XXI

Know Your Enemy: And the Other

There was a ping on Garrus's visor as he received the coordinates Niels had sent them all—almost halfway down the ship. Well, I've been needing some exercise. He pounded after Shepard down the walkway. "Around the corner. Take the door on your right," EDI told them, and his body reacted before she'd finished speaking. The door opened automatically—the AI was in the system, helping them get out, fighting the Collectors' attempts to power up and attack the Normandy.

Garrus paused for a second to note that the shell of the ship was hollow—that there were rooms and paths around the vast interior they'd already seen. The room they were in was entirely closed off from the center of the ship, and there was only one way to go—down. They passed panels and conduits as they went, and even in their hurry, he saw Shepard's omni-tool flashing, capturing data and tech readouts for the professor to study after they escaped. If we escape.

The corridor opened up, and Garrus dug his heels in to avoid crashing into Shepard as she came to a halt, left hand raised behind her. "Enemies!"

They were looking at some sort of work or control center, complete with a gallery off to the right where higher-ranking soldiers could watch the grunts, down where they were. Garrus sized up the layout in a moment. The Collectors were dug in with the high ground, up in the gallery and straight ahead down the corridor, but the honeycomb structures they seemed to favor provided cover. Shepard had stopped behind a console, there was a ridge to her right, and they weren't in the open.

But the enemy could see them. The shrieks of their beam weapons started up, a few staccato shots that indicated some of them had more conventional weapons. Garrus tried to count them, but they were in cover, too, and it was hard to tell how many there were. We're outnumbered at least two-to-one. Maybe three-to-one.

But beside him, Lawson clenched a glowing fist and pulled it back, and a Collector soared over the room. Garrus punched two shots through its head and let the body crunch into the left wall. We're not beaten yet.

Their position was no good, though. They had to stay low or risk the Collectors firing over their cover, and there was no leaving for a better position while the Collectors had them caught in a crossfire. Garrus glanced at Shepard and saw her jaw set behind her visor, her pistol held tightly in her hands for several quick, precision shots, and her omni-tool glowing.

It was stupid. Completely insane. The mass effect propulsion on Shepard's firing weapon would fritz out her tactical cloak and leave her wide open when she took her first shot, and behind the Collector line there were too many Collectors and there wasn't any of the cover they had here. It was also their only move if they didn't want to get caught up in a long, drawn-out firefight with the Collector ship powering up every second.

Shepard faded out, and Garrus's visor tracked her as she started sprinting. Damn it.

"I need a barrier!" Garrus snapped at Lawson, switching his sniper out for his assault rifle and climbing to his feet. His plates itched as Lawson immediately complied. He opened fire in a wide arc, following his visor's targeting paths, drawn in dashed blue lines across his vision. He felt the particle beams and bullets hit Lawson's barrier as he drew Collector fire. In two seconds they would give. In five, his shields would go down, too. He hoped it'd be long enough.

Four pistol shots rang out in rapid succession, and a fifth Collector plunged over the railing of the gallery. He hit the ground with a sick thud. Garrus hit the ground with a little more control, his shields at 5 percent. Beside him, Lawson was pale, but when he looked at her, she smiled.

Shepard had the high ground now, and it was an entirely different battlefield. Garrus saw her crouch down and pull out that magnificent rifle, and it was on. They caught the Collectors in the crossfire the things had hoped to catch them in, and Garrus pressed forward with Lawson to tunnel their way out.

Harbinger seized control of two separate Collector drones before they escaped the room, but the Reaper's favorite party trick had a couple of down sides, Garrus thought as he shot down another burning shell. The energy signature when Harbinger seized control of a drone lit up the entire room—and the Reaper never shut up. Harbinger's minions threw scary, crackling, black mass effect fields, had tough barriers and armor, but as soon as the Reaper took them it painted a neon target on their foreheads, almost literally. And with every minion they took out, Harbinger got a little less terrifying.

But annoying your enemy can be useful too. I'd know. Annoyed, they could get careless. Annoyed, they might forget about the drones trying to shoot Harbinger down. Annoyed, they could get stupid. It was a tactic Archangel had used often in the past. "Stay sharp," he warned. "We've made it mad. It doesn't get to make us stupid!"

Lawson nodded, and over her shoulder, Shepard held up the sign for 'understood.'

EDI's exit route took them to another room, another gallery and understructure—but this time the ship brought them out into the gallery. "I am opening a door on the far side of the room," she informed them. There was only one problem. The massive, Collector air-support monster hovering right in front of the open door.

"Look at the size of it!" Lawson cried. Raw fear ran thick through her voice. She hadn't been on Horizon.

"Keep it together, Lawson," Shepard ordered her. She nodded at the husks and drones trickling through the door underneath the monster. "Just keep them off me. Let me worry about that."

Given an objective, combat was small. As long as you were able to forget the plasma beam zeroing in on your friend on the other side of the room, the electric explosions whenever she'd done a lot of damage but hadn't taken it out yet.

Garrus raised his assault rifle and focused on the husks—humans kidnapped from the colonies, already converted by the Reaper technology on this ship. The CAS plasma beam shrieked as it bore down on Shepard. He didn't look. If that thing was still shooting, so was she. He heard the cracks of her gun—that antimateriel rifle had to be the best protection against something like that.

He threw a husk over his shoulder and stomped it into the ground. Tech sparked and gray guts gushed over his boots and greaves. At his back, Lawson took four shots at a drone. "Why isn't it shooting at us?" she demanded. "It's just . . . chasing her!"

Overhead, there was a crackle, and small pieces of burnt-up tech fluttered to the ground. Garrus felt a grim sort of admiration for the self-destruct protocol of those things. The Collectors had left all their other technology out to be scanned, but they weren't taking the chance for Shepard to learn anything about those horrible fused husk destroyers.

"I think a lot of these things have priority targeting," he murmured to Lawson, nodding at Shepard and falling into line behind her again. "Shepard first."

Shepard rolled her shoulders and began jogging toward the exit, but the open door closed as they approached. "EDI, we got a problem here," she said.

"A temporary setback on Firewall 3217," EDI reported. "Rerouting commands to Firewall 716. I have successfully opened a door on the opposite wall. I will keep it open as long as I can."

She was still fighting the Collectors on the ship, trying to keep them from leaving. EDI was designed for cyberwarfare. Her job was to hack enemy systems, bring down security walls—vent airlocks, screw with gravity, and mine enemy data. Garrus had some idea of what Cerberus had spent to build her—it wasn't cheap to develop that kind of entity, under the noses of intersystemic AI regulation. You didn't risk it unless you were sure your AI would work. But EDI was up against Reaper technology—and they were completely dependant on her out here. That's a comfortable feeling.

But the door was open, and the three of them ran through. Off the ledge ahead, Garrus could see the shimmer of the mass effect envelope surrounding the ship—a glimpse of a white SR-2 that was Niels, waiting for them. "Down there: That's where we came in!" But he could feel the engines of the Collector ship rumbling beneath his feet, and the shimmer of the mass effect envelope grew more visible as he looked at it—the Collectors were diverting more power to the shields, readying the ship for space flight. We don't have much time.

"We must be getting close to the end," Miranda gasped.

"Don't say that!" Shepard snapped immediately, and as they rounded the corner, she groaned. "Tempting fate, Lawson! Tempting fate!"

Garrus chuckled through the burn in his chest as he saw another gallery, and no less than six Collectors waiting in it. The three of them dove down into a workpen by a terminal for cover. He saw Lawson's omni-tool flash over the terminal. "There's an alcove," Shepard said. "Just ahead. I'm going to flank,"

"Here we go again," Lawson muttered. Garrus saw the antihumidifiers kick on insider her helmet, and knew she had to be sweating hard. How much longer would her biotics work without caloric intake? Lawson was good, but he'd seen her limits. She wasn't any Jack or Samara. Sure enough, she didn't put up a barrier for him. She pulled out her pistol for accuracy and shot—two or three shots per target to get through barriers and armor, carefully calculating each one. Garrus used his sniper, deliberately taking out the Collectors closest together, the ones that would feel the next drone's blood splash on them, have to shove it off before moving on. He didn't know if Prothean husks could feel fear any more than human ones, but he noticed more of them started shooting at him, all the same.

He heard a triple bang around the corner. One of the Collector heavies had to be back there, on Shepard's flank, blocking their exit. She'd have to deal with it before she could be much help with the Collectors in the gallery. Garrus scooped up some abandoned heat sinks by the terminal. Lawson made the sign for charge, looking the question at him. He nodded. She signaled to let her take point—her barrier would give them another few seconds. Groaning, she built it up one more time, vaulted the pen, and ran up the ramp to the gallery.

Garrus followed in single file after her, letting Lawson take the fire. As they came up in the middle of the three surviving Collectors, Lawson let her barrier go in an explosion of biotic energy. It pulsed out like a wave. Garrus braced himself just in time, but the Collectors fell like bowling pins. Their feet scrabbled on the ground as they tried to climb to their feet—too late for two of them. Two heads caved in and fell back—but the third was already lighting up from within, rising above the gallery, much too close for comfort.

Harbinger's drone crackled with Reaper tech. Lawson rolled to the side, thrust her hands up—but she was tapped out, amp overheated, exhausted. Garrus fired—a concussive blast point blank. The only damage it did was to take down half the thing's barriers—but it did disrupt its attack. Lawson's SMG started up, firing six modded bullets a second at mass effect speeds at the at the thing. They evaporated on contact—but so did Harbinger's barriers, and Harbinger turned toward Lawson's prone form on the ground, raising its arm. "You will know pain!"

Garrus fired again, full power, just as a fireball arced over the gallery and into the back of Harbinger's head. The last drone self-destructed in an explosion of tech, just like the CAS vehicle. Garrus held out his hand to Miranda. She took it and climbed to her feet, and the two of them jogged down the ramp to meet Shepard.

"Cutting it pretty close there, Shepard," Garrus told her.

"Sorry about that," she shrugged, flashing him a smile behind her visor. "But you two had it handled."

Despite her smile, she was moving time-and-a-half toward the exit now, around the corner and down the ramp toward the shuttle, even before Joker came over the radio. "Uh, Commander, I hate to rush you, but those weapons are about to come online! You might want to double-time it. You know, so we can leave before they blow the Normandy in half."

"Nag, nag," Shepard muttered. She caught sight of something ahead. "Great. Collectors sent us a send-off party!" She slung her rifle back behind her back and drew her SMG. Taking his cue from her, Garrus drew his assault rifle and prepared for melee combat as no fewer than eight husks came running at them, sparking and screaming, the sound lost so close to the breach in the ship.

Shepard impaled one on her omni-tool, sent a fireball bursting through it and threw it into another. Garrus fired bursts at the husks, first in one direction, then another, trying to break up the clump around her. "I can't get a clear shot!" Lawson cried. "Oh, damn it!" Then she was with them, kicking a husk off of his flank and shooting it between the eyes. Garrus broke the spine of another—the resulting shock short-circuited his shields, and he fell back, firing at a husk coming up on Shepard.

"Commander, is that you?" Niels asked over the radio. "Get in!"

Shepard waved them in front of her, "Go! Go! Go!" Garrus jumped first, turning around to fire at the husks still following behind them. He blew one's torso back off of its legs, which fell in different directions to the ground. Lawson leapt up next, and finally Shepard. She banged the door frame, and Niels hit the controls to close it.

"We're out of time, Commander. We have to go!" Joker cried.

"You heard the man! Niels, get us out of here and back on the Normandy! Move!"

"You got it, Commander!"

The Normandy had already started moving when they flew into the bay. Alarms were blaring, reacting to the proximity of a hostile ship. As soon as the bay doors shut behind them, Garrus felt Joker activate the FTL drive, racing for the relay. The inertial dampeners couldn't quite handle the differences in velocity they'd gone through in the last few seconds, and Garrus's stomach roiled. But the commander had to be on the bridge in case it came to fighting, so Shepard was up and running before Niels even turned the shuttle engine off. Garrus glanced at Lawson, and the two of them ran out after her.

Everyone was quiet as the Normandy flew out of the relay. The Collectors would be unable to follow them—but it had been close. And the Illusive Man had set them up.

"De-equip and hit the showers," Shepard ordered. "I want both of you, Mr. Taylor, and Dr. Solus at a strategy meeting in the briefing room in half an hour. We'll debrief and talk about what's next. But first, I'm going to have a little talk with the Illusive Man." She jerked her chin. "Dismissed." Then she walked away, heading for the elevator herself.

Garrus stayed back a moment. Lawson was staring at Joker's display as if she wasn't really seeing it. Cerberus's bitch, Jack called her, and while Jack might not be the best judge of Miranda Lawson, she did have something of a point. Lawson was the longest-serving, most dedicated member of the organization on board the Normandy. After Nos Astra, Garrus had a bit more of an idea about her. She hadn't confided in him like Taylor or Shepard, but he'd seen enough. Lawson had grown up in a gilded cage, her every move—and a few other things—dictated by a controlling father richer than half the galaxy. She'd taken one of the only routes available to her to get out. Cerberus hadn't just been her escape. Ever since the day she'd left her father, they'd been her sanctuary. And—probably because of the connections and talents she'd built with her father—she'd been a high-value asset to Cerberus ever since. Lawson probably hadn't seen half of what really went on in the organization. The Illusive Man wanted to keep her happy and on the team. He'd manipulated her, just like he was trying to manipulate Shepard.

Until now, Miranda had bought it. She'd thought she was too important, too special to be used or played like anyone else. Now she knows that's not true. Will it change anything?

"Why would the Illusive Man do this?" Miranda murmured to herself.

Garrus watched her carefully. "I'm guessing that's what Shepard's going to ask him. It's never easy, is it? Finding out your superior's willing to risk more than you thought."

"Shepard and the Normandy, everything and everyone onboard, are too high-value to risk losing on a reconnaissance mission. We should have been warned."

"Yeah, don't tell us that," Joker said. "Those assholes would've blown up the Normandy. Again! And the Illusive Man just sent us at 'em. I mean, you guys got out of there, and I flew us out. But that's 'cause we're just that good. Any of us slipped up for a moment, bam! 'Sorry, you're gonna need another ragtag crew of rescuers, 'cause this one's toast.'"

Miranda blinked and stepped back. "He must have known we could handle it," she said. "Still—no. I'm sure he'll have an explanation for Shepard. I—we should get ready for the meeting."

She walked away, and Joker looked up at Garrus. "You know, maybe the Alliance tried to ground me for a while after Alchera. Maybe the Council has their heads up their asses. But both of them always let us know about potential mission dangers. This need-to-know basis shit—I need to know, you know?" He shook his head. "Glad you all got out of there."

"You played a part in that."

"Hell, yes, I did," Joker retorted. He smiled. "But still."

"See you around, Joker."

Garrus got to the briefing room five minutes early, but Shepard already there, showered, changed, and out of her meeting with the Illusive Man. Her single plait was still wet, but she looked professional as the business end of her new gun in the science uniform she always wore on duty.

Garrus remembered Chambers asking her one evening in the mess why she wore the same uniform every day when Cerberus had made three or four variations available to her. Shepard had smiled and made a joke about matching with the doc every day, but he'd known the real answer. The science uniform was the only uniform anyone on the ship had without a Cerberus logo—just an embroidered "SR-2."

She was quiet, standing at the head of the briefing table and clearly in no mood to chat. Taylor came, then Solus and Lawson walked in together—and then Shepard gave them the details.

EDI had analyzed the information they'd picked up on the Collector ship and determined the Collectors used a Reaper IFF to get safely through the Omega-4 relay to their home world or station, and the Illusive Man had found one for them on a dead Reaper out near Klendagon in the Century system. No fake distress signals this time—the Reaper had been drifting there for millennia, and only since Sovereign had anyone known what to look for.

Looking around the room, though, Garrus saw he wasn't the only one skeptical about this new mission. The Illusive Man had apparently been worried about an intelligence leak if he tipped them off about the trap, but only the professor was prepared to accept this. Miranda was pale. Every so often she drummed her fingers on the table, and Taylor's arms were folded.

"So the Illusive Man didn't sell us out. Could've fooled me," he muttered.

Mordin tilted his head and extended a hand in a shrug. "Lied to us. Used us. Needed access to the Collector data banks. Necessary risk," he reasoned.

"Sending us in, maybe," Garrus conceded. "Sending us in blind? No way."

"Not knowing all the risks jeopardized the mission," Shepard said definitively. "The Illusive Man tries something like that again, the Collectors will be the least of his problems." Lawson tensed, and Shepard glanced at her, but Miranda didn't say a word, and Shepard moved on. "EDI, are you sure this IFF is going to work?"

"My analysis is accurate, Shepard," the AI told them. "I have also determined the approximate location of the Collector homeworld based on navigational data from their vessel."

A holo of the galaxy map popped up in the center of the conference table, and blue crosshairs drifted over the map to land squarely in the center of the galactic core. Well. I wish I could say that doesn't make sense.

But Miranda narrowed her eyes at the map. "That can't be right."

Shepard gripped the edge of the table in both hands. He could see his own thoughts on her face. Forget how we get back. How the hell are we even going to get in to take these bastards out? "EDI doesn't make mistakes. The Collector homeworld is located somewhere in the galactic core."

"I guess now we know why no one's ever survived going there," Garrus joked. He looked around at the others. It wasn't funny.

Taylor was still staring at the map. "The core's just black holes and exploding suns. There are no habitable planets there."

Across the room, Mordin's mind was already working on the problem. He paced the room, hypothesizing aloud. "Could be artificial construction. Space station protected by powerful mass effect fields and radiation shields." His omni-tool came out, and his fingers started flying over the keys, taking notes.

"Even the Collectors don't have that kind of technology," Lawson argued.

Shepard looked at her. "We've learned the Collectors are Prothean husks, working for the Reapers. We all know what the Reapers are capable of. They built the mass relays and the Citadel. Who's to say they can't build a space station surrounded by black holes?"

"The logical conclusion is that a small safe zone exists on the far side of the relay, a region where ships can survive," EDI told them. "As Officer Vakarian suggests, standard transit protocols would not allow safe transport. Drift of several thousand kilometers is common and would be fatal in the galactic core. The Reaper IFF must trigger the relay to ignore standard protocols."

Shepard was quiet for a moment. "Just because we can follow the Collectors through the relay doesn't mean we can take them out. I don't want to go after them until I know we're ready."

Taylor frowned. "Sooner or later we need that IFF. I say, 'why wait?'"

"It's a derelict Reaper," Lawson pointed out. "What if the Collectors are waiting for us?"

Shepard tapped her fingers on the table, considering. Garrus saw her look at Lawson, the professor, Taylor. Her eyes landed on him last. She shook her head. "The more people we have completely committed to the mission, the better our chances of success. We need to keep building up the team."

Garrus thought about how the room looked from her perspective. The Collectors had drawn them out today, but the minute they went after that IFF, they were done playing defense. They wouldn't be trying to catch up to the Collectors on a colony world or trying to escape a trap. They'd be making their first attack. Sovereign had technology like no one had ever seen before. The Illusive Man says this Reaper's dead, but we also know we can't trust him. We have to assume the minute we board that Reaper, the Collectors will know we're coming for them.

We're outmanned and outgunned, and this is probably a suicide mission. But if it's a suicide mission, it had better work. No one's going to get another chance.

Their best asset against the Collectors was the people on the ship—a team that could defy any odds and end every last one of the bastards. And we're not ready. Garrus could see it right here. Taylor's too angry—too ready to jump in head first. He's not fighting the Collectors; he's fighting something else. Something personal. The professor's too quiet, staring at Shepard. He's waiting on something. And Lawson—she's still trying to make up her mind about who and what she's fighting for.

There were wider issues in the crew. Tali had signed on to run from the quarian admiralty board. Grunt was having some sort of krogan health problem, maybe related to being grown in a tank. No one really knew Thane or Samara yet, and none of them worked as smoothly together as they should.

And you know you're not ready to jump off the ledge either, a small, malicious voice in the back of his head whispered. You know you're looking at the beginning of the end of the cycle, that if the Collectors aren't stopped, the Reapers keep coming, and the entirety of civilization goes down in flames. But all those corpses in the hall, all the pods those bastards will fill with first the population of Earth than every planet or station in the sky don't mean as much to you as the fact that Lantar Sidonis is still breathing on the Citadel.

Garrus bowed his head. Beside him, he felt his hands clench into fists. If they wanted to do this right, holding off on the attack was the right call. He knew that. But damn, the fact she has to make it . . .

Taylor wasn't happy. "It's your call, Commander," he said. "Whatever you decide, we're with you."

Garrus glanced up at Taylor, frowning, and he wasn't the only one. Shepard was staring levelly at him, too. Ignoring her stated decision wasn't the subtlest way of saying he still disagreed. Taylor dropped his eyes and nodded, but Shepard kept looking at him when she said, "Dismissed."

Garrus felt like someone should probably talk to Taylor, but he couldn't do it. Not today. Without thinking about it, his eye flicked over to his vid archive and began replaying the footage from the Collector ship, fast forwarding and rewinding through it. He didn't bother syncing it up to his radio. He didn't need to. There was the Reaper, Harbinger, coming at them again and again. There was the pile of rotting, human corpses, kidnapped from Horizon or Freedom's Progress or any of the other half dozen colonies the Collectors had hit, subjected to horrific failed experiments—that would have only been worse if they'd succeeded. There was the Collector on the slab, a mockery of the last race the Reapers had wiped out.

But there was another vid playing in his head, and he couldn't shut it off no matter how many times he watched this one. Butler, looking up at him and seeing Nalah, bleeding out from so many bullet wounds it had been impossible to tell which had killed him. Vortash, fading away up in the loft. All of Omega's bile rolling across that bridge toward him—and Sidonis, flying away from it all.

Garrus's throat was dry, his chest was tight, and it felt like someone had been tying knots in his intestines. This is where duty fights duty, and I don't know what's right. I just don't know.

A/N: So you get a Wednesday update today, because I feel just terrible. Some of you know I was recently promoted and have been a lot busier at work and more tired when I get home, but the truth of it is that for a while, I just burned out. Combat chapters are never very easy for me, and after Illium, hitting this, I just had to take a break. I had most of this written for weeks, but it took me ages to get through the combat section, and I'm still not thrilled with the result.

I hope that things will pick up a little now, but the way my life is just now, I'm not going to make you any promises. Just know I'm working on it. I have not abandoned this story, and I will update when I can.

Apologies,

LMSharp