11. Shadow Strike
Shepard looked across the Jeeya's galaxy map and highlighted a large portion of nothing. Dark, unexplored space. Tali's surviving Quarian colleague, the rookie Zeyah, had spent hours studying the approximate potential location of first Arturus' dormant Mass Effect relay, and then the energy signature of his ship as it headed there. Tali was relaying instructions to Joker on how close they could maintain position on Arturus as he travelled, which was a fine balance. Too slow and they would lose him. Too fast and their pursuit would be detected. The vessel he had taken was a stolen Asari commando unit's transport, which would undoubtably have stealth tech and advanced, constant detection capability. It was lucky they had two Quarians and as skilled a pilot as Joker. Few would be managing to stay this rapid-clandestine course.
Zeyah looked up. Though nothing could be seen behind his silver tan visor, he now exuded concentration; he possessed a lot more assurance in the management of this sort of thing than he did weapons after all. Shepard didn't doubt the death of R'kel back on the Blackwatch dreadnaught still weighed on his mind, but he had not let it show. She and Tali were quietly impressed by his performance since they had rejoined the Jeeya.
"They just dropped out of FTL," he said, pointing to a flashing green circle in the top right portion of the map.
Shepard, standing on the other side of the projection, nodded with satisfaction. "And they don't know we're on them?"
Zeyah looked down across a host of bright, multicoloured buttons and panels. Then back up. "No idea. So long as we drop out of FTL in thirty four seconds. Already relayed to Joker."
They each looked at each other. Thirty four seconds passed. Then they felt a heavy slowing, and the sense of dead stop.
"In position," Tali confirmed, with a quick glance over Zeyah's shoulder.
Zeyah looked back. "Yes, thank you Tali'Zorah.
"Vaas Normandy," she added.
"Sorry, yes, Tali-"
"Joking, Zeyah." She chuckled, then added in seriousness, "That's good work."
"Thank you, Tali."
Shepard touched the com pad at her collar. "How we getting on that ship, Joker? And can you see that relay now?"
"Tricky," he answered evenly, "and the relay looks pretty banged up. It's got a kind of rusted look to it. But readings say everything's intact, if someone wants to try and switch it on."
"I've had enough of dormant relays being switched on. Could we go in EVA?"
Joker breathed in heavily. "Shit, commander, that's a hell of a jump from here to there-"
"Onto the relay, not Arturus' ship. Maybe we can disable it directly without crossing paths."
"Well that's worse." There was a static pause. Then a hesitant, "Maybe?"
"It's possible?"
"Do you know how to disable a relay?" Tali asked.
Shepard thought about that. Goddamnit. "Not this one," she admitted eventually, and sighed. The Jeeya had firepower to deal with a few fighters, but no heavy weapons or high explosives. No, there was only one way. Disable this at source. Disable Arturus.
"So EVA to Arturus' ship it is?" Joker waited.
Shepard punched the desk beneath the galaxy map. "Take us in as close as possible, light them up and Tali and I will make a jump. You good with that, Tali?"
"I'm good," agreed Tali without pause.
"Zeyah,you and Joker head back to Omega. We'll rendezvous with you in Afterlife."
"I hope so, Commander. This looks pretty high risk."
"Since when did I not do high risk, Joker? And Zeyah, you've got too many years left to be involved now. Get the drinks in on me."
Zeyah's body language relaxed, he didn't mind too much. "What do you want?"
Shepard thought about it. "Something red."
A short time later, Shepard and Tali were in the airlock of the Jeeya, Shepard in her black and red trimmed assault armour and EVA helmet, Tali in her usual violet environmental suit. Each had a rifle strapped across their chest and several clips of thermal ammunition at the hip, and a canister of thrust at their backs. Tali had the sticky grenade pistol on her other hip, just for good measure. Her omni tool was ready too. It would have to work flawlessly when the Jeeya drew alongside the Asari vessel and they made the jump from ship to ship.
Joker's voice came across the com, taught but ready. "Three seconds to drop on my mark. Mark, three, two, one."
A huge jolt rocked Shepard and Tali, but they kept their balance, hearing the loud grinding of battery fire from the Jeeya as it came out of nowhere, and, hopefully, surprised Arturus. A loud thump made the airlock tremble around them. Then its red lock panel went green. Shepard thumped it open with her palm and they ran forward, each hitting the top of their gloves at the same time to activate their thrusters. They launched head first out into the void of space, but had no time to register any sense of risk or trepidation. The side of the blue Asari commando ship loomed almost instantly large in front of them. Again they hit their thruster control, and their approach speed dialled back. The Asari airlock came into clarity before them. Joker had set them up perfectly. As they slowed further and settled into a drift, Tali used her omni tool to open the airlock. They touched down inside, and she re-shut it. Out of the periphery of her vision, Shepard registered a bright white light and Joker's jump away to safety.
A couple of meters away inside the airlock of the Asari ship was the door to the interior itself. Its circular lock was red, but Tali hacked that in an instant, and Shepard smacked it open. Cautiously, they stepped aboard.
Inside, blue spotlights lit a large circular room populated with benches and lockers. These were of a darker blue. The walls and floor were, on the other hand, lighter than the lighting. It was a classic Asari aesthetic, smooth and strangely calming, for whoever the crew were. The situation was not a calm one, however, and the crew were not Asari. On the far side of the room, a portion of the wall now dissolved into a transparent elevator access. There had been no sign of a door frame there before, but then again, such hard lines would have spoilt the look of the place.
The next instant it was spoilt instead by blazing gunfire and Turians. Five emerged from the doorway. Four melted immediately before they could pick their mark properly though, as the intruders already had expectation in their trigger fingers.
The fifth Turian ducked and rolled for cover behind a locker off to the side. He found it and stuck out an arm to fire a light machine pistol. But he cried out in anguoish the next moment, as a round reduced his hand to a blackened stump. The rest of the it vapourised before his eyes. Ailing, he crawled forward, losing sense of his whereabouts as he tried to find his weapon and the pain kicked in. His weapon was itself but a melted pool of metal now, however.
Shepard walked up to him and stared down at his smouldering wrist. "Where's Arturus? I actually want to save your race from extermination, you know."
The soldier gargled, then managed a reply. "Engineering, deck four. Everything he needs to reactivate the relay is down there. The artefact. He's going to put it in a torpedo and fire it through the relay. He thinks the Prothean nature of it will be… the key. But you are too late. You can only bear witness... a new dawn for us all. Palaven will rise." He started to cackle.
Shepard covered her face with one hand and shot him with the other. "Seriously?"
Tali walked to the doorway. "Come on Shepard, we can't waste time on these idiots."
Shepard followed. "I'm not, Tali. They're just so blind. It's actually ridiculous."
"Deck four," Tali said in Turian.
A few seconds of silent descent later, the wall in front of them dissipated, revealing a large Mass Effect drive surrounded by silver gantry and a host of Turians, some engaged at control stations monitoring the drive, others watching for intruders, like Shepard and Tali. To the right, there. exuded a red hue, though they couldn't make out what was there before a new hail of laser fire came their way. Fortunately a pair of silver cargo crates sat between them and a small flight of steps up onto the gantry. The crates took most of the fire, whilst other efforts fizzed into the now wall they had just emerged from.
"Right!" Tali shouted.
Shepard whipped around and shot the Turian running towards her from a station a few meters away. They went down, and Shepard brought her gun to bear on the soldiers battering their position with fire. She took out the two nearest, but one fell flat out of sight. Several other Turians who were clearly only working on the science side of the project, ran away behind the drive. Stray shots from Shepard glistened as they splashed against the drive's protective forcefield.
There was an explosion on the side of the drive gantry closest to the red side of the room, and a groan of falling metal. Tali had put a mine on the other side of the gantry, and when it exploded, that section of the supporting platform collapsed. The drive shuddered, but a thin piece of metal still maintained its presence.
"Don't blow us all up, Tali. Not yet at least."
"Not yet?"
"One way or another Arturus and this place is going down. Even if we have to go with it. Preventing that relay being activated is too important."
"I know." Tali picked off another Turian, climbing out of the wreckage of the fallen supports. When no fire came back, she breathed in. "I say we run for whatever that area is." She pointed to the red light and a large, landing bay size door. Its lock was green.
"He knows we're here for him," Shepard muttered, "I hate that."
"If he's waiting to show us his achievement, he's an arrogant bastard," Tali said.
Shepard knew what she meant. "Yeah, he won't have done anything just yet. Let's move."
They sprinted for the door, Tali first, whilst Shepard covered her, spraying shots back across the room as she went. Several optimistic scientists tried to take her out and failed. Their genius was lost to the annals of time.
Just before she turned to follow Tali in, she fancied she saw a slightly odd shade of yellow light pass across a lower section of the Mass Effect drive.
The door hissed shut, and they found themselves inside a hall, a veritable library, of floor to ceiling computer banks. Hard Drive towers of black, each striped with glowing red bar codes. No screens, just boxes and bars, and black metal grilled floor plating underfoot. A single gangway led straight ahead to one figure, standing with his hands behind his back. A dark pedestal lay before him, and his attention was on it, though it was plain.
Shepard gripped her rifle and levelled it with Arturus' head.
"One shot to die, one shot to live," Arturus said in that arch, haughty voice that so riled her. She scowled.
"I take the shot, you fire the torpedo," she said, understanding him perfectly.
"My finger is right on the button, yes. But it's an easy choice for me Shepard. What about you?"
"I thought you'd want to be around for all the glory this little idea of yours will bring? Be a shame to miss it."
Arturus did not turn, and his voice remained unflustered.
"True. I would have liked to see the coming war. The glory that will come with it."
"Don't do it, Arturus. Don't be who you they think you are." She paused and said the next through gritted teeth. "Even I can understand your reasons, to a point. But if you activate that thing, you're just as bad as anyone or anything I've ever killed."
"No. I am more." Arturus prodded the panel in front of him and turned. "I think the Protheans would be proud to have another piece of their ingenuity illuminate the galaxy. Do what you will."
Tali's omnitool blinked amber and she drew a sharp breath. "Torpedo away, Shepard."
Emily found that for once, she didn't know what to do.