Chapter Text
—<|MASS EFFECT|>—
Nihlus Kryik, turian Spectre of the Citadel Council, turned to look out a window, toward the plains and flatlands rife with a host of grazing wildlife.
The vast field looked simple, contenting. Overall idyllic.
He had seen images like this plastered on the extranet, had heard gossip and read filtered files regarding the human colony of Eden Prime; though even the unfiltered documents had little negatives to say about the planet, which was where his current objective of retrieving a Prothean beacon was taking place. Alongside an evaluation of Jane Shepard.
He'd heard talk of it the most from the Systems Alliance corporal – Richard L. Jenkins – whilst aboard the Normandy. The corporal had grown up on this planet.
He cast his gaze over his shoulder, toward the grizzly pyre beyond the entrance of the house he was within. The scorching pile was made of the charred remains of human colonists; those not in the pyre were impaled in a gruesome display on tripod-mounted geth stakes.
He turned to exit the residence he was in, but not before glancing at the homeowners, consisting of a family of four: two children, a mother, and father; all of them charred into black crisps on the floor.
From how they were strewn about, Nihlus surmised they'd attempted to flee but were swiftly gunned down, with the father dead first, the mother dead second, the son dead third, and the daughter dead last.
As he exited the house and stepped onto unpaved ground, Nihlus turned toward the grim sky and closed his eyes. Sucking in the ash-ridden air through his teeth, he caught the faint taste of copper on his tongue and the wafting stench of burnt flesh on his nose.
To see one’s home transformed into ruin garnered within Nihlus pity for the corporal, which he promptly stowed before marching toward the edge of the cliff the residential area had been built atop, to focus his view on a nearby spaceport built into a gorge down the cliffs.
He tapped his earpiece and said through the comms, “Shepard, a little change of plans. I see a spaceport nearby, I’ll meet you there.”
From what little he could discern, Nihlus presumed this platform of the spaceport to be a train dock, or a depot, judging by the monorail to the left of the facility, which was enclosed and suspended in a narrow valley of concrete stretching as far as his eye could see. The depot proper seemed to be built deeper into the cliffs of the gorge, barred behind a thick garage door, with its outside docking platform – stocked with unmoved cargo – and the grassland beyond it being all that he could currently view.
Nihlus could also spy damage around the station; debris was littered about, with some construction materials scattered around the grassland inside the gorge, and one of the monorail tracks was destroyed, along with its respective train. He also spotted a few burnt corpses behind the waist-high solid steel balustrades around the edges of the docking platform.
If the geth that had attacked were still there he would need a better approach, so he scanned the other half of the gorge, which was a hill sloping up to a narrow pass that led to the dig site, and swiftly spotted two boulders on the hill large enough to cover himself during approach.
He also noted that the balustrades at the landing of the stairs could cover him on the platform.
Nihlus ceased his reconnaissance and carefully made his way down the cliff edge. He dropped down from ledges to jutting rocks and eventually landed onto the grassy ground with a roll. Gathering himself with a sharp breath, he briefly surveyed his surroundings before scrambling toward the boulders.
He hid behind the first boulder for a few seconds out of caution before dashing toward the second and then approached the stairs. He scuttled up its steps and crouched himself down behind the waist-high balustrades around the landing before peeking out to reconnoiter the dock.
At first he found it all empty, but then he caught sight of a sleek and rotund bipedal figure in dark armor, with equally dark robing and a starkly white head, entering into his view of the dock. Underneath the figure’s stole, Nihlus could glean pieces of obsidian-black armor. He noted the small cloak draped over their right shoulder and the large pauldron that was affixed to the left—they then suddenly turned his way, prompting him to shift back down behind cover to avoid detection.
With cold, protective steel at his back, Nihlus mused to himself in his confusion, pondering what purpose could possess a geth to wear such garments. At hand, he couldn’t determine any practical usage for the robe beyond as a veil, but then the geth could have just sported dark plating instead. And speaking of the garment, it was fine, far too fine; he expected something like it on those devout or ceremonial.
Nihlus halted his musing, he could think about it later at a safer point in time. The geth were an unknown, and thus, he had been wandering blind. A geth donned in black robing wasn't beyond comprehension, no matter how bemusing.
He clenched the trigger of his Banshee and discreetly shifted out of cover to fire at the geth—except it wasn't a geth.
He promptly relaxed his finger as his eyes widened in surprise; he recognized the figure not as the geth he had assumed, but rather, a friend.
One who Nihlus knew as— "Saren?"
His friend turned around, revealing his signature white complexion, pale blue eyes, and Arterius crest, which was a merged and tapering head crest overlaid with a ceremonial-looking black cloth, with a pair of thick, tapering fringes extending from his cheekbones and past the back of his head.
"Nihlus," his friend replied.
With a blithe stride, Saren approached him. The pale turian’s dark robe lightly swayed with each step, revealing glimpses of the Stiletto pistol holstered on Saren’s hip.
"This isn't your mission, Saren," Nihlus said with surprise in his voice and slight relief. "What are you doing here?"
Saren placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and replied, "The Council thought you could use some help on this one.” The white turian then removed his hand to walk past Nihlus’s periphery.
He had to be losing his touch, he thought, if the Council found it necessary to send his mentor as backup. Regardless, with Saren at his back, he could return his focus toward scanning the docking platform.
To the right of the garage doors were more blackened bodies piled near the walls. His eyes swayed not too far as he then found four destroyed geth mangled nearby. He wondered if that was Saren’s doing, but upon stepping for a closer look, he found that unlikely; the geth hadn't been destroyed by gunfire, instead destroyed by something blunt. Crushing. Biotics?
“Do you know what destroyed these geth, Saren?” Nihlus inquired.
Saren shook his head and answered, “No, old friend. But whoever did this is capable of exerting enough brute strength to cave in refined alloy. And I doubt it was a biotic. I would have been able to detect faint traces if that was so.”
Nihlus grimaced as he stared at the destroyed geth. “I wasn't expecting to find the geth here. The situation's bad.”
He continued his search, slowly swinging his head around the dock before his eyes were caught upon a tall figure hidden behind a few crates and an unnaturally thick shadow.
The figure was scrounging around the spilled contents of a crate before they shifted around and revealed their left side, allowing him to glimpse the ephemeral flames of reddish-purple hue that engulfed their forearm and foreleg. He wondered what kind of pyrotechnics could harmlessly coat limbs in a steady and colored flame, but his thoughts were halted when they then abruptly moved his way.
Nihlus halfway brought up his rifle, prepared to unleash slugs as he watched the figure emerge from behind the crates and step into grim skylight. And upon seeing the figure's full form – standing at a height around two meters – Nihlus felt a shiver tremble up his spine.
The figure sported colors of primary blacks, with secondary purples, and tertiary reds, with golden accents and a red-purple emissive to the lights scattered on its armor.
Its build was bulky and muscular in an exaggerated manner when compared to a human’s. It was the most apt physical comparison Nihlus could make: a bulky, exaggeratedly muscular, and armored human. But the alien aura it emitted, and the form-factor of its armor, swayed his conclusion from it being a human.
Like he’d seen before, its forearms and forelegs were engulfed in radiant magenta fire that burned perpetually. But what was new to his eyes were the red wisps of opaque red, which clung to and traveled up its body like smog, with the shifting sunlight altering the propensity and the opacity of its effects.
On its black chest and shoulders were bulky and crude attachments of red and purple armor, marked with scrapes, scuffs, and scars. It sported a stylized battle skirt with two black tassels with small golden spikes. The arms were adorned with backward-angled black plates and thick golden trim, the hands and fingers decorated with gold plates. The head vaguely reminded Nihlus of a human skull and was smeared with red paint and cemented into a pair of scowling eyes with a set of gold-rimmed, emissive exhausts affixed at a slant below the cheeks.
Stepping back cautiously, he turned to quietly warn Saren of the alien, “Saren… get behind cov—" only to suddenly be shot.
Nihlus was sent hurtling backward onto the ground from the force of the slug, which tore through his right mandible and sent it flying, before carving a deep lateral gash across the right side of his skull.
Nihlus spat blue blood with a hoarse cough before, with blurring vision, searching for whoever had shot him.
He slurred his words as he exclaimed, “Saren, help me!”
Nihlus searched around frantically, but he found no geth anywhere before his eyes turned to Saren… who was aiming a Stiletto down at him.
His eyes bulged in utter confusion as he gargled out, "S-Saren…?" with blood and spittle mixing in with his words.
"I would've preferred to end you quickly and painlessly, Nihlus," Saren said earnestly as he marched toward Nihlus.
The pale turian kicked his dropped Banshee aside, toward the monorail, which caused it to slide under the railings facing it and to drop into the valley.
"For what it's worth, Nihlus, I am sorry it had to end like this. I won't make you suffer any longer to amend this mistake."
Nihlus stared in disbelief as Saren held the Stiletto toward his head with a disgruntled expression. But his execution at Saren’s hand was interrupted when the alien that he had seen prior suddenly appeared over the pale turian’s shoulder without a sound.
His eyes widened in surprise when the alien shot its gold-adorned hand toward Saren's wrist faster than either him or Saren could see and wrenched the hand into the air before Saren could even react, causing the shot to be fired straight into the air instead of Nihlus’s head.
Saren snapped his head toward it and exclaimed in surprise, "What!" before striking the alien in the head with his free hand.
But that did nothing but emit a small crunch of ceramic.
The alien loosed a low growl at Saren before hurling him into the steel balustrades around the platform. The collision let off a terrible crunch of steel and the ablative ceramic inside Saren’s hardsuit and left a sizable dent in the balustrades.
The pale turian, prone on the ground, released a pained cough and snarled before slowly attempting to push himself up with trembling arms.
Meanwhile, the alien turned from Saren and faced Nihlus. Its expression was cemented into a pair of scowling optics, which had somehow turned magenta. And as he gazed into its glare, its expression began to vaguely resemble one of contemplation in his hazy perception.
The alien then turned away from Nihlus to scowl at the coughing Saren, who miraculously recovered onto his feet with only a wobble, despite having been thrown into the balustrades, which had been dented by the collision.
Had he been the one to be thrown, the injury sustained would have left him confined to a berth for months, perhaps years!
The alien reached a hand over its shoulder and unholstered an ornate rifle that unfurled into existence from thin bands of blue digital light.
The weapon sported the same paint as the alien, though a different orientation. It was regal and sharp. The plates, hard-edged and organically curved, were detailed with superfluous grooves, indents, and lines. Gold plating and a very jagged golden bore, with a ribcage-esque golden sight rail. It was a very regal weapon with a very savage, bone-like design.
The alien racked the forestock of the weapon forward like a shotgun – prompting Nihlus to correct his prior assumption – causing the ribcage-esque top to spring up and shift back in unison, before it then shifted the pump back, causing the top to shift forward and reset.
Saren had barely any time to raise his Stiletto before the alien discharged a fireball from the bore of its shotgun. The discharge was accompanied by a distinct roar that echoed through the air, sounding akin to cannonfire, which was then followed by the hefty sound of the shotgun racking a new shell.
The indiscernible pellets ejected out the front of the shotgun shattered Saren’s kinetic barrier in an instant and then crudely cleaved his left arm from his shoulder; the disembodied limb sailed through the air before eventually landing somewhere in the grassland.
Saren howled in agony and fell onto his rear, clutching his wound as blood poured incessantly from the stump of his shoulder.
Nihlus watched as Saren clutched the stump for seconds before he suddenly released his grip to cry into his earpiece, "I need reinforcements and medical units at my position, now!" Saren then clutched his wound again as blood continued to pour.
The sudden sting of his wound brought back meager clarity to Nihlus; yet he laid on the ground, still petrified for a few more seconds by the events that had just occurred, before willing himself to activate his omni-tool, which bathed him in its faint orange hue. He activated its dispenser and lazily smeared medi-gel across his amputated mandible and the gash across his head with a grimace.
Afterward, he laid on the ground and let loose a long and heavy sigh.
His thoughts turned toward contemplation, he wondered why the situation had unfolded this way, why Saren had shot him… But his thoughts were interrupted when the alien growled and approached Saren with soundless steps.
He watched it march toward Saren with an intentionally slow pace; it was obvious the alien was playing around when considering the strength and speed it had exhibited.
But his attention was then abruptly diverted from Saren and the alien when he suddenly began hearing high-pitched electronic chirping from the direction of the monorail. He then heard the thud of several heavy steps. The thudding grew closer before the elongated grey head of a geth trooper suddenly peeked up from the ramp leading down to the monorail’s boarding platform.
"That's impossible..."
It couldn't be possible that the reinforcements Saren had called for were geth…
But, much to Nihlus's dismay, the impossible was proven not so when eight geth marched onto the docking platform and amassed into a lateral firing line.
The alien lazily halted its stalk toward Saren to turn and look at the geth as the machines trained their rifles on it.
He saw the alien swiftly bring its arms up and smash them together, causing a cobbled together wall of dark stone to suddenly sprout from the ground just a second before the geth opened fire. The hail of slugs pelting stone caused dust to gather, with a cloud soon beginning to form.
Eventually, the hail of gunfire died down as the cloud peaked in volume.
The geth troopers twitched the steel flaps of their heads, communicating via electronic screeching before one geth moved to scout. The scout cautiously stalked toward the dissipating dust cloud, the bright light of its optic piercing the veil.
Nihlus swiftly surmised that the gathered dust somehow possessed the ability to scramble geth sensors, for why else would a scout then be needed.
Behind the scout, a pair of geth split from the group and approached Saren, who had propped himself up against the balustrade he had collided with.
Nihlus was uncertain of what he was meant to feel while looking at Saren’s wounded state, but what he was certain of was that he felt betrayed.
The pale turian groaned out a pained command that Nihlus couldn't hear, prompting the pair of geth to electronically screech to one another before one of them suddenly clasped its left arm in a vice grip that caused the alloy of its limb to groan.
It violently tore its left arm from its shoulder, though the steel cables connecting the arm turned taut, preventing the geth from fully dismembering itself for a brief second before it then snapped the wires with a harsh tug. The amputated geth then held its disembodied limb to Saren's mangled shoulder before the adjacent unmangled geth began fusing the synthetic extremity to turian flesh.
As the geth affixed the machine wiring of the arm into Saren's organic neurology, his legs tossed and turned, his body writhing in pain as he held back muffled cries and screams.
It was at this point that Nihlus realized that the geth were far too engrossed with aiding Saren and searching for the alien that they had disregarded his presence. And that gave Nihlus the greatest opportunity to possibly end the madness currently unfolding... by killing Saren.
He unholstered his Razer, with the pistol transforming to its full length in a second, before discreetly aiming the handgun at Saren. He wrapped his finger around the trigger and felt the chill through his hardsuit's glove—but he also felt himself hesitate.
If he pulled the trigger, fed lead straight into Saren’s forehead, then he’d never know why Saren betrayed him. He’d never understand… Or maybe, he was hesitating for a different reason?
Saren was his mentor, his friend. Yet… Nihlus had caused the inadvertent demise of many friends alike in the name of completing a mission. He was no stranger to sacrifice. So what made Saren any different?
His thoughts were cut short when the cloud completely dissipated, revealing the still standing stone wall, which then suddenly collapsed before the alien's hand then abruptly emerged from the still falling rubble.
Faster than his eye could see, in milliseconds, it clasped its gold digits around the scout’s eye, crushing the optic with a crunch of glass. It then subsequently eviscerated the whole head with a wrenching motion, which was accompanied by the ear-bleeding sound of shearing metal and popping fuses. And with a violent pull, the alien then savagely tore the geth's head off its shoulders, with some sort of spine-like machinery still connected to it, which dripped profusely with geth fluids.
[CRY.NN — Drive Injector]
[0:00]
Hellish-sounding electronic music of a genre Nihlus hadn't ever heard then began to play as the last of the rubble collected on the floor, revealing the alien as it blasély dropped the head onto the floor.
With the alien revealed, the five geth on standby immediately opened fire, but not even half a second later, the alien quickly shifted into a stance, hunching forward with arms raised near its head, and charged.
It closed the distance between itself and the geth within a split second and delivered lightning fast blows against the heads of three of the five geth in another second, absolutely sundering the metal along with any electronics kept within.
In around three seconds, the alien had dispatched three geth.
Nihlus took the opportunity to fire a slug at the two geth near Saren, though the one-armed geth managed to block the shot with its body as the other geth beside Saren fired back at him.
He promptly rolled into cover behind a crate and returned fire, impairing his opponent by hitting it in the right elbow, causing it to drop its gun and lose function of the arm. But the now-crippled geth merely picked up its dropped rifle with its left hand and resumed fire.
He briefly leaned out from cover – which nearly had a slug clip his head – to fire at the crippled geth and witnessed the alien dispatch the last two geth fighting it by impaling its fist through the head of one unit before using the body as a tonfa to strike the other.
The alien then tossed the mangled body into the crippled geth fighting Nihlus. The force behind the throw caused the two machines to be turned into jagged mess of sparking circuitry and jutting metal, with the friction of collision having generated enough heat to fuse some of the alloy together.
He stared in awe, wondering whether such a feat was generated due to biotics.
However, he was doubtful of that; he had seen what an asari Justicar could do, and he was certain no Justicar could match the alien.
Dispatching three geth in around three seconds? A good Justicar would need ten at least, twenty at most.
With combat over, the alien's music ceased and Nihlus emerged from cover to search for Saren, who apparently managed to slip away during the chaos with the aid of the amputated geth.
He eyed the ground in search of tracks and came upon a trail of blood mixed with trickles of white geth fluid, which led toward the monorail. But before he could pursue Saren, he had to handle the matter of the alien.
Nihlus holstered his weapon and shifted into a placid posture, or rather, the most neutral stance he could take. He doubted that the alien was hostile toward him, why else would it refrain from finishing him? Yet still, he’d rather not cause another event akin to the “Relay 314 Incident”.
The alien stared down at Nihlus, the magenta glow of its scowling optics turning a vibrant red upon shifting its head up a little to better stare down at him.
He would be lying if he said it didn't unnerve him a little.
"Thank you... for dealing with the geth..." Nihlus's words were slightly slurred but he remained eligible enough.
The missing mandible caused an unpleasant heat to spread throughout his face, but the anesthetic property of the medi-gel held back the pain, making it quite tolerable.
The alien cocked its head to the side in an emote of discernible bemusement and he wondered if it had some manner of translation software, and if it did, whether he could share his language program with it, though he wouldn't activate his omni-tool to find out; the phrase "no sudden movements" was universal despite the arrangement always slightly differing between races.
The alien suddenly turned its head toward the tracks that Saren had left behind, slowly tracing its head across the trail of turian blood mixed with geth fluids.
"Do you wish to pursue Saren?" Nihlus inquired.
It snapped its head toward and silently scowled at him, or at least presumed it to be doing so; its expression was just a scowl. It then bellowed a low growl, and whether it was of agreement or denial was up in the air.
But then the sky suddenly rumbled, prompting Nihlus to turn his eyes up, alongside the alien, and his eyes widened and his mouth became agape as he laid sight upon the source of the quaking: a hulking vessel. The exact same as the one he bore witness to in the comms room of the Normandy.
It was tapered at both the bow and stern and sported a bug-like design. Arcs of red lightning jumped across its dark-colored plates, lined with deep, symmetrical etches. It spewed a red-colored smog from clouded ports underneath it. The oddest part of the vessel was the prehensile metal legs: three pairs at either side of the amidship, behind the bow, with two pairs of larger legs at each side near the bow and one directly at the front of the bow.
The gigantic ship soared above Nihlus with harrowing speed outmatching any civilian or military craft. It blared a foghorn-like roar as it ascended, causing the ground and air to tremble before it eventually disappeared beyond the clouds.
Disturbingly, he had felt the cry coming from inside his very own head.
"By the spirits..." Nihlus gawked.
"Nihlus!" a woman’s voice suddenly called out.
He quickly recognized the voice and cried back, "Shepard!"
Nihlus turned to see a human woman in a black and red medium-sized combat hardsuit and helmet – emblazoned with an N7 emblem on the right side of the chestplate – approaching from a shed adjacent to the hill, with an entourage of three individuals.
Two of whom Nihlus recalled as Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko and Corporal Richard L. Jenkins. The two soldiers were each donned in sets of black combat hardsuits and helmets similar to Shepard, but without the red stripe and of a lighter classification.
The third individual, however, was an unknown in a heavy white-pink combat hardsuit and helmet.
He watched the group approach with weapons drawn. Nihlus felt his guts churn.
"Lower your weapons!" he shouted before turning to ascertain the alien's reaction.
It was as impassive as a statue, its glaring pair of optics were now a malignant magenta as it eyed Shepard and her team.
He silently hoped that Shepard and her subordinates wouldn't provoke the alien, and thankfully, she didn’t. Shepard and her squad arrived with weapons in hand, though they had been stowed or set idle.
Nihlus glanced at the alien again, seeing it still impassive and unresponsive to Shepard’s approach as she and her team marched up the steps onto the platform.
"Nihlus, mind telling us who your friend is?" Shepard asked, gesturing her head at the alien.
He sighed in pain and said, "Shepard, I cannot tell you who the alien is. It hasn't even spoken. It appears to understand gestures – and I have an inkling it can understand my words – but growls are the only response I've gotten."
"They friendly?" the unknown soldier abruptly asked.
"They saved my life."
It was then that Shepard noticed the scar and inquired, “How’d you get injured? How serious is it?”
"It’s manageable. And as I said, the alien saved me from an attack," he answered while caressing his wound.
"From the geth?" Shepard asked.
"A friend..." he replied with faint sorrow.
"Who would betray a Spectre?" the lieutenant inquired in astonishment.
He answered, "His name is Saren Arterius. He's a turian Spectre. I think he’s behind the attack on Eden Prime.”
From the corner of his eye, Nihlus saw the corporal’s expression abruptly flicker from his prior jovialness into one of anger upon the statement. The young man turned with eyes of ire to stare into the burning ruins of a residence atop the cliffs of the gorge.
Nihlus observed the corporal then turn away and silently smolder behind Shepard and her lieutenant, before the unknown woman placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, which stanched some of the corporal’s anger.
Shepard asked him, "What makes you think that?"
"Saren called for reinforcements through his comms. Eight geth then arrived via the nearby monorail,” he replied.
She grimaced before asking, "And where has Saren gone?"
"Via the same method the geth arrived. The trail that Saren left leads to the monorail. Though, borrowing your vernacular, it'll be ‘like a needle in a haystack’ when it comes to finding Saren. This is a spaceport with many stations, after all."
Shepard gave nod in understanding before asking, "And the Prothean beacon? We searched the excavation site and didn't find it there."
"I don't know where the beacon has gone," he answered with a shake of his head.
"Damn... Do you at least happen to know what that giant ship was? It resembled the one we saw in the distress message," Shepard inquired.
He nodded. "The ship? Yes, it is the one from the distress message. I saw it up-close and personal."
"Commander, there's something behind those crates!" the unknown soldier abruptly exclaimed as she raised her rifle, aiming toward the garage door with crates around it.
He promptly turned and aimed his Razer in that direction, alongside the others. He glanced at the alien to see it remaining in an idle stance for some odd reason.
"Keep your guards up. Could be more geth," Shepard warned.
He waited with a hair-trigger before he caught a glimpse of something emerging from around the corner of the crates.
He was about to fire preemptively but was stopped when the alien suddenly stepped into the line of fire, preventing them all from firing as a human male then appeared from behind the crates.
The man appeared to be a dockworker, with a disheveled grey and brown attire. His short hair was frayed and his eyes were bloodshot.
The man waved his arms frantically and exclaimed, "Wait! Don't—! Please don't shoot! I'm human!"
"What were you thinking? You could've been killed sneaking up on us like that!" Shepard yelled before hurriedly lowering her rifle, with her team following suit.
"I–I'm sorry. M–my name is Powell. I'm a dockworker at the spaceport. I… I couldn't help but overhear you guys talk about the beacon," the worker said nervously.
Nihlus stepped forward and asked the worker, "Do you know where the Prothean beacon is?"
The frightened dockworker stroked the back of his head and nodded. "Y–yeah. It came in this morning and was hauled off to the platform via the cargo train— it's only a station away, so it's one ride there… To think that was only a few hours ago... feels like a whole other life."
"Powell, do you know what occurred before the attack? Why the geth arrived on Eden Prime?" Shepard asked the worker.
The worker shook his head and answered, "I don't know... one minute I was hearing my supervisor and coworkers chatting and working, then I hear a shriek coming from inside my own head, followed by the screaming of my friends and supervisor, and gunfire..."
Nihlus narrowed his brows at the mention of a shriek.
"Powell, do you know what that ship was? The one that just left the atmosphere a few minutes ago?" Shepard asked.
Again, the man shook his head and answered, "All I know is that that mothership was at the start of the attack. It carried thousands of those things onto Eden Prime."
"You're Cole's contact on the spaceport..." the unknown soldier abruptly remarked.
The worker’s weary and bloodshot eyes lit up at the remark.
"Cole's alive? Thank god... that's the best piece of news I've heard since this nightmare started!"
"He also told us that you run the smuggling ring," Shepard added.
The man's joyous expression then swiftly died as he donned a fretful mien and yelled, "H–Hey now! My supervisor's dead, my fellow crew are dead! Does a small smuggling ring really matter in this situation?"
"No. Not really," Shepard said with a shake of her head, glancing at the burnt corpses to the left of the depot with a grimace.
The lieutenant then mused aloud, "Wait, how did you survive but the others didn't? Why didn't any of them think of hiding behind those crates?"
The worker stroked the back of his head nervously and answered, "They never had the chance; I was behind the crates long before those things arrived."
"And why were you behind the crates before the attack?" the lieutenant then asked the man.
The worker fidgeted, cupping his hands together nervously. "In order to get through the day, w–whenever my supervisor's not looking, I sneak behind the crates where no one can find me and grab forty winks."
"You survived because you were lazy!" the unknown soldier angrily exclaimed, causing the dockworker to recoil in fear.
"You managed to hide before it all started, but how come the geth didn't search the spot you were napping behind?" the lieutenant inquired while allaying the worker’s concern by placing a hand before the unknown soldier to stop her.
The man pointed a shaky finger at the alien. "He destroyed those things before they could find me."
That explained to Nihlus the origin of the geth bodies he saw strewn about.
"Alright, we have enough information. We should go," Shepard said with a nod.
The man fidgeted with a conflicted expression before calling out to Shepard, "Wait! I... I have some smuggled supplies nearby... I think you'll put them to better use than me."
The man crouched down out of sight. Nihlus could hear the worker moving spilled cargo aside before standing back up with a crate of grenades in his hands.
"No one really cares if a small amount of equipment goes missing from a military order. So, here—take them. I sure don't need them."
The unknown soldier suddenly stepped forward, fuming.
She pushed aside the lieutenant’s arm, and with a glare, she yelled, "My fellow soldiers could have used these grenades, you bastard!"
The unknown soldier was about to grab the worker's collar when Shepard stopped her by grabbing her wrist.
"I understand your anger, Williams," Shepard stated evenly. "But you also have to understand him. Eden Prime hasn’t gone through anything serious. They truly believe that this small smuggling ring is harmless to everyone. ‘Who cares if a few grenades go missing, they'll never be used’. That’s what they were most likely thinking before everything went to hell. So calm yourself, Williams."
Shepard released her grip on the soldier’s wrist, who briefly refocused her glare on the worker before stepping away with a huff.
The dockworker looked at Shepard with awe and said, "Thank you..."
Shepard gave a nod before asking, "Powell, do you have anything else for us?"
The man looked around before nodding. "I think so..."
Again, the man crouched down, disappearing for a brief few seconds before returning with a small container branded with the Systems Alliance insignia.
"This here is a prototype. Top of the line. I snagged it and thought I could sell it for couple thousand credits worth... but I don't need it anymore, so here— take it."
Shepard opened the container to find a small weapon modification labeled “EMP” inside. She took the item and slotted it on the end of her Avenger assault rifle.
She turned to the worker and said, "Thank you, Powell. I suggest you go and hide now."
The man nodded before approaching the garage door. He tapped a series of numbers into the control panel nearby and the door then loudly opened before he then entered, with it loudly closing behind him.
Shepard glanced at the alien before turning to Nihlus.
She asked him, "Are they coming with?"
Nihlus turned and stared into its scowling eyes and it replied with a nod and an exhaust of red-pink fumes from the slanted tubes affixed to the sides of its face.
"It's coming with,” he answered before turning to the unknown soldier. He asked Shepard, "Who is she?"
"This is Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the two hundred and twelfth brigade. Stationed here on Eden Prime. We picked up her while coming here. She'll be helping us from here on out," Shepard answered.
"What happened to her squad?" Nihlus inquired.
"I think I’m the only one left, sir," Williams replied with a dour tone.
Nihlus gave a grim nod. "My condolences for the loss of your comrades."
“Thank you, sir,” Williams replied.
"We should go," Shepard said before turning to approach the catwalk leading down to the monorail's suspended boarding platform in the concrete valley.
[CRY.NN — Whistleblower (Lothyde Remix) ]
[0:00]
Hellish music suddenly began to blast from the alien's direction, prompting everyone to turn and witness it suddenly leap several meters into the air in a spiral. It glided through the air with its weapon drawn before landing with a slide onto the further cars of the cargo train.
He immediately noted the lack of a roof and walls on the train the alien had landed on, with only rails and a line of thick steel ramparts inside the cargo train at either side. He had an inkling the ramparts would be prime cover and hiding spot, and the open roof exposed them to possible snipers.
"How the hell did it do that?" the gunnery chief asked.
"Not sure, definitely not biotics. I think…" the lieutenant replied with uncertainty.
Nihlus quickly crossed the catwalk connecting the monorail and the platform, descended the ramp into the concrete valley and stepped onto the suspended boarding pad made of steel plates before boarding the train.
"Come on, Williams," the commander urged before boarding after Nihlus, with the corporal and lieutenant in tow.
A single crack of gunfire from the alien's shotgun suddenly filled the air, prompting everyone to raise their weapons and turn toward the alien. He tilted his head a little down to the side to see a geth with a recently made crude chasm in its chest collapsing onto the floor sideways from behind a steel rampart with a thud. His intuition had been right.
“Hit the deck!” Shepard exclaimed before the outed geth emerged from behind cover and fired.
Nihlus dove behind a rampart before glancing out of cover to see Shepard and her crew firing at the geth, though the distance made accurate fire difficult.
“We need to close the distance. Williams, Jenkins, cover me and Alenko! We’re charging!” Shepard ordered before swiveling out of cover to dash up the train.
With supporting fire at her back, Shepard and the lieutenant charged forward. They dashed into cover whenever the geth exposed themselves to fire volleys of slugs. Swiftly, they encroached further and further upon the geth and destroyed more and more of them, with Shepard taking point, before she suddenly was hurled onto her back, with the distinct sound of a shattered kinetic barrier and the warbling echo of a high-power rifle ringing out.
"Commander!" the lieutenant cried before grabbing his downed commander coughing on the floor.
Nihlus cried, "Sniper!"
Hearing his cry, the corporal and gunnery chief promptly ducked behind cover just as four geth snipers fired. The rounds flew past where their heads had been and instead struck the rampart behind the two humans.
“I’m scuttling!” Nihlus yelled.
But before he did that, he needed to find the snipers, which he swiftly did. They were standing atop the concrete walls in the ravine, hiding behind a rock they’d presumably dragged with them to use as cover.
He shifted out of cover to fire suppressive shots at the snipers, but the geth, being machines with pinpoint coordination, halted from the train him by pelting him with volleys of slugs.
“I can’t move!” he shouted.
Nihlus turned toward Shepard, who had been dragged behind cover by the lieutenant. He tapped his earpiece and called to the lieutenant and her.
“Shepard, are you still able?” he inquired.
He could see the lieutenant patting down the commander’s armor in search of a breach before Shepard replied with a groan through the comms, “I'm fine. The sniper only broke my kinetic barrier. Though that still hurt like hell. Got any way to get rid of them?”
“Perhaps,” Nihlus replied before tossing a grenade toward the snipers, though it was swiftly shot out of the air. “It didn’t work. And if I try firing the geth aboard the train will suppress me.”
Abruptly, Nihlus heard the crack of the alien’s shotgun thirteen times and peeked from cover to see one of the geth snipers fall into the valley, a gaping hole in its head. The remaining snipers fired at the alien before it fired a singular, large projectile at them. The projectile flew past them and then suddenly blew up, hurling the units off from their perch atop the valley’s walls in pieces.
He turned toward the alien to see it rack a shell from its shotgun, with twelve geth destroyed around it on the floor. It inquisitively twitch its head and, after seconds of pause, then assumed an idle stance before cutting its music.
"They've dispatched the geth. Let's move," Shepard said before shifting out of cover with a brief stagger alongside her lieutenant. She turned to her subordinates at the rear of the train and ordered, “Williams, Jenkins, watch our backs!”
“Roger!”
“Wilco!”
Cautiously, Nihlus shifted out of cover and began moving up the train along with Shepard and her crew. Though he was in the middle of the formation, which was a mere line, that didn’t mean he could relax the slightest. His eyes swayed around, scanning for signs of any remaining geth, with Shepard and her crew doing much the same.
Eventually, he caught glimpse of something poking out from behind a steel rampart near the train controls. He stared at the object in bemusement before he finally recognized to be the head of a geth.
But before Nihlus could react, the alien blew apart the unit’s head, along with a chunk of the cover the geth hid behind, and racked its shotgun before turning around to fire at a heavily damaged one-legged geth that was crawling toward the corporal.
"How was it behind us? There were only dead geth," the corporal questioned.
Nihlus’s attention was then seized by the sounds of sparking circuitry from a legless geth at his feet.
He stared into its lightless optic as circuitry behind the glass flickered. He swiftly aimed his Razer at its head, but before he could fire, the geth’s optic was suddenly lit with life and it wrapped its reinvigorated steel claws around his ankle and pulled his leg, tripping him.
He cried midfall, "The geth aren't dead!" before landing on his back.
On his back, he retaliated by firing a slug straight into the geth's head, which did little more than destroy its light-emitting optic before it swatted his Razer out of his hand and off the train. The legless geth then crawled atop him and reached for his throat before choking him.
"Nihlus!" the corporal yelled.
The human hurried toward him, kicking the head of a crawling geth aside with an armored boot while sprinting.
"I've got your back!" the corporal shouted before he grabbed the shoulders of the legless geth as it choked Nihlus.
But the corporal was meat and bones whilst the geth was metal and circuitry. Raw human strength wouldn’t cut it. So instead the corporal started bashing its head in with the stock of his rifle. The damage to its processors and whatever electronics in its head caused its grip to loosen, enough for Nihlus to hurriedly push the thing off him and then kick it under the rails and off the train.
"Thank you, Corporal, I owe you a debt," Nihlus said with slight breathlessness.
He then noticed the crawling geth that the corporal had previously kicked sneaking up behind the human with dangerous haste, prompting Nihlus to take the corporal's sidearm – a Kessler – from his hip and dump slugs through the geth's head until the pistol overheated.
The corporal glanced at the geth before turning back to Nihlus and said, "Thanks. Guess that debt is settled."
He nodded before extending the Kessler back to the corporal.
"Nah, you keep it, Nihlus.”
Nihlus quirked a brow in confusion. "Are you certain?"
"Yeah. Besides, I've got my rifle," the corporal affirmed and emphasized by holding his rifle out.
[Cheshyre — A Rallying Cry of Futility(Final)]
[2:01]
More hellish music of same or similar genre began to blast from the alien, causing Nihlus to turn toward the alien, who he had ignored up till now.
The alien was enthralled in its battle with the reanimated geth. Seven of them in total surrounded the alien, who fought with brutal grace. Its movements were abrupt and cutting, accelerating and decelerating in an instant. Its bare fists dented, warped, and caved in the steel of the reanimated geth with ease.
Whilst the alien was engrossed in its fight, Nihlus turned toward the front of the train and spotted a single-armed geth in black plating. From how it staggered, he inferred that its right knee had suffered damage. The geth reached behind a rampart and brought out a—
"—Rocket!" he shouted before ducking down behind cover.
He caught a glimpse as the geth pulled the trigger and the rocket flew. The exhaust caused the geth’s knee to buckle and collapse.
Nihlus braced behind a rampart as the rocket whistled through the air, but there was no explosion. He heard the rocket still burning and cautiously glimpsed out from cover to see the ordinance adjacent to the alien’s head, held tightly in its right hand. From the way the alien was posed, it appeared as if the alien had simply leaned out of the way and grabbed the rocket in midair before it struck its face.
“By the Spirits…” Nihlus gawked.
“Are they… holding the rocket?” was the lieutenant’s similar reaction to the events unfolding before them all.
“Christ,” the chief muttered.
The alien held the rocket in its hand until the propellant fizzled out. The alien afterward nonchalantly tossed the ordinance twirling into the air and caught it before hurling the explosive toward the black-plated geth like a javelin.
Everyone immediately gripped whatever they could as the rocket went off, shaking the whole train, before turning to eye the frontmost car, which was now covered in smoke.
“Everyone okay?” Shepard asked.
“I’m doing fine, commander,” answered the corporal.
“Same here, Commander,” said the lieutenant before turning to the gunnery chief. “Though Williams got kicked by one of those reanimated geth.”
"I'm fine, Lieutenant," the gunnery chief said with a pained frown. "Just out of breath. Give me a second."
"Kaidan, tend to Williams's injuries," Shepard ordered before turning to Nihlus. "How about you?"
"I’m no more harmed than I was previously, though a bit more winded,” he answered before then chiding himself, "I should've expected the geth to play dead, they're machines after all. But it's too late for that now. I'll just have to be more cautious next time for that trick."
His attention turned to the alien when he heard it rack the slide of its shotgun, but instead of causing the golden ribcage-esque sight rail to spring open and shift back and forth, the rail opened diagonally like a hatch and ejected a long black tube with golden accents that clattered on the ground.
The alien then procured an identical tube from thin air and fed it down the underside of the ribcage-esque top, before using its forearm to slam the hatch close, after which, it racked the slide back.
The alien briefly glanced at everyone before holstering the shotgun on its back, causing the ornate weapon to disappear as bands of digital blue light weaved around it.
Everyone, including Nihlus himself, stared with interest at the brief technological display.
“Awesome!” the corporal exclaimed in glee.
The alien turned away from the group before then soundlessly walking toward the train controls with a brutish gait.
"So what can't it do?" the gunnery chief asked from behind a rampart with a mild huff as the lieutenant tended to the damage on her hardsuit.
“I'm not sure, Williams, they’re alien. We shouldn't base our views of them on previous experiences with other aliens,” the lieutenant replied.
He tuned out the two soldiers and focused on the alien. He watched it intently scrutinize the train's controls as Shepard arrived beside it.
The commander looked the controls over before informing everyone grimly, "Damnit. The interface's hardware suffered damage in the explosion."
The alien rubbed the back of its head in apparent embarrassment. Even species apart, physical cues seemed somewhat universal.
"Is there anyway for us to fix it?" the gunnery chief asked.
“Not sure,” the commander answered with shrug before asking, “Does anyone have experience fixing hardware?”
But before anyone could answer, the alien abruptly tore out the steel panel covering the internals of the train's interface and tossed the thin sheet aside onto the floor – with it sliding off the train – before crouching down and reaching into the internals.
"Commander, what are they doing?" the lieutenant asked with bemusement.
Shepard crouched down to assess whatever components the alien was meddling with inside the interface before replying, "They're messing with the hardware… No... they're fixing the train's controls." Shepard then rose to her feet and said to everyone, "Alright, the alien's trying to fix the train controls. Let’s take the time and recuperate. Or try finding an alternative way of getting to the platform."
He nodded at the suggestion before the anesthetic properties of the medi-gel he had previously applied began to abruptly ebb, causing him to begin feeling the heat and sting of his wound.
He approached a rampart and sat himself down with his back against it before activating his omni-tool. He briefly searched for the medi-gel dispenser on his omni-tool and activated the function before spraying the healing agent on his wound again, feeling the heat of his wound dissipate.
Abruptly, he heard the corporal ask him, "Mind if I sit near you, Nihlus?"
He turned up to see the cheery corporal and gave a nod. "That is alright, Corporal."
The corporal quietly sat himself against the other rampart to the right of Nihlus.
"Hey, Nihlus... are all days like this when you're a Spectre?" the corporal inquired.
He raised a brow at the query and deliberated briefly before replying, "They're similar. Though… mission parameters have rarely been altered to this degree before."
"I don't mean the mission going awry... I mean the death," the corporal said seriously.
He eyed the corporal with slight surprise. He hadn't seen the jovial human be the slightest ounce serious during his time aboard the Normandy. The glimpses of gloom from prior he had assumed to be an isolated occurrence. Nihlus wondered whether it had been due to adrenaline or youth that the corporal was able to maintain his cheer.
He turned to the human and answered, "Missions tend to... go this way. Especially so with Saren, who is more goal-oriented."
At the mention of Saren, Nihlus saw the corporal grit his teeth in anger.
There was a pregnant pause before Jenkins asked, "How did you… become okay with it…? Or handle it?"
Nihlus turned his gaze skyward and said, “I focus on the mission first and foremost. I don't let innocents die if possible... but sometimes I have to. I don't mourn their passing, I simply promise to improve.”
That was one of the reasons why he chose Shepard for Spectre candidacy. It was not only for her aptitude, skill, and experience, but also her drive to improve, not just for the sake of herself, but also for the sake of others. It was that drive which had allowed her the strength to hold out on Elysium alone until reinforcements arrived.
Because when something precious was in danger, men and women could summon strength unmatched to protect it.
Silence soon reigned over the train as the alien worked on the controls, with Shepard resting near it. Nihlus glanced and saw it taking parts from the destroyed rocket-wielding black geth to fix the train’s interface.
"Do think it intentionally threw the rocket at the controls?" Nihlus abruptly heard the gunnery chief ask the lieutenant.
He raised an inquisitive brow and discreetly turned to the lieutenant, who replied with confusion, "Huh? What did you say, Williams?"
“I’m just saying, it’s suspicious as hell that we encounter an alien on Eden Prime while it’s under attack by geth, and it then ‘accidentally’ destroys our way of getting the Prothean beacon. I think it’s trying to delay us,” the gunnery chief said speculatively.
"It hasn't acted against us, Williams," the lieutenant chided.
"Not yet, Lieutenant," the gunnery chief retorted.
He heard Jenkins muse suddenly, "I wonder what those two are talking about.”
The corporal stood and moved from his position and approached the lieutenant and gunnery chief.
He asked them, "What are you two talking about?"
The pair jolted with surprise and quickly turned to face the corporal with two different miens. The gunnery chief’s face was a scowl, whilst the lieutenant’s was of concern and mild vexation.
The two soldiers stared at one another, silently communicating before the lieutenant answered, "Williams was asking me about the alien."
"Oh! They're cool aren't they, Lieutenant? Them catching a rocket was freaking amazing!" the corporal remarked excitedly.
The lieutenant turned toward the gunnery chief with knit brows.
He quietly urged her to speak, to which she said, "I was talking with the lieutenant about how suspicious the alien is."
Her words promptly clipped the jolly that Jenkins had radiated.
"But... they helped us with the geth? They're a good guy."
The lieutenant sighed and appeared to settle himself into a conciliatory role as he said, "I get what you mean, Jenkins. But I also understand where Williams is coming from."
"But they haven't done anything to even suggest they would want to fight us!" Jenkins argued.
“But what if it’s just playing the long con? Get our trust and then bring back whatever info we’ve got to the geth?” the gunnery chief countered.
Nihlus turned toward the front of the train. The alien's armored back was turned to them, but he had an inkling that it could hear them.
“They saved Nihlus! They could’ve just killed him, but they saved him!” Jenkins retorted.
"So what? Again, long con! And what if it does fight us, what then? It can catch rockets with its bare hand, Corporal!" the gunnery chief snapped back.
But before either side could pursue the debate any further, the disembodied voice of an unknown woman cut through their chatter.
"He can hear ya, y'know?" the woman said with an accent, her voice originating from somewhere toward the front of the train.
The gunnery chief raised her rifle and searched for the voice before yelling, “Who’s there!”
Nihlus turned toward the alien to see a shining, amber-colored projection above its shoulder. The projection took the form of a semi-transparent tetrahedron, orbited by a segmented ring of the same color, with a single golden orb of light in the middle serving as an eye.
“Above his shoulder, dingus,” the projection called out.
"Who the hell are you?" the gunnery chief heatedly inquired whilst aiming her rifle at it.
"You're flagging a friendly, Williams. Stay your weapon," Shepard ordered – to which the gunnery chief complied – before her attention, too, was taken by the projection floating above the alien's shoulder
"Settle down. I'd rather not mop up another one of Makyr’s messes if I can help it," the projection warned with a tone of nonchalance. "Besides, I'm light and mind. Ya can't hurt me even if ya tried."
The lieutenant muttered, “Light and mind?” before asking, “Are you some kind of AI working for him?”
The construct turned to the lieutenant and said, "Now that's how you ask a question: nice and polite," before sending a demeaning glance toward the gunnery chief.
The digital entity then turned to the alien and jocosely said something in an unknown language, prompting it to growl. Whether it was one of amusement, a retort, or anything else, Nihlus hadn’t an inkling. Its growls all sounded the same.
The lieutenant's expression was marred with confusion as muttered, "What?"
The digital construct rocked her "head" backward in muted laughter. She then apologized, "Sorry. Been too long since I actually talked instead of negotiated with folk. When you travel with Makyr for so long, ya kinda forget that life's not just work and war. But where are my manners? I'm Junas, Cephalon of all trades of this hunk of bioferrous exoflesh, Makyr. Nice to meetcha! And sorry for my nephew’s manners."
Nephew? Now he was even more confused. At least he now knew the name of his savior. Makyr. He owed the alien a great debt of gratitude.
The lieutenant reiterated his question, "Are you some kind of artificial intelligence, Junas? Because you're too lively to be a VI."
Junas tore her “eye” from Makyr and shook her “head” before replying, "Nah. Cephalons ain't AI, and I don't even know what a VI is. Orokin really didn’t like AI, was taboo. If I was one, I'd be purged without a moment's notice."
He had little misgivings with AI. With the geth, he barely registered them as AI, considering them just soldiers, so he bore no genuine hatred for them. But the Council... they were not too keen with AI, and from what the construct said, the same was said for these “Orokin” who had created her.
He interjected to ask, "You say you are not an AI... and you mentioned being a Cephalon instead. So I must ask: what is a Cephalon?"
If he was informed of what exactly a Cephalon was, his report could allay any concerns the Council would naturally have upon her mention. Preventing their ire was the least he could do for the cohort of his savior.
But before she could answer, Makyr loosed a prolonged growl, causing the digital entity to turn toward it.
She nodded intermittently, humming occasionally in reply before she said, "Alright, I'll try.”
It was as if she had been conversing with Makyr, even though the alien’s long growl had long since ceased and it stared at her in silence.
He asked the construct, "Is he speaking to you on a private channel?"
Junas nodded and answered, “Yeah. Makyr doesn't like talkin’ on open broadcast. He told me to explain it in a way that only gives ya necessary info. Essentially, the minimum.”
Nihlus understood a need for secrecy.
"So then, what can you tell us?" he inquired.
The Cephalon let out a faux cough, as if to bring attention to herself, despite already having the attention of himself and Shepard and her team.
"A Cephalon is an organic being who has been transferred into a digital state. I was granted the… honor” —there was a nigh imperceivable strain in her voice at the word “honor”— “of being committed to the purpose of training warrior youths for my service to the Orokin Empire after my Dax battalion aided in the battle of Hull.”
"Is he one of those "warrior youths" you mentioned?" the gunnery chief asked with a scowl. "Are all they all like him?"
The Cephalon "shook" her head. "Makyr's not a Dax, he's a Tenno. And even then, he's unique amongst Tenno: he's my nephew."
More questions began to pile in Nihlus's mind as a few were answered, but he stowed those thoughts for now.
There were more poignant queries, such as, "What are Dax and Tenno?"
"The Dax were the vanguard of the Orokin Empire. They fought against whatever tide was against the empire during war and conflict. In peacetime, they were the proud guardians of great and minor cities, struttin’ above the commoners and walkin’ behind nobility like great statues of bronze and silver and honor," the Cephalon explained with a tinge of pride. She then said, "And the Tenno are great warriors who harness great power, heralding from an old war long buried. They protect our home system, maintaining equilibrium between factions to ensure no side seizes the whole star, alongside maintainin’ the safety of as many innocents as possible."
"You used past tense to describe the Dax while using present tense for the Tenno. Am I to guess the Dax were phased out by the Tenno?" Shepard inquired.
"Can’t answer that," the Cephalon flatly replied.
The corporal then interjected and said, "See, what'd I tell you, chief? The alien's a good guy!"
The gunnery chief merely gave a sidelong glance toward the corporal before replying, "Just because she says the alien is good doesn't mean the alien is good."
"She’s somewhat right. And Makyr doesn't like being called that..." Junas informed the corporal.
The corporal asked, "Why doesn't he like being called a good guy?"
"Makyr has an inconsistent transparency policy. He doesn't want to come off as arrogant and self-righteous when considerin’ the blood on his hands."
The alien abruptly growled to grab everyone’s attention before the train’s interface lit up with life. With a press from the alien, the train lurched forward.
With the train in motion, Shepard said to everyone, "Alright, let's cut the chatter. We have a Prothean beacon to recover and a rogue Spectre to catch."
—<|MASS EFFECT|>—
—<|WARFRAME|>—
This reminded Junas of her olden days as a Dax on the frontlines, the state of this planet. It wasn’t as terrible, but it certainly was comparable. And topping all the surprise: aliens.
Of all the things she had seen, an alien was the least expected. Sure, she had encountered and – Void forbid – felt the graze of the alien Void against her no longer existing flesh during voyages. But a true to form alien was wholly unexpected.
Though she did have a silent query: why was it humanoid? It was less alien and more raptor. She wondered whether it had been due to genetic tampering that the turians were akin to earthen raptors. Though that metallic carapace was quite dissimilar, so perhaps the description was not so apt.
As the train came to a halt at the boarding pad of the other platform of the spaceport, she quickly became aware of the tens of wretched machines deployed to defend the area through her sensors.
Those Void-damned machines were located atop the two walkways extending from the concrete valley, which was all confined within the large metal walls. She could also discern some hiding behind the railings on the two catwalks linking the walkways and the monorail’s two boarding pads all together, with one at the rear and the other at the front. She also keyed in on the bomb placed underneath the looping ramp of the boarding pad their train had halted at.
"Demolition charges!" the human commander, Shepard, called out.
"I hear more than one," the raptor-like alien, Nihlus, added.
"Don't fret, I'll handle it," she assured the group blasély before splicing into the controls of all the bombs simultaneously.
Of course, she was stonewalled, but with a pull of the cybersecurity and cyberwarfare subroutines she had managed to salvage before the fall of the Orokin, she bypassed the wall.
Junas was certain that if she was a Cephalon more inclined toward larceny, those bombs would have taken only a couple seconds to hack and disarm, but she wasn't. She wasn't even a proper ship Cephalon. She was a combat instructor—a teacher.
She waded through the various duds, misleads, and triggers of the bombs as the group of humans and the raptor-esque alien got off the train and moved up the looping ramp and onto the rear catwalk. She saw Makyr cut ahead of the group by bullet-jumping onto the left walkway directly from the train and was immediately met with a hail of gunfire.
Meanwhile, with the team of humans and one alien, she noticed a group of machines approaching their flank from the right walkway, marching across the rear catwalk.
She patched into their comms with little difficulty and notified them, “Enemies approaching your rear.”
She didn't even bother to turn her visual feed toward them as she heard them dispatch of those Seven-forsaken machines until she heard a sudden retaliatory hail of gunshots and turned to see that the team was pinned beneath a volley of suppressive fire.
Just then, she finished disarming the bombs and called to Makyr through comms, “They’re in a bit of trouble,” before she turned her visual sensors to see Makyr, engrossed with identifying the internals of a dead machine.
The young man was a fanatic for mechanical details, frequently being distracted by the manner in which Corpus automatons moved and Grineer machinery shifted.
Hearing her, he dropped a fuse and turned toward the team, who couldn’t even peek out from cover due to the intensity of the fire.
He bullet-jumped toward the rear catwalk, and with a one-two-three combo, decimated every machine with his Landslide punches, with some of their white fuel coating his arms.
He approached the group of soldiers, who emerged from behind the cover of a protruding wall of five connected to the larger wall of two confining the station, beyond which she discerned there to be a hanging platform emitting a noticeable energy signature. She presumed it to be originating from this “Prothean beacon” they had mentioned.
She summoned her avatar, placing it above Makyr’s shoulder before she instructed it to shrug as she casually stated, "Got rid of the bombs."
"Thanks, Junas!" the jubilant soldier, Jenkins if she recalled, thanked.
"Thank you," was the more calm gratitude from the fiery-haired Commander Shepard.
Junas then informed them, “Also, I think I got a ping on that artifact y’all are lookin’ for.”
“Where?” Nihlus inquired.
“Opposite side of this wall,” she answered.
“Then, let's move,” Shepard ordered.
The commander’s team moved up along the walkway, toward an arched entryway in the wall that led to a switchback ramp connecting down onto the hanging platform on the other side, with Makyr following them. Passing the threshold, she, alongside Makyr, Nihlus, and the fiery-haired Commander Shepard’s team, spotted it: the Prothean beacon.
"Is that it, Nihlus?" Shepard asked.
"It indeed is," the raptor alien replied.
The beacon was situated against the railings of the hanging platform, with a pair of tripod-mounted stakes placed near it, each affixed with the mutilated remains of a human corpse.
Abruptly, the abrasive woman yelled, “Commander, geth!” before firing a burst from her rifle at a wretched machine taking cover between a set of steel containers.
“Everyone, move it!” the commander cried before turning to order the abrasive woman, “Williams, watch our flanks.”
The soldier nodded and said, “Wilco, Commander!” as everyone else proceeded down the ramp down onto the hanging platform.
As Makyr was naturally the fastest among them, he bomb-rushed the Seven-forsaken machine whilst it exchanged gunfire and crushed it between the two containers it hid between by bashing his shoulder into the container. The sudden compression caused the machine’s white conductive fluids to be squished out the top… Terrible phrasing.
Afterward, those stakes with the malformed humans abruptly began retracting, prompting the attention of those most near it, such as the fiery-haired Shepard, the alien Nihlus, and her two subordinates.
"Damn, husks!" the looker exclaimed before firing some sort of telekinetic blast from his palm that hurled the malformed humans off the hanging platform.
Junas had seen some odd things in her time as both an instructor for Dax and as Makyr's versatile Cephalon. But never did she think she would witness an unaugmented human wield telekinesis.
Abruptly, the abrasive one cried out as she was shot in the shoulder, prompting everyone to scan the area before spying a singular geth several meters away, hiding behind one of the supports of the platform.
The white-pink soldier fell onto her back as blood poured from her shoulder before the machine that had created the wound was promptly deprived of function thanks to an expert shot in the head by the fiery-haired commander’s rifle.
"Keep your guards up. We fought geth pretending to be dead, so make sure they actually are," the commander said before dumping bullets into the machine until her rifle overheated and then walked toward the beacon.
Without a word, the jovial soldier moved up the ramp to attend to the abrasive soldier with the looker in tow, who examined the abrasive one's shoulder before she batted his hand away.
A frown of pain on her face, the abrasive woman said with a groan, "I'm fine, Lieutenant, it didn’t hit an artery."
"How many times do you intend on getting hit, Williams?" the looker asked before procuring some field dressing.
“Don’t blame me for that. Couldn’t see the bastard,” the abrasive one retorted before she felt a sting and jolted as the cloth was wrapped tightly around her shoulder.
The jovial one then chimed in and extended a hand before asking, "Need a hand?"
“Thanks, but no need, Corporal,” the abrasive woman said before she got up on her own.
Junas turned away from the trio to focus on the alien raptor and the commander, who placed a hand to her ear and began speaking through her comms, which she covertly intercepted.
"Normandy, the Prothean beacon is secure. But I don't know for how long, so hurry up and get here,” Commander Shepard reported.
Junas heard the "Normandy" blare through the fiery-haired woman's earpiece and reply, "We hear you, Commander. We'll be there in a few minutes tops."
"Junas," she suddenly heard Makyr's voice crackle through her secure commlink.
His voice was heavily modulated by scramblers to sound as menacing as possible without being overbearing.
Junas turned to Makyr and said through the commlink, "Yeah?"
"Discreetly scan the beacon, and extract whatever information is stored within their vessel when it arrives. I want to know of that beacon's purpose," he ordered.
"Sure thing, Makyr," she replied before engaging in an indiscernible scan of the artifact.
From her initial readings, the beacon appeared to serve a similar purpose to Ayatan sculptures: the retention of information. And it radiated eezo like hell—or known to the humans of this galaxy more as "element zero". But unlike Ayatans, the beacon was large and cumbersome. Even the largest civilian-use Ayatans were smaller— unless one was talking about the more exotic sculptures. Those things came in all sorts of weird shapes and sizes.
She tried to dig deeper into the artifact, but found her efforts rebuffed… No, not rebuffed. That phrasing suggested resistance. It was more like there was no access point; like her interface was incompatible with it.
Junas initiated another scan but found nothing new.
“Alien technology, so familiar yet so not,” she mused before redoubling her efforts.
"This is amazing. Actual working Prothean technology. It's unbelievable!" the good-looking one said as he and the abrasive woman approached the artifact.
"It wasn't doing anything like this when they dug it up. Nor when the research team were looking at it," the white-pink-armored woman remarked. "Something must've activated it."
The raptor alien asked the white-pink soldier, "What state was in it during excavation?"
As the group of alternate timeline humans and the alien conversed, Junas tuned them out. Her instruments were being piqued.
Noticing this, she muttered to herself, "This is odd..."
"What is odd, Junas?" Makyr’s crackling voice inquired.
Junas must've left the commlink open for Makyr to hear. Clumsy.
Speaking through the commlink, Junas replied, "The artifact's energy is intensifying. The data inside has been accessed just recently, and the door hasn’t been closed. There’s also some energy leaking due to damage"
Junas could feel Makyr's quirked brow as he then asked through the link, "Is it dangerous?"
"Well—"
Before Junas could answer, the artifact suddenly started reactivating, emitting an erratic green glow before beginning to vacuum the abrasive woman toward it.
“Shit,” she cursed before, from her periphery, the commander abruptly charged toward the woman.
The fiery-haired Shepard lunged into the air and grabbed her subordinate in a firm hug before tossing her aside as the artifact fully activated and seized the commander in a levitating hold.
The looker checked on the abrasive woman as she rolled toward him while the commander was fed an abundance of retained alien information, a process which Junas only knew about thanks to readings provided by auxiliary tools designed for Ayatans.
"Shepard!" the abrasive woman yelled before charging toward her commander.
But the looker stopped the woman, holding her back as he exclaimed, "No! It's too dangerous!"
"He's right, it's too hazardous for us to interfere!" the raptor alien concurred.
The cheery one looked at each of them before shouting, "We can't just stand here. We need to help the commander!"
It was then that Makyr abruptly approached the human commander.
Junas widened her nonexistent eyes and screamed, "Makyr, no! We don’t know what adverse reactions alien info can have on your mind!"
Whether it was the Void's tampering or the unique biology of his Warframe, or some other accursed factor, Makyr was locked in place upon grabbing the human commander. Not vacuumed and levitated like the fiery-haired commander. Locked in place. And as a flood of data streamed into him, Junas rapidly tried to find some form of shut down sequence for the Seven-damned artifact before it just exploded, causing the commander to be flung away and Makyr to collapse onto the floor prone.
"Makyr!" Junas cried before hovering over to him.
She felt her digital heart ache with worry as she scanned both his Warframe and his transference chamber. Her feeds told Junas that Makyr was physically fine, but the mind was a whole other beast. Makyr's cognitive readings were off the charts and Transference energy was surging.
He was connected to something other than his Warframe.
Junas watched as the commander's team worriedly approached her and Makyr, shouting, yelling. She could only hope that Makyr's mind was more monstrous than whatever was buried within the beacon.
—<|WARFRAME|>—
—<|MASS EFFECT|>—
Saren Arterius sat unrobed on his cold throne in a chamber made from large, fibrous strands of synthetic muscle as a makeshift medical geth tended to his recently-fused synthetic arm.
He grit his teeth as the unit painfully secured the arm more firmly into place and sat in silence, with the only other noise being that from the geth beside him.
He had denied anesthesia for many reasons, one of which was that the pain sharpened his mind. It allowed him to better plan his moves, such as the alien he had encountered on Eden Prime.
The strength it had displayed was beyond him, beyond even a squad of geth, so Saren would have to plan around it.
Annoying, but doable.
From behind, Saren heard the door to his chamber slide open, with the familiar clacks of Matriarch Benezia's heels sounding off as she approached.
Saren heard her cough into her hand to gain his attention before speaking, even though he already knew she was there, "We identified the ship that touched down on Eden Prime. The Normandy. A human Alliance vessel."
Saren placed his other hand against his face, slowly feeling a boiling anger rise within him as he was reminded of humanity. Greedy, wretched, putrid humanity. The ones who had stolen his brother, the ones who had defaced this universe with their unchecked ambition.
"It was under the command of Captain Anderson. They managed to save the colony."
An old foe. That name caused his vexation to spike.
"And the beacon?" Saren asked with a low tone.
"One of the humans may have used it."
Saren's anger heightened at the reveal, prompting him to leap from his seat and shove the makeshift medical unit away.
Saren tried to contain his anger, breathing deeply in and out, but to no avail. He snarled with anger and swung his new arm, catapulting the table that had been aiding the geth unit in securing said limb into the air. He then began destroying whatever else he could find in his chamber while boiling with rage, such as the medical geth unit, which he kicked and punched until there wasn’t a spot on its plate without a dent.
Saren then lunged at Matriarch Benezia. He cupped her face, intent on gouging her eyes before he restrained himself. He boiled with rage still, but he would not deprive himself of a pawn. He was mad, but not a beast.
Saren snarled and said, "This human... must be eliminated." He then released her before seating himself upon his throne. "Send out scouts. The alien on Eden Prime... I have a feeling that where the humans go, it shall follow."
—<|MASS EFFECT|>—