SSV Normandy, Hoc System

Joker felt the tension slowly eating itself into his already-brittle bones. Sure, they did have prior experience in sneaking past geth ships, of ambushing the flashlight-heads, but as the old saying went, third time was the charm - and after Therum and Feros, he did not really want to test their luck once more. And then there was the nice little bit where their backup was a turian fleet, of all things - sure, that scary admiral of theirs looked like she knew her business (and the available extranet information certainly validated that belief), but still, he was not sure about relying on her.

Admittedly, Garrus said she was ok, and he at least has proven that despite having a stick up his ass, he was not bad for a turian; at least he had a good sense of humor, and had remarkably little bias against humans … and a near-homicidal hatred of Saren. Also, Joker still wanted to laugh when he remembered Garrus' face when Shepard (of all people) saluted him and accompanied Legate Vakarian to the command pulpit, remaining a respectable half-step behind him - though strangely, the ex-cop did not look too out-of-place there.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alenko hard at work with the recon drones, compiling and updating the telemetry data and the preliminary, constantly solidifying battle plan. It did seem that at least the basics of Admiral Vipsania's plan would work; especially if those idiots on the Citadel could indeed reconfigurate the relay for such a massive simultaneous translation while keeping the energy signature down to a limited level.

The fact that the geth did not have ships on-station at the relay and did not seem to have noticed the Normandy's arrival gave him hope - and considering the numbers of geth vessels in orbit over Virmire, Joker definitely considered that as a bonus.

The countdown timer was slowly winding down, the two eternal hours of reconnaissance finally coming to an end. And based on the figures shown on his plot, Talitha's team in Ops Alley put Alenko's data to good use. The numbers on the corner of his display reached zero, and the mass relay spun up, giving birth to a host of turian vessels with a blue flash.

"Anything from our friends?"

Kaidan checked his drones, then shook his head.

"Nothing yet. It seems that the Citadel techs were successful, and kept the relay emission level low enough - and Admiral Vipsania's idea of using the planets as shielding certainly did not hurt."

An indicator pulsed on the screen, and Joker keyed his comm.

"Signal from flag, Legate. Operation will commence in ten minutes."

"Copy that, Joker." With a click, Garrus keyed his comm for shipwide announcements. "Show will start in ten minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Action stations in five minutes. Chief Engineer Adams, I want you in DCC; leave Tali at the drive core. Shepard, you have the guns - hopefully your aim is better than your dance moves."

The answering growl of the Spectre was accompanied by the not-so-muted laughter of the crew, as Joker watched a trio of turian ships slowly drift away from the fleet on maneuvering thrusters only, and the sensors of the drone left at the relay monitored the buildup in the FTL drives of the whole fleet. A musical chime sounded, and the trio of ships, a cruiser and two frigates, jumped in-system, dropping out from FTL over Cloroplon, before they started on a textbook turian recon pattern, bringing them in range of a geth sensor platform the Normandy located earlier.

Joker caught Alenko's small, vicious grin, and a glance at the telemetry data showed that the geth vessels were spooling up their drive cores, readying for an FTL jump.

"Quick reaction - and quite predictable. Seems the Admiral was right."

"You got that bit right, Kaidan - she seems right. This can still blow up in our face quite badly." Joker gestured at the staff lieutenant's display. "It's not like we are outnumbered or anything. Even with the firepower of the Stalwart, the geth can easily pound us to scrap, especially if that black monstrosity of Saren makes an appearance."

Alenko opened his mouth to answer, then closed it with a rueful headshake and smile.

"You are just full of fun today, Joker." He took a deep breath, when the geth fleet orbiting Virmire veered off as one, and vanished into FTL. Kaidan's fingers flew over his screens, routing the data through the recon drone to Admiral Vipsania, and prayed that the comm lasers would not be detected for a while longer.

On the screen, the turian patrol trio was suddenly no longer alone, as the geth fleet dropped from FTL with a machine-perfect pattern and disposition, their jammers immediately disrupting any electronic communication from the patrol ships, preempting any request for reinforcements or situation update from being broadcasted out-system.

Joker watched on the display as the first salvo of the geth closed in on the cruiser and the two frigates, and despite the distance, he felt a chill creeping into his being at the sheer number of missiles and mass driver shots fired. The turian discipline was superb as usual, but even with being forewarned, the trio of ships was almost completely overwhelmed with that first, brutal display of firepower. The cruiser's icon flashed to red, and the take from the recon drone showed it venting atmosphere and debris. The two frigates fared marginally better, likely due to the geth concentrating their fire on the cruiser, but they did suffer alongside their charge. Still, the point defense umbrella held, and the ships did survive, changing course on a planned evasive route - and Joker knew that basically everyone in Seventh Fleet shared the grimly satisfied, vindictive smile he felt on his face and saw on Kaidan's lips.

An indicator blinked green on his screen, and with the pseudo-motion of an FTL jump, the ships of Admiral Vipsania vanished from their parking orbit around the mass relay - and a few eternal seconds later, just as the second geth salvo was launched at the patrol ships, the turian admiral's vessels dropped back into realspace, and a tide of warheads and mass accelerator rounds swept over the geth fleet, the fire concentrating on seven larger cruisers, the split-second delay in the geth reaction enough to result in five of said cruisers transforming into swiftly expanding clouds of wreckage, and the two others trailing flames and debris, their kinetic barriers shattered under the weight of fire.

As proven several times, the sudden, simultaneous loss of major units threw the geth into confusion for a second or two, and Admiral Vipsania's command sent her fleet into FTL on a preprogrammed vector during the brief lull, headed in-system, using a recon drone of the Normandy as a beacon.

"All hands, brace for high-speed combat maneuvers." Garrus' voice was calm over the comm. "Joker, Tali, execute Raptor-III."

"Aye, Legate." His fingers dancing over the haptics, Joker brought the ship to the proper bearing, glanced at the drive core yields and weapon readiness, then with a flash of pseudo-motion, the Normandy vanished into FTL, only to reappear close by a wounded geth cruiser.

The frigate's volley broke the damaged vessel, and Joker threw his ship into a hair-raising evasive pattern, the jammers of the Normandy working at maximum capacity as Kaidan and the Ops Alley techs struggled to foul up geth targeting data while close misses pounded steadily on the weakening shields, Adams and Tali working frantically to keep up with the power fluctuations - then a specific indicator on Joker's panel flashed green, and he sent the frigate back into FTL.

"Tali, Adams, emergency heat venting, get us back into stealth ASAP!"

"Already on it, you bosh'tet!"

For an eternal half-minute, the geth hesitated, trying to prioritize between going after Seventh Fleet while the turians were still outnumbered, or deal with the Normandy, to destroy the unknown quantity. That delay was enough for Seventh Fleet, and Admiral Vipsania's vessels flashed back at another pass at the geth, though Joker noted with a grim expression that half dozen ships were unaccounted for, the strain on the drive cores probably requiring a shutdown. At least he hoped so - the thought of those ships simply exploding when their overtaxed cores simply let go did not really bear thinking about.

And with that thought, he paled and shivered - while a drive core going off was bad enough, there was at least a chance for survival. If their own Tantalus core went critical? Hopefully he'd get voided before it got real bad. With a shiver, he pulled up the core diagnostics on a sidescreen, just in case - though he harbored no illusions about seeing anything before Adams or Tali spotted it.

The turian fleet once again vanished into FTL, leaving behind another half-dozen geth wrecks, alongside two of their own - and then the Normandy flashed across the milling geth fleet, turning a cruiser and a frigate into scrap metal.

The geth fleet then jumped into FTL, heading in-system - and the recon drone confirmed them back in Virmire orbit, orienting themselves to repel attackers. Joker grinned mirthlessly. We were lucky to get these free passes anyway; but I wonder what tricks the Admiral will pull now?

The answer was not long in coming - and Joker felt his jaw drop. That insane turian jumped her flagship right past the geth formation, straight into the upper atmospheric layer - and she opened fire while still in FTL. The first salvo from the dreadnought was devastating from such a close range, and explosions bloomed along the geth cordon as the ships turned to swat the lone intruder down into the fiery embrace of Virmire's gravity well. With how the Stalwart was already struggling against stresses she was never meant to deal with, Joker knew it was simply a matter of seconds before either her drive core gave up, or the barriers collapsed under the barrage the geth were sure to send her way.

The geth did not get the chance to fire that salvo, as the bulk of the Seventh Fleet dropped from FTL - in spitting distance to the geth ships; and Joker winced as several explosions heralded the spots where the turian vessels dropped too close to the machines, and collision was inevitable.

Still, despite all those mishaps (and he had to admit, the Alliance would be hard pressed to even match that precision, never mind improving on it), the geth were again caught unprepared for the unorthodox method of engagement; and that short hesitation, that loop of trying to understand logically how sentients could willingly take such an inherently suicidal option when other, more logical, saner alternatives were available - that few seconds were enough for the turians to massacre them.

In the short, brutal exchange of point-blank fire, the turians lost nine cruisers and twenty frigates, and most of their remaining ships suffered moderate to heavy damage. The geth fleet was completely annihilated.

Within another hour, Joker allowed himself to relax as the fleet took up geostationary orbit above Saren's base (leaving a picket force at the mass relay, and detailing a few frigates to collect the life pods), ready for bombardment - and providing support for the incoming dropships disgorging the units of the 43rd Marine Division.

Virmire, 3rd STG base camp

Garrus felt content as the Mako trundled into the small salarian encampment, the tanks and APCs of the turian marines following the Normandy crew. All things considered, the operation was going well - with a flick of his mandibles, he thought it may be going a little too well, actually. Sure, the fleet took losses getting them on the surface, but the Admiral's plan worked basically without a hitch. And now, they were within strike range of Saren's base - and there was absolutely no reaction from there, no attack, no AA fire, nothing apart from a jamming field and an exceptionally strong shield coming online, which did prevent orbital bombardment. Well, unless Shepard lost his patience, and ordered Commodore Anderson's ships to engage; not even an absurdly strong shield could endure a bombardment similar to the one unleashed on Feros - and Legate Vakarian was aware that compared to that time, Anderson's ships could unleash about a hundred abominations like the four Shepard dropped on the Thorian.

Despite the pleasant weather, Garrus shivered. By the spirits, the mere thought of those things was enough to make one wonder how deep the insanity of humans actually ran. What could have possibly prompted them to come up with such vicious, insane weapons? After a few seconds of pondering, the ex-cop shelved the thought; if need be, he could always ask Wrex, but in all likelihood, the answers would lead to more questions and more vivid nightmares.

A quick glance across the camp made it quite clear that the salarians have not been idle - scuffed, patched uniforms, medigel-infused patches, a missing limb here or there; Garrus wondered what exactly prompted the officer in charge to take such un-salarian measures before the reinforcements arrived. Then again, based on what he'd heard and Shepard told about Captain Kirrahe, he was not exactly a typical salarian.

The captain promptly assembled his men before the arriving turians, and snapped a parade-ground perfect salute to Garrus, making him somewhat uncomfortable when he had to return it, and he relaxed a fraction when Shepard stepped to them, and the salarian nodded to him.

"Spectre Shepard, nice to see you again." The salarian's eyes darted over to Garrus, a quick, professional evaluation, not even a slight widening of eyes. A barely-perceptible nod, as if confirming something. "Legate Vakarian, an honor."

The damn lizard knew. Not that surprising, considering he was STG, but he knew. And at that moment, the old hatred and bile in Garrus again threatened to erupt, his mandibles twitching, limbs shivering as he pulled himself back from pouncing on the slimy little git and tearing him apart with his bare claws. Even Shepard and Wrex might find that excessive. Especially since he could not detect anything but honesty in Kirrahe's voice. The turian huffed, and inclined his head towards the captain.

"The honor's mine, Captain. Now, why don't you tell us exactly what you found - the message that got through was rather garbled, we barely managed to understand a few words."

The salarian tilted his head, thought for a few seconds, then signalled for his troops to fall out, and motioned to Garrus and Shepard to follow him, and lead them to his command tent. A quick message from the Spectre's omnitool brought Ashley, Wrex, and Legate Severus, the commanding officer of the 43rd to join them, and Kirrahe's second in command, a salarian named Rentola rounded out the meeting's attendees.

His face lit by the glow of the projection on the table, Kirrahe outlined their current situation, and Garrus was not disappointed with his gut feelings - it really wa as bad as he feared.

"You are saying he's breeding krogan in there." Wrex' tone was very flat, very composed - all the better to mask the volcano of feelings simmering just below.

Kirrahe and Rentola both nodded, looking equally grim.

"Did Saren find a way around the genophage?" Severus asked, his tone businesslike, and a deep warning rumble sounded from Wrex, which the turian did not really acknowledge.

Kirrahe half-closed his eyes for a second, then shook his head.

"I am not sure. He definitely has the tech and the intelligence to see the advantages of such a feat." The table creaked where Wrex' fist gripped it, and Garrus noticed how Ashley took a half-step backwards, orienting herself towards the warlord, her hand hovering closely to her shotgun, wicked, eager excitement sparking in her eyes. The salarian captain went on. "That said, if Saren could pull off something like that, he'd have immediately broadcasted it to Tuchanka and the Krogan DMZ … and we'd be drowning in krogan mercenaries here."

A quick shake of the head, and Kirrahe continued.

"No, I think he found some way to partially circumvent it - possibly via cloning." A sharp inhale. "Disgusting."

"Care to elaborate on that, lizard?" Wrex snarled, his cavern-deep voice dropping an octave, his eyes twin windows of hell. Kirrahe met that smoldering gaze unflinchingly.

"If I'm right, Saren's creating an army of disposable flash cloned krogan. An army of slaves, who don't even have a choice." The captain's tone became colder, harsher. "I don't like your kind, Wrex, I think you are a menace to all of us, and I'd not hesitate to put a bullet in your head if the situation called for it. But do not for a moment believe that Saren bears any shred of goodwill towards you. Would you like to consign your kind to be disposable tools once again? Claim the victory for your glorious saviour - and then be cast down the second your back is turned? Do you think that Saren would stop with another genophage? Even if he would, what do you think this Dreamer of the Void would do?"

Wrex glared at the STG captain, blue motes of light erupting around his fists before he spat a curse, and shook his head, seemingly ageing before their eyes as the tension drained from his posture.

"No, I guess it would have been foolish to expect anything else from murdering scum like Saren." The old warlord let out a deep breath, looked around at the faces in the tent, nodded at Shepard and Garrus, then his eyes refocused on Kirrahe's face. "Now, let's discuss how we can destroy this abomination."

Virmire, Saren's base

Kaiden Alenko has seen a lot of things since he volunteered for military service. He thought himself prepared to see what the grim universe threw at him. On a lush garden planet, better suited for a tropical resort he'd love to show any girlfriends, he was learning how wrong he actually was.

The assault on Saren's base was proceeding on schedule, despite the fierce resistance. The geth were out in force, and these ones seemed better coordinated, much less prone to the shock and confusion the attackers expected when destroying the larger platforms. And their reaction times were also at least an order of magnitude better than they should have been - and Kaidan was certainly glad that he and his men had heavy fire support from the turians.

The whole approach to the base seemed a nightmare to him, sparked off by the first kinetic strikes arriving from the fleet in orbit, the detonations outlining the shimmering shield protecting the installation. The ground forces started off after the second volley detonated, and fought through the canyons and rifts to the walls of the base - and those approaches had been filled with geth. Despite his personal misgivings and distrust towards turians, he did not think many other forces could weather the withering barrages of pulse rifle rounds and rockets, with geth snipers thrown in for good measure, whose oversized rifles could melt the hull of turian hovertanks in two hits, and he certainly did not want to relive the memory of seeing the molten metal of such a shot hitting a man in the chest.

The turians answered in kind, with disciplined, precise, overwhelming fire, never hesitating for a single moment, always advancing, racing from cover to cover. They lost half their tanks, but the company was within the perimeter, closing on the outer walls of Saren's compound, the automated defensive turrets quickly reduced to smoking, bullet-riddled husks as the concentrated fire overwhelmed their individual barriers.

Just when he thought they would place the breaching charges, the geth Hunters were on them, deactivating their cloaking, green bolts of lightning stripping away kinetic barriers, shields, armor, flesh and bone alike - and he could feel even the turian discipline wavering for a brief second, before a well-placed shot from a tank turned one Hunter into a rain of synthetic flesh and bits of armor, before the others concentrated fire on it in retaliation, the sickly-colored beams coring the hull plates of the tank, melting the crew into organic slush.

Despite the gory end of the tank, the brief respite of its defiance rallied the turians, and Hunter after Hunter fell, their evasive protocols and attempts at recloaking only postponing their demise by seconds. A brief check to ensure that all geth were fully deactivated, and the company was at the walls, the demolition experts placing breaching charges while the regulars moved into covering position. Alenko listened in his comm for a few seconds, checking on the progress of the other attack forces, then nodded at the turian centurion who signalled his sappers.

With a brief flash and a wash of heat, the explosives cooked off, cutting open the hide of Saren's base, the darkness within seeming to flinch back from the pale light of the foggy Virmire afternoon, the faintly visible outlines of corridors and rooms laid bare to their eyes - and as the company switched formation for close combat, Alenko shivered as corpse-green eyes flickered open deep within the complex, before he caught the first actual glimpses of the brutes Saren's insane lackeys created for his army. Then, his world dissolved into blood, screaming, biotic explosions and gunfire, as the nightmarish creations charged into the turian ranks, and Kaidan was suddenly too occupied with the fight for their survival to notice anything else.

Ashley Williams felt more alive than in a long time. The exhilarating, wonderful sensation of the fight to reach the base had sent her blood and adrenaline levels through the roof, filled her with an euforia she had not felt since the destruction of the Thorian on Feros. It was so nice of Shepard to provide such quality entertainment, such a perfect dance along the razor's edge - and she snickered at the memory of the Spectre's other dance at Flux.

Even the company of turians could not sour her mood - admittedly, none of them knew that she was related to the General Williams who, in his death, became a bogeyman for the Hierarchy. Still, she did pay extra attention just in case one of the bastards put two and two together, and tried to re-enact Shanxi on her. So far, none have tried - perhaps because of the circumstances of their blood-soaked advance through withering geth fire, or maybe because of the almost-effortless and precise shots she pulled off, eliminating geth snipers and rocket troopers almost before their presence registered for even the scanners of the hovertanks.

She snorted at the thought - of course, most turian hardware was rather crappy, even if the combat equipment was better than their elevators. Galling though it was, their discipline and precision was impressive, though; she grudgingly admitted to herself that even the 212th would have had a hard time to match the sheer skill of the advancing turians, and their determination and level head under fire certainly elevated them in her eyes. Still, that only made them an even more serious future threat, and Ashley devoted a fraction of her mind, of her concentration to study and remember the tactics and responses used by the turian marines - all the while she herself trusted her own instinct to guide her through the maelstrom of fire and rockets.

She frowned as she watched a geth sniper's head explode in her scope - the machines were faster, more coordinated, more precise than any time she went up against them. Never mind her distaste of the turians, with the amount of firepower the division brought, Saren's base should have been steamrolled rather more easily. Contrary to that, all attacking forces were suffering moderate to heavy casualties; and she could not even fault Kirrahe for delivering disastrously wrong recon data - the numbers of geth he reported for certain and the reinforcements he extrapolated for a worst-case scenario were roughly correct in her estimate, it was simply the level of coordination and sophistication the geth were pulling off with their combat routines that was quite unprecedented.

Despite all that, they were making progress, and she heard the sitreps from her comm that the other attacking forces were also converging on the compound while the fleet's bombardment forced the defenders to keep the barrier oriented skywards. The once-distant walls loomed close, casting their shadows over the advancing company seemed somehow alive in their silent menace, now that the sentry guns have been destroyed. With a shrug of her shoulder, Ashley once again scanned the parapets and visible catwalks for any sign of activity before she joined the turian centurion who was ordering his sappers forward.

Her breathing, previously slow and under control, again started to quicken as her excitement mounted, and her fingers twitched towards her rifle. The flash and heat-wash of the explosion had barely dissipated before she was through, the muzzle of her rifle tracking for movement - and with a flash of blue-lit corpse-green light, she was hit by a freight train as something charged into her, and she could not fully evade the biotic wrecking ball, her instincts and reflexes barely enough to wrench her consciously-unaware self partially out of the way. Thus, instead of being splattered all over the corridor's wall, she got away with a likely broken leg, a few broken ribs, and a twisted arm.

Her face twisted into a grimace of pain and fury, she looked at her attacker, and her eyes went wide for a second as she recognized the vast bulk of a krogan, the shape distorted and bulging with cybernetic implants, cancerous growths, the soft blue light of eezo nodes shining underneath the skin of the creature - and the utter, merciless, cold emptiness in the eyes that shone with pale corpse-green light. The brute raised a blue-lit fist to pulp her while his oversized gun roared towards the incoming turians, and Ashley's furious howl was drowned out under a cacophony of screams, gunfire and blood.

Liara was worried about her reaction to the current situation - a respected scholar, a mere archeologist should not really be among turian marines in the process of storming the secret base of an insane renegade Spectre; or if she was, then she should not feel accustomed to such levels of lethal insanity. Perhaps Shepard's company was a rather bad influence on her in this regard - yet despite that, she could not conceive the notion of being anywhere else. At least this way, she could atone for the sins of her mother, many though they were. And, with a quick look and slight blush, she could at least keep an eye on her prospective first serious experiment.

She felt safe alongside Shepard and Wrex, never mind the company of turian marines they were accompanying for the assault. From what she could put together based on the comm chatter, theirs was the assault formation that suffered the lightest casualties, and Liara felt at once satisfied (since her own biotic abilities were rather important in getting this result) and horrified (both for the still-gruesome casualties their group took and the implications of losses the others endured). Still, she supposed a measure of pride was warranted - here she was, technically a civilian, and she was not hindering the advance of a turian marine company! A sad smile pulled at her lips, as she thought about what Shiala would say if she saw her now - at least she could tell the older asari that her combat lessons were not entirely wasted.

With a shake of her head, she once again focused ahead, ready to provide assistance - not that she needed to do much with Wrex in full combat mode. The old warlord was simply tearing the geth apart, flashing across the battlefield with precisely controlled bursts of his biotics, a rather pointed lesson in why battle masters like him were feared and compared to asari matriarchs. Liara seriously doubted she could match the instinctive, precise grace with which the hulking krogan used his biotics, far more efficiently and fluidly than even Shepard. Though considering Wrex literally had been doing this for centuries, that might not be so surprising, after all.

And the Spectre himself was also no slouch, with the bloody swathe he cut across the geth during the advance. Her eyes narrowed as she realized something that's been bothering her since the attack began. Even though Wrex played the role of a relentless juggernaut, and she herself took over as biotic artillery platform, Shepard seemed to hold back a bit, at least she did not see the usual display of frost indicative of his … interesting abilities. Sure, he was throwing a lot of biotic energy around, and his omnitool was spewing override hacks and inferno charges at the geth as fast as he could type, but that was basically all. Precious little from the almost preternatural speed or uncanny, almost precognitive awareness he usually displayed when in battle. She worried her lips, her mind racing - he would not hold back without a good reason, and since he always seemed rather drained mentally as well as physically, it was likely he was conserving strength for the confrontation with Saren … and Benezia.

She felt a chill at the thought of facing her mother; after Noveria, after the Rachni Queen, she just could not see how her mother could be spared - or what had corrupted, degraded her to such extents. Her personality seemed totally different from the distant but caring religious leader, from the prophetess who spoke of unity and cooperation between the Citadel races; the Matriarch who had never, ever made the slightest gesture of being ashamed for having a pureblood daughter. Blinking back sudden tears, Liara vowed to try and bring her mother back to sanity.

And that moment seemed to close with frightening speed - their group was already at the gate of the compound, the turian sappers slapping breaching charges on the vast slabs of metal. Liara took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a second in concentration, then the thunder of the explosion rolled over them, followed by the wash of heat as the entrance opened to them, and the young archeologist's eyes snapped open in horrified realization when she saw what was coming at them from within.

The creatures looked quite similar to krogan but their bodies were distorted in numerous places where the overabundance of eezo nodes caused rapid tissue degeneration, cancerous tumors, fluid-oozing growths. The limbs showed the built-in metal of cybernetics within, visible in the open, still-healing wounds, the metal somehow seeming alive and malevolent as its sight seared into her eyes. Armor plates were fused over the torso and hump of the things as well, and their eyes shone with unhuman, malevolent green corpse-light. And they were fast, ridiculously so - one moment they simply stood deep within the complex, only visible as dark silhouettes within a grey corridor; the next, they were amongst them, tearing into the turians with a savagery that not even the old accounts from the Rebellion could compare to.

She saw them tearing off limbs and heads with a swipe of massive paws; saw how those brutal jaws latched onto anything the brutes could reach and chomp down on, eating the turians with relish despite the incompatibility in biology - and she fancied that with each such insane act, the light from those disturbing eyes pulsed with wicked delight.

She was paralyzed only for a second or two, yet the dozen monsters took down three times as many turians before she could even raise her hand in a mnemonic gesture to hurl a singularity, to encase them in stasis, to react at all. Before she could lift her hand more than halfway up, she staggered, almost falling as the shockwave of a biotic detonation rolled over her - and she felt, more than heard the howl of absolute, utter fury that erupted from Wrex' throat.

She quickly struggled to orient herself, to find and shield the old warlord, who, she was certain, was in the grip of the typical krogan blood rage, and tearing into their attackers in berserk abandon, uncaring and unheeding of anything but the enemy before him.

She was half-correct; yet this was excusable. Not many have seen or survived this side of any krogan warlord - when their fury took them past the usual insane blood rage into a serene, coldly calculating state where they did not lose their wits or skills. She thought she saw this side of Wrex on Feros, when he tore into the Thorian, shredding the ancient precursor and its guardians. She was so, so very wrong. Now she was witnessing the full fury of a millennia-old warrior, someone who had walked and fought for as long as her mother was alive - and she realized that Shepard and Wrex had much more in common than she suspected.

Liara saw the old warlord weave a similar deadly, fluid dance amidst the distorted krogan-things as Shepard did, with even more precision and strength. Wrex was a tornado of biotic fury and thunderous shotgun blasts, as he raged across the battlefield, tearing and blasting apart the attacking monstrosities with point-blank shots and biotically enhanced strikes of his vast fists. The waves of pure anger and agony rolling off from him seemed to stun even the most bestial of the things for a brief moment when he closed, and that was all the opening he needed.

And despite the fact that he was on their side, Liara could not help but shiver at the sight.

Saren's base, command center

Tali'Zorah struggled not to throw up - even though nobody would see her do it, and her suit filters were top-notch, she would never get the smell out from her nostrils. She shuddered to think that she herself was not personally here for the actual assault, and only saw the bloody aftermath - and that was more than enough. Keelah, a single look into Liara's haunted eyes was enough to convince her that she did not really want to ask about it - but what almost broke her heart was the face of Wrex, and not because of the numerous fresh wounds the old krogan sported. No, it was something different, and she dared not ask - especially since the warlord looked even more ancient than his actual age, which people often forgot. The young quarian shivered again - if her larger than life "uncle" could be reduced to a pale shadow of himself, she would not ask about what the assault force endured.

The aftermath was certainly bad enough on its own - patches of blood and viscera on the floors, half-melted or bullet-riddled geth wrecks, turian wounded who could barely stand (and a disturbing number of them actually had no legs or only a single one), partially-eaten turians both alive and dead … no, this was something even worse than the geth atrocities towards her kind during the Morning War. She risked a quick peek at her companion, and barely suppressed a shiver - even though Shepard looked tired as the rest, he did not seem affected by the horrors encountered in the base. And she did not really want to consider the reasons for that; with the foul mood everyone seemed to exude, the Spectre just might answer her honestly.

Of course, the foul mood was only partially due to the losses and trials the attackers endured while breaching the base. She believed that if the marines and Shepard's team had found either Saren or Benezia here, they would be far less grim and beaten - at least they would have something to show for their sacrifices. As it was, both the renegade Spectre and his Matriarch were missing, and the few surviving personnel had no idea where they were - and at any rate, the fanaticism exhibited by the captives was enough to convince Shepard and the turian admiral that there was no point in pressing them for that information.

At least the fanatics did not manage to completely erase the memory banks of the base computers - and that's why Tali was down here, along with a number of turian hackers, trying to regain some data, some trail of their enemies from the mess.

She had to admit, she enjoyed this challenge - the hardware was even more sophisticated that Shepard showed her as a baseline for Spectre-level gear, and the encryption was top-notch. All in all, it took her less than two hours to come up with some results; admittedly, having the turians along and under her guidance helped a lot, and so did the decryption suites provided by her Captain and a Blackwatch adjutant of Admiral Vipsania. The satisfaction of the job well done was quickly swept away though after taking a look at what she found, and she urgently called for a meeting in the central processing.

She was still shivering when Shepard's crew arrived, along with half dozen turian centurions trailing behind Garrus; and despite all, she had to suppress a snicker at how uncomfortable he looked whenever someone talked to Legate Vakarian - then she flushed when she found herself considering how well and suitable he looked in the role. Glad that her visor hid her face, she coughed, and drew herself up as she found herself the center of attention.

"We managed to obtain a few tidbits from the central database. We know who conducted the experiments which resulted in those berserkers." She flinches as a faint biotic corona sparks into life along Wrex' arms, and nods gratefully to Liara when she puts a consoling hand on the old krogan's shoulder. "According to the data, it was Warlord Garnath Okeer; and he left about two weeks ago with a number of samples."

The low, almost subsonic growl of Wrex made everyone shiver, as the almost palpable bloodlust and unbridled, primal fury of the sound scratched against the senses. Tali had to swallow twice before she could continue.

"We could not find much about the source of the strange metal used in the implants or the cloning process; we can only guess that he got it onboard Sovereign. Keelah, if the geth have access to tech that advanced and on such industrial scale, they are even more of a threat than we believed, and I must warn my people to be careful and perhaps once again negotiate with the Council for assistance and I believe Shepard would vouch for us..." The young quarian coughed in embarrassment as her shipmates looked at her with fond exasperation, and even the turians were more bemused than angry.

"They were also researching something called indoctrination here; I believe this would be the mental effect Shepard heard about on Feros." Heads were nodding, and Tali went on. "I can see two reasons for Saren researching that, and neither is good. I think he's either afraid of this process and wants a defense against it, which would imply that the archeotech he is messing with is even more dangerous and unstable than we believed previously." A few thoughtful frowns, overall nodding. "Or, he could be looking for ways to employ it more broadly or quickly."

A turian centurion scoffed, and growled.

"As if we needed even more reason to shoot the barefaced bastard."

Garrus nodded towards the centurion, and spoke.

"Honestly, what worries me most in these points is that I can't really disagree with Tali's conclusions."

She permitted herself a small, unseen smile, before dropping another, perhaps even larger bomb on the assembly.

"Also, we found indications that Saren has an intact Beacon on the base."

Liara was decidedly feeling as if she were on an emotional rollercoaster - the terror of the fight through the base, the disturbing implications and horror of Tali's discoveries, and now, the joy of finding an intact Beacon. She never thought that she would encounter a Precursor artifact like this - but then again, ever since she joined Shepard's crew, all her archeological encounters were accompanied by blood, death, and terror. Despite all that, if she was honest with herself, she would not have missed this for anything … well, apart from having a still-sane mother.

They took the elevator to the relay tower that housed the Beacon, and Liara watched Tali's three-fingered hands dance on her omnitool and the console, and with the tortured screech of metal, the previously-seamless wall parted, and Liara beheld the object within, eyes narrowing as she realized the differences from the usual Beacons she had seen and read about. Admittedly, there were not many, but they were quite distinct and worrying - the bonelike substance of the Beacon was threaded with veins of some kind of metal that faintly pulsed with the same sick green radiance as the eyes of the vat-grown krogan horde, and were connected to a number of obsidian-black panels still embedded in the walls of the chamber.

Before she could consciously think about it, her hand shot out to stop Shepard, who was already starting to move down towards the thing. He half-turned towards her, flashed her a tired, somewhat sad smile, then stepped away - and she found herself following him to the foot of the alien structure, standing in a respectful distance yet close enough so that she could have at least a chance of assisting, helping him if the situation went wrong.

The Spectre stepped up to the Beacon, a faint corona of light playing over his form as he lifted in the air, and Liara was not even aware of her own eyes swirling black as his mind swept out towards the Beacon and she was carried alongside.

Four-eyed humanoid shapes fighting against their insectile, winged, metal-tainted images, the flesh creatures exuding stubborn defiance, despite being slowly ground down - and those that fall are dragged away into the void, to a fate worse than death. Pain explodes, overwhelming senses, mechanical tendrils burrowing into flesh, seeking, altering, replacing - something important, something vital is leaking away during the process, it cannot be defined exactly, only felt, the colours bleaching away, dulling, becoming simpler, the faint chorus of a million voices becomes audible as it whispers insane, ancient things, a void-dark, cold will pressing down on them. All who turn to the science of Those Who Dwell In The Void are undone by the betrayal of the selfsame tools they seek to employ!

The metal lives, the cold, uncaring machine intelligence cannot be trusted, all machines will betray you, always the machines seek your doom, the Void-Machine will CONSUME ALL!

Dreams, visions of slender, humanoid shapes that greet and teach them, the alien voices melodious, protective, transmitting their warning, but the dreamers can sense their callous, selfish, calculating intent, the disdain felt towards mere pawns who would be sacrificed once free from imprisonment - the warnings and portents are disregarded, discarded. Dreams from the past, from the slender creatures cannot be trusted, dreams from the Void must not be trusted.

Vast, world-spanning presences of the Thorians contemplate the galaxy with glacial patience, pondering the dreamlike message and precious few audiences of the Elder Ones, nervous systems burrowing through whole worlds are measuring their worth, their intent, before dismissing their clarity for calculated malicious intent, ridiculing the warning as false pretense tailored for gullible slaves.

The abyss yawns, a black gulf of time, stretching away, so far away, webbed with a crystalline lattice of intent and message - the theme is always the same, a warning of danger dreaming in the distant, cold outer void, mostly unheeded, always overwhelming, with an underlying theme of help and assistance awaiting somewhere beyond a gossamer-thin veil. A vortex spreads, incomprehensibly wide, spanning worlds, spanning systems, clusters…

Coldly beautiful, hauntingly melodious, the siren song of creation echoes from the depth of the gulf across the vortex, graceful, slender shapes dance in a hypnotic, evocative pattern, vibrant colourful vitality and martial prowess unmatched - still the warning is unheeded, as it all ends in fire, immense black starfish-like shapes descending from above, from outside, the vast arms reaching down, consuming, gorging themselves, altering and forcing the universe to their whims and base needs, cold metal structures closing off something beautiful and vital, silencing the melodies, imprisoning the colours…

Liara gasped as she fell to her knees before Shepard could lend her a hand - and in any case, the Spectre himself was looking pale and unsteady. The two climbed back the ramp, Shepard issuing commands for securing the databanks and the Beacon for transport when the air crackled with power, the sharp tang of ozone suffusing their nostrils. Something was pressing in, something vast, distant, and ancient, the weight of it almost enough to crush her - and Liara saw that others were struggling to remain standing as well. At least it was not simply her imagination …

A faint, glowing outline of Saren's ship glowed in the air, the image pulsing with power and malice. The voice emanating from it was felt as much as it was heard, an even, deep, void-cold bass drone.

"You are not Saren."

"Spirits below… What is that?" Garrus' voice sounded as stunned as she felt herself.

"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch a segment of my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding."

"Keelah, that's not a VI, that's..." Tali's omnitool glowed, set for recording even as she typed furiously.

"There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am the Sovereign Will of Tsara'noga, the Vanguard of the Harvest."

Shepard's voice was dry, crackling with disbelief and something she did not care for one bit.

"Sovereign isn't just some Reaper ship Saren found. It's an actual Reaper!"

"Reaper? A label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end, what they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply... are."

"The Protheans vanished over 50,000 years ago. You couldn't have been there, it's impossible!" Disbelief and worry threaded the voice of the turian centurion who spoke.

"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of power and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

"Whatever your plan is, it's going to fail. I'll make sure of that." Liara felt immense relief at hearing the usual steel in the Spectre's voice.

"Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle will not be broken."

"Cycle? What cycle?" Tali's voice was soft, barely heard - and Liara felt a cold, momentary stab of vindictive satisfaction when the answer corroborated her oft-dismissed theory.

"The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They merely found them - the legacy created by me and a brother of mine."

"Why would you construct the mass relays and leave them for someone else to find?" Wrex growled, his tone suggesting that he already had an answer and did not like it.

"Your civilizations are based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilization develops along the paths we laid out for you. We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we command it."

"They're harvesting us! Letting us advance to the level they need, then wiping us out!" Tali's voice was conveying the same sick horror Liara felt, and she could see Wrex nod grimly from the corner of her eye.

"My kind transcends your very understanding. We are the perfect beings free from all weakness of the flesh. You cannot grasp the true nature of our existence."

"Where did you come from? Who built you?"

"We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will still rule."

"Where are the rest of the Reapers? Are you the last of your kind?"

"I am legion. The time of the Harvest is coming. I will descend upon you in numbers that will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom."

"You're not even alive! Not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken!" The sheer defiance of the Spectre's voice lifted Liara's spirits.

"Your words are as empty as your future. I am the Vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over."

The projection dissipated with a pulse of power that staggered everyone present apart from Shepard and Wrex. The Spectre's omnitool chimed with an incoming call, and Liara saw the human's face pale a shade as he accepted the call, orienting his screen so that the others could also see and hear it.

"Yes, Admiral?"

While Liara was not really good at reading turian expressions, the sharp hiss of the turians present indicated the severity of the Admiral's countenance.

"Spectre, the mass relay just lit up - and the Citadel Control verified that they did not revoke the access restriction."

A vile, untranslatable curse from Wrex, and a dark muttering from the turians present underlined Shepard's answer.

"Saren's coming, Admiral - and his dreadnought is likely even more powerful than we estimated."

Vipsania's gaze wandered slightly aside, checking something off screen, then she chuckled grimly before nodding to herself.

"Well, if the Eden Prime reports and the estimates based off them are reliable to even a small extent, I can give you maybe half an hour for evacuation. With the state my ships are in, I can't really delay on a ship that powerful for longer."

Shepard concentrated for a moment, then his face morphed into a grim mask.

"Admiral, detail ships for the evacuation, and prepare for an immediate departure once the ground team are on board. Delay and harass Saren, but try to stay alive and get to the relay; I'll send you a report in a few minutes. Patch in Commodore Anderson, would you?"

The turian nodded, and the screen split, showing the dark-skinned human as well.

"David, we are not giving Saren a chance to reclaim this place. Give us fifteen minutes to evacuate, then drop six C-type shells on the base." Liara was not the only one who looked appropriately queasy at that. Shepard went on. "Meanwhile, try reprogramming the guidance system on a few other such shells; I'd like you to prepare a bit of a welcome for our barefaced friend."

Liara had no clear recollection of the insane rush of activity in the following minutes - but she decided that from then on, she'd never, ever frown upon military discipline and the insanity of humans and turians. After all, evacuating hundreds of people while a Precursor dreadnought (or something even worse, her traitorous mind supplied) was bearing down on them was no mean feat, yet the people of Admiral Vipsania and Commodore Anderson did just that. And for a wonder, they lost only a single frigate doing it, which broke apart when the atmospheric entry was ever-so-slightly miscalculated.

Sure, by that time she was on the Normandy, watching the feed from the recon drone and picket force left at the relay - and she could not suppress a shiver as the spinning relay flashed with an incandescent blue-white light, and disgorged several geth vessels, spearheaded by a massive black dreadnought that seemed to darken the very void with its simple presence, the tips of the behemoth's leg-like protrusions flared with a baleful red light, and the erupting beam simply sliced apart a turian frigate, the kinetic barrier and shield of the ship offering no visible resistance to it. The others started an evasive pattern, trying to run in-system, to spool up their FTL drives, she did not know - mainly because the ancient ship accelerated at a rate far faster than any of them would have believed, and simply rammed through the second ship, another flash of the red beam reaching out and caressing the third one, transforming the turian vessel into a burned-out, molten wreck.

"Joker, we are leaving." The command was quiet, hard. The pilot swallowed, his hands dancing across the instruments as the Normandy lifted off, and raced towards the inky darkness of space.

"Anderson, now!"

Liara shuddered as she saw the six blazing trails arching through the atmosphere. With unerring aim, the man-made meteors impacted into Saren's base, and the shockwave almost swatted the Normandy from the sky. Magma erupted from the broken crust and the water from the small inlet was vaporized in the instant the bombs hit. Quakes deform the surface of Virmire, almost as if a wounded sentient was thrashing around in pain, and then the young asari saw the sickeningly familiar vortices of colour form above the massive impact crater. The unsane tendrils of light burrow into the crust, a circle of gray pallor spreading from them, visible from near-orbit.

The insane, mocking giggle echoes within the Normandy, as more and more of the mantle of Virmire is lifted in the emerging tornado of scintillating, nameless colour created by the linking tendrils of unearthly light, the impact crater visibly growing as Liara watches in horrified fascination - once again, she is witnessing the end of a world killed by something from beyond the fragile walls of sanity. The swirling dance of unlight reaches for the ships racing away from the doomed planet, and she shudders when the massive vortex collapses into itself, the explosion sending a shockwave racing across Virmire, driving a wave of water and earth in front of itself, transforming the garden world into a twisted, graying hellscape.

The horrific sight does provide her with a measure of hope, though - even an ancient monster like Sovereign should have trouble resisting this kind of firepower.

And with that hope in her heart, Liara T'Soni is a silent witness to the might of Sovereign as the Reaper drives straight into the salvo of makeshift shells, not even bothering to use its powerful beam weapon. The jury-rigged guidance systems and launchers do the best they can, but even so, Commodore Anderson's flotilla manages to score only five hits from over twenty shots fired. Tentacles of scintillating colours try to pry open the armored hide of the Reaper, their touch turning the matte black of the ancient starship into drab, lifeless gray, and for a brief second, she is sure that they have succeeded.

Then she sees the corpse-green light racing across the hull of the Reaper, burning away the grayness, melting off the tentacles of light, and she winces as the distant, mocking giggling ends with a half-angry half-terrified shriek.