Chapter 77. Darker Sides
Three Hours Later, 21. March 2417 AD, Normandy
After they had brought the injured Garrus back to the Normandy, a process that had included Kai 'borrowing' a skycar to help them escape from what remained of Zara District's pissed-off gang members and make it to the docks before half of Omega knew that they had Archangel with them, Doctor Chakwas had told Shepard that she'd immediately have to perform surgery on the turian. While he hadn't been on the brink of death, how that was possible was beyond Emily considering he had taken a gunship round to the head, the Normandy's medical officer had also stressed that he was still in very bad shape. His barriers and armor had taken the brunt of the hit. But the right half of Garrus' head had still suffered severe damage. It was fixable on the Normandy, yet it would take far more time than most medical procedures did these days.
Hence she had told the N7 to wait.
Since she was powerless to do anything else, Emily had complied, set on patiently waiting things out and distracting herself from the issue. First she had killed time by storing away her gear and weapons, then she had debriefed Leng and Callius. Next she had had a chat with General Arterius, who had told her that missions turning out this way was a rather common experience on Omega. Afterwards she had sat around some more in the conference room, content on simply waiting.
Surprisingly enough, it had been rather easy to do so this time around. Knowing that Garrus wasn't going to die made it comparatively easy for her to wait out the result of the surgery. It was also a pleasant surprise given how much blood he had left on the floor of the now destroyed storage room. Even though she hated seeing one of her team get hurt, right now was nowhere near as bad as the feeling she had had when Alenko and Wrex had been injured on Virmire and she had been trapped in a collapsed part of Saren's base alongside an ASOC officer without knowing what had happened to the two of them. Still she was anxious for Chakwas to finally be done. She had been in there for nearly two and a half hours and by now Emily had started to wonder if there had been a complication of some kind and her 'relaxed' attitude on all of this would come crashing down on her.
Since those were hardly healthy thoughts to have, the N7 had left the conference room and gone to the adjacent lab, where Mordin Solus had taken refuge. Originally she just wanted to ask him if it was possible for the Collectors to have used the vorcha to spread their virus, the answer had been a clear yes on the salarians part. But somehow Mordin had managed to steer away from the topic and lock her in a web of increasingly more complicated theories regarding the Collectors' modus operandi. From what she understood he had come up with these in between the time of meeting her and her returning to the Normandy. After going through his first three theories, which consisted of the bugs being bio-engineered creatures capable of employing biotic stasis field, them just being organic reconnaissance probes unrelated to the abductions and, her personal favorite because of how ludicrous it was, the bugs all coming together in small swarms and carrying away the colonists in what Mordin called a 'swarm cloud'. After the conclusion and strange excitement the salarian had shown in regards to people being abducted by flying bugs, Mordin was now exploring his fourth theory.
Out of thirteen in total.
"Could also be used as method of deploying neuro-toxin meant to render colonists incapable of fighting back," the salarian scientist reasoned before once more turning his attention to the bug-like creature sitting in a sealed-off box on the central desk of the lab.
"If they're poisoning them, wouldn't it be more effective to just use gas? Why the bug? Seems like an extra step they wouldn't need to take," Shepard pointed out.
"Technically correct. But gas or airborne toxin vulnerable to natural phenomena. Turning wind could render attack partially ineffective or worse, ruin moment of surprise, warn colonists and jeopardize entire operation," in a way, Emily found it kind of scary how easy it was for Solus to get into this 'how-to-effectively-abduct-a-human-colony' mindset, but on the other hand, this was probably the exact reason why he was rated as a mission-critical team member. They needed someone who could think like their enemies. "Bugs more reliable. Smarter than gas to. Especially if predatory in nature. Natural hunting instincts would make for ideal delivery system and training would make them even more effective. Collectors may have even used human test subjects prior to attack on colony to perfect creatures and tactics outside of abduction scenario. Would explain sudden exponential increase in target population. Tests completed, Collectors confident in functionality of weapon. Only natural for them to seek bigger targets now," he explained quickly and under full use of his chopping hand-gesture habit. Then he looked at her. "Consider this theory lacking though. If creature is related to abductions, most likely not through means of toxin."
"How so?"
"Haven't dissected creature yet. But scans and surface observation show no method of injecting neuro-toxin or residue. Only found Eezo residue. Furthermore, no visible stinger. Just claws and pincers. If anything, appendages give more support swarm cloud theory," then he suddenly placed his hand in front of his mouth and looked at the alien creature in question. "Will have to make calculations on number of Seekers required to lift fully grown human and calculate strength of individual specimen," he said before pointing his index finger into the sky and walking over to the five terminals he had set up on a single desk. She got a feeling that he really liked that theory. "Will begin right away. Welcome to join me. Biomechanics and mathematics incredibly fascinating fields of study. Especially when combined on highly theoretical level. Good distraction too while turian comrade recovers," he offered, already typing away on his screens.
"I appreciate the offer, but I think I'll pass on the math part," Shepard said while raising her hands. "I do have one more question though. Why call them Seekers?"
Mordin looked up from the tablet for a second.
"Never saw Swarm Cloud?"
She shook her head.
Did a movie give him that idea?
It certainly sounded like it.
"Can't say I've heard of it."
"Quarian horror holo. Newly founded colony discovered to be plagued by swarms of insectoid creatures. Silently arrive at night. Carry away people to feed growing population. Named seekers by protagonist for ability to locate colonists in all possible hiding places," as he talked, she realized that Solus had definitely modeled his theory after a movie and immediately had to think back to what Joker had said when she had visited him on the bridge after dropping Garrus off on the med-bay. They had brought a mad scientist onboard. There was just no denyingthat. But, in accordance to the pilot's claim that bad guys should be the only ones with mad scientists, she was entirely okay with that if Mordin remained on the good side and didn't suddenly start to laugh maniacally in random intervals and outlined his personal plans for galactic conquest over dinner. "Exceptional work of entertainment. Recommend immediate viewing. Would lend you copy of mine. Directors cut. Signed by entire cast. But last colleague I gave it to never returned it before retirement to Omega. Will have to make inquiry now that you made acquaintance with him."
Mid-sentence, Shepard's omni-tool buzzed. Immediately she went to open the message. It was from Chakwas. The surgery was finished.
"Vakarian recovered?" Mordin figured.
"Yes," she nodded. "Sorry, Mordin. I hate to run off mid-conversation like this but," the N7 began.
"No apologies needed. Understand eagerness. Fought Saren and Sovereign together. Didn't see each other since near-death experience. Natural to want to see Vakarian immediately upon recovery," Mordin replied. "Was running out of conversation topics to occupy you with anyways. Tell Vakarian I wish him swift recovery. Approved of his work as Archangel."
With a nod, Emily left the lab behind and made her way to the med-bay. But before she even reached the elevator, she ran into Garrus in the CIC. Despite having taken a gunship shot to the face, the former detective was already on his feet again. And also wearing his armor. She scanned him and noticed the bandage covering almost the entire right side of his face. At the edges, she could still see freshly-scarred red skin tissue where some of his facial plates had been before.
"Shepard," he said. His speech still slightly slurred. It was probably a mixture of anesthetics, medigel and stim packs that was causing this effect.
"Garrus."
"Chakwas told me that you'd want to see me and tell me why you dragged my ass out of the fire on Omega."
"Which is why I was on the way to the med-bay."
"I figured I'd save you a bit of the way."
Emily folded her arms and looked at the turian.
"Should you be up already, Garrus?"
"My face got hit. Not my legs. I'll be fine."
"Wait. You say you got hit in your face?" she said before cracking a smile. "I don't see a difference."
For a second his mandibles began to twitch and Garrus started a laughter. But then he winced.
"Funny," he said before instinctively rubbing the bandage, which was something he probably shouldn't be doing. "But don't make me laugh. My face is barely holding together as it is right now and I don't think Doctor Chakwas is me it twice in one day."
"No, probably not," Shepard replied before looking at the conference room. They had a lot to talk about, and not just regarding their mission. From his reaction on Omega alone, it was clear to Emily that Garrus, like a lot of other people, had considered her dead for the last two years. "You got a minute to talk? Or maybe two? This might take a bit longer."
"Considering my op on Omega literally ended in an explosion killing my entire team," she had heard about that and she was still unsure of whether or not to talk to Garrus about it, "I don't really have any other place to be right now. So sure. Lead the way, Shepard. I'd love to catch up."
They moved to the conference room and to start things off, they had just chatted a few minutes. Garrus had told her about how he had left C-SEC after his mandatory term of service had ended by dramatically slamming his service gun and badge on the table and how he had ended up with the Blue Suns a few weeks later. Meanwhile she had told Garrus how it came to be that she was even sitting here to begin with. Then she had briefed him on their mission, what they had done up to now and told the story behind the abductions that were happening. Then she said that she wanted him on his team, if he was willing to take the risk. To that the turian had only one reply.
"Damn the risks. The whole reason I ended up with the Suns to begin with was because I thought you were dead. If I knew that you weren't, I never would've left C-SEC to begin with," he said before making a move to scratch the injured part of his face but stopping himself half-way through the move. "I would've followed you through hell back then, Shepard. Of course I'll do it now."
"Thank you," she smiled a genuine smile at that. "It's good to have you back, Garrus."
"It's good to be back too."
That kind of loyalty from a person with Garrus' skills was exactly what would help them make it through this mission. She would've liked to end it on this high note but then she remembered a little complication they might run into later down the line.
"What about the Blue Suns?" she asked. "Don't you think they'll want you to come back? I mean you did join them, right?"
"Yes and no. I was never really a full member. It was more of a partnership really. You see, they gave me a place to put my anger and for that, I did missions for them and didn't ask too many questions," Garrus explained. "The only thing that really connected me to the Suns was my team and well. They're dead," she saw the way he looked at the floor and placed a hand on his shoulder. She had seen this kind of survivor's guilt before. And while the last, most memorable occasion had been with a certain specialist she liked a whole lot less than Garrus and wouldn't mind not seeing again, it had taught her a hauntingly valuable lesson on the kind of damage this could cause.
"Don't blame yourself. You couldn't have known."
"I'm not blaming myself. I'm blaming the scum of Zara," Garrus replied. He got and after five seconds or so of staring into he wall, he looked her in the eye and pressed his mandibles against his jaw. "Losing people is nothing new to me. Neither is losing them because of mistakes I made. I learned to live with that a long time ago. You don't have to worry about guilt keeping me up at night and affecting my performance during the mission," he took a few steps around the room and looked at the holo-table. Then he showed a part of himself that Shepard most definitely didn't remember being there two years ago. She didn't exactly like it either. "Still. I'll make them pay. The Talons, the Morbians, the Reavers and the Red Sand Guild. They'll all regret ever being born by the time I'm done with them," he added.
"Garrus-" she began. She got what was making Garrus say these things. But she couldn't claim to agree with them.
"They were good soldiers, Shepard," the turian protested in an icy tone. "I can't bring them back. But I can avenge them and I will, no matter how long it takes me," suddenly Garrus seemed to catch himself going down the slippery slope. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts. "Sorry, Shepard," he muttered before sitting down and rubbing his palms together. "The whole topic is still fresh. I didn't mean to snap at you like that. That was out of place of me. Especially now that you're my CO again. It won't happen again. I promise."
"I get where you're coming from, Garrus," Emily replied. While saying that he couldn't allow himself to give in to the desire to vengeance was on the tip of her tongue, she knew better than to just blow Garrus off like this. He was opening up, probably for the first time since being on Omega. "Losing comrades is hard. Especially if you're already used to it. Just take some time and talk to people whenever you feel like you need to. You can come to me whenever you feel like it. Or if it's a turian that you need to speak to, I'm sure Callius will be ready to help too," that was at least the impression she had gotten of the Blackwatch lieutenant. "Whatever you need, I'll make sure you'll get it."
He took a deep breath.
"I'll take you up on that offer, Shepard. Thank you."
"No problem," she replied. When she realized that the turian was waiting for her to say something else, she decided to dismiss him with a task she knew he was itching to get to. "I think you should get settled in Garrus. And maybe fix your Phaeston. You're probably going to need it soon enough."
"Good idea," he nodded, got up and went to the door. Then he turned around one final time. "I meant what I said, it really is good to be back on the Normandy."
"Likewise."
With that the turian left, leaving Emily alone. She looked at the conference table and the tablet sitting on it. With Omega done, she had to make a choice where to go next now. She could cross Mordin and Garrus off her list. Her personal next choice now would obviously be Wrex. There wasn't anyone who could deal with bad guys quite the way like the krogan bounty hunter could. But if they were to go from Omega to Tuchanka, they'd make quite the detour considering some of the other people on her list.
She wiped through the list of people again.
First she thought about going to Illium and picking up Krios. That was kind of in the vicinity and it was probably also a good idea to cross him off sooner than later. Assassins didn't usually stay in one place for long. But if she was entirely honest with herself, she hadn't quite warmed up on the idea of recruiting a drell hitman for her time. While she was certain that Harper had a very good reason to give her his dossier, she still had to do some serious self-convincing before bringing an assassin on board. The same and even worse could be said for the most questionable choice Harper had made; the krogan scientist and renowned war criminal 'Okeer'. Even though there was just a location and a resume for him, she skipped the page this time around. No need to read that again. After a few more skips, she landed on one of the less exotic but still obvious choices.
While Callius already kind of filled the role, her team could use another biotic. Especially one as strong as her. She skimmed the file again. Lieutenant Jennifer Nader was currently serving in an all-biotic marine shock company aboard the second generation assault carrier HSASV Thomas Edward Lawrence, which was currently patrolling along the Traverse's border with the Terminus Systems with the rest of the Thirteenth Fleet and staging raids on pirate outposts. Their last known location was just two days away from Omega and going there wouldn't put them out of position like flying to Tuchanka would.
She'd have to give the fleet a heads up to keep them from jumping away and it'd also mark her first public appearance after 'dying', but other than that, this seemed like the obvious choice. In an ideal scenario, she'd get another team member without a fight while Mordin and Garrus got settled in and Garrus recovered and Callius and Leng would have some downtime after helping her make it through a quarantine zone and a gang war.
So she gave the call.
22. March 2417 AD, Attican Traverse, Coalition World Kosh
As the dark-haired specialist walked through the entrance of the spaceport and took his place at the back of a line, his gaze wandered up to a familiar, luxurious skyscraper in the distance and he cracked a smile. He had broken into that one with Yo-yo. Back then Kosh had still been an independent world, run by a split-government of corporate authority and colonial administration who had waged an unofficial war with each other through various mercenary outfits and staged gang wars. Back then they had arrived under an alias and laid low while scouting out their target. It had been a fun couple of day days and then, in the dead-of-night, they had made their move, found a clue and eventually tricked a volus into giving them even more intel, which had led to the assault on Torfan.
Good times.
Especially compared to now.
He moved up in the line of the checkpoint and presented Solomon Gunn's citizen ID to the HSA soldier that was doing the checks. Like his comrades at the other lines, he was wearing his combat hardsuit and carrying an SR-8 assault rifle.
"Mr. Gunn," the guard read from his ID card.
"That's me," he replied.
"Like I just said," the guard muttered before starting a well-rehearsed speech he'd probably learned off a briefing pamphlet. "Alright, Mr. Gunn. Before we start with the security check of your person, the CIP Charta requires me to inform you that by signing the Sentinel Agreement, the CIP has granted HSA military personal authorization to act as a law enforcement institution and assorted us with the privileges and responsibilities that come with this status. This includes the use of force, ability to detain and permission to search people and personal belongings. Do you understand?"
"I understand," he nodded. Not that he had needed the little summary. As an HSAIS intelligence officer he had been briefed on the Sentinel Agreement himself before going undercover and as such he also knew that any answer other than 'I get it' would land him on the first flight off-world and in handcuffs for the time in between.
"Very good. Please put your bag in the scanner and step on the marked platform," the soldier instructed and Morneau complied, despite already having done the same thing inside the space port. He stepped into the red square marked on the floor and for about ten seconds, small orange beams ran across his body. Then a green light flashed.
"Alright. You're all good. Have a pleasant day, Sir," the corporal said. Then he waved his hand. "Next!" he ordered and Morneau obliged, all the while suspiciously eying the sniper positioned on the guard tower that overlooked the checkpoint.
He recognized every aspect of this set-up from the occupation of the Fringe Worlds. Combined with the namesake of the operation, the Sentinels, which were small drones that hovered through the air at all times and formed a city-wide surveillance system which fed information directly to a central 'hivemind' of about a hundred different VIs. Although the system was illegal to use in Council territory and deploying them on any HSA world would be akin to political suicide for the person who signed the order, the CIP's government had completely embraced this 'small invasion of privacy'. After all, it had bought them the protection of the HSA's armed forces and given them the ability to control entire megacities of unruly citizens. As one drone zeroed in on him and more orange scan lasers inspected his face, Morneau blinked and looked at the blue glowing 'eyes' of the small and otherwise green, eezo-propelled flying disk. The entire ordeal left a very Orwellian taste in his mouth and he had a hard time connecting this side of the HSA to the HSA he knew and liked.
In a way one could say that he owed the HSA his life and would do anything for it. First they'd made sure that he actually lived through the Eezo accident that had killed his parents and turned him into a biotic. Then they had put him into a state-run orphanage on Earth and kept him off the streets of the ARA metropolitan area. When his abilities had manifested, they had lifted him from the rather miserable existence of an un-amped and untrained biotic by bringing him to Grissom Academy for surgery and training. And once that part of his life was over, they had given him the tools needed to do good and end up the person he was right now. In short, they had given him the chance to work towards something greater than himself; building a better future that didn't include things like war, poverty or a divided humanity ready to kill itself at a whim.
So yeah. From his point of view, the HSA had done nothing but good to him and a lot of others just like him.
But as he walked over a bridge and looked at the commercial spaceport which had been turned into the main HSA FOB on Kosh as part of Operation Sentinel, he couldn't help but feel disappointed with and ashamed of his own people. Officially, this was a peaceful support mission meant to secure the worlds of the newly formed CIP while they transitioned into a full-blown, functional stellar government. However the Paladins and soldiers that patrolled the reinforced perimeter, which had 'military security zone, trespassers will be shot' written on it in all kinds of languages, painted a very different pictures. As did the neatly parked rows of shuttles, gunships and armored vehicles and the reinforced barracks and static shield generators that protected the barracks and the larger command center from incoming fire.
This wasn't how you set up if you helped form a government.
This was how you set up if you occupied a population that didn't want you in its home and was ready to use force to get rid of you.
As far as he was concerned, the fact that the HSA knew exactly what it was doing in the CIP but still continued down the same road months after it had been made clear that the people of the CIP didn't want it there was nothing short of a disgrace. He reached the end of the bridge and walked into a plaza, losing sight of the FOB in the process. If he was perfectly honest, he counted himself lucky that Redford had stolen him away from Grissom Academy before he had graduated and ended up in the army. Otherwise he might be one of the soldiers enforcing this occupation right now.
But enough of that.
Morneau walked the plaza for a few more minutes until his omni-tool vibrated and informed him that he was at the meet-up point. As he read the sign of the café he was standing in front of, he came to a halt and let the crowd of aliens, and armed CIP patrol, move past him. After a quick moment of pause, the undercover specialist checked if he was really in the right spot.
Yes. No doubt about it.
This was the place where he'd meet the strike team leader. A stylish, overprized Thessia-inspired café, out in the open, for all to see. This really couldn't get any more opposite to his Section 13-sponsored trip to Kosh. Morneau deactivated his omni-tool, took a second to make sure that he was actually in character for Solomon Gunn and stepped inside. It didn't take him long to find who he was looking for. The asari wasn't exactly hard to find considering she was wearing a white dress with a red, three-pronged star broosh.
Talk about corporate loyalty.
He walked over to her table and, after an inviting nod from her part, sat down.
"You must be Mister Gunn," the asari asked with a smile before waving for a waiter to come over to them. He mustered her for a second. She lacked the usual tattoos or face paint most asari had on their faces and the blue skin on her scalp was unusually darker than the light-blue shade of her face. Her eyes were also a very light blue, almost to the point of seeming white, and while he couldn't exactly place or justify it, he had a bad feeling in his gut right from the get-go and just by looking at her. It wasn't down to the usual 'where are their ears' and 'why are they blue' questions that were bothering him this time around either. Alarm bells honed by years of espionage training and field experience were ringing in his head and telling him that something about her was off.
But Solomon Gunn wasn't supposed to have that instinct. So, for the sake of maintaining cover, he didn't let it show and just stayed as alert as he could without making it seem like he was ready to run away at a moments notice.
"And you must be the strike team leader," he figured in return.
"Usually yes. But while you're here, I guess I'm the number two," the asari replied before the waiter arrived.
"Dear, would you please bring my friend something to drink. A Thessian Pine Needle Tea, perhaps?" she suggested while the waiter smiled at her.
"Water will do," he threw in.
"Or a water then."
"Of course, anything you wish," the waiter replied. Politely and, weirdly enough, excited.
"Not very adventurous, I see," the Final Wave operative chuckled when the waiter had left. Then she actually introduced herself. Kind of at least. "You can call me Irna," she said before extending her hand over in a way that invited a hand kiss and not a handshake.
This was one of the weird ones, wasn't it?
"That's not an asari name," he observed before grabbing the hand and shaking it.
"Maybe my parents didn't like asari names," she shrugged.
"But they obviously didn't have problems with asari numbers," he pointed out before feeling a tingle in his hand. It was vaguely familiar, almost like a very small, very brief biotic impulse. Still, it felt electric and wrong and gave another ring to his alarm bells.
Should he cut and run? His gut told him to, but the issue here was that the gut was basing the worries on Daniel Morneau and not Solomon Gunn.
"You're a sharp one, aren't you?" she complimented with a smile that spread across her beautiful, flawless face.
Hold up.
What?
He shook the thought out of his head and reminded himself of the lack of ears, the tentacle-like shape of her head and the blue skin and thought back to Emily Wong. While that was admittedly a very weird anchor point to pick, it worked like a charm.
"You learn a thing or two about the galaxy when you've been around," he shrugged before pulling his hand back and putting it under the table to rest it in his lap. Then he glanced at it for a second to see if he had just been injected with something. He couldn't see any injury and the watch that was monitoring his vitals for the slightest hint of an anomaly at every moment hadn't sent out an alarm yet.
So he was in the clear.
Probably at least.
"A traveler then? Tell me more," Irna returned in a friendly, interested tone and for an inexplicable reason, he almost gave in to the need to agree to it and start small-talk with the blue-skinned merc. But then he shook his head. That wasn't why he was here. Why the hell would he do that?
"Nothing more to tell," he stated before rubbing his hand and feeling himself become more normal again. "Let's talk about the mission." Then both noticed that the waiter had arrived and paused. After she had put down his water, she smiled at Irna.
"On the house, of course," the young asari stated while looking at her with beaming eyes. She looked at Irna like she was the most amazing thing in the world and frankly, Morneau wondered how the older asari was doing that. Now that he had stopped shaking her hand and reminded himself that she was blue and didn't have any ears, she looked and talked like just about every other asari.
Where had that strange surge of charisma come from?
"Thank you, you really are lovely," the merc replied. "Now shoo. Me and my friend need to talk about something private," she added and as if cued, the waiter shot Morneau a death-glare. Then she left and Irna turned back to Morneau, who was still trying to understand the person sitting opposite to him.
"Now where were we, Mister Gunn?" she asked with an almost seductive tone.
"The mission," he responded in a stoic tone before focusing on something just behind the asari. It probably made him look impolite or anti-social not to look her in the eyes, but he wasn't going to fall for the charisma he had just witnessed the waiter being caught up in for a second time.
"Right the mission," she repeated before leaning forward in her chair in a way her dress probably wasn't tailored for and mustered him with another smile. When he showed no reaction other than a blank stare, Morneau got the impression that she quickly lost interest in whatever her plan had been. "The reason we're sitting here is a volus called Dindo For. He runs For Mineral Transportations and they're the new shooting star of Kosh. As you know, he pissed of our client and now he wants us to send a message," Irna explained in a more normal tone. Internally, Morneau frowned.
Dindo For?
He knew that name and that was not a good thing on an undercover assignment.
"Which will have what form?" Morneau replied while internally already picturing how this entire operation came crashing down on him. That was the same damn volus who Yo-yo and him had looked for the last time when they were on Kosh. Back then he had still dabbled in slavery and ended up on the hitlist of HSAIS, which raised two questions. What was it with this guy and working in shady business fields and how the hell was he still alive eight years after selling human slaves? Just about everyone else who had invested in that particular industry had suffered an unfortunate accident like falling of a building ledge or being involved in a particularly lethal skycar malfunction, which may or may not have been related to a heat-seeking missile, after Torfan and similar operations had seen the vast majority of human slaves retrieved. He could only assume that something had gotten in the way of Dindo's 'accident'.
"Dindo's a daddy. And I don't mean that in the weird 'pays the vacations of asari maidens so they have sex with him' kind of way. He's got two kids. Volus daughters. Ten and fifteen," Irna went on. "Our client figures that if they were to disappear and it would be suggested to Dindo that he either reassert his loyalties or we'd pry their environmental suits open piece by piece, he'd have a change of heart. So the plan can actually be quite simple if you want it to be. We circumvent the security system, break into his penthouse, take the kids and turn them over to the client for further treatment," the asari said nonchalantly while Morneau was once more reassured why he'd never, ever genuinely end up in the private sector. HSAIS did a lot of shady stuff too, no doubt. But at least they didn't do it to people who had nothing to do with the matter at hand. They had a code. People like the Final Wave didn't. And that alone was enough of a reason to bring them down alongside the Broker.
"Sound simple enough," Morneau figured before taking a sip from his water and keeping Irna waiting for a reply a few more moments. He could see on her face that this wasn't a position she liked to be in, but ultimately, he was the team's handler on this particular mission and both of them knew what that meant.
Besides the command authority that came with it, it was his call if he'd go about the mission this way or do it differently. Because of this, he could, theoretically, just as easily screw up and save the two kids from being traumatized for life. While that was obviously the moral choice, it would also blow his cover, ruin everything he had been working for this entire time and stop any chances of finally taking out the Shadow Broker and stopping him from doing shit like this again in the future. So although it was incredibly tempting to go on the op and shoot Irna and all of her kidnapping buddies in the back the moment they turned it to him, Morneau understood that the greater good and mission success that hinged on him becoming a trustworthy, top-level Final Wave operative.
That by far outweighed what damage he'd directly do to these two girls by playing a role in their abduction. Hence, he did what specialists were taught to do from day one. Put the mission first and ignore the fact that it took some serious manipulation of his moral compass to justify doing it. "Did you already do some recon of the target object? What about For, when is he around?" Considering their past involvement, this was really the most important piece of intel for Morneau.
"Of course. I've been doing this for five years, I'm not an amateur," Irna nodded. Wait. Only five years? That was short for an asari. What had she been up to earlier? He wanted to ask and know more about her but after recognizing the strange and uncharacteristic pull to converse from earlier, he resisted and didn't. "Dindo's out most of the time, visiting his mistresses or business partners. He likes to work nights too. It's likely he won't be an issue we'll have to deal with."
Good.
"And security? You mentioned a system. But what about guards?"
"He used to have armed security. Still does on some public events. But in his home For mostly runs an automated security system these days. Ever since Kosh became part of the CIP and your army showed up to enforce the law, corporate extortion and merc hit squads have become a thing of the past. It's too easy to be caught," she sighed. "Your people and their stupid Sentinel drones are really bad for business, anyone ever told you that?" Morneau shrugged in response and still avoided anything but short eye-contact. At least there was one good thing to this entire 'support mission' the Arcturus government had built here. "If you ask me, this whole Sentinel thing is probably also the reason why For decided to violate the agreement to begin with. It gave him a false sense of security," Irna explained in the same, almost seductive tone from earlier. Then she smiled again, probing his defenses for a second attack. But Morneau was still onto her. He didn't understand how she was doing it, but she knew what she wanted to achieve. And he wasn't going to be charmed into submission. He put on his best 'annoyed handler from your Citadel HQ who signs your paycheck' look he could muster and stayed silent. "But that's not why we're here," Irna observed more neutral again.
"No, it's not," he confirmed before playing into his Solomon Gun persona a bit more. "We're here because For screwed up and our client values tradition. The circumstances around it are irrelevant, as long as we finish the mission to his liking."
"Finally a handler who gets field work," Irna sighed.
"I like to think that I've got a general grasp of how things work out here," he shrugged.
"I'm actually glad to hear you say that," Irna offered with another smile. But this time around there wasn't a hint of the seductiveness of earlier. She just seemed pleased.
"Bad experiences?" he asked as neutral as he could. It was a purely informative question but again he observed the shift in the asari. She thought she had a way around his defenses, and she was set on using it.
"Let's just say that I've worked with some headstrong people in the past," Irna replied calmly. "It didn't always end well and considering how pleasant this whole meeting has been, I'd really, really like to avoid that with you, Mister Gunn."
Nope.
He still didn't get how it worked or what was causing it but he was onto her and once that happened, he wasn't going to fall for it again.
"If you phrase it like that, I guess they didn't survive?"
"You know corporate policy. No talking about past jobs," Irna commented. "It's not like it's relevant information for you anyways. You don't seem headstrong to me," because she didn't know a thing about him." If you keep it that way, this is going to go flawlessly and you and I will have a lot to celebrate afterwards."
"Flawless is what I'm shooting for," Morneau said without falling for the obvious trap in her reply. 'Just remember; blue skin, no ears tentacles, blue skin, no ears, tentacles, blue skin, no ears, tentacles' he told himself. "Can we meet the team now?" he added.
"You really are eager to get this done, aren't you?" Irna said with a chuckle before joining him.
"I take my work very seriously," Morneau replied. That was the only thing he had said that wasn't a complete lie and considering how this whole exchange had gone down, he wouldn't give the asari another piece of honesty.
She was way too creepy for that.
Fifteen Minutes Later, 22. March 2417 AD, Coalition World Kosh, Hotel Suite
"Alright everyone. Stop messing around and get in here," Irna called as she and Morneau walked through the door of the hotel suite. Since he had avoided small-talk and only replied in one-word sentences to the attempts to lure him in which she had made on their way here, it was the first thing she had said in the last five minutes.
He was glad about that.
They were now inside a hotel high-rise outside of the spaceport again. While it wasn't the highest building on Kosh, that honor went to the newly opened Transworld One, you still had a decent view over the city. As if magnetically drawn to it, Morneau's eyes darted back to the compound that served as the HSA's FOB on the planet. His little walk-by on the bridge really hadn't done the scale of the fortification any justice. This wasn't a small FOB as you'd find on the far-out colonies in the Traverse. It was a full-blown Colonial Watch HQ that could probably take over all of Kosh and the rest of the system if its commanders felt like it. He knew the numbers involved in Operation Sentinel, of course, but he really wondered just how much it costed the HSA to maintain fortresses like this one on all coalition planets.
Upon Irna's order, three other people walked into the living room. One was a tall, brown-plated turian with white facial markings, one was a lime-green salarian and the last one was a fellow human, a fair-skinned man with short, reddish hair. He turned away from the window wall to greet them.
"Team, meet Solomon Gunn. Our handler for this mission," she said before pointing to the turian. "Solomon Gunn meet my XO Olarix," then to the salarian "Rano," and finally the human "and Sixteen."
"I take it their parents didn't like normal names either?" he figured.
"No offense, but code names just keep things easier for all of us now that we're working in an HSA-sponsored police state," the turian Olarix, who might as well be called two, figured before going up to shake his hand. "A pleasure to meet you Mister Gunn. Irna tells me that you already spoke about the plan?"
"Briefly," he confirmed.
"Good. Do you have any objections?"
"Not yet," Morneau nodded again, happy that this turian didn't have a strange attraction to him. "But I didn't hear any details yet. Then he pointed at the human. "I do have one question right away."
"What is it?" Olarix responded.
"If he's sixteen and there's only five of us here, where are the other eleven members of your team?"
"They'll be running perimeter security and operational support. They won't be part of the actual strike team," the turian replied. "So there's no need for you to see their faces or for them to take the risk of being linked to the op by coming here. Given the circumstances on Kosh right now, I'm sure you understand."
He didn't. He personally liked to know who was covering his back, even if it was Yo-yo most of the time, and as a specialist, he never had to worry about popping up on any facial recognition scanners either. HSAIS, using all the power a state-run intelligence service like it could muster, had turned him and his colleagues into ghosts. But he nodded nonetheless.
"I get that," he still said before looking to the containers sitting on the glass table of the hotel suite. "I take it my gear's somewhere there?"
"Yes. Right here," Rano, the salarian number seven, said before tapping his hand on top of one of the smaller ones. Unlike the strike team, he had just brought a single case. He didn't need any fancy tech or special guns for an op like this. "Have to say. Rare for handler to actually join strike team and not observe from distance. Pleasant surprise."
His instinctive response would've been that he'd been taught to lead by example way before leading had ever been an option in his career all the way back on Grissom Academy. But since that would be a dead give-away that he wasn't some sleezy ex-intelligence marine who'd sold his morals and skills for a paycheck but a grounded person with ideals and principles, he swallowed down the reply and let Solomon Gunn take the wheel.
"If I wanted to observe from a distance, I wouldn't have joined the marines," Morneau replied, drawing from Gunn's back-story for inspiration. Then he walked over to his container and opened it to see if everything was there. Much to his dismay, he hadn't packed and transported his own gear. Like any good corporation, the Final Wave had a department for that which had taken the 'boring task' of his hands. Inside, he found a mask, light armor, an undersuit, a sidearm, a rifle and a combat-rated omni-tool.
Good. At least the department could follow simple directions.
"Most of them were as corporate as they come. Grunts usually don't land those positions," Sixteen offered before suspiciously mustering him. "Which actually brings me to my first question of the day. What's your story? How come you're not here with the rest of us? What makes you so special?"
Morneau looked at the red-haired man and noticed the airborne eagle tattooed on his wrist. It was safe to give his detailed cover story.
"Nothing's special about me. And my story's probably the same as yours. Wanted to be a badass, joined up straight out of school just in time for the Blitz and then did a couple of more tours with the 212th," he replied in a practiced manner. Back when his persona had been created, it had only been natural to choose the a that had basically been gotten wiped out by Sovereign during the battle of Eden Prime. It made it a whole lot less likely for him to run into anyone who had served in that unit and could tell others that no 'Solomon Gunn' had ever been a part of it.
"And you lived through the Eden Prime invasion?" the ginger airborne trooper asked.
"Nope. I got out right before the two one two got smoked," that too was a precaution on the part of the people who had created his cover story. The list of people who had survived the unit's contribution to the battle was short, full of commendations and available on a ton of extranet pages. So naturally, Solomon Gunn couldn't be a war hero.
"Huh. Talk about coincidences," Sixteen said with a hint of irony, leading Morneau to conclude that he was definitely not entirely down with his story yet. While that wasn't necessarily a problem yet, it might become one later down the line. He'd keep an eye on him during the op. But for now he'd play it cool.
"What can I say, I've always been a lucky guy."
"Which would also explain how you landed this job when you're just a dumb grunt like me."
"Probably," he shrugged before once more focusing on the team leader, not by choice but by necessity. "Are you ready to go tonight?" he asked, already alert for signs of her manipulative charms.
"I'll have to check with the observation team if Dindo's out today. If he is, we just need to suit up and fly over to his penthouse," the asari replied. Ever since they were around the team, she seemed to have stopped doing whatever she had been doing.
"Please do," then he looked at Olarix. "While she's taking care of that, could you give me a detailed run-down of the plan? Irna and I only really talked about the general concept. I can't tell you if we can do it like you planned before I see for myself."
"Sure, take a seat," Olarix replied before gesturing to the couch of the hotel suite. Morneau complied and watched as the turian set up a little hologram projector roughly the size of a cube. He twisted its top, removed the lid and then activated the device. It assembled a large, square floor plan of a penthouse with ten rooms. "This is the layout of the penthouse apartment. We created it through a combination of outside observation and the kind donation of the original designers' plans. As you can see, it's basically your standard volus CEO living space. It's surrounded by glass-panel walls on all four sides and has three bedrooms, a living room, a spacious kitchen and a bath. Then there's the pressurized suit-changing chamber and some other miscellaneous rooms. Before you ask, yes, the glass is mass accelerator and breaching proof, so we can't go in that way," Olarix wiped his hand through the hologram, grabbed a section of the assembled design and pulled it upwards. There was now just a 'T'-shaped structure left.
"This right here is the part we really care about. The entry area and the rooms of the kids. Going through the door with anything but the key is going to give us trouble. I'll say that right away. When For bought the penthouse, he was still worried about mercs murdering him in his sleep. So it's designed to keep out intruders and withstand every kind of breaching charge that wouldn't blow up a good part of the penthouse too. Considering why we're here, an explosive entry of that magnitude is obviously not an option. Therefore we'll have to rely on the only legit way of entry. The keycard," with a slap of his hand, Olarix wiped away the entire hologram. Then he typed something on his omni-tool and produced an image of a salarian. "This is the facility manager of the building. With a little help of Irna's charms, he volunteered us one of the emergency keycards of the building," he'd wonder how she'd done that if he hadn't witnessed it first hand. "So unless you've got any objections, we can just take the elevator to the penthouse, walk in, get the kids and leave the message. Since For doesn't pay for body guards anymore, the only security we'll have to worry about in that case are the cameras and since we kind of want him to know that we have his kids and we also have these fancy masks that we're going to wear to avoid showing up on the Sentinel network," the turian said with a wave of his hand and a pat on the container.
"It's a non-issue," Morneau concluded.
"Exactly. All in all, it shouldn't take longer than five minutes. We just come through the door, two people go into one room and get one kid each while Sixteen over here keeps our way out save. Then we take the elevator back down, meet up with our get-away driver and go to the meeting point where we hand over the kids."
To someone who was hopefully a high-ranking operative of the Broker.
"And you're sure there won't be any security?" he asked again. To Morneau it still seemed incredibly stupid that someone who had worked in shady business fields for at least a decade would rely solely on a good door for security. Then again, Dindo hadn't exactly seemed like the brightest type back when he had bought Yo-yo's bullshit improvised story about them wanting to buy human slaves because salarian slaves would look out of place on a human construction site.
"Yes. We don't expect any resistance. The target doesn't even hire a nanny. He lets his older daughter watch over the younger one."
"Alright. I have no objections," he said with a nod. Not a second later, Irna came into the room.
"For's out on a business trip. He won't be back until tomorrow evening. As soon as it gets dark, we're good to go," she announced.
"Great. So it's the usual waiting game," Sixteen sighed before dropping down on the couch. "Wake me when we leave."
Five Hours Later, 22. March. 2417 AD, CIP World Kosh, Sky Apartments Tower
Just like planned, they had arrived at the tower that housed the volus' penthouse. Now they were about to step on the elevator. To avoid drawing attention to themselves by showing up looking ready for war and considering the lack of security, they had decided to only bring sidearms and only wear light armor that fit underneath the stolen service uniforms they had picked up earlier. So here they were, four Final Wave operatives and one undercover HSAIS officer pretending to be janitors of the apartment building.
"Observation's still reporting no light. Looks like the kids are fast asleep," Sixteen informed them after the elevator had started to move upwards. Morneau and the others pulled their masks on and then the specialist kept his eyes on the story-indicator. The numbers climbed by a lot faster than it felt like they were moving. "Mark my words. This will be an easy one," the former airborne added before rolling up the sleeves of the stolen red jumpsuit to reveal his tattoo.
Normally, he would've said that this was a shit idea and easy way to be identified. But since Morneau couldn't care less if this guy was dragged out of his apartment by an ASOC raid, he didn't intervene.
"Should never say that," the salarian pointed out.
"What? You worried I'll jinx it?" the human chuckled. "I didn't take you for the superstitious type, Rano."
"Not superstition. Observation based on personal experience. Thinking mission will be easy tempts lack of focus. Lack of focus causes mistakes. Mistakes kill people. Suggest you drop attitude, Sixteen. Also, would roll down sleeve. Tattoo easy way to identify you," Morneau looked at the salarian for a second. Then he observed his fellow human. The salarian was right and they both knew it. So Sixteen obliged and silence followed right until the elevator announced their arrival at the top floor. When they were there, Irna used their keycard to open the door of the elevator and stepped outside. Morneau followed his first instinct and looked out the window wall. Then, instead of thinking about how fast they had been going to get this high, this fast and what would've happened if the brakes on the elevator would've failed, he simply followed the team outside and stacked up in front of the penthouse door behind Olarix.
"All teams, we're making entry now," Olarix said before Irna opened the decorated but still well-secured door by holding the keycard over a scanner. When the door came apart, they flooded into the penthouse. Exactly as planned, Irna and Rano went to the left room and Morneau and Olarix to the right one. Meanwhile Sixteen secured their way out. He shared a nod with the turian, then he opened the door.
That was where the complications began.
First there was light, which obviously indicated that someone was awake.
Secondly, there wasn't just the ten-year old volus.
There was a nanny.
"Who are you? What are you doing he-" another volus clad in a white and violet exo-suit began to scream before Olarix took a decisive step forward and pressed the muzzle of his Carnifex against the temple of the volus. In the same instant, Morneau noticed the much smaller volus sitting on the floor of the room, frozen in place, the model of a turian plastic frigate still in her hand.
"One more word, you die," the turian Final Wave operative threatened before nodding his head towards the small volus girl, which was wearing an all-white exosuit. He threw one glance at the baby-sitter. She seemed to comply with Olarix' orders. Next he holstered his sidearm and added 'literal kidnapping' to the list of things he had never seen himself doing ten years ago by grabbing the volus by the arm and lifting her in the air. The girl was strangely silent. He'd chalk up to the shock of seeing a member of the species that had collectively sworn to protect the volus push a gun into the face of her baby sitter. After making sure he had a good hold on the child, Morneau planted a hand on Olarix' shoulder to let him know that he was backing out of the room.
"Just stay silent," the turian reinforced again, still keeping his handgun trained on the volus. Meanwhile Morneau had made it to the entrance area again where he could see Rano carry a slightly bigger volus. Unlike his own passenger, she was trying to struggle, but the handcuffs that the salarian had put around her gauntlets were making that almost impossible. He nodded to the salarian and both of them got ready to leave.
He was about to breathe a sigh of relief that no one had died.
Then Irna looked through the door where Olarix was still holding the volus at gunpoint.
"What are you doing, Olarix? We can't leave her like this," he heard her moan in an annoyed tone. He didn't hear the reply but, in that moment, he didn't think much about it. "Fine. I'll handle it. Step back. This will be messy." That caught his attention. He turned his head just in time to see Olarix walk out and Irna to walk inside. He wasn't sure why, but she had removed her mask. Then there was what sounded like a combination of an animal scream and a gas bottle exploding. Next he saw Irna step out of the room with the helmet of the volus in her hand and residue biotic energy dancing across her skin. But strangely enough, the sound of the volus' entire body going through the opening of the helmet because she'd just gone from sixty atmospheres as found on Irune to the pressure of Kosh's one atmosphere, hadn't been the most disturbing thing about the murder he had just witnessed.
Nope, that was the sadistic smile on the asari's face while she watched the whole ordeal and the jet-black color her eyes had suddenly taken.
He didn't need to look to understand what had killed the volus. It was basically like a decompression accident, only about ten times worse and even messier. While he had seen a lot of bad and disgusting things in his life, with the husks on Akuze ranking on an unchallenged first place and the rachni and their eating habits on Noveria being the follow-up, he couldn't help but wince when he saw Irna simply walk away from the 'explosion' that had just spattered gore over her entire face and body. After the second of surprise, he snapped out of it and observed the seconds that followed. Unlike him, she didn't seem to be horrified or disgusted at all. On the contrary, she looked gleeful and lively, as if the murder had given her immense pleasure. With her free hand, the asari wiped the brown blood stains and bits of intestines off her face and onto the back of her uniform. Then she looked at the remains of the helmet, which still had biotically charge eezo residue on it and thus glinted purple, and tossed it back through the door frame, from beyond which a lot of brown blood was rapidly flowing into the hallway. Once that was done, she pulled on the zipper of her uniform and discarded the janitor overalls, revealing the light armor and kinetic weaving undersuit she was wearing underneath. She tossed the blood-stained fabric into the room too, took a step back and then she looked at her team.
Surprisingly enough, the four Final Wave operatives seemed to be just as horrified as Morneau, but unlike him, they let it show and one even opened his mouth.
"What the fuck did you just do, Irna? Are you fucking mental?" Sixteen began.
"What needed to be done. Now get moving, Sixteen. We need to leave before someone comes up here to figure out what just exploded," she ordered. Morneau and Rano fell in line behind her, likely because both could look past the sight and recognize that she was right. They had to move. However Sixteen and Olarix didn't. They still seemed caught up in themoment.
"What are you doing? I said get moving!" she reinforced and finally Sixteen and Olarix, after the latter had whispered something to the former, also walked back to the elevator. Once there, they went to a floor about fifty stories below, an office that would be empty at night and which windows weren't nearly as reinforced as the ones on the penthouse and set up a breaching charge on the glass wall. In the process of doing so, Morneau took a glance outside. A lot of small lights were coming their way and that wasn't a coincidence. Before he could see what they were, he assumed them to be drones, their get-away driver announced his presence and they blew out the windows with the small explosives. Then the yellow and brown cargo shuttle hovered just outside the building and opened its rear ramp.
Although the gap between them and the car was only about half a meter, a jump all of them could easily make, each Final Wave operative with the exception of Irna took a little running start before making the leap over. The long fall that waited below was more than enough motivation to make sure. After their successful escape from the building, they secured their prisoners and strapped in for the short flight to the rendezvous point, where he hoped to meet the Shadow Broker's men and not just some mobster from Kosh' underworld. Otherwise he would have a really hard time justifying what he had just allowed to happen. Morneau, who was sitting the closest to the ramp since he had gone last, leaned his head back, threw one more look at the tied-up and terrified volus children who had just witnessed the bloody murder of their babysitter and were now being abducted, and then went over his survival motto.
Put it in a box and don't let it-
"We've got incoming! Sentinel drones!" the disembodied voice of the getaway driver interrupted.
Immediately his eyes darted to the screen that displayed what the camera at the rear-end of the shuttle was seeing right now. Then they narrowed. Two narrow, green disks were chasing after them.
Huh.
Who knew these things could go so fast?
"Can you shake them?" Olarix called.
"With this brick? Not a chance!" the pilot replied.
"Try!" their turian colleague insisted.
"Well. This is gonna suck," he heard the airborne trooper next to him mutter before their pilot started his evasive maneuvers. Although he had to admit that the guy could fly decently, his spinning and weaving through the buildings and traffic of Kosh weren't doing them any good. The artificially controlled drones were right on their tail and their super-human reaction time, nimbler design and VI piloting made it impossible to outsmart them.
"Fuck this," Irna declared from the seat across of Morneau. "Twelve, stabilize the craft," she instructed. A few seconds later, the evasive maneuvers stopped. Then she removed her harness, walked to the ramp and looked at Olarix. "Get the Widows," she instructed. The turian complied, unstrapped himself and pulled a long anti-material rifle from a box. He handed it to the salarian. While he extended the weapon, the turian reached for another gun of similar design. Meanwhile Irna had opened the hatch.
Shortly afterwards, two loud shots flew past his seat and echoed through the shuttle's cargo compartment. Despite the mask having some limited sound dampening, the echo rang through Morneau's ears long after they had hit the drones and sent them crashing down to the ground.
One step closer to permanent hearing damage.
After his hearing started to recover and the whining of the engines and rushing of the wind came back, Morneau heard the strike-team leader first. She shouted something he couldn't quite make out and then she got ready to sit back down and strap herself into her harness. But before she, Olarix or Rano could do such a thing, their craft got buzzed by something a lot bigger and a lot deadlier than a Sentinel drone. All three of them started to tumble and slide towards the ramp and towards their deaths. Irna managed to grab a hold of the cargo-webbing above the ramp and Olarix somehow caught himself on one of the harnesses. But Rano was still sliding. Morneau processed the situation faster than his companions and in retrospective, that was the only thing that saved the salarian's life.
Driven by a mixture of instinct and some very bad memories, Morneau moved almost automatically. He grabbed his harness with both of his hands, undid the lock so he could hang freely and kicked his legs just out far enough for the salarian to catch them before he would've fallen to his death. The force of his weight nearly caused the specialist to loose grip himself but before he was forced to find out if all the strength training and additional biotic practice after Akuze had actually paid off, the craft got stabilized and all of the Final Wave mercs scrambled back to the safety of their harnesses.
Well, all expect Irna.
The asari stood on the ramp and stared down the gunship. Judging by the shape of the wings and tail, he'd say that they had the misfortune of now being hunted by an A-83 Vulture gunship. The craft was rapidly flashing its searchlights at them in an unspoken demand to surrender. On their own, one of these things could wipe out an entire infantry company if it didn't have anti-air equipment. It would make more than short work of the shuttle they were flying.
He saw the asari flare up with biotic energy. Normally he would've assumed that this wasn't going to work. But Irna radiated raw power of a kind he'd never seen or felt before today and considering that his trainer on Terra Nova had been an incredibly gifted asari spectre and that he had also faced an asari matriarch in combat, that was really saying something.
While the mercenary got ready to unleash her power, the spy clenched his teeth and looked around. He couldn't let her do this, not just because he wanted to save the lives of the army pilots, but also because taking down that gunship would be the surest way to make the HSA shoot them out of the sky without a hint of hesitation, which they would do if Irna killed two of their pilots.
He could hardly scream 'stop' or just kick the asari out of the shuttle to stop her by killing her. While a part of him believed, that none of the team would be particularly sad about that happening, it would probably burn his cover and render everything that he had already allowed to happen pointless. But on the other hand, he didn't want to see the aftermath of what was about to happen. He looked around. There had to be something he could do to stop Irna that didn't involve an albeit well-deserved five-hundred-meter fall to her death.
While he scanned the shuttle, the asari was now covered in a field of pulsating energy that was starting to make the entire craft vibrate. She glowed in an unusual bright purple that lit up the entire cargo compartment and although it might just be the lighting playing a trick on him, Morneau got the feeling that her blue-white eyes had turned jet-black again.
It was quite a demonic sight, to be honest.
Moments before Irna got ready to unleash all the power she had been building up, Morneau threw his head backwards in frustration and reached for the unlocking mechanism of his harness. He'd do all of them a favor and kick her off the ramp. He'd just argue that he'd done it for the sake of the mission afterwards. While the odds of that working were about fifty-fifty, being blown out of the sky was a one-hundred percent way to fail his mission. But then, just as he pressed the button that would unlock his harness, he spotted a fire extinguisher hanging above him.
Would this work? He had no idea. But it was honestly the best option he had. He realized that he was counting on the Vulture pilot to be jumpy, which was kind of the anti-thesis of the job requirements you had to fulfill if you wanted the HSA to put you behind one of its most destructive flying weapon platforms, but then again, flying shuttle chases wasn't exactly something army aviation did on the regular.
"Tell the pilot to get ready to dive!" he shouted to Olarix. The turian nodded and banged on the metal divider between the two compartments.
Then the specialist jumped to his feet and reached for the red cannister. Meanwhile Irna was collecting a ball of unstable energy in her hand that even peeled of the plating in the interior of the cargo compartment. When the orb was reaching a critical state and she switched her stance, indicating that she was ready to launch of the projectile, the specialist appeared next to her at the edge of the ramp. He threw the cannister and shot it with his sidearm mid-air right before it could crash into the reinforced cockpit of the vulture. While the explosion wasn't as white, big, powdery or distracting as he had hoped it to be, it did cover the cockpit window of the Vulture and had the added benefit of breaking Irna's focus just enough for her to miss her mark. It was the combination of both these actions that gave them the chance he was looking for.
"Now!" he shouted as the unstable biotic ball exploded far left to the gunship and caused the pilot to start his own evasive maneuvers. Then Morneau lost his footing and started to fall backwards before he could grab something to hold on to. He probably would've smashed against the wall that divided the cargo compartment from the pilot if not for the intervention of Rano, who repaid the favor from earlier by grabbing his arm when he came flying past him. Judging by the painful scream the salarian let out as soon as he grabbed the heavier specialist, the force of the catch probably tore every tendon in his arm. But it saved Morneau from breaking his back against the metal divider and he appreciated that. Despite the presumably hellish pain and the rapid maneuvering of the shuttle, Rano held onto the specialist long enough for Morneau to pull himself to safety until the cargo shuttle once more started to fly more normally, this time without someone on their tail.
Talk about luck.
"Thanks," he nodded to the salarian. His gratitude and respect for the act was only really limited by the fact that this guy had just helped abduct a kid but then again, so had he.
"Even now," Rano replied between a set of powerful breaths probably meant to overshadow the stinging pain he was feeling by now.
"I think I shook them off. I'll fly a few more rounds to be sure, then I'll drop you off at the meeting point," the pilot announced. Morneau breathed a sigh of relief. This time for good. Then he looked across from him and noticed the way that the asari merc was staring at him. It was the definition of a death-glare and given her display of power, he'd be really glad to be off this fucking planet and be as far away from her as humanly possible.
She might look like an asari, but there was something vile hiding underneath.
And he didn't want to find out what it was.
Codex: Operation Sentinel
Operation Sentinel, also known as the Sentinel Agreement, is the name of the ongoing military support mission launched by the HSA on all CIP worlds in 2415 AD. The self-declared aim of the mission is to secure the CIP for as long as it takes the former independent colonies to set up and organize an interstellar, constitutional government. In order to achieve this, the Human Systems Alliance deployed five army groups, numbering at an estimated two point five million soldiers, on the twenty-two planets that form the CIP and gave state-support and funding to the highly controversial 'Sentinel' Program (See Codex Entry 'Sentinels) of the Hahne-Kedar Robotics division, which was previously most renowned for the development, manufacture and improvement of the Paladin Program (See Codex Entry 'Paladin Mechanized Support Combat Suit),
Ever since its signing in 2415 AD, the Sentinel Agreement has shaken support in the already controversial Goyle Administration elected in 2414 and divided the Arcturus parliament in two. Passed with a margin of only two votes in favor, public reaction to the Agreement can be broken down as either 'unpopular but necessary' due to the importance that the CIP plays in the HSA's economic growth or 'unconstitutional and troublesome' due to the fact that the same way the Sentinel drones are being used in the CIP would be a breach of the universal rights declared in the Human Unification Charta, the founding constitution of the HSA, if used on HSA soil.
Since the start of military operations in the CIP, the Goyle Administration has increased the HSA's military budget in a way only rivaled by the Noé Administration's emergency measures that were passed during the Fringe Wars in 2378 AD. This is largely the result of the increased cost of maintaining a large military presence outside HSA territory, the increased number of deployment salaries paid to the Operation Sentinel troops, and the continued development and variety of the HKR Sentinel Program.
Combined with the controversial Sentinel drones and increased resistance on the CIP worlds against the Operation Sentinel troops, critics and political experts in both human and greater Council space have accused the Arcturus government of 'subtle imperialism'. They claim that the CIP, as the first of many others, has become the target of an expansionistic, human-centric surge in nationalism fueled by the humanity's ascension to the ranks of a full Citadel Council member.
Furthermore some NGOs and conspiracy theorists alike are worried that the expanded Sentinel Network as it is used in the CIP, is the first step in the direction of a new kind of all-knowing surveillance state.
Given this, public approval of the Systems Alliance Foundation party has dwindled to an all-time low ever since the election in 2414 AD while opposing parties like Terra Firma or the Progressive Front, which had previously formed the fringe of human politics, are experiencing massive spikes in popularity.
Meanwhile the official statement from Arcturus remains the same.
Operation Sentinel is a necessary means of stabilizing a region crucial to the security of human interest and will continue until the CIP is capable of defending itself against foreign aggression.
A/N:
Did someone order the fastet update in years?
No?
Okay. I did it anyways.
I have to say this: Don't get used to it... this just kind of wrote itself to the necessary length because I went through a lot of effort to actually find a way way to describe the uneasiness that Morneau was feeling and put something we've all heard and seen in ME 2 (I think you can all guess who "irna" actually is. If not, well... come on guys I even wrote the word demonic. Just go on a wiki run.)
...and I think I managed to hit it.
Other than that, we got to see a darker side of Garrus, a darker (albeit funny side) of Mordin, a darker side of the HSA, an expected dark side of 'IRNA' and... a probably expected darker undertone of an undercover mission. What I'm getting at is this: I'm really proud of this chapter title becaus it's one of the few ones where it actually fits to ALL scenes we looked at. To understand this you need to understand that I choose chapter titles in three way: thematically (The Hunt for Archangel, for example) symbolically (Darker Sides) or 'it sounds cool'(The Word that Ends the World, although I didn't really pick that one, that was spawned by a certain admiral who helped me find like... nearly fifty chapter titles I think? (for the new ones who weren't around back then and hit this point now and have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about: Semper Vigilo didn't have chapter titles until Mass Effect 1 started and, with the help of AdmiralSakai, we basically had to come up with a ton of narratively fitting chapter titles for what was already a big story back then.)
Moving on from that unrelated subject.
I don't have a lot else to say.
The reason i updated so fast is because I'm still on leave and all my plans for this week kind of bombed. So I figured I wouldn't dick around for four weeks for a change and just sit down and write the chapter quickly before I disappear into the dark confines of office work in an investigation group for the next eight weeks. (I'll be looking at word for a living then, so I probably won't be as motivated to keep writing. Just expect another slow-down. :) )
Review and let me know what you think.
For the record we're at 642 reviews, 1,002 favorites and 1100 follows (we did it you guys!)
See you around next time.
