The War Room was, as always, dimly lit.
As Michael entered, he let the hum of the dozen of computers in the room wash over him. It was the hum of data being streamed to them, processed and catalogued. It was the sound of intelligence reports, of Reaper and Cerberus troop movements being registered, of special forces from a dozen races on a hundred worlds accomplishing or failing their missions. It was quiet and indistinct, a soothing buzz as individual deaths and losses lost all meaning, almost turning into a soft music as each tone added to the whole.
It was a music Michael was well familiar with by now, something echoing within him as he marched into the room, Garrus hobbling forward at his side.
Michael shot his friend a glance, unsure if it was wise to let the man out of the Med-bay already, but the Turian had insisted once he'd gotten wind of something happening. Though he was now back in his armour, Garrus still looked smaller than he usually was as he limped forward, and though Turian faces were difficult to read, Michael had enough practice to know that his friend was hiding a fair amount of pain.
Of course, commenting on that would be about the worst thing he could do, so Michael kept his mouth shut as he turned his gaze back to the three women waiting for him, standing in front of the room's central holographic projector.
Leftmost of the group, Michael was not surprised to see Samantha Traynor standing straight, hands behind her back. Still trying to be a soldier, I see. Despite his weariness from his defeat, the mess with Liara and Tali, not to mention the exhaustion from his sleep – or rather, his lack of it – Michael found himself inwardly smiling at that, she'd more than proven herself already, though apparently it was never enough.
Nor was it a surprise to see Liara in the middle, however painful it was. Yet despite the fresh wounds she'd so recently suffered, the Asari looked surprisingly at ease. She was properly dressed in her doctor's clothes and wore a friendly smile on her face. Yet through their link Michael felt surprisingly...little...as if she was keeping her emotions held back...or rather...away from him. Not that it wasn't apparent in her stiff posture in how she was holding herself together, how fragile she truly was. I'm sorry.
Trying to hold back his own guilt and sympathy so as to not shake Liara's already fragile self-control, Michael turned his gaze to the last one of the group...and instead flooded their connection with surprise. "Chakwas? What are you doing here?"
"All in due time, Commander." The grey-haired doctor replied, a motherly smile on her lips...a smile fading as she turned her gaze to Garrus. "And I recall telling you to stay in bed, Mr Vakarian. Isn't Doctor Michel supposed to be watching you?"
"What can I say?" Garrus shrugged, barring his teeth in a grimace of pain at the movement, a grimace he turned into a smirk. "I have my charming ways."
Snorting, Chakwas shook her head while crossing her arms in front of her chest. "I'll have to talk to her about professionalism later then." She shrugged, then gestured to the other women. "But right now we have other issues at hand. Traynor, I believe you were to start?"
"Of course." For a moment, there was a flash of nervousness in Samantha's eyes, then she smiled and gestured at Michael to join them as she turned towards the projector at her back. "If you could join us, Commander."
Conscious of his distance to Liara, though unwilling to make that apparent, Michael moved to stand at Traynor's left side. A natural choice, given the group, and one that kept Samantha between himself and the vulnerable Asari. Garrus, on the other hand, ended up next to Chakwas, the Turian casually ignoring her disapproving frown as he focused his gaze on the projector, anticipating a hologram to appear at any moment.
Which it did, first it was but a glowing orb of white and blue, but it swiftly expanded, turned into a familiar shape, a shape that made Michael frown. "So...you transferred the galaxy map here?"
"Patience, Sir." Traynor chided him, sounding slightly smug as she continued. "Now, you've instructed everyone to find a way to locate Kai Leng, correct?" Before Michael could reply, the woman continued. ""Of course, with him in a small shuttle using cloaking technology and an entire galaxy to look through, we've all had our work cut out for us." She shot him a smirk, as if to tell him how ridiculous his request had seemed at first, but her smile faded as he eagerly waited for her to continue, making her sigh and give him an uncertain look. "However, I made the supposition that Kai Leng would not pass through Reaper controlled areas, given the value of his cargo..."
She hesitated as Michael frowned. Kai Leng is cautious, yes, he doesn't attack unless he feels he has the advantage, and he wouldn't dare risk his cargo... He nodded, making Traynor's shoulders slump in relief. "That makes sense, good idea."
Nodding, Traynor turned back to the hologram, raising her glowing omni-tool. "With that in mind I removed all systems under Reaper control from my search..." With a small explosion of light, a quarter of the galaxy turned black. "...as well as any systems where Kai Leng would have to cross Reaper territory when leaving Thessia." More systems disappeared, leaving two thirds of the galaxy remaining. And we've only been in this war for what...a few months? Michael shot Garrus a worried look, a look the Turian returned in kind.
The Turian then turned his attention back to the hologram though, tone uncertain. "That's still a lot of territory to cover, and I'm guessing asking every military with a presence there for suspicious activity would just flood our computers with garbage data?"
"I'm afraid so." Traynor nodded with a grimace, but then grinned as she turned her head to the right. "Which was why I went to Doctor T'soni here for some help. Doctor?"
Furtively, Michael shot the blue woman a look, but Liara had her gaze fixed on the hologram, her own hand coming up to touch it as she spoke. "With my contacts, I've been trying since before the Reaper invasion to map out Cerberus' activities, and with some success, despite them working in separate cells. Cerberus casts a wide net though, and if we trust my sources, I could only exclude a few systems from Traynor's search parameters." A few more areas on the map turned black. "However, you remember how you asked me to keep track of Miranda's movements, Michael?" She turned her eyes to him.
Michael swallowed, there was a wall behind Liara's eyes, a wall he hadn't ever seen before...and he knew it was his fault it was there. Focus on the mission, the Reapers is all that matters. "Yes, I couldn't offer her alliance resources as she wished, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to give her a safety net."
"Yes, well, she might need it, she's hardly acted with safety in mind." Liara turned her attention back to the hologram. "Her movements have been relatively easy to track, she's left quite a few craters and bodies in her wake." Why am I not surprised...? "More importantly though is that her attacks have been at either high-profile agents within Cerberus or their larger facilities. While Cerberus casts a wide net, only a few of their active cells are larger operations, and Miranda's preference for them has leant itself to mapping out their organisation in more detail." With a hum, a large piece of the galaxy map began to glow blue. "This is her primary area of activity, and given her pattern of movement, some areas are where we believe she might later go." One of the areas turned an even darker shade of blue. "Since Miranda is hitting high-profile targets of Cerberus', and Kai Leng is likely to go to such a place, there is a tangible connection. Even if not, if we can target such a location ourselves, we might be able to track him down using their own systems."
"That's a lot of systems in the Attican Traverse..." Garrus noted with a sage nod. "Not surprising, Cerberus no doubt had the facilities there to aid human expansion, now they've been turned into facilities for waging war." Then he shook his head. "Even so, that's not a lot to go on, we could be hitting tiny Cerberus cells that couldn't tell us anything."
"Perhaps, but more importantly is that I could more easily go through these systems in search of clues." Traynor added, the woman's eyes aglow with eagerness as she raised her omni-tool. "In fact, various reports from the Alliance and our allies have shown dead zones in communications in several of these systems. While they have assumed this to been the Reapers', my own analysis of the way communications are blocked shows that the dead zones have more familiarity with when Sur'kesh and the Citadel were under attack, ergo, Cerberus' doing." Michael found himself leaning forward, he too feeling eagerness fill him as several systems bloomed up in a dark orange, a few overlapping with Miranda's blue, a few even within her dark blue, where she might go."And where Cerberus goes through the trouble to block out communications like that, we're sure to find something big."
A grin spread itself over Michael's face as he looked at the map. "Using the lack of a signal as a beacon...clever work, Traynor." He slapped her back, making the woman grunt as she nearly tipped over the projector.
"Oh, thank you, Sir, but we're not done yet...Doctor?"
To Michael's surprise, it was not Liara who spoke up, but rather Chakwas, the woman shooting Garrus a final frown before turning to Michael. "I'm sure you've forgotten about how you ordered me and Doctor Michel to take samples of the Cerberus troops we recovered from the attack on the Citadel? Not to mention those other times we've had time after a skirmish with them?"
"Of course I remember." Michael frowned. "I remember everything regarding this war."
"And I'm sure Miss Chambers would have had a few choice words about that." Chakwas replied with a frown of her own, then shook her head as she put her hands behind her back and straightened. "Anyway, our analysis has yielded an interesting result. You see, only five percent of the troops have been identified to have prior affiliation with the Alliance, mercenaries or other paramilitaries, people that would be ideal recruits for a Cerberus army, the rest were far more difficult to identify and I had to turn to Liara here for assistance with accessing less obvious registers."
Michael, now impatient, turned to Liara, his question quick. "And?"
"Eleven percent couldn't be identified, but the rest were found in various databases." Liara evenly replied, shooting him a calm look that put a damper on his eagerness. I'm sorry... Suddenly turning her head away, Liara sighed, though her voice betrayed no emotion save the usual tiredness that by now permeated everyone on the ship. "The rest, however, could be found in all manner of dna banks."
"Oh, I got to hear this, what kind?" Garrus grinned.
Rolling her eyes, Chakwas was the one answering. "Sperm banks, mortages, bank accounts, memberships in various organisations, tax registers."
Michael blinked, confused. "Wait, that sounds like..."
"Normal people, yes." Liara nodded, eyes fixed on the map as she spoke to him. "Remember what Kai Leng said on Thessia? 'Perhaps you shouldn't have ignored Grissom Academy'? These soldiers weren't actual soldiers before when the war started, they were civilians."
"Damn..." Garrus whistled softly, though his face was frowning in disapproval. "...never underestimate Cerberus' ability to disgust you...bet those civilians didn't approve of having Reaper tech inserted into them and being turned into Cerberus drones..."
"They probably had nothing to say in the matter." Chakwas retorted with a glare aimed the Turian's way before she turned back to Michael. "Anyway, many of them had been registered as refugees, and if not for the chaos of the war, I'm sure more would be so, I'd bet my license on it."
"Considering what's at stake, I'd say you're betting more than that on it." Michael replied solemnly, nodding to himself. It makes sense though... "Traynor, have you-"
"Way ahead of you, Sir." The woman replied with a grin. "Let me mark out the major targets of human refuges..."
Instantly, red dots appeared along the galaxy...and Michael's eyes widened in disbelief as he found a single dot appear where Miranda's dark blue and the Traynor's orange intertwined. "Where is that...?"
"The Shadow Sea, Lera system." Garrus grunted, knowing Michael already knew the answer. "Horizon..."
That son of a bitch... Michael turned his head up. "EDI, have Joker set the course immediately!"
"Yes, Commander." Came the calm response.
Sensing his mind, Liara shot him a look. "To be fair, we don't know if Kai Leng will be there. It could just be-"
"Doesn't matter." Michael snapped. "This is the best lead to a large Cerberus facility we have and I'm going to use it to find that little twat and then I'm going to ram his sword so far up his arse he'll taste it." The others, save a grinning and nodding Turian, exchanged a disgusted look at the picture he painted, but Michael didn't care, eyes afire with eagerness. "Excellent work, girls, you've just saved the galaxy." Turning, he stalked towards the door, mind already in the armoury. "Today the fortune of war swings our way..."
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Thanks to Abydos Jackson for being my Avenger, and happy holidays to all our readers and reviewers.
