Here we go again!
"Back so soon, Commander?" Joker called from the cockpit where he was, apparently, watching a football game on one of the secondary monitors.
"Ran out of ammo," Shepard deadpanned. "Nice to see that you're keeping a close eye on us while we're out and about."
"What can I say? There's only so much pulse-pounding action a poor pilot can take before he needs a breather."
"Evidently," Shepard said. "Tali around?"
Joker jerked his fist backward, pointing his thumb toward the pit where the sensor technicians worked. "Right side. Pressly's pretending not to keep an eye on her while he totally keeps an eye on her. Why, got something?"
"Might," Shepard said. "That, or we have a wonderful new way to ruin chapstick. Don't work too hard, now."
"You know me," Joker said, unmuting the sound on his console.
"Shepard! I'm all set up and ready to go as soon as- what's this?" Tali asked, peering down at the tube in Shepard's hand.
"A bad practical joke, something straight out of a spy video, or a new geth-themed flavor of chapstick. Your choice," Shepard said, opening the tube and handing the data chip contained within to the quarian.
"Ew," Tali said as the chip stuck to her environment suit's finger. "Let me guess: A dead drop, vessels passing in the dark, that sort of thing?"
"No, it was 'you must have dropped this.' Not even joking," Shepard said. "I think the administrator's secretary has something for old spy stories."
"I take it you want to know what's on it," Tali said.
Shepard nodded. "I wasn't about to jam it into my commlink – I'm not a tech, and I have no idea what sort of games one could play with a piece of gear like this. Figured I'd take it back to someone less likely to accidentally reveal my contacts to the galaxy while opening it."
"A sound precaution," Tali said, and while Shepard couldn't see the quarian's smile through the faceplate, it was plenty clear from her voice. "When working with geth tech data, we use specially designed datapads and computers with no radios at all. Hard to make a networked intelligence when there's no network!"
"I should add one of those to my shopping list next time I'm near a quarian merchant," Shepard said. "With all the geth we're fighting, odds are good we'll want to 'interrogate' some at some point."
"I can put you in contact with a reliable one," Tali offered.
"Drop me an e-mail with contact info," Shepard said. "I'll take care of it when we get somewhere less remote. In the meantime, let me know what's on that chit."
"Will do, Shepard," Tali acknowledged, reaching down into a duffel bag and pulling out an old, beat up slate and going to work.
Eight minutes later, Tali came jogging into the mess hall waving a data slate. "Got it, Shepard!"
Shepard looked up from her book and half-eaten sandwich. "That was quick, Tali," she said.
"It would have been faster if I hadn't needed to borrow an adapter from Joker," she grumbled. "My silent tablet is old and doesn't have the right port for those cards."
"The joys of planned obsolescence," Shepard said. "What'd Parasini give us?"
"Not a whole lot, I'm afraid," Tali replied, handing the tablet over to Shepard. "There's a note directing you to talk to a turian named Lorik Qui'in, who apparently works for Synthetic Insights and may be interested in helping you. She also included something of a file on him."
"Let me see," Shepard said, accepting the tablet and frowning. "Hm."
On the surface, it seemed straightforward enough: A suggestion that Qui'in might be able to help Shepard with getting out of the building, along with a few fairly extensive personal observations about the turian. Which, if accurate, was very helpful information, but what the note didn't explain was why a secretary – normally a position selected for loyalty and discretion, since competent secretaries were a dime a dozen – on Noveria of all places would risk her career to subvert her boss' attempt at stymieing Shepard.
It's Noveria, which means everyone has a motivation, and the motivation is usually money... one way or another. Still, if the data's good then the data's good, and we can worry about why we were given it later.
"And there was nothing else useful on the chit?" Shepard asked.
Tali shook her head. "Nothing. In fact, it was a brand new – the total data use log matches the contents of the drive to within a few megabytes."
"So what you're telling me," Shepard said, handing the tablet back to the quarian, "is that when the obvious path was closed to us we were given a route forward, in a manner straight out of a spy novel, on an expensive piece of brand-new late-model data storage, in such a way that showed no concern for possible damage to said storage, by somebody on a secretary's salary?"
"That's- ooooooooooooh," Tali said in dawning awareness.
"She's not a secretary, or at least, not only a secretary. I see nothing dangerous about going and talking with this turian, so that's our next step. While we do that, I want you to go hit up all the intelligence databases we have access to and find out who that woman is."
Tali took the tablet back and nodded eagerly. "I'll get right on it, Shepard. Uh, how do you want me to tell you if I find anything?"
Shepard shrugged. "Assuming I'm not in delicate negotiations or shooting somebody, just comm me. If I'm busy, pass the intel to Kaidan, he'll know when to interrupt."
"Gotcha, Shepard," Tali said, jogging back for the elevator.
Ah, the exuberance of youth, Shepard thought, reaching for the second half of her sandwich.
Upon the quick resolution of the mysterious secretarial data chip, the trio departed the Normandy for Port Hanshan once again, this time with a notable decrease in the number of armed security personnel blocking the path to the port proper.
It was, Shepard noted, an interesting side effect of the human condition to overemphasize one's own involvement in a situation. In this particular case, Shepard was curious as to the number of heart attacks the presence of a Council Spectre on Noveria was causing among the corporate types around the planet, especially given that some rumor of her intervention in ExoGeni's leadership had to have slipped out by now.
She frowned. She'd been having more of those thoughts of late – idle musings on nothing in particular. They were not unwelcome, but perhaps a little inappropriately timed, given how much of her focus should be on her mission, rather than the nature of its less relevant consequences.
I probably just need more sleep, she thought wearily. She'd slept well enough, but the recent week and a half had been anything but normal for her, not to mention the prothean relic and asari archaeologist both rooting around in her brain.
Sighing, she thumbed the elevator door to the bar and walked purposefully inside. Entrances mattered in situations like this, even if the corporate world was less... ostentatious about their dominance displays, they still took note of them.
Her target was obvious: A bored-looking turian nursing what appeared to be a third or fourth drink at a table by himself out in the open part of the bar. He was getting on in years, if Shepard was reading the turian signs of aging properly, although he clearly took care of himself, with subtle muscle development that turians in good shape had. The well-tailored suit didn't hurt the ensemble, either.
A corporate type, but clearly not upset or stressed, she thought. Odd, then, that he would want to speak to me, and out in the open, too.
"Afternoon," he greeted her casually as she approached, clearly cheerfully inebriated. "Sit down, have a drink, what can I do for you?"
"Are you Lorik Qui'in?" she asked, making note of the bottles on the table. "I was told you might be able to assist me."
He eyed her more carefully. "You are the Spectre that just arrived, are you not? What can an old turian like me possibly help you with?"
Careful, Shepard, this one is more cunning – and less drunk – than he lets on, she thought to herself.
"I'm trying to get into the garage," she explained. "I have... places to go, people to see."
"People outside this port," Qui'in said, nodding. "You need a pass. How fortuitous. I am the manager of the local Synthetic Insights office – for the moment, at least."
She raised an eyebrow at the turian. "For the moment?"
"Mister Anoleis has, ah, closed my office," Qui'in said. "He claims to be investigating reports of my corruption."
"Completely baseless, of course," Shepard deadpanned, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"Naturally," Qui'in said, his eyes crinkling in amusement. "In this case, however, I think the administrator is by far the more interesting character. He has become quite wealthy, you know, since he took direct control of rents."
"A completely natural coincidence that has nothing to do with the credit chit somebody just slid him under the table."
"Indeed," Qui'in said, his tone darkening, and he leaned forward on the table. "I acquired evidence of Anoleis' actions, and his hired goons are ransacking my office to find it. If you recover the evidence from my office, I will give you my garage pass, as well as a sum of credits."
Well, at least his goals are straightforward, Shepard mused. I wonder what Parasini's stake is in this game, however...
"I take it you have a plan?" Shepard asked.
"I do," Qui'in said, lacing his fingers together. "There is... oh, what is that delightful human expression... a... fly in the lotion?"
Shepard motioned for him to continue, and he gave a small shrug. "Violence against Mr. Anoleis' thugs may be necessary. He has members of Hanshan's security team searching my office. He's paying them under the table. Miss Matsuo is unaware of their outside employment."
"If he's paying them under the table, they're mercenaries," Shepard said with a practical shrug. "I can kill mercenaries."
Technically, I can kill them even if they're not mercenaries, but 'Spectre guns down hardworking police officers' plays far worse in the news than 'Spectre stops corrupt ex-cop from shaking down innocent office worker."
"Excellent!" Qui'in flashed a turian smile, then slid a small ID card across the table. "Here is my pass into our offices. It will activate the elevator. The evidence is on my office computer. This OSD contains the decryption key for it – just slide it in, and it will auto-execute."
Shepard nodded, pocketing the drive and the pass before turning to head for the elevator.
"Oh," Qui'in called as she began to walk away, "do try to keep the bloodstains off the carpets, would you?"
"Uh, Shepard, isn't Synthetic Insights on the third floor? Why the lobby?" Kaidan asked when Shepard tapped the elevator button.
"Because the simplest solution is to give these-" she tapped her pocket with the pass and drive, "-to Anoleis in exchange for a garage pass."
Liara frowned. "You are... probably correct, Shepard, but that seems..."
"Wrong? It's also not what I'm doing," Shepard said, then reached for her commlink. "Vakarian, Shepard," she called.
"Go for Vakarian," her commlink crackled back.
"You worked in C-Sec for a while, yeah?" she said casually, leaning against the wall of the elevator while she talked.
"Maybe a couple years," Garrus' voice said after a moment's pause. "Why do you ask?"
"During that time, did you ever, oh, I don't know, see somebody take money to look the other way?" she asked.
"Might have," he said, with suspicion beginning to creep into his voice. "What's going on, Shepard?"
She smiled. "I just received word that some of Port Hanshan's finest are getting paid under the table to shake down an office to steal evidence of their boss' corruption for him," she said. "Figured you might like to dispense a little justice,"
The comm reply was full of stack brought on by rustling armor and quick movement. "Already on my way."
Shepard lowered her hand from her ear and grinned at the two, then stepped out of the elevator.
It didn't take long for the ground team, sans Tali, to gather outside the elevator leading to Synethic Insights.
It was, Shepard figured, a rather intimidating sight: Six well-toned figures, all in full state of the art combat gear, with half of them wearing a biotic amplifier of some kind. It was enough to start a scene, had Shepard not already given the 'get lost' eye to everyone nearby.
"This is your show, Shepard," Garrus said, checking action on his rifle. "How do you want to do this?"
Shepard pursed her lips. "Keep your helmet cams on for the lawyers. They get one warning – if these are the same people Kaidan, Liara, and I ran into on the way in, they're going to be pretty quick on the trigger. If they surrender, disarm them. If they fire, shoot to kill."
Liara looked around at the assembled team and shook her head. "This is going to be a slaughter," she half-whispered. "A krogan, three biotics, a professional soldier, and a C-Sec veteran against some corporate security?"
Shepard checked the rounds in her pistol and slid it into her hip holster. "It's only a slaughter if they do something stupid," Shepard said. "If they have an ounce of sense, they'll surrender when they see us coming."
"Somehow, I do not believe they will," Liara said with a sigh.
"Freeze! Hanshan sec-"
The woman in a Elanus Risk Control Services uniform with 'Port Hanshan Security' stenciled over the back held up a hand while her partner leveled his shotgun at them.
"Freeze, Council Spectre," Shepard said without breaking stride.
The woman lowered her hand with the turian's shotgun wavered.
"You have exactly threeseconds to disarm yourselves before we turn you into a multi-chiral soup," she continued. "I don't care what Anoleis is paying you, I guarantee it isn't enough. One. Two-"
"Oh, Jesus, don't shoot," the woman said, raising her hands while the turian dropped his shotgun on the ground. "We never signed up for this."
"You did, in fact, sign up for this," Shepard corrected, using her biotics to shove the shotgun under a nearby desk. "But we're in a forgiving mood. Leave now, don't warn anybody we're here, and we'll forget we saw you."
"Deal," the woman said hastily, stepping around them and making for the elevator at a near sprint.
Shepard waited for the elevator to ding behind her, then brushed her hands off while Garrus laughed. "Spirits, Shepard, that's one way to make an entrance," he said, shaking his head. "Wish they'd let us go in like that in C-Sec. Might have scared a few people onto the straight and narrow all on its own."
"Perhaps," Shepard said. "Eyes up, people. I don't think the rest will be that easy."
"Movement," Garrus hissed, tucking up against one of the concrete walls. "Around the corner, dead ahead. Armed."
Shepard crouched down behind an absurdly overbuilt flower pot. "How far in from the edge?"
Garrus glanced at his motion tracker, then gestured about a meter in from the edge of the concrete.
"Right," Shepard said. "Time for the warning."
She sat up slightly behind her flower pot and bellowed. "YOU ARE INTEREFING IN COUNCIL BUSINESS. THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND COME OUT FROM BEHIND THE WALL WITH YOUR HANDS UP. YOU HAVE THREE SECONDS TO COMPLY."
A burst of gunfire, sprayed wildly in their generation direction, was the only reply.
"Kaidan, get the wall," she ordered, sighting down her pistol.
While approaches to biotic combat differed heavily between specializations in the Alliance military, the fact remained that all the L2s and L3s were, pound for pound, some of the most devastating fighters in humanity's history. Even the weaker biotics could fling armored combat drones around like it was nothing, and the stronger ones – like Kaidan or Shepard – could turn them into shrapnel with only a modest expenditure of effort.
And while it wasn't quite the same thing to knock a hole in a concrete wall as it was to punch a hole in a heavy combat drone, it wasn't wholly different, either.
A brilliant flash of blue and the sudden grinding sound of artificial stone rubbing on reinforcement bar and stone announced the failure of the poor security guard's cover as the entire top two thirds of the decorative block lifted into the air.
Shepard's three tungsten rounds ensured that surprise was the only response he'd have the chance to make.
"Neutralized," Shepard said. "Garrus?"
The turian shook her head. "All clear. That was the last one."
"Good," Shepard said, getting out from behind her cover. "Let's go find us some evidence."
"Shepard, I think I found something," Tali's voice said in her ear while they were waiting for the OSD to finish transferring files.
She keyed her comm. "Go ahead, Tali."
"I did some digging, and that woman? Gianna Parasini? She's really difficult to track down. Her name comes up in some Earth university papers, somewhere called Chicago, I think. After she graduates, nothing. Also, can I say how creepy it is how much information these organizations collect? I only had to type her name and it gave me way more than I'd feel comfortable other people knowing."
Shepard smiled. "Copy that, Tali. See if you can dig up anything on that university – check if there are any archives of school newspapers and look through the graduation photos."
"Will do. Am I looking for something specific?"
Garrus' voice echoed in from around the hall. "Shepard, someone's coming up the elevator."
Shepard gave the turian a thumbs up and keyed her comm again. "Nothing yet. I'll comm you back; Garrus says we have company."
"Gotcha, Shepard. Good luck!" Tali signed off with a click.
She jogged out to the walkway overlooking the office where Garrus had set up his rifle to keep an eye on the entrance to the room. "Who's coming?"
"Three guards. Two men in full suits with rifles, led by a blond woman carrying a sidearm."
Shepard pursed her lips. "I'll be that's Kiara," she said. "Damn. Anoleis knows we're here. That was faster than I'd hoped. Get into cover and be ready for anything, I'm suspicious of anyone with as big of an attitude as she has carrying that little weaponry."
"Wrex, Ash, you're with me on point. Liara, back line, if they try anything stupid I want them on the ground. Kaidan, you're supporting Garrus," she laid out quickly. "Go. They're almost here."
"I don't think you're supposed to be in here, Shepard," Kiara drawled while walking up, flanked by two members of the security team.
Anybody walking straight out in the open against a well-prepared enemy they know is a biotic is either a powerful biotic themselves... or a blithering idiot. I'm not ruling out both.
"Are you planning on making me leave?" Shepard asked.
"Leave? After everything you did? No, I-"
Ah, there we go. Justification.
Shepard's hand darted to her pistol, whipping it up and putting a pair of rounds into Kiara's upper torso – or, at least, they were aimed there. The rounds themselves stopped a fraction of an inch in front of the woman, their kinetic energy handily dispersed by the combination of the clearly aftermarket shield generator she was wearing.
She had to give the woman some credit. An idiot she might have been, but she was a prepared idiot, as any shield that would stop the round from her handgun – even a tungsten round, with its reduced shield penetration potential – was significantly better than anything anyone else had fielded against her.
Kiara staggered back, the shock on her face twisting into rage as she raised her hands... and not in a martial artist's stance.
Shit.
"BIOTIC! TAKE HER DOWN!" Shepard bellowed, ducking out of sight and popping the quick release on her pistol's magazine while reaching for the high explosive rounds she kept as a contingency.
Garrus' rifle barked, but with its anti-geth ammunition it only knocked her backwards slightly instead of depositing her internal organs over the carpet. Liara was behind cover as well, gathering the energy required to manifest a miniature singularity behind the trio, while Alenko and Ash poured slow and steady fire at the two other members of Kiara's team to keep their heads down.
Shepard slammed the magazine home, mashed the block feed toggle, and then ducked up from behind the walkway's barrier just in time to see Wrex and the member of the guard he'd tackled go flying over the railing wreathed in a blue glow.
Thank you, Wrex, for being large, intimidating, and wonderfully distracting, she thought, raising her pistol.
She did need to readjust her aim slightly when Kiara was ripped off her feet and dragged into the air by Liara's singularity, but it made little difference in the end. The pair of shots she fired the second time worked vastly better, the first overloading her shields and leaving a scorch mark, the second detonating inside her stomach like a miniature grenade.
A single followup shot dispatched the horrified guard.
"Clear," she called. "Wrex?"
She leaned over the edge and relaxed. Wrex was unharmed – externally, at least – but the same couldn't be said for the guard, since Wrex had apparently used the man as a cushion for his landing. "Any damage?" she called down.
"Just my ego," the krogan grumbled, resettling his armor. "Think he's dead. Human necks don't bend that way."
Shepard leaned back from the railing. "Anyone else hurt? No? Good. Let's get our evidence and get out of here. Somebody's bound to come asking and I'd rather not be answering questions away from the blown-apart corpses of security."
"Please," Liara said, looking a little ill.
"Then by all means," Shepard said. "Let's get out of here."
Liara tried her best not to stare at the empty gaze of the former security sergeant.
A couple weeks ago, and she would have been a scarcely functional wreck on the verge of breaking down after what she'd just done. In fact, she'd done essentially that when Shepard had rescued her from the krogan in her mother's employ.
Now, however, she merely flinched away from the gory scene, more unsettled by her own lack of response to what had happened than by the event itself.
I suppose I have Shepard to thank for that, she thought in wry amusement, and for more reasons than one.
True, her mother had done her best to teach her how to handle herself in periods of high stress, and those skills were paying dividends with the course her life had taken of late. Still, there was only so much training could accomplish, and in the end she'd been given the choice to sink or swim.
She liked to think she was swimming well enough.
It wasn't just the training, talks, and direct involvement with the Normandy's ground team that did it, either. While those things played a crucial role, there was a limit to how quickly a mind could adjust, and the asari – as skilled as they were – could not overcome simple physiology. No, that particular benefit came from the other side of the commander, the one she didn't share with others.
Normally, the melds were a sharing: Each partner gave a little of themselves to the other, changing them to be more alike. Sometimes, that change could be directed, as it was when attempting to move knowledge or particular memories. Other times, it was... less so. The biologists claimed it was an evolutionary adaption to improve the ability of parents to work together to protect and care for their young. Liara wasn't sure, but regardless of why it happened, there was no doubt that it did happen, even when the partners were not asari.
Or, at least, that's what was supposed to happen.
When one half of the partnership was physically incapable of the kind of change she had to offer, it became far less of an averaging of differences, and more of an imposition from one side to the other.
Liara had noticed it almost immediately, the subtle shifts in her own behavior and thought patterns to a far more... clinical... perspective. A less empathetic one, to be certain, although it was not that she could not care about the feelings of others, they were simply... less important, less all-consuming than they had been.
She sighed and stopped trying to look away from the body. It had not changed, the corpse's eyes still staring off into the distance, and she took a moment to kneel down and close them.
Worst of all, I cannot decide whether my mind is being changed by contact with hers... or simply due to the realities of the situation I find myself in, she thought.
I wonder if this is what growing up is like?
Shaking her head, she jogged to catch up with the commander.
"Shepard, I found something out about the Parasini woman," Tali's voice said in her ear while she was walking down the stairs toward the exit of the offices.
She held up her fist for the others to stop and pushed the earpiece in farther. "Go ahead," she replied.
"She graduated near the top of her class on a full scholarship about half a decade ago," Tali quickly explained, "with a degree in criminal justice."
Shepard snorted into the pickup.
"Don't worry, Shepard, I'm not that clueless," Tali said. "She was hired straight out of school by the Noveria Development Corporation, but she wasn't high enough up for any of the agencies here to have a dossier on her."
Wrex grunted. "She's a cop."
"Not a cop," Garrus shook his head. "Trust me. Could be internal affairs, though."
"That's a kind of cop," Wrex said.
"Gentlemen," Shepard held a hand up to silence the pair. "Anything else, Tali?"
"Well, she had a minor role in her university's theater program – her name's on the credits for a few performances, but I couldn't find any recordings – and she's also briefly mentioned in a local news article about a new crime lab that the city was going to open a few years ago. There's not really a whole lot more, unless you want me to start asking for her school papers."
Shepard laughed. "You've given me more than enough. Feel free to go back to poking at their network security – I think we have enough on Parasini."
"You do?" Tali asked. "Uh, I mean, of course, happy to help."
Shepard took her finger off the side of her ear. "The girl has enthusiasm and does magic with tech, but methinks she doesn't quite have the knack for people," Shepard observed while Garrus rubbed his forehead. "So. Internal affairs?"
Garrus nodded. "Very good chance."
"Still could be a cop," Wrex argued, but Shepard could tell his heart wasn't in it.
"Not on her budget," Garrus said. "Remember what Tali said? She needed an adapter for the data chip, it was so new. Definitely not doing that on a public sector budget. They buy cheap and established, not new, expensive, and untested."
"I think we'll find out shortly," Shepard said when the door opened. "Hello, Miss Parasini."
"Spectre," the secretary said with a small inclination of her head, "there have been reports of a disturbance coming from the Synthetic Insights office. Might you know anything about that?"
Shepard looked over her shoulder at her team, armed to the teeth and smelling of hot metal, gun oil, sweat, and broken concrete. "Of course not," she said, completely straight-faced. "Why would I?"
Parasini blinked, then rolled her eyes. "Don't play me, Shepard. Meet me at the hotel bar... before you talk to Qui'in."
Spinning on her heel, the secretary marched off toward the elevator.
"Don't play me, my ass," Shepard muttered under her breath. "Turnabout is entirely fair. Fine. I guess we're heading to the bar."
"You want all of us there for that?" Wrex asked. "Might not be... subtle."
Shepard raised an eyebrow at the krogan. "Haven't you heard the whispers from people when we go by, Wrex? We're already as subtle as a lithobreaking dreadnaught. Might as well embrace it."
"Fine by me," he grunted. "Just wanted to make sure."
"Try not to shoot anyone in this bar without warning me first, though."
"No guarantees."
By the time they all made it out of the elevator and over to the bar, Parasini was already there with a half-empty cocktail. "Allow me to reintroduce myself," she said in a far more natural voice than the one she'd been using. "Gianna Parasini, Noveria Internal Affairs."
"Told you," Garrus said, elbowing Wrex in the side with a faint clunk.
Wrex grumbled, then pulled a credit chit out of a pocket on his armor and handed it to the turian. "I shoulda known better than to bet against C-Sec when it comes to cops."
"All that training has to be good for something," Garrus replied, stowing the chit on his belt. "Sorry, Shepard."
"At least you two are getting along," she said diplomatically, then turned back to Parasini. "Apologies. I assume you want something?"
"The Executive Board knows all about Anoleis' corruption," Parasini explained. "I've been undercover trying to get hard evidence for six months. Evidence that I believe you have."
Shepard patted the pouch on her armor with the OSD in it. "Possibly. However, I need Qui'in's garage pass to complete my mission. He has agreed to a trade."
"You help me finish my investigation, I'll get you whatever you need," Parasini said fervently. "Favor for a favor."
Shepard folded her arms and looked askance at the secretary.
The woman sighed. "Look, Shepard, I don't like this either. You Spectres play fast and loose with the law; that's bad for business. But I'm running out of options here. He's not stupid, and he'll figure out I'm on to him sooner or later. If that happens, he vanishes, and taints the name of this place as a haven of research and development for years."
"You're assuming that I want research and development to continue here like this," Shepard said.
Parasini blinked in surprise. "What? But you're-"
Shepard waved a hand around at the building. "This place is everything that is wrong with how humanity conducts its business. Hiding from the Council whose laws we nominally follow? Conducting unethical research in the dark of night, metaphorically speaking? No. The future lies in working with the rest of the galaxy, not trying to hoodwink them. There are too few of us and too many of them to be playing fast and loose with the law."
The internal affairs agent looked at Shepard again, a thoughtful expression on her face.
"Let me to make you a counteroffer, Gianna Parasini," the Spectre said. "I will speak to Qu'iin and see that he testifies. In return, I need something from you."
Parasini pursed her lips, her eyes guarded. "And what might that be?"
Shepard gave the woman a smile colder than the blizzard outside. "You claim you believe in law, order, and justice. I can tempt you with the opportunity to vastly expand the impact of your actions."
"How?"
Shepard gave a slight bow. "Allow me to reintroduce myself," she said, mirroring the words the agent had used not moments before, "Commander Shepard, Spectre, enforcer of the Citadel law. When Anoleis falls, you will – at least temporarily – be in the unique position to acquire a great deal of information that many have worked very hard to keep from eyes like mine. Retrieve it for me, and I will ensure that justice is done on a far greater scale than you could possibly hope to accomplish on your own."
"I..." Parasini glanced aside and bit her lip. "I wasn't lying when I said I didn't like the way you Spectres acted, Shepard," the woman said. "You're not just bad for business, your... flouting of procedure risks compromising the very justice you claim to uphold."
"Perhaps," Shepard admitted. "In fact, I agree with you... for the most part. The systems being what they are, however, I challenge you to find a better source of justice that lies within your grasp."
"Fair point." Parasini took a deep breath, then nodded, pushing away from the table. "Fine. You have a deal. I'll get you some info if you get him to testify. Now I'd better get back to my office before Anoleis starts thinking I'm taking too long on my break."
Shepard smiled. "As you wish," she said softly to the departing woman.
"Are you sure you're not trained in this?" Garrus asked once Parasini was down the elevator.
Shepard shrugged. "Only a little. N7 operatives receive some training in psychology and what they call human intelligence. Basic stuff, so if we're on our own we know how to avoid getting duped, mostly."
Garrus shook his head. "Why do I get the feeling you're not telling me everything?"
Shepard smiled at him. "Because you're not a fool, Garrus. Now. How do I talk Qui'in around?"
"You're asking me?" Garrus asked, surprised.
"Do you see any other turians?" Shepard replied. "I can work passably with my own people, Vakarian. I am by no means an expert on interrogations or turian psychology."
"Could have fooled me," he muttered, then sighed. "He's not a bare-face, so that means he still at least plays lip service to the hierarchy and its values. That won't get you far, but it's common ground to start from. He's also private sector, which either means he's fond of money or he wasn't succeeding that well in service. Personally, given how he behaved earlier, I'd pander to his ego. Sell up what helping the investigation would get him from others. You can also try playing up the honor bit if you think it would work."
Shepard pursed her lips, then nodded. "Okay. I can work with that. Go get a drink from the bar, Garrus, and stay close. If I put my right hand on my hip, it means bail me out. Drop your drink if you think I'm making a terrible mistake and need to change approaches immediately."
"I hate spy stuff," Garrus muttered, heading off to the bar.
Shepard smiled.
"Now that you have my property, you would dictate how I use it?" the turian scoffed. "I have no interest in a public spectacle."
"Don't you?" Shepard asked smoothly. "I would say that having a Spectre clear the corrupt cops out of your office would be making a pretty public statement about your capability, would it not? Are you telling me that was an accident?"
"Touche, Commander," Qui'in, said, the indignation instantly gone from his voice. "But there is a difference between subtly implying that I might have more connections than I do to potential employers and testifying publicly against my landlord. After all, both my current and prospective employers require the goodwill of the executive board to work here."
"The same executive board whose internal affairs agent I just told you was trying to gather evidence against Anoleis?" Shepard folded her arms across her chest. "Helping pin this on Anoleis would be a mark in your favor here, not one against you."
Qui'in stared at his table for a long moment, then sighed and drained his glass. "Perhaps. Very well, I see you will not be dissuaded. Make whatever arrangements you need to with your contact; I will wait here."
Shepard nodded her thanks at the turian, then gently set the OSD on the table.
"I take it you don't need my garage pass, then?" he asked as Shepard turned to leave.
Shepard shook her head. "Your offer is appreciated, mister Qui'in, but I think I'll make my contact take care of it in exchange for the runabout I've been put through."
The turian snorted and raised his empty glass at her while she walked for the door.
"Well?" Parasini asked as the trio stepped into Anoleis' foyer.
Shepard nodded at the woman. "He has agreed."
Parasini let out a long, slow, weary breath. "You have... no idea how much of a load that is off my mind," she said. "Do you have the evidence?"
Shepard shook her head. "Qui'in has it, as he is the one with the decryption keys. I trust his word, however."
"Clearly you haven't worked in corporate circles before," the other woman said, and not for the first time. "Trust no one."
Shepard shifted her hip just enough to draw attention to the boxy, heavy, and decidedly lethal firearm strapped to it. "I have certain freedoms when it comes to enforcing promises made to me," she said, her voice mild. "Besides, we convinced him it was in his own best interest to testify."
"If you say so," Parasini said, looking at Shepard askance. "Well, regardless of whether he follows through, you have my thanks. I guess I was wrong about you Spectres."
"You weren't wrong," Shepard said, her voice flat.
"Sorry?" Parasini blinked.
"Spectres are not 'super-police.' Our deployment is the Council's admission that every system has failed, and sometimes the only morally acceptable answer involves ignoring every other rule. If we're around, it means something has gone very wrong, and nothing short of completely ignoring every rule will fix it."
The woman swallowed. "I, uh, wow. Okay. And you're here."
Shepard offered her a small smile. "Like I said earlier, I am merely passing through."
"Oh," Parasini said, reaching under the desk and pulling out a keycard, "that reminds me. Here. One garage pass, as promised."
"Thank you," Shepard said.
Parasini looked down at her skirt and sighed. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have an arrest to make. Wish I'd had time to change clothes... I hate skirts," she muttered, strapping a very utilitarian-looking shield generator belt and holster over her waist. "Want to stay for the show?"
"Can we, Commander?" Garrus asked. "This is always the best part."
Shepard shrugged. "As long as it's quick."
"This is an OUTRAGE!" Anoleis snapped, struggling in vain against the plastic restraints binding his hands behind his back. "I'll see that you never work in this sector again!"
"Yeah, yeah, get a move on," Parasini drawled at the salarian, shoving him roughly toward the door.
"You! Shepard!" he yelled, "I demand you place this bitch under arrest!"
Shepard raised a single eyebrow at the salarian.
"You have the right to remain silent," Parasini said in her perfect-secretary voice, then rolled her eyes and gave Anoleis' shoulder a shove, "I wish to God you'd use it."
She marched the salarian out the door, pausing only briefly to wave farewell to Shepard as she did. "See you around the galaxy, Commander," she called, "I owe you a beer."
The ground team assembled in one of the large concrete indoor courtyards, taking spots around a decorative fountain.
"Did you see the look on his face," Garrus nearly cackled. "Beautiful."
"I see somebody enjoyed today's little sideshow," Shepard observed with a wry smile.
"Well, it wasn't a hardened criminal or sand-dealing ganger, but I'll take what I can get," the C-Sec officer replied. "Not too many lowlifes in our line of work."
"Present company excluded, at least," Ash quipped, and Garrus laughed.
Shepard waved them all to attention. "Okay, that went well. We got what we needed, we didn't have to shoot anyone that didn't deserve it, and we only wasted-" she glanced down at her omni-tool, "-about an hour and a half. I haven't heard anything from Joker or the spy sats, so we're going to go on the assumption that our objective either cannot mount meaningful opposition to our advance here or simply doesn't know that we're coming."
Kaidan raised his hand, and Shepad pointed at him. "Yes?"
The lieutenant bobbed his head. "I feel obliged to state, ma'am, that it's pretty much guaranteed that she knows we're here. You don't get this far without having at least a couple spies in the port."
"I agree," Shepard said, "which is good news for us – it means that she can't completely stop us before we get to her lab, which indicates that her force projection ability is limited."
"Or that she's saving it for a big trap outside," Wrex grumbled.
Shepard glanced at the krogan. "She can't really afford to do that," she said. "Not in the position she's in. She knows I'm coming for her, and she has to know I'd prefer to take her and the base in one piece. While the base is still intact, she has a bargaining chip. If she makes it too hard for me to get to her, she risks me writing off the whole capture mission and ordering an orbital strike on the lab. No, if she's going to set a trap, it's going to be inside the base proper. We'll probably see some obstacles on the road there, but I don't think it'll be anything serious."
Wrex cocked his head at her. "So we're walking into a trap laid by an asari matriarch," he said slowly.
Shepard nodded.
The krogan checked the mag on his shotgun and rolled his shoulders. "I'll say one thing, Shepard: You certainly keep life interesting."
"Not my intention, trust me," she said dryly. "Now, absent any further intel, we'll go with the original plan: Liara, Wrex, and I on the strike team, with the rest of you standing by in the Normandy. The shuttle's not going to be much good in this weather, so if things do go wrong and we need backup, you'll clear an LZ with the ships' guns and drop in. Aside from that... we'll play it by ear."
"Those plans never end poorly," Wrex grumbled. "Fine. Let's go."
Shepard peered up at the entrance to the Peak 15 research facility in the darkening sky and sighed.
The presence of geth in the garage had been a surprise, but between the might of three biotics and a quarian hacker that decided she wanted to play with the base defense turrets, they didn't last long. The road toward the facility itself had been an exercise in token resistance, with a few scattered mobile units tucked along the edge.
"Did that seem too easy to you, Shepard?" Liara asked as she crawled out of the armored car.
"'Course it was," Wrex grunted while he followed her. "It was a trail of crumbs to lure a beast. Whoever's in there wants us in there. You still think this is a good idea, Shepard?"
"Nope," Shepard said, turning to face the pair. "But it's our only choice and only chance, so we have to take it."
"Go figure," Wrex said. "I'm going to go reload my guns before we start."
Shepard nodded at him, then turned to Liara. "What about you? Is your kit ready?"
Liara patted the various pouches on her armored suit. "Medi-gel, trauma kit, stabilizers, spare ammunition blocks, tranquilizers, environment gear, emergency survival kit, and a some rations," she said, tapping the pouches in order. "My gear is ready."
"And what about you?" she asked quietly.
The asari took a shuddering breath. "I... do not know," she said. "I am nervous. Anxious."
"Understandable," Shepard said, and patted her on the shoulder. "Keep your eyes open and use stasis first, then ask questions later."
Liara gave her a jerky nod.
"Wrex!" Shepard called into the blizzard. "What's the hold up?"
The krogan's armored head leaned around the corner from the back of the Mako. "Do I bring the rocket launcher, the flamethrower, or the SAW?" he called back.
"We have a flamethrower?" Shepard asked, walking back to the Mako. "I didn't know we had a flamethrower."
"I have a flamethrower," he corrected. "Your quartermaster said something about 'war crimes' and 'illegal to own' but I ignored him and he didn't want to argue."
Technically, the weapon was a flamethrower, but it was a flamethrower in the same way that a nuclear weapon was an explosive: Accurate, but highly misleading. Rather than spraying a jet of flammable liquid and then igniting it, modern element-zero powered flamethrowers used a mass effect shield to keep the inside of a barrel in hard vacuum while a separate element zero unit would accelerate a stream of fuel to tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. Upon leaving the protected barrel, the atomized and hypersonic mist of fuel would immediately undergo friction ignition, turning in to a supersonic wall of destruction. The resulting sonic boom from the flame jet could break windows, and the blast itself would burn nearly anything, and the few things it couldn't burn it would cut in half.
"Ah," Shepard snorted. "Well, Liara and I can handle vehicles and doors, so that rules out the rocket launcher. We're not going to be fighting masses foes from a fixed position, so I'd skip the SAW. Take the flamethrower. Keep it holstered for now, though."
"Fine by me," Wrex said, grabbing the weapon out of his bag with glee while Shepard shook her head and walked back up to the building.
Liara cocked her head at her. "Everything in order?" she asked.
Shepard nodded. "Wrex just needed to pick out another gun," she said. "Any ideas for how to get in here?"
"I believe there is a service entrance on the left," she said, gesturing at the far side of the road. "I don't know if it's open, but between the three of us I suspect simple doors will pose little obstacle."
"Sounds like a plan," Shepard said. "Any cameras?"
Liara shook her head. "None that I have seen."
"That just means they're well hidden," Shepard sighed. "Well, we knew this was a trap going in. Not like it's going to make a huge difference now. Let's go open a door."
"After you," Liara said, falling into step behind her.
The door was closed and, if the lights were to believed, operating on emergency power.
Shepard frowned, her hand hovering over the activation panel. "This shouldn't be offline," she said. "Unless she's killed power to the whole facility, and I don't know why Benezia would do that. It negates a huge part of her advantage."
"Perhaps there truly was an accident here? I believe that Parasini mentioned she was here to investigate her business here."
"If so, it's a boon for us," Shepard said. "Still, I bet it's crawling with geth. Be ready."
She tapped the panel and winced as the door slowly, ponderously, and loudly ground open.
"So much for a sneaky entrance," she muttered. "Come on."
The room was, of course, crawling with geth.
Fortunately for them, most of the units were drones equipped with rocket launchers and a few of the weaker mobile units – a massive problem had they attempted to bring the Mako or another vehicle in, but a complete pushover for a few biotics in combat armor.
Rockets worked amazingly well on ground vehicles: The relatively slow moving projectiles would often slip through the mass effect shield configured to deflect normal supersonic rounds, dealing direct blows to the hull of the target. If the vehicle reconfigured its shields to stop the rockets, it put a far greater load on the computer controlling the shield as well as limiting the top speed of the vehicle to less than that of the rockets.
However, this made rockets terrible against ground forces, as the same slow trajectories that made useful against vehicles also made them easy to stop for an alert biotic... assuming, of course, that the target didn't simply step out of the way.
Shepard looked around the dark room. "That's clearly the freight entrance," she said, pointing at a heavy door at the back of the garage, "and I think that one over there is the personnel entrance. We'll probably need to get the power on sooner or later, but I'm hesitant to do it until I know why it was shut down... and what's likely to turn on and come after us when we start it up."
Liara nodded. "That seems logical to me," she said. "Explore until we find out what happened?"
"I don't like exploring dark buildings full of people trying to kill me," Wrex grumbled, unholstering his shotgun and swapping the ammunition block. "I like the idea of fighting through a bunch of automated defenses even less."
They moved forward into the narrow hallway at the back of the room, Shepard noting the gun emplacements and extendable roadblocks built into the passage.
Liara cocked her head at the deactivated turrets. "Why are those pointing the wrong way?"
"They want to keep their people in as much as other people out," Wrex replied grimly.
Shepard moved closer to the turret. "I'm not so sure about that," she said, lifting the shroud around the barrel. "Look. High caliber barrel, high velocity acceleration rails... this isn't for errant personnel."
Wrex moved up next to her and casually ripped the ammunition block out of its locked housing. "You're right," he grumbled, showing her the half-expended high explosive block. "That's overkill for anyone, even if they had krogan working here."
"This place... it is a high-security laboratory for biological research," Liara said. "These may be in case whatever they're... researching... gets loose."
Shepard narrowed her eyes, then looked at the far end of the hall where the weapons were pointed and shined a flashlight. "I don't see any impact craters, do you?"
"No," Wrex said, then started. "Oh. Oh!"
"I don't understand," Liara said. "Why is that bad?"
"Because," Wrex explained while he swept the room with his shotgun, "these guns saw use before they lost power, and they're kitted out with some of the heaviest ammo you can load... but we don't see any damage to the backstop. Which means they were shooting at something that walked away from taking that kind of fire."
"Or flew, crawled, or slithered away," Shepard offered.
"Or that," Wrex grunted. "Anyway, doc, whatever is loose in here is nasty, armored, or both."
Liara pursed her lips. "Then perhaps my mother was not here just to bait us out after all."
"I think that's probably right," Shepard said. "In the meantime, keep your weapons close. I don't like this."
One tense climb through a deactivated elevator shaft later, the trio emerged into what at one point had been office work space and laboratories, now covered with a few inches of frozen condensation.
"They break a window?" Wrex asked, turning up the heater on his armor.
"Must have," Shepard replied. "I don't see how else all this snow got-"
"Wait," Wrex interrupted, holding a fist up. "Did either of you hear that?"
They froze in place, silence falling over them like a shroud, with the only noise being their breathing, the off-sequence thump thump of their heartbeats... and a quiet skittering sound, like a large spider.
"Yes," Shepard replied, stowing her shotgun and drawing her pistol. The shotgun offered more firepower, but the pistol was more maneuverable on top of being easier to use with her biotics, and against something small like an insect, she valued speed over firepower.
"Top of the stairs," Liara said, eyes fixed on something in the distance. "Left side. Near the handrail."
Shepard looked up, but couldn't make anything out through the dim light. "I don't see it," she said quietly. "Wrex?"
The krogan didn't answer, but kept his gaze locked on the point in the dark while he aimed his shotgun one-handed, flicked the toggle for a carnage blast, and squeezed the trigger.
The quiet was broken by the infernal roar of the weapon, followed almost immediately by the explosion that enveloped half the top of the stairs and shattered most of the glass within a thirty meters.
Shepard winced at the sound. "Mind telling me what that was all about?" she asked when the echoes died down.
"Quiet," Wrex snapped, his eyes flickering around the room.
Liara rested a hand on her shoulder and shook her head silently, then resumed sweeping the room with her rifle.
They waited for a tense half minute before Wrex lowered his gun. "Okay," he said, "I think we're safe... for now," he added ominously.
"You saw it too, then?" Liara asked, gripping her rifle tightly.
"What did you see?" Shepard demanded.
Wrex sighed and turned to face her. "Do you know the story of my people, Shepard?" he asked.
She frowned. "Discovered by the salarians about two thousand years ago, uplifted shortly thereafter to serve as shock troops in the rachni wars. Population explosion led to border conflicts, which in turn resulted in the salarians deploying the genophage to prevent the vast majority of krogan eggs from being viable," she said. "I'm not up to date on recent krogan history."
"A clinical, if accurate, answer," he growled. "I am the first krogan in seventeen centuries to slay a rachni."
"What?" Shepard blinked.
"I saw it, too, Shepard," Liara said. "It was one of the workers. The rachni were – or are, I suppose – a hive mind with wildly different types. The workers are small-" she gestured with her hands, outlining a volume about thirty five centimeters long and roughly fifteen or twenty wide and tall, "-and serve to construct the nests for the rachni."
"That's fascinating," Shepard said, "but how in the world are they here?"
Liara shrugged helplessly.
"I think I know why they had heavy guns at the entrance," Wrex said. "I dunno if they're cloning them or if they found some buried in the ice or what, but it's pretty clear what they were researching."
Shepard nodded and a hand up to her earpiece. "Joker, Shepard," she said.
"Commander! Good to hear your voice," Joker replied immediately. "What can I do for you?"
"Tell Tali to disconnect and clear any tracks, then get airborne," she said. "I also need you to put in an immediate top priority call to Admiral Hackett – I don't care if he's sleeping – and get him on the line for me. In the meantime, go ahead and power up the main guns."
"I copy jack Tali out, get airborne, warm up the big guns and make a priority call to Hackett," he repeated back to her. "What's going on down there, Shepard?"
She cast a glance at the krogan still sweeping the room with his shotgun. "Wrex and T'Soni both confirm hostiles we just encountered here appear to be rachni," she said grimly.
"Uhhh..." Joker said, momentarily at a loss for words. "Aren't they extinct?"
"Evidently not," Shepard said dryly. "We ran into what appears to be a small group of workers that posed no real threat, but we can hear larger things moving around in the dark."
"I copy that. Be careful down there, Commander, I don't think we can do emergency pickups in underground bases."
Shepard smiled. "Duly noted. Now go call the Admiral."
"Aye aye, ma'am," Joker said.
"Okay," Shepard said, letting her hand fall from her earpiece. "Our mission hasn't changed. We still need to get in, secure Matriarch Benezia, and find out what Saren's next step is. Wrex, they don't teach us about fighting rachni, so if there's something you know, pipe up."
Wrex didn't stop sweeping the room while he answered. "They attack in waves, usually from multiple directions," he said. "They're fond of close spaces – tunnels are their favorite – and they can come through the floor or ceiling with little difficulty."
An enemy that can come at you from any direction, can endure a wide range of hostile environments, and that doesn't care about losses, Shepard thought to herself. No wonder the galaxy had trouble with them.
"And," Wrex continued, "they're a bit larger than I am and armored."
Well. Shit.
Shepard stowed her pistol and drew her shotgun, loading the high explosive ammunition block as she went. "Biotics?"
"They're not biotic, and ours work fine on them," Wrex said. "They're not big on tactics, or at least they didn't used to be."
"You sound like you were there," Liara said hesitantly.
"Hrh," Wrex grunted. "I wasn't. My father was, and was one of the lucky ones to live through it. I learned it from him. He told me they'd be back, and that there was no way we'd gotten them all."
He grunted again. "Guess the old fool was right. Let's get moving. The sooner we're out of here, the better."
"I wholeheartedly concur," Liara said.
It was slow going.
In the sustained battle between the geth and the rachni that had been waged through the facility, the rachni were the clear winners. A few pockets of geth remained, but with the reactor offline many of them had simply deactivated when their internal power stores had run down.
Unfortunately for the ground team, this meant fighting through a veritable army of rachni, and they were tough. Their acidic spit went right through their shields, even when set on high-sensitivity mode, and their tendency to erupt in unison from the walls meant that even with their biotics, they'd taken a few nasty hits along the way through the bowels of the facility.
"So we cannot get to the hot labs without the reactor being online, and we cannot start the reactor without the VI online, and we cannot start the VI without power," Liara complained after a particularly brutal ambush. "Does anyone in this facility understand how to make proper emergency procedures? Because-"
Shepard spared a smile for the asari. "At least there's enough emergency power for the automated systems to give us directions," Shepard pointed out. "Imagine if we had to go digging through their procedure manuals to find this."
"Goddess, we'd be here all week," Liara groaned. "How many more flights of stairs until we reach the batteries?"
Wrex rubbed some ice off of an engraved level marker. "Two," he said.
Two and a half tense flights of stairs later, the trio emerged into a large, circular room filled computer nodes and data storage, along with several industrial scale battery back-ups.
"Wrex, cover the door," Shepard ordered. "Liara and I will see if we can get this working."
The krogan grunted and stood by the entrance, his shotgun aimed down the stairs they'd climbed.
"Okay," Shepard said, putting her hands on her hips and looking up at the wall of batteries. "This looks like the backup power for the computer systems. Any idea how to make this work?"
Liara shook her head. "They did not teach me starting computers from battery back-ups in school," she said. "However, given as this is an emergency system, it should be relatively straightforward. Perhaps there is a control panel somewhere?"
"Probably- ah," Shepard said, stumbling over an ice-covered panel. "I think this might be it?"
Liara raised a blue hand, gentle waves of artificial gravity blowing the ice off the surface. "It would appear so," she said, peering at the panel. "One simply changes the input selector-" she reached forward and turned a dial over, "-and starts the system."
Liara tapped a button.
There was a humming sound, a snap, and then a great deal of grinding that made both of them wince. "I don't think it's supposed to sound like that," Shepard said.
"It's probably just ice on the cooling fans," Liara said. "Probably."
"Better not be breaking stuff," Wrex called from the door. "I don't want this to have been for nothing."
"In this cold, I doubt they need cooling fans, at least not for now," Shepard hedged. "Let's see if there's- ah," she said, smiling as a holoprojector in the central tank began to flicker to life. "Perfect."
A few flickers and beeps later, and a somewhat blurry virtual intelligence interface stood before them.
"It looks like you're trying to restore this facility," the female agent said in a saccharine corporate voice, "would you like help?"
Shepard stared at the interface, wondering if the designer had programmed it with a sense of humor to annoy an unknown superior or simply because he or she believed the function would never be actually executed.
"... yes, I would," she said after a long pause while Liara glanced at her curiously.
"This agent has been programmed to respond to Mira," the VI said. "May I ask your name?"
And here we go again, Shepard sighed internally. "I am Commander L Shepard, Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance," she said. Here's hoping this song and dance doesn't take all day.
"Finally," Wrex said, pushing away from the doorframe. "What took you?"
"Do you recall the krogan we encountered on Feros?" she asked, "the one bellowing at the VI? I believe I understand his sentiment."
"Heh," Wrex grinned. "Didja find out what we need to do?"
She nodded. "Emergency power will last a few hours, but we need to go restart the fusion plant that was shut down when the 'contaminants' got loose or we won't be able to take the tram to the other side of the base."
"That all?" he asked.
"No," Shepard said. "We also need to reconnect a communications line that was severed and get rid of a small army of rachni in the tram tube."
The krogan's eyes narrowed, then checked the fuel readout on his flamethrower.
"There's a failsafe purge system, but it won't work with the generator offline, so we'll clear out the generator room first. Should save us a nasty fight."
"Fine by me," Wrex grunted. "Got enough stuff to shoot here as it is."
"Hey Commander, got a sleepy admiral on the line," Joker's voice chimed in her ear while they were disposing of a small squad of thoroughly ruined geth near the reactor core. "Shall I tell him you're busy?"
Shepard smiled and shook her head. "That would be rude, Joker," she tsked him. "Patch him through."
"Commander," Hackett's gravelly voice said. "I understand you're fighting rachni?"
"Yes, sir," she said, levity gone. "Both my krogan mercenary and my team's archaeologist confirm the sighting, and other hostiles in this facility match the types we were able to look up in the archives. We have full suit cams as well, but the connection's too spotty to get a complete dump out while we're in here."
"Understood, Shepard," he said. "Do you need anything I can provide?"
"Yes, sir," she said. "If you could arrange for all of Binary Helix's C-list to end up in custody by the time we're clear of this mission, I'm sure the Citadel Council would likely be deeply appreciative."
"Speaking for them now, are you?" he said, but there was humor in his voice. "We'll make sure they don't go anywhere."
"Thank you, sir," she said. "Additionally, this facility is a wreck, and nearly all the civilians are MIA. With any luck they'll be hiding somewhere and we can question them directly, but even if they're not we'll still need an investigation team and an armed occupation force."
"I'll have a team put together," he said. "Any recommendations?"
Shepard glanced at her teammates. "No turians, and bring as many biotics as you can field. The rachni are tough and they're all over the place, but they're not smart. If we don't report in, understand that you may also be facing an asari matriarch and at least a shuttle's worth of asari commandos."
"You don't do anything by halves," Hackett said with a sigh. "I'll see what I can wrangle up. Anything else?"
"No, sir," she said.
"Then I'll get on this," he said. "Hackett out."
Wrex eyed her while she lowered her hand. "You're gonna make enemies that way," he remarked, although there was no rancor to his tone, only... respect?
"Not much choice about it," she replied.
That was something of an understatement. She'd already soured several corporations' outlooks on her with the stunt with ExoGeni. Having another large company taken down by the authorities within a week of the first would cement her in the minds of the corporate world as an enemy of theirs, which could have very serious repercussions down the line.
On the other hand, not ratting them out after stumbling across something like this would get her fired if not killed, which would be even more disastrous. There simply weren't any good options, and rather than waffle over the choice, she'd simply picked the least bad option and run with it.
"Maybe," the krogan grunted. "Still. Nice to see. Now let's get moving. My boots are starting to freeze."
She cocked her head at the krogan as he wandered toward the reactor, wondering – not for the first time – what thoughts ran through his head.
It took them the better part three hours to get everything sorted out.
Moving through the facility was exhausting, as sectors wouldn't stay cleared. The rachni were clearly alerted to their presence here, and while they weren't moving with anything resembling organization, they were still wandering through tunnels and passages the trio couldn't secure. The result was constant attacks by everything from the soldiers that warranted full focused fire and attention from their biotics to the workers that even Liara could kick into submission.
Wrex's flamethrower was down to half a tank of fuel, and Shepard had gone through most of her snacks as well as an ammo block of explosive ammunition. Liara had managed to deplete her rifle's block and had moved to the pistol Shepard had given her, although none of them had suffered significant injuries.
But they had made it, and while the tram ride itself promised a respite from the constant fighting and tension, nobody on the team was in the mood to relax.
The worst was very clearly still to come.
Dun dun DUN!
Next time: Rift station, some prep work, a full on biotic beatdown, and a whole lot of drama.