The M35 Mako Infantry Fighting Vehicle was rated for a lot.
With armor tough enough to withstand high drops — even without its micro-thrusters to slow it down and mass effect fields to lower its mass — and strong enough to weather extreme cold, heat and almost any other kind of rough terrain, its wheels were also independently reversible and capable of the sort of extreme manuevering that meant it could pull off the sort of moves any normal vehicle would consider near-suicidal.
Commander John Markus Shepard of the Systems Alliance was clearly determined to put all of that to the test.The Alliance all-terrain vehicle came screaming in from the access ramp, Skyway left behind as the Mako’s suspension squealed scorched tracks across the already wrecked roadway leading to the plaza of Zhou’s Hope. With another squeal of oversized tires, the vehicle skidded to a shuddering halt in roughly the same location where the thing had originally been dropped, coming less to a stop and more a horizontal crash.
Either way, it kicked up a cloud of dust thick enough that the front of Zedd’s boots were forced to suffer for it.
His fault for standing where he was, hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat — Kaiden and Ashley flanking him for some reason. Jane Shepard kept two paces ahead of them, her Katana already resting against her thigh — the thing yet to be holstered once — as she watched the Mako’s main hatch blow open with a hydraulic hiss.
Garrus was the first to drop out of the speedy tank, the turian stumbling as he hit the ground with a heavy limp. Whatever injury he’d taken seemed to have thrown off the officer’s usual stalk of a gait, but it clearly didn’t seem to be that serious. Not as the turian forced his spine straight a second later, returning to his full seven feet as mandibles flared tight against whatever pain he was holding in.
Tali was even less graceful as she practically pratfalled out behind Garrus, both arms wrapped tight around a sealed metal cylinder and pressed close to her chest as if she was carrying the highlight of any young quarian’s pilgrimage.
Liara T’Soni made her way out a few seconds after the quarian, the asari’s blue skin oddly washed out as she pressed one hand hard against the side of her head in a top-notch impression of Alenko.
"Status." Jane didn't even give them a chance to fully clear the vehicle as she stepped forward with an order readied. "Now."
John Shepard climbed out of the driver's hatch, M-8 Avenger slung low to match the Katana on his twin’s thigh. The man wasn’t exactly forthcoming with an answer, mouth shut and eyes up as he swept the perimeter; tracking the upper walkways, the shadowed archways, the makeshift barricades.
Zedd didn’t waste a second in following his gaze.
The colonists were already out and milling around; the ones sweeping dust, even the ones who seemed to be moving things idly from place to place or chatting — they were all just standing there.
Dozens of them.
Watching faces lined the railings, grouped-up together near the rusted prefabs, and clustered a little too close to the plaza of Zhou’s Hope.
Yes, they weren’t doing anything.
Unfortunately, that was the problem here.
"We need privacy.” John spoke the words as if the soul of his sister had taken him over, all warmth and calm stripped out of his tone as he grunted each syllable. "As soon as possible."
"We don't have time to play hide and seek, John.” Jane’s jaw tightened, grip shifting on her weapon at the sound of his voice. “What did you find?"
Blue eyes narrowed at Jane through polarized glass. "Not out here."
Green eyes followed the path of blue, Jane biting down whatever retort she had to throw back as she saw the meat-puppets staring down at them from all over.
"Idea for you, Shepards.” He jerked his chin toward the crashed salarian freighter looming at the back of the plaza. "Big ugly ship over there. Good a spot as any and decently secure.” That was far from the reason he wanted them back there, but he wasn’t going to say anything out loud where anyone could listen in. “How bout we mosey on over?”
Both twins shared a look that communicated an entire childhood and a tactical manual on top of that in about half a second. With a glance back at Zedd, Jane gave a short nod sharp enough for the both of them. "Move. Now."
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
They didn't run, but the pace was a forced march that ate up the distance in no more than twice the time. Even still, the hair on the back of Zedd's neck prickled the entire way with each pair of too-open eyes that landed on him with calm observational ease.
Soon enough, they hit the shadow of the freighter's half-scorched hull.
"Alright…" Zedd paused near a cluster of dead power conduits. “This is good enough.”
Deadband. The silver band warmed against his skin as Zedd fed a hard spike of psions directly into the sapphire CAD on his finger, mind running through the activation sequence necessary to actualize the psionic spell.
→ emit: kinetic_occlusion_shell(shape: dome, radius: 4.5m, density: low)→ tune: vibration_dampening(freq: 20Hz–24kHz, attenuation: 92%)→ apply: signal_noise(bands: radio/microwave/lidar, attenuation: 68%)→ layer: impact_diffusion(threshold: 8kN, bleed: outward)→ anchor: caster_position→ sustain: until_release(upkeep: steady)→ on_breach: flare_dampen, collapse
A geometric shimmer unfolded from the ring, a translucent field of pressure expanding outward in the shape of a dome that swallowed the eight of them.
The air pressure inside the bubble spiked as sound dulled to nothing; the ambient noise of Zhu's Hope dying all at once with even distant voices blurring to nothing but mouth-shapes.
“Wha-?” Ashley flinched like she’d been punched, rifle raised for a split second before she thought better of it. Liara wasn’t immune to being startled either, the asari jumping as Tali glanced up at the blue-hued barrier surrounding them all. "Victors, what the hell is this thing?"
"Deadband." Zedd cleared his throat as he let his hand fall, already feeling a little pressure from keeping the technique on. Sustained uses were always more annoying to use than simple shoot-and-forget sequences, but he didn’t exactly have many options for that right now. “It’s a psion-based acoustic and signal dampener, basically pushes kinetic force outward to flatten frequencies. Even with hardwired mics or comm pings, this should block it.” Liara tilted her head. “Psions?”“Human-based biotics, okay?” Zedd grunted both syllables out with a shake of his head, cutting down any questions on that mess before it could spiral. “Look, we got about ninety-seconds before this gives me a migraine. Let’s get to talking."
Jane barely even glanced at the shimmering wall, her attention locked on her brother. “He’s got a point, Johnny. Let’s get this out in the air.”
"The facility across the Skyway.” John didn't hesitate. “Nothing like just a research outpost, no matter what Fai Dan said. When we got there, we found an observation site to watch the colony itself.”He looked around the gathered crew circled around, jaw tight. "ExoGeni wasn't building a colony. They were building a petri dish."
"For what?"
John was quiet for a moment before he answered his sister’s question. "The company found a sapient organism under the ruins Zhu’s Hope was built over. They were nice enough to name it Species 37 and used the colony as a long-term experiment around it.” …you’re joking."Nothing about the behavior here was simple shock or stress. These colonists aren't just traumatized workers." The commander took a breath. "Each and everyone here is compromised; spores in their system have pretty much pulled an override and sucked the whole colony into the same alien root system."
“...the fuck.” He wasn’t surprised, exactly. Sure, he was wrong — technically — but he could live with that. Even still, the way he was wrong… “The fuck?”
Vindicated in the completely wrong direction.
"That is... so much worse. No, just… so much stupider than I could have given these psychos credit for." Zedd hissed the words, a hand dragged down over his face as he tried to process the information Shepard had dropped on him. “An actual chemical experiment? Sure, why not? I’ve dabbled in some crazy shit myself. But just a random alien mold run rampant on HR?"His mouth worked silently, disgust stealing the words from him. "God, I hate psychics." Zedd’s eyes slide over to the resident bluey among them. "You’re okay, though."
“I…” The asari’s pale face flushed a darker shade of violet. "Asari are not psychic. I am not psychic, Mr. Vi-"
"Yeah, sure, believe that." Zedd waved a hand her way as he tapped the side of his aviators with the other. "But all of this makes sense now. I scanned the lower colony systems while you guys were shooting up the Skyway. A lot of the colony’s life support was being geared to distribute what had to be particulate matter.” He pointed down at the metal grating beneath the freighter. "Ship’s lower geometry doesn't match the hull scans because there’s open tunnels beneath the ship and there’s definitely something alive down there."
“What?”Jane turned on him, boots scraping the deck as she closed distance in just two steps. "You knew there was something under the colony and you didn't think to share that?"
"'Dead ship breathes funny' is not exactly a mission-grade diagnosis, Shepard." Zedd snapped right back, not giving an inch. "For all I knew, it was just an ExoGeni project. And I was right, I mean… technically, I was.”“Victors.”“Look, I had symptoms. I didn't have the disease.” Zedd bit down on his urge to yell. “You want to yell at someone, yell at the guy who brought the spores."
"The logs we pulled…" Tali interrupted, quarian holding the strange metal canister tighter to her chest as she spoke. "They're all fragmented but they made one thing clear. The geth were a cleanup crew. They were trying to erase the evidence."
"What evidence?"
"Saren got what he wanted." Liara answered Ashley with a breath-soft voice. "He came to Feros for something the logs called the Cipher. A complete storage of Prothean knowledge."“Oh, great.” Jane groused with a sigh. “Another Beacon.”“No.” The asari shook her head, correction coming quick as she pushed the words out nearly as quickly as the quarian did. “Not a machine. Nothing like the Beacon. Unfortunately, nothing quite that simple.” Blue eyes flickered down to the ground as if she could peer through the foundations beneath her feet. "Species 37 spentthousands of years beneath this world-city absorbing what ExoGeni could only define as neurological echoes of the Protheans as they lived and died. Cultural fragments of billions upon billions existing within the depths of its root network.” Zedd blinked slow at Liara’s words, fighting all urges to let his mouth hang open as he pieced the facts together.“Impossibly…” Liara raised her head “...this would imply that it possessed enough of the Protheans to understand what the beacon vision meant."
“Saren made a trade with the organism." John took over, voice gravel. "In exchange for access to the Cipher, he gave it one of Benezia’s people; a commando named Shiala. From the footage we have, he believed this thing — the Thorian—”
"Thorian?" Zedd grunted. "Of course it has a worse name."
"Saren believed the Thorian could clone her somehow." John moved on like Zedd didn’t even say a thing. "Speak through her and process the Cipher through her nervous system so he could comprehend it."
"So he got the data." Garrus folded his arms over his chest. "And ordered the geth to bury the trail. Kill the witnesses and everything else. Unfortunately for him, it seems like he left only a skeleton crew behind.”
"ExoGeni had a contingency, though. Stupid as the plan was, they at least had something." A hand reached out to rap knuckles against the metal canister Tali was holding. "A compound meant to at least suppress the Thorian’s hold over the colonists without killing them. Tali pulled the formula and Liara helped her synthesize a field-ready version in the Skyway labs."
"It's an aerosol nerve agent." Tali nodded in support. "Theoretically, it should knock the colonists unconscious long enough for us to reach the root system."
"Theoretically." Kaidan isolated the word.
"Well, it has yet to be tested and the margin of error is awful…" Tali’s admissions seemed to hit her with every syllable, voice trailing off even as she kept going. "Too little concentration, and the colonists keep attacking us. Too much..."
"They stop breathing.”
Ashley’s grip tightened on the Avenger assault rifle, looking back at the Commander as he finished Tali’s sentence for her. "How many? How many of them are compromised?"
“You weren’t paying attention, Williams.” Zedd folded his arms over his chest, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Like the good Commander already said, all of them.”
"We can't move them. We can’t kill them." Jane’s words were flat, all the heat gone from her voice as she stared off at nowhere. "Surrounded by hostages."
"I think can’t is pushing it a little but… yeah." Zedd slid his hands back into his pockets. “Alien zombie hive with civilians for skin.”
"...fuck.” Ashley said all that was needed. "This... this whole situation..."
"Is fucked, yes.” Jane echoed Ashley and finished her sentence in just three words. “It’s all fucked.”
"Outnumbered." Zedd drawled, looking up at the rusted hull of the freighter. "And dealing with a zombie hive that could go hostile any second, filled with targets we can’t really afford to treat like targets."
John met his eyes. "Pretty much, yes."
"I want you to know, Shepard, if we survive this…" Zedd blew air out of his nostrils, eyes closing behind his glasses. “I’m billing the fuck out of the Alliance for this ‘consultation’.”
No one laughed.
Mostly because Zedd wasn’t joking.
"Alright." Jane cleared her throat, shotgun up again. "John's team has the gas. Victors has the map and the freighter is clearly the access point. So, we breach, blast, and extract this ‘Shiala’ if we can. Clear enough for me."John nodded. “Same for me.”
“Hold on.” Zedd blinked, eyes raised to the see-through blue wall that was the Hush-Zone; its surface shadowed by the colonists standing just outside of it. "You know how this thing hides sound, right?"
"We know." Jane snapped. “Why?”
"It doesn't hide faces, Shepard." Zedd took a step back, eyes narrowing as he tracked the silhouettes beyond the field. "How do we know this thing can’t lip-read?"
The whole colony was already looking at them from a distance; on the upper walkways, by rusted barricades. The wounded men near the freighter entrance poked their heads out as half-starved families stepped on out of the prefabs.
One customer-service smile vanished, facial muscles slacking.
Then another.
Then all of them.
One by one, the colonists of Zhu’s Hope stopped pretending as every single head angled in the exact same direction.
"Arms up!" John’s M-8 snapped to his shoulder. “Non-lethal if possible!”
"If possible!" Jane parroted, shotgun leveled at a crowd of thirty approaching mechanics. “If!”
"If?!" Zedd’s eyes went wide, the Full Stop already in his hand as the blue of his omni-tool flared open — gun settings open in front of him. “That ‘if’ is doing a hell of a lot here, Shepards!”
A colonist in a grease-stained jumpsuit sprinted forward to throw his entire body weight at the faint blue wall, slamming both bare hands into the edge of Zedd’s still active Deadband.
The barrier flared, psions shifting to keep it up even as it rippled from the impact.
A second body hit it.
Then a third.
Then ten.
A flood of meat pounded for entry, the dull distant sounds of human bodies mindlessly throwing themselves against mental math as they clawed at psionic shields.
With a grunt from Zedd, the barricade collapsed into ambient psions; giving way under the crush of flesh. The silence broke with it, peace shattered into a cacophony of screaming, stampeding boots, and frantic breaths from all sides.
And beneath it all, something groaned deep from beneath the colony floor.
“Jesus!” Zedd backed up toward the open mouth of the crashed freighter, auto-fire from his pistol enough to knock back and drop a colonist’s knee. “We’ve got company!”Zedd glanced over his shoulder at Ashley’s words and his eyes widened as something that used to look like an asari crawled from the ship behind other bodies.