by Joan Jett
“I’m not. But if he can get ExoGeni to change its policy toward Feros, that’s good enough. We can nail him to the wall later.”
Ash laughed quietly. “Pretty scary, Skipper. I didn’t know you spoke corporate.”
Shepard smiled. “I took a correspondence course.”
Juliana and Lizbeth Baynham approached us. “Commander, did you mean what you said about freeing the colonists from the Thorian’s control?” asked Juliana.
“Certainly. Do you have an idea?”
“We might. From what Lizbeth tells me, the Thorian exerts its control by infiltrating the human nervous system with its spores. Maybe we can counteract the effect temporarily by administering tetraclopine.”
Shepard frowned. “What’s that?”
Lizbeth broke in to explain. “It’s a compound we use in the grow-labs, as part of our standard insecticide. It acts as a neuromuscular degenerator. Against the Thorian-affected humans it should have an anesthetic effect, knocking them out and suspending the effect of the Thorian’s spores for a brief period.”
“You’re suggesting that I release clouds of nerve gas in the colony?”
“Not at all,” Juliana protested. “In the concentrations we’re suggesting you use, the compound should be completely harmless in the long run. It might help you incapacitate the colonists without using lethal force against them.”
Ashley said, “We could adapt our grenades to disperse this tetra-whatsis. Like an old-fashioned gas grenade. I’ve got the tools we would need.”
Shepard thought about the proposal for a long moment. “Well, I certainly don’t have any other way to help them if the Thorian turns them against me. I’ll at least try it. How much of this tetraclopine do you have on hand?”
“Not much,” Juliana admitted. “I’ll work with Chief Williams to adapt your grenades.”
“Go ahead.”
* * *
When we left the arcology for the final run to Zhu’s Hope, we had a grand total of five gas grenades, and we could not be certain they would work. We had no opportunity to test them in advance. Nevertheless, Shepard ordered us to check fire if any of the colonists presented themselves as targets. We would give the grenades a chance to work first.
The doors to the garage at Zhu’s Hope refused to open for the Mako. After signaling for entry three times, Shepard had us emerge from the AFV and approach on foot.
A bipedal figure crouched by the garage door. At first we thought it one of the colonists, but as we approached it stood upright, and we could see it wasn’t human at all. It had arms, legs, and head, but none of the fine details. A mockery of the human form.
“What is that?” Ashley asked, her voice low and tense. “Is that what a human turns into when the Thorian has been in control long enough?”
I moved closer, examining the thing. “I don’t think so. It seems to be made up entirely of plant fibers and tendrils. Perhaps the Thorian is creating its own proxies and simply imitating the human shape?”
Suddenly it moved, turning its “head” as if its eyeless face could see me.
“Liara . . .”
The thing leaped, colliding with me and knocking me to the ground. I could hear the others shouting, and then the monster opened its “mouth” and vomited a mass of oily greyish-green fluid over my helmet and armor. My suit was sealed, my faceplate down, but the stuff appeared to be corrosive as well as revolting. I feared I might soon start taking in toxins through the seals.
Meanwhile the garage door slammed open, and over a dozen more of the monstrosities charged out to attack us.
I called up a biotic surge and expelled the energy in all directions, flinging my attacker away in large, rancid chunks. I will not vomit in my helmet, I told myself as I scrambled to my feet. I will not vomit in my helmet.
Then I backpedaled frantically to get away from four more of the creatures.
Fortunately they didn’t have any kinetic barriers, so my biotic talents worked very well on them. I dropped a singularity just in front of me to cover my retreat, flung a persistent attacker away with a violent telekinetic push, and then I had reached my friends. Shepard and Ash retreated slowly, hammering the vegetable monstrosities with sustained assault-rifle fire. I turned my attention to making sure none of the attackers got close enough to spew their corrosive venom again.
Eventually we took refuge behind the Mako, from which vantage point we could easily keep the rest of the attackers at bay. A few moments later the last of them fell, spattering across several meters of the pavement.
For a moment we stood still, the harsh sound of Shepard and Ashley breathing loud in my helmet radio. I did my best to scrape the horrible muck from my helmet and upper body armor, still struggling to keep my digestive tract under strict discipline.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Shepard finally.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not all right. I can smell this crap right through the seals of my armor, which means they must be failing. Oh Goddess, what a stench. I strongly recommend you not let those things close enough to do that again.”
“Okay, helpful hint,” said Ash. “Now what?”
“Now we go in and hope we don’t run into any more of those,” said Shepard.
We found no more Thorian proxies in the garage. Instead, four colonists opened fire on us the moment we appeared.
We had no cover, and under Shepard’s orders we couldn’t return fire. Even suppression fire placed the colonists at too much risk. I saw nothing we could do.
Shepard had better fortune. After two seconds of indecision, he swore bitterly and charged the colonists.
They concentrated their fire on him. Even after Ashley and I ran after him, they ignored us and fired only at Shepard.
His shields shone blue-white, a shimmering mosaic of light, as he crossed the floor at a dead sprint. I saw them tremble on the verge of going down, but then he tapped at his omni-tool and redirected power to rebuild them even while he ran. He dodged, he weaved, he danced across the floor in an attempt to shed as much incoming fire as possible. He charged up the ramp toward the colonist barricades, and I could see their eyes widen in shock as their fire simply failed to bring him down.
At the peak of his run, just as I knew his shields were about to go down, he leaped over the first barricade. One grenade left his hand, not hurled, simply tossed less than a meter so it would land perfectly in the midst of the colonists.
It went off. All four of the colonists suddenly dropped their weapons, clutched at their throats, and collapsed to the floor.
Shepard landed in a shoulder roll, his armor and weapons clattering as he bounced back to his feet on the far side, already scanning the colonists’ position to see whether they had all been affected.
The hangar saw a moment of perfect silence. Then . . .
“Shepard, you God-damned stupid son of a bitch!”
He straightened slowly. “Language, Ash.”
“Language, my ass! That was the most utterly moronic thing I have ever seen a Marine do in my entire life!”
“It worked.”
Ashley became nonverbal, emitting a lengthy growling scream of rage.
“Ash. We only have four of these gas grenades left. Somehow that has to cover every last armed colonist in Zhu’s Hope. We can’t afford to miss.”
“Then give the gas grenades to me, and let me re-enact the Charge of the Fucking Light Brigade.”
“We’ll share.” He grinned. “Actually, it was kind of fun.”
Ashley turned to check the condition of the gassed colonists, still muttering under her breath.
I switched to Shepard’s private channel. “Shepard, that was probably the bravest thing I have ever seen anyone do in my life.”
“I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”
He had to do it once more as we moved into the heart of the Zhu’s Hope colony. Ashley had to do it twice.
The Thorian committed all its available resources to the attempt to kill us. We
met more of the proxy creatures. Over a dozen of the colonists carried weapons, attacking as soon as we appeared.
The proxies we fired on freely, falling back to draw them away from the colonists, destroying them as quickly as possible. Once the proxies had been dealt with, we stayed under cover, refusing to return the colonists’ fire, until Shepard or Ashley could charge forward and gently toss a gas grenade into place.
Arcelia Martinez fell just at the top of the last stairway leading down to Zhu’s Hope. Ian Newstead fell at the first barricade inside the colony; he must have given in to the Thorian’s persuasion at last.
We didn’t see Fai Dan until the last of his people went down and the battle seemed to be over. While we searched for the path down into the Thorian’s lair, he appeared, staggering out of cover with a heavy pistol in one hand.
“I tried to fight it,” he told us, his voice taut with strain. “It gets in your head. You can’t imagine the pain. I was supposed to be their leader. These people trusted me.”
Shepard stared at Fai Dan, backing away slowly, unwilling to harm the man.
The colonist continued forward, gesturing with his pistol. “It wants me to stop you . . . but I won’t.”
“Oh, to hell with this,” Shepard muttered. He threw a gas grenade, the last one he had.
Fai Dan gasped and went down, the pistol dropping from his weakened fingers to skitter across the floor.
Shepard shook his head. “Nobody gets left for that thing to use.”
“Shepard, I think I’ve found where the Thorian is hiding,” I said.
“Where?”
“Right here,” I told him, and activated the crane that held the freighter Borealis in place. The starship rose several meters into the air, exposing a stairway that descended into the depths of the Prothean structure. “The colonists must have set the freighter there as another defense for their master.”
“Good enough,” said Shepard. He keyed his helmet radio. “Normandy, it’s safe to come out of lockdown. Kaidan, I want your team here on the double. It’s time to finally get some answers.”
Chapter 34 : Vaster Than Empires
10 May 2183, Zhu’s Hope/Feros
Nine of us descended into the Thorian’s pits.
Shepard led us, with Ashley, Garrus, and Wrex at his side. Kaidan and I stayed in the center of the formation, ready to bring telekinetic force to bear in any direction, or apply medical aid as needed. The rest of the Marines walked at the rear: Jean-Paul Bayard, Heinrich Müller, and Alexei Dubyansky. At Shepard’s orders, most of us switched to shotguns, expecting close-order combat against the Thorian’s proxies in the cramped tunnels. Only Kaidan and I stayed with our pistol and submachine gun, expecting to be more effective as biotics.
All of us wore sealed suits. I had gone through a complete armor check, with Ashley ruthlessly swapping out any piece whose seals didn’t meet with her approval. None of us wanted to take any chances breathing air laced with the Thorian’s spores.
As we descended, the stairwells and tunnels took on a disturbingly biological appearance. Thick ropes and webs of vegetable matter hung on the walls, scum-covered water pooled on the floor. We saw white masses of tissue in dark corners, like enormous tumors. Stray air currents rose to the level of a strong breeze at irregular intervals. My suit sensors reported relative humidity of one hundred percent, with all manner of strange organic compounds in the air. Had any of us opened our faceplates, the stench alone would probably have been enough to knock us flat.
It was like descending into the depths of a stagnant marsh . . . or the bowels of some enormous beast.
The Marines chattered at first, but as the surroundings became more alien, more threatening, they fell silent. Even Garrus and Wrex, usually irrepressible when a fight was in the offing, found themselves with nothing to say.
Finally Shepard stopped dead, looking ahead of us. “I . . . think we’re going to need bigger guns.”
Slowly we moved forward, all of us staring upward in fearful awe.
We saw the Thorian.
In five hundred years I have seen many strange and alien life-forms. Some of them have been grand, others have been terrible, and a few have been both. I think nothing could possibly compare to the sight of Harbinger sweeping down out of a stormy sky, its vast arms spreading wide to devour all light, its howl of devastating thunder sounding from horizon to horizon.
The Thorian came close.
A great well stood at the core of the Prothean structure, about thirty meters in diameter, probably intended to bring in natural light for the long-dead inhabitants. We had emerged onto a broad portico, its inner side open to the well, a place where Protheans might once have gathered to enjoy fresh air and sunlight.
Now a vast vegetable mass occupied the well, a lumpy sphere over twenty meters across and suspended about ten meters above our level. It must have massed thousands of metric tons. The sunlight gleamed on its flanks, setting off hues of gold, green, and brown. It had a horny carapace, and several clusters of massive tentacles. It seemed to expand and contract slowly, taking in and expelling air like an enormous bellows. Several thick cables of vegetable fiber, each of them well over a meter thick, anchored on the sides of the well to support the thing’s enormous weight. Another thick cable depended from the central mass, falling into shadow down in the well, possibly maintaining a connection to the world-spanning mat of plant tissue on the surface far below.
All of us stared at it. Short of high explosives, none of us could see how we could possibly harm it.
After several moments, I became aware that the mass heaved and strained, as if trying to expel some foreign object. A cluster of tentacles moved slowly to hover over the edge of our portico. Another heave, and a rush of greasy fluids spilled out on the floor. Shepard backed away apprehensively.
A form emerged from the mass of tentacles: bipedal, slender, and very graceful. It dropped to the floor, landing in an elegant crouch, and then rose to a standing position. It showed no concern for its nudity, or for the sheen of oils that ran down its body to pool on the floor. It raised a crested head and looked at all of us with piercing jade eyes.
Corporal Müller made a vulgar comment, earning a sharp rebuke from Kaidan.
Aside from its vivid green coloring, the creature was perfectly asari. In fact, I recognized it.
“Shiala?” I breathed in shock.
“Who?” asked Shepard.
“This looks like Shiala, one of my mother’s acolytes, as well as a childhood friend of mine.” I took a deep breath. “I mentioned her to you before. It was Shiala who remained in communication with me for a number of years, after my mother and I stopped speaking to each other.”
“Liara, I don’t think that’s really an asari,” said Kaidan.
“Of course not. It must be another of the Thorian’s proxies. Still, the resemblance to Shiala is quite remarkable.”
Then the Shiala-thing decided to speak. “Invaders! Your every step is a transgression. A thousand feelers appraise you as meat, fit only to dig or to decompose. I speak for the Old Growth, as I did for Saren. You stand within and before the Thorian. It commands that you be in awe!”
Even the voice is the same . Although Shiala never sounded quite that arrogant.
“Liara, does this make sense to you?” asked Shepard.
I thought quickly, and realized I had at least a hypothesis. “We know Saren came here. He needed something from the Thorian. Perhaps he bargained with it, using Shiala as an intermediary?”
“How would that work?”
I glanced up at the creature’s central mass, and shivered. “Shiala could have melded with the Thorian.”
“Could she even do that?” asked Kaidan.
“Yes, if it has anything approximating a nervous system. Which it must, however exotic the biological mechanisms involved.”
“You understand,” said the proxy. “Saren sought knowledge of those who are gone. The Old Growth listened to flesh for the first ti
me in the Long Cycle. Trades were made.”
“Would you be willing to trade with us as well?” asked Shepard. “I need the same knowledge that Saren took.”
“Never. After Saren departed, his Cold Ones came and sought the destruction of the Old Growth. They began killing the flesh meant to tend the next cycle. Flesh fairly given! Falsehood and betrayal!”
Shepard sighed. “Yes, Saren has a habit of doing that.”
“The Old Growth sees the air you push as lies! There will be no more trades with flesh!”
“Well, if you won’t bargain, then you had better listen to this: I won’t let you keep the slaves you’ve taken. Release them, now.”
“No more will the Old Growth listen to those that scurry and nibble and betray. Your lives may be short, but they have already gone on too long. Your flesh will feed the ground and the new growth!”
With that, the Shiala-thing made a commanding gesture and ignited with blue light. A telekinetic bolt flew out, hurling Shepard backward against a stone column.
More of the half-formed humanoid proxies flooded onto the portico from both sides.
That quickly, we found ourselves fighting for our lives.
I couldn’t begin to make sense of the battle. We had no plan, no doctrine, and no tactics. All of us simply did what we must to survive from moment to moment.
Garrus, Bayard, and Müller stood back to back, using their shotguns to keep the proxies at bay.
Wrex roared, seized one of the proxies in both hands, and simply ripped the thing in half. It continued trying to attack him until he stomped it to mush beneath his boots.
The proxy creatures caught Ash on her own, surrounding her in the first moments of the fight. Somehow she became a creature of agility and raw reflex, spinning to the four quarters, dealing out a roundhouse kick one moment and a shotgun blast the next. A goddess of war, who none of the Thorian’s creatures quite managed to touch.
Shepard picked himself up, shook himself briefly to make sure nothing was broken, and then hurled himself into the wild melee.