Chapter 53: Whatever It Takes
8. January 2415 AD, HSASV Normandy
"Let me get this straight. You hired a krogan mercenary?" the pilot of the Normandy asked as his hands danced across the holographic interfaces in front of him with practiced ease, their motions swift and fluid. "Bold move, Commander."
"I didn't hire him, Joker," she replied, keeping the smart-ass comment that to hire him would mean that the krogan would get paid for his service to herself. "He offered his help and given who we're up against, I took it," she added with a shrug. "Now, do you know where this is or not?" she asked, returning to the initial reason she had made her way to the bridge in the first place. The navigation data that had just arrived. She had come here to find out where her first mission would take place and what would be the first step on the way of stopping the rogue Spectre she had been tasked with stopping.
"I will once it gets encrypted," the pilot replied from his seat, his eyes remaining fixed on the consoles in front of him. "Which I'm pretty sure only you can do," he added before a swipe of his hand caused another hologram to pop up almost right in her face and demanding her to enter her N7 access code.
"Wait, this is HSA intel?" she asked as she recognized the burning torch emblem of HSAIS and subsequently thought back to her last, rather unpleasant encounter with an agent of the intelligence service for a few seconds.
"Of course it is," Joker shrugged. "What did you think I was talking about?"
"I figured it'd be Spectre intel," she replied, somewhat surprised.
"Hah. Good one, Commander," the pilot chuckled. "As if they'd ever sent Spectre intel to me."
Quickly entering the desired code and only briefly wondering why the pilot of one of the two most modern stealth frigates in the HSA's navy didn't seem to have the same security clearance as an N7 officer, of which there were far more in existence than stealth frigate helmsmen, Emily watched as the data encrypted itself.
"You got it?" she asked when the procedure had finished.
"Yep. I got it."
"So," she replied while looking at the digits and letters in front of her. "Where exactly is it that we're going?" Much like the theoretically subversive nature of her last mission, knowing how to navigate the mass relay network wasn't part of her job description.
"The Artemis Tau cluster by the looks of it," that name she had heard before. Located on the thin line that divided the Fringe Worlds and the Attican Traverse from the rest of HSA space, the Artermis Tau cluster had become famous or rather infamous for one thing.
It, or rather the Sparta System located inside of it, had been the site of one of the Fringe Wars largest space battles and, as a lot of the older HSA naval officers remembered, the site of one of the navy's single worst defeats only rivaled by the Dark Thursday of '78. In spite of their very real numerical superiority and at least theoretical technologic age, the Fifth Fleet had suffered a terrible blow at the hands of what had supposedly been nothing but a small reconnaissance flotilla, earning itself the rather unfortunate and very much disliked nickname of Fleeing Fifth that, in certain, very wrong and questionable circles, still stuck to this day. Additionally, the battle was still presented to this day just how destructive of a bottleneck a mass relay could be if the enemy was already waiting for you to come through it and how little protection escape pods and shuttles offered if cruisers and frigates exploded around them. Amongst other things, that was one of the reasons she was glad she did most of her fighting on solid ground. While being a ground pounder was statistically more dangerous, it still also lowered the risk of her life ending at the hands of vacuum exposure.
Deciding to move away from that morbid line of thought and back to the situation at hand, Emily looked away from the hologram and back to Joker, who was still completely focused on his own work.
"So," Joker said, mirroring her own tone from earlier while moving several of the holograms out of his view. "What exactly is it that we're gonna do in Artemis Tau?"
"Good question," she offered with a shrug and a smile. "I'm afraid I know exactly as much as you, Lieutenant. Remember? I thought it this was Spectre intel."
"Right."
"Right."
"So I'll just take us there?" he asked, turning away from the holograms in front of him for the first time.
"In one piece, please," she replied, nudging her head back to the controls of the frigate.
"Respectfully, Commander," he countered, catching her hint and turning back around but not before offering a somewhat cocky smirk. "I could fly this ship one-handed and blind and still get us there in one piece."
"Oh, I believe you." She knew that he was one of the best, otherwise he wouldn't be sitting here to begin with. "But I and everyone else not strapped into a harness right now are not in any rush to see you do that."
"Yet," he added with a chuckle. "One day you'll want to see it and you better believe that I'll deliver."
"Let's save the betting for when we're not hunting a rogue Spectre, alright, Lieutenant?"
"Copy that, Ma'am."
With that the N7 decided to leave the bridge behind her and see if she could figure out what the purpose behind these coordinates were. Quickly remembering where the comm-room was before making her way there, Emily didn't exactly go far far before realising that something else would get in the way of those answers for now. Or rather, someone else.
"Commander," the biotic marine that had accompanied her these last couple of days called right as he stepped out of the opening elevator with some other crew members, who unlike him immediately went to their assigned postings. "I've been looking for you."
"That usually doesn't mean anything good," she replied from personal experience. Most of the times a subordinate was looking for their superior, it was to sort out something they themselves couldn't fix. "Please tell me this isn't about Wrex breaking something," she sighed, "or someone," given her impression of the krogan that addition felt necessary. Although she wasn't going to second-guess her decision of accepting his help, it didn't exactly require a lot of mental gymnastics to create a scenario where a krogan mercenary would get into a fight with someone on a human warship. Most people didn't like to admit it but krogan were far from popular with the majority of her people ever since the Blood Pack, a mostly krogan outfit, had murdered thousands of human colonists shortly after first contact had been made between the HSA and the Council. Imagining that a couple of marines would try and pick a fight with the krogan and that Wrex would give them what they were looking for wasn't all that hard.
"It's not," that was a relieve. No broken bones meant no work for Doctor Chakwas and that was a good thing. "Besides, I don't think he'll get into trouble any time soon. When I talked to him earlier he was hanging around the observation deck, staying as far away from the rest of the crew as possible."
"Wait. You talked?"
"Yes. It was quite interesting actually. He told me a bit about his home, his people. He's got exactly as many stories as you'd expect from someone his age."
"Sounds like you're becoming friends with the new kid pretty quickly, Alenko," she offered jokingly.
"I wouldn't go as far as calling us friends just yet," the lieutenant countered noticeably more serious. "The conversation did end with him telling me to get lost."
"Alright. Rude."
"From my limited sample size, I'd actually say that it was pretty polite by his standards," the dark-haired man offered with a shrug. "Either way, it's not about befriending him. In my experience it's important to get to know the people you fight with, even if they don't like you," Emily could agree with that notion. "And by the looks of it, he's here to stay so getting to know his is what I'll do." She should probably do the same when she got the chance to. if anything it'd help her judge when and how she could count on the krogan to be at his best. But before she got a read on the bounty hunter, she had to figure out why HSAIS was sending her to Artemis Tau and to do that she had to figure out what Alenko wanted from her.
No reason in talking around it, was there?
"So if it isn't Wrex you wanted to talk about then?" she intentionally left the question open-ended, offering Alenko his chance to get back on topic on his own.
"It's the turian."
"Vakarian?" She honestly hadn't expected him to be a problem. "What about him?" she added.
"I know this is going to sound out-of-line considering that he's here under the Council's orders but," the biotic paused for a moment as if to look over his shoulders to check if someone was listening in on them. When he was satisfied with his conclusion, he continued, "I don't trust him." And a third surprise. This had to stop happening.
"Why not?" she asked in a more serious tone. If one of her officers had a problem with someone they'd be working with, she was going to drop her somewhat relaxed style of command. Especially if the complaint was someone who was as professional as Alenko seemed to be. If he was talking about trust issues, she doubted that it was because he just happened to dislike the turian.
"When I tried talking to him yesterday, I found him in the armory, typing some kind of report. When he saw me, he just pretended like nothing had been going on. To me it looked like he was keeping tabs on the crew and the ship, seeing where we stand and all."
"Well, he is a detective," she offered. "Being suspicious is probably second nature," the commmander replied. "Besides, he's got superiors of his own who probably want to know what's going on with his assignment."
"I know, Ma'am but from what I saw that wasn't the kind of report you sent to keep brass satisfied. It was more meticulous than that. Kind of like a strength assessment really."
"What are you saying, Alenko?"
"To me it looked like the kind of thing you'd do if you want to spy on someone, Ma'am."
"Alright," the N7 nodded. "But what would he want to spy on? The turians helped built this ship. Last time I checked, they even had two of their -" catching what the biotic was suggesting halfway through her sentence, her expression turned a bit darker. "You think C-SEC might have been compromized after all, don't you?"
"They made you a Spectre because they didn't know how deep Arterius' influence ran, didn't they?"
"They did."
"Before you get the wrong idea, this isn't about him being a turian. I trained with cabals, fought with cabals. It's just that-"
"No. I get what you're saying. If there's a chance that C-SEC has been compromized, there's also a chance that the guy who just happens to join us just as we're about to leave might be a mole. Given the situation it's something we have to consider," she cut him off for both their sakes. There was no need for him to add a justification to his observation, not in the situation they were. "But still. Let's keep this between ourselves for now. At this point, everything we say is pure speculation. There's no need to blow this out of proportion, especially not if you just got the wrong impression."
"Of course. I just figured you should know."
"And you were right. I should," she said, eyeing the comm-room behind the tall marine. "Listen, there's something I have to do right now but if you notice anything else or god forbid find proof of it being like you said, you come straight to me, okay?"
"Yes, Ma'am," he nodded.
"Good," she returned the gesture. "Now. As I was saying. Stuff to do," she concluded with a smile and a nudge of her head that was supposed to clue him off that he was kind of standing in her way right now and that she didn't think that squeezing past him would've been all that appropriate. Evidently, the gesture didn't work as intended. Instead of taking a step to the left, the biotic just looked at her, probably wandering where exactly her damage was. "Said stuff kind of has to happen back there," she finally offered before pointing behind him.
"Oh. I see," the biotic realised before making the desired room. "Apologies, Ma'am," he offered as she walked past him.
"Oh and about the Ma'am, Alenko," she said while turning around to face him all the while walking backwards to the comm-room, "if it's just us, Shepard's fine by me as well."
"Alright," he replied before finally returning her smile.
"Alright," Emily repeated, glad to apparently have managed to make a crack in the shell of the biotic. "I'll talk to you later, Alenko. Take care."
"I will," with that, she turned back on her heel just in time to open the door in front of her, allowing her to enter a more secluded part of the ship and in turn giving her the much needed chance to work her head around this next piece of information.
Great.
One of her lieutenants suspecting what could now be called her colleague of being a mole for what was probably the deadliest, most adaptive foe she was ever going to face.
Yeah.
She could've done without that problem ever surfacing.
He had to have misinterpreted something, right? There wasn't actually a mole on her crew already, was there?
Sure, he seemed a bit jaded with C-SEC but the impression she had gotten of Detective Garrus Vakarian had been a good one. Behind the layer of a disillusioned cop, he appeared to have a decent head on his shoulders. At least that was the conclusion she had come to after their talk in the medical wing.
But as with many things, conclusions could be wrong. Especially when it came to people.
Wiping her hand over the opening mechanism of the comm-room's door and figuring that she was going to get a second impression as soon as she was done here, the N7 had been about to call the one person she figured would know why HSAIS would sent her intel while she was waiting for the Spectres to do that, namely Ambassador Udina, when her omni-tool buzzed with a message.
"Talk to me, Joker," she asked.
"I got a call coming through for you, Commander. You should get to the comm-room."
"Coincidentally, I'm already there. Put it through now."
"Copy that," as the line closed as suddenly as it had opened, the room went through the familiar process of darkening itself before constructing a pale blue depiction of a person.
"Commander Shepard," the voice made it clear who was calling her even before the shape of the director had assembled completely. "Or do you want it to be agent now? I heard about your promotion. Congratulatioins."
"Thanks. And commander's juts fine," she replied. "What do you want, Director?"
"Besides congratulating you on becoming the second human Spectre in history?" he returned in the same calm tone he had picked the last time they had talked. "To talk about your assignment."
"I'm not sure I can tell you about th-"
"You're chasing after Agent Saren Arterius in hopes of rescuing Councilor Benezia T'Soni who you believe to be his captive. To achieve that task, you were expecting the first set of Spectre intelligence to show up by now," the man paused as she saw his hologram draw in a breath of smoke from the cigarette he was holding, "To save us both some time in the future, I think from here on out you should always work under the assumption that with me you won't have to worry about what's classified or not," he added after blowing out a bit of smoke too fine to be properly portrayed by the projector, causing it to appear as a number of disturbed pixels dancing around right in front of his mouth. "Nine out of ten times I already know and the one time I don't, I'll hear it right when we're done talking."
Ignoring the fact that she really would've liked to point out how that stood in violation to security clearances, Emily realised that she should've known that he'd her own suspicions from their first conversation, the advice of the specialist should've been enough of a clue to see this coming.
"I take it you're the reason I'm going to Artemis Tau?" she asked, refraining from confronting him about what the HSAIS agent had said just yet. There's be a time and a place for that but it wasn't right now. She had enough on her plate already, she'd save the paranoia about her superiors for a later point.
"Perceptive. I like it," the man pointed out as he sat down in a chair that was only being assembled by the projector when he made contact with it, causing it to seem like he was sitting on nothing but thin air for a few seconds. "Yes, I was the one who suggested that your first stop should be the Knossos System," so that was their exact destination. Good to know. Hopefully Joker was going against regulations and eavesdropping. It'd save her the trip back to the bridge.
"Why?"
"Because someone who will prove herself to be exceptionally useful to your mission is currently working there alongside one of my field teams. Extracting her should be your first priority even after the Spectre intel reaches you," the director said as he placed the cigarette into what was likely an ashtray sitting just out of view.
"And who may that someone be?" she asked as the man folded his hands in his lap.
"An archeologist," he replied.
"An archeologist is going to prove useful to my mission?"
"Yes."
"How exactly?"
"You could call her an acquaintance of Arterius and the councilor," he replied cryptically.
Early 2156 CE, Knossos System, Therum, Cerberus Research Camp
"No, no, that won't work either. Everything we observed up to now suggests we'd just trigger a safety mechanism that might make any further access impossible," the asari replied as her eyes remained fixed on the dozens of small silver tiles that made up the airlock-like 'room' in the center of this prothean ruin, trying to find something she hadn't noticed the last hundred times she had looked at every last one of them and tried to make sense of all of their details down to the last scratch.
"I don't know what else to tell you, Doc. It's literally the only thing we haven't tried yet," a member of the science team she had been asked to accompany by General Arterius after her last 'field trip' with his brother, replied after letting out a long drawn sigh and scratching his reddish beard. "It worked before, didn't it?"
"Yes. High-powered energy surges have been successful at reactivating dormant prothean artifacts in the past," she replied. "But none of those artifacts displayed properties even remotely similar to this room. Given that it already seems to be drawing power from our generators by some unknown method, I'm worried that a sudden surge might overload whatever inner circuitry is responsible for this absorption. I'm sorry Doctor Gregor, but it's simply far too risky."
"Considering what happened on Eden Prime, I think we're far beyond the point where we're concerned with risky. You know just as much as I do that time is a luxury we can't afford right now."
Eden Prime.
That was only one the thoughts she had been blending out through her work.
Or at least tried to do so.
Truthfully, she had known this assignment wouldn't manage to distract her the way she had hoped it would. Even as a child, she had never been good at not thinking about things. And that had been way before the fate of the galaxy had been at stake and her own personal life had gone through changes she hadn't expected to occur for at least another couple of centuries.
As she waved her hand through the air to look at the first instance of them noticing that the artifact in front of her seemed to siphon energy from their generators for a reason she had yet to uncover but suspected to be some kind of internal power storage, she also gave in to the wave of thoughts that had been crashing against the little dam she had been trying to built for some time now.
While the civilized part of the galaxy was still trying to piece together why the geth would leave the Perseus Veil for the sole purpose to attack a human world before playing hide-and-seek with several fleets of human and turian warships in the Attican Traverse, the young archeologist and the science team she was working with already knew the answer. After all she had played a major role in putting together the pieces that had allowed General Arterius and Director Harper to know what was going on and the people around her were all desperately looking for some kind of answer for what could be called the most pressing issue in galactic history. An impending invasion of the as of yet unknown but still exceedingly powerful species responsible for wiping out the protheans some fifty thousand years ago.
As she found the set of logs where the observation had first been made, she read over the report again and again to confirm that it was actually what she was looking for. After making sure that it could be used to support her opposition of using a power surge to force some kind of reaction of what she was starting to suspect to be some kind of likely outdated mining technology and not the kind of data storage or experimental shielding technology Doctor Gregor hoped it would turn out to be, she turned back to the human scientist.
"Just look at how little power it's actually drawing," she said, hoping that a task at hand would stop her from thinking about the other things, or rather people, that the wave was trying to bring with it, "dormant or not, a sudden power surge would most certainly trigger an internal fuse. Going through with this plan would either shut down the artifact completely or outright destroy it. I know that you're eager to find answers," all of them, including her, were, "but doing this won't bring us anywhe-"
"Doctor T'Soni?" a familiar voice asked, causing her to turn around to face the somewhat heavy-set technician it belonged to, his round face lacking its usual smile.
"Jesus, Pete, can't you see we're talking here," her colleague began, a hint of annoyance in his tone. It wasn't the malevolent kind and if she hadn't had decades of practicing how to not let stress affect her during her work, she might've reacted the same way.
"I know. I'm sorry, Doc. But this is important," he said, climbing up the stairs to join them in front of the artifact. "There's an urgent call for you in the comm-room, Doctor T'Soni."
"From whom?" she asked while another wave of her hand caused the orange hologram of her omni-tool to vanish, letting the argument slide into the background for now.
"They didn't say, they just told me to get you right now."
That certainly sounded cryptic.
Although she had been left out of the loop in regards to most things, the unsanctioned field trip she had taken with the two Spectres severely limiting how much the general seemed to trust her at the moment, the fact that it was sounding this cryptic was giving her hope. A disproportionately large number of the people who had been keeping her out of the loop liked to behave like this for a reason she still wasn't entirely capable of understanding. Whether it was tracking her down on Thessia or waiting for her in her room, both Arterius brothers, one of which she hadn't actually spoken to or heard from in months, were the kind of people who'd indulge in this kind of secrecy.
Aware how her heart seemed to skip a beat at the prospect of continuing the field investigation she had started a few months ago, she only threw a short look at the prothean artifact in front of her before turning to the human scientist, not entirely sure what it said about her that a piece of previously completely unknown prothean technology was no longer enough to keep her from ignoring everything else like it had been in the past.
"I'll be right there," Liara said while making her way down the stairs. "And please. Don't do anything to the artifact until I'm back," she added after a moment of recalling a result of her limited observation of the species. While she was aware that she shouldn't generalize, the last few months had led her to the conclusion that humans seemed to have difficulties with not doing something that could potentially trigger destructive consequences. In a more quiet moment the xenoanthropologist in her might've spent a moment or two to muse how they had managed to get to where they were right now, a young civilization rising through the ranks of galactic politics in a speed never seen before in history, without blowing themselves up along the way or pander on what would have happened if her own people had adopted even a portion of this seemingly natural tendency to take risks at an early point in their own development.
But as things were, now was not a quiet moment.
It was an exciting one.
"Did they say what it was about when they sent you to get me, Pete?" she asked as her feet carried her down the makeshift stairs quick enough to cause the human to have to jog to catch up with her.
"No. They only said that it was urgent," the technician replied as they walked through the familiar grey, circular halls of the ruin and began making their towards where the human research outpost had built up its communication hub, if one could dare and call a couple of antennas and a hologram projector set up in the prothean equivalent of a broom closet a communication hub.
"And you really don't know who it is?" she asked on their way through the security checkpoint that had been set up between the center of the ruin where the mysterious artifact was located and the rest of the base that now served as the makeshift laboratories, quarters and administrative rooms of their expedition, the inhospitable volcanic outside of Therum's surface causing the rare exception of archeologists forgoing to live in a camp otuside of their dig site and instead move into the object of their desire.
"Come on, Doc. You know I would've told you if I did." Yes. She knew. Liara might not have been a very socially active person but even from her limited experience she had been able to figure out that the burly human had become especially fond of her ever since she had arrived on Therum one and a half months ago, an observation she had of course never used to her own advantage. That would've been more than just uncalled for.
"Of course," the archeologist replied as they passed the checkpoint under the watchful eye of one of the armed guards, the rifle loosely dangling from the harness of the human's body armor just one of the dozens or so small things that reminded her each day how this dig was very different from the civilian ones she had been part of before.
"Sorry, Doc," the human offered as he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand before coming to a stop in front of the comm-room.
"Don't be," she offered a brief smile before a wave of her hand allowed her omni-tool to interface with the opening mechanism of the door. "Well?" she asked as the doors came apart, the bluish light of the human-made hologram projector already flooding out of the darkened room. "Aren't you coming?"
"I'd love to but no," Pete dismissed the notion, surprising her. "This is as far as I can go," he added before nudging his head towards the fine blue lines originating from a small orb at the top of the door. As they brushed against where his omni-tool was clipped to his working fatigues, subsequently producing a rather loud beeping noise before turning read, the technician frowned. "Security clearance around here is a bitch," he explained. "Guess I'll see you around, eh?"
"Yes, you will," she nodded before turning around again and stepping into the room, her presence evidently being registered as the door shut behind her, its lock hissing surprisingly loudly in the process of assuring no one would be able to eavesdrop. This certainly was shaping up to be a unique conversation.
If anything, this level of secrecy was giving her even more hope that she'd join the Spectre on another expedition. In all the time she had known them, only the younger Arterius had gone through such troubles before talking to her.
"Doctor T'Soni," a flanging voice greeted, its familiar tone filling her with excitement right until she recognized that the turian hologram standing in front of her was the depiction of someone older and far more scarred than Saren Arterius.
"General Arterius."
So much for continuing what she had started several months ago.
Still, if the man who had sent her here had something to say, she'd listen. Maybe it'd surprise her. Maybe his trust in he rhad returned and she'd be welcomed back into the fold.
"I take it you're alone?" it was only now that she noticed how uncharacteristically tired the older turian sounded. And now that she had noticed it in his voice, she was also starting to see it on his face. Goddess, it looked like he had aged nearly twenty years since she had last spoken to him.
"Yes, I am."
"Good," he replied, still sounding more strained than she had ever seen him be, which in itself was saying a lot because there had been several occasions during the Skyllian Blitz during which she had been sure that he had called her straight from the frontline of the war. "What I'm about to tell you can't ever leave this room," he had said that several times before, yet never sounded as serious as before.
Was it something big?
Would she be able to get off of Therum and continue her investigation?
Would she be able to-
"Do you understand me, Doctor?" the general's rough voice tore her from her thoughts.
"Yes, I understand. Whatever it is that you have to say, it will not leave this roo-"
"Saren has been turned against us."
The interruption was as sudden and brief as it was shocking. As her eyes widened in wake of the news, the asari scientist suppressed the gasp that had been sneaking up on her, managing to keep up a facade of calm while her brain began spinning out of control.
Saren?
Turned against them?
"He's working with the geth, likely under the influence of the same indoctrination we've observed before."
The geth?
They had been tracking geth the last time they had been together.
Had he gone after them again and gotten himself captured?
When?
How?
Was she somehow to blame for it?
"After receiving evidence proving his treason and involvement in the attack on Eden Prime, he has been declared a rogue Spectre by the Council. Another operative is beginning her hunt for him as we speak. She has been ordered to stop him. To achieve that, his survival has been ranked optional."
He had been the one behind the attack on Eden Prime?
Why would he do that? Besides the obvious indoctrination of course.
It had to have something to with what the Harbinger had been trying to do.
If only she knew more about the attack on Eden Prime other than that it had happened, she might've been able to figure out.
As the questions began to stack up, she made another realisation.
How in the Athame's name could it be that General Arterius was delivering this news so calmly and detached? Saren was his own brother. Yet he was talking about him like he was just another enemy, like none of this affected him in any way.
Suppressing emotions like that couldn't possibly have been healthy, could it?
"I called you to inform you that you are to report directly to me if he makes any further attempts to contact you."
"I don't understa-"
"Also, I called to inform you that a new discovery has been made in regards to the whereabouts of your mother. It is probably best if you sit down," he added more sympathetic than before. As a hint of softness returned into the general's otherwise exhausted tone, Liara found herself confronted with the other topic she had been avoiding.
Her mother's sudden disappearance and likely death.
Although they hadn't been close for years and the last time they had actually spoke to each other had been a scolding regarding her expedition with the Spectre, the news that she was missing had still hit Liara completely unprepared, sending her in a state of confusion, grief and ultimately refusal to deal with the most likely scenario that involved accepting that her mother, her only parental figure, was dead. As she preapred herself to hear that her frozen corpse had been recovered in the mangled remains of a spaceship, she did her best to put up a brave face, somehow feeling obliged to at least show a fraction of the composure General Arterius was showing despite telling her about how a Spectre was trying to kill her brother as they were speaking.
"I would but there are no chairs here," she replied meekly after a moment, her voice cracking in the process.
So much for putting up a brave face.
"We think your mother is alive," as she was about to ask how they could possibly know that, the next sentence of the general crushed her in a way she hadn't expected it to. "And we also think that she's being held captive by my brother."
"I don't understand. How could you know that?" Liara asked in return, nearly stumbling over her own words.
"Following his attack on Eden Prime, we managed to recover a recording which proves that your mother was taken captive by Saren at some point in the past. Likely with the goal of being turned as well," as the general observed the range of emotion unfolding on her face, she noticed his own features soften, at least as much as the plates that covered his face allowed them to. "I am truly sorry."
"Don't b-" she had been about to reply when a sudden shock traveled through the entire facility, the force behind it sending her flying to the ground and causing all power, including that of the holographic table, to be lost in an instant, drowning the room in complete darkness.
The first thought that shot through her mind, dispersing those regarding her mother and Saren, was that someone had ignored her warning and attempted the power surge. As she tried to get up, something she failed to do at first thanks to something very heavy pressing down on her legs, the asari felt her biotics flare up in a natural response to the heightened levels of adrenaline being released throughout her body. Focusing on her biotic abilities and reinforcing the purple field as a response to the natural reaction, the steelbar that had been keeping her on the ground effortlessly floated into the air, allowing her to crawl to freedom. As she climb over the debris and, through the light of her omni-tool, find her way to the door just in time for the emergency power to kick in and flood the whole room in red light, Liara brought up the communications channel on her omni-tool in an attempt to call for aid after realising that the door wouldn't open on its own.
"This is Doctor T'Soni, I'm trapped in the comm-room. Can someone pleas-" as a burst of incredibly loud electronic feedback flooded out of the earpiece attached to her omni-tool, Liara shrieked in pain exactly as long as it took her to tear the small wire out of her ear. Feeling another shock travel through the facility not a moment, this one slightly less powerful than the first one, Liara struggled to stay on her feet.
Goddess, what was going on here?
As she picked up on what sounded like a cry for help followed by gunshots on the outside, the shock evidently having managed to break the seal of the door, the archeologist swallowed at the realisation slowly creeping up her spine.
They were under attack.
Early 2156 CE, Aephus, Turian Naval Rally Point
"Doctor T'Soni, can you hear me?" he asked again, raising his voice ever so slightly this time, the frozen hologram still showing no respone. "Damnit," he cursed. This was bad. A dozen things could lead to a transmission cutting of this suddenly and all of them involved an attack of some kind. "Veltax! Get in here!"
"What is it, General?" the other Blackwatch operative asked as he came shooting through the door not a second later, his hand clutching the Carnifex that was usually attached to his belt in spite of how unlikely it was for an assailant to get to him in here or survive the ensuing fight with a trained Blackwatch operative.
"The line to Doctor T'Soni just collapsed and I think it's because she's under attack. I need you to get Melion and tell him that he needs to contact the Normandy. They have to hurry up."
"Right away, Sir!"
As the sergeant ran out of the office to execute his orders, Desolas fought the urge to throw the terminal sitting in front of him into the hologram projector. As more curses flew out of his mouth, most in Pallian and a few in the native tongue of his home Elapri, a language which the Hierarchy had given up on trying to fully eradicate several centuries ago, the general shoved his chair back and began walking through the room.
He should've known this would happen.
Saren had tried to get to her once before, of course he'd try again. She seemed to be vital to whatever mission it was that the Harbinger had indoctrinated him into trying to fulfill and a Blackwatch soldier wasn't going to give up on something important to his assignment, at least not this easily. Cursing himself again for thinking that hiding the doctor in a somewhat secluded portion of human space would've been enough to stop someone like his brother, Desolas came to a halt in front of the frozen projection of the asari scientist, her face stuck mid-sentence, blissfully unaware of whatever had happened next.
If he took her, if he turned her like he had turned her mother, it'd be on him again. Another one of the people who had looked up to him to lead them against the Harbinger turned against their allies because of a call he had made.
As he silenced the rage begging him to simply slam his fist into the projector and cause the image to disappear much like he'd silence an insubordinate soldier, the general kept staring at the projection for a few more moments before turning on his heel and marching back to the terminal, entering a series of calculations before looking at the result.
For a large fleet, it'd be the better part of a week before they'd reach Therum.
But for the love child of human ingenuity and turian engineering? When flown by some of the best sailors the Hierarchy could offer?
It'd be significantly less than that.
Spirits, they might just beat the Normandy if the current trajectory he had assumed for it was correct.
Entering a set of commands before opening a line to the part of his legion that was tasked with maintaining Blackwatch's means of transportation, Desolas made his decision.
"Captain Hikarus, ready your ship," he spoke, not even bothering to ask how long it would take the naval officer to do so. He knew exactly how many minutes that procedure would take, he had been the one to set the requirement. Being who he was, Hikarus would likely still get his crew to beat the current record.
"At once, General," a single sentence came back to him before the line closed itself again.
Saren was his brother. He had been turned against him by an enemy of unfathomable might because Desolas himself had pushed him down the road of desperation.
It was something he was never going to be able to take back.
What he could do however, was to try and make it right.
He could try and stop his brother.
And if that failed, a scenario he forced himself to consider in preparation for the consequence it carried, he could avenge him.
"Veltax," he spoke into his omni-tool on his way to the door. "Get Galviat and Callius. Tell them to meet us at the Parnack's dock."
"Yes, Sir."
He'd make this right.
Even if it was the last thing he did.
Meanwhile, 9. January 2415 AD, Cronos Station
"Considering that the Normandy and the commander are gone, I take it the data drive got the job done?"
"Yes. Delivering the recording to the Council proved to be the incentive we hoped it'd be," Director Rei replied. "They made Commander Shepard a Spectre on the spot and sent her to bring in Arterius right after. She's on her way to get Doctor T'Soni as we're speaking."
"Didn't clean up Udina's mess though," the younger man returned with a hint of annoyance in his tone. "Anderson's still benched and pretty pissed about it."
"Which might be for the better," the older man replied. Although Arcturus was in a justified state of anger and confusion after the very sudden and very independent decision of Udina to convince the Council to withdraw the first human Spectre, David Anderson, from his position for the time being, Rei himself recognized the logic behind the decision. Sure, he wasn't blind to the damage it did, but the fact remained that there would be even more damage the other way around. Anderson and Arterius had worked together for years and while they both knew each other's methods, technically making either of them to be the perfect person to bring down the other, the director himself doubted that Anderson could actually pull the trigger on someone he had known this long. He had read everything there had been to read about the man and all of it simply pointed to one conclusion that nullified whatever hole Udina had torn into the HSA's hopes and dreams in regards to a seat on the Council.
Anderson wouldn't be able to stop Arterius and given the indoctrination effect under which the turian was suffering, the turian would show no hesitation to kill his former friend had he been sent after him, leading to the inevitable and unavoidable failure of any attempt the former N7 made to put a stop to whatever goal it was that the former Blackwatch operative was pursuing for his new master.
"Having Anderson go after Arterius is just asking for disaster," he added, voicing a short summary of his thoughts.
"Permission to speak freely, Sir?"
"Go ahead, Morneau."
"So is sending a regular N7."
"We both know that the commander is more than that. Her record speaks for itself. If it wasn't for her, things on Elysium might've gone a lot different," although he knew some people would take it like that, he wasn't defending the woman because she happened to be the daughter of a specialist who had died under his watch. "She's one of the best soldiers we have."
"I'm not saying she can't fight, Sir," the specialist replied after a moment. "If anything she's got that part covered pretty decently," there was a short break where even Rei himself after decades of working in the espionage business wasn't certain what the expression on the dark-haired man's face was saying. "What I'm saying is that her kind of fighting won't be enough to stop this. Arterius was one of the best and it didn't help him one bit in the end. Same thing could go for her. One wrong step and that's it, she's gone."
"Is this what this is about, Morneau?" the director asked in turn, placing a hand in front of his mouth.
"Sir?"
"Alec," he clarified with a slight mutter. "Is he the reason why it's starting to sound like you're about to ask me to have Arcturus pull the Normandy out from under the commander's feet and give it to you instead?"
"I wasn't going to ask you that."
"We both know you were," he called his bluff. With thirty five years more on the job, he wouldn't be fooled by a lie as obvious as that one. "And the answer is no. I don't know what this chip on your shoulder is still doing there in the first place but it's about time that you lost it." Although he figured that a specialist would be able to handle that kind of tone, Rei decided that he should at least add a piece of advice to what he was trying to say. "Trying to look for a way to repay a dead man for something you think you still owe him is a good way to get yourself killed. Trust me when I tell you that that's the last thing Alec would want you to do," the took a surprisingly deep breath. "Are we clear on that, Specialist?"
"Crystal, Sir," the younger man nodded, not entirely managing to convince Rei that they really were. Given that he had been down this road before himself, he'd take the partial acceptance for now. Things like this didn't go away in one stern talk. "But even with dead men out of the picture, I rest my case. The commander can be the best damn soldier who ever walked the galaxy, it's still not going to be enough. Not against someone like Arterius. He's not the kind of person you can beat on a battlefield alone."
"I am perfectly aware of that, Morneau."
"So you get what I'm saying?"
"I get that you are itching to get back at the guy standing behind him and prove that Akuze was the exception, not the rule. I get that you feel like you need to prove to yourself that the Harbinger isn't going to get you again," he drummed his fingers on the top of his desk for a few moments before pulling up a new report regarding some of Arterius' private assets on one of the several screens standing in front of him. "Did I get that right?" he asked after a moment of letting the accusation sink in.
"No matter how good the other guy is, there's not a specialist alive who likes to lose, Sir," he confirmed Rei's suspicion.
It was a bold statement for which the part of him that fancied itself a wise and experienced leader would've scolded Morneau if not for the fact that deep down the director knew that it was true. It was just another one of the characteristics that no matter how different two specialists were in every possible way seemed to be prevalent in every last one of his colleagues, making it one of the few conditions he was certain to be a part of the process HSAIS went through to aquire new recruits for the thirteenth section of its Bureau for Field Work.
"No there isn't," he finally admitted with a mumble. Setting aside the reasons for the specialist wanting to go after Arterius himself, the logic behind his request couldn't be dismissed, chip on his shoulder or not. Someone with the resources of Arterius wasn't going to be defeated on the battlefield alone, especially not if he was fighting his fights one at a time and against the same foe.
It'd take more than that.
Someone had to pull the chair from under his ass before Shepard would be able to finish him for good.
While HSAIS hadn't been able, or in this case more likely really bothered, to keep as meticulous of a track on the Spectre and his assets as they did of other potentially dangerous peopel, they had at least managed to draw up up a rough estimate of the network the now-rogue agent could fall back. And even though one of the dozens of footnotes that had been attached to the report insisted that there was a possibility of that figure being lower by now due to all kinds of people having started to chip away at his resources over the course of the time Saren Arterius had practically dropped of the face of the galaxy, it was still a considerable network. Probably larger than that of most other Spectres. However in spite of how intimidating the dozens of major share holdings, board memberships and classified deals with corporations operating at the very limit of both legality and Council Space seemed to be, there was a way, albeit a complicated one, that could be used to pull all of that from underneath Arterius in a reasonable amount of time.
"Young and you never did manage to get a fix on Okuda before I told you to go after Fist, did you?"
"No. We had a few leads on the Citadel and Bekenstein but after Eden Prime hit, they all went cold. The guy might as well be a ghost right now." Out of all the people looking for the turian right now, one seemed to pour even more resources, time and manpower into locating him than the Council. One person who may very well break apart a complex network built over nearly three decades for no other reason than to spite someone who had broken a deal with him. "I thought I was pretty clear on that in my report, Sir."
He had been.
Rei had just asked the rhetorical question for the sake of leading the specialist into the direction he was now realising this was going.
"Given the current circumstances, I think we can both agree that it might not be in our best interest to get in the way of someone trying to achieve the same thing as us, no?
"Probably not," the other man replied after a moment. "Just to get this out of the way, you're not thinking about shaking hands with the Broker, are you? Because if you are, you might want to think about sending someone else."
"Of course not," he said in return. As attractive as the saying of the enemy of your enemy being your friend was, the number of reasons that spoke against ever trying to strike a deal with the Shadow Broker outweighed any possible gains by a long shot. "I was thinking more along the lines of finding a way to put some semblance of control into the path he's burning through Arterius' network." Although he might've been the most successful information broker in the galaxy, the observations that had been made in regards to what could only be described as an obsession of getting his hands on the turian were starting to leave their marks on the Shadow Broker's own organisation. The days of carefully calculated assassinations and ruthlessly efficient operations had made way for an uncontrolled, by his standards incredibly erratic behaviour that aimed at one thing and one thing only, resembling a wildfire in the process. "And to achieve that, Okuda's still a means to an end. He's our way in."
"So what you're saying that it's back to square one for Yo-yo and me?"
"Same mission, different goal," he offered with a shrug. "You know how it goes."
"Nothing like a switch of priorities to mix things up," Morneau mused in return. "I'll get right to it, see which lead's the least dead."
"If I were you, I'd play into Okuda's arrogance. Let him think he got away clean. He always had a problem with growing too comfortable with something he was sure to be a safe thing. Use that."
"Understood. Play him like he tried playing the Broker."
"Exactly."
"I'll let you know when we have something."
"I'd expect nothing less," he nodded.
"Without stepping out of line, I have to ask. Are we done here? The longer we talk, the more dead our leads get."
"Just one more thing, Morneau," although it should've been self-explanatory, the confirmation that Arterius really had gone rogue and with almost absolute certainty was standing under the indoctrination of the Harbinger made Rei feel like he had to say it.
"All ears, Sir."
"No matter how bad you want to stop him, don't take the risk of ending up like him. Arterius might not be around himself when you hit his assets but he's bound to have gathered a following by now. If there's even a one percent change of you, Young or anyone else getting compromized, you abort," briefly drifting back to the first time he had seen an Object Omnicron during the Fringe Wars, Rei shook his head at the memory of his partner being thrown back several meters by some kind of blue energy burst, "If you somehow find another artifact, there will be no intel gathering and no interrogations. You're going to destroy it the moment you can. Torch the whole place if you have to," he added to his instructions before taking a somewhat deeper breath, aware of the underlying implications of his final order. "And no matter what happens, you make sure that you and your mind stay on our side. Losing Arterius was already bad enough but a specialist switching sides now would end our chances of winning for good. Whatever if takes, your secrets stay yours."
"Always, Sir."
"Now go and make sure that Shepard can stop him before it's too late."
"My pleasure."
"Dismissed."
"Sir."
As the hologram disappeared, Rei looked at his screens, the dozens of messages that had appeared within the short time he and the specialist had talked all demanding his attention. He let out a single sigh, knowing full and well that he shouldn't complain about having moved on to tasks like this considering he had just told a man not even half his age to put a bullet in his own head if the situation required it. From a rational point of view, his current position was the far better one.
But still, he would've gladly switched places with Morneau.
With the fight looming on the horizon, Rei couldn't help but want to be back in the thick of it. Although on the grand scale of things, he was making more of a difference in his current position than he could ever hope to make in the field at this point, Rei simply missed solving the problem personally, missed the feeling of something being your fight.
As another message popped up, he let out another sigh.
Helping to stop their former ally by breaking his support structure wasn't his fight.
His fight would come on the day the Harbinger decided to continue what they'd stop Arterius from achieving.
And then he'd be ready.
Then he'd do whatever it took.
Codex: IFSDF Navy
Established during the closing months of 2377, the IFSDF Navy made up the spaceborn wing of the IFS's armed forces, at first consisting of the vessels commandeered by the IFS during the opening engagements of the Fringe Wars but soon being expanded upon by new vessels built in in the shipyards of Horizon, Shanxi and Amaterasu. Although significantly less numerous than their opposition, the IFSDF Navy profited of the fact that initially almost all of its commanding officers had joined them from the ranks of experienced HSA captains, giving them an early edge while weakening their foe at the same time. This fact, alongside the IFSDF's willingness to abandon orbital supremacy in favour of keeping their fleets mobile and giving them free reign over when and where they engaged the HSA, knowing full and well that the latter wouldn't use full-scale orbital bombardment against their own worlds, allowed separatist elements to fight the significantly larger Human Systems Alliance Navy on their own terms.
While absent for most of the first year of the war, the naval assets of the IFSDF, back then not formally known as such, made their entrance to the conflict on the Dark Thursday, delivering a crippling blow to the HSA and setting the tone for how they'd fight the majority of the war, striking sensitive targets in lighting-fast attacks and vanishing before a response could take place, a tactic that has been adapted and is still used by their former foes to this day.
When talking about the IFSDF Navy, it is unavoidable to not talk about the most curious product of its own ship building effort, the BC-313 New Dawn. Although the exact circumstances of its construction and the technology involved in producing its main-gun and armor plating, both having yet to be recreated by either the HSA or the Council, were not recovered following the, it is known that the New Dawn and the proposed sister ships of its, which never entered construction due to the end of the war, were the product of something recovered IFS documents called 'Project Primogeniture'.
It should be noted that critical voices amongst the political opposition of the HSA's government have time and again voiced concerns regarding how sincere the official claims that all details of Project Primogeniture actually are.
Besides the New Dawn, the IFSDF Navy is noteworthy for another unsolved mystery that has since led to several works of fiction and conspiracy theories claiming that the entire separatist civil war served the sole purpose of strengthening the HSA's rule and giving Arcturus more power.
The identity of its commander.
While most elements of the IFSDF leaderships either died or entered captivity at the end of the Fringe Wars, the identity of the individual in charge of their naval operations officially remains unknown, leading to this person being one of the few separatist leaders still being considered at large and dangerous, despite it being unknown whether or not he or she is actually still alive.
Combined with the adaption of their tactics and the apparent lack of any information regarding who had been responsible for dealing the most crushing naval defeats in the HSA's history, small but vocal minorities, including members of the already mentioned political opposition, raised the possibility that the commander alongside the staff of Project Primogeniture were recruited into the ranks of the HSA Navy at the end of the war, avoiding prosecution in return for their services.
These theories have been largely dismissed by the public due to a number of reasons.
A/N:
So. I'm shit at keeping my own deadlines.
We know that by now.
Well, at least it hasn't been entirely one month (beat that by two days) since I last updated.
Can't really say anything I haven't been saying tbh. Just been busy with police academy and all.
So let's not go there again. You heard it all before.
let's talk chapter.
Yeah.
This is one of those "people talk about what will happen next" chapters.
You know the type.
We get a bit of Shepard, a bit of Liara, a bit of Desolas and a bit of explanation as to why a character did what he did before we head of to Therum.
Also, we get a hint at another side-plot that I plan to be resolved before we head of to Virmire, namely that Garrus might be doing more here than he was doing in canon.
Now I don't think it has to be said that he's not actually working for Saren.
I will take the liberty to confirm that because in my mind that goes without saying.
BUT!
There is more to his plot line than apparent right now.
I'll leave you with that to think about.
... besides this I don't really have a lot else to say.
Huh.
That's a new one.
I guess there's one thing.
We did crack 800 followers.
That's nice.
Sooooooooooooooooooooooo...
For the record, we're at 453 reviews, 713 favorites and 803 follows.
As always, review and let me know what you think and all. You know how it works.
See you around next time.
