17 – Zhu Who?

There was a Kafkaesque abomination lankily walking down the steps – a man stuck in a frog's body. Not just any frog, upon closer inspection. Although one must admit the signs were there; the gleaming sheen of its scaly skin, large, bulbous black eyes peering underneath a pair of antennae, the thinnest slits for nostrils and mouth, and when it blinked in confusion at the sheer terror on Gorman's face, the eyelids folded from the bottom up. It was wearing a slim set of black and orange armor that seemed to curve in, accommodating its concave chest.

And here the Commander was, thinking he had been fully prepared for another alien encounter after Kalu's speech back on the ship. Now right in front of him was an amphibian a full head taller than him…and Gorman was momentarily paralyzed with fear and confusion. In a split second he did the only thing his brain could conceive of – to arm oneself against the unknown. His hands made for the M16's sling, but they were shaking too much to unwrap it around himself before the monstrosity was up in his face. Zaz was quick to notice, trying to pull the Commander's fumbling hands away from his rifle. Gorman looked her with a wide, bewildered eye, and received second-hand embarrassment if anything. He looked to Saal'Inor for any reinforcement against the imminent frog-like threat. A rookie mistake – there was no expression to be found.

"So," the creature spoke fast and clear, a far cry from the 'ribbit' initially assumed. "You're the next Commander the human Alliance sent?"

"You'll have to forgive him," Zaz spluttered, finally wrestling Gorman's M16 onto his back as before. A hint of a blue glow from her hands indicated just how much the Commander's instincts took over. "He's not used to salarians."

"So it seems. Wait, was that a weapon he was reaching for? What's it made out of, plastic?"

"Huh?" was all Gorman could eventually croak out.

"You wanted to shoot me, Commander, as ineffective as it would have been with that children's toy. You're one of those human supremacists I've heard about, then? You're a racist, yes?"

"You are?" Even Saal'Inor was getting confused now.

"Racist? What – how – no! No, it's just…" Gorman's cognitive senses were coming back around.

"Just what, Commander?"

Zaz let out a hefty sigh.

"Can we just start over?" she pleaded. "I'm Zaz, this is Commander Gorman and…'Sally'."

"Ledra," bluntly stated the salarian. No pleasant handshakes this time. It folded its thin arms, revealing sets of webbed fingers. Its scales were a murky brown, and Gorman couldn't determine whether it was a natural trait or the chameleon-like result of their dreary environment.

"The trader," Gorman snapped his fingers with recollection, now desperately trying to continue a conversation despite his distressed state. Through his accent his team were instead trying to figure out who Ledra could have betrayed. The salarian's large black eggs for eyes gave another confused blink at the snap. "You have, like, a storefront or something?"

"You're looking at it," Ledra gestured to what was behind him – the ship. Gorman gulped. A grim reminder that despite how different the salarian was, it is still just as bad at piloting as the average human. As the Commander's brain continued to grapple with the impossible, more similarities had to be found between him and it if he was to keep sane. Two arms, two legs, two eyes, upright, capable of speech and presumably critical thought. Thanks to the translator, maybe if he closed his eyes and imagined the world's most boring human in its stead, he'd feel a lot more confident conversing…but even then, its voice had an unignorable inhuman lilt to it.

"What do you have in stock?" Saal'Inor intervened. Good idea, thought Gorman – get the two extraterrestrials to talk it out…unless they have nothing except surface-level anatomy in common either.

"Leftovers, I'm afraid," Ledra sighed through its little nose slits. One antenna twitched to show candor. "Best I can offer is decade-old weapon mods and a modern armor suit…for krogan."

Gorman shuddered at the mention of those massive beasts from Mavigon. One of their suits of armor on him would probably be enough to survive as many fresh M16 bullets as he had printed, assuming the suit would fit at all. It made sense for a merchant at a colony under siege to not carry the latest and greatest, but he knew the real answer why thanks to the words of Davin and Greta.

"That's because the other Commander took all your best goods, right?"

"Don't you badmouth Commander Shepard, human. You're no Shepard, that's for sure. If it wasn't for them, Zhu's Hope would be a living nightmare."

Gorman was taken aback, again. So it was the Spectre he'd been hearing about. What interest could they have had in a place like this? Captain Chen seemed clued in, but he made it sound like the Shackleton would be the first Alliance ship to make it here. And despite an interspecies language barrier, of course, to call the colony a 'living nightmare' was an interesting choice of words. The geth weren't just killing their victims – they were probably impaling them and converting them like that harrowing time on Eden Prime.

"Why was Commander Shepard here?" Gorman pursued, but his credibility had been strained to a breaking point.

"I'm done talking to you, mister racist. Your other human friends are waiting for you on the other side of the ship." With that, the salarian stepped to the side and gestured to the doorway into the ship it'd stepped down from. Gorman opened his mouth in protest, but quick side glances to his team gave him expressions that were yelling 'Let's move on', even through a foggy orange visor. Something told him he wasn't likely to get a discount if he needed anything from Ledra later.

The inside of the ship, the 'Borealis' as written on its interior panels, reminded Gorman of Tara IV. Not the clean docking bay or the well-staffed cafeteria, but the tight, poorly ventilated tubes he and Kalu had searched for Blanc through. The interior was remarkably intact for something that had slammed into the top of a skyscraper, but faulty lights, sooty burn marks and the odd blood stain reaffirmed that things were definitely not okay by any means. Open archways flanked them, leading to different sections for storage and one that was serving as a makeshift medical bay. An older man was in there, kneeling beside a blanketed figure on a tabletop bed. Another glance showed at least three more colonists hanging around by a bunk, soothing their temples and bruises on their limbs. No gunshot wounds, thankfully – Gorman was starting to wish he'd invited Dr. Vermeulen to join the crew, at present it looked like Feros had little need for three soldiers, but instead three medics…and maybe a small army of structural engineers.

Natural light beamed in from the open door at the end of the corridor. As Gorman tried to focus on the sounds coming from outside, he happened to hear something that surprised him. He stopped in his tracks, his crewmates slowly coming to a halt behind him.

"What was that?" he openly asked. There were the murmurs of talking from beyond the doorway and back to the infirmary, the gentle flickering of light bulbs and the whistle of manageably dusty wind, but something else was picked up by his ears…and not those of his team.

"It was a salarian, Kevin," Zaz remarked. "I thought Kabiru said you knew about them?"

"You're not really a human supremacist, are you?" Saal'Inor added.

Gorman stomped his boot on the flooring panels underfoot.

"Touchy subject. Sorry."

"Listen," Gorman turned around, holding a finger to his lips. He stomped again. The sound of boot on metal reverberated through the narrow hall…just a bit longer than it should. "There's something underneath the ship."

"If we're hearing it from here, it's gotta be a huge space, plenty of echo-room," theorized Zaz, testing out her own armored foot for good measure. "Didn't see anywhere like that from our way up those stairs."

"The ship was placed here by that crane to cover something. Let's keep moving, but I've got a feeling there's more to this place than we're seeing. Just keep that in mind. Call it a footnote."

Zaz groaned. Saal'Inor shrugged. The three of them proceeded into the light at the end of the tunnel. The great outdoors, in all its crumbling splendor, was littered with more debris but also an unusually greenish bunch of splotches sporadically around. There was a very faint, bitter smell lingering in the air that reminded Gorman of drain cleaner. They stepped down from the ship and faced what must be the ledge of the skyscraper itself. Nobody braved a look below, instead all eyes latched onto a group of sleek white lab-coats talking amongst themselves to the left. All humans, thankfully for the Commander's weary soul.

The group of three now turned to face their counterparts. There were two women, one older, one younger, that closely resembled each other – same tired brown eyes, upturned nose and orange patches on their shoulder. The third man was heavily balding with a thin moustache, a Feros parody of Ray Toner. He wasn't smoking, however, but twitching, a very noticeable tic of one of his eyes. Behind them were bulky mechanical instruments with blinking buttons, much cleaner than their surroundings and sturdy enough to likely withstand any rumblings of the tower. Gorman approached and waved them down.

"Commander Gorman, here to help. Which one of you is Zhu?"

"Zhu who? Oh, right," stumbled the man, paying zero attention to Gorman's slowly retreating outstretched hand. The older woman leaned forward and shook it with gratitude.

"Dr. Baynham," she smiled. "This is my daughter…Dr. Baynham, and this is Ethan Jeong." The young woman gave a nod, the man's moustache started twitching too. "We're leading ExoGeni's research division on this planet. Thank you for coming all this way, we weren't expecting another Alliance ship for weeks, maybe months."

"Is the Alliance outsourcing, Commander?" Jeong pointed with his chin to the quarian at Gorman's side. "If I had known that, I would have had our desks and chairs nailed down."

"…Why would you do that?" Gorman attempted to understand the sarcasm that flew right over his head and caused Saal'Inor's head to droop a bit lower.

"Seriously, Jeong?" the younger Baynham put her foot in, "Even after a non-human helped save this entire colony?"

"Oh please, it was mostly Shepard, that turian was just there for good PR with the Council," Jeong scoffed back, "And besides, if it wasn't for me personally vouching for this place with the higher-ups, this colony would be dead and buried for good."

"By 'personally vouching', do you mean, 'Tried to have the colonists killed, Shepard called me a bean counter and I was so scared I begged ExoGeni to not pull funding'?"

"Woah, woah, stop right there," Gorman raised his hands up with more questions than time would ever allow. Jeong tried to kill the colonists? Commander Shepard's working with turians? Zero mention of the geth? Just what exactly was going on here? "From the top, tell me everything."

The elder Dr. Baynham sighed, cleared her throat, and began to recount.

"About five years ago, the ExoGeni corporation sponsored setting up this colony. Feros is a wonderous planet, haunting in its beauty and teeming with prothean architecture – we once thought it was a miracle no other Council species came here first. Zhu's Hope was founded as a little residence on this tower and a biomechanical research facility was built on the one across the skybridge."

Gorman nodded, remembering what he'd seen from the Shackleton – the skyscraper with the gaping wounds on its side.

"All of a sudden, the sky was darkened by these horrible ships. One of them was absolutely enormous. Before we could react, the geth of all things were swarming us. We're scientists, not soldiers, as I'm sure you understand, and we lost a lot of good people…just like that…"

"We three were in the research tower at the time," interjected Jeong. "Communication was cut completely, no way to reach ExoGeni and evacuate with all our data."

"Or evacuate the rest of the colonists," Baynham begrudgingly continued. "We were lucky enough to hide away in a secure chamber of that tower. Even luckier that Zhu's Hope was also holding, and luckiest of all that the Alliance sent Commander Shepard to save us. The Commander fixed our supply of food, power and water, not to mention cleared out most of the geth in this tower and plowed a safe route to the other one. I can't think of anyone more fitting to be humanity's first Spectre."

"Why were the geth here in the first place?" Saal'Inor chimed in. "They've never left the Veil, for any reason."

No immediate response from the crowd, all three of them looking like they themselves were searching for an answer…or the right one. The younger Dr. Baynham answered first.

"Well, it turns out it was probably -"

"A prothean beacon, right?" Gorman confidently concluded. Jeong looked suddenly relieved.

"It could well have been, Commander," he folded his arms. "Prothean technology built this galaxy, and, um, as you call them, beacons are just some of the prothean wonders on this planet." Jeong must have noticed how Gorman's face lit up upon this statement, and despite the scowls of the two doctors beside him, he carried on. It was clear that he was addressing the Commander directly – Zaz not so much, Saal'Inor not at all. "We're actually planning another expedition back to the ExoGeni tower very soon. It's much more interesting than this tower, I can promise that much. You're more than welcome to come along – who knows, you might even find one of those beacons for yourself."

This was exactly what Gorman wanted to hear, so much so that he'd forgotten Jeong had just been accused of trying to kill the colonists. His heart was buzzing with excitement to get one step closer to so many things. With another beacon – intact, hopefully – in his grasp, he would have definitive proof that he wasn't crazy, that the visions were a warning for not just him but everyone, something the Alliance needed to see and hear for themselves. All he wanted to do was hand the problem off to people who belonged in this far-flung year. Then he would retire back to Earth, breathe clean air, and catch up on current affairs at his own pace. It took him a moment, and perhaps a subtle nudge from Zaz, to snap out of his daydream and back to the problems at hand.

"How many were killed? How bad was the attack? We saw bloodstains as far as the docking bay."

"Very bad," exhaled Dr. Baynham senior. "Everyone you see here are all that survived, well, minus one. I honestly couldn't give you exact numbers. Some of the fallen were not in a…recoverable state."

"I understand," the Commander nodded. "The geth's work, I presume."

"Mostly," said the daughter.

"Totally," quickly followed Jeong. Before Gorman's raised eyebrow could lead into further interrogation, he continued on. "Speaking of, while we greatly appreciate the supplies I assume you've brought for ExoGeni, we need your help to clear out the very last geth in this tower."

Gorman held back an indignant scoff of his own. The fact that the killer robots were still lurking around any corner were little more than an afterthought to this guy.

"…That's right. I was told to talk to Arcelia, is she around?"

"She's waiting for you at the elevator. Down that way, up the stairs," Jeong pointed a finger behind the Commander's team and to a gap in the concrete, a protruding doorway that led somewhere much darker and much tighter than this open rooftop. "You and your…presumably professional team sort that out, and I can personally guarantee you a spot on the expedition. Just don't touch anything. Company property."

"Now that sounds like a plan," Gorman smiled, "We'll geth it done."

"Ha! Ha. Good, um, good one, Commander," Jeong let out something between a laugh and a bronchitis-filled cough. His face had contorted into the most forced smile imaginable. Either that or he was suddenly in immense pain. "I get it. We'll 'get' it done. Yes. Funny."

"Yeah, that's…what I said."

"Good luck, Commander. We'll talk later, I'm sure," Dr. Baynham junior was desperate to conclude the conversation. With that, the three ExoGeni lab-coats turned face, back to whatever maintenance they were definitely working hard at before Gorman's team arrived. As the Commander, Zaz and Saal'Inor shuddered away their secondhand embarrassment and started walking to the other end of the rooftop, some loud whispers from behind broke through the dusty air.

"You checked his credentials, right? This isn't some practical joke?"

"Davin said the ship matches Alliance signatures…if a bit outdated, but who cares? He's here to help."

"Outdated? He was wearing khakis, Juliana! And don't get me started on his 'crew'."

"We should have told him. He'll figure it out sooner or later."

"Oh, please. Any Alliance 'Commander' that willingly brings those vagrants along with them is obviously not the critical thinking type. I swear, if ExoGeni finds out one of them was even in the same star cluster as our database systems…"

The Commander's troupe swerved around momentarily. In a split second, three sets of eyes latched onto them, blinked in surprise and recognition, and swiftly refocused back on the machinery. Gorman hummed, but Saal'Inor whispered something of her own, under her breath. It was not something pleasant.

"That guy's a real jerk," Zaz muttered, tilting her head towards the entryway to the elevator to get the group back on track. Footsteps resumed. "I get that we need him if we want to find some prothean stuff, Commander, and I know you're probably happy to have a 'friendly' human talk to you after the salarian…incident, but the less we can see of Ethan Jeong, the better."

"Nailing down desks and chairs," Gorman mused, "Why would he assume we would want to steal anything?" He looked at his surroundings once more. Loose cables, crumbling concrete, sheets of metal strewn haphazardly, Borealis debris, he didn't see anything he'd like to have in his nonexistent captain's cabin.

"He wasn't talking about you, captain," Saal'Inor spoke up with barely concealed sadness through her synthesizer. "He was talking about me." She noticed Gorman shooting her a confused look. "You know how I said on our Pilgrimages we have to bring something important back to our fleet, right?" A nod in response. Zaz was more focused on her next few steps over some particularly jagged bricks, she knew what the quarian was about to say. "Because of that tradition, some – not just humans – have concluded that we're all thieves. It's a reputation my people have had to deal with for quite some time."

Gorman's boots skidded to a halt, just in line with the shadow from the entrance's overhang. He glanced back where they'd come from, and the three figures huddled near a blinking contraption.

"People claim your whole species are thieves? Jeong was calling you a thief?"

"Well, we've learned to avoid anyone that thinks -"

"That friggin' racist!" Gorman exclaimed. Confusion, as it easily does, turned to anger, and anger brings out different things in different people. In the Commander's case, it was his Boston accent. "Nobody says that to my crew and gets away with it, kid. Why, I oughta…" Gorman puffed out his chest and began a stride away from the tower interior, but he felt three fingers pulling him back.

"Captain, really, it's fine. I've been called worse."

"Like 'Sally'?" Zaz managed a chuckle.

"Who's the racist now?" Gorman gritted his teeth. "Wait until that frogman fellah hears about this…uh, I mean, that salarian...businessman."

"Come on, captain. Let's go to Arcelia, finish off the geth, find that prothean thing you were telling me about earlier and get off this planet."

The Commander gave one more huff before composing himself enough to resume entering the tower's less-than-spacious accessway. He barely had given thought to the archway itself – if he had, he'd have immediately noticed that it was smothered in marks from bullets and burns.

It was much darker in here, but a narrow band of light was still seeping in from somewhere high above. Another set of steps greeted them, and without delay Gorman's team began hurdling them upward. As with the route up from the docking bay, each step was accompanied by a silent prayer that it would hold underneath them. Voices could be heard at the top, down a decrepit corridor heading right.

Five people in dirty, once-black suits of armor were fidgeting with their weapons near what appeared to be a wide, rusted metal cargo lift. Their helmets were off and piled in a corner – blocky, angular and able to protect one's head and face save a strip from the bridge of the nose to the top of the chin. In terms of weapons, the Lancers were plentiful. Some of the armor looked decidedly ill-fitting, which led to the assumption that they were volunteer scientists and not professional soldiers. It was easy to spot their leader, not chatting but scanning their surroundings. She was well tanned, slight in stature yet commanding in stance, with short brown hair that fell over two worried brown dots and harsh, bruised features. She gave no grin to see Gorman's approach, instead a seemingly impenetrable frown greeted the Commander as she examined him and his crew up and down.

"You're late," she grunted. Her accent had a Hispanic twang to it.

"Arcelia?" Gorman guessed. A firm nod in response. "We would have come sooner, but your racist boss had a few words for us."

Arcelia's guard cracked, ever so slightly. Somewhere under her fringe, an eyebrow raised.

"Jeong?"

Gorman nodded back.

"Well, in any case," she tried to regain her icy composure, folding her armored sleeves and tapping her boot impatiently. "Let me guess; he told you about all the problems we've been having recently. Tell me, what do you think the most important problem is?"

It didn't take Gorman long to figure out what she wanted him to say, all he had to do was glance at the masked figure off his right shoulder.

"There are still geth in this damn tower."

"Finally!" Arcelia exclaimed, startling Gorman's group and even causing some of her own troopers to rear their heads. "About time someone else is taking this seriously." She let out a large sigh of relief…and even the slightest hint of a smile. "You don't want to know how much stress we colonists have been under recently, Commander, but once Shepard cleaned house too many of them have been going about their business like nothing happened. Most are still in shock, I think."

As happy as Gorman was to meet someone making the most sense of the day, he couldn't help but feel like she too was leaving something out.

"Commander Shepard missed a few spots, I take it?"

"Couldn't be helped. There's only a few geth stragglers left after Shepard's team blew up a hundred of them, but they've been hiding from us somewhere on the upper levels. Sporadic sightings, rumblings in our pipework, God, sometimes it feels like they're living in the walls." She paused to shudder – Gorman and company couldn't help but do the same. "It's strange behavior, really, and that's what worries me. When the geth first attacked, they were unbelievably coordinated. We were outflanked and suppressed ten to one. These leftovers though, it's like they've been reduced to…I don't know, it's like they're…"

"Feral?" Saal'Inor predicted.

"…Yes, exactly!" Arcelia wagged an affirmative finger. "How did you know?"

That last question was more from a place of politeness than anything – if the quarian in the room didn't know any quirks about the geth, then this mission to defeat them was going in pretty much blind.

"Networked intelligence," Saal'Inor explained, "Basically the more geth there are, the smarter they get. We…once thought it would make them more productive. It's easier to give orders to one collective unit than one thousand units, and with their processing power put together they would have amazing efficiency."

"So the more 'units' are removed, the more stupid they get? Is that it?" Zaz enquired.

"It would explain what we've had to deal with," said Arcelia.

"In smaller numbers they can only calculate a million outcomes per second instead of a billion, but they're still very, very dangerous. Unpredictable, even. Especially now that they've been backed into a situation like this."

Gorman's eyes narrowed. Robots able to cooperate as a supercomputer in larger numbers, and when reduced resort to hiding like cornered rats, fighting tooth and nail when threatened – he was hearing the telltale signs of self-preservation. As callous as it sounded, what use is a survival instinct mechanism like that in a machine allegedly designed for hard labor? Gorman shook away such silly notions. Unthinking, unfeeling robots cannot be given the same consideration as any human, alien, or animal for that matter. A toaster will always be a toaster.

"Having second thoughts, Commander?" Arcelia derailed his train of thought. She had noticed his strained expression.

"No, I'm ready," Gorman replied, "It's just that I thought we were here to fight robots, and not…rabid dogs."

"What's a dog?" asked Saal'Inor.