"Synchronicity" is a word with a special meaning among those who work with psionics. We have yet to precisely understand the mechanisms behind it - a frustratingly common trend among psionics as a whole. What we do know is that in certain circumstances, psychics who have a strong Mental rating are able to telepathically "link" with another psychic, usually (but by no means exclusively) with a strong Mental rating of their own. This link allows for an exchange of data between the individuals linked, no matter the distance. In effect, Synchronization turns the two psychics into a sort of quantum-entangled pair. The effect, as far as we can tell, persists over a prolonged period, although a lack of communication will allow the connection to deteriorate and eventually end altogether.
This should not be confused with "mindspace" interaction between psychics. In that scenario, a short-term, mutually-shared hallucination is formed between two who bear the Gift, constructed out of elements of their respective subconscious. This allows for rapid communication between psychically sensitive individuals, but it is highly unstable, and can usually be collapsed by one party or the other with focused effort. Only the strongest Mentals are able to sustain a mindspace connection for longer than a few minutes, and the effect has none of the long-term aftereffects of a Synchronicity event. It can also only be formed between Gifted; non-psionics are completely immune to the effect.
-Doctor George Pokorski, XCOM Psionic Corps researcher
Chapter Nine: Operation: NEPTUNE DAGGER - Part Two
Screaming and heat hammered Shepard. Smoke, the stench of dozens of materials set ablaze, including human flesh, pummeled his nose, and he forced his eyes open.
He stood in a sea of bodies.
They looked human, at least in body shape, but their armor was clearly not vahlenite or a derivative, and the weapons lying among them were kinetic mass accelerators. The colors and models of their equipment were uniform, even though Shepard knew they had never been that way. He stood knee-deep in the corpses, dozens of ruined bodies littering the street between the module-stacks of a colony city. The corpses were broken, shot with kinetic and energy weapons, bodies charred and twisted. The only light was a smoke-choked red burning down from overhead and spots of reddish-gold from distant fires raging through the streets.
Mindoir.
"Intriguing," Paxton Fettel murmured from behind him, and Shepard whirled. His sidearm was in his hand, and Shepard snapped it up, the green glow from its lines turning into a sickly yellow in the red light. The psychic stood atop the carpet of batarian corpses, his formerly gray coat soaked in blood, and his eyes turned up toward the bloody sky.
"It is always interesting to enter someone else's mind," Fettel spoke, turning his head to gaze of the ravaged, burning colony. "To see their fixations. Their obsessions. What defines-"
Shepard shot him, a bolt of yellow-green fury vaporizing Fettel's head and neck. The body toppled, dissipating into a cloud of expanding black smoke.
"I suppose I shouldn't expect manners from you," Fettel continued, to Shepard's left. He spun, leveling his pistol at the apparition, who was ambling idly along one side of the street, stepping atop the bodies of the slavers who had burned Shepard's home.
Shepard nearly shot him again, but held his fire this time. Everything thus far indicated that this was a constructed mindspace created by telepathy, a virtual environment constructed from the subconscious of those involved. Usually these were formed from the minds of those initiating the connection, but could draw from details and memories of any of the participants.
And clearly Fettel had built it out of Shepard's subconscious. The fact that Fettel had managed to draw his mind in despite Shepard's mental resistance and that he was wearing a psi-cloak spoke that either Fettel was immensely powerful, or that Shepard needed to have a stern talking-to with the armory techs who maintained his gear.
"Then again," Fettel said with a shrug, "most minds I've had the pleasure of talking to on this level show me something similar. The… carpet of dead mercenaries is a nice change of pace, however. Usually there are only one or two bodies that they fixate on. Sometimes a room, or a house. Rarely there will be a crashing vehicle or spaceship."
Shepard lowered his sidearm, thinking while listening to the psychic ramble. Fettel had killed Chen, or Matzirov, or whatever his name really was, and implied he was responsible for the cyborg's actions. Which implied he was connected to Disler's murder, and possibly the SDC psionics lab. The fact that he had gone to the trouble of creating a mindspace instead of attacking or killing Shepard directly indicated he wanted to talk.
"Why did you bring me here?" Shepard asked.
"Because you are both an agent of XCOM, and the first psychic I have met in recent years who was not insane, or quickly driven to that state by experimentation," Fettel said. "That allows you a certain freedom of intellect and action that most lack."
Shepard scowled, shaking his head. He started concentrating, pushing outward with the psychic energy that ran through his body. What could strengthen the body could be used to empower the mind as well.
"We're all hounds, to one master or another," the psychic rasped. "At least you are more free-willed than dogs. XCOM Sentinels have to be, and that is useful to me at the moment."
Shepard's power ran through body, intensifying his mental defenses, and the bodies and burning structures surrounding him and Fettel began to grow hazy and indistinct as he pressed against the mindscape the psychic had built. Fettel's words abruptly halted.
"Stop monologuing," Shepard said. "I'm not some weak-willed Mental you can play games with, Fettel. You brought me here to talk, and you don't have time to be obtuse. Get to the point."
Fettel stared at Shepard for a moment, and then…
He smiled. He then chuckled, and stepped forward, toward the Sentinel.
"Excellent," the insane psychic said. "Very well. You are here because of the blockade. The blockade is being perpetuated because the SDC is terrified they will lose their precious toys. Or… toy, now. Matzirov is dead, and I believe you seized Allmon's brain, or what is left of it, when you landed at the docks."
"The one puppeting those workers," Shepard said, and Fettel nodded.
"Even less strong or imaginative than Matzirov. Forced to rely on technology instead of his own powers. When they spoke to us, he fell into their thrall entirely. But-" He held up a hand. "I speak ahead of myself. The point, as you requested."
Fettel began to pace around Shepard, stepping over the armored corpses filling the street, rising and falling with each body he walked upon.
"The Chinese have always been deeply interested in Armacham Technology Corporation's many… products. Myself among them, as well as the Replica." He paused, exhaling. "Little enough difference, I suspect."
"You're saying you were trained by Armacham?" Shepard asked, a bit skeptical. Extranet rumors were always going on about secret psychic training cabals, but most of those were just conspiracy theories. The actual secret psychic programs had PsiCorps minders watching them like hawks. Then again, SDC's lab had been kept secret from XCOM for some time. It was possible Armacham could have been running their own psychic program under the radar, but Shepard didn't know how a corporation could have kept it secret from XCOM Intelligence and PsiCorps.
"Armacham has many contracted military projects, for a wide number of clients," Fettel replied. "I am far from the first psychic child they have trained, although they go to extreme lengths to hide it."
"You'll forgive me for being doubtful," Shepard said, and Fettel shrugged.
"It makes no difference whether you believe I was raised in a box with an ATC logo on the side or not," Fettel said, his words bitter. "But you will find no record of me in any PsiCorps academy or sanctioned school. The methods they used to teach me were… not compatible with PsiCorps' ethics. A focus on speedily developing psionic capabilities, no matter how painful or damaging."
He continued pacing over the bodies, boots crunching occasionally when they found a particularly charred corpse.
"I digress. My childhood has only a tangential relationship to the reason we are here. The SDC was enamored of the idea of a Replica army of absolute loyalty. More palatable than a legion of drones or mechs, especially with Citadel electronic warfare capability. But there was always the issue of subversion. Voice commands fell out of favor for neural programming, but such things could be compromised. The forays into Replica controlled by psychics was highly appealing. Thus, SDC contracted Armacham to develop Project Perseus, which tragically ended just a few days previously."
Fettel's smile as he said that made it clear how he felt about the "tragedy."
"Psychically-sensitive Replica are nothing new," Shepard said, and Fettel nodded as he moved around the street, treading on the broken remains.
"The technology has been around for years, but it has always been imperfect," Fettel mused. "Cloned brains able to receive input from a Mental. A suitable psychic could control a squad, or even a platoon, but… SDC was more ambitious. They wanted a commander who could control entire armies. A psychic commander able to command and receive input from tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of Replica, waging wars across entire worlds."
Shepard frowned at that, and shook his head. Remote psionic control was one of many threats that Sentinels, especially PsiCorps Sentinels, had to study in detail. What Fettel was talking about, however… it wasn't impossible, but it was extremely difficult. Quite simply, no known psychic could handle the raw amount of data from that many Replica at once. One could get perfect battlefield intelligence and precise control over a small group of Replica, but tens or hundreds of thousands? It would drive a human mind mad.
"Yes, a quite challenging prospect," Fettel agreed. "One would need to greatly increase the power and capacity of a Mental to achieve that goal. Which would require a great deal of invasive and destructive experimentation."
The last words were delivered with a low snarl, and flickers of red light washed off Fettel as he spoke them.
"SDC funds bankrolled the project, but the blood was on the hands of Armacham researchers. Many passed through the labs," Fettel said, stopping in place and turning toward Shepard. "Very few in any usable state. Those of us who showed the most promise, they… selected for a particular procedure. The specifics are beyond me. I do not remember the precise process, but what resulted was…. enlightening."
Something about the way he said that triggered Shepard's mental alarms.
"What do you remember?" Shepard asked, taking a step forward.
"Light. Information." Fettel closed his eyes, his head twitching, like he was being prodded with electrical shocks. "A sea of data, as though I were an infomorph buried in the extranet, but it wasn't electronic. It was pure knowledge, pure psychic power. And when it was over, I heard and saw. A blind, deaf man whose sensed were restored. And what I could feel through my new senses was glorious."
His eyes opened, and his smile returned.
"And they told me to wait. To prepare."
"Who?" Shepard asked, anxious. This all sounded like a Synchronicity event. But that would mean that….
"Those who would muzzle me," Fettel replied with a chuckle. "I am unsure precisely what was speaking to me through the connection, but I knew of their intent."
Connection? Shepard felt a sudden chill. An abrupt boost to psionic power, coupled with this talk of connections and voices? Definitely Synchronicity, but the only thing he could think of that could both boost power and enable communication was….
No. No, ATC couldn't have been that idiotic. They hadn't connected Fettel to an unsecured Gollop device, had they?
"I knew they would use me," Fettel said, "just as Armacham tried to use me. Matzirov and Allmon fell into their promises, but I saw the chains they would bind us with. I agreed to their help, and when the time came, we wreaked a glorious slaughter upon our captors."
His fists clenched tight, knuckles popping.
"They gave Allmon and Matzirov new bodies, but I recognized the trap. When I escaped, I did so as a free man, in my own body."
Fettel's smile turned to a vicious grimace.
"I am not their hound. I am no one's. My path is my own, for the first time in my life, and I will pave it in their corpses."
Fleet Admiral Steven Hackett loomed on the bridge of the XCS Honjo Masamune, his scarred visage dark and unwelcoming. He had once been accusing of being "allergic to smiling" and it was an apt description. He'd had a long career, earning one scar after another, and he didn't believe in erasing the marks one earned in war, whether physical or mental. Only when he'd resleeved had he ever lost his previous scarring, and he'd worn his current body for thirty years of service, and it bore the marks.
He wondered if he would earn more before this operation was over with. Putting his Strike Four task force between the PPA and SDC navies over Proteus was just inviting an event that could result in many medals and new bodies being passed around for his crewmen. The fact that the SDC and PPA officers responsible would be pretty much lynched by their respective commands for even scratching an XCOM ship would be mild comfort. They were still parking their task force between two angry, near-hostile navies in the midst of an international crisis. One moron making one bad decision could trigger a bloodbath humanity could ill afford.
He looked over the sensor feeds and the system-wide hologram in the CIC. The SDC's fleet was holding orbit over Proteus, maintaining their blockade over the major undersea settlements as well as the smaller ones and the few bits of land area poking above the waves, where land installations had been built by one faction or another. The PPA had concentrated their own task force ahead of the planet's orbit, outside of effective weapons range, though their position meant they could simply launch kinetic weapons back toward the planet at the SDC fleet.
The fact that the SDC had to spread its fleet across Proteus' orbit also meant that if the PPA started shooting, they'd have advantage in force concentration, which was why Hackett had been forced to concentrate Strike Four in orbit ahead of the planet as well. Keeping a middling distance between the two navies would let XCOM pick off any outgoing munitions, but it also meant that if one of them wanted to open fire they would have to neutralize the XCOM fleet first. On top of that, forcing Strike Four to hold its current position left them in an inconvenient position to support the ground teams. XCOM ships had to pass through the SDC blockade to get anywhere, which slowed them down further.
And on top of that, the Citadel had sent a bipedal weapon of mass destruction to observe and try to defuse the situation. Or rather, Saren Arterius had invited himself using his Spectre status, and apparently no one on the SDC side had the spine or authority to refuse him. His frigate hung in station-keeping orbit over Xin Hengsha, while his shuttle had descended about fifteen minutes ago. By now he would have long since landed at the spaceport and gotten to work.
An alert popped up on Hackett's feeds while he was contemplating that happy thought. One of the infomorphs monitoring the sensor reports from the fleet had spotted something.
Go ahead, Lieutenant, Hackett sent to the officer heading the sensor operators.
Sir, we've got an anomaly on the hyperwave scanners covering Proteus, the Lieutenant replied.
Send me the data, Hackett ordered, and brought up his own feed. He paced over to his command chair and sat down while the data uploaded.
He saw a hyperwave plot of the planet, including the gleaming points indicating SDC warships orbiting the planet, with ship size, type, and model coupled with estimates on weaponry and crew counts hovering next to them. The hyperwave readings were fuzzier the closer one got to the planet's magnetic fields, and the constant thunderstorms sweeping the planet didn't help either. They had a hard time scanning anything underneath those storms, which was why they relied on other sensor types. Yet another reason why SDC had built their psionics lab here.
It would be a different matter if the hyperwave was in-atmosphere. The peculiarities of the sensor system allowed ground-based arrays to provide a complete picture of human (and otherwise) activity from inside its magnetic field, but none of the Proteus colonies were large enough to warrant a hyperwave system. The ideal setup was to have a hyperwave scanner on the surface and another in orbit to get a full picture of what was happening.
It took a few moments for Hackett to spot the anomaly, even with the informorphs marking the area where they detected it. It was in Proteus' upper hemisphere, near the north pole, where temperature and pressure differences were currently causing massive and violent arctic storms. The timestamp for the reports indicated that for several seconds, at about ten minutes ago, there had been an abrupt surge of energy amid one of the most intense storms. The radiation markers were consistent with elerium-based machinery.
Hackett frowned, considering the radiation spike. It could have been the activation of an elerium-based power system, but the spike was too abrupt and cut off too quickly. The destruction of a surface facility or airborne craft using a large elerium reactor could have such an effect. A DV drive's wormhole generated radiation spikes in a similar band, but no one had yet been able to figure out how to open a wormhole inside a planet's gravity well.
The admiral considered the current situation, and glanced at the plots showing the fleets standing off over Proteus.
Comms, prepare a message, he sent after several minutes' consideration. Broadcast on SDC, PPA, and XCOM military channels.
Ready, sir, replied the comms officer.
All ships in-system, this is Admiral Hackett, XCOM Strike Taskforce Four, he sent. Possible unidentified ship in-atmosphere at Proteus. XCOM ships are going to standby alert. Recommend same.
Message away, the comms officer sent back after a moment.
"Good," Hackett murmured out loud. He wasn't sure what that anomaly was, but he was going to be ready for any eventuality. They hadn't found anything out of the ordinary during the psionic sweep drill, but he was keeping his eyes open.
There was too much weirdness going on right now.
The mindscape trembled, corpses and smoke and fire becoming fuzzy once more as Shepard pushed against Fettel's will.
"If you want revenge, I can help you," the Sentinel said. Fettel peered at him for a moment through the red haze.
"How would you do that?" the psychic asked.
"All of the evidence of what SDC and Armacham did is at the bottom of the ocean," Shepard said. "The only proof that any of this happened is either twisted into an unrecognizable form, or dead. Except you."
Assuming anything Fettel was saying was true, of course. He could have just been completely batshit. Gollop machines were not kind on the psyche, even when one didn't link up with some horrifying alien consciousness on the other side.
"Why should I care about proof?" Fettel rasped in response, a snarl stretching across his features. "I know what was done to me. I need to prove it to no one."
"You've got two options, Fettel," Shepard said, continuing to push. "You come with me, and with XCOM's help, we bring down the people in Armacham who tortured you. The other option is you go on a rampage on your own, I take you down hard, and you end up dead or back in a permanent isolation cell."
"I do not seek legal vengeance, Shepard," Fettel replied, and his voice became sharper and harsher. "I seek blood. I want to see them torn down, to taste their blood, and to crush each and every backup drive and cortical stack between my fingers after ripping their throats out with my teeth and crushing their skulls with my mind."
His eyes glowed red as he spoke those last words, and he leaned closer.
"Will you offer me that, Shepard?"
"No," the Sentinel said, and threw everything he had against Fettel's mindspace. The figures blurred, becoming watery and indistinct, and Fettel's hiss of rage filled Shepard's ears.
"Then stay out of my way," the psychic snarled, and the mindscape collapsed.
There was a sharp, piercing scream, like a blade dragged along the edge of another, but raised in pitch and amplified a dozen times over. Shepard felt an instant of vertigo, a blast of static washing over his implants in the wake of the scream, and he fell backward into shadow.
Pitch blackness surrounded him, save for a ghostly aura of red-tinged purple light surrounding a lean figure a few meters away. Red eyes burned in the darkness.
Shepard deployed his helmet immediately, and activated his thermal sensors as he brought his pistol up - the real one, this time. As everything was replaced by high-resolution grays and whites, Fettel standing out directly in front of the Sentinel, one hand raised idly. Wisps of energy circled between them, thin white bits of mist on the thermal sensors. Shepard's own limited psionic senses warned him that Fettel was projecting a barrier between them.
Maybe I shouldn't have shot him first, he thought, while still covering the lunatic psychic.
They were inside a pipe, Shepard guessed, one large enough for a small truck to easily drive down. There were no internal lights, which meant it was likely one of the pipes for pumping processed water into the colony itself.
"Time is short, Shepard," Fettel rasped in the darkness. "Ever since I gazed into that endless glory, that shining void of power and knowledge, my dreams have spoken of an inevitable truth. War is coming. Fire sweeping over the earth. Bodies in the streets. Cities turned to dust."
For an instant, a ghost hovered behind Fettel, a lean, robed figure of shadows, head hidden behind a hooded helmet, and four long, skeletal arms extending toward the psychic.
"Retaliation."
The ghost vanished, and Fettel took a step backward.
"I will see my revenge before that day," he rasped.
"I can't let you go on a killing spree, Fettel," Shepard spoke, firm and determined, and matched Fettel's step.
"You cannot hope to stop me," the psychic replied with a smile.
"I find that unlikely."
Shepard heard the faint hiss of a current-gen camouflage cloak only a few meters behind him. He glanced behind him as a marker appeared on his HUD, a pale blue square that indicated a likely friendly IFF right behind him. Shepard expected to see a heavy tactical drone or suit of armor.
When he turned, he saw a two-meter tall quadrupedal war machine built like something between a panther's long limbs and a bear's hefty bulk. The body was covered in flexible, thin layers of long, sharp-edged, jagged armor plating, and sprouting from its shoulders and back were three long-barreled cannons that like Shepard quickly concluded had the words "armor" and "rapid" repeated multiple times in their descriptions. On the front of the war machine, however, was not an animal head, but instead a distorted, lengthened, and much larger version of the familiar avian-like features of a turian, cast in dark metal but with bright, glowing eyes.
"You are Fettel," the heavy, grating, mechanical voice spoke. "I have already surmised you have abducted an XCOM Sentinel, and from his accusations, you intend to commit multiple murders if you escape."
The heavy cannons on the mech's back were locked onto Paxton Fettel's chest.
"You will surrender immediately."
"You have no comprehension of the power you face in me," the psychic said. "Mere mechs and guns will not halt me."
"I possess sufficient firepower in this platform to destroy an armored battalion, human," the mech replied. "Along with clear lines of fire and zero legal or moral compunctions against using them. I am Saren Arterius, Citadel Special Tactics and Recon, and in this pipe, I am the reigning deity. Surrender."
Fettel's barrier stretched out, power pulsing forward and intensifying. Shepard took a step back, pinging Saren's comm, and an instant later got a response.
Psionic field, extending toward you, the Sentinel messaged.
My brain is not organic, Saren replied, his message tinged with eager anticipation.
He's a very strong Kinetic, Shepard sent. Psionic shielding won't stop him.
That would be more problematic, Saren agreed. If anything, however, that thought seemed even more eager. Were I human. Or organic.
Hell. Shepard was stuck between two lunatics with god-complexes.
Where's my team? Shepard asked.
I left them to guard the hatch, Saren replied. They were unwilling, but I convinced them that acting as rear guard would be in their best interests.
"I kneel before no one, Spectre," Fettel snarled, pulsing psionic power filling the entire freshwater pipe.
"Sufficient firepower forces weakness in everyone's joints, Fettel," Saren replied, the mech leaning forward.
The psychic's hostile snarl twisted at those words, becoming a tight smile, eyes shimmering.
Shit.
Shoot him! Shepard messaged, slowing time.
Thus, he was able to hear the deep, resounding echo of breaking metal, stretched out from a sharp, piercing peal to an overwhelming deep note. Shepard could see the afterimage of the psionic force that had stabbed into the wall of the pipe between Fettel and the pair leveling guns at him.
At the current depth, the water outside was under a not-insignificant pressure, although the city was built well above anything like crush depth. Thus, seawater exploded into the pipe through the hole Fettel had abruptly blown open, and it slid off his barrier, hitting the opposite side of the pipe and spraying toward the Sentinel and Spectre.
Shepard leapt backwards away from the wall of water, and could watch in slow motion as Saren reacted, in a manner that was totally predictable in hindsight: He opened fire.
The three cannons on the quadruped mech's back unloaded simultaneously, one releasing a massive blast of blinding plasma. The second sprayed a column of kinetic rounds, while the third blasted heavy anti-armor slugs once a second. In his current state of slowed time, Shepard could watch the steam exploding outward around the Spectre's gunfire, instantly enveloping the mech. More seawater sprayed and poured around Saren, and Shepard could sense Fettel's barrier beyond the incoming flood, barely flickering. The water must have been absorbing most of the energy of the shots, and breaching the gap in the pipe at such speeds that it deflected the kinetic energy of most of the bullets away from the barrier.
And Fettel was retreating, running up the pipe faster than a normal human could manage.
Water was rapidly flooding the pipe, already pushing against Shepard's knees, and more steam was filling the pipe with each plasma shot. He didn't know how long Fettel's barrier would last, especially with him moving away from it, but they had only a few moments before the pipe filled completely.
Saren, we have to retreat!
Then retreat, organic. I don't need to breathe.
Shepard scowled behind his mask, then checked his local map. They were only about sixty meters from the hatch where Fettel had pulled him through. Shepard pointed his arm back up the pipe and fired his grappling hook, yanking himself away from the Spectre trying to batter down Fettel's barrier. He hurtled through the air, over the rapidly ascending flood of seawater, and kicked off the pipe wall when he reached the claw's anchor point. He immediately fired again, slowing time to line up his shot, and launched further up the passage, legs dragging through the rising water.
Saren was still shooting behind him, and by the moment Shepard hit the second anchor point, the water slowed, accompanied by a roaring detonation.
Barrier down! Saren reported. I am in pursuit.
You won't catch him now, Shepard sent as he spotted the nearest hatch and grappled toward it.
He cannot outrun a mass accelerator, Saren replied.
Shepard didn't answer, instead pinging his fireteam as he flew toward the hatch.
This is Shepard! Open the hatch on my orders, and close it the moment I'm through!
Christ! Did you flood the bloody thing? MacTavish asked as Shepard landed next to the pipe, water rising over his chest.
Open it!
The hatch beeped and flew open, light spilling into the pipe, and Shepard was hauled forward by the sudden rush of seawater. He hit the floor inside the storage facility, sliding across the metal floor on a wave of water. He heard MacTavish cursing and shouting behind him, and then the flow and pressure of the water abruptly ceased. In its place Shepard heard the faint thrumming of a kinetic barrier.
"Close the hatch!" a flanged, higher-pitched turian voice barked, and Shepard rolled over. He could see MacTavish and his XCOM team levering the hatch closed, and standing behind them, a hand extended toward the pipe, was a turian female in dark armor lined with glowing blue wire-thin threads extending from a circular generator mounted in the back. When the hatch slid shut, she lowered her hand and exhaled, before turning toward Shepard.
Her face was painted bone-white, with a single red stripe slicing down the center. The unpainted portions of her skin that he could see behind the facial cartilage were a more typical yellow-brown. Dark eyes gleamed down at him as she extended her hand, and Shepard took it, letting her pull him to his feet with surprising strength. The fabric of his psi-cloak was waterproofed, so the liquid simply poured off him, pooling around the floor.
"You must be Major Shepard," the turian said. She glanced back to the pipe. "As usual, my boss went straight in shooting, without giving you a choice in the matter."
"Saren? Yeah, that would be accurate," Shepard muttered. "And you have me at a disadvantage."
The turian cocked her head to the side, before nodding. Probably figuring out what he meant by that phrase.
"Nyreen Kandros," she said. "Special biotic-tech support, assigned to Saren-Kiris. Did he say if he was going to come back out?"
"No, he went chasing after our suspect, even though the pipe was flooding," Shepard said. He frowned. What had she said? "Saren-Kiris?"
"Old Triviran dialect. Kind of like…" Her mandibles twitched. "Your Greek, or Latin? Its a number. Means Two."
"Saren-Two?" Shepard asked, and felt his heart sink a bit. Saren had forks? "There's more than one of him?"
Her mandibles spread a bit, in what Shepard knew was the turian equivalent of a guarded smile. Her eyes twitched a moment, likely looking at something on her AR, and she nodded slightly.
"Significantly," she said. "I've been instructed to take you to Saren-Vanis whenever it is convenient for you."
Shepard frowned, checking that term with a quick mesh search. It was indeed a word in old turian Triviran, meaning "One." That meant Saren's primary personality?
"Make sure we're linked on the same tac-net," Shepard said, and sent her his frequency, before looking up toward the ceiling, and the walkway far overhead.
"We'll need some time. Reports to make, bodies to recover. And I have a friend who I'm not leaving here."
"Alright, gentlemen," Admiral Hackett said as he sat down in the simulated chair at one end of the simulated table. "Let's get this underway."
His avatar matched his own physical body, and all of the XCOM personnel surrounding the table did the same - standard procedure in a serious military simulspace briefing. The room was a virtual recreation of one of the officer wardrooms on the Masamune: a long metal table in a gray-walled room surrounded by chairs, although devoid of the ship decorations and service records and trophies of the carrier itself.
It had been two hours since the latest incident on the surface, leaving a dead Sentinel, three dead Hengsha policemen, one dead cyborg, and a turian Spectre's Exo with far too many guns stomping around in the bowels of the colony looking for the psychic upon which this whole bout of insanity was pivoting. Bodies had been recovered, stacks had been extracted, corpses autopsied, and reports compiled.
Now it was time for summation. Present were the people conducting the current investigation: two Intelligence agents and an R&D scientist. The agents were Lieutenant Morales and Captain Hasham, who had been analyzing (read: interrogating) the brain of the cyborg from the Hengsha docks. On the opposite side sat Doctor Kei Sun, the scientist who had been performing autopsies on cyborg bodies.
"What did you learn from the bodies, Doctor Sun?" Hackett asked. Sun was still for a moment, likely pulling up data reports. He was a thickset man originally of Chinese-Russian descent, but he was a serial resleever, having inhabited dozens of bodies over his lifetime, and apparently liked picking random physical features for his bodies. For a few years he had even sleeved into a modified elcor body.
"The bodies were human-model cybernetic chassis," Sun said, his voice low and deep, without a recognizable accent. "Constructed of a dense variant of vahlenite alloy, beneath an advanced weave of CNT muscle fiber augmented further by vahlenite latticework tracing through the muscle. These are rated for high-end military-grade augmentations."
He gestured, cross sections of the remains of the two cyborgs appeared over the table, with internal systems highlighted and diagrams of artificial muscle groups.
"Interestingly, the bodies were not fueled by power cells like most military models and vehicles." He gestured again, and a schematic of a cylindrical device that glowed with a faint green light. "Both cyborgs instead had a micro-elerium reactor installed in their chassis."
Hackett frowned as he looked at the scale of the devices, and how tiny they were. A single unit was the size of a human thumbnail. Small-scale elerium reactors of that size existed, but they were very rare things, because they were prohibitively expensive to miniaturize beyond a certain point while still getting sufficient energy output to be worthwhile. Sealed hydrogen-oxygen high-capacity fuel cells were far more common and far less expensive.
"The bodies were constructed primarily for extreme durability and redundancy," Sun continued. "Multiple layers of armor, shock gel cushioning delicate components inside - which themselves were greatly minimized - and multiple copies of vital systems. This explains the extreme abuse that our Sentinel team required to bring them down.
"However, most intriguing was an analysis of the recovered dermal flesh," Sun continued, bringing up images from both of the cyborgs prior to their heads and bodies being ravaged by plasma fire. "While we recovered… relatively little of the organic components of the bodies, analysis confirmed that they were human. Comparison to Neo Hengsha genetic databases confirmed that they are the original organic bodies: One Edgar Chen and one Suva Yang, both dockworkers at the Hengsha spaceport. We did a medical background check, and found that three months ago Chen went through a regular medical screening and came out with only the standard gene-modding and minor augments for heavy physical labor. Yang's last checkup was four months ago."
"So somewhere in that three month period they were… replaced," Hackett said, and Sun nodded.
"Hengsha police are doing a full background check on them," Captain Hasham said. He was a remarkably average man, and like most Intelligence agents he cultivated an appearance of boring efficiency, which worked into his own voice, coming out as a dull monotone. "Trying to find a point where they could have been abducted and had their bodies augmented. But three months of archived mesh records and sensory recordings is a lot of data to trawl."
"The augmentation would have to be quick," Sun said, thoughtful.
"Not terribly so," Hasham said. "Neither Chen nor Yang had significant social lives and worked irregular hours, according to what we've uncovered so far. They could have gone missing for a couple of days without arousing notice."
"Ideal targets for a replacement scheme," Sun mused. "And these augments are remarkably extensive and well-integrated into the organic bodies. From what we recovered, there were still significant internal organic components within the bodies. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that much of the augmented structure was assembled inside their bodies."
"What could have caused that? Hackett mused. "Nanomachines, Sun?"
The doctor shook his head.
"It would require very advanced nanotech machinery," he said, and Hackett nodded as he realized the implication.
"MELD," Hackett growled, and Sun nodded.
"Its the only technology we have ever encountered that's capable of doing augmentations on this scale." He shrugged. "Theoretically, it's possible existing geth, Citadel, or human nanotech could match it, but it would require weeks of therapy and many repeated surgeries, and even then I doubt it would match the sophistication of these bodies. Neither Chen nor Yang were out of contact for the required length of time."
The Admiral considered that for a moment, and turned to the Intelligence agents.
"What did you find from the brain Shepard's team recovered?"
"Lieutenant Wade's assessment on the mind within the brain was correct," Morales said. Like her superior, she was a dull, unremarkable figure and voice, matching the body she wore as an Intelligence agent. "Whatever the mind was that ran on that neural architecture, it wasn't human. Neural response patterns to stimuli did not match human brain patterns with any regularity."
"But some components did match," Hackett said, glancing over the report through one of his feeds. He understood the basics, particularly the fact that the subject had not survived the interrogation. Ugly business, and he didn't like that it happened more often than not when protected status was removed.
"Some of the more baseline, instinctual responses were human," Morales droned. "Hindbrain functions, stimulation of neural feeds from simulated organs. The brain reacted to simulated heart, respiratory, and digestive ailments as a human would. Higher brain functions were a different matter. Most simulated negative sensory reactions, particularly pain, were completely ignored. Zero neural response whatsoever.
"It was also completely uncommunicative with us. We had to force neural reactions through sensory simulation and stimulation to determine how it reacted. Images and sensory data connected with Major Shepard and his team did trigger neural responses, particularly Lieutenant Wade."
"So it was after her, specifically," Hackett said, and Morales nodded. "Hasham, I want a full investigation in possible internal leaks. If they knew we were bringing an A-tier mental down, they could know other classified data. They might have just spotted her psychic signature coming down and scrambled an ambush, but I doubt it."
"Yes, sir. I've already initiated preliminary inquiries."
"Morales, continue."
"Yes, sir," she replied. "We compared the responses with a number of other images. Humans in general triggered similar but less intense reactions. XCOM's emblem triggered a minor reaction. Curiously, images associated with the SDC or Hengsha had no hostile reaction. It wasn't until we showed the Armacham Technology logo - part of a wide range of images to test general reactions - that we got something as intense."
She paused for a moment.
"But most worrying was when we started displaying alien species. It had minimal reactions to most species, but when we started showing it images of Ethereal agents, it began having stronger reactions. When we showed it an Ethereal corpse, there was a very intense response. We then showed it a living Ethereal, and the brain had an extremely intense burst of neural activity before…. self destructing."
"Self-destructing?" Hackett had only skimmed the basics from the report, and had not read that part. "Explain."
"All neural activity ceased. Hindbrain functions remained, but there was no further response from the rest of it. No form of stimulus provoked any reaction. It was effectively brain-dead. It was almost certainly some form of internal neurosensory self-destruct response tied to the image of a living Ethereal."
"I see," Hackett said, contemplating that revelation for a few moments. "Anything further to report?"
"Nothing pertinent, sir. Details on the individual response levels and neural activity can be found in the report."
"Very well. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I have some considerations to make."
The scientists and agents surrounding the table vanished a moment later. Hackett stood, dismissing the table, and then opened an comm channel to the surface, bouncing through XCOM drones until he reached his target. It took a couple of seconds for Major Shepard to respond.
"Admiral, sir," he replied, a still full-body image of the Major appearing in front of Hackett. It was a representative avatar, meaning it lacked all the wear and tear - and water - from his recent set of adventures on the surface.
"Major, I read your report. I'm sorry about what happened to Garm."
"Thank you, sir," Shepard replied. "I don't think he's bothered by death the way some people are. He just says it means another copy of him is in Valhalla."
Hackett smirked at that.
"Its going to be some time before we can resleeve him. Masamune has some synthetic bodies for emergencies, but no one in the fleet carries feline bodies in storage. We'll upload him into the Masamune's network soon.
"In the meantime, I have an autopsy and interrogation report for you to read." Hackett sent a quick command. "It's just been sent, review it when you have time. Short version is, the cyborgs had MELD or some equivalent used to build their bodies, the one on the docks was specifically targeting Lieutenant Wade, and the brains are hardwired to self destruct if they see an Ethereal."
It took several moments for Shepard to respond.
"Shit."
"I agree on all counts, Major," Hackett replied. "Which is why I've decided to issue an alert to all XCOM ships, declaring this a BLOODY JESTER scenario."
"Sir, you could go even further and issue a CHIMERA SUNRISE."
"I don't have enough evidence for that," Hackett replied. "I'd need confirmation of an Ethereal presence to make that call. All we have are some similar technologies and neurological responses. Speaking of which, I've read your report on Paxton Fettel, and I agree with your assessment. He sounds insane, but he's… incredibly powerful, judging by the feeds and your report."
"Yes sir," Shepard replied. "I don't know if he's behind what's going on down here, but he's definitely playing a major part in all of it."
"Agreed," Hackett said. "Which is why capturing him is your number one priority. We don't have the evidence to even start a case against Armacham for whatever they've been up to, but if you can bring in Fettel, we've got something substantial. Analysis of his brain can prove Gollop exposure at the least. Not to mention an unstable psychic like him, loose in underwater habitat. That's a timebomb, Shepard."
"Yes sir," Shepard said. "I'm heading to a meeting with Saren Arterius and our Hengsha Police liaison. We're going to discuss how to capture Fettel."
"Saren," hackett growled, shaking his head. "Be careful around that one, Shepard. He's one of the Council's most respected and decorated agents, but he's also quick to resort to violence when he feels its needed. All three of the forks on that planet will be extremely dangerous."
"Three?" Shepard asked, and Hackett could guess at the Major's horrified expression.
"Six, to be accurate, although only three go on field operations," the Admiral said, checking his dossiers on Saren, mostly supplied by XCOM Intelligence. "A primary coordinator and tech specialist, a heavy combat Exo, and a stealth operations Exo. Another coordinator handles his operations from the Citadel, and he has a fifth fork managing his businesses, investments and finances. A sixth fork is kept in reserve in case he needs to quickly respond to a situation."
"That's equal parts efficient and paranoid," Shepard mused.
"He's a Spectre," Hackett replied. "As I said before, be careful. Saren will try to expedite a conclusion to this standoff as soon as possible. If he thinks the only way to stop the PPA and SDC from going to war is the deaths of thousands, he'll open fire himself. He's one of those types of Spectres."
"Understood, sir," Shepard replied, his tone grim.
"Remember, while Saren is a problem, Fettel is your objective." Hackett shook his head. "Secure Fettel, and find whoever - or whatever - backed this attack, and we can end this blockade and get Saren off this planet before he does something drastic."
"Yes sir."
"Good luck, Shepard."
Alison and Garrus stood on a walkway overlooking one of Xin Hengsha's commercial districts, long lines of small shops and retail kiosks lining the corridor below them. It wasn't too dissimilar from what one saw in the Citadel or other space station commercial areas, save for the opposite wall. A long wall section stretching the entire commercial district was a holographic projection which showed a real-time view of the ocean outside, the subdued towers of the colony and their interconnected latticeworks of support beams and connection tubes lit in a number of soft blue and yellows. Millions of fish flowed in massive schools, currents of silver scales reflecting the lights of the towers. A stretching line of tables, benches, and transplanted greenery lined the hologram wall, letting people enjoy the sight of the sea while still safely behind dozens of meters of habitat hull.
The human and turian were leaning on the walkway overlooking the shops, their postures idle even while they trawled the local networks, hunting for information regarding Paxton Fettel. Exact data on him was hard to come by, but Alison was well connected. So much so that Garrus often wondered why she'd bothered hiring him into Hoplite, as he was sure there were far more capable people she could team up with. But at least he didn't need to know why they did what they did. For the last year they had run from one crisis zone to another across the galaxy, engaging in legally-shady activity that inevitably led to defusing one bad situation or another.
He didn't have any real qualms with being paid to solve crises; half the time he was asked to put a bullet in people whose dossiers involved words like "murder," "sapient-trafficking," or "war crimes." The kind of people he'd either busted or was forced to watch get away back when he was C-Sec. But sometimes… Sometimes Garrus asked himself who was backing them, giving them the intel and money to shoot trouble in the face. It felt almost like they were working for a Spectre.
"Hey," Garrus suddenly said as he finally spotted something on his feeds. "I found Fettel."
Alison looked up at Garrus as he spoke, and her expression shifted quickly between surprise, disbelief, anger, and finally annoyance.
"You… I've been following hundreds of… how?"
Garrus brought up a picture that one of Alison's many contacts had sent them: a human male in his early twenties, pale-skinned, lean-faced, and with black hair. It was an institutional shot, with the man wearing a dark gray hospital gown and with a sunken, dejected expression. At the bottom of the picture was the name PAXTON FETTEL followed by a series of ID numbers and letters. According to their contacts it was several years old, but suitable for facial-recognition.
Garrus was curious, but not terribly so, on how they'd gotten the image.
"So, our… suspect? Target? What do we call these guys? You never made that clear."
"Individual of interest."
"That takes too long to say."
"How. Did. You find him?"
Garrus chuckled at her annoyance, and nodded.
"Fettel's been a lab experiment for a significant part of his life, going by what Disler implied," the Exo continued. "We can safely assume that he was a valuable test subject, so his life has been tightly controlled. This likely includes a very strictly controlled diet, probably calculated down to the last calorie and vitamin."
"Yes, that makes sense," Alison said, and cocked her head to the side in realization. "Oh. Oh."
"Right. Psionics require a high calorie intake, scaling up based on how powerful they are and how much they're using. Fettel's supposed to have been juiced with Gollop devices, so his powers will be… pretty damned powerful. In other words, he's going to be hungry."
"You staked out the food courts," Alison said, shaking her head. "Okay, that was a better idea than blanket data trawling."
"Years and years as a detective," Garrus replied with a shrug. "I imagine that if I were locked in a lab for years, forced to eat carefully-prepared food day in and out, if I escaped and got hungry, the first thing I would do would be… eat three double beef-imitate cheeseburgers with two orders of fries and three extra large soft drinks in Hengsha Mall East's food court."
"He's still there?" she asked, standing up straight, a hand sliding across her jacket's waist the check her sidearm.
"Starting on his third burger," Garrus replied. "Surprisingly impeccable table manners. I wonder where he got the money to buy that much beef-imitate."
"Likely pulled someone's account numbers," Alison said as they started down the walkway, plotting a path to the food court on her AR. "Mentals can yank account information when someone accesses their data. Pull surface thoughts about passwords, account information, and so on, and break in even if the account is heavily secured."
"Sounds so... low tech," Garrus mused as he followed her. They both slung duffels holding their heavier weapons and trotted along the walkway.
"Low tech works fine when augmented by mind-reading," she replied. "Okay, we're not going to act when we find him, just tail him."
"You sure?"
"We need to know who is backing him, and he's got to meet with them at some point. There's no way he's getting off this colony without help, not with that blockade."
"We have to be careful," Garrus said. "You nearly got your metal caved in by a cyborg. A high-tier psionic will be problematic for the two of us."
"Hell of an understatement," Alison replied. "I think its time we went more overt. XCOM's got the manpower and equipment."
"XCOM?" Garrus said. "You certain?"
"We start a fight with Fettel, we lose," she replied. "I have contacts in XCOM, and we'll likely need their firepower."
"Heh. I won't object to having more guns on our side."
Saren-Vanis was waiting for Shepard on the Hengsha docks - or more specifically, on a secured landing pad at the top level. His shuttle was a long, heavy craft that matched the turians' winged and bladed aesthetic. The turian himself was apparently content to coordinate from within his ship, but descended from the ramp as Shepard and his squad approached, led by Nyreen. The turian Spectre was tall and lean, even for one of their raptor-like species. His skin was pale, bare of any clan or tribal markings, and he wore a set of dark gray armor, with the same glowing blue lines that Nyreen wore. Shepard had checked that design, and found it was a modified turian variant intended to support biotic amps, which meant this Saren was also a biotic. His eyes gleamed a pale, bright blue, indicating augmentations, and Shepard guessed he had plenty more physical mods hidden under his cartilage skin.
Sitting by the shuttle's ramp, resting on its hindquarters, was Saren-Kiris, and in the light of the docking bay Shepard could see the quadruped Exo was painted matte black, save for its head, where the stylized, angular eyes, mouth, and nostrils shone with a dark blue. The shoulder cannons were retracted, making Saren-Kiris look like an oversized, distorted metal bear with a malformed turian head.
"Sentinel Shepard," the organic turian spoke, his flanged voice making Shepard immediately think of cast iron.
"Spectre Arterius," Shepard replied. He glanced to the Exo, which was still dripping a bit from his fruitless hunt through the colony's water systems.
"I understand you have already met Kiris," the Spectre said.
"I spent most of the time arguing with him, actually," Shepard said, and Saren's mandibles spread apart for a moment before clicking against his lower jaw.
"Yes, he tends to have honed the more aggressive components of my core personality," the turian said. "It is usually more of an asset in dangerous scenarios."
"We were facing a potential A-tier human psychic who proclaimed intent for large-scale murder," Saren-Kiris rumbled. "Decisive aggression was the correct decision in that scenario."
"We will debrief when Corsiv returns," Saren-Vanis said, and turned back toward Shepard. "Sentinel, time is short and war is potentially about to erupt at any moment. I have read your reports on the hidden SDC lab and Paxton Fettel."
"Then you know that XCOM has marked Fettel as our priority," Shepard said, and glanced to Saren-Kiris. "Alive."
"A transitionary concept among many species," Saren-Kiris replied.
"We don't know if he has a cortical stack installed," Shepard said. "Until we do, we take him alive."
"...reasonable."
"Fettel is not necessary," Saren-Vanis cut in. "Armacham created him, so I shall focus upon them. Their headquarters on Proteus is located in Westwater, the main PPA colony. Marshal Disler will have been restored from backup by now. If Fettel wanted his knowledge, so do I."
"You don't have that authority," Shepard said.
And technically, it was true. Spectre legal authority was limited in human territory, and they had to get approval from local authorities to perform most actions. But legal limitations could be bent, especially when one had the kind of power and connections that a Spectre commanded. Having a direct line to the three most powerful sapients in the galaxy gave one tremendous amounts of soft power. More than one human administrator who had barred a Spectre's investigation had abruptly found themselves replaced by someone more willing to cooperate, or receiving a call from their immediate superiors ordering them to play by the Spectre's rules.
"I've been told that before, Sentinel," Saren replied, and Kiris let out a low, mechanical chuckle.
"ATC has sanitizing procedures in place," Shepard said. "Anyone dealing in shady activities tends to. Disler's backup would likely have any incriminating evidence edited out of his memories just in case something like this happened."
"True enough," Saren said after a few moments. "And physical evidence of their activities is in short supply."
"Excepting Fettel," Shepard said. Saren nodded, thinking on that for a few moments.
"I will send Corsiv to investigate the Armacham headquarters regardless," the turian said. "He will be far less likely to trigger emergency sanitizing. In the meantime, we will follow your advice and hunt Fettel."
"Right," Shepard said with a nod, hiding his relief that Saren wasn't likely to go storming the ATC headquarters. "Going by what he said, we assume Fettel has been influenced by some unidentified alien intelligence operating through an unsecured Gollop machine. He's unstable, likely not thinking rationally, even without the possibility of being influenced from outside intelligences."
"And that is why we're under your "bloody clown" protocols," Saren said, Shepard nodded, not bothering to correct him.
A marker appeared on Shepard's AR display, and he glanced behind him at the two figures it indicated were approaching.
Walking toward the landing pad were Alma Wade and James Vega, the former wearing her PsiCorps armor and cloak and the latter in his heavy tactical armor. Alma kept a hand on James' shoulder, but otherwise seemed to be normal. Flanking them were half a dozen Hengsha policemen in tactical gear.
"Ah, I see," Saren said, noticing the pair approaching. "You would turn a tactical liability into an advantage." Shepard glanced back toward the turian, who shrugged. "I reviewed the recordings of the initial attack, and am aware of Lieutenant Wade's psionic ratings and her near uselessness in a combat situation. But her sensory capabilities…."
"She can sweep the entire colony, which was her original mission, before we got sidetracked," Shepard said, while at the same time having his muse make a note that XCOM needed to check again for STG infiltration. XCOM didn't share the specifics of its A-rated psionic personnel with the Citadel. He turned back toward the pair and their escort as they stepped onto the platform, and walked toward them.
"Lieutenants Wade, Vega," he said with a nod. "Good to see you back down here. Did you get some rest?"
"Yes sir," Alma replied. Her glowing eyes flicked past him, toward the pair of Sarens. Kiris stood up off his haunches, peering at Vega, who matched his stare, girth, and armament. Shepard received a ping from Alma, and answered the call.
Sir, is that Saren Arterius? she asked.
Yeah, Shepard replied. He saw her frown. Something wrong?
No, sir, she replied, and shook her head. It's just… Major. Uh. Well, sir….
Go ahead, Lieutenant, Shepard replied, concerned. He glanced back to Saren-Vanis, who was doing something with his omnitool.
Surface thoughts. He's… a bit of an asshole, sir.
Oh, Shepard replied, and shrugged. Yeah, that made sense. I figured that out earlier, but thanks for the heads up.
Shepard turned back toward Saren-Vanis, and noticed that Kiris was circling around Vega, who kept an eye on the quadruped Exo. The Exo finally stopped, bobbed his head, and made a respectful hum. Vega mimicked the motion.
"I'll take my team and begin a sweep of the colony," Shepard said, and Saren looked back up from his omnitool. "We'll do a sweep, hab by hab, using Lieutenant Wade's powers, and Hengsha police will lock down-"
There was a ping on Shepard's comms from his muse, and a high-priority indicator flashed by on his AR.
"Hold on, incoming from the Admiral," Shepard said, holding up a hand and opening the channel. Admiral Hackett, sir?
Major, we've found Fettel, Hackett messaged, blunt and straightforward. Approximate location at least.
Oh. Well. Shepard's lip quirked in annoyance. He'd been waiting for Alma to come down to start the search, but now…. How did we find him?
Some unofficial Intelligence assets, Hackett replied. They tracked him to a commercial district using some… complex behavioral predictions and suspicious banking activity.
Understood, Shepard replied, pinging the rest of his squad, including Alma and James. Garm's absence was painfully obvious at that moment. I've got my team on the way now.
I've got our Intelligence liaison coordinating. They'll feed you the data and a comms frequency with our assets.
Understood, Shepard repeated. He looked up to his team and the Sarens.
"Intel has Fettel spotted," he said. "We're moving. Saren, you care to join us?"
"Of course," the turian said, his tone eager, and Kiris rose off his haunched, humming in anticipation.
Hengsha Mall East's food court was generic as such places went: a small open-air (relatively, considering the colony was underwater) plaza with a dozen tables, flanked on two sides by various food vendors and hallways past them leading into a larger shopping district. The other two sides looked out over another concourse and the holographic walls projecting the ocean beyond the habitat. The scents of a dozen vendors' worth of cooking filled the air - seafood, meat-imitate, fruits, vegetables, breads, and noodles - and the space over the vendors and shops featured a riot of holographic and LED advertisements.
Garrus and Alison had positioned themselves on opposite sides of the food court, Garrus at the edge of the plaza where he was sipping yet another a slushie while playing a mindless mesh browser game on his omnitool. Allison was leaning on a walkway on the far side, overlooking the plaza, pretending to watch the ocean projection on the wall. Both had a handful of microdrones flitting around the plaza, including one actually perched on a chair just behind Paxton Fettel's table.
Fettel wore a generic civilian jumpsuit, with a breather helmet at his side, designed to go airtight in case of a water breach. Over it he wore a red-and-black leather jacket. As Garrus had reported, he was busy eating a plate of beef-imitate cheeseburgers with calm, controlled efficiency, although Garrus could see restrained eagerness in how he grabbed burger, fries, and soft drinks.
I could just shoot him now, end all this, Garrus suggested. I have a suppressed weapon, and XCOM will cover us.
Not until we have his backers, Alison replied.
But he'd die happy. Eating artery-clogging meat and cheese, peaceful, content. Two shots into the head, he'll never know.
No, Garrus.
He was joking of course. He'd carried out assassinations before, and Fettel was a murderer by proxy, as far as they knew. Garrus wouldn't have any qualms with killing Fettel where he sat right now, but he knew they had a larger mission.
A new ping touched his comms as he sat there, and a set of new markers appeared on Garrus' primary AR, approaching from one end of the mall area. He counted eight contacts, moving in a couple of groups.
This is Major Shepard, XCOM Sentinel. I'm with Spectre Saren Arterius. Our team is moving into position.
Copy, Sentinel, this is Agent Tam, Alison replied. My team is observing the individual of interest right now.
As soon as she sent that, Alison pinged Garrus on their private channel.
Holy shit that marker really is Saren. Looks like Vanis and Kiris.
Well, at least we have the firepower advantage, right? Garrus sent back, even as he started doublechecking cover and exits.
Sentinel Shepard, Spectre Arterius, be advised, Alison sent, Our agents are using cyberbrains. Fettel does not appear to have detected us. Advise you keep your team's distance while we observe.
Understood, Shepard replied. A second message came through, and Garrus could sense the irritation attached to it.
My team will remain on standby, Saren messaged. We will prepare to intervene if the situation becomes violent.
Garrus could detect the naked anticipation in those words.
A couple of minutes passed, and Garrus saw Shepard and Saren's respective teams move into a storage area behind one of the vendors. Not close enough to immediately intervene, but they could be in the plaza in about twenty seconds if things went hot. He could also pick out a few marked Hengsha police moving around the outskirts of the mall area. Garrus didn't like how loose and ineffective the perimeter was, but they were setting up for observation and tailing, not containment and arrest.
Garrus counted at least thirty civilians in the food court, mostly human but a few turians and hanar as well. If things went hot, a lot of innocents would be caught in the crossfire. Judging by Saren's reputation, that wouldn't matter much to him. At least no one sat close to Fettel
Sir, I have something, a new ID sent across the channel. The tag on the name identified it as a Lieutenant Wade with XCOM. A mind on intercept toward Fettel's position. Organic brain, about twenty meters away, north. Getting weird echoes off his brain patterns.
Same as the one we captured at the docks? Shepard asked.
No, Sir. This one is human. Just firing odd signals.
Possibly bio-augs, Saren sent. Mental augmentations can result in unusual mental signatures. It is common with asari augments.
I think I can see him, Alison sent. Feeding it to you.
If it weren't for Lieutenant Wade's alert, Garrus probably would have missed the human walking into the plaza. He wore a standard, pale brown civilian pressure suit and jacket, had short, dull brown hair and no distinctive features or markings. He walked at a sedate, unhurried pace across the plaza and food court, approached Fettel's table, and sat down in a chair across from the psychic.
"You took your time contacting us," the bland-featured man said without preamble.
"Matters required attending," Fettel replied. "Though I am curious as to why you are willing to meet me so openly," the psychic continued as he finished his last burger. "This is a very public location."
"This is Xin Hengsha," the nondescript man replied. "We are always being watched. The key is to remain unremarkable so no one will care enough to be observing your actions."
"I do not have the time or luxury to be unremarkable," Fettel replied.
"Nor do you have the other two minds," the contact said. "Our agreement stipulated they would receive those bodies in order to deliver the egos to us. It was a significant effort to acquire cover bodies for them and put them in place for an ego transfer."
"Circumstances demanded sacrifice," Fettel said, leaning back in his chair. He picked up the only remaining drink and sipped it. "We both knew your enterprise would draw attention to this colony. And I was not the one who spent Allmon on a botched assassination attempt on an XCOM A-rank psychic."
The bland man scowled slightly, eyes flicking back and forth to the tables around them. No one was in easy earshot, Garrus guessed, but openly talking about murder plots wasn't likely to sit well with him.
"Matzirov was not sacrificed for the greater objective," the nondescript figure muttered. "We have been observing-"
"Matzirov died for my reasons," Fettel growled, setting down his drink. He then abruptly stood up. He started walking away from the table, and the contact stood just as quickly, following him.
Track him, Garrus sent to Alison. Fettel's on the move.
I have him, Alison replied.
They weaved their way between tables, the two men going silent for several seconds, until they passed the thin crowds and moved past the vendors lining the edges of the court. They moved down a side corridor, empty of any immediate civilian presence, and stepped through an employee-only doorway. Alison maneuvered her microdrone to keep tailing them.
"Do you have a way past the blockade?" Fettel abruptly said, turning to face the contact as soon as they were in the corridor beyond.
"Yes, an atmospheric transport," the contact said. "Stationed at the main docks."
"They would let you fly an aircraft with the blockade ongoing?"
"Surface to orbit transit is blockaded, but in-atmosphere flights are tracked closely, not grounded," the contact replied. "Once we arrive at our destination, we will be able to leave the atmosphere safely. But with far less than we had hoped for."
"You and I both know I am the only one that matters," Fettel snarled. "Which ship? What is the destination?"
"No."
"What?" Fettel raised an eyebrow as the bland-face contact crossed his arms.
"You are an unruly child, Fettel," he said. "We question whether you are truly suitable for our purposes, or just another brash fool drunk on your own power."
"Hm. I see," Fettel replied, and a smile cut across his narrow features. "You would leave me here? After the effort you put into liberating me?"
"Yes," the contact replied. "Our deal was for you and two other egos with the Gift. It was our prerogative to risk Allmon. It was not yours to destroy Matzirov pursuing your own agenda, and we are not going to risk exposure for someone as unstable as you."
Shit. I see where this is going, Alison messaged. Shepard, move in!
Copy! Shepard replied. The markers indicating Shepard and Saren's teams began to move from their hiding places.
"Unfortunate," Fettel said. "However, there is a matter, I wager, that you have overlooked."
Reddish-purple light flashed, and Fettel's hand lance dup and grabbed the contact's skull. The bland features shifted to surprise, and rapidly shifted to horror as psionic power surged through his skull.
"Your brain is organic," Fettel hissed, and a strangled cry escaped the contact's throat as he shook, limbs and arms spasming violently. A couple of seconds passed, and the contact sank to his knees, psionic energy raging around his skull and back up Fettel's arm's. Blood began to emerge from his eyes and ears, then the nose and mouth, followed by wisps of smoke.
Then the light faded, and Fettel released them man, letting him slump to the floor in a slowly-expanding pool of blood.
"Not much time now," the psychic muttered to himself, and stepped back through the employee door.
Shepard, you get that? Alison messaged.
I did. Everyone stand down.
What? Garrus sent as the team markers abruptly halted..
Shepard wants us to track him, Alison sent to him over their private channel. A heartbeat later Shepard's message arrived.
Track him. He's already burned the contact and ripped the knowledge he needs from his mind. Fettel's got to be headed for the docks. Tail him, see what ship he takes. There was a pause. Whoever is behind this has a way off the planet. He'll lead us right to them, and going by what we've seen from him so far, he'll be as hostile to them as he is to us.
A good plan, Saren messaged. Rendezvous at the docks. If he beats us there, we can have Hengsha Port Authority delay his departure until we're ready to pursue him.
Understood, Alison sent, standing up from their spot, slinging her duffel, and hurrying along the walkway along a preset path to the docks. Garrus did the same from his side of the mall. We'll meet you there.
What about the man he just killed? Garrus asked Alison as they strode as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves.
Hengsha police will pick his body up, she replied. Nothing we can do about it now anyway. Remember why we're here, Garrus.
Yes, I know, Garrus replied, his message carrying irritation and a bit of anger. But he just murdered someone in cold blood, on top of everything else we've seen him do. Fettel's a psychopath and we need to bring him down.
I know, Garrus.
I'm not going to pretend we're cops, Al, he sent. But we are spies, and I know how this works. Psychopaths like him can get a free pass because they're useful to someone. We're not letting that happen.
Once we've got his backers, she assured him, he's going into a cage or a box. We can't let a psionic as crazy as Fettel run loose.
Good. That's all I need.
Your sense of morals and justice might be a pain in the ass to certain people, Garrus, she sent, and then smiled. But not to me.
"This human has the worst fieldcraft I have ever seen," Saren remarked as they watched Paxton Fettel simply walk into the Hengsha docking dome without bothering to hide his presence.
"He's spent most of his life in a lab," Shepard remarked as Fettel entered an elevator, rode the lift up a dozen levels, and immediately walked toward a light atmospheric skimmer. It was a lean, snob-nosed raft, about twice the size of a common aircar, painted a generic gray. He ignited his omnitool as he approached, waved it over the pilot's door, and it opened.
"Remarkable lack of security," Nyreen commented. "Either that or he ripped access codes and protocols from his contact's head before he died."
The two teams were waiting inside their respective craft, Shepard's squad fully kitted out, with Alma and James accompanying them, waiting in their Voidranger. Both of the Sarens as well as Nyreen were aboard their own shuttle. They watched on the multitude of cameras scattered around the hangar as Fettel started the preflight sequence.
"Sentinel Shepard?" called a woman's voice from the Voidranger's loading ramp. He looked up from his AR to see a human woman in her apparent early twenties with delicate features and braided brown hair. Standing next to her was a turian Exo with his chassis painted a dull gray, augmented by bright blue slashes across his face and mandibles. They were both wearing civilian clothing, but they also bore heavy duffelbags that Shepard was entirely certain held all manner of military options.
"I'm Agent Tam," the woman said, extending a hand. Shepard shook it. "This is Agent Brutus." The turian shook Shepard's hand in turn.
"You Intelligence?" Shepard asked. Tam shrugged, and Shepard received authorization codes matching those he had received from Hackett's Intelligence liaison.
"We have Intelligence connections and have authorization from our superiors to assist your team in apprehending Paxton Fettel and whoever is assisting him," she said, the words standard, dull, and canned. Shepard nodded at that.
"Welcome to the team," he said, and stepped back inside as they boarded. He checked on Fettel again, to see that he was still preparing to lift off. Shepard then switched channels, opening up his command line with Admiral Hackett.
Sir, estimate three minutes until he's ready to lift, Shepard sent.
Understood, Major, Hackett replied. SDC's cleared us to put our frigates into orbit and let us tap into the air traffic sensor network so we can follow him. I've got two full companies of infantry ready on our Voidrangers and a dozen smashdown launchers loaded with FENRIS and HULU drones. Give us a target and I can have those drones on-site in less than two minutes and the infantry on the ground in ten.
Shepard let out a relieved breath at that. Hackett was putting a lot of firepower at the ready to deploy.
I hope we won't need them, sir, he replied.
God, I hope not, Hackett replied. If we're lucky its just a small ship parked on some rock poking above the ocean and you can take them down with just your squad. But if not, don't hesitate to call down the rain. Every soldier in this fleet is standing by, and a few coded orders will get SDC and PPA's naval assets down there as well.
Thank you, sir.
Good hunting, Major.
Shepard looked up from his data feeds, and saw Agents Tam and Brutus arming up, the former fitting tactical armor over her civilian jumpsuit while the latter was prepping a set of weapons: laser submachineguns, a kinetic marksman carbine, a fusion rifle, several pistols of different types. These "unofficial" Intelligence agents were armed for Muton.
He glanced across the other side of the dropship, and saw McTavish and his squad similarly doublechecking their gear, while Alma was sitting in her crash seat, eyes closed and face drawn tight from concentration. James was sitting on the floor next to her, securing himself to the deck with cargo straps. He grunted an acknowledgement when Shepard met his eyes.
Without Garm, though, things felt empty.
"Fettel is lifting," Nyreen suddenly reported, and Shepard sent a nonverbal prep-to-lift order to the team. Everyone not secured strapped themselves in - Agent Tam paused to adjust the fit of her armor before complying - and the loading ramp began to close.
"Hengsha Port Authority has cleared Fettel's aircraft to launch," Nyreen continued. Shepard could see the small aircraft ascending up through the center of the docks, moving on tower-directed autopilot, and rose up toward the top of the dome. The doors overhead slid open, and a burst of rainwater slashed through the doors in the few seconds it took Fettel's craft to pass through.
"Sensor data coming down from orbit and from Hengsha air traffic," Nyreen continued. "They have him locked in."
"Wait five minutes to let him get ahead of us, then we launch," Shepard ordered, and his team nodded. "Keep our distance and keep sensor masking on at all times. I don't want him to know we're in pursuit until we land on his head."
Twenty minutes later, the Voidranger and Saren's shuttle were swooping northeast, over the northern hemisphere of Proteus. Fettel was several hundred kilometers ahead, course never wavering as he stuck to a east-northeastern course. Nyreen suggested he was likely using autopilot, and Shepard and Agent Tam concurred.
If his path was accurate, he was heading toward a thin archipelago of islands a little past Proteus' Arctic Circle, one of the small percentage of the planet's surface area that wasn't ocean. There wasn't much built up in that area; the islands were not strategically valuable, and the only facilities built there were an atmospheric craft refueling station and a large climate monitoring facility. The former was the most likely location of any ship. Shepard opened a line to Hackett.
Admiral, has there been any contact with the teams operating either base on these islands?
Negative, Major, Hackett said after a few seconds.Stand by a moment.
Several more moments passed, the two dropships continuing along their path, passing through a wall of stormclouds.
Shepard, those facilities are in the vicinity of a radiation anomaly we detected about ten hours ago. It looked like someone detonated a Durand-Vahlen transition drive in atmosphere near the North Pole.
Shepard thought on that one for a few seconds.
You think someone tried to fire off a wormhole inside a gravity well?
Possibly, Hackett replied. Maybe someone tried to sneak a ship in past the blockade with an atmospheric wormhole jump, and the predictable happened. If so, Fettel's going to a dead end.
If it were always that easy, Shepard sent back.
Keep your eyes open down there, Shepard. And end this.
Yes sir.
The minutes passed, the team sitting in anxious silence. McTavish and his squad were making quiet jokes, while Tam and Brutus were silent, probably conversing via a private channel.
Then, two minutes out, the Voidranger's pilot messaged them all and sent a data feed from the dropship's sensors. they were closing with the islands, and Fettel's craft was heading toward the climate station on the largest island. Shepard looked over the feeds, which were being partially disrupted by the storm, and checked with Saren's team to make sure they were getting something similar. Geographic and oceanic data were coming back, and they had a good look at the island that matched the most recent planetary scans.
Fettel's aircraft began to descend, ignoring the storm and the crashing waves.
Something moved beneath the waves. Thermal blooms appeared on the scanners, followed by radiation markers consistent with elerium-based power sources. Water rose, and then broke, and an enormous shape began to rise out of the depths.
Sensors confirmed length: half a kilometer. Spectrographic sensors returned elemental composition: a variant of vahlenite. Radiation markers screamed that the craft was definitely using massive elerium power sources, comparable to human carriers.
Visual scanners confirmed its shape: an elongated craft, dozens of small engines helping push it up out of the sea, with a deadly, familiar profile.
Alma reached up, putting a hand to her forehead, and shepard turned toward her. He didn't ask, and she didn't need to hear his question. She shook her head slowly, and faintly, Shepard could feel a pressure against the back of his skull, a distant throbbing. An awareness, not actively probing against him, but apparent by its mere psionic presence.
"Never felt anything like this," Alma murmured. "But… Major. Its them."
Shepard nodded, switching to his command channel.
Admiral, this is Major Shepard, he sent. CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE. Repeat, CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE.
He swallowed. Nearly two centuries had passed since they'd last seen a ship like that.
Ethereal battleship detected in-atmosphere.