"By the Goddess, is there no end to these abominations?!" Lymrase exclaimed as her saber bisected the final Adjutant from the most recent wave of the things. "How many did Cerberus make?!"
"They didn't." Revan said bluntly. "There must have been more personnel down here than we expected. Support staff, scientists, guards… if the experiments caught them off guard with the power outage, there could have been a spike in the Adjutants' numbers before Cerberus even knew they escaped."
"So criminally incompetent instead of actively malicious. How different from Cerberus's normal operations."
Revan paused for a moment because in her experience Cerberus tended to be both, but then realised Lymrase likely only had limited exposure to the organisation and either only saw successes or assumed the extent of any revealed failures were overblown rumors.
It didn't help that the members of her old Order very rarely ventured outside of the Asari Republic and only paid attention to news from the wider galaxy for hints about possible Force users.
Her musing was interrupted by some more whispers from the Force, letting her know that more enemies were approaching.
"Sargeant, prepare your men." she said lowly to the leader of her handful of remaining marines. Even between herself and Lymrase, the waves of Adjutants and attacks from unexpected angles had slowly whittled down her supporting force to just a squad of four.
"More of them? Already?"
"Look on the bright side, Sergeant, if they are throwing so many of themselves at us it must be because all the easier prey has already been dealt with. Every kill now is a permanent reduction of their number."
It wasn't much of an uplifting speech, but even assuring them the enemy wasn't truly endless was enough to make the marines stand a little taller and grip their weapons a little tighter.
Just in time too, because another Adjutant clawed its way over a catwalk and launched itself at their group.
Revan quickly moved to intercept even as shouts from the others informed her that more enemies besides this one had revealed themselves and showcased the worst thing about these creatures aside from their ability to convert others into more of themselves.
The Adjutants were intelligent. And they were learning.
During the first few encounters, the creatures had just mindlessly rushed forward like rabid animals. Their entire plan being 'overwhelm Revan's group or die trying', and had been somewhat easily dispatched by her group.
But then they had started striking from the shadows, from angles their modified physiques allowed them to traverse that no one had expected. The first death among them had come from one Adjutant clinging from the underside of a catwalk that went over their path and shot him with the biotic cannon that seemed built into every Adjutant's arm.
Since that one had been on its own, Revan couldn't tell if it was specifically intelligence that made that creature attack from an ambush or just raw animal cunning after seeing it was outnumbered. Especially as three groups after that encounter repeated the rabid animal behaviour with little deviation.
But this ambush included a distraction, a flanking maneuver, and coordination between at least three other Adjutants. This group had actually waited long enough that if it wasn't for the Sith's warning, the rest of her group might have relaxed after overcoming their previous encounter. Revan didn't know if it was due to time and experience, the person the creature was created from, or some other factor, but they were definitely getting smarter. They needed to be eliminated before one grew intelligent enough to steal a ship and escape off planet.
Which brought her back to the creature currently clawing at her face.
Revan's blue lightsaber stabbed towards the incoming Adjutant's right arm to make sure that it couldn't fire into the rest of the group while she used her red one to shield herself from the creature's other hand. Both sabers sparked off the Adjutant's biotic barrier, but it was enough to stop its charge.
The Sith ducked around a flailing limb and dragged her saber over its torso until she felt the barrier break and her blade cut through a decent section of where its organs should be. Another quick turn had her lash out and sever its right arm around the shoulder before she drove her second saber into the creature's face, just to be sure it was dead.
She couldn't afford to stop though. Her senses were practically screaming that the fight behind her was going badly, even in the few seconds it took for her to kill the first enemy.
Relying on the Force to guide her actions, Revan spun and pulled one of her marines towards her moments before an Adjutant's arm would have crushed his neck. The marine went sprawling over the ground, but the Sith figured he'd prefer that over dying.
The other marines had opened fire on a third Adjutant that was approaching but hadn't breached its barrier yet and Lymrase was still dueling her own opponent so Revan took another moment to Force Push another marine out of the way of the third enemy before moving to engage the unoccupied second.
The space they were in was too enclosed to risk Force Lightning, so Revan lept over her still fallen marine and fell onto her opponent like a buzzsaw of whirling light.
Light, quick touches of her sabers quickly drained its barrier even as the Adjutant gave up aiming its cannon at her and simply fired randomly towards the rest of her group. But Revan had already predicted it doing something like that since others had gone for easier kills before they were slain and levitated the dismembered arm from the first enemy into the energy bolt's path. It exploded into a massive ball of whitish plasma that Revan simply let roll over her own shields and armor.
But now that the creature's own defenses had failed, Revan repeated her now favored tactic of carving out her opponent's torso with one saber and stabbing through the Adjutant's face with the other to guarantee a kill.
She turned to find Lymrase was also done with her opponent and just in time to see the final Adjutant fall after being riddled with blaster fire. Funnily enough, the killing shot seemed to have been made by the marine she had pushed over. He had just rolled over and continued firing instead of taking the extra couple of seconds it would have taken to get back to his feet.
Another group dealt with and no major injuries on their side. That was about as good a result as Revan could hope for.
"Area looks clear, Empress." The marine sergeant said after a few seconds with nothing else jumping out at them. "We're ready to move out when you are."
"Good, any sign of a way to boost a transmission to the surface?" Revan asked.
One of the more urgent objectives Revan had was to alert the fleet that any outgoing ship from this facility needed to be destroyed on the off chance an Adjutant managed to stow away on one. One of the others was to inform Shepard and the others of what they had found here so none of them were caught by surprise.
Unfortunately, the lab was designed to block all incoming and outgoing signals and backtracking now could mean getting pinned between the Adjutants and the Cerberus forces following after them.
"I see an intact terminal over there, Revan!" Tali'Zorah called out, pointing at a bank of monitors that were still intact and hadn't been locked out for whatever reason. "If it has access to the rest of the facility I should be able to link up with EDI and get a warning out to everyone at the same time."
Revan nodded. "Good idea. See if you can open a line to Commander Shepard too. I have a plan to deal with any of the Adjutants we might miss and it will need her help."
It took Tali'Zorah a few minutes, but eventually she managed to pull off enough computer magic that they were able to get a signal out to the Normandy's AI and explain what was happening in the lab. From there, Revan was able to spread the message to her battle group in orbit and order every Imperial out of the facility as quickly as possible.
What she hadn't been able to do was get directly connected to Shepard. But simply bouncing a call through EDI was simple enough and accomplished basically the same thing, and Revan wasted no time letting the Commander know about the situation.
"Well… fuck. Leave it to Cerberus to mess around with a techno plague. What do you need us to do?"
"I need your help to overload the lab's main reactor. We're going to turn this whole facility into a crater."
-o-
[A few minutes earlier]
It might have been just a bit of an exaggeration to say there was an army of Cerberus goons between them and the database Kasumi was after. But only just a bit.
Shepard was actually pretty sure that if Cerberus's battlenet wasn't completely fucked thanks to EDI tearing it apart after they had released all the prisoners, they would have been completely overrun by simple numbers. But the android had messed things up so thoroughly that they had run into individual squads the entire way and most had no idea Shepard's team was coming through.
That didn't mean smooth sailing though.
More than once, her team had almost been flanked because another Cerberus squad had either heard gunfire or was looking to link up with their comrades in the area. Shepard could still feel the soreness in her side where a surprise gunshot had broken her shield and almost penetrated her armor.
But small army of Cerberus or not, her team was up to the challenge. And soon they were almost outside the vault they were after.
There was just one problem.
"You don't have the second key?"
Kasumi huffed. "That I already have one key should be impressive enough! Do you have any idea how hard it was to sneak one away without Cerberus locking down the vault and changing the keys?"
"Very hard, I'm sure." Garrus replied. "But that doesn't help us get inside, now does it? Where's the second key?"
"It's supposed to be with Captain Martin today according to the schedule I managed to acquire. He was also supposed to be in the central control hub so I figured it wouldn't be an issue." Kasumi defended herself. "As good as I am though, I can't plan for what he would do when faced with a full on invasion."
"Fair enough." Shepard admitted. "But we still need that key if we want to get that database. Any idea where he is now?"
EDI stepped forward. "Commander, according to the Cerberus battlenet Captain Martin was declared KIA in an engagement with Imperial forces close by."
"Damn, does this mean we can't get in?" James cursed.
"It's possible that the key would still be on his body." Liara argued. "Unless it was hit by a direct shot or was recovered by another member of Cerberus, the Imperials likely wouldn't have recovered anything before moving on."
They didn't exactly have a lot of time to sit around discussing things, so Shepard made a snap decision. "EDI set a waypoint to where the Captain was reported killed. If the key isn't there we'll have to exfil quick before we get hemmed in."
A blue marker appeared on her HUD.
"Alright, let's move."
Thankfully, there wasn't much resistance to run into on their way. Only two squads that were easily dealt with thanks to the specialists Shepard had on hand.
The problems appeared once they got to the plaza entrance where Martin's body supposedly was.
Not only was there a mix of Cerberus Trooper accompanied by several Phantoms poking around the area, there were two Atlases stomping around.
That was going to be difficult to deal with, with only two squads.
"Okay people, this is going to get dicey. I want Garrus, Javik, Liara, and Kasumi focusing on the infantry. James, EDI, and I will deal with the mechs." Shepard ordered.
"Eso es un poco loco, Lola." James muttered. "That's a lot of armor to get through just by ourselves. And I left the heavy stuff back on the shuttle."
"Then it's a good thing Cerberus hasn't cleaned up their toys yet." Shepard said and pointed to several fallen bodies of the Troopers where a few rocket launchers could be seen lying around, even from where they were now. "We can use their own heavy weapons against them."
"I'm down with that."
"Then let's move." Shepard raised her blaster and after a quick count, opened fire on one of the Cerberus soldiers walking around and then broke into a sprint towards the closest rocket launcher. Several troopers cried out in pain and surprise at the sudden assault, but the Spectre was already focused on her part of the plan.
Plus, she trusted her team to do their jobs.
Sliding to a stop by the first launcher, Shepard quickly confirmed it was loaded, aimed and fired at the first Atlas. Its shields prevented most of the damage, but enough got through that when James followed up shortly after – the entire cockpit was consumed by the explosion.
That was one mech down, but the element of surprise was gone and the other one wasn't going to be that easy.
Shepard threw herself behind a barrier as the second mech spotted them and opened fire.
Her cover was thankfully thick enough that even the Atlas's cannon didn't just shred it, but it wouldn't last long either. Shepard quickly pinged EDI to run a distraction, otherwise she was going to be mulched by that gun.
Out of the corner of her eye, Shepard could see EDI seemingly abandon any sense of self preservation to sprint at another rocket launcher.
After what happened to his buddy, the Atlas pilot couldn't just ignore that and shifted his fire into the android… only for the bullets to pass harmlessly through the holographic decoy EDI had used.
Shepard took advantage of his distraction to swap cover to behind a few stacked cargo crates that would give her some room to move if the Atlas focused on her again. Something that seemed unlikely for now because it seemed James had lucked into another launcher being pretty close by and managed to put a rocket into the Atlas's back, ruining its shields.
If they could get through the armor before those came back up, the second mech was toast. And Shepard had eyes on another rocket of her own. She just had–
"Shepard, DOWN!"
She didn't hesitate to listen to Garrus's warning and instinctively let herself drop just in time for an orange plasma blade to ignite and pass through the space she just occupied and a woman in Cerberus colors appear out of a Tactical Cloak.
One of the Phantoms. Fuck.
Cerberus's silent ninjas were deadly in close quarters combat and the near unblockable energy blade didn't make fighting them easier. But that didn't mean it was impossible if they got too close.
Shepard shoved herself out of the way of a follow up strike from the knock-off lightsaber – Revan had called it a protosaber – and kicked at the Phantom's legs. There was a wet popping sound as the ninja's knee dislocated under Shepard's armored boot, but the woman herself made no sound and just tried to stab the Spectre again. Shepard fended it off with the only thing she had available - the spent rocket launcher in her hands.
The protosaber started quickly melting through the weapon, but it wasn't quite the same as Revan's blades. Shepard had enough time before the orange blade cut through her improvised defense to roll out of the way.
The Phantom turned to chase, but her dislocated knee gave out and caused her to stumble.
Shepard seized on the opening to get closer and grab the protosaber by its power cord in hopes of disabling the blade but just because the weapon was considered pretty shoddy by Revan's standards, that didn't mean Shepard could disable it just because she got her hands on it.
The two women ended up in an awkward grappling match as they tried to keep the orange plasma blade away from themselves while trying to shove the other into it. Both of them got in some dirty punches and elbows as well, with neither one getting a clear advantage over the other. Shepard only got the upper hand when she forced the Phantom to shift her weight back onto her bad leg and then slammed her head into the nearby cargo container.
With the Phantom stunned, Shepard managed to pull away enough to activate her omnitool and flashforge an omniblade, and didn't hesitate to ram the thing into her opponent's spine before they recovered from the head trauma.
There wasn't time to catch her breath though.
While she had been dealing with the Cerberus ninja, James and EDI had been completely pinned down by the remaining Atlas and that thing's shields were going to restore themselves pretty soon.
Shepard looked down at the ruined remains of her purloined rocket launcher and immediately dismissed it as an option. Nearly cut in half, anything she tried to fire out of the thing was more likely to explode in her face than actually shoot properly. And there was no time to go running around the plaza looking for a new one.
She looked at the body in front of her and had an idea though.
"EDI, on my mark I need an Overload towards the Atlas. The target will be obvious."
There wasn't a reply, but Shepard wasn't expecting one. Instead she focused on using her Biotics to Lift the fallen Phantom into the air and then Push it towards the Atlas.
"Ready, mark!"
Snapping off a few blaster shots just to make sure she had the Atlas's attention, Shepard watched as the body of the Phantom collided with the mech right around the waist section. She winced a little because that was a bit lower that where she was aiming, but there was nothing she could do about it as EDI followed her orders and sunk an Overcharge into the powerpack on the Phantom's back.
The things were already prone to violently bursting into flames, but combined with the Overcharge and one of her rifle's own powerpacks attached to it, Shepard figured the protosaber's power source would make a decent bomb.
And she was right.
The Atlas shook as the powerpack detonated and secondary explosions started appearing all over the frame. Shepard watched as the pilot attempted to bail out of the doomed mech only for the whole thing to go up like a firework before the hatch could release.
A quick look around confirmed that the Atlas had been the last thing standing and her other teammates had already finished with the infantry and had been moving to help. Which she appreciated even if it ended up not being necessary.
"Everyone okay?" She asked.
"I thought you were joking when you said people would be foolish enough to bring a sword onto the battlefield." Javik said as he walked over. "But with the types of blades used and their stealth technology, I can see why you would consider such tactics dangerous."
Shepard noticed that a chunk of the Prothean's shoulder armor had been sliced off and realised she hadn't been the only one a Phantom had managed to sneak up on.
"The rest of us are fine, Shepard." Liara added.
"Better than fine, Shep. While you were playing with that robot, we managed to find Captain Martin's body and the second key. We're all good to access the database and then get out of here!" Kasumi cheered.
"Great, let's start–" Shepard started to say only EDI to interrupt her.
"One moment, Commander. Revan's team has uncovered an urgent situation. Connecting the call now…"
Shepard and the rest of her team listened as the Empress explained what she and Tali had found in one of Cerberus's labs. An engineered creature created from Reapertech that could infect other species to make more of itself and could overrun the galaxy if it managed to escape this facility. This was Project Overlord all over again.
"Well… fuck. Leave it to Cerberus to mess around with a techno plague. What do you need us to do?"
"I need your help to overload the lab's main reactor. We're going to turn this whole facility into a crater."
"You have it. We're heading that way now." Shepard ended the call and turned to her team. "Okay, we've got another Cerberus doomsday weapon to stop, but we still need that data. Kasumi, you, James, Garrus, and Liara head back to the vault and get that data out. Then I want all of you on the first shuttle back to the Normandy."
"EDI and Javik? You're with me. We'll meet up with Revan's team near the reactor room. Any questions?"
There were none.
"Then let's move people!"
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