Wha-
Hot copper-scented spray hung in the air for all the split-second it took for David Al Talaquani’s skull to vaporize into mist, red and gray splattering against the shielding of Zedd’s Mantle.
The colonist’s body didn't even have the decency to collapse like a person, knees folding as the rest of him gave way and dropped the headless torso into the pulverized ground with a wet thud loud enough to echo.
The moment didn’t last long enough to breathe.
Not as the air pressure in the plaza inverted and the sky tore open.
“I was fucking kidding!”
Apparently, the universe thought he was the joke; the punchline the sound of Geth shardfire shrieking out into the screaming populace.
Fuckfuckfuck! Zedd swiped his hand through the air, ignoring the screaming whine of a phasic round superheating the space two inches from his shielded head as he ducked for something close to cover. Fuckfuckfuckme! The remainder of the still airborne chrome spheres — each of the LVD — zipped backward in a synchronized swarm to bury themselves back into the reinforced linings of his pockets; each one of them shrinking back to ball bearings to join their brothers.
Lil V Prime followed a half-second later, the thing chiming a sharp warning before nesting itself under Zedd’s collar.
Not risking proprietary hardware in a blind firefight. He wasn’t eighteen anymore; that was a different kind of stupidity compared to his present-day kind. Besides, the drones weren't shielded for sustained shardfire to even think about using them openly like that. Not yet, anyway.
White optics ignited in the smog as Geth unfolded from the shadows, synthetic joints whining as they leapt from their hiding spots within Prothean architecture.
Full Stop found itself in his hand as Zedd found proper cover behind a cargo loader, rusted material shielding him from the scream of shards as he began to fiddle with the attached settings on the handcannon. C’mon… His omni-tool spun out, the device more expansive and easier to manage than relying on the modular selector attached to the barrel guard.
‘Kinetic Emissions Packet Setti-’
“Semi-auto! Semi-auto! Semi-auto!” The output settings on his weapon slid down an easy three notches from standard, royal blue coils along the spine shifting to a pulsing rhythm.
Without wasting a second, he leaned out with the weapon up; targeting suite in his aviators painting a bright red vector over a geth trooper already advancing.
Two thumps sounded off as the gun kicked in his palm, twin streaks of localized blue hate crossing the plaza. Whatever systems that approached sapience inside the trooper didn’t last long enough to register the shattering of its barrier, synthetic frame already falling as the second shot tore clean through its frame.
Zedd didn't bother watching it fall properly, already mid-motion to snap a third and fourth shot through the optic sensor of a unit trying to flank Kaidan.
Semi-auto; higher fire rate for far lower yield. For anything that wasn’t a basic krogan, two semi-automatic slugs were enough to strip shielding and punch a hole clean through. A third was just overkill.
Really, he only kept it kicked so high at ‘standard’ mostly to make a point.
Either way, math was math.
"Left side, pushing up!" Shepard’s voice carried over the din, the trained biotic Bulwark completely devoid of panic as he created cover. John stepped right into the open street, left hand glowing with a biotic field ready. The Commander thrust his palm outward — the field he held flying out and ripping chunks of street and dust into a blue-hued translucent wall of force anchored right into the street.
Wonderwall. A successful one, at that.
He’d heard of that technique. Mostly because Kira loved to complain about how hard it was to pull off every time he watched her train. Doesn’t look that hard to me.
Three geth plasma bursts slammed right into the Wonderwall, the hardness of the barrier showing itself off in good form as the projection absorbed the impact, kinetic strain stored in its lattice.
"Moving!" M-8 Avenger already shouldered, Williams ran out behind Shepard’s projected cover to lay out a punishing stream of sustained fire to chew bits off the Geth frontline. A heavy-duty shard tore through the head of a shock unit, Garrus atop a collapsed slab as he racked his Mantis to cool the sniper. “Stripping shields.” Another shriek of super-accelerated grain cracked out, leaving another Geth without a flashlight.
Zedd grit his teeth, holstering the Full Stop for a second as he grabbed the edge of a shattered concrete pillar and vaulted over the thing. By the time he landed, he was already in front of a shock unit; the thing whirling on him without a weapon in its hand.
The Geth rifle swung out in Zedd’s hands and the butt of the weapon shattered the synthetic’s chassis in an instant; enough force in the hit to break both weapon and former wielder.
Tossing the weapon over his shoulder, Zedd grit his teeth and ducked back for cover; a stray round tearing apart the concrete at his feet. Suffocating.
Fighting like this…
Compared to his teamwork with his friends — even with Nina — had a specific rhythm, a flow he was used to; Kira setting up the pins with a Singularity, Kai cutting targets to scrap, and him bulldozing whatever was left.
It wasn’t always fluid, but it was undeniably fast.
This Alliance doctrine — holding ground behind cover, laying suppressing fire, advancing in clean wide wedges — was disciplined, sure.
It was effective, undoubtedly.
It was just so slow.
Even with the Shepards throwing Breakfists and Novas, and Liara just warping her way through the fight, it might as well have been slow motion compared to how Zedd was used to handling combat.
A geth shock trooper took the chance to flank him; the thing rounding a pillar to his right, rifle raised and humming.
Zedd lunged, the speed of a groundcar compressed into three steps. He dropped his shoulder and met the synthetic with a single shoulder-check; shield overloading instantly as the metal chassis folded inward.
With the sound of crunching metal, the synthetic was launched backward into a rusted transport rover.
Rising back to his proper height, Zedd shook out his arm for a second; eyes glancing down to the ring on his right hand. The sapphire-embedded CAD was quiet for a very good reason, Zedd deliberately keeping his psions locked down. Can’t afford to start snoozing in the middle of this. Flinging forty Gs of gravity around was fun, but the neural drain was a bitch, and he had no idea how deep this Geth hole went.
"I'm in their local network, bypassing the encryption.” Tali’s voice came through the comms, filter system still somehow caught even from inside her own suit’s mic. “Just give me a second, I can fix this!" Somewhere behind the frontline, a geth’s shield suddenly flared violently, electronics turning in on itself as the synthetic dropped.
Zedd glanced back to see Tali’Zorah crouched behind another building, her omni-tool a blur of orange holographic code. Good job, Tee.
"Clear the lane!"
The air tore open with a boom as Jane Shepard shot past her brother's cover. The woman was a streak of blue, her Biotic Charge erasing the distance between her and a cluster of geth. In a microsecond, she slammed into their line, impact enough to restore her personal barrier.
The M-23 came up, her Katana rising point-blank. Messy.
An instant later, Zedd watched a geth trooper lose its upper half to a shotgun blast. Man, she’d fit right in with Dev’s boys. Unfortunately, something drastic would have to happen in the universe for him to ever trust Jane Shepard with one of his custom powered armors.
He jogged forward, Full Stop back in his hand as he picked off stragglers. A quick three-shot over a low wall dropped another trooper, Zedd ducking back to let the weapon vent its ambient heat.
But as the initial wave of synthetics broke, Zedd’s HUD started feeding him environmental telemetry from around the plaza that made him frown. The colonists…
The few around scattered when David's head popped.
But they hadn't run.
Zedd watched a man in a greasy jumpsuit duck behind a prefab barricade as a stray phasic round cracked through the open walkway while another colonist, a woman, dragged a bleeding worker into a doorway. A third gripped a battered civilian-class rifle with stiff, white-knuckled hands, the man firing blindly into the smoke.
They were flinching. They were bleeding.
But they were staying.
Zedd paused, lenses polarizing against the smoke. Why are you still here?
Pirates hit a normal colony, the people made for the shuttles — their actions a desperate dash for safety. If they couldn’t do that, then they knuckled down and got their asses to the deepest basements. This was a young corporate outpost being invaded by synthetic myths.
Nothing about this should have them ready to stand and fight.
Yet, despite all that, they were holding barricades like they were being paid for all this.
ExoGeni. Zedd’s thumb rubbed the silver band of his ring as he realized what the bastards were up to here. They’re running an experiment.
There was nothing else it could be; the only thing that even made close the concept of sense on a spreadsheet. Modify the dopamine and cortisol receptors, chemically neuter the flight response, and you get a perfectly pliable worker class.
A labor force that wouldn’t crack, wouldn’t panic, and would never complain hard enough to the point they’d quit. Devious.
No matter how bad the working conditions get.
Cheaper than paying hazard pay. His lip curled up, fingers tight around his weapon. ExoGeni's HR department is really putting in the work.
"Through here. Keep moving." John’s voice cut through the shardfire, the Commander waving the whole squad deeper into Zhu's Hope.
Zedd followed the jarheads without wasting a moment, already in the middle of the pack as he stepped over the sparking remains of a geth trooper. They pushed through the smoke — smell of burnt plastic and shard-battered metal thick in the air — until they hit a reinforced concrete barricade thick enough to block the main artery.
"You’re late."
A woman stood behind the barricade, her hair cut close to her scalp and pasted with sweat to her tanned skin. She held a shotgun under one arm, blood drying in a thick streak down the side of her face.
"You’re not dead yet.” Jane’s rifle was already up, her green eyes tracking movement along the upper gantries. “How late could we be?"
"Jane!"
“What I meant to say was…” The Spectre rolled her eyes at her brother’s hard look. "You’re welcome."
"That’s it?” The colonist’s eyes flicked over the whole squad, gaze on the three non-humans before flicking back to Jane. “This is the rescue?"
"Currently in progress, ma’am." John stepped forward, voice strong and sincere as he met the woman’s eyes. "Who’s in charge here?"
"Fai Dan." The woman’s grip tightened on her shotgun with a grunt. "If he’s still alive."
That was all the questions they had time for because the concrete barricade ten feet to their left exploded inward in a deafening crunch of pulverized stone as rebar and shrapnel tore through the dust.
Geth poured through the breach, troopers flooding in hard while heavy shock units stomped through behind them, white optics burning through the dark haze.
A colonist screamed from an upper balcony, civilian rifle firing early and wide. The shards hit nothing worthwhile; useless sparks chewed out of a structural pillar a good three meters to the left of the nearest synthetic target.
"Tower!" The bloodied woman’s shout came loud as she backed behind cover, shotgun up and barking as her other hand pointed high. "They’re using that tower! Long as they hold it, they can shoot down into half the colony!"
Jane was moving before the woman even finished the sentence. "To the fucking tower then!"
The fight immediately became all angles; brutal and chaotic.
Zedd didn't bother shooting with the lane too crowded. Instead, he kept to the barricade, at least one eye on the colonists as they kept firing around the Alliance squad.
It was brave.
it was also mostly useless.
The man who had fired wide was still standing out of cover, holding the trigger down, pouring rounds into nothing while a geth trooper zeroed in on his chest.
"The hell are you doing?" Zedd’s lunge had him catch the collar of the man's jumpsuit, a violent shoulder throwing backward before a phasic round could ventilate his lungs. "Hold your fire unless you have an actual shot, you idiot!"
The man hit the dirt hard.
Zedd looked down at him, expecting heavy breathing and the wide eyes of a civilian who had almost seen his end.
Instead, the colonist just stared back at him; eyes watery and near blanked with the muscles in his face slack. That gaze met Zedd and he had the distinct feeling that his words had to travel a long way through heavy water before they meant anything at all.
Eventually, the man picked himself up and just nodded back at him as if he’d never heard of an adrenaline response.
Zedd stayed crouched behind the barricade, the Full Stop heavy in his hand, ignoring the deafening roar of Jane’s shotgun ten feet away; blinking at the civilian’s back as he walked away. Trauma doesn't look like that. Whatever ExoGeni put in the water here, it broke the steering wheel.
"Victors! Head in the game!" Ashley’s suppressing fire came with a shout. “You’re slowing us down!”
Zedd rolled his neck, his aviators catching the glare of a shardburst. "Yeah, yeah. Let's go clean out a tower."