Chapter 5 Trouble in Torfan
Part 2: Preperation
T-33 hours
"So when you say we're going to jump," Tali Zorah asked the giant madman she was presently strapped to the chest of, in a voice that sounded confused and strangely hopeful to Jack, "You mean out of a shuttle right? So that we can approach the hanger bay from the ground and more easily sneak in from outside? Right?"
"No." Shepherd answered. "Shuttles can be easily tracked. We need to get in completely clean without raising any suspicions."
"But surely a ship won't raise any suspicions." Tali insisted, the slightest bit of panic entering her tone as her mind made its first guess on just how she was going to get down to the planet. "I mean the pirates in the fleet must all be eager to get down to the planet and enjoy some rest and relaxation."
Jack really did feel sorry for her at this point. Shepherd was determined to get this done his way, and trying to get him to give up on an idea like this once it was stuck in his head was almost impossible. This wasn't even her fault. Shepherd had wanted to prove he could do something like this for about three years now, but back home his mother had laid down the law and refused to even think of such an experiment.
"Sadly not." Jar'Kannath supplied scoffing to himself. "The scribes that run Torfan are all convinced they were sent here as some devine punishment for not being petty and assholeish enough in their last lives. Any ship going down without explicit permission will get turned away, probably after they take a pot shot or two at it. With so many ships going down all at once now, and since the governor has published an official list on the order they can do it in, any unscheduled vessels making for the surface will likely get shot down without hesitation or warning. A couple of the captains are probably planning to get rid of the mercs they hired for this job by sending off ahead of everyone else. I know I would. If I hadn't hired Krogans anyway, they have a nasty habit of surviving impossible crash landings and demanding to be paid regardless. Not going to try that one again after Mindoir."
Jack believed it had been a mistake to outright refuse to do the experiment. If they had just scheduled it for later and then conveniently forgotten or kept postponing it due to malfunctioning equipment, then Shepherd probably would've dropped it eventually. Denying him any chance to prove himself right must've seemed to Shepherd like they doubted he could do it, an almost surefire way to get Shepherd to do something stupid.
"So if we can't take a shuttle how are we getting down?" Tali asked her voice now more confused and rather hesitant.
"I told you." Shepherd explained calmly and clearly, "I am going to jump. First we'll walk out of the airlock over to where the ship drops its trash from."
"Torfan's security insists we unload our waste into the upper orbit of the planet." Jar'Kannath commented dryly. "They seem to think the cloud of debris makes for some kind of defence for the planet. As if a round from a spine gun is going to get deflected by a few clumps of frozen feces."
"And that debris will shield us from detection when we jump down to the surface." Shepherd continued.
"Jump down." Tali repeated in stunned disbelief.
"Yes jump down." Shepherd confirmed.
"From about three hundred kilometers off the ground?" Tali asked.
"I think we're closer to four hundred right now." Shepherd answered.
"Four hundred thirty five to be precise." Jar'Kannath clarified.
"Alright." Tali concluded, her breathing was accelerating Jack noticed but she did a good job of controlling herself even still. "I have several questions at this point."
"How many of them," Jack interjected, "Revolve around the existence of Shepherd's sanity?"
"Most actually," Tali confirmed. "In fact almost all of them I think."
"Ah well there's your problem then." Shepherd offered, "You're wasting time on an entirely pointless line of thought. Everything I do is perfectly sane by definition. It's only a question of whether it will work or not."
"Oh no you don't!" Tali shouted at the man, "You don't get to just define yourself as sane and wave away any objections to your harebrained ideas! Especially not when your idea is to JUMP down to a planet from orbit!"
"Unfortunately I kinda do." Shepherd insisted, "Insanity is deviation from socially normal behavior. You can't accuse a Turian of being obsessive compulsive or a Quarian of being a germaphobe. Those behaviors are drilled into them by their respective cultures to the point that it might as well be genetic. It practically is genetic in the case of a Quarian. And there is no social norm to compare me to.
"I might look human," Shepherd continued, "But I'm not. Not really. There are three cell growths in my brain labeled 'Unknown Shepherd Organ' seven, eight and nine. I know for certain that I entirely lack two of the major emotional impulses that drive and shape human psychology. There is no one in the universe even remotely like me, as far as I know. Therefore any decision I make is the choice that one hundred percent of beings like me would make in the same situation. Therefore I am sane by definition."
The silence that followed his declaration lasted uncomfortably long. Tali and the pirate captain were both stunned. Jack couldn't blame them. She hated it when Shepherd talked like this. She liked the man, admired him even as a kind of older brother she could always count on. Hearing him go on about the matters that fundamentally separated him from the rest of humanity disturbed her. Yeah he was a giant, and yeah he wasn't really alright in the head if she was honest. But he normally seemed just so real, so personal, so familiar really, and then every now and then something would come up that reminded her of the fact that he had likely been built deliberately as a weapon meant to kill and slaughter.
It was a fact she thought she understood. Something so similar to humanity couldn't have evolved naturally outhere in the wider galaxy. He must've been made by someone, and the only reason to make something like him would be as a weapon. It was a fact she knew and accepted, in much the same way that most people knew that tigers were dangerous.
Tell someone that tigers were dangerous and they would brush it off. Of course tigers were dangerous everyone knew that. How could you not know that? They're tigers for god's sake! It didn't stop some people from keeping them as pets though. But then lock a person in a room with a hungry tiger, well, then a person came to realize just how true that simple fact really was. In the same way, Jack knew in her head that Shepherd was an actual killing machine. It didn't stop her from liking and respecting the man though. And it did nothing to prepare her for the times when Shepherd suddenly started acting like a killing machine.
She didn't really remember all that much of what the two of them had done on Elysium as they hunted pirates and looked for the right ship to take control of. Like most real life or death fights, the fighting itself all kind of ran together in her head. Her mind was too busy trying to stay alive to focus on properly archiving her experiences at the time. But she remembered how it started. She remembered Shepherd leading her, Miranda and a few of the other jocks to where the fighting was happening. She remembered being all gunhoe and excited to do some real fighting. To show those four eyed bastards that they didn't mess with humanity and her family. She remembered rounding the corner to join the fight. And she remembered how Shepherd had suddenly just moved. In what seemed like two steps at the most he had been amongst a whole squad of the SIU, the best the Batarians had to offer, and he had all but torn them limb from limb. In the blink of an eye, with just a few quick moves of his hands and knees, he left behind six men, broken, crushed, twisted, torn, utterly and completely slaughtered before they had any idea what was even happening to them. She remembered. She shuddered at the thought.
"So," Tali said awkwardly after the silence had dragged on for sometime. "How are you going to put on a spacesuit with me strapped to your chest like this?"
"I can't really," Shepherd explained, "The good captain doesn't have a suit that can fit me, and I didn't have time to make one myself."
"That will kill you." Tali said in a deadpanned voice.
"Not really." Shepherd explained, "I can hold my breath long enough to reach the planet."
"That will kill you faster!" Tali shouted. "The air in your blood and lungs will boil and explode without air pressure to keep them contained."
"No." Shepherd rejected, "I just need to contract my skin with enough force to recreate the effects of air pressure with in me."
"Skin does not work that way!" Tali insisted.
"Well yours doesn't."
"Do either of you want to add anything to this!?" Tali shouted at Jack and the captain, "The man you all are putting all your hope in is going to kill himself for nothing. How can you all be ok with all this craziness?"
"The whole situation is insane!" Jar'kannath shouted out back at her. "It was insane when my slaves overthrew my whole ship! It was insane when this crazy giant madman decided not to kill me and all my men. And it's insane that you all think you can bring down the whole Hegemony with nothing but a bunch of upstart slaves and a fleet of outcast pirates. But you know what? Screw it all! I should've died several hours ago. So at this point I don't care what other forms of madness the world throws at me anymore. So if Shepherd wants to crash this ship into the rotfather's black swollen eyes to cure all the galaxy's diseases then I say full speed ahead! Time to die with our boots on boys!"
The group finally stopped outside of one of the ship's main airlocks' while the captain panted to himself and tried to calm down a bit. Around them a few of the pirates that had overheard their captain's tirade made a strange sign to themselves. They raised seven fingers up, four on one hand three on the other and then brought them together and folded them flat to made a kind of shield that they held over their hearts or eyes before turning away. It was a strange sight indeed, and the captain looked slightly embarrassed by the whole thing when he saw them. Jack then decided to add her two cents as well.
"There's no use arguing Tali," Jack explained, "Shepherd has had his mind set on trying this for sometime. Ever since we watched that one old movie where they threw that alien monster out an airlock to kill it. Don't worry, we'll drain the air out the airlock slowly and at the first sign something is going wrong we'll pull you both out of there and we can come up with a much more sensible plan moving forward."
"You people are such a bunch of worry warts." Shepherd insisted as he opened the airlock and stepped in. "The more time we waist up here the worse things will get down there. Just be sure to get the geek squad to work on hacking into their outer security system quickly. Just because I know this will work doesn't mean I want to stand in near vacuum outside of the pirate's airlock for next hour or two. Let's get going already."
With a groan from Tali, Shepherd closed the airlock and Jack began to cycle out the air. In seconds the air pressure was low enough to give a normal human altitude sickness, but Shepherd showed no signs of discomfort. Shortly thereafter the chamber was in total vacuum and Shepherd gave a thumbs up to open the outer airlock. Jack complied and the two soon stepped out into the void of space. Jack closed the outer bulkhead and re-pressurized the chamber.
"So," Jack said turning to the pirate captain, "The rotfather huh?"
"Sorry," The captain apologized, "I know it's bad luck and all, to name the old gods, but I swear sometimes there's just no other response to some of the things that man does."
"Hey man I ain't judging you." Jack dismissed. "I just thought all you Batarians followed your sacred pillars for a religion or whatever, never heard of any kind of 'old gods' or anything."
"We don't-" Jar'kannath started and stutterd, he paused for a moment as he considered his words. "It's not a religion. The Pillars are more of a moral philosophy, The Pillars that Hold Up a Man's Life, no Batarian believes in any gods. Supposedly people followed the 'old gods' back before the Hegemony started and spread the teachings of The Pillars. And supposedly people used to do all kinds of horrible things to earn their favor, like kill, rape, and Batarian sacrifice, those sorts of things. Then 'the Hegemony saved us all from terrible debauchery,'or some such nonsense.
"Nobody ever talks about the old gods these days," Jar'kannath continued, one of his hands twitching at his side making geometric shapes in the air as he did so. "Certainly not where any priest can hear you anyway. But if you really want to cuss someone out it's strangely cathartic to evoke that old superstition. Lot's of pirates and smugglers openly do it out here away from the confines of civilization, and lot of the older pirates will smack you upside the head for it even worse than the priests ever did cause they say it's bad luck. I don't know. Aren't you humans still pretty religious?"
"Some people are." Jack answered with a shrug, "Never really understood how these days. Last I checked the bible never mentions god making aliens or anything so at the very least it seems kind of outdated to me. I guess some people take comfort from old traditions. To each their own I guess."
"I could live with that." Jar'kannath agreed.
"Rotfather though." Jack said rolling the name across her tongue, "I kind of like it. It's a good name for an old evil god. I could easily see something like that winding up in like a D&D manual or video game."
"Yeah well don't go yelling it around the crew." Jar'kannath insisted. "That kind of thing makes people jittery. Kinda makes me jittery to if I'm honest. It really is bad luck. Besides you humans already have all the best swear words in the galaxy, so why go taking ours?"
"I will admit that mankind's vast lexicum of profanity is our greatest contribution to the galaxy thus far. Either way, now that's Shepherd has gone down to the surface, you're not going to try anything sneaky up here are you? You wouldn't want me to start cracking heads anymore than you want Shepherd to."
"Sure let me just go and try and disarm all the people who have taken all my guns and armor and I will get right on that." Jar'kannath declared while rolling his top two eyes to emphasize the sarcasm. "I know, I'll get the Krogan that mad giant just blackmailed into following him to help me. Oh no wait, they're all disarmed as well."
"Don't get smart with me tough guy." Jack pressed, "A lot of people would get mighty suspicious of just how quickly you've had a change of heart on this whole slavery bit."
"Fair point I guess." The captain said waving her down. "On the one hand it's not like you all have given me much choice on the matter. You've got a gun to my head and there's no denying that. On the other hand I am increasingly convinced that I'm not actually going to get paid for all my hard work I did on this whole raid and that just pisses me off. So even if I could re-enslave all of you, at this point, I think it would actually be better to just let you all loose on Torfan and sit up here laughing my ass off as you all raise hell down there.
"Furthermore." The captain continued, "If I'm not going to get paid then I'm a dead man walking regardless. This raid was expensive, I'm a month behind on paying my crew already. Hiring the Krogan cost me a few loans to some very unpleasant warlords out in the Terminus, and I still owe Okeer about another ten thousand credits as is. If I can't pay my crew soon they're going to hang me. If I can't pay the Krogan they're going to hang me with my own entrails. If I can't repay the warlords they're going to feed my legs into a meat grinder and then hang what's left of me. At this point my only hope of coming out of this alive is to put together that pirate fleet that Shepherd wants to use to jump start his revolution. Hopefully enough guns gathered together will give the Krogan and warlords pause for thought before they come after me. And then I can gather the loot I need from the remains of your uprising to fully pay them all off."
"Awe." Jack cooed, "You're almost kind of cute when you're desperate like this. Don't worry your pretty little head. Stick with Shepherd and me and we will do our best to keep your neck intact. You really think the other captains will go for it then?"
"They should be in a similar position to me. I'll make sure Shepherd gets his chance to make his speil to them, and then I'll make sure they all vote in the right direction on this. You can count on me."
"Good to hear." Jack approved. "It will be better to see. Come on. We've both got work to do."
T-32 hours
Shepherd felt surprising calm as he drifted through space alongside the waste and refuse released by the Shadow's Glory as it settled into orbit. Tali seemed to have stopped screaming, taken in by the wonder of the unfiltered sight of the star system. Torfan's blue sun burned softly in the distance bathing the gas giant the pirate base orbited in a hazy white light that reflected off its methane rich atmosphere. Distant as it was, the star appeared as but a single blazing light in the midst of the great outer arm of the milky way spread out behind it. A diamond amidst a great crown of stars. The only other identifiable light that matched the sun's glory, was the great bleeding rift that seemed to sit on the other side of the galaxy. In truth the thousand light year wide blazing nebula of burning stars actually sat somewhere between Torfan and the galactic core, tens of thousands of lightyears distance and yet still strangely visible even now. It was all a humbling sight.
Shepherd's heart rate had slowed to a crawl as he slowly made his way towards the planet. No doubt it was the sound of the slowing beats that had put Tali in a panic until Shepherd had moved enough to assure her he wasn't dead yet. Though he still wasn't certain if it had been him or the sight of the system in all its glory that had finally silenced and calmed her down. Truth be told, his heart slowing down had taken Shepherd by surprise as well. It was a very odd thing, not fully understanding just how it was that his own body worked.
His limbs had gone mostly ridgid as his skin tightened to hold the air in his lungs and keep it dissolved in his blood. The skin on his face had turned black as it deflected the increased radiation he was exposed to in space. His diaphragm, or at least the muscles that did the work of a normal person's diaphragm, had shifted in how it contracted. It now pushed the air in his lungs from one to the other through his third lung and its ludicrously complicated network of filters, scrubbing the carbon dioxide his body produced free of carbon and cycling the oxygen back into his body. Functioning as a kind of biological rebreather as he knew it would, but it was still a very strange feeling. Stranger still, he hadn't had to consciously think about doing any of it, and he knew that he could consciously decide to stop, return to normal breathing, and essentially kill himself here and now. And that knowledge in no way interfered with his body's simple automatic alterations it had undergone to keep him alive. Shepherd had to admit, whoever it was that built him, they had done a damn good job. Now why exactly that person decided they needed to make sure that Shepherd would have little trouble living in the cold depths of space on his own and unprotected for potentially hours on end, was another question entirely.
If anything could be said to keep Shepherd up at night it was thoughts like that. It didn't take a genius to realize he was the final product of some massively overfunded super soldier program. But there were a few things about that line of reasoning that never quite added up to Shepherd. He was simply too uncontrollable. An uncontrollable super soldier was a thing certain to end in tears for everyone involved. And not just from the possibility of a coup, uprising or rogue soldiers going on rampages. The military required discipline and order to exist and Shepherd himself was simply too intelligent for the role of a ground pounder. His mind constantly sought solutions to the problems he saw around him, his own confidence in himself lead him to naturally question and doubt the decisions of others. The fact that his predictions of disaster seemed to consistently prove true, only reinforced his certainly that most of the galaxy would be much better off under his influence if not his outright control. The further fact that he could and was in the process of subverting galactic rule served as evidence that he was a dangerous creation.
He was an artificial conqueror. A vat grown Napoleon or Genghis Khan. His capabilities as a warrior and a general were undeniable but if he honest with himself, unless he served under someone as capable as himself, then for the good of the army he served he would have to usurp them. This was not the kind of thing one would normally want out of a super soldier program. Well whatever he had originally been made for, he knew what it was he needed to do now.
Around him the collective debris released by the pirate fleet began to either settle into orbit, or descend towards the planet. Meanwhile the first transports began their flights away from the pirate ships towards the ground as they unloaded their living cargo. Together, this created the maximum amount of interference for the sensors on the planet below, this was the perfect chance to make his own descent undetected.
With a thought, Shepherd sent electric signals flying down his nerves to the biotic nodes that formed in him some six years early. The element zero within him reacted to the stimulus and generated a mass effect field around him, bent to his will and shaped by his thoughts. Most would need to move physically to properly activate their nerves, but Shepherd had never known such restrictions. His nerves responded as he wished without question, and in a moment the effect he desired formed. A bit in front of him, and a bit behind, the mass effect field he created pulled at the fabric of spacetime, curving space itself and generating a vortex of gravity. His momentum already carrying him forward, he was pulled in by the singularity, but he moved quickly enough to instead slip around it and slingshot out the other side at a even greater speed.
Shepherd repeated this maneuver three more times. By the third, he was pulling at least a G and a half as he shot past the warp in spacetime. He was also now properly angled towards the planet and his chosen landing spot. Needing no further change to his direction, Shepherd surrounded himself in a mass effect field and reduced his own mass to greatly increase his velocity.
With no further sensation of force beyond the growing tug of the world beneath, it was hard to judge his actual speed as began his steep descent. Shepherd would've guessed that it was somewhere around twice the speed of sound in a standard atmosphere. All he could fly by was just how much distance between himself and Torfan remained. He held his course until he was about ten kilometers off the ground and finally starting to meet some real resistance from the thin atmosphere. Shepherd restored his mass and began bleeding off speed. The air pressure increased, and he no longer needed to hold his own skin so tight. He twisted his body out to maximise his wind resistance, but turned away from the approaching ground out of some concern for Tali's mental health. By the sound of air, for a lack of a better term, rushing past his head, he had a much better sense of his own speed and reacted accordingly.
About two kilometers from the ground, he began to flatten spacetime around himself to lessen the effect of the moon's gravity, while again reducing his mass so the air around him could more effectively resist him. Thus he greatly lowered his terminal velocity and dropped his speed. About five hundred meters above the ground, he began forming singularities behind him to start actively pulling him upward. Ten meters off the ground, he restored his mass and twisted about to land feet first a little less than a second later. He bent his knees with the impact, and defused the shock through his body.
As he straightened to his full height he took stock of his passenger strapped to his chest. Tali was trembling, and he could faintly hear her yelling again. Luckily she had shut off the speakers on her helmet, how considerate of her. Her suit was still intact and Shepherd saw no signs of injury on her, though it was hard to judge with her suit still on. He was a bit worried about how fast she was breathing. Hyperventilation was a usual sign of panic, so it was to be expected he supposed, but she did have a limited supply of air. They had linked a forty five minute tank of air to her suit, and the whole trip had only taken about twenty minutes, but he would feel better about her once he got her inside the base and she could breathe properly. To that end, Shepherd began running in the direction of one of smaller spaceports on Torfan, about three kilometers away.
Tali had been quite the unexpected boon. Her technical knowledge had proven invaluable, and Shepherd was certain that she would continue to impress in the days and weeks to come. Beyond that though she possessed qualities even more valuable than her cyber warfare abilities.
In many respects she was about what he might have expected from a Quarian. She was keenly aware of her people's plight and the potentially vital role she might play in preserving them. But she also was plainly quite young and inexperienced. She had a kind of sheltered hardness to herself, if that made any sense. That was perhaps to be expected. The only other Zorah nar Rayya Shepherd had heard of was admiral Rael'Zorah. That marked Tali as the only daughter of an old and well respected family line, her father was not the first or even third Zorah to hold the rank of admiral, her's was the closest thing one could find to an elite family in the migrant fleet.
Such a heritage came with its own challenges and privileges. Her family had clearly done all it could to protect her. But the migrant fleet could not tolerate outright naivety and the result was that she had been mechanically prepare for combat and violence but not mentally. Hense her sheltered hardness.
She had killed for the first time in the armory, and she was struggling to come to terms with it. But she hadn't hesitated to pull the trigger as so many others had when they found themselves face to face with men trying to kill them on the way to the armory. Her training had driven her to do what she had to, even before her mind had processed what was coming. Afterwards she had suppressed her raw emotions under the needs of the moment so she could deal with it later. For the next few nights she might wake up in a cold sweat, crying or screaming but she would get over it, Shepherd was certain. There was beyond doubt a core of steel in this girl, one that would see her through this challenge and if left to her own devices, eventually see her captaining her own ship in the fleet.
She probably wouldn't make admiral, a position as much political as it was tactical. Tali struck Shepherd as a person a bit to technical for political life. She was too eager to get to grips with the problems in front of her, too concerned with efficiency over morality and probably politeness as well. She was the kind of leader who would step on people's fingers to get what needed to be done, done. An invaluable subordinate, a terrible diplomat. Besides that, Quarians were well aware that nepotism, as one of the three great vices of bureaucracy, was one of the best ways to destroy the creativity and initiative that the migrant fleet needed to survive. Furthermore, it was a vice the Quarians were uniquely exposed to, thanks to their strong sense of responsibility to their people and the tight nit nature of life on a liveship. While the Zorahs had produced an admiral every three generations or so since before the fall of Rannoch, neither they nor anyone else had ever had one two generations in a row. Of course, all that was assuming she continued to progress on her own, Shepherd had no intentions of leaving her to wallow as just a ship captain. By the time he was done with her, she would go from completing her pilgrimage to commanding the Quarian specially forces within two years at most, and he would see her on the Admiralty board within a decade.
Before long Shepherd found himself quickly approaching one of the starports. His eyes telescoped in and focused on the still slightly distant structure, but he saw them plain as day. The outer security cameras were cycling on and off in the previously agreed signal that the outer security system had been compromised by the team of cyber security turned warfare experts Tali had trained up on the ship. Shepherd put on an extra burst of speed to reach the outer airlock as quickly as possible. The airlock cycled open he approached, allowing him to enter. As the chamber sealed and pressurized, Shepherd tasted the air to confirm he wasn't being gassed before he finally breathed in for the first time in twenty six minutes exactly. The inner door opened and Shepherd entered unopposed. Knowing that the security system wouldn't track his progress, Shepherd kept his cloaking field inactive for now to conserve power. Instead he relied on his enhanced sense of hearing to forwarn him of approaching pirates, as he made his way quickly through the port. Fortunately most of the base personal were busy elsewhere unloading and inspecting the incoming shipments.
Tali most important feature to Shepherd however, wasn't her skills or her potential to grow even more skilled, but her surprising strength of will. Tali had actively resisted his attempts at driving her forward and had argued against what he was doing in fighting the Batarians. This was no small feat. During the eight years the Council and the Alliance had conspired to deny him from his true passions of military theory and weapon design, Shepherd had instead turned his attention to studying the psychology and culture of the various races of the galaxy. While he was the most practiced at manipulating humans, a Quarian shouldn't be so resistant to his charms.
Shepherd was by his nature the epitome of the unknown. He was not only something that no one ever expected to encounter, but something that most people don't believe even could exist. In the presence of the unexpected, people rely on their imagination to provide the information that their physical sense cannot and to prepare themselves for what could happen and what they can do. Fear invents visions of the worst possible outcomes to brace the individual for the worst, while hope grants people an idea of an optimal outcome that they can work towards. When confronted with Shepherd's overwhelming physical power and ability it is natural for people to assume the worst, and quickly realize that if Shepherd sought their lives then they were doomed. This meant that whenever Shepherd instead dealt with people kindly and magnanimously he not only relieved them of the greatest fears but also gave them hope that by following him their own welfare would advance.
This effect had already reproduced itself amongst not only the captured humans but also the pirates as well. The captured slaves had had their lives torn away from them. Their minds were filled with visions of all that they would suffer at the hands of the Batarians for decades to come and the ignoble death that surely awaited them. Shepherd gave them hope not only of escaping from this awful fate, but of taking control of their lives back from the random and chaotic universe that had so betrayed them. The pirates likewise had already resigned themselves to dying at Shepherd's hands, when he offered them a chance to work for him instead, he gave them not only a means of escaping certain death, but a means at striking back at the Hegemony that had abandoned them. In both cases Shepherd not only now represented salvation to his followers, but empowerment. Now Shepherd was the basis on which these people built their view of the world itself, he was the means by which they would take back control, he was their savior, and they were now his fanatics.
There were, generally speaking, three ways to motivate people. This was true not only of humans but of all the Citadel races as well. In fact the main reason why the Citadel system even worked at all was thanks to this common system of motivation. Firstly one could convince people that acting in such a way advanced their own interests. Usually this was accomplished by giving people money which almost everyone considered useful and beneficial, but also offering someone emotional or moral fulfillment likewise could satisfy them. The second was to instil fear in people, bypassing their sense of rationality and getting them to lash out on instinct and emotion. The third, and by far the most powerful, was to instil in a person a sense of duty and responsibility to uphold and protect some concept, person or system. This was usually accomplished by altering a person very sense of identity, making them a small part of a larger whole. Thus the good of and survival of the larger system becomes synonymous with the good and survival of the individual, and even more important than the individual in many ways. While a person can be easily convinced to fight and kill out of fear or for a paycheck, people were usually only willing to die in the support of the greater whole. This was the essence of fanaticism, when a person comes to see something as even more important than their own lives.
All armies were built on such fanaticism. The soldier is the ultimate form of the citizen. A person so convinced of the rightness and justice of their own culture and civilization that they are willing to not only die in the defence of it but also kill to advance its interests at the expense of other states. A soldier does not need to be convinced that going to a place and killing another man there will somehow make them better off or safer. A soldier has already agreed that the nation's advancement and defence is the same as their own advancement and protection. Soldiers can act with unity and speed, striking with determination and a willingness to give up their own lives to destroy their enemies and protect their fellows, all thanks to this belief that the cause they fight for is more important than their own survival.
Shepherd needed this fanaticism to not only destroy the Batarian system of slavery but also complete his further goals of reforming and improving the galaxy. He had to take advantage of the just cause Elysium offered him, so he didn't have the time to build up a culture or system of beliefs that men could analyze and decide if they were willing to give their lives in support of. Instead he had to make himself into a symbol that others could believe in and build their lives on. He had to create a cult of personality to instil in others the fanaticism he needed to change the galaxy. This however, meant that every true believer he made out of the men under him was one less man he could rely on for any kind of advice.
The fanatic by their very nature cannot question the subject of their devotion. To doubt their convictions is to abandon not only their greatest strength but to throw away the entire basis of their identity. While such deep personal introspection often makes them into a better person, it would destroy their use as a soldier, and thus is something Shepherd could not allow.
As Shepherd considered these things, they came to the end of starport and entered the great underground highway that connected the inner base with its outer satellites. Fortunately the highway had little need for much lighting, relying instead on the headlamps of the transports that used it. Thus Shepherd could easily make his way down it, still only using his cloak sparingly when convoys of trucks passed him as he kept to the shadows along the long roadway.
In Shepherd's life he had only known four people that didn't instinctively submit to him and could actively disagree with him as Tali had. The first was his adopted mother, Sara Shepherd. She had the unique advantage of not seeing the gigantic killing machine that he was whenever she saw him. She only saw the small vulnerable child she had pulled from the depths of space all those years ago. The second was Spectre Valern, which was to be expected. If the Citadel Spectres couldn't resist a little manipulation and intimidation then the galaxy would be in a much worse place than it was.
The third was a special case. Miranda Lawson was one of the few designer children rescued by Spectre Valern who had actually lived with her supposed father for some time before she was brought to the research station. While she had lived a physically comfortable or even luxurious life, especially compared to the 'jocks' the would be child soldiers like Jack who had suffered greatly at the hands of Cerberus, she instead had been subjected to tremendous emotional abuse living with a man who made it clear in no uncertain terms that he had bought her, owned her and could and would replace her if she failed to live up to his standards. Consequently Miranda was ferociously determined to live her own life and would bend knee to no one ever again. It was a tremendously powerful part of her character that Shepherd respected too much to ever willingly subvert, no matter how frustrating it made her at times.
The fourth, Jack, was actually partially Shepherd's own fault. When he was younger and still getting used to the full extent of control he could exert on other people he had essentially experimented on Jack while trying to work out his full technique. He had pressed her to far and had badly hurt their relationship as a result. It had been weeks before she was willing to even speak to him again and nearly half a year before he had convinced her to forgive him. As a result, Jack now had her back up around him, at least subconsciously so. She still agreed with him mostly, but any attempt to force her into line was certain to result in her blowing up at him.
Unlike others that Shepherd could browbeat or inspire and thus lead easily, those four and now Tali could only be persuaded by appealing to their own interests and good. Or by frightening them, but Shepherd considered such techniques inferior and uncontrollable. They could question and challenge him, they looked at problems from a different direction then he did, making them ideal advisors. Not that Shepherd often needed advice, he was probably one of the top ten smartest people in the galaxy thanks to his enlarged brain and lightning fast nervous system. But the fact that Shepherd had to appeal to their own interests to persuade them meant that none of Shepherd's plans or intentions could be motivated solely by his own interest, since they would have to likewise appeal to his advisors and their concerns. In this manner, Tali and Jack would keep Shepherd honest and prevent him from becoming as bad a tyrant as those he sought to replace.
This was especially important since Miranda had refused to come with Jack and Shepherd to overthrow the Hegemony, a fact that still rather rankled him. Shepherd's inability to persuade Miranda to help him would've worried him more if her objections had stemmed from his methods or intentions, but rather Miranda had simply doubted his ability to pull it off. She doubted him. And that stung. More than it should. Obviously a Citadel Councilor and an Alliance Navy Captain couldn't be seen to cooperate and support a soon to be known terrorist and revolutionary, which ruled out his mother and Valern as potential advisors and had left him with only Miranda and Jack. And Miranda had for some reason believed that an entire civilization of billions of people could possibly overcome one over glorified science experiment with an axe to grind. But now he had Tali to take her place which was good.
At last Shepherd and Tali came to the main base on Torfan. Here underground, it appeared as little more than an alcove in the highway wrapping around it. An open space large enough for three of the large trucks to pull up to it without impeding traffic heading up or down the road. Large bay doors opened out into the loading bay where the trucks could back up to the wall, with a smaller door off to the side where people could walk in and out on ground level. One of the loading bays was opened up to receive a truck backing up to it, so Shepherd slid between them with his cloak active, and climbed up into the base without a sound or any sign the workers ready to unload the truck had noticed them.
Crossing the loading bay quickly, Shepherd paused briefly to examine one of the large scanners near the entrance, ready to reexamine the incoming cargo for anything the inspectors top side might have missed. The design was fairly standard, and older version of such scanners used at starports around the galaxy to check incoming cargo against its declared manifest. But it was just one of three in this loading bay alone. According to the pirates, the base's bureaucrats would use at least seven or eight such loading bays to bring in cargo on this scale. Dealing with each individual scanner would be time consuming, hopefully all of the scanners linked into a common server system further in, from which all the scanners could be appropriately sabotaged. His curiosity satisfied, Shepherd reached the far side of the loading bay, and slipped through a door out into the wider base.
Tali butted her head against his chest to get his attention. Shepherd held up a finger to her face for a moment as he checked the surrounding corridors for signs of potential interruptions before allowing her to continue. The speakers on her helmet came to life with a slight pop of static, but they were obviously set to their near lowest volume setting and thus made very little noise.
"Hold here a moment," Tali instructed as her fingers danced across her omnitool, "I'm accessing their inner network now. Security is a bit tighter than expected, but not much to speak off. Alright I'm in."
"Can you access the scanners from here?" Shepherd asked.
"No," Tali denied. "What I'm accessing is basically the local extranet, for visitors and businessmen here. All the technical systems will be closed off. Probably connected to the local security stations. But I should be able to use the more accessible broadcasts to track down those major stations. Just give me a minute to…. Oh."
"Problem?"
"Yeah," Tali admitted as she turned her omnitool so that Shepherd could see it as well, along with the 3D image of various corridors branching off in all directions. "I'm running an auto-map of this place while I search for any technical blueprints or something, but the inner base might be a lot more complicated than I had assumed. I could take me quite some time to track down one of those security stations."
"Our time is limited Tali," Shepherd chided, "We only have about another four hours or so until Jar'kannath has to start bringing our people down here."
"I know, I know." Tali placated while her fingers danced along the omnitool. "But there's only so much I can do, it's not like they've posted a map of the place on here."
Shepherd took a breath to calm himself for a moment. His vision became more erratic as he ignored the input from his eyes and turned all of his conscious attention to his ears and the vibrations in his feet. There was the thrum of ventilation above him. The murmurs of fearful slaves from the cargo hold behind him. The wine of electric forklifts as they carted around crates of human life. The vibrations of erratic footsteps from a dozen different directions as people moved about on this floor and the one above and beneath. And just there, the clash of foot falls in unison. Men marching down a corridor some forty meters to the north west. Shepherd locked on to those marching beats, and tuned everything else back into the background of his senses, then he took off in the direction of his quarry.
"Shepherd!" Tali squealed as he started moving. "Where are we going?"
"To ask for directions." Shepherd answered.
After a few turns and slipping past a handful of individuals walking the corridors, merchants from the look of them, and not necessarily knowledgeable of Shepherd's desired target, Shepherd found his prey. A group of about eleven men, marching down the hallway, arms swinging, guns proudly displayed, chests outs and all the swagger they could muster shown with every step to intimidate those around them out of their way. Their armor and weapons came from a dozen different sources, but each man had a single red stripe across their shoulder. Torfan's security forces, out and about to stare down the slaves and lord their authority over the pirates on shore leave to follow. The exact sort of men who would know exactly where a security station could be found.
Shepherd stalked the group silently for a time, and when they found themselves in a more deserted hallway, the group's discipline promptly slipped. The men now slouched and fell out of step, one man fell a bit behind the group, as he drew a canteen to his lips and quenched his thirst. Glancing down a side corridor to ensure it was likewise uninhabited, Shepherd took an quick lunge towards then man, hooked a hand around his throat, and dragged him back and to the side. His absence went unnoticed by his peers, and the poor Batarian could hardly breath, let alone cry for help. Shepherd ducked into the side passage, and pressed the man against the wall, his legs dangling in the air as Shepherd held him at head height. Shepherd stepped in to bring the man within the reach of his stealth field, rendering the man invisible to outside observers and giving the bewildered security enforcer a full view of Shepherd commanding glare that now all but burrowed into the man's soul.
"If you enjoy breathing," Shepherd began easing off the Batarian's windpipe just enough that he wouldn't pass out and might be able to squeak out an answer. "You will point the way to the nearest security station."
"All Seer save me!" The man croaked as Shepherd grabbed one of his hands and broke two his fingers with a quick snap. "Yes! I can show you the way! Down that way and further in!"
The batarian gestured down the way they had come with his yet unbroken hand. Shepherd relieved the man of his terminator assault rifle and phalanx pistol. Then he re-shifted his hand to hold both of the Batarian's arms and kept them pressed against his throat to hold him against Shepherd's side. With his prisoner secured Shepherd moved once more, making his way in the direction indicated, stopping at cross ways to let his guide indicate an appropriate new direction. Shortly, they reach an unmarked section of hallway which the Batarian insisted held a hidden door into a secret compartment. Tali nodded in conformation as she scanned the wall with her omnitool and began to access the door's remote control.
Shepherd promptly broke the security guard's neck and after checking that the coast was clear, leaned the man against the wall, propped up in such a way as to appear merely lazing about. He then began to unstrap Tali from her current predicament and set her on the ground once more. Shepherd gave her one of his stealth field generators rendering her invisible and making him slightly less so. He nodded exaggeratedly at Tali, his more sweeping motions more easily detectable with one less generator, and she taking it as a sign, opened the door for him.
Within Shepherd saw eight figures all wearing armor marked by the blue stripe of Torfan's security, one of them had an additional red stripe no doubt signifying his higher command. The eight figures were all paying attention to a wall of computer monitors, clear crystal glass screens through which holograms were projected outward by the circuitry carved into the glass. Six men stood at the screens themselves each watching over a specific area under their command, while two others stood in the middle of the room to gain a more broad perspective and monitored the men at the monitors. One man near the wall turned and looked around at the sound of the opening door. To his perspective, Shepherd seemed a great dark mass blocking out the doorway, like a shadow standing upright, or a great swarm of insects flying so close together that they couldn't be seen through. His mouth opened in confusion, but he had not said a word. Shepherd drew a pair of shotguns from his back, the weapons extending outward from their reduced inactive size, and entered the room.
Shepherd approached the two men in the center of the room, he foot falls still silent, his form still shadowy and indistinct, his pace measured. He looked like a great cloud of black smoke broiling into the room. His only observer was still dumbstruck when Shepherd finally attacked. The guns he had drawn had come from the pirate armory and were each equipped with a shoulder strap incase they had to be used by an unarmored pirate in an emergency. Shepherd held them near their centers and allowed the straps to hang loose. With a casual motion he flipped the straps over the heads of the two soldiers in front of him, and with a deft spin of his fingers, he looped the straps around their necks and formed a small knot where they intertwined at the base of each man's skull. Each Batarian had only enough time to recognize the feeling of nylon on their skin before Shepherd yanked them back and upwards. The sudden speed snapped their heads forwards and pulled their skulls from the base of their spines, snapping the necks and throats at once. The men were left paralyzed and suffocating as they hung limp before Shepherd dying and helpless.
The sudden motion finally broke the effect of Shepherd's remaining stealth field and he now stood fully visible in the middle of the room. The sight of the two deaths and the sudden appearance of this great murderous giant in their midst left the one man looking at Shepherd all but choking as he desperately tried to cry out in alarm. Three other men at the consoles started to turn around at the sound of snapping bones behind them, the last two flinched, hunched up and looked down by mistake. Shepherd was already moving as he studied his prey, with a casual swing he threw the two soon to be corpses at the four men starting to see him and pounced on the two yet to turn. The first body struck the man who had seen him enter square in the chest and knocked the air from his lungs. The second body, given a wider throwing arc, splayed out horizontally in the air and crashed into the three other men, driving them into the wall. One of them had his head pushed throw one of the glass monitors, and tore his throat out on the glass, the other two were merely stunned.
Shepherd grabbed his twin shotguns by the barrels and bore down on the two remaining upright men. Swinging hard and down ward, he brought the pistol grips of each gun hard into the temples of the two security officers. Their skulls shattered under the blows, fragments of bone were driven into their brains, their capacity for thought destroyed they slumped to the ground and were left for their brains to drown in their own blood. Shepherd moved quickly down the line, striking now with the butts of his guns against the throat and forehead of the two surviving men who had been hit by the second corpse. Another skull broked under his assault as the man's head was whipped back quickly enough to also break his spine, and the second man was left grasping at his collapsed windpipe.
The man who had actually seen Shepherd enter tried to stumble up and roll past the giant that had now slane his comrades. Hoping to get enough room to turn and fire upon the monster that was about to kill him. But the man underestimated Shepherd's reach, and he caught a snap kick to his face that left his jaw and lowers skull shattered, and his brain concussed and unconscious.
Just then Shepherd heard the telltale click of an unfolding weapon behind him. A ninth soldier, an older human with the tattoos of a terminus pirate gang on his face, standing in the corner of the room, a blind spot to where Shepherd had entered from. The man had the look of wild panic in his eyes overwhelmed by the brutality and speed of Shepherd's work. Nonetheless, his training had served him well enough, and he had had enough sense to bring his rifle out and up to face the giant.
Shepherd cursed himself for failing to properly sweep the room when he entered, and allowed the momentum of his kick to spin his body around to face the new threat. The man and the world around him seemed to move in slow motion to Shepherd. He knew his shields could take the salvo that was coming for him, but he prefered to minimize the noise of his assault, this was a stealth mission after all. Shepherd whipped one his arms around and sent one his guns flying through the air at his target. The man flinched at the sight of the projectile, and blocked it with his gun, deflecting the impact enough to save his life, but allowing himself to be rocked back by the impact. Shepherd gave the man no second chance, crossing the distance in all but a blink of any eye, Shepherd brought his second gun down and once more drove it's pistol grip into the top of the man's skull.
As the ninth man slumped to the floor dead from his broken skull, Tali's invisible form peaked around the door and entered, bringing the body of the dead patrolman with her. Her eyes swept over the carnage left by his passing but made no comment beyond a single grimace. She closed the door behind her and set to work at the surviving consoles.
"I guess you're done persuading people to join you huh?" Tali questioned as she got to work. "You didn't even give them a chance to give up."
"I can't convince everyone I come across to drop everything and follow me." Shepherd responded as he began to search the bodies of the fallen security officers, checking their weapons and equipment. "I might have been able to intimidate them into surrender after I killed one or two of them, but I don't exactly have plenty of places to start stashing prisoners."
"You just convinced a krogan warlord to follow your mad scheme." Tali pressed, "How much harder would it be to talk all these people around? They're all in the same boat the pirates are right? Most everyone here is going to die when the Alliance comes looking to rescue their people."
"Truth be told not to difficult." Shepherd admitted. "You're right, it would be in their best interest to work with me against the Hegemony. It would take some time, and a lot could go wrong, but I think I could do it. I never really pressed my ability to persuade people to its limit growing up, so I don't know how far I can really press it. But there is a limit to everything."
"But if you could solve this peacefully," Tali said a little hesitantly. "Aren't you deliberately deciding to murder these people by attacking them regardless?"
"I am." Shepherd accepted as he got to work, he had found a silencer attachment to the pistol used by the apparently leader of this squadron. He took the gun and pressed it to the chest of one of the dead bodies that he was holding up as if it was facing the doorway. He then shot the corpse three times splattering blood against the walls with a few silent coughs from the weapon. He dropped the body to the ground as if it had been knocked off its feet by the hits and then moved on to the next.
"But why though?" Tali asked after she flinched slightly at the sound of the shots going off. "Why not take this place as your own as well?"
"Sooner or later persuasion would no longer work." Shepherd explained as he created the false impression that a firefight had broken out in the room. "I won't be able to convince people to act too far against their own self interests. While what I am planning will help the pirates and other rejects of Batarian society, as well as the culture as a whole, it will be to the considerable detriment of most of the rule class and upper middle class as well. They will resist me and what I am doing. Plus culture as a whole resists any kind of change, since it will threaten an already functional system and endanger the prosperity that people already possess. A society must be broke before it can be fixed. A certain amount of chaos must be introduced to the system to make real change necessary and acceptable. Thus in the end it will come down to violence."
"Not necessarily." Tali denied as her hands danced on the along the computer console and she did her best to ignore the blood splatter that occasional struck the screens or that she felt drip against her suit. "If you can demonstrate that structure of society is insufficient to the task, people will accept change to deal with the issue. Chaos need not be violence."
"The disruption of social order on mass scale will produce violence regardless of the origin of chaos." Shepherd declared as he began to press down on the chests of the dead victims, pumping their hearts and pushing blood out through their wounds as if they had been shot while still alive. "With 1.25 trillion credits I could buy every slave in batarian space and free them. With 2.75 trillion credits I could bankrupt and buy out every industry that employs them and reform them to work without slaves. With 6.62 trillion credits I could bribe, subvert, black mail, and reform the necessary number of nobles needed to change the legal status of slaves throughout the hegemony. In all these cases, 19.86 billion Batarians would be added to the existing caste system.
"Everyone of those Batarians would have to be evaluated by the priests of the Pillar of Foresight to determine which area of society they are best suited to be reintroduced to. 19.86 billion Batarians suddenly added to the workforce, competing for jobs against every other Batarian alive. And since most regular Batarians are working jobs they lack the talent for thanks to the inefficiency inherent in a caste system, whereas the slaves will exclusively be driven into industries they can actually succeed in a lot of regular Batarians are probably going to lose their jobs, pushed out of the market by the freed slaves. The resulting social pressure and backlash will lead to violence on a mass scale. The slaves will likely be forced into roles as second class citizens as people fight to defend what little they already have. To solve that crisis I will need to be able to act unilaterally and immediately. I will need overwhelming force that can be brought to bear at a moments notice without anyone able to gainsay me or object to what must be done. I will need to have military power.
"The greater the alteration to society the greater the chaos will be needed to initiate that change and the more chaos will be created by that change. Chaos is necessary to initiate revolution, but the destruction of chaos and the formation of new order is necessary to complete a revolution. The goal of a revolutionary therefore must be to limit the spread of chaos as much as possible. The simplest solution is usually the best, and the simplest solution to any political problem is force."
"If your goal is ultimately to limit the destruction that you cause," Tali argued, "Then I ask again, why do the people on Torfan need to die if you could end the conflict here peacefully?"
"Every time I directly intervene," Shepherd explained, as he retrieved the shotgun he had thrown at the last soldier having finished doctoring the crime scene. "Whether by preventing a conflict or by overwhelming an enemy with my own strength I deny my soldiers a chance to test themselves and improve their combat ability. Eventually they will have to fight and they won't be able to win just with a 'can do' attitude and a few weeks of training, they will need real experience and veterency. Torfan is an ideal proving ground. The enemy is competent but over confident, spread out and isolated with exploitable flaws in their communications. The people are desperate, hemmed in and afraid. Once I show them that victory is possible their fear will turn to anger, and burning fury that, if properly directed, will overpower the defenders. As it is written: 'Throw your soldiers into position once there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight.' If you want to see how a man can really fight, first lock him in a cage. The surge in moral from this initial victory at impossible odds will inspire them to throw themselves into training and will carry them through harder battles yet to come.
"I do not need Torfan." Shepherd concluded, "And its sacrifice furthers my goals. The lives will kill hear now are lives that will not have to be lost later and at a greater price. It is a grimm mathematics to be sure, but it is the only way forward that I see."
Tali fell silent after that as she continued to tunnel her way through Tofan's security systems. Strangely, she did not seem saddened or disturbed by Shepherd's declaration, but remained focussed on the programs dancing before her. Shepherd suspected, that truth be told Tali didn't actually care for the lives of these slaves, smugglers and merchants of suffering and death, but rather had used the conversation to try and gauge him in some way. He appreciated it either way. It was what he wanted her here for, to challenge him and make him explain and defend his reasoning. Being right was all well and good, but it didn't really matter if one couldn't explain why they were right and convince someone else that they were wrong.
Shepherd turned his attention from her and back to the gun he had retrieved. The shotgun refused to retract to it's more compact size, and now that he could study it in detail, Shepherd saw that the barrel had been bent by his throw. He quickly examined the other weapon he had used to kill in this room and fortunate found that it was still in good shape and usable. Shepherd grunted in annoyance at the damaged weapon and swapped for an assault rifle carried by one of the security guards.
"I need to get a dedicated melee weapon." Shepherd mused to himself.
"What?!" Tali exclaimed as she stopped working and turned to face the giant.
"Like a broad sword or a warhammer," Shepherd explained, "Something I can get some proper momentum behind for taking down larger targets."
"A sword." Tali stated in disbelief.
"Maybe a claymore," Shepherd pondered, "Or a glaive, I've always liked glaives they're like 'sword pikes' very good design you know."
"In this day and age?" Tali questioned. "You do know melee combat is almost completely useless in modern warfare. Ancestors, it was almost completely useless in olden days too. Your people have had access to guns for like 800 years right?"
"That is a mindset steeped in tradition," Shepherd retorted, "Blind to the innovations of the modern era. Orbital insertions, stealth transports, shielded personnel carriers have all shrunk the battlefield considerably compared to the age of field artillery and tracked tanks. In rough terrain, urban combat, or in boarding actions, a well armored and shielded soldier with a jet pack or the vanguard suit of biotic powers can easily close the distance to engage their enemies at point blank ranges."
"Or, you could give that same soldier a shotgun," Tali pressed, "And he could do that same thing, more quickly and wouldn't be completely useless if the enemy took a few steps backwards. It's not a question of is it possible, but whether or not its efficient. Which it isn't. Guns can do more damage, more quickly, at greater and safer ranges."
"There is more to winning battles than just killing people." Shepherd dismissed, "Shock and awe are the real keys. Convince a man he's already lost and you don't have to fight him at all. The mind isn't evolved enough to process death from a distance. We are all the descendents of prey animals, so it's hard wired into our subconscious that death comes from things up close. It's one thing to see three men fall over because a sniper has you zeroed in, it's quite another to see a man get ripped in half by a scream psychopath with battleaxe. Besides, my own body is optimized for close quarter fighting where I can not only deal the most damage but put my greater strength and reflexes to their best use."
"You're strength would be put to best use," Tali insisted, "Carrying some kind of heavy weapon systems. Like the shoulder mounted miniguns and portable howitzers that the Elcor use. Your reflexes would be best used for sniping. And as a general rule, the guy in charge of an army shouldn't be slumming it with the ground pounders in the first place!"
"Portable howitzer….." Shepherd mused deep in thought, though he did catch Tali berating herself under her breath for suggesting more ways he could kill people, "Yes that does make sense. I wonder if there is a way to combine the systems?"
"What like a gun sword?" Tali scoffed.
"No," Shepherd agreed, "The combination leaves both unbalanced and awkward to use plus they are usually restricted to pistol barrels. Traditionally I would rely on a bayonet, but that design stemmed from the fact that guns were originally meant as an anti cavalry tool, so it made sense to turn them into spears. I've seen alternatives to the idea, where they place an axe head on the end of the gun to give it a more anti-infantry use. And King Henry the VIII of England once owned a gun mace of which he was quite fond. Something along those lines perhaps, maybe a combination sniper rifle axepike? We'll put our heads together after this is all done see what we can come up with."
"Oh no!" Tali denied in horror at the very thought, "I'm am putting my foot down right now! I will not help you come up with crazy weapons to kill people with!"
"Oh don't be like that," Shepherd insisted playfully, "It'll be fun! The Alliance and the Council would never let me actually work on any of of the ideas I had for not guns, tanks and warships. The two of us together, we could come up with a whole new generation of wonderful weapons of death and destruction!"
Tali shook her head and turned back to her computer screen. Shortly thereafter, the screen lit up with hopeful new messages that signal Tali's success. She nodded approvingly at the cooperating computer system and called back to Shepherd.
"I we could turn our attention back to the task at hand? I've gotten access to the scanners and am uploading their alter programming now. They should ignore our weapons and equipment and allows all our people in safely."
"Excellent work," Shepherd complimented her.
"We will probably want to monitor the situation from here until all our people have come down." Tali continued, "In case something goes wrong. I should be able to initiate a manual override from here before the inspectors are alerted to the problem."
"That should work." Shepherd agreed. "See if you can access the shift schedule for the security guards in this area. If you can we should make sure that no one else tries to come and use this room until we're done here."
"No problem," Tali affirmed as she got to work. "What's our next step once our people are in?"
"I will sneak you back to the slave pens after we're done here." Shepherd explained, "There you can work safely with our other hackers to expand our control over Torfan's inner systems. Jack and the others will begin distributing weapons amongst the Elysians and organizing them for the fight to come."
"What about you?" Tali asked.
"I've got to meet with the pirate captains eventually and make sure they come round to my point of view." Shepherd continued. "Also I'm going to get to work softening up the defenders for our outbreak. Mostly though, I'm going to convince the governor here that the pirates are planning to betray him. The more animosity between the two I can create, the more likely the pirates will side with us and the more divided their forces will be when the time to act finally comes.
"Oh!" Shepherd added almost as an afterthought, "I'm going to see if I can't jury rig a suit of armor together for my self. Something that will be suitably impressive and inspiring I think. Maybe something brass, or golden. We'll see what they have lying around."
AN:So this is the first section of the story written from Shepherd's perspective. I'm still not certain if I actually like how it turned out or not. Took me a few goes to get to a place where it doesn't feel like I've contradicted anything about him I've previously established.
This section also deals with some of the Primarch's more advanced biology, which I'm no expert on by any stretch of the imagination, so I ask for your forbearance if it seems like I've deviated from the established lore. I am pretty certain that other Primarchs have gone on exposed space walks before though.
I've decided to take the advice of one reviewer and just upload these whenever I reach a natural stopping place rather than trying to get the whole section done, hence why we still aren't done with Torfan yet.
Let me know what you all think of Shepherd's inner dialog and philosophical musings, as well as the presentation of his character overall.