Video message recorded 1257 on Normandy SR-2
Date: xx/xx/2185
Talk on the Normandy has shifted from Gardner's cooking to Ferris Fields. Another colony's gone silent. I wonder if I had done something, anything different, the colony would still be here. Even worse, Crewman Hadley's brother was stationed on the colony. No one will say he's dead. The crew is convinced Lawson and I will save the colonists. It seems these doubts don't leave my quarters where the rest of the crew can see them. What will happen when the next colony goes silent, Kaidan? Will they believe in me then or will I have a mutiny on my hands?
I've been listening to the crew and am beginning to see another side Cerberus. They take care of their own. One crewman's family is on New Canton and Cerberus is evacuating them to Earth. Lawson gave her personal word it would be done to him. Most of the crew seems to be here because the Alliance and Council are doing nothing. Taylor is even oddly optimistic about it. If Cerberus saves the colonies from the Collectors, perhaps people will forget the rest of what they've done. He's realistic about the chances of that happening.
I don't have to go far out of my way to find trouble. We stumbled onto the remains of a ship to find the mechs shooting anything that moved. EDI analyzed the ship's logs and we backtrack to Jarrahe station. We were greeted by bodies, killed by a paranoid VI. VIs seem to develop self defense capabilities frequently—maybe we should rethink how we interact with them. Maybe the quarians would still be on their homeworld if they talked to the geth instead of shutting them down. But if there was no quarian Pilgrimage, Tali would not have gotten that memory core… Enough digressing, Moira. Using information found on the station we shut down a Hahne Kedar assembly line. The mechs from the factory had bad obedience processors which infected other mechs. A royal mess left for me to clean up. The worst part? Hahne Kedar knew the mechs put Jarrahe Station at risk and only made a token effort to warn them. Oh, and Jarrahe Station's VI tried to upload itself to the Normandy. EDI doesn't seem to have been affected. Nothing's allowed to hurt my ship. I already had to confiscate a solder gun from Joker.
It took lots of planning on Kasumi's part, but we got her partner's greybox back. First we infiltrated a party hosted by Donovan Hock, arms dealer to the stars. You'd love the dress she picked out for me. Black leather, sexy without showing too much. She obviously didn't ask Joker for advice, thank god. Easy to move in. Still, it was nice getting my armor back from the statue of Saren. Kasumi decided in my role as Alison Gunn, mercenary captain, my tribute to Hock would be a gold statue of our favorite turian husk to hide our equipment. I'm A. Gunn, get it? Got a bit of intel about Archangel—he seems to be bad for business. Good for him. Another bit of gossip was the possibility I'm alive. None of them wanted to believe it. No one recognized me. Maybe it was dress. Who expects to see a larger than life soldier in anything other than armor or a uniform?
After a bit of stealth work, we opened his vault. I had a ball looking through Hock's quarters. Even found a spare cred in a couch cushion. Felt odd, almost naked, when we defended ourselves from the Eclipse mercs. I'm just not used to wearing a dress. The fact my better omni-tool is integrated into my armor left me with my back-up. It's not optimized for combat, but did the job. I was more worried about the tech armor and kinetic shield. Most women wear lacy lingerie under a dress—not me. I wear an abbreviated version of the standard armor lining. I assume that was another of Kasumi's touches. If so, she should market it to one of the corporations—they'd make a killing selling it to bodyguards. I just wish they could fit more batteries on the thing.
Kasumi wanted to leave with half of Hock's collection. Liara would have liked some of the things we saw like stone tablets with what Kasumi identified as old quarian script. Think the tablets contained the quarian ten commandments? We blasted our way out—it was fun. I got to try my skills against a couple asari vanguards. They weren't much to write home about—probably why they're working for a mercenary company instead of for a Matriarch, right? Pretty routine stuff until we got out to where the Kodiak could extract us. Hock shows up in a gunship. We worked our way closer to the extraction point, where Kasumi could disengage the gunship's shields. When she jumped onto the ship, words can't describe it. Have you ever seen circus trapeze artists? You must have, growing up in the United North American States. It was like that, but add an acrobat and one of those lizards that can walk up the side of a tree as easily as I can walk up a flight of stairs. Either way, it was mesmerizing. I could never do that, even if I lived as long as an asari. Once we finished off Hock, back to the Normandy.
Moira
