Mass Effect - Power Struggle Pt. 01

"The signal was mostly for generic humanitarian aid. Our plan should be to go down there and settle any issues we can on the ground, then evac anybody in need of more serious medical aid. Samara, you and Liara are coming with. Depending on how long the sender has been down there, we're going to need a soft hand at best and the ability to sedate at worst."

Liara gave a sort of nervous half-nod while Samara gave a casual salute.

"If I may, commander" Shepard was past the point of jumping when she suddenly heard Kasumi's voice behind her. "The signal was more than just aid. It's contradictory, calls for a lot of things at once. Either whoever sent it doesn't know what they're doing, or their console is broken."

Shepard didn't even turn, watching the expressions of her crew to gauge how Kasumi's face changed behind her, "Then, either way, I guess we'll need you along as well."

A couple of her crewmates winced, after a moment, Kasumi sighed from behind her.

"I was really hoping you wouldn't say that."

"Dismissed!"

By the time Shepard had turned to grab a helmet, Kasumi had slipped back into being invisible. There was nothing actually forcing her to be there, if Shepard didn't headcount before dropping, she could reasonably slip out before they took off. Even then, if Shepard did do a roll-call and she wasn't there, it was basically impossible to find her if she didn't want to be found.

But it was a question of trust. And Shepard trusted her.

***

It was a bone-rattling, teeth-clacking landing, but the Mako's supports made sure it wasn't a lethal one.

Initial entry pushed the cabin hot, the shuttle getting as close to orbit as it could without being snagged out of the air and folded like paper. With Metgos, that still wasn't very close. There were a few moments of compelling, lightheaded weightlessness, then pressure and gravity snapped against them and tried to jerk their skulls from their necks. Shepard heard the whine and felt the momentary biotic flex of Liara and Samara straining. She could feel her teeth digging into her mouthguard unconsciously, the taste of plastic and metal filling her mouth. Scientifically, if she were to start cursing, it would provide her a sort of euphoric effect that would have made the pain more tolerable. More scientifically, her tongue was glued to the bottom of her mouth, and opening her jaw would have likely pulled it off of her skull.

They went nose-down until impact compensation needed to level out, and the pressure slowly moved from head-on to pressing on top of them. As they got closer to the ground, it got worse. Each foot toward solid earth another few billion atoms of gas press down from the top of the atmosphere trying to reach the core. A small, dense planet covered in a soup of poison. Not much that could survive out here, but the signal hadn't been crashed vessel, it had been colony distress. Well... that and crashed vessel, according to Kasumi.

They slammed into the ground, impact compensation squealing. For a single moment, they were a thousand-ton bouncing ball, synthetic rubber straining against the surface. Then they snapped back against the ground and everybody nodded in involuntary unison as the restraints gave them back control of their necks, only to strain under the newly equalizing pressure.

"Status report?" Shepard groaned, leaning her neck to either side and shuddering at how loud the pops were.

"Undamaged," Samara reported back with more pain in her voice than she was letting on. Her usually incompletely-zipped zipper had slid another few inches, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

"Similarly shaken but unharmed," Liara added.

"I think I messed myself," Kasumi groaned.

"Oh?" Liara asked, sounding embarrassed for her, "I assure you, it's p-perfectly natural. In zero gravity, the blood rushes to your head, causing a diuretic effect that when aided by newfound pressure-"

"I was kidding, Blue," Kasumi sighed.

"O-oh, I-" Liara trailed off for a moment, "Wait, if I'm Blue, what is Samara's code name?"

"Big Blue."

"Really? I don't believe that she is much larger in stature-"

Kasumi shimmered into half-visibility long enough to hold her hands in front of her chest like an overworked handbra. "Big Blue."

Samara watched without her expression changing from the same flat, focused face that she usually wore. "Hilarious."

Kasumi shimmered back out of focus as Samara tugged her zipper back into not-quite-right place. Shepard leaned forward and opened the comms.

"Landing party to Normandy, we're-"

The comms exploded with noise. Somewhere, in the distant background, she could hear Joker fighting interference and competing signals but he couldn't get a word in edgewise.

Using general comms, with an atmosphere like Metgos, there was always going to be some pretty intense interference. However, on top of the nuclear hum, the distress signal they had responded to sounded a hundred times louder and more clearly than before. Shepard got an earful of what Kasumi had been talking about before she turned it off and opened the shortwave personal comms to Joker. Distress signals, about eight or nine of them, all in the same voice and seemingly from the same source, were bouncing off of each other and cutting each other off, turning everything into a word slurry that succeeded in being very loud, but failed in making any sort of point.

"Joker, you read? Main comm channels down on the planet's surface are unusable. Keep official chatter on shortwave for the time being."

"Yeah, I noticed. I'm starting to lean on the whole "broken distress console" idea."

"What was the base transmission code and frequency?"

"Signal is commercial, no frequency base on the planet, it was bounced shortwave off of a satellite currently orbiting the planet and transferred to broadwave."

"So why is it the loudest thing in the galaxy down on the surface?"

"Could be both shortwave and broadwave, and we're feeling the wrath of it now." Kasumi mused.

"The satellite's orbit entered the last stage of decay right around the time you guys dropped. Keep your ears peeled for the sound of it crashing into the ground, should be any second now."

"Once it does crash, we'll either be left with a shortwave signal trackable from the Normandy or a broadwave signal trackable on the surface," Kasumi reported.

"Meaning?" Shepard grumbled, already feeling the heat creeping into the cabin.

"If we're left with a shortwave, we have a crash survivor who didn't know what she was doing. If it's broadwave, we have somebody with a more powerful radio who doesn't know what she's doing. Question of recovery or rescue, ne?"

"Joker, we're going to deploy the probe while waiting for the satellite to come down, reserve this shortwave frequency for emergencies until then."

"Probe away, Captain."

Shepard closed the shortwave, Samara and Liara were already sealing their helmets.

"Kasumi, are you ready for us to open the cabin?"

The seemingly empty chair swiveled instinctively, "I was kinda hoping to sit in here and play with my radio while you guys went out into the oven."

"That was what I wanted, but we still have to vent the cabin to open it."

Kasumi paused for a second, "Right, no airlock."

Shepard heard a couple of telltale clicks before the chair spun lazily, "Ready."

Shepard gave a hand sign to Liara and Samara, when the pair returned it, she punched in the keycode to unlock the door, then regretted the day she was born.

It was a still, windless day on Metgos. A fortunate thing when the wind contains enough nickel to sand skin from bone. It lent the atmosphere a peaceful stillness, crimson sky painted by a single massive sun that seemed to dominate the whole of both horizons. Ashy, silty red clay dotted with sparkling metal over sheets of rock eroded to porous sponge-like strands. Volcanic spots too twisted and unlike anything else in the known universe to be much use to anybody that still seemed to call like some primal unknown frontier. In the far distance, across a vast expanse of valleys, craters, and cliffs carved by the tides of brutal wind, she could make out the flaming tail of a crashing satellite.

Her environmental sensors screamed in agony as they kicked into the highest gear they had. Air so past the point of filtration and breathing that it was better to recycle her carbon dioxide than even try to get a breath from around her. Crushing pressure that was only kept at something like twice the Earth's gravity by the best shock absorbers she had. And heat beyond description. Hotter than hot. Room temperature was an easy enough goal to maintain with the systems, moisture, and filters she had in place. To hang even a few degrees above that meant some truly hostile climates. On Therum, saving Liara, she had all but stood directly inside the cone of an active volcano, and even then, the temperature crept to about twenty degrees Fahrenheit over the base. 33 Celsius, about 91 Fahrenheit, wasn't outrageous to have naturally, but for an environment suit, it was pushing things to a crazy amount. She'd read somewhere once that 60C, about 140F, was where you started experiencing hyperthermia and it became unlivable. If her suit rose in one degree of Celsius for every ten over the base temperature or five with moist heat, how many degrees external until she was baked alive in her suit? It wasn't really the time to go back to math class and figure it out.

Her temperature sensor read 45 Celsius, 113 Fahrenheit, and it was climbing.

"Not a fucking chance anything can live above ground out here." She grumbled.

She could hear Liara and Samara pulling the probe, suddenly a few times heavier, down the ramp together. It was quiet enough for her to hear her heartbeat in her ears. She resisted the urge to look up into the heart of the star that dominated the sky again. Night on this place must have been a matter of minutes or years depending on the orbit. It was almost shockingly beautiful in the way that only something so completely hostile could be.

"Not a great time for woolgathering, Shepard." Samara's voice hissed over comms, buzzing with background radiation.

Shepard helped them yank the probe out toward the face of a cliff and set it into the ash and dust as best they could. A set of hyper-tense steel legs slowly folded out of it and almost broke under their own weight, but set it in place. After a moment, the solar panels picked up enough light to start transmitting.

"What kind of readings you getting, Joker?"

"Uhhh, you want the Celsius or Sieverts?"

Liara nudged Shepard and pointed to a spot on the horizon. A haze was forming where the wind had started picking up, and looked to be headed their direction.

"I'll get back to you on that."

They filed back into the cabin and resealed it, letting the air flow back in after the filters had been given enough time to blast out the sheer quantity of things it had soaked in and was worse for. The heat started to slowly creep back out of Shepard's suit, but nowhere near fast enough. When it was safe to breathe in the cabin, she unsealed her helmet and yanked it off. Even if her helmet didn't destroy her hair, the sweat was doing fine on its own. Liara and Samara didn't have to worry about that, but when they unlatched their own helmets, they were sweating just as hard. She heard Kasumi undo her own when the other three had done it without dying.

"We all good?" Shepard glanced back.

"Melting," Kasumi responded flatly, "Our satellite just screamed its last."

"What's the status on the radio?"

"We're still being abused by broadwave, just less loudly."

Shepard turned the cabin radio on quietly. The earlier jumble of signals was still blaring, but a little more tolerably now. The effect had clearly been doubled by having two sources, and she could almost make out what it was saying at this point. She turned the scanner slowly in a full circle, pinpointing the direction it was coming from, then turned the Mako to face it, listening to the shocks groan in protest.

"Joker," Shepard called over shortwave, "We have a source on the signal down here. We're on approach now, keep the shortwave open and keep her ready to bounce if we need to."

"Cool, if whoever is sending it is still alive, can you throw something at them? For me? As a gift to your favorite pilot?"

***

Exogeni.

Even on a planet as unsustainable as this, with a colony that didn't show up in official records and which was likely doing illegal things; corporate insecurity dictated that you had to put your name on the front door, and Exogeni had.

The shutters were most of the way down, leaving a small window to peek through. What little exposure through UV-blocking glass they got was still turning the cabin into a furnace. Shepard had considered putting her suit back on, but it had a limit, one best saved for emergencies. She'd heard Kasumi click her helmet back on a while ago, but she wasn't keeping her eyes peeled like Shepard and the two Asari. She was mostly keeping an eye out for trouble and reading the airwaves.

Shepard cleared her throat, "We all see the name on the door, right?"

"I'm not sure what a human-owned colonization company is doing out here," Samara responded flatly.

"They handle mining as well, in my time excavating Prothean ruins, they were our main source of equipment. I believe they even directly funded some of our expeditions."

"I always thought you mined purely for the science of it," Kasumi's filtered voice came over the cabin comms, echoing slightly.

"I did," Liara responded defensively, "But expeditions still cost money."

"So," Kasumi changed the subject, "Does one of us just get out and knock?"

"Are we sure they're the source of the signal?" Shepard checked her readings.

"Sure as can be," Kasumi replied.

"Then send a generic hail asking for access."

"Why would a secret base just let us in?" Samara mused.

"Same reason they would call for help, I assume." Liara tented her fingers in front of her lips.

"I agree, it's totally a trap." Kasumi chirped.

"Could just be that whatever happened is bad enough that they don't care." Samara responded coldly, "Allegiances are rarely so deep as death."

"Could also just be Hanlon's Razor; maybe the message was intentionally garbled as code, and they didn't think anybody passing would be altruistic enough to stop for a garbage signal." Liara mused back.

The door started to slide open, the emergency signal shut off in unison.

"Well," Shepard set the Mako to drive slowly into the vehicle-sized airlock, "If it's a subtle trap, Kasumi, once we set foot inside I want you to make a beeline for the offices of the person in charge. If it's a less subtle trap, we're the ones in the tank."

The door sealed behind them and the air from inside the base began to rush in. The temperature inside the Mako started dropping, then stopped after lowering about one-fifteenth of what Shepard would have wanted. It took a moment for the Mako's monitors to catch up, but eventually they stopped around the 60C/140F limit. Just about the extreme edge of what you could survive without a suit. Whoever ran this base either wanted it hostile, or their environment control was ailing. On Metgos, that would be a pretty good reason to give up on any semblance of secrecy.

The airlock opened into a vehicle bay. Low lights, emergency power operation by the look of it. A couple of recon vehicles in disrepair. Only one of them actually seemed to be because of damage from the outside. The rest in disassembly, probably people hooking up the power cores to temperature control. About twenty people waiting to see who came out of the strange tank on the distant world in the secret base. But none of them scientists, all of them working types.

"Looks like a mine, all of the vehicles are fitted for small excursions and nothing else," Shepard remarked dryly.

"The people all seem rather disgruntled," Liara remarked absentmindedly.

"Well, it is almost hot enough to kill a person out there," Shepard responded flatly.

Shepard gestured to Samara, who shook her head. "No weapons, improvised or otherwise. If we walked out and told them we weren't going to help, the worst we would have to fear is their numbers."

"We're not going to do that, are we?" Liara suddenly asked worriedly.

"I want guns displayed but under fingerprint lock, only to be used in an absolute emergency," Shepard commented as she got out of her seat. "And helmets on. Even without the temperature, I can't help but notice we're the only ladies currently on this rock."

The Mako's cabin depressurized loudly and Shepard lamented that the instruments hadn't been wrong as she stepped out and felt the air get hotter. Another quick headcount with a better view re-confirmed what she'd thought. About two dozen males, if you included the Hanar, who you couldn't really tell but assumed were. Krogans, Batarians, Vorcha, one or two Drell, and four Hanar. No Salarians, no Quarians, no Asari, and no humans. Nothing "weak" enough to not handle high heat and hard labor. Either a prison colony or a mining colony, maybe both. The only question mark was the Hanar.

A krogan stepped forward and nodded dismissively, "You're not Exogeni."

Shepard caught the glimmer of Kasumi slipping behind cover out of the corner of her eye as Samara and Liara closed in on either side of her.

"I'm not, but I'm Commander Shepard, and I'd like to help if I can."

Her name clearly rang a bell for them, but it did for everybody. That said, none of them exactly brightened up. Most remained scowling or looking downtrodden.

"Talk to the bossman, see what he needs from you."

"Where's the boss?"

"Up the stairs down the hall, door with the broken lock," The krogan huffed a sort of bitter chuckle, "Can't miss it."

The office was cooler, a lot cooler. Cool enough that Shepard could consider unsealing her helmet. It was still hot, hotter than she'd like, but her suit was going to take time to get back to normal and spend most of that time above where the office was. A human was sitting at one end of a table, a series of monitors behind him like a halo of electronic blue light in the otherwise low warm colors of the base. Across from him, one of each of what C-Sec would jokingly call the "problem races" minus a Volus. It was like the setup to a bad joke. She decided to keep her helmet on.

"No comms, no work." The Batarian sitting across from the human droned boredly. It was clearly a stance that he'd been taking for a while. One he was tired of repeating.

"If we can't report a profit back to Exogeni, even with equipment failures, what incentive do they have to repair the comm satellites?"

"No comms, no work."

The Batarian, as well as the Krogan on one side and the Vorcha on the other, were all dressed in what could be favorably described as dirty work coveralls. Clearly one-size-fits-all in theory but not so much in practice in the case of the Krogan. There was a pretty obvious contrast between them and the corporate dress of the human, one either made by choice as a sign of solidarity, or in earnest. There was a Hanar behind the trio, who had neither made an attempt to sit in a chair or put on a uniform. The human had a short messy mop of blonde hair, a slightly flabby, unassuming face, and was sweating a new collar line into his shirt. Not completely without challenge, a couple of scars to attest to it, but clearly fatter and happier than the aliens in coveralls. Shepard recognized him. One meeting on the Citadel, early in her career, another some time later on Illium. Judging by the corporate dress, best to remember his name if she wanted to get anything out of him.

"You gotta understand, guys, my hands are tied here-"