Chapter 92. Libera Te Tutemet Ex Inferis
7. April 2417 AD, Cronos Station
An odd engraving on the chest armor of the geth platforms.
Out of all the things to get hung up on, the odd pair of engineers she was supposed to keep from blowing up Cronos Station had chosen a little, wavy pattern.
'Geth wouldn't do that.'
'Geth don't work like that.'
'Geth don't care about appearances.'
'The only one's who'd do something to a geth just so that it looks good are the quarians. It has to be an old platform and therefore, we can find out where it came from.'
Those had been the key arguments leading to Yo-yo being voluntold to sift through page after page of geth designs created prior to the war. In the meantime, the engineers she was supposed to keep an eye on kept on doing their science stuff.
Needless to say, those assignments were not equally fun.
While they were cracking open geth in the adjacent room and doing god knew what to their parts, here she was, looking at a two hundred and fifty year old extranet page that had taken it upon itself to list every last form of the 'most groundbreaking invention in galactic history'. She'd be lying if she said that it wasn't weird to hear the geth be described like that. That groundbreaking invention as after all responsible for billions of deaths. Additionally, she'd be lying if she claimed that she had a good feeling in regard to finding what she was supposed to look for. Even though she was swiftly approaching the last page of the high-resolution images, she had yet to see a single geth that looked even remotely close to the ones being disassembled in the lab. There were some that had a similar stature, which happened to be the same heavy labor designs that the geth had used to attack Eden Prime two years ago. But there were none that had the wavy pattern, black, opaque alloy, particularly strong synthetic muscle and strange head shape of the drones they'd found on Freedom's Progress.
In her mind there were three possible explanation for this. She'd taken the liberty of coming up with them right around the time she'd looked at sewage cleaner geth and learned that part of the reason why the geth had been created was because the quarians seemed to have collectively decided that none of them wanted to work below a management job. This had led to a huge worker shortage in the century leading up to the Geth War and forced the Conclave to take radical action. The ultimate product of that action had been the geth, the fittingly named servants of the people.
The first and least likely theory was that the pair of engineers had made a mistake and that these geth were in fact original designs made after the war by the geth. Yo-yo considered this to be unlikely because they had been right about everything up to now and it was indeed a well-known fact that geth didn't care much for visual distinction. After all, all their warships, which had been designed after the war, were simply upscaled forms of the same wasp-shaped quarian designs that the Conclave had used during the war. From the smallest dropship all the way to the largest dreadnought, they all looked the same.
Secondly, and far more likely, there was the possibility that the self-proclaimed geth curators hadn't gotten the chance to finish their work before their favorite robots had gone on an empire-wide killing spree and that the type she was looking for hadn't been documented before the page-owners had died. That one sounded more plausible to her because a brief glance at its coding had revealed that the extranet site had stopped being updated right around the beginning of the Geth war, indicating the untimely death of its quarian owners in the waking hours of the conflict.
Finally, there was the third assumption, which was based less on science and facts and more on the personal insights she'd gained into how powerful people thought and acted.
It basically went like this: Going by their looks and their absence from the records, the drones in their lab were the first generation of a type of combat-oriented platforms built by the quarians just before the war. Their creation was unknown to the rest of the galaxy because the Conclave, or maybe some independent arms contractor, hadn't been ready to reveal their creations just yet. Before they got the chance to show the Council what they had made, the war happened and their geth turned against them. Then, as expected form a synthetic war machine, the precursors of the drones made short work of their creators and every quarrian in their vicinity, killing everyone aware of their existence. From there on out, they had faded from memory and up until now, remained forgotten.
While there was little historic evidence to support that train of thought, officially militarization of the geth had never ventured beyond the realization that it was a possible application, Yo-yo considered it to be a logical step from the quarian point of view.
With the geth created it was just a matter of time until the quarians or someone else would go on and design a version of them that was meant specifically for a military application. Therefore, the Conclave would've obviously taken initiative to make sure they didn't get one-upped in their own game. It was what the HSA and every other spacefaring civilization would have done in their place. After all, a synthetic swarm intelligence of unfeeling, unflinching war machines made for a rather terrifying weapon and, more importantly from the perspective of a government, an incredible way to project power on other governments.
From what the extranet told her, people back then hadn't been blind to the martial potential of the geth. Everyone had expected the quarians to introduce the geth into their military from the get-go. Similarly, the horrific aptitude that the geth had shown for war as early as the opening months of their uprising also suggested that somewhere beneath all the talk about them being 'peaceful laborers' and 'servants of the people' there was something with a keen understanding for war. After all, if the synthetics really had not had the slightest clue about fighting, the quarian military should've won, no?
The specialist clicked onto the next page of images and let out a sigh as her blue eyes kept darting over the pictures.
Her idea was just an assumption at this point and even if she was right, knowing where the geth came from wouldn't exactly help them understand what they wanted. Neither would it help them figure out the meaning behind their threat that the servants of Nazara were within. And that was their priority right now.
Still, it was something she'd decided to keep in the back of her mind until they reached the point where that information was going to become useful. When the time came, she'd bring it up to the experts and see what they thought of it. But until that point came, she'd probably be stuck looking through these pages and staying silent about her pessimistic views of the motives and logic of now long dead quarians.
And unlike the drawing of conclusions, that task wasn't nearly as enjoyable to her.
As she scrolled through the images, Yo-yo remembered the time she'd done something very similar with batarian POWs and came to another conclusion.
This would most likely be a lot less of a drag if Morneau was around to help.
Not only would it have made things somewhat more entertaining, it also would've cut the workload in half or reduced it to zero entirely. Knowing his luck, he probably would've punched in a random page number and stumbled upon the exact geth type they were looking for twenty minutes into their search. Granted, it had taken a little longer than twenty minutes back then, but Morneau had found the batarian SIU operative back on Camelot with that exact method. Or rather with the lack of a method.
However, since Magic was still stuck in an undercover assignment, the incredibly boring task was all up to her. And since Yo-yo was painfully aware that she didn't have his luck, she wasn't going to rely on shooting in the blind and messing up her organized approach this close to the end.
She'd take it one page and one picture at a time and do this her way, even if it took her longer. With that in mind, she clicked on the next page and got to scrolling again. If Morneau had been the one doing the clicking, the geth she was looking for would've just popped up and he would've already had some stupid quip about it at the ready. She spent another second lingering on the thought and then set her mind to continuing on with the task at hand. But with the Camelot assignment now back on her mind, so was Morneau.
Yo-yo let out another sigh. This one was much longer and from an outside perspective might have given the impression that she was exhausted from doing the same repetitive thing over and over again.
Although that was kind of true, the real source wasn't related to the task at all.
It was frustration about the way things were looking right now when it came to Morneau.
By her count, today marked Day 187 of the 200-day time limit Magic had set himself to drag the Broker out of his hole and deliver him to Cronos in a present with a bowtie. While both had known how utterly unrealistic and jinxing that kind of statement was, she couldn't claim to not have spent the last six months expecting him to actually live up to it. Everyday there'd been the small hope that she'd wake up and find him ready to brag about having done the impossible. It was a misplaced hope, she knew that, but it had still done a decent job at giving the impression that Morneau would be back quicker than expected and that things would return to normal again with them going on missions together.
However as of lately, that hope had begun to vanish rapidly.
With the last two weeks of the bet officially having started – and Lancelot's report on Morneau's status indicating that he was still running around on the Citadel playing contractor, occasionally pretending to be a lovey-dovey boyfriend to some journalist with barely mediocre writing skills and an obnoxious social media presence while only making little progress in regards to his actual target – Yo-yo was accepting that she'd continue to fly solo for the near-future. Morneau was going to continue to be absent and the end of his operation was nowhere in sight. Hence, she'd be stuck doing single-operative tasks for the time being.
Needless to say, she liked that open-ended timeframe a whole lot less than the finite two hundred days limit she'd been working with up to now.
And that wasn't entirely down to her missing having Morneau around due to not being able to go on actually decent missions with him either.
While Yo-yo had never really understood why, her and the biotic specialist had clicked at a decisive point in their formative years as specialists, even if the start of their training had been the very definition of rocky. Ever since that point, they had worked together and gotten along perfectly. Uncomplicated and effective would be the words she'd pick to describe them and their track record spoke for itself. Whenever they were sent somewhere together, they didn't just meet expectations, they crushed them. If they were working as a team, the job got done, no matter how difficult it seemed, and if they weren't directly working together on an assignment, they'd still help each other out as best as they could and be better off for it. It was a nice harmony they'd settled into and nothing the last decade had thrown at them had been able to disturb that balance.
They were a good match, just like Section 13 intended its operative pairs to be, and by splitting them up, HSAIS had shot itself in the foot.
That was her very personal and extremely negative opinion on this entire ordeal.
Yo-yo obviously knew why this was a single-operative assignment and understood why she couldn't tag along to help Morneau out. Job openings in the tier of the Final Wave they needed to infiltrate were scarce, so smuggling in both her and Morneau hadn't been an option. Additionally, someone else wouldn't have fit into the cover story they'd build with Solomon Gunn. Another identity was just another point of that story that could be attacked. Hence the lone operative part made sense to her.
What she didn't get however, was why they'd picked Morneau out of all their colleagues.
There were a ton of specialists who were just as, if not more qualified to do this type of op who weren't Morneau.
Okay.
That was neither true nor fair to Morneau.
His qualification as obvious as hers would've been. Before the entire mess with Akuze and Arterius had happened, Morneau and her had already been tasked with chasing down the Broker and been involved with him several times over. So it made sense for their bosses to pick one of them, they were kind of the experts when it came to the Broker. Additionally him being a biotic and her not being one, also explained why Morneau was deemed to be the favorable choice out of the two. When the chips were down and Magic had to go up against the Broker's best operatives, he could do damage she couldn't and go blow for blow with any biotic he might run into along the way. Since HSAIS had the clear and justified expectation that the Broker wasn't going to come quietly and instead whip out every merc he had on his payroll and throw them at whoever was coming after him, it was obvious for them to pick the one biotic specialist that Section 13 had access to, to level the playing field. The fact that direct action and actual fighting had always come easy to Morneau had likely influenced the decision as well.
From that perspective the choice was logical.
But damn it.
Just because it was logical didn't mean that she had to like the idea of Magic slugging through this assignment without her being able to watch his back.
If she was around to make sure that he didn't get himself killed in some moronic way, then she'd be completely fine with him doing a long-term undercover op and going blow for blow with someone as infamous as the Shadow Broker.
But since she wasn't, she hated it.
And there was a good reason for that too.
She didn't doubt that Morneau would be able to go up against whoever the Broker threw at him.
But she did worry about the fact that he'd have to do it while not really being himself.
To put it bluntly, Yo-yo had known Morneau for so long, that she knew that out of the two of them, she was the one who true undercover work came easy to and that he always struggled with it. Whereas she could drop every aspect of who she was on the fly, her partner had always been a hint too grounded to drop what she considered his at times very odd and very rigid but still arguably decent core personality.
While that obviously wasn't an issue for the short-term infiltration tactics and bait-and-switch moves he liked to use all of the times, those really just came down to playing dress up, getting into character and being confident about your act, Yo-yo suspected that their superiors were aware of the problems this caused with long-term assignments just as much as she was.
She figured that the reason Morneau hadn't been on a real long term undercover op ever since his first one was because someone somewhere up the chain of command, possibly Redford, possibly Director Rei, had recognized the same issue she had and determined that he was far more valuable as a direct action assent. While that certainly would make him an exception, usually things went the other way around and specialists were determined to be more valuable for undercover ops like it was the case with her or Lancelot. But she wouldn't put it past their superiors to take one look at Morneau and do the opposite.
And although she wasn't going to doubt his abilities, she would say that they were justified in making that decision.
Whereas the morals of supremely talented undercover operatives shifted as they needed and any concerns they might personally have didn't surface and didn't impact their decision-making, her partner was never able to fully embrace that mindset. No matter who Morneau pretended to be or how long he was supposed to stay in characters, bits and pieces of who he was always stuck around and poked out from underneath his cover story. He got attached to the people around him and his values began to shine through more strongly the longer he was gone. It wasn't something that had compromised his ability to perform his missions up to now. If it had been, he obviously wouldn't have remained in Thirteen and instead been shipped off to the door kickers back at Section 9. But it was still there and still fed into one of Morneau's less than optimal but sadly enough stronger qualities.
He liked playing the hero.
There was just no other way to put it.
She wasn't sure if it was just something that came natural to him or if the HSA molded everyone who went to one of their military academies into perfectly obedient soldiers with stupid save-the-world attitudes. But what she was sure of was that Morneau was always ready and, more importantly, always eager to go the distance for that attitude. Even if doing so wasn't the smartest move he could make, he always wanted to do it. The attitude and the personality it came from were always riding shotgun with him, no matter if he was back on Cronos Station or living life as a shady contractor. He couldn't drop it to save his life and, knowing him, he wouldn't change it even if he was capable of it.
While that might have been admirable anywhere else, in their line of work it could make or break the success of a mission and decide whether things would go smoothly or horribly. Usually that wasn't a problem. Somehow Morneau always managed to walk the line. He could have this mindset, take risks because of it but still get the job done. She wasn't sure how, but he made the combination work. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was skill, but somehow he'd made it work up to now and she'd never worried about it before.
However recently, for the first time since coming to accept that Morneau was somehow capable of doing this without any negative impacts, she been having a bad feeling. She wasn't sure where it came from. Maybe it was the fact that he was going after the Shadow Broker, who was arguably one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy. Maybe it was because he was doing so as a Final Wave contractor, which was arguably one of the shadiest roles in the galaxy. But either way, her gut was telling her that her partner would get himself into a world of trouble before this op was over precisely because he had to play the hero.
She hadn't shared her concerns with anyone, obviously. Like said, Morneau would manage, he always did. But just because she hadn't shared them with anyone didn't mean that they magically vanished or that she somehow could forget about the nagging voice telling her that this time would be the first time things would go sideways for hi-
As a hand was waved through her field of vision, she registered that she'd been scrolling through the pictures without actually looking at them for the past ten minutes and tore herself away from her concerns. Clearly, she'd gotten lost in thought. That was one of her bad qualities. She blinked, oriented herself, stopped scrolling and looked at the owner of the hand; Robin Wigmore.
"Calling Specialist Rachel Young. Are you still with us?" the blonde engineer asked with a smile on her face.
"Yes, yes, present and accounted for," she replied before realizing that both her and her lab partner were looking at her in expectation. It was a good thing this didn't happen to her when she was out in the field, otherwise she might be the one who'd be in a world of trouble. "Sorry. You kind of caught me in the middle of daydreaming. Did you need something?"
"Yeah we could tell, you zoned out bad," Ardery chuckled before the blonde engineer nudged him with her elbow, effectively silencing him.
"We were going to get some lunch and wondered if you wanted to join us," Robin offered, ignoring her lab partner's glance. "What do you say?"
She looked at the images of the geth and realized that she could use a break.
"Count me in," she replied before getting up with a last glance at the images. Yup. That was what she got for zoning out. She'd have to restart the page again when she came back.
"Nice," Robin replied before tilting her head and looking her in the eye. "So. What exactly were you thinking about? Aiden's right, you did look very zoned out back there. Everything alright?"
Yo-yo took one look at the pair of engineers and shrugged.
"Yeah, everything's alright. It was nothing important. I just sort of got lost in the geth pictures," she stated, letting the concern slight away again.
Morneau would manage.
He always did.
Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Enroute to Haestrom
After her father had told her that the Project Kaziel drones were coming from the old quarian colony Haestrom, Tali had wasted no time organizing their infiltration of geth space. She'd once more drafted Reegar and his unit for the mission, taken the fastest ships the Fleet had been ready to give out to her and set out. Since going through the mass relay was hardly an option, the geth blockaded every access point that led into the Perseus Veil and shot everyone who used them, Tali had opted for an old, albeit dangerous route instead. In the times when the Veil had still been Conclave Space, the set of jumps they were executing to reach Haestrom had been a so-called 'slaver track'. Slaver tracks were pathways through space made up of a set of closely linked planetary systems and outposts that lay far outside of the mass relay network. They offered enough pitstops to vent their engine cores, were usually unguarded and had the added benefit of having been abandoned around the same time the Conclave had embarked on its exodus. While using the track obviously but a strain on their ship and ramped up their travel time enormously, turning what could've been a day's journey into fourteen, it would keep them from being vaporized as soon as they left the Haestrom Relay.
Although the marines were less than happy to spend that much time with basically doing nothing, Tali had already found a way to keep busy. Her father hadn't been very clear on how he'd procured the records of Kaziel or been able to deliver a straight explanation as to why the project was buried under what he'd described as the tightest locks in the Migrant Fleet. But the files had still found their way to Tali. They, alongside general information on Horizon, had kept her occupied the past four days and she was only really reaching the interesting parts right now, assuring that she'd be busy for at least another four.
She flipped the holographic page and continued to read over the files. The part she was reading right now was basically the 'sale-pitch' of the project's lead designer, a quarian by the name of Don'Gera who'd worked for a now long-gone tech company based on Rannoch and died shortly after the beginning of the war in 1890 CE, albeit from sickness, not combat.
'Alongside the development and subsequent production of combat-oriented geth platforms, the main-aim of Project Kaziel will be the development of an improved and more complex swarm consciousness useable by every geth subtype. If Project Kaziel receives the requested increase in funding to build the required facilities on Haestrom, a de-militarized version of this consciousness we are creating could be made available for the public sector in five years. In addition to increasing the thinking capacity and self-awareness of the geth, this consciousness will also increase productivity of regular platforms by a margin of at least 21,65 percent.'
Her eyes narrowed after she'd spotted the date behind the request.
1888 CE.
This had been written just two years before the geth war and right around the time the first 'anomalous' functions had appeared throughout quarian space.
More thinking capacity.
More self-awareness.
More productivity.
Could that mean what she suspected?
A knock on the side of her bunkbed threw Tali out of her train of thoughts. She pulled open the curtain separating her form the rest of the ship and looked at Reegar.
"Your shift at the helm's starting, Ma'am," he said before leaning against the side of the bunkbed. Due to the size of their crew, everyone had to pull their weight. While other mission leaders might have found that jarring, being quarian meant that it was nothing new for her to pitch in. "And since that incidentally means that mine's over, I'd ask that you put down your book and be on time this time around." That was as polite of a way to say 'don't be half an hour late like last time, I want to sleep' as Tali could think of. Since it was a rather embarrassing mistake for a quarian to be late for their shift Tali jumped out of the bunk instantly without deactivating her holographic reading material.
It didn't go unnoticed by Reegar.
"What are you reading anyways?" he said while glancing at the page. "Is this for Haestrom?" he figured.
"Yes," she nodded before quickly powering down the reading application. "My father sent me the files for Project Kaziel some days ago," she looked at the red-armored marine for a second and went back to her previous thoughts. "They've revealed some rather disturbing possibilities."
"Like?"
"Like the fact that whatever they were doing on Horizon might have been the reason the geth grew sentient to begin with."
That got Reegar's attention.
"What do you mean by that?"
"The project wasn't just limited to a foundry. It was an entire research complex. They didn't just build geth, they were also designing a newer version of the consciousness that the geth share. And as soon as they started rolling ou that consciousness, the first geth started to display signs of deviancy," she said before realizing how final her statement seemed to be, even though she was just drawing conclusions. True to her character, Tali quickly doubled back on that. "I mean the timing could be a coincidence, obviously. But I think it's strange, don't you agree?"
The marine looked at her omni-tool.
"Yes. That does sound pretty strange," Reegar replied. "Can you send me those files?" Tali hesitated in her reply and the marine lieutenant picked up on it. "I just want to look through them to see if there's anything relevant to our ground operation."
She thought back to the message that had been attached to the files.
"Father said I shouldn't share them with anyone. They are classified for a reason."
"Didn't stop you from telling me about them just now," Reegar pointed out, causing Tali to practically be crushed by the realization of what she'd done. Keelah. Her dad would kill her- "Don't worry. I'm not going to tell anyone or make you share them," Reegar went on. "Just keep in mind that your father isn't the one who has to make sure these things don't murder us the second we set foot on Haestrom. If I can look at those files, I might just be able to get us all out in one piece," then he climbed into his own bunk and grabbed a hold of his curtain. "Think about it while you're at the helm. I'll ask you again in six hours."
Then he pulled the curtain shut.
Six hours later Tali had made her decision, handed Reegar the files and given her dad yet another reason to consider her a complete disappointment.
Meanwhile, 7. April 2417 AD, 'Uncharted Regions', Planet H-342-June-2378
Although James Vega had been surprised and relieved at how quickly he'd been given an assignment at first, he was now coming to regret his initial enthusiasm. He'd been sent straight to a combat unit after being told that he had 'no need for additional combat training' by the IFS cell he'd initially joined a few weeks back. From there on out he'd been sent to replenish 'Horizon Company', an infantry formation working on what he was quickly accepting to be the most bleak, most desolate wasteland of a planet he'd even been on.
H-342-June-2378, or 'June' as they were referring to it for the duration of their stay, was for all intents and purposes not a nice place to be around. It was windy and sandy and inhabited by a ton of particularly large bird-of-prey species, which despite their very different apperances all seemed to enjoy nothing more than to try their luck against Horizon Company of. In the last four days, their outpost had been attacked twenty-five times by those damned birds. Six times several of their men had been injured in the process and during the last flyby, a bird that was easily the size of a Kodiak had taken one of their APCs and flung it into the canyon like it was made of paper.
While Vega realized they could count themselves lucky to haven't had a KIA yet particularly after the last encounter, he also couldn't help but wonder why it was imperative that they guard this canyon personally and under clear skies.
Sure, he got the general concept of protecting the science team that was dwelling in the canyon that Horizon company had surrounded on both sides. But what could possibly be so exciting about that damned rift that it required an entire combat unit to protect? In his mind, a few automated turrets and anti-air missile launchers would deal with the birds just as well as the hundred-odd riflemen that made up their unit.
Hell, it might even be better because he was confident that the fucking birds definitely wouldn't try to eat the turret-
As soon as he heard the by now familiar shrieking of the alien fauna, Vega sprung into action. He flicked the safety off his Valkyrie, which he'd taken with him as a parting gift from the HSA Marine Corps, and nervously scanned the sky
"You see it, man?" he asked with a quick glance to the soldier on his right before returning to scan the air above them. The fact that these birds were smart enough to always attack with the sun in their rear certainly made spotting them more difficult until their visors adjusted to the brightness and filtered it out, which they sometimes didn't do quickly enough. Those fuckers were fast, faster than any other animal he'd ever had the misfortune of running into.
"Nah," the soldier, an older man with greying hair and a rifle built during the first Fringe Wars, said, still leaned back in his chair. "Relax. Sounded like the bastard was far away," he went on before squinting open one of his eyes and taking a look around the immediate vicinity of the small watchtower they share. Vega shook his head at the sight. The man was so relaxed that he hadn't even bothered to pull on his helmet, let alone aim his rifle.
That was no way to pull guard duty.
No wonder these birds were kicking their ass.
Then again, maybe that'd be him in a week as well. Except for the occasional avian attacker, there was nothing to do on June other than sit around and watch the sun cook the sand around them. When the man's words rang through and nothing else happened for a few more seconds, other than their CO telling them to return to regular watch duty and indicating that at least one other soldier was paying attention, Vega decided to join him. He locked his rifle and sat back down.
"Jesus Christ. All of this for a bunch of stupid caves," he muttered before pulling of his own helmet as well.
"Canyons," the man corrected.
"Yeah. Whatever."
"Not what you joined up for, I take it?" the older man replied.
"No, not exactly," the deserter replied before throwing a glance at the sandy rift. "You said they found this place way back in 2378?" The fact that the IFS had apparently spent a good part of the Fringe Wars lurking around the galaxy was still something he had to come to terms with. Only god knew how close they'd come to a first contact that could've changed humanity's entire history.
"Yup," his companion replied. "This and a thousand other ones. While the HSA was pushing back in the Fringe, the IFS decided to stroll around the galaxy," he muttered before closing his eyes. "Not that it did them any good though. Lost all the same."
"Mhm," he muttered before watching several figures in white hazmat suits open the fenced door of the stairway that led into the canyon. They were carrying glass boxes, small hammers and what looked like an environmental scanner. "Hey, do you got any idea what they're doing down there?" he wondered offhandedly.
"You ask a lot of questions, newbie, you know that?" the man replied with a mutter before squinting at him with his one open eye. "Makes you wonder why you're so curious, really. Maybe you got someone you want to tell all those things to? A friend back in the HSA maybe?" he added more coldly and threateningly while actually opening his other eye. Vega's face grew grim at what the man was suggesting.
"I wouldn't lift a finger to help the HSA, if that's what you're suggesting."
"That's exactly what I'm suggesting," the man said as both his eyes narrowed. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he started to laugh. "Relax. I'm just messing with you, newbie," then he glanced back at the canyon where the science team was only now climbing down a set of stairs. "Truthfully, I've got no idea what the fuck they're doing here. All I know is that this place used to be house an EWD outpost back in the war."
"EWD?"
"The Experimental Weapons Division," he looked at the older guy.
"Doesn't ring a bell."
"The guys who tried to keep us in the fight with expeditions like this? Who build the New Dawn?" his companion replied with a hint of confusion. "You've never heard of them, have you?"
"Nope."
The man let out a long-drawn sigh.
"They really don't teach you anything about the IFS anymore before recruiting you, do they?"
"Nope," Vega stressed again.
"Huh," the man muttered before closing his eyes again.
For a few moments Vega expected him to say something else or give him a lecture about the IFS's history but moments turned into minutes and the 'huh' remained his only comments in that regard. Since James had always been one to take a hint, he didn't try to continue the conversation after that and let minutes of silence drift into hours. For the entire duration of his watch, he left his companion be and set his eyes onto the horizon, which consisted of nothing but blazed sand and barely noticeable dunes. June's surface was eerily desolate and unnaturally flat, like someone had taken a mining laser and made it so. There were no mountains, no hills, no lakes and no valleys. It was just their little outpost, the canyon it guarded and the cave systems that were apparently hidden deep underneath the surface.
Incidentally, it was that fact that allowed him to notice when something finally happened five hours into his seven-hour guard rotation. At first it was faintly noticeable and he mistook it for another bird, but as the shape on the horizon quickly drew closer and became much larger, he realized that it was mechanical. A ship made of a black alloy that glistened with a hint of dark-green was shooting towards them. Its shape reminded Vega of other salarian vessels he'd seen in the past, rounded corners, a sleek profile and same strangely silent engines. Immediately Vega was on his feet, rifle in hand. Thanks to the HSA's involvement, it was safe to assume that the Council wasn't on good terms with the IFS.
"Yo, hermano! Check it out. We've got incoming," he said while nudging his comrade, who only reluctantly opened his eyes again. He tilted his head up, squinted against the sun and then became distinctively unimpressed, a reaction that seemed to be shared among the other guard posts. No one in Horizon Company but Vega was alarmed by its sudden appearance. In retrospective, that should've told him enough about the owner's of the vessel.
"Oh. Them again," the older soldier muttered before closing his eyes again. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but those guys are on our side. No action for you today," he went on as the ship began to close in on the base, visibly slowing down in the process. It was around that time that Vega noticed the fine, grid lines that ran across its entire surface.
"Never seen a ship like that, who are they?"
"Lystheni," the soldier replied.
"Lysth-who?"
"Picture a bunch of salarian rejects with a hard-on for raiding and boarding," the man muttered as the ship began to land.
"So pirates?" he figured.
"Nah. Nomads."
"Ah. Like the quarians then." Vega concluded right as the ramp began to lower itself.
"Not really, no," his laconic companion replied before kicking back again. "Just see for yourself."
Not a second later, the biggest salarian he'd ever seen stepped into the sunlight of June and lifted his hand to shield his pale, ashen-grey face from the stronger than average brightness. He looked around the camp for a second, which allowed James to see that his skin was also covered in grid-like lines, and then turned to face one of the hazmat wearing IFS members that had approached him. They seemed to exchange a few words, which the former bounty hunter obviously didn't understand due to a mixture of distance and engine noises, and then the hazmat guy handed the lystheni one of the glass boxes. The lystheni inspected the case and bowed his head respectfully. Again, the distance made it hard to tell, but to James it seemed like the box contained a piece of reddish-brown dirt, or maybe some time of colorful crystal which glinted with a mixture of violet and black dust. The alien seemed to exchange some more words with the hazmat guy and then stepped back on his ship, which subsequently lifted off again. Meanwhile the human returned to the secured stairway, opened the seemingly unlocked door and vanished back into the canyon.
"That's it?" Vega wondered. He'd expected more than that.
"What do you mean?" the older soldier replied.
"He just picks up a box and leaves? That's what I was supposed to see for myself?"
"Yeah. Better get used to it. It's the most exciting thing that'll happen to you while you're here."
"I don't get," Vega admitted flatly as the lystheni ship shot out of their outpost and climbed high into the sky at a speed that no human craft would ever be capable of.
Since when was the IFS working with aliens?
And what was up with that stranger rock?
"Me neither, newbie. Me neither," the old grunt shrugged. "It's weird that we're shaking hands with aliens, but the captain said that those guys are our allies and that's that," he went on. "Make of it what you want. We're not the HSA, we ain't gonna tell you what you have to think," he kicked back in his seat again, returning to his previous 'guard duty'. "Now if you don't mind, I really wanna go back to making the most out of this lousy excuse of a chair."
Vega looked at where the ship had landed and then to the canyon.
"Yeah whatever," since the point of joining up with the IFS certainly hadn't been to exchange one secretive liege for another, he made a spur of the moment decision. "I gotta take a leak, you good to watch my sector for a minute?"
"Sure, take your time," his companion replied without shifting in his seat.
Vega climbed out of the guard tower and crossed their security perimeter towards the canyon, which was made up of other towers like his own and old IFSDF armored vehicles assembled in a ring around several reinforced prefabs. When nobody was looking, which was really not a rare occurrence on June, he let himself in through the fenced door of the stairway and climbed down into the canyon. As he went down, he already made up an excuse for when he was inevitably caught. He'd heard something weird and, in the interest of the security of their operation, decided to investigate. After all, it could've been a new type of bird, no? It wasn't exactly a fool-proof excuse, but it would probably do. What little he'd learned of the IFS up to now was that they were significantly less paranoid than the HSA when it came to their own guys.
He continued climbing down for another pair of stair flights until he could see a section of the canyon that was shaded by an overarching rock outcrop and subsequently enlightened by floodlights.
He stopped and took a closer look.
There were a pair of prefab shads, calling them buildings would've been a stretch and a small green excavator. Next to it several guys in white hazmat suits were in the process of putting a large blue tarp over chunks of red rock which from his position looked to be assembled in a pattern very reminiscent of-
Vega froze in place at the realization and felt his heart stop in his chest.
He wasn't sure if the red shape was painted onto the stone or if that was just its natural color, but he immediately recognized the vaguely squid-like outlines that the stones were assembled in and knew what they were supposed to represent.
After all, it was kind of hard to forget the sight of the ship that had incinerated half his base back on Eden Prime and killed hundreds with a single shot oof one of its guns.
Suddenly it all came crashing down on him. The corpses, the screams, the smell of burned flesh and freshly welded metal, the enormous shadow it had casted over the entirety of the hillside-
"Hey! What are you doing down here? You're not supposed to be here, didn't they tell you that during the briefing?" one guy in a hazmat suit called after looking up from his task of fastening the tarp. Vega didn't respond. He was far too caught up in the memory of geth moving through the burning ruins of the base and shooting every survivor they came across and dragging the bodies away to be turned into those horrible, blue monstrosities. "Hey!" the hazmat guy called again, only this time around he was standing next to Vega, who was still utterly stuck in his memory. He might've been standing on June right now with two years separating him from the incident, but to him it certainly felt like he was back on Eden Prime and living through the invasion all over again. While he flashed through the images of his dying comrades, the hazmat guy had rushed up to him to investigate. In the process, he'd clearly recognized that something about Vega was off.
"Is everything alright with you-" he began before shaking Vega with his hands.
Vega suddenly slapped the hands away and shook his head.
"I thought I saw one of those things fly down here," he lied, presumably very unconvincingly before removing his helmet and taking a sip form his water flask. The fact that he was sweating bullets certainly helped with his story. Or at least he hoped it did. If it didn't he had fucked up pretty badly just now. "Guess it was just the heat playing tricks on me though. Sun's really getting to me."
Right. The Sun was the issue here, not Eden Prime. He was over that and the HSA.
The hazmat guy mustered him for a second.
"If you're seeing things, you should go to the medic," he replied, luckily sounding more annoyed than suspicious.
Vega wiped the sweat of his brow and used the opportunity to throw one final look at the small research camp and the now covered up mural.
What the fuck was a mural of that thing from Eden Prime doing all the way out here?
"Yeah, I think you're right, man," he responded to the concern with a friendly smile.
"That's still lieutenant for you, newbie."
Lieutenant?
Fuck.
And just like that the smile vanished.
"Sorry, Sir," Vega replied sternly. "Am I dismissed to go see medical?"
"You are," the hazmat guy replied. "We don't need heat casualties out here. Go and take care of yourself, trooper."
"Roger, Sir."
Two Hours Later, 7. April 2417 AD, Imir System, Korlus
Shepard watches as a distant smoke trail plummeted through the sky and crashed somewhere behind the heaps of scrap that made up most of the imminent surroundings of Okeer's base.
They'd been on Korlus for less than twenty minutes now and had only made the brief hike from their landing zone towards the outskirts of where Okeer had set up shop. In that time the N7 and her team had already observed several distant air engagements, been overflown by a pair of Blue Suns transports and been treated to the sight of a squadron of repainted, outdated turian frigates breaking through the clouds and setting itself into a holding pattern somewhere north of them and begun shelling said place indiscriminately.
Harper hadn't been overstating things when he'd claimed that the Blue Suns were coming for Korlus and Okeer with a vengeance.
Just as she climbed over a piece of cut metal, a distant explosion echoed through the sky and shook the ground underneath their feet. While it wasn't nearly close enough to hurt them, Shepard still felt the force of the blast and nearly lost her footing on the piece of salvage material.
"That sounds a lot like turian artillery," Callius muttered as the rest of the team followed her and the turian over the obstacle while more similar-sounding explosions began to set off. "It's a creeping barrage," the Blackwatch officer added. "Who exactly armed these guys?" while the question initially wasn't exactly directed at Garrus, the fact that he'd spent some time with the group made it natural for everyone to expect him to know the answer. Callius turned towards her fellow turian, who was still wearing his blue, slightly damaged C-SEC armor, and waited for him to jump across the piece of metal.
"Officially it's all from anonymous supporters or the black market," the detective replied before looking up to where the turian frigates were hovering. While they were old, they weren't ancient. From what Emily could tell, thirty years ago those ships would've still been flying under Hierarchy colors. That made it very unlikely for them to end up on the black market. "But I don't think I have to tell any of you that there's a lot of people in Council space who've got an interest in making sure that the Suns keep the Terminus in check," he went on as Shepard set her eyes on what Cerberus had identified as their objective.
It was a half-way broken down elcor merchant ship that Okeer had refurbished to serve as a fortified lab. Its naturally sturdy hull and spacious interior made it perfect to that end. "Human guns and human gear, human and turian ships, turian aircraft, turian hovercraft, the occasional volus bomber," Garrus listed. "I'm not a detective anymore but I can still identify the prime suppliers for you just by looking at that list," Shepard planted herself next to one of the dark green door that acted as the ship's entrances while Garrus let out a sigh and pressed himself to her right before shrugging. "In the interest of time let's just say that anyone with a Terminus problem likes to see it when the Blue Suns are winning and that no one's all too keen on asking too many questions about the exact logistics of their war machine. I mean, who cares about a few pieces of military surplus going missing if it keeps the slavers in check?" Shepard nodded to Leng, who then opened the door and spun inside.
"Besides, if you ask me, the gear's better of being used for this than it is gathering dust in some storage on Palaven." Given how he'd joined up with the Suns seemingly on a whim two years ago, Shepard wasn't very surprised to hear Garrus say that.
What she was however surprised by was to find four dead salarians in repainted Eclipse gear lying dead on the floor just behind the door. Their acid green blood was spattered across the white interior plating of the old elcor ship and with the exception of a spray of cobalt blue, turian blood smeared on the wall facing the way the salarians had been looking, there was no indication as to who had killed them.
"Looks like the Suns already here," she stated before looking at one of the orange and blue armored salarians. Unlike his companions, he wasn't wearing a helmet, and still seemed to breathe, albeit in jagged breaths. By the looks of the tight, powder-round inflicted shot grouping in his abdomen and the wounds to both of his legs, he wasn't going to be alive much longer. But while he was, she was ready to try and use the opportunity.
She kicked the gun out of his reach, scanned him for any hidden weapons, which she found none of, and then got to work.
"Leng, you cover me while I fix this guy up and see what he has to say. The rest of you set up a perimeter. If they look like they're with the Suns, don't shoot them unless they start shooting first," she ordered before kneeling down and applying a dosage of medigel to the injuries. It wouldn't make him better, but it might just stop him from bleeding out. "Are you still with us?" Emily asked while her fellow N7 leveled his gun at the merc's head just in case he decided to try something.
The salarian was slow to react or look up, but when he did, he practically jumped and banged his head against the wall of the merchant ship. When she was sure that she had his attention, Emily asked her questions.
"What happened here?"
He stammered something she didn't quite understand, then looked at Garrus and began to shout.
"Get that Suns scum away from me!"
If there had been any doubt that the Suns had done this, it was now gone.
"We're not going to hurt you-" Shepard began before picking up on something in the distance. It sounded like a mixture of human shouting and animalistic grunting followed by gunfire.
"Uhm. I really don't want to jinx us," Jack muttered, focused on the corner from which the noise was coming from. "But did that sound like a krogan to any of you?"
Shepard looked at the Blackwatch lieutenant on her squad, who only gave a brief nod.
"Yes, it did," the N7 muttered. Then she returned her attention to the injured salarian, suddenly being reminded of Virmire. "What exactly is Okeer doing here?"
The salarian stayed quiet, which promptly caused Leng to plant his foot on the injured leg of the merc. He let out a painfilled grunting sound right until Leng stopped pressing down.
"She asked you a question," the petty officer muttered wrathfully after the little reinforcement he'd given to the salarian, prompting the mercenary to glare at him. He gritted his teeth and narrowed his large eyes.
"Why don't you go and find out?" the salarian spat.
She knew Leng's temper when it came to mercs, so she knew that this was about to end badly before Leng ever made a move.
The N7 stopped pressing and lifted his foot, presumably to stomp down.
"Stand down, Petty Officer," she called before her fellow N7 could bring his foot down and cross the line towards prisoner abuse and war crime for good. Leng's armored boot froze instantly, stopping mere inches above the injured leg of the salarian. He might have a temper, but he wasn't one to disobey orders. Especially not when they came from her. Leng took a step back and looked at the injured salarian, his intention hidden by his polarized black visor and his subsequent silence. "Okay. Let's try this again. What is Okeer doing here?" she repeated.
The salarian cracked a smirk.
"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you," he forced himself to smirk, even if it looked like he was causing himself pain by doing it. "Now fuck off and let me bleed out in peace."
Before she could respond, another one of her teammates stepped in.
"Lovely. A merc with a spine," Garrus began before kneeling down next to the merc and turning his head towards Shepard. "Commander, if he doesn't want to talk, there's only one thing left for us to figure out."
"Which is?" Shepard replied.
"What exactly we are going to do with him," Garrus stated coldly. "We can hardly leave him here. I know his type. He's a prowler," he explained, clearly focused on the orange and blue armor the merc and his companions were clad in. To Shepard neither the name 'Prowler' nor the colored armor meant anything. Then again, she had been out cold for the last two years. "He'll shoot us in the back first chance he gets, unless of course, we shoot him first," he said with a shrug.
"We're not going to do that," Shepard replied quickly, realizing that 'that' side of Garrus had surfaced again.
"He's got a point, Em," Leng muttered over the squad intercom and outside of the salarian's earshot, causing Shepard to fold her arms and Garrus to shrug. "We can't leave him here and we can't take him with us. So we might have to consider using our operational freebie on this guy," Leng began.
"Get that idea out of your head right now. Both of you," Shepard stated flatly. Even if HSA special operations units could technically circumvent having to accept a surrender and refrain from taking care of their prisoners if their mission required them to, that technically certainly didn't include outright murdering their prisoners. It was more about leaving them to their own devices and taking away their means of fighting back. And while she had no doubt that there were N7 and ASOC teams who were very liberal with using that technicality, particularly when it came to batarians, she wasn't going to become one of them.
"You trust me, right, Shepard?" Garrus suddenly asked before turning his head to her.
"I do," the N7 replied. "Why?"
"Don't interfere," Garrus said before leaning in further to the salarian and suddenly clamping down his hand on the merc's injury the same way Leng had done just now. But whereas the N7 had only made the salarian uncomfortable, Garrus made him scream. He dug his fingers into the bullet wounds. The salarian let out a shout and despite her urge to protest, Shepard decided to trust that Garrus knew what he was doing and had a good reason for it. "Now you listen to me. The N7s might play by the rules, but I think both of us can tell that I'm a bit less by-the-book than they are," he threatened before digging the talons of his gauntlet deeper into the injury and holding the salarian in place with his other hand. "You've got two options now. You either tell us what Okeer hired you to protect," quicker than she could register, Garrus had stopped pressing down on the wound and started pushing a curved military talon against the salarian's stomach instead, "or you find out what happens if you cross me. And trust me, when I'm done with you, you'll be wishing for my friend to take over again."
As she watched the scene unfold and stared at Garrus doing his 'Archangel' business, she got an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Still, she continued to do what Garrus had asked; trust him.
"You have ten seconds to think about it," Garrus muttered. "Well, more like seven now that I'm still talking-"
The salarian's eyes locked on to Shepard, clearly expecting her to interfere.
"You can't let him do this. Make him stop," he protested weakly.
"He's not HSA. I can't make him do anything," she replied in a stoic tone, playing along with what she hoped was just an empty threat on Garrus' part. The salarian's eyes darted between her and Garrus and then widened as the turian threw his hand back to deliver the first stroke of his blade.
"He's cloning krogan!" he suddenly shouted, opening the flood gates and stopping the tip of Garrus' knife from connecting. "Okeer's cloning krogan! He wants to make the perfect soldier. Has been trying for some time now. But he keeps screwing it up. There's always something wrong with them. Sometimes they don't listen, sometimes he just doesn't like the way they look," he continued, his voice becoming faster and faster. "Either way, as soon as they're out of the tank, they go on a rampage. He hired us to clean up after them and make sure they don't destroy his base but lately he's become more reclusive. Said he was close to finishing his perfect soldier and told us to lock everything down in anticipation for the big test. Captain thinks he's lost it, but when I passed the lab earlier today, I saw what he cooked up. Biggest krogan I've ever seen. If that thing got out during the attack it won't matter what your friend does to me because we're all gonna die anyway-"
The salarian was interrupted by the sound of clapping coming from somewhere up ahead. Instantly Shepard and her team aimed their guns at the corner that until now had only been covered by Callius.
"God damn, Archangel. You made that guy sing fast. Omega really taught you a thing or two after all," a human voice called over the clapping before a pair of blue-armored hands appeared from around the corner.
"Identify yourself!" Shepard ordered in return. She'd stepped away from the salarian and was now focused on this new arrival.
"Don't shoot. I'm friendly," the voice said before a man in a beaten set of Blue Suns armor stepped out from the corner. While his hands weren't carrying a weapon, an old SR-7 bullpup rifle was slung over his shoulder and an equally old SIS-7 pistol was holstered by his left leg. If not for his slightly more up-to-date armor, he would've looked like an HSA soldier straight from the post-Fringe Wars years. The man took a few more steps forward, which allowed Shepard to see that the right side of his otherwise blue and white helmet had at one point obviously been shattered. By the looks of it, it had subsequently been fixed with onyx-black armor plating very reminiscent of the alloy that N7 armor was made of. Additionally the collars of his chest piece seemed to be marked with golden, sun-shaped orbs.
Garrus stepped back from the injured salarian, walked up next to Shepard and sheathed his knife.
"Is that you, Massani?" the turian asked cautiously before another pair of Blue Suns members, one human and one batariain, turned the corner behind him. At the mention of the name Massani, Shepard's mind began to ratter.
Wasn't that the name of the guy who ran the whole Blue Suns thing?
"In the flesh," the man replied before clearly looking at her and staring at her visor as if he was trying to make eye contact. "Didn't realise you were a fucking necromancer. Vakarian," he nudged his head at Shepard and stared down the barrel of her Valkyrie. "Ain't she supposed to be six feet under?"
"I got better," Shepard corrected before lowering her weapon. "Are you friends with this guy, Garrus?" she asked over the squad intercom.
"More like associates. But yes, I know him. Zaeed Massani. He's a big shot with the Suns. Has been with them since day one," the turian replied. To her he sounded almost impressed. Garrus wiped the green blood on his hand off on the white wall of the merchant ship and took several steps towards the Blue Suns member. "Don't get me wrong, Massani. It's great to run into you again. But what exactly is a field commander doing on Korlus?"
"I could ask you the same thing about you and your Spectre-pal, Vakarian. Korlus ain't exactly the Citdael either" Massani muttered. "If you must know, I'm here to settle scores," he went on before folding his hands in front of his abdomen and tapping his thumbs together. Then he leaned to the left so he could look at their captive. "Considering what you asked that scumbag over there, I take it you're here for Okeer, aren't you?"
"Yes," Garrus replied with a nod. "And judging by your relaxed attitude, you already beat us to him, didn't you?"
"Damn right I did," the Blue Suns commander replied with a nod of his own. "So. I got good news for you and bad ones. Which one do you wanna hear first?"
"You know me, Massani. Bad news first. They feed into my cynicism."
"Fair enough," Massani shrugged casually. "If you came here for Okeer, I'm afraid you're gonna leave empty-handed. I killed the fucker five minutes ago. Clean headshot straight through the cranial plate. Much better than a monster like him deserved, but it got the job done," as he explained what had happened to the krogan war criminal, another pair of Blue Suns passed the corner. This time it was a human and a turian. They were pushing a levitating coffin-like tube in front of them and quickly vanished beyond the next corner, only throwing a glance at Garrus in the process. Her curiosity overshadowed the realization that she was surprisingly unconcerned by the fact that she'd just been told that her key objective on this mission, Okeer, was deceased.
"What's in the tube your men were carrying?" she asked.
"That would be Okeer's perfect krogan," Massani said. "Figured since he's got no use for it now, we might as well make the best of it. If it's as good as he said it is, it'll be a hell of an asset to the Suns. If it's stupid and attacks us, we'll use it for target practice and get some fun out of it that way," the Blue Suns merc stated. Now he was looking at Garrus again. "You want to ask more questions, or you want the good news now?"
"Good news," the turian said briefly.
"Okeer didn't put up a fight. Was too scared of damaging his precious little krogan. While that made things a bit boring for us, it means that his entire lab's still intact. If you want his terminals and his data drives, you can have 'em. That shit ain't what we came here for so I'm not particularly attached to it."
Even if she was still surprisingly unbothered by not being able to hear it from Okeer himself, that was kind of a relief. She'd get what Cerberus wanted, pieces of Okeer's knowledge, and she'd get it without having to aid and shelter a war criminal.
From her point of view, that was about as ideal of an outcome as this mission could've had.
"You really expect me to believe that you only came to Korlus to kill Okeer?" Garrus retorted cautiously. "Come on, Massani, you're petty. But you're not 'invade a planet to kill one person'-levels of petty. What's your angle here?"
"My angle here is that I expect you not to look a gifted horse in the mouth, Archangel," Massani replied before pointing his finger at Garrus' chest armor. Suddenly his tone shifted and tension cut through the air. "I expect you to go in there, take the data and stop asking questions that no longer concern you," he said, poking Garrus with every point he was making. The two stared at each other for a moment and then Massani went on. "Your business of asking why the Suns do certain things ended when you got some of my best and most loyal men blown up and walked away as the sole survivor. Kuril and the others wanted your head after what happened on omega. But I gave you the benefit of doubt. That's why you're still breathing right now. You'd do well to remember that before you try to pry about Suns business in the future."
Considering what she and Garrus had talked about and how the turian felt about his team, Shepard expected Garrus to explode then and there. But much to the N7s surprise, the former C-SEC detective and former Blue Suns member replied remarkably restrained, at least by the standard of Archangel.
"And you and the others would do well to remember what happens to people who threatened me," Garrus retorted. "I like you and your crew, Massani. The Suns do good work out here," Garrus' voice became cold. "But don't push me. You know I won't hesitate, no matter who my sights are zeroed in on."
The stare-off between the current and the former Blue Suns members lasted for another moment, which felt much more like minutes when Shepard realized that Leng and Callius shared a nod and adjusted themselves so that they had an open field of fire and remembered that she had failed to check if the HSA's rules of engagement still actually considered the Suns to be friendlies until proven otherwise.
Her concerns vanished when Massani let out a hearty laugh and retracted his hand from Garrus' chest.
"Hah! Good one!" he exclaimed before looking at the injured merc and pointing behind himself. Garrus didn't seem to take it as jokingly as him though. He was not laughing and his hand was still inched dangerously close to his Carnifex pistol. "Lab's that way, the lads standing guard there already know you're coming," Massani went on before patting Garrus on the shoulder. "You won't have to worry about the Prowler slug over here either. I'll take him of your hands. There's a nice brig ship waiting for him back with our fleet."
"Fuck you," the salarian said before spitting acid green blood on the floor."
"Save the dirty talk for your cellmates, princess," Massani replied before moving through their formation and lifting the salarian to his feet. Then he looked at Shepard. "You wanna get Okeer's data or not?"
She nodded and threw a glance at the salarian.
"He's all yours," she said. Then she gave the order for her team to fall out the way that the Blue Suns operative had pointed. They moved through the ship in silence and ignored the sporadic lone gun shots going off in the elcor vessel. There was after all still a battle going on.
Only when she set foot on the bridge that let to Okeer's lab, which happened to overlook the cargo bay of the old merchant ship and saw several rows of dead, cuffed mercenaries who'd clearly faced a firing squad did she stop and think about her decision and one of the not-so-distant gunshots from earlier.
"Garrus, do the Blue Suns have prison ships?" she asked, the idea that she'd handed someone over only to be shot lingering over her like a dreadful shadow.
The turian was silent for a few seconds.
"They do," he began. But before she could be relieved by the statement, he went on. "But Zaeed and his legionnaires aren't exactly known for using them," he moved past her, seemingly unconcerned.
"You knew-" she muttered.
"I did. But what would you have done? Tried to stop Zaeed? That only would've gotten good people on both sides killed," he paused in front of the pair of Blue Suns guards who were blissfully unaware of what they were talking about right now. "Here's what I learned while working with the Suns. The best thing you can do is to look away when they start breaking the rules," he looked up and down the guards in front of him. "There's a reason why guys like them and me ended up as vigilantes instead of becoming a hero like you. And it's not because we do things the clean way."
For a second Shepard was shocked and watched him walk into the lab after sharing a respectful nod with the two Blue Suns guards. Whenever she thought he was back to being the Garrus she knew, Archangel reeled up again to show his ugly face and proved her wrong with yet another showcasing of brutality.
It was frightening and disappointing and a part of her wondered if there was a way to salvage the Garrus Vakarian she'd met two years ago or if he was really gone for good.
But after that second passed, Emily decided that she wasn't one to abandon her friends and set her mind on not letting Garrus remain in whatever dark hole he'd climbed into.
She'd drag him out, even if he tried his best to stop her.
Archangel had to go.
For Garrus' sake.
Codex: HSAMC Biotic Assault Regiment
'We set the bar.'
The Biotic Assault Regiment (BAR), similarly to the Turian Cabal Corps that it was designed after and, at least for the first parts of its history partially trained b ( thus earning itself the rather unoriginal nickname of 'Human Cabal Corps') is a unit within the HSA Marine Corps made up entirely of biotically-gifted soldiers. The BAR draws its recruits from graduates of Grissom Academy, the first and up to date only institution focused on training human biotics.
The marines that make up the BAR are typically career soldiers who first began training around the age of twelve and are 'amped' at the same age as part of the procedure meant to give them control over their powers and contain their destructive potential.
This surgery, alongside the attendance at Grissom Academy and the partaking in basic classes on biotic control is required of all registered human biotics, no matter if they wish to join the military training program or not. From a purely legal point of view, this stands in direct violation of several core civil rights, including the right to self-determination that forms one of the decisive points in the HSA's infringement of basic rights of biotics was made possible by the 'Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training Bill', which was only marginally approved by the Arcturus Parliament in 2390 AD and was replaced by the 'Biotic Study, Ascension and Military Application Program', or short, the 'Ascension Program' in 2401 AD.
Due to the rarity of human biotics, the BAR is not deployed as one cohesive unit but rather split apart in companies or platoons which are then attached to regular marine or, in rare times, army units.
This rarity combined with the high investment the HSA has made into these individuals, results in the mandatory term of service within the BAR, as with all Grissom graduates, being at least twelve years from the date of graduation.
Upon the completion of this period of service, reenlistment is highly encouraged by the HSA.
It should be noted that, contrary to the general believe, not every biotic Grissom graduate has to serve in the biotic shock troops of the HSAMC. Although the vast majority chose to do so, a fraction of the graduates of Grissom Academy military classes never enter the ranks of the BAR. They instead join other branches of the HSAAF. According to Grissom Academy these divergences are usually the result of personal preference, career opportunities offered upon graduation, a failure to pass the BARs selection process or disciplinary issues. While no hard numbers are published for strategic and security reasons, the continued interest in biotically-gifted individuals has led to Grissom Academy, similarly to other military academies, publishing the yearly 'distribution' of its graduation classes.
As of 2417 AD, this distribution painted the following picture on the state and deployment of human biotics.
HSAMC Biotic Assault Regiment (71 Percent)
HSAMC Miscellaneous Occupations (10 Percent)
HASA (7 Percent)
Citadel Security Exchange Program (4 Percent)
HSAN (4 Percent)
HSAIS (2 Percent)
Other Exchange Programs with biotic Citadel Forces (2 Percent)
Although the size of the military graduation classes themselves continue to be classified, it should be noted that the HSA claims that the size of current classes under the Ascension Program have, in comparison to the time of the BAaT (referred to as the first and second generation of human biotics) increased exponentially. This increase in numbers is attributed to the better detection and understanding of human biotics and expected to grow exponentially with the inauguration of the classes of and after the year 2420 AD. The reasoning behind this expectation is that those who would be inaugurated with the beginning of 2420 AD or in the following years are the children born during or in the wake of the Skyllian Blitz, which saw several large Eezo spills over densely inhabited planets.
A/N:
So let me get one thing straight out of the way.
I might as well have called this chapter "The Foreshadowing of the Trouble".
Because that's all this is.
A chapter full of foreshadowign things we already suspected.
Morneau will be in trouble.
The geth we've been seeing are the harbingers (no pun intended) of SERIOUS trouble.
Vega and the IFS are digging up a WORLD of trouble.
And Garrus is causing himself a ton of trouble due to goign too far of the deep end (which I assume you suspect will be kind of sorted out once his SV Loyalty Mission on Illium occurs. So don't worry, we won't have to deal with edgelord garrus forever.)
To get one thing right out of the way (and adress something I doubt many of you saw coming; namely Grunt NOT ending up on the squad)
Obviously Grunt won't end up being target practice.
Zaeed is going to fill in for his Shepard role and by the next time we see him (which WILL happen in SV:ME3) ... we'll have a Zaeed-raised, SV-Blue Suns-socialized Grunt without a Shepard to reel him back in.
...yeah I'll leave it up to you if that's a good thing or not.
... it's certainly going to be FUN though. :)
Other than that... I don't have a lot to say, other than that we're getting surprisingly close the finale of the Shadow Broker arc. Morneau didn't show up in this chapter, at least not directly, but if everything goes like I plan (which is rarely the case) ... he'll be back next time and from there on out... things are going to slowly start go sideways right until becoming a complete shitshow a few chapters down the line.
Aganian and the Broker aren'T stupid, my dudes.
... but then again, neither is our (beloved) paragade background deuteragonist
So get ready for some good old SV-spy thriller content. I've got some very interesting set pieces planned out for that arc finale.
However until then, I just want you to review and tell me what you think about the chapter.
We took a longer break this time around (which is largely down to me entering the last 120 days of police academy and being back in 'school' for one last theoretical semester.) But I hope that you still have the general plot and what's happenign right now in mind.
For the record we're at 726 reviews, 1131 favorites and 1228 follows.
See you around next time :)
