Author's Note: You know, I had this nice little Christmas interlude planned and begun to write it. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near that point in the story, so...my apologies, you'll have to make do with a different Christmas gift, and I'll deliver that interlude later. As to what your gift actually is...well, you'll find out on Christmas Eve, hehe.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Both Wrex and I can hear the gunfight coming closer, but neither of us is prepared for the sight that greets us when we finally link up with Kaidan's company. Kaidan's men are pinned down and under heavy fire in a little junction that serves as an intersection between four corridors. Two marines are taking cover behind the edge of the bulkhead frame on the far side, and Kaidan and the rest of his men scattered around the room, scrambing into firing positions that won't expose them to the streams of lead being hurled down towards them. In this close proximity, Kaidan and his men are just barely stayling ahead of the enemy fire by running close and fast enough that they have a hard time tracking them.
And standing in the center of the room, the marines' small-arms fire pinging off their armored hulls, is a pair of YMIR mechs.
They see or hear us coming the moment we see them, and one of the two giant robots lumbers around to bring his weapons to bear on me and Wrex. I flatten myself against the wall immediately as rounds start whizzing through the air, grazing the edge of my shields, while Wrex, with his large krogan frame, has a much harder time finding cover. I wince as his shields spark and collapse, and he takes a round into his armor, but he strides forward anyway until he finds a niche in the wall big enough to hide him. Think the corridors of the SGC under Cheyenne Mountain. Only with steel ribs instead of concrete.
"You having a party and didn't invite us?" I call over the radio. "I'm hurt!"
"I was about to, when these two crashed the party," Kaidan replies, his rifle resting on top of a console and firing blindly in the general direction of the YMIR bots.
"Now that's just rude."
I can practically hear Kaidan's brief grin. "I tend to agree. You bring any party favors to teach them some manners?"
I root through my utility belt and realize with a grimace that I don't really have anything in the way of high explosives. All I've got is a couple of breeching charges that aren't even going to penetrate their shields. "That's, ah, that's a negatory." I look up, just in time to see rounds sparking off the steel arch I'm hiding behind. "On the other hand, at least only one of them's shooting at you now."
We did bring some heavy ordnance. In fact, a couple of the marines brought missile launchers. The problem is that Wrex and me sent ours back, and Kaidan's are pinned down and can't get a shot. If we could draw fire from one, or turn it around...
"Wrex," I call over to my partner, who's growling in frustration as he waits for his shields to recharge.
"What?"
"If I overload the shields on that one, think you can take him?"
The krogan eyes me for a second, before one of his eyes swivels to glance at the YMIR. A grin starts spreading on his face. "Yeah."
"Make sure you keep him between you and the other 'bot. No point in having you wreck one only to get turned into a sieve."
He grunts for a moment, and I look around the corner. There's no real break in fire because the YMIRs are just putting rounds down the corridors to keep us suppressed, making my cloak completely useless. Considering their massive heatsinks and ammo supplies, there's no doubt they can keep us pinned here for a very long time. If Kaidan was here on my side of the junction, we could probably keep one of the YMIRs pinned between his shockwaves and my overloads, since Wrex's warp is ineffective against shields. But he's on the other side of the YMIRs, dealing with his own lead-spewing problem.
Leaning over, I fire off an overload from my omni-tool, just barely managing to drop back into cover as the return fire starts drilling into my shields, dropping them to almost half for the second or two I was exposed. A glance at the tactical display of my omni-tool confirms, however, that the YMIR's shields aren't down, and are recharging quickly. Quicker than mine, at any rate.
The charge bar on the omni-tool reaches full, and I pop out of cover again to fire off another one. This time, my shields are almost down, but so are the YMIR's.
Fuck. At this rate, I'm going to have to throw out a third overload, and my shields can't take that kind of punishment. To make matters worse, that particular YMIR has zeroed in on my position, and while he's still indiscriminately spraying lead down the corridor, he's adjusted and spraying more my way than towards Wrex. Not that there's much of a difference in these corridors.
But apparently, that's enough for that krazy krogan who bursts out of cover, Charging at the giant mech with a roar that shakes the tunnel. He shoulder-rams it, causing the mech to stumble backwards, then grabs its gun arm and headbutts it.
Holy freakin' fuck. He headbutted a mech, and the mech lost.
There's actually a sizeable dent in the YMIR's chestplate, and Wrex, both arms on the YMIR's gun arm, lifts up, spraying bullets all around the room, but away from me. There's an opening, all right.
Leaning out of cover, I reach around and unfurl my rifle, bringing it to bear and zeroing in on the mech's head. For some reason, idiots still seem to put primary processing and optical faculties in exposed appendages.
But I'm not complaining.
A swift pull of the trigger, and my high-powered sniper round blasts through the YMIR's weakened shields and rips through the lightweight plating on its bulbous head. With a mechanical groan, the giant killer robot ceases to function as its secondary subprocessors try to take over.
Before its failsafes can kick in and power it back up, Wrex lowers his head, steps forward, and then somehow, someway manages to lift the armored mech up and throws it into the other one.
Holy.
Fucking.
Hell.
Okay, note to self. Don't piss off Wrex. Like, ever.
The second YMIR stumbles as something really big impacts it from behind, and before it can right itself and reacquire targets, Kaidan and two of his marines lean out of cover to make full use of its distraction. Between a flash of biotic discharge and two rocket-propelled grenades, its shields collapse and one of the shaped charges breaches the chestplate and explodes the torso, showering us all in debris. Fortunately for Wrex, who was closest to it, the body of the mech he'd thrown shields him from the majority of the blast wreckage.
Of course, knowing him, he'd probably enjoy getting hit with it and having the scars to show for it.
Now that the mechs are down, Kaidan and his men sweep into the junction and take up firing positions, and I head over to meet with him and Wrex. "Man," I tell him as I carefully step over the slightly burning remains of the YMIR that got hulled by an RPG, "what'd you ever do to piss them off? That's a hell of a lot of firepower stuck in one corridor."
"I agree," he chuckles wryly.
"Means they're guarding something," Wrex grunts and unlimbers his shotgun. "Which way did they come from?"
"Down there," Kaidan points in the opposite direction of where his men had been pinned down. "We were clearing these hallways when they just stepped out down there and started shooting."
There's nothing unusual about the end of the corridor he's indicating. It's just a regular hallway, like all the others we've passed so far, and terminates in a T-junction. "You call the Commander and Vakarian yet? See if they've run into similar defenses?"
"Not yet. Haven't heard from-" he pauses and cocks his head to listen. "Comms are down," he finally says quietly.
"Jammers?"
"Likely."
Looking down where the YMIRs came from, I get a sinking feeling about this. "We've got point-to-point, right?"
"Short range comms are intact," he confirms. "But something's jamming planetwide."
"Well," I mutter, toggling my cloak, "time to take a look-see, I guess."
T
We're all sticking together now. Considering the fact that Wrex and me already sent our last two marines back, and one more got wounded in the firefight with the YMIRs, we just don't have the manpower to split up into fireteams.
Well, not to the point where we want to risk running into another pair of giant killer robots as undermanned as we are, anyway.
But as we continue moving deeper into the facility, going down service elevators and maintenance shafts, I can't help but think that something's very, very wrong here, because other than the couple of Cerberus troopers when we first entered and those two YMIRs, there hasn't been any opposition whatsoever. It's really weird, because Cerberus isn't really known for leaving its bases understaffed or underdefended.
I'm walking maybe thirty meters ahead of the main group, with Wrex a little closer to me, since my cloak makes me the ideal point-man, I suppose. And every corner I turn, I'm almost expecting to run smack into something nasty. A Cerberus trooper, a combat mech, a giant space alien.
A freaking exomorph.
It's almost like Noveria all over again.
But there's nothing. Just my quiet footsteps echoing down the abandoned concrete hallways and the occasional flickering lights.
Speaking of flickering lights...
With an electric pop, the lights go out.
All of them.
And then, slowly, as if heaving and straining to do so, the red emergency lights come on, illuminating the floor a little. Just enough for you not to trip, but not nearly enough to see what's going on further down the hall. Great.
"Hey, Eltee, you turn the lights out on me?"
Kaidan's hushed voice comes back over the radio. "Negative, Ghost. We're just as much in the dark back here. What do you think happened?"
"I have no clue." I look around me for a bit, then activate the photomultiplier in my visor, causing the room to look a little brighter, but turning it into something of a black-and-white. Kind of like turning up the brightness and gamma in a game when it's completely dark. There's not even markings on the wall. How the hell does the base personnel not get lost?
Well, shit's officially gone from creepy to creepier.
"Warning, containment failure. Warning, containment failure."
I tap my radio again with shaking hands as the mechanical announcement comes over the PA. "Uhh...Eltee, please tell me you touched something and can un-touch it?"
"Afraid not." Kaidan sounds just as confused as me, though not nearly as spooked.
Then again, he doesn't have to take point in a dark underground facility that has just told you something breached out of containment. And let me tell you, in the Mass Effect universe, if something's in containment and underground, there's a damn good reason for it.
And then the emergency lights go out.
Fuck.
This time, I don't even get to raise my hand to the radio before Kaidan's voice comes crackling over the comm. "That wasn't us, either. Hold position."
A second later, footsteps echo behind me, and Kaidan, Wrex, and the rest of the squad come out of the shadows, their helmet lights casting searching beams into the darkness around us. I turn off my visor's night vision. I'm not sure we should be using flashlights, actually, but if there isn't enough light for the NVGs, then I suppose that's our only choice. It's either that, or sit in the pitch dark.
"All right," Kaidan finally says after consulting his omni-tool. "Surface scans picked up an underground thermal sig. Residual heat still shows up on scanners, so if we can get the reactor going and restore power, we should be in business."
"We should see about establishing communications with the other groups and the ships," I add, idly fiddling with my own omni-tool and the sensor settings. "So far we haven't got a clue whether we're being jammed locally, or if everything including surface-to-orbit is crippled. We don't even know if any ships left the bases so far."
The Staff Lieutenant nods in my direction and swings his flashlight around. "Good idea. Whatever is jamming us is still active, despite the lack of power. Which means there's got to be a backup power supply around."
I have a sinking feeling that I'm forgetting something here, but for the life of me I can't think of it. I just hope it doesn't come back to bite us in the ass later.
"We should also investigate what they were keeping under containment here," Kaidan finishes.
Oh. Shit.
That's right, Cerberus was experimenting with shit here. Like, rachni and thorianized shit, if I remember right. There's no way I can warn Kaidan and let him know what we're about to run into, but from what I remember from the actual mission, there weren't too many specimen. Forcing my heart rate to calm down, I can't help but double-check my immediate surroundings and scanner. Okay, calm down. It's just one or two of them. There's six of us. Even worst case, we still outnumber them like three to one.
We stick close together as we continue shuffling down the corridors towards the cooling main reactor, and all the while I can't help but wonder why it shut down. It was working perfectly fine for a while...I guess it's possible that it was on a timer, or something. But that, along with the fact that we're trudging along and haven't run into anyone - or anything since those YMIRs - has me really paranoid right now.
"Why do you think they all left?" I hear one of the marines ask quietly as we clear a barracks room that housed troops. Bunks, footlockets, even a low table with an ashtray and cards on the table. Looks like someone left in the middle of a game.
"Maybe they saw us coming?" another replies just as quietly.
It's possible, I mean, it's not like you can hide the energy signature of a mass relay going off. Or the big, honking cruiser in orbit. But where did they go? There clearly were people here at one time, and the fleet hasn't detected any ships leaving the surface, nor any surface transports. And we haven't found any transit tunnels.
I clear another corner; there's a large, secured double-door down the hall. I can't quite make out the writing on it from a distance and in the dim light of our torches, but as I get closer, the lettering resolves itself.
"Got the reactor control room. Door's closed but not locked. I think we can force it open."
As the marines and I take our positions in a perimeter around the door, Wrex simply steps up, holsters his shotgun, and wedges his talons in between the two massive steel plates. He grunts, and I can see him straining even under his armor, but with a gargantuan heave and a metallic grind, they begin to open.
As soon as there's a big enough opening to stick a gun through, Kaidan and I turn around and peer inside while Wrex keeps forcing the doors. A very loud minute and a half later, there's a two meter gap, and all of us quietly slip inside.
It takes me some looking around and cross-referencing with my omni-tool's database to find out that the reactor is a standard radiation-less fusion plant. Jumpstarting the diagnostics consoles with a charge from a spare power cell, lines of error messages start scrolling across the screen. They're all gibberish to me, so I call up a schematic of the facility and an operations log.
"Eltee," I call over. "The system went into shutdown because something was disturbing the reaction. Fuel rods retracted, but something's still wrong. One of them's jammed half-way."
"Can you reactivate it?"
Considering the fact that the reactor went into shutdown for a reason, I'm not sure I should, but unless we want to sit around in the dark some more, I guess I don't really have much of a choice, huh? Wait. "What about emergency power?" I ask back. It was just running for a bit, before it gave out.
"Sanders looked at it already. It looks functional, but the controls are non-responsive."
"Great." Looking down at the control system for the reactor again, I can't help but wonder what would've happened had I stayed in bed the morning I ended up in this fucked-up universe. Of course, considering the fact that I wasn't actually in bed that night, and it wouldn't have done me a lick of good anyway, that's somewhat of a moot point.
Kaidan, though, at least seems just as worried about messing with a faulty fusion reactor as I am. "Can you tell what exactly caused the shutdown?"
"I think so." Tapping around on the interface, I haplessly stumble through the menus. Kind of like using Windows 8 for the first time without having a clue as to what you're doing. There, I think that's it. A schematic of the reactor comes up, with a red section along the ignition chamber. "Looks like something breached ignition. System detected the breach and turned itself off to avoid an accident."
"You think it's safe to turn on?"
"Well, according to this, the ignition system's still working perfectly fine, we've got fuel, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. The reactor went into a failsafe diagnostic mode the moment it was damaged due to power loss in the ignition beam, but there doesn't seem to be any actual damage to the internals."
"Power loss?"
"Yeah. Beam intensity fluctuated. Almost like something got in the way of it." I look up at Kaidan, and I can tell we're both thinking the same thing.
He grimaces slightly. "We need those lights. Can you start her up?"
"I think so. But we all better stand the hell back."
The entirety of the reactor assembly is laid out on the deck below us, and we're in something like a control tower-type room that overlooks it. The moment I start powering on the system, the massive capacitors powering the ignition laser hum to life, and seconds later, a brilliant emerald green beam shoots out from a chamber on the side.
Huh. 532nm lasers, didn't think they were still in use. Seconds later, there's a flash of light as the fuel pellets ignite and begin fusing, and the reactor starts to power up. Indicators come online, and so far everything's looking good. The lights automatically come back on as power returns to the facility, allowing us to take a look around.
I peer down into the reactor room through the glass window, and almost wish I hadn't.
Staring right back at me is a thorian creeper.
And he's got friends. A lot of friends.
T
I should've stuck with Shepard, is the thought that runs through my mind as the six of us beat a hasty retreat through the Cerberus base. On the bright side - quite literally, actually - now that the lights are working, out-running the thorian creepers is actually not that hard.
No, what makes it hard is the fact that there's so many of the damn things. They're crawling out of the air vents and from the lower levels and elevator shafts, almost like the rachni did on Noveria. After shooting the first few of them in the reactor room, we realized that those weren't the only ones very quickly when they started swarming us, and we've been on the retreat ever since, looking for a way out or a fortified position.
Mostly for a way out, though, because every position we've tried to hold has eventually been overrun by creepers pouring out of the smallest nooks and crannies that you could think of. How the frak did Cerberus get a hold of so many of them, and how in the living daylights were they thinking of controlling them all? We're running all the way back the way we came to the service elevator that Wrex's group originally came down on, firing over our shoulders the entire time.
Creepers aren't exactly the most durable of creatures. They're not naturally armored, and they're mostly soft tissue. That's not the problem.
No, the problem is they're almost zombie-like, what with their shriveled and shrunken skin, their empty eyesockets, their moaning slow walk, and the way they absorb rounds like there's no tomorrow before dropping. They're soft, all right, so soft, in fact, that most of our rounds go right through them, causing very little damage.
We've found it more effective to aim for joints and blow them apart. They may not feel the pain, but running after us is a whole lot harder if one of their legs has been blown off at the knee. On the flip side, taking our time for such aimed shots is...well, it's not really possible right now. I unclip another frag grenade from my belt, knock the arming stud off against the wall, and toss it behind me as we round a corner.
A dull thud rings out behind us as the three-second fuse lights the frag, spraying the corridor and the pursuing creeps with shrapnel. It won't stop them, but at least it'll slow down the ones behind us. Finally, we reach the service elevator and Kaidan slams his armored fist down on the call button.
Unfortunately, this is a T-junction, and we quickly set up firing positions, with the marines dropping to a knee in front, their assault rifles at the ready. We can hear the creepers coming slowly, and suddenly, gunfire erupts from my left as I'm pointing my pistol down the way we'd just come from as the soldiers open up, the order to fire at will long since given.
Lingering for a second on the corridor to make sure nothing is coming down that way for now, I reach for another grenade on my belt. Fingers brush against them as I count silently how many are left. Three. Two incendiary and one frag, from the feel of it. Three grenades to last us until the elevator gets here. I opt for an incendiary this time. No point in risking showering us with shrapnel in these straight corridors.
The two marines are pouring fire down the hallway until their rifles cycle and vent, trading off so one is firing while the other is venting. Despite the near-constant barrage, the creepers are still advancing. Twenty meters out. I strike the head of the grenade against the wall again and rear back, hurling it as far as I can.
It bounces off the concrete floor with a metallic clink and rolls another meter or so before the fuse runs out and sprays molten copper across the corridor, cutting through creepers and setting others on fire. Without waiting for an order, I lift my pistol with my other hand and start firing.
"Any luck on those comms?" I ask Kaidan over the whine of our weapons.
"A little," he announces as he begins hurling biotics down the other way. Looks like the creepers are closing in on us. "I'm mostly getting static, but I think they're picking us up."
Striking my last incendiary, I spin and chuck it down the other way, my trigger finger never pausing until my pistol cycles. "Good, because we're going to have to get out of here in a hurry."
"No argument there."
I grab my last grenade - a frag, this time, and reset the timer to five seconds, the highest it'll go. "Here," I shove it in Wrex's hands. He doesn't need me to tell him anything else to know what I want him to do.
Without a word, he strikes it against his armor and hurls it down the central corridor with an almighty roar, his shotgun up and tracking almost as soon as the grenade leaves his hand. It sails through the air much further than any throw I could've mustered, so far, in fact, that it explodes in mid-air almost at the other end of the hallway, well away from us.
And still they keep on coming.
They're so close now I can flip the laser sight on my pistol on with ease, taking my time to line up shots to vulnerable limbs. This close, it's really hard to miss anything, but even if I blow apart their kneecaps, they keep on coming. Headshots are completely ineffective. It'll stagger them, but the rounds just go right through, and they keep on coming.
Wrex's shotgun opens up behind me with its thunderous report, and amongst all of us, it's probably the single most effective weapon, because every time Wrex pulls the trigger, a handful of creepers blow apart into pieces.
With a quiet ding that's almost lost in the din, the elevator arrives. It's one of those open platform type elevators, and even before Kaidan can give the order, we all shuffle back, forming a tight circle pouring out fire at the creepers that are advancing on us, a little island of gunbarrels firing on full auto, heedless of the need to vent, because if there's a time for suppressive fire, it's now.
The last marine steps into the elevator, and I mash the button to take us to the surface as one by one the rifles click and begin to vent. Wrex snarls and headbutts a creeper that got too close so hard its head flies off, and then rams the butt of his shotgun into its still-standing and twitching torso, propelling it off the elevator. Hands start clawing at us, and suddenly, it's a melee as the elevator jerks and starts moving.
A hand reaches for my left arm, and on instinct I spin around, smashing my elbow into whoever was standing behind me. It's a creeper, unfazed by the blow to its head. There's no way I'm going to risk firing at this close range, not when I know my round is going to go through it and hit someone else. As it swipes at my helmet, I lean back and smash it across the face with the pistol in my free hand, again and again until it stops moving and my racing pulse slows down as I realize the combat around us is pretty much over.
Looking down at the remains of the creeper, I can't help but wince. I did a hell of a number pistol whipping its head, because it's a caved in, mangled and bloody mess right now. It's not human, it's not human, it's not...hell, it's not even sentient. Yeah, let's go with that. It's not sentient, it's not sentient. That sentiment is actually aided quite a bit by the fact that, while it's vaguely human in form, it resembles a dried up kumquat more than an actual body. Still gross.
Forcing myself to remember what it is, I poke it with my foot and something catches my eye. "Eltee," I call out. "You're gonna want to see this."
Hanging from the creeper's dessiccated, bony frame are tatters of a uniform I vaguely recognize, but the symbol hanging on a piece of fabric over its left shoulder is unmistakable.
The black and gold of Cerberus.
T
Once we're back on the surface, communications are thankfully back intact, leaving Kaidan to speculate that it was a localized jamming field. After hopping back into our Kodiak shuttle and contacting Admiral Kohaku and informing him of our findings - and with orders to bring back the creeper corpse I bashed to death, because apparently it's the most intact - we're informed that Garrus's team has already reported back.
They ran into broken containment areas that, at least according to the data logs, once contained rachni, but the majority of the facility database was purged. They did run into some pretty heavy resistance, but they made it out with only two wounded, but no useful intel.
Shepard's squad, on the other hand, hasn't reported in.
After hearing that, me, Wrex, and Kaidan look at each other, and I just know we're all thinking the same thing.
The ride to the third base is uneventful, and the moment the doors open, the three of us step out to meet up with Garrus. Liara is going to return with our two shuttles with the wounded, since she took a couple of rounds that breached her armor during the fighting.
But hey, it's four of us, and Shepard's already cleared the way.
And we have Wrex.
"Down there," Garrus indicates an open access hatch. "Should be easy to find her."
"Just follow the trail of destruction," I mutter, but over the radio it comes across loud and clear, drawing an amused chuckle from the turian and Shepard's second-in-command. Even Wrex grins behind his helmet.
"Down the rabbit hole once more, then." I look at Garrus and Kaidan. "So, who's going first?"
With a slightly annoyed rumble, Wrex peers down, then just steps forward and drops down the access hatch, ignoring the ladder altogether.
There's a slight thud as he lands, a metric ton of muscle and armor, and the three of us sane people shrug in unison and clamber down the regular way. Not the insane-krogan-jumping-down-twenty-feet way. Wrex, of course, is fine when we get to the bottom and close the hatch overhead, but all three conspicuously ignore the crater left in the concrete floor as he does the krogan impression of tapping his foot.
Kaidan just chuckles and checks his omni-tool. "We're cut off from the surface again."
"Probably something in the soil, then," I hazard. Either that, or they lined the base in something that interferes with communications.
"We haven't detected any surface-side comm relays," Garrus adds. "Wonder how they stay in touch with anyone else. Or each other."
"Try and reach Shepard," I suggest.
"Any Spectre, this is Akameka, do you read? Repeat, Spectre, do you read?"
A few seconds of silence later, Kaidan frowns and glances down at his omni-tool. "We should have short-range comms. Either she's busy, or she can't hear us."
"Well," Wrex ambles down one of the corridors that's suspiciously pockmarked with impacts and blackened from flame, "then we find her. The old fashioned way."
With a shrug, I exchange a glance with Kaidan and toggle my cloak. "All right, here we go again."
This is gonna be so not fun. Let's hope Shepard didn't run into anything like we did, although if she has, I'm inclined to feel sorry for the creepers.
You know, we were only half kidding when we made that joke about being able to follow Shepard by just following the bodies, but as we continue sneaking down into the depths of the facility - with me cloaked on point again, I really need to do something about that, I hate being point - we realize just how true that statement was. That woman leaves a trail of destruction in her wake like Hänsel and Gretel left breadcrumbs. Unlike the other two bases, this one was actually being defended by Cerberus, and everywhere we go there's broken and shot up bodies of troopers, combat mechs, even the odd YMIR or two.
And we haven't found a single one of Kohaku's marines, and the shuttle topside hasn't reported anyone coming back. Considering the sheer amount of opposition down here that Shepard's wrecked, we can only assume that she hasn't even had a single casualty yet. And that is impressive and scary at the same time. Then again, she's got Tali with her. And she's crazy. As I step over a wrecked LOKI, I can't help but think woe befall any who stand in that woman's way.
We've been walking for a while now, and a glance at my omni-tool confirms that we're way deep into the facility by now. We've long passed the reactor room where we stopped in the first base - necessitated by having to run for our lives by a horde of thorian creepers - and heading deeper still. Probably towards the containment area, if the layout of this base is identical to the others. Either that, or the command center.
And the bodies keep piling up.
Man, it looks like Shepard fought a small friggin' war in here.
And then a little green dot on my map projection starts flickering on, not too far away from us. I tap my radio. "I got something. Looks like a Normandy locator beacon. It's one of ours, looks like, two-hundred fifty meters ahead and to the right."
"Copy that. Lead the way."
Thankfully, there's neither rachni, nor thorianized shit, nor anything else in our way as we continue on our merry way. Shepard really is anything but subtle. I mean, the woman leaves doors in her wake that are blasted open, for crying out loud. And she's got Tali with her. If anyone can hack those freaking locks, it's her. But I can just see the Commander pushing on that remote detonator of hers with a gleeful smile as she blows them open with some kind of explosive instead, claiming that hacking would take too long.
Wrex just chuckles the entire way. Of course he'd find that amusing, and even Kaidan lets out a sigh that's somewhere between amusement and vexation as we pass probably the tenth mangled bulkhead.
We emerge from the central corridor into a T-junction that is curved away from us, and ground-penetrating radar indicates that it's bending around some kind of large circular room. There's several access doors to the chamber spread around, and I halt my progress after checking around either corner. "We've got four entry points, if this is circular," I inform them quietly. "And there's quite a few obstructions in that room. Could be command."
"All right," Kaidan looks down either way. "Wrex, Vakarian, take the closest. Grayson, we're on the far right. Standby on position."
The four of us move out, and from here I can't see Kaidan anymore as he disappears around the curvature of the wall. I'm in luck, too, because the lock is inactive. "Ready," I click over the radio.
"Ready," Wrex echoes a bit later, leaving me to assume that Garrus had to fiddle with the lock first, since they were closest to their door.
I can almost hear Kaidan counting down silently. "Go."
On that single word, Kaidan and Wrex hit the door controls and step into the room, weapons at the ready.
The chamber is large - probably fifty meter in diameter or so, almost factory-sized, and the outside is ringed with inactive consoles, while the center is dominated by a large holo display that is currently inactive. From the inside, I can tell the room isn't circular at all, but tapers off on the far side. And we're staring right into the barrels of Shepard's marine squad while Nadya, Shepard, and Tali are huddled over a console on said far side of the room.
"We're friendly, we're friendly," Kaidan announces as he turns on the speakers on his helmet and I drop my cloak.
Shepard looks up and waves at the marines to stand down. "What are you doing here?"
"Akameka and Vector finished their sweeps of the other facilities," Kaidan replies, snapping off a brief salute as I drop my cloak. "We'd lost contact with you, and Valor informed us that you hadn't reported in. The Admiral decided that it would be prudent to send support and recovery forces, if necessary."
"I see." Shepard waves us over to where Tali's working on hacking into a console. "We found this area about an hour ago. It's some kind of command and control center, but there's more to it."
"Scans indicate that there's a number of containment and stasis pods over there," Nadya adds, pointing to the central dais. "A series of kinetic barrier projectors runs the length of the central area, certainly enough to hold specimen of an unknown origin."
I grimace slightly, thinking back to the thorian creepers. "We found some specimen, all right. Looks like they've been playing around with some really nasty shit."
"You'll have to explain that one later," Nadya says with a small smile. "Right now, we're more concerned with gaining access to this facility's data archives. It's still active and intact, but..."
"There's more firewalls here than on a volus's bank account," Tali complains from underneath the console.
I lean over to look at what she's doing. "Want some help?"
"Yeah. I've got power back to this system, but it won't let me access anything."
Shepard looks up from where she's been talking to Kaidan and Garrus. "Commander Radmanski, take Wrex and two of your men to the surface. Get in contact with the Valor and give them a sitrep. Stay with the shuttle, we'll come calling if we need your help."
"Yes, Commander." Without a second thought, the Valor's XO turns around, gathers her men, and marches out. She pauses briefly in the doorway. "I'll leave someone inside so we can keep in touch. If you find anything..."
"We'll relay it to you. Thank you, Commander." Shepard nods at her. The two of them seem to understand each other pretty well without needing a lot of words. It makes sense, we need a line of communication to the fleet, and if good old human-powered relay is what's needed, the I suppose that's it.
In the meantime, I bring up my omni-tool's Cerberus hacking suite and try to link up with the console. Even with it running, the Cerberus encryption takes a while to break, and I take to sitting around and watching the room while the codebreaker does its work. It never really ceases to amaze me how this actually goes about its business. It's certainly not like the old days - well, my day - where you needed a degree in cryptography or advanced mathematics to break a cipher. Quantum computing made spinning through variables for something like 128-bit encryption really a piece of cake, so most of it comes down to how much processing power you have, how long the password or encryption key is, and the operator's ability to bypass security measures.
Tali leans over and runs her hands over her own interface, probably trying a different approach to breaking encryption, and, but a few minutes later, both our omni-tools emit a victorious beep, and the console powers up its holographic display.
I freeze almost immediately at what I'm seeing. Shepard, Garrus, Kaidan and Tali all seem mildly interested, but then again, they haven't seen anything to let them know of the importance of what we're looking at. "Commander..." I mutter half in shock and half in terror.
It's a star chart detailing fleet movements and logistics. But they're not Cerberus fleet movements.
They're Saren's.
And he's headed for the Virmire.
Momentarily shoving aside the questions as to how Cerberus got a hold of Saren's flight plan, I know exactly what that means. Saren's ready. He knows where the Mu Relay is, and the endgame's begun.
Shepard must have a sixth sense for something like this, because she doesn't even have to look at me to know somethng's wrong. "What is it, Lieutenant?"
"We've got to go. We've got to go now!" I tell her urgently. If this map is correct, then Saren's made his move. Sovereign is underway, in transit between Virmire and the Mu Relay.
"Go where?" she seems genuinely confused.
I pull her aside briefly. "A ship. Sovereign isn't a space station or a base, it's a ship. It's Saren's flagship, and he's moving her to Virmire right now. We need to go, Commander. We have to intercept him!"
She looks at me deeply, as if to gauge whether or not I'm serious, and then nods curtly. "Tali, Grayson, do a full data dump. You have ten minutes, then we're out of here. I need to talk to Admiral Kohaku."
As I stare at the map, my fingers unconsciously typing away at my omni-tool's interface, a fragment of a plan starts to form. We know where the Mu Relay is. We know where Saren's headed. Maybe...maybe we can stop him from ever reaching the Citadel.
But is that really such a good idea? I stare around the compound. So much has already changed. If Sovereign never attacks the Citadel, if the Council isn't in danger of being lost and Shepard has the choice of saving them, what will humanity's role in the coming years be? Will they still get a Council seat? Will the Council shove this entire matter under the carpet, pretending it never happened, aided by the fact that there's no Reaper debris to show for? Will that eventually leave the galaxy unprepared for their return?
Fuck.
I hate my life.
"What's this?" Tali's voice brings me out of my thoughts as she taps away at the console. Suddenly, a stasis pod slides up in the center of the dais in the middle of the room, and the containment kinetic barrier generators start humming with restrained energy as the system powers up.
We all turn towards it, weapons raised, when the door slides open, and the last person we expected to see tumbles out, coughing and fumbling around blindly from hibernation sickness.