411Author's Note: And another chapter down, only a few more left to go before the story is finished. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 97: The End of the Cycle Part 3
08M 18D 12H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
The Slag worlds had begun to stabilise, there was the minor issue of the Composer's wormholes near the planets. Without the Life Eater Virus constantly breaking down organic matter the forests and animals weren't being destroyed anymore and the production of exotic gasses had stopped. The atmospheric scrubbers had finished gathering up all the exotic gasses in the atmosphere which was being given to Gaians who behaved themselves. The Gaians had a mutated metabolism that was fuelled with exotic gasses, the benefits gained seemed to chiefly include an extended life span, but as a downside they were basically breathing money. For the time being Okeer had been given the task of creating a way of stably producing exotic gas without requiring the breakdown of minerals.
Not an especially easy task but he had a good starting point.
To begin with, Okeer had the molecular and chemical structure of Exotic Gas. Then he had a Gaian on life support, various tubes and wires were going into their bodies, chemical monitors, search algorithms, and other life support units. In simple terms Okeer was looking at the body of the Gaians, how the gas interacts with their bio-chemistry, and the by-products that are produced in the process. He also had Lithoids called in, specifically the Gaul so that he could learn about how their bodies produce exotic gas and had many of the same processes set up on them as he did on the Gaians.
"Trees, rocks and fungus." Okeer let out a sigh at what his life had become. "Bloody hell what am I doing?" The machines were running, operating algorithms that would efficiently record the information that he needed, there was probably already a bunch of Tebrids that were competing to take his notes apart and finish his research for him. Honestly beyond this point it was pointless to continue, he should just go and find a place to lie down and- "AAARRRGGGHHH!" Okeer let out a loud growl at his own knife in his leg, glaring at a blank screen and watching the green disappear from his eyes. "Alright you Mot Heads! Let's do this the hard way."
Natural Krogan regeneration took care of the leg wound as Okeer got to work on figuring out what was going on. The Gaians were easy to find, oddly enough. Given how precious it was the Tree's should've been working hard to preserve their limited supply of exotic gas less it runs out on them, instead he caught them in the middle of a makeshift outdoors gym working out of all things. Okeer's concerns only grew even greater.
"I have some questions for you guys." Okeer stated as he glared at the nearest Gaian. Each of the Gaian's had been given an oxygen mask, or rather a exotic gas mask, in order to minimise the amount of gas that they needed in order to function.
"You were touched by the Composer weren't you?" The Gaian couldn't talk with the mask on, instead using a simplified Omni-tool fitted for Elcor to communicate.
"I'm not sure about that." Okeer glared suspiciously at the Tree-Frog. "I was working in my lab when I suddenly got hit with the bizarre feeling of wondering why I was doing anything at all and it felt like I was going to fall asleep and never wake up."
"Then yes you were." The Gaian replied as if it had said something obvious.
"How? The blocker is still up right? He shouldn't be able to send any signals down here." Okeer asked glaring rather suspiciously.
"You say that but he doesn't have to either." The Gaian started to hold up fingers with their free hand as they made their point. "We already told you how the Composer was formed from our culture, the blueprint of the Composer is already there. Your medical procedure involves using machines to sort through the data you take from us, you delegate the task of figuring out solutions from the Data to others, usually while you sit in front of your computer waiting for the results to appear on their own." All of which the Gaians have witnessed while inside of Okeer's laboratory while he was experimenting on them. "Like a virus it infiltrates your mind. Sometimes you use that information to build up a immunity, most of the time it just eats you from the inside out to feed itself. I don't know what you do in your free time but if nothing else I suggest you start working out if you don't want to end up like us."
Okeer turned to his laboratory, where he had a sledge hammer and a spare tomkah tire sent to him.
"Have word sent to Liara to contact me immediately, and have a message sent through the network to the rest of the people on the planet to start doing squats if they're not busy." And then Okeer started beating the tire with his hammer.
08M 16D 23H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
It took Liara a few days to reconnect with her network, part of that was sorting out the flood of Intel and requests that she had received. Among them was a priority report from Okeer, a right the Krogan received due to Liara's high expectations for his research into exotic gas. What Liara got however was a live feed of Okeer and other Krogan hitting a tomkah tire with hammers.
"Okeer? What are you doing!?"
"Anti-composer counter measures." Okeer stated bluntly as he put his hammer down and returned to his work station. The Krogan then conveyed the information and insights that he picked up from the Gaians, at first Liara found it hard to believe however... "You have a little something on your face." Liara turned on a personal camera and saw a video feed of herself with a blue glow around her face that she knew personally had nothing to do with her biotics. "So you aren't using your biotics then." Okeer of course had considered the best case scenario but he knew his luck wasn't that good. "I don't know which one of those Cloaca's you're channelling right now but you should probably stop." Liara decided to trust Okeer's words for now and watched the alien glow disappear, then she opted to really believe him. "I'd also like to not know which one of those three you're channelling, planning my life style around avoiding one of them is hard enough." Whereas now Liara had to take all four of them into account. Lovely.
"Let's change topics for now. What's the result of your research?" Liara rubbed her temples as she chose to get down to business.
"I've identified the by product of the Gaians exotic gas based metabolism, but you might not like it." Okeer held up the sample he had taken in a jar, the finger of a mineralised Gaian.
"It turned back into a mineral?" Liara asked and Okeer nodded his head. "Well that's unfortunate."
"I'm going to implant Gaal chips into their bones for now, that should make their bodies a little less expensive to maintain." Okeer stated bluntly. "I've sent warnings to the teams on Slag III and the other two Slag Planets about the Anti-Composer Methods. I suggest making sure that they're following them."
"Stay on Slag III for the time being, you have the full authority to lead the expedition." Okeer nodded, and returned to his work out as Liara cut the footage. "Call Wrex." At Liara's order Liara wasn't greeted by Wrex, but rather by Bakara. "Where's Wrex?" Liara liked nothing about where this situation was going.
"He's having fun with the Tzynn. Trying to pry out their secrets in between their little matches." Bakara indicated the pit Wrex made in the station. Oh for the love of.
"Is Wrex Glowing?" Liara asked remembering her conversation with Okeer. It was a strange question, Bakara looked down at Wrex.
"Yes. He's using his biotics to fight." Bakara was eyeing Liara suspiciously.
"Is he glowing red? Specifically the eyes or around the eyes." Liara chose to rephrase the question.
"I don't know, I haven't been able to get close enough to check." Now Bakara was growing concerned. "What's going on?" Her limited knowledge of media told her that people's eyes suddenly glowing red for no good reason was typically a bad thing.
"The combination of knowing the details of the culture that spawned a Shroud God and engaging the trappings of that culture has a habit of infecting them with the Shroud's influence." Liara explained Okeer's latest discovery. "Now what has Wrex been doing?"
Bakara looked down at the pit, and sighed.
"I'll go and pull him out of it." Bakara stated as she adjusted the settings on her shot gun. "You might wanna check on your own people, you information gathering types get up all kinds of shady stuff."
"Make sure he isn't mutating too while you're at it." Unfortunately Liara had to agree with Bakara's assessment wholeheartedly.
This was a mental virus, by learning the information you're already infected, but you can build a resistance by acting counter intuitive to the culture in question. As information gatherers most of Liara's personnel would already be carriers, but the ones who show symptoms? Information Brokers have to be paranoid by nature, it was a brutal business of eat or be eaten, to have your secrets revealed is your greatest death. It was a culture of deep rooted and toxic paranoia that was ingrained into their minds for years, if any of them had caught so much as a whiff of the Whisperer of Secrets...
"Huu. Great. My entire network is busted." Letting out a sigh Liara looked back at her monitor, discovering an annoying blue glow again. "Damn it!" And now she was caught in a vicious cycle, she can't trust her subordinates because they might've succumbed to corruption but that same lack of trust meant that she was going to get hit with corruption instead. "Glyph. I need to have my memory box trimmed, prepare our techs for work."
"On it Shadow Broker, speaking of which should we contact Ms. Rayya?" Right, Tali should be leading an expeditionary group trying to keep the Gorthikian's from getting up to any sort of mass sabotage schemes. As Liara was thinking about that the image of a tired and worn Tali appeared on the screen. "What In goddesses name?" Tali suddenly screamed in frustration holding her head in her hands before slamming her head down on the console with enough force that the feed was disconnected. "Tali!?" A few moments later the feed was reconnected, audio only.
"Apologies Shadow Broker." The Geth, Lovely. "Creator Zorah is... indisposed."
"Weird glow around her face?" Liara needed to make sure.
"Correct."
Great.
"What colour?" Time to figure out how screwed they are. "Blue." Lovely, they can form a support group with the Squids at this rate. "Any signs of mutation visible or otherwise?"
"Negative."
Small miracles.
"What's Tali Trying to do right now?" Now to try and manage this situation before they lose Tali completely.
"Deciphering the Gorthikian language by spying on them, especially unpleasant because they've already cracked council and Union language ciphers."
Language? Yet another part of the alien culture that Liara needed to look out for.
"Peel Tali off of the console, we need to have a chat." Liara rubbed her temples. They've basically lost the information war at this point in time, enemy intelligence was literally toxic at this point in time costing them their sanity and if they're particularly unlucky their original forms, frankly speaking Liara wasn't willing to let the symptoms progress enough that they could find out. Liara managed to explain the situation to Tali as she typed up a information packet that she was going to blanket disperse to all of her forces.
Liara learned that Tali already made direct contact with the Gorthikians, learned more elements of their history and culture that Liara would have to have sequestered off to another part of her mind where it couldn't hurt her or bite her in the ass. One that would have to be very carefully worded to figure out what people should be looking for without turning them into raging paranoid messes.
"Glyph. Start reviewing security footage going back three months, cover all known operatives."
"Shadow Broker, there are over 2 million operatives scattered across Union space, that's..."
"Over a billion hours of footage I know." Liara stated as she started rubbing her temples, if she divided it across the roughly 100 concurrent files that Glyph was capable of examining at the same time that was 'only' 10 million hours. Liara could use what she knew about the problem to narrow the list further. "Start with people who have been reported for suspicious behaviour, and the ones who reported them. Also if the image in question doesn't have our people looking at or glancing at a camera then it doesn't factor into the footage." Most important of all. "I also want everything we have on any personnel that have been showing any signs of mutation. Now where's Samara at? I remember that we sent her out to try and track down the Sathyrelian's that had met with the Tebrids?"
"I have been trying to contact her." Glyph replied. "It seems that she has been cut off from her communicators. Hers and her daughters." The AI explained bluntly.
"Could they be fighting is that why they aren't talking to us?" Liara questioned rubbing the side of her head.
"If that was the case then my remote override in their omni-tools would've taken effect." Glyph stated bluntly.
"Lovely. Send the Dragoons and figure out what's going on with her." Liara didn't have time for this.
08M 16D 23H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Bakara watched Wrex fighting against the lizard, watched as her mate spent a increasingly larger amounts of time getting throttled by the alien creature, and worse yet he was liking it. With neither any explanation or warning Bakara fired into the pit, her claymore electrified as she brought down the metal monster and brought Wrex back to his senses.
"Go take a cold shower. A long one!" Bakara neither broke any further arguments nor explained further. Wrex on the other hand pulled himself out of the hole, red glow gone, and let his subordinates help him to the medical ward. Happy Wife Happy Life as Shepard puts it.
"You-!" Bakara shoved her gun into the open mouth of the Tzynn, simultaneously muzzling the creature and delivering a clear and present threat. "-Are going to shut up and listen, before I skin you and turn you into a purse!"
Even if she didn't know about the curse of the Tzynn's culture Bakara wouldn't be interested in what this thing has to say. They managed to get their asses off of their death trap of a home world, they escaped slavery from the ones who sneaked onto their planet and were spying on them, and they decided to behave like primitive hunter gatherers refusing to put down roots or advancing their civilisation.
"You, and all those under you will cease your hostility immediately. You will be removed from this station and go to whatever planet the Union tells you to, and you will stay there until your God is dead, then once we are certain that you can behave yourselves we will consider releasing you. Or you can die, and all of your men with you."
"Grr!" The Tzynn leader growled as he dug his teeth into the barrel of the weapon.
"As you insist!" Bakara flipped her weapon into the air, and the Lizard with it, maintaining her grip on the first and seizing the latter by his neck and pressing the barrel of her weapon to the creature's cheek, intent on taking him hostage.
"He he he!"
"What's so funny?" Bakara didn't like where this was going.
"You think that taking me hostage is enough to make them stand down? Have you met my people!?" A loud bang echoed out, a Projectile breaking through the sound barrier and piercing the dragon scale armour of the Tzynn, tearing through his body before becoming lodged in Bakara's shoulder armour. "If you guys meant to kill me you probably shouldn't have gone through your leader to do so." Bakara explained as she tore the spike out of her armour, the two extra layers of Dragon scale really but a dent in the projectile.
"Not aiming at you!" The offending Tzynn in questioned walked forward to admit his crime.
"Oh? You leader wasn't all that well liked I take it?" Bakara questioned looking down at the bleeding creature on the floor.
"Like you. Too much talking." The Tzynn drew their arm blades as they prepared to attack.
"Good to know." Bakara on the other hand clicked on her coms. "Grab the one on the ground when you come and get me too." A Pasharti suddenly appeared, grabbing Bakara by her leg and the arm of the Tzynn leader before the three of them vanished back to the ship that they arrived on, now a safe distance from the station. "Pick him up." Bakara had the Tzynn leader picked up by his head. They would tend to his injuries momentarily, but in the mean time the station was still in visual range and Bakara was forcing him to look at it. "Fire." A single Missile containing a cocktail of explosive compounds and energy was fired into the station at a strategic location and subsequently destroyed in the chain reaction alongside all the Tzynn that were still on board. "Poof." Bakara stated making a point. "Everything you built, that you stole, gone like that. Now none of you know how to rebuild do you?" Bakara just shook her head in the negative. "Your culture is parasitic, you are a parasite. Everything you are and everything you own was stolen from others, the Union, your technology, the only thing that's really yours is your worthless god and he's eating you from the inside out while your struggling against us is breaking you down from the outside." Bakara stood up. "I had my men evacuate your breeders and your offspring from the station before we blew it up, if our experiments prove successful we might be able to save your species." It would be good to confirm if merely raising their people outside of the Shroud's influence would be enough to cut it off. If they had something truly inconvenient built in like some kind of genetic fail-safes that would be problematic.
08M 16D 23H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
If Niffilheim had nothing else, it had access to an abundance of hot water. After being dragged out of her work place Tali had been stripped of her environmental suit and showered in cold water until her mind was clear again, now she was warming herself up with hot water. Quarians are many things, surprisingly durable despite their reputation for weak immune systems, but as a race native to a desert world they are not accustomed to cold water, especially prevalent considering their weakened immune system. Her mind cleared Tali put on a fresh environmental suit and went into a meeting with her executives.
"So the Monsters are booby trapped." Tali stated as she let out a sigh. "That's all we needed to know. How're the Squids doing?"
"Creator Zorah, we just got your head back on your shoulders straight, is now the time for this?" A concerned Geth asked brow flaps raised in concern.
"Are there any other problems that we need to address?" Tali asked and the various Geth shook their heads in the negative. "What time is it now then if not for dealing with the Squids?" With that the Geth broke no further argument.
"The Signal jammer may have backfired, now that their minds are not being bombarded by endless signals they are only picking up on one now."
"Which only leaves the Whisperer." They had yet to cover the entire planet in the psi jamming field, they were working on it mind you, but there were limits to what they can do with a planet that was half on fire and half cold. Even the fire and cold resistant Thorian had a limit to what it could do, especially when it had to two time with two other species of plant. "Limit of psi blocker unit to roughly 40% of planet, split between either side and becomes weaker the further away from the nearest Thorian jammer it gets." So in other words most of this planet would technically still be under the Whisperer's control. Technically but in reality...
"The further away from the jammer they get the less hospitable this world becomes." Stepping foot on the fire side would be an exercise in being extremely toasty, and the ice side requires some pretty extreme thermal-kinesis, or rather some very powerful psionics, so long as the jammers were functional then they wouldn't be able to use that. That said. "Alright let's make this easy on us." Tali had a long week, she was cold, she had been attacked, and she might have a parasite living rent free in her mind. "Are they coming towards us where it's more... temperate and hospitable, or are they going away from us where the Whisperer's influence is stronger?" She'd like to pack the Squids up and go home already.
"They seem to be divided." The Geth reported. "One group is heading towards the equator, another group is heading further East deeper into the cold."
"The Seismic sensors are also picking up a lot of activity." EDI chimed in. "Perhaps no longer hampered by their all consuming headaches, their general productiveness has managed to sky rocket."
"How bad can it be?" Tali would wish she never asked a question like that again until the end of her days.
"This footage just came in from one of my transport tunnels." A Holo-screen played, which showed what could best be described as a giant mechanical worm with rotating cutting drills for a head tearing into the tunnel before it started to go through the proper area. "Oh that's just fantastic!" Tali snapped as she held her face mask with her hands. "Chief Wrund." The Krogan leader stood at attention when Tali called him. "Your choice, you can go after the mechanical discount Thresher Maw or go and play nice with the incoming group of Squids." The Krogan Chief gave a big predatory smile at that statement.
Somehow Tali didn't expect to have to go after the worm.
"So is this safe?" Tali asked looking at the stupid idea that she had been given in response to the question of 'what's the fastest way to get to the worm.'
"Not remotely." Was EDI's reply.
In simple terms? EDI's train tunnels were closer to giant vacuum tubes than anything else. Inside of a completely airless, friction-less environment the train can reach what was previously considered to be only it's theoretical top speed, a speed that was further enhanced by dint of a Rail Gun styled launcher to fire it down the tunnel at speeds that would chew through feet of solid rock with the sheer force alone, and if not for the Mass Effect based repulsers forcing the entire thing to stay away from the walls and ceiling and continue on the correct path would.
"The initial start up alone would fry you down to the marrow, let alone what kinds of things that the G-Forces that follow would do to your corpse."
"Then What Am I doing here?" Towards this end a new vehicle was brought in, a fighter ship, the kind of thing that was made to deal with the insane G-Forces that Tali would be dealing with, which after extracting the cockpit and reinstalling inside of the train car itself, made it the perfect mechanism for getting to the unruly drill train, and lots of weapons to blast it once she caught up to the bastard. "This is what I get for trusting an AI." Tali muttered as she face palmed.
"Creator Zorah, you're glowing again. Shall we fetch the hose again?" Tali was starting to miss the presence of the Krogan, they were meat heads sure but she feared them a lot less.
Review Section:
Monster King: Glad you like it.
RonaldM40196867: Cruiser, with all the fixings to deal with problems in space, orbital weapons platforms usually don't work out so well.
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