"...god, I miss the Kodiak."
Words he never thought he’d say about that stupid clamshell. The FTL-capable clamshell of a drop-shuttle the Alliance treated as an all-purpose vehicle was never something he was the biggest fan of — mostly for the pettiest of reasons — but right now… “I miss the fucking Kodiak.”The words were bile and boogers as they scraped their way out of Zedd’s throat the second his boots hit the ground. Pulverized and dusty ground, but still sweet sweet ground. The shock of terra firma was almost too much for his stomach or his knees, especially considering the former was still processing the landing Jane Shepard had chosen to make.Never doubting John’s piloting skills again. Because at least John had actually piloted them somewhere. The redheaded demon the Council had given Spectre Status to had just loaded them up inside the M35 and let them drop from near-orbit.
A ‘tactical insertion’, she called it.
Nothing… He sucked in a breath as clean as any on the Normandy, filters on his shields working hard to keep it that way. Nothing about that insertion was tactical. Cramming eight armored bodies — including a seven-foot turian, a quarian, and an Alliance gunnery chief whose elbows seemed magnetically attracted to Zedd’s ribs — into an infantry fighting vehicle barely designed for fourteen humans maximum was a nightmare on its own.The fact that the Mako’s mass effect suspension had them bouncing and shaking every inch of the atmosphere down to ground was even worse. My organs… Every one of them had received a massage, and not the kind he would pay for. My gentle organs.
He pressed a gloved hand to his temple, fighting the urge to empty his stomach onto ancient Prothean architecture. Instead, he just took another deep breath of Mantle-filtered air, thankful to himself for the air filtration.
Besides, he didn't have much time to dwell on the terrible Alliance engineering.
Not when the sight of the landing zone sent a child down his back that had nothing to do with his cooling systems.
The heavy dust of their localized thruster-burn settled around the Mako, painting the towering and overbuilt Prothean strato-scrapers of Zhu's Hope in a sickly amber. His aviators adjusted before he could bother doing it himself, blue lenses polarizing against the ambient glare of the planet’s sun.
…This is a ghost town.
True, but what it wasn’t was also obvious. Where’s the warzone?
"Spread out.” Shepard’s voice was tight over comms, the shorter of the two taking field command the second they were off the ship. Her path took her over towards the concrete barriers, her weapon ready and waiting to be used. “Check your corners.”
Zedd followed — Tali at his six — as they made their way past a row of civilian transports parked near a rusted gantry; each and everyone in perfect formation. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say they were nearly… symmetrical. Huh.
Leaning forward, he peered through the cracked window of a hauler, eyes widening at the sight of a starter fob still inside and waiting, a half-empty ration tube in the cupholder.
…huh.
“Take a look at this.” Kaidan called out, the biotic walking up to a set of maintenance racks bolted to the side of a prefab. Each hook on it held heavy industrial environmental suits, llimp and perfectly aligned.
"I’m barely seeing any battle damage, Commanders." Garrus rasped as his rifle swept the upper balconies. "These doors, they’re not breached.” Ashley’s frown matched the one Zedd wore as she looked back at them. “Not much blood around either."
Zedd’s jaw tightened as that much matched his own scans with his glasses, a rapid degradation check having given him all of nothing. Barely any more scorch marks than you’d expect from a minor pirate attack, and pirates had the excuse of being interested in terror and loot over execution. It’s like the Geth aren’t trying to demolish the place.
But even that didn’t explain the sudden absence. Of course, people ran when the geth dropped from the sky. They would do the same when any enemy suddenly dropped on their head. But that was the thing.
People ran.
They scrambled.
They trampled.
They crashed their cars in a hurry to escape.
In any panicky situation, people did almost as much damage to themselves as the enemy would do to them. Nothing about this looked like a panic.
"Contact," John’s callout pulled him from his thoughts as they moved forward again. "Up ahead. We have locals."
Zedd stepped out from behind a hauler, thumb drifting toward the safety of his readied handcannon — the Full Stop resting in its magnetized holster. Locals.
The ‘locals’ were a small group of colonists standing near the entrance of an oversized vaulted Prothean archway, clothes filthy from dirt and chaos, but none of them even armed.
They were barely even hiding.
If Zedd didn’t know any better, he would think they were just standing there. Waiting. A small group of colonists just past those ones were gathered near a pile of crates, moving things and sweeping dust from whatever fight they had been too late to drop in on.
His soles stopped for a moment, a deeply uncomfortable pressure clamping down at the base of his skull. Something’s off with these people.
It wasn't immediately obvious but the same way his body was tuned to be stronger, it was also a bit more sensitive to the subtle things. And this was just on the other end of subtle. These people were obviously still people; breathing, bleeding, and human in every way that mattered but…
Why aren’t they more… He sucked his teeth as he looked them up and down, the sound a ‘tch’ in the silence of their steady approach. Where’s the stress? For a bunch of civilian colonists under siege by synthetics, starved and sealed off from the rest of the galaxy, they should have been shouting and screaming as soon as they saw the crew.
He’d expected at least one of them to come running up, begging and pleading for an evac they couldn’t even offer right now. Someone somewhere should have been screaming or shooting at the Alliance for a chance off this rock.
Instead, while some were just working, other ‘locals’ looked over at the heavily armed squad of soldiers as if they were new neighbors or something.
Yeah, no. Zedd narrowed his eyes, lenses already running a scan as a blue overlay locked onto the colonists. …the fuck are they testing on you people?
The biometrics were just a degree off-center, barely noticeable but almost constant across the gathered colonists; a slight shift in biochemistry to encourage…
Not compliance.
Not aggreableness, either.
More a sense of passivity?
…wow, ExoGeni are some demonic fucks. He wasn’t joking when he had said as much earlier but fucking with your own worker’s cortisol levels to keep them from complaining was a whole new low. Just enslave them at that point. It’s pretty much legal out here.
Zedd swallowed the urge to pull his gun. No need to turn them into corporate zombies. He swallowed down another urge, this time to open his mouth. If he tried to explain that the colonists were too calm for a warzone off a basic scan, the jarheads would just look at him like he was losing his mind or whining about the locals.
After all, shell-shock was a thing.
No… I need their data.
Zedd shoved his hands deep into his pockets, fists clenched tight around smooth cool objects no larger than ball bearings. With a smooth motion, he flicked his wrists.
Those ball bearings flew up into the air from the linings of his overcoat, each one unfolding into something closer to the size of a golf ball as they held their place in the air with faint hums. Each one bobbed in the dusty atmosphere, pinhole blue optics blinking to life. Barely a second later, a slightly larger sphere floated up from his collar — the softball-sized drone chiming a cheerful note as it took point over the swarm of his fourteen siblings.“Just mapping our way around.” Zedd’s mutter came as soon as he ignored the starting looks of the Marines. He paid them little attention as the drones scattered out, zipping up ancient Prothean walls and diving down into alleyways and maintenance shafts.
"By all the ancestors…" Tali stepped closer, her breathing audible as she took in the hardware still hovering around him — a few drones kept in reserve. "These drones... what brand are those? The micro-repulsors… they’re practically silent."
"Custom, of course," Zedd’s drawl came slow, his attention on a readout on his left lens as the drones began feeding him topological maps of the settlement. “Recently made.”
"Model name?" Her hands hovered as if she wanted to catch one out of the air, if not take it apart right now.
"LVD. Lil V Drones. And this one right here…" He pointed a finger at the lead sphere still hovering by his shoulder. "He’s the leader of these little guys. The VIP. Very Important Prime."
“Heh.” A low rasp of a chuckle escaped the mandibles of the Turian just in front of him. “Okay. Okay, that one I understood.”
"You have got to be kidding me." Ashley, however, just groaned out loud, her helmet the only thing keeping her from pinching the bridge of her nose. “Your complaining is better than your jokes.”“You!” Ashley’s rant about his sense of humor was shut down as a new figure stumbled out of the shadows of the nearest prefab structure — his grease-stained jumpsuit coated in at least one layer of thick brown dust. "You're... you're here. Alliance?"“No, food delivery.”
"Commander John Shepard, Systems Alliance." John stepped forward before Jane could snap back at Zedd, hands open and non-threatening as he slipped into the diplomatic stance the man was known before. "We received the distress signal. We’re here t—"
"I am David Al Talaquani." As if the man didn’t see the big N7 on the Commander’s chest, he just barelled over him without even acknowledging Shepard’s rank. "You must speak with Fai Dan immediately. “Fai Dan?” Shepard didn’t even blink at the disrespect, the man moving forward with a necessary question. “Who is F-”“Our colony leader.” Al Talaquani seemed to enjoy being rude as he didn’t bother stopping. “The geth are in the tunnels, assaulting the colony."
"Where are they, though?” Zedd crossed his arms over his chest as the drones returned back to him, several shrinking back into his pockets. “Not to act blind, we didn't see any fighting on our way down. Orbit was clear, too. Hell, I’m not saying it doesn’t look bad now, but not actively bad."
"You must speak to Fai Dan." David repeated the words as if Zedd hadn’t said a thing, a trembling finger aimed toward a rusted stairwell leading deeper into the ruins. "In the colony proper. Down the stairs. Fai Dan will explain. The geth are in the tunnels and towers."
“Fine.” Jane stepped forward with a grunt, green eyes narrowed to near-slits as she assessed the colonist. "Understood. You take point and show us the way."
"Great.” Zedd rolled his eyes at the bullshit this op was turning out to be; orbital drops, ghost towns, and now customer-service tour guides in the middle of a ‘supposed’ geth invasion. A hand dragged down his face as he bit out a sigh, head tossed back to stare at the smog-choked sky. "Stuck with the jarheads. Wake me up if the geth actually show up."
The sharp pop of a mass accelerated shard ripped the air to punctuate his words.
And in front of them all, David Al Talaquani's head chose that moment to explode in a geyser of red mist and white bone.