-Garrus-

Noveria was not a place he ever expected himself to revisit, but, it seems, this galaxy shattering war has a way of bringing people back to their roots, so to speak. Even more so, he never would have guessed they find their way to Port Hanshan, yet, here they were, docking at the nearly the same dock they had three years ago.

Luckily, this time, they were expected thanks to a man they hadn't had contact with but for a passing message since coming here looking for Matriarch Benezia, now-Administrator Lorik Qui'in. According to his recent hail to the Normandy, he was noticing some troubling activity that fell out of the executive board's concern, but may turn out to assist in their war effort.

How were they to pass it up once they heard it involved Cerberus?

Stepping out of the Normandy and into the cold Noveria air - at least it's not during a blizzard - Garrus shakes off the initial shock at the drastic change. He ignores the raised brow from his mate, knowing the question about his suit's ability to keep him warm, and simply says, "If I freeze to death in this suit, then I need my credits back."

She snorts as they walk through the checkpoint, pointedly ignoring the blaring alarms as security waves them on. "Looks like it pays off to be on the good side of the Administrator. Now, we only get dirty and suspicious looks instead of constant questioning."

"Now we just need to see how much bureaucracy and red tape we'll have to get through."

"Spectres Vakarian and Shepard," a woman in a long gown greets when they step into the main lobby of the port, Qui'in's assistant most like since there's really only a handful of people who'd want to address their arrival and he doubts Lorik suddenly found a way to turn into a lavender skinned asari. "I am Administrative Assistant, D'Lana. Administrator Qui'in would like to pass on his greetings and hopes you'd do him the honor of visiting him in his office."

"Honor, huh?" Jane chuckles and shrugs. "Why the hell not? He did contact us, after all. Want to lead the way or do we just go, because we know the way. Unless you changed things around here."

She simply smiles and holds a hand out in 'right this way', walking them to the office. "We have, in fact, made some changes since the last time you were here, Spectres, though, I don't believe you had seen much past the hotel's lounge, so it may not seem all that different."

Looking over, he sees his wife give him a look as she moves her mouth mockingly at the woman continuing to talk of 'changes' made to the port, of things they have absolutely zero interest in unless it affects their clearance out of here or initial reason to be here. He just hopes that they don't have to jump through so many loops this time.

"Ah, Commander Shepard and Praetor Vakarian." Lorik stands from his desk as his assistant leads them into his office. She leaves silently as he crosses over the opulent rug on the otherwise smooth tile, in an even finer suit than the last they had seen him in, and offers a hand to Jane, nodding in greeting to Garrus. "I can't say that it is all too good to see you considering your reputation of, what do you say, causing ripples?"

"But you have a feeling we're needed?"

"Indeed. You see, Commander, I have begun to notice something curious." He motions them to take seats as he walks back to his desk, the seats they are offered plush lounge chairs that creak under Garrus' armored weight. "As you may not know, Cerberus has various facilities here on Noveria. While not what concerns me, it is their activity that causes confusion." He hums and crosses his arms over his desk, looking between them. "They have begun an assault on one of their own facilities."

"Why didn't you just bring this up to the executive board?" Garrus doesn't understand why they've been brought in, but he has to admit the potential to add one more tally to their 'Cerberus Facilities Taken Down' chart does sound appealing. At least, he figures, they haven't yet heard anything telling from Hackett concerning their next move in the war.

Qui'in chuckles and asks, "Have you forgotten how things work on Noveria? Cerberus is free to do as it pleases with its facilities and personnel." Jane opens to speak, most likely ask what the hell they're doing here then, when he continues with a rumbling that matches his slight smirk. "However, what two Spectres do when they're here is none of my concern. After all, you have paid for docking permissions."

In truth, they haven't paid a credit for anything, their docking completely free and 'paid for' with Qui'in's order to allow them through. "And this fighter base you told us about in your message? Is it one of the facilities?"

"Yes," Lorik answers, accessing his terminal to type something, then eject and OSD. Once he hands it over, he brings his hands under his chin. "The fighter base was once a manufacturing plant used by the company. I suspect that is where the attack on their other facility is originating from. This OSD contains the coordinates of each facility."

Whatever is important enough to warrant an attack from within the human terrorist group could be more valuable than the fighter base. They may have come as a preemptive strike against Cerberus before their foothold here could become a problem, but now they may have their hands on something that, obviously, is worth enough to warrant Cerberus attacking their own facility.

That is, he admits, if they aren't just assaulting their own because of some side-effect of the Indoctrination most of them have apparently submitted themselves to without knowing.

They fought hard against Cerberus troops, defending and watching Kaidan's six while he worked on dropping the facility's communications. Without it, the fighters attacking the other facility -what looked like a research station from what they could find in this base's computers- would have limited to no means of communicating with this facility to coordinate their attack. Their thoughts were that it would benefit them when they move on to the second should they have to find a defensive force there as well.

"Shepard," Kaidan calls over the comm just as Garrus fires at the cockpit of an Atlas closing in on their position, close to whittling away its armor to give him the opening to take the killing shot. "I've taken down their communications!"

The man slides into cover beside Jane not a moment later, peeking out to Overload an incoming group of troops. From his position, Garrus watches Jane give a nod in acknowledgment before rolling from cover and throwing one of the proximity mines he had given her to use thanks to her position further up on the field in combat.

Her throw is good, as she gets the explosive into the direct path of the Atlas, and he watches as the mech steps directly on it. Only a split second passes before it detonates, blowing off the mech's leg and sending it crashing to the ground and Garrus knows before she thinks it what his mate is planning to do.

Covering her from his own position, he feels more than sees her charge the downed Atlas, shattering the front shield. When he looks in her direction to cover her flank, he watches as she reaches in and starts hammering her biotically protected fist into the pilot's helmet, denting it with each punch.

He can hear her pants over the comm when she finally stills as the last Cerberus soldier falls to Alenko's reave. Looking to his position across the field, she motions both men closer with a twitch of her bloody hand as she looks around, scanning for more hostiles. "Move out. We still have some fighters to blow up. Garrus, you still have those explosives strapped on your back?"

"Unfortunately," he deadpans as he makes his way over. Granted, the actual canisters of explosive substance he was carrying was actually harmless until connect to a receiver and detonated, but it didn't stop him from constantly 'complaining'. "Unless legs suddenly materialized on them and they climbed off."

She snorts and moves to check on the state of his heating coils, which she doesn't think he's noticed since they got onto the shuttle over here. He appreciates the concern, but freezing to death was, quite frankly, the mistake of three years ago Garrus Vakarian. Now he was fully equipped with enough heating coils to warm the entire Normandy in deep space.

Gently nudging her to keep a look out, he heads for the fighters that still hadn't been deployed. "Jane and Kaidan, watch my back and, whatever you do, do not activate the explosives? I may be cold, but now that cold."

"Says the one that always used to complain, 'turians don't like the cold, Shepard. Have I ever told you that?'." Her impersonation of him is horrendous, but it does get both men chuckling, so he lets it go and, instead, occupies himself with securing the plastic explosive to the hull of each fighter.

"Shepard, we got incoming."

"Shit. Stay on it Vakarian." She pats his shoulder roughly before rushing forward. I got your back.

He hums as he works, dodging the incoming fire as he rolls and crawls under the hulls of the fighters to make sure he gets each and every one, slapping a block of explosive on and inserting the detonator. Making sure that every single one is covered with they blow this place - most likely damaging the rest of the landing pad as well, which is an unintended benefit - he pulls out his rifle and quickly fires, taking down an incoming Phantom before it could get close to Alenko.

"Explosives are set," he confirms as he reloads a heat sink just as an Atlas ducks under the opening cargo doors, starting to fire on their position. "Cortez, what is your position?"

"I'm on my way to the LZ, sir. Just losing a pack of dogs."

"Move your ass," Jane growls as she fires a spike into the slot of a Guardian's shield as it draws on her. "We need to be out of here yesterday!"

Seeing her position is too close to the Atlas, Garrus calls out to her to get down and out of the way as he fires rapidly, overheating his Widow and switching out heatsinks so fast it's all a blur. He growls constantly with each step closer to his mate it gets, putting his rage behind each bullet until he does it, gets the shot he's needing.

Once the shielding of the core on the back of the Atlas is destroyed, the heavy plating crumbling under his repeated fire, it's all too easy to send the mech into a critical state. That's exact what he does when he fires into the core, the thing immediately sounding with deafening alarms as it whines before exploding into a bloom smoke and flames.

Holy fuck… warn me next time!

I told you to get down for a reason.

I thought that was because it was heading for me.

As if I'd ever let it actually get close enough to you to worry.

The Normandy's shuttle comes flying towards them, barely losing its tail by the looks and hurried call from the pilot. "Come on!"

"You heard the man! To the shuttle!" She starts to throw biotics to clear their way, covering Kaidan as he jumps into the shuttle and Garrus as he jumps from his cover and sprints to her. With a final biotic shove of the Cerberus troops closing in, she slams the shuttle door shut and shouts, "Get us the fuck out of here!"

Feeling the shuttle jump under their feet as they all remove their helmet for a chance to breathe, Garrus smirks as he offers the detonator to his mate once her own is gone. "For you, madam."

"It's yours. You did the work." She smirks and adds, "Don't say I never did anything for you."

He chuckles and flips open the trigger guard, growling as he presses the button, hearing the heavy click of its denotation. In only a moment, they hear the roar of the explosions, the radar on Cortez's terminal flickering in activity before dying down to normal readings.

"Good work, Vakarian. You pressed a button," his mate says with a warm chuckle as she heads to the cockpit. "Now let's go find ourselves a science facility and see what else we can destroy and how many more bad days we can give people."

They did manage to find themselves a fight when they flew into the Cerberus science facility, but it didn't reveal something they had expected. Where they figured it was probably infighting within the Cerberus ranks, perhaps Indoctrinated against those still with some mental capacity and will to live, it was actually deserters that Cerberus was gunning for.

Even more interesting, these deserters were lead by none other than Jacob Taylor, former soldier for Cerberus himself just six months ago.

He took a hit, though, and they have to carry him into the facility just as a woman comes running. She's young, of a darker complexion similar to Jacob's own, and seems to be the one mostly in charge of whatever research they are doing here while Taylor has been covering their defenses. That it, until they were severely outnumbered and outmatched.

They have a moment to regroup and get Jacob to a medic, their greeting party dispersing to rush back to what seems like an effort to pack supplies and equipment up for their escape. Garrus isn't sure what they're researching, but he hopes this need to take everything is justified by something groundbreaking.

"Why does the Illusive Man want you dead," Jane asks the Brynn, the lead of the science team.

"If you want my suspicion? Tying loose ends." She sighs and crosses her arms in discomfort. "We were all working on individual pieces of larger tech, smaller formulas to an even larger equation."

"Equation?" Garrus rumbles in thought, frowning as he shifts his helmet to his hip. "For what?"

"We believe he was trying to discover more about dark energy."

He growls and looks to his mate as she explains to the confused woman and their former, and current, squadmates. "The Reapers were created to 'solve' the dark energy problem. For some reason, they think killing entire civilizations helps."

"The Reapers?" Cole's eyes widen in surprise. "That… certainly explains the Illusive Man's interest in the Collector Base."

"Come again," Jane says, turning her head to the side to turn an ear to hear it better this time. "We destroyed the base."

"Apparently not all of it," Jacob explains with a scowl. "And he apparently had techs make a false IFF to get into the Omega-4 too after EDI uploaded the schematics. Before she was unshackled."

Growling, Garrus shakes his head. "All that and for what? So he could go back and start using that tech on his own people." He shakes his head, trying to drop it for now while there is going to still be more resistance, and looks to Taylor. "You all need to evacuate, there's no way that firefight outside is the last we see of Cerberus."

"We need to get the AA towers on the roof back online. Cerberus has jammed them, the controls are useless down here." 'We' as in the three soldiers still capable of fighting, but Garrus won't scrutinize the man's words. "I think they've tampered with the network link from the outside. We need those guns online or any escape will be shot out of the sky."

"Jacob, you're injured," Brynn says as she lifts his arm over her shoulder. "Commander Shepard and her team can handle the guns, right?" Jane nods. "See? We need to get you to a medic."

The team starts to follow them up the steps and into the actual facility from the shuttle bay access when a man calls out to them, slowing Garrus and the others while Jacob and Brynn continue deeper inside. At first, he doesn't recognize him, isn't able to put a name to the human face that, to him, has no distinguishingly enough features - and they meet so many people for him to remember them all. That is, he doesn't recognize the man until he speaks.

"Officer Vakarian," the man turns completely and Garrus can't hold back his growl. There's only one person that would address him before his mate, a man that she wasn't around to speak to. "I… see to remember me."

"Hard to forget," he says with a scowl.

"Yes, well," the man ducks his head, "after you took my brother to the Alliance, I tried putting that behind me." Garrus' mandibles twitch angrily at that and he almost wonders if he can punch the man and see if he can break his nose again, this time beyond repair. "I… I don't suppose you have any news of him? With the Reapers, I worry for him."

What does his owe this man? Does he really deserve to know the truth of his brother, of the child-like mind he nearly destroyed with his torture? What good is worrying now when he was the sole reason for so much fear and pain?

"Ever hear the saying 'too little, too late'?" He snaps, growling low as he steps closer to the worthless human being. "You don't deserve to worry about him after what you put him through."

Jane, obviously understanding from here who this man is and what his association is with them, steps in. "We don't know where your brother is. Earth was the first hit by the Reapers."

"Oh." Archer's face falls as his voice breaks. "I… I see. Excuse me."

Garrus watches the man, a look of despair on his face, leave them, heading for a secluded corner, but he doesn't grant him the solace of others seeing him take his life. Even as a turian who believes crimes can be forgiven in death, he doesn't think the man should ever be granted forgiveness. One's own blood is irreplaceable and valuable, not an object to used as he had pleased.

When they reach the roof, they find that Cerberus has set up a strategic defense using the natural structures of the room as well as their own barricades, shield generators, and crates of supplies for the facility. The three of them are left at a distance, using tech and biotics from afar to whittle down the numbers as they slowly advance.

The troops are defending one position and, upon clearing out the area of hostiles, they find the source of the problems with the AA guns. Cerberus troops had hard wired their way into the defense's telemetry and shut off the commands from within to reaching the weapons. Once the communication channel is reopened, they have to regroup and head across the field once again to get to the AA guns themselves to manually reactivate them.

Jane covers him as he climbs onto a heating unit, laying down upon his perch, and it gives him the perfect angle to provide covering fire as Kaidan and Jane have to first climb down between the ventilation structures and pipes before they can climb back up onto level ground with the incoming Cerberus fire.

Clearing the path for them to get onto better ground, his position never quite figured out by the enemy, he turns his attention to the manned turret, needing to get its attention of his mate. The first shot embeds itself in the thick metal shielding his target and he curses under his breath, calling out to his wife.

I can get that turret off you if you distract it enough to turn.

In need of a shot, I see. He can practically feel her smirk, but she starts to move, charging into a group close enough that the turret has to turn, changing its line of sight.

Perfect. He purrs as he fires, watching the head of the head of the turret occupant explode as his body falls from the seat. That taken care of, he focuses his sights on those around his mate, killing those she hasn't chosen in her string of actions as she plays them out.

"Alenko, get on that AA and get it working!" She shouts over the sound of gunfire. "We have your six!"

"Loud and clear!"

Garrus watches the man climb up the ladder and fires at a sniper that takes notice of his movements, dropping her before she can raise her weapon. He and Jane work in tandem as he covers her while she slowly makes her way towards the other.

Without any idea how many fighters are in the air right now waiting to shoot down the escaping shuttles - though, limited thanks to their attack on the base just before - they need those guns on immediately, so, while he doesn't necessarily like it, he will simply let her rush ahead as he covers her. He can always bring up the reckless nature of it later, after all, when they aren't tired and growing exhausted from the back to back missions in the freezing, numbing cold.

"My gun is golden," Jane comms. "Kaidan? How's it looking?"

"Need to repair it… almost done."

Watch my back while I sprint across. I want that turret.

Didn't know that's you call it.

How about you kill instead of joke, smart ass?

He chuckles as he lines up and fires at two Centurions that had taken notice of her unguarded sprint across the catwalk between the two towers that provided absolutely no cover. She jumps into the turret and fires at what he thinks is his cover, but turns out to be Cerberus actually taking cover behind his perch, not knowing he was there. He sends a silent thanks to her for that, glad he doesn't see her smug expression.

"Done!" Kaidan's are punctuated by the sound of the AA guns firing, the fighters in the air starting to fall.

"Shepard! The guns are online! We're getting people out."

"Understood," Garrus says in the comm before getting out of his perch and waiting for the other two to come running.

Just as they're trying to get back to the shaft to take them down, a fighter comes down, slamming into the roof and sending them flying from one another. Garrus hits a piece of the vents hard enough that he feels it dent under the force of his body and he blacks out for what feels like only a few seconds.

What makes him, snaps him back into consciousness, is the sound of shouts in his comm, voices demanding 'Shepard' to move. Snapping up with a groan, he looks to her just as she's climbing up over a crate and helping Kaidan up.

A quick run through their connection shows that they're mostly okay, but then that same voice yells over the comm and gunfire surrounding them. "Shepard! Move your asses!"

Getting to their feet proves easier than it should, but he supposes that has a lot to do with the bullets flying by their heads as they run. That always seems to but a fire under their feet.

Jacob hangs out of the Normandy shuttle as he fires, covering them as Cerberus troops start running over the roof. Alenko is first on the shuttle, followed by Jane, then Garrus, but, just as his feet hit the metal of the cabin, his heightened senses pick up what is definitely not a good sound.

She screams before the man hits the ground, Brynn rushing to Jacob's side as Cortez starts pulling them from the scene. Jane slams the hatch shut as the woman sobs, holding a hand to Jacob's bleeding chest, but Garrus can tell there's no hope, this an injury that won't be easily fixed.

"D… damn." Taylor coughs up blood, looking at it bubbling up like he's never seen that color of red before. "Sorry… I won't… be around for… the baby…"

"No! No. Please." Brynn sobs as she pleads, rocking as she holds him to her when his eyelids' movements slow to a stop. Her wails are piercing, her breaths in gasps and hiccups, but there's not a damn thing any of them can do, not now and not ever.

Jacob Taylor is gone.

Jane lays a hand on Brynn's shoulder in comfort and Garrus looks up from the scene and to his mate's expression of concealed anger at yet one more life that will be lost to this war. To anyone else, her face would seem cold, uncaring in this time of one of their friends slowly losing his life, but her green eyes are burning.

She will make this life lost count, one way or another. Of that, Garrus is certain.