Eternity, Book 0 "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 3 Night and Fog

Beware the humble secretary

Minds turned to exploiting any secret advantage.

Michel suggested a skeleton plan: getting to the maneuvering control center at the top of the Presidium tower. Some still thought in terms of taking a taxicab. "You'll be shot out of the sky", observed Tactus. "– On foot then," suggested Hannigan.

So, two more surprises from the human women. As the Plan man, Tactus believed in keeping mission variables within bounds; and he was uneasily aware that these comrades had hidden depths, which bothered him.

It wasn't simply that their sponsors - Vakarian and Bailey - seemed improbably well connected on both sides of the law. Nor that the women were decorative (especially Hannigan) and smart (especially Michel), even by asari standards; being clever and cute isn't a hidden depth. Nor even their unexpected competence. It was more that these women had been, er, recommended as human liaison by people one did not ignore - which normally meant influence, even nepotism, and incompetence. Not this time; and Tactus hated mysteries. Worse, he somehow found himself agreeing with them a lot. Tactus felt he needed to be on his guard against being played.

Of course, many like them filled aid posts after people vanished. Cerberus had hit, and suddenly there were vacancies to be filled. After obscure threats from mercs or Cerberus against humans and aliens, all the asari, and at least one volus, had stopped coming to work. Tactus could not dispense with the services of qualified personnel. He could, however, be careful.

But now Bailey of C-Sec ran with their idea, considered something could be done, with one caveat; "…You would need council authentication." Bailey couldn't spare many men, though. Tactus shook his head: "Too much risk, too little gain." Whereupon Hannigan thought for five seconds and asked: "Would old Spectre access codes help?"

Hannigan

She had filed the early Spectre codes to the Illusive Man, through EDI's cryptological escrow. (EDI, clever girl, never delivered them. If Cerberus wanted to work the Presidium controls they would need a tame Councilor or Spectre.)

Not the revised ones following the clone incident, though. Slackened biometrics gave her access to the practice range with those, and privilege elevation was easy.

Explaining the codes' provenance might have caused embarrassment…

Soul on sentry-go, let's whisper our promise…
From that night of the void and that day of fire.

Given the circumstances no-one was minded to explore personal implications. Bailey, first, nodded it through. Then Tactus. Just as well. In the end, only survival mattered.

Some pangs of guilt there, even so.

Tactus

"How old are these access codes, babe?" – asked Tactus, warily. Michel just gave the girl a knowing look, dammit. Michel had been fairly high-profile, the doctor with a murky past, but least he knew a little of her story. No-one knew anything about Hannigan.

These two stood out together. Something about the pair of them did not compute. They were thick as thieves, and angels with rocket-loaded wings hovered around their shoulders. Chloe Michel never lost her cool. Hannigan occasionally did. She stiffened up when certain people hove into view, like that fool from the Blue Suns. She had something to hide too, avoided any kind of limelight, which Michel did not.

Both had been on first-name terms with Vakarian and Bailey; between them all four had serious leverage with rations and supplies – which helped explain why their refugees worshiped them. That pissed the black-marketeers. When Vakarian and Bailey left on other business, Tactus and Michel faced serious death threats. Tactus had then seen Hannigan whispering urgently to that evil bastard Massani, which grabbed his attention by the fringe. The threats disappeared. So did the mob. As in, some of them weren't there anymore, and the rest weren't sayin' nuthin' to nobody. Dangerous profession.

"They date back a few months, for one set. I don't think Spectre codes expire, as such, they just ring bells which won't be heard right now. A few weeks for the other set, but these were, um, renewed recently with slack biometrics. That should get me beyond the embassies."

"Hm." Tactus had considered for a few seconds. "It's worth an expedition. Let's do it." - meaning platoon-strength infiltration.

Sneaking through enemy territory around the ring should have taken hours, but for some reason the heavy concentrations of enemy troops had gone elsewhere. Just as well; most of his troop had serious firepower and wouldn't trade big weapons for speed. Depressingly few of them were even in sight.

Michel

The ring had been remodeled, probably by keepers. There was an impossible number of corpses. Michel had stooped to examine a few: "These bodies are old. A couple of weeks, at least. Preserved somehow. There's saponification here too. What is this?"

There were also structures now which had never existed before, full of dead husks, but Chloe knew her way around this area. On nearing the base of the Presidium elevator, the arms opened, shattering C-Sec's front lines – not that the husks could outflank them. "What can this mean?"

Then the Earth-anchoring beam flickered out. "Nothing good." – Tactus could be such a downer. Probably a Turian thing. My god, so many ships. And… pieces of ships. Reapers! "Keep going!"

Morale was briefly up. There were dead reapers falling to the dark planet below. Ships too, but there were far, far more ships than Reapers, and more arriving; the space around the open Citadel was relatively free.

Tactus jimmied open an elevator door. All three ventured inside. Michel stood on his shoulders and pushed open the access plate. After boosting Hannigan to the roof, both the women helped the Turian up. Moving up the shaft three hundred meters, they could break into the surface of the elevator bridge. There was a new scene of calamity, but with retention fields up, breathers could come off. Tactus was the first out, and the first to look around for the rest of the platoon. "Spirits!"

Tactus was visibly upset, which made Hannigan scramble. "What is it? What's wrong!" He pointed. "What. Is. That." – asked Tactus.

A tremendous great rod with a basketball head, like no ship any of them had ever seen, was knocking aside resistance as it made its way towards the opening base flaps, straight towards the Presidium ring. More precisely, the base of the Tower's central spire.

Michel was just as shocked as Tactus. But Hannigan… she was giving that thing a long, considering look.

"I think… I might not be supposed…"

"Hannigan! Look around you!" Tactus waved in the general direction of Out There. Space was full of dead reapers. And other bits. Some of these monsters were kilometres long and already blazing through the atmosphere, couldn't be good for anyone below, hope they're plasma before they hit the ground. What did this mean for the Reapers? The Citadel?

"All right –" she began reluctantly, then:

"Felicia. No." Michel took Hannigan's elbows and looked her in the eyes. "We don't know what's going on. What would he – would Hackett want?"

Tactus' eyes narrowed. "You can't just drop that name and leave it there. What do I need to know?" Hannigan put her face in her hands.

Michel turned back to Tactus. "What she suspects… Don't push it. Please. But I think… this is an Alliance device. And that's all you need. Just how it works will be clear. But I think I know how she guesses it. Will that do?"

"That thing's about to rip the the Presidium off the hinges and – no wait, it's docking." It was, too. They watched, enthralled, as the head came to within metres of the tower base, which appeared to open – an answering beam joined with it; the docking point glowed, and something in the base glowed in response. Soon enough, a quivering continuous stream developed between them.

She shook her head. Tactus cleared his throat. "We still have to get to the tower."

"Yes. The arms' opening has stopped the ground beam. That monstrosity may interfere with the forced orbit."

"But Chloe, won't we just fly into space?"

"No. When a forced circular orbit fails, we'd be at periapsis of what will then be an elliptical orbit." Hannigan blinked; Michel sighed and changed mental gears. "We will go flying off into space. But we'll come back to the same point, except there will be EM drag on a body this size from that planet's magnetic field, if it has one. It certainly has an atmosphere, you can see the hazy horizon. Every time the Citadel dips back near the atmosphere, there will be more drag. Sooner or later we're all doomed by whatever that is, Hackett's weapon or not. Time to go."

"Fine. But inside the elevator tunnels, please. I don't want to be near that beam. It has a lean and hungry look."

Radio

When the mother and father of all cataclysms hit, they were deeply embedded in keeper tunnels. Next thing, it was like the end of the world; all space glowed red around them. Ten minutes later, they emerged. Tactus picked up a Phalanx pistol from a corpse. God knew where he got the stamina to carry a rifle, pistol, and a backpack.

The artificial gravity weakened. So did the atmosphere. "Breathers," directed Tactus. The girls hated this part. On the other hand it was getting light. Great piles of what Michel described as concrete rubble blocked the direct path up the spire. The raw material was known to be a sideritic iron. In other words the Citadel had been built from asteroid cores. That cladding had smashed, brittle fracture from impossibly high strain rates. Hannigan observed broken fragments with the sparkly gray texture of a broken cast iron frying pan. It cut your hands and other parts if you weren't careful.

Hannigan looked around for an easier way up. There was gravity again.

Surely nothing electronic could have survived the initial EM pulse, let alone the peculiar red glow that expanded behind it – in fact, radio comm had paused. What they carried with them into the tunnels still worked, like her omnitool. Some shielded Citadel optical tech was still working. Portions of the wards still had mass effect fields confining breathable atmospheres.

The team stopped for a draught from the sippers; Michel cast a jaundiced eye at the rising day-side: "Is that planet looming closer?"

"No," Tactus said. "It's an optical illusion. The ring and ball give you perspective."
Hannigan nodded at Michel: "Right. Like a full moon rising over the sea." Poor woman. Chloe's been away too long.

But while she had difficulty recalling an orange moon on the horizon, Michel still thought this was whistling in the dark; discounting an approaching impact amounted to forced optimism. Clearly, sparks of system life notwithstanding, the Citadel was on borrowed time. It was around the size of the K-T dinosaur killer, although not traveling at forty kilometres a second. If EM drag decayed its orbit much more… well, going from forced geosynchronous to atmosphere, the impact would merely boil the sea for, oh, a hundred kilometres around, say, the Azores, right there… oh dear…

Ranging

"There's an issue." Chloe pointed at the planet above the ring, and their gaze followed.

"… Well? Right. We've been moved. So what?"

"Earth," said Chloe, in a flat, bitten-off sort of way. Hannigan shrieked briefly then covered her mouth and shrank into a corner. Tactus sat down. Earth, Tactus belatedly recalled, was the human home planet, and it didn't resemble a blue marble anymore.

On reflection Tactus didn't think their location mattered that much. More urgently, they could still see the strange shattered spermatozoon hanging together by threads from the spire's base, two hundred meters off. Weird. Even in tatters, most of it vaporized, it was tremendous.

Time to get rid of it. First though, they must cross shards of broken cladding.

"Hannigan, up! We have to get moving."

"Leave her alone!"

"No, this won't do." Tactus seethed as Hannigan whispered, (*"It's OK, Chloe."*)
"There's still the small matter of can we get that fucking thing off the fucking tower so we can maybe close this station or at least engage the bloody thrusters!"

"Just give me a moment, please, Tactus. It was a shock."

They all got to their feet. It was barely possible to see in orbital twilight, but Hannigan examined her bleeding hands. Not worth expending medigel on this. Taking textile strips – ripped bed sheets, looted from Chloe's bag – she bound her palms and wrists, looking back. Their escort fire team had reached level sixteen's elevator ledge, counting from the tower base; some of the sluggards were catching up now, looked to be near the elevator base.

She waved, wondering if the fire team would notice. The debris of the shattered presidium ring was still circulating in what amounted to free fall, except where artificial gravity still worked around active mass effect generators. Best path is around the spire's base, thought Tactus. Look around. Pay attention. Where were the rest of the Reapers? Floating reaper corpses had stopped twitching now, but those souls still alive on the Citadel remained in peril.

"The beam's gone. We can at least look around." They moved on, through the elevator bridge and into the spire base.

Michel had a pack also, tiny, and her Gladstone bag, an affectation but it went everywhere with her in the camps and had saved more lives than she could count. Back they'd gone into the narrow warrens of keeperdom, trying not to be noticed.

They couldn't see any reaper creatures. Were they all dead? Perhaps we can move openly. But there were a lot of human dead too. Hannigan now gripped the M-11 Suppressor John had given her, more her size.

"C-Sec and the militias were well organized. Nothing like this many deaths," noted Tactus. "Where did all these human corpses come from? I've seen a couple of asari, but no salarian at all, nor turian, unless you count marauders."

Hannigan turned and gazed at the newly visible terminator line. "How long have we been back?"

"No more than sixteen days," responded Michel. "Which, I note, is about enough time for Hackett to collect his fleets here."

Hannigan thought for a moment. "That's time enough to account for all the corpses. But I'm surprised they didn't build a processing plant like – what was reported of the Collectors."

She shivered. Traitor memories. Think about something else.

"Perhaps that was for later? They've been clearly very busy with a counterattack."

Flashbacks had prompted Hannigan's old boss, and it hurt to think of him, to insist – against protest – that she at least practice with a service pistol. Much heavier than her current "popgun". It was supposed to be therapy against a feeling of total helplessness. Okay, but it was painful – the recoil nearly broke her wrists – till the commander took her to a Spectre gun range.

His hands tenderly enfolding hers in the correct grip still shone in memory. As did the kiss on her neck. Totally destroyed her concentration. How was a girl to shoot straight? But that had been the point. Emphasize the how. Husks did not survive a headshot. Hannigan felt better now. Michel though was giving her an odd look. Must stay focused.

"Hm. Have you noticed there's no encryption static? Radio carrier's gone again."

Michel stopped, tilted her head to one side. "Good catch. Tactus, test your guns." He drew the Phalanx and…

"There's no laser sight. Crap! The electronics are dead!"

"Pull the trigger. Actually no, don't. We don't know what it will do. You'd have to kill the next husk with a stick. Good thing they're dead already."

Tactus grinned evilly, and unslung his rifle. "Ancient human Lancer M-7. The only electronics is in the sights. Doesn't use thermal clips. What about yours?" Hannigan passed the M-11. Tactus examined it carefully. "And where did you get this?"

"Not telling. Why?"

"It's a hold-out weapon. Very highly modified human design. Expensive, because illegal, it's silenced. These things pass detectors, at least when disassembled. Don't depend on electro-optical tech. It might still work. Wait."

Tactus moved off a short distance, held out the gun, turned his face away, and fired. The slug ricocheted off the broken metal and plaster cladding, and shot into space. "Okay. Here. Always knew you came from the dark side, folks. You're too cute to be real." Turian grin.

Michel and Hannigan looked at each other: "Never said we didn't."

Heh. Humans came in all sorts of shades. With bleached ones like these two, Tactus could normally see blue traceries of arterial blood under the skin; but now those pale cheeks turned bright red. Feeling as though he had just scored some sort of obscure point, Tactus stowed the Phalanx in the pack. Logically he should have dropped it, but it was hard for a turian soldier to abandon a weapon.

Michel admired the way he moved on tiptoe, a turian soldier hypervigilant for husks, muttering "We've got to find a control kiosk." But Hannigan saw no husks, only corpses, the strange waxy humans:

"Why? It'll take days for orbital decay even with an elliptical orbit."

This brought a long stare from the Turian. "Hannigan. Look out there. No live Reapers, right?"

"R… Right. So? That's good, no?"

"Do you see any live Council warships? I don't. Lots of pieces. But I think every ship still able to move, Reaper or Council, has buggered off. I think that red glow had something to do with the dead reapers, because you can see crackling red light all over them, but not over that cruiser broken in two, so maybe the Reapers are all dead. But maybe not. And maybe the Council will come back. But maybe not. And when, anyway? We've got to undock that thing and get this place moving. And can I say I really, really hate all this mysterious 'Not telling' bullshit!"

She sighed, "Tactus–" and stopped.

"Out with it, Hannigan."

"Hackett is responsible, sort of, for that. I think. And… do you remember Vakarian?"

"Lived next door to us, yes. Can't forget the prick, beat my sniper score at the arena. Had this astonishing quarian girlfriend. I think. Hated Blood Pack, but had an absolutely huge Krogan friend, bloody strange. Hated Blue Suns too, had that in common with Massani. Pure death on Eclipse, but traded insults with an asari, some diplomat's daughter, joked she was a quarter krogan."

"Er… Okay, that's him. He wouldn't tell me what he was doing, any more. And I think his people were expecting me to try and charm it out of them. So I didn't try, except… I'm… I think I'm disgraced… at least, I sort of couldn't stay on the crew. But I'm aware who Vakarian was working with. And one of them, I'm sure, was the current Primarch."

Tactus stared. Crew, what crew? This… human… guttersnipe had just told him, in deadly serious terms, that she knew or worked with the Primarch's entourage. Also the human admiral whose fleets saved the Citadel and the Council. Which was beyond impossible.

On the other hand… there was Massani, who talked to her like she was some sort of favorite niece, and Bailey. You look out for those women, mister. Do you hear me? Bloody frosty cop. And it was a very, very terminal career move to annoy a Primarch. Almost as bad as ticking off Massani.

"Alright. This just gets weirder, but so far in a good way. Where to?"

Michel looked around and up. "Keeper tunnels. Converge there", just below the tower base. "The place has completely disintegrated. The tunnels will be blocked."

"But there's atmosphere." There was, too. This close you could see the faint blue flickering of a hemispherical retention field right over the base and intersecting the remains of the ball's docking clamps.

"That's where the dual interior thruster and arm controls will be. We'll have to climb over. And gravity is all over the place, but it's what, point two g here, now."

Tactus set down his pack and withdrew… a coiled rope. "You shower ever abseiled before?" Only Hannigan put her hand up. But twenty minutes later, smoking flaky corpses took Michel's eye. Not waxy. Strangely burnt and charred.

"Wait, it's just another dead human, no?"

"No, Tactus. We have to check this. His cover's an Alliance uniform képi. The first I've seen among the victims, here. And this close? It's surely related. The controls are there, you can see them, the platform is smashed but the haptics are still up, we can do this. And that body's maybe got a key!"

"Hannigan's codes–"

"Might not work. Tactus, we need to check it out."

"All right, already. Shit. Cast your end over there, I'll tie it off. Right. Come on."

– Next chapter will be #4, "London calling" –

Wednesday, July 15, 2015