Chapter 25: chapter 25
took all of twelve minutes for the Grizzly to become operational, though there was still too many people to fit inside the tank because it was designed for a single driver (Jackson was already doing something in the driver seat since the engine had rolled over that was similar in a manner to Joker aboard the Normandy) a gunner and a vehicle commander.
Since Jackson was driving and they needed an engineer in the one vehicle that relied on heavy armor plating instead of shielding, Tali rode in the vehicle commander seat as Jason climbed behind the gunnery controls.
Leaving Jane to drive the Mako with John behind the guns and a bewildered Liara in the navigator seat wondering if something bad was about to happen due to the fact she had witnessed both Jason and Tali sprint for the Grizzly without a word.
"Alright everyone," Jane could be heard over the squad com net as Jason quickly familiarized himself with the turret controls as the massive door leading outside slid open slowly, "keep your eyes peeled for anything remotely Geth and give it a dose of whatever firepower you got, it's a long way to Peak 15 and odds are there could be a whole army between us and the lab."
"We'll provide heavy support from way back here Boss Lady," Jackson pitched over the net as the Grizzly reached its maximum speed, somewhere around sixty kilometers an hour in the heavy snow while the Mako zipped ahead of them to scout the area ahead.
The first heavy turret they encountered was easily blown apart by the Mako as Jackson caught back up to the smaller IFV to discover just what the Geth were throwing at them.
Jason sighed as the familiar silhouette of a Colossus appeared inside his imaging reticle as Jackson brought the tank to a halt, "Let them have it bro."
"Gladly."
It surprisingly took only one shot to penetrate the shielding and armor plating around the primary power core of the Colossus (which was located about four feet behind the neck joint and just about in the center of the metallic body) and destroy said Geth platform as the main heat exchangers discharged excess heat buildup.
"Sweet," Jason smirked at the display of a combusting Colossus from a single shot before Jackson decided to voice the question everyone was thinking, "hey Bossman?"
"Yeah?"
"Can we keep the tank please?"
A heavy sigh could be heard, "Sure, why not."
(The one thing that always pissed me off was that you could never have a real tank in any mission, aside from using it as fire support once, now they get to use a Grizzly, so deal with it.)
To express their apparent happiness at having a new toy to play with, they blasted another four heavy turrets, nine Armatures, sixty standard Troopers and another Colossus before they reached Peak 15 in a manner of thirty-seven minutes.
"I think I'm in love," Jackson said as he clambered out of the driver compartment once they reached Peak 15, Jane having denied them the right to simply blast the doors open and roll right into the loading bay where no doubt a whole shitload of Geth and cloned Krogan were waiting for them, "there are so many things I can do to this machine."
"Please keep it G-rated for the rest of our sakes please," Jason grumbled as he wiggled through what had to be the smallest hatch in existence, "I don't want to explain to Dr. Chakwas how you ended up injuring yourself on a tank."
Liara all but tumbled out of the Mako, looking a startling shade of green for a species that had a primary shade of blue for a skin color as everyone simply offered her sympathetic looks at her current predicament, which had been a rather enlightening experience when riding with Jane Shepard as a passenger.
In a combat zone.
Jason gave her some motion sickness tablets and a shot of anti-nausea medication he just so happened to have carried in his medical kit (who was he kidding, he'd brought it along for himself) in order for her to even walk unaided as everyone grouped near the door leading into the facility, which if memory served meant that they would find a welcoming committee.
"Holy shit we have Geth!" Jackson called out as he dove for cover because he had been the guy on point for this adventure as everyone else either began shooting back or ducking behind something that could stop bullets.
Instead of the usual handful of Krogan and a noticeable presence of Geth, this time around Insanity mode had been activated because there was three Destroyers, two Drones, seven Krogan armed with brutish looking shotguns, at least five Hoppers playing merry Hell with motion trackers and coms and somewhere in the ballpark of twenty Geth Shock Troopers with a pair of heavy security turrets pointed towards the only entrance into the facility.
"It appears that they have upgraded security," Jason commented as the whole squad retreated to a safe distance (around the corner) and waited for the first unfortunate hostile to step around the corner, "I seriously doubt all of these things fit inside of those crates."
"Methinks a dropship or seven slipped past the scanners after they got here," Jackson was kind enough to add as he handed over one of his demo charges to his smaller twin, "want to soften them up for us?"
By then Jason had primed a demo charge in each hand and was slowly creeping forward, "Planned on it, now cover me."
John simply nodded his head in approval while Jane and Liara lit up with biotics as Jason tensed up for a toss as he peeked around the corner.
A massive flashlight three feet above his head stared back.
"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" With that, Jason tossed both charges blindly around the corner as he backpedaled, hearing at least one attach to something with a metallic clank before he thumbed the detonation command prompt on his omni-tool, a really handy feature now that he thought about it.
Fire, smoke, what could only be charred pieces of Krogan, and assorted bits of twisted metal soared past before John lead the charge around the corner and into what had to be the most well thought-out killzone the team had ever encountered. Even though the Geth and by extension the Krogan, had been cleaver enough to cook up this ambush they had forgotten one tiny detail as various programs simultaneously agreed on one simple factoid as they witnessed a team of organics charge their positions.
Never send the meat shields and largest units with the biggest guns first, if they're opponent happens to have a large supply of explosives on hand and is willingly to use them, then the ambush turns into a massive clusterfuck.
XXX
"Do you think that was the last Geth we'll be seeing?" Liara asked once they stopped at the security console in order to pass through the security checkpoint.
"Doubt it," John answered after he finished ransacking a nearby locker for assorted goodies, "they would need more than that to overtake this facility before a distress call was sent out."
"Unless they already had agents planted here," Jason replied as he stepped back from the security terminal, "no doubt someone unlocked the doors and disabled the security alarms before they arrived."
Jackson simply grunted as he adjusted the massive load of Geth parts on his back, "Since when am I the pack mule for crying out loud?"
They, meaning Jason and Tali, had grabbed several weapons, components that were not blasted to smithereens and other odds and ends from the miniature scrapyard the team had created after a ten minute firefight with several helpings of high explosives and gunfire, most of which went into Jason's backpack while the larger pieces that couldn't fit or were too heavy for Tali to even lift where given to Jackson.
The total was about three early model Geth plasma shotguns, (that were also going to be utilized later when the Rachni came pouring out of the cracks like a flood) two functioning rocket launchers, some kind of tactical assault rifle they had never encountered before and some larger pieces, like two power cores taken from the wreckage of the Destroyers, that if combined with the proper amount of explosives could potentially make a bomb big enough to wipe out say, an entire wing in a laboratory?
Jackson knew why he was toting half the stuff on his back, but he kept up with the whole whining aspect of the job, though Jason knew it wasn't an act either as the team entered the security checkpoint.
"With enough time we can understand the capabilities of the Geth," Tali exploded into a mini rant as everyone waited for the decontamination cycle to commence, "after we get back to the ship and run diagnostics on everything."
"We might even catch a break and find out where Saren is hiding if these units also had access to that information," that caught the attention of both John and Jane, "which would be highly probable considering that Geth do not consider some units to have higher classification than the rest, they share everything on their network."
"Wonderful," the sarcasm dripping from that single word was picked up by everyone while Jackson brought up the rear, "now if only we could properly interrogate one of them, we might get something."
Jason face palmed, hard, "That would never work and besides, I can probably rig a couple of those weapons up so we can fire them."
"I like the sound of that." Jackson giggled like a madman before noticing the look he was getting from Jane and stopped doing that.
The first door they reached proved to be uneventful, unless you counted half a dozen regular Geth units that were completely and utterly annihilated under the coordinated efforts of four humans, an Asari and a Quarian armed with a deadly prototype drone, but that wasn't the real issue as they spread out and scavenged any supplies laying around.
This is the part where we all wished Wrex was part of the ground team.
"Did you guys hear something?" Jackson had to ask the most cliché question of all while Jason did his best to avoid rolling his eyes as everyone stopped and listened for a moment.
Sure enough, a faint thudding sound could be heard, similar to someone (or something) crawling through an air duct or across a metal floor.
"Eyes open, we're not alone here." John advised as everyone circled up in the center of the room and continued looking for the source of the noise that was getting closer.
The signature shriek was all the warning they got before a giant lobster crossed with a shrimp mutated to the size of a small car came crashing through a nearby window with a pair of tentacles waving around next to its head.
"What the Hell is that thing?" Jackson voiced as several floor and ceiling panels began falling away to reveal more of the creatures, along with twice as many smaller green ones that were crawling towards them.
"Don't care, open fire!" John shouted as he did just that, catching the first Rachni warrior in the head and frowned as it simply kept coming.
Jason was glad for several reasons, not only was his combo weapon ideal for dealing with the Workers, swarms of them were rushing towards the squad from every direction to deliver their suicide attack and the much larger Warriors, that were sitting from afar launching acid with their tentacles. That and the fact he also had biotics, which were perfect for sending several of the charging Warriors into the air or into stasis so they were sitting ducks for anyone else.
Chatika Vas Pus Mk II couldn't care less either as Tali sent her drone on a rampage, Jason waited long enough to summon forth Maximus, the pair of drones unleashing a barrage of attacks as well as using the rocket grenade feature against multiple targets while Jackson was too busy doing what he did best when it came to hostile combatants they encountered.
Introducing the sharp pointy end of a bladed weapon to various parts of the Rachni anatomy when one would venture too close for comfort while shredding the rest with gunfire and grenades.
"Watch out for the little ones, they explode!" Jane warned after one got close enough to detonate close to her, but fortunately her shields took the brunt of the damage and left her relatively unscathed before she tossed several of the Warriors back with her biotics as John decided that his sniper rifle simply wasn't going to cut it in this fight and pulled out his sidearm and a grenade.
Liara was proving her worth as a natural adept with biotics as she gave up on the idea of using her pistol and attacked with her biotics, using singularities to thin out the number of attacking Rachni and providing that sudden boost to the single Warriors that slipped past.
Once the flow of available targets tapered off and everyone regrouped, Jane was the first to break the silence.
"What kind of oversized cockroaches are these people growing down here?" Jane mused as she was busy nudging a nearby corpse with her foot.
"Rachni," Jason said after he ran a scan over one of the nearby corpses, causing everyone to freeze at his next words, "these are Rachni Commander."
"Rachni?" John sounded confused, "Weren't they wiped out by the Krogan thousands of years ago?"
"They were, but I'd venture a guess someone decided to bring them back from the dead," Jackson said as he swapped out ammo mods for something a little more effective, say a Ripper mod, "think Saren has something to do with this?"
Jane paused for a moment, "He does have a large investment in Binary Helix here on Noveria and his most trusted confidant came here with a small army of Geth, your guess is as good as mine."
"Well if we are fighting Rachni," John said as he lifted his omni-tool and punched a couple commands, "than we better get some help."
Wrex answered after a few seconds, "Shepard."
"Urdnot, we have Rachni, how do we deal with them?" John was straight and to the point as everyone crowded around the commander to hear what Wrex had to say.
"Rachni?" Wrex appeared to be confused before his eyes narrowed, "Are you certain?"
For an answer, John simply waved his arm around for Wrex to see the aftermath of the last ambush before bringing his omni-tool back up to his face, "I am, any advice?"
"Don't stop shooting," everyone sweat dropped at this before Wrex decided to throw in his two cents, "my people have learned that Rachni always attack in overwhelming numbers and are only vulnerable around the head and they don't like fire."
Next time I build a flamethrower instead of a grenade launcher before the second installment, Jason vowed to himself.
"Have the rest of the ground team prepped and waiting for my orders," John ordered, having notified Pressley and Joker as well, "be sure they come packing heavy ordinance and extra supplies when I give the word and send the Council a message that we have a minor bug problem to take care of."
"A bug problem?" Jane snorted, "Well this day just keeps getting better and better."
"We still got a job to do people," John deadpanned as he took point, "and it just got interesting."
Meh, I'd say +5 Renegade.
XXX
"Why is everything either turned off or always broken when we come along?" Jackson asked rhetorically as Liara and John followed him to the roof where the communication landlines needed to be turned back on, "I mean what the Hell?"
"No doubt a tactic to stall anyone coming after them," Liara pointed out as the elevator arrived at the roof as the doors slid open, "it was rather effective sabotage."
"Take out the VI that controls a majority of the functions on this station and you effectively stop any force dead in its tracks until they either find another way around the obstacle or repair the VI." John replied as the hair raising shriek was enough to stop all three of them in their tracks.
"Oh Hell, looks like we got bugs." Jackson sighed as he tossed a grenade, "wonder how the others are doing fixing the generator?"
"Probably got the same problem we do right now," John cursed as a blob of acid sailed past his helmet, "so focus on those things dammit!"
XXX
"I think we found the rest of the Geth," Jason deadpanned as a rocket obliterated the machinery he had been crouching behind a moment ago before he leaned out from cover and launched a Carnage shot towards the offending Rocket Trooper, "just a guess though."
"I fell strangely compelled to agree with you," Tali pitched from the safety of the console booth where she was taking cover even as she blasted another Hopper to bits, "they must have landed more troops than we thought because this is ridicules."
"Less talking, more shooting lovebirds!" Jane called out.
Jason shrugged and went back to the oh so tiring work of demolishing groups of hostile robots with guns, biotics, grenades and assistance from his drone.
Just another day at the office.
XXX
"Generator repaired and the communication landlines are now operational," Jane spoke softly to the VI (Mira or something like that?) before she glanced over at her tech gurus who were busy doing something off to the side with a few pieces of Geth hardware, "may we proceed to Peak 15 now?"
"Access granted, please utilize the tram in order to reach Peak 15 Labs, have a pleasant day."
John snorted, "Stupid computers, should've just thrown a grenade at it and walked the rest of the way."
"Now honey," Jane replied sweetly as she nudged her husband with her free elbow, "we can't break the computer we worked so hard to fix and none of us would last outside in that weather."
"Fine," John whined before putting his serious face back on and walked over to where everyone was waiting, "we need to get moving."
Jason looked up from what he was doing and lifted a finger, "Need two minutes Commander."
"For what?"
Jackson literally giggled like a maniac as he jumped up and down, "He is doing his thing with a captured weapon he took from some Geth."
John sobered up at that thought as he watched the man in question tinker with the unmistakable weapon, "Will it work?"
Tali opted to answer this time as she used a diagram brought up on her omni-tool, "We have been able to hack though the security firewalls in the programming in order to input manual commands into the firing selector systems and even the targeting programs as well."
"Short answer." John grunted while Jane rolled her eyes.
"She means yes John," Jane rubbed her hands together in glee, "so what is it this time? Another sniper rifle or a machine gun?"
Jackson looked like his face was about to split in half from the massive shit eating grin on his face, "Even better Boss Lady, a machine gun with an extended ammunition canister he took off a Destroyer, and if he gets it to work properly, even you can fire it."
Dead silence.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone