“-Christ!”Zedd backpedaled hard, boots grinding against pulverized ferrocrete as eyes went wide. It had barely been a full five seconds since the Deadband went down, and the silence went with it; all the roar of Zhu’s Hope rushing back into his ears in a wall of noise.
Deafening noise.Chaotic noise.
Enough noise to distract him, like he didn’t have enough to worry about.
Namely — “The fuck is that?”Right in front of Zedd, a shadow peeled itself out of the open maw of the freighter’s main module. Immediately, he could tell it wasn’t a colonist.
He’d have to be blind to assume that, especially considering it had all the same shape and structure of the blue-skinned manipulative demons the galaxy called asari. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the coloring.Greener than any asari he’d ever seen, the thing was as nude as most of them seemed to like being at least; its skin dripping with a thick fluid just as green as its skin; every inch of it a sickly bioluminescent jade that complimented the pulsating veins and hollowed-out pits of darkness it used as eyes.
It seemed to have as much of a mind as it did clothing as the thing hissed his way, jaw unhinged and hands hooked into glowing green claws as it lunged.
Zedd didn't even have time to raise his gun.
An ear-splitting crack split the air at hypersonic speeds directly over his shoulder, tearing through the smog and the green thing’s right shoulder. Glowing green fluid splattered the deck plates of the freighter in an arc as half the thing’s shoulder ceased to exist.
Garrus didn’t even shout a warning, the turian’s Mantis doing the talking for him as the mutated asari slid to a dead stop inches from Zedd’s boots — limbs twitching in broken spasms as a drop of that green sludge splattered against his Mantle and slid off him. Gross.
The plaza didn’t give him a second to breathe as it exploded.
The tactical nightmare Zedd dreaded dropped itself on their collective laps the moment the silence broke with a flood of meat. A mindless tide of bodies in dirtied jumpsuits clawing and grabbing for anything they could get ahold of, throwing themselves at the kinetic barriers like they could pry open hardsuits.And — of course — crawling out from the shadowed gaps in the freighter’s hull were dozens more of the mutated, green-skinned things — green-tinted biotic energy sizzling against the barklike ridges on their skin.
"I’m dropping the green ones. Unless they’re off-limits?" Garrus yelled over the sudden roar of the crowd, Mantis rifle tracking a target scrambling up a pillar. “If so, my apologies for the first one.”
“Garrus, you take their fucking heads off and you’ll be my favorite!!” Jane’s shotgun barked a harsh boom as punctuation, the Vanguard blowing a hole clear in a charging mutant. “And that’s a promise!”“Yes, ma’am!”
“I—are they—please…” Liara stumbled backward, pistol shaking and biotics flickering in her off hand as wide-eyes took in the shattered remains of her own kind. “C-c-can I not…?”
“Liara, control the choke point!” John grabbed her by the shoulder, physically hauling the asari behind his own mass. A Wonderwall rose quickly with a single gesture, the barrier enough to block a rushing mob of grease-hands. “Garrus, clear the green ones like she said! Nobody puts a round in a colonist, understand?”
Even as the colonists swarmed him, the Commander held the center, the oversized shimmering barrier bearing force with each slap of meat against his field; blood and dirt smeared in thick layers against the semi-translucent wall. John Shepard just stood there, teeth gritted as he held the line with gravity warping and groaning around him.
"They're throwing biotics!" Kaidan’s panic was its own force, the biotic ducking for cover as a shuddering line of sickly jade shuddered against a wall. “Green biotics!”
Whatever they were — and Zedd was betting on some plant-clone hybrids — the green asari were clearly not just mindless biters. Unfortunately, they were clearly semi-mindless biotics and that was so much worse for every reason you could think of; their energies corrupted and violently emerald.
Without warning, one of the green fields slammed into John’s projected Wonderwall, the man’s eyes going wide as he screamed and ducked for cover of his own. A split-second later, it became immediately clear why as jagged biotic force passed clean through the field like acid eating glass.
“John!” The man snapped his head up to meet Zedd’s wide eyes. “What the fuck?”“It’s not rated for anti-biotic defense!” His Avenger cracked out, the Commander catching the asari that had nearly taken him off-guard. “Strictly standard kinetics, alright?”“Then why use it?” “Instinct!” Shepard grunted, a normal biotic barrier catching another green blast before Jane splattered the offending Asari for him. “Not used to fighting other biotics, Victors!”
Instinct, he says. Zedd scowled, Full Stop held high. “I hate escort missions.”
He’d already done the work of modifying the KEP output, dragging the gun all the way down to its bare-minimum viable setting. A massive pain in the ass, considering he’d built the Full Stop to do exactly what it said — put a period in damn near fucking anything he pointed it at.
Whether that was punching holes in armored vehicles, or reminding krogan that redundancy didn’t mean immortality, it had a purpose.And that purpose was not to play crowd control with brainwashed corporate colonists. Hostage situations were already a logistical headache unless you could simply pop the hostage-taker and call it a day. In an ideal situation, they could just glass the colony and they’d be back on the Normandy in ten minutes eating crappy rations.
Instead, he had to play riot cop.
Either way… Zedd ducked under a heavy spanner used like a club, a colonist charging him with empty eyes. With a grunt, he kicked the colonist square in the chest, the zombie sent flying with a chest that was most likely going to have a bruise in the shape of his boot for weeks. I have full-auto.
After all, lowest power meant the absolute highest fire rate. Might as well use full-auto.
With eyes narrowed, the handcannon went shoulder-high as he held the trigger all the way down.
Low-yield kinetic packets flew free, each one a pale-blue beanbag fired out of a cannon. A woman in a grease-stained jumpsuit folded entirely in half, oxygen slammed out of her lungs after taking three blue bolts to the sternum. She dropped to the pavement, gasping as Zedd already pivoted, five quick bursts launched into the chest of a dockworker rushing Kaidan’s flank.
By the fourth, he was already sprawling back across dirt and into a stack of supply crates.
Un-shielded and un-armored, it was no surprise they went down easy.
Un-fortunately, they didn't stop coming.
The guy in the crates groaned, eyes rolling back in his head as he just... stood back up. Arm hanging loose at an odd angle and entirely dislocated by the looks of it, his face was perfectly slack as if pain or adrenaline was nothing he’d ever heard of before.
With a dazed groan, the colonist just picked up the spanner with his good hand and started walking forward again.“...well, fuck me running.” He couldn’t help the frown he wore, gun still up. “That’s just unfair.”
John rushed past him, the Commander ignoring a colonist clawing at the back of his hardsuit as biotics flared around him. What looked like a tether of biotic force warped the air in front of him in a flicker of blue, three of the mutated asari seemingly anchored to the floor and each other.
Whatever it did, it dragged their inertia down to zero so Kaidan could shatter them with Cryo rounds — the cold enough to affect them with each blast from the man’s heavy pistol.
Kaidan was methodical with each motion, the man keeping his back to Jane even as he covered John’s six at the same time. The heavy pistol barked out again, Cryo rounds playing their part as the M-3 Predator barked them out. A colonist lunged, and a shot from the biotic Sentinel caught him clean in the chest, flash-freezing the man’s hardsuit and locking up his joints.
The Marine didn’t pause with that, a Stasis field immediately freezing another rushing worker completely out of phase with reality as she hung in the biotic wall.. “Left flank is getting heavy! I can’t hold this many!”
“Then back the fuck up!” Jane Shepard seemed to wear anger like a favorite pair of shoes but at least this time it was justified. Her entire doctrine was built on closing distance and detonating barriers, but there was no space or option to use a single Charge and a Nova was clearly off-limits. Both would have pulped civilians instantly. Instead, she relied on blunt physical trauma, shoulder-checking a colonist into a wall before snapping her shotgun up to obliterate a green mutant trying to flank her. “Get off my damn armor!”
Another Greenie bypassed the crowd, leaping straight for Jane’s blind spot.
The stock of an Avenger assault rifle smashed into the asari’s face, shattering green bone in mid-air and sending it to the floor. As soon as the thing hit the ground, Ashley Williams made sure to put a three-round burst through its neck before kicking a civilian away as hands reached for her rifle barrel. “Watch your six, Lieutenant!”
Tears streaking through the dust on her face, Doctor T’Soni wasn’t proving herself to be a liability either as her hands flew up, both wreathed in biotic power. That power lashed out in the shape of a dark blue Singularity, the biotic construct flaring into existence above the mob. Six colonists found themselves ripped off their feet, bodies suspended helplessly in the air as they kicked at nothing.
With Garrus sniping the asari as more popped up and Tali using her drones to shock and freeze in equal measure, they were far from losing. Unfortunately, they were equally as far from winning. Balancing lethal force while pulling their punches against targets clogging the exact same firing lanes...
That was just a tactical nightmare.
“Distance defintiely isn't working.” He ducked his head, sidestepping a wide punch to deliver one of his own; gloved fist enough to send a body back into the rushing mound. “Can’t just push ‘em.”That didn’t leave them with a lot of options.Luckily, Zedd had fifteen more.
"Fuck this.” He holstered the gun for a split second, hands flying out in front of him with fingers splayed. "Boys! Daddy needs you!"
Fourteen chrome spheres spilled out from his coat, each one unfolding to full-size as they hit open air; thrusters engaged and shields ready. The biggest and the best of them dropped in front, chiming a greeting as it was activated.
Weaponry was a secondary thought when it came to the drones he’d made in the Normandy’s limited armory. Eventually, he had plans to fully and properly outkit the little guys with something he would consider decent — for their size, at least.
Unfortunately, while he might have had the means, Zedd hadn’t really had the most time to put his ideas to practice. As fast as he could work, engineering still required at least a modicum of planning and implementation.
But at the very least, they had working kinesis modules and that meant… “Lil V.”
He aimed them with his eyes, focusing on the mass of civilians. “Bowling practice.”The swarm of drones streaked through the air, kinesis barriers at full bore letting them do exactly what he’d hoped they could.
A crunch rang out, a colonist hitting the ground as a golf ball slammed into his unshielded knee at sixty miles an hour. That unshielded knee inverted almost immediately. Another drone slammed full-bodied into the chest of a charging worker, the unmistakable sound of cracking ribs in the air as the man was thrown flat on his back.
The air filled with the sharp cracks of fracturing bone and the heavy thuds of bodies dropping to the ground. A shattered femur didn't kill you, but it sure as hell kept you from rushing a firing line. I'm saving your lives, you can bill me for the physical therapy.
“What are you doing?!” Kaidan yelled over the comms, the man visibly wincing as a drone cracked a man’s collarbone right in front of him. “Victors!”
“Keeping them out of your lap, Alenko!” Zedd snapped back, ducking a glob of green biotic force thrown by a clone-asari. “You got a better idea?”
"Gas out!" Tali whipped her arm forward as three canisters clattered across the ground, each one hissing as thick, heavy clouds of greenish-yellow aerosol washed over the front line of colonists. Colonist after colonist inhaled it, the entire line seizing as foam bubbled from the corners of their mouths as they dropped to the ground. “It’s working!” It was.
Zedd narrowed his eyes, lenses peering through the thick gas. Emphasis on was.
He didn’t need a read-out to see that the dispersal rate was too slow in open air and by the time it reached the next wave, it was already too diffuse to be worth it. “They’re pushing through!”
A surge of colonists, pushed by the rushing green Asari, trampled right over the unconscious bodies with mutants right behind it.The asari broke through the line, barely flinching as it skittered around the gas and launched itself over it with a stack of crates as a jumping point. The thing shrieked their way and hurled another corrupted biotic glob right at Zedd.
Zedd didn't think, kinesis thrusters in the soles of his boots igniting in concert with his Mantle as he jumped. A simple kick off the ground became forty feet of air as the green biotic field tore through empty space beneath him, crashing into a pillar and fizzling to nothing.
Gravity suspended him for a fraction of a second as air rushed past his face, thick with smoke and the smell of ozone.
He drew the Full Stop with his right, firing a series of suppressive shots into the crowd, as his left hand snapped up, thumb brushing the silver band that was his CAD.
Fingers spread wide, the blue wireframe overlay in his aviators locked onto the mob below.
→ lock: targets(count≤5) → bind: hand.digits[5] → emit: psion_tags(count:5, mode: nonlethal) → assign: digit_to_target(1:1) → on_hit: impulse(3.5kN), stun(0.8s), collapse
“Fivepoint Tag.”
Four snaps of air cracked out from extended fingers, the fifth tearing from his thumb at a sharper angle. Each bolt was nothing but concentrated air pressure packed together tight by psions; Kira had her own name for it — Magic Missile. As confusing as that was for a whole host of reasons, he couldn’t deny it was an apt one as each bolt shot for a different body in the crowd below.
Five clean lines of blue force targeted and tracked and touched down almost at the exact same time; each one a controlled impact that struck hard enough to fold knees, drop bodies and slam the breath out of lungs.
Nothing vital, of course.
Just pain and bruising enough to put a target down.
One colonist spun violently into a wall as another dropped flat on his face, his hardsuit ringing against the floor plates. A third lost his footing entirely as the blast popped directly against his kneecap, force sending him into a sprawl onto dust and garbage.
Zedd hit the ground hard, Mantle absorbing the shock as he kept moving; fingers raised as he repeated the Fivepoint Tag over and over, a path cleared through civilians in quintuple lines of psionic force.
“Keep pushing them back!” John dropped a colonist with a heavy hook, another grabbed by the collar and sent hurling into a group of three. “Move toward the freighter!”
“Path is clearing!” Garrus was already backing up, providing overwatch as the rifle forced another asari-clone to return to the dirt it spawned from. “Go!”
Zedd backpedaled, eyes scanning the smoke as the drones were still at work clearing the immediate perimeter. Even with all that, the numbers were just too high. He vented the Full Stop after an entire half-minute of full-auto since the last rack, blue coils hissing as they dumped heat.
A blur of green motion chose that moment to rip through the dust.
A clone ducked under Garrus’s firing line, crawling on its belly like a spider before launching itself straight at Zedd’s chest, glowing hands reaching for his throat.
His index, middle and thumb came up in the shape of a barrel; a child’s finger gun.
→ lock: target(center_mass) → bind: emitter(index_finger + middle_finger) → emit: psion_bolt(radius:0.018m, density:high) → vector: fingertip_line(speed:supersonic, correction:minor) → pierce: armor_gap(depth:shallow), bind_surface → on_hit: shaped_burst(inward, impulse:18kN), rupture, collapse
“Deadbolt.”
A single bead of hyper-dense blue pressure snapped from his fingertip, crossing three feet of distance with the sound of tearing air to strike the lunging mutant directly between the eyes.
Meat and bone and bark-like green tissue buckled inward around the impact point, the blast punching right through the skull in a shaped burst of force. A geyser of green gore, black brain matter, and shattered bone splattered across the pavement, misting the air as the headless body dropped at Zedd’s feet.
“Gross.”
“Move!” Jane Shepard was the one to grab Liara by the shoulder this time, the asari almost frozen as she stared wide-eyed at the headless clone. With a grunt, the Spectre dragged the traumatized asari toward the rusted loading ramp of the freighter, one-handing her Katana as she carved a bloody green path through the remaining mutants still holding the entrance.
"Inside!” John stood by the jagged entrance, hand waving quickly as each one burst through the darkness of the ship. “Move, move, move!"
Zedd was the last one backing up, firing the Full Stop in suppressive beats to keep a lingering cluster of colonists pinned down behind a stack of crates. He stepped backward, turning to step through the breach as Shepard jumped in ahead of him.
And, out of the pitch-black darkness of the ship’s corridor, something fast and mindless lunged straight for his chest.