Chapter 57. Hic Sunt Dracones


14. January 2415 AD, Feros

"We're coming in on our drop site, Commander," the pilot informed them as Shepard switched between looking at the turian shuttle flying to their side and being inexplicably drawn to the impossibly high black towers stretching far into the clouds around them and continuing far higher than anything short of the old space elevators the batarians had managed to construct before their first contact with the rest of the galaxy and the following access to huge masses of cheap Eezo had made them obsolete. "Looks like the signal's still broadcasting. I think I can get us-" in her experience it was never a good thing when the pilot cut off his sentence in its middle. It usually meant that a shuttle was about to be in for a world of trouble.

"What's the matter, Lieutenant?" she asked quickly, ready to brace herself for a sudden stop to their flight.

"Nothing, it's just that," he began as Shepard saw the copilot shrug after tapping on a screen to his right several times, relieved that neither of them seemed to be all to worried. "Whatever is sending the signal is broadcasting on an old frequency. A really old frequency. I don't know how Joker overlooked that, really."

"It might've had something to do with the fact that I'm busy flying something a bit more sophisticated than a Kodiak, Kowalski, " the voice of the Normandy's helmsman quipped in.

Blending out the banter between the two lieutenants, she watched as the large stretches of open terrain, aqueducts Doctor T'Soni had called them, began to become visible below them, forming a net of 'roads' between the individual towers and making the commander hope that their assessment of the situation was correct. Because if it wasn't, and what they were looking for on Feros wasn't somewhere close to the signal, they'd have to either wait for their Mako to be dropped in and risk the Normandy being attacked or cover the open space on foot, exposing themselves to the deadly eye of any geth snipers that may be waiting for them to leave the relative safety of the towers.

Neither option sounded preferable right now.

"Commander?"

"Yes, Williams?"

"I think I know why its a really old frequency," the other marine spoke while the shuttle began to slow down, the weathered hull of a distinctively human ship coming into view on the dusty, grey surface of an enormous landing pad attached to one of the prothean towers. Its size appeared almost tiny compared to the even larger, partially overgrown structure it was attached to and its dirty but still metallic surface clashed with the layers of brownish vines that seemed to grow all over the outside of this particular tower, stretching downwards and upwards for as long as she could see yet avoiding the platform altogether in the process.

"I take it you're seeing what I'm seeing, Commander?" the voice of General Arterius came through her radio.

"Yes, General, I am. And before you asked," she added, thinking back to her previous statement of there being no human presence on Feros that she knew of," I've got no clue how it got here."

"All the more reason to scout it out then," the Blackwatch soldier replied. "Maybe it'll lead us to my brother or help us figure out what he was doing here. It's no coincidence that it started broadcasting right as we entered the system."

If he was even doing something in the first place.

Considering the reason they had come here wasn't exactly what she'd call solid intel, Shepard remained skeptical despite knowing that this was their only option right now. Other than Feros the trail of the rogue Spectre had gone cold for the time being. Given what was at stake, which was just about everything, that was a very, very bad thing.

She sighed, choosing to focus on the mission instead of her own doubts. She was here now either way. What she made of it was up to her.

"Making our final approach, Commander," Lieutenant Kowalski, the Kodiak's pilot, informed her as a green light marked the unlocking of the magnets keeping the door shut and allowed Feros cold and dusty but otherwise breathable air to slowly flood into the crew compartment. Observing as the turian shuttle did the same thing, Shepard was about to undo her harness when a loud bang caused the Kodiak to shake and swirl uncontrollably, a painful blaring echoing through the crew compartment and closing the doors again, drowning out the thought that she had been one button press away from certain death.

"Goddess!" the asari strapped in opposite to her exclaimed as her hands tightened around the handles of her harness. "What was that?" she asked, recovering surprisingly quickly.

"We just got buzzed by a geth gunship, Ma'am" the pilot replied from his own seat, flicking switches left and right and stabilizing the craft again. "But it doesn't look like it's here for us," he added as the screen of the crew compartment switched to showing live footage of one of the Kodiak's outside cameras. Instead of the turian shuttle, it now depicted a silent, blue plasma explosion hitting a level of the prothean skyscraper above them and melting off pieces of the vines before engulfing the sky in a cloud of ash a second later. "Looks like they're trying to bring down the tower," he added just before the gunship was hit by something from inside the tower that Shepard couldn't place. Its effect however was quite easy to recognize, the hit staggering the hornet-like gunship before triggering an equally violent plasma explosion that consumed the purple craft in an instant.

"Also looks like the tower doesn't particularly like them trying that," the turian in her own shuttle observed dryly before turning his head towards T'Soni. "Doctor, is this be some kind of automated defense system?"

"I'm not sure," she replied somewhat uncertainly. "If it is, something has to have changed here on Feros. Pirates have been tearing apart the planet for centuries and it never fought back before. Why start now? Maybe the-"

"No point in speculating about the why of it," the detective shut her down. "Is it a prothean defensive system or not?"

"It's unlikely to be one."

"Thanks. That's all I wanted to hear."

"Can you still bring us down?" Shepard asked the pilot a moment later.

"Already on it," the man replied, again opening the shuttle doors from the cockpit and allowing the Spectre to see that the turian squad had already deployed from their own orange and grey craft, forming up in a square formation and heading towards the presumed safety of what upon closer inspection looked exactly like an old Condor-Class, a type of heavy corvette that hadn't seen service since the beginning of the Fringe Wars and had long since been replaced by a smaller, more nimble variant.

In a less stressful setting she might've mused about the fact that the interest in model ships her father had passed onto her had actually found a tactical application but right now she had to focus on other things, her first priority being to get her team to the ground and the Kodiak out of the air.

"Good," she nodded as the ground closed in on them. "Listen up people. As soon as we touch down we follow Blackwatch into the ship. With the geth strafing the tower, we can't stay out in the open right now," turning to the pilot after undoing her harness, Shepard said one more thing before leaving the shuttle. "The same goes for you, Kowalski. Head back to the Normandy right away. No holding pattern this time. Can't risk losing you or the Kodiak to one of those gunships."

"Understood, Ma'am."

As her feet touched the dark-greyish surface of the landing pad and she waited for the rest of her team to disembark, Emily took a second to adjust to the fact that she was still several thousands meters above ground. The sheer scale of this skyscraper and the dozens of similar ones piercing the clouds below her, some reaching up higher, others having barely been built to this point or ending somewhere below them, was simply something else entirely.

Then again, these were the same people that had built the Citadel so she really shouldn't have been all that surprised at this feat of engineering either.

"Last man," Alenko informed her as the Kodiak flew up behind them, its engines kicking up the thick layer of grey dust that covered up the actual black metal of the tower in the process.

"Move out," she ordered in response, her onyx black N7 armor now spotted with the same kind of dust, giving her a strange, temporary camouflage pattern. "General Arterius, I suggest we enter the ship first. The best point of entrance should be its cargo ramp."

"We're already waiting for you, Commander," the turian responded as Shepard and her squad made their way to the back of the Condor-Class, the scratched serial number and unreadable mess of letters that had made up its name standing out to the commander mostly because it looked like they hadn't been removed by the same kind of dust that had battered the rest of the hull but rather by a 'cleaner', more intentional method.

A pirated vessel maybe?

"So, Shepard, I don't want to be the guy who points out the obvious," the krogan bounty hunter began as they hugged the wall of the corvette and pressed forward along its side."But how exactly do we get this thing to open? I mean it's not a krogan ship," he went on, removing one hand from his shotgun and dragging his armored gauntlet along the hull as if to test its strength, "but it sure looks sturdy. And I don't think whoever left it here, left it open."

"Wrex's got a point, Commander," Williams added. "We didn't exactly bring the gear necessary to break through naval armor and I don't see us overriding its locks anytime soon either."

"If someone used the ship to broadcast a signal, they had to have gotten inside," Shepard countered as they neared the end of the corvette's side, already spotting one of the black and gold armored turians, the Phaeston in his hand being lowered as soon as he saw them as well. "I'm counting on that," she added before subsequently finding her solution to the problem and as a matter of fact the problem itself to be non-existent.

"Or we just use the ramp since they actually did leave it open," Vakarian offered over the squad intercom before folding up the sniper rifle he had brought with him and switching it for a Phaeston of his own, a smart choice considering they'd be entering close quarters now.

"You wouldn't happen to have an idea how the ship looks on the inside, would you, Commander?" the turian general asked from the top of the ramp, looking into the dimly lit cargo bay.

The model ships hadn't exactly been that detailed, at least not on the inside.

"No, but I know who might," she said before trying to reach out to Joker. "Normandy, do you read me?" she asked cautiously while biting her lip below her helmet, knowing that the geth were notorious for setting up jammers and that HSA communications, despite the best efforts of the R and D department and the military-industrial complex, were prone to being jammed quickly simply because besides of a few exceptions used by a very limited number of people they were far less sophisticated than the galactic standard. There was only so much catching up on one could do in thirty something years if they wanted to do it in a way that didn't make them dependent on foreign suppliers, something the HSA's defense ministry had been trying to avoid as much as possible with the exception of a number of joint research projects such as the cross between kinetic barriers and human shields or the Normandy-Class.

"I do, Commander," Joker replied, confirming what she had hoped for, namely that it only made sense that the Normandy would be one such an exception.

"Can you send me the layout of a Condor-Class?"

"Can do," the voice of the pilot came back, "Just give me a moment," he dragged out the last parts of his sentence just long enough for her omni-tool to light up. "There you go."

"Much appreciated," Emily said her thanks before quickly passing the information on to the rest of her squad and the turian team, their respective omni-tools glowing for brief moments as well.

"No point in lingering around then," General Arterius offered as he lifted his rifle and planted a heavy armored boot inside the cargo bay. "My team will take the lower levels, secure the armory and the engine room. Maybe try and turn on the lights while we're at it," continuing upwards without looking at her, his attention focused in front, the turian offered a final suggestion. "I recommend that you head for the command center, Commander, you're bound to be more familiar with it than any of us."

"Understood. We'll head for the bridge," she nodded while following him into the ship, their respective teams behind them. "Let us know if you find anything," she added as the green night vision filter of her HUD began to make up for the darkness of the Condor's cargo bay, allowing her to avoid the supply crates, cables and pieces of what appeared to be scientific equipment stacked around the two trucks parked in the hall's center. When the turian squad split away from her own, heading straight ahead where her team began climbing a flight of stairs, the commander finally came to the realisation how strange it was that someone had made the entire way to the corvette's bridge, which was located on the opposite end of the cargo bay, without turning on the lights or closing the ramp again.

Weird.

Maybe there had only been enough power left to keep one system running?

"Dammit," she heard Wrex grunt as they cleared the stairs and headed for a halfway opened blast door that had certainly seen better days.

"What's the matter?" Alenko asked a moment later.

"I'm stuck on something," the krogan explained as Shepard threw a short glance backwards, seeing him struggle to remove the thin vines tangled around his large feet, a powerful ripping motion finally managing to do the job and allowing him to move on.

Was it just her still being paranoid from the jungle warfare portion of N7 training or did those vines, which seemed to closely resemble the ones on the outside of the tower, only smaller, had grown in a manner strangely similar to that of a tripwire?

Since nothing was happening or blowing up around them, it was probably the former.

Still, the resemblance was uncanny.

"Commander, we just entered the armory," General Arterius muttered through her radio. "It looks like someone wiped it clean. There's not a single gun or bullet left in here. Be careful."

"Understood, General," Emily replied while pressing herself against the wall next to the blast door, her gut telling her that this wasn't the place she wanted to be in right now. As she edged closer to the entrance, she noticed the scratches and small burn marks on the door itself, the green filter of her HUD making it hard to tell just how old they were. Of course she could've turned on her helmets flashlight to check but if she did that, she might as well scream down the corridor that they were coming in and paint a target on her head while she was at it.

After she had risked a quick peak down the corridor behind the damaged blast door, finding it just as empty as the cargobay, the N7 stepped past the door and followed the hall for a few steps before freezing, the glance of a body slumped against another doorframe that hadn't been visible from her last position causing her to stop in her tracks.

"Williams, you're with me. The rest, cover us," she spoke into the squad intercom while keeping her rifle trained on the portion of the body she could see, halfway expecting the figure to jump up and attack her. It certainly would've fit the bill of things that had happened to her since Eden Prime.

When she had reached the skeletal figure, now sure that he dead, her attention shifted from where a portion of his torso armor had been melted away to the hand visible under the unmarked, light armor the human had been wearing. It was still clutching onto an empty SR-6, a weapon even older than the Condor-Class they were standing inside, having both entered service and ceased to be produced a decade before the Fringe Wars and way before first contact above Parnack and as such way before the Condor and its crew should've ever made it to Feros.

Could it be?

No. That just didn't seem plausible.

They had to have been a bunch of pirates who happened to use very outdated equipment, right?

"Just how long has this ship been here?" Williams asked next to her, snapping her out of the suspicion forming in the back of her head.

"I've got no idea, Gunny," she replied sincerely while crouching down. "However long it's been, it looks like this thing ended rather violent," the N7 observed while picking up one of the spent shell-casings stuffed between the body and the wall he was leaning against, the uninterrupted layer of dust that had settled on it visible even through the green filter of her night vision HUD.

"Just raises the question against who," the NCO asked again before looking around and noticing another vine dangling from the ceiling, this one looking quite decayed compared to the other one, "or what," she added quietly.

"Well whatever it was, it's not gonna get-," Emily began while rising to her feet, interrupting her sentence the moment she noticed the small piece of metal dangling from a chain wrapped around the neck of the corpse. Carefully pulling on the chain in a manner that ensured she wouldn't end up with a skull in her hands as well, the commander retrieved the set of dog tags and wiped them clean.

"Alright, this is now officially weird" she muttered absentmindedly as she read the name, date and place of birth, and rank engraved into the metal chip before focusing on the heptagonal sigil making up the background of it all.

So much for her earlier suspicion not being plausible.

"Ma'am?" Williams asked before she handed the dog tags to the marine.

"He's IFSDF," Shepard explained. "Or at least he used to be at one point," despite the evidence, there was still a chance right?

Oh come on.

Who was she kidding.

"The Iffys? But that's impossible," the gunnery sergeant replied while handing back the dog tags. "We didn't even know about Feros before we made First Contact."

"The we here being the HSA," the commander sighed while waving for the rest of her squad to come over . "Guess the IFS did a bit more exploring than we gave them credit for after all," although it was well known that separatist forces had ventured into some uncharted portion of spaces and opened a number of mass relays during the Fringe Wars, the records that had managed to survive past the end of the civil war had suggested that they had only charted a few, unimportant systems in the hopes of finding new mining grounds safe from HSA raiders.

It would seem that that suggestion had been far from true.

She really didn't look forward to breaking that news to one of her HSA superiors.

Rewriting history hadn't been her intention when setting foot on the planet a few minutes ago but with something as simple as pulling on a dog tag she had done just that.

"It's an IFS ship," she said to Lieutenant Alenko as the man led the turian, the asari and the krogan to Williams and her. Throwing another glance at the skeletal remains of the separatist trooper, Emily offered a warning. "Watch your step. No telling what surprises they hid for us."

"The IFS?" the biotic replied stunned. "What were they doing here?"

"Doesn't matter right now," the N7 replied, the focus of her mission returning to her. "Remember, we're here because of Saren and the signal, not because of what killed a bunch of Iffys thirty years ago," switching the channel, she relayed her recent discovery to the turians as well. After all, a mission lived and died on up-to-date intel.

"Understood," the general replied stoically after she told him about the origin of the ship. "We're still trying to get to the engine room and restore power but we ran into a sealed blast door," as she heard what sounded like a biotic blast in the background, the turian quickly went on. "We're improvising an entrance right now."

"Copy that," she answered before stuffing the dog tags into a small pouch attached to her armor and signaling for her team to continue moving forward through the dark corridor, Valkyrie trained ahead. Just because he had been IFSDF didn't mean that whoever the man might've left behind didn't deserve to know what had happened to him. Enemy or not, they were still people.

"Watch your step, Wrex, there's more vines up ahead. Wouldn't want to lose you to hostile vegetation this early into our mission," the C-SEC detective joked as Shepard herself stepped over the mentioned overgrowth.

"Very funny," the krogan replied as his feet crushed the plants underneath them with a wet crunch. "But calling this pathetic shrub hostile vegetation is an insult to half the things growing and killing back on Tuchanka."

"Alright. Fair point," Vakarian said dryly. "Radiation one, old prothean ruin zero, then."

"Technically all prothean ruins emit a small portion of radiation," the asari of her squad chipped in a few seconds later. "However since we're in a human ship right now which probably possesses some kind of shieldi-"

"Hold up. Did you just see that?" the turian cut the archeologist off with a shush before he closed the gap between him and Emily, removing a hand from his rifle to point down the corridor towards another blast door.

"I did not," the N7 replied.

"Something just passed that gap."

"Gunny?"

"I saw nothing , Ma'am," Williams offered from her left.

"Trust me. It was there. I'm sure of it," the insistence in the turian's tone combined with her own gut feeling about this situation certainly managed to convince Shepard.

"General," she spoke into her radio a moment later. "We might not be alone."

"I'm getting that impression down here myself," Arterius replied, another biotic thumping sound suggesting that his team had yet to improvise their entrance. "Something's here, watching our progress, tracking our steps as we make them. I just don't know what," as she heard metal creak and break in the background, the general took a short pause. "We've got our way to the engine room now. Maybe that will help us cast a light into whatever shadow our company is hiding in."

"Did you see what it was?" she asked the turian next to her when the transmission had ended. "If it was armed?"

"I have good eyes but I'm not that good," Vakarian shrugged. "I barely saw it move. No way I can tell you what exactly it was."

"Say you had to roughly describe it," Alenko injected.

"Then I'd call it a human figure."

"Maybe a survivor of the crew?" the lieutenant suggested.

"Or a scavenger," Wrex countered with a grunt. "The last time I was here, the place was crawling with them." He had been here before as well? Interesting, that made two of her crew that had been on Feros already.

"And the last time I was here, we made sure that it wouldn't ever again," Vakarian offered.

"Maybe you and your friends did a poor job, then, Blue."

"There's an easy way of finding that out, isn't there, Commander?" the turian figured her intention correctly.

"Yes. Follow me. Square formation. Doctor, you're in the Center. Wrex, you watch our back."

As their steps echoed through the hallway and past several other bodies who's collected dog tags identified them as more IFS troopers, the team followed Shepard's lead who herself was following the small map on her HUD that was leading her to the corvette's bridge and into the direction of what Vakarian had see. As they moved the N7, despite her own orders, couldn't help but wonder what the IFS had done on Feros and how they had stumbled upon in the first place without making first contact with another civilization? Feros wasn't exactly Council Space but it was irregularly visited by all kinds of people, Council and Terminus alike. The odds of them running into someone weren't exactly low.

Then again maybe they had made first contact, just not with the Council or a known Terminus faction. Although well surveyed, it was basically an accepted fact that in addition to the hundreds of fragmented Terminus nations roaming this part of the galaxy there were likely several other space faring races active within the heart of the Terminus Systems and the fringes of the Attican Traverse that the greater galactic community hadn't made formal contact with. Time and again stories shared by traders and mercenaries, the few people who actually trafficked between the core of Citadel Space and the vast Terminus Systems, gave accounts of at least one race moving about the place and creeping along the fringes of the Attican Traverse, staying away just far enough so the few turian patrols that visited those systems every now and again wouldn't discover them but still approaching isolated colonies every now and again.

"When we reach that room over there, we have to head right. There should be a flight of stairs there," she informed the squad while taking care to step on the parts of the metal floor that weren't covered in vines, which worryingly enough became rarer with every meter they got closer to the bridge. "And keep your eyes open for our guest." Could a bunch of these plants really have killed the crew or was she just being paranoid? Surely the more logical answer was that the plants had simply grown into the ship after someone else, most likely pirates, had killed the IFSDF crew.

Yes, that made a lot more sense than vines winning over trained soldiers with assault rifl-

"Commander, you're gonna want to see this," she heard Alenko say from the back end of the formation, causing her to turn around to see him standing in the faint blue glow of a terminal that seemed to have been activated by the armored gauntlet now resting on its screen.

"Didn't I say to focus on the mission, Lieutenant?" Shepard replied while walking over to him, trusting Williams to take her place and hold the front of the formation. "And not to worry about what happened to these guys?"

"Yes you did," the biotic nodded in the light of the terminal, "but you're still gonna want to see this," he insisted.

"Alright. Show me."

As the officer stepped aside to let her look at the screen, the two words written over the rest of the mission report stood out to Emily almost immediately and made the already insignificant act of insubordination completely forgiven.

Project Primogeniture.

Otherwise known as the Moby Dick of the HSA Navy.

This changed a lot.

Stopping Saren might've been their priority but this right here? This had to come in second place. Project Primogeniture had created the single most dangerous warship in human history. Considering the scale of the fight they'd have on their hands soon enough according to General Arterius, even the hint of a clue as to what the IFS had done to make a battlecruiser capable of taking on a whole fleet was worth investing a few minutes into.

"You're right," she murmured while reading through the otherwise unimportant file that only seemed to describe an uneventful exploration mission of the tower the corvette had landed by. "Save it for later and radio the Normandy, tell them to try and sent in a recovery team once we cleared this place."

"Understood."

"And Alenko?"

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"This terminal is a gold mine. Good job on not listening to me."

"Thanks, Ma'am"

"Okay. Let's find that bridge."


Meanwhile, Engine Room

"Any progress?" Desolas asked while turning his back to the vines growing from the air duct above him and looking at Lieutenant Callius and Galviat who were still standing in front of the control panel of the engine and the reactor connected to it.

"No, Sir," the sole biotic and incidentally also the tech specialist of his team replied before nudging Galviat. "Now. Try it again," she said gesturing for a large switch to the left of the taller Blackwatch operative.

Wrapping his hand around the handle and pulling on the switch as instructed, the turian held it down for a second before releasing his grip and watching it slide back up before shrugging. "Still nothing."

"Spirits, I don't get it. This should've worked," Callius sighed in annoyance before bringing up her omni-tool, its activation appearing as a bright, almost white light in the night vision filter of Desolas' helmet. "It's like the entire room isn't even connected to the rest of the ship anymore," she explained while tapping on the hologram."No matter what I do, the system stays completely unresponsive."

"Well have you checked if it is?" Veltax said from his position at the door, his eyes and Phaeston set the way they had come from, covering their backs.

"No I have not," Callius answered before explaining. "Disconnecting the room from the rest of the ship would cause irreparable damage to the power circuits and make it impossible for anything to be broadcasted."

"So you haven't checked," the fourth member of his team summarized before looking backwards. "Galviat, think you can pry that wall behind the console and take a look inside? See if the thing's still connected?"

"Looks doable," the other turian replied before reaching for the curved dagger every member of his legion carried on them and placing its tip on the edge of the wall, ready to open up the panel.

"Did the two of you listen to what I just said?" the biotic lieutenant injected.

"General?" Veltax said, clearly demanding his final say in the matter.

"Would a complete disconnect explain why nothing we do seems to trigger any response from the ship?" Desolas asked.

"Obviously it would," Callius replied a moment later. "But setting that aside, there's just no logical reason to think anyone would go through the trouble of disconnecting both the reactor and the engine room from the rest of the ship and then repair the kind of damage that would do just to hide it from someone."

"Except for the exact situation we're in right now," Veltax added from the door, his sight once more set to where they had come from. "Lure us in with a message, turn off the power to make it harder for us and finally, strike with that advantage on their side."

"Come on, Ma'am, we've been in stranger ones than this," Galviat finally shrugged from the biotics left side, his blade still barely touching the wall cover. Although all of them knew that it was ultimately his decision and none would carry any hard feelings over him overruling either of them, Desolas still decided that he wanted Callius to make this call.

"Lieutenant?" he said as he looked at the leader of his honor guard.

"Do it," she answered a moment later, causing Galviat to instantly jab the knife into the frame of the wall, the much stronger material the blade was made of effortlessly penetrating the thin cover and allowing him to pry it open with little force.

"Alright you stubborn piece of metal," he said while placing the knife back in its sheath and preparing himself to pull off the cover, his hands resting the gap he had created. "Let's see what all the trouble is about." With a quick , almost effortless pull the cover started to move and flew into the back of the room not a moment later, clittering upon impact. "Well that was easier than expected," Galviat said while rubbing his hands together before both as and Callius took a look into the wall behind the console

"Oh crap," Callius cursed, their combined frames covering up their discovery.

"And? Was I right or what?" Veltax inquired at the seeming realisation.

"What is this? How did these things get in here?" the lieutenant asked the turian next to her, prompting Desolas to make a step forward to try and see what the confusion was all about.

"Beats me. But if all the other cables are overgrown like this, it's no wonder nothing around here works."

"It's not just overgrown, Sergeant. The cables," she muttered while reaching inside,"they've all been completely replaced by these vin-"

Before the turian could finish his sentence, Desolas picked up the echo of a lone shotgun shot from somewhere above them, the powerful force behind it carrying it all the way down to them. But before he could act on that, something else occupied his mind, trained reflexes kicking in as something tried pulling him from his feet mid-step. Getting in the way of its plan to sent him falling to the ground with his back exposed, the general spun around and landed on said back instead, his Phaeston at the ready and his finger pressed against the trigger, just one small squeeze away from firing. However instead of finding a target he and his honor guard, who all had reacted in a similar fashion, found nothing but empty air and a vine that had made its way from the air duct all the way to his leg while his back had been turned.

Pulling his own blade from its sheath and quickly cutting it off before giving it a chance to show what else it might be capable off, Desolas noted the short resistance it gave his knife and made his final assessment of the situation as the shots above them flared up to life again, this time not ending after one.

"Head for the bridge and watch the vines. They're what's been watching us."


Five Minutes Earlier, Bridge

"It's really a miracle anyone even managed to start this thing," Alenko wondered as he removed more of the vines covering the single running terminal in the otherwise dark bridge with his bayonet, cutting them off and tossing them to the ground where a small heap of them had already collected. "With all that overgrowth you'd think it would've stopped working decades ago."

"Never mind the overgrowth, it's an even bigger miracle the bridge isn't shot to hell and back. Those Iffys put up one hell of a fight," the gunnery sergeant of her squad observed while following Shepard's orders of collecting the dog tags of the skeletal remains of the IFS crew spread around the bridge. "Not a single bullet left in any of these guns," she added while checking the empty chamber of one of the SIS-7 pistols lying at the feet of what appeared to be the corvette's commander, the dark red color of his uniform having paled over the years but still identifying him as an officer. "They went down shooting but somehow managed not to hit any of the important parts."

"To be fair, if what they were shooting came in the same way we did, they'd have to be terrible marksman to hit the consoles behind them," Vakarian offered while walking around the bridge, likely to get his own impression of the scene. "Still doesn't explain why nothing's missing though."

"What do you mean?" Emily asked.

"While killing for the sake of killing isn't exactly rare in this part of the galaxy," his voice flanged as he marched past a row of disabled terminals only to pick up a discarded and beaten shotgun, failing to cock it due to a decade old jam blocking the mechanism and repeating the motion after smoothly fixing the problem, displaying a surprisingly high level of mastery of human weapons in the process, "you'd think the guys who went through this kind of resistance would've at least taken something with them."

"You're right," the N7 replied while looking around the overgrown but otherwise untouched bridge. "You don't fight like this just to leave everything behind."

"Didn't the general say that the armory was completely empty?" Doctor T'Soni threw in.

"Human weapons aren't exactly worth stealing, especially not this kind," the turian countered as Shepard watched him move through the room, gently placing the weapon on what used to be the corvette's holotable, the cracked glass of its projection surface indicating a lack of function. "No offense."

"None taken," she frowned behind her helmet. She got it. Compared to the galactic standard all but the latest generation of human weapons were sub-par. Luckily the times of an entire squad emptying their SR-7s into a krogan mercenary only for the krogan to shrug all of the bullets off and take down half of them down before being killed by an anti-material rifle were over. "Any progress on that signal, Lieutenant?" the N7 finally asked, turning back to the biotic human just as he pulled another vine off the console.

"Almost cleared the console, I just need to," he groaned while pulling on the single largest vine resting on top of the console and obstructing a good portion of it, "get rid of this one," finally managing to remove the large plant with a surge of purple energy, Alenko tossed the roughly arm-sized plant to the ground. "There, all done," he finished not a second before the console shut off, once more returning the bridge to complete darkness and causing him to look at it in disbelieve. "What the-" Alenko muttered in confusion as he leaned over the disabled terminal, "Commander, I realise this is going to sound strange but I think the vine was what kept broadcasting the signal."

"Come again?" she asked as she headed towards Alenko.

"You saw it shut off as soon as I separated it, no? That can't be a coincidence."

"It's just a plant, Lieutenant," Williams injected. "Plants don't trigger broadcasting signals."

"If they don't, how come removing the vine ended the signal?"

"Damned if I kno-"

As a shotgun blast drowned out the rest of the gunnery sergeant's sentence, Shepard spun on her heel to find Wrex facing the door, a humanoid shape lying at his feet. Lowering her rifle only when she realised that there were no further enemies in sight.

"Thing tried sneaking up on me," the bounty hunter explained as he brought his heavy foot on the figures head, the ease with which he crushed its skull and the lack of blood or gore produced by the gesture instantly putting the N7 off. "Didn't work," he added with a chuckle before crouching down to inspect his kill and mumbling in confusion. "Now what in the void are you?"

"Is it just me or do its intestines look just like the vines?" the asari of her group observed as she stepped up next to the krogan, surprisingly unbothered by the display of violence.

"Come on. Humanoid, walking plants? Now that's just ridiculous," the turian detective replied as he too joined the three off them. "What's next, a flying hanar-" whatever witty comment it was that Vakarian had held on his tongue ended when another figure jumped from the shadow of the blast door. Quite literally vomiting what her night vision portrayed as a green slime from its mouth, it instantly began melting through the turian's assault rifle, which he had used to block its jaw from tearing into him, for as long as Wrex allowed it to stay on top of the detective. As the krogan pulled the creature off the turian and fired off another shotgun blast that sent it flying back at least two meters, the commander was really glad to have brought Wrex along.

"Spirits," Vakarian cursed as he suddenly tossed the destroyed rifle away, watching the evidently acid-like substance melt all the way towards the tungsten block responsible for producing the weapon's ammunition and reaching for his sniper rifle as a back-up right as choir of deep, guttural growls encroached from the corridor Emily and her team had come from, quick footsteps accompanying them.

"Heh. Here they come," Wrex said after pulling the C-SEC officer on his feet and leveling his shotgun at the door right as Shepard and her marines did the same.


Present Time

"Commander, do you read me?" the general finally spoke into his radio after kicking the body of the last of the eyeless, plant-creatures that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere to attack the Blackwatch team on their way to the bridge, the damaged air ducts, previously closed but now opened doors and holes in the floor covers offering an explanation as to where they had been hiding all this time.

"Yes, I do," the somewhat breathless voice of the human soldier came back to him, a last Carnifex shot echoing in the background of her transmission. "Can I assume that's you walking down the corridor?" she added as Desolas saw the figure flashing a light at them through a half-way opened blast door up ahead.

"Yes," he replied before triggering the lights installed into his helmet to confirm his identity. "I take it you've got no idea what these things are either?"

Taking in their appearance in the new light, their uncanny resemblance to the indoctrinated monsters the Harbinger and as of lately the geth as well seemed to create sent a sickening feeling down his stomach. If it wasn't for the lack of the cybernetic implants all of the husks had displayed, Desolas wouldn't have blamed anyone for drawing a comparison. Between their twisted faces, their claw-like hands, the quick and forceful nature of their attacks and their complete lack of a self-preservation instinct, there wasn't really that much difference between the two of them.

Except of course the acidic vomit that had managed to peel off the traditional golden highlights of his reinforced armor's torso and would've likely caused far more damage to the standard-issue hardsuit worn by the rank-and-file of the Hierarchy's army.

"No," the commander replied through the radio. "But we know that the vines were what was causing the signal."

"That would also explain what we found in the engine room," he remembered their earlier discovery

"How so?"

"The internal wiring was running on those plants, not the actual cables of the ship," Desolas explained quickly. "This vessel was meant to be both bait and trap at the same time," he summarized, trying to decide how likely it was that this plant and the Harbinger were connected to each other and whether or not the message that had lured them here was related to the ship and the trap was well.

"So where do we go from here?" the commander replied while the lights on her helmet turned off again and the heavy footsteps of the krogan bounty hunter accompanying her team began heading towards the honor guard. "The signal was our only clue, without it we'll have to start searching all over Feros and still have no guarantee of actually finding out what Saren was doing here."

"I suggest we move on to the next best thing," the general argued as the mixed team of humans, a turian, an asari and a krogan reached them. "If we find out why the geth are here, we might also find out what my brother was doing here and why he sent us that message."

"Understood," the commander nodded.

"Good. Get ready to move. We shouldn't linger around here much longer, every minute we stay here is a minute whatever spawned these monsters has to sent more of them our way," Desolas reasoned while throwing a final look at the husk-like creature at his feet, holding back the uneasiness it made him feel.

"Back to the landing platform then?" Lieutenant Callius threw in.

"Yes, back to the landing platform," he confirmed.


Five Minutes Later, Outside of the Corvette

As her eyes adjusted to the daylight of Feros, Shepard looked at her team.

Considering with what little intelligence they had embarked on, they were doing an admirable job of not questioning the point of what they were still doing here. Then again, all of them knew the stakes.

Not that that diminished the respect she was starting to have for all of them.

"Wait. That wasn't here before, was it?" she heard the asari wonder, turning her head to where she was standing in her costum set of armor which Shepard assumed had been bought for her by her mother who probably knew the kind of places her daughter would go to in order to follow her passion and wanted to get ahead of the dangers they brought with them.

"What? The overgrowth?" Wrex replied with a grunt. "Of course that was here before. Did you sleep on our approach or something like that? It's was covering the whole tower. Probably has been for millennia."

"No, not the overgrowth," the archeologist insisted before rushing off the loading ramp of the Condor and pointing at a small hole in the layers of vines that almost perfectly aligned with the door behind it. "This!" she exclaimed before turning back to Shepard. "Commander, I'm sure it wasn't here. This can't be a coincidence."

"I think she's right, Ma'am. It kept the broadcast online. So what's to say it can't show us doors?" Alenko muttered behind her.

"Get back here, Doctor T'Soni!" Shepard called." It tried to kill us, Alenko. I don't think following its doors is such a good idea."

As the asari archeologist came back their way, Shepard and everyone else present on the loading ramp suddenly brought up their guns, the figure emerging from the dark behind T'Soni startling all of them. After she got over the initial shock of thinking they were going to shoot her, the doctor too turned around to see the other, green asari that had emerged from the door, slowly walking backwards, focused entirely on the other member of her species.

"Stop! Who are you?" General Arterius called through the speakers of his helmet, his voice amplified strong enough to be audible even over the loud wind rushing past them, a fact that didn't seem to bother the green asari in the slightest despite not wearing a hardsuit herself.

"One who serves," the asari shouted as she froze in place,"I came to explain, to make you understand the message of the Old Growth!"

"The what?" Williams wondered next to Shepard right as Doctor T'Soni walked up the ramp again, her blue face a shade paler than before.

"It did not mean for its thralls to attack. Their instincts led them to lash out while it was distracted with fighting the cold ones. Their attack was not meant as a hostile gesture of our master."

What the hell was that asari talking about?

"Everything alright, Doctor?" Vakarian asked while pulling the asari out of their line of fire.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine," she mumbled. "It's just-"

"Just what?"

"Asari aren't supposed to be green," she replied perplexed and visibly shaken before Shepard made the connection. It would've been like looking at a red human. That would set off every alarm bell, telling her that the thing standing in front of her might look human but sure as hell wasn't.

"General, what do we do?" the taller of the two other male Blackwatch operatives asked calmly after overhearing what the doctor had said.

"What's the Old Growth?" Arterius called, his rifle still aimed squarely at the 'asari'.

"The Thorian!" she exclaimed, sounding almost excited. "All who wander the builders' towers stand within and before him. And all who do so, bask in his wisdom."

Builders? Did she mean the protheans?

"Sure sounds like a humble guy, doesn't he?"

"Not worse than some of your colleagues, Blue."

"You mentioned a message," the turian general continued. "What does the Thorian want you to tell us?"

"That Old Growth will grant you what you seek if you aid him in the battle against the cold ones your kin brought upon him."

"Our kin?" the general repeated.

"No. Your kin," the 'asari' corrected with a point of her finger. "A thousand feelers have recognized the familiarity of the air you push. You are like the one who came before. Strong, fierce, determined. Yet still free of their taint. Their shadow has not claimed you nor will it. You may right his wrong and be rewarded for it. Return that what he and his cold ones have taken from the Old Growth and name your desire. The Thorian will fulfill it."

"I don't like it, Sir," Lieutenant Callius muttered. "It tried to kill us. We'd be idiots to believe it now."

Despite her better judgment, Emily gave in to the urge to disagree.

"General, if that thing knows something about your brother, we have to take the risk," turning her head towards the turian lieutenant, the N7 began to reason with the biotic's own logic. In her experience, that went a long way in convincing people. "It's like you said, Lieutenant, Feros is the only lead we have on Saren. We have to follow it through, no matter how dangerous it gets."

"How do you know what we seek?" Arterius inquired.

"Just like you're familiar to his flesh and his spirit," the 'asari' spoke before her pointing finger shifted towards Emily herself, putting an uneasy feeling in her gut that only her training and experience as an N7 kept from getting the better of her. "This one is familiar to his mind. Like him, the builders' secrets have passed on to her. And like him, the Old Growth holds the key that will unlock them."

"Goddess, she's talking about the beacon," T'Soni observed, snapping out of her perplexity at that realisation, her focus on anything prothean seemingly overwriting whatever nerves had gotten the best of her. "We have to follow her, General Arterius. Even fifty thousand years after their death the protheans wanted someone to know what they tried to pass on to the commander on Eden Prime," she explained, only barely stopping herself from shaking Emily, pulling back once she realised that there was still a gun in her hands. "If there is a way to decipher that message, she might prove crucial to keeping history from repeating itself and to stopping Saren and the Harbinger."

She didn't particular like how that made her sound more like a strategic asset than a person. But what she wanted had to take a step back now that the whole galaxy was at risk. Besides, in a way she had become a strategic asset when she had decided to enlist.

"How do we know the Thorian will uphold its end of the deal when we're done with helping it?" General Arterius finally asked, lowering his weapon just in the slightest.

"The Old Growth is above such petty things as betrayal. If you redeem that what your kin has wronged, the Thorian will give you your Cipher."

"Doctor, what are the chances that this thing really has a way to unlock the message of the beacon?" the turian general muttered into the squad intercom.

"Feros is the biggest known prothean ruin in the entire galaxy and this Thorian seems to be an integral part of a good part of it. If there is a way to decipher the beacon's message, it's possible that it managed to find it."

"I see," he replied "Commander?"

"What is it?"

"It's you who'll have to take the biggest risk. What do you think?"

"It's like Lieutenant Callius said, Feros is our only shot," she repeated, staying true to the turian's and by extension her own words. "I'll do whatever it takes."

"Understood," he nodded a single time, not feeling that it was necessary to get further confirmation of her commitment. "Lead us to your master!" he called, the last part of his order carrying a strong hint of distaste.

As if hit by lighting, the asari sprung into action. She turned on her heel and headed back into the door, only calling out for them to follow her as she went through the opening.

"Move out," the Blackwatch general instructed after that.

"Heh. And here I was thinking we were idiots for walking into a geth ambush," Wrex grunted before she gestured for them to follow the Blackwatch operatives as well, heading into the unknown that would await them inside of the prothean tower that seemed to sent a tingle down her spine the closer she got to it. "Not that I am one to mind a good fight," the krogan added a moment later before stomping down the ramp alongside the rest of them.


Codex: Terminus Systems

The Terminus Systems are a region of space located on the far side of the Attican Traverse, bordering on a large chunk of the unclaimed portions of the Attican Traverse and a small number of human colonies and independent worlds under HSA protection. Populated by hundreds of independent nations formed by people unwilling to acknowledge the political authority of the Citadel Council or adhere to Council law, the Terminus Systems are at times described as both the most free and most dangerous place in the galaxy. Ravaged by the wars of rogue governments, plagued by pirates, criminals, mercenaries and slaver rings and influenced by the Batarian Hegemony, the Terminus Systems have been locked in a state of constant instability ever since the Rachni Wars ended the Council's ambition to expand into the vast region.

Although lacking a formal capital, the Omega station (see Entry 'Omega') acts as a trade capital and at times diplomatic meeting ground for the warring nations of the Terminus and has in the past been used as a de facto capital by the number of warlords or powerful governments that have managed to unite a large chunk of the region under their authority before inevitably being toppled by a coalition of rag-tag groups fighting against any sort of central Terminus administration, a hypothetical governmental body that could very well rival or surpass the power of the Citadel Council.

Even though the chaos of the Terminus and the spontaneous raids from groups within its borders have long since become an accepted part of everyday life for the denizens of the galaxy, it should be noted that there have been three proposed and two actual military interventions with the aim of bringing order into the region and finally ending the threat it posed, the first one having occured shortly before the Krogan Rebellions, three consecutive ones having been planned by the Turian Hierarchy and one having resulted in the Human-Mercenary Intervention of 2387 (see Entry Human-Mercenary Intervention) the effects of the latter still being felt to this day. Having upset the semblance of balance that had existed in the Terminus up to that point, the HSA's short but impactful war with the region has led to a series of events that, according to a number of Council experts, are pointing towards an unprecedented and incredibly worrying development in the history of the region that had discouraged the Council from approving the proposed turian intervention in the past.

A foe against which the warring nations of the Terminus may unite against.

Seen as a volatile mixture only waiting to explode, it is likely only the might of the Council that stands behind the HSA, the surprisingly one-sided victory of the humans in their first conflict with the region and their Council-assisted victory in the Skyllian Blitz (see Entry 'Skyllian Blitz') that prevents dozens of angered Terminus nations from invading human territories again.

It should be mentioned that due to its vast size and potentially hundreds of opened but unexplored relay systems, it is generally assumed that a number of minor space faring races are active within the Terminus Systems, the most recent discovery of the Raloi and their homeworld only reinforcing this notion.


A/N:

Well, hello there.

Been a while.

At this point I think you know the reasons why.

Well most of them.

A bit of my time wasn't just spent working, it was also spent writing and developing on that spin-off series I mentioned working on.. which now holds the creative title of "Semper Vigilo: Anothlogies" (i know, super creative) !

The release of that is still a long way down the road though since its obviously going to take place all over the course of this story and hence contain a shitton of spoilers... so yeah. Be patient (At this point I'm PLANNING (so nothing set in stone) for one story that is mostly spoiler free to be released somewhere around christmas.)

Alright. chapter.

So. Feros and the promised original plot begins. As you can tell, it's already way different.

What else is going to change?

Well stick around and find out whenever I find the bloody time to write 58. (It's crazy that it's already been FORTY days since I last updated but well, that's my life right now. Can't help it. Might get better later this year/at the end of january.

In all seriousness though, I do hope I can make Feros return to the real originality the earlier plots had because frankly, sticking to the general parts of Mass Effect's (awesome) story has been kind of restrictive. (before you say it, Mass Effect Two (season four) and Three (season five), with the exception of a few key points, are going to diverge a lot more than Season 3 is already doing because that's more fun for me and probably also for you.)

Additionaly, I wonder how many of you could guess what would be up with the corvette based only on the title.

Additionaly... yes... I went there, I, the absolute madlad, YET AGAIN connected another storyline to the main story! As I think I've said before, in the end (as in Mass Effect 3), everything's going to lead to one unified plot with the pieces slowly connecting to each other as we go on. So now the IFS plot (and something else not yet revealed) have touched with Shepards!

REJOICE! (do it.)

As for the new folks who bothered reading this.

Hi.

This is how these A/N usually go.

I am weird like that.

For the record, we're at 502 reviews (another landmark cracked) 775 favorites and 864 follows and as of right now have made it onto Page 2 of all-time most followed mass effect story, a point I didn't think we'd ever hit when I started writing Semper Vigilo... nearly two years (22 months and 1 day) ago. Yes. It's been that long. Time really does fly, doesn't it?

Here's to another 22 months and 1 day.

See you around next time.