still trying to finish up this chapter and it’s only half done….
Tagging @tkwritesdumbassassins @monsterrae1 @alyxmastershipper @quietborderline @outtoshatter @missanniewhimsy @whimsyswastry and whoever else wants to play along. No pressure as always.
Wip Wednesday graphic by the ever-talented @radio-chatter
Title: The First Spectre, chapter 2: Eden Prime
Pairing: Endgame Buddie but it’ll be a couple hundred k before we’re there.
Thirty years after the mars ruins were discovered leading to the Charon Relay and twenty since the First Contact War, humanity is still striving to take its place amongst the Citadel Council as equals. Commander Evan “Buck” Buckley, the lone survivor of Akuze is nominated to become the first human Spectre.
When his test mission goes sideways, Buck uncovers a much larger threat against all sentient life. Can he convince the Council to prepare for war or will they ignore the dangers that are closing in?
A new cycle has begun. The Reapers are coming.
Tags/warnings: first draft, Buddie —>MShepard, Biotic Eddie Diaz, Lone Survivor Buck, will have character deaths but not Eddie, Buck or Christopher (at least permanently). Space Opera levels of violence and alien weirdness.
They’re a few warehouses away from the space port when they run into their first and only survivor thus far, and she’s screaming for help.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” A woman in Alliance Marine armor runs around a corner and almost smacks right into Buck face first and would have fallen as she bounced off him if he hadn’t caught her.
“Um, hi?” Slips out before Buck can check himself.
The woman shoves him aside, out of breath and raising her gun to point back where she’d come from. “They’re coming?”
It’s a stupid question. The sound of a hoard of husks stampeding towards them makes her rambling explanation that follows unnecessary.
“—they’re dead. The colonists are dead and those robots did it!”
Diaz’s biotics thrum as they cover Buck, shielding him as they prepare to be overrun. “Robots?”
“Geth!” She answers right before the first husk reaches them and then they’re too busy fending off husks to have any further conversation. Diaz continues to shine, his biotics providing the perfect compliment to Buck’s aim. The woman is no slouch either and Diaz starts giving both of them targeting assistance. Buck can tell the biotic is tiring but Diaz doesn’t make a complaint, just keeps going and going.
Buck is going to owe the man a beer or two after this, assuming they both survive.
They’re just about done mopping up when Buck hears something mechanical and robotic make a noise he’s never heard before. It’s low pitched, a thrum followed by a robotic trill, mimicking human speech as pitch rises at the end of sentence to indicate a question. The few remaining husks are whipping from side to side, their movements becoming even jerkier and more frenzied, mouths open and closing in those horrible alien screech-like screams.
The ground underneath Buck’s boots shakes as something heavy takes a step and then another. The thrum blasts around him, louder, angrier as mechanical joints whir and the Geth steps into view, it’s single, lone eye swiveling on the long sinuous neck of interlocking joints as it locks onto Buck, light lancing across the space like a spotlight as it zeros in. Another whir and a muffled series of thumps and the eye seems to rotate and grow brighter, energy gathering and then shooting out at him only to smack against the biotic barrier that Diaz has thrown between them. The wave of sound as the energy beam hits the barrier sets off a secondary concussive sound wave and Buck staggers back a step, fumbling for his rifle.
The woman fires desperately at the Geth, shots pinging off in all directions as they ricochet off the armored plating that covers the alien machine, hardly making a dent. Diaz’s biotic shield flares, boosted as the man throws all his remaining energy into protecting Buck who’s standing there like a deer frozen in the headlight of the stuff of alien boogeymen legends.
Geth aren’t supposed to be here. Last anyone had heard they’d withdrawn to behind the Perseus Veil after they’d decimated the Quarians and made them into nomads, their homeland of Rannoch lost to the rouge hive mind of the AIs they’d created to help them. Originally designed to be near indestructible, the Geth had been built as laborers and protectors until the AI had begun to question some of the tasks given it and the Quarians had attempted to destroy their greatest work.
The Quarians had lost their war over three hundred years before humans had opened and traversed their first relay. A cautionary tale told to any younger space-faring race about hubris and going too far.
Nobody but the Quarians had seen a Geth in hundreds of years—but the thing in front of Buck sure looked like the pictures of Geth Armatures in his alien tactics textbook. Diaz’s scream of Buck’s name as he pushed more energy into the shield around Buck finally jolted him enough to get moving again.
