Chapter 25. Plausible Deniability
Late 2135 CE, Attican Traverse
"We'll get a fortune for these so no one is going to touch them, am I clear?" the krogan said as he pointed at their most recent conquest, a group of independent colonists captured in the Attican Traverse, the true frontier of the Citadel Council's colonialisations effort. One of the batarians backed away from the cage after the krogan threw a stare at him. He wouldn't lose a single credit because his underlings couldn't control themselves. If they wanted to toy with them, they had to buy them.
The group consisted mostly of salarians and asari but there were a few turians, several humans, an elcor merchant and a lone quarian on his pilgrimage. While the later wasn't worth much and would most certainly meet a quick demise after being sold because of his weakened immune system, the asari would earn him a lot of credits on the Hegemony's slave markets. Batarian nobility, like most of the galaxy, had a hard time resisting the allure of the all-female race. They alone should ensure that the raid would pay off. Adding to the most common usage for asari slaves, their longevity and biotic powers meant that they could be sold for a higher price due to being passed down through generations of batarians. The salarians, while short-lived, made for excellent factory workers. They required less sleep than any other race and could be sold as a package deal with the elcor, his strength making him a valuable working asset. He'd do the heavy lifting, which would drain the salarians, and the amphibians, who had placed the genophage on his people, would be condemned to work hour after hour in the smog of a batarian factory until their bodies gave in on them. A fitting demise for those who had brought about the end of krogan civilization by butchering their young before they could even break the shell of their egg.
But not all of the group would be sold as easily as the asari, elcor or salarians.
The krogan's biggest concern were the humans and turians of the group. One were part of a society that drilled all of its able-bodied citizens, only able-bodied specimens making it to the slave markets in the first place, in the matters of war. Turians slaves had a long standing history of not only being dangerous to capture, regular asymmetrical warfare classes seen as a typical family past time and a small arsenal considered to be as essential as furniture by just about all of them making them a very hard target, but had a reputation for causing trouble for whoever bought them, using their training and the social values drilled into them to their advantage.
They were the only race of which all slaves were required to be issued explosive collars upon being bought, a custom usually seen as unfavorable compared to regular shock collars. Slaves who had their will broken were more useful than slaves who had their head blown clean of their shoulders. Killing a slave was seen as a waste of money if you could simply electrocute them into submission. However the stories of batarian masters and their families being found dead in their homes, throats slashed by turian claws or organized rebellions of slaves having enjoyed more military training than the Internal Forces supposed to keep them in check slaughtering whole towns, had caused the Hegemony to issue the directive on anyone who wished to posses a turian slave. Explosive collars were more expensive than shock collars and did not have the effect on turians as they had on other troublesome slaves. Their will wasn't broken through the threat of death, on the contrary their desire to kill the batarians was fueled by them. In most cases the hate for their masters was much bigger than their fear of the collar's explosion.
That's what the four-eyed freaks got for letting people that spent fifteen years of their life being drilled for a war against them into their homes. Even ancient krogan knew that letting an enemy sleep in your home was the fastest way to never wake up again. Normally he would laugh at their stupidity but since he made his living like this, he had to worry about the worth of the slaves. He had to convince someone to buy them in spite of the risk they posed.
Which brought him back to the other troublesome race. Humans tended to be bought for a rather cheap price due to having the tendency of requiring a lot of 'encouragement' before seemingly bowing to the will of their future masters, acting out for far longer than asari or salarians and only putting up a defeated facade while planning their escape. Something about the upstarts, he wasn't exactly sure what if he was honest with himself, caused them to have a hard time accepting their fate. Whether their history and society made them despise slavers or if their most basic instincts made them strive for freedom, the fact remained that humans, whose naturally high endurance made them ideal workers in most conditions, lost value due to being almost as troublesome as turians. A few more rebellions and they'd receive the same treatment, insane softskins.
"The buyer will be here in a few more minutes," his batarian liaison officer and contact to the Hegemony's slaver guilds spoke as he walked into the prefab, coming from the communications array at the other side of the camp which they had established on a remote moon in the Attican Traverse. The world's hostile wildlife and generally somewhat unpleasant temperatures meant that, while habitable, it was low on the Council's colonialisation charts, making them unlikely to be found. The fact that their target had been an independent colony, meaning that they had no allegiance to the Citadel Council whatsoever, made it even more unlikely. In their pursuit of independence, the colonists had lost their freedom and their freedom would earn him credits. He didn't know who exactly the buyer was but he knew that his contact had described him as one of the wealthiest people outside of the ruler caste.
"Heh," the irony made the krogan smirk. "Then it's time to rally these up," he said as another batarian guard went to the cage. "Anyone tries something," he said as he raised his Claymore, "you all get it."
The threat had earned him well in the past. Even the rowdiest slave wouldn't endanger everyone around him. Their compassion was their weakness. The slaves were pulled out of the cages, marched outside and forced to stand in line, allowing any potential buyer to better inspect them. The air around them was silent until three batarian shuttles slowly hovered down to the surface. They would soon be able to land in the camp and soon the credits would flood his accounts once more.
Or they would've.
As the brownish crafts crossed the outer perimeter of the camp, several smoke trails shot from the canopy of trees as a series of homing missiles smashed into their rear ends, causing one of the shuttles, and possibly the rich buyers inside, to plummet to the surface before hitting the ground in a fiery explosion, taking the barracks it had just crashed on with it in the process. A burning slaver stumbled out of the building, his vorcha biology trying and failing to keep him alive as his skin began to melt at the hands of the burning fuel sticking to it, savage screams coming from him as he dropped to the ground while rolling in an attempt to suffocate the flames. Another of the three shuttles crashed clean through one of the camps provisional guard towers, killing the snipers inside as they tried to jump to safety and cleaving straight through the fence in the process, breaching the camps perimeter in the process. The third craft, the one that had flown in the center of the formation, simply fell out of the sky as a homing missile gutted its engine, blue eezo dust tainting the sky before it hit the center of the camp, injured batarians stumbling out of it for a few moments
Then the shooting began.
Suddenly members of his raiding party and the injured batarians were dropping dead around him, blue figures appearing from the jungle and picking them off one by one. His legs began to carry him back to the prefab he had come from, dashing past the slaves running away, or in the turians' cases running for cover in the process. In retrospective grabbing one of them as a shield would've been the smart move but it was too late to turn around now, the sound of his barriers shattering just as he threw himself into the prefab reinforcing that he had barely escaped death.
The gunfire raged on outside as he peaked around the corner, aligning his shotgun with one of the blue armored figures, a human, and squeezing the trigger. The human flew backwards as blood exploded from his chest, collapsing on the ground as red began to appear around him while the krogan's shotgun began to vent its heat sink. He cursed the fact that he could only fire once as a turian rushed out of his cover, beginning to drag the injured human away from his line of fire while he was forced back into cover when a round drilled itself into his arm, effective fire now coming down on the doorway he used to shield himself, small holes being punched through the metal as armor piercing rounds tore through them, the friction of their impacts causing sparks to fly into his diretion.
This cover wouldn't last much longer and by the sound of another missile detonating in the prefab next to him, neither would he if he stayed here. As his Claymore cooled off, he took a deep breath to summon every ounce of courage left in his old bones and jump outside. If he could escape from the camp, he could use the jungle to his advantage. Survive until they left. He wouldn't die on this rock. There was still money he had to spent.
He charged outside, firing the shotgun at the closest standing turian he could see. His shells punched through kinetic barriers before the already blue armor turned darker as the turian's blue blood stained it. He smashed the stunned and injured foe away and continued his run for a few seconds before his legs failed him, the feeling of his knee caps being shot through preceding the feeling of hitting the ground face first.
Right about now he wasn't sure why he thought that charging outside had been a good idea. He should've stayed with Clan Weyrloc.
Any other krogan might have forced himself back up out of pride but he wasn't any other krogan. Unlike most of his race Weyrloc Reav favoured survival over pride. What good would a moment of pride be if he didn't get to experience it for the rest of his life.
"I surrender," he said as he tossed the shotgun away, turning on his back as four blue-armored figures leveled their guns at him. "Name your prize, I can pay."
The figures shared a look before one began to speak.
"Sir, this one wants to bribe us," a turian said as he lowered his rifle and looked towards the slaves. "He can't walk," the gunman added for one reason or another.
"Does he now?" a ragged voice asked as a human walked over to him, balancing a knife in his hand. The man had seen a lot of fighting already, the krogan could see it in his eyes. "We'll let's hear it then," he chuckled.
Good, it was working. This was probably just another mercenary band looking to make a profit, he could work with that.
"You're their leader?" the slaver asked. "What's your name?"
"Zaeed Massani, I'd lie if I'd say that this was a pleasure," the human said as he kneeled down next to the krogan, pinning one of his arms to the ground with the weight of his body. Shortly after another armored boot stepped on his remaining free arm.
"Name your prize," the Weyrloc krogan spoke.
"You can't afford it," the human replied as the grey blade began to hover closer to his face. This was just intimidation. He most certainly could afford it, over a century of selling slaves had made him a very rich krogan.
"Three million credits," Weyrloc Reav began.
"Not good enough," the human countered as the knife scratched along the krogan's headplate.
"Five million credits and you can have those slaves over there."
The knife that was now dragging along his face, drawing a bit of orange blood and a grunt of pain, was the human's response to the offer.
"Nine million credits and I'll hand over my private collection," the slaver suggested as the human stopped.
"Personal collection?" he asked as a gunshot in the distance silenced the screams of an injured batarian.
"When I see something I like," the krogan said as he threw a gaze at the slaves, "I keep them around."
The face of Zaeed Massani experienced a shift. He was bad at reading human facial expressions but he assumed that the narrowed eyes and tensed jaw displayed interest. Everyone had a price.
"I keep them around in my home on Omega. I've got asari, if that's what you're into," the krogan added. "Humans too, if you're more traditional. I even have a quarian girl, bit young for my taste bu-"
He stopped talking for a moment as a knife punched through his plates, a surprised scream and painful grunt following his interrupted offer as the human began to pry pieces of his headplate off with the combat knife.
"Not good enough," the blue-armored figure repeated as the krogan noticed the small, white sun on his shoulder just as a fragment of his headplate went flying through the air.
"I'll make you a rich man," the krogan began again, speaking through grunts of pain. "I can give you anything you want. Anyone you want."
"There's nothing you can offer me that could buy your life. All the suffering you've caused, all the people you killed, all the people you sold to a fate worse than death," the human said as he pried of a bigger piece of the krogan's headplate, causing the Weyrloc to make a painful hiss. "It ends now."
The knife cut through the exposed soft skin in an instant, destroying the krogan's brain before he could let out another scream.
12. November 2393 AD, Uncharted Planet in the Attican Traverse
"Get those folks out of here, the batarians will come looking for their shuttle eventually," Zaeed ordered as he rose from the krogan's corpse, giving it a slight kick to make sure the slaver was actually dead. With krogan and vorcha, you never could be too sure.
"Good riddance," one of his soldiers, Jack Narom, commented.
"They all are," the black-haired commander replied as he turned away, juggling the knife between his hands, orange blood dripping on the ground in the process.
Zaeed walked through the camp, Blue Suns moving the victims of the slavers into the direction of the exfiltration point and away from the camp. They would drop them off on the next civilized world after they were done here. He came to a halt in front of one of his non-commissioned officers, a turian military veteran.
"How many?" he asked the taller, brown-plated turian.
"We captured fo-"
"I meant how many of our own died," Zaeed interrupted the turian sergeant as his face grew a bit more somber. Typical turian mindset. Always placing the mission first, casualties second.
"Five. Tallin, Krian, Smith, Drakov, Reid."
"Shit," they had been good people. All of them were.
"I'll get to informing the relatives once we're back in space," the turian offered as his brown face changed into the turian equivalent of a frown. "Let them know that their loved ones died for a bigger cause, so that others could live in freedom."
"No, I'll do it," Zaeed replied. "Have one of the tech guys look through the krogan's omni-tool for bank data," he added. Usually stealing from the dead was seen as wrong but if the dead they were stealing from had been truly terrible people and the stealing itself was with good intention, his karma should be fine. "The guy was loaded. Make sure some of that money reaches their families and put the rest to good use. Donate it to someone helping former slaves rehabilitate or something like that," the Blue Suns commander suggested before patting the turian sergeant on the shoulder, earning himself a nod. The money wouldn't bring either of the five back from the dead but it would be better than mere condolences. Other groups may have kept the money for themselves but the Blue Suns were different. They received steady funding through a reliable source. The perks of being a black-ops organisation.
"Tell the demolition crew to rig this entire place," Zaeed added, "have them link the detonator to batarian military IFFs and activate them once we're in the clear. When they come looking, I want them to burn with this place."
"Yes, Sir."
The Blue Suns commander continued his stroll through the camp, inspecting the carnage his men had delivered on the slavers and observing them in the process of taking care of the surviving slavers. They'd take those who could still walk with them, question them and leave them for Council authorities to deal with. Those who were too injured to make the trip, well the Blue Suns had adopted the turian code of law for these instances, a series of gunshots echoing through the camp confirming that a particular law was currently being enforced by some of his unit. In the beginning he, like most of his comrades, had felt somewhat uneasy about the prospect of shooting injured foes but after a few operations and more importantly after seeing the extend of the brutality slavers were capable of inflicting, the unease had all but disappeared. After over two years of operating against them, a sense of justice had filled its place. As one of his operatives had previously said, each dead slaver was a good riddance in Zaeed's eyes.
A service to the galaxy.
"Well, I'll be damned," Zaeed muttered as he walked towards one of the crashed shuttles, batarian corpses and blue dust surrounding the still burning wreckage. He noticed the black color of the armor the corpses were wearing, hardly slaver gear. They didn't look like regular buyers and once he noticed the burned writing his translator identified as 'Had'dah Enterprises', a batarian corporation operating off the world of Camala. Strange. His eyes wandered to confirm his suspicion. Could it be?
Yes it could.
Finally the top half of a batarian corpse being inspected by another member of the Blue Suns caught Zeed's attention. The burned, yellow garbs worn by the dead batarian were stained with blood leaking from a wound caused by piece of shrapnel being lodged in his stomach. This was a batarian noble, the color yellow was reserved for the members of the Hegemony's highest castes. The batarian's brown arms were resting on his injured legs as he leaned against the exterior of the shuttle. The cuts on the batarian's suggesting that ,in his inexperience, the alien had tried to remove the piece of brown metal stuck in his lower body, accelerating his death in the process. He had gotten the fate people like him deserved.
"Sir?"
"Yes?" he said as he reacted to the call of the man kneeling next to the dead noble.
"We struck gold, Sir," the human said as he ran another scan of the batarian's face, fine orange lines scouring his bloody features. "This is Heth Had'dah."
"What the hell would someone from such a rich family be doing out here? Double check him," Zaeed replied. While nobles would sometimes buy slaves themselves, someone as important as an Had'dah wouldn't go to a backwater raid camp like this one without a good reason. The family was far too rich for that. On the other hand, a member of the Had'dah family would explain the corporate sigil on the shuttle and yellow cloth, their wealth was more than sufficient cause to be deemed worthy of wearing yellow in the eyes of batarian society.
"No idea but," the Blue Suns operative held up his omni-tool, a scan showing a complete match between the corpse and a picture Heth Had'dah, "it's definitely him."
"Time to send a message then," Zaeed said as he kneeled down next to the operative, lifting the orange-stained blade to the batarian's eyes. "Sergeant Kuril?" he spoke into his radio as he began to carve out the eyes of the batarian wearing yellow. "Limit the explosion to structures only, I want them to find something."
"Understood," the voice of the turian came back, not questioning Zaeed's reasons.
"Creative," the human next to him commented as Zaeed used the yellow cloak to wipe the blood of his knife before observing his handiwork, "but they'll have a hard time identifying him now."
"Oh don't worry, Edam Had'dah is going to recognize his brother and it's going to piss him off. Who knows, he may come after us personally."
"Because the Hegemony didn't hate us enough already?" the human sighed.
Batarians believed that upon death, their soul left their body through their eyes and that anyone who had their eyes removed by enemy required immediate special treatment least their soul would get trapped inside their body, unable to ascend to batarian afterlife. By the time they would find this one, it would be too late for special treatment. Zaeed smirked. Psychological warfare at it's finest. Reading up on batarian culture had been lucrative and making an enemy angry was always a good way to throw them off their game.
"Yes but if they're pissed," Zaeed said as he placed his knife in its sheath, "they'll make mistakes," the commander got up from his kneeling position and pulled the helmet that had been attached to his belt over his head, "and if they make mistakes, they're easier to kill," his voice sounded through the filter, giving it the sentence a sinister finish. "Rally up people, as much as I'd like to hang around to kill some more batarians, duty calls."
2137 CE, Citadel, Office of Councilor Idril
"So you're saying that a batarian dreadnought entered the system and simply picked up the Leviathan?" Desolas Arterius asked through the communication buoy network as Councilor Idril, or rather Cozek, looked at the turian general. He had reached out to him due to finally figuring out what had happened to the Leviathan of Dis.
Their cooperation with the humans had up to now had only helped to maximize the effectiveness of their search. The last four years had turned up nothing but the find of a minor prothean site at the hands of a turian 'survey crew' and a few months ago the single biggest piece of evidence they had possessed had vanished deep into the territory of the Batarian Hegemony, making it unreachable.
"Yes," Cozek simply confirmed.
"This isn't good, you know that," the general, whom Cozek had apparently interrupted during a field exercise, said. "Tell me you've got better news."
"Afraid not," the salarian replied. "My STG contacts haven't made any other breakthroughs."
"Alright, I'll let the humans know," Desolas said as he tossed his helmet from one hand to the other before the line closed. "Take care of yourself, Cozek."
"Suggest you do the same," Cozek replied as the turian general put on his helmet, hiding the most recent addition to his injuries.
"Sent in Agent Arterius," the salarian said as he pulled up his hood moments before the brother of the general stepped inside, unaware of the conversation that had ended mere seconds ago.
"You wanted to speak to me, Councilor?" the Spectre asked.
Saren Arterius had already gained something akin to a reputation among other members of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch. He had been active for the last three years, completing a series of operations linked to financial crime and arms smuggling, becoming the go-to agent of Cozek for more than just his abilities. The salarian had ensured to give the Spectre assignments that would allow him to prove himself up to the point of being seen as experienced enough to mentor a new candidate, a human candidate. Now the time to do that was drawing closer. A couple more regular missions or a particular big case and Saren would be considered a senior agent, if not through age but through success.
"I believe that you should see this," the former STG agent spoke as a recording of several workers loading weapons off a turian freighter resting in what looked like a docking bay began to play. "A theft to one of C-SEC's weapon shipments," the salarian clarified.
"How did they do it?" the turian asked. "There are countless of protocols in place to prevent something like this from happening."
"They followed the protocols," Cozek, or as Saren knew him, Councilor Idril, revealed. "They forged a permit to work on the craft, loaded the weapons of the freighter and into a transport vehicle, received a signature of the freighter's captain and drove off."
"But the weapons never reached C-SEC, did they?"
"No, they remain missing."
"Where did this happen?" Saren asked.
"Here on the Citadel," Cozek said.
"I mean no disrespect, Councilor Idril, but this sounds like a case for C-SEC, not a Spectre," the white-plated turian said as he folded his arms in front of his white-armor, covering the black Spectre sigil in the process.
"And normally you would be right," the salarian admitted. "The theft itself isn't what requires the attention of a Spectre, it's a small detail about the thieves that requires someone of your skill set, Agent Arterius."
"I'm listening."
"All workers were identified as having been trained by Had'dah Enterprises, a batarian Element Zero supplier based on Camala, the name should be familiar."
"Had'dah Enterprises was the company the Lower Wards arms dealer ring was supposedly backed by," Saren concluded.
Problems with the batarians living on the stations had grown even worse over the last few years and one of the cases Cozek had given to Saren Arterius had revealed a troubling connection between a group of arms dealers smuggling unregistered, military-grade weapons onto the Citadel and a rich batarian company, Had'dah Enterprises, which had seemingly aided them by providing means of transport. It had since been theorized that the arms dealers had attempted, and failed, to supply weapons to a group of radical batarian citizens living on the Citadel in preparation for an armed uprising. Had'dah Enterprises had managed to avoid further official backlash from the incident due to claiming that the arms dealers had stolen the freighters from Camala, something both the Spectres and STG had disagreed on, earning the company a spot on the Citadel's watch list.
"We fear that they may have decided to shift their strategy."
"Instead of smuggling weapons on the station, they steal them from C-SEC, weakening their opposition in the process," the turian reasoned. "The weapons most likely ended up in the hands of another group of radicals."
"Exactly," Cozek smiled at the Spectre's quick thought process. "We managed to track the workers back to Juxhi, we believe that the planet could be acting as a meeting spot for the leaders of the thieves and their corporate suppliers."
"Juxhi? I'm afraid I've never heard that name before," the Spectre admitted.
"An independent colony in the Attican Traverse, close to human space," the salarian councilor explained.
"Understood. You want me to go there?"
"Yes. Agent Arterius, I'm ordering you to head for Juxhi and find out if Had'dah Enterprises is once more connected to this incident."
"What about the radicals on the station?"
"C-SEC has already launched an investigation. Focus on finding a connection."
"What if I do find a connection?" the Spectre asked.
"Follow it until you manage to obtain conclusive evidence that Had'dah Enterprises is backing criminal activity on the station. Evidence they can't talk their way out of."
The Spectre nodded but remained standing in the room, causing Cozek to give him the permission to leave. "You're dismissed, Agent Arterius."
Sometimes turians were amusingly formal.
5. January 2396 AD, HSASV Hastings, Enroute to the Vetus System
Staff Lieutenant David Anderson pulled his chin over the bar once more before slowly letting himself descend, completing another pull-up. Hailing from Battlegroup Tesla, the naval formation currently acting as the HSA's continued military presence in the Skyllian Verge, the Hastings, alongside the three other frigates of its wolf pack, had been stuck with patrol duty for the last two weeks, splitting of the main fleet lying in wait at the relay with the most connections in the region.
HSA doctrine was clear on the matter, there was no point in stationing fleets around every single piece of territory. Instead human naval tacticians were following the principle that he who tries to defend everything, defends nothing. According to the navy's strategy, smaller groups would irregularly visit points of interest while the majority of naval assets would remain close to the most central mass relay of the region they were assigned to, ensuring that they would have minimal reaction time to any distress signal or report of the long range patrols. While this ensured a reaction in force, it also meant that the smaller patrol formations, like the Hastings and her pack, were more vulnerable due to being separated from the rest of their fleet. This meant that the ordinary naval personal on the vessel was actually quite busy as the frigate regularly jumped through the relay network, visiting a number of colonies, outposts, mining and research facilities. It also meant that he and the N7 detachment he was commanding were stuck with nothing to do besides training. For this reason his entire platoon was currently occupying the Hastings' training room.
At least until something came up.
Since the Hastings was currently enroute to Elysium, intending to refuel before continuing its patrol, the prospect of something coming up was rather small. Elysium was the logistical hub of the HSA in the Skyllian Verge and as such frequently visited by HSA naval formations. While the Tesla and the majority of its battlegroup were currently occupied somewhere else, the chance of something coming up was small.
"Lieutenant Anderson!" he heard someone shout and as currently the sole representative of the rank in the gym, he dropped from the bar.
"Yes?" he turned around to face the source of the sound, another lieutenant.
"You need to get to the bridge right now," the woman said. "It's urgent."
"What about the rest of my unit?"
"Tell them to get in gear and wait in the hangar."
"You heard the lady. Master Chief Rico, get the guys combat ready!" he called through the gym, a faint 'yes, sir' echoing across the room after his order, before following her towards the bridge of the Hastings, stepping inside the elevator after a short jog.
"What happened?" Anderson asked. "Is Elysium under attack?" he asked perplexed.
"No," the other lieutenant explained as the elevator ascended. "We picked up a distress signal from the research facility on Sidon the moment we dropped out of the relay and we're closest to it."
Anderson raised his eyebrow. "Doesn't exactly sound like a job for N7."
"The facility is under attack, Lieutenant."
"Next time, lead with that," Anderson suggested. "How didn't the attackers get spotted earlier?"
"Unknown."
"By whom is the base under attack?"
"Unknown," the lieutenant repeated.
"What do you know?" Anderson sighed.
"Only that whatever they are researching is highly classified and that the distress signal activated a few minutes after we left the relay."
"Who's in charge of the base?" Anderson asked as they walked out of the elevator and through the corridors.
"Doctor Shu Qian," the lieutenant said before they entered the bridge, "Captain," she and Anderson saluted.
"At ease," the captain ordered. "Lieutenant Anderson, a word," the officer gestured for David Anderson to follow him. As they walked across the bridge, the captain brought up a tablet before handing it to Anderson. Visible on it was a map of the region and the picture of a domed outpost.
"No blueprints?"
The captain shook his head.
"Listen, I don't know what is going on down there and originally I called you up here to discuss our strategy but top-brass just got involved, left a message for you."
"What did they say?" Anderson asked as the captain looked around himself.
"Nothing you find down there leaves the planet. They made it sound like whatever they were doing on Sidon is all kinds of illegal. This one's completely of the books."
"That's cryptic, Sir," Anderson replied.
"I know," the officer sighed. "Take a small team, get down there, find out what the hell is happening, find out who those attackers are and get your unit and any survivors the hell of that world. Meanwhile I'll wipe the records."
"Copy that, Sir," Anderson nodded.
"Dismissed."
30 Minutes Later, Surface of Sidon
The domed research facility had looked smaller on the picture, at least that's what Anderson thought as the N7 unit jumped out of the Kodiaks and onto Sidon's icy surface.
The planet was dominated by wide, cold deserts and unlike Elysium completely desolate. There were no other settlements, no skyscrapers, no towns, not even other research domes. For hundreds of kilometers there was nothing besides this research lab and there was a reason for that. Anderson knew that shortly after the Fringe Wars Sidon had been eyed for limited colonialisation by a private corporation , only for the HSA to pay a surprisingly large sum to keep them offworld before swiftly declaring the Sidon 'too dangerous' to be colonized. Ever since then a tight lip had been kept in regards to the icy sister planet of Elysium. No one really knew what exactly the HSA was doing on this planet. As such conspiracy theorists had long since used Sidon as fuel for their stories, declaring the world to be, among others, the site of the single largest prothean cache ever found, a secret military installation researching biological warfare or a large proving ground for experimental weapons that would be far too damaging to use on the HSA's regular exercise grounds. Furthermore IFS sympathizers suspected that Sidon was stocked with WMDs intended to use on Elysium should they ever rise up again.
He shook his head at their theories as he jogged up the dome and noticed the distinctive lack of damage at the main gate. There were no signs of explosions, no scorch marks of breaching charges and no mass accelerator impacts. By the looks of it, whoever had attacked the base had simply walked inside.
"Single file, Falk you're on point."
"Yes, Sir."
The N7 team began their march into the darkness of the research dome, an eerily silence accompanying the results of the power outage. There was no sound of gunfire, no signs of a battle. The dome had been staffed by three dozen scientists, a couple of guards and several technicians but not a single body was to be found. By the looks of it, no one had put up a fight, probably unaware of the fact that an enemy strike team had walked in the front gate. The unit ventured deeper into the base, and soon found themselves closing in on a security checkpoint. A few meters in front of it the pointman raised his fist, causing the fifteen N7s to halt their advance.
"Found one, Sir," he heard the N7 say as he nodded towards a glass panel, cracks spreading across the surface from a single round entry hole . "Clean shot through the head, never saw it coming," the soldier added as he crept into the room.
The N7 operative stood next to a guard sitting in a chair, a patch on his otherwise black combat fatigues identifying him as not a marine, as the uniform would suggest, but a member of the HSAIS. He was slumped over a terminal, pistol still in its holster and head turned away to the left, revealing a peaceful expression on his face. He hadn't seen his attacker coming.
"Took them by complete surprise," Anderson figured. Something about this attack was strange.
"Not all of them, Sir," another N7 said further down the line, causing Anderson to turn to him. "That one went for his gun," the soldier said as she pointed to a guard with several holes in his chest, a SIS-8 clutched in his hands.
"Follow me," he said as he walked towards the room, which upon closer inspection turned out to be the security office of the dome. He turned his head around the corner and saw several corpses sprawled out across the small room, blood stains on the lockers appearing as a darker shade of green inside his night vision HUD as he inspected the scene. One of the guards had been shot in the face right in the door way, his corpse staring at Anderson in a mixture of fear and surprise. Beyond him six other members of the security staff had been gunned down in rapid, professional fashion.
"So they took out the first guy by complete surprise and blitzed the rest with overwhelming force. Precise and fast, my money is on mercs, " Master Chief Rico, a soldier that had already been part of his unit when they had gone after Sederis, figured. "Think someone let them in?"
"Would certainly explain how they got the drop on them."
"Great, a traitor," the master chief sighed. "Jesus, I don't wanna know what we'll find behind that door. It's gonna be ugly."
"Neither do I," Anderson sighed as they walked back to the security checkpoint. "But there might be survivors."
"Let's get this over with," the soldier nodded as he opened the door.
The scene that revealed itself to Anderson was unsettling to say the least. They had most certainly found the majority of the staff. However the hope of finding survivors had been crushed the moment he spotted them. Lying next to an incredibly darkgreen, or rather bloody, wall dozens of scientists and technicians were stacked on top of each other, executed.
"Fucking hell," the non-commissioned next to him muttered.
"Lined up and shot," another N7 commented as she walked up next to Anderson.
"Rico, take two men and go through the bodies," Anderson ordered. "Compare them with the personal lists, we need to know if this is everyone."
The lieutenant drew in a deep breath. Finding the aftermath of an attack was one thing, stumbling into a massacre was another. He felt his stomach drop has he inspected one of the corpses, a single round had embedded itself into the skull of the man, his glasses still somewhat attached to the remains of his head. The fear on his face was as clear as day and by the looks of the wound, he had stared his executioner right in the eyes. It took a special kind of person to execute an unarmed person in such a personal manner outside of combat.
"The rest of you spread out the lab in groups of three. Try to figure out what the hell happened here. Falk, Lisov, you're with me."
Anderson and the two N7s accompanying him walked through the darkness as they looked around the lab. The power had been cut, most likely by the attackers, and as such none of the screens were turned on, giving no insight into what the base on Sidon had been researching. The room lacked traditional laboratory gear or at least it didn't look like David Anderson imagined a top-secret HSA laboratory to look like. There were a lot of consoles, a lot of wiring and a lot of questions.
"Dammit," he heard Falk curse as the soldier tripped over something on the floor, stumbling against a wall to catch his fall, an empty sounding thudding following the impact of his head with the metal surface.
"That didn't sound normal," Lisov commented as she helped the soldier to his feet.
"Do that again Falk," Anderson spoke as he turned towards the man.
"What? You want me to trip again?" the soldier asked in confusion as he shook his head. Apparently his helmet hadn't done its job good enough.
Without having to say another word Lisov walked over to the wall and knocked her armored fist against, a hollow noise echoing through the laboratory.
"There's something behind this wall," the N7 officer said as he stood next to the woman. "Falk, get the tech guy over here."
"Aye, aye, Skipper," the soldier who may have just uncovered an actual conspiracy theory said as he turned back into the direction they had come from.
"Secret trapdoor in the wall?" Lisov asked. "Kind of cliche if you ask me, Sir."
"I'd rather ask you if you know how to open it," Anderson replied as his hands raced over the metal surface. In the movies there was always a secret pressure plate that had to be pushed or a panel that had to be turned into a certain direction to unlock the hidden passage but somehow the N7 doubted that the HSA would use something as popular as this to disguise a hidden room within an already secretive laboratory.
"What were they doing here?" Lisov questioned as she pushed her hands against the wall. "I'm starting to think those conspiracy nutjobs might have been onto something. Maybe it really is a prothean cache?"
"Let's focus on getting in first," Anderson muttered as knocked against the wall again to determine just how far the hollow space behind it reached. As far as he could tell it had to be a big room. He could walk several meters to the left and the wall was still as hollow as where Falk had stumbled into it.
"Maybe we have to press the right place at the same time?" Lisov guessed.
"Could be," Anderson nodded. "But where?"
"Terminal on the wall over there," a voice behind him informed the lieutenant. "At least that's where the wires behind this wall lead. I can restore limited power," the N7 looked at Anderson before the officer nodded, the glow of the engineer's omni-tool, a rather handy addition to the arsenal of the HSA's more elite forces, following Anderson's nod. "Done."
"Brought the tech guy," Falk chuckled as he looked at the two N7s inspecting the wall. "With all due respect, Sir, you two look like idiots."
"Make yourself useful and activate the terminal, Falk," Lisov sighed.
The soldier laughed in a joyful manner before jogging over to the now activated terminal, avoiding stumbling this time around. He lingered for a couple of seconds before entering a series of commands, a hiss in front of David Anderson following whatever Falk had done.
"Secret door," the tech guy, Petty Officer Kinsley, said surprised as he turned to Falk. "You weren't fucking with me."
"Rico, we found something. Keep checking the bodies with your team, the rest of you rally on me," Anderson ordered. "Looks like an elevator."
"Everything but bio weapons," Falk pleaded as Anderson, the tech guy, Falk himself and Lisov stepped onto the platform.
"Goes down roughly 15 meters," the N7 that had pointed him to the terminal informed them as the elevator began to descend.
"Sir, we've finished identifying the corpses," Rico spoke. "All but two people are accounted for."
"Shit," so just about anyone was dead. Not a good sign. "Who is missing?"
"The head scientist and one Lieutenant Kahlee Sanders, she's part of the navy's research and development group, listed as a member of the technical staff."
"Copy that. Secure whatever data you can find up there, start with Qian's room."
"Aye, aye."
Moments after the conversation had finished, the doors of the elevator opened up and in doing so introduced Anderson and the other three N7s to an underground facility. Large processors were lining the room, coolant tanks attached to them as dozens of screens were connected to a central control unit. Power to this part of the facility was still very much active and Anderson noticed that one of the screens depicted a rather strange looking something. He couldn't quite tell what exactly he was looking at, only the smooth shape of it really standing out to him but before he could investigate any further, the sound of gunfire erupted to his left.
"Contact 10 o'clock!" Kinsley roared as his SR8 unleashed a deadly burst of bullets, dropping a black humanoid figure before he and the rest of the N7s went for cover. Precise fire was pouring down on them, causing the lieutenant to dive behind a shipping container.
"Falk, go left," Anderson roared as he peaked around the corner, firing four rounds into the kinetic barrier of what could either have been a batarian or a human before once more hunkering down as small rounds bounced of the metal crate. He had counted five targets.
"I'll overload their shields," the engineer spoke as his omni-tool flared to live. A blue electric current hit the figure the lieutenant had just shot before Falk killed him with a headshot, a dark red cloud shooting out of his four-eyed helmet. Anderson would have to put in a requisition for a combat-grade device himself. They were very much effective due to their versatility but the model he had been issued wasn't meant to be used for anything besides administrative tasks and communication.
"Lisov, flashbang, Falk prepare to get close!" he ordered before a white flash exploded in the air, allowing himself and the engineer to pour suppressive fire on the attackers while the man who had discovered the elevator jumped into their side, his assault rifle spitting death into their exposed sides, killing most of them.
Anderson went to exchange the spent magazine as Lisov grunted in pain, an injured batarian who had removed his helmet to reveal an evil grin pointing a smoking gun at him before pulling out a rather deadly looking device from his backpack.
A bomb. A big one.
His rifle was spent, the SIS-8 was his only option.
Too slow.
"You'll burn, human scum," the injured batarian laughed as he pressed a button on the box, red symbols flashing on its display. "You'll all bu-"
He was stopped from gloating as Lisov returned the favour, turning his face into a shade of its former self as she emptied the rest of her magazine.
"Everyone, get the hell out of the base!" Anderson roared through the radio. He didn't know batarian but they wouldn't have long. He saw Kinsely pick up Lisov, who was thankfully the by far lightest one of the four, and the unit rushed for the elevator.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Falk said while slapping medigel onto Lisov's wound, stopping the quick flood of blood in the process. They were sitting ducks inside this cage. He wouldn't die in an elevator, that would be disgraceful. Mercifully, the doors opened just as he had finished the though to reveal Master Chief Rico waiting for them.
"I told you to get out!" Anderson said as they ran past him, "if you blow up alongside us, I'm killing you."
"I'd want you to," the man replied as they shot past the security checkpoint, the light of Sidon's surface already visible up ahead. Just a few more meters.
Anderson ran as fast as he could yet somehow the engineer, still carrying Lisov, managed to stay in front of him. Whether the officer in David refused to overtake his comrades or if the knowledge of running for two people gave the other N7 a unknown reserve to go back to was beyond him at the moment. He could see the black silhouettes of other N7s waiting outside as their onyx armor stood in stark contrast to Sidon's white surface. They were waiting for them some fifty meters outside the base.
"Keep moving! Get clear!" he shouted as he reached the outside and the figures once more picked up their pace. "It's gonna blo-"
He felt himself being thrown forward and saw Petty Officer Kinsley flying ahead of him, trying his best to break the fall of both himself and Lisov but failing, rolling through the snow and reopening the wound in the process. Falk and Rico, who had been between himself and the other two N7s fared much better, rolling once before coming to a stop.
Anderson himself simply flew past them, taking the brunt of the explosion to his back before hitting the ground.
Hard.
He saw a small crack appear in his face plate and felt pain in his entire body but the knowledge of still being capable of feeling pain relieved him. If his legs were hurting, he wasn't paralysed.
"Close that wound," he heard Rico shout, stepping up at his own lack of command. "You still with us, Skipper?"
"I wish I wasn't," Anderson attempted to joke, a painful moan following the beginning of a laugh.
"Anything broken, Sir?" the N7 asked before touching him. If David had received damage to his spine, moving him could proof fatal. Rico was right to ask the Lieutenant given the fact that he was conscious and experienced enough to know if anything was damaged.
"Don't think so," Anderson sighed. He knew his luck would run out eventually, he was just glad it hadn't happened today.
"What the hell happened?" Rico asked as Anderson felt himself being turned over.
"Mercenaries, batarians," the N7 officer explained she wiped the snow that had been obstructing his visor. "Shot Lisov, primed a bomb before dying. My gun was dry, couldn't stop him."
"Bastards." Rico asked as he helped Anderson to his feet, the now smoking dome behind them clouding the sky black.
"How's Lisov?" the lieutenant asked towards the engineer who was now joined by a medic.
"Stable, Sir," the woman herself grunted back. She still had some fight in her.
"What were they doing here?" Rico asked, causing him to turn back to the master chief.
"Damned if I know," David Anderson replied as he checked his HUD to see if his suit was compromised, once more finding that his luck had pulled through for him. Still environmentally sealed. Time to call home. "Hastings, this is Lieutenant Anderson. The facility just blew up, batarian mercenaries attacked it. No survivors but two members of the staff are unaccounted for. We got one injured and need pick up, over."
"Acknowledged, Kodiaks are inbound, over and out," a voice replied through his radio.
"Did you find anything before you had to book it?"
"Managed to get a look at the doctor's latest report," Rico replied as he brought up his own omni-tool
"And?"
"Well I don't know where Doctor Qian went but I did find something interesting about the other missing staff member."
"Lieutenant Sanders? What about her?" Anderson said as Rico tossed a smoke grenade for the Kodiaks to find them, even in the age of mass relays visual identification was still the most reliable method. The green gas began to disperse itself through the air as the wind carried it west.
"She went reportedly AWOL a few hours before the distress signal was sent," the master chief sighed as his own omni-tool lit up. "Looks like we found our traitor," the face of an attractive blonde woman with icy blue eyes looked at Anderson.
"Let's get of this rock."
Codex: Slaver Bands
After the Rachni Wars limited expansion and the Krogan Rebellions left the Council unwilling and unable to consolidate its rule over every settled world in the galaxy, independent colonies began to appear within the Attican Traverse, the region separating the Citadel space from the lawless regions of the Terminus Systems. The independent worlds, unaffiliated with the Citadel Council, soon became the target of batarian slavers. The Batarian Hegemony, whose economy relied heavily on a caste-based form of slavery, realized the potential of incorporating aliens within the ranks of their servants and jumped at the chance to finally have access to a large, non-batarian pool of potential slaves. This marked the beginning of its still active campaign aiming to secretly support selected slaver bands.
Back then, still an associate of the Citadel Council, the batarian government couldn't officially back the slaver bands but over the course of centuries groups based in the Terminus Systems turned from small criminal gangs into large, government-sponsored paramilitary organisations, ravaging across the Attican Traverse for several hundreds years through the help of batarian military advisors. Abductions turned into full-blown planetary assaults and small raiding vessels into large slave barges as the demand for alien slaves and the support of the Batarian Hegemony, grew. This growth resulted in a golden age for slavers, several states based entirely on capturing and selling independent colonists being founded in the Terminus Systems. These rogue nations grew to a point at which they began to prey on colonies of the Citadel Council. Raid after raid finally causing the Turian Hierarchy to request the Council's permission to launch a preemptive strike which would've set off a war on a scale not seen since the Krogan Rebellions. This request was denied, leaving the slaver states to grow.
However the rise of mercenary organisations such as Eclipe saw the slavers crumble as they were suddenly faced with more than just planetary militias. Wealthy worlds and companies in the Terminus Systems and Attican Traverse began hiring the private military corporations to keep the slavers of their back. But instead of discouraging the Batarian Hegemony, the decline of a steady stream of slaves caused it to step up its support, supplying selected slaver bands with outdated military gear and naval vessels, effectively starting a war between mercenaries and slavers though the later remained outgunned and outclassed by the modern equipment and training of the private military contractors paid to hunt them down. Combined with the turian effort to purge slavery from Council Space, the slaver states were pushed from being a dangerous threat to a nuisance for over one hundred years.
The Human Mercenary Intervention (See Entry 'Human Mercenary Intervention 2387/88 AD') led to a renaissance for the slavers as Eclipse was shattered by HSA forces, allowing batarian-backed slavers to fill the power vacuum left by Eclipse. The gangs grew in strength as they once more set their eyes on Council worlds in the Attican Traverse and human planets in the Skyllian Verge. But they would not remain unchallenged as another contender stepped up. With unknown origin and wealthy supporters , the Blue Suns continued what Eclipse had started.
Slavery in the Attican Traverse would reach a new height in 2402 AD, the year the Batarian Hegemony formally withdrew from the Citadel, revoking its associate status and increasing its support of slaver bands to an all time high in 2408 AD, resulting in the Skyllian Blitz.(See Entry 'Skyllian Blitz')
In 2409 AD the slaver renaissance ended with the Battle of Torfan, the death of several high profile individuals causing most groups to withdraw into the Terminus Systems, their leaders afraid of becoming victims of yet another bloodbath at the hands of 'Ardat-Torfana', the 'Demon of Torfan'.
A/N: Chapter 25 is done. Now starting, something that follows the basic plot outlined by Mass Effect Revelation, a book I never read but is integral to the stuff that caused Mass Effect 1. I feel kind of bad basically just retelling the general plot so I'll probably only follow the most basic outlines of it. A lot of stuff that happens in the book can't happen the way it did in Semper Vigilo due to how different the canon timeline and mine are by now.
It'll probably take me somewhat longer to create the chapters covering this storyline because I need to make sure that the stuff makes sense but I'll try my hardest. This will be a very Saren-heavy story arc, at least I plan it to be. I look forward to writing more about him since he's still the protagonist of the pre-mass effect storyline of Semper Vigilo.
Now I'd like for you to tell me what you think of the chapter, you know give me my review fix and all that stuff.
For the record we're at 187 reviews, 379 favorites and 470 follows. That's a lot. Like I know I say this often but I never expected Semper Vigilo to become this popular.
See you around next time.
