Chapter 13
"You did what?"
I don't think I've ever seen Marie look more shocked in her life. Worryingly she had the same look in her eye that I'd seen her give Captain Lentz, just before she turned a knife on him.
"I did what was necessary, for the sake of the mission. Besides those people were all agents of Cerberus," I replied bluntly.
"In case you've forgotten so were we until recently. If you let us turn our backs on Cerberus why couldn't you give them the same opportunity? They might even have been an asset to your mission!"
"Babe, most of them don't have the same training as Miranda. Without experience in covert ops they would've just been a liability," Jackson said, trying to put a comforting arm around her, only to have it quickly shrugged off.
"More to the point any one of them could have been a potential trap," I added in quickly as I could see Marie was preparing a retort and we didn't have time for a relationship spat.
At my words she shifted her attention back to me, her expression confused.
"What do you mean a trap?"
"It could have been my loyalty that Cordanoy wanted to check up on. If that was the case then one of the people I spoke to would have been his loyal spy. Failing to report their apparent plans to turn traitor would only get me reported to the director. Then it would be my head on the chopping block."
"Um isn't that a little bit convoluted?"
"Personally I would trust Miranda's instincts on this Marie. I've seen first hand just how far a professional military will go to route out potential traitors," said the Colonel, speaking up for the first time since the call began.
We all turned to stare at him in surprise at that remark.
"Ask me about it another time. We're wasting valuable call time debating ethics when we should be focusing on what we've learned."
I nodded my approval.
"Have you got something new for me?"
"Yeah we did actually or rather he did," Jackson answered, pointing a thumb at the Colonel to indicate who he meant.
"Your Turian might be allergic to taking risks but he certainly knows his way around data analysis, I'll give him that much."
"I was looking back through the records trying to find out how long this station has been here and what it was originally built for when I made a startling discovery."
I sighed.
"I know it's been here for millennia-"
"It's only just arrived in the system a month ago-"
"What?"
"What?"
We both frowned at each other, thrown off by what the other one was saying. I recovered first.
"This station is well over a month old. I have evidence that suggests it predates this cycle."
"This what? Nevermind. Look I know it's clearly older than a month but I'm saying it only arrived here last month."
"So Cerberus transported the station from another system?"
"From another cluster actually. When I realized that Cerberus had moved the thing from somewhere else I started looking through the transport logs of the nearest Mass Relays. Took me a while to spot it but eventually I found a gap where it seems as if the logs were actively suppressed."
"How could Cerberus do that to a Relay?"
"Uh that was kind of your fault Lawson," Marie admitted looking fairly embarrassed.
"Care to explain that remark?"
"It's thanks to your retrieval of a Reaper IFF during your mission with Shepard to stop the collectors. You needed it to get through the blocked Omega 4 Relay but afterwards we discovered it could have other uses."
"Such as?"
"Well the Reapers built the Relays so using their protocols gave us the same kind of control they have. Not completely of course because they still haven't figured out how to use them properly yet but they learned enough to suppress transit logs."
"Not to mention opening a few back doors to attack where they're not expected," Jackson muttered.
"In any case, I tracked the gaps back through the Relay network to get a probable originating system for the station."
"Probable?" I asked.
"Well, they were careful with their movements. The lengthy gaps between each jump have meant searching through a lot of data to extrapolate their route. As far as we can tell the station comes from one of the systems in the Hawking Eta cluster, possibly, the Thorne system."
"What did you say? The Thorne system?"
I didn't even hear the reply, my memories were already taking me back to the words of my former boss.
During my mission with Shepard, we had learned that we would need to find a Reaper IFF (Identify Friend Foe) system in order to pass the Omega 4 Relay behind which lay the main base of the race known as the Collectors. Not an easy thing to get your hands on but the Illusive Man found us a solution.
It came about from a discovery made while investigating the mystery of the Great Rift valley on the planet Klendagon. The rift is just an enormous canyon that stretches out right across the southern hemisphere. Spectacular as it is, it would be scientifically irrelevant if not for the fact that it was clearly not a natural occurrence. Recently scientists determined that it was the result of a glancing blow from a mass accelerator weapon over 37 million years ago.
When the Illusive Man heard about this discovery he sent Cerberus agents to search for both the weapon and its intended target. The target was a 'dead' Reaper, found hidden in the atmosphere of a brown giant. We were sent there to recover it's IFF and integrate it into our systems. And as for the weapon? I wasn't present for the meeting but part of my role involved reviewing the security footage for all of Shepard's major interactions (in order to better understand and thus manipulate him into obeying the Illusive Man though it was never said in quite those terms).
'The weapon was defunct' was how he had put it to Shepard. It was exactly the same thing he'd told me to my face once when I had inquired about it. A casual, throwaway line, but something about it had stuck in my mind. Now I knew that it was a lie, delivered with pathological sincerity. Cerberus hadn't abandoned the weapon, they'd built the station I was standing on around it.
I still don't know why that upset me so much. Maybe it's just knowing that even when I was completely devoted to him, the Illusive Man still hadn't trusted me with a secret he when easily could have done. Blinded as I was back then I would have happily kept it for him. Or maybe it's just how damn easy it was for him to deceive me. I'm trained to spot liars a mile off but I've never met anyone who could lie like he can and if he can lie as well as that how can I trust anything I ever heard from him?
Suddenly I heard an alarm chime and acting on instinct my finger hit the off switch, killing my conversation with Maria and the Colonel in an instant. Eyes sweeping across the room I searched for whatever had caused the brief moment of panic only to have my gaze come to rest on my pager. I almost smashed the damn thing with a warp until I remembered that I hadn't got my biotics back online again yet.
Pausing to let myself settle from panic down to the gut wrenching anxiety that had been plaguing me the last few weeks I then forced myself to pick up the pager. The message was from Director Cordanoy, congratulating me on the successful capture and 'reorientation' of several traitors to the organization. In fact, it had worked so well that he wanted me to come to his office to discuss an additional list of suspected malcontents.
If I had reflected on it later I might have concluded that the op was destined to go bad from the moment it began. You never send an agent into a high stress environment when the objective is so clearly personal to them. Much less so when the mission in question is likely to bring up so many emotional triggers for that agent. And you absolutely never allow that agent to design most of the operation on their own.
I was furious. Stressed out from weeks of hiding in plain sight, of trying to lead the project while burdened with the knowledge that every contact might potentially lead to my exposure. Guilt ridden for breaking my promises to Shepard by obeying Cordanoy's orders and terrified of what might happen to my sister if I didn't.
It was time to act, I decided. For better or worse I needed to bring this mission to a close before Cerberus (or more to the point I myself) hurt any more people. My only option for doing at this stage would be Cordanoy. He was the only one here who was high ranking enough to give me useful intel about Cerberus' other operations. If the softly, softly approach wasn't yielding results then I would have to start being more direct.
Shutting down the parts of my mind that were protesting that this was suicide I began re-examining the half formulated plans I had already made for this eventuality. While I gathered gear and weapons from around my office in preparation for the upcoming task I formed a mental map of every part of the station I had seen in my head. Visualizing the four clear pathways that ran between my current location and the target's office I eliminated them one by one based on the known patrol routes at this time of day until I had an optimal path for avoiding detection. The fact that it looked like a suicide run didn't phase me, I was ready.
Crossing the room, I took position in front of the door but didn't activate the control, yet. I knew that my best chance of success would involve exploiting a shift change of Delta squad that would occur at 14:00 precisely. Factoring in my movement speed, the places I would need to stop to allow patrols or automated cameras to pass me by, and accounting for reasonable delays I calculated that I should begin my run in exactly 14 minutes and 12 seconds.
Holding position where I was I forced myself to count down the seconds precisely as I waited for my window of opportunity. I knew my count was an exact match for local time (a result of my genetic enhancements) and that the exercise would calm and focus my mind for the task ahead. At 7 minutes 35 seconds an alarm went off, sounding through the station.
Recklessly I tried to ignore it, continuing to count down the seconds even though I knew the sound I was hearing would change everything. If the station was on alert, even as part of a drill or training exercise then the patrol routes I had so carefully memorized would change. A part of me tried to guess what those changes might be, to predict which units would now move faster, which would hold position, and where but I forced myself to stop.
Even perfection has its limitations, I reminded myself. A mind like mine could make sensible, logical predictions regarding the altered routes but those predictions would be colored by my own bias towards perfection. I could see how it should be done but that wasn't enough. To accurately make the predictions I would need to know the precise skill of the man giving the orders. The calculations now swam in front of my eyes, taunting me to solve them but I pulled myself back from the brink. I could make a stab at their resolution but my solution would almost certainly be flawed. It was only the hubris of perfection that could make me believe otherwise.
I had just decided to head back to my desk and give up this insanity when I heard the door control activate all by itself. With a renewed stab of fear, I watched as it slid away to reveal two Phantoms standing behind it. Why hadn't I seen their approach on the camera feeds?
If the Phantoms saw anything amiss with the way that they found me, standing just behind my own door, shocked at their arrival they made no mention of it.
"Director Cordanoy needs you in the operations center. You are required to come immediately."
Fighting to regain my mental balance I simply nodded and allowed them to escort me. Clearly, today was not going to be the day for sudden acts of rash impulsiveness.
When I arrived at the operations center I saw something that unnerved me more than anything else I'd discovered thus far today. The director was already here, and he was really worried about something. He masked it well but the signs were all clearly there for the expert eye to tell. Much as I would have enjoyed watching him squirm, the idea that something had spooked the famously unflappable officer left me worried. As soon as he saw me enter the room he beckoned me over to his side impatiently.
"Our location has somehow been compromised, we are now in imminent danger."
"What kind of-" I tried to ask before I was interrupted by another officer.
"Sir the transport we intercepted appears to have been under the command of one of our operatives. He's requesting to speak with you sir, very insistently."
Cordanoy turned on his heel to face the man that had spoken with a glare that almost melted him on the spot.
"Inform him that he will have to wait until the present emergency has been resolved."
Nodding mutely the officer did just that and the director turned back around to address me again only to be interrupted once more, this time by the banging and crashing sounds coming from outside the door.
"What on earth is going on back there?" Cordanoy demanded, finally willing to unleash his unrestrained anger at the ongoing delays.
Before anyone in the command center could answer the door slid open to reveal two collapsing phantoms. As soon as the entrance had widened far enough to permit it they fell flat on their faces, knives protruding from their backs. Behind them, grinning broadly with apparent pleasure at the spectacle he had just caused was Alexander Kolvar. As he scanned the room, he quickly sighted on me and without saying a word, drew his pistol and fired.
Time seemed to stop as I struggled to process what I was seeing. Kolvar was here, somehow having managed to survive Korlus, find himself a ship that worked, and to track me down to my hiding place. I would have been impressed if I didn't have more pressing issues to consider. I threw myself to one side as fast as my enhanced reflexes would allow but he had been so successful in getting the drop on me that I wasn't sure it would be enough. It was only when I was peeling myself off the carpet, miraculously still alive, that I realized Cordanoy had interceded on my behalf.
Stepping between us his kinetic barriers (required to be worn at all times by the director of each cell) had easily absorbed the single shot that would have torn through me. As I moved to get to my feet and behind the Director I couldn't help but try to work out if I would have been hit if he hadn't stood in the way. I probably would've made it, I decided but it was difficult to be sure. It had been a very close call.
"Who are you? What is the meaning of this?" the director was demanding.
"Sorry about your guards, they were refusing to let me through. Still, you can always get some new ones from, uh-" he paused, his eyes darting towards me before continuing.
"Well, you know who I mean."
Alex smiled and made to step forward into the room only to notice that he'd seriously misjudged the mood when Cordanoy signaled his troops to raise their weapons, and aim them directly at his chest.
"It's Operative Kolvar sir, I have some critical information for you regarding-"
"Kolvar? You will have to explain yourself, starting with why you deemed it necessary to try and murder one of my staff."
Oh crap, he was hearing Kolvar out. I was tempted to demand he be taken into custody over the attempt on my life but I knew the director was smart enough to see through that ploy. It would only make him more suspicious. No, I'd have to let Kolvar have the stage for the time being and allow him enough rope to hang himself (hopefully the impression he had already made would go a long way to getting him killed).
"She isn't one of the staff. Her real name is Miranda Lawson and-"
"Lawson? Here? Don't be absurd." Cordanoy scoffed.
"You're a mess Kolvar, a rising star who failed to live up to expectations. I've read the reports from Captain Lentz. He already informed us of your disappearance after allowing your target to escape the Hades. And now you arrive on my doorstep with these wild accusations and the blood of two of my guards on your hands."
"I'm sorry for that sir but there was no time to-"
"On that point at least we are in agreement. There is a far more pressing issue at hand and I have no further time for these distractions. Take him away and I will decide what to do with him later."
Several more guards appeared and made an effort at leading Kolvar away from the operations room. As they laid hands on him I could see his muscles tense up in preparation to strike. I didn't attempt to warn them, so much better to let Alex try and fail to break free but to my surprise he restrained himself, choosing not to start a war against Cerberus. Instead, he tried a desperate last attempt to convince the director.
"Sir there was a mutiny aboard the Hades, I saw it with my own eyes. The Captain was captured, maybe some of the other ranking officers, I'm not sure but I was left stranded on Korlus. Lawson and her friends left me to fight my way out alone," there was something dark in Alex's eyes as he spoke those last words. Some mixture of hatred and fear and battle experience that could help but remind me of Thane's warning. If Kolvar survived he would be all the more dangerous for it.
"You claim that the reports we have been sent, the same reports that suggest you went AWOL were made under duress? How convenient for you," Cordanoy replied coolly.
"Would I be right in thinking the Hades stopped reporting in shortly after that message was sent?"
Kolvar was pleading now, desperate to salvage his tenuous grip on both his position and his life but unfortunately, the remark had hit home. I could see the gears of the Director's mind whirring under that balding scalp of his. He had two operatives each accusing the other. One of them was lying and Kolvar's brusque, tactless appearance hadn't done him any favors. But if, if mind you, he was telling the truth about the mutiny then Larona should have been aboard when it happened.
I opened my mouth to speak, unsure of what exactly I was intending to say (my genetically enhanced intellect letting me down badly here) when the Director seemed to come to a decision without me.
"Very well, Operative Kolvar, cooperate with my men and I will make a proper investigation of this matter once the current crisis has been averted."
For a moment Alex looked as if he still wanted to argue but he quickly decided against it, understanding from the tone of the director's voice that this would be the final offer made to him. With some effort of personal restraint, he nodded briefly and allowed himself to be led away by the armed guards.
As for me? I said nothing as all this took place, nor did I intend to. A full investigation would undoubtedly reveal the truth but that would still take time. Time which I would be able to use to smile, look innocent, and strike before the noose finally closed around my neck. A dangerous proposition to be sure but feasible with a little luck. The only real worry would be trying to get off the station once I made my move. I didn't think I'd get another chance to speak to Marie and Jackson to coordinate an escape plan so I would just have to improvise. I hate improvising, it's so much more Shepard's style than mine.
Meanwhile the Director pulled out a small set of actual physical keys and unlocked a small door set unobtrusively at the back of the room and ordered me to follow him quickly. It wasn't lost on me that he had also ordered double the usual number of bodyguards to accompany us. As we all climbed into the concealed elevator hidden behind the door I started calculating distances and picturing how the first few moves of the fight would play out. The results were pretty grim. Without my biotics, I knew I simply wouldn't be able to deal with this many enemies. I tried to look for something I could use to give myself an edge but the Director interrupted my thoughts.
"I'm not going to waste my breath by asking if you are who you claim to be or not. What I do want you to know at this moment however is how irrelevant your true allegiance currently is."
He turned to face me, his tone and expression making it clear that he wanted my full attention in that moment.
"The Reapers have discovered what we have been doing here and appear to have decided to shut us down. Long range scanners have picked up one of their capital ships inbound to our location and communication with the fleet has already been cut off."
"Is there a contingency plan we can fall back on?" I asked, allowing a little (completely genuine) fear creep into my voice.
Cordanoy snorted but I didn't see anything particularly funny about the situation.
"The safety of this station was intended to rest of on its isolation and the absolute secrecy of the project but clearly someone has screwed up and allowed our position to be compromised."
"But there has to be something we can do."
The Director nodded wearily.
"There is, but it will take both of us to do it. That's why I summoned you here and why it doesn't matter if you're a traitor or not right now. We must work together on this if we want to have any hope of surviving it."
"And afterwards?" I spoke the words out of instinct, though I realized as soon as I heard them that they might sound like an admission of guilt.
Luckily the director did not take it that way.
"Assuming we survive? I'll do my best to give you a fair hearing Sub Director. You've been a good deputy, I've appreciated having you by my side in these difficult times."
"Thank you, sir," I replied automatically, though the idea of his gratitude given what we had done made me feel almost physically sick.
"So what do we do?"
"You'll see," the director replied.
The elevator came to a halt and we came out into a large hall where all the walls were covered in more of the weird alien writing. Almost everything here looked alien, even the consoles that rose out of the floor although some of them had been cut into. Leading from them were wires and equipment, strewn haphazardly all over the place that I guessed was being used to interface with the alien systems.
The whole room had an elegant grandeur to it, everything from the shape of the room to the decoration on the sweeping arches that were all over the place. But most spectacular of all was the view from the vast window that had been partially cleared to give me my first glimpse of the chalky white surface of the asteroid and the light of the pale blue star that lay beyond.
Predictably the view had absolutely no effect on the director, who seemed to be more concerned at the room was virtually abandoned apart from a single Cerberus officer.
"Lieutenant Solner, where are all the support crew? I ordered them to be assembled here and briefed on the situation."
"I tried sir but when they heard what was coming, well I- I just couldn't keep them here sir. They kept insisting that the machine wouldn't work and then they ran off."
"And you weren't able to stop them?" Cordanoy's scathing tone could have melted through the hull like acid.
"I- I didn't expect them to turn violent," he explained, pointing to a couple of nasty bruises forming on his face.
"I tried to convince them to stay but they managed to steal my weapon and disappear into the maintenance tunnels, sir."
The director grimaced and hit a control on a nearby console.
"Control please advise time remaining until the Reaper arrives in this system."
"At current speed, it will be here in approximately twenty one minutes. I hope you have that weapon ready to fire, sir."
"Stand by control," he replied and hit the control again to deactivate the comms.
"Solar capacitors are charged, but we need to redirect the energy to reactivate the main generator so that the weapon can fire," he read out from the nearby display.
"Larona you have a certification in field engineering, do you think you will be able to finish repairs on the flow distributor since all of our actual engineers seem to have absconded?"
"It would help if I knew what this thing was supposed to be," I muttered as I headed for the side tunnel he'd indicated.
"It's a weapon, sub director. A Reaper killer."
I raced down the tunnel, my mind racing as I considered the problem in front of me. The flow distributor was Cerberus technology I was relieved to see, which put fixing it well within my skill set. As I assessed the damage I saw that the fix would be long winded but straightforward enough and set to work immediately, praying I would be able to finish in time. Even that wasn't the most pressing of my concerns however, not compared with the age of the station.
How exactly Cordanoy thought that the alien's superweapon would still be capable of firing after so many millions of years was impossible to fathom. Clearly, the work here had been to restore it but it was obvious the engineers didn't have much faith that it was ready from the way they had chosen to flee. I might have been tempted to join them myself but I wasn't sure how they intended to get off this base let alone out of the system with a Reaper already approaching from the only Mass Relay in the cluster. I would just have to make my repairs as fast as possible and hope the director knew what he was doing.
I was horribly aware of the minutes ticking by as I worked but there was no way I speeding it up. I knew that the repairs required patient precision to have any chance of working reliably when we tried to activate the device. What made it harder still is that I had half a dozen phantoms peering over my shoulder and tripping me up as I tried to move from one work station to the next. Despite all his fine words Cordanoy clearly didn't trust me an inch.
Eventually, I was finished and I raced back down the corridor, leaving my guards struggling to catch up with me.
The director was looking agitated by the time that I returned but was reassuring pleased when I confirmed that the job was done.
"Good. Now activation of the weapon requires joint authorization from the two highest ranking officers aboard the station. Head over to that station and activate it once I have entered my authorization code."
He pressed another button on the console and a holographic reproduction of Director Cordanoy himself materialized in the center of the room.
"Greetings Director," the VI's synthesized voice intoned blandly.
"Please input your authorization code."
"Input code: Ecco, Six, Nine, Eight, Bravo,"
"Sub Director Larona, please input your authorization code."
"Input code: Charlie, One, One, Three, Alpha," I replied.
"Authorization codes accepted. Initiating device start up sequence."
As these words were spoken the whole place began to hum with power and somewhere below us we could hear the main generator roaring back into life.
"Reaper detected in local star system. Acquiring target and charging weapon."
We haven't even given it any instructions but it made sense, the alien race must have designed it to kill any Reaper in range.
"Fifty percent charged."
Would it be enough to stop this Reaper? It had only crippled the last one it had targeted, even after it fell into a brown giant.
"Sixty percent charged."
I supposed I would just have to hope that it would, there were no other options open to me right now.
"Seven- Operative Lawson, are you able to hear me?"
Somehow the VI's voice had been interrupted. The new one was just as synthesized but so much more recognizable to me.
EDI.
Which meant...
The SSV Normandy was here.