Colonel Adrian Edison leaned back in his chair, the leather complaining loudly as he shifted his armoured bulk in the seat, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the cramped cockpit of his shuttle. His pilot tried her best not to cough, trying to keep her discomfort away from the attention of her superior officer. She clearly did not want to show any sign of weakness in front of him - reputations were everything in their line of work.
He could give two shits if his pleasure brought her any discomfort, and he smiled slightly as he took another drag of his cigar, a fine example delivered all the way from Cuba with a large number of its fellows. The Illusive Man knew how to keep the morale of his men soothed. He scanned the datapad he held pinched between his armoured fingers, reading the status report from his second, Lieutenant Alba Cain. Cain was a mean little bitch who knew how to keep her team in check, so he had had no qualms with leaving her in charge aboard the Normandy.
He glanced up from the datapad and looked out of the domed canopy of the shuttle's cockpit, the transparent alloy curving across the entire front of the vessel. Not good for protecting its pilots, but on a stealth vessel that hardly mattered. If anyone was close enough to spot them, decreased protection to the flight crew would be the least of their worries.
He let his eyes roam over the shape of the Normandy's outer hull as the starlight reflected from its surface directly below them. The shuttle had locked to the top of the Normandy using a mass effect tether - difficult to detect when compared to - say - magnetic docking clamps.
"That vessel is a marvel, no wonder the Illusive Man wants it back." He said, thinking aloud. His pilot knew better than to reply, and didn't even acknowledge that she had heard him speak at all. He sat in silence for a long time, smoking his cigar until there was nothing left except a burned out butt. He stubbed it out against his vambrace, the paint burned and blackened from countless years of the same action. He stood up, and climbed down from the cockpit, the pilot visibly relaxing as he left her to her task.
He was a big man, tall and muscular, with the gait of a career soldier. In his late fifties he was quickly reaching his prime, considering the average human lifespan now Prothean technology had boosted human medical science. His hair was greying and his miriad tattoos fading, but he was still the equal of Alliance soldiers half his age. He stretched to flex his idle muscles; having been sat in the cockpit for several hours he needed to work out the tension and return his body to its physical peak. He needed to be at his best for this mission. Shepard was a dangerous adversary, and not one to be taken lightly. When they finally came face to face, Edison would not be found wanting.
He had been so damn close before that bitch quarian had screwed up everything. He cast his mind back to that moment, when the Normandy had vented - violently. Tulchev had just vanished out of the airlock, right before his eyes. He'd been a good man, and had served with Edison for a long time. Not long enough, after today. He would make sure she suffered for Tulchev's death; he owed her for that.
Shepard had been so close, hidden away inside the infirmary one deck below. Then the ship had vented; the main airlock had been jammed open. Quarian bitch.
She had run some sort of hacked VI program that had sealed the infirmary, jammed open all other doors on the ship, and then opened the main and auxiliary airlocks. The decompression had been overwhelming, and he had almost followed Tulchev into the embrace of God. Through the Lord's grace he had remained, as had the rest of his commando unit. Cain had barely kept her control, and only his own dangerous expression had calmed her down. Still, there was a fury simmering behind the woman's eyes, and Edison knew that he would need to let her slip her leash soon or she could become... disruptive.
Looking at the monitors in the crew bay of the shuttle, he could see her heart rate was increasing, her blood was very much up. Looking at the holo-feed from her helmet camera, he could see her pacing the CIC beside Shepard's command terminal, Zou and Foreman keeping well out of her way. She had a strong team, they would keep her in check.
Zou was something of an oddity for a Cerberus operative. He was young, almost too young for Edison's taste, and that probably explained it. He was a skilled unarmed combatant, having trained with an asari huntress practically from birth. He was - by asari tradition - also a biotic. It was rare for asari to take on human apprentices, so Zou's family must have been pretty damn impressive to get one to train their son into the almost super-human killing machine he was.
He had taken to carrying an asari hunting blade as a backup weapon, and preferred to incapacitate his targets with his biotics before finishing them off up close with the blade.
He was almost completely hairless, and had also picked up a nasty habit from his old mistress - after every kill, he took the still wet blade and carved into his own flesh to mark the victory. It was a crude practice, but nothing was normal about that xeno trained freak. Zou was one of Cain's little creatures, and so long as he followed orders and did his job, Edison could care less who he was or where he had come from.
Foreman was something else entirely. Thin and wirey, he was never the less a figure of taut muscle and incredible durability. The little shit had survived more than Edison had ever believed possible, and bore the scars to prove it. He had seen him shot, stabbed, beaten, crushed, and even blown up - but still the bastard could fight almost a well as he could. He had a preference for machine pistols, and carried two into battle, as well as his trusty shotgun. At range, Foreman was at a disadvantage, but up close, only Zou was better.
Edison smiled as he remembered the time they had been infiltrating the Citadel to go after some turian officer called Septimus. Their cover had been blown, and the mission scrubbed. They had scattered, disappearing into the wards. Foreman had tried to get clear from the Zakera wards, and had been challenged by a unit of C-Sec hunters. He had drawn his twin pistols and killed them all before even one of them had fired a shot. That reporter - Al-Jilani - had almost shit a brick covering that one.
Then there was Cain herself. A graduate of the Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training scheme conducted during the early years of human biotic research. Wired with L2 biotic amplifiers, her abilities were almost prodigal amongst the initial candidates, though she suffered badly for it. The amplifiers altered her personality, making her prone to violent mood swings, which limited her uses as candidate for the Alliance military.
She was eventually removed from the project in secret by the Illusive Man and drafted into Cerberus - right after she killed two of her instructors during a mental breakdown brought on by the conditions of the training regimen. The Illusive Man put a great deal of time and money into Cain, earning the woman's loyalty and stabilising her condition to the point where she could control it, most of the time. Still, Cain was a dangerous and unpredicatble predator, and though Edison trusted her, he trusted her no more than one would trust a starving tiger not to tear off your arm. He had gotten quite good at stearing her toward his own goals, and so he was stuck with her - none of the other cell leaders had even come close.
Yes, his team was ready - he was ready - for whatever Shepard and his rabble of alien scum could throw at them.