"User alert. Main reactor shut down in accordance with emergency containment procedures. Manual restart required".
"God, doesn't that thing ever shut up?" Chief Williams voiced her complaints openly, as she always did.
"It will. Give me a second", Shepard reassured her, tapping a series of keys on a tattered terminal. The facility's fusion plant relied on helium-3, which Joker had mentioned as being one of Noveria's major imports. Shepard couldn't remember the reason for this; helium-3 was a popular and plentiful gas, a frequently harvested source of energy. She wasn't sure about its renewable qualities, and didn't much care. All she knew was that she had to restore power to the central reactor before the matriarch found some way to escape the labs. They were closing in on their objective, but the journey had been riddled with all manner of obstacles. She imagined the facility would have its own security forces, but it was unlikely they gave Lady Benezia and her commando team a hard time about getting around the facility.
Damn Tali.
This whole mess was Benezia's fault, and if stopping Saren meant killing an asari matriarch, Shepard would not hesitate.
Something echoed sharply, and the reactor hummed to life.
"That should do it. Better now, Ash?"
"Much better. But if I have to see or hear that V.I. again, you might have to confiscate my weapons, Commander".
"I hear you, Chief. Move out".
The chief and the commander quickened pace, veering around the broken bodies of synthetic life forms that littered the catwalk. When they returned to Liara, they found her hunkered down beside the bloated corpse of what appeared to be a vicious insect. This insect, however, looked big enough to eat a German Shepard for lunch.
Ashley frowned.
"Been busy?" asked the most dangerous Shepard the Chief had ever known.
"A little, Commander", the asari replied. "I appreciate the upgrade you installed in my pistol, though. I did not think such a small weapon would be capable of-"
"Watch it!" Williams shouted, drawing her assault rifle with lighting speed. A series of loud pops were concluded when a shrill screeching filled the air. The bug sat in a heap, less than three meters from the asari, who sent one extra round into the hideous beast for good measure.
"Wow", Ash was the first to speak, though she kept her rifle trained on the motionless hostile. "Nice reflexes for a-"
"Sound off, Chief", the commander ordered, sweeping the room for additional threats. The insect had apparently smashed its way through the metal grate, and Williams guessed that it would only be a matter of time before they starting pouring through in greater numbers. She didn't know what kinds of experiments were going on at Peak 15. Part of her hoped that this "biological contagion" had been Benezia's idea; it would make filling her with polonium rounds all the more satisfying. Still, she would need more information before she could make sense of everything that was going on here.
"Clear. Let's get to the trams".
This was Shepard's game, and if the commander decided that the matriarch could be more useful if they took her alive, she wouldn't question those orders. Shaking images of biotic warriors from her mind, the Chief jogged behind her allies. Concave walls of greenish tile blurred past them, illuminated by curved stretches of glass that filtered sunlight through colorless layers of permafrost.
Alestia hated the krogan.
Like most species, she was glad that their numbers were dwindling under the salarian's brilliant genophage. Binary Helix had supposedly been working on a "cure" to appease krogan investors, but the results been disclosed as "not viable". That was a cover story, of course, for the valuable projects that Lady Benezia had to keep under wraps. She did not know why the matriarch would be interested in a remedy for the krogan genophage, yet it rarely bothered her. As an asari matron, she was never one to question the wisdom of the matriarchs. They did not take action without careful thought, and a young asari maiden was little more than a reckless child to the unfathomable depths of a matriarch's thorough strategies.
"Excuse me", a harsh voice spoke.
"What?" Alestia opened her eyes, allowing them to focus on the newcomer who rudely disrupted her contemplative state of serene relaxation. She appeared to be a human, and Alestia was unsurprised.
"You seem awfully calm, considering everything that's happened here".
"That", the asari explained to the human, "is one of the virtues of the mediation you interrupted".
"Sorry", came the curt apology. "I was just wondering if you knew Lady Benezia".
"Do you know President Huerto of Earth?" Alestia retorted, reflecting the absurdity of the human's question. Her face appeared puzzled, as though sluggishly working out the intricacies of her blatant sarcasm. "I did not think so", Alestia said at last.
"You haven't seen a matriarch pass through here recently?"
"I saw her. You asked if I knew her. I do not."
The human continued to annoy Alestia, asking generic questions regarding the nature of her occupation as a geneticist. She answered truthfully without revealing her affiliation to the matriarch.
Apparently satisfied, the armor-clad human departed and began to chat with a pair of women that Alestia did not recognize. She heard the room grow silent when they entered, but had assumed they were nothing more than a stray security team.
She could not hear their words from across the room, but Alestia would not stoop to eavesdropping to learn more about the newcomers. No one noticed the asari's calm eyes tracking the trio, watching them negotiate with the elcor merchant, converse with a salarian scientist, and head downstairs to the medical bay. Her contact in Hanshan mentioned something about a group of suspicious individuals. The hanar's description matched the human and asari she saw now, although no quarian was in sight.
No krogan, either. Thank the goddess.
Alestia resumed her meditation, this time without bothering to lower her eyelids.
Perhaps it was their violent nature, or their toad-like faces. Perhaps it was an extended grudge, after her mother had been thoughtlessly murdered by a krogan bounty hunter several centuries ago. To the krogan, it might have been "just another job". To the orphaned Alestia, it had been an outrage. After years of hard study and relentless searching, she located her mother's assassin in a dingy bar. She had taken careful aim at the bulky krogan's brainstem, where vital bodily functions were disrupted with a single, precise blast from her Stiletto IV. She expected to feel relief at the sight of his lifeless body, but instead, felt incredible excitement. Spurred on by the rush of power, she fired several more rounds into the krogan's face. She told herself that she was only "making sure" her revenge had been exacted. No one in the bar spoke a word when she holstered the weapon and exited the building, and the few who dared to look her in eye could not maintain their gaze when she met it with her own.
Such a simple act, yetso much power!
Alestia spent the next decade working as a customer service representative for a small bank. When her salarian employer finally got the gall to accuse her of "embezzlement", she spent a luxurious evening carving him apart with the largest knife she could find in the break room. She did this after everyone's shift had ended, mainly because she wanted to avoid muffling his shrill screams with some barbaric gagging device. Such adventures only served to pique her curiosity, and she heard many more screams before her recent appointment to Benezia's team of researchers.
Alestia was one of Matriarch Benezia's most valuable assets. Even among the many members of the matriarch's entourage, she was extremely intelligent and passionately devoted to her mistress. Over the centuries, her methods had been honed to achieve unparalleled levels of efficiency. One of the matriarch's dull commandos referred to Alestia as "something of a sadist". Even as she recalled the words, it brought a smile to Alestia's shapely face. Only rarely had she been shamed by her indulgence in morbid curiosity. The few who even recognized her eccentric desires did not show any lasting interest.
Perhaps, before their work on Noveria was complete, she would educate the impolite human on the true nature of sadism. She had no interest in her asari companion; there was something about the scream of an asari that felt more aggravating than pleasurable. Humans were another story, though. They had only made themselves known to the galaxy in recent decades. Many found them to be mysterious and arrogant.
Alestia had never heard a human scream before.