Hello there,
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If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
Hawking Eta
Thorne
Mnemosyne
"What's with all the chop, Joker?" Shepard asked his pilot as the ship shook violently.
"Doing my best. The wind's gusting to 500 kph."
"There's a second ship alongside the Reaper. It's not transmitting any IFF, but ladar paints its silhouette as geth." EDI informed them, and Shepard grunted in annoyance.
"Let's hope it's them and not the Reaper that silenced the research team." The geth were easy to deal with compared to a cuttlefish that could fuck with their minds.
Well, not his.
"Shit."
The ship stopped shaking, and EDI showed them the wreckage, with a red bubble around it. "The Reaper's mass effect fields are still active. We just passed inside their envelope."
"It's definitely the Reaper then." The damn thing was still active to a degree to be able to keep its mass effect core online.
"Eye of the hurricane, huh?" Joker commented as Shepard headed to the airlock.
—
They were about to board a Reaper, and derelict or not, Shepard wasn't taking any chances. The entire team, except Mordin, was with him and ready to take the IFF, no matter what the dreadnought threw at them.
Because no way in hell was this abomination not aware of what was happening inside it.
"Exploring an abandoned area, expecting something mechanical and nasty to jump out at any moment. Just like old times." Garrus commented, sounding nostalgic.
They were just about to enter the Reaper through the small station the Cerberus had built when the entire place shook.
"Normandy to shore party. The Reaper put up kinetic barriers. I don't think we can get through from our side." Shepard rolled his eyes. The bastard was definitely operational then, even if not entirely.
"As curious as I am about the Reapers, I'd rather not be trapped inside one." Tali quipped, and Shepard nodded.
"EDI, have you detected a power surge anywhere in the derelict?" They needed to find the location of the Mass Effect core to shut it down.
"At the moment of activation, I detected a heat spike in what is likely the wreck's mass effect core. Sending you the coordinates. Be advised: the core is the only thing maintaining the ship's altitude."
"I would prefer to save the derelict for proper study, but we can't risk indoctrination by staying too long. Let's hurry." He already had plenty of tech from the Collectors, and he was sure more could be found in their base beyond Omega 4.
"Joker, we'll sweep for survivors and recover what data we can find; standby for extraction." This would have to be fast, because once the mass effect core was gone, it was a freefall.
"You mean before the ship falls into the brown dwarf and everyone in it dies? Got it."
The team swept the area, seeing corpses of the Cerberus science team littering the ground. "Whatever killed them, it wasn't Mass Effect weapons for sure."
"More like an animal tore them apart." Zaeed grunted, familiar with the sight of varren attacks.
"Be on guard; this looks like the work of husks." Shepard warned. Chances that the Cerberus agents were converted to husks were high, and they did have a rather large presence aboard the derelict.
Kasumi went invisible and spoke through the comms. "Movement on sensors, weapons hot."
From the sides, husks began to climb, dozens of them rising, appearing out of nowhere.
"Target those tanks; use them to take the husks out en masse." Shepard highlighted the tanks in the shared battle net. Zaeed waited for the maximum number of husks near the tanks, and the explosions shredded them.
Shepard knew they had to stop the enemy's swarming tactics. "Biotics to the sides, send the climbers down." He ordered.
Miranda, Samara, Jack, Thane, and Jacob went to the sides, using their biotics to push the husks down, stemming the tide.
"Where did they even find so many husks?" Garrus wondered, firing a shot that took out three husks.
Shepard was curious about that as well, but there wasn't time for a proper investigation. "Good question."
Grunt crushed the last husk beneath his boot, and the team quickly moved forward, covering each and every corner.
A husk was ahead, but before they could react, a mass effect weapon's sound was heard as it died, followed by another.
"Sniper!" Garrus cautioned, checking the area for anyone else.
Miranda checked her sensors for any sign of a Cerberus IFF but found nothing. "A survivor?"
"Unlikely any of them could resist indoctrination." Even the asari, with all their melding and mind arts, could not.
The only way forward was the location where the husks were just shot by an unknown, and Shepard created a barrier, allowing Garrus and Zaeed to check the area before they gave the clear.
Of course, the hallway seemed empty before husks began to surround them once again. There were two openings on the platform where the husks were coming out, and Shepard nodded to Thane and Miranda. Using their superior fire rate, the two let loose, tearing through the husks below.
But this time, there were more than husks. A scion fired, its biotic weapon sending a shock wave, causing the team to take cover.
"I want a rocket on that Scion." Shepard ordered, and Grunt grinned, quickly carrying out his orders. There were no other heavy units in the area, and the team focused down the sides of the hallway to clear the husks before they could even fight.
"And there's the Cerberus team." They found several figures impaled on the spikes that were all too familiar.
"Dragon's teeth, as the humans call them." Tali had looked up the name and found that it made sense in a twisted fashion.
"There's nothing we can do for them, but the Reaper won't live for much longer."
They did not face any more husks but found a locked door with a passage built by the Cerberus due to the exposure to the atmosphere.
Hacking the door, their scanners became garbled due to interference. Shepard ordered the team to spread out to check the room, and three mass-accelerated slugs passed by him, hitting the husks that were climbing up the ledge behind Shepard.
The team turned as one, aiming at the geth unit responsible for the shots, but Shepard raised his hand, signalling for the team to stand down.
"Shepard-Commander." The geth saluted, he guessed, before it turned and left the ledge.
"Another geth speaking to you. At this rate, they'll be lining up to ask for an autograph." Garrus teased him, and Tali scoffed.
"Ugh. Don't even joke about it, Garrus."
Their banter was interrupted by the groaning of the husks, and more began to climb out of the depths below.
"Another scion. Grunt, take it out." Shepard ordered, firing at the nearest husk, while the room lightened up with laser fire.
Grunt fell behind, taking his rocket launcher, and pulled the trigger. The red mass hit the scion's hunched back, eviscerating the top half, leaving only its gun and legs.
Samara, Miranda, and Jack each launched a singularity, pulling the husks together, making their job much easier. The laser fire pierced through multiple enemies, allowing them to quickly clear the ledge.
Up the stairs ahead, the area looked clear, but as always, the husks waited for them to come close enough before springing their trap, and this time, there were two scions.
"Grunt, the one on the left, and Jacob, take the right."
Jacob's minigun took three explosive shots to bring the scion down, while Grunt managed to hit the other scion's weapon as it was about to fire, causing an explosion that took out the husks around it.
"Hah!" Grunt hollered, pleased with the explosion. The battlemaster's teachings on timing were coming in handy now.
The husks were more annoyances than danger, and as the team approached the final area before the mass effect core, two more scions popped up.
"God damn it, how many do they have?" Jacob grunted, tearing through another husk.
This was getting ridiculous.
"Grunt, save your launcher." Shepard ordered at the krogan, who grunted in displeasure. Shepard set up a barrier, blocking the scion's next attack, and twelve laser guns were pointed at the final enemies.
The scions stopped for a second, perhaps realizing in their diminished intelligence that they were outnumbered, and the collective fire turned both of them to sieves.
Shepard opened the door to the airlock and found what they had come to search for in the first place, the Reaper IFF, before opening the next door, weapon raised. A glass panel was blocking the way, and through it Shepard could see the interior.
The geth unit that had spoken to him was already inside, at a console, with husks closing in behind.
Shepard waited to see what would happen, and the geth pulled its sidearm, turning back to take out the closest husks before continuing his job.
The barrier came down, and the geth turned around, but the husks managed to overwhelm it. The lights of the synthetic went out, and he wondered if it was permanently gone.
Just as he was about to shoot the Mass Effect core and call for extraction, the blast shields were closed around it, and husks swarmed the room.
"The room is too small; watch each other's backs." He ordered, switching to the microwave mode.
Shepard was considering how to get through the core shielding while the team fought through a horde of husks, but for some reason, it opened by itself.
Perhaps the geth had done something?
With a biotic lasso, Shepard pulled the launcher from Grunt's back and quickly took aim.
"Joker, get ready to extract us." He ordered, pulling the trigger.
The red rocket impacted the core, destabilizing it, and the Reaper began to shake as the violent winds of Mnemosyne battered the derelict without the mass effect fields.
"Shepard, the geth's still intact." Garrus called out, and Shepard nodded.
"We are taking it." He wanted to speak to it, to see what it was searching for here.
"But…" Tali started to oppose, but Shepard stopped her.
"No buts."
Thane and Jacob shouldered the geth, carrying it to the ledge.
Husks were still behind them, and as Joker opened the airlock, Shepard shouted at them to go.
The geth was thrown first, before Jacob and Tali followed, and the rest of the team quickly jumped to the airlock as well.
Shepard, Garrus, and Grunt were the last ones left before the krogan and the turian jumped back-to-back, and finally, Shepard activated his anti-grav generator, flying inside.
"We're clear, go!"
—
As the supposed god fell to its doom, the Normandy blasted out of the planet's gravitational pull at full speed, finally in the clear.
—
"Commander, about the salvage you insisted on recovering. A working geth unit would prove invaluable to Cerberus' cyberwarfare division in combating the Reapers." After the team had taken a breather, the three of them had gathered in the meeting room to discuss the events inside the ship.
"We'll have to disagree on that, ma'am." Jacob knew that the best geth was a dead one, ignoring the occasional units too scared to fight Shepard.
"And there is a significant bounty on intact geth technology." Miranda informed him.
Shepard wasn't impressed, though. "Miranda, I'm filthy rich."
Shrugging in acceptance, Miranda yielded. "For now, we stored it in EDI's AI core."
—
EDI erected additional firewalls and surrounded the geth unit with a mass effect field while Shepard sent some simple codelines to activate it.
The synthetic headlight came to life, and it whirled around before standing up to look at him.
"You are the second geth unit to ever speak to me." Shepard told the geth.
Its headflaps flickered, but the geth remained motionless otherwise. "We are unfamiliar with any unit that has met you."
This one was the sole geth unit aboard the Reaper, meaning a special unit. "Hmm. You called my name. Why?"
"We wished to greet you."
"Weird, you know, the geth usually greets me with weapon fire." Shepard said with a dry tone.
The synthetic explained that the geth had a schism due to Nazara's offer—or Sovereign, as they knew the Reaper to be—with a small part choosing to follow the Reaper, while the majority chose to create their own path.
"Did it not occur to your collective that a portion of geth, breakaway or not, attacking the organics would only make the galaxy fear you more?" This was like half of Earth's population going rogue and attacking the Turians.
"Yes."
"Then why let them go?"
"We did not wish to fight units that were a part of us once." Ah, they did not have the heart for it.
"What were you doing aboard the Reaper?" He got to the actual matter.
The Reapers were a threat to the geth, as they were to organic life, and this unit was seeking means of resisting hacking attempts by the Old Machines.
"I am asking for confirmation, but the geth, as a whole, aren't allied with the Old Machines, yes?" Then again, for all he knew, the geth lied through everything.
"We oppose the heretics. We oppose the Old Machines. Shepard-Commander opposes the Old Machines. Shepard-Commander opposes the heretics. Cooperation furthers mutual goals." Shepard blinked.
The peace offer from the geth aboard the Alarei was weird enough, but a cooperation offer?
This was completely new.
"How interesting. As I inferred, you do not have faulty programming ordering you to destroy organic life." The geth were fighting for self-preservation, an act befitting a sophont.
"Yes."
"What do the geth, your geth, think of the quarians?" If cooperation was possible, then perhaps peace was too.
"We do not wish them harm, as long as the creators do not wish us harm."
A very straightforward answer, and one that made Shepard scoff internally.
He was right about the quarians losing their homeworld due to fear.
"If the quarians were willing, would the collective be open to the idea of peace? And allow the quarians to return home, sharing it with you?" That part was important, and what better gift to his girlfriend than returning her race to Rannoch?
"Yes. Shepard-Commander is influential among the organics. Facilitation of peace may be possible through you." Of course he would lead the processions to ensure no one stepped out of the line.
"One more question. How many programs do you have on this platform to speak to me?" If a single geth program was as intelligent as a varren, this special unit must have more than the usual geth they encountered so far.
"There are currently 1,183 active within this platform."
"We'll need to give you a name if you are joining my team." Calling it the geth sounded a bit impersonal.
Fortunately, Ei popped up to the rescue. "We are Legion, for we are many."
"It fits."
"Christian Bible, the Gospel of Mark, chapter five, verse nine. We acknowledge this as an appropriate metaphor. We are Legion, a terminal of geth. We will integrate into Normandy."
Shepard lowered the mass effect field and held out his hand to Legion.
The synthetic took it, robotically awkward, but gave it a good shake.