*** Dig Site ***

Shepard turned his attention back to the sensors. "Whoa, slow down. Got two walkers at three-twenty."

Kaidan slowed the Mako. "Well, at least they're not closing fast. You ready up there, Chief?"

"Let me at 'em." Though her eyes were obscured by the full-immersion viewer, Ash's grin was readily visible.

"Here we go." Kaidan gave the Mako a burst from the jump jets to get it started up the side of the pit.

Ash's visor displayed a bird's-eye view of the battlefield that let her see the terrain, and where the cannon (if the Mako held its present course) would most likely be able to hit the geth walkers. As they approached the first such point, she gestured to signal the view to reduce to a window. Now she saw what the linac did. The targeting computer adjusted for descent over distance, though with a slug moving at 0.34c, it was practically nonexistent at this range.

The computer had tagged the two walkers, and she had confirmed them as targets. As the Mako climbed out of the pit and turned left on the road, both walkers hove into view, much closer than she had realized.

They looked much bigger in person; Ash's eyes widened. She thumbed the cannon's trigger, fire erupted from the muzzle, and an explosion drove the nearer walker back a dozen meters and up on its aft legs like rearing horse. It settled back to the ground with a resounding crash.

Both walkers fired on the Mako; electrical arcs covered it as the shields crumpled.

"Shields down eighty percent!" Kaidan sounded panicked.

Ash was embarrassed and angry all at once. "Dammit! Dive us back down into the pit!"

"They can shoot down on us in the pit," Kaidan bounced in his seat as the Mako careened across meter-high lumps. "Like fish in a barrel!"

"No, make for the pit!" Shepard barked. "Steer to port, get behind them, then get some distance!"

Kaidan swerved left, making a U-turn so the Mako would come out behind the walkers, and using the jets to vault over the lip of the pit; the onboard VI noticed, aligning and adjusting wheel speed to match that of the terrain flashing past as they were airborne, giving them control immediately upon touchdown. They were still on the downslope, but out of view of the armatures. The steep wall of the pit was no problem for the Mako, with its vertically-aligned MEFG easing the APC back to ground level.

"Gunny, eyes aft. You see those walkers again, sound off and then fire."

"Ready, sir!"

Kaidan accelerated over a flat part of the terrain. "We've probably got enough distance to–"

"Walkers on the ridge," Ash barked, "They're firing!" The cannon thundered. "Gotcha!"

Kaidan waited almost half a second before steering suddenly left. The Mako's VI systems had added a window to his synthetic windshield that showed the walkers, and let him see the approaching energy projectile. He hopped the Mako to be sure, but his sense of timing and distance were true; the blue-white bolt erupted on the pit floor behind and below them. Volcanic gravel sprayed across the Mako.

Ash fired again, but missed the armature's "neck" as the Mako jostled over irregular ground. "Dammit!"

"Sorry!"

"Let 'em have it from the 5mm," Shepard said.

Ash whooped, "Like that! One down!"

"Still one to go," Kaidan sounded worried.

"Doing good, LT," Ash said. "This is winnable."

"I can boost shield regen with a more efficient algorithm," Tali suggested. Her voice was almost a whisper over the 'comm as she leaned toward Garrus. "Shields are regenerating – now at thirty-five percent – but this is actually kind of exciting."

The turian gestured through the aft bulkhead at the walker firing at them from the rim of the pit, "If you only think it's exciting, you don't realize that that thing could kill us all with a single shot."

The cannon fired again. Ash nodded once, "That's one hit!" The Mako continued to bounce and squeak its way across the irregular ground.

"Not at all," Tali pointed at the service panel covering part of the shielding system, "I just have great confidence in Alliance kinetic barrier technology. It's mostly stolen from us, and then companies with money made improvements." She grinned to herself. "And it's fun to watch them getting their robutts kicked."

The cannon fired again. "Got 'em! Crash and burn, you bastards!"

Tali raised a hand to object to the specific nature of the epithet, but Garrus put out a claw and shook his head.

"Great work, Williams, Alenko!" Shepard said. "Looks like we're almost there again. Okay, Tali, with me on the scanners. Williams, watch the horizon. Alenko, get us there."

They rolled along in silence for a minute, heading back for the pit wall. The Mako raced up the 40-degree incline easily, reached the top of the pit and bounced down onto the road with a chassis squeak. As they turned left, they saw the smoking wreckages of the two walkers.

"Are we there? Can I inspect those?" Tali asked.

Shepard saw the tuberamp entrance to the mining site was under a hundred meters away. His ARO informed him that the structure, with its "flying house" control centre, was almost certainly the entrance to the dig site where Dr. T'Soni had last been heard from. "I don't think I'd consider the area to be secure," he said, "so I'm not thrilled about this idea."

"I'll go with her," Wrex offered.

"Stop here," Shepard said to Kaidan. He turned and continued over his shoulder, "Okay, we're deploying the Fireteams. Alenko, Vakarian…uh…Tali. You three get out there, inspect that wreckage for anything useful. Team Alpha will continue approach on foot, and when you are done, meaning no more than ten minutes, you get back aboard the Mako and bring it to the entrance, and join us. Got it?"

"Yes! Yes!" Tali was ecstatic; she looked like she was vibrating. She bolted toward the starboard hatch and banged the control toggle.

"Though as I think of it, Alenko, make sure you transfer control back to Normandy's MRO. There might be more geth left out here, and we can use the Mako as a sentry gun once you're in the dig with us. Don't want any of 'em coming down behind us while we're fighting ahead." He turned and spoke toward Kaidan, but addressed the whole ground unit, "Everyone stay safe and stay in touch. Interteam comms will be channel Delta, team leaders will pick LOSI channel with Alpha below and Bravo above."

Tali was the first on the ground; hanging from the crossbar, she dropped out, sprinting over to the smoking wreckage.

Garrus followed her out, but walked casually after her. "What's the big deal with this thing?"

"We're still on channel Charlie," Kaidan said, "Bravo team, switch to use LOSI channel 14, scrambler synch on me."

"I'm here," said Tali.

"Comm check OK," Garrus added.

Kaidan swung down from the bar and dropped to the ground. "Good. Okay, so what is the big deal about these things?"

"When they drove my people from our homeworld, the geth had only a relatively small number of different platforms. For instance, we had miners and farmers, and high-construction, EVA…and each type was optimized for its task. Some were rather general in their design, which left them flexible in capability…like civil workers or especially domestics. Those were the most like us, because they had to interact most closely with us; in our homes, and at work, and so on.

"But after the Rebellion, we didn't know what they would do. They disappeared behind the Veil and stayed there. For centuries. How could a machine intelligence with the ability to change itself, to improve its design to the point of self-awareness, not change further after having done it? So every single geth I see gets analysed by a huge suite of VIs that live in my local DCE. It's one of the reasons I have made an effort to have so much of it. The geth may be wiping themselves of their data when badly damaged, but design aspects persist in their hardware, and sometimes in firmware."

Garrus had just caught up with Tali, who was circling the wreckage with her arms outstretched and moving rapidly, her omnitool and an external sensor illuminating both hands. It looked to Garrus' eyes like a strange sort of mating dance. He turned and followed her, illuminating his own omnitool, and scanning the wreckage a bit less thoroughly. "Wait. You're wearing a DCE? How big is it?"

"It's woven all through the suit, so it's hard to significantly damage without blowing half the suit off, which would probably kill me anyway. I've got 880 Exabits of active compute statage, but I've got room for maybe three more times that. I just ran out of credits…and figured I'd be able to add it in later."

Garrus had taken a step back at Tali's announcement of her DCE's size. "Spirits, I've served on starships with less computing power. Do you actually need all that?"

Tali's scanning work didn't slow down her conversation. "Sure. I have VIs that automate all kinds of things. Lots of them are proactive, and there is a simply enormous database based on Lewadar data that helps direct them. They need storage and processing space. But without them, I'd have a hard time managing all the little tasks involved in exosuit life, especially now that I'm out on my Pilgrimage." She stopped momentarily, clambered up on top of the fallen wreck, choosing her steps carefully. "They manage my hardware, let me know if I need to help with maintenance, and even operate the sensor suites actively. Very helpful in a fight." She picked up chunks of debris and tossed them casually out of the way as she moved.

Garrus pulled his Thunder-VII off his back and triggered its decompaction; it was still balky after being overloaded, even after a hard reset. He fitted it to his shoulder and zoomed out, enhanced his view, and began scanning the horizon. "Do all quarians need that much computing power?"

Tali prised up a loose panel to look under it. "Well, I am kind of unusual that way. But my parents were both heavily into cybernetics and artillecture. My father still is, and more than ever, now. He made sure I had the most brilliant VIs and every single…uh…widget and thingy…ever written. At least, what he has in his library."

"So the quarians didn't design this kind of geth," Kaidan said.

Tali worked as she talked, "Right, and that's what's so exciting about this. What have the geth discovered or changed about themselves? Have they invented or updated technologies we haven't? Are they using tech in ways we hadn't thought of? Are there signs of quarian design that persist even through this much time?" She hopped down from the first walker, jogged over to where the "head" had fallen, lit her omnitool and sensor. "The possibilities are just…mind-exploding."

"I take it you found nothing unusual there," Kaidan observed as he followed her.

"No, I mean...I don't know yet. I'm in a hurry. I don't want to make the Commander Shepard mad, so I'm just scanning thoroughly. I'll VRS it all later. The armature body contains a simply massive ultracapacitor array, but nothing else noteworthy that I can see from here. But now that you ask, this is very interesting. It's a directed energy weapon. Not very efficient, but sufficient."

Kaidan snorted. "I'd call it better than that. It sure did a number on our shields. I don't want to mess with one of these again, except at range."

"Wait, what did you call it?" Garrus stepped closer. "An amateur?" (He was curious because "amateur" is a deadly insult to a turian, especially a soldier.)

Tali looked up from her omnitool. "No, sorry…an armature. We've seen this design before; it's an excellent field artillery weapon, normally dropped from low altitude where needed. Things like this have killed a lot of fleet Marines." She pointed across at the "head," separated from its fallen body. "The machine itself is just a big, walking, gun carrier. They can change out the prime weapon as their technology changes. But this is the first time I've seen a weapon like this." She stooped momentarily closer. "And it's…dissolving itself in front of us. Keelah, they really don't want us to know how their tech works. I'm glad we got to these as fast as we did. This might be the big break that will give us an advantage over them."

Garrus jogged over to the other shattered geth armature, scanned it. "We must have shot that one second, because this one is more degraded than that."

Kaidan sighed. "Sorry about that."

Tali looked up suddenly. "No! Don't even think it! This is excellent, probably the best I could have hoped for. This might be the kind of valuable intel that would make a good Gift of Passage."

"But you've collected your data, right? So there's nothing else to do here?"

Tali glanced from her omnitool to the wreckage and then to Kaidan. "Ahm…correct."

The human biotic turned and jogged toward the Mako. "Then let's get the fireteams working together again. Bravo team: Weapons out, eyes on the horizon. Let's double-time it!"

As they approached the Mako, they could see the other fireteam ahead of them, just crossing under a conveyor bridge. "What's that? The thing on the ground under the bridge?" Kaidan had slowed, and was pointing at a crumpled form on the ground.

"I saw that earlier." Garrus crawled up through the starboard hatch. "I think it's a fallen geth. The sniper in the tower probably took it out when Tali cracked it." Tali followed Kaidan up the portside hatch, but stopped on the ladder.

Kaidan looked over his shoulder as he stepped over the center console and into the pilot's seat. "Can't go with you hanging out of the hatch like that," he said.

"What if I sign a waiver? I want to get to that geth up there as fast as I can, let's go!"

Kaidan shrugged, hit an override on the Saftey VI prompt, and nudged the throttle ahead.

"Hey this is a little bouncy, but it's kind of fun," Tali said.

Garrus shook his head. "Spirits. The youth these days…so carefree and impervious. They think it'll never happen to them."

"I heard that," Tali said.

"Hm, did you now?"

The Mako rolled up just past the conveyor, slowed, and stopped. Tali hopped off before it did, and ran to the fallen geth, scanning it before she had even stopped running herself. "This one is mud." She leaned closer. "Chep. Looks like a new design, too."

Kaidan gestured at Shepard. "Okay, Bravo team, switch back to channel Delta." He pointed at the various machines and equipment around them. "They sure have a full-blown mining operation here, though it looks like it's been mothballed. Boreholes and pits, refinery, and storage silos, hoppers…this was a real, going concern. Bet those crates are just full of small mining equipment, hand tools and such."

"Maybe so, but the Prothean tech in here is largely intact," Shepard pointed toward the entrance. "Far more valuable to the galactic community than minerals. From what I've read about it, this is a vast and very well-preserved site." He looked at the map on his omnitool. "And this looks like the entrance. Alenko, hand over control of the Mako to the MRO. I want a full team for whatever's next, and I also don't want bad guys flanking us."

"Aye, sir. Transferring control to Normandy," Kaidan put two fingers to his ear and spoke to the controller aboard Normandy on a different channel.

Walking to the base of the ramp, Shepard stopped and turned to face the team. "All right team, this is our first firefight together. Switch to channel 14, prioritize LOSI. Scrambler synch on me." He paused to let them do so. "We're already in hardsuit mode because of the atmosphere, but switch your suits to stealth mode. Enable Active Camouflage if you've got it, or black if you don't. Check your targets, and remember Tali's wave-off signal in case she's cracked one of these things.

"Wrex, Williams, on my shoulder. Light 'em up." He stopped and turned. "By the way, Wrex, I sure like that hybrid weapon you carry. Assault rifle mated to a grenade launcher?" He turned and started up the ramp to the circular entrance. "Glad you brought it; I'll be interested to see what it can do."

The krogan pulled the oversized weapon off his back, and – holding it by its "spine" – watched it decompact. "Yup. Old Faceful."

Kaidan snorted a laugh. "Faceful?"

'Yup," Wrex said. "This thing just shreds its own ammoblock because the cyclic rate is so high. Throws off shrapnel even if you don't hit anything. 'Bout the only safe place in the universe is directly behind it, and even that can be like standing next to a dirt fountain."

"Yaah, the mighty Revenant," Ash sighed. "Designed for warlords who want to leave an impression…but not a lot of bullet holes on target."

"Oh, you might remember I kind of fixed that part," Wrex noisily chu-chunked the first grenade into firing position.

"Maybe we won't have to today," Ash said. "I'm already having problems with ammoblock integrity."

They stopped at the door.

Shepard searched for a control on what looked like a mining drill interface. His VI noticed, and prompted him with the directions. "Glad we have tech for using our tech," he repeated the old saw to himself.

The interface was simple, if obscure; he unpinched a circular door icon, and after a massive but slow-moving klunk, the pressure door split along an irregular seam, opening into the floor and ceiling.

They peered down into the yawning chute-like tunnel; the ring trusses filled the shaft with a serviceable amount of light.

Shepard led the way with his new Spectre pistol, its exterior darkened, its scope view superimposed over his ARO's view of the world.

"Reminds me of a big waterslide," Ash said.

"At least it's…lighted," Garrus sounded unhappy.

"Mind your footing," Kaidan said. "This is kind of steep. Somebody in back falls, we could all go down like dominoes."

"Right; spread out," Shepard said. "Keep spacing to two or three meters. It may be lighted, but that may not help much. Switch to FSEV, or whatever visual enhancement you have. It's going to take us some time to get down this tuberamp, so you probably have time to VI-check all your weapons; at least check your primary."

They continued down the ramp for a few seconds.

"How deep is this place?" Garrus looked around at the curved walls. "It feels like six billion tons of rock is ready to crash down on us."

"Don't worry," Tali said. "Elfell-Ashland invented the drillramp system; it works best on accessing existing chambers. Uh…chambers that have presumably been stable for thousands of years. And these lighted things…ahm…ring trusses have sensors in them that will sound an alarm if seismic activity looks like it's going to threaten tunnel integrity."

"That's reassuring," Garrus said. "So we'll know if we're about to be buried alive?"

"No, they're smarter than that. They'll give you as much warning as they can…usually two or three minutes at least."

Kaidan held up his left hand, illuminated his gauntlet, and scanned the nearest ring as he walked past. "These have been severely damaged. They're working fine now, but they look like they were overloaded at some point. Probably by the geth."

"Thanks for the reassurance," Tali said sarcastically.

Kaidan continued, "As for how deep it goes, that depends on whether you want to acknowledge that we've actually entered at the side of a mountain. For each meter ahead and down we go, we effectively double the amount of dirt overhead."

"Delightful," Garrus said.

"Hey, no problem," Ash said. "Haven't you ever made one of those ice cream treats where you stick a straw into it and create holes? Ever notice the holes stay even after the straw is out?" She paused, considered she was speaking to a turian. "Uh...wait. Do you guys even get ice cream?"

"No."

Kaidan scanned the curved wall. "This is long-cooled igneous. Very strong and light, but brittle."

"All right, let's cut the chatter," Shepard said. "I want eyes on sensors, and I want to know what's ahead. Anyone else carrying an observer drone, or the pattern for it?"

"You don't want to use one of those in a cave," Wrex said. "Just focus your sensors forward. A thirty-to-fifty degree cone should be more than enough, and you'll get more range if you reshuffle the sensor parameters. No one's going to flank you in a tunnel, and even if they try, we've got Bravo."

"Good insight, Wrex." Shepard retuned his sensors.

They continued down the tsduberamp in silence, passing evenly-spaced, lighted ring trusses.

Garrus switched to a one-hand carry long enough to crack the talons on his left claw. "So how deep are we…from where we came in?"

"Looks like we're down about eighty-four meters so far," Tali said casually.

"Hold." Shepard stopped and held up a closed fist; everyone stopped where they were. "Got a bad guy." He carefully traded his pistol for his sniper rifle, lifting it off his back by its extending stock and waiting through it slowed but silent decompaction. He fitted it to his shoulder, briefly regretting not having had a chance to put a hundred rounds through it before using it in combat, but savoring the weight and feel. Another check of the display confirmed the geth didn't read on any of his sensors. The only way to spot it was to actually see it.

That's impressive, he thought. And a problem.

He pulled about 1000 grams of pressure on the trigger; 1400 would fire the weapon.

The sight appeared on his ARO; one of the largest and highest-resolution displays he had ever seen. It covered his ARO view with range and wind data, spectroanalysis, and emissions. Across the top, it showed a wide-angle view from the suit's rear-facing cameras. Along the right side, it displayed an analysis:

Geth
Armed with assault rifle
(Similar type to that recovered on Eden Prime)
Alert but unaware

Shepard used the charge sensors to line up his shot on the geth's central systems just before it turned to look toward him. Before the display could update, he squeezed the trigger just slightly more.

A blade of smartmetal chipped a flat-edged disk of C60 off the ammoblock, shaping it for short distance, but relative silence and high impact. As soon as it arrived at the entrance end of the linac, the fragment was blunt-end-first into the series of MEFGs that reduced it effective mass to that of a few electrons, accelerating it to 0.4c by the time it left the muzzle. The VI-controlled linac had analysed the firing conditions and launched the fragment so that it would hit the target "flat," delivering as much of its force as possible.

Moving at that speed, the fragment had only the tiniest fraction of a second to interact with the target, but with Shepard's orientation to the geth, and significantly slowed by the shields, the "bullet" drove a hole right through the optical input, out the bottom of the geth "head," and through the central power distributor, pulling over half a kilo of critical system material with it as it went.

The geth collapsed back against the handrail of the scaffolding on which it had stood, and then slid down onto the scaffold floor.

Garrus nodded approvingly, "Nice."

Shepard continued to glass the area ahead for more geth. "They hardly read on any of my sensors. If I hadn't seen him, we'd have walked right into him."

Tali realized she would have to help with that, but because she wasn't sure if it was an issue in hardware or software, she created a memory alarm for herself to talk with Shepard after they got back. For now, she would take up the slack of watching her own sensors more closely.

"But that weapon," Garrus continued. "Well, what can I say? I want it."

A metallic klang sounded from distantly below.

"Oops…that must have been his weapon," Kaidan said.

"There goes our element of surprise," Shepard said, "All right, there's a scaffold to the right that looks clear; Alpha squad, follow me around the corner. Bravo, I want cover, but we are in a cavern; do not shoot at snarks. Keep up; fast and quiet."

"Got it," Kaidan said.

"With you, sir," Ash nodded, rifle at patrol ready.

"Let's go, then!" Wrex displayed his mouthful of fist-sized teeth.

Shepard balked as he looked back and saw the grisly grin, then switched back to his pistol as he started forward. He noticed Wrex was crowding him; he made a right turn, and then another, and then a left. "Keep one more step back, would you, Wrex? I don't want to step on your toes."

"Don't worry about my toes," Wrex said. "Worry it'll get hotter as we go down. This is a volcanically active site."

"I need a bit more space."

"I hear you." Wrex took a deep breath as he walked. "Fifty degrees hotter, and I might start to get uncomfortable," he chuckled. "How are you little mammals doing, Shepard?"

"Doing fine. Seems cooler underground than above."

Tali stood upright from her examination of the geth. "Nothing new here."

They continued around the corner, found themselves looking along a catwalk that led past a quick-build lift at a garage-sized alcove.

At its entrance was what appeared to be a translucent wall of blue light.

Shepard stopped. "What am I looking at here?" He glanced over his shoulder. "My ARO's not telling me anything. Anyone know what this is?"

Ash's armor jostled his own as she stopped next to him. "Never seen anything like it, sir."

Shepard's suit displayed a red callout, aimed below the floor. "I've got movement! Get to cover!"

Before anyone could answer, a crimson-colored thing slid up into view from below the scaffold ahead; it was only a meter high, but was balancing on three steerable jet legs. It paused for a fraction of a second as if about to speak.

Shepard froze; these were Alliance drones, or very similar. Is this an Alliance operation we've found?

Wrex turned the muzzles of his dual-firing assault weapon on it without hesitation.

The first few rounds battered the flying tripod back several meters, almost to the glowing energy curtain behind it. Wrex kept firing for almost three seconds before the thing exploded, raining debris on the floor distantly below.

"Whatsa matter, never seen those?" Wrex hadn't lowered his weapon. "Flying sentry guns. If you didn't launch them, they're not your friends, and they never travel alone."

Weapons out, the team looked around the cavern anxiously for a few seconds.

Nothing moved.

Tali, standing where the cavern wall met the engineered one, pointed at it. "Hey, look at this. See how the flow moves around this wall? This cavern formed later…after this structure was built."

Shepard began to move slowly closer to the glowing wall, watching his combat radar for signs of anything else hostile. "Nothing on this…energy barrier?" He reached out with the butt of his pistol and prodded it experimentally. It yielded slightly to his slow pressure, but remained unbreakable. "Some Prothean just…left this thing on fifty thousand years ago, and it's still running?" He shook his head. "The energy source should have been a clue, even from orbit. We're not alone here."

Kaidan scanned the junction of constructed wall and energy barrier. "I'm not so sure. Maybe that's why the stuff inside is still there; it's been protected by this field that reads like matter at distance. It's emitting in the low ultraviolet, but it only to a few meters. This stuff even looks like...calcium-rich granite to ThruView. Any energy source may not be visible from outside."

"We'll have to hold a detailed analysis for later." Shepard turned and walked toward the lift, which opened its doors for him. "There are still geth in the area, and we've got to get to the camp site, or wherever it is they kept their computing, supplies, and whatever." He tapped the frame of the lift and looked over his shoulder. "Is this thing safe?"

Tali stepped closer, her omnitool lit. "Integrity shows 100%. No signs of tampering." She studied her omnitool. "This is a salarian design. Some company called Prefabivators." She did something to her omnitool. "The service log looks clean; if the geth used this, they didn't alter it."

Shepard glanced at it again, and then stepped aboard. "Alpha, let's go. Bravo, wait here in case there's a problem."

Ash and Wrex stepped aboard the freight lift, and Shepard toggled the one control. As the doors closed and the lift began its descent, Shepard glanced at the suit status lights on his ARO. "Make sure your dropsuits are enabled."

Ash nodded as she did so. "A single-throw freight lift? This feels like mining equipment, too." She leaned out the open side as they descended. "Damn! This thing is deep!"

Wrex also moved to that side, but looking up, and with his weapon at the ready. "They never travel alone. Stay sharp, little mammals."

Ash looked across at Shepard. "Do you have a fix with that Locator Key?"

"No, still nothing." Shepard looked up from his omnitool. "But if the geth already got her, it doesn't make any sense for them to still be here."

"I'm telling you, it's all about conquest," Ash said. "They tortured us on Eden Prime, and they're just fucking with us here." She took one hand off her assault rifle long enough to wave a thumb at Wrex. "I'm with you. Stay sharp."

# # #

The email was so blunt, Jack Harper at first assumed it had come from within his organization:

Cerberus is leakier than you realize. I want to help you because I think you may be able to help me. And I want to see Humanity survive and thrive in the 23rd century.

MLawson

Attached were fragments that gave nothing critical away, but clearly identified them as having come from highly sensitive – and very specific – documents.

He tasked a few VIs with finding out who MLawson was; some of the first results were images of the woman. As the nearby holotiles filled with personal data about her, Jack found himself comparing her with Eva Coré, perhaps the most capable and attractive woman he had ever known. With her and Ben Hislop, he had formed the Cerberus Group to fight the turians that had attacked Shanxi over 25 years earlier.

The act of creating Cerberus had not been official at first; Jack had simply been thinking out loud about his idea to create a group so there would be a name for the colonists of Shanxi to know about and draw hope from. "Cerberus is the name of the three-headed hound of Hell," he had explained. "It's as fearsome an enemy as you can imagine. Actually more like a three-headed wolf the size of a house."

"That's what I'm talking about," Ben Hislop laughed heartily. "That's what we are!" He clapped Eva and Jack each on a shoulder. "When I'm with you guys, there's nothing we can't do, and god help anyone who tries to stop us!"

Eva looked thoughtfully at Jack. "But why aren't we just joining the resistance?"

Jack shook his head. "This isn't my first rodeo. I've been on several sides of fights like this. The soldiers get paid to do what they're told, which is usually to stop or start bullets. The resistance is civilians willing to take big risks and accomplish critical things that soldiers are too obvious for. But they're in it for the cause; they hardly ever get paid, though sometimes they get weapons and equipment from allies. On the other hand, third-party specialists, sometimes called 'mercenaries' by people not informed enough to be specialists, do get paid. And if we are organized, they have a name to write the check to."

Jack shrugged and half-smiled. "The best part is that when we're done, I don't go back to living on a military base, eating bad food, and getting paid nothing. I get to go back to my import-export business, and I can put on my 'resistance hero hat' if I ever need or care to."

He nodded toward Ben. "But if you and I hadn't met, I don't think I'd have realized all this. And the three of us working as a single entity makes us far more formidable. We have complimentary strengths, and can work in parallel. Like you said, we can accomplish almost anything."

At the moment, it seemed like it might be true. The three of them had ambushed a turian patrol of eight, decimated the regular troops, and captured the commanding officer, who in typical turian fashion, had not even provided a name.

Eva had activated her wearable computing system, the interface strapped to her left forearm, and been examining the recalcitrant turian. "He's an officer," she said. "Looks like an O-7 or an O-8."

Ben turned. "Fuck a duck! Seriously? What's someone that big doing on the ground?"

"Probably trying to act like he's a real go-getter, coming down from orbit after he thinks the planet's secure." Eva continued to move the scanner puck near the turian, who clearly was unhappy about it. Noticing this, she double-tapped her collar mic and spoke into it. "All you have to do is tell us who you are," she said.

Her computing systems paused for a second before rendering her statement into passable alien speech, and the vocoder spoke it aloud.

The turian looked at the device as it began to speak, and then looked away.

Ben looked from Eva to the turian and back. "I thought they already understood our language."

"They do," Eva nodded. "But I was going to give him the benefit if the doubt." She looked up at Jack, raised her left arm to show the interface for her wearable computing. "He may not be giving us anything for free, but there's an ad-hoc network of intel about these turians, their operation, and capability. People have been hacking and probing their network since they first came within range and started dropping LVs. We'll find out who this guy is." Her wrist computer hooted at her; she looked at it and smiled. "Ah-ha. General…Desolas…Arterius."

Ben turned and squinted. "Desolas…? Wait. Isn't that the guy from Lord of the Rings?"

Eva swatted at him playfully. "No, that's Legolas, you big lunk."

The image in Jack's mind froze on the expression Eva had just then: Intelligent, vivacious, confident. But humanity had not been strong enough then; she would die fighting the turians, trying to avenge Ben…either for his transformation into something not human, for his death, or both.

Jack didn't notice he was frowning deeply, but his reverie was broken as a new holotile appeared in front of him. It was a one-minute briefing about Miranda Lawson.

He called her immediately.

"Ms. Lawson, I just received your message about plumbing issues within my organization. You have my undivided attention," he began the call. "What can you do for me?"

"What can I not do for you," she answered. "I have advanced degrees in neurotronics, management, and cybernetics; I speak French, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. I won the 2181 Ironman Octethalon, have IFR multi-displacement space flight certification up to 25 kilotonnes, and blackbelted in Brazilian Ju-Jitsu and Open Form Radiant Dragon. My weighted IQ is over 180, and I'm a Grand Master Go Champion. I'm teaching classes on Cryptology at…"

"But what can you do for me, Ms. Lawson?"

She stopped and took a breath, pausing to think for almost a full second. "I can help you save Humanity. And I can do it better than almost anyone else in the galaxy."

"I believe you. What do you want from me?"

"A task that no one else has been able to accomplish." She paused. "And...a place to hide from my megalomaniacal father. Forever."

"Your father…Henry Lawson? Hm. Henry provides our organization with considerable intelligence and financial resources. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of compromising that."

"I don't want you to let him know where I've gone," Miranda said. "It's a big galaxy. I'm sure there are places to go and things to do that are far enough removed that he'll never see me again. By all means, keep taking his money; I'm glad to see you're using it the way you are. I just want to be far enough away from him that I'll never see him again."

"Now that might be possible. When can you start?"

"When do you want me where?"

He told her.

She agreed, and hung up.

In the skycar seat next to her, Niket gasped. "Who was that?"

"My next job. Want to go to Arcturus?"

"Uh…would I be coming back?"

She looked sideways at him, frowned guiltily. "I suppose not…regularly."

# # #

As they stepped off the lift, Wrex looked around. "That thing seemed rickety."

Shepard toggled the control that would sent it back up to the top.

"Probably not designed to carry a half tonne load very often," Ash said as the door closed.

"I suppose not." The krogan looked around as the lift ascended to get the other team. "Whatever that energy thing is, it gives off a really sterile light. Protheans sure built things homey."

"And they built them to last," Kaidan added over LOSI. "This light's been operational since before humans started drawing on cave walls."

Shepard paused to reflect on this fact, shook his head in amazement. "Hard to believe, isn't it? It just makes my head spin."

"Hey, you know this lift looks like it took quite a beating," Garrus said. "Spectrometer's showing a lot of stress lines."

Kaidan asked, "Quakes?"

Distantly above, the lift door opened.

"No, it looks more like it was flexed repeatedly," the turian answered. "Not so much like a quake or two. If it hadn't been printed, it wouldn't be as easy to spot."

The lift began its descent again.

"Been watching sensors," Ash said. "Not seeing any e-sigs or motion. No heat sources. Doesn't look like there's anything here but us and rocks."

"Well…maybe." Kaidan sounded uncertain. "We already know we can't read past that barrier. And they've already shown they can hide well. Remember when we were trying to spot the geth on Eden Prime? If they're down here, they can stay really still and read practically zero on a charge sensor."

"And what about that energy wall?" Garrus pointed toward the series of barrier-shielded rooms they were passing on their way down. "Doesn't that stuff read at all?"

"It's reading as constant," Tali said. "Like a physical object. I can't see an emission point, almost like it's endemic to the structure itself. But it's clearly not matter."

Shepard had started deeper into the chamber, toward the energy wall and another lift as Bravo team disembarked from the first. "Looks like we're almost there. It's only another twenty meters to the bottom of this cavern. But this lift looks like it's damaged. I hope no one's got a problem with heights; it looks like the ladder is the only way down from here."

Tali looked up from her omnitool. "It will still take us down until it fails."

Garrus aimed his omnitool light down the lift's rails; it autoadjusted focus to keep the beam at three meters across where it made contact. "That's not very far. Look, down there. The rails converge."

"Then it's that much less I have to climb," Tali said. She stepped aboard the lift. "Anyone else want to come along?"

There were no takers.

"Cowards." She waved a hand through the holograph, the door slid shut, and the lift began its descent. She passed Ash, Kaidan, and Shepard crawling down the service ladder on the outside of the framework before the lift slowed and screeched to a halt; sparks flew from the motors. She was still several meters above the next scaffold level, and not even halfway to the ground. "Well, it was fun while it lasted." She leaned out of the side nearest the ladder as Shepard crawled past.

Kaidan stopped above her. "Come on out," he said.

"Thanks."

Shepard had reached the scaffold at the bottom; a ramp that looked to have been attached at some point in the past now lay in pieces on the cavern floor. On just the other side of a broken floor panel was more scaffold, still partially attached to another ramp; it looked like it was for heavier equipment, which might have explained how it had survived.

He looked down through the scaffolding ahead as the team stepped off the ladder behind him. "From the dig work that's been done to date, I think they figure this used to be a prison, or a police precinct or something." He jumped noisily across to the other section. "Bravo team, follow me to this ramp, and go check the far end of this cavern. Watch out for more geth…or geth traps."

Tali jumped across behind him, pistol at the ready. "I wonder what this asari could be looking for? Most Prothean ruins have nothing more than dead instrumentation." She pointed at the energy barrier. "That is very unusual."

Garrus stopped to look at an outcropping as Ash stepped around him and jumped across. "I've never actually visited a Prothean ruin before. Well…aside from the Citadel."

A noise, almost like a single musical note, drifted up to them. "Ah…" The noise was flanging, and sounded artificial. But at the next word, it resolved into a voice. "Hello? Can anyone help me?"

Wrex looked up and around. "That's no geth."

Garrus was crouching near the edge of the scaffold, peeking through to the chamber below. Light shone out of it, casting a line of blue light across his face. "Someone's down there. I can see feet."

The voice continued, "Can you hear me out there? I'm trapped! I need help!"

# # #

Six organics [four species] have entered Prothean site from south entrance
Platform YPK2MKZ76555 rendered nonfunctional by hostile fire
Sentry platform 7I8HYYUR.313 rendered nonfunctional by hostile fire
Runtimes restored from network mirror instances
Platforms at base of main chamber remain in stealth mode
Observe organics for potential solution to energy curtain passage
Boot Grodis-contractor from sleep state, notify and deliver to northeast entrance
S
uperior platforms will accompany in order to assure minimal damage to Benezia-offspring.

# # #

Shepard turned left and looked down at whatever Garrus was seeing. Behind the energy curtain, an asari hovered in the chamber, arms outspread as if maintaining balance. It also looked like there was another, but fainter, sphere of energy surrounding the blue alien.

That's no biotic barrier, Kaidan realized.

Shepard dropped four meters from the scaffold, relying on his armor's dropsuit function to land softly. The Omnitool Locator was still showing nothing, but a comparison with the images shown translucently on his ARO made it obvious that this asari looked like the archaeologist they were trying to find. Tali could be heard climbing down the remains of the lift rails as Kaidan dropped quietly behind him.

Shepard frowned to himself. All asari kind of look the same to me, he thought. "Liara T'Soni, I presume?"

Liara T'Soni was almost babbling, "Thank the goddess! I did not think anyone would come looking for me. But…who are you?"

Shepard gestured to himself, and then the rest of the team, now assembled behind him. "I'm Commander Stephen Shepard, Systems Alliance, and this is the ground team from SSV Normandy. Are you okay? What happened to you?"

"Listen, this thing I'm in is a Prothean security device. I cannot move, so I need you to get me out of it, all right?"

"How'd you end up in there? Did the geth put you there?"

"No, I was exploring the ruins when the geth showed up, so I hid in here. Can you believe that? Geth…beyond the Veil after all this time! I activated the tower's defenses, I knew the barrier curtains would keep them out. But when I turned it on, I…must have hit something I wasn't supposed to. I was trapped in here. You must get me out, please!"

Shepard found himself wondering if he was being told the truth. "Your mother is working with Saren. Whose side are you on?"

"What? I am not on anybody's side."

Ash challenged her, "We know she's working with Saren, who used geth to attack our colony on Eden Prime. If she's working for him, then give us a reason to believe you're not."

The asari looked shocked. "I may be Benezia's daughter, but I am nothing like her! I have not spoken to her in years. Please…just get me out of here."

Shepard held up both hands in reassurance. "We'll find some way to help you. What do you know about this thing that we should?"

The asari looked toward the short pillar on one side. "There's a control in here that should deactivate the barrier curtain, but I cannot get to it anymore." She looked out at the Normandy team. "Be careful. There is a krogan here with the geth. They have been trying various ways to get in here. They have been unable to take control of the system remotely, or to blast their way through the barrier curtain, even with a large weapon. Ah…I wish I could tell you more than that."

"We haven't investigated the camp site, sir." Ash was looking toward the back of the cavern floor, aiming her omnitool's torch into the darkness to reveal three medium-sized tents and the cylindrical shape of a mining laser. "Could be important clues."

"Good thinking, Chief." Shepard made eye contact with Kaidan and pointed south. "Bravo team, investigate that camp site. And keep a sharp eye out for geth. Remember, we have only seen the one flying sentry and one android since entering; assume there are hostiles."

*** Glossary ***

AI: Artificial Intelligence

APC: Armored Personnel Carrier

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay, AR visualization performed by user neurotronics

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance, AR visualization performed by on-site hardware, computation performed by remote device (e.g., omnitool)

artillecture: the study of artillects (artificial intellects,) their design, operation, ethics, and the philosophy behind same

chep: Quarian scatological term for fecal matter (non-canon)

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

FSEV: Full-Spectrum Enhanced View, VI-controlled visualization system that actively displays the most informative parts of the electromagnetic spectrum between high ultraviolet and low infrared.

Lewadar: Lifelogger app optimized for quarian enviro-suits. The word in Khelish means "ancestor," as the quarians are attempting to slowly build up a new database of ancestral memories, relying on users to will the contents of their lifelogs to the new system (not canon); at least part of the intent is to replace the ancestral databases that were lost during the fall of Rannoch during the Morning War. (that event is canon)

linac: linear accelerator

LOSI: Line of Sight Intersuit, a telecom protocol used by the Alliance to allow fireteams to communicate with each other over short distances without having to worry about interception. Primary mode of data exchange is optical, but the fallback radio component is also scrambled.

LT: Lieutenant

MEFG: Mass Effect Field Generator

MRO: Master of Remote Operations

Open Form Radiant Dragon: a refereed biotic-enhanced street fighting that includes the random introduction of melee weapons

Radiant Dragon: Biotic-enhanced martial arts

snark: a target that is in the mind of the user only; cf. "snark hunt"

statage: generic term for class of device or system capable of supporting both computing ("compute state") plus storage (when unpowered;) Example: A memristor

Thru-View: Sirta Foundation's brand name for their proprietary version of transopter technology. See transopter.

transopter: Scanning technology for "at arm's length" analysis. Combines infrared, Doppler ultrasound and remote specific gravity arrays to construct a 3D model in virtual space that can be superimposed on a user's omnitool, ARO, ARA, etc. Integration of ThruView with standard omnitools allows for realtime VRS

VI: Virtual Intelligence, sometimes called "Narrow AI" for its limitation, but distinguished from "true" AI (with the ability to access and rewrite its own operating code)

VRS: Virtual Reality Simulation, a simulation of a process or device in VR for analytical purposes; a way to examine equipment of unknown origin, or of unknown operational condition

A/N: Argh. Moving into new house (still the wrong house, IMO.) Days not my own at the moment. Sorry for the delay, but now I'm mostly caught up with the write-ahead, and that'll be good for a couple of months of regular releases. Thanks and welcome to all the new faves and follows; write a review if you can! I practically live for them.