3. Dreadnaught

Shepard had only just finished fixing the scope on her M-15 Vindicator when R'kel appeared and told her Joker had news. They had been trailing the Turian ship for some time now, but suddenly it appeared to have stopped and they were almost upon it. Shepard nodded and made for the hub.

The dreadnaught was indeed sitting there waiting for them when they dropped out of light-speed, and was now illuminated on a translucent screen in the centre of the room. Joker, Tali and the others had assembled to examine it and hear what the Commander would do next.

Initially, Shepard only studied it. It was slate-like, a dark metallic blue, with a pair of dorsal fins in the centre section of the ship, and a large, rapier one at the rear. Low hanging engines glowed with pale white light beneath its hull. At the front it was flat-faced and ugly but commanding, with multiple forward-facing Thanix cannons above and below a small control tower. Closer inspection showed a pair of gun turrets either side of the twin dorsal fins, too. Strangely, it bore no registration markings of any kind.

"It's dead in the water," Zeyah said, as if awaiting the human to state the obvious.

"No, the lights are still on, the engines are just on hold," Shepard pointed out, "they're not gone. Someone's aboard. Have we hailed them?"

"No reply," Joker replied, as intrigued by the image as Shepard was. "And we haven't been blown out of the sky either. I would've thought one of the two would've happened by now, wouldn't you?"

Shepard agreed. "Copy that. Try them again, say we're coming aboard."

Joker picked up the com and slowly dialled in the correct frequency for contact. Tali had taught him a very basic guide to operating it and he just about remembered. He could feel her watching him like one of his old Academy tutors as he did it. "I got it, Tali," he said calmly, then hit a switch to his left and spoke loudly: "Turian... I mean, Unspecified vessel, this is the, ah, Quarian transport Jeeya. We, ah, we spotted you seem to be having some difficulties there. Do you require assistance?"

Silence and static.

Joker tried again. "Do you need help?"

More static.

Finally he said, "We request to come aboard."

Still nothing. He looked up at Shepard, who gave him a thumbs up. "Okay, anyone who is there, we're coming aboard." He activated the ship's thrusters on a mimimal setting and took them in. A few seconds later the ships locked together with a dull thump. Shepard looked around at her crew. She had a feeling she might need more than one spare pair of hands this time, and looked at the two engineers, R'kel in the red suit and Zeyah in a pale yellow and white one.

"You two seen any combat?" she asked. They looked at each other. "Come on, guys, I need one of you to come with me and Tali on this."

R'kel sighed. "I've shot a few Geth on recon missions. Not many, but I can do a job. I also have a few years on Zeyah here."

Zeyah seemed to gain some enthusiasm at this. "Not by that much, R'kel. I—"

Emily Shepard had seen and heard such reckless self-confidence before, however, and she knew where it got you. So she put up a hand and said simply: "Good enough, R'kel. Okay, let's go find us some answers."

Zeyah watched them go silently, motionless. Joker thought that maybe she was relieved the Commander had dismissed her outburst.

The first thing that happened when they walked out of the airlock and onto the dreadnaught was that Tali fell over.

"Va'Salica!"

Shepard saw why she fell and why she swore so acutely. She had tripped over the corpse of a Turian guard. He was face down, blood still oozing from a hole in the back of his rugged white head. Like the ship, his black armour was unmarked and he had his rifle still clasped in his left hand. He had been surprised. When Shepard looked further up the access corridor she saw he wasn't the only one. Two more soldiers, each in the same jet black armour, lay dead; one slumped against the wall, the other spread-eagled, staring up at the strip-light above him.

Getting back to her feet, shaken but recovering, Tali examined the dead Turian's armour. She spotted a small tattoo on the soldier's left cheek. She pointed to it. "Do you recognise that? These aren't like any Turian soldiers I've ever seen."

Shepard looked hard at the tattoo and put a hand through her hair. "No, you wouldn't have. I only know them because of my Spectre... thing." She wasn't sure she had that status anymore. Most likely, people thought her temporary allegiance with the Illusive Man wasn't temporary at all. Most likely, the council would strip her of the title. Well, in the grand scheme if things, Emily reflected, she couldn't give a—

"Commander?" R'kel interrupted her thoughts.

"Oh. Sorry. No, judging by the tatt, what we have here is a Blackwatch unit. Which makes things worse than I thought."

"How so?" R'kel asked, fingers tensing around his own rifle, looking around, sounding on edge.

"Blackwatch is an elite Turian Special Forces Division. They run high priority, high-risk, usually deniable missions to protect Palaven and more specifically, its hierarchy. If Cerberus stole something and the Primarch sent them to retrieve it, that means their government is involved, bigtime."

"Well these special soldiers are all dead, Commander," Tali said pointedly, "so whoever's left must be pretty damn good."

"Arturus," Shepard said, looking keenly down to the next door. She checked her weapon. "Be ready," she murmured, then snapped: "Lock and load."

The floor they had arrived on was clear, save the continuing stream of dead crew. After a short time they found a lift and Tali hacked into its control panel, giving them access to the bridge.

They went up in silence.

The elevator door slid aside.

A volley of rapid-fire assault rifle fire took R'kel's head off and plastered it across the back of the elevator.

Shepard ducked back inside the left of the doorway, Tali likewise on the right, blood running down her visor. She wiped it away and swung an arm out, fired a sticky-mine from her pistol, in the general direction of the killer. They heard a scurry of footsteps. Several sets of footsteps. Shepard dropped to one knee and edged around the corner, just in time to see a Blue Suns mercenary fly across a central table and through the holo-image above it. He was pushed by a blast of fire and smoke as the mine detonated behind him. Clattering to the cross-hatched iron floor, he lost his rifle and looked around, wild-eyed. The last thing he saw was Emily Shepard, examining him through the scope of a Vindicator. Then half a clip was emptied into his chest plate and he pitched back and lay still. But someone else was moving behind the smoke that now swirled inside.

It was difficult to make out much more of the room as yet, just that it seemed to be wide and rectangular, and that around the table were a large number of monitors. The rear wall or whatever lay beyond the smoke-screen, could not be made out. Shepard fired two shots through the middle of the haze to see if anything came back, which would give her a marker on her target. She immediately got what she wanted. A second volley spattered overhead and sparked off of the ceiling. White light panels shattered and glass cascaded down to litter the floor. Only the holo-image was unmoved. Shepard noticed it was of the Jeeya. Her attention switched back to the source of the second volley. Again she squinted through her scope. This time she adjusted a filter over the glass, making the smoke pale away and reveal the second Sun, crouched in the shadow of an alcove in the rear of the room. She also saw another door behind his position, the green light of its auto-lock reflecting onto his blue armour. The merc was human.

Then he was a dead human, a single shot ripping through his throat before he could register his shock. She scoped the rest of the room and stood up. Clear.

"Sorry, Tali," Shepard said. She chose not to look at what was left of R'kel.

Tali stood in the doorway of the lift, saying nothing, entirely aware of what was behind her. Presently she said, "He knew the risks, Commander. Move out."

Shepard grimaced, knowing Tali was speaking her own Alliance military jargon but thinking something else. Shepard had more or less forced the engineer into this situation. Then again, there had been little to choose from. No, she decided, like it or not, mean it or not, Tali was right.

"Right. Stay sharp, we're taking these fuckers down now. Only one we want alive is Arturus. Rest can go to hell." They advanced across the room. Just as they reached the door, Tali stopped, looking at a blue console on the wall just above the body of the second mercenary. It showed a crew roster. It also had two other names in red. She stepped closer to examine them.

"Commander, there are two prisoners aboard this ship. Captain Harvik Persson and Navigation Officer Nathan Cornwell."

"Cerberus officers, I'll bet. You get a location on them?"

Tali put a hand to the screen and swiped it twice horizontally, then once vertically. A blue 3-D miniature image of the dreadnaught appeared. Two red dots were clear at its heart.

"They're two decks down, Commander, one above where we came aboard."

Shepard hesitated. She wanted to go after the mercs and find the spy. She also wanted to meet the officers now. She decided to press on after Arturus. If they missed him they could go back and interview the captives. "Come on, we're going after these sons of bitches first, Tali."

"Got it."

The door was locked but Tali used her omnitool and hacked it in the blink of an eye. They let the doors slide back and awaited another hostile reception. When none came they edged around the doors and into the room.

It was more of a hall, wide and long, open down the middle with various desks and holo-images blinking either side, like a long office room more than the head of a battleship. But at the end was a giant, golden projection of a planet, with numerous writings and secondary images appearing around its borders. It was Vana and the one image that stood out, towards the northern pole of the planet was of a domed construct in a grey, rocky wasteland. Digital letters labelled it: Mata Faculty.

Then three more blue suited men appeared from their positions behind the furthest row of desks. One fired from the right side of the aisle, opening up with a snap of sub-machine gun fire, while the other pair attacked on the left side with twin, short bursts from assault pulse-rifles. Shepard and Tali were already rolling into cover, though, diving in behind a bulkhead, not flinching as the floor burned up behind them.

Shepard looked at Tali. "'Kay, you fire four mines around the corner, I'll do the rest."

She looked at her Quarian friend and again she wished that some day she might see a clear expression behind that visor. "Don't worry, this'll be a cake-walk. Taken care of Collectors, Reapers, Rogue Spectres. Dumbass guys like this aren't my ticket to the next level, you know?"

Tali cocked her head. "Your... logic is interesting. I just hope it's sound."

"Damn well is. Light 'em up."

Tali put her head a fraction around the corner of the bulkhead and saw the far end of the room and their small, peeking heads. She fired four mines.

Shepard got to her feet when the first explosion went off. The second and third went as she left cover and began to walk down the central aisle. Yellow flame and acrid smoke was sprouting and billowing all over the Suns' positions. When the fourth blast ripped away their cover altogether she was half way down the aisle, and the mercs were staggering out into view, bleeding and blackened. They still held their weapons though, and when they saw Shepard stop and stand, waiting, they raised them. They were dazed and bleary-eyed and they never stood a chance.

Emily blazed a full clip in an arc across the three of them, lifting each off their feet and tossing them back into the fires that burned behind them.

Shepard looked around. "Arturus?" she shouted. "Arturus, the spy, are you here? I want to talk to you. Name's Shepard. Might have heard of me. I know your boss."

There was no reply. Then the projection of Vana cut to black. Then to the face of a Turian in the armour of the Blackwatch.

"I'll call you Emily, if I may," he said, in a voice that was heavy, aged and genial.

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I take it you're responsible for all this."

"I think you did that," he said, observing the carnage.

She ignored his this remark. "Where are you?"

"I'm not on the ship, if that's what you mean," he said lightly.

"Mata Faculty on Vana, then?"

Arturus looked off screen, then up, then back at Shepard. "Apparently so."

"Why? What are you doing? Why is a Turian working for an alien hating club like you are?"

Arturus peered forward. When he answered his voice was less pleasant. "My reasons are my own. Perhaps, though, at a later time, I will tell you, one traitor to another."

"Look forward to it. Maybe the prisoners here can tell me something in the meantime instead, though."

Arturus leant back. "Possibly. Except, there is the matter of the self-destruct sequence that was activated when I opened this channel. You should probably run along now if you want to speak to them." He looked off-screen again and the image of Vana reappeared.

Shepard and Tali exchanged looks. Then they sprinted for the elevator.