Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.
Author Notes: This episode involved a lot of research. I started with the codex on Ilos, and then had to brush up on hard science to flesh out the setting. I do hope that you enjoy this.
Episode 74: Igni Ferroque
Shepard was past the OD doors as soon as they opened wide enough for her, and she reached the half-wall splitting the room in two by the time the door began to close. Then the door stopped, and sprung open again. A familiar set of footsteps trailed into the room. She stopped, listening for a second set behind them. The mere thought that Saren might decide to cut in on her breather galled her. She could not afford to show him even a glimmer of a weakness. However, there was only one set of footsteps and then the door closed.
"Shepard, are you alright?" Nihlus asked quietly, outright dipping his tone.
She continued toward the sideboard table, intent on getting some coffee to go with her stim. "Truthfully? Not entirely." She would not pretend in front of Nihlus. Doing so would waste energy she could not spare, and he might see right through her anyways. "We'll be on Ilos in under an hour, and then we must be ready to deploy the moment EDI finds the Heretics on the surface. I can't even afford to get some sleep, and I'll be honest, I kind of want some right now."
"You assume EDI will find them quickly," Nihlus argued. "Normally, maybe, but things are not normal here. We do not know what the conditions on the surface are like, and EDI will be limited to passive observations and signal tracking. I bet it would take longer than you expect."
Shepard opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came up. Nihlus was not wrong in what he said. She closed her mouth and glanced at her kettle.
"Get some sleep. I can relay your orders to Alenko- and I will keep Saren from waking you."
"That'd be nice," Shepard murmured under her breath, but then louder, "I'm surprised that he hasn't followed you in. He would want to discuss the ground phase."
"He would, but he is also aware that he cannot force you to do anything you're not amenable to," Nihlus replied.
"I'm never amenable to someone breathing down my neck, Nihlus." Shepard flashed him a wan grin. "That said, I can tell you just about what will happen next. There is no way he is going to sit this out, and neither will you. I suspect Legion might be interested in joining us as well, and then there's Javik." Here she paused as she remembered one key bit of information. "But I need to confirm whether Doctor Chakwas cleared him for active service. If she hadn't… well, it'll be one more thing giving me a headache." Javik was normally testy and short-tempered. How much worse would he get if she had to order him to stay on board?
"Vakarian will want to be at your side too," Nihlus added.
"You're right." Shepard sighed, she really did not want to tell Garrus no, but would have to. "Unfortunately, I need him up here. He made some nigh-miraculous shots today. Heck, he almost got the Impera on the first go! I need that up here in case Harby decides to try and pull a fast one. He's not going to be happy… but-"
"He also listens to orders," Nihlus replied.
"Something you could learn from him," Shepard fired back without missing a beat, looking over her shoulder at him with a consciously raised eyebrow. However, before Nihlus could bite back, she went on, "I know how things will play out, and it works for me. So there is no point in… discussing things with Saren."
Nihlus chuckled, "I dare you to tell him that to his face."
"In the interest of maintaining diplomatic relations and peace on the Normandy… let's not go there," Shepard replied blandly.
"Alright." Nihlus shifted his weight and crossed his arms under his keel bone. "But speaking of the Normandy, we will be out of contact once we are deployed."
"Yes, and EDI won't be able to assist us remotely nor will Legion be able to do that code trick to pass her any messages," Shepard added. The damage to their aft masts complicated ground operations considerably. "Obviously, I factored that into my calculus. I trust Kaidan, Garrus, Joker, and EDI to prevent the Normandy from going into more pieces than it already is." Perhaps it was not the right thing to joke about, but Nihlus appreciated that sort of humor, so why not?
"You do have everything figured out." Nihlus gave her a toothy, smug grin. Then his arms dropped down to his sides, "Get some sleep, Shepard. I will come and wake you up once EDI finds the Heretics."
Shepard glanced at the kettle, contemplating if she could get away with taking a nap, or if she should thank Nihlus for his concern, take a stimulant, and soldier on. If she went with the former, it would have to be right here in the OD. Fortunately, the couch was comfortable enough if Nihlus loved to lounge on it. She also could not pretend that Nihlus did not have a point. Even an hour of sleep was better than no sleep at all.
However before she could say another word, she felt Nihlus' warm hands settle on her shoulders, "I know that look," he stated. "You are thinking whether you can get rid of me, so you can continue worrying. Stop it."
Shepard glanced over her shoulder, meeting his gaze.
"I mean it, get some sleep. You will have the time, and none of us want you doing this on stimulants. Harbinger will not forgive you a single mistake. Do not give him the opportunity." Nihlus' hands slid off and he turned around.
"What about you?" Shepard asked. Was he really going to push her into sleeping? What was she, six?
"Do not worry about me, and do not try to change the subject. I will make that an order if I have to." Nihlus retorted sternly.
"On what grounds?" Shepard turned sharply, unable to bite back the flash of annoyance. He was ignoring her! "You're no longer my mentor, you have no rank authority to order me around."
Nihlus hummed but only somewhat slowed down on his way toward the door. "You know, you are right… I will just have to ask Doctor Chakwas to make it an order."
Shepard froze, that was- he would not, would he? "That's blackmail!"
"All is fair in love and war!" Nihlus retorted just as he stepped into the range of the door sensors, causing it to open for him.
Shepard clamped her mouth shut as she watched him go, knowing better than to say what was on the tip of her tongue right then. She did not need Saren overhearing such an exchange. Nihlus had timed the whole thing down to perfection, walking away with the last word! Some part of her was less than amused, but all the same, she knew where he was coming from. He was not doing it for his own ego, he was concerned for her, and she could not fault him for that.
She turned to look out the viewport over the couch. The Normandy was now cruising on its way toward Ilos. Having left the strange asteroid belt behind them, the reddish-purple haze deposited by the supernova began to dissipate away as they drew closer to the system's star. This allowed more distant stars to shine through. All the same, it did not disappear entirely, giving everything an eerie feeling of fundamental wrongness. Or perhaps that was just exhaustion and nerves talking. After a long moment of standing there, Shepard shook her head, and moved toward the couch, all thoughts of stimulants and coffee forgotten.
Three Hours Later…
Shepard stirred on the couch when her nose registered the scent of freshly-brewing coffee wafting through the air around her. Once her brain registered that the scent implied she was no longer alone, she shot up into a sitting position and looked toward her sideboard.
"We are over Ilos and EDI has some preliminary scans for you," Nihlus stated from where he stood at her sideboard table, pouring coffee into a cup.
How long has she been asleep? Well, that did not matter. All that mattered was that Nihlus was true to his word. "Did you make that?" She asked. It was a rather creative method of waking someone up. She would be lying if she said that she did not prefer it. Shaking her awake did get someone smacked once or twice.
"The instructions are printed on the package," Nihlus replied with a grin as he set the kettle back onto its base, picked up the cup and its saucer, and carried them over to where she sat.
Shepard lowered her feet to the ground and grinned as she accepted the cup and saucer from his hands. Up close she noticed that the cup was barely steaming, as if he had allowed the water to heat up just enough to brew, but not come to a hard boil. She took a small sip, and discovered that indeed the fluid's temperature was perfectly drinkable. "Congratulations, if being a Spectre ever becomes too much, you have a future as a barista in one of those overpriced Presidium coffee shops."
Nihlus smiled, but it was wan, without flashing his teeth.
Shepard hesitated, wondering what brought about that unusually subdued reaction. However, she did not linger on the thought, and instead focused on drinking her coffee as quick as she could without outright gulping it down. When the cup was empty, she set it back down. It was then that she realized how long he must have been in the OD while she slept, and that she must have been sleeping quite deeply to miss his entrance. She rose to her feet, squared her shoulders, and took the cup and saucer over to the sideboard table, to be dealt with later, and turned toward the door. "Alright. We have a job to do." Along the way she adjusted her fatigue top, and when the door opened breezed out as if she had not been sleeping on the job.
In her absence, the group on the CIC shrank somewhat. Adams had left, undoubtedly returning to engineering. Shepard would not be surprised if he would put in some serious overtime trying to coax something from their damaged communication equipment. Javik and Legion were also absent, which raised Shepard's eyebrow. Javik came and went as he pleased, but why was Legion absent?
Garrus was also still present, working on something or other, likely fixing whatever aberrations the Thanix picked up after repeated firing. His focus was so intense that Shepard would not be surprised if he utterly forgot that he was not alone right then.
Saren hovered by the head of the CIC console, watching over her crew as if he was their commanding officer. Shepard idly wondered if he needed a polite reminder of the boundaries, but ultimately, there was no point. No one on the CIC would take orders from him. Saying anything wound run the risk of stepping on his ego toes, and there was nothing to gain from that right then.
Kaidan was at the Operations console, ever the dutiful acting XO. Unsurprisingly he turned toward the OD door when he heard it open. "Commander," He said calmly, just loud enough for everyone to hear.
"You have the situation well in hand, I see."
"Yes, ma'am." Kaidan nodded.
Garrus looked up briefly, meeting her gaze. Shepard nodded across the main console, and turned toward the central CIC console. Within a few seconds she stepped up to the command platform to appraise the information displayed on it.
EDI once again went above and beyond in her thoroughness, showing Ilos as a sphere with all the important basic information added on neatly. It did not take Shepard long to orient herself. Ilos was bigger than Earth, its radius being over eight thousand kilometers, and having twice the mass, making for gravity about twenty percent stronger. What caught Shepard's eye was the atmospheric reading, eleven point twenty-six standard atmospheres at the surface. The thermal readings also surpassed fifty degrees centigrade on the day side. "A pressure cooked planet, delightful," Shepard murmured.
"Fun times to be had, no?" Kaidan asked ruefully.
Shepard shook her head, "Much fun." She murmured. "Everything is going to be bothersome. Even the gravity." It was not enough to be harmful, but certainly enough to affect endurance, should they need to do any cross-country hiking. "No traipsing about without a sealed up helmet, either." It went without saying that making atmospheric entry with the Normandy was also a no-go. Even if they did not need to maintain stealth, the ship's dented armor would not like the friction of plowing through such an atmosphere at a few dozen times the speed of sound. It would be asking for trouble.
"No ma'am. Traipsing about without a helmet would be an exceedingly bad idea," Kaidan agreed. "And not just because of the heat and pressure."
"What do you mean?" Shepard asked.
Kaidan shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Ilos has a very thin ozone layer, and then there is the matter of composition," He tapped a few keys at his controls, which added the spectrographic readings for the atmosphere.
Shepard blinked, she would be lying if she said she knew exactly what she was looking at, right then. Ilos atmosphere had a full thirty percent of its volume in breathable oxygen, but also a whole two percent in carbon dioxide. "I'll bite, what's wrong with that picture?" She asked. If EDI had told Kaidan anything, then it was not obvious enough for her.
"The carbon dioxide and oxygen levels are both elevated, even for a developed planet," Kaidan replied. "The former would explain the hot house, but the latter… well, it is evidence that the planet's whole ecosystem is out of balance. The photosynthesizing flora survived the mass extinction event better than the fauna."
Shepard hummed. Photosynthesis involved taking in carbon dioxide and outgassing oxygen, but animals tended to operate in the exact opposite direction. She could see how with the number of oxygen breathers reduced, the oxygen would have begun to metaphorically pile up. That said, why was the carbon dioxide so high? Plants that were not eaten, should have consumed it all, or at least, she would think they would.
"As for the carbon dioxide, Ilos produces a lot of it through forest fires."
"You're kidding me, right?" Shepard asked as she snapped out of her thoughts.
"I wish I was, but I'm not." Kaidan replied. "Over the past hour and a half the sensors counted on average fifty-five lightning discharges per minute, although most are atmospheric, cloud-to-cloud. There are also multiple raging wildfires, we're talking hundreds of thousands of square kilometers."
Shepard blinked, "Great, so… thick atmosphere, uncomfortable gravity, and the air shouldn't be breathed without filtering." None of it would matter much to Harbinger and the Heretics. They did not need to breathe, and odds were the only thing that would stop them, would be a direct lightning strike.
"Our flight in will be affected if we have to go anywhere near the fires," Nihlus commented. "Also, we should not blindly trust the Kodiak's navigation systems with the amount of lightning activity."
"Can your shuttles even fly in these conditions?" Saren asked.
"They'll fly," Shepard replied. The Kodiak and its variations were designed to work in worse conditions. She turned to Nihlus, "There's nothing to do except pick our landing sites and calculate all relevant courses up here."
"Yes, and my fighter pilot training will be an asset here," Nihlus added.
Shepard nodded and turned back to the central projection. Now that the basic conditions were covered, she could take in the topography. Ilos had massive continents, many of them covered by greenery, whether on fire or not. Its water bodies were smaller, with nothing that was larger than Earth's Atlantic Ocean, but there were many large rivers and inland lakes. The high ratio of land to water would make for a huge haystack in which to hide a magnetic needle.
It was right at that moment, when she thought of the ark as a magnetic needle, that Shepard realized that the planet's weather activity posed an even greater challenge to their mission specifically. "Come to think of it… the lightning will generate a light, but constant electromagnetic interference. That will complicate finding the magnetic field from the ark's power core."
"That was the method you used up to this point, yes?" Saren asked.
"That's right," Shepard replied.
"What are the alternative options?"
Shepard drummed her fingers on the console in front of her, did she dare admit that she did not have any other options? No. She did not want Saren to know how much she had been flying by the seat of her pants, not yet. "Working on it, but I do know what won't work. We can't enter the atmosphere. Entry friction will give away our position, and we can't use the atmospheric probes either. They send their telemetry via a signal that required functional communication antennae."
"Commander, there is one more thing that you'll want to see," Kaidan said, drawing her attention.
Shepard nodded, internally thankful for the reprieve that sort of distraction provided.
Kaidan pressed a number of keys at his controls, which caused the central projection to stop and zoom in on the largest of Ilos' landmasses and then what appeared to be the ruins of a massive city, a half-circle of mottled greys, browns, reds, and white built on the coastline of the planet's biggest water body, sprawling hundreds of kilometers in all directions. "We discussed all the natural challenges that are present on Ilos, but those are not the worst thing we have to face… if the Ark is anywhere near a previously inhabited area, any plan we make will have to take this into account."
At first, Shepard was not sure what she was looking at. The clouds drifting over the city prevented full clarity, but that was not enough to conceal it entirely. It was still patently obvious that unlike the one on Feros, this city appeared to be in much worse shape. It had almost no upright structures, and even its ruins seemed to mash together into a peculiar tangle. Whatever was discernable, clustered on the edges of four strange, flattened, plains. These were almost perfectly round, thirty kilometers in diameter, and each contained a lake right the middle, roughly ten kilometers in diameter on its own. Interestingly one such flattened area was in the very middle, right on the shoreline, and its lake joined up with the water, creating a bay.
Then, as the seconds ticked, something about those flattened plains made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. This was too different from Feros, where the city was merely abandoned and left to decay for fifty thousand years. Worse, the flattened plains began to look positively ominous. Her instincts told her they could not be scenic features or parks. No one built such huge, perfectly circular parks, or cut perfectly circular lakes in the middle of what would have been the oldest parts of a city. Knowledge in the back of her mind said that the Protheans had not been such devout nature lovers either.
If they were not natural, or decorative, then the only explanation was that these were the zones of destruction leftover after orbital bombardment. But then, if that was the case, then how large would the round have been to create them? "Kaidan, tell me I'm wrong and those lakes are not impact craters."
"I wish I could, but they are. Each is also emitting trace radioactivity detectable from orbit," Kaidan replied, his tone turning dour.
Shepard froze to where she stood as the truth crystallized fully, and then she felt a chill race down her spine. "They're… nuclear surface-burst craters."
"Yes," Nihlus said somberly.
"Yield?" Shepard croaked as she looked toward Kaidan. How big would a bomb have to be to leave a hole that large? The one by the shore would not have had far to go before it hit the water table, but the ones further uptown? Had they been filled in by rain, or did they go down that deep?
Garrus cleared his throat.
Shepard glanced toward him.
"By my calculations each would have been approximately one hundred megatons," he explained.
Shepard had to bite her own tongue to stop herself from cussing right then. Doing so was never constructive. Forget the thick atmosphere, the gravity, the almost non-existent ozone layer, and the issue of needing an air filter. This was worse, much worse. Then, it took a few moments, but the horror fully sank in, and then a sick feeling settled in her gut as she realized just what must have happened when the city of that size was hit by four separate one-hundred-megaton bombs. "Any estimate on the city's population when the bombs dropped?"
Garrus shifted his weight from foot to foot as he glanced at Kaidan.
"Without an idea of population density such an estimate is likely somewhat… unreliable, but if we model it on the densest cities on Earth, we're talking a hundred million, but possibly more." Kaidan stated.
Shepard knew that Kaidan was trying to maintain his professional detachment, but his eyes were hard and he spoke with an edge that betrayed the anger simmering under the surface. She could not pretend to be unbothered either. She had no reason to doubt that hundred million estimate, as it was coming straight from EDI. Judging from the city's state, likely as much as half of the population might have died in the initial blasts, and that was probably merciful. As the survivors would have had to deal with a nightmare scenario. "How many bombs, in total, were dropped on Ilos?" Shepard needed to be sure.
"The sensors identified the radioactive remnants of nine individual nuclear detonations on the surface. Four in this city, two in another, and three more at three different, smaller cities scattered across the planet. All of them were of about the same yield," Kaidan explained.
Shepard put her hands on the edge of her console. The sick feeling in her gut just got about ten times worse. Someone had dropped nine hundred megatons of nuclear explosives on one planet. The scale of destruction unleased on Ilos outright boggled the mind.
"There is no mistaking the intent there," Garrus added.
Shepard nodded mutely, still trying to wrap her head around what she had just learned. But then, she realized that although there was some anger in Garrus' tone, it was already somewhat subdued. Kaidan was outright affecting unflappability. They knew about these detonations before Nihlus woke her from her nap. It even explained why Nihlus was so subdued, even his sails had been deflated by the revelation that Ilos had delivered.
Shepard took a deep, bracing breath. It was officially time to pull herself back together, she could mull the horrors later. "This was not about just destroying the cities, they wanted to render the surrounding area uninhabitable." Did the Oravores know that there was an ark on Ilos, and was this their method of preventing it from operating as intended? Why though? Was the AI tampering not enough? Had they been unable to tamper with the AI on Ilos? Where was the ark? Was it built inside one of the cities? The questions asked themselves far too fast for her comfort.
"They also knew what they were doing. The yield was calculated for the conditions on Ilos," Garrus went on. "The atmosphere would have dampened and slowed blast shockwaves, making air-bursts inefficient. But the higher gravity would have reduced the height of the surface-burst blast cloud, so less ejecta reaches the stratosphere, diminishing the fallout."
"In any case, most of the fallout will have decayed by now," Saren added blandly.
Shepard knew that the most dangerous fallout components had half-lives measured in decades at the longest. "Obviously, but these bombs also did not use up all their fissile material, as the lakes are still radioactive. Plutonium and uranium have half-lives in the tens of thousands of years." She felt it needed to be said, even if she came across as flexing her memory for high school chemistry. "But let's not lose sight of the fact that while the Oravores certainly knew what they were doing-" Shepard paused, as using those words left a nasty taste in her mouth, "It was still an act of undeniable evil, perpetrated to kill millions in the blink of an eye. There is nothing there to admire."
Shepard felt like that needed to be said as well, because the Hierarchy had a different perspective on mass casualties and what was acceptable wartime conduct. Their doctrines did not make much of a distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and they seemed to lack anything that might vaguely resemble the Geneva Conventions. But she did have those sorts of limits, and was not about to let them go, as doing so would put her at the top of a very high and slippery slope.
Nihlus shifted his weight but remained quiet.
Saren stood deathly still, but did not comment.
"Commander… I apologize if it sounded like I was minimizing the event," Garrus stated quietly as he dropped his gaze to his console.
Shepard was utterly unsurprised that it was Garrus who read her meaning. "I did not say that's exactly how it sounded… I was trying to ensure that perspective is not lost." She really had not meant that as a direct aimed accusation, least of all at Garrus, and with the intent to chastise. More like a suggestion, a display of a certain cultural difference between their two species. "That's mostly how I look at it," she added and turned back to the central projection.
Saren made a sound in the back of his throat that vaguely resembled a harrumph.
She was not surprised that he was unimpressed with the back-pedaling. Well, it was time for a topic change, as awkward as that would be. "Javik saw that, didn't he?" She asked.
"Yes," Nihlus stated.
Shepard hummed, "I wouldn't blame him if he thought that those within the Ark are… gone." It was difficult to imagine how a population could survive on an irradiated world, in the middle of a war. Sure, there would have been some survivors out there, but how long could they last? Could those nine explosions have produced enough dust to block out the sun for any significant duration of time? That would have affected the growth cycle of crops. Factor in the electromagnetic pulses released by the blasts, and any survivors would have found themselves cut off from all organizational structures, possibly without food and shelter, afflicted by radiation, expecting fallout, and thrown back into the Stone Age all at the same time. The prospect of that was quite terrifying, and she had never been one to scare easily.
"Unfortunately that would be a… safe assumption, ma'am," Kaidan murmured.
Shepard sighed, it took her quite a bit not to show her anger right then. Showing it would do no good for anyone. "The more I learn about the Oravores, the more I hate them." There was no sugar-coating what they had done to Ilos and its people. The worst humanity had done to each-other, in that regard, still allowed the survivors to seek refuge within their society. She doubted the Oravores would have allowed the Protheans to escape with their lives.
Was Ilos even the first victim of Oravores nukes? Shepard could not imagine the Protheans ever taking that sitting down. Such an act would quickly escalate any and all wars. To be sure, both species appeared to have fought each-other to total annihilation, but was Ilos indeed where the final act, mutually assured destruction, actually began? No, she reasoned, it could not have started on Ilos. Only if and because there should have been an ark on it. Building such facilities only began to make sense once the situation began to look grim, when the nukes were already flying. So could Ilos have been one of the last planets to be bombarded instead? This was another question that would probably go unanswered, or worse, become the area for fierce academic debate. Those could lose perspective awfully quick as the various scholars involved fought over whose conclusion was right.
"Shepard, are you alright?" Nihlus asked.
Shepard shook her head, pulling herself out of her thoughts, "I'm fine… just still trying to process everything. Well, I can do that later." Nihlus would understand her proclivities. If Saren thought she was spacing out instead, well, that was his assumption. Right then, she did not care. This whole thing was on the verge of making her sick. The monster inside was stirring to the defense of those long-dead, and she was struggling to rein it in. Though rein it in she must. "Alright, so now we radiation exposure to the list of reasons why this mission should be planned and executed with utmost care."
"Which brings us back to the topic we were discussing before. How do you plan to find this ark, if the lightning will interfere with your conventional methods?" Saren drawled.
Shepard glanced at him and tried her best not to give him a withering glare. Did he have to be so obvious about the fact that he had been waiting to bring that up again? Well there was no escaping having to make a confession there. "I'm afraid this is the one area where my skills are… underdeveloped." That was a major understatement, but she would not make such a confession without turning it on him. "But, if you happen to have a plan, then by all means…" she purposefully trailed off, raising an eyebrow.
Saren's mandibles twitched upward.
Shepard knew she had him. That faint movement was as close as Saren Arterius came to chewing glass, because he had nothing constructive to contribute. Well, she would spare him one courtesy, she would not make her touch-down obvious.
Kaidan cleared his throat, "Well, we know that Harbinger and Nazara will look for the ark," he stepped in, calm as could be. "As such, I've begun passive monitoring for signs of Heretic activity."
Shepard turned her gaze toward him and noticed the faint tip at the corner of his mouth, trying his best to bite back his grin, and almost succeeding. Not for the first time Shepard wondered just why would anyone, in their right mind, pass up on having Kaidan as a subordinate? He had just handed her a shovel with which to dig herself out of this little mess.
"We wait for them to find the ark, and then attack with everything we have," Nihlus added, flashing his teeth.
"Exactly," Shepard nodded at Nihlus, but then turned to Saren. "Given the circumstances, it might just be our one viable option. Ilos is toxic to organics, it will limit our operational times, and I do not have the resources to dig the ark out, if its entrance is buried. Harbinger has all that, and it's high time it does something for us, and not the other way around."
"Turnabout is fair play," Kaidan murmured, his gaze remaining on the console.
Shepard smiled, "We will have the element of surprise, armed Kodiaks, and we have already culled the number of Heretics in this system. They're bound to be getting… slower. All of it is to our advantage." It was the thing she happened to be quite good at.
Saren said as he closed his eyes briefly, "Very well."
Shepard would take that as his resignation to doing things her way. She could not hope for outright agreement, no matter how much she would have liked that. She turned back to Kaidan, "Well, lieutenant… continue to monitor for Heretic activity, I want to know as soon as you have something, no matter what that happens to be. I give you carte blanche on positioning, coordinate with Joker as needed." She did not want to deal with rubber-stamping every altitude and heading adjustment the passive monitoring would require. She trusted Kaidan and Joker to get it done efficiently and professionally.
"Yes, ma'am," Kaidan replied.
There was only one last thing to consider, but something that could make or break the whole operation. She glanced toward Nihlus, "If we are going to mount a successful sudden attack on Harby and the Heretics… we need a few plans and ample supplies." Organizing that sort of background minutia could be easily done while they waited for EDI and Kaidan to find the Heretics.
"You will hear no argument from me," Nihlus replied.
"Has she ever heard an argument from you?" Saren asked blandly.
Shepard froze to the spot, was that a joke or was Saren just being a git? Somehow she doubted he had a single funny bone in his whole body. "Oh Nihlus disagrees with me often enough," she said.
"Yes, we have a balance… there were times when Shepard deferred to my experience," Nihlus added blandly.
Shepard bit back her grin. Did he even understand the inside joke? She was not certain, but she certainly would not say that he often ended up ruing winning their arguments. Those who knew her would understand that she was affecting a certain Shepard-brand hauteur in equal parts truth and jest. Those who did not, like Saren, would take it at face value. Shepard did not need him deeming it as proof of human arrogance, her arrogance, or some combination of both.
Half an hour later Shepard decided her presence on the CIC was unnecessary. The Normandy was keeping an asynchronous orbit, in full stealth, with course adjustments made by Tantalus drive. With no sign of Heretic presence in orbit, she deemed it safe enough to step away and start on the ground mission preparations. Her first destination was deck three, the medbay, to discuss things with Doctor Chakwas.
With the Normandy remaining at yellow alert, everyone was to remain in a state of readiness, and so, the atmosphere down on the crew deck was completely different than at any other time. The galley was shut down and locked up tight. The enlisted whose job was to facilitate ship security were geared up and ready for the come what may. Equipment closets that contained breathing apparatus and fire extinguishers, which were normally concealed behind panels, were opened and ready for use. There were also the flashing lights which indicated the location of hidden access hatches leading to each of the Normandy's escape pods.
When she passed by the crew, she offered them reassurances that things were under control and that her presence was nothing to worry about. By now they knew that the Normandy had sustained some damage, but Shepard assured them that it was relatively minor, all considering. She considered it relatively minor, considering that there had not even been one little fire on board. They would know that had the damage been truly horrible, to the point of presenting a threat to the ship and its crew, it would be obvious, and Shepard would not have been dismissing it. She was not a madwoman.
As Shepard stepped into the medbay, and stopped just past the door, allowing them to close behind her.
Doctor Chakwas looked up from the pad she had been reading while seated at her desk, "Commander, anything I can do for you?"
Shepard blinked, momentarily disoriented. Were it not for the emergency breather within reach or the first-aid supplies arrayed at a ready for immediate use, the doctor's calm greeting could almost convince her that the ship was not in a state of high alert. Then she remembered that Doctor Chakwas had decades of experience and had chosen to serve aboard ships with full knowledge of the realities of combat. That would probably lead to a certain amount of unflappability. "Ah… not directly. We're all fine."
"A testament to our command team, I'm sure," The doctor smiled.
"And Garrus' bordering-on-supernatural ability with things you point and shoot," Shepard replied. Then she shifted her weight, mentally shifting thought tracks. "Fortunately, the fighting out here is behind us. There is only the ground phase left, and its problems. I need advice."
"Have a seat then. I will be glad to lend any assistance, you know that."
Shepard smiled and moved to take the other chair at the doctor's desk.
"Now, what can I do?" Chakwas asked.
Shepard took a deep breath and tried not to exhale it as a sigh. "Well, my first concern is Javik. I suspect he will want to join us for the ground operation, and I need to know whether he can or if I will have to… put down my foot and convince him that he can't."
"Ah, I will say this, he's been cooperative, if for no other reason than ensuring that he got active service clearances. I've completed my review of the medical databases, and I'm pretty sure I know enough about Prothean physiology to provide adequate treatment for the sort of trauma he is liable to sustain in active service aboard the Normandy."
"And the toxin?" Shepard asked.
Chakwas set the pad in her hands aside and shifted in her seat to be more comfortable. "You'll be happy to know that it is no longer an issue. Doctor Cohen's neutralizing agent is remarkably elementary in how it works, and that makes it almost universal. Once administered intravenously, it binds with the toxin molecules and blocks their ability to interact with any nervous tissue in any way. The patient's own body then gets rid of the molecules through natural processes. I think he modelled it on modern antivenin synthesis techniques. Neurotoxin venoms are quite common in the animal kingdom."
Shepard hummed, "He came up with it relatively easily. The man is either a genius, or it was down to having access to a great number of… subjects to test this on." The Rachni that had been born on Peak Fifteen would have been the perfect test subjects, same as any other lab animal. Still, what kind of weapon was so relatively easily countered? One would think that the Oravores would cook up something extra nasty and extra potent, as it was meant to disable the thing that gave Protheans a definite advantage.
Furthermore, it was meant to break down in the open air while leaving no trace. Yet it was debilitating if not deadly if delivered to its intended target. What use scenario would that have? Well, going back to Doctor Chakwas' reference to the animal kingdom, she knew that the deadliest snakes on Earth used neurotoxins, and with some, they could kill in as little as the victim taking six steps. "This suggests the Oravores deployed it as an opening strike when engaging the Protheans," She mused.
"I got that impression as well." Chakwas replied. "But, I would not think too hard on that."
Shepard could not help but think about it, it was not in her nature not to. "Nasty stuff either way," Everything made her wonder whether she should have investigated the good doctor. Just how many of those on Peak Fifteen had been shady? Likely all of them in some regard, but there was shady, and then there was Cerberus-shady. Just where on that spectrum was Cohen, exactly? The thought did not settle well with her, but then she shook her head and metaphorically tossed it aside. There was no use worrying about that now, was there? "So, Javik is… good to go?"
"As far as I can tell, he's as prepared as he'll ever be. I've synthesized a supply of the neutralizer and supplied him with ampules that are compatible with his armor's medicine-delivery system. I've also added a few spares to the first-aid kits on board both our Kodiaks."
"That's good to hear. That's one concern off the list, but not the only, and not the biggest. We've discovered that Ilos is an irradiated wasteland, and not by accident."
Chakwas straightened in her seat as all semblance of levity vanished in the split of a second. "How irradiated?" She asked in an instantly-worried, motherly tone.
"EDI found the still-radioactive craters of nine separate, hundred megaton blasts. If our target is anywhere near any of them, we're looking at a serious problem as the Heretics are unlikely to be hampered as severely." Electronics tended to take much higher doses of gamma rays before frying, unlike organic matter. Harbinger would get a real kick out of that, one more thing to crow about.
"You'll need to keep track of the radiation levels, the Kodiak's scanners will be able to help you. But there are things I can do to reduce the effects of exposure." Chakwas stated.
Shepard breathed a sigh of relief that she hoped the doctor would not hear. She had not been looking forward to traipsing through still-radioactive rubble and ruins, as she was not particularly fond of the idea of risking her own health like this. She hated the mere thought of Harbinger winning because she came down with radiation sickness. It would be something else the mad machine would hold over her. "Thank you, Doctor."
Chakwas cleared her throat. "First, you will need to swap your suit's filtration to the appropriate rating."
"That was on my list," Shepard replied. It was kind of basic safety rules, really.
"Good. After that, there are things I can give you that will help prevent the buildup of radioactive isotopes in the body should anything get past the filtration. After that, your concern will be background radiation. For that, I need to explain what is too high and how to calculate exposure times."
"No time like the present," Shepard replied as she brought up her omni-tool. That sounded like information she would want to take notes on, and maybe then she could start feeling more at ease with the whole operation.
An Hour Later...
After her consultation with Chakwas went down to deck four. Sometime in the middle of discussing options for protection, she realized that there was no way that Harbinger would find anything intact and usable in the zones of total destruction, the glass plains surrounding the craters proper. From space these looked like deserts, uniform in color and elevation, and were made up of material that was pulverized during the blasts.
There was probably no way for anything to have survived underground in that area either. Each explosion would have created a powerful localized earthquake, possibly with ground liquefaction. It was hard to imagine how a structure could withstand not collapsing on itself under that sort of stress. If something had survived, it would have been buried, closing any and all access to it.
That said, there was still plenty of structures outside the blast zones, which could still harbor radiation hot zones. That complicated the mission, making it so they had to fight against the clock as well as the Heretics. That was perhaps the worst part. Shepard hated when she did not have the time to plan and take things carefully.
With those dour thoughts in her mind, she stopped at the cargo hold turned sleeping quarters. The cargo bay door was meant to seal in the case of emergencies, and it did not come with a chime, but by now someone had rigged up a rudimentary one for it. She tapped the button and waited.
The cargo bay door opened about five seconds later, so Shepard stepped in and stopped just far enough into the space that the door closed behind her.
"Commander," Javik greeted without looking up from his current task. He was seated at his desk, which was covered with tools. Some of them looking like they had been made on the Normandy's fabricator. From the assortment it looked like he was conducting a thorough inspection on the rifle that had been in the stasis pod with him.
"Javik," Shepard replied automatically. She was none-too-surprised that he did not trust anyone with the weapon. She would also not comment on how that sort of greeting was becoming entirely too common. First it had been Wrex, a krogan of few words, and now it was Javik, a prothean who at times almost treated the very act of speaking as beneath him. If the mood of the day was not so dour, she would have let herself enjoy the amusing irony there.
As the seconds stretched and the silence lingered, Shepard knew that she would have to start talking. But how to go about it? She would not ask the absolutely inane question of whether Javik was alright. Who would be given what they had just learned? That would probably go over especially bad with him. "I just had a conversation with Doctor Chakwas." When in doubt, go in blunt.
"I am cleared for active duty," Javik stated.
"Yes," Shepard replied. Doctor Chakwas would have told him first. "I know you want to come down to the surface with us. But… there are complications with that. You must have realized that."
Javik set the weapon down, and got up from his seat, then turned to face her. "The conditions on Ilos will not be a problem for me. Protheans are more resistant to ionizing radiation that most of the species alive today."
Shepard blinked, genuinely surprised at that tidbit of information. That said, it could very well begin explaining why the Oravores used hundred megaton nukes. If their intended victims could survive higher levels of exposure, whether instantaneous or over time, then they would have just increased the levels of exposure.
"Do not even start thinking of a way to tell me no," Javik went on.
Shepard looked right in his eyes, "Will you take that no?"
"No." He replied blandly and without a moment of hesitation.
"Figured. Quite frankly, I could use your help down there. That said, I need to know that you can handle it. Aside from the radioactivity, we're about to go down to what had become a… tomb to your people. Harbinger and Nazara will be picking over it, looking for whatever it is that they need. I need to know that I can trust you not to overreact."
"And what is your definition of… overreaction?" Javik asked, sneering.
Shepard suspected that she had pressed the wrong button with that choice of word. Well, it was a good thing then that he was not going for her jugular, yet. "I need to know you will follow the plan we make and the orders I may issue, without losing your head, figuratively speaking."
Javik's expression returned to neutrality as he stared at her without blinking. "As long as you do not order me to spare those things. You will not have a problem."
Shepard nodded. "I'm not about to issue that order. Harbinger… has crossed a few lines of no return."
"Good."
"Just so you know, the team will be made up of myself, Nihlus, Saren, you, and likely Legion."
"Your continued blind trust in that thing will cost you," Javik groused.
Shepard tried her best not to react by bristling like a porcupine. Javik was still going on about that? She had to remind herself that he did not know Legion, and if she had been in his shoes, she might have reacted the same way. His psychometry also did not work with Legion, and for someone who was used to knowing so much, the loss of awareness would be jarring. So she could understand his hesitance to trust, really.
Still, Shepard would keep hammering the point, Legion was not the enemy here. She crossed her arms under her bust and stared the Prothean down. "A spy, traitor, or sleeper agent would not do half of what Legion has done for this crew." As far as she was concerned, that was perhaps the most telling part. "Legion diffused bombs, walked into the path of bullets, and built a heavily reengineered version of their preferred long-distance rifle for me. And all those are just the most notable instances."
"Token efforts meant to make you lower your guard!"
Shepard glared, she had not come there to start an argument, but this had evolved into one. "You've not met them yet, but the portion of the Geth under Harbinger's sway, the Heretics, are fanatical in their devotion to it. They see nothing wrong with walking into the line of fire for it. That comes from the fact that the Geth, as a whole, do not view their platforms as inherently alive. The runtimes can upload back onto whatever dropship that brings them in, and they can change bodies like you or I would change clothes. So, I have to ask, if Legion had been an agent sent to get rid of me, why not just go for it? Why the months-long wait? Why risk termination and mission failure by taking shots for me? Why supply me with a weapon? Surely the sacrifice of even a thousand runtimes would be acceptable losses if it terminates someone its god-king sees as an enemy."
Javik's expression darkened, but he remained silent.
Shepard figured that she had hit the mark, but there was just a few last things that needed to be aired out. "And no, Harbinger is not trying to sway me to its side. Both of them hate organics. Nazara outright killed almost the entire crew of the ship it now wears as a body." To say nothing of the colonists on the Virmire ark. "They have no reason to spy on me, not when eliminating me would be far more efficient."
"You have made your point."
Had she? Or was he merely backing down so she would get off his back?
"It had better be ready to defend itself, should those other ones try to take over it again," Javik went on.
Shepard released a long, mostly silent exhale. At the very least that was an unambiguous acquiescence to her wishes. She could live with that. Javik would realize, with experience and in time, that Legion was actually indeed on the level. Perhaps not on the side of the angels, as they were too wily to be innocent, but not the worst. "I wouldn't even focus on Legion, he's not the most… problematic of my present allies."
Javik harrumphed, "Yes, the most problematic of your… allies is that Turian. Arterius. I hope you do not consider him under your control."
Shepard shook her head, "Stars are masses of intensely hot gasses, gravity pulls, and Saren Arterius would love nothing more than to see me fall from grace. Any other oblivious statements?" She could not be bothered to bite back her sarcasm. "But I bet you've learned by now that I have… leverage on him. As for any take-over attempt… Legion and EDI have that covered."
"We shall see," Javik remarked cryptically as he turned back to his table, but then paused over the chair without actually sitting back down.
Shepard blinked, and metaphorically bit her cheek to stop herself from articulating any thoughts. She still was not sure just what and when he could and could not read. At times he seemed able to read active thoughts, and at others, he only demonstrated picking up tidbits of information that was a bit older, and had not been on someone's mind right then and there. Some part of it was probably also anticipating what she might do, read her in the more conventional sense, which might come off as mind-reading. Asking him to clarify the limits of his ability would undoubtedly be pointless. "Well I suppose that's… most of what I wanted to ask. EDI is monitoring for signs of Harbinger's activity as we speak. I'll ask her to relay the information once she has it."
"That will be acceptable," Javik replied as he sat back down.
Shepard did not particularly care for being dismissed on her own ship. But she also knew better than to pick a fight that she would probably never win. The only thing she could do then was roll her eyes, turn, and breeze out of the room.
Two Hours Later…
After her encounter with Javik, Shepard went down to deck five to tackle the logistical matters. With Ashley's assistance she ensured that their Kodiaks had adequate supplies and provisions for the surface operation. That included double-checking the first-aid kits for Doctor Chakwas' additions, as well as making sure that their hypo-jets were charged and operational. As abrasive as Javik was, she would not risk his life, and then she might need those injection devices herself.
Then she swapped the filtration membranes in her armor to the ones rated for radioactive particulates. After that, the final bit of preparation was rigging up a supply of grenades and demolition charges. The former for Harbinger's proxies, and the latter in case they had to clear debris of some sort. Shepard reasoned that such a contingency would come in handy if their operational time was curtailed excessively, and while she was not a structural engineer of any sort, she had a good idea about what debris could and could not be cleared with explosives. She was leaving nothing up to chance.
Once all that was done and organized, she thanked Ashley for the assistance, and stepped onto the elevator with the CIC as her end goal. As the cabin ascended, Shepard took a long, deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly through her mouth. Appearing fretful, worried, or haggard would not be a good look up there at that moment. When the cabin stopped, she tugged down her fatigue jacket, to set herself to right, and as the door opened, she affected all due decorum.
"Commander on deck!" Kaidan announced.
Shepard looked around the CIC, none too surprised to see that Saren was still standing off to the right side of her post at the head of the central console. Nihlus hovered on the left, where he was closer to the operations station, likely scoping the readings EDI was showing Kaidan as they came in. Garrus was also still there at the weapons controls, but it appeared like he had finished whatever he had been working on, as he was not typing away on it.
"Kaidan, anything new to report?" She asked as she moved toward her position, the best post in the house to look over the central console.
"Nothing of consequence, just yet, ma'am, but we are compiling quite the compendium on Ilos in the interim. Enough so that we probably have to adjust some of our previous conclusions."
Shepard could see that the Ilos projected over the console had been detailed out a little in her absence. An asynchronous orbit meant that EDI was monitoring whole tracts on the planet's surface. Every pass over a single location allowed the sensors to record ever-more detailed and variegated information. There was a great deal of the most important information displayed as EDI marked the largest storm systems, the worst of the forest fires, and other problematic spots right along with the cities and the nuclear impact sites in them. Shepard counted ten new points of interest, each labeled by a Greek letter. However, there was a conspicuous absence of any target identified as Heretic. Kaidan would have called her up to the CIC if EDI found anything there. "Nuclear impacts aside, what are some of those other markers?"
"Mostly smaller centers of population and various activity," Kaidan began.
Shepard hummed. Any one of those centers of population could conceal the ark in its ruins. Or somewhere nearby. This was beginning to resemble a needle search in a big haystack, which might just explain why Harbinger was struggling to find anything. The only other vessel currently in orbit around Ilos was the Impera, and between them, the Normandy probably had the better sensors. After all, the Impera was a pure military vessel, but the Normandy was more multi-purpose in her design, with some features of survey and scientific vessels added on. Clearly the Alliance was not exactly sure how they were going to use Thanix-equipped stealth vessels. Their solution was to adopt a 'try things and see what sticks' approach.
"I've labeled those locations differently because they appear different from the cities. For one, none of them were hit by nuclear ordnance, rather the Oravores used more conventional armaments. Orbital bombardment and incendiary saturation bombing."
Shepard hummed. Did that mean they had a limited supply of hundred megaton nukes? Or had they perhaps miscalculated the number of targets and improvised from there?
Kaidan went on, "Site Beta was a large military base and spaceport. Five of the other nine locations are small cities, each was hit by three to five dreadnought-class kinetic impacts of about twenty-five to thirty-five kilotons each. The remaining four locations include a civilian spaceport and three vast agricultural production centers. The lattermost were firebombed to ensure the fields would be destroyed."
"The scale of evil there…" Shepard trailed off. This was the exact sort of thing the Council had explicitly forbidden with their ban on the bombardment of garden-class worlds with nuclear weapons and dreadnought-class kinetic munitions. Then, even if no one had told her about the genocidal ambitions of the Oravores before, Ilos would have clued her in on its own.
After that, it was given that the Protheans would have retaliated in kind, which would explain why neither species survived. Albeit the scariest thought was what would have happened had the Oravores won. What would they have done if they were allowed to run rampant and unchecked? They had already tried to strip-mine Thessia. Would they have come after the other species? They could have very well become a galaxy-wide plague of locusts that consumed everything in their paths.
"The Council is going to want to see these scans. They are the first such data we have on Ilos," Nihlus stated calmly.
Shepard nodded, "They can have them, but they'll have to wait until we're done here." That sort of statement did not surprise her one bit, as Ilos had been inaccessible longer than the Council existed. However the scans would be all they would get from her. If they wanted anything else, they could get their own scientific vessel to go there and take them. The planet's location and condition would not stop anyone genuinely interested. The scientists would easily come in with drones and all the supplies needed to deal with the radiation. "Well, there's nothing left to do but to keep monitoring. Harbinger will show itself, eventually."
"Yes ma'am," Kaidan replied.
When it did, she would descend on it with a vengeance. The Heretics had managed to damage her ship, threaten her crew, and were now desecrating what was, very literally, a tomb planet, the site of what was likely one of the worst acts of genocide ever perpetuated by anyone. She was not going to kid herself, this was not a situation that could be resolved with parlay.
Author Notes: Yes, I've changed Ilos a little bit between game canon, and my canon, all in the name of an arc-spanning homage to the Fallout games. I've had to do a lot of research on certain relevant bits of science to make it work, as homage is nice and all, but I wanted to keep the sci-fi here as hard as ever.
General Notes:
Episode Title - This refers to the military tactic of scorched earth, leaving nothing that the other side can use. Seemed apropos given the episode's subject matter.
Chapter Notes:
Atmospheric Values - Earth's oxygen makes up 20% of our atmospheric volume, and our CO2 is 0.041% now. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas, trapping a great deal of heat (IR radiation) near the surface. Venus is 95% CO2 and the surface there 737 K, hotter than Mercury on the day side!
Nuclear Detonations – A Surface-burst is a nuclear explosion that happens on the surface. An air-burst is a detonation above, with the fireball not touching the surface. The former have smaller initial blast radii (the ground absorbs energy), but worse fallout. The latter have greater initial destruction by the shockwave, but reduce fallout.
Yields – For perspective, the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba (1961) was 50 - 58 megatons. But the bombs used as weapons were smaller. Little Boy (dropped on Hiroshima) was 15 kilotons, and Fat Man (dropped on Nagasaki) was 21 kilotons (1 kt = 0.001 mt). All of these were also air-bursts!