Shepard had known Garrus for a long time by either turian or human standards. They'd been through hell together on a couple different occasions. She knew his moods, and she was moderately proud that she was able to read the alien so well. His body language was telling her that he was upset, even if his words weren't. Shepard wanted to be sly so as not to provoke him or cause him to shut down. She casually fell into step with him, cleaning her weapons next to him and working up to conversation.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Grunt. Apparently it didn't take Shepard's sensitivity to the turian's feelings to assess something was wrong. So much for being slick.
"We're walking into a trap, that's what's the matter," said Garrus. Shepard nodded in agreement.
"Maybe, but I don't think Patriarch would set us up," Shepard interjected. Garrus grunted, hunched over his sniper rifle. He was always meticulous, but Shepard suspected his weapon was already clean enough.
"If Aria has a mole, what makes you think it didn't dig all the way down to Patriarch?" asked Garrus, as he adjusted his scope.
"I'm not disagreeing with you, Garrus. I'm just saying I don't think Patriarch believes he's giving us faulty information." Shepard knew from experience that diplomacy and tact only went so far with Garrus. Sooner or later she'd have to pull rank. She hoped it wouldn't be sooner. She looked over their stock of weapons and ammo. They'd brought out the big guns. They were big enough for the collectors, anyway. Shepard looked wistfully at her stock of Cerberus-issued weapons. The Alliance outfitted their soldiers with the very best, but there were some things they just couldn't get away with. Some things, like handing out prototype alien technology to their special ops units. Shepard sighed, there were definitely some things she was going to miss about working in the private sector. She hefted her favored missile launcher over her shoulder and reached for her geth-made plasma shotgun. She paused for a moment, thinking. "Wait, wasn't going to see Patriarch your idea in the first place?" she asked Garrus.
"That's not even the issue, Shepard!" he waved his hand dismissively. "Those bastards are stringing us along. It's crumbs here and clues there – and we're walking right down the path they want! They're practically herding us. Meanwhile, Scratch could be dead by now. Who knows what they're putting him through, especially if he's not cooperating," said Garrus. Shepard hadn't forgotten about the human mechanic held hostage by the Suns - the man who had once been Garrus' friend. She knew they were working on borrowed time, but she also knew it would be foolish to rush a job like this. That's how mistakes got made. There was more at stake than just one hostage.
"Well something's up, but we won't find out what it is by sitting around talking about it," said Grunt. He'd been ready for the past twenty minutes, pacing back and forth not trying to conceal his impatience. Shepard looked down, triple checking that her kinetic shield barrier was fully charged.
"He's right," she said to Garrus' back. "We can't delay and we can't rush it. We get into the main computer and we've found our traitor – hopefully. If it's a trap, we need to be ready. I need you both to stay focused, no matter what happens." Shepard brought up her omni-tool. Tali had sent over a scanning program she created for them to upload to Omega's computer core when they got there. It was supposed to scan for the program that did what she described on board the Normandy. EDI had sent the station specs to her along with the additional data that Legion was able to hack out of Omega's systems. EDI had remote control of the station's defense systems. Shepard noted that the Normandy's AI could access defense turrets on the station's exterior, fire extinguishers, and airlocks. She tried to think quickly to integrate the station into her battle strategy. It seemed it was going to be up to her to improvise. She watched her team gear up for their trek into the server room. She could admit she knew less than she would have liked to about what she was getting her team into, but there wasn't time to be as thorough as she usually was. Shepard just hoped they were prepared.
Once suited, the squad finally made its way toward their destination following the map provided by EDI on Shepard's omni-tool. The server room was in the middle of the station, so the team had to take a series of elevators down in order to get there. Thankfully for the team, operating the elevators didn't require any kind of security pass codes. Shepard estimated from looking at the map and keeping track of their location that they were almost directly beneath Afterlife. They were also uncomfortably close to the Blue Suns warehouse. The team stepped out of the elevator onto the quiet maintenance floor. The contrast between the bustling main decks of the space station and below was startling. Shepard found it peaceful, but she wasn't foolish enough to be lulled into a false sense of security. Ahead, Shepard saw a door with an entry pad that glowed orange. The plaque on the wall next to it read "Server Core". This was the place, all right. There was no sign of anyone in the hall as the team stepped out of the elevator, but that hardly meant anything. The atmosphere was tense, and getting tenser by the second. If they were walking into a trap, approaching the server room doors could just be the spring.
Patriarch was torn between rage and excitement. Rage, because he couldn't believe that the Suns had actually gotten into his office. Excitement, because he now had an excuse to involve himself. He wasn't about to let a group of mercenaries newly led by an amateur use him to get to Shepard or anyone else. He would show the Suns that they've messed with the wrong krogan. He would do this, or risk his reputation falling further into the "has been" category. Patriarch moved quickly toward his apartment. He knew where he was going after he collected his weapons and armor from his place, but he didn't know if he would get there in time.
He stopped outside his door, noticing a slumped figure in the shadows nearby. He moved closer to inspect the figure, it was hooded and unmoving. Patriarch nudged the body with his foot. The figure fell over and into the light. It was Fin – both pairs of his eyes were still open, a look of pain etched on his elongated batarian features. There was a krogan blade buried in his chest. Patriarch instantly realized how the bug came to be planted inside his office. He wondered how the Suns got to the poor kid. Debt, maybe? Or just the threat of violence? It didn't matter now. The old krogan liked Fin, he was a good kid: not too ambitious, listened to directions, knew the old man's drink preferences. He wasn't terribly attached to him personally, but he was sorry to get him mixed up in business that was way over his head. Patriarch shook his head and bent over to remove the blade from his employee.
It seemed that Alpha was trying to get to him now on a more personal level. He didn't need to wonder why. If the Suns were bent on taking over Omega, they would need him to stay out of their way. He was Aria's advisor. They wouldn't be content with simply removing her, they needed to kill all of the roots she had dug into the station. Patriarch would not be dug out quite so easily. The krogan blade in Fin's chest was a message to him that his employee's death had been his fault. He scoffed at their attempt to guilt him into submission. He had seen scores of men, good soldiers and better men than Fin, die because of him – directly or otherwise. Patriarch knew who he was, but apparently Alpha did not have as good of a grasp on Patriarch's personality profile as he thought. Unless he thought Patriarch had gotten soft in his old age. The krogan felt the rage welling inside of him, running like fire through his veins. It made him feel stronger, younger.
He knew who he was, or rather, who he used to be. Shepard had once chastised him for letting others think he had become weak. Initially, he shrugged it off as a human female speaking from ignorance. It took weeks of her words rattling around in his bony head to make him realize that she had been right. He had liked her and her team for acting as his krantt, fighting on his behalf when the assassins came for his life. He had come to respect her after she left, when he thought about her words and actions while she was on Omega. Shepard was a soldier, and a good one. He had been a good soldier once upon a time. Well, a good mercenary anyway. In a way, the small human female with the blood-colored hair reminded him of a younger version of himself. He vowed to use the rumors floating around Omega about his renewed power to his advantage. He flexed his new muscle and began to feel intimidating again and less like one of Aria's cautionary tales.
He was working his way to being viewed as a real threat when news struck that a refinery had been destroyed on Zorya claiming hundreds of lives, including most of the Blue Suns and most notably their leader, Vido Santiago. The Suns remaining on Omega had run around chaotically for the first few cycles, taking out their frustrations on innocents like schoolyard bullies. A week later they had suddenly all gone quiet. No one heard from them or saw any of them in uniform or sporting the characteristic Suns tattoo (or conspicuous removal of said tattoo) anywhere on the station – at least from what Aria's intel could see. It seemed to Patriarch that it only took the space of two weeks for the remaining Suns on Omega to regroup and start recruiting in force.
That's when the violence in the markets started, and when Aria began to find that her stock was dropping on her station. Shipments were going missing, credits were mysteriously vanishing from right under her nose. Aria immediately suspected Patriarch, who had so badly wanted to be considered a threat he had not quite thought through what to do if he found himself in that position again. Aria challenged him to an obviously unfair fight knowing the krogan was willing to die for his honor. Her men outnumbered Patriarch's three to one, and after a brief skirmish, she left Patriarch to live once again with the knowledge of her superiority. He kicked himself all the way back into his little hole of an office in the underbelly of Afterlife. It became obvious that Patriarch was not involved when the violence and theft began to escalate until the Blue Suns came right out and announced their intentions by taking over the market in a show of force. Aria had cut out practically everyone who had delivered her intel, but to Patriarch, she delivered the most grievous insult one can give to an enemy: she ignored him.
Patriarch had relived that embarrassment every day until now. The chagrin made his jaw ache from clenching. He clipped his collapsed weapons into their slots on his battered and scarred old mercenary armor, his face grim. He loaded up ammo and an extra shield battery. He could feel the tingle of his biotic implant working on his nerves. Light flicked at his fingertips as he worked, dark energy swirling around his large scaled hands. He moved efficiently, like he had been preparing for a moment like this for quite some time. He was ready. Shepard didn't know that he had disgraced himself once again and she didn't need to. He was going to prove to himself and everyone else that he was a force to be reckoned with, that he was still krogan. The old krogan's face cracked in a dark grin. He was beginning to feel like his old self again.
"Have I mentioned that I don't like this, Shepard?" asked Garrus as he input the security codes Patriarch provided into the server room door panel. Shepard and Grunt stood watching on either side of the turian for any sign of movement in the corridor, there was none.
"Yes, and I've noted it in my log," the commander responded. "You can see for yourself when we get back to the Normandy." Garrus huffed, finishing the input code. The light on the door panel switched from orange to green and swished open. Shepard silently motioned her squad to flank her as she took point going into the room. She took a deep breath and threw up a barrier shield as she led her team in.
It was warm inside, even warmer than Afterlife on a busy night, but much quieter. The room was filled with rows and columns of server machines forming a grid, glowing and whirring. Shepard walked slowly, keeping a sharp eye out for any sign of trouble. It was an ideal place to hide or be hidden. Not only would the servers provide physical cover, but it would be foolish for anyone to fire a weapon in the room that was responsible for keeping the station's life support going. They were, for all intents and purposes, in Omega's brain. Shepard signaled for her squad to lower their weapons and halt. They were in, but finding the data they needed might be difficult to find in the maze of identical machines.
"Any idea what to do now?" asked Shepard. She looked over at her shoulder to Garrus.
"There's got to be a control panel in here somewhere. Probably along one of the walls. Or maybe in the center," he said, uncertain.
"We should split up and look for it, there's obviously no one else here," said Grunt.
"I think you're right, Grunt. Okay, we split up. Keep in radio contact. If you have to fire your weapons, just make sure you're not aiming at one of these things – I don't want to be responsible for a whole deck getting spaced or anything like that," said Shepard. Garrus and Grunt nodded and took off in opposite directions, headed for the perimeter of the room. Shepard looked at the ceiling to try and find her way into the center of the room, per Garrus' suggestion. She noticed the ceiling had a grid inlaid in its semi-reflective surface and she wondered if that's what it was used for. As she walked, she tried to look for any distinguishing markings on any of the server boxes, but she could find none. It baffled her how anyone who came to work down here could locate any one individual machine. She heard Garrus yell "found it" off to her left. She shook her head, annoyed, and put her hand to her earpiece to activate her comm. Loud static assaulted her ears, startling her. She cursed to herself. Of course there would be too much interference in a place like this to use the radio channels. So much for giving Garrus an earful. He probably had some choice words to say to her. She could see his hand waving above the boxes and walked toward him, getting a visual when she found the right column to walk down.
"Didn't think about the interference getting in the way of radio contact, did you?" asked Garrus smugly as Shepard approached.
"And I suppose you did? You should speak up next time, I didn't quite hear you back when that would have been relevant," said Shepard. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he returned to studying the control panel's layout. Grunt made his way up one of the columns to join them. He seemed tense or impatient to the commander. Probably a little of both, she guessed. She kept her distance. He continued to keep watch, his finger twitching near the trigger of his shotgun.
"I'm accessing the list of individual user uploads to the server, which should narrow our search down. We don't have the exact day the virus was uploaded, which would be the most helpful," said Garrus, his voice trailing off and his fingertips flicking through the data on the screen. "Okay, uploading Tali's program now. We should have something soon." Garrus squinted at the screen.
Shepard looked around him to view the screen – there was a lot of data to sift through, and Shepard was glad to have Garrus there to do the tedious tech work. He had the patience and finesse with technology that she sometimes lacked when under pressure. "I might have to access another system to take a look at the processes, see if I can find a specific – hello!" Garrus stopped short and zoomed in on a bit of data. Grunt looked over for a moment, but was uninterested in the finding.
Shepard moved in next to Garrus, looking at the screen. Tali's scanning program had created a list of possible files. At the top was a small, unassuming file named "". Small enough to have been easily overlooked by anyone, except that Tali's program had clearly highlighted the file as performing all of the tasks she observed in the fake firewall virus. Shepard read the file description thoroughly, she was fairly sure this was the culprit. She looked for the user name who uploaded the thing and was only mildly surprised to find she recognized it.
"Anto? That's one of Aria's main bodyguards, he was there the last time we saw her," said Shepard, taking a closer look. Garrus touched the file name and it opened a new window showing the program's processes.
"Yeah, this is the right one. Look there, the program's interacting with basically every source of incoming information to the station," said Garrus, pointing to the screen. "This is what we expected to find, isn't it? I'd call this pretty conclusive evidence, Shepard."
"All right, download that to your omni-tool, but keep looking. I want to be sure that we've got the right one," said Shepard. Garrus activated his omni-tool, bringing the lit display up to the screen to download the needed data. He touched the control panel's screen to begin the transfer, and it turned a bright red. There was a slamming noise followed by the faint sound of an alarm in the distance.
"What was that?" asked Grunt. He didn't wait for them to answer, he trotted off to investigate the perimeter of the room. Shepard looked over at Garrus, and he gave her a thumbs up.
"Got it," he said simply, putting away his omni-tool. He followed Shepard as she tracked Grunt through the grid. They soon found what the slamming noise had been. Thick metal doors had blocked their exit, sealing them in. Shepard squeezed between Grunt and Garrus to get to the security panel. She attempted to hack their way out using every technique she knew, but the door wouldn't budge. Dozens of scenarios flashed through her mind as she thought of what the Suns were preparing for them while they were trapped in the room. Would they rush at them? Bomb the place? Gas, mechs, what? They wouldn't risk putting the whole station on lock down or worse, disabling key systems, would they?
"Can we get a hold of the Normandy?" asked Shepard, still trying to crack the security system. Grunt and Garrus each tried their comms to get through to their ship.
"There's too much interference in here! We could try boosting the signal -" said Garrus.
"Then do it now!" said the commander, her voice raised. She wasn't going to risk waiting for the Suns cavalry to arrive, not in the sensitive server core. Grunt fired his shotgun at the metal door at close range. It dented the door slightly, but mostly it just startled Shepard and Garrus. Shepard glared at the krogan, who pointed his weapon at the ground once more and shrugged.
"It was worth a try," said Grunt. Garrus turned to jog back toward the control panel. Shepard and Grunt followed close behind. He activated the terminal and searched the settings. Shepard watched his facial expressions change from frustrated to hopeful as he found something on the screen that he liked. She guessed he was trying to sync his comm with Omega's system, but she didn't want to distract him with questions. With a few keystrokes and some syncing between the devices, he held his comm up to his ear and spoke.
"Normandy, this is shore party, do you copy?" said Garrus. The squad waited for a tense moment before Joker's voice issued through the speakers on the control panel.
"Loud and clear, Garrus," said Joker casually. Shepard held out her hand for Garrus' comm device and he handed it over.
"Joker, EDI, we're in the server core in the center of the station. There are metal security doors blocking our exits. We need them open – now!" said Shepard.
"Right away, commander," chimed EDI. To her left Shepard saw the nearest security door opening and heard the alarms in the hall fall silent. The squad ran for the door, not knowing if their being open was permanent. Reaching the doors, they were able to exit into the hall. The cool air felt good on Shepard's face. She knew they couldn't linger there, but she figured they could catch their breath for a moment. She experimentally tapped on her comm and found the interference from the server room was gone. She contacted the Normandy and handed Garrus' comm link back to him.
"Thanks, EDI. If there's anyone around, tell them we could use the back up. Things are about to get heated down here. We're headed toward the Suns base, I'm forwarding the location now," she said, and tapped at her omni-tool.
"I'll let them know, commander," said Joker. "Be careful, okay?" he added.
"Will do. I'll be in contact. Shepard out," she said, putting her comm away.
"That wasn't much of a trap," said Grunt.
"Are you complaining?" asked Garrus, perplexed.
"Let's not get too excited," said Shepard. "I say we rush them now, while they're still figuring out what's happened. Maybe we'll be able to catch them off guard."
"I like it," said Grunt. He jumped and ground his fist into his palm. Shepard turned to Garrus for his input.
"Right behind you, Shepard," he said. Shepard nodded at him. She turned her attention to the map she had on her omni-tool, looking for all the possible routes to the warehouse. She figured if the Suns were planning to meet their supposed trapped quarry in the server room, they would take the most direct route. Shepard traced an alternate path that led to the side of the warehouse opposite the server room. With a small squad, it was important to flank as much as possible. She hoped they'd have the advantage by coming in through the back way. Taking point once again, Shepard began to navigate her team around the unfamiliar hallways. She was excited, and that excitement grew with each step she took toward the warehouse and her goal. She wanted to find the hostage alive, just like she wanted to find the mercenaries stumbling and unprepared. But what she wanted most was to see the look on Anto's face when she told him the jig was up.
A/N: Once again, thanks for reading. Your feedback makes me happy! Folks who leave reviews will get cake.