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Chapter 29: Prethoryn Part 3

If this was a robbery, it was the weirdest any of them have ever seen. The other side's ship basically casually strolled up to them and opened fire on them only once and then basically just sat there waiting to be boarded. What was wrong with these Citadel people? Most of them were better criminals than this, and they got caught, hence how they wound up working for Valhalla in the first place. Once they actually comprehended what was going on a group of LOKI sent over to board the other ship. They found only one person aboard the ship, an Asari, one dressed in low cut red armour which exposed her neckline, she was sitting in the lotus position on the edge of a circle of cushions.

"I am Samara of the Justicars. Should I presume you haven't heard of our order?" The Asari woman asked while keeping her eyes closed.

"No." The leader of the LOKI mechs replied curtly. "What compels a Justicar to open fire on our station?"

"I am here to take custody of the creatures you have in your possession." Samara replied bluntly.

"'The Creatures...' you will have to be more specific, Creature can literally cover every single living being in the galaxy from the lowest insect to the mightiest of the Prethoryn." Not to mention it was just plain rude.

"Among those that were taken into the custody of the Union after the Batarian's were wiped out were several children born of Asari and Asari pairings, what my people derogatorily refers to as 'pure bloods', among them were even those born of pairs between pure bloods. Those are the ones I refer to." The self proclaimed Justicar explained in no uncertain terms.

"You're calling your own people creatures?" What exactly was going on with these people?

"I came to talk with you, as a courtesy." Samara stated simply. "I've already fired on your ship once as it is and that was just to get your attention. I'll allow you to muse the implications of what I'm willing to do to ensure that no more innocent people are killed to keep those creatures contained."

"I'm afraid you've wasted your time mam. Union law is clear: Sapient beings are not bargaining chips, particularly to those who shoot first and then attempt to negotiate." The LOKI leader explained bluntly.

"Then I won't waste any more time." Samara stated as she gave her shoulders a roll.

A few short moments later the Muninn scout ship returned to the Valhalla station, outside of the airlock one of the higher ranking members of Valhalla's security team were waiting for the scout team to come back, then the air lock opened.

"That was fa-" And the three bodies of the scouts, thoroughly smashed to pieces and reduced to shrapnel, came flying at him at terminal velocity under the familiar biotic glow of a trained asari.

Samara walked through the air lock, biotically crunched the four bodies into four balls of scrap metal before proceeding to calmly walk through the rest of the ship dragging the four balls with her as she went along. Of course Valhalla soon became aware of what was happening on their own ship. Security teams swarmed down the halls looking to intercept Samara, and were smashed to pieces by chunks of the ship being biotically ripped off and smashing into them. Outside of the ship? It's hull? One solid mass. But the inside of the ship? Lego bricks, for lack of a better term, facilitate easy repairs and upgrades. Human ships after all pride themselves on standardised components and modularity, easy to take apart, easy to fix, easy to modify. Now they may have to reconsider how they were going to build their ships in the future. But for today: they had nerve gas, and they weren't afraid to use it.

"And here I was under the impression that the Union had more honour than this." As Samara walked, biotically assembled projectiles trailing her, she saw several of the vents had started spewing purple gas. Samara simply took the easy way and slammed corks in the form of scrap metal into the vents to prevent them from spewing any more gas as she found them. Afterwards she simply slapped a gas mask over her face and moved on with her day. Of course they sealed the corridor that she was in before they tried to kill her, as a result she had to go through the inconvenience of tearing the door off before she continued.

Valhalla had a number of holding cells. Samara could sense the Asari inside of them, just... sitting there, they were in the standby mode of their default sex-toy programming, which basically means that they eat food when given to them, perform exercises, usually yoga on a fixed schedule, sleep, masturbate, or simply sit in the seiza position waiting for someone to come for them. Some had already received a round of Union cybernetic's, replacing atrophied eyes and ears. Others had already received reprogramming telling them they had lived happy lives but had gotten into accidents which necessitated the new implants they had gotten, many were even under the impression they had volunteered to join Valhalla itself. Samara hoped as many of them found happiness as possible, or at the very least it was handed to them through the same implants that had left them mentally and emotionally crippled. But for now it was no coincidence that the three strongest Ardat Yakshi on the station were missing. No not missing, she felt a particularly strong feeling from not too much farther away.

"You would be the Person who fired on our ship are you?" A heavily synthesised voice echoed out from a speaker at the corner of the room. "You've been giving my boys the rough treatment. I honestly don't know whether I want to kill you or bend you over a table."

Samara mused the implication of the sentence for a few moments as she walked.

"I was under the impression that the Union held their forces to a higher standard than this." Samara stated as she walked into another hallway, following the strong feeling that she was getting.

"Yeah, no. We're not those guys." Tor stated in no uncertain terms. "We're the guys the Union sent to die where the Prethoryn are the thickest and nastiest. Smugglers, arms dealers, rapists we even got a guy who was charged with stock fraud if you can believe that." Well, Tor wasn't being entirely honest. Valhalla mostly buys up Old Grey boxes from the soon to be or recently deceased and installs them in Synth bodies for use as semi-disposable front liners, a chance for a second life, but who would want to spend that next life being thrown at the likes of the Prethoryn, the Unbidden or most recently the Reapers only to get destroyed over and over again? So the majority of the Grey Boxes in question comes from the prisons, or perhaps even worse the people who actually like being thrown at the Prethoryn. Tor is a case of what you call Column A and Column B.

"I see then. I'll simply clean up while I'm here." Uttering that phrase like she was visiting a new neighbour's house for the first time and realised that it was already filthy Samara walked into the hangar bay for vehicles.

She soon found the console that Tor had been speaking to her through, and the person manning it with a grotesquely impractical hair style bowled over it. Samara decided to check for a pulse. Samara pulled over several of her balls of scrap material and proceeded to fire them at the person on the console leaving behind several chunks of material sticking out of the smoking synthetic corpse.

"Oi watch the merchandise!" The lights in the bay came on dramatically, the remaining Synth's had all gathered together, including several giant sized machines and several tank-like vehicles.

"Watch the merchandise lady!" One of the giant machines, one decorated with cartoonish skull imagery and brandishing something that looked like a gun but was scaled up to the point that it could probably shoot freighters out of the sky, snapped in the voice of Tor. "It took me forever in a half to get it the way I like it!" Samara biotically grabbed the synthetic body, crunched it, and then fired it at Tor's current body with a shot gun-like blast. Sadly since YMIR Mechs are built with stronger armour than the smaller Loki cousins so the shrapnel didn't leave much of an impact. "Alright. Now I'm mad."

Tor proceeded to fire his weapon at near point blank range directly at Samara, Samara in turn biotically jumped through the air and immediately clung to the ceiling, resulting in a follow up blast into the ceiling. Isn't Tor being a little reckless with his blasts? He wasn't worried about it. That's Dragon scale that they covered the outside of the ship with, it's a big boy that can handle it. Of course the hull plating was designed to block shots that were coming from outside the ship. Still it's a little easy to see that with Samara using charge to jump all over the vehicle bay that Tor was doing more harm than good, hence he changed tactics.

"Get em girls!"

To Samara's surprise one of the tanks transformed into a beast of chrome and biotics and leaped through the air at her, and she soon saw two more just like it jumping through the air after her too, since fire arms weren't working they instead opted to use charge and lift to chase after her as well, pouncing her like a predator.

"Ah. So that's where they were." Samara stomped her foot, several nearby crates, containing things like Mjornir canisters and Gleipnir bouncing mines, went flying and she threw them into the vehicle bay doors with more biotics before the entire thing blew a hole through the doors and the contents of the vehicle bay began being sucked into the void of space.

Despite appearances, Samara's armour was fully rated for the vacuum of space, the only real requirement for surviving the void of space was A a steady supply of oxygen, which Samara had with her oxygen mask, and B a external source of pressure on the body a requirement that despite appearances to the contrary Samara's armour fulfilled, even the area that exposed her breasts was covered in a dense transparent material. Aside from it being highly fashionable the boob window also encouraged enemy combatants to instinctively shoot there, where her personal biotic field was strongest. Samara blasted the three Fenrir's with her biotic field and sent them flying out of the ship through the hole, and she went after them.

In the Citadel Admiral Shepard had just picked up a transmission, while still discussing the ways to start taking apart the Prethoryn with the rest of the councillors.

"What's the situation." A pause as the person on the other side informed her of the situation. What they knew about it anyway. "Alright. I'll let them know."

"What is it? Did another hive fleet show up?" Sparatus asked immediately going for the worst case scenario.

"What the hell is a Justicar?" Sparatus's imagination failed him.

Was it possible to survive reentry into a planet's atmosphere with only a hard suit and biotics? It wasn't easy, to put it mildly. You start by using biotics to create a barrier around you to protect yourself from atmospheric friction, once you enter the Atmosphere proper you then slow down to terminal velocity from there it's a matter of timing, and how thorough your preparations were. A parachute or the likes would be most ideal, after all that was designed specifically to safely stop a humanoid figure who had entered a free fall state, but the Council didn't have parachutes, they had biotics. Biotic jumping was a pretty reckless sport. You get a shuttle to carry you up to the lower atmosphere of a planet, then you jump and fall spread eagle, then measuring atmospheric density and gravity you calculate the ideal height to deploy a biotic barrier to slow you down. Deploy too soon: and eventually you'll be falling without a parachute. Deploy too late: Splat. So usually when you go biotic jumping you want to have a professional guide who has already done it several times on the specific planet you wanna jump on. Samara on the other hand has done this Thousands of times, across hundreds of different worlds, she could give a class on Biotic jumping and that was before the Savant X hit the market. Not only did Samara land safely but she had plenty of energy to spare to hunt down all three of the Ardat Yakshi on top of that.

Speaking of which, she didn't get a good look at the planet they were heading to before they started this free fall but she had a good idea of what she was looking at. This system had been taken over by one of the 'heads' of Hive Fleet Hydra, what use to be a world owned and operated by the Batarian's was now going through a ice age as a by product of the Prethoryn suiciding themselves on the planet and now a mountain sized womb had emerged. This monster's newfound appetite for Eezo would likely lead to it to attack council space next, specifically a Asari world, as Samara was opposed to this notion she wondered if she could kill it while she was here. But first thing's first, she had to deal with the monsters she came here for, all three of them.

Samara didn't have a parachute, but the Three Fenrir units did, and they two had biotics, so their landing was pretty smooth as well. Letting out a sigh Samara opted to track them down, before they tried to eat something too big for their bridges.

According to Tevos, a Justicar is part of an ancient order of Asari, one who has forsworn family in order to travel the Galaxy righting wrongs according to a strict sense of justice. This is the official story, but in reality the Justicar's real purpose is much closer to a gang of demon hunters, which in all likelihood is what led Samara to attack the Valhalla facility.

"Ardat Yakshi?" Admiral Shepard asked cocking her brow in suspicion at yet another term she wasn't familiar with.

"In ancient times my people believed that the Ardat Yakshi were demons. In reality? They were Queens, cult leaders and other figures of influence." Tevos explained bluntly. "When Asari reproduce with other Asari there is a chance that a neurological defect may occur that creates... problems with the mating process." Shepard raised a brow indicating for Tevos to continue. "Three to be precise. First and most important, the Ardat Yakshi are infertile, meaning that they are not able to reproduce." Which okay that could be a problem if all the Asari were also Ardat Yakshi. "The second is that the mate is killed in the process." Slightly bigger problem there Tevos! "And thirdly, the Ardat Yakshi's biotic abilities, as well as what you call their psionic abilities, are significantly increased with each new victim that they claim, a process that's also highly addictive."

"That's a pretty serious thing to keep secret from us Tevos!" Sparatus snapped glowering angrily.

"Oh come off it!" Tevos snapped back in reply. "These are innocent people suffering from a severe and crippling neurological disorder! You would have had them all killed! And you...!" This time Tevos pointed to Esheel. "...would have dissected them!"

"She's not wrong." Esheel replied not even bothering to hide her opinions on the matter.

"Should I assume that this means that you have developed treatment plans for them?" The Admiral asked tapping her fingers impatiently.

"Prevention is the better part of health care." Tevos stated bluntly. "For instance you might've noticed a certain... cultural aspect of our society where our people are strongly encouraged to seek mates among other species."

"Which raises the question of how you people managed to not go extinct before you met the Salarians?" The Admiral asked to wit Tevos made a flat face.

"Another part of prevention is that couples who are considered to be high risk are informed of the fact that their child may form a fatal neurological disorder and are strongly encouraged to seek genetic correction for the child before she's born." It takes talent to simultaneously ignore and answer a question at the same time. In the mean time Esheel was now thinking back to derogatory comics featuring Asari and Varren and tilted her head as if saying 'that could work.' "But yes, people do slip through the cracks, individuals who are against genetic engineering for instance, or those who live on planets too poor to afford gene-therapy health care. Even then it's not guaranteed that these individuals will turn out to be Ardat Yakshi, another thing that makes it so difficult for them to be found is that symptoms only manifest when they've reached sexual maturity after a century."

"And it's the job of Justicar's to find them and bring them in before they hurt anyone?" The admiral asked suspiciously and Tevos gave a tacit nod of her head by way of reply.

"Find, contain or kill. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that many Ardat Yakshi are only found after they discover their abilities and go mad with power, or alternatively after they accidentally kill someone and call emergency services after being horror-struck. The latter is more common, and there's an entire planet dedicated to only one temple filled with nothing but Ardat Yakshi."

"Quarantine is the better part of prevention." The admiral muttered as she let out a sigh. "And now we're thinking this unhinged lunatic has invaded Valhalla because she thinks there's Ardat Yakshi there?" Admiral Shepard asked looking at the group suspiciously.

"Recent intelligence reports from decoded Batarian servers." Esheel stated bringing up the files in question on her omni-tool. "The Collectors make very specific requests concerning the genetic specimens that they took from slaves. '10 Pure Bred Asari born of Pure Bred Asari parents.' Apparently one notable family of Batarian's manage to raise three."

So the Batarian's were deliberately going out of their way to mass produce Ardat Yakshi, a considerable investment to be sure, and one that was difficult to manage hence leading to the use of the Compliance Needles to keep them under control. It wasn't likely that the Batarian's just sat on assets like those either, by the sounds of things the Ardat Yakshi were useful as mass mind control units, and a highly effective method of picking off rivals, dissenters and unruly slaves. The Family that had these three under their control were likely very influential before the Union mucked up their plans.

"So to summarise, three of these monsters have been wrung through a Union super soldier program and are now in a battle to death with a Justicar while surrounded by Biotic Prethoryn." Sparatus liked nothing about any of the words in that sentence.

"You still haven't explained to me much about this Samara or what we can expect from a Justicar. She's already attacked a Cabal and we may have to assume we'll have to use force to bring her down if she feels inclined to do so again." Admiral Shepard asked feeling like she asked this question already was losing her patience.

"Justicar's have spent centuries honing their use of Biotics, many of them are Pure bred asari which according to your psi reading technology places them on average at seven." Asari already explore the concepts of mind reading through their empathic powers, some experts are kept on call by C-Sec, the issue here is that the ones who have mastered themselves to that degree are usually Matriarchs.

"So all the benefits of a 7th tier psionic, biotic powers on top of that. Is that what you're saying that we're dealing with?" The Admiral just let out a sigh.

Well at least they weren't hard to find, Samara walked towards where her target had landed, and to her surprise she had come to her instead, that plus sized synthetic gave a order to attack her after all, perhaps while she was hunting the Ardat Yakshi they were also hunting her. Convenient. A warped cannon shot with a Mijornir round slammed into Samara's position from miles away prompting Samara to jump through the air supported by another charge/lift combination while she looked down at the enemy position. The top most part of the contraption opened up to reveal a vaguely feminine figure looking up at her, her face covered in a bulky visor as she looked directly at Samara. Samara squeezed her hands with raw biotic power. Stones from all over the area floated up into the air to meet her, before with a Slam she sent them all flying back to the ground like a home made meteor storm, all of them targeting the four legged monster that the Union built around another monster.

The Fenrir blinked first, supported by Biotics she rapidly climbed up the meteors like they had been mere stepping stones or stairs as she rapidly became air born. Samara was not amused, recalling meteors yet to hit the ground to instead coming at the mechanical monster from the sides. The Creature's tail lashed out with the chain-sword drawn from one of it's hips and proceeded to hack it's way through the incoming stones before they were able to connect. Sensing an opening, the Fenrir fired a rod of tungsten with biotics at the Matriarch, who then dodged as the rod flew into the sky. Distracted the Fenrir was able to pounce on Samara, holding on with mechanical claws and attempting to bite her.

"You and I both know how this ends!" Samara and her opponent both glowed blue at once, and then they dropped.

Samara fully intended to suicide herself to kill this Ardat Yakshi. The Fenrir's built in rocket thrusters roared and it broke free of Samara, Samara in turn stopped her fall as she observed their new surroundings. A crater, a crater whose ridge rose above the height of some buildings, and directly inside of it was a giant bulging mass of organic matter, like a festering boil for planets. Well, she intended to lance this boil while she was in the neighbourhood anyway. That was her plan anyway, but then the tungstun rod did it for her, the Gungnir rod slamming into the boil given extra force by its combination of biotic fields. A sea of acid soon followed in the destruction. Naturally both Samara and the Fenrir fled, Samara tried to follow the mechanical monstrosity but was intercepted by the splashing acid and so instead had to go in the opposite direction. In the mean time a fetal creature was flailing around in the goo screeching. It would soon die anyway, but something instinctively called out to the Ardat Yakshi on a deep and primordial level, so she turned around, transformed into a hover tank so that she could fly over the muck and headed straight for the jaws of the beast. Samara paled with realisation.

"No!" The mechanical monstrosity pounced on the half dead fetus, and opened up to the grey suited Asari inside who reached down with her hand and touched the fetal Prethoryn. Suddenly the world became flush with power, more raw psionic might than a single mortal was ever meant to comprehend flooded the mind of the Fenrir's operator and was sunk into the spores of the Thorian, the raw power spread out from the Ardat Yakshi and across the stars. On Tuchanka Kalros who was starting to calm down screeched with a mighty fury of a sun shoved into her mind, across citadel space various people screamed as images of mechanical cephalopoid abominations flooded their minds. In Union territory the Prethoryn was thrown into a frenzy like never before as they felt something taken from each and everyone of them. And then it stopped, just like that, the Prethoryn had died, and the one who killed it rolled off it's mountain of a corpse unmoving. Samara stood up to continue her chase, but instead received a slap to the side of her head and a electric shock.

"You've caused a lot of trouble." A Turian in a hard suit stated while holding a gun to Samara's fore head. "I wonder if you plan to keep causing trouble?" Samara let out a sigh as she held up both her hands, the Biotic boot attached to the side of her head disabling her implants. "Good." Another Turian walked up behind Samara and proceeded to put her into cuffs before dragging her to her feet.

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