Chapter 101. Twelve Plus One


One Day Later, 2158 CE, Menae, Installation 237

Jondum Bau considered himself methodical, reasonably intelligent and, more than anything, a fan of puzzles.

When he was presented with a problem that needed solving, he didn't perceive it as a closed-off issue. Instead, he took it apart into manageable pieces, looked at each piece individually and then assembled a solution for his problems with the pieces he was handed. It was a system that he had refined over the years and it had yet to fail him.

Because of its proven success, Bau had also employed this system when the Council had led him in on the troubling reality that bits and pieces of the Reaper 'Sovereign' had vanished. He had begun his investigation by looking at all the pieces: Arterius' fall to indoctrination, the events leading up to Virmire, the Battle on the Citadel, the cleanup in its aftermath, the exact descriptions and timelines of the pieces that had gone missing. It had been a tedious process but eventually, all these little cogs had led Alenko and him to a warehouse in New Canton. There, they had hoped to solve the riddle of the missing Reaper tech, or at least to find a new angle from which they could approach it.

But instead of receiving answers, they had stumbled into a Collector assault, lost a member of the HSA's Reaper task force and stumbled upon someone who he believed to be a victim of indoctrination. While that was already bad enough for one op, they had subsequently come face-to-melting-colonist-face with the Harbinger, the intelligence behind the Reapers' game. Although he had already suspected that the Collectors' appearance on New Canton was supposed to destroy evidence prior to the horror show the Harbinger had delivered – it was too coincidental that they just happened to annihilate their one clue just before they could follow up on it - the encounter had convinced him: They had been on the right trail and in response to their success, the Harbinger had taken drastic measures.

To make matters even worse – because stumbling into a ground war prior to the violent disassembly of his methodical approach clearly hadn't been bad enough - said encounter had left his trainee with a vision in his head that he had immediately gone off to chase after, effectively leaving Bau by his lonesome.

He liked puzzles.

But this one was getting on his nerves.

He stared at the various holographic displays in front of him that separated him from the black walls of his room in the turian military base and read the words written on them.

Garret Bryson.

Derek Hadley.

Task Force Aurora.

Hahne-Kedar.

Sovereign.

Harbinger.

Collectors.

They were all connected to one another and he had no trouble putting them in the correct order:

First there had been Sovereign's destruction and the collection of his debris: headed among others by Garret Bryson and the rest of Task Force Aurora. Subsequently, sixty-two of the pieces had gone missing – likely with the help of the indoctrinated Derek Hadley – and a trail to New Canton had been established.

This point was where the first major question popped up and where he had created a fork for the two possibilities.

Had Hadley gotten himself indoctrinated by accident, then stolen the pieces on the orders of the Reapers to intentionally spread out the number of indoctrinated agents and killed Bryson as a last order? Or had he intentionally stolen the pieces for someone other than the Reapers, gotten himself indoctrinated in the process – which would make the attack on Bryson an opportunistic move on the Reapers' part - and there was a third-party at work who thanks to Hadley was now in possession of pieces of technology that could accidentally spread out the Reapers' reach and create more opportunities for the Harbinger?

Bau blinked long and glanced at the word 'Collectors'.

Their actions spoke against what he was calling his 'planned action' hypothesis.

Next he moved his eyes towards Hadley.

The man had been a prodigy and an expert on his field.

Could he really have gotten himself indoctrinated due to a foolish breach of the very safety measures he had helped design?

Or was it more likely that his carelessness had been forced by the illegality of his actions?

If the latter was the case, it supported what Bau was calling the theory of an opportunistic Harbinger.

The grey salarian placed his hand in front of his mouth and hunched forward.

If he considered that Hadley had acted for a third-party that was now in possession of what was essentially a WMD with the capability of creating perfect sleeper agents, he'd have to open another fork – no - begin an entirely new puzzle.

This investigation was taking on a new dimension altogether.

He'd need to convey with the C-SEC team working on this and he'd also need to inform Councilor Valern.

If this branched out even further, he would need extra hands-

The door of Bau's locked quarter slit open with a hiss and in an instant, the Spectre had shut off the displays, pulled his sidearm and leveled it at the figure standing in the doorframe.

"No need to be alarmed. Just me," the fiery-red salarian said before waving his hand in a greeting motion.

"Door locked for reason, Janon," Bau responded before lowering his gun and removing the signal technician from his sights. "Nearly shot you."

His long-time acquaintance folded his arms and only offered a shrug.

"Said you needed to speak to me, no?" the other salarian said before inviting himself in and sitting down on the turian-made bed. Unlike when he spoke to non-salarians and took care to form full and slow sentences, Janon spoke to Bau like anyone would to a proper STG agents. Fast and chopped off; just like Bau had taught him.

Bau looked at him for a second.

The story of how they had met was in equal parts strange as it was suspicious.

It had been about thirteen years ago, back in the closing years of Bau's STG career.

He'd already been a distinguished – albeit because of his heritage underappreciated - field operative back then and been given a mission of utmost importance. The heiress of an influential Dalatrass had been abducted and unless the Union would pay a hefty sum – which it never did – she would have been executed in a fortnight. The only clue to her whereabouts had been a ransom demand that had been bounced through a myriad of comm buoys. It had been virtually untraceable and despite the best efforts of STG, not one signal specialist had been able to figure out the exact origin of the ransom demand. It had seemed so unlikely that they'd recover the heiress, that STG had been about ready to call it off by the time Bau had been brought in.

Since he was not one to quit easily but also recognized the limitations of STGs surveillance network, Bau had taken a third alternative and used the opportunity to combine this time-sensitive mission with another long-term investigation of his – the hunt for the runner of a notorious extortion scheme who earned his living wage by scamming Extranet users and holding their personalized data hostage.

In his mind, the best person to track down the origin of a heavily encrypted message was a person who made a living by sending similar requests. Hence he had flown out to Omega, broken down the blackmailer's door – who had turned out to be none other than Janon – and offered a simple choice. Help with the matter of the abducted heiress and continue to work for Bau in exchange for a pardon or face a life sentence in a Union working camp for over five hundred thousand cases of identity theft and extortion.

Naturally, Janon had chosen the former, proved his talents as a 'freelance signal specialist' (a term they had come up with to describe his role of being both an informant of the criminal underworld and a hacker-for hire) and turned himself into a useful ally for Bau to call upon whenever he needed someone to break into something or track something down.

While the few agents who knew of Janon's true origins were quick to point out how strange it was that the salarian had made short work of an encryption not even STG had been able to break into, Bau hadn't heeded their paranoid-fueled demands to eliminate the salarian as soon as the heiress was secure. Instead of listening to them say 'he was in on it' and shooting Janon in the back of the head, he had put the other salarian under the microscope in a grueling long verification process. At the end, he had determined with complete certainty, that Janon was in fact nothing but a very talented signal technician with a habit of extorting a few million idiots who didn't read the terms and conditions of his software clones every now and again.

From there on out, a wonderful partnership had blossomed and Janon had become Bau's go-to-person whenever he needed a signal decrypted or traced. In exchange for those services, Bau had continuously listened to Janon's outdated believes and religious ramblings, and – much to his surprise- slowly but surely come to understand why he held on to the old faith.

While he wouldn't go as far as describing himself as a devout wanderer or something along those lines, Bau had definitely picked up on a few philosophical points of view that others in the Union didn't support. And while the people in charge would of course never say that to his face, Bau knew that if he hadn't adopted these views as a Spectre, he'd no longer be a distinguished field operative, let alone work for STG's top echelon or have top-level clearance.

After all, subscribing to what some called a 'seditious' and 'archaic' religion tended to have that effect.

Despite the drawbacks, Bau still felt like becoming slightly more religious in return for hard labor capable of breaking entire nations was an admittedly one-sided agreement. If the roles were reversed, he'd certainly feel undervalued. But if the other salarian was bothered by it, he had never mentioned it. Personally, Bau had always blamed Janon's lack of asking for more compensation on his believes. The Wheel of Life did after all preach the importance of diligent and humble work and Janon was nothing if not diligent and humble.

So naturally, when asked if Bau knew anyone who could help with 'strange signal towers from batarian space', Janon had been his immediate recommendation.

"'Speak to you' not synonym for 'break my door lock'," Bau retorted. "Besides, already under scrutiny as things are. Can hardly afford to get caught forcing your way into Spectre quarters," Janon, ever the loyal acquaintance, had told Bau about his little run in with Operative Lawson as soon as it had occurred. The human operation officer had also placed the salarian under the microscope. But that wasn't the reason why Bau had asked him here. Neither was his actual talent for signal detection.

This time around, he was only interested in what Janon heard the people around him say when he worked with them and to fill in the blanks for Bau.

Despite being asked to recommend people for this task-force, her wasn't actually a part of it or the larger SLD structure surrounding it. As such, he was out-of-the-loop regarding everything that didn't get mentioned in the briefings he received.

And since Bau hated nothing more than being out of the loop…

"Heard of progress regarding towers. Believe team left for a new mission recently. Heard anything about that?"

"Nothing more than rumors. Not part of operational element, remember?" While Janon's outward appearance might leads some to believe that he had at one point or another been part of what you could call an operational element, most of the rugged and hardened appearance was simply the result of living on Omega for most of his life without being able to defend himself properly. Until Bau had taken pity on him and taught him, Janon hadn't even been able to properly shoot a gun, let alone hit anything.

"Rumors always hold some truth," Bau responded. "What did you hear?"

"Mission concerns a spire still under construction, outside of Hegemony space, believed to be mostly unguarded."

"Objectives?"

"Heard nothing. Can only assume."

"Assume."

"Likely further surveillance and in-depth scans. Possibly recovery of parts for study if General Kryik feels brave."

Nihlus Kryik.

That name had floated around Bau's eyes plenty of times in the investigation. The turian Strategic Logistics Division that maintained this base had played a large role in the collection of Sovereign's destroyed pieces and the subsequent cataloging and incineration of said pieces alongside Task Force Aurora.

"Have had much interaction with him yet?"

"With Kryik? No. Why?"

"Personal interest," Bau lied quickly. He trusted Janon – even to the degree where he wouldn't fault the salarian for breaking into his quarters – but he wasn't quite ready to disclose that to him no one, even a turian general, was not beyond suspicion.

"Find his rise through the ranks rather inspiring," he went on, if only to add more substance to his lie. "Kryik is bare-faced, Terminus-born child of criminal mercs. Perfect recipient for social pariah. Poverty and death of family members make him enlist as an auxiliary because lack of citizenship means he's not eligible for proper service, faces discrimination, hardship, war, nearly dies on Virmire, still ends up as a general with direct line to the Primarch of Palaven," Bau blinked. "Would make for awfully good novella, no?"

Janon responded with a shrug. "General Kryik simply proof that roots do no defy course of life. No one born extraordinarily good or bad, everyone product of own choices and own actions," that was one of the tenets of the Wheel of Life that Bau had picked up as well. Ironically, it was also one of the key reasons why the Breaking of the Wheel had happened. Unsurprisingly, a ruling class that based its right to governance on the very idea that they were born with the blood-right to rule didn't like philosophies that promoted ideas of equality. "Find it funny that you would ask me about Kryik while clearly knowing more about him than me," Janon went on.

"Referring to what?"

"Everything beside auxiliary career," Janon reasoned. "Didn't even know he was born bare-faced."

Bau widened his eyes.

"But crooked tattoos clearly indicate self-application," he offered. The mishap on Kyrik's face was the most obvious sign out of all of them. No turian would ever be caught with crooked facial markings, especially not if they were from Oma Ker.

"Figured tattoo artist had shaky hands from one too many close calls in battle. You fought with them. Should know their type and their missions. Told me yourself, can't throw stone on Oma Ker without hitting shell-shocked veteran," Janon offered in return to which Bau could only agree before returning to the matter at hand.

"Take it you can't offer any insights then?"

"Other than his clearly novella-worthy life story? No," Janon said before his omni-tool flashed up on his hand. "Require anything else from me?"

Bau mentally rearranged the mirrored image of what Janon was looking at and shook his head.

"No. Was just trying to satisfy curiosity. Free to go enjoy your Vaelo game," the Spectre offered with a friendly smile. That was Janon's other hobby. In addition to being passionate about signaling and extorting people, the red salarian really enjoyed the board game after one of which's pieces he was named – the second of the lowest, Janon, the soldier. According to Janon, that could be attributed to his neglectful and uncreative parents running out of names shortly before casting him out to Omega to be able to afford feeding his 'more promising' siblings.

"Much appreciated. This one will be good one," Janon commented with a smirk before turning away. Him being distracted came in handy too since Bau still had work to do regarding the slight matter of a third-party armed with Reaper-tech. And similarly to not wanting Janon to know that even turian generals were suspect, Bau also had no intention of revealing to his old friend that the galaxy might very well already be littered with sleeping agents just yet.

Those were worries he need not to have.

At least not now.


Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Pranas System, Sur'Kesh, Duchy of Raeka

Gaining the trust of the circle of dissidents Kirrahe was now embedded in had taken the better part of a month, the participation in several criminal acts against local security personal and three nights of heavy drinking in which they had not-so-subtly interrogated him. But here he was, within the heart of their attempted rebellion from which they were supporting the unrest in Xeltez: the backroom of a shop selling cleaning utensils and harmless chemical composites.

Needless to say, Kirrahe had expected something else when rumors had told him that the unrests were being supported by official sources within Xeltez' neighboring duchy.

The same could be said about the people he had encountered.

Instead of finding seasoned insurgents practiced in underhanded methods and experienced in terroristic acts like the rumors had promised him or meeting with people who could reasonably be believed to be indoctrinated like Valern had feared, he was sitting among disgruntled businessowners who weren't doing much more than providing funds for the uprising from their own pockets.

Their motivation as also much simpler than trying to destabilize the Union.

They were angry because they had relatives in Xeltez who had ended up on the bad end of a baton wielded by local security personal sworn to the ruling Dalatrass. That was it. No larger goals of toppling the Union, no grand strategy to soften Sur'Kesh for a Reaper plot… just disgruntled and angry folk on the low end of the social hierarchy who were voicing ideas well in line with the general trend of egalitarianism and equalism commonly found in this layer of society. There was the odd comment about toppling the ruling nobility here and the unserious call to action there with a few odd old believes sprinkled in now and again. But all in all, it was strangely mundane, not at all what he had feared when Valern had sent him here and definitely not anything would concern STG.

They weren't a secret police after all.

Kirrahe narrowed his eyes while listening to the talk of Rojah, the unofficial ringleader of this debate club.

All this effort for nothing.

While it should have made him relieved, it instead turned him suspicious. The divide between what he had expected to find and what he had really found was too large.

The whole ordeal really was as clean-cut and obvious as it had seemed on day one. Absolutely nothing indicated even the hint of Reaper involvement.

He had known Valern long.

While the salarian might have been out of practice because of his position as Councilor, Kirrahe refused to believe that Valern would make mistakes like this and misjudge a situation his badly.

That in turn left only one possibility.

The seasoned STG officer rose from his seat in the middle of Rojah's speech. Confused by the act, the salarian addressed him by his false name.

"Where are you going, Dinmar?"

Kirrahe's only response was a long blink and a brief 'to get air'. Then he was out of the door and standing outside the cleaning shop, which was located on the bazar layer of the jungle-city and as such offered a nice view of the other surrounding pyramid-like structures that made up the border territories of the Duchy of Raeka's. On the horizon, Xeltaz was still close enough that he could see the bridges that allowed passage of the stream that had divided the fiefdom from the duchy for the last ten centuries and if the bright blips in the sky were any indication, the air surveillance that the regional governance of Xeltaz had put in place to quell the unrests had once more been increased.

He thought back to his arrival on Sur'Kesh and the talks with Valern and weighed it against where he had ended up. He could only come up with one conclusion.

All of this was wrong.

His mission, his information, his target, Valern's words – it was all tainted by deceit.

He was ready to believe that he was here because Valern needed him to monitor the situation.

But everything else was a lie.

Only question now was why.

Why would Valern -

"Caught enough air yet?" a voice behind Kirrahe interrupted. Its owner, a yellowish salarian who belonged to Rojah's group, stepped past the STG officer and leaned against the railing of their layer, putting himself squarely into the cone of light of the street lantern as if he wanted Kirrahe to focus on him.

It worked.

Besides his somewhat rarer skin-color- most salarians ranged from brown to red and unscaly or green to grey and scaly only few landed in the bluish-teal or yellow spectrum - the salarian was distinctively unremarkable. He wore dockworkers clothing in earthly colors and lacked any defining features like clan tattoos or ornate markings. The only thing he seemed to carry that was of any note was the omni-tool attached to his belt and the gloves stuffed into one of his pockets.

"Not quite. I still feel a bit light-headed," Kirrahe responded, taking care not to slip into his usual STG-manner of talking. The chopped off sentences and rapid pace would easily expose him as a Union operative.

"Natural reaction to open questions and fears of deceit," the salarian muttered in a very STG-reminiscent manner, then he reached into his pocket and flipped Kirrahe a plastic chip that produced a hologram as soon as he instinctively caught it. He glanced at the number in front of him and his eyes widened.

That was his service number.

How-

"Judging from look, I believe you understand what this means," the salarian said before hoping onto the railing.

Kirrahe had been on this job for most of his life. Successfully too.

As such it was rare for him to find himself at a complete loss.

"How did- Where-" the STG agent gained his composure just in time to hear the low humming of an Eezo engine. "Who are you?"

"Someone who's been watching with great interest," the salarian offered while an unmanned one-seated floating bike appeared from below. Judging by the paintjob, it looked like it belonged to the security forces of Raeka and it was clearly the yellow salarian's chosen getaway vehicle.

Kirrahe cursed the fact that he had to attend these meetings unarmed. Whoever was standing in front of him needed to be detained immediately. As if the yellow salarian knew that Kirrahe didn't represent a threat to him, he turned his back to him and looked at the jungle in front of him with a satisfied smirk as if this was all just a huge prank to him. "Figure you might be salvageable yet. Turn card, please."

Since he was still at a loss what was going on, Kirrahe complied. In turn, the hologram of his service number vanished and an old symbol representing a piece of the game Vaelo popped up. It was an array of four circles that connected to each other in a poor man's optical illusion. As far as the hierarchy of the pieces went, this was the king of the poor pieces. Finat; the jester.

"What does this mean?" Kirrahe asked while considering if he could grab the stranger somehow. His back was still turned, so if could only get into a better position… he started adjusting himself slowly and the salarian showed no reaction. He seemed caught up in the landscape in front of him, Good now all he needed to do was-

In a flash, Kirrahe lunged towards the yellow salarian and in an equally fast instant, the yellow stranger escaped Kirrahe's reach with a somersault toward the bike hovering a good distance away from the ledge. It was a needlessly risky move that easily could've killed him, but instead of falling to his death, the salarian landed on the bike's handles with a one-handed handstand and gracefully lowered himself towards the seat. Not even a trained gymnast or practiced acrobat could've executed it better and for a second, it seemed like this stranger was defying the laws of physics themselves.

Before Kirrahe could even consider jumping after him – which he honestly doubted he could, the salarian gave the handles a swirl to the left and moved away from the wall. All the while, he cracked a knowing and cocky smile as if to tell Kirrahe 'yes, I really just did that.'

"Consider it an introduction," he offered with a wave of his hand that caused the plastic chip to snap out of Kirrahe's grip and back into the extended hand of the salarian with the hint of a purple flare.

A biotic member of his people?

So much for unremarkable.

At least it explained the gravity-defying display of acrobatics.

The salarian closed his hands around the disk and his smirk extended even further.

"Introduction to whom?" Kirrahe demanded.

"Patience is virtue. Answers will come in time. All in due time."

The green STG officer narrowed his eyes and stepped to the railing.

He wouldn't be played like this.

"Who do you work for?" he asked as he climbed up and found his footing.

He could make it.

It was far but he could definitely somehow-

In response to Kirrahe's new position, the salarian swirled back even further to a distance he most certainly wouldn't manage to leap and then opened up a timer on his omni-tool. He reacted with a shocked expression towards the digits.

"Oh no. Afraid I have another appointment to attend," he responded. "Suggest you return back to Rojah's group and continue listening. Public speaking skills of members only adequate," he said with a shrug before closing the timer and pointing at Kirrahe, "but overall logic sound. Good talking points. Good morals. Finger food provided for attendees excellent as well. Rojah could open excellent arthropod-kitchen if cleaning business and politics don't work out for him. Suggest you try fried jungle-crawlers. Outer shell melts in your mouth. So long, Major Kirrahe," Before Kirrahe could respond, the yellow salarian hit the acceleration paddle on the bike and disappeared into the night at what was a near suicidal speed in urban conditions.

Apparently, he would very well be played like this.

He glanced down the pyramid where a long fall was waiting for him and then climbed down from the railing. Once his feet were back on solid ground, he looked back at the store they'd both come from. For a second he thought about reporting back to Valern and demanding answers.

But then he got the distinct feeling that he still had to find some answers on his own. For starters if anyone inside knew anything about the yellow salarian. It was certainly the first time Kirrahe had ever talked to him, but he had to have gotten inside somehow, no?

Hence he went back in and continued to listen to Rojah talking about the social injustice of the Salarian Union, the dalatrasses' inherent fallibility and the answers which the long dead Wheel religion could provide them with. All in all, it costed him the entirety of his evening and in the end the only thing he could learn about the stranger was that neither Rojah nor any of the other dissidents had the hint of a clue of who he was.

Worrying indeed.


One Day Later, 2158 CE, Citadel, Office of Councilor Valern

Valern put down the tablet containing C-SEC's daily security report detailing both a 'gang-related event with possible diplomatic implications' in the vicinity of the HSA Presidium dock just around the corner and a 'violent incident of yet unknown nature' by the Final Wave headquarters located just outside his view and shook his head. Either C-SEC was willfully ignorant or genuinely incapable of seeing what had occurred under their noses. Just by reading over this, he had an immediate and accurate assessment.

Whatever had happened to the first unspoken – and most broken - rule of clandestine work on the Citadel?

While someone else in his position might've immediately told C-SEC what had happened, Valern knew that there were far more pressing issues and as such wasn't feeling like making this more of an issue than it had to be.

Speaking of.

With the 'urgent' report now viewed, Valern could return to the problem he'd been working on earlier: the continued absence of sixty-two pieces of highly dangerous Reaper technology. He had previously been reading Agent Bau's update, which had detailed how the Spectre was becoming more convinced that the missing pieces weren't the work of an indoctrinated agent at all – or at least not one who had initially taken action because of already being indoctrinated – but rather an individual who had for reasons up to now unknown decided to transfer selected pieces back to an as-of-now unidentified third-party. This being Jondum Bau, the Spectre had already found a fitting name for this hypothesis: the 'theory of the opportunistic Harbinger'. While it obviously painted the Harbinger as less of an all-knowing, all-planning entity and somewhat quelled the worries that a good portion of the Council's anti-Reaper task force was in fact an anti-Council Reaper task force, the idea that the Harbinger had only seized the chance of pieces breaking containment and wasn't actually the one responsible for them being missing didn't make the fact that they gone any better.

The pieces were missing and the fact that some third party was possibly exposing the galaxy with indoctrination-capable technology because of nothing but ignorance was just as bad as their previous fears.

In the past, Valern liked to be proactive against his fears.

But because he was tied to the rules of the Council and his role as a councilor, he could hardly pack his kit and join Bau on the hunt for this mystery organization, no matter how good that idea sounded in his head.

So instead of taking his old Scorpion for another spin, he'd have to keep his feet still and wait for Bau and his pupil Alenko to do their job.

Bau was a very strange person with equally strange believes and at times Valern considered him far too trusting person. But he was nothing if not competent. That made this easier.

Valern exhaled and looked at his desk, which strangely enough was now empty.

He had completed all of his work early, which was rare in the office he held.

Rare and unpleasant.

Faced with a sudden burst of free time, he looked around the room and stopped on the hologram projector.

Maybe he could request a status update from Kirrahe?

Last he'd heard, his old friend had tried to infiltrate a ring of 'hardened insurgents' that Kirrahe believed to be the backers of the unrest in Xeltaz and possible root of the non-existant Reaper conspiracy under the guise of which Valern had sent him there – something that he still felt remorseful about. Not being honest with Kirrahe had been unpleasant and it lingered on Valern's mind even now that the lie was long since spoken. But personal feelings set aside, ultimately, it had been necessary.

He could've hardly told Kirrahe the truth about why he wanted him on Sur'Kesh. Even the mention of the name 'League of One' would have sent the STG spiraling into immediate action. And as long as Valern had yet to make up his mind on where he stood regarding the future for salarian-kind that the League offered, he didn't want STG involved. While this obviously put him in a compromising position – one that could either see him painted as the hero or the villain depending on how it all ended- Valern had to admit that the knowledge of his currently treasonous behavior wasn't bothering him all too much.

In the best-case scenarios – which he viewed as situations where there was one clear victor and one clear loser - the League of One either failed miserably and the problem was solved when they were garroted to please Dalatrass Linron and the other staunch royalists or they succeeded and the Dalatrasses as a whole would be removed from the equation.

Either way, their future obstructions in regards to the Reapers – which Valern knew would occur if the nobles were still around by the Harbinger reached the galaxy – weren't going to be something he had to worry about if the Union had just survived a coup attempt. With their new order in place – or their own lives recently threatened - whoever was in charge would rush to the chance to defend themselves.

In the worst-case scenarios on the other hand – which he considered to be the ones where neither side could claim a full success or one in which the reapers showed up prior to the League of One making their move– nothing much would change at all. The power base would be shaken up a bit and there might be one or two riots, but on the grand scale of things, the war-readiness of his people wouldn't change for the worse or the better.

So no matter what happened, the Union would at the very least be in a position where it could still defend its territories and people.

Naturally, he would prefer a scenario in which they wouldn't have to rely on the turians and humans and whoever was left of the batarians to take the brunt of the attack and die in the billions to slow down and possibly stop the Reapers while the Union locked down its core to protect its power and the Republics collectively realized that a mighty fleet and decentralized militias made for a poor combination during a galactic war … but if that was the best outcome he'd get for his people, he'd take it.

A lone beep from his private terminal distracted Valern's opportunistic considerations. He moved his eyes to the corner of the holographic screen and found that he had just been invited to a game of Extranet Vaelo, an ancient strategy-game he hadn't played since attending STG's officer academy. The idea behind it was simple and universal – much to the bewilderment of xeno-anthropologists and historians, games with eerie similar, albeit less complicated concepts to Vaelo existed not only amongst groups of salarians that had been separated by oceans in the old days of Sur'Kesh. It could also be found in human, asari and batarian societies: 'Chess', 'Kepesh Yakshi' and 'Ghon'Varat'. If those similarities were not enough to bewilder the scientific community, the fact that the turians of all species did not have an equivalent to Vaelo certainly did. After all, if he had to name any one species that would produce an equivalent to the wargame, it would be the turians. The basic concepts it taught were certainly useful for the education of militaristic society.

But then again, from what he remembered, ancient turians had always preferred dulled weapons and high hills to boards and figurines…

Valern looked at the invitation and the unknown contact which had sent it to him and in a spur-of-the-moment decision did something every cyber-security instructor would've lynched him for.

He tapped on it with his finger and opened it.

As a direct result, his home screen was replaced by a hexagonal Vaelo board. But instead of finding the nearly two hundred pieces arranged orderly in the formations in which they started the game in, they were arranged to depict a flower.

A Jeshesh flower.

An entertained smile flashed across his lips.

He'd been wondering when he'd hear from them again.

After replacing his excitement with the appropriate caution, Valern inspected the design more closely. He realized that all the pieces from his highest class – there were four classes of pieces with three individual pieces each – had been removed to the corners of the flower where they were useless. The sole exception to this deportation was the most crucial piece of his side that needed to be protected to not lose the game: the Dalatrass. Unlike the other high-class pieces making up the edges of the flower, she was standing exposed across a hostile third-class piece that usually didn't survive this long into the game, the 'Alabash'; or 'Monk'.

Another ping caught his attention. This time it was from the in-game chat of the message. He opened the chat and read it.

'Our turn.'

Before he could think about how he wanted to reply to that, Valern watched as the Monk moved on the Dalatrass' field and destroyed her in an overdramatic and poorly animated sequence worthy of a free Extranet Vaelo-game. Then a game-over screen flashed in Valern's face and a final message popped up on his chat.

'Patience is a virtue, dear councilor. We suggest you recall your friend from Sur'Kesh. Troubling times ahead.'

Not a second later, his business terminal exploded with news headlines less than a minute old reading 'Critical Failure on Sur'Kesh: Dalatrass Linron reported missing after incident in her floating palace', 'Floating miracle turns into wet mausoleum – more to follow shortly' and 'Catastrophic Accident!? Eezo explosion spotted over Sur'Kesh ocean.'

Valern grimaced and actively ignored the heavy-handed symbolism of the message to focus on the more important aspect.

…what had just happened?


Four Hours Later, 2158 CE, Pranas System, Sur'Kesh, Outer Districts of Talat

"Rescue operations are still going on, but after reviewing the recordings of the detonation, it is our believe that they will be unsuccessful. We are not holding out hope to find any survivors," the representative of the Union stated while looking into the camera and being unaware of the fact that he was addressing three of the thirteen people responsible for the 'accident' at the floating seat of power. "In this hour of darkness, we offer our condolences and support to all members and living relatives of the Linron bloodline. Together, we will see the end of this terrible accident."

An accident.

If they hadn't meant for this exact reaction to occur, Ginon would've been insulted. Years of planning to get close to crucial personal responsible for supplying the floating palace and years of moving pieces into the exact place they needed to be, so all eyes were turned to Xeltaz and not the ocean palace…

If he hadn't intended for it to be dismissed as a strike of fate, he would be boiling with rage by now.

But since that was exactly what the League wanted, he cracked a smile.

"You did good. This is it. The beginning of the end. I can feel it," the teal-skinned felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to the owner of the teashop where he usually laid low whenever he was on Sur'Kesh. Like a lot of the salarians living in Talat, the pale-skinned salarian had more than a few Lystheni genes in him. And while some might have considered him a slowpoke for his heritage and his advanced age, Ginon knew better.

Alabash was smart, smarter than just about any person he'd ever met. For this very reason, Ginon and his companions had chosen him to run the League's base of operations on Sur'Kesh.

Speaking of companions…

They all knew what they had signed up for. One didn't join the League by accident.

But despite that knowledge, not all of them were taking it equally well.

"Only took us two millennia," Finat said mockingly and in a fast pace before raising his cup of tea, which didn't actually contain tea, but alcohol. "Hope blowing up a bunch of servants isn't the only thing we'll be remembered."

"Freedom is paid for in blood," Alabash said more slowly and befitting of his appearance. "The innocent lives we destroyed today will build the world of tomorrow. When it is done, all who died will be remembered as martyrs and champions of the salarian people."

"Agreed," Ginon nodded before glancing at his omni-tool. It was rare and pleasant to be with any of his like-minded companion, let alone two at the same time, but he had placed to be and orders to execute. Tanon had been clear in his earlier address and it was just like Abalash had said.

This and Xeltaz were the beginning of the end.

Yet they couldn't stop here.

Disassembling a decadent and oppressive system and replacing it with a more modern and freer one was hard work and removing one figure head would hardly launch the salarian people into a revolution.

Before he could return to the Citadel and chat with his favorite Councilor, Ginon needed to go to the Duchy of Raeka and have a chat with a certain Dalatrass.

After all, she had just lost her most important rival to a freak accident.

Who wouldn't use that to their own advantage?


23. April 2417 AD, Cronos Station

Jack Harper took a sip from his glass and pinched his nose at the headline of the random news site he'd opened. His eyes felt heavy and the brightness of the text stung in response to his tiredness. But he couldn't sleep now, not when this had just happened.

'Dalatrass Linron and inheritors to her dynasty confirmed dead – succession crisis in the work on Sur'Kesh?'

Between the Collectors increasing attacks and his loss of influence over Shepard following the reveal of Alenko's whereabouts, missing Reaper pieces being spread around the galaxy by an unknown, possibly moronic, possibly ingenious group of people - which neither Alenko nor Councilor Udina had felt necessary to tell the HSA about - and the very tangible scenario of the Reaper's arrival in a softened-up Hegemony space being right around the doorstep, the absolute last thing the galaxy needed right now was for one of the Council members to suffer from a medievalesque succession crisis.

As far as insurgencies were concerned, wasn't it already bad enough that the IFS continued to exist somewhere outside of the explored regions of space and that various separatist movements – chiefly the eternally problematic taetrian Facinus - were rallying in the Hierarchy?

To make the joke complete, one could argue that all that was missing now was for the Asari Republics to suddenly fracture into thousands of squabbling and disunited micro-states barely being held together by a few extraordinarily determined Matriarchs who'd yet to fall into the same stagnation as the rest of their species… but as far as Harper was concerned, that was already the case.

In an uncharacteristically classless move, the Cerberus director downed his bourbon in one gulp.

If he wasn't going sleepless for two days straight, he might have even felt the burn of it.

Was it too much to ask for the galaxy to not try and destroy itself at every turn?

Harper let out a sigh, lit up a cigarette and decided to check up on his newest project, which like several other new operations were the direct result of his vow to adopt desperate measures to combat the Reaper threat.

Considering the most recent developments – particularly the results of Doctor T'Soni's little mind experiment with Shepard and Alenko – he had given Cerberus a simple, albeit by Council standards very much illegal order.

While the illegality itself wasn't anything new – pretty much ninety percent of what Cerberus did broke one or more Council laws or violated a Charta or Convention (their most recent offense most likely being the creation of the AI Tas) – the scale and possible consequences of what he was planning were uncharted territory.

As of yesterday the majority of the two-hundred elite commandos that made up his strike teams and an equally large part of the classified scientific compartment had donned unmarked gear and disguised themselves as bands of pirates, mercs and general scumbag smugglers. After leaving Cronos in ships the HSAN had seized over the years, they had set out to various locations in the galaxy containing sizeable prothean ruins that the HSA did not have access to, among others Feros. Once there, they were supposed to circumvent – or if that wasn't possible subdue – the on-site security and steal every shred of recoverable prothean technology that looked like it could contain the hint of a data fragment. Once that was done, they'd bring all of it back to Cronos where freshly created and equally illegal unshackled copies of the 'TAS' and 'EDI' designs would scour the fragments for hints of the three major objects T'Soni had highlighted in the report he'd received from Arcturus Command: the 'Catalyst', the 'Crucible', and the 'Kaleidoscope'.

Harper pulled on his cigarette.

It was strange for him to feel this conflicted about a decision already made.

Then again, him giving the order to kill Council-affiliated security if it became necessary was a new low for Cerberus.

If it all went well and his actions ended up saving the galaxy from the Reapers, no one would mind that he had decided to forgo the proper security clearance and years spent on waitlists usually required to access these sites. Hell, he and his subordinates might even get pardoned for breaking every single law related to the treatment of prothean technology.

But if it didn't - say because the strike teams ended up engaging and killing someone in their mission and a subsequent investigation identified them as Cerberus or because some politician aware of his agency became suspicious and made the connection for themselves- well… in that case, his actions might not save the galaxy, but only destabilize it further by forcing the HSA to denounce and disassemble its best weapon in the fight against the Reapers: Cerberus.

He puffed out smoke and watched it mix with the sun's light. Thanks to the 'improvements' his one and only run in with an Object Omnicron had done to his eyes, the blinding light didn't bother him in the slightest.

Given the risk of grievously harming the very nation he was sworn to protect, Harper had obviously considered trying his luck through the official institutions and arguing his case. Call in favors with General Arterius and others, talk to the Council's official survey corps, talk to individuals Councilors… but given the fact that all these groups hadn't even felt it necessary to inform the HSA of the fact that the galaxy might just be littered with indoctrination-inducing Sovereign fragments, he had ultimately decided against it for a simple reason.

If he had asked for permission and gotten denied, he would have had to resort to his current solution anyways. Only then everyone had known about his interest in the sites and the conclusion that he was the one responsible behind the events that would follow would've been obvious.

So he hadn't.

Instead, he had stayed silent to the point where no one outside Cerberus, not even HSAIS or his only superior, Chancellor Goyle herself, knew what he was up to. If the worst came to be, their ignorance would ensure that only Cerberus was branded as rogue.

He pulled on his cigarette again.

Him possibly alienating the HSA and risking Cerberus' very existence for the sake of chasing after something he didn't even know existed wasn't the only thing he was conflicted about.

His counter measures to ensure that it didn't happen were also a new low.

Unbeknownst to the other staff of the mission, the strike team operatives, who considering their selection criteria were the only people he was a hundred percent ready to call unquestionably loyal to humanity's best interest and determined to do absolutely everything to protect said interest, had been ordered to make sure that no one from the lowliest security guard to the head researchers of either side – Council or Cerberus – breathed a word of this to anyone, no matter the measures required to ensure silence.

If the security or secrecy of any operational element was at the risk of being compromised, the strike team attached to it would eliminate the source of the risk – even if it was the science team they were supposed to protect – and then either evacuate, or if all else failed, deny their own capture.

Now this obviously wasn't the first time he had given such an order to the commandos. For them, this was a standing order and sadly, some of their ranks had already been forced to follow through on it in the past to avoid falling into the hands of the batarians or the geth.

But the same couldn't be said about the scientific staff or everyone outside of the strike teams.

Non-combat Cerberus staff had died before, yes. In fact, the number of casualties among non-Strike personal was even larger than the deaths among combat personal – something the events on Akuze were to blame for. So in a manner of speaking, they really all knew the risks. Sacrificing some for the good of the many was after all a constant in the service of humanity.

But just because it happened regularly didn't mean that it became any easier.

He had made the call with a heavy heart, something that he considered to be the direct results of the involuntary attachments that he had allowed himself to form ever since Noé had asked him to spearhead this initiative.

Thirty years ago, he would have had no such second thoughts.

He really had changed for the worse, hadn't he?

Harper puffed out some smoke and suddenly felt a sting in his head – that would be the bourbon complaining about being consumed in such a disrespectful manner and his lack of sleep remind him that humans were not designed to work for forty hours without closing their eyes.

Sometimes he missed the days when he'd been the one behind the trigger, the one who's life was at stake. Back then sacrifice had been so much easier. It hadn't felt so unpersonal or been so effortless on his part. He'd been right there in the moment, taking the worst of it with him. That had made it easier to not feel guilty about it. He used to have faces and memories to come back to. Something tangible. Now all he had was vaguely familiar names and personal-numbers and the knowledge that he alone was to blame for the events that had led to all this death.

Then again, maybe that was the sacrifice he had to make to even the score. Others gave their lives, he gave his conscience…

… what exactly did it say about him that he wondered if the first one might be preferable after all?

"-are you alright, Jack?" a washed-up voice behind Harper asked, shaking him awake to the fact that there was not only someone in his office, but also to the reality of once more having gotten lost in thoughts.

He glanced down at his finger where the cigarette was smoldering dangerously close to several burn marks, some fresh, others old and mostly healed.

Good. This time he hadn't added one.

With that out of the way, he sorted the voice to a face.

Tao.

Interesting.

With the noose closing around the Shadow Broker, his old friend hadn't made the five-minute trip to his office in weeks.

Why now?

Maybe it was news about the Broker?

God knew he could use the distraction.

Time to find out.

"Now to what do I owe the pleasure-" Harper began with a smile only to find his dark office empty and his door closed. He shook his head and glanced at his wristwatch's monitoring of his current biometrics.

As expected, it was flashing red and advising him to seek medical attention.

Forty-one hours without sleep and little food, a respectable mixture of blood-alcohol and nicotine concentration in his system and a coming-down from the little 'booster' he'd taken when news of an explosion on Sur'Kesh had reached him. It was a stimulus concoction based on the Auxilliary Corps stims Cerberus had 'borrowed' during the Eden Prime incident and from what the doctor had told him before he'd administered it to himself, it wasn't exactly field-test worthy just yet.

So as far as causes for auditory hallucinations went, that was a pretty good one. Especially when considering the fact that a lot of people who were thirty years younger than him would probably be hospitalized by now.

He exhaled in defeat.

Time to take a nap.

The galaxy would still be standing in a few hours.

… hopefully.


Five Hours Later, 23. April 2417 AD, Mirage of Halegeuse

Haugen and the rest of Phantom Squad watched as the spherical drone buzzed through the room and scanned it with small teal treads of light.

"So? What do you think?" the turian in the middle of the hangar asked in expectation. In the interest of improving their compatibility, the lieutenant had invited them to demonstrate what it was that Recon actually did. And while Haugen already knew what it was that made this turian spec-ops unit special, he didn't want to be rude and deny the younger officer.

"That's it? That's your gimmick?" Miller, who clearly had no problems with coming of as rude, wondered while sitting on a crate and looking at Lieutenant Enrykis demonstration of the Reconnaissance Corps' last piece of equipment; a surveillance drone. As far as Haugen had been told a swarm of these things – in which they were usually unleashed - could map out an entire battlespace and identify all targets within it in as little as thirty seconds. Once that was done, the combined ground and orbital artillery, which could all be guided by the Recon units at the front, would then handle the rest.

"It's not a gimmick, Staff Sergeant," Enrykis said before pressing a button on his grey gauntlet and prompting the small spherical drone to stop hovering and drop back into his hand. Next he turned off his visor on which he could see everything depicted by the drone. "It's bleeding edge reconnaissance tech," he added, sounding almost hurt. Considering how much pride turians tended to take in their associated military careers, Haugen wouldn't be surprised if he actually was.

"Don't get me wrong. It's impressive and really fucking useful," Miller corrected, surprisingly enough picking up on the turian's demeanor. "But I was just kind of expecting something more… flashy. You got nice guns, active camo and a lot of cool toys. But the personal touch is kind of missing."

"Meaning?" Enrykis wondered.

"You know. Blackwatch's got their fancy power armor, their knives, their creeds and their whole honor-obsession and the Cabals have all these nice custom guns and aggressive tactics and freakin' biotics," he listed with a smirk that made Haugen grimaced. As a human, he obviously knew that Miller was messing with the lieutenant. Question was, did the turian too? "Meanwhile you got stuck with all the basic stuff like the unloved middle-child."

He caught the awkward glances of Mav and Hofmann and considered intervening at this stage, but before he could, Enrykis seemed to catch up.

"It's not -" the lieutenant began before recognizing the smirk on Miller's face and narrowing his eyes. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"

"Of course I am. Nothing like a friendly hazing to ease cooperation," Miller said before jumping from his chair and walking towards the turian. "Can I see that?" he asked while pointing towards the drone.

"Sure," the turian responded before handing the small silver sphere to Miller.

"The whole battlefield you say?"

"Yes," Enrykis replied. "When we hit the ground, half my unit is going to carry field packs with these things. I had them shipped from Palaven the moment I knew I'd be going on this mission. Figured they could help prevent what happened last time," the younger turian lieutenant said with a sigh before glancing at Haugen with a recognizable, somewhat uncertain look in his eyes. While he was by no means unexperienced – there was no such thing as a green spec-ops soldier in the turian military – Haugen knew that Enrykis was still comparatively young for someone in his position. He was an officer, yes, but he was still within his mandatory fifteen-year service. That made him an anomaly in the turian officer corps. Barring a few exceptions – like promising special operations candidates such as Enrykis-, one didn't get to command anything in the turian army until they had passed the mandatory period and become a career soldier.

Or at least that's how things usually went.

Considering all the Recon soldiers he'd met up to now had been on the younger end of the scale, he wasn't ready to dismiss the notion that this part of the turian military played by a slightly different set of rules.

"I heard things got bad on the ground. A lot of husks and Internal Forces," he finally said after maintaining eye contact with Haugen.

"You heard right," Haugen replied with a brief nod. "But you can't compare that op to this one. We aren't hitting Hegemony space this time around. It's just some Terminus rock."

"And we've got your guys covering our six," Hofmann added somewhat distracted. Like Miller and Mav, he was now fascinated by the 'boring' drone since it had started floating around the hangar again. With little other entertainment to go around on the Halegeuse, the drone was a welcome change.

"Doesn't mean we won't run into any more of those monsters," Enrykis retorted before pressing a button on his gauntlet that made the drone return to the backpack he was carrying. Like the rest of his armor, it was currently black and dark red. That'd change once they hit the ground. While it didn't turn them invisible like ASOC armor did, the armor suits that the Recon Corps was issued could shift through a variety of pre-programmed camouflage patterns adapted to a variety of environments. "I was there two years ago, you know," the lieutenant suddenly went on with a stern expression on his pale-blue face. When all ASOC troopers looked at him, he clarified. "Eden Prime. My unit was right there in Xenograd when the geth hit Navi Bhopal," Navi Bhopal. That name rang a bell. It was Eden Prime's second-largest city and located right next to Cooper Wells Combined Forces Base where the annual joint exercises took place. A lot of ASOC operatives had died there, most of them he'd even been friendly with.

Hell.

He probably would've died there too if not for Hackett's special assignment. Haugen knew himself, so he knew that he'd probably have insisted on leading the QRF back then and gotten buried alongside the rest of the soldiers Arterius had killed that day.

Desires for revenge and the knowledge that the one shot he'd taken at Saren on Virmire had definitely hurt the turian sat aside, realistically speaking Haugen knew that his odds of surviving what had killed most of the Fifth Company-Sixth Platoon would've been slim to none. Phantom was good, maybe even the best, but even they wouldn't have had a chance against a rogue Spectre backed up by an army of geth and a fucking Reaper.

"They timed it perfectly. Attacked right when most of the troops were bunched up for the exercises and didn't have any real ammo on them. Then they went into the city. What they did to your people back then… you don't just forget that," Enrykis muttered before detaching the backpack from the magnetic locks of his armor and setting it to the ground. It wasn't larger than your every-day commuting pack. While they looked like a well-practiced routine, there was heaviness to his movements that Haugen recognized as well. Enrykis hadn't quite gotten over the sight of the husks yet.

Not that he'd blame him for it.

Although he personally hadn't been shaken up by the batarian husks they'd found on Jasintho in the slightest, Haugen knew that he wasn't exactly a good standard for measuring what traumatized people and what didn't. According to the Army's psych-eval standards half the shit he'd seen since the attack on Mindoir sixteen years ago – including but not limited to the inside of a slaver barge - could've probably sufficiently traumatized him to the point of a mental break or a honorable discharge.

Yet for some reason, it had only pissed him off.

"Only good thing that ever came from that fight was that it got my unit selected for this task force," Enrykis finally sighed. The ASOC soldier figured that the only reason the turian was sharing this with them was because he'd probably been around a lot of his dying ASOC brothers back then. That tended to build a certain familiarity. Adding to that, Recon and ASOC were both spec-ops and respected each other for being cut from the same cloth. So even if they technically didn't know each other, they were already more alike than most people in the galaxy.

"Because you already knew about the husks," Mav figured before folding his arms. For all their experiences, that was something Phantom couldn't actually claim. While they had been on Virmire and Haugen had actually been there when Commander Shepard had spoken to one of the Reapers, none of them had known anything about Reapers or husks right until Hackett had pulled them into this op.

"Yes," the younger lieutenant nodded. "My unit lost a lot of good people to them on that day including our entire command staff," that certainly explained his rank. A field promotion born out of necessity, "but I like to think that maybe that's what was meant to happen. We had to go through that nightmare so we could end up here. Kind of like the spirits guiding our destiny, you know?" he said with a twitch of his mandibles. "Sorry. Oversharing," he finally realized while staring at his backpack of drones. "It's a stupid conclusion. Not like you believe in spirits anyways."

For a second none of the ASOC soldiers said anything.

Even before half their unit had gotten wiped out near Navi Bhopal, they all had had their brushes with death. Between the raid on Mindoir, the Skyllian Blitz, Torfan and various other high-stakes ops, Haugen had been on a lot of military funerals since the start of his career.

For crying out loud, Mav and Miller were only on his squad to begin with because Barb and Ahmed - the two guys who'd initially fought alongside Hofmann and him since Mindoir - had gotten KIA-ed in 2406, the same year Miller's and Mav's first team leader and medic had ended up on the bad side of an IED, and ASOC had figured to just integrate the two less experienced soldiers into the ranks of the more experienced squad that had just gotten cut in half as well.

But that wasn't something Phantom usually spoke about.

Openly addressing the people who hadn't made it back wasn't how any of them had been trained in ASOC or educated in whatever academies they had gone to.

They were taught to soldier on. Turn their losses into purpose, determination, or if all else failed, rage to make sure that 'it meant something'.

After the initial surprise, Haugen stepped up to the turian and gave him a friendly smack against the shoulder like he would do to any human LT. When that prompted Enrykis to look at him, he jabbed his index finger against the black and red armor of the younger officer.

He wasn't usually one to give these type of speeches, but something about seeing a young lieutenant struggling to make sense of traumatic shit spoke to Haugen. Hence, he pulled out the exemplary and motivational career officer that was hiding somewhere underneath his worn-out, pale combat fatigues (which lacked any rank insignia whatsoever) and channeled the charismatic commanding presence he'd been taught to have as long as back at Anaru Academy into a couple of sentences.

"As long as it keeps you fighting, there's no such thing as a stupid reason, Lieutenant. You could've let Eden Prime break you and no one would've blamed you for it. But you didn't. You chose to turn it into a reason to go on. And that's all that counts. Anyone ever tells you anything else, just laugh in their face. They obviously don't know what they're talking about."

"Or just hit 'em. That's what you do when someone on your ship pisses you off, right? You duel them?" Miller threw in. With the drone gone, he'd resorted to wondering around the hangar again.

"Duels are resolved to settle honor disputes or resolve battles. What you mean is just plain old sparring," the pale blue turian nodded towards Haugen. "Thank you," he added somewhat more quietly.

"Don't mention it," was the only reply Haugen could think of in the moment. He considered adding something more encouraging like 'we've all been there' or something along the lines but then got distracted by the sight of the tall, raven-haired operative who'd just entered the hangar clad in a suit of light, white armor with yellow headlights.

… oh hell no.

"Captain."

"Miss Lawson."

"There's been a slight change to the perimeters of your operation."

He folded his arms.

"Let me guess. You're coming along?"

"With Doctor T'Soni out of the picture, you need someone else with scientific expertise to join you on the ground."

Hofmann walked up next to Haugen.

"No offense, but I thought you were an operation chief," his second-in-command wondered.

"I am, among other things," the woman replied with an accented voice.

"When exactly did you become an expert on what T'Soni does?" Haugen went on.

"I had some downtime these last couple of nights. Picked up some of her work. What she does is actually pretty simple once you got the hang of it. Me being a quick study obviously helped as well."

"You don't actually expect me to believe that you caught up on a few decades worth of studying in the span of a couple of nights, do you?" If she wanted to insert herself in his op, she could at least just say so.

"Not at all, no," Lawson responded before a smile crossed her unsettlingly flawless face. "I only became an expert on what's relevant for this mission."

"Mhm," Haugen muttered. "Despite how the last op turned out, I take it I don't get a say in this?"

"No, I'm afraid it has already been decided."

"By whom?"

"Someone further up the chain of command of this Task Force."

He had an educate guess as to who that someone was.

"Let me guess. You?"

"Yes. Me." He narrowed his eyes and she clearly caught on to it. "With Doctor T'Soni gone, I am the only person on the task force who shares her understanding of this technology and has enough training to into the field with you."

Somehow he doubted that.

"Just what kind of training are we talking about here?" the blonde officer asked.

"I'm afraid that's classified."

"With all due respect," Hofmann injected. "I'm positive that whatever tactics you were taught was either pioneered by ASOC or NSOC. Baring the biotic stuff on Grissom Academy, either us or the N7s wrote the book on every advanced training program in the HSA military."

"And I'm sure elements of it went into mine. But nonetheless, I'm afraid that it does not concern you. I can handle myself, that's all you need to know, Master Sergeant."

Hofmann shot Haugen a look and he could only agree with what he was trying to tell him.

This would go sideways.

"For the record, I'm objecting to your presence, Lawson."

"And for the record, I'll assure you that there's no reason to do so."


Codex: Turian Reconnaissance Corps

'Victory at any cost'.

Due to the vastly different environments of turian colonies and the challenges associated with these, most legions maintain their own special operations groups. However despite this wide accessibility of highly-qualified personal, only five units within the Hierarchy Military carry the official designation of 'Special Forces'.

These units are the Cabal Corps, the First Blackwatch Legion, the Compartmented Hasatim Hostage Rescue Element (official designation: 363rd Hastati Detachment Cipritine), the Armiger Shock Troops and the Reconnaissance Corps.

Whereas the other four can trace their lineage back to the Unification Wars, Recon as it exists today was only put together four centuries ago to 'ease' the operational strain on both Blackwatch and the Cabal Corps and provide the turian Central Command on Palaven with an alternative to the special operations groups of individual legions that does not insist on entering the battlefield via rapid mass orbital insertions.

In addition to filling the gap of long-range reconnaissance and executing sabotage operations ahead of the main force – which up to Recon's inception was still a task given to the Cabals or their Armigerian comrades – the Reconnaissance Corps also serves as a rapid-response direct action force spread out over turian space. Whenever a time sensitive operation requiring military force appears anywhere outside of the immediate vicinity of a Cabal or Blackwatch unit, the Recon unit attached to the closest turian naval vessel is called in. In this manner, the Reconnaissance Corps mirrors the human Naval Special Operations Command (unofficially known as N7).

Due to its comparatively young age, the Reconnaissance Corps has a mixed reputation among the turian military. While universally recognized as a useful and well-trained special forces element respected by its four older counterparts, the breaks from tradition that the Recon Corps demonstrates, among others the conscious choice to not adopt any heraldry and to not incorporate ceremonial weaponry into its traditions, has made it a somewhat divisive group.

While not as inherently unpopular as the Cabal Corps or considered as 'questionably sane' as it is the case with the Armiger Shock Troops, there is a history of regular units and members of Recon clashing with each other in unusually high numbers. Where one side views the other as tradition breakers, the other side views them as needlessly traditional and rigid and incapable of adopting to the rapidly changing environment of battlefields in the 22nd Era of the Citadel Calendar. In addition to resulting in a classified number of dispute duels to first blood fought between various general staff officers and Recon commanders, it is rumored that rank-and-file personal regularly settle arguments in sparring rooms, prompting naval commanders from trying to avoid having Reconnaissance Corps soldiers on their ships.

Due to its nature as an official Special Forces element of the Hierarchy Military, little is known about Recon's actual strength and current operations. Similar to Blackwatch and the 363rd Hastati Detachment, few if any past missions are made known to the public and the units' archivists are held to the same classification standards as their active operatives. The only officially known engagements of Recon are:

- The still-ongoing Anti-Slavery operations on the Council-Terminus border

- The Skyllian Blitz

- Saren Arterius' invasion of Eden Prime and the subsequent manhunt for Saren Arterius

- The still-ongoing Taetrian insurgency

Furthermore, the Reconnaissance Corps is known to maintain an exchange program with various reconnaissance detachments of the Human Systems Alliance Army and Marine Corps.

As per the official statement of the Reconnaissance Corps, its ranks are opened to members of the Turian Auxiliary Corps and a classified one-digit percentage of the currently active Recon soldiers are of non-turian heritage.

As with the TAC, estimates, eyewitness accounts and military analysts point to these individuals being predominantly batarian.


A/N:

So this chapter got delayed for a couple of reasons. Most boil down to me dicking around, some are going to accompany me to February. (long story short, I am moving 250 kms south from the northern end of my state to the southern portion because I'm getting a different posting starting in February after finally graduating form academy)

In additiont o being delayed, this chapter's also once more on the shorter end of things( most recent chapter were anywehre between 13k to 16k words, thsi ones just about 12k without the A/N). This is strange in the fact taht something pretty substential happened in this chapter but somehow it had very little screentime.

I am obviously talking about the League of One basically killing the salarian's equivalent to the King of the Seven Kingdoms from GOT.

Now... I know it kind of comes out of nowhere and might seem like an asspull BUUUUUT you'll have to believe me that THIS was planned as far back as the chapter "Moving the Pieces" when Ginon, the league of one character talked about 'using the opportunity' of Edne Prime gettign attacked and kind of foreshadowed in "SNAFU" back when valern actually visited that palace (I am saying this because as its recently been pointe dotu to me, SV has become so bloated and large that its become difficult to remember everything, especially with the 'minor' plot lines of Valern and company that only show up every 10 chapters or so.)

The reason why I never wrote a scene of this "building up" so to speak was because I kind of wanted you (the readers) to get blindsided by the League of One just as much as Valern. We spent all this time looking at xeltaz and the uprising and everything and then BAM they suddenly blow up the richest dalatrass in the galaxy. (also we really, really REALLY couldnt afford ANOTHER POV plotline...)

So yeah.

I hope it still works like I wanted it to work (namely the whole blind-sided part.)

OTHER THAN THAT.

I don't have much to say at all.

If you are wondering what that whole "xenograd" and Navi Bhopal stuff was all about... I do suggest you plop over to SV:Anthologies and give the latest entry a read.

Hah... and you thought I was done promoting xeno noir. GOTCHA ONE LAST TIME DIDN'T I? :D

eeeeither way.

Review and let me know what you think. I had some rather insightful reviews at the 100th chapter mark (for which I am seriously thankful, these help a lot!)

For the record we're at 768 reviews, 1184 favorites and 1268 follows.

As its been pointed out to me, we also recently crossed the 1.1 million word mark.

Holy shit.

That's a lot of words.

See you around next time.