Chapter 50
The team of Garrus, Tali, and Shepard made their way to the nearby elevator in silence. Once again, Tali interacted with the ancient control protocols and sent the elevator on its upward journey.
After a time, Tali broke the silence. "Shepard? Why haven't we heard from Joker since we landed? I don't remember you saying we were under a communications blackout, and I haven't seen any signs of the geth scrambling our comms channels."
"As soon as we dropped, I sent a coded message to Joker telling him to get the hell out of range of the geth; and, if possible to rendezvous with Fifth Fleet under Admiral Hackett. He's supposed to rally the troops and await further contact from me. I also have a dead man's switch attached to an S.O.S. message waiting in my outbox. If my suit registers my death, that message goes out to Hackett, Anderson, and Joker. It says something along the lines of 'I failed and I won't be coming back. Circle the wagons and ready the Fleets, because Saren and Sovereign are coming.' When we beat Saren, I'll call Joker and tell him to come pick us up and bring a couple crates of champagne and liquor. Then I'll take about a year's worth of leave, spending six months celebrating and the next six recovering and getting back in shape." Shepard chuckled briefly at the thought.
Both Tali and Garrus were heartened by the simple fact that the commander said "when" in reference to beating Saren, rather than "if." "Thank you, Shepard." Tali said.
Spike just nodded in response, since he was more concerned with pondering on what other defenses Saren may have positioned during the lead time gained by the lockout. What sprang immediately to mind was more of the same: more primes, more troopers, and more destroyers. As well as some more armatures, most likely of the untethered, unhackable (at least on a non-temporary basis) variety. An evil grin crept over the commander's face at the thought of taking on everything he had just listed, while riding in his beloved Mako. The tiniest part of Shepard's brain had the amusing thought that the geth they'd just defeated should feel sorry for their friends further inside the complex, because the Mako was a dozen times better at bringing the boom than he was.
The elevator finally came to a stop and the door slid open, revealing the Mako resting amidst the fragmented remains of its prior enemies. The three members of the team wore similar smiles beneath their helmets, as each contemplated the imminent wholesale slaughter of the geth in which they were about to engage. Without another word, they piled into the fighting vehicle and Shepard spun the Mako around in a tight circle before gunning the engine and taking off down the previously-blocked subterranean passageway. After a short time, the natural-looking plant growth gave way to the sharp corners and flat surfaces of a man-made, or in this case prothean-made, hallway.
After a half-kilometer of travel within the prothean corridor, Garrus gave voice to a question that was also bothering Shepard. "I would have expected to run into something left behind by Saren; a trap, or an ambush, or a blockade of some kind."
"I agree. Maybe seeing us drop practically on top of him spurred him to head inwards as fast as he could, and so he didn't take the time to prepare anything for us." Shepard said, hoping as he said it that it was true.
"Or maybe we just haven't found it yet." Tali added, ensuring that the party remembered that a worst-case scenario existed.
"Thanks for that, Little Miss Sunshine." Shepard answered sarcastically.
"You're quite welcome." Tali responded politely, effectively negating her boyfriend's sarcasm.
After that entertaining exchange, the interior of the Mako once again descended into silence. Shepard continued to blow through the ruined hallway at top speed, eventually briefly passing through another nature-themed chamber before the scenery returned to the eerie, glowing prothean walls and floor.
Garrus again broke the silence. "What do you think all of the cylinders on the walls are? Containers of some sort?"
Tali answered him. "They look like stasis pods, but that can't be right. There's too many of them."
A blip on the radar halted whatever Tali was going to say next. Before she could call out a warning, Shepard detected the tell-tale golden halo of an incoming rocket. The two voiced their observations at nearly the same time.
"Incoming fire! Twelve o'clock!" "Four contacts directly ahead!" Shepard and Tali yelled out respectively, before Shepard steered the Mako to the right in order to avoid the rocket.
"I'm on it!" Garrus responded, lining the barrel of the Mako's mass accelerator cannon up with the rocket's trajectory and sending a 155 millimeter shell speeding downrange. A quick burst with the coaxial machine gun immediately after impact finished off the first of the rocket troopers. Garrus then turned his attention to the next-closest geth rocket trooper.
While Garrus was acting offensively, Shepard was keeping busy with a dazzling display of defensive driving. The Mako swerved left and right, slowed down and sped up, and even jumped over a rocket at one point. Through it all, the Mako remained untouched by a direct impact.
From her seat at Shepard's right, Tali marveled at the casual display of skills by her commander. Garrus and I often make fun of Shepard's driving, but the way he can make the Mako feel so alive when we're under fire is amazing! I remember Garrus talking about how unwieldy the Mako's controls feel, and how he could barely manage to drive in a straight line that time on Luna. In contrast, Shepard looks so at ease with bending the vehicle to his will, even when I swear he's making the Mako move along the three axes in impossible ways.
Garrus eliminated the last of the geth just before Shepard reached it. "Gotcha, Commander." The turian smirked.
"Whatever, Garrus. I'm still leading on points, and I'm equally sure that there will be more opportunities to squish geth before we're done here. Unless you think that the extent of Saren's anti-incursion defenses is a squad of geth rocketeers."
Garrus shook his head in the negative. "You're right, Commander. I expect that there will be a great many geth stationed between us and Saren."
"I couldn't agree more." Shepard responded.
The Mako descended into silence yet again, as Spike drove them through another nature chamber, and into yet another section of hallway. Up ahead, a glowing golden barrier stretched across the entire width and height of the corridor.
"What is that?" Tali asked.
Neither man responded directly to the quarian's question. Instead, Shepard gave an order to his turian comrade. "Garrus. See if you can blow through that - whatever it is."
"Will do, Commander." Garrus then proceeded to attack the golden barrier, first with the cannon, and then with the machine gun. Neither weapon even appeared to have an impact on the glowing energy shield.
Undeterred, Shepard continued to put the pedal to the metal, and drove the Mako headfirst into the barrier. The Mako just simply stopped. There was no sound accompanying the collision, and no real feel of hitting anything solid. The Mako's tires continued to spin fruitlessly, but there was no accompanying acceleration or any give in the shield at all.
"Well." Shepard said, cutting the engine. "I suppose we'd best get out and see if we can find a way around, or a way to turn this thing off."
The team from the Normandy disembarked, and within moments Garrus had located a hallway cut into the wall. Releasing their preferred weapons from their cradles, the team moved forward with caution and on a hair-trigger.
"This doesn't feel like it was set by Saren, Shepard." Tali said as they made their way through the gloomy space.
"What makes you say that?" Shepard answered, his eyes attempting to pierce the darker area that lay ahead.
"It just feels too, passive, I suppose, to be one of Saren's traps. Just think about it: nothing's shooting at us, and there's no geth or krogan around. This is nothing like Saren's past attempts to deal with us."
Garrus and Shepard pondered on Tali's words for a moment.
Garrus was the first to speak. "I believe she's right, Commander."
Shepard nodded. "Yep. Me too, Garrus." After a pause, he continued. "But that brings up the question of if not Saren, then who?" Neither of his companions had an answer for that question.
"There's an elevator up ahead." Tali said.
"I suppose we should take a ride, then, eh?" Shepard asked rhetorically.
The team then entered the elevator and Tali interfaced with the control panel. Moments later, the elevator started its descent. After a short period of silence, Tali voiced another incongruity with their forced detour. "If this were simply an automated trap, then wouldn't Saren have triggered it, and then deactivated it?"
"Possibly." Shepard acknowledged. "But maybe he did trip it, and then after he released the trap, he re-set it for us. Kinda like what he did probably did with the main door."
"So we could be walking into another ambush." Garrus tacked on, before double-checking that his AR's safety selector was switched to the "Rock and Roll" setting as Spike liked to call it.
"Yeppers. Ain't life grand?" Shepard added on unnecessarily.
When the elevator finally stopped, and the doors slid open, the team stepped out onto a platform that seemed to stretch above a bottomless abyss. On the walls of the chamber were thousands of the mysterious cylinders. Out at the end of the downward-sloping balcony was what appeared to be a prothean console with a crackling, corrupted hologram shining out of the top.
"Well, at least there's no geth." Shepard said in an effort to lighten the mood, before he moved forward. Tali and Garrus followed the commander down the ramp, and when the trio reached the hologram, it suddenly spoke.
"You are not prothean. Nor are you machine. The warnings sent out through the beacon were a success." The hologram had a dry, mechanical voice, and spoke with no inflection.
"It appears to be some sort of V.I. program." Tali said. "But badly damaged."
"I do not sense the taint of indoctrination within you." The V.I. responded. "Perhaps there is still hope to stop the tainted one."
"Wait!" Garrus exclaimed, once again tightening his grip on his AR. "I can understand this one. If it's really a prothean V.I., why isn't it speaking prothean?"
The V.I. answered him. "I have been monitoring your communications since your arrival. I have translated my output into a format you can comprehend." After a brief pause, it continued. "My name is Vigil. You are safe here, but that is likely to change. If the tainted one succeeds, no where will be safe."
"So then why did you stop me? I'm kinda trying to stop the 'tainted one,' and you making me take unscheduled detours is not helping." Shepard said, irritated at having been sidetracked by a V.I. program.
"You must stop the cycle that has continued for millions of years. To do so, you must understand the cycle."
"Yeah, yeah, I already know about the cycle." Shepard said exasperatedly. "Every 50,000 years, sentient machines harvest all intelligent organic life in the galaxy. It's about to happen to us, and that's not something I'm prepared to allow."
"You must not make the same mistakes we did. The Citadel was the heart of our civilization, as it is with yours. But it is also the center of the mass relay network. The Citadel itself is a mass relay that connects to dark space, where the machines you call the Reapers lie dormant. When the Citadel is activated, the Reapers will pour through and destroy your center of government and your primary defensive fleets. That was our fate."
"Fuck!" Shepard swore, mirroring the thoughts of his teammates.
"Our leaders were dead before we realized we were under attack." Virgil continued. "With control of the Citadel, the Reapers control communication and transportation across the galaxy. This made them unstoppable."
"Well then, I need to get back to stopping Saren, so that can't happen." Shepard said, having reached the limits of his tolerance for long-winded virtual intelligences. "Do you have anything useful to tell me, or should I just get going?"
"The tainted one searches for the Conduit." Virgil answered, re-capturing the attention of the Normandy commandos. "This facility on Ilos was the last bastion of the prothean race. Already a secret research laboratory, within minutes of confirmation of the attack of the Reapers, the leaders of this installation had remotely removed any mention of us from the data networks. Then in secret, the scientists began researching a method to try and defeat the invading forces. Eventually, the importance of the Citadel to the Reaper's success was discovered, and their thoughts turned to plans on how to capitalize on this information."
"I don't need the fucking thesis explanation!" Shepard yelled, his patience finally exhausted. "I need to stop Saren! So tell me what the fuck the Conduit is and how I can either use it against Saren or destroy it, and then let me get on with saving the gods damned galaxy!"
The V.I. was silent for a moment, and a part of Shepard's mind wondered if he had gone too far. Luckily, before he had to contemplate apologizing to a computer program, Virgil spoke. "The scientists on Ilos achieved two monumental triumphs. They were able to create a backdoor into the Citadel, by creating a miniature mass relay. It is connected to the statue of the mass relay that sits in the Citadel. It was their crowning achievement. The tainted one seeks to use the Conduit to bypass the Citadel's defenses and manually activate the station's mass relay function. This duty was originally intended to be performed by the keepers on the Citadel. However the scientists at this facility were able to remotely block the keepers from ever receiving the Reapers' command to open the dark space relay. This was their second successful task."
"Good. So I find the Conduit and blow it up. If Saren's already gone through, I can use it as a shortcut to get to the Citadel and finish this chase once and for all!" Shepard exulted. "Thanks for the info!" He turned to run back up the ramp, but was stopped by Virgil's last statement.
"I have created a data file containing this facility's research. Please, take it." Shepard gave a nod to Tali, who moved forward to grab the data. "The tainted one has not yet reached the Conduit. There is still hope, if you hurry."
"Yeah, no thanks to you running your fucking metaphorical mouth when you could have just given us the data file and the highlight reel." Shepard said under his breath as he ran back towards the elevator. "Fucking pain in the ass V.I. Maybe if the protheans had spent a little less time chatting with their constructs and a little more time learning how to kill Reapers, I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Gods damned motherfuckers!"