armed with the fruits of the labours they had sunk into studying the enemies they've faced in the past, the matter disentegrators which pulls apart material, the more material one has to work with the more destructive the disintegration. Of course Sovereign wasn't inclined to stay put and get torn apart on a molecular level either but it was intercepted by another worm hole courtesy of Thuban, and then appeared directly behind it, when the ancient machine tried to move it was held in place by millions of psionics. Sovereign was more than capable of taking even the strongest Union ships in a one v one fight, so instead the Union sent lots of ships.
And yet they were still lacking data 'What weapons does a Reaper have?' 'What kinds of defences does a Reaper have?' 'What kinds of tactics does a Reaper use?' Needless to say, Sovereign accompanied the Union Fleet until they were satisfied that they had learned everything that they could.
"This is so surreal." General Sparatus looked at the fight going on with awestruck horror, the monster that managed to One V One the strongest ship in the Union's fleet was being torn apart, dissected even. Literally dissected, next to the Councilors was one of the Late Admiral Kraken's Tebrid assistants was recording the entire battle, watching live footage through multiple camera's as it worked together with a advance AI program to take snippets of Sovereign's body as it was coming apart including it's weapon systems, thrusters and shields giving them detailed but critically flawed details about how the reaper had been built. Like someone being dissected during a sword fight. Sovereign's death was ultimately slow, pathetic and agonising, and yet knowing that it was going to die anyway, the Reaper chose to mimic it's old enemies and chose to spend it's final few moments spitefully.
"Quite intelligent, your Admiral Kraken, I sent everything that he knew to my brother's in the void. Enjoy!" And then Sovereign died. Just like that.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Lot's more.
Gianfranco Cembran: I'm sure they appreciate that.
Guest: Cool.
Chronus1326: Since most of the citadel born threats, Omega and it's various mercenaries the latter of whom appear as secondary antagonists throughout ME2, I will be making use of various crisis factions by way of substitute for said mercenaries loss.