"Units are approaching on scout vector. Range is optimal for weapons. Garrus-Captain, adjust one degree up y, and three degrees left x. Shepard-Sargant, adjust five degrees down y, eighteen degrees left x," said the geth, and the two soldiers did as ordered, both keeping an eye on the datafeeds they were being given by the same, including a countdown clock and overlays that showed precisely where the enemies would breach the horizon. Charn, grumbling a little, used his pods controls to help Jane's aim, moving her to match the data better, as she had been half a degree off, which at this range meant she might miss.
"They aren't launching any probes, or taking any precautions. Truly, they believe themselves to be masters of this world," commented Tali as her own probes gave her a nice readout on the pair. Jon above her, nodded once, and then crouched as his display added a countdown to itself. Five seconds to go, and an overlay appeared as well, showing him exactly where he would need to stand to fulfill his part of the operation. Four seconds, and he could hear his sister tense up, preparing to fire. Three seconds, and Legion closed his sensors up, moving slightly to the side of where he had been. Two seconds, and everything to hang there in anticipation. One second…
"Fire!" shouted Garrus over the comm, and almost simultaneously a beam of light red energy leapt from his gun, while at the same time, light green shot from Jane's. The two bolts, thin, but brimming with power, crackled through the air, firing at speeds that weren't quite that of light, but far quicker than even the geth's processing power could combat. As such, the two units in the sky only had that single moment of horror as the shots streaked towards them, not even letting them transform out of their flying modes, before their jets exploded in a spray of shrapnel, heat, and carnage.
The two units plummeted without their drives, their warframes unable to change form now due to the twisted bits on the rear, allowing them little in the way of protection as they fell. The huge things, as big fighters to a micronian, struck the ground hard, but in a testiment to their construction, it was the earth that gave, not them. Huge chunks of dirt were thrown into the sky as they skidded across the ground, stopping just in front of where Legion and Jon were standing, the pair moving the instant they were stopped, with Legion standing before his, while Jon put his left hand over the one before him, his omnitool appearing as Tali used it to connect to the geth platform plugged into the warframe itself.
"Accessing network!" she shouted, and over the comm one could hear her fingers moving, the large digits showing themselves to be as dexterous as any human's. Legion didn't appear to be moving himself, but a holodisplay in front of his palm showed him hacking through one layer of security after another. Jon himself got a display of both hacking attempts, marveling at the speed of the two as they tore apart firewalls after firewall, before finally the network of the geth, and the minds of these platforms in specific, was laid bare.
"Prioritize tactical and mission brief. We need to know what that ship was, and what it wanted. If possible, find out who launched this assault as well," ordered Captain Garrus, though whether Tali and Legion were following that order was anyone's guess, as they scanned the data streams before them, copying files that seemed important for later, and makings notes of where the stuff seemed different than usual. After almost a minute of silence as they worked, one could hear Tali gasp in shock.
"Legion, what do you see in sectors five-oh-eight, and six-one-six of your unit?" she asked, and the geth was quiet for a moment, before finally answering.
"Interesting, the foreign code is…," Legion, saying nothing else rose from his position and raised his right arm so it was pointed at the sky. One could then hear the sound of metal clunking against metal as the hand at the end of the arm was drawn inside, revealing the arm itself was hollow within. If one could see through the metal, one would have been able to see the hand breaking into small limbs around the five fingers, which went against the arm's inner hull, before sparking with power as the chamber began to fill with yellow light.
"Jon, kill it!" shouted Tali, and without waiting for further instructions, the Terran pulled his Gallants off his hips and laying into the thing, leaping back as bolts of protoculture tore into the warframe body, the armor melting under the attack, the first bolt of which was aimed right at the geth platform that housed the primary runtimes, rendering the thing braindead, and then slag in seconds. Legion's own attack was less pinpoint, but far more devastating, as his arm cannon, literally his whole arm transformed into a gunpod like aperture, belched forth yellow bolts at a dizzying speed, each ripping into the enemy's armor, reducing it to nothing in a furious volley of destruction. In both cases, nothing remained of their prisoners, but piles of melted slag.
"Ms. Zorah, Legion, you had better have a good explanation for why you just killed our only two prisoners," said Garrus after the smoking craters that had once been warframes finally began to cool off.
"We do Captain. Those geth were already dead," as Tali spoke, she caused a small flash of blue light along Jon's left arm, making him raise it upwards, and then start projecting a hologram in front of her.
"Legion, this resembles what you saw, correct?" she asked, and the warframe's head nodded at the sight before him.
"Affirmative, code blocks match within ninety-six percent of this unit's observation of the enemy's command lines," he confirmed, and Tali caused the view in front of them to straighten out, small graphs appearing next to the code lines, showing various stats, but most important to the discussion seemed to be the one that seemed to be a countdown timer, showing degradation of the runtimes within the geth's personal network.
"This unit, all the runtimes in it, and possibly everything in the network here has been infected by a code lines I can only call wonder drugs. They're not viruses, not in the usual sense, as they're actually making the runtimes work faster and more efficiently than the hardware should allow. In a way, these geth are as close to full sentience as an amalgamated intelligence can get," she explained, and the graphs showing comparisons between normal geth, like Legion, and the modified ones attacking the colony, popped up in the display.
"These upgrades are costly, however. The runtimes degrade, even faster than logic stringing them would cause. Worse, if I'm reading this right, the degradation can be, and has been, sped up in this case," as she spoke, one of the runtimes was isolated from the rest, showing the foreign code had wormed its way through the entire thing, looking like a parasite sucking dry the former geth.
"If I'm right, this runtime was on the edge of the degradation effect, probably noticed it too, but the code spread through it, and began sending false reports to the rest, convincing the aggregate that nothing was wrong. Whoever did this is a monster, they gave these geth some enhancements that probably seemed like gifts from on high, but ones that are slowly killing them while also controlling them," as she finished, the display shifted to show coding in her own pod, firewalls that were literally being battered against by the alien code.
"I had Jon destroy it, probably for the same reason Legion destroyed his. The code is self propagating, meaning that all it took was one geth to be infected, and it would have spread the stuff to the rest of whatever collective it was part of. This code is mind control, enhancement program, and kill switch, all in one very nasty package," this was followed by her firewall burning away the malignant code, and Legion's warframe nodded, likely having done much the same.
"When we get back to the Normandy, I want your pod and Legion's brain scrubbed, just in case. But I agree with your decision. Keep whatever snapshots of the code you can, so we can observe them later, but for now, safety means burning this infection out," said Garrus, looking down at his gun, as if wondering if it could burn the code out in some way. While he did that, the two Gallants wielded by Jon beeped, telling him the chambers were full again, only to be counterpointed by Legion letting out a warning siren, before sending them data from his sensors. The geth were coming in force.
"Tali, is there any way at all to recover these geth and return them to normal?" asked Jon, his tone sounding almost completely flat, as he returned the Gallants to his waist, where they clicked against his sides.
"I'm afraid, even if we could get one of them to consent to a scrub, the code itself is far too pervasive in their network at this point. Any attempt to remove it would likely result in the geth runtimes ending up fragmented at best, completely deleted at worst," admitted the quarian, and Legion nodded at her assessment, showing he believed it to be much the same, when Jon turned to him for a second opinion. This solicited a rather angry sounding growl from the Terran, who turned towards Garrus' mech.
"Captain, permission to deal with the incoming enemies?" he asked, standing straight and tall, with a note of menace in his voice. Garrus, looking at his unit, considered the offer. He'd heard tales, of course, of both Shepards. There was a reason they'd been selected for this duty after all. But still, his scope told him there were more than seventy geth warframes in the air. Not an easy fight even for all of them at once.
"You think you can take them all by yourself?" asked Garrus, and one could almost hear the feral grin on Jon's face, as he hefted one of the pistols, spinning it on his finger, before returning it to his waist.
"I know we can," he said, not a brag or a boast, just a statement of fact, and after stroking the side of his mandible for a moment Garrus nodded.
"Alright, let's see what you can do. Legion, Jane, we're on defense. Anything gets past Jon, and we deal with it," as he spoke, the three walked towards a nearby stand of trees, taking position in the limited coverage the greenery gave them. Jon, smirking inside his helmet, wiggled a finger and opened a private channel with the woman in the pod on his back.
"He seems to be rather dismissive of you and Charn," commented the Terran as he walked forward, watching as data feeds flew through his view, giving him all the plans Tali was working on at a glance.
"He's a turian. He thinks in terms of equipment and drivers, and right now, to him, Charn and I are the former rather than the latter," she offered.
"Heh, well, he'll learn soon enough," responded Jon.
"He certainly will. Now, how do you want to play this? We have way too many targets incoming for my liking, and not nearly enough firepower to compensate," she asked, as her sims seemed to all red out at the same instant, showing the probabilities of survival dropping to at or near zero.
"I have a few idea, though for firepower, why not use the gallants? They tore through that unit's armor well enough," he offered, drawing one of the pistols and looking it over, getting sensor overlays that read him the general stats and abilities of the weapon.
"At close range, sure, a single shot would be more than adequate to rip through the barrier and armor of the warframes. We're not going to be at close range," she told him, and showed him a quick sim of him firing from the ground, one that ended with only about a dozen enemies destroyed before he ran out of shots, and their counterstroke tore through him like wet tissue paper.
"How's about a 'Stairway to Heaven' then? We'd certainly make it closer with that little trick," said Jon, giving Tali a moment to run the numbers on the maneuver, and this time their odds were greatly improved, with the pair rising to meet the threat, rather than allowing the geth to fight on their terms. When five sims in a row showed a green result, Tali gave it the go ahead as her fingers began to fly over her controls.
"Beginning countdown. Tower shield activating," she informed him, and Jon leaned forward, holding out his right arm so that it was hanging in front of him. Slowly, a line formed on the arm, an arc of a barrier expanding outward, taking on the distinctive purple glow of a hardened version as it grew and grew, becoming a rectangle as tall as Jon himself was, while the Terran wiggled a finger, reopening the general comms for the rest of them to hear.
"We'll be ascending in a moment. We'll give you a signal if we need assistance," he told them simply, and began to walk forward, his feet falling heavily on the ground as he made his way towards his opponents. The sensors continued to feed him data, giving him angles, projections, and everything else a soldier on the ground wanted to know about his enemy, before a blue plate suddenly appeared in front of him. He didn't hesitate however, stepping on the thing, which held under his weight.
"Stairway to Heaven!" he shouted, and his foot jet flared, giving him boost, which was just about to arc down, when another blue barrier appeared, allowing him to once again get a boost up. Five steps and he was several hundred feet in the air, the geth spotting him, and instantly deploying their guns. Given the warframe was designed at least partially based off a veritech, it was little surprise that the guns were deployed from the bottom, the hands of the units' popping out in a similar way to guardian mode, before rings extended from inside their sleeves, separating fingers and palms, and eventually leaving all the geth with double gatling guns.
The shots fired a heartbeat later, and lines of red light, liquid metal, accelerated towards the rising form of Shepard. Unfortunately for the AIs, the tower shield was more than enough to catch the shots they fired that actually hit, while the majority of them flew wide of the mark. The angle and approach of Shepard's rise carrying him higher and faster than the geth's calculations really allowed, and in this their weapons were working against them, as they had to wait for the entirety of the red liquid to exit the barrel before they could fire again.
"Prepare for combat," said Tali's voice in his ear, and Shepard tensed as his arc finally carried him up over the firing angle of the warframes, who were quickly approaching their position. The last plate appeared, and with a burst of fire from his boot, the Terran was propelled upwards even farther, his body spinning as it did so, the tower shield falling away, as the gallants found their way into his hands. The geth, had they been farther away, might have divide their force, pincered him in, or any one of a dozen other tactics, but in their overconfidence, they were literally right under Shepard as he arced above them, and then green bolts of light fell like rain.
Each shot of the gallant was as powerful as a dozen or more from their hand blasters, the geth's defenses, barriers that should have been able to take fire from the Terran for at least a few minutes, found themselves completely inadequate to the task, as each shot tore into their purple glow, winking it out of existence, and then their armor would crumple like cardboard. Worse, the shots themselves were almost supernaturally accurate, each blast aimed precisely at the mass effect core of the unit, causing it to explode as the core back blasted with enough force to tear the frame apart.
The geth weren't about to go down so easily, however, and as four tens of them died in terrible explosions, the remaining units took new angles, or flipped and began firing while trying desperately to dive away from the still spinning Terran. That spin was important, however, as like the sudden rise, the seemingly random way the armored man changed direction threw off their aim, and their weapons, which had proven effective against the colony's scant defenders and people, were completely outclassed.
In less than a minute, the geth were all destroyed, eighty-four units in total, all to a single soldier, who ceased to spin, and began to drift downwards, an aura of blue light showing the use of mass effect to slow his descent. Staring upwards at the scene, where the explosions of the geth still lingered, Garrus had to whistle through his mandibles. He'd heard rumors of the two Shepards, and even seen a vid or two of their exploits, but that was just incredible, causing him to flick a switch, and get a private channel with the Shepard still standing next to him.
"Your brother is everything the tales make him out to be," he commented, and Jane, looking up at the pair coming towards them, shook her head at the assessment.
"Not a chance. My brother's great as a tech, but he's at best an average fighter. Tali though, that girl's got a gift for guns akimbo that would make even Max Sterling jealous," she told the turian, who hmmed through his mic, considering what she'd said, going back over the battle a frame at a time. He did see what she meant too, as flashes of blue light sometimes bloomed on the armor, showing where Tali used her pod to alter the angle of Jon's arms, legs, or anything else, even using them to reverse the spin a time or two. With Jon providing the muscle, and Tali providing the skill, the pair were a force to be reckoned with.
"All units destroyed, Captain," said Shepard as he came to ground, the gallants at his hips showing their chambers as slowly refilling, having been emptied against their foes above. Meanwhile, the pod on Jon's back squealed harshly, as steam flew from the bottom of it, wilting the grass below.
"Affirmative, I'm not detecting anymore warframes in the colony itself. Of course, my pod is now at less than fifty percent power, so if they have any reserve forces, we're not going to be able to repeat that little performance. Hmm, we lowered down to ninety-eight-point-six percent Sync ratio, Jon," commented the quarian woman, and the Terran she was riding on just shrugged as he began to review the data of their combat on his own hud, getting the calculations to fly before his eyes, telling him where the computer believed they had acted against each other.
"Nothing to it, just a rounding error I think, due to the Stairway maneuver. We'll practice it more once we're back on the Normandy," he said, and soon the unit was off again, Legion in the lead once more, his sensors wide open, with Jon and Tali just behind, while Garrus, Jane, and Charn brought up the rear. As they walked, Garrus went over his files, digesting everything he could as quickly as possible. He'd heard the term Sync Ratio before, of course, he was a Captain after all, but he'd never been in a fight with Terrans, never seen how it worked.
Now he understood. It was a measure of ability, similar to a pilot grade rank, but also a measure of unity. A Terran and a micronian operating a pod could, through training, act almost as one, with every movement of the Terran enhanced by mass effect fields, or with data feeding them optimum movement strategies and the like. Of course, for most teams, even years of practice only gave them a Ratio of around fifty percent, with most averaging out like Jane and Charn at something like high teens or early twenties.
Jon and Tali though, they were the hundred percent. They moved and acted as one, without a wasted motion, allowing for the pod to generate almost pinpoint defenses, while Jon would move with them, positioning them and keeping them where they were most useful. It also made them mobile more so than most, especially considering they little Starway they'd made. Combined with the latest tech in the gallants, and the pair really could take on the world. This made Garrus smirk to himself, remembering stories of his father about how the female Shepards had so impressed him as a soldier. In those tales, he'd never once made mention of the males though, somehow missing this in his assessment. He would really enjoy rubbing this in the old man's face when he returned to Palavan.