Author's Note: Sorry, it was a busy morning. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 84: The Great Rift Part 5
?M ?D ?H Until the Colossus Fires
Once again, Shepard was dunked into water. This time though there was no convenient ground beneath her feet that she could use to stand up, instead she kept sinking. Mind you, Shepard didn't spend long sinking. Instead the Dragoon turned on the built in function of her suit that let her use it to propel herself through the water as she reached the surface, and in lieu of a better idea, decided to keep going in a straight line until she found land. Let alone a potential launch or landing facility, Shepard didn't even find a chunk of land that such a thing could be built on, let alone any sign of how she got here but after what happened the last two times that was normal by now. What wasn't part of the pattern was how Shepard hasn't found anyone by now.
The Gaian's were living in the swamp, the Gorthekians a big junkyard of crashed space ships in a wasteland. In both cases Shepard was dropped in the middle of where they had built their civilisation. Which meant that Shepard now had an idea of where they were supposed to go.
"I've got a bad idea about this." Shepard dropped her propulsion and crossed her legs as she began to sink into the water again.
Shepard's suit was filled with a sophisticated sensor suite, paired with an equally sophisticated pattern recognition AI that could pick out details from the Data she was soaking in. Despite that Shepard receive no sign of any kind of buildings, shelter, any sort of indication that anyone had built anything down here. Letting out a sigh Shepard prepared to release her emergency chute to forcibly take her to the surface, and to her surprise discovered something above her, a huge whale shaped black mass that was now swimming above her, which Shepard would be going to very shortly.
"...The hell not? It's the best lead I've had all afternoon."
Shepard pulled the cord, a huge balloon was inflated from turning water into hydrogen and oxygen gas as Shepard shot straight up through the water as she approached the underside of the whale thing. Whatever it was, it had some kind of symbiotic relationship with something that looked like coral, and it was spitting out foot soldiers. The Creatures resembled something like a cross between dolphins and crayfish, with long antenna like whiskers floating off to the front and a armoured back leading into a long dolphin type body shape, two grasping fore limbs in the front instead of fore fins.
"Great there's more of them now." Shepard started as she prepared to deal with the enemy. "I come in peace, I mean you no harm-" Several of the crayfish prepared to strike Shepard all at once, lashing with their tentacles. "-and none of you care."
The water around Shepard suddenly turned into fire, a mixture of electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in the water and then igniting it into flame. That gave Shepard the opening she needed to eject herself from the water and land on the back of the whale thing, which now that she had a better look appeared to be some kind of giant crustacean with a navy coloured shell. Shepard could feel the psychic power coming off of the creature, it was weak, far away from a telekinetic or pyrokinetic, the most likely explanation was the humble perception filter, projecting a mind altering effect that makes people ignore the thing that they were looking for, the definition of 'if it was any closer it would've bit me.'
"You hid your presence from me." Shepard rolled onto her back and looked up into the sky. She was tired, she was forced to run around, get into brawls and use psionics and Telekinetics for days on end. She was running on an empty tank. "I need to find subsistence before my suit starts cannibalising my body for nutrients again." Shepard went through that experience once already and didn't care for it back then. "If there is something living here there should be some-" A Shadow over took Shepard who could only let out a sigh. Turning around Shepard saw a huge mass of water that had been pulled into the air. "I hate my life."
The sphere of water had one of the Crayfish things inside of it, it was surrounded by a mass of water that was growing denser and denser as more water was being drawn from the ocean. Suddenly a blade of water was shot out of the sphere with enough force to cut through a layer of steel, directly hitting Shepard in the process. Which would be rather unfortunate, were Shepard not wearing a full body armoured suit made out futuristic material that makes steel look like sugar cubes.
"That's all you got?" Another, even larger shadow appeared behind Shepard, notably come from above instead of below. "Me and my big mouth." Shepard turned around, another even larger mass of water had formed in the sky, several more of the crayfish things were in the water now. Suddenly the water changed shape, rounding out while a large cone shape was carved out leading to the crayfish that was inside. "The hell is-?"
"RRREEEAAAEEEE-!" A sonic blast suddenly echoed out using the water as an amplifier and bombarding Shepard with a continuous cacophony of wailing sonic screams.
"MUTE THE DOG!" Shepard's armour complied, a small dose of medigel being applied to fix her ears while muting all outside influence as Shepard dealt with the enemy. Course just because Shepard couldn't hear the sonic attack didn't mean she was out of danger. The force of the sound blast took her off her feet and threw her backwards, skipping across the ocean as she went before she started to sink again. "Sonic attacks created through the use of Telekinetics. That's a new one." Shepard didn't have any time to muse the implications.
The rest of the Crayfish were already zipping over from the big one, riding on jets of water that were coming out of what Shepard was hoping were dedicated jet organs but felt that scenario was extremely unlikely. More to the point, Shepard had vastly more to be concerned about as the walking boom boxes were coming straight at her.
"Enough!"
Shepard once again used lightning to turn water into gas and gas into fire. This time Shepard's defence was overwhelmed, another of the tele-sonic attacks to blow all the flames away and knock Shepard away again. She heard that animals like whales like to blast their prey with concentrated sonar as a weapon, which then stuns and can even kill their prey. Was there some kind of limit, was that why they're using the water? As Shepard was thinking about this her body started to get blasted by sound again, this time it was stronger than before. Shepard got it now, the more that they use that sound attack the better they figure out how her armour is built, then once they figure out the exact frequency that it's weak against they'll be able to shatter her armour like glass at a opera.
"Get! Off! Me!" Screaming that out Shepard gave a final telekinetic push as she forced everything the crayfish could use to transmit sound away from her. Shepard was left floating in the water, her armour shattered and her mind exhausted. "So this is how I'm going to die? I'm going to drown in the ocean and then seafood is going to eat me?" Shepard just let out a sigh. Shepard was met with a familiar sensation of being dragged into a mind palace, just to confirm she looked down at the Rifle that was her sign that she was not in the land of the waking during the course of this insane situation.
"Now you want to talk." Shepard just sighed as she pulled herself to her feet. She was under water again, so deep that she only saw light when she looked up. And yet she could clearly see the newest entity to make their presence known.
Of the three eldritch abominations from another dimension that Shepard's had to deal with the tall bronze skinned figure was by far the easiest on the eyes, a tall roughly humanoid figure who was somehow simultaneously wearing massive quantities of gold, silver and jewels in the form of necklaces, chains, rings, piercings, bracelets, hair and horn ornaments and yet so little that every should-be private area on their body was exposed, which was how Shepard made out both breasts that were competing against the head to be seen and the bejeweled rod that was competing with the legs for 'longest limb on the body.' Everything was so gaudy, excessive and over the top that it made Shepard's eyes hurt just to look at it.
"Allow me to introduce myself." The figures'entire body jingled as they stood up and bent over in a bow, speaking in a voice that couldn't be described as masculine or feminine but was nothing short of attractive for all it defied description. "I am the Instrument of Desire." First the Animator, then the Composer, after that was the Whisperer now the Instrument? Do none of these things know what names are? Shepard was starting to feel like she was starting to find out why the Unbidden are so hard to talk to.
"If you're going to insist that I look at you when you talk can you at least cover up first?" Shepard shielded her eyes as she made her request. "You're making it hard to concentrate."
"As you wish." With a swish of it's hand the warp entity clad their lower body in a sheer silk cloth and had their tits bound in nipple coverings. "Now than-" The 'three legged' figure made a deliberate show of baring her genitals as they adjusted which leg was crossed over which one. "-let us speak of the Sathyrelian Bliss." The scenery changed to an underwater world, cities were built hanging from the undersides of the massive crustacean creatures that Shepard saw earlier. "The Sathyrelian's come from the sea, as all life does. They evolved to share a symbiotic relationship with a local lifeform, a type of giant shelled reptile that they call Nemmas."
Is that what those were? It was hard to tell with all the coral-like stuff.
"A lesson as old as time in Sathyrelian Society is that abundance and ease do not equal prosperity." Numerous of the Crayfish people, the Sathyrelian's, were hard at work oyster shucking, fishing, and harvesting aquatic plants. Others were floating on or near the surface laying about in obvious relaxation. "Pleasure is best paired with Hard Work and busy hands needn't worry about what they don't have. It's a policy that carried them all the way to the stars."
"And then you found evidence of another civilisation, or civilisations, that had been wiped out by some unknown forces and they came up with a theory as to why this had happened." Shepard has had this conversation far, far too many times already.
"Indeed they had." The Instrument shrugged their shoulders as if what she had been saying had been obvious. "They discovered that the oldest and longest lasting race had been sea dwellers like themselves, they reached across the stars, accumulating resources and making slaves of those to whom they encountered and making them worship them." Well they weren't wrong. "And so they decided to follow suit."
Scratch that, they were very, very wrong.
"They developed a terraforming machine that can drain another world's oceans and deliver them to their own world." A trail of once lush and vibrant worlds sucked dry and turned into barren rocks. "They encountered other races and used them to experience sensations that they dare not inflict upon themselves." A field of bodies tortured and mutilated beyond recognition. "They bred more Menmas, modified and enhanced them through genetics and cybernetics and expanded their populations throughout their vast ocean cities."
"Meaning the jackasses tried to drain the galaxy of resources to increase their own planet's mass and habitability, damn the consequences." Shepard let out a sigh. "I don't actually blame the Reapers for this one: I would've kicked your asses too."
For all that the Reapers are vile monstrosities they are at least invested in the long term survival of the galaxy. The same cannot be said for these hedonistic cloaca's.
"You would've tried. I wonder what my people would've done in response." The hermaphrodite gave a nice view of their breasts as they leaned over and rested her chin on her fist. "What sweet screams will you make in response?"
Shepard wondered what led to this thing to exist in the first place. The depravity and excess was explained already but the... everything else was still unexplained. Well if the Crayfish are hermaphrodites then it makes sense that their God is as well, then was Shepard's image of them being shaped by what she thought they should look like? How does that even work when they haven't even introduced themselves.
"Even if you say that, you were beaten. If not by your victims then definitely the Reapers." Even if they were the dominant power of their cycle, the fact of the matter is that they were here now, having joined the ranks of the various races that were jarred and 'preserved' by the Reapers and were now... whatever this was.
"Indeed we did lose in the end, but that just means that the enemy was stronger than us. That is different now." The Reapers were sent running from the Union not once but twice, the destruction from the first time the Mass Relays were destroyed on top of that. "More Reapers have been killed in this cycle than in any other, if you count the explosive end of the last as the beginning of this one." If these people, in Reaper form, have been around since near the beginning of the Reaper's cycles then that means that they should have the most accurate idea of what is going on with the Reaper's numbers at this point in time.
"Have enough of them have been killed off that we can wipe them out in a straight fight?" To Shepard's question, the Instrument of Desire started laughing so hard that they were slapping their thigh and wiping a tear from their eye. "Alright. What makes things so different now?"
"You poor pathetic creature you've failed to understand the basics of war. You have been working so desperately hard to slay enemies that don't matter and yet you are nowhere close to the one that actually matters. I pity you."
Of course none of the Reaper's became what they are by choice, they're the end result of pulping an entire civilisation body, mind and soul, mixing them together with nano-technology and then pumping the slurry into a space ship shell to give birth to a new horror, enslaved to the whims of one, the first Reaper, the one born of the race that they served, the ones who meant to enslave the galaxy, the one who intends to remake it into their perfect image.
"Harbinger." Shepard Darkly concluded, drawing her own conclusions.
Of course the coward hadn't re-entered the galaxy. It can drown them out with the full force of their countless Reaper Slaves. It even has other lesser Harbingers that the monster can assign the task of recycling their forces into an army of foot soldiers to harass them. It has even adopted the Union's tactics and were even unleashing their old enemies to run harassment, and by the time that the Union is done dealing with this new enemy both factions will be primed to be conquered by the Reapers, remade according to their designs and allow the Leviathan's perfect eternal empire to flourish. Worst of all though? There was nothing that they could do about it. For all that the Union had developed technology to short cut their way across the Galaxy all of it was dependent upon the warped reality that emerged in the aftermath of the Mass Relay detonations, the only machine that they had that could reach the Harbinger was the Alpha Relay, and Shepard watched it get blown up with the rest of the remaining Mass Relays. And yet hope had appeared.
"So? What about you. What's your grand scheme to go where we cannot and strike at who is out of our reach?" To Shepards growing, increasing annoyance, the monster laughed at her.
"I'm not telling~! I'm going to let you tear each other apart, and then I'm going to swoop in and claim the spoils!" As the bi-gendered God-like entity explained that, the waters started to swirl and another vortex opened up as Shepard muttered 'not again!'
10M 20D 12H Until the Colossus Fires
Titan, Cryos, Poseidon, Aquatos, Oceanic and other ice worlds, where the ice was cold enough to produce deep freezing temperatures that few cryogenic facilities in the entire galaxy could match. Here continent wide server farms had been built by the Union, each of them containing millions of programs being run in a massive simulation. AI personalities were being raised in mass for the purpose of being downloaded into the awaiting bodies of millions of Dragoons and soldiers from across the Union Council space. Right now, these worlds were under attack. Great cyborg ships with some kind of crayfish creature as it's core were dropping into the worlds in question, smashing through the icy surface into the waters below. These worlds were not entirely defenceless though, the sea born Mero were tasked as these worlds defenders, joined by the Council own wet work agents the Hanar.
Both the Mero and the Hanar were equipped for war, their bodies covered in shells of armour, fans propelling them through the water while submersibles attacked the new unknown threat. The creatures resembled Crayfish, but large enough to be the same size of Dolphins. They attacked used sound transmitted through psionics, the combined might of their Telekinetics and water pressure was used to crush enemies and shatter their armours and weapons.
At times like these people turned to their heroes, indeed it was even normal for pray to those that you believe in for salvation. And the Council has no shortage of heroes that it can rely on in these trying times. Thus the Hero of the Citadel Council would soon make his debut in Union space: Blasto the Spectre! Hero of the Citadel!
"Cut!" One Mak Wakers, a Salarian director with the unfortunate position of directing the Six low budget high action 'Blasto Hero of the Council' films, even though he was the only one who didn't realise he was unfortunate, called out to the members of his cast. "Would somebody in the prop department please tell me how hard it is to create a menacing alien invader?" Fresh off of telling the Heroic tale of how Blasto single handily fended off the Reaper invasion by destroying the Citadel and detonating the Mass Relays he was now in the midst of the story of Blasto fending off the 'unknown' alien invaders threatening the Union Dragoon facilities, Mak was now pulling down on a black and blue Sathrelian puppet. "This looks like something I had for breakfast this morning!"
"Director Wakers, this is the most accurate rendition of the enemy forces that we've been able to pull from the footage from the ocean worlds."
"I don't care about realistic!" 'Who were the one who said to make the props as realistic looking as possible!' "I want Scary!"
"Director Wakers Sir!" An Asari production assistant suddenly ran in.
"Now what?" The annoyed Salarian director turned to face the woman in question tapping his foot in annoyance.
"A cease and desist order from the Union: We're not allowed to use the names or likeness of any of their generals or diplomats." Have it their way.
"Everyone take five! I need to go talk to the writing team about changing a few lines for the movie." Lovely.
Now they were going to get a cease and desist letter from the council for causing friction with the Union. This guy's last three movies are still in last minute approval because of the amount of top secret content he comes into contact with, and the amount of sheer offences that he's managed to cram into each of his movies. The Hanar are up in arms about the whole thing, still trying to get the whole franchise removed from public streaming, no the fact that there was a Hanar in the titular, starring role did absolutely nothing to waylay their sheer displeasure. In fact this actor was quite possibly the singularly most hated Hanar in their entire recent culture.
Turkis didn't know who he offended to be stuck baby sitting this loser but he prayed to the spirits that they might forgive him one day. This propaganda theatre was one of the few places receiving a steady stream of Intel. That isn't to say that the Intel gatherers were bad at their jobs, only that by dint of it being top secret information there were only a handful of people and/or facilities that would have access to it. Contrary to the Director Mak's assertions his 'breakfast' was one of the more dangerous enemies that they ran into. The Sathrelians attack via the mind, flooding the brain with enough over stimulation to give an aneurysm, shatters most machinery with their psi sound attacks. Much as Turkis would appreciate not having anything to do with the blowhard, he had his uses, aside from the secrecy and discretion that can be afforded by having a bunch of people move from planet to planet discretely, more important than that the man has a unusual talent for planning and creativity, with some light prodding from a number of 'producers' the man can devise complex and effective schemes to build his movies around, which on at least three separate occasions have prevented some serious situations. Case in point, Mak's managed to calculate and foil at least three separate attacks by the Crayfish that would've wreaked havoc on the Dragoon servers. He was still an insufferable ass though.
"Let's get the writing team down here, let's check to see how well we can write in the surprise twist of a admiral getting mind controlled by the psychic crab people." Like that, that is exactly the kind of thing that can get on people's bad side in a hurry.
"Do not have the admiralty get mind controlled." Turkis snapped by way of reply. "My entire job description is literally 'stop you from doing stupid mot' and 'write down any ideas you come up with!'"
"Alright how about this." Mak brought up a Holo screen with a wave of his hands. "The Thorian connects those who have their spores in their brains to others with the same infection right?" The Hologram illustrated his point with a chart of several different people and a mushroom in the middle of the formation, various lines were circling around using arrows to indicated the pattern of thoughts. "Right. So: what happens if one of those things eats the brain of one of the defenders?"
"Really? That's a thing that you think these creatures do, eat the brains of creatures that they've only just encountered?" Turkis wanted to smack himself in the face.
"Why not? It makes them scarier after all." Mak shrugged his shoulders as if he was talking about something incredibly obvious. "And it's what you guys pay me for as well. Come up with the worst case scenarios."
"If they did get access to the Thorian then they might interfere with the Dragoon Bodies." The Asari Stage hand pointed out, and once again Turkis had no other choice but to reaffirm this b-movie director's wisdom to his superiors.
Life was not fair.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Liara, Tali is a close second.
ExcaliburShooter: Read and find out.
Monster King: So you've said before.