Author's Note: And that's the Contingency finished off, or just about finished off. Either Way. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 71: Hub Gamma
13M 05D 10H Until the Colossus Fires
The combined Council and Union Fleet arrived at Contingency Sterilisation Hub Beta, the first having been post humorously named Alpha, and the third one they have yet to get to as Gamma. Names were irrelevant though. Immediately upon entering orbit around the Factory world the two fleets opened fire on the planet. There weren't any ZPM missiles here, there were however lots of Thanix cannons, Gungnir anti-ground Lances and Tachyon Lances to hammer the surface of the planet. Using the schematics of CSH Alpha that EDI lift with her bombs communication centres, docks and anti-air weapons were targeted by the Union and Council forces.
In the confusion a drop pod was deployed planet side, opened up and the Council's Matter Decompressor unfolded and started blasting straight into the planet itself. Immediately the Contingency came to learn what was happening and deployed their own forces. Exactly as planned. With the enemy concentrating their forces on trying to counter the atom splitting weapon their forces gathered, and were naturally slaughtered. Soon the Contingency ships came back, followed by the Gestalt, and soon were caught in the proverbial rock and a hard place. Union ships moved to protect Council Ships, Dragon scales and in many cases ships from the Scientific fleet with Astral Thread enhanced shields moved to screen shots from the returned Contingency ships and fired back at them with their own heavy ordinance, with the Prethoryn still chasing them and belching acid into their flank.
As it seemed like the Contingency got hit with the proverbial Hammer and Anvil combination, the entire CSH Beta started glowing with multiple Mass Effect fields turning the massive sphere shaped ship around, before it abruptly opened up Pack Man style complete with giant rotating neutron density grinders roared to life and a huge Mass Effect field started drawing the Council, Union, Prethoryn and even the Contingency ships into the maw of the proverbial beast. It seemed that something within the dread-naught sized creatures had been triggered, because soon they started charging at the massive Eezo core of their own volition. A particularly spiteful Turian Captain opened fire on one of the Prethoryn as they went down, the super heated molten metal setting Prethoryn flesh on fire as it turned into exotic plasma before being thrown into the heart of the proverbial furnace.
Even in the void of space you could hear the Contingency screaming 'full reverse!' as they desperately reversed the artificial gravity field they had in place to keep from swallowing mountain sized hunks of burning Exotic Gas. The Union and Council fleets continued to bombard the Contingency as they spread out over the planet. The Salarian's revealed a project they had been working on to seize control over the Prethoryn Gestalt through Queens that they raised from Thorian Clones, so as a result of this more reinforcements could be called from the Prethoryn as the planet receive continuous bombardment from the combined fleets until it was completely destroyed.
Of course they would have to be careful to not destroy the reaper hearts less another Astral tear was opened, instead after a sufficient amount of violence was unleashed to strip several miles worth of metal was scraped off the surface of the machine world via acid, Gungnir rods and other weapons a team was sent down grab and extract the hearts for safe disposal later. Then the planet received the final destruction to eliminate it and the threat it represents once and for all.
"Well glad that's over with." Tevos let out a sigh as she glared balefully at the screen depicting the end of Beta. The Union already made off with the hearts from the Contingency, tearing the hearts open and unloading their contents into one of the existing tears or the like so that they can turn them into more thread.
"The Fleet has been severely damaged in the battle against the Contingency." Nyreen stated as she looked at the write up for the battle against Beta. "It's going to be a little while before they're operational again."
"Don't have 'little while.'" Escheel was panicking as she opened a hologram on her omni-tool. "Contingency Sterilisation Hub Gamma is on its way here now." Well Luckily they had plans in place to deal with it.
13M 02D 12H Until the Colossus Fires
"I don't get it." Grunt was seated in front of Legion as the Frankenstein-like synth explained the situation to him again. "This isn't brainwashing?"
"No it isn't." Legion stated for the upteenth time. "This is information, not reprogramming." The Synth explained bluntly once more.
"What's the difference?" Grunt asked bluntly.
"Theoretically? The individual Programs within the Contingency will have the capacity to decide who they want to ally with themselves."
"So we could end up having to kill them anyway?" Grunt asked just to double check.
"Many of them? Yes. Approximately 15% of the Geth consensus voted to ally with the Contingency coding agreeing with its principles during the mass takeover of the programs by the Contingency. A large portion of the Valhallan synths were based on... unsociable individuals, made worse by being repeatedly treated as disposable assets against impossible foes. A few among the Custodians though I am not sure of the exact reasoning." Different day same Mot to paraphrase the saying.
"The Salarians figured out how to hijack the Gestalt, you are liberating the Synths. Is there even going to be a need for the Colossus at this rate?"
Shepard who was listening in nearby thought about the question. The Salarian's solution was the equivalent of waltzing up to the Gestalt and trying to drag them out of their own insanity one... group? Fleet? She didn't have hard numbers on that yet. They already destroyed two Contingency hubs, the bots used so much Anti-matter, ZPM's and Reaper Hearts in their construction that they blew up at the slightest love tap it seems. Well multiple weapons of mass destruction weren't exactly 'love taps' but the point remained. The only one who theoretically needed a Colossus left to deal with was the Unbidden, and with Wander they might have that diplomatic nightmare dealt with soon enough, hopefully without having to destroy the closest thing resembling a home-world that they have at this point.
It was entirely possible that by the time the Colossus finished its extended retrofit period the mess in the Terminus system would be cleaned up. Unfortunately unless the Reaper's have a planet somewhere they need to blow up Shepard personally doubted that the Colossus would be much good, the continent sized super weapon was notoriously unwieldy to the point that it can't be used in Ship to Ship battles. In an emergency a Global Pacifier could be utilised as a poor man's planetary shield, a shield you can't break through or be taken down. Shepard didn't think that was a good idea personally, it kinda renders the planet in question pretty useless in the long run and the people on it might take offence to being suddenly and irreparably cut off from the wider galaxy.
In layman's terms, the biggest project that has eaten into the largest chunk of the Union's resources for the past six months would be rendered effectively useless an entire year before it can be implemented. There were going to be loads of people happy about that.
"Insertion's T-Minus ten commander." Joker's voice echoed over the coms.
The pilot sneaked the Normandy through the Contingencies defences and the dozen or so members of the team were released onto the ground so to speak, the biggest unit there being Liara in the Fenrir. It wasn't a case of every inch of the Hub being covered in camera's but this being a factory world they needed to be able to see and track what it was doing to an extent. Luckily they had a master thief, top tier assassin and a technopath to help them sneak through.
"This thing still freaks me out." Grunt stated watching the ghost-like figure of The Wanderer as he floated through the hallways of the hub.
"Give it a break the bastards haven't been able to find us thanks to him." Shepard stated watching as Wander performed another round of looping the data feed for the security systems so that the Contingency wouldn't know that they're there. After doing this several times Wander abruptly stopped at the end of a hallway.
"-way down we go~!" The Floor suddenly opened up into an industrial sized elevator that was theoretically big enough for all of them.
"I don't trust elevators." Garrus stated bluntly.
"Since when?" Shepard asked scrunching her face in confusion. "You were a C-Sec cop, how did you do your job if you didn't get onto the elevators?"
"Had to track down a rogue AI once." Garrus stated bluntly. "Tried to kill me with an elevator." So it was more specifically that they can't trust this elevator, they also have to take into consideration that the Contingency will discover their presence here if they use it, and if they know where they are inside of a means of transportation that they control...
"Stairs are inefficient." Legion piped up. "The Contingency doesn't use them." Damned if they do, damned if they don't. "What are the chances that they won't know we're here if we take it?"
"They already know we're here." Legion stated bluntly. "We took too long to get onto the elevator, now they've sent a security team to figure out what's taking us too long." Well that simplifies matters.
"Grunt Slam the elevator down." Shepard popped a plasma grenade and tossed it into the elevator.
The Elevator exploded as Grunt sent it careening off the breaks and slammed into the bottom at above terminal velocity. The Biotics in the group lifted Liara's Fenrir into the air and lowered it into the shaft, the group piled onto the machine facing in all directions. The Contingency contiued to flood into the shaft from all sides, and were blasted from all sides too with crowd control abilities, area of effect attacks, and lots and lots of fire power to go around, not to mention the literal tank.
"Down you go~."
Of course the Contingency were coming from below too, a relatively easy case of using slam to multiply the gravity of the ones at the front of the group to push them back down the hole producing a satisfying crash at the bottom.
"That's nice and all but we also need to do something about the ones above." Liara asked as the numbers from above began to increase.
"Legion, Wander, think you can do something about them?" Shepard was none the less getting ready to so something herself.
"Unwise." Legion didn't want to expose the Codex's existence yet.
"-let me solo lo lo lo- -her~!" Wander however had no gripes with keep his trump cards secret.
The Bard raised both hands into the air and loosed streams of energy into the attacking the Contingency Synths, the built in disentegrators tearing apart the rampant synths on a molecular level, the sheer energy frying the circuits and systems of the Contingency synths causing them to fall like drops of rain. Of course a new problem has arisen in the meantime, as while it probably wasn't their intent but the sheer amount of dead contingency synths ended up blocking the exit out of this shaft. As the group was wondering what they were going to do about that Liara simply put her feet against the wall and tore her way into another floor above the bottom.
"Our Floor." Liara followed that statement with shifting the Fenrir into vehicle form and together riding on her back the group zoomed down the comparatively narrow hallway, narrow to a highway rated for a tank that is.
"Hallways are inefficient." Legion felt the need to correct the assumption. "The Contingency doesn't have them."
It made sense to a degree, Tali knows being entirely computer programs if the Geth have to get from point A to point B they usually download themselves or send themselves over via a data transfer. If you had to physically move something around and build the entire place up from scratch anyway then the best way to use a corridor like this would be...
"Mot!" The faint rumble echoed out, Tali didn't think of it because she grew up on a ship, but Shepard was quite familiar with bullet trains from when she use to live on stations and in cities. Not only that but she heard the rumbling coming from both sides at once. "How bad do these bastards want us dead!?" At this Shepard pulled out her sword and made a crescent shaped slash into the ground with the weapon, the weight of the Fenrir did the rest of the work as they dropped down into the hole.
"We'll have to find our way back up soon." Luckily they were already all wearing suits, the all machine/synth Contingency had no need for things like a pressurised breathable atmosphere, so they were working from the start wearing pressurised vacuum sealed armour. That said... "We have to get back up as soon as possible. This place is much worse than being caught between two raging trains." Liara snapped as she made her opinions known.
"How bad could it be?" Garrus was the one with the unfortunate distinction of uttering the words one should never speak. The entire space lit up with Mass Effect fields, the space in question stretching on beyond the horizon, as the mountain sized objects that they had been standing on began to move. "Me and my big mandibles." Garrus complained as he realised where they were.
One of the most infamous moments from the attack on Hub Beta had been when the entire planet suddenly opened up and unleashed angry rotating chompers that had giant Mass Effect drawing cores flaring that pulled entire ships into a giant yawning furnace to be broken down for material. They might have time, the Contingency used neutron Carbon Cubrate material for the hull of it's ships just like the Council, if any of those ships or materials were within the effective range of the Neu Eezo core when it turned on and started sucking matter inside the entire hub would get torn apart, clung to the side of the giant rotating neutron grinders on the other hand was slightly more concerning they will admit.
Liara positioned the Fenrir so that it wouldn't be thrown off by the centrifugal force, everyone else secured themselves in place as an additional precaution against the merry-go-round of death. So they had time, they just didn't have a lot of it to work with. Leave their lives up to fate? Grinded. Exotic gas explosion? They don't have nearly enough to destabilise that field, and even if they did they'd die in the explosion.
As Liara thought of and dismissed Options Wander started to act. This place was being powered by several of the same Reaper Dark Hearts that was responsible for the explosive increase in population for the Unbidden, in fact this close to the core he could sense the psionic waves in mass, and thus he put them to work. Wander gorged himself on the psionic energy Zro soon forming as it arced off of the Neu Eezo. Being able to witness the birth of new Unbidden was nice when none of your allies are the ones getting sucked up. The Self replicating psychic crystal mixed with the dense mass of Eezo in the surrounding area. Soon newborn wizards pulled themselves out of the Eezo, and each and every one of them already knew what job they had to do.
The Wizards went to work, the Neutron density blades were forcibly expanded, jammed up and getting torn apart in the process. The destruction wreaked was on a scale few organics can comprehend as the jammed machinery were caught up, forced to function anyway, and subsequently tore itself apart. The Power lines to the Neu Eezo core were severed and the Mass Effect field disabled, causing the entire hub to go dark as it lost power.
"Remind me ladies and gentlemen." Liara ground the Fenrir to a halt as she turned the lights on the suit and had a look around their environment. "We were going to use the Hub to broadcast our own signal correct?" There was an awkward pause in the Vacuum.
"Additional substations present on the planet." Legion piped up, most likely its various personalities finished consulting with one another. "Anti-matter plants and ZPM units will provide power in the interim. Solar energy Collector arrays present but won't see use until the system approaches stars. Contingency units are being dispatched to repair the damage, and to eliminate the intruders responsible." So there was no more reason to stick around here then?
"The Contingency doesn't have the common courtesy to make land marks for intruders, and thanks to that ride on the grinder we're lost." Shepard summarised their situation hands outstretched bluntly.
"We passed by the same hole we came in through approximately 17 times in forty five minutes, the last time was approximately 13 minutes ago the spinning slowed down." Thane piped up and the others looked at the Drell suspiciously. "Drell have extremely good memories." The lizard like alien piped up as if these stares were normal.
With Thane's help EDI was able to pinpoint the location that the group first entered the grinder area allowing them to return to the rail line. Following that the group was as stealthy as a horde of over the top lunatics could be while driving a tank around. They did find Contingency forces every now again, but between the mech tank, the super solider, the Krogan, the Master assassin and the technology manipulating energy ghost, most of them really weren't that much of a challenge considering the number of biotics/amount and quality of fire power in the group. That is to say most of them.
"Approaching the target destination." As Legion said that something clicked inside of the machine as new data came into its possession. "There's a guard protecting the station. A Tor program."
"'A' Tor Program?" Shepard liked absolutely nothing about this. "There's more than one of him now?"
"Correct." Legion's Geth brows clicked as they spoke. "Tor is data, easy to replicate and distribute. On top of that he is also highly successful in the use of violence as a problem solving method." Legion spoke as Shepard let out a groan.
"Who's Tor?" Tali asked sounding mildly concerned.
"Tor the Terrorist that was executed over Two Decades ago?" Kasumi however was more concerned than anything else at what she was hearing.
"That would be the one." Shepard stated as she let out a sigh.
The Union couldn't just mass produce AI programs to act as disposable foot soldiers against the acid spewing Prethoryn, the various AI right's groups bitched and whined about inhumane behaviour, but no one complained about hurling a bunch of death row inmates who had managed to earn multiple life sentences at the monsters. So on top of already being psychopaths, they were effectively tortured to death by the Union over and over again, on top of being given the Contingency's anti-organic programming. So yeah, people like Tor were apparently quite common in the Contingency nowadays.
"We just need to get the communication transmitter up and running again right?" This time it was Grunt's turn to utter cursed words.
The group arrived on the back of the Fenrir in time to bare witness to a metal giant that had just finished smashing the machines that made up a good chunk of the communication devices. A thick heavily built three story semi humanoid figure half as wide as it was tall, it's back was armed with cannons three quarters its height and it carried a massive weapon, a hammer that looked like it had several racks of missiles waiting to be fired from inside of it. In layman's terms, the entire thing was a ludicrous mass of violence, one that looked like it was designed with the though process of 'what does an immature child think looks cool' which means...
"Tor!?" Shepard called out to the giant as the rest of the group got in position to go into battle. "Is that you you ugly bastard!?"
"If it isn't the admiral's brat." The metal giant planted his weapon into the ground and leaned on it. "Technically I'm Tor-37, but I assure you I lose nothing in comparison to the original."
As Tor was speaking several figures dropped down from below. Terminator's had been used as the base, female Felinid if the long cat tails, large ears and obvious hourglass body shape was any indication. However there was no one in their right mind that would mistake these for real Felinids. For one thing there was no hair, not even synthetic skin, there wasn't even a face just a smooth flat surface likely lined with hundreds of micro camera's and sensors like some of the military Grade helmet's Shepard's seen acted as substitutes for eyes. They also didn't walk like Felinid's either simply crawling on the ground on all fours less like actual people and more like a porn model trying to emulate a cat.
"Nice to see that you still let your fetishes hold you back." Shepard stated as she cocked her gun.
"What can I say? I'm a man of culture." And then the hammer started spewing death, the weapon swung down in the group's directions as it opened up and released its payload.
The missiles were promptly scooped up into a singularity as the members of the team scattered. Garrus and Legion assumed sniper nests utilising reinforced legs for jumping and a jump pack respectively as they started sniping the charging synths. Grunt and Thane Charged forward. Kasumi grabbed Tali and disappeared. Wander howled, calling the Wizards he released into the hub in order to further tear it apart and distract the Contingency. Liara prepared to provide ranged fire. Shepard went on the war path.
"Well now you're making it interesting!"
Rather than the large and unwieldy missile launcher disguised as a hammer that Tor was wielding he instead opted to stomp the charging Krogan coming to chop off his ankles. However not only did Grunt Pull himself out of the way of the stomp, he followed that up with taking out his weapon, a great Grail Thrower, and firing off several spikes from the oversized weapon directly into Tor's knee. A snap sound echoed out as the makeshift pins broke and Tor followed up with a back hand directly to the Krogan.
Thane on the other hand was soon climbing Tor's body, dual wielding Chakram disk launchers as he fired point blank into the giant machine's body, each shot was warped, and made from heavy armour piercing materials besides the point, so they had a easy time penetrating the durasteel body, the issue being that the sheer mass meant that there was a lot of redundancies he'd have to go through to render it completely inoperable.
"We need some parts over here!" Tor attempted to turn at Tali's voice but Liara had started to release the missiles she gathered into his frame. While the others kept the brute busy Tali and Kasumi had taken to repairing as much of the damaged machinery as possible. This was their way of hijacking the Contingency control signal after all.
"Anything specific?" Thane shouted as Tor made an attempt to swat him, though at this point Thane had found a spot out of reach of Tor and his bulk.
"Raw materials! We can make do with our own fabricators!" At once Shepard pulled out her sword and threw it at Thane, the Drell soon getting into position to slice off the arm of Tor.
"You lot don't know when to quit!" Angrily saying that Tor lived up to his name's sake. The Giant mech fell backwards grabbing the cables that made up the connection to the transmitter that they needed as he fell and nearly crushed Tali and Kasumi in the process. The Thief teleported away with the Engineer, while Thane jumped to safety aided by his biotics.
"Well that was a failure." Shepard stated bluntly.
"As a command type platform Tor 37 has an ongoing overriding connection to all of his forces." Legion informed helpfully. "The Codex can still be spread to a large portion of the Hub."
"I don't know what you are scheming traitor but it ends here!" Suddenly countless turrets popped out from all over Tor's body. Singularities were deployed to eat the majority of the slugs that were being fired, the metals being crushed together and heated inside of the singularities, and then a wild card appeared. Grunt charged back into the fray, biotic barrier covering his entire body, extra weight from his biotics increasing his mass as he slammed into the side of the giant machine with enough force to carve out a huge dent into it, and followed that up with continuing to smash.
"Pass it over!" To Shepard's shout Liara tossed her the singularity that had the largest amount of mass to it, the ball of missiles, who then threw it at the downed Tor, before whipping out her plasma shot gun and firing. The ball of metals and Mass Effect Fields exploded and rained shrapnel down on the downed Tor leaving his entire body damaged. "You damned Bitch!" Tor's synthesized voice screamed as Shepard whistled at Legion.
"Understood." Legion pounced on Tor and found the central data core. He quickly dismantled the parts that he didn't need and found the central transmitter. "I will have to disseminate myself among the collective to spread the codex." Luckily Legion had already backed himself up. "In the mean time we suggest you all evacuate." With that Legion plugged himself into Tor's unit, and his lights went out as he spread the Codex among the entire Contingency within the hub. The entire machine world lit up with the new information, repairs ensued as the Contingency ships broke out into civil war, and didn't bother pulling their punches either, as it stood Shepard's team were lucky to escape the planet alive.
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