This chapter has been brought to you by the INSISTENCE that this fic isn't dead. I just have writers block. This is one of several future chapters I have written, but apparently people think this fic is dead so I decided to give this one up early. I want to at least get the suicide mission done before posting next.
"Anyone else feel like this is overkill?" Jacob asked as they all got into position.
"No." Grunt snorted. "I still don't see why you think such a thing exists, anyway."
"Because there are some circles of thought that may deem this more than enough." Thane told the krogan as he stretched his dominant arm for biotics. Glint appeared briefly to shush them all, and Crow sighed.
"Glint, they can't hear us." he reminds his Ghost out loud. "Legion said so."
"You can never be too careful." Glint offered in response. Crow rolled his eyes and took aim. After their unfortunate discovery regarding the compatibility of biotics and vortex grenades, they had been met with only a couple of geth in a short hallway filled with turrets that Legion was able to hijack. It was no contest. And right now, they were preparing to ambush handfuls of geth attached to local servers like in the first room.
"Charlie in position." Jacob informed the Commander through comms. A few moments passed, biotics primed to cut loose, and Tali ready with her omni-tool.
"Execute." In the space of a few seconds, the geth's shields were stripped, the machines were riddled with bullets, and then thrown into the walls with such force that one of them got stuck there.
"You know? You might have a point, Jacob." Crow commented as they watched the carnage settle.
"All clear, Commander. We'll meet you at the door." the man said, signaling them to move out. The geth in the wall fell out and started to float to the floor in the low gravity environment. "Hey, at least these guys deserve it."
"We would do well not to get too complacent." Thane commented. "This is still an enemy stronghold."
They met up with the others, who'd been given no problems by their own hub, and continued on up several ramps and through corridors that geth occasionally popped into like that whack-a-pyjak game that he and Joker had messed around with at the arcade. Eventually they came to another wide room, though this time it didn't have any hubs. The word must be spreading about their presence, because there's a wave of geth to meet them.
Legion hacks the security turrets, their techs strip shields, and Samara puts up a large barrier since there isn't enough cover for all of them. Aside from that, the only real problems were the cloaked geth.
Crow could see them, thanks to truesight, and judging by the turian's well-placed shots Garrus must have tricked out that visor more than he thought, to detect non-organic enemies despite their lack of a heat signature. He thinks Shepard can see them as well, she had probably done something similar to her helmet. That meant it was down to the three of them to call out where the targets were.
"Tali, ten O'clock!" he warns, throwing out a smoke bomb. He was glad to have perfected the release devices the other day. He could technically just disperse smoke out of his body outright, but Nightstalker's hadn't done that since the Dark Age; it was easier to compress it into a container and throw it. According to Glint, Hunters used to use everything from perfume bottles to gallon jugs until the Iron Lords came along and developed their own early iterations of specialized devices.
The bomb attaches to the wall, and bursts smoke out when a pair of cloaked geth cross in front of it. It sticks to their armor, eating away at it and turning them into easily spotted void-afflicted targets. Tali was on one in an instant with her shotgun, being the closest, and a biotic attack yanks the other off the ground and throws it across the room, where it exploded as the void interacted with the mass effect field.
An electrical explosion paints another target, likely Garrus with his omni-tool, and a shockwave of biotics sweeps one section indiscriminatingly (probably Jack), earning a few choice words from Miranda, who was nearly caught in it as well.
Things die down quickly after that, until the only geth on the field are Legion, and an unfortunate trooper who was still caught in a singularity and being used as target practice by Shepard and Grunt. Once the singularity fades and the more hazardous geth parts have slowed down in their erratic low gravity journeys, the group splits to ensure all sections of the room are clear and meet up in the back to make their way along more ramps and corridors.
It was here that they had their first close call; geth ambushed them from around the corner in the next room they entered. Shepard got nailed, but thankfully her shields took most of it, and she pulled back to let Legion chuck a grenade at the problem and hack a nearby turret.
"Crow, Kasumi, go dark!" She ordered, and the two of them did just that. Pulling the void around himself, he slipped past the others and ducked took advantage of the pause in suppressing fire the grenade had caused. By the time the geth have recovered, he's already slamming a knife into the vital systems of one, and Kasumi is doing the same to another. He pivots, using the low gravity to throw the body at the remaining geth before ducking around it and putting a bullet in its head.
He uses truesight to ensure there are no more surprises before calling the all clear. Shepard is rolling her shoulder, but her armor had done its job and now sported a small but deep dent as proof of its functionality.
"Good work, fall back in." She tells the two, and Kasumi practically skips back to her place in formation.
They do a cursory sweep of the room, during which Shepard nicks some shielding tech, and make their way down another passage of ramps. They're met with another hub room within, data streams illuminating the walkway they come in on and casting a sickly light about the area.
"Crow, Kasumi, in you go." Shepard calls them forward again, and the two go dark for the third time. At the bottom of the ramps that led down onto the ground floor, he used truesight to find Kasumi, and tapped her on the right shoulder to indicate that was the side of the room he would take. Quickly, carefully, he made his way around, locating the hub and identifying two geth hunters linked to it with a lone trooper. Taking initiative, he creeps up and plants a smoke bomb on the side of the wall next to the hunters and backtracks to the center of the room to hide behind cover; he's been invisible for a while and needs to take a break.
After a few moments, he uses truesight to find Kasumi again, taps her on the left shoulder to indicate where he was going again, and made his way to the hub she had undoubtedly found. It also had two geth hunters, so he planted another smoke bomb next to them before retreating back to the rest of the team. Kasumi is already back in place, so he assumes she already told Shepard what she had found.
"Two hunters and a trooper on the right side, too." he informs her. "I placed a smoke bomb next to them and left Kasumi's the same gift. I noticed their cloaking doesn't really work when the void is eating away at them."
"Good thinking." She tells him. "Activate them when I give the signal. Charlie, split off, Mordin and Samara go with them. Everyone else, with me."
They filed down the walkway in twos, weapons ready for any surprises, and split off at the bottom. Crow couldn't help but remember his first mission with the whole team, on Aite. The disorder of the landing, the clashing personalities, the awkwardness of everyone getting used to each other in a combat setting. He could remember his own wariness of Grunt, and his unease at being in a team after so long working alone, and only one drill under his belt.
Now, they all moved fluidly, as one. Nobody spoke unless necessary, Jack didn't try to start anything with anyone, and they all had one another's backs without having to be asked. Grunt was a friend, albeit still and odd duck of a friend, and he could say he would trust any of the team to watch his back... well, maybe not Jack, being a bona fide psychopath and all. He was still slightly on the fence about Miranda, but in firefight he could still trust her to shoot at the other guy.
Everyone was in position in less than two minutes, everyone ready for the moment they were told to strike, each of them prepared to compliment whatever the others dished out. Even Glint was ready, linked to his omni-tool even while hidden, ready to remotely detonate the smoke bombs.
"Execute." The smoke explodes out to cover the two hunters, rendering their active camouflage irrelevant at best as the void painted their bodies in embers of decay. A singularity pulled them in along with the remnants of smoke and the lone trooper, and an incendiary blast from an omni-tool turns it into a vortex of fire. Gunfire sprays the objects of misfortune, and a violent biotic push slams the pockmarked, scorched remnants into the hub hard enough to embed the geth platforms into it. Jacob signals for them to ceasefire, but Grunt still gives one of the geth some complementary shotgun spray.
Shepard confirmed that her team had successfully downed their geth as well.
It really was a far cry from what the team used to be. They had been relatively coordinated before, but now they could take out a small enemy squad in less than a minute. We just bodied them. He thought with a flicker of amusement. As the Guardians would say.
"It isn't fair." Grunt grumbled as they met up with the others. "Not much of a fight like this."
"Don't jinx it." Crow told him. "I don't want every geth on the station between me and the airlock once we blow this place."
"I don't want every geth." Grunt scoffed. Shepard shushed him, and led the way through the next door, but he continued in a whisper, leaning towards Crow. "Just at least one big one. I want to see what we can do to it."
The next room gives them a window view to a massive server hub, and they halt briefly when Legion does some kind of scan and finds the Heretics had spies among Legion's own geth. Something that apparently challenged how geth normally interacted with each other. Crow can't say he understands any of it, but 'what did we do wrong' would definitely stick in his mind.
As would Legion questioning the value of individuality, but he wasn't the right person to try to explain that value; he still sometimes wrestled with what the freedom to be an individual could let him do with his life. He would let someone else help Legion with this particular existential crisis.
The next room is finally their destination.
"This it?" He hears Shepard ask as Charlie fans out to the left of the room.
"Yes." Legion confirmed, striding up to a console at the front, which overlooked a maze-like lower area. "We will upload a copy of our runtimes into the core. It will delete all copies of the virus. When complete, it will notify us. The indexing operation will take time. The heretics will respond with force to our upload. We must hold this room."
"Crow, place some of those smoke bombs at the tops of those ramps in case anything invisible makes it up." The Commander ordered. "Garrus, set up some proximity charges near the other doors. I want our sharpshooters up here watching those doors below, Alpha will cover them. The rest of Charlie, hold on our left, Bravo on our right."
They all ran to follow the orders, and Crow is glad there are only two ramps; he only has two disorienting smoke bombs left.
"Zaeed, we're going to need a hot extraction from these coordinates." Ironically, the call from Shepard came right after the one from EDI. "ETA is twenty minutes. Be ready."
Jaw clenched, he debates relaying the news. On one hand, she would probably give him hell for not telling her right away. On the other...
"Zaeed, do you copy?" It would be a distraction. One she didn't need, not in the thick of it. The team was making fast progress, almost breezing through the station like it was a game, but a distraction would change that.
"I copy. Kick their asses." He would tell her after they boarded. His fists still clenched tight on the console, he curses once again that he's the designated driver for this mission. At least out there, he could shoot something. Then again, anyone else might've told her that the Normandy had been hit, and a desperate Commanded could make mistakes. A desperate team certainly would in their haste to return, if she relayed the news to them.
Zaeed hated that he couldn't shoot anything right now, but he can admit that he was probably the best man for this. At least they would be right on those Collector bastards tails after this.
"Datamine and analysis complete." Crow was introducing a geth hunter to a Lightforged Hunter knife from a few meters away when Legion got on comms. His enemy tumbled back an fell down the ramp with a weighted knife jammed square in its face, and he shot it with Hawkmoon just to be sure it was dead while another geth gets swept off the ramp unceremoniously by someone's biotics.
"Regroup, we're about to get out of here!" Shepard followed up.
"Crow, Grunt, watch our six." Jacob ordered as they all started making their way to Shepard's position. But they didn't get much further than the console that Legion had started the data mine from.
"It is time to choose." Legion told them as they all crouched behind cover, looking at several of them before focusing on Shepard. "Do we rewrite the heretics, or delete them?"
"Why are we choosing?" Shepard shook her head. "They're your people."
"There is no consensus among our higher-order runtimes." Legion explained while Crow popped a geth trooper in the head. "Five-hundred seventy-three favor rewrite; five-hundred seventy-one favor destruction. You have fought the heretics in the past. You have perspective we lack. The geth grant their fate to Normandy."
"What's that mean?" Tali huffs, fingers flying across her omni-tool as she pilots her combat drone. "You mean Shepard."
"We mean Normandy. You are Normandy." The geth states.
"I think he's equating us to a consensus." Glint chips in over comms in an attempt to clarify, and Crow can't help but think it makes sense, at least from a geth perspective. We do move as a single unit now.
"We don't have time for this, just blow them up!" Grunt shouted. More geth were starting to pour in from the bottom half of the room. This was met with several more confirmations of 'destroy', because if Legion wouldn't commit to a choice without their input, they were going to have to give it. Crow was among them; after all he'd read about indoctrination, and knowing the few things he did about Uldren's fall, the concept of messing with any species 'brains' was abhorrent to him.
"Destroy them." He said, Glint popping into existence to nod in agreement. "It seems more merciful than tampering with their minds to me."
"I say if we can get them to blow up Reapers for us, brainwash them!" Jack was the only exception, proving once again that her brain might be screwed on incorrectly.
"There's no guarantee they won't come to the same conclusions again is there?" Shepard sighed when she was the only one left and Legion looked to her. "To worship the Reapers and attack organics?"
"There is a non-zero probability of error." Legion informed her.
"Then we blow them up." She decided. "We have a chance to end this once and for all. We're taking it."
"Acknowledged." the geth nodded, perhaps only for their benefit, and started working at the console again while the rest of them re-engaged fully to give him cover. "Collapsing antimatter magnetic bolting mechanisms. Done."
"Zaeed, now!" Shepard commanded over the link to their shuttle. Crow threw down two invisibility smoke bombs, one up front and another towards the back, so the whole team was covered. For a moment he was worried that it wasn't enough, and wished he had made more than three, or hadn't left the third back on the Normandy for Mordin to examine.
Even invisible, they managed to move smoothly as a single unit. They'd made certain beforehand that everyone had modifications to their HUDs that kept the team marked even in such a state, otherwise they might end up shooting him or Kasumi by accident, or each other if he put them under smoke for safety. They made their way out the right side of the room and into a corridor filled with several troopers who got ambushed by shotguns, biotics, Shepard's omni-blade and one of Crow's knives.
The station rocked and crashed around them as systems overloaded and normal functions got interrupted. Pipes started screaming overhead, startling him, but he was able to shake it off. One burst, though, and Thane had to pull Tali forwards in order to keep her from getting sprayed with whatever the substance was. The exit Legion had found for Zaeed to park at earlier was remarkably closer than their infiltration point, and only an emergency like a reactor meltdown would open it, likely as a security measure. Even if geth mainly lived in the servers, they still needed evacuation routes on this station because if it started to go, getting their physical platforms to safety was the only way out.
And it looked like a geth prime had been on its way to evacuating. Good thing they got here before it started trying to pry the door open.
"Shit!" Shepard swore as she and Garrus turned the corner together only to nearly walk into the thing. Grunt just had to ask for a big one, didn't he?
"Tether out!" He warned, dashing forwards and calling on his Light. The bow really did come easier now that he'd held it before. The void sang in his hands as he pulled the string back, and let the arrow flew. It struck the prime true, and the massive geth staggered as paracausal force slammed into it, shields flickering. Its trooper escort was pulled in by hungry tethers of light that demanded prey. Crow ducked and rolled into cover, looking over to the others in time to see Shepard, Garrus, and Tali with their omni-tools out. The now familiar sound of shields failing sounded from the prime's direction, and he leaned out of cover to toss a vortex grenade at it.
"No warps!" Shepard warned. Whoops, forgot about earlier. Now a good chunk of their team probably wouldn't risk hitting that thing with their biotics because of him.
Someone slammed a trooper to the ground anyway, and Grunt charged forwards, laughing.
"Grunt, no!" The krogan slammed into the prime, pumping it full of full of lead, and Crow jumped out of cover, dodging bolts of plasma and throwing a knife at the trooper that shot them. The vortex grenade had eaten two troopers, and as he got closer to the tussling krogan and geth, he willed the residual energy into overshields for the two of them.
He jumped up onto the prime, while Grunt laughed and Shepard shouted obscenities about his impulsive bloodlust, and worked to get a decent grip about its shoulders. Every time it tried to pry him off, Grunt would continue trying to throw it around, which was about as unhelpful as the thing trying to grab him. Thanks to the void anchor, it couldn't move, and was taking more of a beating than it otherwise would have. Crow would still prefer to end things quickly, and to that end, he finally managed to jam Hawkmoon's barrel between the plates at the base of its neck; the gun was practically singing with paracausal energy after the fight in the control room, glowing with silver light, and he'd decided to save that energy in case he needed it.
Like now. He pulls the trigger, and the paracausal bullet rips through the prime and into the floor. The massive construct staggers, sways, and falls, Crow hopping off and backing up several paces so that it didn't land on him. The silver light emanating from Hawkmoon faded, and he thought he heard a faint, content chirp.
"Grunt, you're cleaning every inch of the damn mess when we get back, you hear me?" Shepard hissed as she led the team forwards. "With a toothbrush."
"It was still awesome." Crow could hear the eye roll in his voice.
"If Crow hadn't intervened, you could be dead right now. Just get on the shuttle." She snapped back as the airlock opened. One by one, they all rush in and strap into their seats. Well, most of them; several people still had to stand. He pat the krogan on the shoulder as he passed him.
The shuttle rattled as they made their escape, tension thick in the air as they all wondered if they were going to make it in time. The inertial dampeners kicked in as they sped up, and after about a minute of the only sound being heavy breathing and the functions of the shuttle-
"Heretic base terminated." Legion stated, as one would announce the weather. Crow let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and let himself relax in his seat.
"And that's the end of all that." Garrus shook his head as Shepard went up to the cockpit, presumably to talk to Zaeed. "Two, three years of fighting geth and we just smoked them in less than two hours?"
"They never stood a chance. Ha!" Grunt barked, grinning as he took his helmet off. "Did you see me pound that thing?"
"I saw you risk getting caught in friendly fire." Glint chided, emerging into the open to whisk away Crow's own helmet. "You really shouldn't do that; you could have gotten seriously hurt! There were biotics and high-voltage electrical charges flying around!"
"Whatever, mom." The krogan snorted. Glint puffed out his shell.
"I am not a-" he cut himself off, staring at Shepard as she came in from the cockpit. Crow felt his stomach clench. "Are you okay?"
"Not doing so well with your counterargument there, buddy." Jacob commented, before he noticed what the rest of them were.
Shepards was white as a sheet, jaw clenched so tightly he could see the muscles protesting, fist tight around the rim of her own helmet. He thought he could hear the material creaking in protest.
"Shepard?" Garrus inquired worriedly.
"Normandy was hit." It's like the floor has been snatched out from under him; his stomach drops, adrenaline floods his body, and fear spikes through him. A thousand different nightmares flash through Crow's mind in an instant, and the reactions around him were muffled by his own, loud terrors. Was Joker okay? Was Chakwas? Ken and Gabby? Shepard wouldn't have that look on her face if they'd fended off the attack, if they had been victorious.
He's able to understand that Joker is the only one left, and that the Collectors took everyone else. There's something about EDI, but he can't be bothered, because they took Chakwas. They took Ken and Gabby. Glint is pressed against his neck, muttering reassurances. There's a hand on his shoulder. It doesn't help. For the first time in his life, he has something other than Glint to lose.
And the Collectors had taken them.
I initially wrote this thing all in one sitting, in a rare, sudden flash of inspiration. Then I accidently closed the window out of habit... without saving. My motivation to rewrite this chapter was so low, I wrote it in small bits, sometimes only a few sentences at a time. It got to the point where I had been stuck on it for so long, I hated this chapter with a fiery passion. So, I decided to skip one of the key fights. This did the trick; I was able to break my block and write the second half of the chapter within a few sessions. It clearly suffers from a lack of the control room fight, but I don't regret doing it. I made a choice between letting it fester to the point where I never moved past it, or turning out something janky that I could always come back and fix later. I chose the latter option.
I've only hated one other chapter as much as I hate this one, and I've only just gotten to the point where I feel like I can go back and re-do it. Someday I'll come back and give this train wreck some love, but for now, I need chapter thirty six out of my face so I can get to the good stuff that I haven't been staring at for months.
Fare Thee Well!