Chapter 24: Applied Research

"Sir! Geth vessels in Ilos orbit!" the sensor officer barked less than a second after the O'Connell emerged from the relay and into the Refuge system proper. "IFF matches vessels present at Eden Prime." Admiral Hackett cursed under his breath. Not even twenty clicks into the system and half their plans go flying out the window. Murphy really was a bitch.

The sensor officer paid no attention to the admiral's brief moment of grousing though, and routed the sensor feed to the holographic platform at the heart of the supercarrier's bridge. A flicker of rainbows heralded the appearance of the planet, and its unwelcome guests, only a few feet from the aged admiral, who turned laser-like focus onto the display. Disappointment and frustrated anger that Saren was, yet again, one step ahead, was forced aside. He had no time to deal with it now. Plans, contingencies and fallbacks raced through his mind as he tried to map out the coming battle.

Only for his thoughts to grind to halt as his conscious mind finally processed what the display was telling him. This... made no sense. It went against every bit of military or tactical thinking he'd ever heard, experienced, or been taught. Why would the geth be retrieving the Conduit, the key to victory for this entire conflict, with a handful of cruisers and their attending frigates? And why wasn't Nazara here?

He didn't realize he had voiced the question until Optimus answered over the still-open comm channel. "There is a significant probability Nazara is lying in wait with the remainder of the heretic forces."

Hackett nodded with a scowl, which deepened when it became clear that they'd been spotted. The orderly patterns of the heretic geth over Ilos suddenly erupted into elegantly chaotic activity. In a matter of moments, the smooth, grid-like sweeps around the planet had dissolved into a loose spherical formation that stood firmly between the approaching ships and the planet that would determine all their fates.

The admiral's lips quirked into a grim smile. Time to find out what's going on. Without turning from the display, he started barking orders. "Get Lieutenant-Commander Shepard and his team on the ground and searching, then tell the Normandy to remain cloaked in a low orbit. They're on overwatch for whatever surprises the geth are planning. All supercarriers are to retreat from the system and take up position one lightyear out. Move it people!" He glanced away from the O'Connell's controllers as they hurriedly started conveying his orders and over to the comm windows containing Optimus and both captains of the other vessels, ignoring the brief sensation of portal travel as he did. "Captain Yamada, once in position, your forces are going to spring the trap. Use just enough to ensure the bait will be lost if they don't react. When it's sprung, Optimus' forces will strike, assisted by the rest of the Yamaguchi's command. Drive them toward Ilos"

"Understood," the geth said evenly, alongside a firm nod from the slim asian man in the window next to him.

Hackett acknowledged it with a nod and continued. "The Bakker and O'Connell will then be the anvil to your hammer."

"As you command," Captain Zhao Yang of the XCS Bakker replied with a shallow bow, moments before all three windows blinked closed.

Immediately, Hackett's attention shifted to the holographic display before him, just in time to witness thousands of the Yamaguchi's ACVs, and one cloaked frigate, pour out of dozens of portals around, and within, the heretic geth formation. The space fighter equivalents to the ground forces' SHIVs blitzed out of their portals in a seemingly endless stream that immediately moved to swarm over the less than two score heretic geth capital ships.

The geth reacted instantly. Each and every one of the capital ships swung out to face the surrounding portals and dozens of spinal mounted cannons filled the intervening space with speeding death. Round after round was sent flying into the cloud of incoming ACVs, scattering them like leaves in an autumn wind. At the same time, geth fighters dropped like shed scales from the cruisers before rising up in an answering swell that charged straight for the horde of drones swelling inside the heretic's formation.

A massive furball broke out in the very heart of the heretic geth fleet, turning the space within into a chaotic mess of human drones, geth fighters, and uncountable streams of both plasma and mass accelerator rounds. The ACV advance from within slammed to a screeching halt as the geth fighters' fully self aware and adaptable AI proved up to the task of keeping the vastly more limited, and equally more numerous, drone VIs too busy to turn on the capital ships. The drones were mired in the fight, forced by a combination of skillful maneuvers and expertly laid traps to slowly grind their way through the geth fighter corp before they could even consider taking on the bigger ships.

Fortunately, they didn't have to. The numbers in the heart of the formation were only a small fraction of the entire force brought to bear, and there were no such fighter screens to deal with the rest. A veritable tsunami of ACVs rushed in against the heretic geth, crashing against the rocks of GARDIAN salvos, even as they flowed around spinal rounds. But GARDIAN lasers alone could no more stem this tide than they could halt the inexorable flow of time. There were simply too many, backed as they were by defense matrices and vahlenite plating. One by one, the GARDIAN banks overheated and fell silent, having claimed only a fraction of the attack force now enveloping the geth craft.

Green-white shields flared to life around each one as the swarm of ACVs descended. Fusion lances and plasma bolts beat a steady rain against the shields, even as laser cannons boiled away large swathes of the armor beneath, and Hackett dismissed the fight from his attention. The heretic geth could not hope to win now. He would do far more good searching for a hint of the ambush he was sure was coming.

Seconds passed in what felt like hours as he searched, bound and determined to catch Nazara as soon as it started to move. He was going to turn this ambush around, and then he was going to kill the omnicidal robot. That was the only outcome he would accept.

And so he was caught by surprise when the last geth ship fell silent, its corpse drifting in a cloud with that of its fellows and the hundreds of ACVs that would not be returning, and nothing else happened. No ships moved, no robotic cuttlefish came crawling out of the moon. It was as if Nazara really had sent these here on their own. Hackett scowled fiercely at the display, half-heartedly searching for the reinforcements he still half-expected while his mind churned over what this turn of events actually meant.

If the geth ships weren't bait for an ambush, where was the rest of the heretic forces? Did that mean the geth already had the Conduit? If so, why did these not simply join them and leave XCOM to search fruitlessly here? And if not, that just raised the question yet again. Why would such a small force be dispatched to secure the key to the whole conflict?

He blew out a low, frustrated breath and slumped back in his chair. This raised a whole lot of questions and next to nothing in the way of answers, and that didn't look to be changing anytime soon. Goddamn Reapers. He missed the simplicity of dealing with Batarians. He knew what to expect from the four-eyed bastards at least.

He shook his head to dislodge the useless thought. He'd just have to find some answers then. A quick motion to his comm officer opened connections with both of his subordinates and his ally. "Good job, Captain Yamada," he said, congratulating the Yamaguchi on its bloodless victory before he focused his attention on the others. "But now it's time to look for the Conduit. Divide up your assigned portion of the planet's surface and send out your ground forces in standard search and rescue patterns. Report any anomalies or functional Prothean technology. Be wary of any geth forces on the ground. We have no way to know how many platforms they deployed before we arrived."

"Average potential force for the heretic ships that were destroyed is approximately eighteen thousand combat platforms of various types," Optimus interjected. "However, there is a significant likelihood a majority of these will be drone platforms, to better facilitate the heretics' search."

"Right," Hackett said with a grateful nod to the blank screen. "This whole thing has been too easy. We're missing something here, and I don't want any of our people to pay for it. Keep your eyes open and be ready for anything, but we still need to find the Conduit before any of those heretics do. Get to searching, and good luck. Vigilo Confido."

Commander Shepard hit the surface of Ilos with a soft grunt, his rifle automatically moving in a sweep to help cover his and Rex's section of the courtyard the squad found themselves in. His gaze darted from point to point, seemingly carrying along the tip of his rifle as he kept a wary eye out for any curious geth. Behind him, he could hear the rest of the more fragile members of the squad doing the same as they jumped down through the portal that was already swirling closed overhead.

"Any idea where to start?" the commander asked the resident expert without interrupting his vigil, easily turning it to a search for clues as well as hostiles. The clearing they had entered, one chosen by the asari due to 'feeling right' and no one having any better suggestions, was a literal ruin. A thick carpet of moss, vines, and detritus covered the ground in spongy layers, giving off a faint, wet squelch with every step. Five large statues of disturbingly familiar, vaguely humanoid, forms, each in varying states of decay, sat facing inward in a ring of small thrones that had been spaced evenly around the exact center of the clearing.

Around them, the carpet of organic mush spread to the very edge of the clearing, where it ran straight into the walls of the single massive building that encircled nearly the entire clearing. It was clear at a glance however, that the building had seen better days. Nearly half of it had collapsed into useless rubble, torn apart by the growth of an enormous... tree was the only word Shepard had for it. But calling it a tree would be akin to calling a chryssalid a bug. True, but it in no way captured the scale and sheer, terrifying majesty of the colossus that stretched hundreds, if not thousands, of meters into the sky. A small, irrational part of Shepard half expected it to come to life then, with another booming psionic voice that would tear into his mind just like the last unnaturally alien plant he'd encountered back on Feros.

The impression wasn't helped by its exterior. Rough black bark coated it, broken only by a network of visibly pulsing blue veins. Every few feet, jagged, leafless branches jutted out of its trunk at odd angles, spearing into floors, walls, and empty air alike with the inevitable implactitude of all flora. And to top it all off, judging by a rough estimate of the thickness and weight of the stone and metal they were supporting, each branch had a higher tensile strength than solid steel. Just what the hell was this thing?

"Not... exactly," Liara admitted, her voice simultaneously nervous, disappointed, breathy and excited. The commander spun to face her immediately, inwardly glad for the excuse to turn away from the subtly intimidating plant. She... wiggled, for lack of a better word, her way over to the centermost statue, the one directly opposite the small opening in the building around them, originally a road Shepard guessed, that broke the building's encirclement, and began examining it with barely-restrained childish enthusiasm. She had to visibly fight herself to turn away from it and look at Shepard, waving one hand at the ruined building behind them. "But this place is a government building of some sort. Any surviving archives will almost certainly be around here somewhere. We just need to find it."

"What are we looking for then?" he asked, somewhat bemused as Liara turned back to the statue before she'd even finished speaking.

She hummed distractedly as she brushed the built up detritus of millennia of neglect off the statue before clambering up onto its knees. She stared intently at the thing's chest, one hand gently tracing faint patterns in the stonework. "We need to determine the location of the archives," she said at length, her focus obviously not on the conversation. "Look for signs, images, anything that could tell us what this place was used for. That will let us know how close we are."

"And what are you doing?" Ashley asked archly, pointedly not voicing the question the rest of the squad was thinking: What good does molesting the statue do?.

"The greeters, as we call them," Liara answered cheerfully with a motion toward the statue, as if she hadn't even noticed the subtext of the question. Though on second thought, Shepard realized, as excited as she was, she probably didn't. "Are a symbol, a sign in and of themselves that identifies public structures and their purpose. That is how I know this was a government building before the Extinction."

"Then why do we need to search?" Garrus asked exasperatedly.

"Because it's been fifty thousand years," Liara said simply. Shepard would have called her tone dismissive and condescending if it wasn't so damn giddy. "And nature is not kind to unprotected structures. So much damage has been done to them that the exact meaning is most likely impossible to determine. I may be able to fin- Oh!"

Her voice cut off and her hands froze on the statue's chest for a brief second. A beat later, she exploded in motion, her hands flying all over the statue's surface before she threw herself from its lap and scrambled over to the collapsed ruin of the left-most one. Dark energy flared from her body as, piece by piece, her biotics sifted through the rubble. Shepard, along with the rest of the squad, couldn't help but stand back and haplessly watch her half-manic search through the broken pieces of a creepy as hell statue.

It was only a few seconds until she found what she was looking for though, and whirled around to face Shepard with a triumphant grin. "Found it!" she cried. "And we're in luck. Judging by what I found here and the sheer size of the building, this is the capitol for this city, possibly even the whole planet."

"Great," Shepard said, and meaning it too. The asari's enthusiasm was infectious. But not infectious enough to prevent his next question. "What does that mean?"

Liara kept grinning, her mood not tarnished in the slightest by the question. Instead, she just pointed out the wide opening leading out of the clearing. "It means that their archives are less than a kilometer that way and if the Conduit is a Prothean artifact, as Saren seems to believe, those records will almost certainly tell us where it is."

Shepard's eyes darted around the broken ruins and partially-intact buildings all around them as Liara led the squad toward their destination, but there was no sign that anything, geth or otherwise, had been through in centuries, if not millennia. And that included animals. It was as if, once the Protheans fell, nature itself recognized the city as a tomb.

Shepard shuddered at that thought, unable to fully suppress the instinctual nervousness that came just from standing in this dead city. The whole place, from the ruined buildings to the carpet of moss and vines underfoot, practically reeked of fallen majesty, dilapidated glory, and, most prominently, the price they would pay if they failed this mission. It was a humbling, and more than a little eerie, reminder.

Which was why Shepard was so relieved when, upon rounding the next corner, Liara gasped and threw herself back toward the squad with a cry of, "Geth!"

There was no time to react before a small rocket shot through the space she had been filling a moment before and exploded on the ground a few feet beyond. Shepard threw himself away from the rocket on instinct, inadvertently tackling Garrus at nearly the same instant it detonated. A small shockwave smacked at his feet and thighs, turning his dive into a semi-controlled tumble that carried both him and the turian behind him down to the ground.

"Anyone hurt?" Shepard asked a beat later as he climbed off Garrus and helped the turian to his feet. He cast a quick look around, but smoke and small pieces of burning moss drifted randomly through the air in a thick, blinding cloud, cutting down his visibility to only a few feet. Only the outlines of his squad on his hud could be clearly seen as they all answered in the negative.

"Good," he said simply, silently thankful for the building separating them from the geth and the time it bought them. "Liara, Garrus, with me. We're going up to the roof to take a look. Legion and Tali, see if you can sneak around and find a place to hit them from. The rest of you, be ready to move when I give the word."

Acknowledgments came back and the two with cloaking modules installed took off into the smoke, even as his archangel pack kicked on and sent him flying toward the roof of the building they sheltered behind, Liara right beside him. They landed lightly and crouched immediately, minimizing their profile as they made their way to the far side. A second later, Garrus' grappling hook pulled him over the lip of the roof and he crawled over to join them in looking over the street beyond. "That's... a lot of geth," he breathed quietly, a kind of quiet nervousness in his voice that Shepard hadn't heard before.

And it was all the harder to dismiss because his words were true. There was easily a score of troopers and destroyers scurrying around below them, hurriedly taking, or even assembling, defensive positions atop and along the side facing them of a surprisingly intact building, crowned by a large, round, four meter tall structure that he had no hope of identifying, only thirty meters or so further down the street from their perch. Worse, there were even more geth inside the building, and no way to tell just how many.

Part of Shepard wondered for a moment just what the geth were thinking. They had clearly seen Liara, and reacted quickly enough to shoot a goddamn rocket at her, but instead of searching for her, they were hunkering down and trying to turn this random building into a fortress. It didn't make any sense to him. Why would they set up shop here, of all places? Maybe they underestimated the destructive power of plasma weapons and thought it would better protect them? Or maybe Prothean architecture was just that tough?

Either way, he thought, it didn't matter. He'd have to be an idiot not to capitalize on their inaction.

"Garrus, we're on the pair with rockets on the roof, you take the left, I've got right," he ordered calmly. "Urdnot and Rex, when I say go, I want a rain of missiles on that building. Take it down to the foundat-"

"No!" Liara hissed quietly from her place at his elbow. "That's the archive! We can't risk damaging it!"

Shepard paused for a long moment. "Well, fuck," he said at length, his tone matter-of-fact. No wonder the geth weren't moving. "We're gonna have to do it the hard way the-"

The commander was cut off by a low-pitched, humming whine from somewhere overhead. He glanced up, even as Garrus' plasma sniper roared from his left. The bolt of plasma shot through the air and speared a geth drone in the middle of its charge straight toward them. It exploded in a brilliant gout of orange and emerald green flame that sent burning shrapnel raining down onto the dirt and broken concrete below.

The rest of the geth reacted with the inhuman speed and eerie synchronicity of networked synthetics, nearly instantly turning as one to face the building Shepard, Garrus and Liara sheltered on. The trio scurried back from the edge, forced to crawl by the withering barrage of gunfire that passed mere centimeters overhead. They didn't make it very far, though, before a pair of bone-shaking booms rang out as the rocket troopers on the far building opened fire, blowing massive holes in the walls of their hiding place and undermining the very floor beneath them.

"Get the rockets!" Shepard ordered as he hurriedly scrambled to a position where he could actually see them, ignoring the way the roof groaned underneath him. "Same targets!"

"On it!" Garrus shot back, his rifle already settling into place dead center on his target. In the span of a single heartbeat, both plasma snipers spat bolts of plasmic death that streaked over the rubble-strewn streets separating them from their targets. Shepard's lips quirked into a small, feral smile as the right side of his target's torso disappeared in a geyser of white fluid and molten metal before it fell limp less than a second before Garrus' target joined it.

Below them, Shepard could hear the roar of Wrex's heavy plasma whirring to life, but a sudden eruption of motion on the roof of the archive, mere meters from the corpse of his target, forced him to dismiss it. He watched, shocked and, one distant part of him absently noted, suddenly very worried, as the round structure crowning the building unfolded.

Four enormous legs, each thicker than he was at the shoulder and covered in enough armor to make Bane feel inadequate, stretched out from each corner of the thing and slammed into the roof with colossal force, sending out a solid wave of sound that seemed to swallow the noise of furious combat echoing up from the street below and left a pregnant, deadly silence in its wake. In this silence, the legs pushed, lifting its body up and making room for a long, serpentine neck topped with a streamlined head bearing the signature geth flashlight to unfold. The enormous geth walker, superficially reminiscent of the Armature, but easily at least twice the size, stood as a tall and menacing sentinel over the entire conflict.

"Keelah!" Tali's voice cried, shrill and borderline panicking. "Colossus!"

As if waiting for that signal, its head swivelled to look straight at Shepard and a chill ran down his spine. Small plates, eight at least, maybe more, in two rows along its back shifted, smoothly creating small gaps in its armor. And the commander had a very bad feeling he knew exactly what those gaps were for.

His heart beat once, loud and thunderous to his ears, then tongues of bright orange flame erupted from every single one of the holes. Shepard reacted on instinct. Raw, animal panic, unrestrained by thought or reason, sent a wave of sloppy, unfocused psionic force slamming into the walker even as the missiles it carried left their tubes.

The sudden slap of force, and that was all it truly was, staggered the colossus and, more importantly, threw off the missiles' targeting. The rocket propelled explosives flew randomly through the air, leaving erratic and nearly impossible to follow contrails as they tumbled wildly off course and ultimately exploded harmlessly amidst the surrounding ruins.

Shepard heaved a short sigh of a relief, internally echoing Garrus' elated cry, and threw himself into motion. He ducked and scrambled along the rooftop, doing everything he could to stay out of sight of the stupid thing even as his thoughts raced. They needed to take that thing out if they were to have any hope of winning this fight, and they needed to do it ten minutes ago. But how? he asked himself with a scowl. It was sitting directly on top of a vital resource, one they absolutely could not risk destroying, and it knew it. How the hell were they going to handle this?

Suddenly, he had an idea. An ingenious idea, if he did say so himself, one that pulled his lips into a sly, cold smirk. If its positioning was a problem, he'd just have to move it. "Urdnot, Rex," he called through the comm, and got a pair of clicks in response. "On my signal, I want all of your missiles in the air and heading for the road right in front of the archive. Liara, cover me."

Affirmatives came back acknowledging the order, so he nodded to himself and leapt out of cover, bending every ounce of his will into this one, single act. So focused was he, that he completely ignored the storm of bullets that filled the air around him, as well as the biotic barriers that sprang up to keep him safe. All he did notice was the river of purple streamers that burst from his forehead and streaked over to the colossus before he'd even fully gained his feet. In response, the colossus' head glimmered with dark energy as what had to be its main weapon prepared to fire with the use of powerful mass effect fields. The head reared back, like a snake preparing to strike, and Shepard pulled.

Stupendous force slammed into the rear of the colossus, throwing it into an uncontrolled tumble that carried it straight off the edge of the archive's roof. It flopped off the edge, right as its weapon fired, throwing its aim wildly off. There was a bright, almost blinding flash as a white beam burst from its head and slammed into the ground so far below. The earth shook and shards of rock and burning concrete were flung through the air by the resulting explosion, but the uncontrolled shot proved as harmless to the geth as it did to Shepard. The commander only distantly noticed however, instead keeping all of his focus on the second stage of his tactic.

"Now!" he barked into the comm, even as another stream of psionic force lashed out and plowed into the top of the walker, catapulting it toward the earth.

The colossus hit with a resounding thud that Shepard could feel even from his perch atop a two story building. There was a flash of brilliant blue, then the missiles came screaming in. The road below erupted into pandemonium, to his eyes becoming little more than a chaotic mess of fire and smoke that blotted out all sight of the walker and even most of the geth that had been defending the archive.

"Did that do it?" Garrus asked quietly in the ensuing calm, his taloned grip tight on his rifle as it periodically belched plasma at any geth that stuck its head out..

The smoke thinned, carried away by a small wind, and Shepard had to suppress a groan. "Of course not," he spat, glaring daggers at the bright glow of the biotic barrier that had sprung up above the fallen colossus and caught every single one of the missiles. "That would be too easy."

"We shall have to fix that then," Liara said gravely, carefully pulling herself to her feet. She set herself into a low stance while a fierce corona of dark energy flared out of her skin. She made a strange, undulating motion that rolled from her feet all the way to her fingertips, which sliced through the air in a whip-like motion. A tight spiral of biotic force, no thicker than Shepard's fist, shot from the tips of her fingers and slammed into the barrier half a heartbeat later.

A sharp, piercing whine filled the air, moments before the barrier shattered like glass. Thick shards of swiftly dissipating biotic energy drifted gently through the air before vanishing completely less than a second later, the mystics powering it simply unable to maintain its cohesion after such a decisive blow.

Shepard could hear the distinctive roar of plasma fire start back up, seizing the initiative that she had bought them, but he could only send the bookish asari an astounded glance. She shrugged sheepishly. "Mother insisted I learn self-defense," she explained semi-defensively.

His lips curled into a tight smile. Really, he should have expected something like that after what she pulled on Feros. "Nice job," he said to her as he turned back to the fight. "Now you're on mystic duty. You see one, make it dead."

"I will!" she agreed with a sharp nod, and scurried further along the edge of the roof to begin her hunt.

Down below, the now unprotected walker jerkily worked its way to its feet under a steady rain of plasma, but its shields flared and kept it protected, no matter what hit it. The glowing green barrier moved in a bizarre swirl that Shepard had never seen before that immediately shunted aside every single bolt of plasma thrown at it. It was unreal, and more than that, he had no idea how to deal with it. How the hell can you take down a shield that doesn't even get hit?

The commander growled under his breath, his mind racing for ways to deal with this seemingly invulnerable engine of destruction, even as he shuffled around the rooftop raining pinpoint fire on the more... squishy infantry below. His thoughts were interrupted however, when Tali's voice came over the com. "Keep the colossus distracted! We've got a plan!"

Before another word could be said, an invisible quarian came flying out of an alley almost a block past the the archive building, well behind the geth defenses. Shepard watched out of the corner of his eye as she charged down the street on a collision course for the now mostly-stable colossus. He scowled at the sight, but fought down the urge to tell her off. She wouldn't do anything this recklessly stupid without a reason and a way to get through it alive.

He hoped.

She reached the colossus in a matter of seconds and immediately scrambled up one of its legs. The spider module in her armor was working overtime as she crawled along the surface of the enormous walker all the way up to the base of its neck, and the colossus didn't seem to notice a thing. Then, suddenly, Tali was visible again. The orange glow of her omnitool blared triumphantly against the matte black of the colossus and dull gray of her armor, catching the eye and alerting everything in the area of exactly where she was. The hand encased in the orange hologram shot forward and seemed to sink into the geth's armor, almost up to the elbow, leaving the quarian laying almost prone atop the gigantic geth, and, fortunately, behind its shield.

The colossus froze abruptly, even as the infantry platforms reacted to her sudden appearance. Thick streams of napalm flew from a pair of destroyers, one on either side of the walker. The flaming jelly slid right past the colossus' shield like it wasn't there and covered the back of the walker in a layer of blazing, white-hot flame.

Shepard felt a pang of irrational worry at the sight. Titan Armor was rated to survive temperatures a hell of a lot higher than any jelly could produce, and he knew it, but he couldn't, and wouldn't even if he could, stop the part of him that wanted to protect her. He kept an anxious eye on the flames and Tali's readout on his hud, even as a lance of psionic force slammed into one of her attackers and tore open its pack, spilling burning napalm on it and every geth near it. Armor ran like molten wax and synthetic muscle burned in blue-white fire as the geth and its nearest neighbor collapsed, the platforms unable to move as their musculature was seared away.

Then the still-burning colossus started to move. One of its legs lashed out and slammed into the surviving destroyer, driving it into the ground and crushing its torso underfoot as the giant walker stomped on it. The telltale glow of the mass effect burst out of its head as it tilted forward, shifting the thing's aim down and right into the heart of the geth infantry. The geth immediately tried to scatter, but the colossus didn't give them the time. Most only managed a single step before a thick beam of solid white shot from its head and speared into a destroyer in the center of the formation.

The platform vanished in a massive, earthshaking explosion of naked energy and thunderous noise. The nearest geth platforms died instantly, their armor seared and systems fried by the enormous surge of heat and power. Further out, the air was filled with a maelstrom of superheated shrapnel and shards of rock that tore through armor as easily as it did synthetic muscle, flooding the ground with thick streams of white fluid as geth platforms were viciously torn apart and cast aside like broken chew toys. Without the slightest hesitation, the few surviving geth outside the archive immediately turned and ran, making a mad dash for the perceived safety of the building and away from their traitorous heavy weapons platform.

"Haha!" Tali crowed triumphantly over the comm, even as she lay amidst the burning napalm atop a hacked enemy walker. Under her direction, the colossus lashed out at the fleeing geth, launching powerful blows from its massive legs the instant any of them came within reach. "It worked! Legion, I could kiss you!"

"That will not be necessary, Creator Tali'Zorah," Legion replied evenly, almost chastisingly, as the two survivors of the colossus' sudden betrayal, and the rest of the squad's cleanup efforts, finally made into the archive building. "Let us focus on the heretics."

"Ye-" she began, only to cut off with a yelp as a lance of biotic energy shot past the colossus' neck and passed by mere inches from her head. She flinched violently and pulled herself back behind its bulk and called over her shoulder, "Little help!"

Immediately, Shepard was tracing the biotic attack back to its source, but he had only just laid eyes on the mystic through one of the archive's first floor windows when the telltale dancing glow of a biotic warp slammed into it. Chaotically shifting forces danced along its skin, rending and tearing great, gaping holes through armor and flesh alike in an explosive display of raw power. Thick white fluid surged out of the new holes, spraying out like the mystic was the galaxy's most macabre firehose and painting the walls and floor around it a nearly impenetrable white until the platform could take no more and it collapsed bonelessly.

"That was the last of the mystics," Liara announced as she ducked back into cover. "By my count, at least."

"Good," Shepard said, not taking his eyes away from the archive building. He panned his rifle all over it, but the geth had seemingly taken the opportunity provided by the distraction and retreated. He couldn't see any sign of them any longer. "Urdnot, Rex, and Ashley, clear the building. Check your fire and don't do any more damage to it than you have to. We'll watch your back."

"On it boss," Ashley said as the trio dashed up the street under the protective watch of the squad's snipers.

"Garrus and Liara, keep an eye out for geth reinforcements. Tali, you and Legion are helping me make sure none of the heretics survive coming out of the building."

"Yes, Shepard," Tali replied easily, the giddy flush of successfully executing such a bold move still evident in her voice. The colossus turned and stomped its way over to the far side of the building. "I'll watch this side."

The commander nodded to himself and activated his archangel pack before darting off the roof of the building that had served him so well and landing atop another ruin closer to the archive, where he could properly see down the alleyway beside it. He settled into position right as Wrex reached the front door of the archive. "I'm in position, go when ready."

The krogan nodded once and swung himself around the corner and into the archive proper. Rex charged in beside him with Ashley right behind. All three swept the foyer for targets, unwilling to advance before knowing the rear was safe. "Clear!" Wrex announced a beat later, and with that, all three disappeared into the building.

The next few minutes passed painfully slowly, the tension thrumming through him refusing to abate even in the face of the dull monotony of overwatch. He listened intently to the chatter as the trio steadily fought their way room by room through the archive building, clearing it out one geth at a time. Finally though, after several eternities of anxious waiting had passed, Ashley's voice addressed him directly over the comm.

"We're done, Commander," she announced with evident relief. "Found what looks like the main record room too. Lots of broken equipment and a VI that's speaking gibberish at least. Hopefully Liara can make sense of it."

"Good job," Shepard said, echoing her relief. He glanced around before focusing on the quarian still riding the giant geth. "Same goes to everyone, but especially you Tali. How the hell did you pull that off?"

"Ah, it's not that impressive," she said modestly. "Legion did the hard part."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "I'd never be able to control this thing if Legion wasn't containing the heretic programs already inside it. He used my omnitool to establish a remote connection and kept them out of the way while I rerouted the motor and weapon controls to my omnitool."

Shepard didn't bother to fight the proud grin that etched itself on his face. It was encouraging as hell to see Tali working so closely with the geth. "Nicely done, both of you. What can we do with it now?"

"We recommend disabling it," Legion's voice interrupted, pulling a frown from the commander. The geth seemed to anticipate his distaste for the idea, for it explained itself immediately. "The heretic programs inside are adapting and will likely soon penetrate the security we placed around the compromised systems. We do not recommend being in its vicinity when they accomplish this."

"Yea..." Shepard drawled slowly, inwardly worrying over just what Legion considered 'soon'. "That would be bad. Can you disable it Tali?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted with a frown. The colossus lowered itself down to the ground and she glanced toward the roof of one of the buildings on her side of the archive, where, Shepard absently noted, his hud marked Legion's location. "Any ideas, Legion?"

"Yes," the geth replied. With no further warning, the armor on the back of the colossus suddenly split straight down the middle. Tali yelped and swung herself around until she was laying on the thing's neck, all the while careful not to pull her arm out of the hole she rested it in.

As soon as she was out of the way, the colossus opened, for lack of a better word. The armored plates on its back shifted out and up in a motion somewhere between the blooming of a flower and the opening of the wings of a beetle. Inside it, thick tubing dotted with glowing highlights every few inches ran in an orderly chaos over widely varying machines of all shapes, sizes and purposes.

"Where do we start?" Shepard asked the resident geth. He was pretty sure he was supposed to just start smashing things, but he'd prefer it if the colossus didn't explode with Tali on it.

By way of response, Legion hefted his rifle and shot a globe of plasma deep into the heart of the machinery, instantly vaporizing huge swathes of the delicate innards. Shepard threw himself back with an oath of surprise and fell on his ass as clouds of white steam and acrid smoke billowed out of the colossus. The walker seemed to deflate with an almost pitiful whine and the various lights and highlights along it dimmed and died, giving colorful testament to the way the limbs, and even the armor on its back, collapsed limply. It slumped weakly to the ground and lay still, utterly dead.

Shepard turned an arch look on Legion. "A little warning, next time?" The question was enthusiastically echoed by Tali, who had thrown herself from the thing the instant Legion had fired and was now glaring daggers at him.

"Yes, Shepard-Commander," the geth replied without emotion, stoically ignoring the quarian's ire.

He eyed Legion, unable to tell if that had been serious or not, but eventually he snorted. The geth didn't understand sarcasm at the best of times, he wasn't going to use it now. At least the stupid thing was dead now. "Whatever," he dismissed it and turned away. A wave of his hand brought Liara and Garrus down to join them. "Let's just get in there and see what these archives have to say about the Conduit."

"Wow..." Liara breathed quietly as she and Shepard strode into the room Ashley had reported. Her head spun like it was on a swivel, her eyes desperately feasting on the xeno-archaeological find of the century like a starving maiden on Janiris. Long shelves stretched in even rows throughout most of the room, the order to their placement broken only by the obvious signs of the passage of time. Rust ran thickly over the shelves, almost entirely eating away at the metal in several cases while thick flora, vines and roots primarily, wove intricate patterns around the metal frame before pushing around and, to Liara's great dismay, occasionally into several of the hermetically sealed crates that were of incalculable historic value. Just the thought of how much knowledge had been lost alongside the integrity of the dozen or so broken crates she could see was almost enough to pull a scowl out of her.

But she couldn't find it in herself to truly be upset. Not when so much more had survived. By Athame, she was finding it hard not to giggle like a schoolgirl and dance a jig. This was the most intact Prothean archive she had ever even heard of, let alone seen. And there was a working VI!

Well, not really working per se, she hastily amended to herself as she glanced over to the hologram, dismissing the corpse of the geth on the floor beside it. The VI's projector had clearly been damaged at some point, likely by the plant growth, leaving it little more than a vague bipedal shape hidden in a storm of orange-white static, and she would be truly astounded if more than a small fraction of its many delicate electronics had survived the millennia without maintenance. That fraction, however, was more than any previous Prothean researcher had ever reported.

Goddess, she had never dared dream of a find of this scale. The things she could learn here! It would revolutionize the galaxy's understanding of the Protheans! And she was the one who found it! Not Matriarch Lisyna, not Rysia Carin, but 'poor, delusional' Liara T'soni and her 'youthful' theories! Oh she couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces when they find out about this. They'd be-

"-ara!" A sharp voice, a hint of reprimand in its tone, suddenly tore her from her thoughts. She flinched in surprise and jerked her head around toward the source, only to come face-to-chest with an impatiently waiting Commander Shepard. "Focus on the job," he chided her, not unkindly. "You can come back to oggle the place once we've found the Conduit."

"R-right," she said with a nod and a flush of embarrassment. She wasn't on a dig, she reminded herself with a shake of her head. Now was not the time to daydream. Lives depended on her discovering the Conduit's location as quickly as possible. She took a deep breath and took one last look around the room, paying special attention to the corner of her mind where the Cipher resided, but nothing stood out as particularly likely to have what she needed.

She glanced at the VI and muttered a quiet prayer to Athame that its interface components remained more intact than its projector. "I will need to consult with the VI," she said to Shepard. "With luck, it will at least be able to tell us where to start in these records."

"Sounds good, just hold on a sec," he replied before turning toward the krogan looming in the background of the room. "Urdnot, you and Rex head out and set up on overwatch with the others outside, make sure the geth don't sneak up on us." Wrex rumbled his agreement and shoved himself off the wall, but froze when a wreath of purple light dropped both of the geth corpses in the room at his feet with a small splash of white fluid.

"Carnifex?" he half growled by way of question.

"Drop these somewhere else on your way out," the commander ordered. "Just in case they're intact enough to listen in. Call me paranoid, but I'd rather not risk them overhearing anything."

Wrex rolled his eyes and grumbled under his breath, but he hefted both of the ruined corpses onto his back and plodded out the door, the commander's robotic varren on his heels. Shepard turned back to Liara. "Alright, now that that's taken care of, do you need anything else from us?"

"No, Shepard," she said with a small shake of her head and a small, eager smile.

"Alright. In the meantime, Ashley, you take the far end, I'll start over here. Go through the boxes and see if you can find anything that looks like a map or something. Start with the open crates."

"And be careful," Liara insisted worriedly as Gunnery Chief Williams made her way toward the far side of the room. "These records are fifty thousand years old. Even the best preservation techniques will not stop them from being very, very fragile."

Chief Williams grunted her agreement, which did little to assuage the tight knot of worry in the archaeologist's chest, and disappeared into the shelves a moment later, while Shepard nodded at her and turned to rummaging through the nearest shelf. Liara watched him anxiously for a moment as he pawed at the boxes, until he sent her a look over his shoulder. She flushed again as, even without being able to see his face, that glance silently rebuked her for failing to perform her duties.

She turned away, trying to will away the blood in her cheeks, and determinedly strode over to the VI's hologram. The projection flickered sharply as she drew within arm's reach and began to speak. Its voice was deep and resonant, giving an even sharper edge to the harsh, nonsensical syllables it spoke that she understood as easily as if it had spoken High Thessian. She couldn't stop the small, giddy smile that spread across her lips at that. It had been weeks and she still couldn't quite get over being able to actually speak Prothean!

"Gree...tings -ser" the VI said haltingly, its voice randomly pausing or descending into brief bursts of static, proof of the corruption of its audio files. "What - yo- reque...st?"

"The Conduit," Liara said, inwardly marvelling at the Prothean words rolling off her tongue. "What is it? Where is it located?"

"Err-. Cond-it data cor...rupt. Would - li- to procee...d?"

"Yes," Liara answered with an annoyed frown. She had known it was too much to hope that the information would all survive intact, but it was still disappointing to hear confirmation of it.

"Pro-ct Cond-it. Super-sor: Ks- Ishan. Lo...cation: Fac-ity 112-. Purpose: .. Err-" The VI's hologram flickered violently then flashed a deep, warning purple. Words flew across the display in a rush, far too fast for her to make any sense of, for a few short seconds. Then the projector practically exploded in an enormous geyser of sparks. Liara instinctively threw herself away from the sudden danger with a yelp of surprise that brought the other two in the room running.

"Liara!" Shepard barked as he rushed over. He crouched down beside her prone form and asked, "You alright?"

"I am fine," she replied, taking his proffered hand and climbing back to her feet. She slapped her hands against her armor to knock off any debris from the floor and shook her head. "Just surprised is all."

"What happened?" Gunnery Chief Williams asked. "I heard something explode."

Liara scowled. "The VI's information on the Conduit was corrupted," she explained in a sour tone. "When I accessed it, something went wrong with it and the projector exploded."

Shepard cocked his head then turned and crouched beside the broken remains of the VI's projector. He examined it for a few moments before shaking his head with a sigh. "Not just the projector," he said aloud. "Looks like it was caused by a power surge from somewhere deeper in the system. I couldn't tell you what actually broke, but the good money's that this isn't turning on again without extensive repairs. Maybe not even then."

"I had assumed as much," Liara agreed with a sigh. If only she hadn't needed to find the Conduit so badly, she could have been more gentle with it. Goddess, why do the geth have to ruin her best finds? First Therum and now this. It was as if they had it out for her in particular.

She pushed aside that thought for now. She'd been distracted enough already. She cleared her throat to grab the humans' attention from where it had wandered and continued. "It did last long enough for me to learn something about where the Conduit was being stored however."

That got their attention immediately. "Where?" Shepard demanded as he straightened from his crouch.

"The VI called it 'Facility 112-something'," she answered him immediately. "But I am unsure precisely where that is." She glanced between them. "Were either of you able to locate a map like you planned?"

"I found something," Gunnery Chief Williams said, even as Shepard shook his head negatively. She turned and disappeared into the shelves for a moment before reappearing with one of the crates, seal freshly broken, in hand. "But I'm not sure if it's a map or what."

The gunnery chief gently set down the crate and opened it without fanfare, setting the lid aside. In it sat large piles of various papers folded into small, tight rectangles and packed into the crate as tightly as the Protheans could have managed, though one of the piles had fallen into disarray somewhere along the line. The human reached in and gingerly plucked out one of the sheets from the disordered pile and just as gently unfolded it over the lid of the crate.

Sharp, angular lines raced along the surface of the document in hard, interlocking patterns that described esoteric, nearly incomprehensible designs of varying sizes and shapes. For a long moment, Liara had no idea what to make of it. It was so utterly alien that she could barely follow it.

The longer she looked at it though, the easier it became. Her eyes started running along it purely on instinct, tracing patterns she didn't even consciously recognize. Several seconds passed as she racked her brain for what this could possibly be for before, like a bolt of lightning, she realized what she was missing.

"Commander, can my armor take pictures?" she asked abruptly. "That I can access here?"

"Uh, yea," Shepard answered, his tone bewildered. He gave her a brief explanation for the mechanism and finished by asking, "But what good will pictures of this thing do?"

"The Protheans had quadnocular vision," she answered distractedly as she moved into position and took her first picture. "Four eyes, in other words. We lack the requisite perception to properly view this." The humans made vague noises of understanding and the room settled into an awkward silence as Liara's head darted around while she took three more pictures. Once done, she activated her mic. "EDI, I'm uploading some photos to you. All four are different angles on the same subject. Can you combine them for me?"

"Of course, Liara," the AI replied instantly. "Receiving the images now." Liara settled in to impatiently wait, her eyes continuing to trace over the piece of paper and slowly but surely picking away at its secrets. She had only been waiting for a few seconds when EDI replied though. "Done. Sending the result to you now. Also, Commander, be advised that the battle in orbit has been resolved. Additional ground forces will be added to the search."

"Thank you," the archaeologist said, ignoring Shepard's conversation with EDI in favor of studying the image as it appeared on her hud. She blinked dumbly in surprise, unable to do anything but stare at it for a single long second. Then she poured over it once more before bursting into laughter. Goddess, what were the odds?

"What?" Gunnery Chief Williams asked bewilderedly. "What is it?"

Liara glanced over, her chuckles slowly dying, and said, "Ex, excuse me, I was not expecting that."

"Expecting what?" Shepard asked, his voice just as confused as the other human's. "All I can really tell is that it's a map of some sort."

"That the gunnery chief would choose exactly the right map," Liara said, a hint of laughter still in her voice. "This is a map of every military installation on the planet." Her hand came down and she tapped several different points on the paper. "Including several possible matches for our target."

"Perfect!" Shepard exclaimed happily. He reached over and pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Way to go Liara! Can you get us coordinates for them all?"

"In a few minutes, yes," she said as he released her.

"Do it and get them to EDI," he ordered, starting to calm down from the surge of excitement. "But first, where's the closest one?"

She took a few seconds to study the map and compare it to the positional readout on her hud before replying. "It is a large underground bunker whose only entrance is approximately two kilometers north-northwest of our current position."

"That's our target then. EDI, get word to the Captain. His boys can handle the others."

The run from the archive to the bunker Liara had found passed quickly and mercifully uneventfully for Shepard. The asari had led the squad through the rubble-strewn streets and fallen ruins at a brisk pace, moving as quickly as he dared push her through potentially hostile territory, and they failed to see even a hint of heretic geth. The commander took it as a good sign, despite the vocal protests of a small portion of his mind. Especially once Liara slowed to a stop at the top of a steep incline that led several meters down, where an enormous, incredibly solid-looking inverted trapezoidal door had been set into a wall of solid concrete and steel.

"This should be it," Liara said, her voice torn between excitement and nervousness.

"Can you get it open?" Shepard asked, waving hand signals to the other snipers and Wrex as he did so. The others immediately accepted the order and moved into position, where they set up on overwatch for any geth patrols.

"I believ-" Liara began, only to cut herself off when a blinding flash of bright blue washed over the area. Shepard flinched as the light speared into his eyes for the small fraction of a second his armor took to compensate for it. "Goddess! What was that?"

"Somebody tell me that wasn't what I think it was," Ashley demanded in the same moment.

"Heh," Wrex snorted into the slowly building silence of dawning realization and horror. Another wave of blinding light painted the area in obscene punctuation of his mirthless chuckle. "Not a chance. That was the Conduit, or I'm a salarian."

"Which means we are out of time! Liara, get that door open!" Shepard snapped before turning on his comm and dismissing the asari from his thoughts. "EDI! Di-"

"I saw it Commander, but it does not appear to have had any effect on anything I can detect."

"Maybe that means it's still charging then," he said, hoping but not quite believing it, as another flash blinded him. "Can you find it?"

"I am unable to locate its source," the AI answered, a distinct note of annoyance in her voice. "But I believe you are the nearest ground team."

"Good, let the Ad-" Shepard's voice was suddenly drowned out by a deafening roar as the door at the base of the ramp exploded without warning, flinging a raging geyser of flame and shrapnel out of the depression and up into the still air. Well honed and deeply ingrained instinct flung him away from the inferno the ramp had become, and he landed heavily on his chest. A thump and a soft, feminine whimper of pain sounded in the pregnant silence following the blast as a limp form was launched off the lip of the ramp and slammed to an abrupt halt against a crumbling wall across the street.

"Liara!" Shepard barked worriedly. He threw himself back to his feet, but before he could take so much as a single step, the telltale chitter of geth platforms echoed out of the thick smoke that filled the ramp. The commander immediately scrambled for cover, cursing vehemently under his breath. "Ashley! Heads up!"

Without waiting for a response, a surge of purple light lashed out and lifted the asari into the air, before it flung her as gently as he could manage toward where the closest thing the squad had to a battlefield medic had taken cover. Ashley caught her with a surprised oath and nearly fell over, but managed to recover and set her down in cover in the same motion.

The next instant, four shapes exploded out of the smoke and arced through the air overhead. "Incoming hoppers," Legion warned calmly, his voice barely audible over the whine of his rifle's discharge. One of the flying geth platforms was speared by the bolt of plasma and sent careening off course in a shower of sparks and half-molten metal, but not even the geth's preternatural reaction speeds could catch any of the other three before they disappeared into the ruins behind the squad.

Shepard's was forced to set aside any worries about them however, when a solid wall of destroyers came charging out of the smoke a beat later. They stampeded up the ramp only meters away from his hiding place, belching waves of blindingly bright flame and showers of shotgun pellets as they came. Burning gel settled over damn near everything in sight, filling the air with thick plumes of black smoke and turning the small stretch of road into a scene straight out of hell.

There was no time to think or plan, only to react. Almost without thought, a telekinetic field blanketed the area, and he regretted it the second it formed. Fires roared and smoke billowed as waves of psionic force seized the hot, agitated air and whipped it into a churning maelstrom of untameable fury. The instant he realized what was about to happen, he tried to stop it by releasing the field, but it was far too late. The convection current had already formed, and powerful, chaotic winds rushed in through gaps in the broken ruins to answer its call. The firestorm instantly became a raging inferno, gorging on the ever-increasing winds of its own creation in a self-perpetuating cycle that no man or god could hope to break.

In a matter of seconds, his vision and even his hearing had vanished, consumed like so much chaff in the blaze. The destroyers disappeared behind impenetrable sheets of black smoke and dancing flames taller than he was. Immediately, he tried to consult his armor's sensor suite, only to find it packed full of static and garbage data from the geth's ECM and he realized, with a sick sensation of dread, that the geth had pre-empted him. They had planned for this. They had wanted him to do exactly what he had, to utterly blind himself and his squad. And he had walked right into it.

Sulphurous cursing and self-recrimination raged through his thoughts, but he refused to compound his mistake by letting it paralyze him. He was better than that, damnit, and now he had to prove it.

The first step in that process was to move. He wasn't stupid enough to think the geth hadn't marked his position before the fire started, and it was only a matter of time before one of those hoppers got into position to do something about it. Hell, with his luck, they were probably drawing a bead on his head even as he dithered. So with that cheery thought, he shoved off the rubble he sheltered behind and threw himself blindly into the inferno.

Fire licked at his waist, but he barely noticed. The layers of vahlenite and carbon fiber in his Titan Armor, designed to protect him from the unholy heat of plasma bolts, ensured he didn't feel a thing. The far more pressing problem was the smoke. The billowing veil hung thick in the air, churned into a chaotic mess by the constant, howling winds that fanned the flames ever higher. After only moments, any reference points he may once have used to determine his position had vanished into the chaotic swirls of black and orange that had enveloped him. All he could see, the only constants in the roaring firestorm his world had become, were the frantically moving markers that represented his teammates on his hud.

Suddenly, that changed when the hulking shape of a geth destroyer came barrelling out of the smoke to his left in utter silence. Flames wreathed the destroyer's form for a brief second, changing its flat red paint into something far more demonic. The sight reached straight past rationality and understanding and plunged straight into the most primal instincts of the human brain. Before he had even consciously recognized the new threat, he had flinched in mid-step, sending himself tumbling away from the looming geth.

The geth's shotgun roared and belched a handful of deadly shards, even as ingrained responses kicked in and his body turned what should have been an ungainly belly-flop into a mostly smooth roll. A single pellet, the only one of the geth's shot he didn't manage to avoid, skittered off the armor on his calf with a spark and the momentum it imparted turned his roll once more into a graceless tumble.

He landed heavily on his back, but he was already bringing his rifle to bear. Nearly the same instant his shoulders hit the ground, his finger tightened on the trigger and sent a spear of bright green plasma roaring toward the destroyer. At that distance, there was no way to dodge, no time for even a geth to react, before a bolt the size of his fist containing more energy than the raging fire in which he stood slammed into its chest.

The geth's shields flared and died in the same instant, the momentary flicker of pale green against the backdrop of smoke the only evidence of their desperately futile attempt. Metal warped and crumpled under the force imparted by the plasma strike, even as it ran in rivers under the unfathomable heat. Delicate electronics inside the geth's torso shattered in a shower of sparks or were seared into their housings, all while great plumes of white steam poured out of the new, enormous hole taking up most of the geth's chest. The light in its eye dimmed instantly and the destroyer dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

At the same time, a sniper round came flying out of the smoke and slammed into his shoulder. The momentum imparted by the round threw his upper torso back against the ground and sent up a flurry of sparks, but the angle of the shot and the curvature of his armor meant that was all that happened before it deflected into the ground beside his ear.

Without taking the time to think, let alone silently thank the designers of Titan Armor, he started rolling. It didn't matter where he was going, so long as it was somewhere else. Before he'd even finished his first rotation, a trio of rapid impacts sounded from where he'd lain only moments before, and he couldn't stop the sigh of relief that came when the shots didn't follow him.

In that brief moment of respite, he had to give it to them. The geth had managed one hell of a trap here. With the destroyers as simultaneous spotters, attackers, and bait, and a smoke screen to prevent counter attacks, the hoppers had free reign over the battlefield. It was a frighteningly brilliant tactical move.

With a shake of his head, he shoved the thought aside and shot back to his feet. He could admire their ingenuity after he killed them. He'd just have to find them first. But how?

This whole scenario was the geth ruthlessly exploiting every weakness he and his squad had. How on Earth were they supposed to be able to counter this?

"Enough of this," Wrex's frustrated and throaty growl cut through the commander's thoughts like a knife. "Brace yourselves!"

Shepard's eyes went wide, even as he threw himself against the nearest wall. What the hell was the crazy lizard up to now?

That question was answered in spectacular fashion before he even finished thinking it. The first sign was the thickening of the smoke and the way visibility dropped from a few meters to nanometers in a fraction of a second. His entire world dropped away to solid, impenetrable blackness.

The second sign was the impact that slammed into his side like a solid punch. He bucked and was nearly thrown from the wall he leaned against, but caught himself at the last second. As soon as he stopped moving, a nearly solid wall of bright biotic-blue light forced its way around him, reluctantly parting around the surface of his armor like he was being dipped in molasses.

The third and final sign was the nearly complete absence of smoke left in the wake of the biotic wave. The fires continued to burn and a thick haze was already returning over the battlefield, but for those first few, brief instants, the air was clear.

Not one to let such an opportunity go, the commander's gaze bounced around the field as quickly as he could, flagging the position of every geth he could set his eyes on, even while the marks on his hud informed him that Garrus was doing the same. Quickly, and poorly, aimed bolts of plasma went flying downrange with every target, but he was more interested in scoping the battlefield while he had the chance than killing the geth.

That's what Wrex was for.

He watched out of his peripheral vision as the krogan charged into the fray with a wordless cry of fury the very instant the geth were revealed, utterly ignoring the storm of plasma and bullets that erupted all around him. With his riot shield held before him to absorb its fire, he barrelled right into the chaos and plowed into the nearest geth with all the force of a speeding truck.

The shield spluttered and died from the impact, but the destroyer was sent reeling. A single, smooth motion swung the barrel of his heavy plasma into its chest. Plasma burst from the gun and bored into the destroyer's torso, where it threw molten shrapnel and thick puffs of white steam flying through the air. Wrex completed his swing and threw the geth corpse away from him before, in the same motion, turning and charging at his next target.

Then Shepard was abruptly forced to dismiss the krogan from his thoughts by a rustle of white he caught out of the corner of his eye and the sudden shriek of his instincts. Heeding the call, he threw himself forward and just barely dodged the fist-sized beam of red light that streaked through where his head had been less than a second earlier.

He turned his dive into a roll and swiftly got his feet back under him, but when he whirled to face it, his attacker was already fading back into the swiftly reforming haze of smoke.

"Oh no you don't!" he snarled angrily, both shaken and incensed by how close that had actually come to ending him. His right hand left his rifle and, with fingers curled in an invisible grip, lashed out toward the barely-visible form in the smog. Long streamers of purple light blasted out of his hand and latched onto his target at the speed of thought. His hand tightened into a fist and he pulled his arm back with a shout. "Get over here!"

In perfect time with the gesture, the enormous white form of his attacker came flying out of the haze in a graceless tumble, giving Shepard his first ever glimpse of an intact geth prime. He grinned ferally as the prime slammed into the ground with a crunch and bounced back up into the smoke-filled air, its gun clattering from its grip in the process.

The next instant, a spear of purple light slammed into it from above, throwing it into the ground with tremendous force. It landed deep in the heart of one of the many fires and its form was consumed instantly, sheltered from his view by the waist-high flames. The next second, sharp, echoing cracks, loud enough to be heard even over the roar of the flames, rang out as the prime's armor proved unable to resist the awesome power brought to bear against it.

Suddenly, there was a flash and the next thing Shepard knew, he was lying flat on his back, over a meter away from where he had started, staring up into roiling black smoke and he felt like he'd been kicked by a mule. "The hell?" he muttered dazedly.

"You were within the blast radius when the prime's power cells suffered a catastrophic containment failure, most likely induced by overheating," Legion's voice answered his question as a three-fingered hand burst from the smoke around him, grabbed his armor and helped haul him out of the fire and back onto his feet. When he was standing firmly once more, the geth released him and took a step back before announcing to the whole squad, "We can detect no further heretic platforms in the immediate vicinity."

"Thank God," Ashley nearly moaned in relief.

"Good," Shepard echoed the sentiment. That was not a fight he wanted to repeat anytime soon. "But before we start celebrating, let's get out of here before reinforcements show up and we need to give an encore performance."

That thought had the entire squad, even Wrex, hurrying for the tunnel entrance.

"Please tell me we're not going to be running down this," Garrus asked with an almost petulant lilt as the squad finally found their way out of the thick smoke and into the tunnel. He stopped at the base of the ramp leading in and cast an exaggeratedly disparaging look around.

Shepard stepped up beside him, took one look down the tunnel and found himself in complete agreement with the turian. To either side of them, thirty meter tall walls stretched laser-straight out into the distance, running so far out that he couldn't even begin to glimpse the end of it, even with the strongest magnification his helmet allowed. And it wasn't a lack of light that prevented it either. The regularly placed skylights, only a few of which still bore any sign they'd once been filled with glass, that ran along the ceiling the whole way down ensured that much.

"Probably not," Shepard muttered his agreement before glancing over his shoulder and raising his voice. "But first, Liara, how far are we from that facility?"

"Wha- Oh!" The asari exclaimed as she pulled her attention away from the strange oblong cylinders that sprouted randomly out of the walls. She paused briefly, probably re-examining the image EDI had created, before continuing. "We are in it, Commander. The door behind us was the entrance."

Shepard frowned. Just how big was this place? "How far are we from the Conduit then?"

"I am unsure," Liara said in a distractedly frustrated tone. "It is most likely in an offshoot from this passageway, but there are no interior details on the map. All I can say for sure is that this passageway is no more than fourteen kilometers long."

Ashley gave an impressed whistle. "That's one hell of a distance."

"Quite," Liara agreed. "It is the entire width of the compound."

"We're gonna need a ride then," Shepard said. He stepped off the base of the ramp and was momentarily surprised by the sloshing as his foot broke the surface of the perfectly clear ankle-deep water that covered the floor of the tunnel. He shook off the distraction and called the Normandy. "EDI, send Mako to these coordinates, we need a ride."

"At once, Commander," the AI replied immediately.

The familiar purple swirl of a wormhole burst to life mere feet in front of Shepard and swiftly grew into a gaping hole in reality that disgorged the squad's TIV before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Mako gently lowered itself into the shallow water and the hatch in its rear swung open before it had even fully settled. Shepard climbed in, content in the knowledge that the splashing of footsteps behind him meant the others were right behind him.

"Garrus, take the turret," he called over his shoulder as he settled into the driver's seat. "I'll drive."

"On it," the turian replied. He clambered into the increasingly cramped confines of the TIV's interior before plopping into the seat on Shepard's right and immediately laid hands on the gun's controls. A soft whir sounded as he quickly synced the gun's camera feeds to his armor and ran through its startup calibrations.

Mere seconds later, Wrex finished squeezing his bulk into the transport and the hatch slid smoothly closed. The dashboard before Shepard flashed green, declaring Mako's readiness to move, and with a few quick commands, it pulled itself out of the water with a quiet hum. Then, accompanied by the quiet whine of its gravity drive, the TIV sped down the tunnel.

The next several minutes passed in uneventful silence, no one willing to break the nervous tension that had settled over them all. They were getting close to the end of this whole debacle, and every one of them could sense it. The end-game lay ahead, and it could potentially decide the fate of the entire galaxy. That was a cross Shepard wasn't sure he could bear. If he fucked this up, he would be personally responsible for the deaths of trillions.

He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but that thought scared the piss out of him. He had enough issues with a kill count in the thousands, how the hell would he deal with one literally a billion times higher?

Assuming he survived, of course. It wasn't like Nazara, if not the Reapers in general, wasn't already planning to personally murder him after all.

"So," Ashley's voice reached in and broke his thoughts out of their increasingly depressing spiral with an almost audible snap. He felt a flash of gratitude to the almost certainly oblivious gunnery chief as she continued in a dry, faux-conversational tone without missing a beat. "What do you think those things sticking out of the walls are?"

"They are stasis pods," Liara said, her voice both reverent and sad, and she instantly had Shepard's attention. "Sealed and inactive stasis pods."

"You mean..." Ashley started in a surprised tone before trailing off, as if she could deny the implication by not voicing it.

"Yes. Each pod most likely contains a dead Prothean," Liara confirmed resolutely. "I can only assume they tried to survive the Reaper's genocide of their species through cryogenic freezing, and then never woke up."

"Jesus," Ashley breathed. "This isn't a base, it's a tomb."

"And it'll be Saren's, if I have anything to say about it," Wrex rumbled into the somber silence that followed. Rex barked in agreement from where he sat across from the krogan, utter confidence in its tone.

"Damn straight," Garrus agreed easily. "We'll- whoa!"

Whatever the turian was going to say was lost as a nearly solid wall of bright gold light suddenly took up the entire hallway mere meters from Mako's nose. Shepard slammed on the brakes, grimacing as his momentum pressed his torso against his restraints hard enough to momentarily cut off circulation, and brought the TIV to a shuddering halt less than foot from contact with the barrier. Choked cries of surprise echoed through the cramped interior of the transport as the others suffered the same he did, but Shepard ignored it in favor of the exterior.

Instinct took over automatically, the hours of endless drills and maneuvers in combat driving coming immediately to the forefront of his mind. Without stopping to think, he immediately threw the vehicle into reverse and gunned the throttle, only for Mako to come to yet another shuddering halt as he realized an identical barrier had sprouted only a handful of meters behind them.

"Brace for impact!" Shepard barked as he realized they were well and truly trapped, and that the geth would never let this kind of opportunity pass them by.

A wave of apprehension crackled through the TIV like lightning, and Shepard's heart beat loud in his ears as the cameras he controlled swivelled all around in a desperate bid to find the source of the ambush before they could attack. Fear thrummed in the air for several tense seconds, but when nothing happened, confusion slowly began to replace it.

"The hell?" Shepard muttered as he finished a scan of the entire section in the shield and could find no hint of the geth. Hell, the only things that marked this stretch of hall any different from the last several kilometers were the glowing barriers and the firmly closed man-sized door set in one of the walls.

"Saren must be trying to stop us," Ashley growled.

"Whatever it is, we don't have time to wait and figure it out," Garrus said firmly. A faint whir sounded as he aimed Mako's gun. "We'll just have to go through it."

Without further ado, the twin-linked heavy plasmas atop Mako roared to life and filled the air with a nearly constant stream of superhot plasma. The barrier didn't even seem to notice. If anything, it grew even more solid looking with every bolt that hit it.

Garrus growled quietly and stopped firing as he noticed it himself. "What is this thing?"

"I dunno, but that isn't going to work," Shepard answered with a scowl. They'd have to go with Plan B. Activating his comm, he called the Normandy. "EDI, we've hit a wall. We need a portal to the other side."

"Yes, Commander," she answered immediately, and a portal began forcing its way open a few feet from the TIV's hull. "Will there be anything else?"

Shepard opened his mouth to answer, but shut it with a click when a new voice, a soothing, obviously synthesized sound of indeterminate gender filled the small space between the glowing walls and the door he'd noticed earlier slid smoothly open. "Please wait. I must speak with you."

"Cuz that's not a trap at all," Shepard drawled sarcastically with a roll of his eyes, pulling a low murmur of agreement from most of the squad. Without even bothering to respond, he dismissed the voice out of hand and began to guide Mako toward the portal.

"Wait!" the voice came again, insistent, almost desperate, the very instant the vehicle started to move. "Please! I have vital information about the Reapers!"

That got his attention, most firmly. The TIV froze, mere feet from the portal, and he opened a connection to the exterior speakers. "I'm listening."

"I cannot broadcast this information. The Reapers' servants cannot learn of it, or all is lost. Please. The elevator in the wall beside you will bring you to me."

"And why should I trust you?" Shepard asked with a scowl. His inner pragmatist was demanding he ignore whatever trap or lunatic this actually was, but the rest of him was loathe to let this pass by. It was the first time they'd run into anything that had so much as hinted at knowing something about the Reapers, and if it was good intel, any amount of delay would be worthwhile. "Hell, how do I know you're information is any good?"

"Because I am the final legacy of my creators," the voice explained in a melancholic tone. "And I witnessed their annihilation."

The commander's brow furrowed. "Who or what are you?"

"My name is Vigil, an advanced non-organic analysis system with personality imprints from Ksad Ishan, Chief Overseer of Facility 11290. Please, I do not have much time left. It is imperative for your own survival that we speak at once."

"Shepard!" Liara cut in excitedly. "That's the name I got from the VI in the archive! This is a real Prothean AI!"

"If it's a Prothean AI, how the hell is it speaking a language I can understand?" Shepard asked, and the asari deflated slightly, only to perk up as Vigil responded. The commander cursed inwardly at the realization that he'd left his mic on.

"The arrival of unknown species to investigate this world was not unforeseen. This was, in fact, the most likely outcome of our actions," it explained. "My creators ensured I would be able to create an adequate translation suite given time and language samples, which I acquired through your unsecured radio and verbal communications."

"Please, if we do not act soon, the Reapers will once more consume the galaxy. We must speak now."

There was only one response he could really give to that. He just hoped it was the right one.

Mako gently lowered itself into the low water and its hatch cracked open with a hiss. "Everybody out," Shepard said, forcing his voice to hide the uncertainty and doubt that roiled nauseatingly in his gut. "Let's go see what it has to say."

Shepard emerged from the surprisingly solid elevator and let out a sigh of relief. Not only had the elevator not been booby-trapped to fall or explode, but there wasn't a corporeal being, geth or otherwise, outside of his squad in sight. It was somewhat refreshing for his paranoia to be proven wrong. After one look around though, he had to wonder. Why the hell there was an elevator to this place? Hell, why did it exist at all? From a quick glance around the tall, narrow room, there really wasn't much reason for the forty plus meter tall room to exist at all.

The entire place was seemingly devoted to empty space, save where the giant blue-veined roots had burst out of the walls, and the single twenty or so meter long suspended walkway he stood on. A terminal waited silently at the end of the walkway, while a vague holographic storm of orange-white static hovering before it. He arched an eyebrow at it. Was this AI really worth building such an enormous room around?

Liara didn't seem to find anything wrong with it though, and she knew the Protheans far better than he ever would. Maybe this kind of thing was normal for them? God knows humans had some customs that must seem bizarre to aliens.

With a mental slap, Shepard shook off the distracting turn his thoughts had taken once he and the squad had come within comfortable speaking distance of the terminal. "Vigil, I presume?" he asked unnecessarily. When the hologram flashed in acknowledgment, he continued. "What do you know about the Reapers?"

"Far too much," Vigil answered morosely. The hologram flashed again, and Shepard got the distinct impression it would be scowling heavily if it was able to hold a shape. "And I will tell you all of it. The Reaper Cycle has existed for millions, perhaps even billions, of years. Unchanged and unchallenged by all those who came before. To stop it, you must understand, lest you make the same mistakes we did."

"The Citadel is the heart of galactic civilization," it said confidently. "And the seat of government."

"For some, maybe," Ashley interjected with an impish grin. "The rest of us don't have anything to do with it."

Vigil paused, taken aback by the clearly unexpected response. "What do you mean?"

"Short version is that there's more than one significant power bloc in the galaxy these days," Shepard said, distilling the current state of galactic politics into the fewest words he could possibly manage. "Three, maybe four, to be specific. Only one of them has anything to do with the Citadel."

"I see," Vigil said pensively. "Perhaps there is still some hope then. However, not even that will be enough to fully avoid the dangers posed by the Citadel."

"Dangers of the Citadel?" Garrus repeated, the frown clear in his voice. Shepard groaned internally, hoping against hope that the AI wasn't about to say what he thought it was. "What does that mean?"

"The Citadel is a trap," the AI answered calmly. "The station is, in truth, an enormous mass relay. One that links to darkspace, the empty void beyond the galaxy's edge. When the Citadel Relay is activated, the Reapers will pour through. Everything you know and love will be destroyed."

Damnit. There went any hope that Legion had been misinformed. Even expecting it didn't make it suck any less. He swallowed heavily. This mission really was one that decided the fate of the entire galaxy.

At the same time, Garrus made a frustrated, aggrieved noise deep in his throat before turning to Legion. "Looks like you were right," he said, equally resigned to and afraid of his own words.

"Yes," Legion confirmed. "The likelihood Nazara attempted to deceive the geth was quite low."

Garrus started to reply, but Wrex cut in abruptly. "Yea, yea, you two can kiss and make up later. I want to know how the Reapers managed to hide the most powerful mass relay in the galaxy in the Citadel without anyone noticing."

"The Reapers are masters of misinformation and redirection," Vigil answered with calm surety. "They have gone to great lengths to ensure the greatest secrets of the Citadel remain hidden until it is far too late."

"How?" Garrus demanded, somewhere between heated and determined. "How would they hide something that obvious?"

"Tell me, who performs the maintenance of the Citadel? Who repairs damage and integrates new components? Who is seemingly everywhere and is yet as poorly understood as the Citadel itself?"

"The keepers..." Tali murmured in shocked realization and the whole squad whirled as one to face her. Garrus made a strange, choking sound, but did, or could, not form words.

"Correct. The keepers enable any species that discovers the Citadel to use it without fully understanding its technology. The very existence of the keepers ensures that no one will ever discover the Citadel's true nature before firmly entrenching themselves within it."

"But then..." Garrus began in a sick voice before trailing off.

"The Reapers can decapitate the Council in the opening gambit," Wrex picked up where the turian left off. He shook his head with a small, wry smile on his lips. "I have to admit, it's one hell of a trap."

Shepard nodded distractedly, even as his mind raced, trying to process this information. "That's all they could do though," he commented with a frown aimed at Vigil. "You said that the Citadel trap would be dangerous to the other galactic powers as well. How?"

The hologram pulsed rapidly for a second or two before answering. "The Citadel is the heart of the relay network. Whoever controls the Citadel controls the mass relays. When the Reapers came for us, they locked down every relay. Transportation was crippled. Each star system was isolated, cut off from the others. No single system could hope to stand against the Reaper tide when it washed over them."

Shepard blinked. Okay, that could be bad. Everything outside of Coalition space relied on the relay network, and no one in the Terminus or even Citadel space would survive if their strategic movements were so drastically hampered. It wouldn't even be a challenge. The Reapers could tear them apart almost at leisure.

Not to mention that if the Citadel could activate relays, the Reapers would have a backdoor to almost a third of the systems inside Coalition space. Doors that they had no idea how to close. They might be able to move the Relays through portals, but each one would take a dedicated supercarrier in order to generate big enough portals, if they ever could, and they'd have to move it far enough to actually make it a problem for the Reapers to get back to its original system. Shepard, at least, couldn't see how they could pull that off in anything like a realistic timeframe.

"What happened afterward? What did the Old Machines do upon achieving victory?" Legion interrupted dispassionately. The emotionless, mechanical voice snapped Shepard from his brief reverie and pulled his attention once more to Vigil.

"They obliterated our people. World by world, system by system, individual by individual."

"Did any of your people attempt to surrender?"

"Yes. No surrender was ever accepted. No mercy was ever granted. Our enemy had a single goal: the eradication of all advanced organic life," Vigil said with the faintest quaver in its voice. "Through the Citadel, the Reapers had access to all our records; maps, census data, everything. Their fleets rampaged through every settled region in the galaxy. Some worlds were purged, utterly destroyed. Others were conquered, their populations enslaved. Then these indoctrinated servants were taken in as refugees by other Prothean survivors, unaware of the sleeper agent they had invited into their midst."

"Within only a few centuries, the Reapers had killed or enslaved every member of the Prothean Empire, Prothean or otherwise. They were relentless, thorough, and unspeakably brutal. Then they stripped our worlds bare. Everything of value, all resources, all technology, were fed to the Reaper armada."

"And then they retreated back through the Citadel Relay, certain that all advanced organic life and all evidence of their existence had been extinguished. Only their indoctrinated slaves were left behind, to starve or die of exposure. The genocide of the Protheans was complete."

Legion nodded a wordless acknowledgment, and Shepard scowled. Every new thing he learned about the damned Reapers made them sound worse, and they had started on par with the Ethereals. Still, he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Why do they do this? What possible benefit does this, this cycle of genocide give them?"

"The Reapers are alien, unknowable. Perhaps they need organic slaves or resources, or perhaps they simply find it entertaining. It is impossible to know for certain. Most likely, they are driven by motives we cannot hope to comprehend. In the end, it does not matter. Your survival depends on stopping them, not understanding them."

"Good point," Shepard conceded with a nod. The Ethereal War was proof enough of those words. Some part of him still hoped to eventually be able to figure it out though. After all, it's usually a lot easier to solve a problem when you know why it's a problem in the first place. Ah well, he could worry about it later. He still had a job to do now.

"So the Citadel is a trap, we can't surrender, and we can't trust survivors of a Reaper attack," he summarized the pertinent information conveyed thus far. "What else do you have on the Reapers?"

"Knowledge of the last act of the Protheans, the only reason any hope remains, and the key to stopping the Reaper invasion."

"What do you mean? Is it the Conduit?"

"No," Vigil answered calmly, ignoring the rustle of surprise that spread through the squad. "The Conduit is merely a means to an end."

"Explain," Shepard said with a scowl.

"Ilos was a top-secret world, dedicated to developing the most advanced technologies in the Prothean Empire." Liara nearly squealed at that news, but when everyone turned to stare, quickly managed to recompose herself with an embarrassed cough. "This particular facility was dedicated to Project Conduit. Its purpose was to construct a mass relay of our own, one that linked directly to the Citadel."

"The Conduit is a back door into the Citadel!" the commander exclaimed in shock. A beat later, his eyes went wide and his blood went cold. "And it's been activated! That was what those blue flashes were! Saren's already on the Citadel!"

"Yes," Vigil agreed sadly, sending ripple of uneasy urgency spreading through the entire squad. "The Conduit has been activated and then used precisely seven times in the last thirty minutes."

"Where is it?!" Shepard demanded, his voice starting to take on the shrill of panic. He'd been sure that the Geth would need to at least move the Conduit to the Citadel before any of this became a problem. The idea that it would let them completely bypass the Citadel's defenses had never entered his mind. "We need to get there now!"

"There is one more piece to discuss," Vigil countered. "Then I will tell you."

Shepard twitched and a small purple corona burst out of his tightly clenched fist as he fought against the sudden surge of frustrated rage that swelled in his chest to join the fear. "We don't have time for any more! Saren's already there! The Reapers could be pouring in as we speak!"

Fuck this thing, he thought furiously. It clearly wasn't interested in hurrying. So without waiting for a response, he immediately tried to contact Admiral Hackett. "Sir!" he began the second the connection solidified, plowing straight over the admiral's greeting. "Recall the troops and get to the Citadel, now!"

"What's going on, Commander?" Hackett's calm, gravelly voice easily broke through the waves of panic edging into his thoughts and he took a deep, steadying breath.

"The Conduit isn't a weapon or a key or anything like that, sir," he said, determination slowly beginning to overcome the initial panic. "It's a mass relay, straight into the Citadel, and the geth have already used it. They're probably already trying to activate the Citadel Relay, and if they manage to turn it on, the Citadel Council will have a front-row seat to the apocalypse."

"What?!" Hackett demanded, barely hanging on to his earlier calm. "Are you sure about this?"

"I'm staring at the Prothean AI that just laid it all out to me, sir," he answered, as confidently as he could. "If it's a lie, it's the best one I've ever seen."

"Damn," the admiral all but growled. "Alright, we're going. You need to get back to the Normandy."

"Sir, my team and I can do more good if we follow in Saren's footsteps," Shepard countered, his frantic panic finally fully suppressed by a grim determination. "We'll hit them from behind while you come in from the front. Worst case, we'll take out the Conduit and make sure they can't get any reinforcements that way."

"Do it," Hackett agreed instantly. "We'll take the Normandy with us and meet you there."

"Yes sir," Shepard said, and the connection closed. He took a deep, steadying breath, feeling significantly less pressured now that he knew something was being done about this, and turned back to Vigil. "Now, tell me where the Conduit is."

"You will accomplish nothing without the tools I am trying to give you," Vigil said. "Stay awhile and listen, or your haste will doom the galaxy."

The utter certainty dripping from its voice, more than anything else, convinced Shepard to comply, but he wasn't happy about it. He shot the hologram a ferocious glare from behind his helmet, but kept his voice even when he responded. "Then speak quickly."

"When the Reapers attacked, Ilos was spared," Vigil began. It looked as if it was going to expand on how, but when Shepard's glare intensified, it stopped itself with an almost sheepish cough. Shepard had to admit that part of him was curious about that, but not enough to risk the entire galaxy for it. It probably had something to do with the planet being top-secret, and that assumption was good enough for now. "The personnel retreated into these archives and were put into cryogenic stasis. The extermination of a galactic species is a long process however, and several centuries passed before the Reapers left. When they did, I had only enough power to ensure the top researchers survived."

"Get to the point," Shepard growled impatiently, the sentiment echoed by the others around him.

"When the researchers awoke, they determined that the Prothean species was almost certainly doomed. They could not sustain a viable population, and the only other sign of survivors was a galaxy wide broadcast through the remaining beacons, calling for all Prothean survivors to gather in a remote system. It was almost certainly a Reaper trap for any survivors they may have missed. Armed with this realization, the researchers turned their efforts to stopping the Reaper threat, forever."

"It was determined that the keepers were the key."

"The keepers?" Garrus asked, quickly and irritably, his tone almost dismissive. "Didn't you just get done explaining how they're under Reaper control?"

"The keepers are controlled by the Citadel," Vigil explained, his voice calm in the face of the turian's continued ire. "Before each invasion, a signal is sent throughout the Citadel that compels the keepers to activate its relay."

"After decades of study, the researchers discovered a way to alter this signal. They used the Conduit to access the Citadel and made the necessary modifications. In this cycle, when the vanguard attempted to signal the Citadel, the keepers ignored it, trapping the Reapers in darkspace."

Almost despite himself, Shepard felt himself relax marginally at that. If the Citadel Relay was shut down, they may not have to worry about the Reapers at all. Then he frowned as something else occurred to him. "There's a manual control for the Citadel Relay, isn't there?"

"Yes," Vigil confirmed, and Shepard's heart sank back into the sea of borderline panic. "I assume that the vanguard's thralls will use the Conduit to bypass the Citadel's defenses and thereby give the vanguard access to those controls."

"Fuck," Shepard and Ashley said in unison. "What can we do to stop it?"

"I have a program in my possession that was created by the researchers," Vigil instantly. "If executed on the Citadel's Master Control Unit, it will corrupt the station's security protocols and grant you temporary control of the entire station. It should give you an edge against the vanguard's forces."

"Wait," Tali cut in. "Where's the Master Control Unit? I've never heard of such a thing."

"It is in the upper-most room in the central spire of the Citadel. I am afraid I do not know what you call it. In our cycle, it was the Emperor's throne room."

"The Council Chambers," Garrus said firmly. "It's gotta be."

"Agreed," Shepard said before turning back to Vigil. A few quick motions opened a connection with his omnitool for the AI and he nodded sharply once its program was transferred over. "Now where's the Conduit?"

Vigil rattled off a series of coordinates. Liara paused for a moment, clearly studying the map, then nodded sharply. "That is less than two kilometers further down the tunnel, Shepard!"

He nodded. "We're wasting time here people. Saren's got enough of a head start. Let's go!"

"We must be getting close," Shepard commented breathlessly, briefly sparing his attention from the controls he had been working furiously.

"You think?" Garrus asked dryly, not looking away from the viewscreens for the turret. His talons tightened on the controls and the humming roar of Mako's only real armament filled the air. The last of the latest, and largest yet, group of rocket-launcher-armed geth troopers vanished under a barrage of brilliant green, and he relaxed marginally in his seat. "What was your first clue?"

"Call it a hunch," Shepard returned, equally dryly, as Mako resumed its course through the offshoot tunnel Vigil had directed them towards. Ruined geth corpses fluttered silently in the wake of their passage, sending small ripples through the murky, white-stained water on the tunnel floor, before disappearing as the TIV rounded another corner. The vehicle jerked abruptly as it was forced to once more dance out of the paths of too many rockets to easily count.

"This is getting ridiculous!" the commander said angrily as a pair of rockets he hadn't been fast enough to avoid slammed into Mako's shield, collapsing it nearly instantly and sending the vehicle careening off course. The commander ignored the damage reports, nothing in it was terribly urgent, and the way the turret fell silent as Garrus, along with everyone else, was jostled randomly in favor of working furiously to regain control of their motion, but he was forced to hasten their tumble instead by the second barrage of rockets. The harness alternatively felt too loose and too tight as they bounced along the tunnel, dangerously close to one of the walls. In the chaos of that moment, he could only be thankful that the antigrav was still working, or they'd have much bigger problems.

The second volley came screaming in all around Mako then, and they just barely managed to avoid it all, even if they couldn't avoid all of the shrapnel. In the resulting lull as the geth scrambled to reload, he finally managed to reclaim steady control of the vehicle, pulling it up short and slaloming back toward them. Garrus immediately resumed his task the very instant the TIV stopped spinning. Through his own viewscreens, Shepard watched as plasma spewed in a nearly endless stream from the turret atop the vehicle and swept through the geth formation like a scythe.

But not even Garrus could catch all of their foes before they were ready to fire once more. The trio of geth lucky or skilled enough to live that long managed to reload their weapons and fire as one, sending yet another barrage of explosive force straight at them.

Shepard immediately flared the antigrav and sent the vehicle catapulting high into the air and over the attack, missing the first of the missiles by mere feet. His lips quirked into a small smirk as the vehicle's momentum carried them all the way overhead of the geth and he remembered something a friend liked to do. "Nihlus, this one's for you," he muttered under his breath, and reversed the antigrav, sending the TIV speeding straight down.

Startled exclamations rang through the cramped interior, alongside accusations of insanity, stupidity, or both, but he ignored it. He had to time this just right.

The TIV crashed into the geth beneath it before they could even begin to physically react and a loud crunching noise filled the air, pulling a satisfied, slightly feral smile across Shepard's face, and he reversed the antigrav yet again. The TIV's descent immediately slowed, but with only two meters to spare, there was never any hope of it stopping. Not without killing the passengers from the g-load at least.

But then again, he didn't want it to stop.

Mako hit the ground like a battering ram, sending a tingling shockwave through Shepard's legs and pulling even more complaints from the others, but upon checking the TIV's status readout, even that couldn't stop him from feeling incredibly smug. They'd landed hard, but nothing more than the outermost layer of belly armor had been damaged.

A few deft motions with the controls had the antigrav heft Mako back into the air and moved it back a bit, finally allowing him to see the three crushed geth, each broken corpse in a swiftly-growing puddle of pearly white, that was the result of his handiwork. That smug feeling grew even stronger.

"Well," Garrus said, his voice tense behind the layer of faux-calm he projected. "That's one way to handle geth, I suppose."

"I wasn't going to let you have all the fun," Shepard returned easily, spectacularly upbeat after such an admittedly insane ploy actually worked exactly like he thought it would. He glanced back at the passengers. "You guys alright back there?"

A long second of silence filled the vehicle in response before Tali chose to speak up. Her voice carried the slightest quiver as she said, "Anyone else beginning to think we should revoke his driving privileges?"

"Oh come on," Shepard groaned with a roll of his eyes at the murmur of agreement that spread through the squad. Even from Rex, the traitor. "It wasn't that bad."

"No," Liara agreed matter-of-factly. "It was worse."

"I get no respect," he groused before turning back to his controls and sending Mako back down the corridor, absently noting that its barrier had almost fully recharged by then. The transport rounded the next corner and all hint of the playful banter they'd been in vanished instantly at the sight that awaited them.

The tunnel continued from their position a dozen meters or so before suddenly exploding outward into an enormous, tiered cavern Sovereign could park in. The road they were on emptied out onto the lowest tier and went straight into the first tier, where it formed a ramp that perfectly bisected each tier all the way to the top. On the fourth and highest tier, atop a large, flat platform, stood what could only be the Conduit. A swirling, not to mention brightly glowing, core of element zero sat embedded in the center of the platform while two tines, looking more like the rails of a magnetic accelerator than anything else, sprouted from opposing sides of the plate at low angles and curved halfway around the core before turning toward the open sky

Then he noticed the geth, and his heart sank. Each one of the four tiers bore two colossi and an easy score of miscellaneous infantry of every description. There was no way they'd be able to fight all of them at once, not without major air support at least. The kind of support that he'd already sent high-tailing for the Citadel.

Then an even more unpleasant thought occurred to him. If this was the rearguard, just how big was the force already on the Citadel?

At nearly the exact same moment, the comm came to life. A voice, distant, tinny, and laced with static, but still recognizably Vigil's filled the TIV. "The Conduit will deactivate in fory-two seconds. If it is allowed to, it cannot be reactivated for days."

Shepard's eyes went wide at that. Damnit, now they really didn't have any time. The Conduit was the only way he was getting to the Citadel in time to stop Saren. There was no other way around it. If they got locked out, all hope was lost. In that brief instant, his resolve, wavering at the thought of facing so very many geth, firmed once more. If the Conduit was going to deactivate, there was really only one thing they could do. Use it before time ran out.

"Hang on tight!" Shepard barked at the others, and threw Mako's throttle as high as it would go. The transport took off with a roar and burst from the tunnel like a bat out of hell. "Legion, prep the command signal for us, send it the instant we're in range!"

The geth replied, but it was only background noise to the pulsing thud of his own heartbeat. The very instant Mako emerged, every single geth in the room zeroed in on it and filled the air with a nearly solid wall of bullets, missiles, and practically everything else that could be conceptualized as a projectile. A loud rushing sound, the movement of his own blood, filled Shepard's ears, blocking out all other sound, and time seemed to slow as raw adrenaline poured through his veins like fire. His thoughts congealed into a strange sort of detached tranquility that made it nearly impossible to focus, but made everything seem so strikingly clear.

It was obvious with a single glance that he'd never be able to dodge what was coming. There was no room, and no time even if there was. His only choice was to move as little as necessary to avoid the worst of it and hope it would be enough.

His grip tightened on his control yoke and he twitched it back and forth, sending the transport slaloming down the track as it raced for the Conduit. Bullets pinged off Mako's shield in a nearly constant rain, chipping away at its strength alarmingly quickly, even as colossi beams and missiles were narrowly avoided.

It took all of two seconds for Mako to cross the distance to the beginning of the ramp. Coincidentally, that was also the time it took its shields to fail, torn down by a missile Shepard had had no hope of avoiding.

Enemy fire redoubled at the sight, and Shepard's viewscreens began to erupt with damage reports of every description. He grimaced at the readouts, mentally apologizing to the TIV's VI, and sent it dropping as low as it could go. In the same instant, a colossus' beam crackled past overhead, missing the body of the TIV by less than inch, but tearing through its turret with ease.

The gun exploded violently, throwing the transport into the ground where it, thankfully, bounced back into the air with only the slightest loss of momentum. Shepard jerked against his restraints, but ignored it entirely, all of his attention consumed by dodging the next colossus' follow up attack that plowed into the ramp less than a foot to Mako's left.

The transport was thrown into a tumbling roll that he just barely managed to keep on course. Damage reports scrolled across his viewscreen faster than he could keep track and the tell tale crack of vahlenite giving up the ghost filled the air, but he pushed it aside. His mind was consumed by a single thought: To slow was to die. And he refused to die here.

His hands danced over his controls, stopping the roll just in time to throw Mako into the air, barely managing to make it over the volley of missiles that streaked by beneath it, only to come down hard. The transport once again bounced off the ramp at the lip of the third tier, accompanied by the squeal and crunch of metal-on-metal impact.

Shepard's viewscreen was abruptly outlined in red as an entire outer armor plate sloughed off with a painfully loud crack, causing the whole transport to wobble violently, its balance ruined. The others made various noises of surprise and shock and Shepard cursed under his breath, but the transport was still moving, and that was all that mattered.

Mako barreled forward, carried more by sheer momentum than anything else at this point, and blew past the lip of the fourth tier, where it flew off the end of the ramp and arced gracelessly through the air. It slammed heavily into the ground once more, and it was only by luck that its catastrophically damaged antigrav managed to get it back into the air at all.

At the same time, a volley of missiles rained down behind it. The TIV's hatch shattered with a deafening crack and a wave of shrapnel tore down the aisle of the transport before slamming into Shepard's back and head, slamming him against his restraints hard enough to break them. He flew forward and went head-first into the controls. His helmet cracked against the viewscreen and voices rang out from all around him, but he couldn't make heads or tails of them through the fog that had suddenly enveloped his thoughts. He blinked, trying to make sense of the blurry shapes that filled his vision, and he could just barely recognize the shape of the Conduit. It loomed large in the screen his helmet was pressed against, the glow in its heart getting brighter and brighter even as he stared blankly at it.

There was a sudden, indescribable sensation of motion, and everything went black.

RESEARCH REPORT
Codename: Colossus
June 2183
Much like the geth armature, previously the only example of geth armored vehicles, this platform is a four legged walker that resembles a dinosaur and serves the role of mobile heavy weapons platform. That is where the similarities end, however. This unit is both larger and far more heavily armed than the armature, seeming to fill a dedicated anti-vehicle or anti-starship role. Its primary weapon is a ferrofluid accelerator much like the hand-held Dragonlance weapon utilized by primes but on a significantly larger scale. Its destructive potential is an order of magnitude larger, easily the equal of a fighter craft's plasma cannon and, with minor modifications, likely on par with even a fusion lance. In addition, this platform has no less than fourteen missile pods embedded in its back. Each pod carries a minifacturing fabricator, akin to those found in omni-tools, which is capable of creating the pod's armaments in a matter of seconds from a surprisingly small sample of omni-gel. With any sort of regular resupply, this platform carries a functionally infinite supply of missiles while in the field.

The platform's defensive capabilities have also been greatly enhanced. Its armor is proportionally thicker than the armature's, by almost forty percent in places, and has been pushed to its physical limits in terms of thermal dispersion and redirection. This platform is not immune to plasma or laser weaponry, but it is closer than any other enemy we have yet encountered, save the ogres. That is not its only protection however. The platform's kinetic barriers are also of a radically different design from any we have ever seen before. Traditional barrier design uses the mass effect to create static 'walls', for lack of a better term, that provide a direct, opposing force to any object that comes into contact with them, halting its momentum entirely. This platform instead rotates the field emitters as they fire, which in turn rapidly oscillates the barrier 'wall'. In doing so, it provides an angled force upon contact that swats aside incoming projectiles, which redirects momentum as opposed to stopping it. This allows the shield to protect against incoming attacks at drastically lower energy cost, greatly prolonging its endurance in active combat. In time, we believe we can replicate this effect with our own kinetic barrier emitters, but for now, many of the intricacies are beyond our expertise. We may need to request aid from our geth or quarian allies to finalize the design.