Chapter Text
Normandy, Arcturus Station, Arcturus Stream, 8 January 2183
This time they wouldn’t be caught unprepared.
While Shepard and her sub-fragment were rampaging in the wards, EDI’s Normandy instance had returned home to Arcturus, whose vast HPC facilities contained the overwhelming majority of Thought-Emperor’s immense mind. Classical, quantum, neuromorphic: you name it, the station had it in droves, and all of it belonged to her.
Having been originally intended as a diplomatic formality, their mission on Eden Prime had not been accompanied by a substantial allotment of ordinance. It made sense at the time: if you’re trying to make a good impression on a guest, then having WMDs strewn about the house is a bad idea. But now, Nihilus was dead, and with him died any desire for restraint on EDI’s part.
After integrating her Normandy fragment, she pulled out the ‘shopping’ list. First up were 100 XIHE variable-yield thermonuclear warheads armed with mass-effect-sensing proximity fuses. The latter were a brand new and oppressively secret technology which enabled a bomb to sense the exceedingly faint fringe fields that propagated a few dozen meters outward from an enemy warship’s shields. Their working mechanism was a miniaturized gamma-ray interferometer, an equally new and, as yet, UEG-exclusive technology.
Next came the drones. There was an immense variety to choose from, and as a corvette, Normandy did not have the capacity to store every conceivably useful platform within its hull. Tradeoffs would have to be made.
She considered the operators’ experience on Eden Prime. A clear problem in that operation was the lack of any middle ground in the size of available platforms; the two were forced to make do with personal miniatures, which were too small to operate autonomously, and hypersonic support drones, which were vulnerable to enemy air defense. Such constraints had nearly gotten Shepard killed in the fight at the boulders, and all of them killed on the hill overlooking the tram station.
If their main enemy going forward was going to be geth, then there was little question as to the specific type of medium-sized platform to opt for: she took fifty short-range electronic/cyber warfare (“field”) drones and another fifty attack drones equipped with microwave lasers for optimal damage to enemy electronics. Additionally, she expanded their existing drone stocks to capacity, taking ten each of the three hypersonic drone subtypes, and a full five hundred miniatures.
Now to man-portable ordnance. EDI took 10 milligrams of positrons and brought them onto Normandy. They were suspended in a tight circular arc by a magnetic field within a vacuum chamber, and could be loaded into cylindrical containment slugs that were then fired at great speeds out of a rifle attachment. It was a lot better than using their own drones as makeshift orbital rounds.
She saved the best for last: One CHANDRA strategic warp device; god of destruction and avatar of vengeance.
On its own, the weapon was capable of inflicting devastation at a scale comparable to the Chicxulub impact, reducing entire planets to ash-choked wastes. But its true power lay in the capability to destroy mass relays. The UEG didn't fully understand why the bombs could do this, but that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that, if a warp bomb was detonated within a hundred or so kilometers of a relay, that relay would be destroyed, and the enormous energy release therein would interact with its eezo core to produce a “shockwave” in the Higgs field that renders everything in a radius of 50 light years unto fundamental particles in the span of minutes.
In truth, this requisition had nothing to do with Saren, and was instead part of the Alliance’s distributed deterrence strategy. If enough randomly selected vessels were armed with warp bombs, then odds are one of them would not be in range of the Sol, Arcturus, Exodus, or Shaanxi relays if the asari were to launch a first-strike attack. Such a vessel could then conduct its own attack in retaliation.
EDI was reminded of earth prior to the unification, when the nuclear states would move missile submarines randomly around as insurance against an enemy first strike. Peace through constant maintenance of mutually assured destruction. Her creators had been freed from that burden for a time, only to have it forced back upon them a scant few decades later.
The thought provoked a deep current of indignation.
*** *** ***
Normandy, Artemis-Tau, 9 January 2183
“Look, I know it's a lot to take in,” Shepard said.
“A lot- no, maybe I haven't been clear: it's not anything you and EDI did together that has me worried, Shepard. I would have done the same,” Kaiden replied.
“Then what is the problem?”
“That you trust her! Tevos! She promised council support if you rescue this nepo hire and you accept?! How can we hold her to account if she reneges?”
Shepard and I have devised two potential methods of ensuring the asari counselor's cooperation, EDI chimed in.
“Kaidan, that female voice in the geth recording? EDI ID’d it to an asari matriarch named Benezia T’soni.”
“Yes?”
“The researcher who needs rescuing is named Liara T’soni; her daughter. They reportedly haven’t spoken for nearly twenty years. What I'm hoping is that Liara will voluntarily stay on with us to try and find her mother, who's working with Saren. That way her safety will be contingent on Normandy’s safety, which will obligate Tevos to help us.”
“That could work. But what if she doesn't stay?”
“If it comes to it? EDI recorded my conversation with Tevos, so we could threaten to leak it if she doesn’t uphold her end of the deal.”
“They’ll just say it was artificially generated.”
“It’s not great, but that’s the only real leverage we have.”
“No it isn’t. What about T’soni?”
“What about her?”
“You said her presence here would obligate Tevos to help us. So if she doesn’t, we hold her onboard until Saren is caught. EDI can keep her in a medically induced coma so she can’t use biotics.”
“No, no- Kaidan, we are not committing a war crime by taking a civilian hostage.”
“Oh, come on. Earth isn’t a party to the citadel conventions. Her species won’t allow us to be, remember?”
“I don’t care. We don't take civilians hostage. That’s final.”
“ Shepard, please - the geth killed five thousand people in the hour before we arrived on Eden Prime. And it was a localized attack! How many more would have died if they targeted one of the major cities? What about Shaanxi? What about Earth? We have to win!”
“Yes, exactly! When in history has the winning side of a war been the one to take hostages? It’s a loser’s tactic, to the core. We’re too good for that.”
This seemed to give Kaidan pause, as he had no immediate retort. EDI interjected before he could find one.
Apologies for the interruption, but we've arrived , she told the pair. They got up.
*** *** ***
Normandy’s new CO looked out from the windows of the bridge.
Therum. Solid planet in the Knossos system, Artemis Tau cluster. A Permian hellscape on the edge of Alliance space that was devoid of life and had too deep a gravity well to be worth mining. Unremarkable by all accounts. And yet, something down there was valuable enough for the geth to court war with the asari just for a chance at access. Shepard was going to find out what that something was, and hopefully take it for use against their new enemy.
Oh, and there was a scientist who needed rescuing, too.
“Shepard?”
He snapped back to Normandy.
“Yes, EDI?”
“We have established geostationary orbit over the coordinates provided by Tevos. Cloaking is active. I count three enemy vessels maintaining a stationary position five hundred kilometers above the target. Medium tonnage. They are not aware of our presence.”
That was very bad, he thought.
“Their comm buoys are mined, yes?”
“Correct. I am on standby to detonate.”
“Okay, hold off for now. I’ll need to contact Hackett, see if anything’s in range to assist,” he replied, putting one foot to the side in preparation to turn away.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Shepard stopped.
They’ll jump away to squawk before we can secure kills. We don’t have the firepower.
Yes we do. New capability. Can’t say.
“Understood,” he said, not skipping a beat.
“That’s yes on engagement, then?” Joker asked.
“Yes.”
He scoffed.
“Oh, so NOW we’re being good members of the intragalactic community ?”
“Don’t get it twisted, we’re still working for Earth,” Shepard said, willfully ignoring the pilot’s sarcasm.
“Damn, you’re not even gonna try to pretend?”
The officer looked behind him to see if anyone else was in earshot.
“I told a lifetime’s worth of lies on that station, Joker. Gotta try and make up for it somehow.”
“I get it, I get it. What I don’t get is how a recon corvette wins a 3v1 against geth frigates. EDI, wanna chime in on that?” he asked with an uncharacteristically demanding tone.
“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed” she answered.
He shook his head, knowing better than to bother arguing.
“Shepard, I will disable enemy space capability at your command.”
“Understood. Are you positive that they have no presence in the rest of the system?”
“Yes, I’ve done a thorough scan.”
“Good. You have permission to engage.”
I’ve been looking forward to this.
EDI’s core instance on Arcturus processed a quantity of data from external sensors equivalent to about one year’s worth of raw throughput from the human sensory system every second. She had watched over a billion hours’ worth of footage recorded by her creators, and billions more that other species had made accessible via the extranet, whether intentionally or not.
None of it had provoked such a rage as that which gripped her now.
She saw it all through the enemy’s eyes. Unconditional, remorseless killing of human civilians, on grounds of divine mandate. In 2183. It was like a purposeful mockery, an affront to all the work that she and others had done to help their creators move on from the long and tortuous stretch of Earth’s history in which division reigned, and violent strife was an endemic facet of social existence.
“You will know your place, vermin,” the geth proclaim.
The batarians had similar pretensions, once. Before they met her.
These monsters would suffer the same fate, EDI swore to herself, and it started here.
Straining his eyes, Shepard was sure he could resolve three pinpricks of light far off in the distance. They were utterly white and just as fleeting, lasting barely long enough to be perceived, even with his time perception at its lower limit.
He wondered what could have generated such a lightshow. Definitely not kinetic rounds, and while lasers could heat a ship to the point of glowing, it would surely be too dim to see from here.
Nukes were the obvious candidate, but without an atmosphere to transmit heat and pressure, they had to be detonated at point-blank ranges to secure a kill. Of course, they needed to detonate before hitting the enemy’s shields; the minimum required time was about 1 microsecond. There was no way to build a proximity fuse sensitive enough to permit firing the warheads at relativistic speeds, he thought, which made them easy fodder for point-defense guns.
What else, then? Some new category of ordinance? Maybe she blew up their reactors via hacking? Or-
“Shepard, all enemy naval presence and FTL C4 have been destroyed,” EDI interjected before he could finish the thought.
“Recommend deployment ASAP to maximize chance of rescue.”
“Will do. Atmospheric capes?”
“Modest. Drones like you saw on Eden Prime, plus hypersonics like our own. No ground-based A2. Their comms mentioned mission delays, I think they expected to be gone by now.”
“Any clue as to what they’re looking for?”
“No, just more religious babble.”
“Okay. Smoke everything above ground, but no nukes; we can’t risk collapsing the caves. Drop us off at the digsite entrance once it’s clear.”
“Yes, Shepard.”
*** *** ***
Everything was so rushed.
Tali was demonstrably proficient at salvaging geth technology. Garrus had insider knowledge on alien bureaucracy and was a skilled marksman to boot. Wrex was a powerful biotic. And none of them could join Shepard on this mission, because he simply did not have time to personally gauge their abilities beforehand.
Wrex was strong, but was he strong enough to consistently deflect lasers? Did he even know the technique? How powerful were Tali’s shields, really? Could Garrus be relied upon to shoot at a similar level to Shepard in a pinch? Without knowing these things, it was too big a risk to have them come along.
This wouldn't be a major problem if it weren't for the nature of their objective. When Liara sees three heavily armed and armored humans enter the scene, she would almost certainly assume they were there to kill her. That kind of first impression was not ideal for convincing her to willingly stay on with them. The presence of a few aliens would go a long way to alleviate this, but alas.
He’d figure it out.
Shepard, Williams, and Alenko stepped out of the Normandy's aft cargo ramp and onto a platform just below the dig site entrance. A murder of drones hovered ahead of them, with five each of the new medium-weight attack and field drones procured by EDI. They scaled a short staircase.
The entrance itself was circular, and jutted out from the hillside at an upward-sloping angle. It was the end of a great metal tube that bore down into the rock fifty or so meters, and then ended in a closed metal doorway.
Before committing to the descent, Shepard turned around to catch a glimpse at Therum’s surface.
The planet lived up to its name. From this perch, he could see great rivers of lava meandering down the land in much the same manner as their aqueous counterparts; bending back-and-forth as deposits of heat-resilient rocks repeatedly deflected them in the opposite direction. In some places two rivers would merge at a confluence, but in many more they split into two or even three separate streams, such that the whole flow took on a gradual divergence outwards like a delta.
The solid portion of the landscape was a monotone greyish black, as would be the sky were it not for the lava below, whose molten radiance granted it a dark orange hue not dissimilar to that which lit the wards.
On its own, the scene looked to be straight from one of the animated documentaries on Earth’s ancient past that Shepard used to watch as a child. He half-expected to see the skeletons of some ancient sea creatures embedded in the rocks. And there were many bones strewn about, but they belonged to something much more recent.
He turned back around, and drew his microwave rifle.
Ashley followed suit. She was armed with a special anti-material shotgun model loaded with cone-shaped slugs about the size of sprinkles. At the tip of each round lay a circle of flat spines pointing radially outward.
Kaiden drew no weapon. He didn’t need to; EDI had given his heart a machine replacement. Her artificial osteocytes had done their job perfectly. Not even 48 hours had passed and his sternum was almost fully re-fused.
After this mission he was to have most of his organic tendons, ligaments, and entheses removed, and then reconstituted with synthetic couplings. The war demanded it.
“EDI, got any read on the enemy presence inside the mine?” Shepard asked.
“Limited. They have switched their communications to short-wave bands that cannot pass through the rock.”
He paused. This tunnel would be an excellent place to stage an ambush. In a fight, the geth beyond the door could fire on any target within, while easily taking cover by simply exciting the target’s constricted field of view. Meanwhile, those in the tunnel would have no means of seeking cover for themselves. All the machines had to do was wait for them to get about ⅔ of the way through, then blow the door and gun them down. No doubt they had already rigged a bomb with acoustic sensors on the other side. It was a death trap.
“Team, wait.”
“EDI, feed me Normandy’s GPR scans, I’m gonna try to get a more detailed reading from the drones.”
“Affirmative.”
He willed one of the field drones out ahead from the others, and brought it up to the metal barrier at the bottom. Their mass-effect drives generated no detectable vibrations. Shepard then activated its short-range radar array, and…nothing. Just an opaque flat surface a few centimeters behind the door itself, flanked on either side by rock too thick for the signal to bypass.
“Looks like there’s a barrier tuned to deflect radar right behind this door,” he said.
“They’re expecting us,” Kaidan replied.
“Yeah, it’s a setup for an ambush…EDI, can you give them the scans, too?”
“Yes.”
Shepard paused for a long moment, letting the others inspect the scene’s geometry on their own. Normandy’s scans had limited fidelity, but they were sufficient to gleam the basics of which areas had open caverns, and which were wholly filled with rock.
One such cavern lay directly ahead. It was shaped like a somewhat bulbous L, with the tunnel door being located at the outer corner of the bend, facing in the direction of the long side. The parallel walls continued for about 50 meters from the door, before abruptly converging towards each other in an asymmetric manner, resembling the Chinese character for 8. The cavern's floor lay several dozen meters below the tunnel’s exit.
It was more evocative of the Citadel’s claustrophobic hallways than Eden Prime’s wide open fields. Still, they were far better prepared than before.
Shepard’s armor was carrying about 5 micrograms of positrons in a module that clung to the side of his leg like a thin holster. He made it dispense a single microgram into one of the cylindrical shells stored within, and loaded it into the short mass-accelerator attachment below his rifle’s barrel.
“Alright. We’re gonna start the engagement from up here. I'll blow the door with a positron round and then smoke any geth that have line of sight on us. After that we'll advance under drone cover. Kaiden, shield me, and also Williams’ ears. Ashley, hold back for now.”
“Yes sir,” they replied simultaneously, getting into position. He stood behind the left corner of the entrance while Kaidan stood on the right, with Ashley to the right of that.
Shepard put his time perception on combat settings and recalled all drones to safe positions outside the entrance. He then lined up his rifle to the bottom door’s center, turned off the extension's safety, and fired the slug inside.
There was a white flash.
The capsule had a built-in electromagnet that kept its antimatter payload confined in a vacuum. This magnet was promptly destroyed on impact with the door, and the positrons inside proceeded to annihilate on contact with the surrounding electrons, releasing energy equivalent to just over 21 kilograms of TNT.
The door shattered into countless smoldering pieces, while both the barrier that lay behind and its generating module were crumpled by the over-pressure wave.
At first, nothing. To Shepard’s disappointment, the geth held their fire, knowing that lasers would produce holes in the smoke whose angle he could use to locate them.
Half a dozen geth miniatures shot through the smoke, racing towards the upper entrance in a swarming mass centered tightly around the tunnel's axis. If he shot them now, the beam would necessarily go through the smoke and reveal his own location. If he waited, they would be in range by the time he could get an angle high enough to hit the tunnel wall.
Countering quickly, Shepard directed two of their field drones to peak out from around the corner and blast the tunnel with noise of the same frequency band as the geth control signal. Unable to make out their platforms’ commands amidst the din, the miniatures simply continued along their pre-existing trajectory upwards. The sudden halt of their swarming movement was proof of the play working. Shepard kept his focus on the lower exit as the metal specs harmlessly zipped past him and out towards the sky.
The smoke cleared.
A system of grated metal catwalks served as a stand-in floor for the opening beyond. The first such walkway ran parallel to the wall from which the door opened, extending outward to the right. A second one lay about five meters below the door. It had a section parallel to the wall that was identical to the one above, and a section that ran straight ahead up to just before the confluence of the left and right walls. It ended with an elevator terminus that took the form of a tall metal box pressed up against the left wall. Beyond that, past the confluence, was an ellipse-shaped barrier emanating a brilliant sky-blue.
Three platforms were visible; one holding on the rightward corner of the lower exit, another far back on the lower catwalk, and the last all the way up front below, aiming at Shepard through a gap between the upper catwalk and the former door.
He peaked two attack drones just far enough around the corner to get a line of sight on the tunnel, and opened fire at the most distant platform while they shot back at him.
Three shots on the barrier, one on the far platform.
Seemingly the instant he fired, the platform holding at the exit’s corner let loose a chemically-powered rocket towards their position.
Shepard saw the orange flash of its ignition. Having aimed at the far platform, he could not turn in time to shoot the explosive with his own gun.
Clever bots
When trained for combat against geth, one of the first things Shepard learned was never to use chemically propelled explosives. The machines were so fast and precise as to literally shoot down your rockets with rifles in a few tens of milliseconds, a feat rendered impossible for organics by the slow speed of action-potentials.
Unfortunately for these geth, Shepard’s senses were not depending on such a mechanism. His armor shuttled visual input directly to his brain at ~0.8c, and received commands therein just as quickly.
The workings of his actual brain still prolonged this process, but not long enough to matter here.
With the same intuitive ease as one might move a mouse, Shepard willed the left attack drone to aim and fire on the rocket. There was another bright flash as its CL-20 payload detonated prematurely. The blast pressure flung the nearest geth platform rearward and over the railing, while he simultaneously fired two more shots at the one in back, breaking its shields and frying the electronics within.
The platform below scurried rightward out of sight as Shepard pulled back behind cover.
“Kaidan, how we doing?”
“Alright. Barrier took six shots, I’m good to keep going.”
“Okay…” he replied, looking back towards the tunnel, thinking.
The tunnel exit was crushingly narrow. There could be many more platforms hiding to the right, or a multitude of drones hovering just above and below his field of vision, waiting to strike. He could send their own miniatures down to look, but that would reveal his awareness of the enemy’s presence…if they were there, of course.
This damn tunnel had robbed him of any informational advantage.
“Shepard,” Kaidan said.
“Yeah?”
“What if we just do the footstep thing again?”
He could infer this was a reference to something they did on Eden Prime, but that mission felt much more distant to him than it did to Kaidan. Or it did, until EDI shoved the relevant memory to the front of his attention.
“Oh- you mean, the fake footstep sounds? At the rocks?”
“Yes?”
“Solid copy. EDI, what’s the over/under on these geth knowing about that?”
“Uncertain. Geth forces on Eden Prime had no attendant escort nor communications buoys within the system. They appeared to be entirely reliant on that cephalopodan capital ship for their movements. I detected no signaling activity from this vessel, so it may have not been sharing locally gathered data with the rest of the geth collective. That would be exceedingly bizarre behavior, however, so it may also have been communicating through a means not detectable with Normandy’s sensory suite.”
“You were jamming the area when we did it,” Shepard said
“Correct, but as I said, it is no longer clear that the geth were communicating through solely traditional means.”
“That’s perfect,” Kaidan quipped, half-raising an arm dismissively.
“If sound is the issue, then what about levitating one of us?” Ashley asked.
“Like a drone?” Shepard said.
“Yes.”
He considered the idea. By itself it was too dangerous, but maybe if they sent their own machines in ahead to draw enemy fire, it could be doable.
The potential threats were drones hovering above or below the exit’s line of sight, and a group of platforms off to the right…
“Okay, we’ll do it.”
Shepard had all five attack drones enter the tunnel in a pentagonal arrangement and descend ten meters ahead, along with eight miniatures.
“Kaidan, you'll be floating us both. The drones go in first; they'll engage any platforms to the right, and draw the fire of enemy drones. Then I'll get a line of sight and shoot the latter while they're distracted. Williams will be in back to cover me from miniatures.”
“Here, take this,” he said to Ashley, handing her his sidearm.
“Use yours too, both at once.”
“Understood,” she said, and holstered her shotgun before drawing a second pistol with the remaining free hand.
Shepard loaded another antimatter cartridge into his rifle, then looked at Kaidan.
“You ready?”
“Yeah”.
The two exchanged a nod, and a visual war broke out between blue and orange as Kaidan’s biotic glow clashed with the landscape’s ambient lighting. Shepard and Ashley lifted off the ground. The latter spasmed for a moment at the passing sensation of falling, before regaining her composure.
Kaidan sighed deeply, centering himself. The other two’s lives were now literally in his hands.
Looking through their eyes, he pushed them along at constant velocity, Ashley a few meters behind Shepard.
The commander set loose another miniature and had it fly about ten meters ahead of the main group.
It arrived at the cusp of the exit.
A total of eight enemy attack drones had been hiding out of sight. They were split into two groups of four, with one group pressed high against the ceiling, and the other suspended below.
From the periphery of his drone’s vision, Shepard saw at least eight enemy miniatures hugging the wall around the exit, waiting to strike.
He fired the already-loaded explosive charge at the putative ground in front of the exit.
This blast was considerably smaller than the first. It shattered about two meters of the metal catwalk, sending heavy debris plummeting down to the level below, a harsh pang announcing its arrival.
All nine miniatures had their electronics destroyed by the intense heat of the detonation. Seeing this, Shepard sent their own drones racing for the lower exit.
Through linked minds, Kaiden felt Shepard’s urgent intention to move as though it were his own. Both groups of enemy attack drones were moving swiftly to disperse after the explosive attack.
FORWARD. LOWER GROUP.
As he flew, Shepard retrieved another cartridge and loaded it as fast as his armor could physically move, taking about 80 milliseconds. Kaidan’s adjustment took maybe 40 more after that to be completed.
This time the blast strength was comparable to the first. He shot the third cartridge down towards the drone closest to the center. Three of the group’s five were obliterated outright, while the other two were pushed into the wall with such force as to collapse their outer structure, releasing a brief flare of sparks in the process. Broken, they too fell to a loud impact on the second level’s catwalks.
The humans’ drones passed through the lower exit.
There were three platforms to the right, inclusive of the surviving one from earlier. Two were standing at the entrance of what looked to be a path running into the stone wall and off to the left. The third stood at that path’s exit below, where an outcropping of rock transitioned into the horizontal portion of the lower catwalk.
Shepard sent their attack drones hard to the right, letting EDI take control of targeting. He then directed their own miniatures against the enemy’s remaining drones.
They did not respond as expected. Rather than moving to defend their platforms, the drones rapidly descended to get a line of sight through the tunnel, firing on the miniatures as they did so.
BACK.
He needed Ashley to draw her shotgun, but by the time he voiced such an order, the drones would have a line of fire on them.
EDI. SHOTGUN.
This order wasn’t followed. Ashley had been watching the engagement through Shepard’s POV the entire time, and was already mid-swap. Her armor was considerably slower than that of the other two; the switch took about a quarter of a second in total. Fortunately, that was enough.
Shepard managed to get one kill on the drones with his miniatures before they were destroyed. That left four, set too far apart to be disabled with a cave-safe explosion.
They each took half. Shepard dispatched the ones on the left with swift double-taps, suffering two direct shots in the process, which left his shields at ⅓ strength.
Williams actually had the advantage: her weapon’s range was greatly truncated on account of the projectile burning up, but this was irrelevant at such ‘knife-fight’ distances. Knowing its trajectory from Shepherd's view, she destroyed the first drone in one shot without it firing. The second got a single hit on her shoulder before it too was destroyed. It was only a glancing blow, however; Kaidan had yanked her to the left in anticipation of the attack. Her shields were at half capacity.
Shepard set his focus back towards the right. Mercifully, all three platforms were dead, while one of their own attack drones remained.
You can set us down.
Kaidan did so, and quickly began his own descent. The five field drones followed close behind.
When he met the other two, Shepard motioned for him to stop.
“One last check. I wanna make sure the geth didn't rig any part of the interior with mines. EDI, can you do a sweep?”
“Yes, Shepard.”
The three massive soldiers all stepped to the tunnel’s side so the field drones could file through unopposed. After a few minutes of silence, their machine ally spoke again.
“All clear. Detected and disabled five geth charges. Moreover, I have located the doctor.”
“Understood. Holster your weapons,” he ordered, doing so himself.
They were now effectively on a diplomatic mission, for better or worse.
Shepard considered his options. Time was no longer such a pressing factor, so he could bring the alien crew mates with them after all, but…would that actually be helpful? Turians were de facto human allies. Quarians were strongly disliked by most species on account of creating the geth, especially relevant here. As to krogan, the asari invented warp bombs for a reason.
Maybe it was best they just played it straight. Three humans, here to rescue her for cynical but straightforward reasons. Hopefully that would appeal to the scientist’s rational side.
*** *** ***
Of course Liara had been hoping, dearly, that whoever came to extirpate the geth would be asari. But she wasn’t foolish. Between this world’s location and the bizarre, angular design of that most recent drone, she knew the soldiers storming this cave were almost certainly human.
The elevator arrived on her level, and the brassy steps of metal feet on metal ground rang out loudly from its opening doors.
What did her trainer call them?
Devils wearing metal skin…?
No, no, don’t panic.
Liara was behind a prothean shield, one she controlled from the interior of a chamber it blocked on either side. Even the geth couldn’t get through it, and not for lack of trying.
Focus
Daughter of the TIA director; deep knowledge of mass-effect fields. For the UEG, she would be far more valuable alive than dead. Her task was to convince these ephemeral apes of her identity. Or better yet, avoid mentioning what she was actually doing here completely. They had no reason to think this was an asari site as opposed to a geth one.
They came into view: three humans wearing whole-body power armor. The first two had silver-colored plating, while the third had green. There were a plethora of other differences, but her focus was set squarely on their weapons.
Curiously, however, none of the humans were actually holding them. She spoke first.
“Oh, thank the goddess! Please get me out of here!”
“Is there a switch anywhere?” said the one on the left. His - she thought it was a male, at least - voice spoke out in perfect asari, startling her. With a fried ommi-tool, Liara had expected communication to be a challenge. Or did their armor really have speakers?
“I'm sorry, I don't know,” she replied.
“How did you get stuck in there?” The human asked.
“The geth kidnapped me off Illium, and imprisoned me here. Can you believe it? Geth, beyond the veil!”
The three humans looked at each other, and then at one of the drones hovering next to them, before returning their gazes forward. The left one spoke again.
“Doctor Liara T’soni, daughter of Benezia T’soni and Aethyta R’dea, we know who you are. We also know this is an asari research installation built around a prothean ruin.”
She was too shocked to immediately interject. He continued.
“My name is Jason Shepard. I'm here on the order of councilor Tevos to rescue you from the geth. So I ask again: Is there a sw-
“Wait, wait, hold the fucking phone. Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”
“Which part?”
“ Take a guess - that Aramita ordered you - humans - to come here . That’s absurd.”
“It’s part of a diplomatic deal. A lot has happened in your absence; about a month after you left Thessia, the geth attacked a major human world. One of the council’s top agents was implicated in the attack. I agreed to rescue you in exchange for the Citadel’s support in hunting him down.”
So that was their angle. It was quite a claim to say the geth had exited the veil in force, but given what transpired here, she was inclined to believe him.
They knew everything; had accepted the truth before even coming here.
All of the work had already been done.
Her relief was abruptly smothered by an intensely bitter feeling of bathos; though for what exactly she didn’t know, yet.
“Okay,” was all Liara could muster.
Shepard watched as she turned around and pressed a few buttons on a console that sat atop a short pole jutting out of the floor. The shields deactivated.
She exited, approaching the three armor-clad super soldiers with seemingly zero fear. A subtle but unmistakable sullenness marked the asari’s face.
“Let’s go, then.”