Chapter Thirty-Two

"Are we absolutely certain that the same Geth transmission frequencies are originating from this particular planet that we've picked up from earlier excursions with the Geth?" John looked apprehensive about this as he remained sitting.

Navigator Pressley nodded his head, "It took quite a bit of signal scanning and cross referencing transmission patterns, I've accumulated data references since Eden Prime and it comes across as a complete match Commander, somewhere down there is a either a large consolidation of Geth ground troops or some kind of base."

"What else can you tell me? Numbers? Anything concrete?"

"So far I've discovered four primary sources of Geth transmission on this planet alone, they have to be established bases of sorts it appears from communication patterns and this planet is more than a little out of the way for travel, not to mention the planet holds no real value for anyone to even bother going there." Pressley typed a few commands into the console next to the display screen in the com room where the rest of the ground team was assembled for a briefing.

"Completely out of the way, yet easily within range of a relay to access to twenty percent of the Traverse," Jane whistled as the visual of the planet came into view, "a perfect place for a secret base of operations when you have the Council hounding after you, that and the Geth can easily survive in a Class Two environment because they don't need to breathe."

"Why do they need a base when they have a massive starship on hand?" Ashley asked, "That thing could easily transport a couple thousand Geth, more if they don't mind it being cramped."

"Saren's ship might not have the ability to transport a large number of troops," Alenko reminded her, "a ship that size would need a real monster of a drive core, that and looking over the video of the ship revealed no known access hatches big enough for any organic or Geth to enter."

"We've only got a small portion of the ship on video, might have been something on the other side that we couldn't see," Garrus pointed out, "we might not have seen the interior bays or general airlocks on a ship of that size yet."

"If Saren did build this warship, then he did it without any known manufacturing shipyard I've seen," Tali also chimed in with her input, "the overall design of the ship doesn't match any known design characteristics associated with any species that we know."

"Huh?" Wrex asked.

Tali fidgeted for a second, "Every single species has a particular style of constructing starships, be it general ship layout, signature features that can identify a specific classification or even the favoritism in the materials used, this ship doesn't match any of the six thousand designs I've cross referenced."

Jackson choked on the cookie he was eating, "You've had time to compare schematics with six thousand different ships!?"

"Of course, I even helped fix the elevator you modified," the narrowing of her eyes indicated that she wasn't amused, "it helps when you have access to a massive supercomputer as well."

John cleared his throat to get attention back on him as he stood up, looking at the display screen, "We are faced with a rouge Spectre who has literally done everything you could think of and more, in command of an entire army of Geth that we haven't even a clue on total numbers and a massive starship that has been seen in atmosphere on a Class IV planet with unknown capabilities aside from what little we've seen and the bastard has disappeared without a trace."

He turned around and crossed his arms, "This might be his primary base of operations or it could just be a delaying action keeping us from finding his real base, I want the full team prepped, bring everything you can think of and then everything else we might have in our arsenal."

"We'll have Joker on close standby with the Normandy in the event a ship attempts to flee or we need some serious fire support, but aside from that we will be first securing a landing zone with the Mako comprised of the first ground team led by myself after we make an insertion from orbit during a meteor shower to mask our approach," a simulation of said event happening was on the display as John kept talking in his no shit tone that meant he was dead serious, "once the first Geth encampment is destroyed, the second team along with the Grizzly will be joining us so we can begin our assult on the other encampments, Jane will be in charge of the second team."

"I want every single one of you to bring a backup primary weapon, full load out of grenades, standard med-gel and whatever else you want to carry along," John smirked as he turned to watch the display change into a geographical map of the region where the Geth bases were located, each one appearing as a generic red dot, "expect heavy ground resistance along with plenty of armor support and turrets in their favor."

"Team One will be Wrex, Jason, Garrus, Liara, Ashley and myself respectively," a glance towards said individuals was met with nods, "pack accordingly for rapid assault and close range fighting."

A nod in the direction of Jane prompted her to stand and step into the center of the room, "Being Team Two means we will be largely support with the heavy artillery on the event things get hairy, Jackson will be driving the Grizzly because he is the only one in the crew even certified to operate the thing, Alenko being biotic support and Tali will be monitoring vehicle status as acting engineer."

The display showed two teams with names and roles attached to each name so everyone understood what part they played as Jason glanced at Team One.

Shepard- Squad Leader/Mako Gunner

Garrus- Mako Driver/Sniper

Wrex- Assault/Biotics Support

Liara- Biotics Specialist

Ashley- Assault/Grenadier

Jason- Medic/Biotics Support

M-35 Mako

Made sense to have a majority of the ground team in the first landing, that and the Grizzly was very cramped, it was gonna be cramped as Hell in the Mako, but it sure as Hell beat having Jane drive.

Shepard- Squad Leader

Jackson- Tank Operator

Alenko- Communications/Biotics Support

Tali- Engineer/Technical Support

MBT Grizzly

It had been ten days since the elevator incident and they were now six hours out from a barren planet in the middle of nowhere with enough Geth transmissions to get picked up, thus the Normandy had been sent to investigate, it literally screamed of a trap, but that was what they were betting on, so they were going in anyway with everything. Jason mused that maybe he should break out a couple of the Victory Projects for this mission, but he figured that bringing along a real tank for additional firepower alone with all the modified hardware the ground team already had would be more than enough for now, that and having Joker less than eighty seconds away with the main gun counted for something.

"Alright people, we have our jobs, let's get it done, dismissed."

Everyone got up and left, Jason heading straight for his workbench after a cramped, but faster than usual ride in the elevator. While the idea of making the elevator supersonic for three whole decks, they instead modified it to move a little faster, thus eliminating the ungodly long wait times between decks, a real godsend now that they could get things done, though Garrus made up for that with his usual elevator banter with other members of the team.

"So, it is just me or does this whole shebang literally scream it's a trap?" Jackson asked as soon they reached the cargo bay, Jason giving a noncommittal grunt in reply.

"Figured as much, but then again I have a feeling that Bossman and Boss Lady know that and have one heck of a kick ass plan in place," Jackson sighed as he reached his locker and started putting on his armor, "so how many do you think?"

"Enough to make things interesting," Jason replied as he pulled out a crate of demo charges from under his workbench, "how did you wrangle driving the Grizzly instead of Shepard?"

Jackson cringed, "A couple of rounds in the simulator proved that Boss Lady can't drive a Grizzly without destroying it and every single allied unit in the scenario by accident, Bossman wasn't much better and Garrus was more suited for the Mako than the Grizzly and I aced it like a boss."

Well if memory served, the two of them had pretty much downloaded the proper operating manuals for anything and everything in the Mass Effect universe, all three segments too. It wasn't hard for either of them to say, take over piloting the Normandy if they really wanted to, but again there wasn't a reason for them to do it, Joker was a really good pilot when you got past the brittle bone's disease and the snarky attitude.

"Got any new toys for us to play with?" Jackson bounced on the balls of his feet as he looked down at the cluttered workbench.

"No, just the usual mixed bag of goodies I've cooked up so far," Jason answered as Jackson sighed, muttering something about having a working minigun of his own, "I have a few projects for later."

"What kind?" Jason turned to see that Ashley had arrived, tucking grenades into her belt pouches after placing her new rifle/grenade launcher combo onto her back and grabbing one of his modified Banshee Mk VI rifles that had variable fire selection.

"Not finished yet, though I think they might come in handy." Jason replied as Alenko made an appearance, placing a spare shotgun onto his back and fiddling with his latest magnum.

"Well, let us know when you are finished, it is really interesting seeing what you build next," Ashley waved as she head in the direction of the awaiting Mako while Alenko did the same towards the Grizzly, "makes me wonder if Saren's flunkies will see it coming."

It was like a knife to the gut, a reminder that sooner or later they would be heading to Virmire of all places where at least one person of the ground team would be dying, though he figured there was a way around that particular story plot that was going to require a lot of fancy tech and old fashioned guts to survive.

Jackson nudged him in the ribs, "One fight at a time bro, we'll take it on when it comes around."

Nodding, Jason finished putting his armor on, stowing his weapons, grenades, machete, knives, medi-gel, first aid kit and additional explosives before he pulled a crate out from under his workbench that was packed with Shocker mods already installed into grenades.

Grenades of his own design.

"What the heck are those?"

Jason laughed as he hoisted the crate onto his shoulder, "A side project of mine."

"You built bigger grenades, didn't you?"

"Ask a stupid question and you shall receive a stupid answer."

XXX

It had taken all of ten seconds to explain to everyone that was crowded between the vehicles how these new hand grenades functioned, the regular Mass Effect hand grenades came in one size, imagine a hockey puck comprised of a detonator switch, a mod slot for each individual grenade and a small magnetic strip so the grenade could be stored or attached to any metallic surface prior to detonating. The new grenades Jason created were the size of a baseball, bearing an uncanny resemblance to frag grenades from Halo, but were modified with the idea of a more powerful mod instead of regular high explosive fragmentation type devices.

"You mean to tell me that this thing can fry any Geth within ten meters of the blast radius?" Jane was about as serious as she could get after she read the schematics of the device on her omni-tool that Jason had forwarded to her.

"The numbers add up to anything short of an armature exploding catastrophically if caught in the blast," Jason shrugged as he handed everyone two of the Mk II grenades for now and stashed the rest of them back under his workbench, "it should either completely take down or at least take a large percentage of the shielding from a Colossus if the grenade lands close enough, though I would recommend only using these when you have fifteen meters of clearance so as not to fry your own electronics."

"Use only against high priority targets or when ordered to do so," John cut in as everyone carefully stowed the extra grenades in a pouch or onto a belt somewhere, "someone please stop Juggernaut, he is making me incredibly nervous."

Jackson was of course absentmindedly juggling five of them, his spare sidearm and a demo charge while sitting on the turret of the Grizzly as Jane started scolding him for screwing around, endangering the well-being of the crew and nearly frying the vehicles.

"No need to worry about that Boss Lady," Jackson quipped as he plucked each item from midair and placed them somewhere safe, "me and Garrus installed a counter EMP and electronic warfare suite on both vehicles to protect them from hacking attempts, overloads and anything else we could think, anything short of a hundred of these puppies going off at once won't do much damage to the vehicles."

"I also took the liberty of setting a similar software program to each of your omni-tools after modifying your armor to accept a smaller version of the same protective tech," Jason said as he demonstrated with his own armor as a yellow layer of hard light could be seen around his body, "it will stop most Overloads, hacking attempts, sabotage and electronic attacks directly, while protecting the medical diagnostics, communication, shielding and power systems of the armor."

(An early attempt at Tech Armor, bite me)

"How the Hell did you manage this!?" Ashley shouted after she discovered the new passive shielding feature downloaded onto her omni-tool and activated it to see for herself that her torso and shoulders were protected by a similar aura.

"I wouldn't have built the Shocker Mk II upgrade if I didn't have a way of preventing backlash damage onto our own systems, though I originally designed it to counter the specific EMP frequency of my grenades, the side effects of the project showed promise." Jason shrugged as he turned to the one member of the ground team he honestly worried about the most.

Tali had activated her own shielding feature, a set of heavily modified Mk VII Light Mantis armor over the top of her regular suit that included a tiara like head piece that acted as a conduit for shielding over her head. While everyone else had torso and shoulder protection with the exception of John due to his infiltrator tech taking priority, thus leaving the man with only torso protection on the front of his body, Tali had protection around her helmet that was really faint, but easily visible when she turned her head side to side and she also had light shimmering around her arms and legs, though it stopped at her knees while her arms where protected until her wrists. Jason was legitimately concerned about any EMP powerful enough to knock a Colossus down a peg or two going off anywhere near the one member of the ground that relied on fifty pounds of tech to keep her alive outside of a firefight, unless she had some kind of EMP hardened armor that could take anything he could throw at in the terms of electronic attacks, which was the reason why Tali had a lot more of it installed into her armor.

The drawbacks were of course minor, shielding was still pretty high and the recharge rate was a little bit slower, that and Tali would never have a cloaking mod installed on her armor because Jason had redesigned the armor for one purpose only. It wasn't as good as what they would have in the second installment, that stuff could stop mass accelerator rounds, shrapnel and directed energy weapons for a short period, this was only suited for the electronic stuff. Then again it didn't amplified other electronic attacks either like it tended to do in the second installment either, there wasn't much of a negative effect either.

"We tested both systems before we even thought of installing them," Jason said after he deactivated his own tech shield, still too early to call it actual tech armor, "with everything short of the Mk II grenades."

"Wait, was that the reason why you were throwing grenades and launching Overloads at your brother three days ago?" Liara asked as eyes turned towards them.

"Partially." Jason deadpanned as he climbed into the Mako.

"Hold on, you said that it was perfectly safe!" Jackson hollered.

"You survived didn't you?"

"That isn't the point! I still can't feel my toes from when you zapped the shit out of me!"

Jane groaned as she rested her forehead against her husband's shoulder, "If Saren or Sovereign haven't killed us by the end of this, then those two's antics probably will be the death of us."

John simply grunted before pecking his wife on the cheek and climbed into the Mako.