Massive Disaster 5-28
Whiteout static swallowed the valley behind them, the rear axle rolling over the last flashlight as it sparked back there in the snow. Nobody bothered to look back at the disaster behind them.
Zedd definitely didn’t.
Granted, that was mostly because looking back meant unclenching from the grab rail and the two of them had been through some things together by now.
Ahead, the storm thinned enough as the sigh of Peak 15 came up out of the mountainside in stacked gray slabs of hard-angled steel and concrete — enough of it to probably shrug off an orbital assault.
No windows on the lower approach and no signage he could spot. Nothing about it looked corporate or anything like a standard research hub. Just over-industrialized architecture clenched like a fist and reinforced to hell and back.
Zero aesthetic. He knew the play, though. This wasn’t just overcompensation at all. You only built like this when the thing inside was worth far more than anything else. ExoGeni built cheap and hid the receipts on purpose. Noveria had specced this by pouring money into the monolithic face and thick stom-baffled walls, just daring anyone to get in and ask why.
"Well." Zedd dragged a thumb over the silver band of his ring-form CAD, the blue gem still cold under his touch. "That doesn't look ominous at all."
"You say that like this place has done anything except get worse." Ashley didn’t bother pulling her attention away from the gunnery yoke, the upper turret of the Mako whining as massive dual servos adjusted the mass accelerator cannon toward the walls they approached.
"...Fair."
“Sensors are clean.” Tali announced from the other side of Liara, fingers blurring over the haptic interface of her omni. “No geth telemetry on the immediate grid, Spectre Shepard. However, it must be known that there is a local jamming field. Assuming the facility’s internal shielding isn’t interfering…”
“Odds are good, the flashlights are waiting on us.” Jane didn’t wait for the quarian to finish the qualification, gauntlets resting heavy on the Mako controls.
As if to confirm Jane’s guess, hydraulic locks from the building in front of them disengaged with a deep thud that echoed out upon sensing the approach of the Mako. Oversized interlocking plates cycled open with a slow, expensive confidence, revealing a cavernous, dimly lit vehicle bay perfectly shielded from the raging blizzard outside.
Jane rolled them over the threshold at a crawl, heavy tires echoing against the floors of the entry bay. Environmental scrubbers kicked on before they even came to a stop, a rush of chemically treated air blasting ice off the hull as the outer doors ground shut behind them.
In no time at all, the shrieking wind of the valley was severed from the inside. After miles and miles of screaming white and explosions, the quiet corporate interior lot was a stark difference that just couldn’t compare; heated flooring under snow-melt grates, holo-signage glowing polite white nothing, and a welcome display the size of a shuttle running a looping animation.
The Mako's side-hatches released with a sharp pop, Zedd not even waiting for the ramp to finish dropping.
“Free!” Vaulting straight out of the cramped coffin, his boots hit polished corporate heated tile, arms up as he stretched tall. Then he took a step back, turning his head to actually look at the Alliance transport. "...damn."
The thing looked like it had been through… well, exactly what it had been through. Scorch marks trailed up the left flank, spall scars in tiny dime-sized craters all over the forward plate and one fender hanging on out of what Zedd could only assume was simple loyalty. Strut mount a little fucked up, too.
‘Fucked up’ was being generous as, damage aside, the whole front of the Mako was caked in a slurry of still-melting ice and geth fluids. “Poor girl…”
"She'll buff out." John hopped down, Kai right in front of the male Shepard, the man in blue giving the fender a look.
The Commander got a raised eyebrow for that. “...if you say so."
“He’s right.” Jane Shepard popped up next to her brother. "Alliance maintenance crews have seen worse."
Zedd’s mouth hung open for a moment, eyes narrowed as he turned his back on the vehicle with a sigh. "That's really not the flex you think it is."
Kai Leng lined up at his side, Zedd shifted his attention to the secondary set of interior doors at the far end of the entry space — overlayered and overburdened glass with a thin layer of frosting that someone probably hoped was aesthetic. Reinforced with a kinetic lattice, the logo of Noveria was etched cleanly in the center, the iconography splitting apart as those same doors slid open — moving with the same unhurried arrogance as the exterior gates.
That arrogance lasted all of three seconds before it exploded apart.
Doors blew outward off expensive rails, that fancy logo suddenly nothing against a blinding shower of glass shrapnel and vaporized steel. By the time debris even landed, the gap was suddenly full of flashlights.
"Contact!"
Zedd wasn’t sure who shouted it out, the word almost swallowed up under streams of white plasma fire in a fraction of a second. Holographic signage shattered into pixel-laden static, the marble underfoot cracked and cratered as shardfire met it.
“Son of a-!” Ashley was the last to drop from the Mako, but the soldier had her Avenger up firing with the rest of them as Geth poured through the breach. The woman in the pink-white hardsuit dropped to the deck plating, a shattered fern planter her choice of cover. "Where the hell is corpo-security?"
“Gone!” And so was Zedd.
Boots scrambled for traction on slick tile for all of a second as he dove hard. Twenty feet cleared in under a second, his body found cover behind a marble-topped security kiosk as a geth rocket detonated against the spot he’d just been standing on.
“Evac was probably the first option the second they spotted synths.” He held his gun high as he slid in deeper against the marble, a storm of pulverized tile and marble buffeting his Mantle as his aviators strobed square targeting reticles through the smoke faster than the fog could hide them. Eighteen.
No — at least twenty-four platforms, more drones behind them and something even bigger in the back throwing a shadow he didn’t like the shape of. Fuck! “I told you Noveria’s a fucking paper tiger!”
“Evac?” Ashley barked again, voice sounding out over the crack of a kinetic barrier overwhelmed by fire, rifle still spitting bursts. “This is their whole job!”
“Rent-a-cops don’t die for hazard pay, William!” Zedd leaned out, Full Stop bucking off with two blue packets — first one popping a trooper’s shields in one shot, the second one caving its chest in around a fist-sized nothing before the frame dropped. “If there’s one thing I respect about them, it’s that.”
“And that’s the one?”
Zedd made a face as he fired again. “Hey, one of us is wearing bubblegum pink armor right now!”
“It’s my favorite color!” The answer came with no hesitation, Williams still firing hard. “What about it?”
Wrex just laughed, the krogan charging past them all to hit the geth line head-on. A half ton of armor and muscle moving at a sprint that ate the space in seconds. His krogan-sized Scimitar roared on the way in, two blasts from it that would’ve dislocated a human shoulder instead tearing apart a clean geth formation into scrap.
If flashlights could panic, these things would be as return fire hit the krogan’s barrier and the krogan refused to care.
The red hammer sat untouched on Wrex’s back, something Zedd was thankful for. With Pride’s red casing riding mag-locked between Wrex’s shoulders, that meant the old krogan knew enough not to swing that thing in an enclosed lot. A biotic-enhancing superweapon would make this fight a math problem where everybody under five hundred years old and not built with redundant organs was on the wrong side of.
Through the smoke and shardfire, Kai Leng made his move into the heart of it. Unlike Wrex, he moved like a rumor instead of a landslide, the former N7 a blur of lethal motion through the path of hot weapons. His sword was already wet with coolant as he went through the geth flank in tight arcs; deflect, step inside, sever, with the Nightletter coughing its quiet shots into optics in between motions.
A trooper made the mistake of drawing Kai’s attention, turning directly to face him with its plasma rifle aimed.
Then its arms found the floor with the weapon falling from them, head flying as it tracked nothing.
Without breaking momentum, Kai brought his left hand up, the Nightletter SMG spitting a stream of blue KEPs directly into the optical sensor of a second platform flanking him.
"Left side! Drones!" Tali ducked behind the front tire of the Mako, warning enough for John as the biotic Commander raised a Wonderwall across the middle lane. Plasma splashed off it in blue sheets, the drones attempt at a flank stymied.
Jane fired back at a dozen flying enemies, only half that number actually close enough for her shotgun to have any effect.
"Hold! I have the drones!" Smartly, the asari didn’t go for her Acolyte pistol, the scientist stepping out from behind the cover of the Mako as both her hands went out. A cluster of drones swung wide around a support pillar and Liara T’Soni caught all six in one gesture. The left flank no longer belonged to the geth as a biotic Singularity closed around them like a hand, a follow-up Warp from the good doctor turning all six into an impromptu fireworks display.
The impact rang off the walls, what remained of the drones hitting powdered marble as sparking trash.
“Sabotage is holding!” Tali’s voice shouted over their comms as a geth platform mid-advance froze like it had been slapped, shields popping in a flash. That only lasted a second before the one beside it jerked to the side and shot its head off. “You have maybe twenty seconds of them being very confused.”
“Twenty’s a lifetime!” Laughing at the opportunity, Jane Shepard spent it like one.
The Vanguard came off the Mako’s far side in a streak of blue motion — Charge erasing space fast enough to make Wrex’s sprint into a turtle’s pace. Her barrier flared back to full as she hit the center of what used to be a formation with explosive impact, her Katana making itself heard point-blank as a trooper lost everything above the waist.
The Spectre pivoted through the recoil, the shotgun and her boots keeping brutal time as her brother pushed up the middle behind her. Without even so much as a look back, he pressured the flanks into her lanes and she made those same lanes cease to exist.
Zedd worked the edges, gun out and firing as fast as he could. A rocket drone exploding above his head thanks to a burst from Ashley, he spun and delivered shot after shot into the small army of drones still pouring toward them. With the twins holding the middle and Wrex being Wrex, his job was mostly arithmetic — something he didn’t mind at all as he dropped two packets into a trooper aiming for Tali’s flank.
“Big one!”
John’s voice sounded out as the shadow in the doorway resolved into a Geth Destroyer stomping through.
“Saw it!” Jane answered back, Katana up.
No one held back, troopers and drones mostly forgotten as a dozen rounds went into the thing’s knee before it even cleared the threshold. The joint gave in, ruined and ragged, and the second the Destroyer went down—
“HA!”
—Wrex’s Scimitar made sure it stayed down.
“Big one down!” Jane shouted off again. “Count!”
“Three lef-!” The count changed as Kai took one from behind with Rogue Spark, Liar holding another upside down with a biotic Lift before Ashley put another full burst up and down the kicking synth’s spine.
Which left one.
A single trooper made it to the far wall, one arm gone and the other with no weapon as it dragged itself upright against the welcome display with its remaining hand. A holo looped with odd cheer over its head: SAFETY IS EVERYONE’S RESP—
Wrext put his whole fist through the geth’s chest and kept going, both the trooper and the display behind it shattering in a sray of glass, sparks and shareholder optimism as the holo died to nothing.
"Heh." Wrex shook coolant off his knuckles, looking back at the ruined lot and the crew he’d been fighting with. "Nice lobby."
“Well, it was.” Zedd shrugged, well aware Binary Helix could eat the cost.
Past the blown interior doors, the actual facility opened up in a wall of darkness.
Emergency strips glowed low and dim along a corridor that ran back into the mountain further than Zedd had any level of care for or interest in, cold air breathing out of it slow and steady like the building had lungs and bad intentions.
No movement on thermals.
No movement was worse than movement.
At the very least, movement he could shoot.
So, so comforting. He bit down the words, one hand racking the Full Stop open to vent — blue steam hissing off the coils and curling up past his glasses.
Jane stepped over a twitching geth chassis without looking at it, shotgun in hand and eyes on the dark. "Inside."