Chapter 8
I was escorted back to the medical lab by an honor guard of Cerberus troopers with my pride severely bruised. On arrival, we secured the captain and forced him to issue orders that would form the opening stages of our coup. All external communications were sabotaged, the crew deck was sealed off and all remaining troops under Lentz's control were assigned to secure key locations throughout the ship.
Leaving behind a small contingent to protect Marie and her prisoner I took the rest of our forces to storm the engine room. We struck fast, moving in before most of the crew had realized what was happening. When we broke in they weren't really prepared yet, and with proper weapons and backup, even my lack of biotics didn't slow us down much.
I was glad of the speed. We caught the last group of techs attempting to manually program the navigation to take us into Cerberus controlled space. Once we had control, I had them shut down the engines. I was happy to let us drift through the void for a few hours if it eliminated any risk of the enemy trying to move us into enemy territory.
Passing by the primary starboard gun battery, which was already being secured by another unit, we moved onto our other main objective, the bridge. I knew that this would prove to be the difficult part. Cerberus had now had time to get to grips with the situation and prepare a cohesive defense strategy. Inevitably the bridge is always the hardest position to capture on any enemy vessel, though I knew my former employers took that further than most. Cerberus regulations even mandate that the armory aboard any of their vessels is placed directly next to the bridge in order to make it the most defensible position on the ship. It's more than just military doctrine, it's based on a philosophy that assumes the threat is just as likely to come from within the organization as without.
Fortunately for us, there is almost no one in the galaxy who knows Cerberus procedures, tactics, and strategies better than I do. Drawing on this I led my squad through the storage areas and hanger bays on the lower decks to avoid encountering too much resistance before we reached our destination. Any opposition we did come across I put down ruthlessly, having neither the time nor the inclination to be merciful. We only paused to sabotage the main hanger bay doors, just in case anyone got any bright ideas about hijacking a shuttle.
Way above us on the bridge itself the remaining crew was doing everything they could to try and maintain control of the ship. They had raised shields around the bridge and adjoining sections and were locking out all computer access. Their efforts were made futile however by the speed at which we had spread through the ship. They had control of the computers but in most cases, we had gained control of the physical hardware, including some of the generators used to power the shields.
A quick bit of sabotage later and the kinetic barriers protecting their last real stronghold on the ship started to collapse. Joined by other units we surged forward, straight into the path of their automated turrets. With no cover available it took a lot of our troopers to render those guns inoperable. As our army charged the guns, I fell back and waited for it to be done, watching as one by one the corpses of my former colleagues were riddled with shots and rendered inoperable. Not that it did much more than delay the inevitable. In the end, they just didn't have enough firepower to stop all of our grunts.
I led the final assault on the bridge myself, executing anyone that failed to surrender to us immediately. It wasn't really much of a fight at this stage, more like cleanup. The Cerberus employees that were left were fanatical in their devotion but hopeless at fighting. Finishing them off was disturbingly easy.
The remainder of our warriors that had survived the attack now fanned out and dispersed. As per Lentz's directives (broadcasted to them via the intercom), they would now sweep the rest of the ship to capture any remaining Cerberus personnel. On a whim, I broke off from the main group and started exploring the rest of the ship. My assistance wasn't really needed in this phase of the battle and I was eager to see if I could learn anything about current Cerberus operations.
Predictably the Captain's quarters were securely locked and without my biotics, I couldn't see any way of forcing my way in. I had more luck with the XO's office on the next floor down. It was left unlocked because the XO herself had come out to see what was going on. Given she was out of uniform I gathered that she hadn't been quite up to speed on the situation when she'd chosen to emerge. She'd had the foresight to bring a gun with though, which is why the troopers hadn't hesitated in gunning her down the second they caught sight of her. She'd made it approximately three steps outside her own front door before she died.
I entered the room and was immediately reminded of my own quarters aboard the Normandy SR-2. Since that ship had been built by Cerberus to replace the SR-1 I supposed that I shouldn't have been surprised that the design was so similar. Directly in front of me was a simple, workmanlike desk, with a single computer terminal present. Behind that was a living room/bedroom area that was just as poorly furnished as mine had been. Evidently, personal touches hadn't been high on this woman's agenda either.
The terminal was locked and encrypted so I settled for disconnecting it from the mainframe (bypassing two autodeletion failsafes to do it) so that it wouldn't be affected if anyone managed to activate a system wide data purge. Then, leaving it for the techs to examine later I moved on to the rest of the room.
My earlier assessment of it as lacking many personal touches didn't quite do it justice. On closer inspection, the room was almost spartan in appearance. There were no photos on display, no document or datapads left lying around as I had hoped (honestly some Cerberus employees can be surprisingly careless). I tried going through all the draws and cupboards I could find only to discover they were all either securely locked or devoid of anything of value.
I was about to give up and move on when I came across something in the last wardrobe that was both useful and disturbingly familiar. Namely a black and white, skin tight Cerberus uniform, the design of which I knew only too well. It was exactly the same kind of outfit I had worn for years in my service to the organization and it was in my size.
Despite its appearance and seemingly thin fabrics, no one knew better than I did just how carefully this suit had been engineered for combat. Early designs were drawn up shortly after I joined. Even then it took years of joint development and field testing in live operations to perfect it. It was made from an impact absorbent, microfiber weave that could stand up to incoming fire almost as well as the armor of a standard Alliance marine. More importantly, it concealed a kinetic barrier generator so well hidden that I had never been noticed wearing it.
In plain English, it was the perfect outfit for a trained infiltrator or spy. Even so, I hesitated before pulling it out of the wardrobe, wary of the implications of donning Cerberus colors again. There was no point just telling myself it was just an outfit, it was a symbol of the plans already forming in my mind. In the back of my head, I could hear whispers of the promises I made to John before departing the Normandy. Those words had meant a lot to me, they represented the better person I had intended to become.
But Commander Shepard was an Alliance soldier, a boy scout who had always done things by the book even when he found himself working with criminals like me. It was something I had badly wanted to believe was possible for me as well. I would have stayed the course no matter what happened to me but my sister was a different story entirely. As long as Ori was missing it was time to put all options back on the table and fight the way I knew best.
Which is how I found myself, two hours later, standing on the bridge of a Cerberus ship, wearing a Cerberus uniform and wondering if anything about me had actually changed at all.
"So let's get this straight. Kolvar, Vorlak, and Kroll all managed to escape the ship before the lockdown was put in place?"
"Along with several loyalists to both Kolvar and Vorlak," the Colonel confirmed.
"Though there was no sign of Kroll, I can only guess he was stowed aboard the ship they made their escape on from the start."
"Do we have any idea where they went?"
Marie shook her head slowly and looked up at the ex-Cerberus tactical officer standing close by her side. As I followed her gaze the man that had been introduced to me as "Jackson", picked up the story.
"Sorry Lawson, they took a Kolvar's modified fighter from the hanger bay. It departed in the direction of Korlus but we quickly lost track of it thanks to its stealth systems."
So Cerberus had been building more ships with the stealth capability we acquired by stealing the designs of the original Normandy, I mused. It wasn't too much of a surprise really given how effective that feature had proven to be for covert operations, but it did mean we would need to watch out for any nasty surprises in future.
"So we have to assume that this Kolvar you mentioned will alert the rest of Cerberus to the mutiny," the Colonel reasoned.
"I wouldn't count on it," I replied. "Alex was the most senior officer to make it off the ship alive. Added to his failure to eliminate me and I doubt he'd be the Illusive Man's favorite person right now. More likely he'll stay out of contact until he can find something to mitigate his mistakes."
"Even so we might still want to think about moving on from this system as soon as possible. Apart from anything else we've been having to dodge occasional fire from the AA canons below."
"Why would anyone on the planet be firing at us?"
"We have a theory, but you probably know more than us about it," Marie answered.
"None of us on this ship know much about the Reapers but I've been piecing things together based on what's being said on the main news channels. I think they might've launched a cyberwarfare attack on Korlus."
"It certainly sounds plausible. Show me what you've got."
Marie turned to face Jackson who then activated the display on a nearby console.
"Far as we know everything started when one of the four-eyes ships docked here three days ago looking for repairs. All their ships pretty much ran like cockroaches when the Reapers hit their homeworld almost a week ago."
"Their territory was right in the Reaper's path as they entered our galaxy," I murmured, remembering what Shepard had told us about his fateful mission to the Bahak system.
"Yeah they were the first hit and a lot of the survivors ran to the Terminus for safety and repairs. Anyway soon after their ships started coming in things started getting weird. At first, it was just simple mechanical failures, power outages, and suchlike. Most of which only affect those down in the pit so it didn't really matter at first."
I frowned, not particularly liking his dismissive attitude but I allowed him to continue his story. With half the galaxy on fire, I didn't have the time or the energy needed to confront his obvious racism.
"It wasn't until about twelve to fourteen hours after the malfunctions were first noticed that the Hades started picking up transmissions about security mechs that were malfunctioning. Like one minute they'd be guarding the door and the next they just went haywire and started shooting people on sight. It was only isolated incidents at first but one hour after we captured your ship it went city wide. Since then communications started being cut off, area by area, starting with the Pit."
"Cut off or..." I didn't really need to finish the sentence, jamming wasn't the only thing that could stop an area from transmitting.
"Yeah, we don't know for sure. Some of the messages we've picked up... It sounds like things have gotten really bad down there."
"And since then planetary based cannons have started firing at any ships in orbit?"
"That's about the shape of it Jack- I mean Miranda," the Colonel said.
"Only pot shots so far so we're not in danger yet but I think it's time we got moving nevertheless."
"So what are we going to do about it?" Asked Marie.
"Oh here we go," the Colonel sighed. "Why do humans always assume they have to do something even when they don't have a clue where to start?"
"You're forgetting we have an expert on the Reapers with us. Miranda actually flew with Commander Shepard to fight them so let's hear what she thinks about it."
Expert on the Reapers? That was stretching the meaning of the word considerably. I knew more than your average person but so much about them still remained a mystery to us all. Including how the hell we hoped to beat them.
"Your assessment of the situation seems plausible, we've seen the Reapers employ cyberwarfare attacks against their targets in the past, they once took over the Normandy using a virus to disable it. That being I think it's safe to assume that this is only a prelude to the main attack. The virus is clearly an inexpensive way for the Reapers to tie up the military resources in the Terminus while their fleet focuses on Citadel space."
"But does it matter?" Asked Jackson. "The Reapers clearly have the firepower to blast their way through every major faction in the galaxy already."
"It may be a question of efficiency more than actual need. Given the sheer number of times the Reapers have conquered our galaxy it's likely they have adapted strategies over time to ensure they can achieve victory as swiftly and overwhelmingly as possible."
"So what exactly do we do?"
"To be honest, I'm not sure what we can do. We can't fight a whole planet," I admitted softly after a moment's hesitation.
"It's easy. An orbital strike on the pit will do the trick," said Jackson.
"You can't destroy a computer virus by shooting at it," I pointed out.
"Um, guys-" the Colonel said before swiftly taking the controls and maneuvering us away from another barrage of fire from the planet.
"No, but it would slow them down. The pit is littered with factories and rubbish dumps filled with machine parts. God knows what kinds of monstrosities the Reapers are building down there out of all that. If we do a blanket bombardment of the capital we can wipe out this infection now before it spreads any further."
"Along with anyone still left alive on the surface. We can't just write off all those people."
"Assuming there is even anyone left alive down there! You've been with Cerberus long enough to know how we do things, the mission always has to come first."
"We are not part of Cerberus anymore!"
"Guys!" the Colonel shouted at us. As I turned to face him I noticed that the barrage from the surface hadn't ceased and was if anything, getting worse by the second.
"Well that settles it, we need to move. Is anyone here actually prepared to launch an orbital strike at a populated world?" I glared around the room, fiercely enough to ensure there were no replies.
"Right then, I want you to take us here," I said, indicating a point on the galaxy map.
"What?" Asked the Turian as he moved us away from the planet and towards the Relay in the system.
"We'll get caught."
"Don't worry I have a plan. It might take a few hours but we should be able to hide the ship in the nebula for that long," I said reassuringly.
"Take us to the Citadel."