Chapter Fifty-Two: Race to the Conduit
They exited the Mako to inspect the hatch barring their way.
Shepard knelt beside it and shook her head. "There's no blasting our way through this."
Twenty solid centimeters of reinforced Prothean concrete guarded the way, the same stuff that kept their cities standing for fifty thousand years. More like a blast door than a hatch. Her eyes narrowed. There was something down that passage, something the Protheans deemed worthy of considerable protection. The Conduit? Maybe. This place had a feel to it, like there were a lot of secrets buried in its halls.
Kaidan rapped the stonework with his knuckles, frowning in concentration. "Saren found a way inside. There's got to be a power station, or an override, or something nearby."
Liara revolved slowly in place, staring up in awe at the slender towers rising overhead. A hush hung in the air, like old libraries, dust motes spinning in the shafts of sunlight trickling between the ancient skyscrapers. The buildings were ramrod straight, with dual wings sweeping out from each side. Shepard recognized in them the same shape as the beacons, though vastly larger in scale.
Piles of loose red soil had blown in and accumulated in dunes and drifts over the eons, enriched by the ash of fires past. Bright green foliage carpeted the area. Evidently, even the thin trickles of light penetrating the press of buildings and looping vines was sufficient to sustain life. Dead plant matter crunched beneath Shepard's boots. Dry, then; she hoped the lightning storms were a good distance off. This matted fiber looked like it would burn quite well. And if Liara was right about the fauna, there was nothing beyond bacteria alive on Ilos to thin it out.
They stood in a courtyard. Overhead, walkways once permitted travel from one tower to the next, though most had crumbled into ruin. Others were overrun by yet more ferns. The foundations of buildings long eroded into nothing served as retaining walls, rising a meter or so above the dirt.
"Ilos," Liara breathed. Her eyes were so wide Shepard could see the white all around the irises, though they were suffused with wonder, not fear. "There's so much history here. So much to learn."
Kaidan shivered. "Feels like I'm walking over a grave."
Shepard spied something just ahead, half-hidden behind a pillar in a tangle of creeping vines. "Two graves."
Liara came back to herself, and blinked. "What do you mean?"
They tromped forward. Shepard cleared some of the plants. "I've seen Protheans, through the beacon." She didn't mention it was at the moment of their brutal deaths. "This doesn't resemble them, not even a little."
A carved humanoid figure sat on a throne, or at least a heavy chair, its high domed head bowed as though in sorrow. A mass of tentacles dangled from its face like a beard. Its hands lay flat upon the curved arms of the chair, the body quite frail beneath that ponderous head, clothed in a thin, loose robe of stone. The statue reeked of age. Older, perhaps, even than the ancient city that grew up around it. Weather had melted its edges into soft contours.
"It's an illithid," Kaidan said suddenly.
Both Liara and Shepard turned to stare at him. Shepard's brow creased. "A what?"
"Is that some sort of alien species?" Liara asked.
His face reddened. "It's a… kind of monster. Never mind."
"Doesn't seem like the Protheans agreed." Shepard brushed aside another clump of vines. "This feels more like an honorific. A symbol of wisdom, or learning."
"There are at least a dozen species traveling the galaxy today," Kaidan stated, though he sounded less than certain. "Surely it was the same in the Prothean era."
Liara laid a tentative, almost reverential hand upon the statue. "There are no records of any species not Prothean alive at that time. Archaeologists have always found that curious. Oh, I wish I had more time to study all this."
"Maybe one day," Kaidan said. There was a trace of regret in him as well.
Shepard took one last look at the statue and drew her rifle. "Move out."
They advanced into the dead city. It was strangely silent. Forsaken trees, leafless, dotted the landscape here and there with limbs like spears heaving at the orange sky. Roots longer than Shepard was tall and twice as thick around wrapped about broken stones. Everywhere was green and brown and rust.
The squad descended into a narrow passage, following it parallel to Saren's corridor. All they could do was hope that it would lead them to a control station. Along the way they passed numerous terminals, most powered down, but some blinking with green light. Shepard tried one and could get no intelligible information from it.
Kaidan was encouraged nonetheless. "This place still has power. It must be running off its own generator. Wind-driven, maybe."
"Not much power." Shepard shook her head, frustrated. She could hear geth moving behind the walls, out of sight. It made her back itch, right between the shoulder blades. The city at ground level was a maze. They could encounter hostile troops at any time.
Liara held her pistol with both hands, pointed at the ground, craning her neck. "Look. An elevator."
There was indeed a set of doors and a control panel that resembled what Shepard knew as an elevator. It seemed wrong, somehow, that the Protheans should have devices so similar to the inventions of humans, asari, turians, and so on down the line. Surely there was more than one way to design a lift?
Between it and the squad was a large public square. Thick columns lined the path. Shepard frowned. "Nice place for an ambush."
"I don't see any way around it." Kaidan was likewise uneasy, his rifle pointed cautiously ahead.
"Be on your guard." Shepard headed into the open.
Nothing showed on the scanner. That didn't mean much; the geth possessed cloaking technology, and there was so much debris that interference was a serious concern. She peered into every shadow and moved forward slowly, ready to act in an instant. Liara and Kaidan followed, monitoring their flank.
They were halfway across when the column nearest Shepard exploded as a high-caliber round struck its face. Concrete shrapnel stung her cheek. The geth rose out of the ferns and trees and descended upon them in a vengeful tide.
She was already diving forward. A second sniper round left another crater in the column. Rifle and machine gun fire joined it, turning the path into a deadly trap. Geth advanced on both flanks, leaving them no cover and few opportunities.
Shepard could see only one way out. "Run!"
Kaidan and Liara streaked past her. She turned and laid down a few sweeps of indiscriminate cover fire, letting her squad gain some ground, before her shield failed and she followed after them. Her legs burned as she made for the far end of the path. Here, on this oxygen-rich planet, her only limitation was her lung capacity. She felt as though she were flying.
Liara stumbled on a tree branch tangled in the detritus. Shepard hauled her up by her shoulder. "Come on!"
She half-dragged her towards the lift. The geth tagged her twice, but the armor did its job. The attack grew more brutal by the second.
Kaidan fired from the elevator alcove, attempting to relieve some of the pressure. "They're closing in!"
Shepard dropped Liara into the relative protection of the shadowed niche, plastered her back to the wall, and started driving back the geth. The nearest were no more than ten meters away.
They were better off than on Virmire, though they faced more geth. They had real cover and once Liara got her breath back, she began controlling the field with her biotics. Shepard concentrated on the units that escaped her singularities. Kaidan used his own abilities to knock back any geth who got too close.
The geth gave them no margin for error. The machines didn't tire, and gave up their operational functionality to gain a tactical advantage. She imagined it must be a strange bargain between processing power and strategic sacrifice. At least these ones didn't bring rocket troops.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than a wave of reinforcements arrived- including two bearing shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Shepard drew back into the shadow of the elevator alcove just as the first rocket struck the frame. Dust fell down on their heads.
Kaidan shot at the unit. It ducked behind a pillar. "Might I suggest a strategic retreat?"
"Way ahead of you." Shepard banged her gloved hand against the elevator call button and hoped like hell it was still powered up.
They were in luck. Only a few seconds later, the doors sprang open. Shepard waved them inside. "Go, go!"
They stepped inside and held down their triggers, full-throttle, for three endless seconds while they waited for the doors to close. As the elevator finally began to ascend Shepard drew a deep breath. Liara rubbed her forehead.
Kaidan slumped against the back wall, massaging his leg with a grimace.
"Status?" Shepard asked sharply.
He shook his head dismissively. She expelled a sigh. "Kaidan-"
"The doc cleared me for combat duty," he said, meeting her eyes, sullen. "The leg just hasn't been pushed like this since I was injured. I'll be fine."
She didn't press him, because they were in the middle of a warzone and it was a little late to worry. Kaidan didn't mistake her lack of further questioning for acceptance. "Nathaly, I wouldn't put you in that position again."
After a moment, Shepard decided now wasn't the time for unnecessary heaviness, either. She relaxed. "Yeah, I guess if I save your ass too many more times it's going to start to look like a habit."
A burst of laughter escaped Liara before her hand reached her mouth. Kaidan sputtered. Shepard grinned and turned back to the door.
"Alright," he conceded. Then he grinned at her. "It's not my fault. You drove me to desperate measures to get your attention."
She snorted. "Right."
The doors opened onto a new plaza of dead ferns and forgotten buildings. It all looked the same to Shepard. "Liara, do you have any idea where a control room might be?"
"This is one of the best-preserved Prothean sites I've visited. Certainly the largest." She pursed her lips. "You must understand, an archaeologist might go her entire career without personally discovering any functional Prothean technology. We know very little of their organizational structure."
An ages' worth of wind-borne dust slumped against the buildings. They were forced to clamor up a hill of loose soil, their boots sliding on the loam. Half-buried hatches peeked over the surface. "I wonder how much of this place is underground now. That elevator seemed to move sideways as much as vertically."
"Hard to say." Kaidan kept his rifle pointed warily. "I hope they kept the Conduit on high ground."
Shepard pressed forward. "No sign of it yet. Saren's going to pick it up and head straight for the Citadel, I know it."
"We don't even know what the Conduit does," Liara protested.
"If the reapers want to… to purge the galaxy, they'll start with the head and work their way down. Basic tactics."
"Look sharp," Kaidan said. He gestured with the gun. "Something's passed this way. Kicked up the leaf litter."
Shepard brushed passed him, crouching low, and scanned the terrain with the strangest feeling of déjà vu. They could have been back in the rolling hills of Eden Prime, beneath a torched orange sky, her and Kaidan and Jenkins, moving unwittingly towards a geth ambush. A wave of something like homesickness followed it, a longing for simplicity and ignorance. If they'd known back on Mars that not six months later they would be standing in a Prothean ruin defending the galaxy from certain destruction, just three people on the ground and one measly frigate hiding from an entire fleet…
Liara touched her arm. "Shepard?"
She shook off the feeling and glanced at her omni-tool scanner. "There's some kind of warehouse ahead. Lots of broken columns for cover. I'm guessing a squadron of geth?"
Kaidan followed her gaze. "There's an overlook. I can see lights inside."
Liara checked her pistol's heat sink. "If it has electricity…"
"Could be that control room," Shepard finished. She glanced at the Mako's position on her map. "We're higher up, but not far from that hatch. I'll move up first, then Kaidan. Liara, stay back and hit them with everything you've got. Keep them off us."
"Understood." Liara stopped fidgeting with the weapon and turned her attention ahead.
Shepard took a breath and scuttled forward through the gaping warehouse door, keeping in cover as best she could. Windows laid into the vaulting roof shed blocks of sunshine on the dirt-strewn floor and across tangles of vegetation. Even inside, nothing escaped the inexorable grip of the vines. Hexagonal forcefields shimmered in the air. The geth kept to their cover, utterly still in anticipation of their arrival. The only sounds were their boots on the concrete and Kaidan's anxious breathing a few paces behind her.
Her heart was racing. They were so close to the end now. Just get that hatch open and Saren would be in her reach. One last fight…
Though she kept quiet as she could, silence was impossible, and the geth were expecting them. Her foot dislodged an ancient bit of stone. It clattered against the floor.
Enemies erupted from all corners of the room.
Shepard dove for the cover of a fallen column. Though she really couldn't spare the concentration, she glanced over her shoulder to check that Kaidan was secure. Maybe it was just last night, but what he said about his leg was accurate- she was being far more protective of him than either of them could afford.
The momentary distraction cost her dearly. Geth flanked her position.
"Need a little help!" She fired blindly, stumbling back. The geth advanced with a relentless calm.
Kaidan's throw scraped them over the top of the stone, and scarcely half a breath later a ball of raw, barely-constrained biotic energy from Liara caught one dead center. The subsequent explosion tossed Shepard face-down into the dirt, so loud that dust rained from the roof.
Bits of geth pelted the ground. She covered her head with her hands. Damn.
A particularly jagged piece bounced off her lower back and left her smarting. Another struck her shoulder. When this is over, I'm taking the longest, hottest bath creation has ever known.
Bullets chewed up the floor around her. Shepard scrambled to her feet and scuttled towards the safety of another column.
The geth were entrenched, and defending every last inch of terrain. Either this was the control room, or someplace equally important to Saren's strategy. Nevertheless, they were making steady progress in their assault of the geth position- until a rumbling towards the back interrupted the fight.
In the chaos it took a second for Shepard to realize it was formed of footsteps, the impact of two giant feet trudging through dust and vines and stone. It was a few moments more before it stepped into the light.
The machine was the perfection of its kind. Towering over four meters tall and weighing more than a ton, its white chassis gleaming in the thin sunshine, the geth raised its massive flashlight head as though sniffing at the breeze. The rifle clutched effortlessly in its spindly hands was the length of Shepard's leg and of a caliber more akin to "artillery shell" than "bullet". As it passed the ranks of ordinary geth, they stood a bit straighter. If they were human, they would have been cheering- and saluting.
It turned to Shepard and fired a laser pulse that melted clean through her concrete barricade.
She yelped and leapt away. A second blast followed her, narrowly avoiding a direct hit.
Liara raked it with dark energy. It didn't even scratch the thing's paint. "It's shielded!"
Damn good shielding, too. Shepard continued to circle around. Stopping with that thing on her tail was choosing to die. She needed a plan, and quickly, but between evading that laser cannon and defending herself from the rest of the geth, she could barely think.
The enclosed overlook at the far end of the warehouse caught her eye. "Distract it!"
"Copy that." Kaidan didn't ask how, for which she was grateful. Shepard hugged her rifle to her chest and scurried ahead.
Several of the standard geth units crossed her path and were easily dispatched. Whatever Kaidan was doing, it was effective, because the big one was all but ignoring her. She straightened just in time to see a piece of rubble the size of a shopping cart fly through the air and strike the machine. It stumbled under the force of the blow.
No damage, though, she noted grimly. All the attacks were doing was provoking the geth. They went berserk at the sight of the assault. Kaidan and Liara would be hard-pressed to keep up, and soon, Shepard knew, their scant cover would reach its end. She had to find a way to take out the heavy before that happened.
A ramp at the back of the warehouse led up to the overlook. A bank of ancient controls awaited her, flickering with green light. Whatever power remained in this facility was failing. Her eyes devoured the console, desperate for anything that might provide a solution.
Outside, the battle grew more desperate. Her head jerked up as a titanic crash brought down half the roof. A careless laser blast had melted through a column. Kaidan and Liara scrambled back, a pair of dusty figures dwarfed by debris. The geth surged after them.
But the new sunlight revealed something else. Running along the warehouse ceiling, high overhead and listing badly, was a crane.
Prothean technology never ceased to amaze Shepard. Even if the relays were attributed to the reapers, the fact that after fifty thousand years their buildings still stood, their elevators still ran, and occasionally their computers and power generators still functioned defied rational explanation. The materials science alone must be a paradigm shift ahead of human tech.
Shepard wasn't about to let it go to waste. Her eyes flicked over the controls, not questioning that somehow the console was legible, no matter the disturbing tracks that train of thought left behind. They landed on a holographic touchpad.
The crane wailed and shrieked into motion with all the glacial reluctance of a continental collision. Inch by aching inch, it crept along its track as Shepard tapped the button, coaxing it as quickly as she dared. If it stalled out, she had no backup plan. As it stuttered ahead, she hit a second key to lower the hook.
By the time it reached the largest geth unit, it was speeding along the track at a good clip. The hook and cable slammed into the machine. It barely flinched. Shepard pursed her lips and reversed the motion.
This time, it caught against the chassis. The geth twisted, attempting to jerk free, but only succeeded in entangling itself with the cable. Shepard assisted it gladly, dragging the crane back and forth until it was quite secure. Then she began to raise it.
The geth redoubled its efforts to fight back. With arms almost immobilized, it only succeeded at shooting the ceiling, widening the hole. It danced in midair. Before any part of the crane assembly could fail, Shepard shot at the unit through the glass of the control room. The geth's shields collapsed. A lucky hit a second later took out the generator.
Bogged down by the lesser geth, it took the shower of sparks to alert her squad that she'd snared her target. Their fire joined hers. With an electronic screech that shook the rafters, the machine succumbed to the assault at last. The deactivated shell hung limp as it revolved on the end of the line.
After that, there was only mop-up.
When it was over, Kaidan and Liara joined her in the control room. Liara sized it up. "This looks like the command center for the entire complex. Saren's troops must have sealed the doors from here after he went inside."
"Talk about bad timing." Shepard sighed, recalling the reckless drop from the Normandy. "Let's get that hatch open."
Kaidan frowned at the controls. "How did you use this?"
"What?" She was momentarily derailed.
"I can't make head or tail of it. It all looks the same." He gestured at the panel, frustrated.
Shepard glanced from him to the interface, bewildered. "I'll have a look, then."
Liara peered over her shoulder. "That's a Prothean terminal. And it's still active!"
The squat pedestal indeed had a burst of holographic static hovering over it. In her haste, Shepard overlooked it before. She spied an activation switch and toggled it on.
The cloud of orange particles intensified. A garbled message played. "Too late… overrun… Reapers…"
"Extraordinary," Liara breathed, drifting towards the display. "A functional Prothean computer system. I can't make out much- something to do with time- so little of their language has survived-"
Shepard's brow wrinkled. "What are you talking about? There's some kind of translator program in this thing."
"Yeah, the Protheans built a program to translate to a language that didn't exist while they were alive." Kaidan looked at her like she lost her mind. "This whole system is in Prothean, Nathaly. How the hell did you find the crane controls?"
"You can't read them?"
"You can?"
"Of course," Liara said suddenly. "The Cipher- it would have given you an understanding of their language. Perhaps that's why the second beacon was so much clearer."
"If I could speak Prothean, wouldn't I know?" Her tone was testy, but her mind was already lining up the logic. Shepard hadn't begun to plumb the depths of the Cipher's information. Most of it was in half-remembered dreams; it seemed like she could scarcely touch it with her conscious mind.
She squinted at the controls, blurring them a bit, trying hard to see the labels as lines and curves rather than writing. "Alright… maybe…"
"Play the whole thing back," Liara requested.
"We need to catch up with Saren," Kaidan said, with a touch of urgency. "I'm sure the scientists will want to have a look at this place after this is all over."
Shepard licked her lips, and reset the system. The message began to play once more. "Too late… overrun… Reapers… -ot safe… refuge… -side archives…"
"It's a warning." Shepard closed her eyes, straining her ears against the static. "This is the from the reaper invasion."
"Citadel… overwhelming… only hope…" The image flicked and danced with the wavering volume.
"Can you make out anything useful?" Kaidan asked.
"…Conduit… desperation… retreat…"
She shook her head. "It mentioned the Conduit, something about retreating to the archives, wherever they are. It's too degraded to be much use. We should go."
He set his rifle and turned towards the door. "Back to the Mako?"
Shepard found the switch to open the hatch. A vibration shuddered through the walls. "As fast we can."
The fading voice of the warning followed them down the ramp. "…cannot be stopped… cannot be stopped…"
She couldn't repress a shudder as they fled the warehouse for good.
The return journey was considerably faster. Most of the geth resistance was gone. They avoided the elevator in favor of a series of sloping halls that turned out to be both faster and less heavily patrolled. All the same, Shepard was glad to see the Mako again. It would be a long walk underground without it.
Ahead of the tank, the tunnel sloped away into the shadows.
Kaidan glanced between the gaping hatch and the quiescent Mako. "Who votes we take the heavy artillery into the creepy bunker?"
"The firepower should come in handy," Shepard said, her voice dry, as she hauled herself up into the driver's seat.
Liara swung up beside her. "If Saren has already reached the Conduit, we could be driving into a trap."
"No." Shepard's mouth thinned into a grim line. "We're definitely driving into a trap."
Her foot tapped the accelerator and they rolled down into the depths.
Buildings rose up on either side, sheer manmade cliffs dressed with crossbeams and metal lattices. Oval cylinders punctured the sides, unlike any decoration Shepard had ever seen. Nature, too, had its say; roots and vines climbed the walls eagerly while the tank splashed through stagnant water. The only light came from rectangular windows far overhead, laying blocks of sunshine over the dirt. This sector of the city was dank and cheerless. For a long time, the sole sound was the Mako's wheels churning through the mud.
Eventually, if only to break the unbearable silence, Liara said, "I never dreamed I would discover anything like this. This bunker might be the last refuge of their entire species. Imagine the secrets that must lie buried here."
"Like the Conduit?" The sarcasm flew out of her mouth before Shepard could think better of it. Liara looked down at her lap.
Kaidan made a feeble attempt to restore the peace. "It's a shame you had to find this place in these circumstances, but we need to keep perspective."
"I am sorry. I cannot help but be swept away by all this." She took a breath. "I think a part of me wants to pretend this is just another dig."
There wasn't any decent reply. Shepard kept driving. Kaidan changed the subject. "What are all those things hanging off the walls? Some kind of storage unit?"
Liara peered through the forward port as if noticing them for the first time. Her voice grew hushed. "No… no, I think they're stasis pods."
Shepard was so startled that she stopped the tank. "Stasis pods? You mean cryogenic freezing- deep sleep?"
Early in their expansion, before they discovered the Mars archives, humans had experimented with extending their own lifespans by hundreds or even thousands of years through freezing, preparation for long subluminal journeys between the stars. While that proved unnecessary, the Alliance continued to develop the technique, aware of the possible medical applications. Holding a gravely wounded soldier in stasis until they could be brought to a proper facility could save lives.
Liara's eyes were perfectly round. "They must have tried to keep themselves alive through the centuries. It was their last hope."
Kaidan crowded forward to get a better look. "So there could be living Protheans here?"
"I…" She trailed off. "I do not think it likely. The power is failing. All these pods appear to be dead. This bunker became their tomb."
"But there are hundreds of these pods," he protested. "Maybe thousands. They can't all be dead."
Shepard started forward again. "Maybe they couldn't outsmart the reapers after all. Or maybe Sovereign seized the chance to kill off the only people who could help us."
There wasn't anything to say to that. They drove on.
Saren either had no time or inclination to leave many defenses behind as he advanced through the tunnels. The occasional pocket of geth was no match for the Mako's cannon or Shepard's brand of melee tank combat. It was a token resistance- just enough to remind them that he still had the lead. Shepard lost track of how far they travelled. It seemed as though the bunker would never end.
After a while, Shepard straightened in her seat. "Some kind of barrier ahead."
It didn't look like geth or Council technology. A sheet of golden light hung between the walls, reaching from ground to roof, billowing in a nonexistent breeze.
"This doesn't look like Saren's work," Kaidan said, though with a touch of uncertainty.
They slowed as they approached. The barrier showed no sign of dissipating. She frowned. "I'll get out and have a look-"
"Shepard!" Liara's hands flew over the navigation panel.
"Hostiles?" she asked, already beginning to turn the tank.
"No- all the instruments have gone out. I'm only getting static."
As the tunnel behind them swung into view, Shepard groaned. "I think I know why."
The passage back was blocked by a second golden barrier. They were trapped in a corridor no more than twenty meters long.
Shepard cursed and tumbled out of the Mako. Liara and Kaidan followed. She stalked up to the barrier until her nose was all but pressed against it and craned her neck. "I don't see any generators. It's coming from inside the ruins."
"Definitely not Saren then." Kaidan stared up towards the roof, as if searching for a way to climb out.
"Over here," Liara called from the opposite side of the tank. "There's a door."
"We continue on foot," Shepard said, drawing her rifle.
The darkened tunnel was carpeted in ferns and smelled of dank. Slimy mold slickened the ground. Shepard was forced to walk slowly, activating the flashlight mounted on her gun when the light from the corridor faded. Water dripped.
The tunnel dead-ended in a tangle of roots. "Damn it."
"There's got to be a way out." Kaidan's flashlight drifted over the walls and roof. "Doors don't lead to nowhere."
"It's been fifty thousand years since anyone stood here," Shepard said. "The exit could be buried under dirt or vines or just grown into the wall."
It was hard not to feel despondent. Saren already had a huge lead, after how long it took to open that hatch, and this problem didn't appear to have any quick solutions. On top of that, they were no closer to understanding the nature or purpose of the Conduit than when they arrived. If she had at least that much, she would be able to gauge the consequences of their slow progress.
Shepard kicked at a fern, frustrated beyond measure, but the plant offered no purchase and she only succeeded in stubbing the toe of her boot against the wall. It didn't hurt; the hardsuit offered excellent protection from such minor damage. But it soured her temper.
Kaidan caught the look on her face and tried to head off the coming storm. "We didn't test the barrier. Maybe we can wear it down."
"And meanwhile we'll have cannon blasts ricocheting around the chamber with our asses hanging out?"
"We could hide in this tunnel. Rig the Mako to fire remotely."
Liara continued to examine the tunnel walls. "What kind of corridor dead ends into a cube?"
Shepard rubbed her forehead. "What?"
"The ground slopes down until here." Liara indicated a spot with her foot. "Leaving this space at the end, level and possessing the same area on all five sides. What does that sound like?"
She began brushing at the moss coating the walls, peeling it off in great sheets. Shepard's fraying patience snapped. "We don't have time for housekeeping."
Undaunted, Liara continued to work, until she tugged aside a patch near the front and revealed a glowing green touchpad. "There."
Kaidan blinked. "It's an elevator."
"With the doors stuck open," Shepard said as understanding dawned.
Liara flashed a smile, small, hesitant. "Help me clear the rest so can see where this leads."
It took the three of them only a few minutes to remove the overgrowth. The shape of the elevator began to emerge. Beneath the layers of time, it was surprisingly clean, uniform even. But the only light that worked was diffuse glow of the controls. The elevator shaft loomed above them, a blackened pit, as they descended into the depths of the ground.
The doors opened onto a tall, narrow cave of rough-hewn stone. A metal ramp sloped down maybe fifty paces. At the bottom, a terminal sat on a circular platform bathed in the same warm golden light as the barriers back on the road. The crevasse was so deep that Shepard couldn't see ceiling or floor. As they stepped out of the elevator, the ramp shook alarmingly.
Liara gripped the rail. "I've studied the Protheans for decades, but I've never felt this sense of foreboding."
Shepard felt it, too, a weighted hush or gravitas implying something of great importance was about to happen in this room- the kind of event that could cause a whole civilization to hold its breath for fifty thousand years. It had ridden her since the Mako fell out of the Ilos sky. Those barriers came from within the city. Something, not turian, not geth, not reaper, but Prothean, set them off.
She never wanted any part of a thing like that. She wasn't a prophet, or a savior, or the pawn of a destiny greater than herself. She was, fundamentally, a soldier. One who went above and beyond to see her mission through. One who wanted to stop Saren and go home. And if she didn't have one, if she was well past the point where she could pretend to herself for a few days that her apartment or her dad's place or a skipper's cabin were the same thing, she wanted the space to build one. The person who fit into this moment wasn't a person on that path.
Everything was in place. The vision, the cipher, this chase across the galaxy and the linked fates of two civilizations- it all led here. Shepard stared at the terminal awaiting her with legs full of lead.
Kaidan touched her shoulder. "You ok?"
Maybe Rag was right. Maybe this is the only kind of future she got. He was right about most things, in the end.
Liara was already down the ramp, circling the terminal, trying to figure it out. Her scientific curiosity was irrepressible even in these dangerous circumstances.
"Nathaly," Kaidan said, drawing her attention with a touch of urgency. "Saren's already got the jump. Let's get this over with."
She forced a smile, quick and tight, because there was nothing else to be done. "Time to turn off that barrier and get out of here."
But she took his hand briefly, impulsively, as they walked towards Liara, a link to that other life she could feel slipping away with every passing second.
More orange static coalesced above the terminal as they approached. The holographic motes inscribed an hourglass, narrowed in the middle, twinning as they ran up and down the image in lines. Every so often, when the image was still new in the fractional second just after she blinked, she could almost see a large-headed figure in the noise.
A voice spoke. "You are not Prothean."
Shepard glanced at her team. By their confused looks, she guessed that the computer was again using the Prothean tongue.
The image firmed up a bit. A large, oblong head and wire-thin limbs peeked through the static, a ghost within a blizzard, so faint it might be only the product of snow-strained eyes. "But you are not machine either. This eventuality was one of many anticipated. This is why we sent our warning through the beacons."
It fizzled and squawked, electronic interference. Kaidan furrowed his brow. "Some kind of VI program? It's really badly damaged."
The VI was silent a long moment, twisting in the air. "I do not sense the taint of indoctrination upon any of you, unlike the one that passed recently. Perhaps there is still hope."
Shepard's interest sharpened. "You saw Saren?"
It stared at her, dimming briefly. A trail of motes spun off and illuminated a touchpad. "Please touch my console."
"Pardon?"
"I cannot understand you," it explained patiently. The motes brightened with insistence. "Touch my console."
Her glance was suspicious, but she circled around the holograph and, feeling a bit foolish, lay her hand against the terminal.
The cave vanished. It was a bit like when Shiala gave her the cipher, only this time, it was her mind, her humanity, being parsed, examined, copied. Too much happened too quickly for Shepard to consciously experience all of it. Snatches of memory- three years old, holding her grandmother's hand in the hot sun watching her father's ship leave for the war. A girl sprawled on the floor of a space station and scrawling her heart into a notebook.
She tried to pull away. Something stronger and more ethereal than glue held her palm to the console. Drunk on the roof with her girlfriend after their high school graduation. Climbing a tree in Brazil during her N1 training. Bodies in the mud on Akuze. A bullet in her shoulder. Batarians…
Missions, friends, enemies, regrets. Locating the beacon and hearing its message. Chasing Saren across the galaxy. Virmire. Ashley.
Though the process took only moments, when the program at last released Shepard her mind was reeling, as though years had passed. Her balance was clumsy. She staggered and tried to find her footing.
Then Kaidan was at her side, wrapping an arm about her to keep her upright. She found the tube in her suit neck and sucked down the tepid water gratefully, greedily. Her mouth was parched as if she hadn't drunk anything in ages.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I have read your essential characteristics," the machine announced. Though garbled by the failing power, the artificial voice was not unpleasant. "From this I have deduced a facsimile of your language. It will suffice. I am Vigil. You are safe here, thought that is likely to change. Soon, nowhere will be safe."
Liara was beside herself. Her hands clasped together spontaneously. "This is incredible. An actual, functional Prothean VI, before my very eyes!"
Shepard straightened, wiping her mouth. Kaidan's arm slid from her waist. She missed it immediately.
Her palm tingled with the memory of the scan. She stared at it, as though expecting to see scars. "Are you a VI? This seems like pretty advanced tech."
"I am an advanced non-organic analysis system with personality imprints from Ksad Ishan, chief overseer of the Ilos research station."
She wondered if Ishan was as uninflected as his digital descendent. "Why stop me up top? What do you want from us?"
"I brought you here to break a cycle that has persisted for millions of years. But first there are some things you must understand."
"I don't have time for a history lesson," she said with palpable impatience. "Saren is gaining on us every second I spend here."
"Your… Saren… is encountering delays." The holograph flickered. "There is time. Listen."
It began to speak. For days and years beyond counting, cycle after cycle, the reapers waited out the fitful rise of organic civilization in the cold abyss of dark space. To the Prothean's knowledge, nobody had ever found them there. The Milky Way was a large galaxy, with many satellites, but the gulf between these meager harbors was utterly devoid of resources. It was suspected they spent the eons in hibernation. Whether they dreamed, or of what, none could say.
They left behind a watcher. Sovereign. Every so often, it rose from its long slumber to peer into the night and evaluate whether civilization was once again ripe for the harvest. When the time was deemed right, it would turn the organics' greatest resource against them- the Citadel. It was a clever strategy. The space station sat at the hub of the relay network; anyone using the relays was bound to discover it. It was self-maintaining and move-in ready. Naturally, each cycle took full advantage.
But beneath the shining Presidium with its gardens and lagoon, beyond the five ward arms and thirteen million people's worth of habitable space, the Citadel possessed a darker purpose- a mass effect relay linking to dark space, one with the power to control the entire network. Sovereign's sole assignment was to open the relay and initiate the next round of annihilation. With a simple signal, it alerted the keepers to prepare the way.
So it was with the Protheans, and all those who came before. Their leadership was obliterated before their empire knew it was under attack. The brutal invasion consumed whole planets at a time. Some were simply wiped out. Others were enslaved, their populations turned to husks, or indoctrinated, able to betray other worlds in the guise of refugees or allies. One settlement after another, their empire crumbled.
Still the reapers were not satisfied. They directed their slaves to strip every world of resources, to systemically erase all Prothean technology, writing, art, culture. Centuries later all that remained were the hollowed out shells of places like Feros- and the occasional overlooked cache, like Therum, or like Mars.
Perhaps the caches were even intentional, carefully abandoned to guide the next cycle of organics. Shepard wondered how many civilizations flourished and died in obscurity every fifty thousand years because they simply weren't fortunate enough to arise beside the ashes of their predecessors, or with a relay attached to their system. Every species was irrevocably reliant on reaper technology to reach the stars.
However, when the reapers eradicated the Protheans, they overlooked something far more critical.
On the verge of replicating the relays and desiring to keep the work proprietary, Prothean scientists established a top-secret research facility in the backwater of the galaxy. Ilos. The project was so sensitive that the only records kept resided within the highest echelons of the government, aboard the Citadel, and in their haste the reapers themselves destroyed all evidence without examination. The researchers watched the destruction of their people from afar and made a wrenching yet extraordinary sacrifice. Rather than fight, they installed stasis pods within their archives, built Vigil, and settled in for the long twilight of their race.
And Vigil waited. Decade after decade, century after century, it scanned the skies, seeking confirmation of the reaper retreat. It witnessed the harvest, the stripping of their worlds, and the eradication of their culture. It saw what happened to the slave husks they left behind to rot and starve by the billions. It presided over the winnowing of the pods as slowly the power died, first the staff, then the security, until at last only a dozen scientists remained. The very last survivors of the Prothean genocide.
Upon waking, they realized the true horror of their predicament. Vainly, they queried the galaxy, but received only silence in reply. No scientist would ever believe that a handful of people could re-found a race. Nor did they harbor delusions of destroying the reapers who were by then long departed. Instead, they focused their vengeance elsewhere. Though they were lost, with the last effort of their lives, they might give those who came after a warning and a chance- because they had the Conduit.
"But what is the Conduit?" Shepard was baffled. All along, they'd assumed it had to be weapon, or at least something of strategic worth in a battle. The work done on Ilos wasn't even military.
Vigil flickered. "It is a prototype mass effect relay, linked to the heart of our civilization."
"The Citadel," Liara breathed. "And because it wasn't built by the reapers, they were not aware of its existence."
Shepard shook her head. "This isn't making any sense. Saren had the run of the Citadel. Why does he need a special relay? For that matter, why does Sovereign need Saren?"
"Sovereign couldn't open the relay," Kaidan said abruptly, as if reaching the end of a thought. He'd been silent throughout the entire recitation, deep in concentration. "That's what they did, right? The scientists- they interfered with the keepers somehow?"
Both Shepard and Liara turned to stare at him. Shepard frowned. "How could you possibly-"
"Remember that data I was looking at?" He rubbed his forehead. "The guy I was working with told me that nobody knows anything about the keepers. It's forbidden to interfere with them in any way, because the Citadel can't operate without them. They go places not even the Council can access. Vigil said they're the key. They manifest the link between the reapers and the Citadel's secret functions.
"Your surmise is mainly correct," Vigil said. "The keepers are indeed controlled by the Citadel."
"That explains some of the odd electromagnetic signatures we found. Nobody thought the Citadel itself could… communicate."
"Where did they come from?" Liara asked.
"We believed the keepers are a conquered race, perhaps the first to fall to machines. They were installed aboard the Citadel to permit new species to use the station without fully understanding the technology, to maintain reaper control. This reliance prevents civilizations from discovering its true purpose. At first it is likely they responded to reapers' commands directly, but like all organic things, they evolve. Now they answer only to the Citadel."
"Maybe that's why Sovereign recruited the geth rather than some other population," Liara suggested. "It needed help scouring the galaxy for information regarding what the Protheans had done, and it no longer trusted the stability of organics."
"You could be right." Shepard shrugged. It made sense. "Sovereign's gone out of its way to avoid revealing its true nature. Who knows how long it's chipped away at this problem."
Vigil agreed. "As mighty as they are, a single reaper could not hope to withstand the wrath of an entire galaxy. But a reaper is patient. Saren may be the last of Sovereign's indoctrinated puppets along this strange journey, but I doubt he was the first."
That raised a number of discomfiting questions, but for the moment, Shepard brushed them aside. "So I take it the Prothean scientists used the Conduit to gain access to the Citadel once the invasion ended. What loophole did they find?"
"The shift in the keepers' allegiance from the reapers to the Citadel took millions of years of natural evolution. So they did not target biology. Instead, they attacked the signal itself. This time, when Sovereign sent the command to the Citadel, it was not acknowledged by the keepers. Reaper control of the station's guardians was severed."
Shepard struck her palm with her fist. "That's why Saren needs the Conduit. It's a backdoor onto the Citadel, and by the time Sovereign found a solution, he'd been disbarred from the spectres."
Liara swallowed. "My mother- whatever else she may have been- was a brilliant woman. She may have foreseen that Saren would be unmasked before they were ready, and led him to this."
Shepard had a more urgent thought. "The Council's guarding the relay network, not the Citadel itself. He'll bypass all the defenses and give the station to Sovereign."
"Yes." A static-ridden hologram could hardly reflect even fabricated VI emotion, but the word dropped the temperature ten degrees. "Once Sovereign assumes direct control of the Citadel, it will override the station's systems and manually open the relay. And the cycle of extinction will begin again."
Shepard was churning through scenarios, her mind working at light speed. It was good, having a clear objective, even if it was damn near hopeless. "Sovereign will need to be physically present at the Citadel to carry out this plan?"
"Manual operation of the relay should require direct contact."
"And the entire Citadel fleet is dispersed to the relays right now, to defend against an invasion."
Kaidan glanced at her. "The Destiny Ascension's still there. It's the Citadel's primary defense."
"It's still a hell of a lot smaller than Sovereign, even without the geth fleet." She grimaced. "We need to warn them."
Liara licked her lips. "The Council won't listen."
"Then we won't tell the Council." She ran her hand over her hair. "I'll deal with Sovereign, somehow. How do we stop Saren? No matter what 'difficulties' he's having reaching the Conduit, he's still way ahead of us."
"I cannot delay him much longer." Vigil paused. "There's a data file in my console. Take a copy when you go and upload it to the Citadel's master control unit. It will corrupt security protocols and give you temporary control of the station. It may give you a chance against Sovereign."
Kaidan frowned. "Master control unit? I've never heard of anything like that."
"Follow Saren. To carry out his plan, he must go there himself."
"An inevitable showdown. Great." Shepard sighed and waved her omni-tool at the console, awaiting the download. "Got it. We should go."
Liara looked around the chamber with reluctance. "Are you certain? Power is failing. This might be our only chance to-"
"The mission takes priority. We have what we need." She licked her lips. "I'm sorry."
But as they left, she found there was one final question she could not ignore. "The scientists, the ones who went to the Citadel- what happened to them?"
Nothing altered in the motion of Vigil's motes. "The Conduit is only a prototype. The portal only links in one direction, so they were trapped on the station. I do not know what became of them. It is unlikely they found any food or water. I fear they suffered a slow, grim death."
A small ship in the dark, drifting towards the Alliance border and safety. "We'll make it worth it."
"That is my hope." Vigil dimmed, and at the same time the lights in the chamber flickered. "You must hurry. Saren is very close now."
It was a long time before anyone spoke as they rode the elevator back to the road where their Mako awaited. Shepard checked her rifle. Her thoughts were too complicated to easily express. Anger and sadness at the fate of this research colony, along with an overwhelming sense of futility and rising dread that they were far too few and far too late. Nothing they did aboard the station would matter without a fleet to defend it. She needed a fleet- any fleet.
Liara fixated on another topic. "All their culture, all their advanced technology, and the Protheans were taken in by the reapers, just as we were. They failed."
"Not entirely." Kaidan was ever the optimist, and the type to admire noble sacrifice. "They've given us a weapon. They've given us a chance… if we can just get there in time."
The elevator opened. They ran up the hall and clamored into the tank. Shepard punched the comm, abandoning the radio blackout. "Ground team to Normandy, come in."
Pressly answered her hail. "Commander, the geth fleet is abandoning Ilos and turning back towards the relay. Request orders."
The barrier was down. Shepard slammed her foot on the accelerator. They peeled away, splashing stale water and mud. "Have Joker follow at a distance. You need to get to the Citadel. Get on the comm and go straight to Hackett- I don't care how many junior aides you have to steamroll to get to his office. Use my name. Tell him Saren is sending his entire force to attack the station."
"The relay guard-"
"The Citadel fleet's spread so thin that the patrol won't be more than a speed bump, and you know what our word is worth with the Council. We need Hackett. We need him to rally the fleets."
"Yes, ma'am. What about the ground team?"
"We're arriving by another route. Get it done." She cut the transmission and focused on the road.
Nobody felt like talking. The route was uneventful; aside from a few token patrols left behind by Saren, they were alone. Evidently, he saved most of his forces for the upcoming battle. Shepard wondered what it would look like on the ground when they arrived. The Citadel had no standing assault force. There was C-Sec, but from what Shepard had seen, they weren't equipped for an all-out fight. Street skirmishes and riots were more their speed.
Even if Hackett pulled off a miracle, Sovereign would win this race. She didn't like the odds of landing any marines past the reaper. It could be that the only real support she'd have once they passed through the Conduit were the two people in the Mako with her. And while Shepard would take Kaidan and Liara over just about anyone Hackett or the Council could supply, they were looking at an entire army of geth.
Her eyes cut to Kaidan, just for a second. He was peering into the gun camera and frowning with concentration. This can't change anything, he'd said. Shepard snorted to herself. Right.
At the time it seemed like the only thing to do. And it was undeniably a heady relief, allowing their affection for each other free rein. But if she'd ever done anything more foolish she couldn't recall it; they were headed straight into a war almost entirely alone, and Shepard didn't think she could stand losing him. A day ago he was properly compartmentalized and she could have ignored it for as long as was required. Now, he was everywhere, under her skin and in her blood, and could not be locked away. Revealing how much she cared for him wasn't only an admission to him- it was also to herself.
And there was Liara beside her, the scientist forced to become a fighter, who never asked to be here but threw her whole heart into it anyway. There was no possible way she could know what she was doing. Instead, she trusted Shepard. If Liara died, she would never forgive herself. Ash was hard enough and Ash volunteered.
Her mouth settled into a line and somehow the Mako found another burst of speed. No more. No matter what she had to give up.
They would defeat Saren, and Sovereign. They would make safe the Traverse and secure victory for the galaxy by borrowing time against the coming invasion. The reapers lived in dark space? That was quite an abyss to cross on fifty thousand years' worth of depleted resources. When they came, the galaxy would be waiting.
She held Sovereign's image in her mind. You've been at this for millions, maybe even billions of years, but you've never yet faced Nathaly Shepard, and you're about to find out exactly what that means.
Liara sat up, her hands flying to the ladar. "Geth contacts. The Conduit must be close."
"Hang on." Shepard swerved around a corner. The tank exited the bunker at last, into an orange burst of late morning sunshine glowing through the high ash clouds.
On either side, retaining walls rose up, restricting their approach. The road sloped steeply towards a circular plaza, the lone portion of this once-great city that remained entirely intact, sheltered from the elements by the rest of the metropolis. Ringing the plaza was a squadron of geth. These were not the gentle, agile troops they were most accustomed to facing. These were the heavy, armored, four-footed sentries standing as tall as a statue and armed with the kind of artillery that could take apart entire buildings.
Kaidan echoed her thoughts. "We can't kill all those. We'll be hamburger in no time."
"We're not going to fight." She took a deep breath and started down the ramp, gaining speed. Behind the geth she spied a familiar sight- a vertically aligned mass effect relay, miniature in scale, an exact match for the relay monument anchored in the Presidium lake. "We're making a run for it."
By the time they were in firing range, they were moving so fast the flanking geth had difficulty establishing a firing solution. Their plasma shells went wide of the tank. Those geth arrayed in front of them hammered at their nose.
"Forward shield depleted!" Liara's hands were frantic at the instruments.
Shepard swore. That was faster than she'd hoped. A shell exploded against the port and the tank rocked on its wheels. She kept her foot down as she tried to clear the dazzle from her eyes.
Now a steady hail of smaller caliber fire pelted their armor, digging into the Mako and forming cracks in the glass.
Kaidan clung to the gun, bracing himself. "We can't take much more of this!"
The shields were useless anyway. With a flick of her hand she transferred power to the engine. The geth began to blur.
A second plasma shell ripped the gun turret from the roof. She heard Kaidan cry out, but there was no time to even think. Straight ahead, energy gathered at the heart of the conduit. Her head was buzzing. Her heart was pounding.
A third shell, a direct hit to her side, knocked her teeth together and threatened to upset the tank. Her palms sweated against the haptic controls. The Mako's armor was failing. "Come on, come on, come on-"
And then, just like that, they flew past the last of the geth defenses and straight into the heart of the relay. A tongue of blue lashed forth and seized the vehicle like a toy. "This is it!"
They were jerked into alignment without a care for the fragile organic contents, banging about the cabin as the tank shot up towards the sky nose-first. The inertial dampeners failed. Acceleration plastered Shepard to her couch. Belatedly, she realized the restraints intended for descent would've been useful, but she couldn't so much as lift her arm to fasten them. It felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest. Breath came in shallow gasps. And still they gained momentum.
Just as Shepard was sure this was how they died, crushed like ants by the sad combination of a battered Mako and prototype technology, all sensation vanished. And then Ilos was gone.
For the barest fraction of a second, she was alone in the universe, in the expectant space between one relay and the next, the moment she always hoped to see.
Shepard had no muscles to tense or lungs to gasp. All that existed here were probabilities suspended in such terrifying exhilaration that it stole away thought. A still and beautiful emptiness embraced them.
It could have been a second or an eon later when the Presidium ceiling blinked into view, decked out with real smoke and false clouds, and Shepard realized they were still rising.
The return of sound- the whistle of air, creaking of metal, the blaring warnings- jarred her out of reverie.
"Shit!" She tried the retrorockets. There was no response from the vehicle. Wheels spun on thin air. The tank shivered alarmingly.
Kaidan somehow pulled himself up towards the front. "If we land in the lake we're done!"
"Navigation won't respond!" Liara punched buttons with increasing desperation.
Shepard swiped the useless steering interface out of her way. "Somebody do something!"
Slowly, their skyward velocity went to zero. They hung at the apex just long enough to send her stomach into her throat, and started to fall.
She attempted to reroute power. The computer died midway through. The tank tumbled through the air, a whirling montage of sky and terraces and water spinning across the forward port. Alarms sounded throughout the cabin.
Shepard grabbed a strut and shoved her head down against her chest. "Brace for impact-"
The Mako slammed into a walkway with a horrifying crash that crushed the roof like a soda can and sent glass and metal flying in all directions. It took a while for the noise to die away. Then the tank shuddered one final time and died, with all six wheels still turning aimlessly overhead.
From the cabin there was not so much as a sigh.
