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"Alright, folks. Fai Dan said that the areas we'll be fighting in will be pretty tight. A full squad will do more harm than good. Which means it's fire team time, which means we're splitting up." Cassandra announced, thirty minutes had successfully made landfall and thirty seconds after she had finished her conversation with the leader of the colony. Her team was standing around her in a rough semi-circle, and she folded her arms across her breastplate as she regarded them. "Garrus, you'll stay. Sniper rifles aren't going to be of much use on this part of the operation, so you'll do a better job running defense and overwatch for the colony than with me. Wrex, you're the muscle, you'll run the front line and run interference for Garrus and the locals if the geth attack again. Kaiden, we need an Alliance representative and an all-rounder, so you'll stay as well. Nirali will be helping out with injuries and evaluating local health. Anyone in bad shape, send over to Doc Chakwas aboard ship, have her take a look at them. Ash, Tali, you two will come with me. We're going to see about pushing the geth back and doing some scouting. Questions?"
Garrus shifted slightly, his mandibles flicking in mild confusion, and a small note of irritation if she was going to take an educated guess. "Commander, with respect, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the krogan with your assault team? Close quarters favors his combat style and his…nature."
"Normally, yes," Cassandra replied, her tone indicating she'd already considered this. "But if the geth do hit the colony while we're out there, I need something that can stop them cold. That's Wrex." She glanced at the krogan, who was examining his shotgun with apparent disinterest in the tactical discussion, though she was perfectly aware he was paying unwavering and absolute attention. "Besides, this is supposed to be a recon mission. As much as I love Wrex, stealth isn't exactly his forte. Not our kind of stealth anyway. His version of stealth consists of killing all of his enemies so that they can't report his presence."
The krogan's deep chuckle rumbled through the air. "Smart human. Though I prefer to think of it as permanent reconnaissance denial." His red eyes glinted with amusement as he hefted his weapon, waving the shotgun -which would probably kill a human that tried to fire it, not to mention was large enough it could probably qualify as a crew served weapon- around with one hand in a casual display of strength as he used it to gesture towards enemy territory. "Don't worry, Shepard. If the geth come back, they'll find out just why I have managed to live so long."
"Good." Cassandra nodded firmly, before taking a surreptitious look around and lowering her voice, stepping closer. Her team unconsciously did the same, making sure they could still hear her as she worked to make sure that only they could hear her. "Listen, the other reason I chose you four is because I don't like this situation. Some of the colonists are acting strange, Fai Dan was off, and the general atmosphere is just…wrong. I don't know what the issue is, but there is an issue. Between the four of you, if the colonists do anything crazy, you should be able to subdue them. Garrus, put that C-Sec training to good use. Kaiden, remember the briefer we all got on crowd control back at BAaT. But for God's sake, don't let on, alright? They haven't done anything wrong yet, and I'm not going to have them treated like they did."
All Alliance marines got basic training on crowd control as a matter of course, in case they were deployed on a planet where rioting or invasion took place, so that they didn't have to rely entirely on local law enforcement authorities to get the job done. Alliance biotics, like the two of them, got even more. After all, when you had an inborn ability to turn gravity off for individuals or areas, you tended to be considered rather useful when it came to deal with mobs of furious or panicking people.
"Understood, Commander. We'll keep our eyes open." Kaiden nodded firmly, before hesitating. "Ma'am, with the interference for comms, what about communications?"
"Once we figure out where the signal jamming is coming from, we'll try and disable it. Otherwise, your orders are to defend the colony. If necessary, retreat back to the Normandy and lift-off, but make sure to keep the colonists in the hold if you do. Use your discretion and best judgement in all other matters." she instructed promptly, intentionally broad. Giving ultra-specific instructions was rarely the best idea, especially in a military situation, and most especially when you didn't have complete intel or reliable communications. The last thing you wanted was for someone to have such rigid orders that they were incapable of acting flexibly or reacting to an evolving situation. "Any other questions? Comments? Concerns?"
Tali's three-fingered hand traced nervously along the edge of her omni-tool, her voice slightly muffled by her mask despite the vocoder. "Commander, what about the geth themselves? If they're jamming communications, we won't have any way to call for help if -when- they ambush us."
"I know. We'll take extra medi-gel along with us, just in case, and I want you to work on trying to trace the origin point of the jamming." Cassie acknowledged, holding up a hand as she sensed -and saw, judging by the young woman's body language- that Tali was about to speak. "I know it's not an easy ask, especially not given the fact that the Normandy couldn't manage it with shipboard sensors. But I want you working on it all the same. We might get lucky and end up in close enough proximity to it that you can manage to pinpoint it successfully." she shrugged lightly. "It's worth a shot. No pun intended."
"I'll do my best, Commander," Tali replied with a nod, her glowing eyes narrowing slightly behind her mask in determination. It was cute, frankly, and Cassie didn't even try to tamp down on the approval she felt as a result.
"Good girl." she grinned, before nodding one final time. "Alright, unless there is anything else, we'll be moving out. Remember what I said about the locals, and remember to keep yourselves safe. Kaiden, you'll be spokesperson since the colonists will be more comfortable with you, but make sure to listen to Garrus. He's probably actually had to do some real crowd control in his life, after all."
The way that the turian shuddered faintly and nodded very soberly with an almost haunted look would, under any other circumstance, been extraordinarily amusing, and Cassie would definitely be trying to get the story out of him sometime soon, but for the moment she only smiled briefly and gestured for the members of her fireteam to follow her as she started for the far side of the colony.
Just in time, too, because they had only been at the entrance to the next corridor -and briefly speaking with the distinctly, if perhaps understandably, abrasive Arcelia Martinez- for a matter of a minute or so before the next wave of geth attacked. There were over a dozen of them, most Troopers and their larger Shock brethren, but the fight was a quick one. Not least because of some very accurate gunfire on the part of the colonists, and not for the first time Cassandra was grateful that there were -and had been, since Mindoir- standard marksmanship and tactical training requirements for all Alliance citizens. Or colonists, at least, which was basically every human that wasn't living full-time on Earth. If not for that, the colony could quite possibly have been over-run already, and they certainly wouldn't have been terribly useful in assisting her team in combat.
It gave her some confidence that the four members of her squad that she had left behind wouldn't be doing all of the work themselves.
Leaving the colonists to finished disassembling the recently deceased geth, rather violently and with an enthusiasm that would otherwise be disturbing, Cassandra led her team deeper into Feros. Hopefully, the geth wouldn't put up much of a fight, and better still, maybe Tali would be able to track down and destroy the source of the jamming. God knew she hated fighting blind, deaf, and dumb.
And He certainly knew she hated it even more when she couldn't use her psionics to pick up the slack…
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"You have to be kidding."
Fai Dan was the one who said the words, an hour later, as he and the freshly-reunited Normandy squad stood around the datapad Cassandra had put down on a makeshift table, but everyone was thinking some variation of the words. It was easy to see why, of course, and entirely understandable, because the datapad was currently displaying a somewhat blurry-from-distance but still completely recognizable image: that of a geth frigate latched onto the side of the local Exo-Geni Headquarters like a particularly large and unpleasant insect.
"Afraid not, and from what Tali has to tell me, that frigate is the reason that the jamming is so strong. It's co-opted the EG HQ comms equipment to boost the power and range of the interference. We're not going to have functioning comms, on or off world, until that ship is destroyed." Cassandra confirmed, and Vakarian raised a hand to be heard. "We're not in class, you don't need to raise your hand, Garrus. Go ahead."
"Yes, ma'am. Ma'am, we do have the Normandy, couldn't we have her lift off and destroy the geth ship? It's immobile and it's barriers will have to be down, a single pass from the ship would deal with it quickly." he proposed, and Cassandra nodded in agreement.
"That's true, and I'd probably be willing to do it too, no matter how loudly Exo-Geni would scream -and they would scream very loudly-, but Tali brought up an interesting point when Ash suggested that very thing when we first spotted it. Tali?"
"Landed geth ships set up hardline beacons to improve their network functionality when they intend to be somewhere long-term. If we can get inside that building and find those nodes, I'll have access to the network itself. Everything that any of the geth on Feros knows will be there." the young quarian explained promptly, and from the looks on their faces everyone present -even Fai Dan- understood just how valuable the possibility was. Still, Cassandra felt the need to drive the point home.
"This could be the biggest intel coup in regards to the geth in centuries, not to mention our current mission. I can't ignore the opportunity."
There was a great deal of nodding at that, and she shrugged with a small smile.
"Besides," she continued. "there's something else we need to consider. The geth don't usually set up shop like this without a reason. They're not exactly known for their real estate investments." She gestured toward the datapad. "Whatever they're doing in that building, it's important enough for them to anchor a frigate and establish a hardline network. That suggests they're either looking for something specific, or they've found it. Either way, I want to know. 'Know thy enemy', after all."
Wrex grunted his agreement. "Smart. Kill two varren with one shot." He hefted his shotgun meaningfully. "Though I still say we should just blow the building and sort through the pieces afterward."
"Tempting as that is, Wrex, we need that intel intact." Cassandra reiterated, a bit exasperatedly, before she turned to Fai Dan. "What can you tell us about the Exo-Geni facility? Personnel, layout, security measures?"
The colony leader just shook his head.
"Nothing, not really. We don't interact with them at all, and frankly we prefer it that way. They're footing all the bills, but we're essentially supposed to be self-sufficient for our day to day affairs, and we've never been to the Headquarters. If they need to tell us anything, they either call us over the comms or send a representative here. The only way that I can think of reach it, without aircraft anyway, is the old Prothean skyway, but that's crawling with geth and a couple of kilometers long." he explained, waving vaguely in the appropriate direction.
"We have the Mako, Commander." Ashley suggested, garnering herself a thoughtful hum and approving nod from her superior.
"Good thought, Ash. You're right. We can take the Mako to deal with the frigate. Once the jamming is dealt with, we can reevaluate the situation on-planet and decide what to do next." Cassandra agreed, grinning at the somewhat-exasperated looks the rest of the squad was wearing. "Sorry kids, looks like we're splitting up again. The Mako can't hold more than three or four people safely anyway, especially not in combat. Same groups as before, I think." she met the eyes of the team that would remain, willing them to understand the subtext. "Your earlier orders remain unchanged. Clear?"
"Clear, Commander, we'll get it done." Kaidan affirmed with a nod, his expression serious. The unspoken message had been received and understood, and she mentally hummed in satisfaction. This wasn't an ideal situation, it was pretty damn far from ideal actually, but she had confidence that her people would keep everything under control. Somewhat ad hoc team she might have, but they were -individually- exceptional. Teamwork would need to be developed, but she had every belief that the team was capable enough to stay alive and accomplish their objectives long enough to develop that teamwork.
"We'll keep things locked down here, Commander, don't worry about that." Garrus added, mandibles twitching slightly as he adjusted his rifle, his words taking on a distinctly wry tone as he continued. "Though I can't say I'm thrilled about missing the chance to engage a geth frigate, I understand this terrain doesn't exactly favor my style of fighting."
Wrex grunted, his massive form shifting as he crossed his arms with a faint scowl that Cassandra was reasonably sure was only half-serious. He likely didn't approve of the obliqueness and time-cost inherent in her plan, but was old enough, experienced enough, and reasonable enough to know that she was right about the potential intelligence windfall that might have thrown itself into their collective laps. "Just save me some geth, Shepard. Getting tired of babysitting."
"I'll do my best, Wrex." Cassandra promised with a wry smile. She turned to her mobile team. "Ash, Tali, get back to the Normandy and help off-load the Mako. Make sure to restock your consumables and double-check your equipment, we're going a bit further afield and this isn't going to be a nice Sunday drive through the countryside."
As the group dispersed, Fai Dan approached Cassandra with a hesitant expression, glancing around to ensure they had a moment of relative privacy before speaking in a quite tone of voice.
"Commander, there's something else you should know." His voice carried a weight that made Cassandra pause and give him her full attention. "About the facility... we haven't heard from them in over a week. Not since the geth first showed up."
"That's not necessarily unusual, is it? You said you don't interact with them regularly, and there are the geth, after all." Cassandra replied, though something in his tone suggested there was more to it, and she wasn't entirely sure she was inclined do doubt him either. He was the local, after all.
"No, but..." Fai Dan rubbed his forehead, looking suddenly older and more worn than he had moments before. "Look, there is something else no one in the colony knows about, something Exo-Geni insisted on when the colony was founded. A hardline communications cable, small and hidden. The geth would overlook it, it's too low tech, and the jamming wouldn't affect it. It's meant to be a kind of failsafe, a way to communicate if something happened to disrupt communications, and it's still functional as of just before you arrived. But Commander," he paused and met her eyes. "Commander, no one has answered since the geth landed. With what we've heard about the frigate and the network nodes? I have serious concerns that about the safety of the Exo-Geni presence on the planet, and if they're all dead and the company pulls out, we're going to have to…"
He cut himself off with a sharp cry of pain, clutching his head and staggering slightly in place, and even as Cassandra hastened to help him, she heard other cries of pain from the other colonists. She heard them, and -even through her tight shields and barely-there psionic presence- felt the mental whips that were flaying them. Mentally filling in the rest of the sentence, the words that he had clearly intended to say, Cassandra mentally took a very deep breath.
Whatever that other psionic presence was, spread across the undercroft of the city, it was in fact affecting the colonists…and it really didn't want them to leave.
"Ngh…f-forgive me Commander, we've been a bit out of sorts since the geth arrived, I'm afraid. Not quite cut out for the stress, and with Exo-Geni cut off we've been relying on some…less than reliable sources of food and water. It seems to be taking it's toll heavier every day."
Either he was lying, or he didn't know what was happening and believed every word he had just said. Honestly, Cassandra wasn't sure which was the worst option.
"Right, of course." Cassandra said carefully, keeping her voice neutral as she helped steady Fai Dan. The lie came easily to her lips, even as her mind raced with the implications. "That makes sense. The stress of a siege situation can definitely take its toll on civilian populations, especially when supply lines are compromised."
She made a mental note to have Nirali analyze any food or water samples she could discretely obtain, though she knew the real cause of the colonists' condition had nothing to do with contaminated supplies. The psionic presence she'd felt was too deliberate, too focused for that. Something was actively influencing these people, and it had just demonstrated that it was willing and all-to-able to cause them pain in order to maintain whatever control it had established over them.
"I'll make sure to check in with you regularly once we get communications back online, and I'll see what my ship can spare for supplies. We're not exactly a heavy cruiser swimming in stockpile, but we have a comfortable margin to work with. For now, I should go." she continued, releasing Fai Dan's arm as he seemed to regain his equilibrium, and he nodded somewhat jerkily and muttered his gratitude. Clasping his shoulder in a genuine gesture of reassurance and comfort, for more reasons than the man likely understood, she left. She left, made her way to the garage, slipped into privacy, and brought up her comms. "Joker, route me to the Doc. Thanks. Karin? Listen, I need you to something for me with some of the food and water stores aboard ship…"
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"You know, at first I just thought the Commander was being a little paranoid, but now I'm starting to wonder if she was on to something." Kaiden muttered as he came to a stop beside Garrus, adopting a seemingly-casual slouch against the wall that the turian officer could none-the-less recognize left his weapons easily accessible, the pair of them watching as Doctor Chakwas walked Nirali through some medical technique or another with an injured colonist. "Have you noticed how twitchy and moody the colonists have gotten since Shepard left?"
Garrus's mandibles twitched slightly as he gave a barely perceptible nod. "I have. They seemed agitated before, but now..." His voice dropped even lower. "It's like they're all suffering from some kind of shared neurological condition. Did you see how three of them clutched their heads simultaneously when the viability of the colony was mentioned a few minutes ago?"
"Yeah. Reminded me of some of the biotic headaches I used to get at BAaT, except these seemed to hit on cue." Kaiden's eyes tracked a colonist who was pacing back and forth near the water distribution point, muttering to himself. "Whatever's happening, it's affecting their behavior patterns. They're all showing signs of stress, obviously, but this is something else, and it's... coordinated somehow, as absurd as that sounds."
Wrex lumbered over, his massive form creating a natural privacy barrier as he positioned himself to block line of sight from most of the colonists.
"Getting that same feeling, are we?" the krogan rumbled, his voice pitched low enough that only the three of them could hear. "I learned a long time ago not to doubt Shepard's instincts, especially not when it comes to her intuition. Something isn't right around here, the colonists aren't right. Been watching them for the past hour, and they're moving in patterns. Not blatantly obvious ones, but patterns all the same."
Garrus's eyes narrowed as he processed this information, putting aside his instinctive distrust and distaste for a krogan in the face of the acknowledgement that Wrex had been alive and fighting in battle longer than the turians had been part of the Council. "Patterns how?"
"Like they're following a perfect routine, but responding to something we can't hear. Or see." Wrex's red eyes glinted with a mixture of curiosity and anticipation. "Every so often, they all pause what they're doing for just a split second. Same time, same duration. Then they go back to whatever they were doing before, but with slightly different positioning."
Kaiden felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with Feros' atmosphere or weather systems. "That's…not right. That sounds more like mechs than people. Humans don't work that precisely or that synchronized, not for long periods and not without some pretty heavy training. The kind of training that your average colonist sure as hell isn't going to have."
"Exactly," Wrex agreed, his tone taking on a distinctly predatory edge. "And there's something else. Watch their eyes when they think no one's looking. They're not looking at us like we're their rescuers anymore. They're looking at us like we're..." He paused, searching for the right word. "Like we're obstacles. And that's not all. The female by the water station? She's been 'casually' maintaining overwatch on our position for the past twenty minutes. And the two men near the supply crates have clear lines of fire on all three of us." He cracked his knuckles with audible pops. "If I didn't know better, I'd say we were being assessed. Question is, what are they planning, and what are we going to do about it?"
Before either of the other two could respond, Dr. Chakwas approached their small group, her expression carefully neutral but her eyes sharp with concern. Nirali followed a half-step behind, the young medic's face pale beneath her dark hair.
"Gentlemen, as you know, Shepard wanted me to take a look at some of the locals and see to their health, with Nirali assisting me." Chakwas said quietly, looking perfectly serene and to all the world as if she was just speaking with her crew-mates. "I think you should know what we've discovered. The colonist we just examined? His vitals are… distinctly unusual. His pulse, oxygen, respiration rate, blood pressure, even his body temperature, it's all off, and everyone else we've examined is the same. To within a handful of points, regardless of sex, age, or size. But more concerning is the presence of what appears to be some kind of organic compound in his bloodstream. Something I've never seen before. It's not a virus or a bacteria that I can recognize, but something else entirely."
"Could it be a contaminant from the Prothean ruins?" Kaiden suggested, keeping his voice low. "Some kind of ancient spore or pathogen that was dormant until now and went unnoticed?"
Chakwas shook her head, her lips pressed into a thin line. "Whatever this is, it's active. It appears to be integrating with their nervous systems, particularly concentrating around the brain stem and limbic structures. I've never seen anything like it in all my years of medicine."
Garrus's mandibles tightened against his face, the equivalent of a human frowning with eyes narrowed in concentration. "So we're dealing with some kind of... parasitic infection?"
"I can't say for certain without more advanced equipment and extensive observation, and even then I'm not sure how much I would be able to discover. So far as I am aware, this is unprecedented. The closest thing I can imagine is some sort of mold or fundus, like cordyceps" Chakwas replied, sounding frustrated and worried "but I doubt that -or some local version of it, at least- is the explanation for what's happening. To find out anything else, I would need to perform brain scans in the infirmary. To whit," she paused, looking around while very, very deliberately not looking around, and the team instinctively double checked that they still had what passed for privacy under the circumstances. "I have some very particular orders from the Commander. Food and drink laced with a sedative, to be distributed to the colonists if we believed they might pose a threat to each other, themselves, or to us. I am…open to your opinions."
Kaidan's fingers twitched against his leg, a nervous habit from childhood that had only grown worse during BAaT. "How fast-acting is the sedative? And how many doses do we have?"
"Enough for the entire colony if administered carefully, and especially if it's ingested." Chakwas replied promptly and with the surety of a long career. "It would take effect within minutes. Non-lethal, of course, but it would incapacitate them long enough to get them aboard the Normandy for proper examination. And, for that matter, properly restrained."
Wrex's rumbling laugh held no humor. "If they're being controlled by something, whatever's pulling their strings might not appreciate us trying to put them to sleep. We'll need a way to handle that. Hyposprays?"
"I'll have some prepared, but they'll need to be subdued before I can safely inject them." Chakwas acknowledged, and Garrus grunted thoughtfully, mulling over the issue, before looking at Kaidan.
"Alenko, I know Williams has basically taken over the armory section, but you're familiar enough with it to tell me this: does the Normandy have any form of crowd-control weapons? Stun guns, that sort of thing?" he asked, and when the marine nodded with a glint of understanding in his eyes, gave something akin to a rather satisfied smile as he looked back at the two medics. "In that case, doctor, I think you and Bhatia get the crew to help you deliver some food and drink to these colonists. In the meantime, I think Kaiden will retrieve a few things from the Normandy arms locker." he paused, looking around, feeling the atmosphere of the colony with all the hard-earned experience of a LEO from the beating heart of galactic society. "Something tells me that we're going to need them."