March 11, 11,988 CE
Outside Ayshire Outpost, on Kawaik D-2 (lunar body) orbiting planet Kawaik Delta, Kawaik System, Lesotho Sector, Gemini Sigma…
Sispius Habinex, Commander of a two-bit Turian nationalist pirate group, the Sons of Cartaan, watched nervously from the rocky crag his forces were hiding behind.
A few kilometers away was what appeared to be a small scientific or observation post with a few strange mechs and rovers walking around it.
"Team 2 in position, sir!" His right-hand man, Cammius Gailus, commed him. "They don't seem to be alerted to our approach!"
Habinex snorted. "Ha, looks like their sensors are quite shoddy. Or not installed at all- they look pretty new. Looks like this won't be such a hard job after all."
"Agreed, sir! That stellar storm might've helped too. Shall we commence?"
"But keep an eye out for mines, soldier. Don't underestimate Salarian merch- they may be short-sighted but they're damn sneaky!" Habinex ordered. "Go ahead! Sniper Team, stay alert, but hold your fire as long as possible! We don't want to alert them prematurely!"
The two pirate groups continued to approach the base from two directions, staying behind any cover they could.
About a kilometer away, one of the mysterious mechs suddenly turned and said something vaguely unintelligible. Immediately, the mechs stopped what they were doing and immediately grabbed for what were apparently weapons.
"Snipers, fire!" Habinex yelled. "Teams, engage, engage, engage!"
Snipers slammed into several of the mechs, but appeared to do little damage, embroiling the assault teams in a brutal gunfight.
The situation worsened as several concealed turrets emerged from the ground to fire, followed by a number of boxy levitating drones.
Habinex winced as the screams and agonized cries of his dying and wounded men. "All troops, abort! Fall back and regroup! Fall back now!"
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While her hired pawns were being butchered, Council Spectre Tela Vasir slipped toward the base's back entrance. She didn't know whether or not she should be surprised when no new alarms sounded, no mechs or turrets fired her way. Just like her intel had said.
"Huh, maybe the old bastard really has a mole on the inside," Vasir muttered. "Wouldn't be the first time…"
She attached a tiny EMP capacitor mine to the door, and hurried back, using a small, extendable fiberglass shield to cover herself. Once the tiny charge went off, she wrenched the entrance open with her practiced biotics, and forced herself through a narrow opening.
A gale began to billow out from the pressurized base until Vasir managed to wrench the door shut. "No airlock- I guess it really wasn't meant to be opened, but no physical-" She stopped when she saw several physical locking mechanisms had been smashed by brute force. "Huh…"
Without further delay, she hurried hastily into the base, scanning for enemies. To her astonishment, several smaller mechs lay strewn about, damaged or no longer functional.
Following the intel she'd received on Illium to reach the small storage room was easy enough, where she found a single mech still standing and sorting through some boxes.
It turned to see Vasir enter. "Ah, I th- AAAHH!" It began in what appeared to be Thessian, but Vasir reflexively unleashed a Biotic Singularity on it, before spraying the machine with her M-15 Vindicator.
Wasting no time, she immediately went to what it was rummaging through. "...Volus...datapads?" She hastily piled as much of it into a box as she could and quickly retreated back out the exit from which she had come.
The pursuit she expected never came, even as the sound of continued gunfire could be heard in the distance. Vasir could only guess that the Turian pirates must've lasted longer than she'd expected.
A kilometer or so out, Vasir climbed down into a small crater, where her ship, a small stealth prowler, was hidden, covered by a camouflage tarp.
She couldn't help but smirk as she started up her engines. "Even I couldn't have imagined it would go this smoothly… the Broker must've had a killer source this time."
Once Tela Vasir had cleared orbit, she paused to examine the contents of the datapads she'd acquired. They appeared to be manufactured by the medium-sized Volus corporation, Trebic Industries.
But inside, she was astonished to find a series of archaeological logs on Prothean artifacts, written in Salarian. Only minimal encryption was used, nothing Vasir couldn't crack in minutes. Although, the precise coordinates of their planets and even star clusters were left blank, the descriptions didn't ring any bells for Vasir, and she strongly suspected that at least some of them had never been reported to Council authorities before.
Furthermore, some of the conclusions and dark predictions were quite unbelievable.
"Evidence of an ancient race of AI Machines that wiped out the Protheans...?" Vasir muttered to herself. "What kind of edgelord fantasy is this? Hundreds of thousands of super-dreadnought-sized warships lurking in dark space? Waiting for organic civilizations to establish a new spacefaring society to prey on? Capable of brainwashing or mind-controlling organic beings around them? Involved with the 'Collectors'? May have been involved in the Rachni Wars?" She shook her head. "This... can't be real, can it?"
The Spectre put down the datapads of apocalyptic predictions and existential dread. She could almost see the dismissive disbelief that the Council would regard this with. Vasir sighed- best to not take these to them and make herself look ridiculous.
Rather, she'd just bring one of the destroyed mechs to them, make a report on the mysterious base, Volus datapads, the Salarian writing, and potential illegal excavation of heretofore-unknown Prothean sites. Maybe she'd just include a footnote on the wild theory, and attach the relevant files in the appendix, but the Council was almost guaranteed to ignore them.
However, as for her other employer... Well, she had no idea how seriously the Shadow Broker would take any of this, but it wasn't her problem. She'd just report all of it, and let him- or her- do as they pleased. After all, if they kept the gaming records of famous figures, maybe they'll find some use for this data after all.
Vasir went to her navigation computer and plotted coordinates to take her out of Gemini Sigma and to Illium in the Crescent Nebula.
Spectres like her rarely made serious mistakes- but they were far from infallible. Distracted by her bewildering findings, Vasir forgot to scan her ship for possible tracking devices.
If she had, she might have noticed a tiny, almost imperceptible electromagnetic signal anomaly at the back of the ship. Lower-quality equipment and untrained eyes might have missed it altogether or dismissed it as stellar interference, but Vasir might have glimpsed it had she done the scan. And if she decided to park her ship on a nearby planet or moon to examine it for 'unwelcome guests', she might have found the small STG drone attached to her ship.
But as it was, Vasir was now blissfully unaware of the hitchhiker as she flew her ship toward her rendezvous point on Illium.
