Chapter 116. Start The Clock
Twenty Minutes Later, 3. May 2417 AD, Mirage of Halegeuse
"Three weeks to get inside Hegemony space and stop the end of the world. Talk about a steep timeline," Undrak muttered after Lawson was done telling them just what she'd learned mere minutes ago.
"You wouldn't happen to have some slaver buddies who could give us a ride?" Miller quipped in return. Up to now he'd been standing with his back to the wall, looking at Lawson from a distance and with a vengeance. What the younger ASOC operative didn't know yet was that Hofmann had told Haugen that Miller was positively livid with himself for 'not blowing that Cerberus bitch's head clean off her shoulders' (his words, not Haugens.) That anger had been showing itself more and more in the last couple of days and – with the lack of a Lawson-shaped target- started to project itself on who was in Miller's mind the next logical target: the batarian Undrak.
Ever since the mission to the Messina had ended with the rest of the Recon platoon dead, the Recon NCO had started to hang around Phantom. They were the last remaining non-salarian soldiers of the task force and since Haugen was aware that Undrak was hurting as badly as any lone, surviving commander would, they had welcomed the batarian into Phantom's social circle – albeit at a bit of an awkward distance where no one was entirely comfortable being around each other.
Hofmann hadn't minded and if Mav did have problems with a 'four-eye' hanging around, he was keeping them to himself.
Miller however…
Well.
Miller was still Miller and no trial of fire or turian uniform was ever going to change that he hated batarians.
On Haugen's … polite request… the sergeant had agreed to keep his snide remarks out of Undrak's earshot and act as professionally around the batarian as his captain expected him to. But given the bombshell that had just been dropped on them, it was clear that the conversation he'd had with the sergeant had slipped into the back of his mind and the muzzle he'd put on Miller had slipped off.
Undrak took the remark in stride though.
"Afraid not, Sergeant. I was born on Palaven. The only slavers I know are the ones I sent to meet the wraiths," the red-brown striped batarian responded before pointing at a series of blue lines running down from his mouth to his neck. Haugen hadn't paid them much mind up to now and certainly not considered them as the equivalent of turian facial markings. He and the batarian hadn't exactly shared any non-war-related stories yet and the significance of the markings was lost to anyone who didn't know where Undrak was from and lacked knowledge about the traditions of the batarian minority living in turian space – sort of like Haugen.
"Mhm," Miller murmured before him and Undrak entered a staring contest. "We sure we wanna keep him around if we're going into Hegemony space? What's stopping him from selling us out to his pals?"
"Miller," he said sharply. The sergeant turned to face his CO. "Keep that shit to yourself. The sergeant's on our side. Remember that."
Miller nodded reluctantly. It was good that the man's respect for Haugen still outweighed his deep disdain for batarians – a disdain Haugen had to admit he had felt just as badly until recently and was only slowly starting to see past; albeit by necessity.
"I know the timeline is steep, but we'll have to make it," Lawson sighed. The Cerberus officer looked pale – more so than usual – and all around uneasy. This was the worst news they could've possibly received. All of the sudden, the abstract war with the Reapers they'd been sent to delay had a starting date and the weight of that news was showing. "If what the probes encountered really is the Reaper fleet… which I have little doubt about… then we need to delay them by any means possible. Even if we start to mobilize right away,three weeks isn't nearly enough," Lawson trailed off. "We need to stop this, otherwise we'll all be dead before the year's over," she said firmly before bringing up her omni-tool and breathing in. "Sergeant Undrak raised a valid point. Our first priority needs to be to secure a way into batarian space and gather more intel on the Viper Nebula. And while it is a daunting task… I'm sure Cerberus will figure something out." As soon as the words left Lawson's mouth, all members of Phantom first glanced at Haugen and then at Lawson. They were all remembering the same briefing from years ago – the one about a discarded, hypothetical mission of theirs that had failed before they'd ever set foot in the Nebula.
Because of this briefing, they all knew the answer to the question Lawson was posing and they were also all very surprised that she didn't seem to be in the know. Well, or in awe at her skill at faking not being in the know.
"And you said this was in the Viper Nebula, yes?" Haugen asked, prompting Hofmann to shoot him a look. His senior NCO probably knew what he was about to say due to the way he had emphasized the location. A moment later, Mav and Miller clearly realized what the look Hofmann and Haugen were sharing meant. Miller cleared his throat to catch Haugen's attention. Then he pointed at Undrak and shook his head.
He had a point.
But then again, he also didn't.
"Yes," Lawson muttered, distracted by her omni.
Haugen sighed.
"Then we won't have to worry about the way in or the intel gathering," he started.
"Sir, I don't think you should-" Hofmann interrupted, prompting Haugen to raise his hand in acknowledgement, much to the confusion of Undrak and Lawson.
"Your concerns are noted, Hofmann. If this blows up, it'll all me," he said calmly. "Like I said. If this is in the Viper Nebula, we won't have to worry about a way in. The navy already mapped a secure route to the Bahak system and its subsequent take-over during the staging phase of Blue Solstice," he explained slowly.
Lawson stopped what she was doing and looked at him with a blank expression.
"You know about Blue Solstice?" …. So it had been an act after all…
"Yes," Haugen.
"How?"
Before he could reply, Undrak spoke up.
"Wait. Blue Solstice as in War Plan Blue Solstice?" the Recon operative asked carefully. In "That thing's actually real? Like as in not Hegemony propaganda?"
"Yes."
"Huh," the batarian murmured. "So the primarchs really were ready to get us kicked off the Council for the HSA…" he observed before looking at the Cerberus operative.
"How do you know about this plan, Captain?" Lawson pressed.
Haugen sighed.
Before he answered, the blonde officer looked at Phantom and threw them a look asking for permission. They all grumbled in agreement. "There used to be a high-sec prison on Arathot. One that held HSA soldiers captured during batarian slave raids."
"That still doesn't explain how you know."
"Because I'm only getting there," Haugen responded, "after we captured Bahak, he told HSAIS that the Hegemony is in splinters. His intel was vague, but still enough for top-brass to start getting comfortable with the idea that now might be a good time to get our people back. Long story short, while HSAIS dressed some veteran S13 agent up like a smuggler and snuck him into the Viper Nebula's mixed-species slave smuggling ring to put an ear to the ground, Hackett dusted off the old Blue Solstice plans and briefed us on the possible logistics of an Arathot incursion, using the exact tactics employed in Blue Solstice' first phase…" Haugen looked at Undrak and Lawson.
"Trust me, we looked about as surprised as you do right now. Sort of hard to believe that the bat-" he caught himself, "the Hegemony didn't like about that part," Haugen noted and then went on. "After we got briefed, we were running drills in a kill house mock-up of the prison for weeks. At the same time, HSAIS' man on the ground managed to get himself inside the Arathot prison and out again," Haugen remembered. "We met him some weeks later, during the de-brief. An older guy, late fifties, probably. Sounded Terra Novan, but never gave us a name," the officer recalled before realizing that his impression wasn't important right now. "Anway. Apparently, the guy had already been quite familiar with batarian prisons and their slaving operations. He told us that he'd spent fifteen years in the Terminus playing corsair, basically fighting a war with the Hegemony without actually going to war with them. He told us that his days of being a privateer meant that he never could sit still for long. Made him nervous. So one day he gets bored hanging around an asteroid smuggling hub in the Bahak System and decides to risk taking a peak at the prison before sending us in instead of relying on word-of-mouth. I never got a chance to ask how he got in and out of a high-sec prison and I doubt he would've answered me anyway… but when he came back from the prison, he told command that every human who'd ever been incarcerated inside the prison had been dead for years," Haugen looked at Miller in particular and noticed how his eyes narrowed. "In his words, all human prisoners had been made into varren food just after the Blitz. It had been some kind of retribution action because the prison warden had lost his sons on Elysium," Haugen glanced at the ground and then looked at Undrak, glad to finally get to the happy portion of the story. "So, to keep up with the spirit of retribution that the warden valued so much, the specialist decides that he'll save us the trip to Arathot and commandeers one of the slaver barges. He kills the whole crew and sends the damn thing on a slower-than-light collision with the prison. The way he tells it, he accidentally messed up a decimal or two when he put in the velocity and didn't just nuke the prison but also the military base to its north and a bit of the but if you ask me… he probably did that intentionally to fuck with the Hegemony some more. Then he flew back to HSA space with some junkyard elcor shuttle, got debriefed and went back to the Terminus to do whatever the hell it is you send a guy like that to do."
"One human commandeered a slaver barge?" Undrak asked, getting hung up on the same detail as Haugen and the rest of Phantom. "How?"
"He wasn't exactly forthcoming with the precise details of the op," Haugen admitted. "It did spark some controversy among Phantom though," he went on before rubbing his neck, knowing exactly what would follow.
"For the record, I'm still team nerve gas," Hofmann injected. "You know how HSAIS is. They definitely still have NTX lying around somewhere, even if they keep saying that they threw it into a sun."
"Nah. He used the fire suppression system and vented the air out of the ship. I mean the guy clearly improvises everything he does, otherwise he wouldn't have rammed a planet with a slaver barge," Miller argued.
"Even after two years, you're still both wrong. That dude looked like he killed the entire crew in their sleep. Cut their throats with dull cutlery and watched 'em all bleed out to make sure they were dead for real. I could see it in his eyes. He was unhinged," Mav offered, to which Haugen let out a small chuckle that managed to obstruct the fact that the Reapers were about to destroy the galaxy for just one blissful second.
… he was still partial to the idea that there had never been a crew to begin with though…
"Anway," Haugen folded his arms, "bottom line is that you can call your boss and tell him that he doesn't need to waste any time with re-writing Blue Solstice to keep us in the dark. We're already in the know and we can get started whenever the logistics get sorted out."
Two Hours Later, 3. May 2417 AD, Eden Prime, Cooper Wells Combined Forces Base
"He's… nothing like I expected," Liara said after the door of the room that their new guest – the prothean commander called 'Javik' – closed.
"I know," Kaidan offered sympathetically, only giving a second of attention to the mixed squad of Cabals and BAR troops guarding the door on either side.
After they had returned from the ruin a couple of hours ago, Arterius had tasked Liara with prying Javik for answers about the Crucible and other prothean secrets that might stop the Reapers. Simultaneously, he'd asked the archeologist to get something useful of the prothean regarding their society that might help them understand just how they had fallen to the Reapers. Liara had also tried to satisfy her own curiosity about their precursors… but she hadn't been very successful in any of these pursuits.
Ever since he'd been woken up by them four hours ago and been flown to this base, Javik had only shown them three things: his unquenchable thirst for Reaper blood; his deep regret over having lost 'his empire'… and his clear disdain about the fact that he was 'surrounded by primitives'.
Since the human biotic knew how little of Liara's expectations Javik met and how earthshattering this whole day had been for her, he decided to try and change the subject to something he'd been wondering about for the two and a half hours…
"So. Where do you figure Arterius and his buddies went?" Kaidan asked. Originally, the general had been with them, as a First-Contact representative of the Turian Hierarchy (just like Kaidan had acted as a representative for the HSA). But a couple of minutes after Javik had started to rant about how 'this cycle' was clearly inferior to the protheans' due to its insistence on 'cooperation above conquest' Arterius had barged out of the door like he'd left the stove on back on Palaven. Javik had taken his very sudden retreat from the conversation as a sign of the general being insulted by his behavior and asked that they tell the 'thin-skinned turian' that 'words would be the least of his worries when the Reapers arrived' and subsequently strip him of his rank for 'conduct unbecoming of an imperial field commander'.
While he wouldn't call himself a close friend to the general, Kaidan suspected that personal insults weren't the reason the turian and his honorguard had left in such a hurry.
"He's so different. Like someone drew a caricature of an evil alien overlord and put him in front of our feet," Liara muttered, perplexed. She was clearly still in disbelief and he wouldn't blame her for it. "How could we be so wrong about them, Kaidan? Everything Javik told us… the protheans … they're more like the batarians than anyone else."
Alenko sighed.
"Maybe it's the number of eyes," he joked before realizing that now was probably a poor time to joke. "Javik says he was born centuries into the war, Liara. He's the product of his time, not an example of what all protheans were like" he figured, seriously trying to comfort the asari.
"Even so, they were clearly not the wise scholars I wanted them to be…" the asari muttered before they turned the corner of the evacuated barracks where they were keeping Javik in and found Sergeant Veltax already waiting for them. Kaidan wasn't particularly good at reading turians, even if he'd taken an online course on their expressions back during the weeks on the SR-1 when he'd suspected that Garrus was plotting their collective deaths…
But even with that limited experience, he could tell that Veltax looked grimmer than usual. "Hey. We were just talking about you," Kaidan began.
"I take it you're done with the prothean?" the turian asked immediately, without a word of greeting.
"For now. He asked us to give him some space to collect his thoughts. All of this…" Liara said. "… is very jarring for him."
"I'd be more worried if it wasn't," Veltax muttered before waving his hand towards a nearby room. "This way please. There's some very urgent news the general need to share with you."
Liara and Kaidan nodded and followed the turian into the room. By the looks of it, it was the NCO's office of the barracks. There was some limited communication equipment, a barebones desk, some uncomfortable looking chairs (one of which was currently being strained by the heavy-set Sergeant Galviat sitting on it)… and one General Desolas Arterius leaning on the desk, supporting his upper body with both of his arms. He was still in his armor – minus the helmet - and staring past them with ice-cold blue eyes and Kaidan couldn't help but feel off-put by the complete lack of an expression on his somewhat asymmetrical face. The partially amputated left mandible, the cut-off fringe at the back of his head, the scared plates on the left side of his face, nothing was moving, like someone had frozen him in time.
Veltax closed the door behind them and exhaled audibly, prompting Arterius to snap out of his trance.
"Doctor. Captain," he began, his voice was low and sounded in that moment, he sounded disturbingly like the recording of Saren Arterius that had started this entire mess.
(Or maybe the more accurate conclusion as that Saren Arterius had sounded a lot like his brother was just now given that Desolas was the elder.)
"Since I consider both of you to be very competent and intelligent people, I suspect that you already know that me leaving the way I did earlier was for good reason," his voice flanged. Arterius had always sounded a bit off – probably because of the aforementioned missing part of a mandible – but the after-effect of the turian's speech was even more different than usual. It was far more pronounced and noticeable beyond the level that the translator simulated.
He wasn't entirely sure why, but the sound of the turian's pair of vocal cords vibrating long after he'd finished sent chills up Kaidan's spine. Due to the vastly different vocal anatomy of the two species, it was impossible to find a human equivalent for what Arterius was doing right now… but just by looking at Galviat and Veltax, he knew that the reaction was something to worry about. The flanging vibration sound lasted a few more seconds and then Arterius audibly cleared his throat.
"I've just received an urgent report from Palaven," he paused, looking at the helmet in front of him. "As of five hours ago, fifteen of the probes we sent into dark space two years ago have stopped transmitting … just after they discovered an enormous mass of contacts moving towards the galactic horizon. Before they stopped transmitting, they transmitted readings that suggests that the contacts they encountered are moving in organized formations and maintaining an artificial course that'll see them reaching the galactic rim before the month is through," Kaiden's eyes widened and Liara gasped, both knowing what Arterius was about to say before he actually did it. "It's them. They're here."
Kaidan swallowed.
Liara spoke.
"How exactly long? And from where?"
Arterius straightened up.
"The Viper Nebula and unless they slow down or speed up… we have twenty-three days left before they arrive," Desolas closed his eyes. "I've been told that the Council's anti-reaper task force is already working on a solution that'll buy us some time. Something about disabling the Alpha Relay inside the Viper Nebula… but I don't think I have to tell either of you the magnitude of the situation we are now in. We've spent the last years racing against time and now the clock's about to run out on us," he opened his eyes again and looked at Liara. "We need that weapon."
Kaidan felt his hand tremble behind his back.
What they needed wasn't a weapon.
It was a damn miracle.
Forty Minutes Later, 3. May 2417 AD, Cronos Station
Harper swiped his finger over the holograms projected in front of his face, skipping highly classified, twenty-year old files with overly on-the-nose names like 'Teal Rain', 'Orange Monsoon and 'Black Moon'. As he went through the names, Harpers suspected that whoever had been in charge of naming the HSA's various emergency protocols had moved on to theoretical war plans after the fact…
"There you are," he muttered when the words 'Blue Solstice' appeared in front of his eyes. He pulled a long drag from the cigarette in his hand and exhaled, dropping the still smoldering piece of paper and tobacco into the ashtray to his left.
It had been just over five hours since he'd gotten word from General Kryik that the probes the turians had launched had found what they'd been looking for… the Reaper armada heading for the galaxy.
While he was standing here, looking over War Plan Blue Solstice and trying to decide if it was suitable for what needed to be done, harrowing words of warning backed up by the Hierarchy's mobilization notice of all reservists who'd left service in the last ten years was travelling across the individual governments of the Council members. He'd only listened in for a few minutes before getting back to work but from what he'd been able to catch… the situation wasn't being received the way he hoped it would have…
Even though Arcturus was taking the word of their turian allies serious and an emergency parliamentary meeting was already scheduled for tomorrow, Harper knew firsthand that the HSA's military capabilities and war-readiness were limited at the moment.
The deployments in the CIP and the crippling blow the human economy had taken during the last all-out mobilization two years ago had slowed things down significantly and inflicted a lot of damage on the asset of the HSA's military that allowed it to play ball with the superpowers of the galaxy.
While the turians were unmatched maneuver warfare specialists with access to unrivaled firepower and numbers, the asari hit the hardest pound-for-pound, used the most advanced warships and could fall back on literal centuries of training. Meanwhile, the salarians could deliver precision strikes like no one else, were experts at dominating air spaces and usually won the war before it ever started.
The HSA's armed forces were admirably competent and had made it a trend to come out on top against technologically superior foes surprisingly often. But since they were two thousand years behind the rest of the Council when it came to interstellar war, they couldn't really challenge the militaries of the big three – except for in one aspect; logistics.
Whereas the Hierarchy had more ships, soldiers and weapons than the rest of the galaxy combined, the Republics had universal biotics, unmatched technology and the toughest warships. Finally, the Union had STG, stealth technology and the ability to defeat you before you knew you were even fighting them.
In the place of these factors of power, the HAS's defining military asset sounded rather boring… What allowed humanity to play in the top league wasn't as much an inherent excellence unique to the human species or some natural knack for war… but rather a disproportionately large logistics corps. Relative to the size of their armed forces, the Alliance had the largest fleet of cargo shuttles, the most military transports and a near unending armada of good, old-fashioned supply-trucks that had been mothballed for the last three centuries who were guided by competent officers that could organize these assets into neat, well-protected supply chains that kept the gear flowing all the way to the front line units.
The disproportionate number of logistical units within the HSA –particularly among the tonnage of the navy– seemed confusing and outdated at first, In a galaxy connected by Mass Relays that allowed near instantaneous travel, there was after all hardly a point in maintaining a fleet of ship that could transport supplies that'd last for well over a year.
But before making a final judgement one had to consider a crucial factor that had been absent in the development of all other Council Member militaries: the Relay Placement Paradox.
Up until First Contact, the HSA's military had exclusively operated within the small portion of the galaxy that just happened to measured travel time not in minutes or hours, but rather days, weeks and months.
Even with state-of-the-art Element Zero drives (like the one the Normandy contained), it took forty-five days to travel from Arcturus, the human gateway to Council Space, to the farthest reaches of human space, the colonies located in the north-west heading of Earth. If one were to undertake the journey with a regular, human-made civilian or military drive, it was nearly ninety days…
Because of these distances and travel times, the HSA's military was first and foremost focused on one thing: moving a lot of things from A to B at a quick pace.
After his considerations on the state of the human military were done, Harper sighed.
History had proved that at the end of the day, supply chains won wars. You could have the best soldiers, most well-connected spy services and toughest warships… if they had no bullets or fuel or couldn't go to where they needed to go, they'd amount to nothing.
So he should technically be happy that the most outstanding feature of humanity's military was its ability to move stuff around, even if it sounded boring on paper.
… yet there was one gleaming issue.
Supply lines – especially on the scale as the ones the HSA liked to build up - only worked if you could pay for them long-term.
And that brought them back to the earlier issue.
The human economy was in a bad state, and not just because it was increasingly depending on trade with the CIP. Inflation was increasing and human credits were worth less than before the attack on Eden Prime. Before First Contact, the HSA had never had to worry about its money measuring up to someone else's. It had been a fully self-sufficient state, a condition that Arcturus had taken great care to maintain while not being fully integrated into the CitadelCouncil. Humanity's membership on the executive body had changed things though. As part of being a fully integrated member of the galactic community, Arcturus had seen it fit to drop all trading restrictions on human corporations… which in turn meant that HSA-based fuel companies, Eezo mines and Titanium manufacturers were now selling to non-human clients who could buy more with less. And since humanity had very little to offer outside of the riches of the Attican traverse (a two-thousand year gap tended to make you somewhat less competitive when it came to consumer goods that weren't food) the return just wasn't enough to neutralize the loss…
So to summarize, things weren't looking all that grand and if he were a smarter man with more time on his hand, he'd probably trade the one human investment he'd ever made (the HSA's government bond for the Fringe World rebuilding effort) for asari' or volus' stocks…
But enough of that.
Harper picked his cigarette back up and read over Blue Solstice's initial phase; a stealth-frigate-based, special-forces-backed attack on military installations inside the Viper Nebula. They could use the approach vectors, but they still needed to figure out how to permanently disable the Alpha Relay (a feat he was sure would result in all-out war with the batarians if they ever discovered the HSA's involvement).
Simultaneously, he had to think about how to break the news to Shepard, especially the part where she wouldn't be sent to try and stop the imminent Reaper Invasion.
The delivery of the Reaper IFF to the Normandy was on its way and with it, the Collector's homebase beyond the relay was in reach. As soon as Doctor Solus delivered his solution to the Collectors and the IFF was properly integrated (a process that Cerberus would stall until the salarian was ready), Shepard could do what they brought her back for; take the Collectors out of the equation and allow humanity to focus on the real threat: the Reapers.
As he read over the details of Blue Solstice, Harper glanced at the countdown he had set up the second he'd gotten words from the turians.
It'd be a close call… but if the Commander and the Captain and everyone around them played their parts to perfection, they might just buy themselves some more time.
… might.
Ten Hours Later, 2158 CE, HSASV Normandy, Laboratory
"-quite good at genetics as a subset of biology, because I am an expert- hmhmhmhmhmhm" Callius heard Solus hum as she entered the laboratory. While Shepard was overseeing the transfer of the Reaper IFF, which Cerberus promised would allow them to traverse the Omega-Four Relay, Callius had been sent to the lab to ask if Mordin could look over the handiwork of Cerberus and EDI after the fact.
Ever since the little … issue regarding Leng's loyalty… the commander had grown even more suspicious of everything Cerberus. She wasn't saying it out loud, but Callius knew that Shepard suspected that someone (or maybe even several someone-s) from the human black-op agency were working for the enemy. Hence, she wanted someone she could trust completely to look over the reworks being done so that they didn't get disintegrated or flung into a blackhole...
Since the salarian seemed to be an all-round genius, he was the natural choice.
Tali would've made sense too, in her mind at least, but Callius got why Shepard didn't want a young quarian she barely knew to look over the most crucial component of their operation…
Her suggestion to just ask Legion – the literal unshackled geth AI that could run just as many simulation as EDI without being a Cerberus tool – to do it had been shot down earlier by none other than Joker. Apparently the helmsman who'd lost several of his fellow graduates to geth ships during the battle of the Citadel wasn't all too keen on letting a geth 'touch his ship' - who could've guessed.
"Mhmhmhmhmmh- the very model of a scientist salarian," the STG mission specialist hummed before turning his head. "Ah. Lieutenant Callius. Been expecting your arrival."
"You have?" Callius asked, somewhat perplexed. She hadn't called ahead.
"Yes. Yes," the salarian responded before bringing up his omni-tool, which already displayed the schematics of the Reaper IFF. "Given Shepard's increasing distrust of Cerberus, recent events in the Migrant Fleet, imminent installation of Reaper IFF and Joker's intense dislike for geth, logical conclusion to come to me for insurance regarding the installation," Solus offered, leaving the Blackwatch lieutenant stunned at his ability to come up with accurate assumptions al the time. "Correct, am I not?"
"… yes," Callius nodded, still stunned. "You seriously figured all of that out on your own? Just by circumstance?"
The salarian blinked, then cracked a smile.
"No. Shepard told me in advance," ... then why send her? "Still, amusing to make you believe in a omniscience of mine," the salarian said before flashing his teeth. The sight was a bit offputting to be honest. Especially when Mordin just kept holding the smile, clearly forcing his face into what was for a salarian an unnatural expression. "Unrelated question," he asked through the toothy smile. "Does current facial expression look human-like? Been practicing human smiling lately to better integrate into crew and finally oust Chief Engineer Adams from his throne of Thursday Night Stand-Up Comedy…"
Callius mandibles twitched downward ever so slightly.
"… if I were you, I'd just stick to the jokes, Doctor," she replied honestly before remembering why she'd come down here. "So. I take it you can look at the IFF?"
"Naturally. Have personal interest in maintaining undisintegrated," Mordin replied. "Intend to retire and collect seashells after this mission and subsequent Reaper issue is dealt with. Preferably to tropical destination."
"That sounds like an awfully boring plan for someone who's last retirement plan was running a plague-clinic on Omega," Callius observed, wondering why there was a holographic projection of a Collector on Mordin's terminal. Before she could ask, the salarian smoothly brushed his hand over the file. She could tell that he'd noticed her noticing it but he didn't address it… weird.
"Retirement supposed to be boring, Lieutenant. Life cannot be constant state of combat. No one meant to fight battles for their entire life. Would do well to remember that if we survive," Mordin said before blinking. Callius decided to ignore the doctor's jab at her personal life. "Accurate assessment on your part though. Will run tests on seashells to pass time. Might add more limbs and modify cognitive ability to allow higher level of critical thinking. Could also add artificial aggression stimulus to awaken predatory instincts..." the salarian listed, making Callius wonder if he'd just replace the Reapers apocalypse with a seashell version of the krogan… "Joking," the salarian said before muttering, "in regard to aggressive stimulus. Moluscoids inhabiting seashells already suitably aggressive," he mumbled before lowering his omni-tool. "Can inform Shepard that I will attend to Reaper IFF as soon as installation is complete. Until then need to run simulations."
"On seashell aggression?" Callius guessed.
"Among others," Solus responded, prompting the turian to excuse herself from the room and go on with her to-do list.
In addition to asking Mordin if he could look over Cerberus' installation of the IFF, the commander had asked the turian to check up on Thane while she had a longer conversation with Lieutenant Nader. Both had voiced the desire to 'talk' but since only Nader had asked for Shepard specifically and Thane had merely wanted to 'speak to someone with access to the Normandy's long-range communications', it had been decided that she would talk to the assassin while Shepard talked to the young BAR officer. It made for a better match anyway. Shepard and Nader had more in common with each other and unlike Thane, Nader had seemed off lately. So it was probably better for her to speak to someone from her species…
The turian officer went through the CIC, towards the elevator and then to the life-support unit. Thane had taken up shelter inside because the air was marginally drier there than in the rest of the Normandy. While the rest of the crew didn't really feel the difference, a sufferer from Kepral's Syndrome such as Thane Krios probably did.
Callius opened the door and found Thane sitting in the dark, his back turned towards the door. Very un-assassin-like, if she may say so.
"Thane?" she asked after a second of considering if it'd be rude to interrupt… whatever he was doing now. In an instant, the middle-aged, sickly drell jumped to his feet and rotated to face her with the grace of a Cipritinian Oshtok dancer (an art Leng had told her closely resembled human ballet).
"Ah. Lieutenant Callius. I've been wondering who would come. You or Shepard," the green alien said before his hand shot out to the side to turn on the lights. He still looked somewhat sunburnt from Haestrom, although it was barely noticeable at this point. "And while I mean no disrespect to the Commander, I will admit that I was hoping it would be you," he said before folding his hands behind his back.
"I was told you need to speak to someone with access to the Normandy's long-range communications?"
Thane nodded quickly.
"Yes. There is someone I need to reach on the Citadel," he said before blinking with both pairs of eyelids. "My son. Kolyat. I want to speak to him before we go through the relay, in case we don't return. We… had a falling out and I don't want to part from this world until I've mended the damage I've caused."
"Wait. You've got a son?" Callius wondered.
"While I understand that it might seem to clash with my profession, yes, I have a son," Thane responded. "He's from a time of my life where I was more than just a blade of the Illuminated Primacy."
"You don't have to explain," Callius offered. "I'll make sure that you get to talk to him," before offering a brief smile and looking him in the eye.
… the act had a bit of an unexpected consequence.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," the drell said before he suddenly turned stiff. "Laster dot trembles on his skull. Spice in the spring wind. Sunset eyes defiant in the scope…"
Callius' amber eyes blinked. "Excuse me?"
Thane closed his eyes and audibly exhaled.
"Apologizes. A memory."
"Of what?"
"Of a failed assassination. A bystander noticed my spotting laser and threw herself between me and the target. She couldn't see me, but she stared me down," the drell sounded reminiscent before glancing at the floor. "Your eyes. They're the same colors as hers."
The turian tilted her head to the side, unsurprised by the drell's ability to perfectly recall moments and instead more curious about the story's origin. It was easy to see that there was more to this flashback and since Shepard had asked her to 'put an ear on the ground and get a feeling for whether or not everyone's one-hundred percent game for the mission', she decided to ask.
"Who was she to you?" Thane remained silent for a second. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," the former cabal added quickly.
"No. Talking might help. Her name was Irikah. My love. My light. She was Kolyat's mother," the drell said, his voice raspy. "She died some years ago. After her death, Kolyat and I lost touch…"
"I'm sorry for your loss," the turian offered. "Was it Kepral too?" she guessed.
"No, nothing of that sort. The circumstances of her death were… grimmer. More personal. My work caught up with us. They knew they'd never got to me, so they attacked the one thing I couldn't protect. Her," Thane murmured, "The falling out with Kolyat that I mentioned … it happened after. I could've accepted a disease and carried on with raising Kolyat. But to see my light extinguished by my own past… Vengeance consumed me and left no room for me to be the father my son needed," the drell explained, surprisingly forthcoming about this very personal topic. "I was successful … but the prize I paid was even more steep than losing Irikah. By avenging her, I lost myself. And Kolyat too."
… Callius was at a loss of words for a second. She hadn't expected the drell to just spill his heart out like this. She swallowed and considered her words. "I'm sorry to hear that. What happened to you never should've happened," she said, certain that Thane had heard it a thousand times already.
"I appreciate your condolences," the drell responded respectfully.
"And I'll make sure you get to talk to your son again before we leave," the lieutenant went on. Then she turned on her heel to leave. But before she walked out of the door, she decided to ask what had been lingering on her mind ever since meeting the drell. "I realise it's a bit of an odd topic change considering what you just shared with me… but there's something I've been meaning to ask."
"Please," Thane replied with a wave of his hand.
"Back when we first met you had a memory flash after you learned that I'm with Blackwatch. You mentioned a name," she went on, the next word heavy on her tongue. "Haliat."
Instantly, the drell's eyes snapped open again and he perfectly repeated what he'd said to her back then.
"A world of thunder and wind, cities far greater than I ever witnessed. A ten-day hunt through the concrete blocks draws its conclusion. I need to escape back to the ship. My pursuers near me to the point where I can feel their breath on my skin. Ther leader steps past me. Too close to stay, too risky to strike. He's older than me, a more seasoned warrior. In a fair fight, he would win undoubtly, yet he never sees more than a flicker of my shadow when I move. I hear his comrade shout. 'Haliat, watch out, he's behind you' but it is of no use. By the time he turns, I am gone as the wind. They never catch me," when the flashback was done, Thane looked at her. "You knew him, the soldier, Haliat."
"Yes," Callius responded. "And also the one who called out to him… he's my commander now, actually."
"Deso," Thane remembered, somewhat uncertain on the pronunciation of a nickname that hadn't been used for the last three and a half decades…
"He goes by General Arterius these days," Callius clarified.
"You've asked me about my connection to a memory, so it only stands to reason that I may ask you about yours. Haliat and you. How were you connected? Was he to you what Irikah was to me?"
Callius shook her head.
"No. Nothing like that. Elanos was a brother-in-arms for some time and ended up as an enemy just before his death," she stressed before realizing that she wasn't being entirely fair to Captain Haliat. "He… was corrupted by a Reaper artifact. The first one we ever found. What happened with him is the reason we knew about the Reapers before Sovereign in the first place."
"If his death served to aid your fight with the Reapers, Haliat doesn't sound much like an enemy to me. Especially not if his final actions were not his own," Thane observed.
"His final actions were definitely his own," Callius muttered, remembering the moment Haliat had slipped into the volcano on Nonuel. "I haven't thought of him as anything but an enemy for years but maybe you're right. Maybe he was more than that," the lieutenant went on before throwing a question into the room. "In a galaxy as big as ours, what do you figure the odds are of you running into someone I used to know and us meeting half a lifetime later?"
The smaller drell folded his hands behind his back.
"The will of destiny more often than not defies the odds of the universe," the drell mused.
"You believe in destiny?" in retrospective that probably wasn't so surprising.
"Believing in destiny would imply that I believe in a lack of control over one's own actions. That is not the case," the drell responded. "I do however believe that there is more to life than coincidence. At times, events line up too perfectly to be mere happenstance. Take for example the odds of us being born in the time we were born in? Or the chance of all of us, the Normandy's crew, surviving battle after battle only to meet through Shepard, who in turn had to survive one monumental test after another and beat death itself to get to where she is now?" Thane offered before pulling in a painful sounding breath. Was talking to her straining him? "Nothing is written in stone and we are all accountable for the choices we've made, Lieutenant. But things that are truly meant to happen will happen, even if the universe does everything in its power to prevent them. They might not always turn out the way we believe they will, though. That is what keeps life interesting," the assassin mused. "Thank you for this conversation. I haven't… spoken to many people ever since I left to embark on my quest of retribution. It is good to… converse. And thank you for trying to give me an opportunity to speak to my son again as well. I'd like to continue this conversation later, but for now I must prepare to speak to Kolyat. There are uncomfortable truths about myself that I must confront before I can become the father he needs me to be, "in the blink of an eye, the drell's hand hit the light switch and he took a quick step back. There was a small trail of violet biotic energy and then a shadow that settled down somewhere at the far end of the room.
"I understand," Callius nodded before leaving the darkened room and wondering if Shepard's talk with Nader was anything like hers with Krios…
Fifteen Minutes Earlier, 3. May 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy, Engineering Cargo-Bay
"Uhm… Jack… you down here?" Shepard called while walking down into the dimly lit cargo-bay below the Normandy's engineering section. About an hour ago she'd gotten a message on her omni from Lieutenant Nader to meet her down here. It had said that they needed to talk about something that was best not overheard by a lot of people… hence the offshoot location. Since Jack had kept her distance for the last couple of days and missed out on the workouts the human crew members had shared for the better part of the last two months, Shepard had obliged, even if it seemed like a strange request.
"Yeah, I'm down here, Shepard," the young lieutenant responded just before the N7 saw her sitting on some cargo crates, illuminated by the red-light of the ceiling lamps. She had discarded her formal marine BDUs for some loosely fitted digi-camo trousers and a black shirt with purple stripes on the arms and a bold, grey 'Biotic Assault Regiment' label written on its back. All around it was a somewhat uneasy sight – partially due to the lighting and partially because Shepard now had some firsthand experience as to why Jack was considered 'the most powerful human biotic in existance'. She'd turned the Alarei inside out, gone blow for blow with a Justicar and an Ardat-Yakshi and nearly killed all of them in the process… intentionally and unintentionally alike.
In Shepard's book that was more than enough to be a bit weary.
"You know I know the look you're giving me right now, don't you?" the BAR lieutenant stated, probably noticing that Shepard – despite being an N7 - was keeping her distance. "It's the same one I've been getting all my life. The good old 'holy shit she's not a person, she's a walking timebomb' look every commander gives me after they see me in action for real," Jack jumped off the crates and only now was Shepard realizing that she was holding a pencil of all things… she knew enough about biotics to know that particular exercise. It was about control – something Jack clearly struggled with. At least she was working on it, though. "It's alright. You can say it. That's what I'm here for after all, isn't it? To flip an APCs upside down?" she quoted from an exchange that had taken place after Illium…
Shepard considered everything she knew about Jack before carefully picking her words.
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bit scary to see you use your full potential," she started. "It's one thing to hear people say you've got the most powerful human biotic on your crew. But seeing it firsthand? Way different," she admitted. "What happened on the Alarei was dangerous. No doubt about that… but even so, as far as I'm concerned, you did exactly what I told you you'd do after Illium. You stepped up when we needed you to."
"As a weapon," Jack clarified, resentful.
She was beginning to understand the problem here.
"As a soldier," Emily clarified. "Weapons destroy without thinking. Soldiers step up and take calculated risks. And that's exactly what you did on the Alarei. Morinth would have killed half the team if you hadn't intervened and while things could've gone smoother, they also could've gone a hell of a lot worse. We walked away, Morinth didn't. That's a victory in my book."
"Nice pep-talk. I still fucked up. I nearly spaced all of us."
Shepard sighed.
"Would it make you feel any better if I told you that half my career has been me getting out of bad spots by the skin of my teeth?"
"No because I knew it'd be a bullshit lie. You're Commander Shepard. Humanity's second freaking Spectre. The god damn Hero of Elysium and the Citadel…"
Shepard let out an unintentional laugh when she realized that Nader really was buying into the hero-mythos the HSA had been trying to build around its second Spectre.
"Sorry," she apologized quickly. "I get why you'd think that. But trust me. I lucked out a lot before they made me a Spectre. Still am lucking out most of the time, as a matter of fact."
"Sure you are.. Name just one example then."
"Easy. Elysium," she stated. "If I hadn't run into Leng, the batarians would've shot me in the same tunnel they wanted to rename after me and there never would've been a hero of Elysium," it was true. Due to the destruction suffered to the Sullivan-3 Tunnel, it to be rebuilt… and people had wanted to name it 'Shepard-Tunnel', an idea the Elysium civilian administration had mercifully shut down.
"That's not the way Leng tells the story," Nader countered. "He says you saved him. Dragged him out of the damn tunnel after he fucked up."
"Yes. But only after he saved me. And for the record, he didn't fuck up, he risked his life to get to the detonator," Shepard responded. "People get hung up on me being the hero because I could walk out of the tunnel. But they don't know that the only reason I could walk out to begin with is because Kai decided that it was his responsibiltiy to take care of the more dangerous half of our idea. He might not say it, but there was no way in hell his pride as an N7 would've allowed him to let a regular, run-of-the-mill marine take care of the more dangerous job," the red-haired marine explained. "And because Kai made that choice, they made me the hero and only slapped an WIA medal on him before calling it a day. And since Kai's… well, himself, he never complained about it," the N7 responded. "But if you don't want to take Elysium for an example, just look at what happened with Saren. Noveria, Feros, Virmire… it was all luck."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously," Shepard responded before recalling some of the events that might have occurred two years ago for everyone else but still only felt weeks away for her. "I got knocked out on Feros by the Thorian way before we ever left. The only reason the crew made it out in one piece was because General Arterius was around to pick up after I dropped. If it hadn't been for him, a whole lot of good people would be dead and there'd be an indoctrinated monster plant to boot," she started, briefly thinking about the turian officer. "Moving on from that, we only survived Noveria in one piece because Benezia was so busy trying to kill us that she didn't spare a second thought to the idea that we had a specialist with us who valued his own life so little that he'd walk through an annihilation field just to kill her," she recalled, the memory of the spy putting a bullet in Benezia as fresh in her mind as the conversation they'd had after the mission."And finally, I only didn't miserably bleed out miserably on Virmire after being distracted by Sovereign's little speech was because some ASOC captain I knew for like half an hour didn't hesitate to throw himself in between me and a wall of exploding glass believing full and well that it'd kill him then and there," she finished, thinking back to the moment the drive-cores had fired off and her brain had frozen up. "From what I heard, he was half a centimeters away from a separated jugular and I never even got the chance to thank him for saving me or his medic for saving Alenko," she looked at the younger lieutenant. "My point is, this job is a matter of luck more than half the time, Jack, and I screwed up plenty of times too. But just like you, I was lucky enough to have a people around me that could compensate and give me a hand," the red-haired N7 argued. "And just because your other commanders viewed you as a weapon, doesn't mean I will. Neither will anyone else. Look at the kind of people on ship. We've got N7s, we've got Omega vigilantes, we've got assassins… hell… we even got a mad scientist and an actual geth…" she listed, "If you want to get technical, we're all seen as weapons and assets instead of living, breathing people by the ones sending us around the galaxy. But we don't get technical, because we know what that feels like," she walked into the red light towards the lieutenant. "Don't beat yourself up over what happened on the Alarei. We'll need plenty of where that came from and some more when the Reapers roll up. Otherwise we won't have to worry about people naming tunnels after us anymore."
"They really wanted to name a tunnel after you?"
"Yes."
"That seems…like a really stupid way to honor you."
Shepard clapped her hands together. "Thank you! Finally someone agrees," she exclaimed.
"There were people who disagreed?" the young BAR officer asked, clearly as perplexed as she had been when people were asking her why she didn't want a tunnel named after her.
"My dad among others…" although to be fair, her father probably would've been happy to have anything named after his daughter, no matter what it was… "I'm seriously glad the idea died down before I went to Rio and got replaced by that stupid Hero of Elysium nickname. I never would've made it through N-School if they would've kept calling me 'tunnel'."
"Now that's bullshit. You wouldn't have quit because of a freaking nickname."
"Alright. Yeah. You caught me there. But the rest is true though," Shepard offered with a shrug. "Now let's get out of here. This place is depressing."
"I prefer to think of it as melodramatic," Jack retorted before following her to the stairway.
"Potato, potato," Shepard offered at the top of the staircase.
"They have that saying in your colony?" the lieutenant asked on the way to the elevator.
"No, not really. But I was raised on Arcturus. So practically Earth. Besides… I think it's a universal human saying, isn't it?"
"Trust me. It's not. First time I dropped that line back on Grissom some kid from Shanxi looked at me like an idiot and asked me why I was suddenly talking about food."
"You know, you really ought to tell me about your time at Grissom some time."
"Grissom was nothing but a bunch of super-powered teenagers running through combat training and puberty at the same time all the while being locked up with each other for the better part of the year. It's also the only Academy on Terra Nova where there are as many girls as there are guys," Jack smirked. "No offense to you, Shepard, but I don't think you're the type to want to know about my time at Grissom."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked while stopping in front of the elevator.
"There was a lot of boning once people got older," Nader stated flatly.
"And?" she asked, curious where this was going.
"I know we just had a heart-to-heart, but I really don't wanna step over any lines here, Shepard," Jack stated before looking Shepard up and down.
"You won't."
"Alright. And even though you could have the entire male crew eating out of your hands and we're headed on a suicide mission and might not live to see tomorrow, I don't see you taking an interest into anything but the mission," Jack said, somewhat awkwardly.
"Mhm. So?" Shepard went on, sort of enjoying letting Jack squirm a bit.
"Sooooooo, I just sort of figured that you just don't … do that, you know?" she went on before defensibly raising her arms "Not that I'm criticizing you for it. Whatever floats your boat," Jack sighed. "Shit. Crossed a line after all, didn't I?"
Shepard shook her head and offered a smile.
"No. It's fine. You're right. I stopped … fraternizing… just before I got posted on the Normandy and ever since then, there hasn't exactly been a whole lot of time for romance or whatever. The end of the world as we knew it sort of took priority over…" Shepard paused, deciding whether or not she'd used Jack's wording. Ah what the hell. Might as well seem relatable. "… boning."
"Which I totally get, by the way," Jack retorted. "I wouldn't be in the mood either if some turian dickhead was trying to bring about armageddon," she went on before the elevator started going up. "Although I did pick up on a bit of a thing back when Captain Alenko was here. There's a story there, no?" the younger biotic asked curiously and just before the elevator reached the crew deck.
She thought back to Kaidan for a split second.
"Not one that went anywhere worth mentioning," Shepard responded before the doors opened. "I trust that I'll be seeing you at PT tonight, Lieutenant?"
Nader shot her a crisp salute.
"Yes, Ma'am."
Twelve Hours Later, 2158 CE, Menae, Installation 237
While the whole taskforce was buzzing with activity and everyone was running around like headless pyjaks and looking at the ever-present countdown clocks that had been placed around the entire place in anticipation of an event already being called the 'arrival' - a name taken straight out of the conversation they had had with the Harbinger - Jondum Bau, still a guest of the task force, was finally feeling like he was making progress with his actual assignment.
While the galaxy was going crazy over an invasion that they had been warned about for the last two years and his own people were descending into all-out civil war – at the hands of a group STG was starting to suspect to be linked to the League of One of all people – Bau was looking at snippets of information and neatly connected sets of data, calm as ever.
Everything was connected. The statement was as much a piece of wisdom from the religion of the Wheel of Life as it was a principle by which he was conducting this investigation.
The Collectors, Hadley and Bryson, Task Force Aurora, Hahne-Kedar… it was all forming a web of information centering around the Reapers. That much had been obvious from the beginning.
He could easily assume that Hahne-Kedar, Hadley's previous employer, had either borrowed a portion of the pieces of Sovereign that had gone missing after the battle or acquired them at a later point from whoever had taken them. As a consequence, Hadley, a later recruit of Task Force Aurora, had become indoctrinated and subsequently murdered Bryson before his work could impede the Reaper's plans for the galaxy.
Similarly, he could also assume that the Reapers, intend on weakening them prior to their arrival would have a vested interest in stopping any attempts at delaying their invasion any further and jumping at the chance to infiltrate the task force. While two years of preparation were miniscule on the timeline of a synthetic species that annihilated life every fifty thousand years, it was still more than enough time for organics to become a hinderance. While he was sure that the Reapers wouldn't have cared about two years in the past, he believed that the fact that protheans had not only survived into this cycle but also managed to sabotage the Citadel Relay and leave behind several contingency measures had served as a wake-up call for the Harbinger.
Finally, he could also link the Collectors actions to the Reapers goals… but not without having struggling to understand their role in the larger picture. He wanted to call them a mere distraction for the galaxy, or maybe consider them as a sort of secondary vanguard to Sovereign… but it didn't match their modus-operandi or the timeline.
The first Collector abductions had started way before the Council had properly started salvaging operations. As a matter of fact, they had been active for several thousand years already. Always lingering in the dark, always probing the galaxy's defenses, just out of sight but always there.
They were obviously acting on the Reapers direction.
But to what end?
What could they achieve by capturing sample size populations of other species all the while waging an all-out abduction war on humanity? Millions had gone missing by now and at this stage, the HSA could no longer hide the fact that they were at war with an unknown alien aggressor, even if they'd like to in order to keep their colonialization fever up.
If Bau wanted to understand the Collectors role in all of this – something he was sure would also help him understand who had taken the missing pieces – he needed to understand their actions.
What would the Reapers want with millions of humans?
The grey salarian looked at his terminal and skipped through the exchange with the Harbinger as captured by his helmet camera. It was the best piece of evidence he had and by now, he had memorized every second of the hour-long video taken inside the Collector ship.
'And with our arrival your actions here will amount to nothing, just as your insignificant victory over the Nazara amounted to nothing,' it boomed out of his terminal… and unlike all the times before today Bau noticed something crucial.
The Harbinger was obviously talking about Sovereign… but he was calling it 'the Nazara'…
What if it wasn't a ship name like 'the Destiny Ascenion' but rather the name of a people… like 'the salarian' or 'the humans'…?
Bau nearly jumped out of his chair, dumbstruck at the fact that he hadn't figured it out up to now.
The harvest.
It wasn't some sort of religious term or a euphemism.
It was a literal harvest.
They were harvesting people to make Reapers.
They'd known that there was an organic component to the Reapers ever since STG had stolen the intel on the Leviathan of Dis and now they were being shown where it came from.
The human colonists were abducted with the end goal of making a new Reaper, one already inside the galaxy… which in turn meant that wherever the Collectors were taking the colonists was also where said Reaper was being created…
Bau was out of the door immediately.
There was a second vanguard in the making and the people dealing with the Collectors, Alenko's praised Commander Shepard, needed to know before they ran into a proto-Sovereign lying in wait…
4. May 2417 AD, Terra Nova, Maguires
"So, Specialist Morneau, Sergeant Mitchell tells me that you have an interest into applying your skills and knowledge to our movement," the pale man across from him stated before interlacing his fingers on top of the bar counter. One of his hands was still organic, the other was fully cybernetic. A 'reminder' of the merc-invention, no doubt. The man was bold, having long lost his hair. Hence the dark, Anaru-Academy lines running across either side of his scalp were tattoos – ones that clashed with the golden, diving eagle stitched on the left side of his neck and complimented the pitch-black reverse-triangle and the number Five depicted inside of it that was tattooed on the right.
It had taken three days of uninterrupted bullshiting and more than one hangover / attempt at seeing if he'd slip up when intoxicated to earn the former Airborne soldier's trust but here Morneau was, sitting in the same bar he'd met the airborne soldier in; only this time it was after-hours and he was meeting someone who actually held some kind of power within the TN-Hardline. His conversation partner didn't know it, but Morneau was (by pure chance) perfectly aware of who he was facing.
Depending on who you asked, Philip Stone, the current leader of the Maguires Division of the TN Hardline and formerly Major (DD) Philip Stone of the Fifth Army Special Operations Command Battalion, was either a cautionary tale for all HSA soldiers to keep in mind whenever they were about to let emotions cloud their judgement… or someone who'd done what 'needed to be done' and then been 'scapegoated' for it to 'allow the Blitz Armistice to go through'.
His story – like most stories of that kind - was rather easy to summarize.
When the batarians had attacked, Major Stone had been deployed to Elysium alongside a reinforced company of the 5th ASOC Battalion. Officially, they'd been there for joint exercises with the local garrison… but both Morneau and Stone knew that 5th Battalion's presence on Elysium had been in anticipation of a batarian attack.
During the opening hours of the invasion – the same timeframe that had seen Alec's daughter become a war hero – Stone and nearly one hundred ASOC operatives (the largest concentration of army special forces deployed to one theatre since the Fringe Wars) had spearheaded a Paladin-based counterattack on another batarian landing zone. The batarians troops, a light-infantry regiment of the External Forces, had (either by some screw up on their navigators part or due to the damage sustained in the brief orbital skirmish) missed their intended landing zone and ended up cut-off from the rest of the invasion force.
Caught between a rock and all the firepower the HSA could muster in the region, the EF commanders had quickly decided to save the lives of their soldiers and sought to surrender to the closest HSA officer they could find… Philip Stone.
Stone – a veteran of anti-slaver campaigns, the mercenary intervention and the Fringe Wars – had had other planes though. Knowing that they had neither the facilities nor the capacity to take an entire regiment captive (especially not during the opening hours of a planetary invasion) Stone had decided to apply the HSA's special forces policy of 'cutting captives loose' to several thousand batarians intending to enter human captivity.
While the official investigation had never been able to verify beyond a doubt that Stone had called in the missile strikes after his team had talked the surrendering batarian envoys into having their men leave their covered positions and assemble in tightly-packed groups 'for better oversight'; an action supposedly taking just before Stone 'had to defend his team against the false surrender of several batarian officers through the use of his service-issue SR-8', the radio chatter of the Paladin teams on the grounds and the barely understandable transmission of an Ordnance Delivery Group Petty Officer refusing to deliver a targeting vector for what he described as 'clearly surrendering combatants' had been enough to land the Major a dishonorable discharge and ten years in military jail; a sentence that had been reduced to six for 'good conduct'.
Considering that it would've been life in jail if his team hadn't gone shields up and if the ODG forward observer had survived the invasion to clarify what he'd really said over the radio back then, six years and a dishonorable discharge wasn't much of a punishment at all for wiping out what would've been an entire POW camp.
"Yeah. You could say that," Morneau retorted before deciding to lean on a feeling Stone no doubt believed they shared; the idea of having been cast aside by the HSA for 'doing what had to be done'. "Like I told Kyle. I'm sick and tired of working for a bunch of obstructive bureaucrats who are so far removed from reality that they don't see what's actually in humanity's best interest," he shrugged. "I was around for the Blitz, so I know you know a thing or two about that."
"That I do," Stone responded before drumming his cybernetic fingers on the tabletop. "You know you're not the first spook who's tried this little 'I'm totally like you' trick on me, right? Ever since I got out, there's been plenty of your kind knocking at my door, pretending to be on the side of the Hardline," he got up and rose to his full height. Stone was a tall and burly man, easily two meters tall and built like a krogan. "Your bosses really ought to get more creative. They keep sending me the same type. Former academy kids with easy smiles and empty words who can't hide their loyalty to the HSA to save their lives," he reached for something behind his waistband and suddenly slammed a curved combat knife into the desk. Morneau was surprised by the gesture, but not startled. He thought about pretending to flinch to give Stone the reaction he wanted like he would with other marks, but then he realized that Stone knew who he was and that he probably wouldn't buy into the idea of a jumpy Section 13 operative…"Don't worry. Even though they sent you here to spy on me, I won't kill you. You're just some poor idiot who's doing his job. Same as I was before they booted me for doing the right thing," Stone was now looking at the Airborne flag attached to the wall behind him. It was green-and-red (the official colors of the armed forces as opposed to the red-white striped HSA flag) and depicted a diving eagle. The gesture of turning his back to him combined with the knife sticking in the table was clearly meant to invite Morneau to try something… he wouldn't"Get out, go back to Cronos and tell them to come up with something else next time around," he ordered sternly.
Morneau kept sitting and instead of leaving decided to inspect the knife stuck firmly in the desk. When he slowly pulled it out of the wood, he could see Stone's eyes immediately shoot towards the desk or rather something below it. Since he doubted a former ASOC operative would sit down with someone he considered a spy and hand said spy a weapon to kill him with without having a back-up, Morneau would assume that that was where the gun was.
He tested the weight of the knife for a second and held it into the light.
The knife had a unique curved shape to it. The black steel was telling as well. The ergonomics were different though, meant for someone with five fingers instead of three. Even so, it was a Mexta-style blade, or rather a Blackwatch-style military-talon.
"You know I never met someone who went to train in the Hinalius Mountains," Morneau observed before accidentally spinning it around his finger with an ease that suggested he was familiar with the weapon beyond what little he'd seen from the cabal instructors back at Grissom. He played it like he meant to do that and looked at Stone for another moment. Then he noticed the turian writing stitched on his remaining organic forearm. The translators of his contact lenses struggled for a second but then he could read it: 'From the shadows we preserve the light'.
"You ever wonder if people like you and me would've been better of being born turian?" Morneau wondered out loud. "Say about the spikies what you want, they know a thing or two about doing what needs to be done," he added, noting the sideward glance Stone shot him.
"They don't like it when you call them that," the former major observed before returning his attention to the flag of the diving eagle. "Too polite to say anything about it though," Stone turned back to face Morneau. "I know what you're doing. Trying to get me to relate to you so that I trust you," yup. That was exactly what Morneau was doing, "it's not gonna work," they'd see about that…
"I get that you're skeptical. I would be too if one of my pals dragged a specialist claiming to have deserted HSAIS to my front door," as a rule-of-thumb, Section 13 operatives didn't go rogue, "but ask yourself this. What would HSAIS achieve by ordering me to advertise that I'm a specialist? If they really wanted me to infiltrate your movement, why the fuck would I not go around pretending to be a disgruntled First-Gen BAR trooper?"
"So that you can ask that question and gain my trust that way," Stone retorted before sitting down. "I'll ask you again, Specialist, why are you really here?" for some reason Morneau couldn't place… the way the question was phrased felt personal to Stone. Like the exact wording held some hidden significance. Hence, his answer would be crucial.
"To make a real fucking difference for a change," the tan-skinned specialist responded, looking at the dark eyes of the pale man with his own hazel ones and not flinching away from the stare down. "Now you can either take that for a reason and let me help the Hardline the best I can… or you can watch me chip away at this little movement you've build bit by bit until it matches my vision. It makes no difference to me."
Stone narrowed his eyes.
"The Hardline's too tough for any one man to crack."
Morneau returned the gesture.
"That's what they said about the Shadow Broker too. Look where he ended up."
"You've got some balls to sit down here and threaten that you're gonna take over my operation."
"Well, no one's ever won anything by being a coward," Stone nodded his agreement, then he suddenly pulled out the gun Morneau had suspected to be hidden below the table. If he were to guess it was probably hidden via a holster taped to the bottom of the tabletop – sort of like he'd done back on the Citadel. He aimed the turian pistol, a Carnifex, at Morneau's head and then slowly lowered it until the barrel was hovering on his heart. "If you're serious, I should probably go back on my word from earlier and just shoot you right now. It'd save me a world of trouble, wouldn't you agree?"
"Definitely. It's what I'd do," he retorted, playing into the good-old S13 stereotype. Then he casually leaned back ever so slightly, just into a range where he was sure his biotics would catch the first round. The gesture was meant to look like he wasn't bothered in the slightest all the while raising his chances of surviving if Stone decided to pull the trigger. The best of both worlds.
"So. Any last words?"
"Nah. Since you're not going to shoot me, they wouldn't be my last anyway."
"You sound confident in that assessment. Why?"
"Because you're not the kind of man who kills for petty reasons. No matter what the HSA might say about you, you're not a murderer. You have a code. Lines you won't cross, no matter how bad things get," those were all lies of course. As far as Morneau was concerned, Stone was a murderous piece of shit war criminal who should be rotting in jail the same as all the guys who'd covered his ass and every word of credit about Stone that left his mouth had a sour taste… but since it was also what the man desperately wanted to hear, he'd say it. "It's admirable, really. But it's also why you need someone like me if you ever want to be more than a loud minority," he went to gently push the barrel of the gun down with one finger and when he felt no resistance, he knew that he was in. "With your code and my methods, we are going to take the Hardline exactly where it belongs. At the tip of humanity's spear."
Stone cracked a brief smile.
"I'm starting to see what made HSAIS think you're special. You're a smooth talker, even when there's a gun pointed at your heart."
"I take it we have an agreement?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On whether or not you manage to live up to your empty words and easy smile," Stone let go of the grip of the gun and it rotated around his finger until the muzzle hit the table. Next he nudged the gun towards Morneau. The specialist grabbed it. "Welcome to the Hardline, Specialist," Stone added before pulling the Blackwatch talon from the table and offering his hand.
Morneau knew what he needed to do next. It was going to suck even worse than lying through his teeth, though…
"Thank you, Major. I look forward to working with you," the undercover operative responded before repectfully shaking hands with a despicable war criminal and wondering how the hell the HSA didn't consider the Hardline a criminal organization if people like Stone were in charge…
… now to find out how Insight was involved…
Codex: History of the Terra-Novan Hardline (Part 3. The eagle spreads its wings)
After morphing itself from a musical genre into a full-blown ideology, the Terra Novan Hardline did what all political movements that have ambition for larger goals do; split itself up into several smaller localized 'division' which – while unified by a uniform 'Hardline' ideology – all displayed their own, unique set of believes. After this organization occurred, the Hardline started its attempts to legitimize itself by actively seeking a connection to the HSA's mainstay political party, the Systems Alliance Foundation, and the military units stationed on Terra Nova.
While its ideology and origin made it instantly popular with parts of the armed forces, the official ties the movement sought with the SAF and the HSAAF was hindered by the former's own political ambitions and the letters 'duty to neutrality' – in accordance with the Code of Uniform of the Human Systems Alliance Armed Forces, active-duty service members may not openly display a political opinion while on-duty.
Even so, by the 2390s, the Hardline's believes, its imagery and its music still found their way into the units stationed on Terra Nova. After early attempts of the HSA's colonial administration to 'quench' the influx of TN-Hardline associated imagery and believes surfacing within the ranks of units such as the 26th Airborne Regiment, 1st Army Air Assault Regiment or the 1st Armored Regiment (and within the student body of the military schools such as Anaru-Academy), it was decided that the trouble of combating the Hardline based on the principle of 'duty to neutrality' was not worth the issues it was creating. Subsequently, a blind eye was turned towards the blatant Hardline-sympathies that were surfacing in Terra-Novan based units, citing its clear loyalty to the HSA and high regard in which it held the military as the reason for the exception.
This decision created no small level of controversy within the HSAAF; and particular within the part of the officer corps that had served during the Fringe Wars.
'Looking back on nearly fifty years of what felt at times like an underappreciated service in the HSA Marine Corps, I understand that it is tempting to make certain exceptions for notions that we think agree with what it means to be a marine, soldier or sailor. But even so, we cannot be blind to the doors we open when we begin compromising on the fundamental principles of our armed forces. There's a reason for the duty to neutrality, one that goes back all the way to the times before the HSA. There is no place for ideology or politics while serving mankind. Hence, I believe that the officials who've made the decision to ignore the foothold that this so-called 'Hardline' is gaining in Terra-Novan-based units are not only making a huge mistake, but also dishonoring every soldier of those units who's ever laid their life down in defense of our principles and traditions. I might have only ever worn dress blacks in my life and talked a lot of smack about the dirt-kickers in green in my time as a junior officer… but even so I cannot help but spend some of my last minutes as the acting General of the Marine Corps to personally address our brothers and sisters in arms currently serving in the Army and Navy and all those who are making decisions that will harm these institutions in the long run. Even though these people used to be like us, you need to be vigilant of them. They are ideologs who want to distract you from the oath we've all taken – the oath they've kicked with bare feet. If you give them even an inch of room, they will do everything in their power to divide us along imaginary lines. These people are war hawks. Demagogs who are trying to stir up rivalries like the ones that led to the Fringe Wars, knowing all too well that they won't be the ones whose blood is going to soak the beachheads. They serve only themselves, not mankind. Do not give in to them, no matter how tempting their narrative's sound.' – General of the HSAMC (ret.) Ingham Costa Stelios during his retirement speech in 2404 AD.
Editorial Notice: General (ret.) Stelios, despite being a Terra-Novan native and Anaru-Academy graduate, remains an outspoke opponent of the Terra Novan Hardline to this day. In his last public appearance, Stelios called the hardline 'a movement founded by pack of vultures who greatly overplay their military exploits and funded by people who've never held a gun in their lives to begin with' and threatened the universally popular musical group Mors Ad Alto 'to better not make any more songs about his Corps'.
Further Editorial Notice: Before becoming the acting General of the HSAMC at the end of the Fringe Wars (a rank he maintained until his retirement), General Ingham Costa Stelios rose to fame for his actions during the battle of Horizon, where he abandoned his post aboard the HSASV Sun Tzu and joined the second wave of marines dropping into the hot landing zones to relieve pinned down and injured HSAMC forces. When questioned on his actions during the opening hours of the Siege of Horizon in the post-invasion parliamentary hearing that took place after the conclusion of the Fringe Wars, Stelios merely replied: 'In the Corps, we lead from the front and by example, no matter how golden our stars or grey our hair gets'. For his actions during the opening days of the invasion, Stelios became the first serviceman to be awarded the Star of Valor after already having reached a flag-officer rank.
Third (and final) Editorial Notice: After the awarding procedure in 2382, Ingham Costa Stelios became one of the few servicemen in the history of the HSAAF to receive its highest honor twice in their career. Stelios' previous Star of Valor was earned in 2361 when a boarding party under his command assaulted a pirate-holdout and Stelios, a captain at the time, 'valiantly and without hesitation or regard for his personal safety assaulted an entrenched enemy position to cover the evacuation of three injured marines from a disadvantageous position, thus not only meeting but far exceeding the standard of bravery and determination to which all HSA servicemen are held'.
A/N:
Aaand here we are... 116, the first chapter where the arrival clock is officially running.
As a matter of fact, I don't find myself with a whole lot to say (which is really becoming a trend) other than that there are a few little throwbacks in the chapter and that if you find any glaring spelling mistakes... its probably because I wrote most of this while being sick with Corona. Yup. Two years after everyone and their mother's already had it and just when it gets replaced as the big news topic by something that I will not address any further if only because I think we really all need a break from that ... I get the fucking 'rona.
I've always been late to new trends, so I guess this shouldn't REALLY surprise me but whatever...
As I'm sure you've noticed, we are making BIG leaps towards the conclusion of ME 2 and while I don't wanna put any goals out there because I'll inevitably fail them anyway... I am THINKING that 2022 is going to end with the Suicide Mission and The Arrival at least starting; meanthing that 2023 will only require the conclusion of Morneau's and Callius' arcs prior to diving head first into ME 3. (now i could obviously be wrong and hilariously drag this out for even longer, which seems weird considering it's been five fucking years and four months since we've started... but I'm reluctancly optimistic that 2022 will end with the Shepard's and Haugen's arcs concluded and the stakes firmly set for the utter devestation that's going to be SV:ME3. ( i have been saying shit will get bad when the reapers roll around for the last five years, so you better not complain about spoilers :P)
For the record we're at 859 reviews, 1387 favorites and 1475 follows.
... oh I nearly forgot, the Redford Anthology has made exactly zero progress since last month! Yay!
See you around next time.
