Mass Effect: Of Lions And Angels

by jerseydanielgibson

Jane Catherine Shepard and Sara Elaine Ryder, the spacer brat and the Cit-born, the Lion of Elysium and the Angel of Illyeria, lifelong friends and almost-sisters, find themselves mired in events concerning ProTech and a diabolical scheme. Can a SPECTRE and a Corpsman along with an eclectic crew stop a Turians' plan that may rattle the very galaxy itself? (ME AU, major changes)

50. The Red Harvest, V

"Sexy danger and sexy bad choices; what's more to love?" - Lancer Rythe, Fort Tarsis, 468 LV

Author's Note: No clones were harmed in the making of this long-awaited chapter as I answer a strange sort of question; what if Shepard hadn't been the only one brain-stuffed by a Prothean Beacon?

Lock and load and prepare yourself for the very long-awaited conclusion to THE RED HARVEST.

---

Main Security Suite, Alexandria Station, Herschel System, Kepler Verge, July 25, 2183

Sur'kesh Yinli Gorban Jac'a Celini Tuvoc Harte sat in the main hub of his security suite of the Alexandria Station when the power went out… and came back on with a vengeance.

The two-century old Salarian Chenobit sat at the main security console when the data screens flickered back onto life, the main power coming back on but with emergency lighting, bathing the interior of the station in blood-red lighting as code and data came back corrupted and exposed, no longer displaying the operating system of a Virtual Intelligence. The Haptic keyboard that his three-fingered hands had been utilizing never came back on, and trying to queue it up resulted in no success. His hyper intelligent eyes went to the security feeds that had showed imagines of the team of infiltrators and assaulters that had barged upon his station to take him down, the former Warlord having toyed and manipulated the scenario to whittle down their numbers.

Harte had always known that someone would eventually have the impetus to cleverly track him down and try to arrest him or kill him, and he had layers and layers of various security measures to prevent that from happening, from droids to drones to turrets to simply flushing out potential victims out of an airlock if necessary. While the loss of his patients would be regrettable, he had an extensive dark market connection and network for those who needed his services for a variety of reasons, from replacing failing organ to adding decades and even centuries to their normal lifespans (tailored with inclusion RNA sequences to make sure they didn't break faith 'lest they age a hundred years in a hundred days). It was all in the name of science, of course; to build the perfect breed of Salarian that would replace the normal stock that the Union government had so blatantly corrupted with their moronic attempts well over a millennium before. Using their less-than-intelligent brothers and sons as cannon fodder and political pawns to support the fertile Dalatrasses and intelligent Chenobits as they waged a shadow war against the Asari Republic and the Turian Hierarchy for political dominance in the galactic station? Tuvoc remembered his sister Ulala giving birth to five fifty-egg clutches, two hundred of his nephews sent out into the black under the auspice of the Salarian Special Tasks Group to spy and infiltrate many different arenas of alien society to keep tabs upon the various governments of the galaxy. Tuvoc Ulala had to watch her sons get turned into pawns in their mothers' schemes to raise their clan in the Union government, breaking her poor heart when they were ushered away at the tender age of four while repeatedly bred for numbers. Their mother, Dalatrass Olsae, had used their Clan in a subtle coup attempt to direct the Union into a more powerful position, with herself as Head Dalatrass. A scheming old female with delusions of grandeur that used and sacrificed her children and grandchildren for her own personal gains and agendas.

He had killed her himself with his bare hands after he graduated the Academy and completely gotten away with it.

Full-restoration cloning had been his glorious achievement amongst many endeavors that he had accomplished; the ability to clone an organ or a system perfectly. He could literally replace any component of the body if he so desired with a good margin of success, and had even gotten good enough to completely clone an entire organism with very little in the way of error; the very pinnacle of genetics. Harte had cloned himself several times over, sublimely educating his clones via subliminal messaging of memories and personality adaptation matrices while the clones grew in case he were captured or killed. There were those who would pay a great deal of money to live forever, and Harte had sold the product with… safeguards genetically included in the clones in case someone decided to sell him out or refuse to pay. He had lived two and a half centuries in various bodies that had been improved over the decades as he refined his technique for the ultimate goal.

To create a Salarian who would be genetically superior to the others.

Harte was well aware how… low… Salarians were in the scheme of things. They weren't built fighters like the Turians, Krogan, or Batarians. They weren't as adaptive or creative as the Humans or the Quarians. Salarian Biotics were rarer than the rest since Dalatrasses weren't exposed to the risks of Eezo contamination, kept away from engine cores and even areas where accidents were likely to happen. The normal Salarian strengths of intelligence and innovation were espoused but sadly not regarded as highly as it should have been. If they weren't straight out regarded as spies (and looked down upon for that profession despite the galaxy's need to know everything miraculously), then they were looked down upon completely, not seen as being as strong or as martial or as cultured as some of the others. The Salarian race had achieved as much as the Asari had without the use of a planet pumped full of Eezo, discovering the Citadel on their own, discovering Prothean ruins on one of their moons and deciphering it themselves to explore the stars.

Harte had spent the past two hundred years exploring and advancing the Salarian Genome to create a Salarian that would be the pinnacle of genetic evolution. Denser skeletons, tendons, and cells for tougher skin and strength capabilities, increases in motor capabilities and twitch-fiber muscle responses for better accuracy and reaction, and the prize; subtle Eezo exposure to permanently change a Salarian female to give birth to Biotic Salarians; an entire clutches' worth. Two hundred years and trillions of Credits had gone into the equipment, supplies, testing, and implementation of creating a Salarian that would be superior to any other species in the galaxy. Intelligent, strong, fast, regenerative, Biotic, longer-living… in every single member, not a small percentage. His only real 'failure' was the inability to change the percentage of females born in a clutch; only one per clutch seemed to be hardcoded into the Salarian genome no matter what he did. Well, of all the things that he possibly could fail at, that was a minor thing compared to the rest. Having forty-nine males that were all equal to each other and all more advanced than the others was more than enough to make up for the loss.

He only needed to think of the growth tank that contained the clone of his long-deceased sister Tuvoc Ulala that contained that wealth of success. When she was 'born' from the tank, fully mature and fertile, her children would be the future. He, of course, would naturally be their father, having already implemented those changes into his own body's DNA.

But then that clochea Turian who had pried out his prized possession four years prior had come back… with a team that could actually give him pause.

Normally, he wouldn't have been worried. The Council had sent the galaxy-famous Doomslayer after him, Doctor Sur'kesh M'kael Bea'ttie Wi'lam Salyer Mordin Solus well known to anyone with ExtraNet access or a subscription to a news media site. As smart and as capable as Doctor Mordin had been, he had fallen to Harte, captured and used to further exploit the Salarian genetic pool, in which the Council Agent was a worthwhile addition. There were perhaps only a few dozen individual sapients more dangerous in the Milky Way, and only a few of those would be concerned with what Harte was doing under the guise of Doctor Ingree Saelon. The Geneticist figured if somehow another SPECTRE or a team of Blackwatch were ever sent, he could defeat them easily.

Everything changed fifty standard days ago, on a day the Terran media called the Day of Infamy.

Normally, Harte could have cared less about the genetically inferior in the galaxy except as a means to exploit. He had long since chosen the path he walked upon, knowing the things he did would be seen as some of the vilest crimes in the galaxy. He had already technically lost once when the Council discovered what he supposedly was doing over two centuries prior, sending SPECTREs and fleets to end the threat of Warlord Tuvoc Harte. What amused him to no end was that very few of the individuals knew that he was a Council Agent, albeit a rogue one. For twenty years, he had searched and searched and searched for information, clues, knowledge, and technical schematics to prepare for an event that he had been warned about; a dire threat given to him when he had accidentally unlocked an unknown Prothean Beacon on an asteroid in a systems' belt that he had chased pirates into. The pirates in question had accidentally unearthed the Beacon and were trying to tap into its data matrices for technological exploitation before being discovered by Agent Harte, each and every one of them molecularly disintegrated thanks to his hand-crafted BlackTech de-ionization canon that he used to render criminal sapients into gory puddles of bones, chunks of meat, and blood. Mission complete and a Beacon to return to the Citadel, Harte had somehow tripped some sort of security field that the pirates hadn't, and petabytes of information had been biologically downloaded into his brain.

He saw war. He saw death. He saw destruction. He saw extinction. All in the hands of some sort of vessels that created monstrosities to massacre organics.

Harte's life was forever changed, and on that day, he began to walk the path he was on now.

Two decades of investigations into Prothean history as well as other precursor species that came before them had the Salarian Chenobit coming to a hearts-breaking conclusions; there was, in fact, a cycle of purging extinction in the Milky Way. Dozens of former space-faring species that were Faster-than-Light capable had been buried in the eons of time, fragments of fragments of what they were existing in Charnel House planets and deeply-buried ruins. Oh, those remains were easily located if one wish to look them up on the ExtraNet, along with conspiracy theories of who they were and what happened to them. But Harte saw something else; the passage of time in between such events, separated by fifty millennium. The Academy Alumni investigated with the fervor that only a Salarian Chenobit could reach when a recently discovered planet by the name of Klendagon was discovered during that time, marked with a rather interesting geological highlight; a gorge hundreds of kilometers long that hadn't been created by wind or water… but by a glancing kinetic strike that had cracked the crust of the planet open with its passing.

Tuvoc knew what that was; it was a shot meant to kill something epic.

A full year of research had went into that gorge, extrapolating where it must have come from when one trailed back the years based upon its carbon-dating beginning some thirty-seven million years prior. He had already suspected heavily that Mass Relays (and likely the Citadel) weren't created by the Protheans unlike the popular belief, and the Klendagon Rift was just another telling point; a mass-accelerated round using Element Zero to drop its properties to achieve greater velocities and kinetic impact. Equations and algorithms had been hand-crafted by his beautiful mind to map the shot that cracked a world, spinning it backwards into time to where its parent star was located in a spinning galaxy thirty-seven epochs before. It had been hard, tedious work, but after a year of research, Harte had found a substantial piece of evident.

He found the target drifting inside a gas giant called Mnemosyne.

The Salarian remembered that moment, seeing a two-kilometer long vessel that was double the length and triple the mass of the venerated Destiny Ascension, a Fleet-Killer if he had ever saw one. That it was inside a gas giant, almost at crush depths, and yet somehow remaining in position under minimal power and seemingly inert and unmanned was a chilling discovery. The sight of its headache-producing hull and strange configuration that seem somehow so wrong was all the evidence that Tuvoc Harte needed.

He had seen its like before; in his dreams, in his visions, in what the Prothean Beacon had downloaded into his perfect memory banks two decades prior.

Something was culling the galaxy every fifty thousand years, something had come and wiped out the Protheans and the species before. Something piloted those strange Super Dreadnoughts like he saw from the Beacon and hovering inside Mnemosyne and killed every last vestigial trace of the species that it hunted into total annihilation. Every fifty thousand years, something went and murdered a galaxy.

And it had been fifty thousand years since the Protheans had gone unknowingly extinct.

Tuvoc tried to convince the Council, he really did. But they were politicians, and they never did anything that would upset their power base or their political standing. The Council of Law decried him and destroyed his reputation, reducing him to a mere researcher for the Office of Special Tactics. That alone was infuriating, but the fact was that he had done his job; he had found a threat, informed the Council of it.

Now it was his job to eliminate it.

At nearly thirty years of age, Harte knew he didn't have much time. He went to the one person he trusted above all in the galaxy; his sister Ulula. Having been deposed by a niece to be the leader of Clan Tuvoc, Ulala listened to his every word, read over his evidence, and even saw the mysterious vessel for herself. Harte had made a plan, and though she made a few corrections to it, she agreed that it was the best choice possible.

Together, he and his sister were going to save the galaxy by creating a race of genetically-advanced super Salarians with the best traits from the other species of the galaxy to wage a brutal war against those mysterious travelers that would utterly destroy them all. Together, they were going to save everyone. He cloned himself when he got too old, continuing his work. He saved his sisters' genetic material before she passed away, holding her hand as she finally breathed her last. He faced the Council and their forces when they discovered him cloning riff-raff to combat possible extragalactic forces that he believed were orchestrating the return of the Annihilators (what he called them). Harte had already combated what he believed to be an Agent of the Annihilators, an Asari Matriarch who preached salvation but was going to bring about galactic extinction just to save the Asari race (typically Thessian of her, really). Several more minor agents existed throughout the Traverse, and Harte had cloned thugs to combat their forces, to purge the galaxy of their filth and deeds. He had to clone himself to distract the Council forces that came for him while he worked, other Hartes who knew the plan and the stakes involved. With a broken heart, he had sent the last of them to convince the Council and the galaxy-at-large that he was dead, that his bases were destroyed as he focused his efforts and research in small stations out in the black, making use of small BlackTech Organic Technology endeavors to fund his project through unscrupulous sapients willing to spend top credit for… whatever bleh'gh they wanted that wasn't worth his time but certainly worth the Credits he needed to save all species. With the Servators dead and his own demise publicized, Tuvoc Harte worked in relative peace.

Every decade, every year, brought him closer to his goal; to create the ultimate warrior to fight the ultimate enemy.

And then fifty days ago, Eden Prime was attacked by the Geth… and a very large vessel that none had ever seen save him.

The Annihilators have returned.

Tuvoc Harte sped up his timeframe, knowing that he had, at best, perhaps a year or so left. He had already crafted what was the 'perfect' clone, and had transfered his memories and progress to the clone, giving birth to it a week after Eden Prime. He was now more superior than he had ever been, his sister nearly ready to hatch… and yet he was running out of time. He was tempted in making even more clones of himself, but having too many had proven… less-than-desirous. It was all down to him; the last of us, Harte thought to himself.

"AI, I know that you are there listening." The Salarian Geneticist said out loud in the relative safety of his security suite, knowing what would be coming next.

[I am] A Humanistic male voice came over the security consoles' speaker.

"I will leave the data as well as my personal logs unaltered and uninfected for you and the Lion to use should she prove successful." The Doctor told the Artificial Intelligence he knew to be in his system. It was really only a matter of time. "I will go and face her, one recipient of a Beacon against another, to see who is the worthy one to defend this galaxy against the Annihilators. Should she succeed, please deliver my personal logs to her for her pleasure. There are things… she should know should she prove victorious for the upcoming years, AI. I have spent the past two centuries preparing for the extinction event that the Annihilators will bring, as they have done to the Protheans, the Inusannon, the Thoi'han, the Arthenn, the Bothroeans, the Carcosans, and the Etamis before us. Please make sure she reads them and takes them seriously if I should fall."

[I… shall], the digital voice replied, a moment of hesitation in its answer likely meaning that this was an unusual situation for it, and yet it had given its word. [What will you do now, Tuvoc Harte]

"Now it is time to see which one of us is the worthier to protect this galaxy, AI." Harte said, standing from the console, assured.

"It is time to see how a Lion fares against a God."

---

TEAM RED, "South Spire", Alexandria Station, Herschel System, Kepler Verge, July 25, 2183

[Captain, I have read and compiled the information you have requested]

Captain Jane Catherine Shepard (SAN, N7, OST) stalked down the hall of the Alexandria Station, leading a kill team of expert specialists to hunt down a sapient who was steeped in some of the worst crimes imaginable. SAM, the Artificial Intelligence created by Captain Alex Clancy Ryder (and currently getting a piggyback ride on Shepard's back) had been unleashed on the station to even the odds against a Salarian that might in fact be smarter than anyone else on TEAM LION, an Academy Alumni that had spent somewhere around the past two centuries living out in the black performing the kind of experiments that would have the most vile of BlackTech marketers shrivel up in horror. This very station had swallowed who knew how many lives and souls, people sucked into the clutches of a madman steeped into blackest of sciences, pushing beyond the boundaries of reason and lunacy. She was going to find her prey and she was going to eliminate Doctor Vorhen Nisuses Ben Vares Tol Ingree Saelon in the name of Man and God with a smile on her face for all that he had done.

Sara, I'm going to empty his skull for what he did to you and Aunt Ellen, for all that he's done to the people here both past and present, the SPECTRE thought, the rage inside her palpable. The vile crimes that had happened on Alexandria Station were beyond appalling, and Jannie knew why the Council of old had sent practically everything two centuries prior to erase anything and everything to do with Tuvoc Harte, to eliminate the threat once and for all. Unfortunately, someone or something had slipped through the cracks and had worked out in the black, away from scrutiny and prosecution. How many years has he done this, how many lives has he done this to? The N7 stalked down the corridor like a panther in search for its prey.

[It is as you feared, Captain; Tuvoc Harte has organically upgraded himself to become a far superior being than anything that currently exists amongst the higher lifeforms of the galaxy]

"Well that's just bloody perfect." Shepard growled at SAM's information. "What are we talking about, SAM?"

[Data suggests that he has stolen genetic traits from many species and has spliced them together and created clones of himself to become a more evolved, more advanced being]

"What a bosh'tet." Ensign Tali'Zorah nar Reyya replied in disgust through the vox of her Rannoch Industries' QuArmor EnviroSuit (Engineer Variant), hoisting her Rannoch Industries' Reegar Electromagnetic Discharge Carbine Shotgun as she followed behind Detective Garrus Kaaldor Vakarian, the Rapid Response Sniper armed with his Kassa Fabrications' M-98 Widow Sniper Rifle. At the rear was Doctor Liara Delphoria E'Shora of House T'soni providing rear security and Biotic support, armed with her Hydra Industries' M-113 Drake Assault Rifle in her armored hands as the Asari moved with enough tactical know-how to look like she actually belonged amongst a team of professionals. "Captain, I'm looking through slaved surveillance feeds, and I see motion captures of a… big Salarian male heading out of the main server complex and towards the main hanger. I doubt he's heading there for a flight."

"SAM? Take over any and all automated defense and begin giving our resident asshole a taste of his own medicine." The SPECTRE ordered as she continued her tactical advanced through the station, heading towards an embankment of stairs that would bring them to the main level of the station. "Observe feeds and note his movement, styles, tricks, and tactics. This guy is super smart and has had plenty of time to plan this out. We're going to need every advantage we can get. Bring the pain, SAM."

[Affirmative]

Deep in the station of the United Aepheus Corporations' Autonomous Energy Processing Station, doors slid open to reveal the existence of Salarian-manufactured Colicoid Creations' Droideka roller-droids as the mechs began to roll out, dozens appearing in the hallways and corridors of the station as they bowled themselves towards their target; a Salarian male thanks to the control that SAM had over the stations' security protocols and information systems. The station was his, as was everything electronic in it.

[Captain, I have collated the information on what Tuvoc Harte was doing on the patients… and himself]

"Send it, SAM." Shepard replied as she turned up the flight of stairs that would bring her team towards the main deck of Alexandria Station. There was about ten flights to clear and ascend, unfortunately.

[He has created a clone of himself with extensive genetic modifications as well as integrating the traits of several different species into a form that has merged with many different forms of genetic code and capabilities to create a body that has come out ideal]

Jannie felt herself slowly stopping in her tracks as she turned slowly to look at the helmeted head of Detective Garrus Vakarian, his shaded visor looking right at her shielded and glowing visor, no doubt the both of them thinking the same thing at the same time. Humanity took a rather black eye due to their MarsGene-induced genemods and the Human GENOME Project to help Humans survive the rigors of space travel, the Homo Sapiens body not exactly constructed to deal with the traumas and ordeals that space flight could take. Decalcification and Vitamin-D Deficiency were common issues for those who traveled extensively, and there were a whole host of small issues that could crop up to include loss of muscle mass, internal system disruptions in the thyroid and endocrine systems due to the lack of proper gravity and sunlight, and even a small percentage of people who developed mental issues such as vertigo, displacia, and even paranoid schizophrenia.

Colonizing different planets with their different environments and mineral contents in the soil and water had their own issues, too, not to mention the whole host of genetic maladies that cropped up in the past century due to Earth's ailing environment due to hydrocarbon pollution, nuclear proliferation, chemical spills, and the extinction of several species of insects and smaller fauna species necessary for some processes on Earth. Without genemods, Mankind would have been in a very bad way. But the Council, despite their stance on genetic modification, did eventually understand why genemods were necessary for Mankind, and gave limited license to companies such as MarsGene and Binary Helix to research proper genetic modification that aided instead of altered. It really didn't go into the genetic work-up that all those in the Systems Alliance Navy and Marine Corps received when entering service, much less what N's like herself received once passing Villa Militar to enhance the Human body to near-perfect condition in such things such as better oxygenation, increased sensory package, denser muscle fibers, and more efficient respiration. The difference between someone like herself and, say, Petty Officer (Second Class) Sara Elaine Ryder or Sergeant First Class Ashley Madeline Williams was but a few percentage points… but only for things that a Human was already capable of.

What Harte was doing was well beyond the realm of proper science. He really had become the Frankenstein Monster, but at the genetic level.

"What are we looking at, SAM?" Shepard asked.

[Denser tissue structure to the dermis systems akin to hardness of Turian plates, modified oxygenation exchange commonly seen in Hanar, biological regeneration extracted from both Krogan and Vorcha, duel-brain hemisphere cooperation as well as hand-eye coordination from the Batarian genome, muscular density increase from both Elcor and Krogan genetic additions, musculature composition and addition to the digitigrade legs for enhanced speed more commonly seen in Quarians, increased intelligence throughout the male Salarian gymates to include all males and not a small percentage, more improved endocrine and hypothalamus from the Volus, telomere end caps from the Asari genome for longetivity…], there was a distinct pause.

[…the addition of both Asari and Human Biotic organ nodes littered throughout the more Human thyroid system for Biotic conclusion akin to Asari strength and the Human genome's genetic diversity to include so many different biologies as well as accepting the Human GENOME Project's more advance genemods that one sees in N's]

"Sara." Garrus said it all in one word, the reason that 'Doctor Ingree Saelon' had needed Sara Ryder four years prior; Human DNA to tie it all together without making some sort of genetic horror. "These patients were cultures to grow different organs to see how Harte could make it work, to make himself into some sort of… super Salarian."

[No, not just him. There is another. A sister], SAM reported. [Tuvoc Ulala remains incubated in stasis, her genetic imprint saved from the original who passed away centuries ago]

"That fucker isn't making a perfect Salarian…" Jannie began.

"But the beginnings of a breed of Salarian that could conquer and control the galaxy, Goddess!" Doctor Liara Delphoria E'shora of House T'soni finished, her tone horrified. "If he released his sister and she were to be allowed to spawn and fertilize her eggs with his genetic imprint…"

"That's fifty super-smart, super-strong, super-healing, super Salarians." Tali finished the Protheantologists' sentence, her tone utterly disgusted. "A Dalatrass can do… ten clutches in their lifetime? Oh… I forgot he added 'super-long lived' to the list of s'kak things of not to queep with. How many people did he do this to? To make two genetic… I don't know what they are!"

"Foul creations." Vakarian growled, his duel-toned voice harsh and ugly. "I didn't think it was possible to hate Saelon even more than I did. This is beyond anything I could have ever thought possible. Who knew cloning slave soldiers wouldn't be the crowning achievement of evil?"

"It ends here, it ends now." Shepard replied with finality. "SAM, send everything this station has for an automated defense against that asshole. If this guy's come back as the Red Skull or some shit, then wear his ass down and distract him. The last thing we need him to do is to be prepared for us."

[Acknowledged, Captain], the AI replied. [The first set of Droidekas will be engaging within thirty seconds. I recommend we corral him to the one location that we are sure to hold the advantage; the MAKO]

"Blast his ass silly with the main gun. I like it." The redhead nodded as she looked back to her team. "Let's shake a leg and get up there as soon as possible. Chances are this guy doesn't have any more carbon copies of himself floating in a tank waiting to finish cooking, so he may in fact be on his last life. No more reloads for this asshole; we end him once and for all." Jannie clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth to signal the go-ahead as she turned back to the stairs, ascending them once more to face the vile creature that ruled this station.

And then empty his brains all over a wall.

---

Sha'me/Ensign Tali'Zorah nar Reyya had two screens up on the inner-curve display of her SMARTglass on the interior of her helmet; one showing an external feed of where she was going, and the other showing a real-time display of camera feeds focusing on Doctor Ingree Saelon/Tuvoc Harte. To see a larger-than-normal Salarian male walking down the middle of a corridor dressed in a simple undersuit with no apparent armor or weapons knowing that there was a team sent to capture/kill him would normally smack of stupid… but the Quarian Pilgrim had heard what the Salarian had done to himself. Tali knew of the Clone War; the Quarians hadn't been a part of it, but they had been endangered by the Traverse Warlord that had used his clone armies to break and destroy his competition to rule the Attican Traverse single-handedly. That the creature was still alive was disquieting. To hear what he had done to others and himself? Her very soul shuddered at the thought of someone who had used people in such a way, to steal their very genetic essence to create some sort of hyper-Salarian built to conquer. It wasn't so far of a stretch to think that if he were to succeed, he and his new breed of Salarians could easily enslave the galaxy given enough time.

And she thought the Geth bad.

"Captain, the first Droidekas are arriving." Tali informed the Human Captain as she followed Detective Garrus Vakarian up the stairs that would take them to the main deck. She could see on the security feed a dozen roller-droids approaching the lone Salarian, unfolding into combat operations as their shields activated and their arm-analogs rotated to expose their assault rifle attachments. She watched as a dozen Droidekas began to engage the Salarian, weapons firing at him.

But the Salarian had already moved.

Tali watched in abject fascination and horror as Tuvoc Harte bound away from where he had been standing, his reaction time extraordinary as he juked to port, dashed to starboard, and leapt forward several meters right into the middle of the contingent of Colicoid Creations' security mechs. The Salarian was a blur as his hands jabbed forward, ripping out exposed wiring and fragile components as he moved to each, disabling and dismantling each in less than a second, moving from one to the next at speeds that had the Quarian's jaw drop. Within fifteen seconds, the only thing left standing was the Salarian, decommissioned Droidekas surrounding him.

Tali wasn't even sure if he had gotten shot.

Queep.

"Captain, he's good. Real good." The Pilgrim said over her vox as she continued to move with the kill team, watching the feed as the male Sur'keshian merely walked away from the scene of the battle, not even really looking strained or out-of-breath. "I've never seen anything like it. Not even in an Asari action vid." The Human paused for a moment, and Tali knew that the SPECTRE was viewing the same thing, obviously asking SAM to show her the images. Fifteen seconds later, the armored helmet of the HMWA MasterGear SPECTRE Mk. IV Armor turned to look at Tali for a moment.

"Any ideas?" The Level Three Council Agent asked her, giving the Quarian pause. Oh, she knew what the Captain was doing! Likely she had a solution in mind, but she was giving Tali a chance to prove herself when facing adversity.

"Hold the droids in reserve until we reach the range in which we can engage him." The Pilgrim replied, coming up with a reasonable solution quickly. "Obviously a number of drones won't be effective. But if we add greater numbers of them during our own attacks, we can tie him down to where he will take injuries and make mistakes, plus we can be a little more indiscriminate with the Droidekas at close range, sacrificing them to gain the advantage."

"We'll also use explosives and the Droideka's power cores to self-detonate." The N7 replied, nodding her helmeted head. "Not a fan of using a bunch of drones and droids to do my work, but this guy's earned an exception to policy. Tali, work with SAM and surround Saelon but don't engage. When we hit him, we hit him with everything." The Quarian nodded as her eyes went to the PiP screen on the inner-curve of her SMARTglass, keeping track of the large Salarian that was stalking the hallways.

[May I make a suggestion?]

"What is it, SAM?" Tali asked, her silvery eyes watching Saelon/Harte advancing through the station at a saunter. He wasn't even perturbed at the thought that someone was hunting him! The fact that she was about to take advice from an AI said much, but she had had conversations with the Artificial Intelligence that Sara Ryder called brother, and the Quarian had to admit that it was nothing like the Geth or the stories her people told about AI. It had been made as a medical device meant to save lives, specifically that of Doctor Ellen Harlow-Ryder, to make decisions and adjustments to give the Human woman a better chance at life and better comfort, too. If Quarians had a little less fear and hate against AI's… would her own father have crafted something similar to SAM to save Tali's mother, dying due to a plague that had ran rampant through dozens and dozens of vessels in the Migrant Fleet? Would something like SAM have spared lives and grief? It was a question the Pilgrim wasn't sure she wanted answer, knowing that there was something that could have been done.

[I have noted that organics can be quite emotionally attached to those they see as special to them], the AI said, [and that even the best of them can be… irrational when someone as such is in danger. I advise a trap… with bait]

Tali's eyes went wide at the thought, knowing exactly what SAM was suggesting.

"Captain?" The N7 looked up to the hacktivist as Tali looked to Captain Shepard.

"How many grenades do we have?"

---

The attack came from the front, and Sur'kesh Yinli Gorban Jac'a Celini Tuvoc Harte was ready for it.

Oh, droids weren't very good at being subtle, and the Colicoid Creations' Droideka Roller-Droids were no exception. Even without his enhanced hearing, Harte could have heard them rolling down the corridor, metal-on-metal producing enough racket for a suited Volus with a malfunctioning VI suite in his suit to hear them coming. There was enough racket to suggest that the entire contingent of his security forces were on their way minus the ones destroyed by the assault team on his station as well as the ones he had decommissioned with his own Biotically-enhanced hands. The Salarian estimated that there was perhaps anywhere from forty to fifty on their way to impede his progress from meeting with the Lion and her crew. No doubt that the Human N7 was going to use the Droidekas as both a distraction and a way to wear him down as she set up a trap to end him, likely to assault him when the threat was at its greatest. It didn't take a military genius to exploit such an opportunity, and a sinister part of the Salarian Geneticist was looking forward to the confrontation, to see if he could best such odds. The Lion might be as good as some of the more elite counterparts that occupied the Special Forces communities throughout the galaxy, like the Hierarchy's Armiger Legion in the Blackwatch, or the more expensive wetwork squads amongst some of the more professional private military companies available, such as the Black Star Division of the Blue Suns Military Corporation, or even perhaps some of the more dangerous individuals in the galaxy, such as the Drell Shadow Strike Operatives of the Illuminated Primacy or a member of the Thessian Order of Retribution, known as the Justicars. While Humans were rather low on the physical scale when it came to some of the species of Citadel Space, Captain Jane Catherine Shepard was an extremely dedicated Human female who had bested opponents whom thought themselves better than her, and that had been before she had become a Council Agent.

While perhaps not as dangerous as some of her SPECTRE kin, Harte knew that coming out on top against one of those vaulted elite, even a brand-new one of a rather backwards species, would be a good baseline upon not only what he would be able to accomplish… but his future taddi as well.

The roller-droids came, and Tuvoc Harte was ready.

They came, forty-eight in all, rolling down the corridors of Alexandria Station as they configured themselves into combat operations, unfolding from their circular configuration and transforming into fully-activated security-oriented assault droids. Legs telescoped out as arms unfolded, weapons systems going on-line as ninety-six rapid-firing weapons locked onto his heat signature as Harte looked at the Droidekas with a smile.

Finally, a challenge.

The Salarian was already moving as the first dozen or so shots fired at where he once was, leaping forward and to the side to land with his feet on a bulkhead wall as weapons adjusted to his movement, tracking him as Harte leapt up and forward to put himself into the middle of the deployment of combat drones, landing with grace in between several Colicoid Creations' versatile product. The droids were already tracking his current position as his hands shot forward, grabbing onto a cable of wires of one Droideka and a hydraulic line for another, tearing out both with ease as he was already moving onto the third and forth, tearing out a tracking servo in one and a power core in another. Rounds were fired upon him as Tuvoc Harte moved with speed and accuracy, tearing out sensitive instrumentation with his bare hands as the drones tried to overcome him with their pitiful artificial attempts. He had already taken out ten before a quarter of a minute had passed, bounding back and forth as he tore out fragile components and brought down robotic assaulters with finesse and speed, dodging incoming shots as the Droidekas pathetically tried to reacquire him, the Salarian moving through their ranks like a ghost, bring them down one or two at a time with his three-fingered hands. The more he took down, the easier it got as the population of drones continued to drop, half of the numbers gone in the first minute. After that, it became almost laughably easy as Harte continued his rampage, leaping and dodging through the constant gunfire as he tore through the ranks as if he had been born to do so.

Within the next thirty seconds, he was standing over the last of the roller droids, its power core in his hand as the robotic security drone fell to the deck deactivated, all of its contingent now off-line. The pain of less than a dozen minor wounds barely bothered him from when his dodging had gotten mere cuts or scratches thanks to his altered biology, the perfect being trumping over vastly numerically superior opponents. He was breathing hard, yet he was already recovering from his fatigue, his minor wounds slowly regenerating as he stood in the epicenter of his wrath, victorious. A well-trained squad wouldn't have walked away uninjured or without casualties, yet in a matter of minutes, he would be in as fit of fighting form as he had been when he started. Tuvoc Harte stood amongst the deactivated drones with a smile.

Sister, I am successful. I am the perfect being; the pinnacle of genetic evolution and superiority.

Yet… all of his foes had been robotic.

This had Harte frown; he had fully expected the Lion and her kill team to engage him when his foes were at their thickest, combining organic elements along with the robotic ones to slow him down and wear him out. Captain Shepard was a highly-trained Special Forces Operative (for her species, but still) who would know when to exploit an opportunity or advantage. That she hadn't was… troubling.

Not that he cared one iota about that kve'sha Elanos Haliat, but the Turian had made the mistake of underestimating the Lion and had gotten his clochea executed while being vid-captured live by the Human just to prove that she could get to anyone in the galaxy. Harte had actually respected that when he learned of the event nearly five years prior.

So why hadn't she attacked him?

She knows when to exploit an opportunity or advantage, Tuvoc Harte thought with a slow-crawling horror growing deep in his guts as he realized he left a vulnerability for the Lion to take advantage of now that the station was under the control of her pet Artificial Intelligence.

"Ulala."

Harte ran faster than he had ever ran before, fueled by the biological changes he made to the Salarian musculature in his legs with additions from the Quarians' digitigrade musculature of their legs and thighs, sprinting forward as a dark red rage took over, the only thought pounding in between his horns being the very intense need to murder the paltry little Human for endangering his sister. He was going to break every bone in her body as the giant Salarian ran down the corridors of Alexandria Station, taking turns at speeds in excess of fifty kilometers an hour as he went right for the Incubation Laboratory where his sisters' new body was being grown, just weeks away from completion. Harte snarled in fury as he turned to the corridor in which the Lab occupied, sprinting for the door with its green icon suggesting it was unlocked as the two hundred plus year old Salarian ran through the opening doors…

…and right into an explosion.

The Salarian Geneticist found himself on his back, looking up at the ceiling in bewilderment for a moment, the ringing in his horns intense as a dark, blinding pain infused his body in a sort of detached way. He blinked several times as he tried to get up, and felt some sort of strange, cold realization come over him as he looked down for a moment while lifting his legs up.

Both were severed mid-thigh from the explosion.

Stupid… walked into… a trap… Harte thought as he coughed hard, wetness splattering from his mouth and down his chin as his head laid back on the deck, knowing he had vracked up, and badly. He had gone into a bloodrage thanks to his Krogan genes, and like every other idiotic Tuchankan in existence, he had lowered his head and charged into the problem thinking it a solution.

The Lion had planted several anti-personnel grenades at the foot of the Incubation Lab to greet him, grenades he had activated in his haste to save his sister.

He looked up to the ceiling of the station to see four beings standing over him, looming over him as Harte realized who two of them were; one Captain Jane Catherine Shepard and Detective Garrus Kaaldor Vakarian. Fitting it would be the two of them, he who had wronged their clan by abducting that little Human female Sara Elaine Ryder. Now they were going to return the favor, and the twitch in his arms suggested that they were broken or damaged badly enough that preventing his demise would be impossible.

"I… was once like you, Shepard," Sur'kesh Yinli Gorban Jac'a Celini Tuvoc Harte spoke, coughing up more blood. "A Council Agent… respected and venerated… a recipient of a Prothean Beacon. And… for a brief moment… I was a God."

The glowing visored helmet collapsed to reveal the face of feminine fury and lethal justice as a crimson-headed Human looked down at him without a gram of pity or mercy in her green and white eyes as she held out her right hand towards the Turian that stood next to her. A Kassa Fabrications' M-98 Widow Sniper Rifle went into that hand as a purple-suited Quarian Pilgrim and a young Asari Maiden looked on, not a word said or a gram of pity to be found in any of them as the heavy sniper rifle extended into combat operations, the large muzzle brake touching his forehead just above his eyes.

"Puny God." The Lion spoke as her trigger finger twitched, ready to squeeze.

Goodbye, sweet sister, I am finally coming home to you.

The gunshot that ended his long macabre life once and for all, delivered by a professional, was mercifully painless, and Tuvoc Harte died with a soft smile on his lipless mouth.

---

Communications Room, SSV Normandy, Herschel System, Kepler Verge, July 26, 2183

Fuck if I'm looking forward to this, Captain Jane Shepard thought to herself as she saw the transmission connect, handshake approved, as the holographic figures of an Asari Elder Matron, a Salarian male, and an elder Turian male pop up, their trigraphical representations all looking to her as the redhead took a deep breath, readying herself for the bomb that was about to blow up.

"Esteemed Councilors, I am here to report a 'mission success' on a Level Five Council Violation." There were only a few designation Level Five Violations, each one a mind-crawling horror. That announcement had all three members of the Council of Law looking at her with great interest.

"The Violation?" Councilor Sparatus Quinlinus asked, his mandibles twitching. A Level Three Violation would give a SPECTRE authority to use just about any means to exterminate a threat without the need to ask permission. It gave her the authority to call up a Citadel Defense Fleet if necessary in order to deliver a kinetic strike onto the offender regardless of collateral damage as long as she could explain the necessity afterwards. A Level Five Violation was generally considered along the lines of galaxy-damaging potential and could, in fact, be a call to war for any and all Council-aligned species in order to purge the threat. The last time a Level Five Violation had occurred, according to Garrus, was in fact the Clone War itself.

"Tuvoc Harte." Shepard replied, seeing the absolute shocked expressions on every one of the Councilors as the name was announced, no further information needed. They knew that name and what it represented. "We found a cloning facility of the worst magnitude in the Hershel System of the Kepler Verge, with Harte alive and well, his little blacksite shop filled with prisoners for genetic experimentation and alteration. The shit we found in there was beyond appalling."

"Please tell me he is dead." Sparatus practically bowled over the conversation. No surprise, and she honestly didn't blame him.

"We went through every body in Alexandria Station for genetic testing. There was only one copy of Tuvoc Harte, and I splattered his brains out with a Widow sniper rifle at point-blank range." The Lion reported, seeing Councilor Tevos T'essus look a little queasy at the thought. "He had changed himself into some fucking monstrosity involving genes and cloning to take just about every positive feature from multiple species to turn himself into a super Salarian. Then he went and did the same for his sister, Tuvoc Ulala, who was still cooking in a test tube. Prelim findings indicate that he was going to breed with his own sister to create a genetically-superior, highly-advanced Salarian offshoot species that had traits from all of us; Asari longevity and Biotics, Turian musculature and plate density, Krogan regeneration and redundant organs, Quarian leg muscles for speed, Batarian cranial improvements for better hand-eye coordination. That kind of thing." Now the Asari Councilor looked positively sickened, but in this Jannie didn't blame her. The redhead didn't doubt she would have nightmares. "He was also cooking up super Krogan as well that one of my crew members had to flush out an airlock when advanced weaponry and thermite wasn't doing the trick. And that was just one out of five. This Harte guy was into some primo sick shit, and now I've got a station filled with comatose patients who are in dire need of extensive medical care, many of them hosts to additional organs for organ farming. As far as I can tell, with genetic testing and his own notes, Tuvoc Harte is truly and utterly dead. Then again, he's played this card before, too."

"Indeed." Councilor Valern Nemnor replied dryly. "We shall send the appropriate medical intervention to the site now, as well as investigative services for both extra confirmation as well as, and as you have mentioned, make sure Harte stays dead this time. Void, if he has been alive all this time but kept his activities to just a singular station, then we were extremely fortunate. The last time Harte did this, it cost millions of lives and galactic instability for three decades."

"Anything else to report, Agent Shepard?" Councilor T'essus finally spoke, having gotten over whatever was bothering her.

"Yeah, actually. I got your Doomslayer back, too."

"Solus is alive?" Valern was practically leaning so far forward on his podium as to be laying on top of it, his dark eyes wide and narrow face eager. "He had been lost in the black for four years chasing… a cloner, if I remember correctly."

"Ingree Saelon; Harte's little fictional name so he could putter on the Cit whenever the fuck he felt like." Jannie knew this from Sara's tale having met the Geneticist. "Harte had captured the Doctor and kept him strapped to a medical table for four years. What Harte did to the Doomslayer was just fucking sickening. Sara Ryder found him and evacuated him immediately for medical intervention, and as we speak, is still surgically removing shit-shop cloned organs out of him to save his life. Request permission to bend a few Council rules in order to do so." They had just stomped on a cloning facility, and no doubt that the three Alumni Councilors in front of her knew what Shepard was asking to do.

"Agreed." Councilor Valern replied immediately.

"Agreed." Councilor Quinlinus was the surprise one; Turians hated cloning, felt it degraded the Spirit. Yet he had also been one of the ones that Doctor Mordin Solus had saved from the Fist of the Pillars when they had delivered a biological device to kill the Chamber of Governance and the Council of Law.

"Agreed." The Asari Councilor concluded as well without reservation. "Doctor Mordin is one of the best, and took on Tuvoc Harte by himself, likely not knowing his identity. We all owe him our very lives, so the least we can do is repay in kind."

"Very well, Councilors. I will send a more in-depth report later on when Doctor Mordin gets out of surgery. Until then, we will remain on-site until Council forces arrive to take possession of the site. Shepard out." The holographic images disappeared as Jannie ended the call, the redhead taking a step back to think as she looked over to Detective Garrus Vakarian, the Special Crimes Detective standing to the side of the communication room, out of the holographic transceiver that Shepard had used. "Thoughts?"

"I hate saying it, but I think you have a point." Vakarian mused as he fiddled with one of his fringe quills with a taloned hand. "Their reactions were… less than predicted in what I would have assumed. If I had been vid-called and told Tuvoc Harte was still alive, I believe I would have ordered a fleet immediately for site sanitation, regardless of the sapients aboard that station if I were in their position. I understand that SPECTREs do perform actions without necessarily contacting the Council of Law first, given guidelines as what they can do in situations, but this lack of… oversight explains how characters such as Saren has been able to gotten away with deed that I doubt would have been approved of." Jannie had asked the Special Crimes Detective for insight on what the Council might say upon discovery of Harte's recent survival. "The fact that they went and lost the Doomslayer and didn't go looking for him disturbs me even more. I remember well the events that made him famous; be glad you weren't there!" The redhead shivered a little at the thought of a bio-bomb being planted upon the Citadel to create a hyperlethal plague to disrupt normal life upon the Center of the Known Universe. Jannie had lived on the Cit on-and-off for several years with her Uncle Alec and Aunt Ellen, and that plague would have been there for all the Ryders if Mordin Solus hadn't stopped the Fist of the Pillars. Oh, and dropped a thresher maw on their main base. One day… that could very well be her. "Still, you've told me your thoughts of possible Citadel collusion with Saren Arterius, even up to the highest levels of the Council Government. I've looked over the data and… it is intriguing." The Turian admitted, meaning that Jannie had a point that Vakarian didn't really want to admit to.

"I just can't see how Saren can run around for years doing God knows what to create some sort of scenario that leads him to allying himself to the Geth without someone getting suspicious." Shepard replied, leaning back against a rail of the communication room with her arms folded across her chest. "It didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen last year. Saren knew of a Prothean Beacon when the Systems Alliance and the Citadel were in negotiations, and had the Geth prepare for an assault. How could he explain away those absences and expenses without someone high-up either agreeing to it or at least looking in the other direction knowingly?" That was one of the things that had clued in her Poppa Bear that there was something rotten in the State of Denmark; prolonged absences and the expense of taking a ship and travelling to the Perseus Veil or some agreed-upon location to contact the Geth. It wasn't as if he were calling them from his domicile, after all! "Others had to have been warded off from his trail. It was significant enough that Lady Benezia, for whatever reason, decided to leave whatever she was doing to get involved. She isn't a SPECTRE, a Special Forces operative, or even some sort of stop-gap measure against corruption or malfeasance! A nine-hundred year old Matriarch from a quarter of the galaxy away saw something was wrong and tried to intervene!" Jannie had a bad feeling that Benezia found herself in a situation she couldn't escape. A trap had been set, and the Asari had been caught in it. Jannie wasn't sure how one detained such an august and powerful figure as an Asari Matriarch of Lady Benezia T'soni's caliber.

Perhaps Liara's potential capture on Therum was the clue; a real mother would sell her soul willingly to save her only daughter.

Maybe Benezia would be able to fight back or resist with the Protheantologist safe on the Normandy.

---

Petty Officer (Second Class) Sara Elaine Ryder sat at the bedside of one Doctor Sur'kesh M'kael Bea'ttie Wi'lam Salyer Mordin Solus, her HMOT MasterGear SPECTRE Mk. I OmniTool having alerted her a few minutes prior that the Salarian male's brain activity had been increasing towards cognition thanks to a monitoring chip that she had placed on the older male's forehead. She was reviewing a prelim report on what was found on-board the Alexandria Station in terms of numbers, potential needs in medical resources, and more than a few identified Council and Systems Alliance violations. There had been a list of personnel fettered on-board the black site station, but Sara hadn't looked over the names, not seeing how identifying the personnel on board would do anything but bring her grief.

Movement at the corner of her eye had Sara look over to see ovaloid eyes flickering open as nictitating membranes slid back to expose the dark eyes of Doctor Mordin as they moved about for a moment before focusing on her, the membranes flickering a few times as consciousness and cognition returned to the multi-disciplinarian Doctor.

"Welcome back, Doctor Mordin." Sara greeted the Salarian male, his triangular head turning towards her as she reached over and took one of his hands into both of her own to comfort him and reassure him. What he had been through had undoubtedly been traumatic, and waking up in an unknown location would no doubt have the Salarian fearful. "It's Petty Officer Sara Ryder. You're safely aboard the Systems Alliance vessel SSV Normandy. Any grogginess, disorientation, or general discomfort you might be feeling is expected since you are recovering from a multi-hour surgery necessary to save your life."

The Salarian looked at her for a moment, his eyes looking around the Normandy's MedBay for a second or two before returning back to her.

"Half expecting to find myself waking up to that room." The Doctor said, his voice weak, which wasn't unexpected. "What kind of surgery?"

"Multiple organ cloning and replacement, Doctor. Authorized by the Council and performed by Doctor Chakwas and myself." Sara admitted, knowing that such things would likely concern the average sapient, and most especially someone who had been ensconced in an organ harvesting facility for four years. "We did the best we could to extract as much healthy DNA in order to flash-clone more healthy organs for you while removing the diseased and malformed ones we located in your body. You… are still a work-in-progress, I'm afraid, and we're looking at at least another six organs that need to be removed and another two that need to be replaced. The ones that we did do were the ones we needed to facilitate taking you off of the life-support equipment that we found connected to you on Alexandria Station. As we speak, a medical intervention team is on its way to the Herschel System for both yourself and the sapients on that Station."

"And Harte?" Solus asked, his tone… mixed but emotional.

"Dead, confirmed through genetic testing on the patients inside the Station." Sara confirmed, the Salarian's eyes flickering open and closed a few times before his head nodded once. "We understand that this trick has been played before during the Clone War, and we must entertain the thought that Tuvoc Harte might have had another facility somewhere, or perhaps some fallback plan off-site or perhaps with a trusted individual who might not know what they actually have. But for now, we know that Tuvoc Harte and his sister, Tuvoc Ulala, have been eliminated with the expectation that Special Crimes will be going through the station with a very fine-tooth comb to discover if there is any information suggesting that he might have given us the slip and make us assume he is dead. Again."

"Yes, a very real possibility, unfortunately." The Doctor replied as he moved slightly to where he wasn't directly laying down, scooting himself so that he was more in a sitting position, his dark eyes focusing on her. "I hadn't realized that the Systems Alliance had employed a surgeon who knows Salarian physiology enough for organ transplant."

"They… don't." Ryder admitted sheepishly, slightly shrugging her shoulders. "I was the lead on the surgery due to my experience as a rated Surgeon's Aide and with the Citadel Emergency Medical Services. I have saved many lives being a Cit Paramedic as well as a Navy Corpsman, but… you were my first ever direct surgical intervention." Sara was wincing slightly at the admission. No one really wanted to hear that they had an inexperienced medic cutting into them, especially with something so major as organ removal and transplant.

"Marvelous." The Salarian smiled, his skin slightly wrinkling along his lipless mouth and eyes as he did so. "I seem to recall you having done something similar on the Human colony that was attacked. Elysium."

"Well…" Sara felt a little embarrassed by the reminder of how she had gone to Illyeria General Hospital looking for her Auntie, finding Ensign Jane Shepard with three rounds in her stomach and one oh so close to her heart, lying forgotten on a medical cot without any real aid because triage had necessitated that the available medical personnel work on the patients who had a better chance of living without needing so much intervention. Sara had taken the rounds out herself, suturing her Auntie back up before beginning to work on nearly eight dozen other patients who had the same issues as Jannie; left to die out of sheer necessity. "I did what I could with you, Doctor, though I'm afraid you are going to need more work and more surgery until you're completely out of the woods. We stuck with the most damaged organs; your liver, your kidneys, your spleen, and your pancreas. You still have two other organs that will need to be replaced, and you will likely need to be monitored for the rest of your life for further genetic damage and potential organ failure of the flash-clone organs that we used to replace your metastasized organs with because we simply didn't have the time to properly grow them over the next six to eight weeks and test them for viability."

"A worthwhile risk for being off that station, sister." The Salarian replied, his tone calm. "You did what was right for your patient and for yourself as well. I believe I may be looking forward to the inclusion of another Medical Doctor in the Office of Special Tactics. Especially one that seems to be as capable and as passionate as yourself." Sara blushed at that.

"I'm only a SPECTRE's Second, Doctor Mordin. Being a Medical Doctor will require more than a few years of education and training. I'm still not sure if that's what I want, especially since the Geth have left the Veil and are attacking Prothean sites and Human holdings." Ryder replied, feeling a little ashamed with what she was admitting to and to whom. "I… like the thought of being a surgeon, and I even have the opportunity to continue my education at either the Citadel University or John Hopkins to do just that thanks to my education at the Presidium Academy. I… I wanted to serve my species first, being born on the Citadel. But now?" Sara found herself looking at her hands that held the Salarians' own, frowning. "Now I'm a SPECTRE's Second in the middle of a war, finding myself fighting the Geth and monstrosities, helping others over a variety of species to continue that fight while one of our brothers leads the Geth to some sort of ProTech device that I have no doubt in my mind will be a disaster for a great many people. How… how can I walk away when people need me most now?"

"There would be no need to walk away."

Sara found herself looking at the Salarian males' lipless smile.

"Young Dalatrass," it was Solus' turn to hold her hands with his own, "it is very nearly a crime for one not to discover one's true potential, to let such difficulties to breed doubt within us. There is a galaxy of possibilities within us, to achieve within ourselves what we are destined to be. To dare to dream is the greatest opportunity we are afforded, to eclipse what binds us down and holds us back. Generations of sapients such as you and I have looked across the stars and into the smallest of particles to seek the answers of mysteries that have been pushed forward by our predecessors, hoping to solve the questions that drive us forward. For some, they have driven themselves towards a solitary goal, to achieve greatness in a singular field, to reach further than anyone else ever has. For others, they seek so much with restless minds that a singular field is too mundane for them." The Doctor smiled as he looked to her, Sara entranced by his words.

"You, sister, have the gift of greatness within you. Why settle for anything less?"

"But, how would I do that?" Sara asked weakly, looking upon the Doctor as he continued to smile at her. "I mean, there's so much I want to do! I would love to be a surgeon, of course, but I know that I'm also capable of doing what my mother was doing before; medical research and clinical experimentation. I… thought about genetics, not just Biotic research but Biotic advancement for Mankind. I know I'm capable of that as well as medical endeavors that would save lives. I… I've invented a program that would help protect people, to give them a second chance in war or emergencies that I call Tech Armor that I've thought about donating to the Quarian people to help better protect them. But the thought of being a SPECTRE when my people need it most? When we really only have three and we're practically laying down the foundations of what may be generations of Human SPECTREs in the decades to come? It's… there so much I want to do!"

The Salarian Doctor just continued to smile.

"As I said, sister, the gift of greatness." Doctor Mordin Solus said to her, holding her hands with his own. "You have a surgeon on board that could help you, to teach you and practice with you. With your status as a Level One Council Agent, you have access to training modules and personnel that can help you in any of those endeavors… and pioneer your own. Be the thing your people need, the thing you need to be, and show others what your species can accomplish when reaching for the stars. Why settle for anything less?" Sara found herself blushing pretty hard at the speech, and yet… and yet there was something within her that clicked, something that just made sense. Who said she couldn't be a SPECTRE as well as a surgeon? Who said she couldn't research medical endeavors while working on technological ideas? Who said she couldn't study genetics to further help Mankind with its maladies, possibly even looking into the Quarian genome to help their compromised immune systems? Sara Elaine Ryder had wanted from a young age to help people, and was thankfully a very intelligent woman who had the capability and the capacity to do so. There were Chenobit Salarians who had several fields of study under their belts with a quarter of the Human lifespan, and Sara had exceeded all of them in the Presidium Academy of Education in terms of Peerage. She had the intelligence, she had the drive, she had the motivation.

She just needed to find a way to accomplish those endeavors, seeking to find that path that would satisfy her thirst for knowledge and accomplishment.

"My recommendation?" The Salarian looked at her, his tone a little amused. "Pick a goal that you wish to see done first, and strive towards it. Then when you've accomplish it, pick another. Even if it requires more education and training, more work and effort, you will always find yourself challenged, striving forward. You will never have a dull life."

"That… sound pretty romantic, Doctor." Sara admitted, pretty infatuated with the idea. "Being an Alumni would certainly help open doors for me, and certainly covers a great deal of the educational requirements in CitU. It's… going to be a lot of work." The young woman thought of the work it would entail, the time it would take, the efforts that would be needed. Yet, it appealed to her. She thought of her mother, Doctor Ellen Harlow-Ryder, pioneering what eventually become Biotic research during a time when it was barely more than a laughingstock science and fairy tales, turning myth into application. Her mother had always taken the time to listen to the dreams of her children, to encourage them no matter the difficulty or impossibility. Because of that influence, her daughter became the first Human to ever go to the Presidium Academy of Education as well as being the first Human Paramedic on a Citadel Skybulance, while her son became the first Human BiotiBall player while captaining his team to two years of championship victories in the Amateur BiotiBall League, winning Most Valuable Player twice. Their mother had wanted her children to experience life to the fullest, to strive as far as they could reach… and then even further if possible.

Mom… you would have loved to see where I'm at now, Sara thought with the familiar pane of love and loss as she thought of her mother. You would have been there for Auntie, too, giving her the encouragement and congratulations she needed to know that she's exactly where she's always wanted to be; the very best. You did more than just raise children, Mom.

You raised pathfinders.

"I see that you've made up your mind." Doctor Mordin said, his dark eyes looking at her knowingly.

"I have." Sara replied with a smile. "I thought of my mother, what she wanted for me. Because of her, her children and the woman she raised as her own became names of worth and meaning, pushing father than any other in their respective fields and endeavors. It would be a shame to sit there and say that I've crossed the finish line when there are other races to run and other challenges to tackle. Perhaps one day we can both greet each other as 'Doctor'."

"I think I would like that, sister." The Salarian replied as he settled more into his bed. "When you are ready, I shall send you texts and requirements for some of those very projects you wish to seek. It is, after all, the duty of those such as myself to help guide the next generation, to show them the merits and worth of striving forward. It has been some time since I've been a mentor, and yet I find the notion appealing to do so for one that is not of my species. It sounds… promising. Until then, it's recovery time for me, I'm afraid." The smile was still there as the nictitating membranes slowly slid close, the Salarian getting the rest he needed for his path to recovery. Sara looked upon the sleeping form of Doctor Sur'kesh M'kael Bea'ttie Wi'lam Salyer Mordin Solus, a sapient who had suffered so much… and yet he wasn't afraid to go forward. The thought of having a SPECTRE Doctor of so many fields, a hero in his own right, being her mentor was appealing to her, and Sara found herself wondering what she could truly accomplish under such tutelage.

"You get your rest, Professor." Sara said as she touched his hand one more time with a smile, her mind alight with the possibilities of the future.

---

Ready Room, SSV Normandy, Lagrange Point One (Matol), Herschel System, Kepler Verge, July 26, 2183

Captain Jane Shepard sat in her ready room during the Blue Watch of the SSV Normandy, the so-called 'nighttime' Watch that went from 2000 to 0800 Zulu (ship time). Council forces had begun trickling in over the past half-a-day thanks to her communication to the Council of Law, and what had once been a rather quiet system that possessed four planets, an asteroid belt, and a dark site was now the host of at least twenty various vessels that were mostly Hierarchy in nature along with more than a few medically-oriented vessels as well. Thankfully, the Three had taken Jannie's debrief of the situation in what was known as the Alexandria Station quite seriously, and no one was taking chances. Teams of Hasti Soldiers were going through the station with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that Tuvoc Harte was irrevocably dead (for the dozenth time or so, as Shepard understood it) while geneticists and technicians were sweeping through everything to make sure that not one single strand of DNA could be used to recreate a monster of the stars. The only reason the Council hadn't blown the station into stardust wasn't due to the fact that it hosted something like five hundred poor sapient beings in various stations of either organ replacement or organ farming, but because the Council was going to rip through every byte of data and every molecule of genetic material to make sure that Ingree Saelon/Tuvoc Harte was permanently dead. Thankfully, the patients inside the station were actually being considered, though Jannie wasn't sure if they would be charged with the knowledge and use of black-lab clones in case they had gone to a cloner to replace faulty organs.

In other words, it was a big-ass shit sandwich along with a side order of shit soup and a shit milkshake.

Command of the investigation had gone to some Turian Admiral named Vartarius Belltonis who had all the grace and comfort of a Depleted Uranium artillery round, but Jannie was struck with the full opinion that Admiral Belltonis was going to make absolute certain that the Salarian geneticist and warlord was deaddeaddead. His father had served in the Clone War, and much like Detective Garrus Vakarian, saw someone of Harte's caliber as a threat to the entire galaxy and its people; Turians tended to take things a little too personal when some did something they saw as 'perversion of the Spirit', and generally laid waste to everything in sight.

It was like Sara had told her a few weeks prior; sometimes a very messy death was a reminder to the rest of the galaxy some lines shouldn't be crossed.

Jannie sat alone in her Ready Room, behind that ancient wooden desk made from Earth trees, forgoing having someone in t here to fill her in on the little details of their Department that she liked to do to make one of her Officers see that she cared about the small things as well as using the opportunity to teach them a little about their own command and future in the means to train Commissioned Officers. It was her job to know the nuances of her vessel and her departments as well as instructing and reviewing the men and women under her command, though for Enlisted Members she entrusted her Non-Commissioned Officers to perform their duties by doing the same for their junior members. It wasn't uncoming that during the evening time after dinner that the redhead would have one to two people visit her Ready Room for a meeting that would last anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes, catching up on reports, teaching and mentoring, or just having some face-to-face time with those who served her vessel. Petty Officer (Second Class) Sara Ryder was generally a near-constant visitor, letting Jannie decompress after a day of work, reviews, reports and whatever discoveries were made concerning intel on the historical Geth movements in the past decade thanks to the Lady of the Chambers, Lady Eloa'Varis. Commander Mark Vanderloo was a big one too considering he was her Executive Officer, but more recently she had to come to terms that she was most certainly falling for her ex-husband again. Now that she rated a Yeoman, Petty Officer (First Class) Hope Lilum got handed a bit of the workload so that the N7 could focus on her true task.

Hunting that fucking spike down and obliterating him with something nasty enough to even shock the Council.

But for now? She read a datapad that was delivered to her from Alexandria Station.

At first, Jannie wanted to datawipe the damn thing, crush the physical data device under her boot, and then incinerate the remains without even looking into it. She contemplated into just handing it off to someone like Agent Zevin Raeka for prosperity, considering who the datapad once belonged to, but it had been meant for her. SAM, the Artificial Intelligence that Captain Alec Clancy Ryder created to stave off his wifes' death due to Eezo Cancer while he went searching for a cure, had notified her of the datapad's existence… and who wanted it delivered to her hands and her hands alone. She still wanted to toss the damn thing out the airlock and towards the energetic blue giant that was Herschal, but something… something made her access that unencrypted, unlocked device and review it.

The datapad in question being Tuvoc Harte's.

The data storage and viewing device had sat on the surface of Poppa Bear's antique desk for the better part of five minutes as Jannie stared at it, contemplating its fate. After all that had happened with Sara as well as Alexandria Station, the N7 wanted nothing more than to atomize the device and destroy Tuvoc Harte once and for all, leaving nothing behind. But something SAM had said, not to mention Harte himself, had Shepard hesitate on that course of actions. Saren, the Thor'rian, now Harte… all had eluded to one thing.

Something bad was coming.

On Feros, the ancient monstrosity and only known survivor of the Prothean Era had mentioned something called the Firebringers; something that had nearly eradicated the Thor'rian as a species, and had in fact destroyed the Protheans as well. That gigantic testicle monster had wanted to turn Humanity into its own personal buffet not only to survive, but to survive what it feared was coming. Council Agent Saren Arcturus was after some sort of gizmo that no one had any idea what it was or what it was for, but it linked to something called 'the Reapers' (a rather ominous name, there). Tuvoc Harte had mentioned something to SAM about several space-faring species that were extinct, having lost to something he called 'the Annihilators'.

Firebringers. Reapers. Annihiliators. The… things that she saw in her dreams thanks to the Prothean Beacon.

Jannie had seen massive ships destroying everything in her dreams; war, totality, fire, devastation, destruction, death…

…extinction.

I… was once like you, Shepard, Tuvoc Harte had told her as he laid on the deck of Alexandria Station, his legs blown off and half of the remainder of his body pulped from the dozen anti-personal grenades that Tali'Zorah nar Reyya had daisy-chained together to blow the super Salarian to smithereens. A Council Agent, respected and venerated, a recipient of a Prothean Beacon. Jannie didn't think Tuvoc had been lying to her; he hadn't begged for mercy, begged for more time, or tried making excuses for what he did. But the knowledge that he was a Council Agent surprised her, an auspicious claim to make that could be verified if one wanted to dig. She had asked Poppa Bear to do just that, and Rear Admiral (Lower Half) David Edward Anderson had done just that, finding out through several back channels that Tuvoc Harte was in fact once a Level Three Agent of the Office of Special Tactics for something like twenty years. She had a history profile on him, seeing that he had graduated from the Presidium Academy of Education, specialized in the scientific, and wrote papers on several fields that showed him to be a Salarian Chenobit that surpassed even most of those few percentile of the Salarian race whose exceptional intelligence was noted. Harte had studied not only the Protheans, but other historically-extinct races as well, expanding on the knowledge and information that was known at the time.

A recipient of a Prothean Beacon. Had… had Agent Tuvoc Harte seen what she had seen? Feared what she feared?

I've never back down from a fight, never shied away from a truth, no matter how potentially ugly, Jannie thought to herself as she sighed, reaching to a drawer at her desk that contained a CeramiGel-crafted glass and a bottle of Elysium Gold Whiskey, pouring herself a healthy helping before capping the bottle and stuffing it back into the wooden receptacle. Shepard took a small sip of the whiskey as she finally picked up the datapad delivered to her by a horrific madman who tried playing God (and succeeding) and unlocked the screen.

And began to read.

---

FINE: ARC X: The Red Harvest

---

BEGIN PRIORITY MISSION: NOVERIA

ARC XI: The SPECTREs Of Humanity

SSV Normandy, Refueling at Pinnacle Station, Phoenix System Argos Rho Cluster, July 29, 2183

"Captain? I have located her."

Captain Jane Catherine Shepard (SAN, N7, OST) had been doing her rounds through the SSV Normandy as she was wont to do, to check in on the departments and get some facetime with her crew. These were men and women she could and would ask to die for a noble cause, and the least that she could do was honor them with her time and her efforts to show that she appreciated them. She was in the Cargo Bay where a majority of TEAM LION was for the Red Shift, being the night cycle for the Normandy-Class Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate. Most were engaged in activities to improve themselves, whether in combat or personally, and Jannie approved of those actions. Some were taking the time to catch up on news of home or family, and she approved of that, too. Doctor Liara T'soni had practically collided with her in her zeal to inform her of her… accomplishment?

"The Matriarch?" No one dared call Matriarch Benezia T'soni anything but the Matriarch in the Protheantologists' presence. The loathing the Asarikin Maiden had for the Matriarch was palatable, and while Jannie didn't know the details, she only had to look at the strained relationship with her own mother to know that sometimes only family could hurt one worse than an enemy ever could.

"Yes." The venom in the Asarikin's voice had garnered most everyone's attention in the Cargo Hold. It had been too long since they had any evidence or clues of former Council Agent Saren Arterius' location, or that of his confederates. Liara had spent weeks searching everything she could, knowing the Matriarch better than anybody. She was their best bet in finding something on the Asari Matriarch that had joined forces with the rogue Turian Agent. "Several years ago, the Matriarch," ah, those venomous words, "had purchased a great quantity of business-oriented tradeable stock options in a Human-oriented company called Binary Helix. It is a genetics research business that originally worked upon curing genetic abnormalities and telomere gene research for prolonging Human life as well as eradicating such ailments as cancers and rare afflictions." The Captain nodded; she knew of Binary Helix. She looked over to see that Petty Officer (Second Class) Sara Ryder had come over to listen, as well as Marshal Samantha Collins. "There will be an emergency board meeting for the majority stockholders of Binary Helix in three days, and as the Matriarch holds a interest of over seven percent in the company, she will be physically present."

"You got a bead?" Sam sputtered, all grins. That was the holy of holy's for a cop and a SPECTRE; to know when and where one's prey was going to be.

"The meeting will occur at the Port Hanshan, with an included investor tour of their research facility on Noveria."

"Hot damn!" Jannie was enthusiastic; hell no, she was elated! The last word that they had of either Saren or Benezia was back on the Cit, in the days after Eden Prime over two month prior. There had been circumstantial evidence that the Normandy had just missed Saren by hours on Feros, busy fighting the Geth at LaGrange Point Two, but other than that there hadn't been a word or a lead. "God bless bureaucracy and having majority stockholders public knowledge on company domains. Damn good work, Doctor." The Asarikin blushed blue with the compliment. "This is our first real lead on that fucking Turian and the Matriarch. I'll notify Mark to get us to Port Hanshan on the double." The redhead was in a good mood. After all the losses they had suffered…

"Um, Auntie?"

"Yeah?" Jannie looked over to Sara, who looked a little sheepish, the younger woman seemingly about to hate bringing something up and raining on her parade.

"It's Noveria." The Navy Corpsman pointed out, wincing. "One does not simply walk into Noveria." Collins snorted at the Lord of the Rings reference. "Its access gates are guarded by more than just ERCS. There is a bureaucracy there that does not sleep. Their security cams are ever-vigilant. The planet's a barren wasteland, covered in snow, illicit science, and dirty Credits. The very air is filled with poisonous politics." Jannie just snorted at the changed meme. "In all seriousness, though? Noveria isn't a Council World. CitLaw has no jurisdiction, the Alliance has no power, and while SPECTREs can visit, I don't think they just let Council Agents run about willy-nilly doing whatever we please. We're going to have to switch tactics, Auntie.

"We're going to have to be discrete."

"She's right. Unfortunately." Sam sighed, the Marshal rubbing at her Tridend Colony-marked temples. "Been to Noveria once. Gave Nihlus the complete and utter red tape runaround while I got to occupy a 'dignitary' room that was really a comfy cell for a week. Elanus Risk Control do not fuck around." Collins looked to Sara. "I have a feeling you've actually got something in mind?"

"Oh yeah." The SPECTRE's Second replied, and Jannie just smiled; that was her Sara. "Few years back when I was working on Skybulance-37, I met a Turian smuggler who had a sick sister. Since neither one of them were CitCitz and technically stowaways, she couldn't just check in her little sister into the nearest clinic or hospital. I chanced upon her in the middle of her delivering medical goods to one of the Clinics in the Lower Ring of the Presidium, hoping to bribe the clinic for free health care with off-the-books pharmaceuticals and medical items. When it didn't pan out, I offered to help for free." Sara merely shrugged her shoulders as if it was the most natural course to decide upon. Jannie knew that for Sara? It was. "The little Turian girl had a hell of a congestive infection, and it took a few days to break it down to where she was on the mend, and I made myself a friend. Vetty wanted to pay me, but I insisted that I didn't do it for money. She… she was a big sister who had to make hard choices to raise her little sister on her own, her mother dead and her father gone. I respected that."

"How was she able to smuggle goods onto the Citadel?" Liara asked, intrigued.

"Don't know, didn't ask, and didn't talk." Ryder replied, folding her arms across her chest. "Vetty said she owes me big time. If she's good enough to smuggle off-the-books medicinal narcotics onto the Presidium without being snapped up by C-SEC? I bet you she knows how to get into Noveria under the LADAR."

"Call her up and set it up." Jannie replied, seeing what Sara was thinking. The Corpsman was going to ask a known smuggler to smuggle them into Noveria with everyone none-the-wiser. It was perfect, honestly; it sounded exactly what a SPECTRE was suppose to do, to accomplish a mission by any means necessary. "If she's got the goods, then I'll compensate her with just about anything she might want, up to and including a Council Pardon." Yeah, she had that kind of authority. She read it up in Avitus Rix's manuals that she could even pull criminals out of an IsoCube and use them for a mission, and completely null-and-void their sentence and prosecuted crime for services rendered. The thought that other SPECTREs might do that filled her with unease, but that was exactly what Sam Collins did on Torfan. "I'll go ahead and push the paperwork forward. Vetty, you said?"

"It's Vetra." Sara replied as she brought up her HMOT MasterGear SPECTRE Mk. I OmniTool, queuing up her Chirp account to contact the smuggler.

"Vetra Nix."

---

Author's Note: Hence the 'Special Tactics' part of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Front doors are mere suggestions. Believe me, I learned that lesson in Iraq.

Forward unto Priority Mission: Noveria!

Who the hell is Olan Kooth/Agent Zeta? If you decided to read that crap comic Mass Effect: Discovery which is the rather poor telling of how Tiran Kandros ended up on the Nexus/Andromeda Initiative, you'll recognize the name Agent Zeta, former STG Biotic Commando who got in touch with some Reaper Tech and found his Biotic powers enhanced and went on a killing spree for more power. I wanted to go this route for Saelon/Harte but couldn't find a way to justifiably to bring fists into a gunfight (I do try to be realistic). But Kooth was about incorporating tech into himself for more power, and I went with the idea of a Biotic Salarian as an antagonist, a far cry from the Mass Effect's 'Doctor Heart' who merely sent unarmed, unarmored surgical victims after you before eating a bullet.

I've been thinking of a way of including everyone's favorite female Turian smuggler into this story, as it already has several Andromeda elements in it (like Sara Ryder and Zevin Raeka, but also minor cameos of Scott Ryder and Avitus Rix, and mentions of Macen Barro and Lisana T'lesso). I think I found the perfect way : )

Sean Bean's speech about Mordor in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was a great spot, and delivered sublimely. One does not simply walk into Mordor, after all. I altered it for humor.

In the original Mass Effect, there were several individuals who had an idea that something terrible was coming. To include Saren Arterius (who discovered Sovereign thanks to an AI researcher), there was Doctor Manuel (the crazy guy from Eden Prime who was also interacted with by the Beacon), the Thorian, the Rachni Queen, a rich-ass Volus who owned an entire planet to 'escape the darkness'… and Jack Harper, also a Prothean Beacon Recipient. There were a few historical references to if one missed out on the threshed populated planets that were buried in the sands of time. It was suggested that Matriarch Deliniga, the one whose data disks you found in random locations, was likely onto something as well.

Yes, the Reaper on/in Mnemosyne is on that datapad that Jannie is reading, along with the inclusion of the Klendagon Rift; the huge scar on the planet Klendagon that was hypothesized as being a massive mass accelerated round that clipped the planet to kill something big. I wonder if the firer was trying to fire a shot and curve it around a planet to kill a Reaper? I mean, how does one accidentally miss a planet being there?

And yes, I made an ANTHEM reference at the top. Don't shoot me.