I wish I could say the journey went without a hitch, so I will. Yes we did have to fight through a veritable army of geth to get to the tram controls. And yes there was even a Geth Prime unit, larger and more durable then your standard geth trooper. That sort of fight would be tough for anyone, and that’s without them taking cover down the entirety of a single path only cargo tram. It would be like breaking into a building where the owner was handed heavy weaponry, told where you were coming from and allowed to call his neighbors to hunker down and wait at the top of the stairs. Honestly it would have slaughtered many attempts to attack it, it would have been a huge hitch in our plans.
Except we were fucking awesome. Shepard and Kaidan were using biotics to lift troopers up and out of cover, to be blasted apart by Ashley and I. My new stinger pistol would drop troopers in a single shot if I hit the eye stalk, and concentrated fire from 4 trained soldiers was hard for anyone to withstand, no matter how durable. Even when the Geth Prime arrived and posed a potential threat, Shepard just launched one of her new grenades below its feet and blasted it off the tram and into the open pit that served as its tracks.
So in little more than 3 minutes we reached the end of the tram, where the controls sat. I took the controls and in moments had us powering down towards the opposite end of the line. It was a couple kilometers away, but not the trams were quick and we would arrive without too much delay.
“Okay commander. Operating on the idea everything goes according to plan, we find the beacon at the dock up ahead. What’s the plan after that? Do we have a protocol?” Ashley is the one to ask the questions, being new to our group and not part of the initial debrief it makes sense she was curious about our plan.
“Plan stays simple. We secure the area surrounding the beacon, Jenkins investigates and tries to determine if its undamaged or operational, and we call the Normandy for full evac.” Shepard's response is brief and to the point, easy to understand no matter what level of military training someone had, but there was one problem.
“Um Commander? I love the confidence you have in me there but I know jack squat about Prothean tech. I might… might be able to determine if it's on. But that would be the limit, I don’t even know how it's supposed to work in the first place. I'd have no basis for figuring out if it's working right or wrong. Best you’ll get is on or off. And that might be a stretch.” I don’t know where the confidence in my abilities is coming from but we were just going to have to evacuate the beacon onto Normandy and leave. Not that it would last long enough for that, but I figured Id clear up that confusion first.
“You’re an engineer though? I mean can’t you figure out how roughly how it operates? It all runs on electricity start and move on from there?” Wow. Just wow. Sometimes I forget that Commander Shepard can be a total jarhead. Full blown Navy officer shining through there. I can see from Kaidan’s look that he at the very least understood how just, wrong, the attempt was. Meanwhile Ashley had a similar look of confusion on her face to how I could be an engineer but not be magically able to decode and understand alien tech on sight.
“Wow… like wow is all I have to say. Spoken like a true Jarhead Shepard, that’s just. I mean its not even an oversimplification its just straight wrong.” I laugh a little to let her know I’m only teasing with the harshness of my words. “While yes the device almost certainly runs on electricity, or more accurately it requires energy to function, that's pretty much all I can guarantee. I could maybe assume whatever coding it has runs on a binary base but even that could be wrong. I haven't even studied existing Prothean tech before, so as far as I’m concerned that would be like me asking you to pry open that upgrade on your omni tool and explain to me how and why it works.” Shepard gives a look and opens her mouth to respond before I cut her off.
“And you're doing it without having had me explain all of the steps beforehand. Totally blank slate you have no clue what it does, it’s just there and you know it glows when it's plugged in.” Shepard closes her mouth as I hear a small chuckle come from Kaidan which causes me to begin to laugh as well. Shepard eventually joins in and even Ashley. For a single moment, there on that tram moving hundred of kilometers an hour towards our destination we take a second to forget where we are. That the colony around us burns and that countless lives had and will continue to die with us able to do anything about it. It was one of those laughs that trails off into somber silence as we realize why we were laughing had nothing to do with the humor of what was said.
The silence sits for a moment, weighing on us, before a sight comes into view at the edge of the tram line. Two bridges and a ramp that would lead to tram access. Our destination. As the tram begins to slow down on its approach we can see that it’s crawling with geth troopers. A cluster of 3 our blown apart by rifle fire as our tram stops in place just next to where they had been crouched over a device. Giving it a quick scan I realize exactly what it is.
“Shit, these are demolition charges. Geth must have set them, my tool is reading three others.”
“Fuck what’s the blast radius.” Ashley asks the question loud and clear.
“4- maybe 500 clicks. Enough to wipe most of the colony off the map.” I can't help but let the panic rise in my throat for a moment, what explosives of this size would mean if they went off.
“Copy. Kaidan, Ashley. Stay and disarm this device, then head up and take the north bridge to join us on the other side. Disarm any you come across. Jenkins with me. We will take the south bridge and do the same.” Shepard takes charge, issuing orders and we fall into line quickly moving fast. Ashley takes cover and provides defensive fire as Kaidan begins to disarm the first device.
At the same time Shepard and I move fast, practically sprinting up the ramp and across the bridge. We don't see any other geth immediately, and as we cross the bridge I call out. “Got 1 on the scanner here, left after the bridge.”
Shepard keeps her shotgun out, her answer to my callout being to charge to the right fast and hard, clearing the corners quickly while I move right behind, pistol out. The two geth standing guard over the device didn't even have time to raise their weapons before our combined fire turned them into nothing more than a pile of scrap metal. I quickly bent over the machine and with my omni-tool had the device disarmed in little more then 10 seconds.
“We have visual on a second device, end of the north bridge. Engaging hostiles.” Kaidan’s voice called out over the radio as we stepped back out from the corner the bomb had been placed into. We could see a half dozen geth troopers moving down the narrow catwalk towards us, cutting us off from where we could see Ashley and Kaidan clashing with their own geth units lying in cover. It was then that I saw a red laser light up across the catwalk, focusing itself on Shepard's chest.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Sniper!” I give the callout on the open channel. Hitting shepard with a shield boost moments before a thick bolt of plasma slams into her chest and knocks her off her feet.
“Shit. Commander you good?” I'm unable to step fully out of cover, but I focus my arm down towards where the sniper had clustered with two other troopers hitting the pile with an overload. I wasn’t close enough to see if it dropped them permanently, but the laser fell out of sight and for a moment it looked like it cleared up before a barrage of plasma fire slammed into the stone pillar I had been using as cover. It was concentrated and judging by the sound they were using the fire as cover while they moved closer. I was preparing to step out and try and engage or at least stall their approach when I hear a cry of rage from my right.
Where the commander had been knocked on off her feet earlier she suddenly came charging through, letting out a battle cry as she did so. I could feel the air itself become heavier as mass effect fields closed in around her. The geth trooper not fast enough to take cover or open fire is surrounded into a field and pulled towards her, only to have its head blown clean off its body from the round of her shotgun. She keeps the mass effect field up however, holding the trooper body in the air like some kind of shield as she continued charging forward. Not stupid enough to miss that kind of que, I fall into step behind her, pistol out and firing at any geth that tries to poke its head out and engage our charging unit from range.
As we pass the pillars and crates where troopers had taken shelter they are blown to pieces at the end of the commanders shotgun. As we reach the end of the walkway we see the cluster where the sniper had taken cover, fried from my earlier overload, and leaning over another bomb.
I don’t wait for Shepard to speak, I instead get right to work disarming the device as she continues her charge slamming into the flank of units that Ashley and Kaidan were engaging. And by the time I finish disarming the device I was working on and catch up to them Kaidan is finished disarming his as well. There are geth corpses splattered all around us, and while both Ashley and Shepard show scorch marks on their armor that acknowledge they had taken fire, we were all still alive and well.
“That’s all the explosives, at the very least we stopped them from blowing up the colony themselves.” I say, trying to make my personal thanks for that effort clear to the group here.
“That’s our job man, nothing to it.” Kaidan slaps an arm on my shoulder, giving me a nod of reassurance as he does.
“Alright. Next we secure the beacon, and then we get the hell out of here.” Shepard brings us to attention once more and we give a nod, turning to where the catwalk moved into a larger stone structure. An open balcony above a larger flat landing pad, large enough to house most classes of human vessel. We don’t have time to take the sight in though, as too my disgust a wave of Husks charges from the pad towards us. It’s not a challenge, or even a threat really. From our position on the higher balcony we just mow them down before any can even reach the stairs. It has the sole purpose of pissing me off even further. All these people impaled while still alive and having their bodies mutilated into these monstrosities.
We move down the steps onto the dock itself, and from there we get our first few of what was left of the Eden Prime colony. I was the only one who knew what it was supposed to look like, but the area extending past and below this elevated dock was massive areas of farmland and housing, a good third of the colony resided within view of this dock. And it was all ash. The reaper landing or taking off in this location left the area below it practically disintegrated, almost entirely in ruins.
“It’s gone… they just. There’s nothing left.” I leaned against the rail as I looked across it. Shepard and Kaidan on my flank, Ashley standing a step further away.
“Hey, it may be a big chunk of colony, but it’s not like that was all of Eden Prime.” Kaidan speaks, trying to comfort me for what I could see of my home.
“Yeah. Over half the colonies structure is intact, and good portion of the people probably managed to survive as well. The colony will survive this.” Shepard chimes in. Trying to help in her paragon way by the sounds of it, but it rings hollow.
“My parents lived down there. In the ash.” The silence that follows is heavy, and not one that can be easily broken.
“Hey, there's a chance they sti-'' Ashley says, trying to join in on comforting me but I cut her off.
“Don’t. Let’s just find that damn beacon and get out of here.” I turn away from the group and begin walking to the next dock platform, the one where I know the beacon is sat.
I stare at it for moment, before turning back to call out to the others I had found it. I need not have bothered as I can see Kaidan and Shepard both behind me, having maintained a respectful distance, but following behind me. The beacon was glowing a faint green on the end of the dock, a large metallic spire that stuck 15 feet up into the air. It was made out of an unfamiliar material, a metal I didn't recognize. Prothean clearly.
“Normandy, the beacon is secure. Request immediate evac.” Shepard speaks into her comm, a private link to Joker and Anderson aboard the Normandy
“This is amazing. Actual working Prothean technology. Unbelievable!” Kaidan is staring at the device like a kid in a candy store and I can’t blame him. We did share an interest in tech, although mine was just more involved than his.
“It wasn’t doing anything like that when they dug it up.” Ashley sounded wary, cautious of what the strange device was doing.
“Something must have activated it.” Kaidan was pulling out his omni tool and running a scan of the device.
“Roger, Normandy. Standing by-” I can hear Shepard talking to the ship as suddenly the machine begins to spark and flash green. Looking down I realized I had been stepping closer to investigate the device myself. What the hell, it was supposed to be Kaidan why did I walk forward like an idiot.
I feel Shepard's arms slam into my back before tossing me away from the device, just before that green energy lashed outward enveloping her and lifting her off the ground.
“Shepard!” I feel myself shouting instinctively, and jump to my feet and step forward again but Kaidan throws an arm around me keeping me in place.
“No! Don’t touch her! It’s too dangerous!” We only watch as she convulses, floating in the air surrounded by that green energy. Suddenly and quickly there is a flash of light, and the beacon explodes, tossing Shepard away where she lands limp at our feet unconscious. Kaidan and Ashley run forward, looking to treat her as we wait for the Normandy to arrive.
I step back surprised and shocked at my own actions. Stepping forward, calling Shepard's name and trying to rush forward again after the fact. That wasn't a conscious choice, it was as though my body moved on its own. That was concerning, since the one that Shepard saves from the beacon at the beginning of the game changes depending on your their gender. Ashley if male, Kaidan if female.
I was expecting Kaidan to do those things, to hold him back as things went wrong. The fact that it was me was concerning. One because I didn't intend for it, and another as the reason the one Shepard saves changes according to her gender has more to do with just chance. The one Shepard saves is her human romance option for the first game. Which meant that I was… Oh. Shit.