Chapter 1: Eden Prime
It wasn’t a long drop, their suits stock jump fields were more than enough to slow their falls, no thrusters needed. But, even so, Nihlus had disappeared into the rocky hills and light forest by the time they landed. Jane popped her own midge swarm and the drones zipped ahead of her, quickly establishing a perimeter. She got a brief view of Nihlus in her HUD as her midge swarm overlapped with his and they networked on their UHF comms frequency, but then Nihlus passed beyond their UHF comms envelope. They’d agreed to keep long-distance radio chatter to a minimum, since they didn’t know what they were up against. Jane didn’t like that, she’d have preferred to keep in eyeshot of the Spectre for tactical reasons. But there was no diplomatic way to say as much, so she had to content herself with short, mission-critical voice messages, not a continuous, bandwidth-intensive feed.
Almost as soon as they started moving, Nihlus broke radio silence to inform her that there were, in fact, “hostiles everywhere”.
“Copy that, can you ID them?”
“They’re… geth.”
“The shit?” Jane said, not over the radio. “We’ve got geth. Stay sharp.”
Shepard gestured for Jenkins to take the lead. That was why he died.
Midges weren’t standard Alliance hardware. Vaastu was the only known galactic civilization with the capacity to produce computer hardware and batteries small yet powerful enough to run the sorts of VI’s and eezo cores the midges required. They’d been forced to economize on space and resources in the colony ships and early settlements in a way that had pushed them towards miniaturization in a way other civilizations had never needed to, to say nothing of the tech they’d managed to salvage. Add to that a few hundred subjective-years of R&D from the high-speed ems, and the midges were quite impressive even by Council standards.
Normally, Shepard drilled her troops hard and had them accustomed to the new tech within a few weeks, a month at most. But Jenkins had proven… untalented and Shepard had been assigned to the Normandy only a couple of weeks ago, not enough time to make their use second nature. Add to that the novelty of being home, he was enthusiastically explaining something about the local wildlife to Kaidan, and his situational awareness was well below the rest of the squad’s.
The geth drones came into view on the midges several seconds before the marines entered their lines of fire. Jane stopped well short of the mouth of the ravine where the drones were waiting, preparing to turn the ambush on the ambushers. Kaidan, who was bringing up the rear, stopped as well, either seeing the drones in his HUD, or simply seeing Shepard stop. Jenkins saw neither.
By the time Jane noticed and yelled at him to stop, the geth drones’ plasma bolts had already ripped smoking holes through his torso.
Shepard swore to herself. A few steps forward and three shots from her DMR later, the drones were scrap. It was too late for Jenkins, though. He was past the ability of medi-gel to help.
She clenched her jaw. She hated losing people even more than she hated the habitual lies of the Alliance. Kaidan said something irrelevant, and she replied with an equally irrelevant platitude. She was seeing red.
The first time she’d lost troops under her command, she’d flown into a rage. She avenged her men, but had been badly injured in the process. The same thing happened the second time. By the third, damn her, she was starting to grow accustomed to it. By the time she lost an entire platoon of infantry under her command in the first wave of the Skyllian Blitz… the rage was still there, but she’d gotten the hang of staying in control of herself instead of just throwing herself at whoever had fired the killing shots until one of them was dead. The outcome of that rage and that skill had passed directly into the annals of military legend and earned her a Star of Terra, as well as grand master competitor status. She felt like that now. She’d been trained well enough in resisting scope insensitivity that she wasn’t actually as angry at the death of Jenkins as she had been at the deaths of those 36 soldiers and the 131 civilians dead or captured in that first wave. But it was the same general idea. The geth were going to die. She wasn’t just going to dismantle their mechanical bodies, she was going to light up that godsdamned mothership like a Yule log. She shouldered her rifle and began a steady advance towards the colony.
With plenty of forewarning from the midges, the next handful of drones exploded before they could even get shots off.
Nihlus notified her that there were “a lot” of other people she’d been unable to save up ahead, which didn’t make her feel much calmer. She continued exterminating the drones and steadily advancing on the colony.
Ashley Williams hadn’t had a great deployment. It was always rough the first few weeks of a tour, when she was only her last name and hadn’t had a chance to prove her competence as an NCO.
She’d finally been getting to that point when the geth had attacked the colony. She hadn’t even known there were geth in this part of the galaxy.
But apparently there were, and they’d wiped out her unit in less than an hour.
And now a member of the Williams family was running. Great job keeping up the family legacy, Ash. She thought to herself.
A shot from one of the drones hit her in the back. That, coupled with a poorly placed rock sent her sprawling to the ground. She rolled and drew her pistol as she hit the ground and managed to knock down the drones before they could properly target her, but there were a handful of full geth units working on… something - which had come into view as she tripped. She opened fire, futilely, as they drew their rifles. She hadn’t even broken the first one’s shields when… there was a series of cracks and the geths’ heads spontaneously fell off.
Shepard saw the embattled marine well before either she or the geth saw her, compliments of the midges. She crested the ridge and, firing as quickly as she could acquire targets, almost as quickly as her rifle’s action cycled, cut down the geth.
As soon as she realized she wasn’t dead and wasn’t about to be, Ashley looked up and around. She found her savior. A figure in night-black armor, with an N7 bloodstripe on her shoulder and helmet, and a commander’s bars on her gorget. It took her a second to realize that the framing for the bloodstripe wasn’t the usual Alliance white, but rather the yellowed-parchment color used by Vaastan auxiliaries. That narrowed the possible identities for her savior down to…
“Commander.” She sprang to her feet and saluted. “Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212.”
“Don’t salute in combat zones.” Shepard gently reminded the marine. Her blood was still boiling, but even when she was young, she hadn’t been so angry she’d confused friend and foe. “Are you wounded, Williams?”
“A few scrapes and burns. Better than the rest of my unit. We were on patrol when they attacked. We tried to get off a distress call, but they cut off our communications. I’ve been fighting for my life ever since.”
“And the rest of your squad?”
“We tried to get back to the beacon, but we were ambushed. I think… I’m the only one left.”
Shepard wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind to give comfort, but she put a hand on the marine’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You did all you could, I’m sure. Our mission is to recover the beacon. Can you take us there?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s time for payback.”
Their eyes met. Shepard grinned and nodded.
They began moving, but were almost immediately brought up short. The midges had given Shepard a good enough picture of what the geth were working on that she could discount them as a threat, but their small sensors could only give so much resolution. So it wasn’t until Jane looked at the enormous spikes with human corpses impaled on them that she realized what they were. She turned away to keep herself from being sick, but the spikes were everywhere.
“What the hell…” she asked herself. Forcing herself to look after she’d braced herself, she continued down the valley. Some of the bodies had been shot, others burned, still others had defensive bruising on their hands and arms but no other apparent injuries. Clearly the geth weren’t above forcing the living onto the spikes as well as the recently-dead.
“Normandy, come in.”
“This is the Normandy. Go ahead, commander.” Joker replied.
“I’ve found something I need to document. Let my drone out the jump doors.”
“Aye aye, Commander.” Joker replied. Less than a minute later, Flere came into view. Shepard opened her drone piloting app, switched on Flere’s connection to her mastoid and throat implants, and began “documenting” the impaled corpses, though she mostly let Flere decide what was important.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Shepard subvocalized.
“Class 3 perversion? At least. Yikes.”
Whatever the geth were up to, it could be worse. But it was still on the scale whose far end included “tile the universe with paperclips” sorts of scenarios. She re-airgapped Flere before they set off again.
They met a little more resistance at the dig site, but less than they were expecting. Shepard and Williams posted up in cover behind the rocks which littered the canyon-gouged region of Eden Prime where the colony had been founded, while Alenko flanked the geth position, driving them into the open with a few pulses of biotic power, where they were easy targets for the two women.
The relative sparsity of resistance was explained when they approached the dig site.
“This is where the beacon was?” Shepard asked.
“Yes, it was right here. It must have been moved.”
“Clearly, but by our side or the geth?” she asked, hypothetically. Obviously, neither of the marines knew.
“Change of plans, commander.” Nihlus interrupted. “There’s a small spaceport nearby. Rendezvous there.”
“Roger.” Shepard replied. “Let’s move.”
They’d barely taken a hundred steps before they encountered the next horror. There were more bodies on spikes here, but…
“Oh god, what did the geth do to them?” Chief Williams asked no one in particular.
These bodies were entirely dessicated. Their greyed skin was perforated in a strange, almost circuit-like pattern and faint blue lights shone through it. Hoses and cables, possibly some sort of horrifically mutated nerves and blood vessels wove in and out of their skin at random.
Shepard had moved away from the rest of her squad to the base of the spikes inspecting the mutilated bodies when the spike telescoped into its base. The “body” impaled on it sparked, then lashed out with long, vicious claws, tearing furrows into Shepard’s helmet and drawing blood from her scalp. She staggered back, only to run into another spike and stumble. If she hadn’t stumbled, she’d probably have been torn apart in seconds. As it was, she ended up inadvertently clearing lines of fire for Williams and Alenko to engage the… whatever they were. One of the three was down and the other two were scrambling over rocks to try to reach Williams and Alenko when Shepard managed to rip off her helmet and wipe the blood from her eyes. She reached down and pulled her service knife from its sheath on her lower back, where standard Alliance suits mounted shotguns.
As it came clear of its sheath, the 18” kukri-style knife blazed blue. It’s monomolecular edge was more than dangerous enough for most purposes, but even the advanced materials of the knife would lose their edge if used on armor or krogan bone, so she’d shelled out the extra cash to have her knife outfitted with a disruptor field generator along the edge. She stepped between her subordinates and the corpse things and swung. She bisected one , then took off the others’ left arm and leg on the backswing, the knife moving through the bodies as easily as it did the warm summer air. Despite what would have certainly been a debilitating injury for a living human, the one that was short two limbs was still clawing its way towards her. A boot to its head ended that.
She wiped away the cuts on her head with a small dose of medigel, then started to sheath her knife, only to pause when she heard something in one of the nearby prefab shelters.
“You hear that?” She asked.
“Yeah, it came from over there. Door’s closed, security lock’s engaged.” Ashley commented.
Shepard nodded and connected to the security lock with her omnitool. A second later, Flere had it unlocked. She hit the button to open the door, and entered, knife in hand but lowered.
“Humans! Thank the maker.”
Shepard sheathed her knife when she saw the pair in the prefab building. “Dr. Warren. Glad to see you’re okay.” The doctor had been one of the friendly contacts in the area she’d been briefed on.
“Hurry! Close the door before they come back!” The man in the room hissed at her.
Shepard raised an eyebrow at the man, then turned back to the head of the excavation site.
“I’m Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy. I’m in command of the team which was sent to recover the beacon.”
“Yes, I recognize you from the briefing. The beacon isn’t here. It was moved to the spaceport this morning. Doctor Manuel and I” she indicated the other human “stayed behind to pack up camp when those… things attacked. The marines held them off long enough for us to hide in here. They gave their lives to save us.” Her face fell.
“No one is saved. The age of humanity is ended. Soon, only ruin and corpses will remain!” Dr. Manuel yelled at them.
“Is… what’s wrong with your assistant?” Shepard asked Dr. Warren.
“Manuel has a brilliant mind, but he’s always been a bit… unstable.”
“Is it madness to see the future? To see the destruction rushing towards us? To understand that there is no escape? No hope? I’m not mad, I’m the only sane one left!” he howled.
“I... gave him an extra dose of meds after the attack.” Dr. Warren finished, lamely.
Shepard’s attempts to get more information about the attack were interrupted by Manuel’s ravings, and eventually she gave up. She strung her midges out in line formation so she could see back to where the Normandy waited. When she’d confirmed that the area was clear, she sent the two doctors back to the ship.
Shepard recovered her helmet and they pressed on into the outskirts of the spaceport. They were able to manage what resistance they encountered easily enough, with Alenko’s biotics managing the corpse things long enough for Williams and Shepard to cut down any geth at range, then mopping up the remaining corpse things with concentrated fire.
“What do you make of these things?” Shepard subvocalized.
“They’re… weird. A proper class 2 perversion could make far more efficient use of human biomass for combat, nevermind the nanomanufacturing capability those spikes imply. A class 3 shouldn’t be able to manage this sort of thing at all. So either we’re dealing with a 2 that… doesn’t care about combat efficiency for some reason or we’re dealing with a 3 with way more advanced capabilities than any class 3 perversion we’ve ever documented. Either way…”
“I agree. Begin drafting an IPO on a…” the subvocalized thought was cut short as the enormous ship from the recording lifted away from Eden Prime’s surface. “Holy hells…” she whispered. She heard similar exclamations from Kaidan and Ashley as the ship disappeared into Eden Prime’s upper atmosphere. They moved forward a bit more, moving away from a stand of trees which was obstructing the view and...Shepard tried to reorient herself as a half dozen more midge feeds came into life from unexpected angles.
“Something wrong?” Williams asked.
“No, I just… yes.” Shepard said, realizing that the new feed was from Nihlus’ swarm. Meaning… the dark figure lying in a heap on the ground in the middle of the new shots…
“Shit, we need to move.”
“Is she… always like this?” Shepard heard Williams ask Alenko as she charged deeper into the spaceport. A few more dead geth later, and they were in a cargo loading bay. Nihlus’ perforated corpse lay in the middle of the bay, along with a few dozen assorted dock workers. He’d died with his weapon in his hand, but at least one shot had been from behind. The killing shot had been from directly above him where he lay. She reconnected Flere to her gear.
“Flere?” she asked aloud.
“Documenting.” The drone chirped in its flat “fit for broadcasting to Terrans” tone.
“Ready.” They said through Shepard’s mastoid implant.
“Nihlus comes up through the docks. Comes here.” She said aloud, moving to where she thought Nihlus was standing. “And then…” how did he manage to end up shot in the back? She looked behind herself. There were… some cargo crates? Could geth get through standard freight scanners undetected? She was missing something, but she didn’t know what. “Geth pop out of some of those crates, ambush him…”
“Yeah. Seems that way.” Alenko confirmed.
“Okay, pulling the recorded video from the midges.”
“Wait, why the guess work if you have video?” Kaidan asked.
“Because then I know if I guessed right.”
Shepard ignored the weird look her reply had elicited and passed the recorded video to their HUD’s, leaving Williams to overwatch them.
The recording started consistent with Shepard’s guess. Nihlus had, in fact, come up through the docks. Then Shepard’s eyes widened. There was another turian here. Nihlus and the newcomer seemed to be exchanging words amicably. The midges weren’t fitted with mics and turians were infamously hard to lipread, so what exactly they said was anyone’s guess. They seemed to be colleagues at worst, possibly friends. Then, Newcomer Turian pulled a pistol on Nihlus while he surveyed the slain dockworkers. Forewarned by the midges, Nihlus dove to the side and pulled his pistol, the shot meant to go through his heart tearing through his lung instead. He returned fire, but it hadn’t done any good. Already injured and taken by surprise, Nihlus was gunned down where he lay. The Newcomer Turian gathered some geth, apparently commanding them, then set off towards the cargo train.
“That was…” Kaidan said.
“Not my finest work.” Shepard finished the thought. “Normandy, this is Shepard. Nihlus is down. Continuing on to the docks to secure the beacon.”
She didn’t know who this new turian was, but it was another target on her “to be killed” list, and another reason for crossing off this particular item.
Hopefully the proof against worst!turian will for the Council to stop being idiots.
Or maybe the council is different here?
Nice chapter, btw.