Massive Disaster 5-16

The side tunnel was a failing lung.

Thick, toxic, and sulfuric, every breath would have dragged pulverized rock and ancient ash straight down an unprotected throat to coat lungs in a layer of grit. 

Thankfully, the four of them weren’t idiots.

As soon as they entered a space claustrophobic enough to require fully-sealed hardsuits, Zedd had activated the nano-shift in his glasses and everyone else’s helmets had gone up as well. As his own aviators unfolded out into a full helmet, the kinesis barrier across his body interfaced with it; keeping him protected from toxins and vacuum both with recycled air.

Good ol’ Mantle. The Victor Mantle aka the Vector Arrest Mantle was something Zedd had created generally for his own use in the long run. Almost any standard hardsuit was pointless for his uses, and walking around in a VEST all the time was just not it, but something like this…

He glanced down through blue lenses at the belt buckle hiding a distributed kinesis node for his barrier. The VM was his mainstay for the simple fact that it could protect him from shardfire and environmental threats even when he looked like he was in regular clothes.

A piece of rock crumbled from high up, scattering against his shoulder hard enough to force a grunt from him. Ow.

Okay, it didn’t protect him from everything, but he was tough enough to handle most other issues anyway. For one, the readout on his helmet told him all about the heat, every degree pressing inwards from the millions of tons of rock sitting directly over them, but the Mantle did its job there and it did its job well; keeping him at most seventy-two degrees and safe.

“This place is…uhhh…” Kira’s voice hit his ears over the private comm channel.

“Structural integrity’s a bitch, yeah.” Zedd answered back, tone a low murmur as he tracked a micro-fracture spider-webbing overhead in real time. Power conduits sparked as they dangled from the ceiling above, still-intact beams groaning without support from damaged others. “Geth destabilized the entire section, not just this tunnel. Smart move, but shit luck for us. I’d say we’ve got about thirty solid minutes before we’re pushing our luck.”

“Then no point wasting the other twenty-nine.” The Commander chose now to speak. “Keep your eyes open and we move quick.”

John took point, M-8 sweeping every shadow as the barrel traced the path in front of him. Kai took the commander’s back, every step silent as his boots found each section of ground that wouldn’t crack.

Zedd and Kira took up the rear to complete the tight diamond, a four-person unit of lethal purpose, his weapon up and ready while her eyes glowed a dangerous cobalt that charged the air with the ozone hiss of dark energy.

They rounded a corner, narrow passage breathing them out into a staging area that should have been refreshing. Zedd’s eyes narrowed immediately, taking in the space. What’s wrong with this picture?  Overturned equipment piled high blocked most of the path, slagged floodlights and shattered supply crates that made the space too…

Too…

Narrow?

Eyes went wide behind blue lenses, the front entrance they left behind popping back into his skull. Shit.

Before Zedd’s brain even formed the word — Ambush! — his HUD flashed with movement and white optics flared in the dark, predatory floodlights snapping open.

Geth rose out of the rubble in pieces first: white optics, rifle barrels, black metal shoulders dragging dust with them. Then all at once, too many guns came up in the hands of each and every trooper.

“Contacts! Twelve o’clock!” Shepard yelled out loud, because apparently the murderbots were being subtle about things.

Double shit! A rapid stream of shardfire tore up the rock wall beside Zedd as he pushed Kira away from him, ducking behind an already half-slagged piece of equipment. Blue eyes met his as his girlfriend found her own cover behind a tunnel wall and let her biotics flare with a burst that sent a Geth up into the ceiling.

Orange plasma tore through the air in response, a blistering wave of superheated gas aimed their way.

Blue biotic shield around him, John still dropped to one knee, a heavy-duty mining laser his choice of cover as his rifle started barking triple-bursts. “Fire out!”

Kai was the kind of lunatic that didn’t bother with cover and he hadn’t changed in the years Zedd had known him. The stealth expert rushed forward with weapons out, already a blur of motion slipping past a volley of plasma, modified body moving faster than synthetic algorithms could easily account for. 

A Geth trooper pivoted, plasma rifle doing its best to track his path. 

Too slow. 

The vibro-blade arced out, modified katana shearing through the neck joint with a high-frequency hum and sending the head flying. Kai grabbed the machine before it could collapse to the ground, metal body held high to use as a shield right before a second barrage of plasma slammed into the destroyed Geth frame. Metal sparked as Kai drew a pistol — a silenced heavy weapon — and two hypersonic rounds of pale blue shot straight through the optics of two more geth down the line.

The path clear, Zedd jumped from cover and charged forward with his right arm raised, pistol still in hand.

Kai’s was meant for quick kills and stealth, each squeeze of his Rogue Spark releasing discrete packets of force. The Full Stop was Zedd’s handcannon, through and through; heavy, powerful and built for a body just like his.

The iron sights were unnecessary, not when the targeting suite in his helmet painted a neon-blue trajectory from the barrel directly to a Geth trooper’s center-mass across the staging area. 

Once. Twice.

Recoil slapped his palm with two solid thumps in return, enough kickback in each to fold a grown man’s elbow in on itself and torque a wrist. Bullets of pure kinetic force — both bright and blue — tore down the tunnel space with visible contrails. A burst of static popped in the air as the first took down a Geth’s barrier, the frame stumbling from the single shot. The second punched with raw power, the Geth frame flying back, a fist-sized hole blown through its chestplate with a mess of sparks and cabling.

He shifted his wrist, the next target already found.

Two more shots were simple math; distance divided by velocity equals offline synth.

“Right flank! Right flank! Moving up!” Shepard racked his rifle, activating the venting system as he ducked back behind cover. “Kira, I need that shield stripped!”

“Already dead!” Kira burst out from behind a crate, pigtails flowing behind her as her hand whipped forward with a vicious curve of dark blue ripping out in front of her. Her Warp slammed into a flanking Geth, kinetic barrier eaten clean through and its armor torn to pieces as the blast spun the frame into a wall. “One d-”

Her words were drowned out by a screech, high-pitched and synthetic as it echoed off the ceiling.

What the… Zedd’s head snapped up as a half-dozen white-armored Geth uncloaked from above, insectoid limbs clinging to jagged rock as they scuttled around with laser targeting aimed down. Hell is that?  “Ceiling!”

The unfamiliar Geth leapt down and Zedd moved on his own.

No thought, just motion. 

His body launched upwards, all his force carrying him far higher than a human body should, and he slammed directly into the lead Geth mid-leap. Nearly three-hundred pounds of modified human meat did what it did, the machine folding in half around the impact. C’mon!

His hand snapped out before he could fall back, the wall-crawling Geth grabbed by one twitching leg as Zedd used his momentum to fling the thing’s body like a weapon — right into the second closest Geth still clinging to the wall.

Both machines collapsed around each other, shattering into a tangle of sparks and white fluid as they crashed back to the ground. Zedd landed on his feet barely a second later, handcannon out as he put a clean round through the faceplate of the skittering third.

The last three didn’t even have a chance to fire; Kai, Kira, and Zedd letting their weapons fly enough to bring Geth falling down like fat metallic raindrops.

“Clear the lane!” A moment to breathe wasn’t in the cards, Zedd’s eye twitching as he raised his head to see a new shape breaching the cover line.

This one was at least a frame he recognized.

Destroyer.

The heavy-duty Geth platform stomped out from behind a half-slagged drilling rig, shields treating John’s suppressing fire as if it was a light drizzle. With a whir of robotic muscle, it leveled a plasma-firing shotgun.

Zedd charged again, moving faster than even Kai in a straight line. The shotgun barrel went high as he wrenched the weapon up with his left hand, heated metal searing his glove. With a grunt, Zedd tore the weapon free from the Geth’s mechanical grip, wrist joint gone with it.

Before the Destroyer could pull free or take in the damage, a strong fist snapped out. Steel caved inward as the chassis collapsed completely, sparks flying as a heavy boot kicked the dead machie backward.

“Thanks.” 

Zedd looked up at the wide-mouthed face of John Shepard, the man staring in confusion at the Geth he’d just taken out with a single blow. Not right now. Zedd rolled his eyes, in no mood to answer questions as he shook out his aching knuckles. “Don’t mention it. Long as we get this over and d-”

Heavy stomps silenced Zedd, the tunnel space shuddering as gravel tumbled loose from the fractured ceiling and rattled up his teeth. A Geth Prime turned the corner, twelve feet of hulking armor pulsing with power as it raised its right forelimb. 

“Prime! Dead ahead!” The siege pulse cannon glowed white-hot as Commander Shepard shouted what they could all see. “Fall back for hard cover!”

The air pressure in the tunnel dropped.

Zedd felt the vacuum in his ears, the taste of thick ozone flooding his filters for all of a second as Kira stepped forward.

Cobalt flared bright across her skin  — an aura dense enough to make her look as blue as any Asari — casting long shadows against tunnel walls. Glowing blue eyes fixed on the Prime.

“Out of my way!”

Kira thrust hands out, blue flooding out as she closed her fists and squeezed.

Singularity.

The Geth Prime froze mid-step, the weapon on its arm whining as heavy barriers flared and flickered under gravitici sheer. The second they overloaded with a spark of white, the platform’s reinforced armor began to groan and then shriek.

The massive machine bent inward, synthetic skeleton snapping, shearing and sparking as joints collapsed into themselves. The Prime’s optical headpiece flared red, one final flicker of life, before it gave way to the localized pressure. In less than three seconds, the hulking platform was crushed down into a dense sphere of compacted wreckage.

It hit the floor with a heavy, dead thud.

Silence rushed back into the tunnel, heavy breaths of the gathered squad only drowned out by the crackle of dying electronics. 

“Nice party trick.” Zedd vented his Full Stop, letting the charge climb back up to full as he stepped over a still-twitching Geth frame. “Little sloppy on the edges. But that’s what practice is for.”

Kira looked back at him, lip already out in a pout. “Shut uuuuu-”

A ground-shaking explosion rocked the entire complex, floor heaving beneath Zedd’s boots as dust, ash, and jagged chunks of rock rained down from the shuddering ceiling in a suffocating red waterfall. The fuck?!

“The hell was that?!” John barked loud into his comm unit, the commander coughing through the dust. “Report!”

“That would be my bad.”

“Would it, Jane?” The commander vanished under the annoyance of a brother as John spat venom at the Spectre over the line. “And exactly how bad are we talking?”

“A fight is a fight is a fight, Johnny.” Jane’s voice crackled back, laced with heavy static and the staccato roar of her shotgun firing in the background. “The welcoming committee on our end is… enthusiastic. We’re doing okay, though. You ever seen a krogan do a frontflip?”

“…no?”

Zedd tilted his head. How would that even work?

“Well, neither did I.” Jane’s words almost came out a laugh. “Till today. How are you looking with the motormouth?”

Zedd cleared his throat. “You know I’m on this line, too?”

Jane’s grunt came loud enough over the crackling comms. “And why’d you think I was talking about you? There’s a lesson in shutting the fuck up. I was talking to my brother.”

Bitch…

Kira’s snort from behind him forced a gape from Zedd. Et tu, Kira?

“We’re close.” John finally answered, eyes fixed on the faint flickering lights leading to the elevator at the far end of the tunnel. The same elevator that would take them down to where they needed to go; the central research chamber. “We’re almost there.”

Are we? Zedd looked at the ceiling, micro-fractures expanding slowly but steadily as the structural schematic on his HUD flashed from yellow to a warning orange.

“Team!” John shouted again, another rumble punctuating the single word as the distant chaos of Humanity’s first Spectre echoed through the rock. “Let’s move!”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

5k Words (100 FP)

5k Words (100 FP)


FAIL: Scavenger (600 FP) [Generic Space Opera] {Quality Resources}

ROLL: SOFTWARE SCIENTIST (100) [PREY] {Knowledge Abilities and Skills}:
You are a highly capable computer scientist with deep expertise in advanced systems architecture, interface design, and digital security. You possess extensive familiarity with TranStar’s computer systems, including their hidden vulnerabilities and back doors, allowing you to bypass or compromise virtually any door or terminal on Talos with a bit of effort. Beyond that, your grasp of computer theory is broad and adaptable enough that learning to hack unfamiliar architectures is dramatically easier for you than it would be for most, ranging from a single day for a basic alien system to a few months for the most secure and deeply locked-down networks.

Forge Points: 200