The Shadow of Old Transgressions (Homeworld/Mass Effect Crossover Quest)

The Spinward Shield

System Rho Terra
Unnamed Gas Giant

The Raawan and Marduk land at opposite ends of the base camp. This is a purely tactical consideration and not in any way influenced by their past grudges. At least that is what they are both quick to assure you. You suspect they may not be being honest.

The Raawan disgorges six Kadeshi in environmental suits led by Captain Leli'Zefal they clamber over the rocks to arrive at the northern side of the base camp. You patch into their helmet feeds as they enter a prefabricated building. It appears to have been an office, but it has been ransacked. It's strange though it doesn't appear as if there was a battle, but as if someone was searching for something. The Kadeshi start looking for records and you switch over to the Kushan.

The Marduk has landed on the southern side of the base camp and ten of them stomp out of the frigate in their bulky armored suits. Captain Dire barks an order and they spread out. Unlike the Kadeshi who stayed in one group, the Kushan split into pairs and entered all of the nearest buildings. It looks like several storage areas containing spare parts and one barracks. The barracks has been ransacked as well, but not the storage buildings.

Both groups move towards the center of the base camp where the command building has been built, reaching out over the bore hole with an elevator leading downward. However before they can reach it they come under fire. Turrets pop out of concealment and begin showering both teams with salvos of automatic kinetic fire.

The two captains take very different approaches. Captain Leli has her team deploy drones that distract the turrets while her crew flanks and disable them. While captain Dire just has his men advance into the fire and shoot back. They seem oblivious to the damage they are taking, but then their suits are so heavily armored that they aren't taking much.

You focus a scan on the area surrounding the command building and spot quite a few more turrets as well as some suspiciously fresh holes. It seems likely their is an ambush. The question is what do you do about it?

[ ] Provide fire support:
Send a few acolytes to provide close range support with their ion beams. The problem here is that their ion cannons are not designed for real precision work and may cause collateral damage especially to unarmored prefab structures. You considered the cherub bombers, but their fusion torpedoes would be even worse. At least the ion cannons can be tuned down a bit. Your allies won't be in any danger, you can always tell them to pull back, but you may well cause considerable damage to the command building.

[ ] Hack the turrets
Take a page out of the Kadeshi book and hack in and disable the turrets. While your allies distract them you'll drop a maintenance drone in and hack into the turret network. That will however expose your allies to more fire, and you aren't sure what's in those holes.

---

Meanwhile down in the megalith you're considering your assets. You have six acolyte drones and one resource drone at the moment. The rest of them are still in the shaft which is blocked off by the metal plate. Aurora is building an airlock, but it will take her time to make something suitable. Of course your drones don't need air, but you don't know what's in the megalith that might be damaged by the atmosphere venting. Best to play it safe for now.

You check that you still have a solid connection with the drones, and once you are satisfied you move them deeper into the cavern. There's a trail of pole lights that appear to have been set up by the scientists. It seems a likely avenue of exploration. As your drones fly you keep a sensor out for an interface port like the one you found at the other megalith. Unfortunately it seems like everything is covered by the strange red organic substance. So you have no luck just yet.

Eventually your drones reach the end of the cavern without finding anything interesting or the scientists. After a bit of searching they do find a corridor that appears to lead deeper into the megalith. It is dark and overgrown with the organic tumors you've been finding everywhere. You could try to fly an acolyte down the twisted corridor. It would be a tight fit and require expert piloting.

But you're in a hurry so you just have the resource drone burn away the tumors and open a path forward. Not as exciting, but more practical. The other end opens up into yet another cavern. Uneasily you remember that the megalith is the size of the entire moon. You do not really have the resources to search the whole thing. Hopefully the scientists have not gone too far.

Fortunately for your patience this is when your drones come under fire. At first just small arms fire, but then a rocket hits one of your acolytes in the armor plating. It still doesn't do much damage to the acolytes armor, but it is concerning so you quickly scan for the source of the fire.

What you find is disturbing. Even filtered through the drones you are horrified on several levels. It's the scientists, but they haven't just been mind controlled. No, that would be too clean. They've been stretched and twisted. Their bodies grown into distended shapes melded with the organic tumors and megalith artifacts into strange machines. They aren't standardized either. Some have arms formed into legs. Others have heads used as turrets or manipulators. It's horrifying. And what's even more horrifying is that the ones with intact heads are moving their mouths and eyes as if they are still conscious and screaming. You have never been so glad that your drones are not equipped to pick up sound.

The twisted machines walk and scuttle along the walls of the cavern as they shoot at your drones. Some with standard galactic weapons seemingly attached at random. Others spit acid from belching orifices or launch plasma from glowing spires. It isn't very effective so far, and your acolytes are destroying them quickly, but you see larger machines growing out of the ground and walls in the distance. One detaches and starts plodding towards the drones emitting a worryingly large energy signature.

You get the feeling that you are going to want to keep a beachhead into the megalith. But you only have six acolytes at your disposal. It will still take some time to get more drones down there. If the machines destroy them all and fortify the first cavern it will be much harder to gain access going forward.

What do you do?

[ ] Have the drone stay and fight.
It may be harder to get access to the first cavern if you lose this wave of drones, but it will be even harder to get through the narrow corridor. Try to maintain your beachhead as far forward as possible. Use the resource drone to perform repairs on the acolytes as needed.

[ ] Hedge your Bets
Have the acolytes stay, but send your resource drone back through the corridor and block it off with a metal hull plate. You may lose your acolytes, but the plate will hopefully slow the machines down long enough to get more drones into the megalith.

[ ] Pull back to the first cavern.
Have the drones retreat to the first cavern and force the strange machines into the bottleneck of the corridor. Some of the larger ones may not even be able to make it through, which will greatly improve your chances.

The Spinward Shield

System Rho Terra
Unnamed Gas Giant

A lot of things happen all at once. You send the acolytes dodging back and forth to avoid incoming fire. You have the resource drone dart back through the corridor to the first cavern. You have the other resource drones begin removing the plate from the borehole entrance. You drop maintenance bots by the Kushan and Kadeshi lines to hack into the turrets. And you open a line to the other members of the flotilla.

"I've got hostiles in the megalith. We're going to need more drones down there."

"Right, I'll start the fabbers up."

"What's the situation?"

"Looks like some kind of anti-ship ground vehicles."

Of course simple words are only part of the conversation. All five of you are tapping into the drone feeds and assessing what is going on the rapidly widening number of fronts.

"I'm going to get that drilling platform out of the way, so we can get down the borehole if we need to."

"Give me drone control. I'm a better pilot than you."

"I'll take half of them as well. That way we won't spread our focus as far."

"Okay, I'll deal with the base camp situation then."

There is a flurry of data transfers as you transfer control of the drones to Iuno and Ulysses. The entire conversation takes seconds. The drones have barely started your assigned evasive routines when Iuno and Ulysses both have their trio break up and follow their own patterns instead.

A mass of metal is ejected from Aurora, the half finished ship airlock, and she instead sends a flight of resource drones down the borehole to move the drilling platform. A steady stream of acolytes and cherubs from Laverna joins them.

You take it all in for a few seconds and turn to your own task. Hacking the turrets. "Leli, Gergal, distract the turrets for a few seconds." You hear their double acknowledgement, but how they go about it is very different. The Kadeshi flash construct several of their own drones and send them forward to serve as decoys. While the Kushan simply intensify their own fire. One of them brings forward a rocket launcher and starts bombarding the turret positions. That makes getting the drone into position a little tricky actually, but fortunately you dropped in spares.

Under the cover of both of your allies you manage to maneuver your drones forward and quickly carve into the access ports of the turrets. The actual hack is laughably easy. These are civilian grade weapons. What's a little more complicated is that whoever set the turrets up anticipated hacking and each one is isolated. So you have to carefully creep your bots from turret to turret while your allies reposition themselves.

There is a tricky point when your bots get to close to one of the holes and a mech erupts from the rocky dirt. It's some kind of construction bot that has been hastily armored and it crushes your bot with a huge manipulator claw. Fortunately the Kushan still have their rockets and the mech is quickly bombarded into scrap.

This happens two more times as you disable turret after turret until you are finally within reach of the command building. You have a hunch that there might be survivors in there. After all, you have not been attacked by the twisted husks of still living scientists up here. So instead of assaulting the building you have a bot hack into a wall panel and you take control of the interior cameras.

There's a group of salarian nervously watching the door armed with a makeshift selection of pistols and mining tools. Of course that doesn't rule out mind control, but these are the only intact scientists you've found. So you don't want to have your allies rush them after all this.

Instead you contact Iuno, "Hey Iuno, I've got some survivors up here. Can you switch with me."

The response is matched with an emotional overlay that you read as disgust and some fear, "Yeah. Yeah have at it. These things are vile."

You smoothly swap control of the drones with Iuno and find that they are in the middle of battling a twenty meter tall monstrosity with plasma turrets studded all over it. You direct the acolytes to destroy the turrets as you aren't sure where the weak point would be on such an ungainly thing, but as they attempt to do so one gets clipped in the engines and spins out of control into a wall.

The remaining two finish the job, but another acolyte takes some damage in the process. And once they are finished they are instantly under fire from two smaller flesh walkers. You destroy them both with quick ion bursts, but while you are concentrating on them a massive bolt punches through the already damaged acolyte destroying it. You focus on where it came from and find that some kind of siege railgun has been moved into position on five wobbly legs. You can't leave that alone or it will destroy all the remaining acolytes far too quickly. Fortunately the rail gun's tracking is poor and you have your last acolyte evade its fire while destroying it.

However this in turn draws the acolyte to the far end of the cavern where it comes under fire from multiple walkers of all sizes. In the seconds before it is destroyed you make note of its sensor logs. They are showing a powerful energy source coming from a mound of twitching bodies. And better yet you spot an access port sticking out from under that mound. Or perhaps the mound is using the port. Frankly you aren't sure. You didn't get a good look before the acolyte was destroyed. And you honestly don't want to get a good look. You can sympathize with Iuno's disgust.

You register the last of Ulysses drones being destroyed as well. Then there is a tense wait as the walkers begin firing into the plate you sealed the inter cavern corridor with. You can calculate exactly when the reinforcing drones will arrive at the bottom of the borehole, but you can't see the other side of the plate. You can't tell how fast the walkers are burning through it.

The answer as it happens is just a bit faster than the drones. The plate melts while the acolytes and cherubs are still several minutes away. In desperation you throw the resource drones into the walker line. They aren't terribly effective at bringing the walkers down, but you're sure that using their PDAs to vaporize the scientists who are still mostly intact is a mercy anyway.

The last of the resource drones is still fighting when the reinforcements finally arrive, but you don't bother withdrawing it. Instead you order a squadron of cherubs to fire their torpedoes. Never has watching a shoal of fusion torpedoes turn a target area into an overlapping hellscape of fusion explosions felt so cathartic.

When the bombardment is done nothing is left of the walkers on this side of the corridor. The organic masses have been vaporized as well and for the first time you can see the underlying structure of the megalith. The bluish metal is outlined by pulses of energy that actually seem to be speeding up now that the growths have been removed. You wonder if the organic masses were siphoning power somehow. That would explain how they could survive in space.

Another walker tries to push through the corridor, but your acolytes make quick work of it. Now you're the one with the numbers advantage. The problem is the bottleneck works both ways. You can clear the corridor itself by firing from this side, but anything that tries to fly down it is going to be exposed to fire at the other end.

You pull your awareness back from the cavern siege and ping Iuno and Laverna, "Any luck finding out what happened here."

"Well they do seem to be survivors. They say that a lot of the scientists got turned somehow and started massacring the others up in the station. They survived by being in the base camp."

"Yeah, that tracks with the station's log. It looks like the scientists closest to the artifacts got mind controlled and started bringing in others to the artifact surreptitiously. Once there were enough of them they launched a coup, and seized the station. Then they gathered up all the bodies and went down to the megalith. I guess we know what for, huh."

"What about the obelisk. Has it changed?"

"Well yes actually. It started trying to get access to me through hyperspace. I stopped it of course, but then I jettisoned the obelisk and used the station's guns to destroy it. I figured we didn't need to deal with any more tricks up here with all the craziness down there."

You are momentarily miffed that she didn't consult you, but it quickly passes, "Yeah, that's probably for the best." You loop Ulysses and Aurora into the channel. "I saw an access port for the megalith before the drones in the far cavern were destroyed. I think we're going to have to get to it, but what do you all think?"

What is the final consensus?

[ ] Nope, Nope, Nope
You're just a small flotilla of young Bentusi and a handful of allies. Aurora will fabricate a passenger liner for the survivors and then all of you will head out to go grab some reinforcements from the nearest Sentinel base. The megalith doesn't look like it's going anywhere. You don't have anything that you need to put your lives on the line for here. This is just a random archaeology expedition an alien minister asked you to look into in your free time. You've already saved what few survivors there were. You don't need to be the one to deal with the rest of it.

[ ] We Have Reserves
So far all of the walkers seem to be made out of scientist parts. It's a bit gruesome, but for some reason they don't seem to be making walkers from the other organic tumors. Is it a question of freshness or something else? You aren't sure, but regardless there were a limited number of scientists so there are a limited number of walkers they can throw at you. On the other hand Aurora and Laverna can keep making drones indefinitely. Unless they pull some kind of trick you will win this numbers game.

[ ] Full Frontal Assault
You don't want to give the meat things time to pull out something tricky. Or worse activate the rest of the megalith somehow. The thing is the size of a moon after all and filled with an unknown amount of ancient technology that might or might not be working. Take the initiative and don't give the tumor creatures the chance to do anything with it. Yes, whatever that comes out the other side of the corridor will be hit by everything, but this is the kind of situation your defensive fields are made for. You'll go down there personally and fight in the megalith yourself. Ulysses will come with you of course along with legions of drones.

The Spinward Shield

System Rho Terra
Unnamed Gas Giant

Your flotilla begins preparations for the assault. Aurora directs dozens of resource drones in lifting the drilling platform out of the borehole. Iuno continues to interrogate the surviving scientists. Laverna continues to direct acolytes into the raging conflict in the corridor while you and Ulysses consider the actual tactics to use in the assault.

You quickly realize that the corridor isn't actually big enough for either of you. You have a few resource drones start carving it wider when a thought occurs to you. If you're going to be cutting through the Megalith anyway, then why do it here? Why not go around the outside and make a new entrance into the second cavern.

You discuss the logistics with the others and it is quickly agreed that that would indeed be a better solution. So once the drilling platform is out of the way Ulysses descends to the entrance of the first cavern and then start rapidly blasting rock and dirt out of the way on the outside of the megalith. The resource drone swarm collects the debris and a tunnel rapidly appears even as the fight continues inside.

You meanwhile have one last thing you want to do. Aurora and Laverna are both busy, but there's one more source of fabbers in the system. The station has a full industrial scale fabber. It's not up to Bentusi standards of course, but it will do for your purposes. You feed it the schematics for your field modules and in short order you've bolted additional modules to your hull along with a large super capacitor. They aren't worth keeping for a real fight, but in situations like this when you have plenty of time to prepare they should significantly increase your field capacity.

---

Finally everything has come together. The second tunnel has reached the portion of the Megalith that is above the second cavern. A swarm of acolytes and cherubs are ready to act as the second prong of your attack, and you and Ullysses are as ready as you can be. Laverna herself is in the first cavern prepared to coordinate the drone swarm.

Iuno, Aurora, and your flicker allies have pulled back beyond the station. They won't be able to contribute anything to this fight. No sense risking them to the battle or the mind infection.

"Field Strength is at 180%. Everything is optimal. I'm gold."

"All capacitors are charged. I'm gold."

"I've locked all the cherubs on the far cavern. Just say the word and I'll start the bombardment."

"Plasma tests are good. Everything is golden. Initiating the burn."

Nearly a hundred resource drones settle on the megalith wall and start using their PDAs to burn through the exotic material. Aurora can't handle this many normally, but in this case they're all slaved to perform exactly one task. As their plasma starts eating through the hull plating Laverna initiates the cherub salvos. Like the resource drones there are far too many of them for her to control normally. Instead they simply fly in place and act as stationary torpedo launchers. Thousands of fusion torpedoes start tearing through the onslaught of walkers and pushing them back into the far cavern.

It's a ridiculous amount of firepower. No galactic fleet would be able to take that many salvos, but then they wouldn't just stand still for it either. This is a highly unusual situation. And in the end it's all a diversion anyway. Something to keep the meat walkers occupied so they don't set up an ambush once they notice the second hole being burned open.

And it's a good thing you planned that diversion as it actually takes longer than anticipated to burn through the hull plating. Apparently there's a layer of monomolecular armor sandwiched around the outside of the megalith. Something to take into account if you need to do this again. But for now it's enough that you can still burn through it.

You've already grappled the hull section and as soon as you read that the resource drones have stopped absorbing any vaporized resources, and therefore broken through, you push your engines to maximum thrust. There's a few moments of strain as the last threads of material pull apart and then you're through. Holding the hull plate in front of you like a shield you barrel into the enemy cavern. Ulysses is right behind and swarms of acolytes spread out from around the plate. Unfortunately you can only take a few dozen with you. They need a bit more fine control than the one off orders you gave the cherubs and resource drones.

Your two pronged attack gives you a precious few seconds of uninterrupted flight. Ulysses just spins in place and lets off a long sustained burn along the walls of the cavern clearing half a dozen walkers in one go while you try to put the plate between the largest walkers and yourself. Then your surprise is over and hostile fire starts hitting you.

It's just as bad as you feared. The walkers are different from when you first saw them. They aren't the small quad limbed things that first attacked the drones, but huge towering monstrosities that cling to the walls in multiple locations. And all of them are festooned with plasma turrets. It's as if you are deliberately flying into the business end of a PDA. Still the hull plate comes in handy now. You angle it in the densest fire to give yourself and Ulysses some mobile cover while he clears off swathes of the wall. As he does acolytes pour in from both entrances as Laverna and Aurora send reinforcements to distract and harass the mega walkers.

The battle feels like an eternity of dodging and weathering fire. One time Ulysses strays too far and even though he's only in the line of fire for a few seconds before you can catch up that's still enough for the plasma bath to strip away half his armor. You have to let the hull plate drop on both of you to provide what cover it can while you hurriedly repair the worst of the damage.

Finally though it is done. Mostly anyway. The walls are clear of walkers and no more are emerging from the monstrous mound at the fire end of the cavern. Ulysses takes his time lining up the final shot. A bolt of energy flies straight into the mound, and to your dismay is deflected into the cavern wall.

The mound has a defensive field of its own. Though you aren't reading anything like the emissions yours emits. Ulysses keeps trying and the drones join in, but nothing works. If the meat is really siphoning power from the megalith it probably wildly outclasses your own field.

Unfortunately you don't have time to study the problem carefully as the mound unfurls several huge protrusions that start accumulating energy. Siege class plasma cannons. But there is one way to defeat a defensive field without bringing it down first though. You remember what happened in the battle in the garden when the Kushan turrets got through your field.

"Ulysses we need to go in!" You align yourself to run along the wall of the cavern. Hopefully you'll be able to keep all of the plasma protrusions from lining up on you at once. You eject the extra field modules. They're already burned out, and you need as much maneuverability as possible for this.

With a terse "Roger," Ulysses drops in behind you.

The two of you hurl yourselves forward while the drones form an ablative shell around you. They last for all of one salvo from the enormous plasma protrusions. Then it's just the hull plate and your fields which quickly start dropping. By the time you reach the mound even the hull plating is all but gone.

Your fields are flickering on and off as you desperately restore burned out modules only for them to be overloaded nearly instantly. You ram the remnants of the plate into one protrusion and grab another one with your repair manipulators. Even as you start manually disassembling the second protrusion you scream into the flotilla channel. "Kill it! Kill it, Ulysses!"

He doesn't waste time with a response instead pumping ion cannon shots into the mound burning huge chunks of it away even as he dodges the final protrusion. It's a desperate race to see who can recharge and fire the fastest, but finally the mound goes limp and deflates. You let the half disassembled protrusion drop out of your grasp and just float in the cavern. No one speaks for several long minutes.

Eventually Laverna breaks the silence, "No one's going to believe us."

You laugh, "They'll have to when we show them the recordings."

"I think I might need better engines. Being this slow is proving to be a liability." Ulysses is floating with half his armor scorched off and a huge portion of his engine assembly melted off so you have to agree with him.

"I'm just glad you two are alright. We have a habit of losing bodies in these situations."

"Yeah, these things are dangerous." You're glad you didn't get put into that situation again, though honestly it was a close thing at the end.

"Alright let's get this mess cleaned up." Several resource drones enter the cavern and begin vaporizing the masses of discorded flesh piled everywhere. You right yourself, grab Ulysses and begin dragging him back to the borehole.

---

It takes a few days to get everything sorted out at the Megalith. Aurora repairs Ulysses while you and Laverna direct the drones in ensuring that every scrap of the tumors is vaporized. You don't want any of it to survive. Though to be honest there's no telling if the rest of the Megalith is infected. Iuno and your allies keep interrogating the survivors, but she has to admit they have little more to tell you.

Once the mound is fully removed you are able to use the access port to interface with the Megalith at last. After all that's happened it seems ironic that this was your entire reason for coming here. Fortunately your translation protocol work, but this megalith feels different. It feels even more ancient for one, but also newer. As if parts of the system have been built more recently than the Megalith itself. Your best guess is that these are parts that have been modified by the organic growths. Or maybe you're actually accessing other points of infection in other areas of the megalith. The thought disgusts you.

Either way the network is vast. There's far too much for you to analyze yourself. You download what looks like a selection of the most important pieces and package them for transport on fabricated memory modules. You'll try to look at them when you have time during your travels.

You also take the time to harvest a resource tank worth of the exotic matter from the Megalith after you locate its storage bays. All in all it was a successful mission for you, if not for the Taiidan. After Aurora fabricates a small passenger ship for the survivors your entire group jumps out.

First you head to the nearest Sentinel base. Whatever your agreement with Minister Fiheo might have been you can't let anyone but the Bentusi guard the megalith now. The flicker races have proven too vulnerable. Once you've made your report to a stern looking Monitor you then double back to Arak System.

At the Grand Conclave you hand over the scientists to the Taiidan intelligence service and make your report to Minister Fiheo.

"Be careful if you find any more megaliths. They seem to have multiple avenues of infection. We predict that we haven't yet seen the full extent of their capabilities and they were already able to take over a whole station of scientists explicitly prepared for strange activity. It was only luck that we arrived in time to save the survivors."

Iuno is speaking through the Envoy, which hovers in Minister Fieho's officer. The salarian listens patiently even as data scrolls across his many screens.

"Yes, I will ensure that every precaution is taken. Thank you for your assistance, and for rescuing who you could. I've transmitted codes you can use to contact some of my old colleagues. Hopefully they will be able to help you in your future endeavors."

You hope so. You didn't give him a copy of the Megalith memory archive for nothing after all.

As the Envoy trundles back to Iuno there is only one thing remaining. Where to go next. You feel like things are becoming more urgent so best to find one of your primary audiences and hopefully gain more allies.

[ ] The Keepers of the Lost
Time to go talk with the Keepers. You have quite a lot of data they would be interested in now.

[] The Exiles of Kharak
One set of exiles has been warned, but their homeworld still hasn't been. You aren't sure what exactly you'll find there however.

[ ] The Vaygr Tribes:
Try and find the Vaygr. This will probably be difficult. Though after that Megalith you may need to recalibrate what you consider difficult.

[ ] The Irune Financial Sphere:
Go cash in your reward with the Irune. It will be nice to go somewhere where you won't be shot at for once.

---

Mission Rewards:
Memory Module: Megalith 002 Research Data
Resource Tank: Element Zero
Contacts: Taiidan Intelligence Service

---

Quest Note: Let me know if you want to do anything like make changes your ships. Now would be the time to do so.