CHAPTER 37: ANGEL'S WRATH
"I'm in charge here, Dr. Baynam, we cannot – " Jeong started to say.
"Mom!" Lizbeth shouted on seeing Juliana alive. The young woman ran towards her mother, immediately ending the argument between mother and Exogeni director.
"Oh sweetie!" Mother and daughter embraced, forcing a scowl from Jeong at suddenly being ignored by the senior researcher.
Not content with being sidelined and no longer the center of attention, the director immediately turned his anger to the Spectre and her fireteam. "I've received reports of damaged company property," Jeong accused Shepard as she approached. The corporate director was flanked by two humans in armor that denoted them as Exogeni security, their rifles readied but not aimed. "And of an intrusion onto a proprietary company network!"
Shepard, however, was flanked by Wrex, Garrus, and Kaidan. The expression on the two guards' faces changed from indignation to concern to fear as the fireteam continued to approach, their eyes not leaving the massive krogan by her side. Jeong himself took a step back. The newest Spectre forced herself to remain calm and not biotically crush this executive in front of her, or at least as calm as she could be given the circumstances and her past life as a colonist. "Ready to come clean on your experiment here?" she asked the director with a quietly unnerving voice.
"There's no experimenting here!" Jeong shot back. "We're just trying to find anything of note on this planet!"
"Oh, by find, you mean the thorian that you're allowing to infect the colonists!?" Shepard snapped at him, her corona flaring subconsciously.
The corporate man paled, but recovered a moment later. "Y-you can't th-threaten me like that! S-s-security!" he shouted.
The two guards on either side of him looked to the two human biotics, the massive krogan, and the turian in front of them. It only took them a split second to reach a realization. They didn't even bother to raise their weapons. "We don't have any quarrel with you," Shepard told the guards. "But we're getting information from Jeong, one way or another." After a brief delay, both tossed their rifles to the side within a moment of each other. "Good. Now, Jeong, you're going to tell everything you know about the thorian. Now."
"Y-you can't threaten me!" he repeated, continuing to slowly step back.
"No, I'm not threatening, I'm promising," she replied, drawing in even more dark energy. Biotic energy swirled around her petite frame, picking up dust from the ruins within a couple meters of her as she slowly walked towards executive. Her soft voice provided an unsettling contrast to the thrum of her biotics. "You're running horribly unethical experiments here on colonists. People who are just trying to make a living on a ruined planet. Then the geth attack, and you care more about your fucking profits than the colonists whose lives you are responsible for!" she suddenly screamed at him accompanied by a subconscious burst of dark energy from her entire body, rattling small objects in the room. More dark energy condensed around her right hand as she brought her right arm up to hold the clenched fist several centimeters from her chest. "I'm tempted to use this biotic fist to punch every tooth out of your lying, sniveling, bullshit-spewing mouth if you don't come clean with us on why you are torturing unwitting colonists!"
Jeong had backed up even further. After dropping their weapons, the two security guards showed no interest in taking any part in the disagreement. The director stared at the enraged Spectre for several moments silently, nervously glancing between her and the krogan next to her. Even Wrex looked slightly surprised by the ferocity of her outburst.
"Your company is experimenting on colonists. You started this mess, and it will be cleaned up, one way or another. By Exogeni, by the Alliance, or by a Council Spectre. What we've seen here has been recorded on our armor systems, and will be in my report. If you don't tell me everything you know, it will reflect poorly on both Exogeni and on you personally. And trust me, you'd much rather face lawyers and prison sentences than my biotics. So, you can either cooperate, or you cannot." She shrugged, forcing her earlier anger to subside slightly. She would probably get in a bit of trouble for threatening an executive of one of the Alliance's most profitable, 'best' colonization companies. But right now, she didn't give a damn. "Your choice," she finished, taking another step closer to him, raw biotic power pulsing from her.
Jeong looked in terror at the wrath emanating from the first human Spectre, the Heroine of the Blitz, the Angel of Elysium, staring at the swirling dark energy around her entire form, listening to the thrumming of her power and her anger. Finally, he let out a shaky sigh and began to speak. "We…we didn't realize what the thorian was when we first found it. But then, everyone at the colony proper that had remained there for several days started to act strangely. That's when we started searching. We started to find nodes of the thorian, and soon after we found the main body itself."
"Right underneath the colony. The one you threatened to feed and have fed your staff to," Shepard said, crossing her arms.
"What!?" Jeong asked in surprise and alarm. "No one has been fed to the thorian!"
Shepard glared at him and crossed her arms. "Jeong, you're full of more shit than a sewage plant."
"Uh, ma'am, no one has been fed to the thorian," one of the security guards said after a moment's hesitation. "While…we made threats to keep people in line, we just send them back to the sector corporate office."
Shepard looked to Lizbeth, who gave the name of the researcher who had mysteriously vanished. "I s-saw security cleaning out her s-stuff one night."
The second security guard spoke up, shaking his head. "She had been sent back to the corporate office, but she had forgotten some of her personal effects in a drawer. She wasn't fed to the thorian. You have my word, ma'am."
Shepard looked and listened to both guards closely, judging every minute reaction that both made…they were probably telling the truth. Probably. "So why'd you make the threats?" she asked as she crossed her arms.
"Many of the researchers had disapproved about using the colonists as unwitting test subjects. So when I arrived, I suggested making threats to keep them in line," Jeong told her.
Shepard glared at him. "Shouldn't the fact that you had to make such threats tell you that something was wrong about what you were doing!?"
"The potential of the thorian is tremendous! Studying its effects, its biology, its lifespan – the value of the medical breakthroughs would be incalculable!" Jeong responded.
"That doesn't mean you have to use colonists as test subjects!" Shepard shouted back, then her face adopted a puzzled expression a moment later. "Wait, what do you mean when you said 'its lifespan'?"
"The thorian is truly ancient, even by krogan or asari standards. It is probably close to a hundred thousand years old, maybe even older. It was certainly alive at the time of the protheans. That's why we wanted to study it. Even just a few biological insights into its long lifespan would be priceless," Juliana answered.
But Shepard hadn't heard any of his rationale as soon as he mentioned 'close to a hundred thousand years old.' If that was correct, it would mean the thorian had been alive…at the time of the prothean extinction. Given what little they knew about Saren's motivations, and even less of what they knew about the Conduit, she finally had a piece of information. Something about the thorian would be relevant to the prothean's extinction. That is what Saren and the geth wanted, and why the colonists had acted strangely – they were defending the thorian from geth attacks. Finally some of the puzzle pieces fell into place.
Though if Saren and the geth wanted whatever it was they needed from the thorian, why didn't they commence a planetary bombardment? On Eden Prime, holding off on the bombardment made a bit of sense, since the attack placed geth at the scene and had, intentionally or unintentionally, thrown the Alliance and humanity into a panic, and they had simply been lucky that it hadn't been worse. But here…why didn't they just destroy the colony with an orbital bombardment or a few bombs after they left? Or…since Saren apparently wanted her alive, why didn't they set a trap for her here? She felt a knot appear in her stomach with the next thought. Or…they already have set a trap here, and are just waiting for me to fall right into it…oh shit -
"Commander?" Alenko asked her again, as she had apparently been so deep in thought that she hadn't heard him ask the first two times.
"Sorry, Kaidan," she replied, looking up at him. "I was thinking…now things start to make a bit of sense. Why Saren and the geth would come to Feros."
"Wait," Jeong said, holding up his hands in near panic. "Did you just say Saren? As in 'Saren the Spectre'?" he asked quickly, his expression turning pale with the revelation as he began to shake.
Oops. Shepard sighed to herself. Well, no point in lying now. "There is evidence pointing to Saren collaborating with the geth. And you could forget you heard that," she told Jeong sternly. And if you think I'm scary, you'll really wish you were dead if Saren gets his hands on you.
"Does that mean that Saren was behind Eden Prime and that he's OH FUCK WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" he screamed.
"Stop it," Shepard ordered him. "No more speculation on the geth. And if you don't want to die, you're going to help me free the colonists from the thorian's control."
"The only way to free the colonists is to disrupt the connection at a thorian's central node. But once you get close to a central node, the colonists are going to react. Violently," Juliana told the squad, while Jeong shivered and muttered incoherently.
"That won't be a problem," Shepard replied. "We use biotics to pull and stasis them. Get in close and knock them out."
Lizbeth had been listening to their conversation, and the researcher slowly, nervously approached. "Umm…Commander? There may be another way," the young scientist said nervously. "We've researched everything we could on the thorian. One thing was how to break the hold on its thralls. We looked at using a nerve agent to render the colonists unconscious."
"A nerve agent. Let me guess, one that you proceeded to test on the unwitting colonists," Shepard stated with a glare as she turned to face the taller woman.
The younger Baynam wilted from the withering stare. She fiddled with her hands as she nervously looked at the ground. "Y-yes. We tested it…three times on three individuals. Each time it…knocked them unconscious for several hours. It degraded over half of the spores in each colonist's body, drastically reducing the time for a full recovery."
"What about inhaling low concentrations?"
"It only causes nausea and dizziness." Lizbeth replied.
"What long term damage does it do to a human?" Shepard asked.
"None, Commander," Lizbeth replied, this time with some confidence behind her words. "We're sure of that."
"It's not weapons grade. Not even close," Juliana added.
"Is any concentration lethal to humans?" Shepard asked.
"Only if you breathe in a full dose, but only because you're not breathing in oxygen. It isn't lethal at all. And you have to be close. It disperses very quickly. We installed the nerve compound in grenades. The colonists have to be within about five meters of it when it detonates."
"I need to see the formula. And a physical sample," Shepard ordered.
Jeong, who had partially settled down, said, "I cannot allow that! That's proprietary information! You – "
Shepard didn't even bother looking at him, simply raising her right arm and hand, sheathed in dark energy. Jeong immediately shut up. Both Juliana and Lizbeth took a step back.
"O-of course, Commander," Juliana said quickly. She opened her omni-tool, quickly transferring the formula to the commander. The researcher then retrieved a grenade from a crate, and Shepard noticed that the crate didn't even have anything other than…a simple electronic lock. She glanced to Alenko, then to Williams, then to Garrus. All shared the same look of incredulity as they returned her gaze. Don't these idiots know ANYTHING about security!? Wrex, meanwhile, shook his head and muttered something in a krogan language that presumably pointed to the sheer stupidity of the associated researchers.
When Baynam returned with the grenade, Shepard scanned it with her omni-tool. That task complete, she opened her comm. "Ghostrider, Shepard. We have a formula we'd like Doctor Chakwas to look at."
Jeong immediately shouted, "That's proprietary infor – " Again he was immediately cut off by a biotic flare from the commander.
"Shepard, Ghostrider. Copy that, ma'am. Stand by." After a moment's delay, the comm officer replied, "Got lock. Clear to transmit."
"Transmitting now," the CO replied. "Also sending audio and compressed video from my armor since the last transmission."
Thirty seconds passed before the comm officer replied, "All data received. Checksum valid."
"Thank you. Have Doctor Chakwas look at the effects of the nerve gas formula and get back to us. Also, transmit my armor data to Fifth Fleet back on Arcturus." Layla then turned to the assembled researchers. Juliana and Lizbeth both looked nervous. Jeong looked a combination of terrified, angry, and dejected. "You'll forgive me if I don't fully trust you," Shepard told the two researchers.
"We're telling you everything, Commander," Lizbeth assured her. "There is also evidence that the thorian can produce humanoid thralls when it feels exceptionally threatened. It uses these thralls to defend itself."
"What 'evidence' are you referring to?" Shepard asked.
"We've seen evidence of something attacking and killing many of the varren that escaped from those scavengers a couple years ago. It isn't us, and it isn't the geth," the scientist said.
"Have you actually seen any of these thralls?"
"No, Commander. Just the fact that some creature is able to kill some of the varren. The varren have been killing and eating something, presumably these thralls, to sustain their population."
"Do the varren leave brown and green remains behind after their meals?" Shepard asked.
"They do. Why?" Lizbeth responded.
"That explains how that varren got so big," Shepard muttered, then continued in a louder voice. "We killed a varren in the tunnels below the colony that had been gorging itself on something. The thing had gotten pretty big, probably close to five meters in length."
"F-five meters?" Lizbeth asked as she went a bit pale. She and her mother exchanged a nervous look, while Jeong's eyes widened in fear. "It…i-i-it's under the colony?"
"It was. We killed it, though," Shepard said lightly. "Nothing to worry about anymore. I really don't like threats to colonists, and since it was a threat to them, I just ripped it in half with biotics. No big deal," she finished with a shrug. "As a Spectre, it's what I do when I find threats to colonists and to innocent people." She glared over at Jeong, and she noticed, with a growing feeling of dark amusement, that he had gotten even paler about how she nonchalantly described killing a danger to the colonists.
The squad began to discuss their assault against the thorian's main nodes. They considered other options, such as first moving the unconscious colonists out of the area and the Normandy shelling the thorian's location, or simply waiting for Alliance reinforcements. Ultimately, however, Shepard knew that they needed to investigate the thorian soon to see just exactly what attributes about the creature presumably brought the geth to Feros. And watch out for any traps.
While someone else might agree with gunning down the colonists, Shepard could never do it. While other Spectres, and certainly Saren, would gun down innocents that were in the way of on objective, the commander just couldn't do it. She certainly couldn't live with the aftermath of the decision, especially not after Mindoir. It was all too easy to picture herself as one of these colonists – confused, frightened, scared. She had been one herself once before she hid shuddering biting back her cries as the batarians searched "She couldn't have gotten far –"
The flashback vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes.
Chakwas soon confirmed that the Exogeni scientists had told them the truth. Shepard then turned to her squad. "Once we get close to the colonists, I'll take point by myself. Swap out your anti-synthetic phasic ammo kits with plain old kinetic ones. Phasic won't do any good against organics. I'll use the gas grenades and biotics to knock out the colonists. You all stay back and deal with any of those created thralls the scientists mentioned that we might encounter."
"Give me some grenades. I can knock the colonists out," Wrex countered.
Shepard shook her head. "No. I'll handle it. This is personal to me."
"I'm up front with you, Shepard," Wrex countered. "I'll punch out any that the grenades miss."
"You all need to stay back – "
"I am too, Commander," Kaidan said with a nod.
"I am as well," Garrus confirmed a split second later.
"It's my decision to save all the colonists. I'm not risking any of you for a personal decision," she responded forcefully with narrowed eyes.
Wrex shook his head. "These people didn't ask for this," he finished quietly.
Layla looked up at the krogan for several moments before shifting her gaze to the rest of the squad, finally letting out a long sigh. "Yeah. They didn't." She then looked to the ground, the expression on her face changing from the face of the first human Spectre to one of a young woman who had watched her family perish on a colony. "It's…I just can't kill these colonists," she said quietly. "Not when they've done nothing wrong, not after…"
"Grab her!"
She gasped as she ran from the fires, from the shooting, from the BLOOD, as the batarian slavers chased her -
She shuddered, sighing again, looking up to Kaidan, Garrus, and Wrex. "Okay," she said. "If they charge you for some reason, knock them out, but be careful. We saw how strong that one colonist was in the tunnels. And be careful with those thralls; they're able to kill varren without weapons."
The squad quickly moved through the ruins on the skyway, encountering no living geth. The passed the research station before getting close to the colony proper. Shepard slowed, motioning for the squad to stop. "We're going to need to move fast once we get close to the colony. It doesn't make sense to use our temporary breathers to avoid spore inhalation – they won't be enough for the heavy combat we're likely to encounter. We'll move fast. Take a two minute break; get snacks, get water, then we move."
Shepard took the brief lull before the presumed intense fighting to give herself an injection and quickly devour two biotic supplement bars, washing the cardboard-like substance down with swigs of water. Other members of the team got drinks and prepped their weapons.
"Everyone ready?" she asked, and got affirms from all of them.
The commander took a deep breath and led the squad back towards the colony.
Commander Shepard constantly swept the rubble for any signs of colonists, thralls, or geth. She took point, quickly dashing forward, stopping behind places that offered sturdy cover rather than only concealment. The glowing blue barrier precluded a stealthy advance, but she wanted and needed the protection. The lack of geth since leaving the research compound made her feel uneasy.
The Spectre quickly swept her eyes for any hostiles as the squad advanced piecemeal. She jumped slightly as she heard a rapid series of clicks in front of her. She took cover a couple meters away and looked to the source of the sound.
The long bridge they crossed had several levels, with lower ones completely covered and presumably used for structural support. There hadn't been any access points open before, but straight ahead of her a panel was no longer there, revealing a ramp that presumably descended to the lower levels of the bridge.
She switched to her shotgun and slowly moved towards the opening, Wrex covering her approached. Alternating glances between the bridge terrain and the ramp, she saw no hostiles, and no outward signs that the panel had been disturbed.
Shepard approached the entrance to the ramp; it turned out to be a shallow descent with the angle no more than a few degrees. Walls about four meters apart lined the ramp on the way down. Shotgun aimed and barrier up, she turned on her armor's light, illuminating the pitch black tunnel.
She paused a moment and considered the options. Someone had clearly removed the panel in the last hour or so since they crossed the bridge the first time; the squad certainly would have noticed the ramp the first time they crossed. But…who? The geth? Or the thralls?
If geth were down there, she didn't want to advance and have them attack from behind. She charged her biotics and drew her shotgun, Wrex at her side as the two slowly approached the entrance. "This has been moved," he muttered.
The commander nodded. "And I heard something. I don't want geth attacking us from behind," she said quietly.
Wrex nodded, and the two slowly moved down the ramp, flipping their armor's lights on. Shepard saw no sign of geth, or any of the thorian's thralls. Her biotics pulsed as she prepared to attack any geth that jumped out at her.
She crept forward, listening for anything, any further sounds. Nothing. She didn't hear her own footsteps, the boot bottoms perfectly absorbing all sound. She didn't hear Wrex's footfalls either, and she didn't find it a bit scary just how quietly the massive krogan could move.
Shepard silently gestured to Wrex to clear the right side of the junction while she cleared the left. She made a countdown with her hand, and when it reached zero, both of them immediately looked and leveled their weapons down their respective hallways…
Nothing. Shepard saw nothing for at least twenty meters down the hall. The passageway was about four meters wide and five tall, with cracks in the ferroconcrete running the length. The ground was nearly completely covered in both varren blood and that brownish green goop. But there were no bodies, no signs of the creatures that had made the disgusting ponds of fluids.
"Clear," Wrex said.
"Clear," Shepard replied.
"Other than blood and guts everywhere. No bodies, though," he added.
"Same thing here," she agreed. Her left arm rose and a wave of dark energy sailed down the hallway, illuminating everything like a flare within ten meters of its center. It traveled for well over fifty meters before dissipating, but nothing other than more blood and gore appeared. "Still nothing."
Shepard felt Wrex do the same thing, and a few seconds later he said, "Just more blood."
"Head back up," she ordered. Both began to head back to the entrance, but a loud squish came from Shepard's boots. She turned around to look at the puddle of blood that she had just stepped in, frowning. It wouldn't be fun cleaning off their -
A loud series of clicks echoed from right behind and above her. She gasped in surprise, immediately spinning around, leveling her biotics on whatever was approaching from behind –
Nothing. Nothing was there. Wrex had stopped, sweeping his section of the hallway for anything at her sudden motion. "What is it?"
She took a deep breath, pausing for a moment, looking for any motion at all down her hallway. Nothing…wait.
She kicked up the light to max power, but…it was gone. Or nothing was there to begin with. "I heard something. A clicking sound."
"Like the geth's?"
"No," she said. "This was different. Did you see or hear anything?"
"No," the krogan said. The two slowly moved back to the entrance, and twenty seconds later were at the top of the ramp.
"Anything?" Garrus asked as the two emerged from the tunnel.
"Nothing," Shepard replied. "I definitely heard something, though."
"I didn't hear anything," the turian replied.
"I heard nothing," Wrex added. "Nothing at all, other than our footsteps, breathing, and biotics."
Great, now I'm hearing things that even a krogan with hypersensitive hearing doesn't detect. She looked away from her squad at the sudden pang of worry at why nobody else heard anything but she did. She mostly cleared those thoughts out of her mind as she said, "Let's…move towards the colony." Her worry did not subside, and she didn't realize her pulse remained elevated. The squad quickly approached the colony proper, passing over the remnants of geth from their prior engagements.
A loud, guttural moan echoed through the ruins, and the members of the squad not in cover immediately rectified that. "That I heard," Wrex muttered several meters from Shepard's position.
She nodded, drawing her shotgun, biotics pulsing at the ready. She turned through the ruins of a former prothean building, still surprisingly intact despite over fifty thousand years of neglect. She stepped over the corpse of a "dead" geth destroyer, coming face to face with –
Her jaw dropped open as she let out a loud gasp, her eyes shooting open to the size of saucers as she jumped back at her first look at the creature that stood in dim light just several meters away.
The creature stood well over two meters tall, wearing no clothes but with no genitalia. The rubbery gray-brown skin stretched over its sickeningly lean body, with wrinkled folds of skin hanging from its major joints. The creature looked to be nothing more than skin and bones. In a couple places, the skin itself had peeled away to reveal sinews that looked less like musculature and more like rotting tree branches. The abnormal, gangly arms that dangled nearly to the knees ended in three-fingered hands, each finger a serrated claw perhaps fifteen centimeters long.
What was most unnatural, though, was the face. The large eyes sat in approximately the same place as a human's, but all similarities ended there. Even a cursory examination would show that the creature did not resemble any known species. It had no ears, just folds of rotting flesh where the earlobes would have been. The eyes themselves had no iris, just an oversized black pupil set in yellow-tinged white orbs. However, Shepard's mind couldn't decide which of the last two things were most disturbing.
The creature looked to have no skull, just a partially exposed brain, the white-pink of which stood in stark, disturbing contrast to the creature's brown and gray skin. The brain itself looked to be set lower in the face, pushing the bulging eyes out even further from the sloped, mottled brow and forehead. Upon additional reflection by the commander's still-alarmed mind, the creature's mouth had to be the most disturbing. On a human, it would have reached from ear to ear, stretched into a permanent grin that completely replaced the cheeks. It did not have lips, but rather rows and rows of needle-like teeth perhaps two centimeters in length. The lower jaw was completely replaced by these rows of upward-facing teeth, with green ooze dripping from several thirty centimeter long tendrils hanging where the chin should have been.
Shepard's blood went cold as the creature's unnatural black irises settled on her. She didn't think it was possible, but the creature's grin somehow widened as it let out an unholy shriek as it started shambling towards her.
The creature was just a few meters away, ready to strike her with its gangly arms and oversized claws. Once the moment of shock had left her, she pulled the trigger on her shotgun, following up with a wave of dark energy at the creature. The swipe missed her as the clawed arms flipped to the ground just a meter from her. The rest of the body, however, had been forcibly separated from the arms from the shotgun and biotic blasts. The creature let out a shriek for a split second that suddenly terminated at impact with a wall about eight meters away.
Scarcely had the shriek ended when Shepard heard several additional growls from just around the remains of a wall. The sound sent a shudder through her as she charged her biotics and aimed the shotgun at the source of the sounds. She barely had leveled her weapon when several more of the creatures shambled around the corner, running at a speed that defied their decaying appearance.
She fired her shotgun at the first wave, hitting two of the monstrosities. She saw in surprise that both of them spun to the ground, the spread ripping an arm and part of the torso off of each. She followed up with a biotic attack that splattered three more against a wall several meters away. The two on the ground attempted to crawl towards her and clamber to their feet, but another biotic attack from her left splattered their remnants on the ground.
"What the hell are those!?" Alenko exclaimed, his corona fading after the biotic attack.
"It…t-these must be the thralls the scientists warned us about," Shepard said. "I thought they'd look, less…disturbing."
Wrex approached moments later and said, "Now that is nasty."
Shepard glanced up to him and said quietly, "For once, I agree with Wrex on something." When our resident thousand-something year old krogan who's been across the galaxy says something is nasty…
"Just…what are these specimens?" Liara asked, wide eyed. "These look nothing like any known species."
"Skipper, didn't you say something earlier about zombies when we saw that crazy colonist in the tunnels?" Williams added.
"Yeah," the commander replied with a frown. She didn't find it funny now. "I seem to be a walking jinx. Fortunately, these things seem to be held together with wet tissue paper. Biotics completely splatter them – "
"Disgusting," Williams muttered into her comm.
"And shotguns seem to work well," Shepard continued. She drew her pistol and fired it several times into a partially intact torso, frowning. "But pistol rounds seem to go right through them. Presumably rifle rounds will too," she said quietly. "Change of plans," she radioed into her comm. "Snipers, your rifle rounds will probably punch clean through these…things. Unless you can hit the neck a few times and sever the head, I don't think rifles are going to do much."
"'Unless you can hit?' Commander, do you really think so little of us?" Garrus snorted over the comm.
Shepard couldn't help but chuckle. "If you all think you can hit those things while they shamble forward. And if we encounter colonists, I'm not sure if they will have weapons. If they do, overload them." She turned to face Alenko and Wrex. "Use shotguns and biotics to deal with these thralls. I'm not sure if they will coordinate with the possessed colonists or not. If they simply charge forward when they see use, lure them away from the colonists before taking them down."
The squad hadn't made it far when a groaning and growling sound echoed through the ruins. At least they announce their presence, Alenko thought.
First one group of thralls appeared to her left, then another about thirty meters to her right, in what looked to be a standard pincer movement. Shepard dropped a singularity on the left group and shouted, "Wrex! Liara! Hit right!" Her detonating singularity proved to have quite effective but disgusting results. The explosion ripped apart the weakly held together bodies, sending goop and pieces of rotting flesh for ten meters in every direction. She had to suppress the urge to gag at the sight.
Alenko appeared in the corner of her vision, just a few meters to the right as he unleashed a massive throw towards the remaining thralls. Those few that did not meet a messy end from the commander's singularity met an equally messy end from the lieutenant's throw.
A roaring biotic detonation to her right announced that either Wrex or Liara had done something similar with the group of thralls approaching from the right. The sound of a carnage shot followed a moment later, then another biotic attack.
She then heard rifle fire from the squad's snipers, and an additional thrall rounded a corner perhaps twenty meters from her position. She saw spurts of goop and flesh squirt bit by bit from the thrall's neck, and she prepared to use her biotics on the thrall, but before she got a chance to, the head twisted unnaturally to one side and rolled right off the neck. The head partially splattered on the ground, and Shepard had to look away momentarily at the utterly disgusting sight.
She turned back to look for any more hostiles, and to her horror, the headless thrall still shambled towards her direction, goop squirting and dripping down its neck. Its movements were sluggish and haphazard, but it still kept enough balance to wobble forward.
After a moment of disbelief, she finished the headless thrall off with a biotic throw, splattering it on the back wall. She heard something over her comm in turian that she presumed was a curse.
"I don't know turian, skipper, but I'm pretty sure I can still translate what Garrus just said to 'that's fucked up,'" Ashley said over the comm link.
"Close enough," Garrus confirmed.
"Change of plans again," Shepard sighed. "If you have to shoot with a rifle, go for its hips. Shooting off the head doesn't work." She paused, in disbelief and disgust at what she had just said. "Did anyone bring a concussive ammo kit with them?"
She received several quick replies of "only phasic and kinetic" and "no".
"I have one," Wrex said.
"One?" Shepard asked.
"Yeah, I always bring one. Why, you didn't?" he retorted.
"In my defense, I didn't expect to be fighting a horde of plant zombie…creeper…things," the commander replied. "What else did you bring?" she asked the krogan.
Wrex listed off all of the kits, equipment, and explosives he had brought along. When he finished, no one spoke for several moments. "Wrex," Kaidan finally asked slowly, "is there anything you didn't bring?"
The krogan remained silent for several seconds before replying with, "Yes. A gas mask for the smell."
Shepard nodded. "You and me both. Snipers, one of you gets the concussive kit, another gets the incendiary kit. Whoever doesn't use a kit, switch to your shotgun and come forward with the rest of us."
"As much as it hurts my pride, Garrus is the better shot," Williams admitted. "Which do you want, big guy?"
"You sure, Chief?"
"Yep."
Silence settled on the comm for a couple moments. "I'll take the concussive kit."
"Chief, you're a better sniper than me. You take the incendiary kit," Emerson said.
Wrex met up with the two snipers, handing over the kits to them, and Garrus and Ashley took turns swapping out their kinetic kits for the more effective ones. Emerson joined up with Shepard and Alenko, followed a couple minutes later by Wrex.
"Let's move," Shepard said.
Just thirty seconds later, Garrus' voice came over the comm. "There's three colonists up ahead. A hundred seventy meters. There are several thralls standing around them. The thralls are not, repeat not, attacking the colonists. The colonists have weapons drawn."
"Great," Shepard muttered. "I'm going to try to sneak in close and hit the colonists with a gas grenade."
"Be careful, Commander," Garrus replied. The turian watched the commander skillfully sneak through the rubble and ruins. Over the past couple months, he had come to think of a her as a biotic bludgeon, albeit a skilled one, that simply overpowers everything she encounters with biotics. However, he realized just how stealthy she could be when she wanted to. If he hadn't been watching her the entire time, he would probably quickly lose her movements. She had a grenade in her hand as she picked her way to within forty meters of the colonists and thralls, who still were oblivious to the approaching Spectre.
She closed another ten meters, ducking around a partial wall and leaning back with her body and arm to throw the grenade at the colonists. Suddenly there was a blur of gray motion that looked to tackle Shepard to the ground, out of sight behind a wall. The colonists and thralls suddenly turned to the commotion and opened fire.
"Commander!" Garrus yelled in panic into the comm. He saw a flash of smoke appear from behind the cover, followed quickly by an unholy screech, then by a woman's soprano scream that clearly came from the commander. He did what he could, opening fire with concussive rounds at the thralls that rushed to her position. He saw Alenko perform a biotic charge to get close to her hidden position.
Shepard had just been about to hurl the gas grenade at the trio of colonists when suddenly something rushed at her from the corner of her vision. It tackled her to the ground, the armed grenade skittering from her grip and rolling away. The thrall loomed over her, a rotting incarnation of a creature long dead. As bad as they looked at a distance, up close they were terrifying to behold. Unholy grin, unnatural eyes, chin tendrils dripping fluids which were best not thought about, and claws that could disembowel a krogan.
Wide eyed, she charged her biotics just as the grenade detonated just a meter away, blasting a cloud of green dust in the air. The creeper raised its claws to strike, but it suddenly let out a screech.
The pieces of skin on the thrall quickly began to stretch and disintegrate, the remainder of the skin rapidly liquefying and running down the now exposed sinews of muscle, forming miniature rivers of blood and muscle. The muscles did not remain exposed for long, as stretched tendons began to snap and tear as if made of frayed yarn, with the relaxed tissues rapidly liquefying.
The creature was literally melting before her eyes.
She let out an instinctive scream as the creeper began to melt into the ground, forming a green and brown puddle at her ankles that rapidly began to spread. The creature's face began to melt, the skin rushing down and through the teeth and tendrils like a disgusting waterfall. The eyes first popped out of the sockets before melting into the rest of the disintegrating head as the teeth fell out, which soon merged with the rest of the torso as the creeper fully liquefied into a puddle that rapidly began to expand.
She lay there for a moment, utterly disgusted and horrified at what she had just witnessed, and the fact that her armor starting at her thighs was now covered in green and brown goop. She then panicked and kicked her legs to scramble away from the puddle and gas, unable to stop wondering whether she would disintegrate too.
Then the smell came. The putrid stench kept her staring at the puddle before she finally jumped to her feet, taking cover several meters away.
"Commander!" a voice shouted at her, bringing her senses back to the present.
"Kaidan," she rasped in response, coughing and gagging on the smell.
"Are you – "
"I'm…" she said quietly, shaking slightly. "Those creatures melt if hit with a gas grenade," she said into her comm. "Don't let them get too close."
"Ugh." Kaidan had just looked at her armor. Everything from her thighs down was covered in brownish-green goop that slowly ran down the armor plates, and a puddle of disgusting sludge slowly spread away from the remains of the creeper. "That's disgusting."
"Now imagine you watched it happen, and it was right above you," Shepard said darkly. She took a deep breath. "I'm…just get back in the fight," she ordered.
He nodded, scrambling up a rubble pile to see Wrex heave a gas grenade at the colonists out of the corner of his eye. The grenade detonated directly in the center of the trio. All three humans staggered for several moments, firing wildly before their legs gave out and they collapsed to the ground.
The lieutenant then saw that a thrall had been partially caught in the gas cloud, and he watched in disgusted horror as the left half of the creature began to melt. It let out a shriek as pieces of skin flaked off of the right half, and the creature collapsed a moment later as its left leg melted.
Garrus is right. That's fucked up, Alenko thought as he suppressed a shudder. He saw Wrex's shockwave tear towards the center of the creeper formation, and he lifted two isolated creepers high into the air, watching Liara throw three of the zombie survivors of the shockwave into a wall, followed by another biotic attack that struck three more. He couldn't see any more creepers from his position glanced to see a corona fade around Shepard.
"All clear," Garrus said into their comm.
Shepard still had her shotgun out as she quickly advanced on the motionless colonists. "Cover me," she said as she crouched next to them, stowing her shotgun and sweeping her omni-tool over their limp forms.
Kaidan swept left and right for any movement, biotics at the ready. Wrex had his shotgun out, his eyes sweeping quickly across the terrain, his sensitive hearing augmenting his already superb eyesight.
"They're alive," Shepard said several seconds later, palpable relief in her voice. "They'll be unconscious for a few hours at least, long enough to learn about why Saren is so interested in this thorian."
"Keelah," Tali said on seeing the extent of goop that covered Shepard's armor. "That is…"
"Glad you have a filter on your suit for that, huh?" the commander replied.
"It doesn't filter all of it out," the quarian said quietly.
Shepard looked to Tali, then to the goop on her armor, a disgusted expression on her face. "Let's just find the thorian, free the colonists, and leave this Godforsaken planet," she muttered.
