Chapter 16

Shepard kept the datapad tucked under her arm as they finished up with Adams. They turned off the choppy comm. The quarian consultant with the Alliance had been understandable enough. Tali's email had been helpful with Shepard mentioning a few things from it. Anchor eyes had long ago glassed over.

"I didn't realize you were going to be so thorough with this, Commander." Adams grinned. "With the fuel recycler covered. We could go over the FTL propulsion jets. The overload circuit breakers are in the cargo bay near the hangar doors. Those crates have been blocking us access them for diagnostics."

"Anchor, follow up on that," Shepard said.

Anchor blinked as if bringing her back into focus then nodded.

"Another thing, Commander—"

"Sorry, Adams," Shepard said. "I'll have Commander Anchor finish up with you next shift. Anything you need, just send it his way."

"Sure thing, Commander."

Anchor shuffled out of engineering behind her. He seemed as relieved to be dismissed as she was to get rid of him.

Shepard walked into the CIC and paused by the map. Two weeks out and dropping out of comm range. Only left with the QEC was going only going to add to the stir crazy. James was probably going to go berserk after two and half months on a ship without action.

Thinking of James reminded her of the notepad under her arm. She was on duty. She couldn't just go back to her cabin. She taped a finger on it and gazed around the room. A few ensigns eyed her curiously. Her gaze landed on the planked gangway from CIC to the bridge. She steeled herself and marched down the grates to the cockpit. Joker looked over his shoulder enough to see her then turned forward again.

"Commander."

"Joker."

She stood for a quiet moment behind his chair. The engines gave a low hum as a blue sheen moved across the cockpit window. Night cycles could be rather peaceful. Joker glanced back at her again.

"You taking inventory of my technical competencies or something? You're just standing there."

"Things all right up here?"

"Everything running smooth. Forty hours at FLT. Two light years to Amar II, gas giant, for static offload. Estimated time of offload: about ten hours. Planning immediate jump back to FLT for thirty hours. Commander."

"An acceptable short-term flight plan, Flight Lieutenant. Continue on."

Shepard moved to the copilot chair and sat.

"Again?" Joker groaned motioning to her. "You know, that's supposed to be for Michael."

Shepard pulled the datapad out from under her arm and leaned back in the chair. It lit up. Joker shook his head and stared straight ahead. The datapad's screen loaded the page she'd seen early by the shuttle. Again, she saw the address for Cortez. The from receipt was definitely one of Liara's accounts. James must have recognized it too. Two paperclip symbols signaled attachments. She scrolled through the message first.

"Date: 3-1"

That was more than a week ago. She scrolled up and checked the date received and transmitted. It wasn't even a full day pass transmission from Earth. It wasn't impossible that the transmission had been delayed she supposed.

"Lieutenant Steve Cortez:

The following attachments may benefit your work on the Normandy. You may wish to share them with your team. Please direct any questions to your supervising officer.

Regards, L.T."

So cryptic. No wonder Cortez was spooked. Shepard's pulse quickened, and she tapped the first attachment. The file came up filling the screen. Shepard's brow furrowed squinting at it. She scrolled through it with a sinking feeling. The whole thing was this way. Damnit. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes for a moment. Encrypted. Great. She closed out the file and brought up the second attachment. It was two for two then, also encrypted. Shepard's jaw tightened as she stared at it. It looked like the same type of code as the first attachment. She could tell that much, and there was something familiar about it. She held it closer, blinking, focusing and refocusing her eyes. The message was from Liara, but maybe it actually was meant for Cortez. He hadn't seemed to think so though. If it was really meant for her, then it should be able to be broken by her. She needed –

Joker cleared his throat. Shepard looked up.

"Good book?"

Shepard frowned. "What?"

Joker pointed at the datapad. "You seem kind of aggravated, Commander. Your heroine choose the Illium tycoon instead of the farmhand?"

Shepard rolled her eyes with a grin. Joker smiled limply then nodded at her datapad again.

"But really?"

"Maybe it's your last flight report. The spelling here, Joker …"

"Uh, I dictate those. If you have a problem with the spelling, take it up with software."

"You don't proofread?"

"Commander, some of the crew doesn't have time to read while on-duty."

"It would cut in on on-duty nap time."

"That was one time! I'd been awake for, like, twenty-one hours."

"One time?" Shepard raised an eyebrow. "One time caught maybe."

"Only counts if you're caught."

Shepard lifted the datapad up again and squinted at it. Something was there. She just had to think about it. Damn. This was not one of her areas. If Garrus was here ... But, Liara knew who was on board. She must have thought Shepard capable.

"Secret Spectre stuff?" Joker strained to see the datapad's screen.

"No …" Shepard paused thinking.

Wait. Shepard leaped up turning off the datapad. She climbed around the consol.

"Hope she comes to her senses about the farm hand." Joker touched the bill of his hat. "Come back anything for another awkward reading session."

"Might take you up on that, Joker."

Shepard rushed down the gangway and through the navigation room. The quantum entanglement comm was through the old war room on the left. The room wasn't in use much anymore. She walked up to the quantum entanglement's consol.

In theory, she knew how to do this. She bent and typed in her primary Spectre ID code and passphrase. She needed a date though. She paused. Today's date didn't seem right. The late date on the top of the message though … Shepard typed it in. She waiting staring at the console. She wasn't sure how long it would take to search the Council's Spectre database for the code breaker for that date. A green light blinked. With her secondary Spectre ID submitted, the code was ready to interface. She read the decoding sequence but it was too long to memorize. She took a transfer data chip from her Omni-Tool, transferred the code, and then purged it from the QEC. She headed back through the CIC.

"Jane, I have correspondence to attend to in my cabin," Shepard said passing her to the elevator.

X

Out of the elevator, Shepard rushed into her cabin. She pushed any clutter aside on her desk and grabbed another datapad. It was going to take a while, but she was going to buy Joker a drink if this worked. It had to work. It was the only thing that made sense.

She fed the first document through her Omni-Tool with the datachip. It read out into her personal, non-networked datapad. Random symbols and letters transferred in actual letters and words. Shepard let out a tight breath and watched the document decode line by line. It appeared to be a report. She scanned down the page. Her eyes stopped on one name: Bram Anchor. She went back to the top pulling up her chair. She needed to read this word for word.

She rested her chin on a fist and read through it. It was an internal document between Terra Firma members. Several colony cells were named and their leaders. It was Anchor's name that she fixed on it. He'd collaborated remotely while serving in the Alliance. There was nothing overtly criminal about it. The dates referenced predated Terra Firma's evolution from political party to vigilante terrorist. It didn't mean Anchor and Terra Firma had cut ties either though.

She grabbed Cortez's datapad and decoded the second document to her tablet. It was Terra Firma again, but it wasn't a report this time. It was something different. It looked like building plans for something. It was pages long. She rereading the sentences as she paged down. She wasn't an engineer. She had enough trouble overriding controls on a door let alone understanding technical language like this, but some of the words meant something no matter your background. This was a weapon of some sort, something involving mass effect fields and amplification. Her eyes caught on one of the words – "orb." It seemed integral to the entire project. She paused on the last page, schematics. She frowned peering closer and enlarged the fine print along the bottom. This was from the Prothean archives on Mars. Terra Firma had gotten their hands on it somehow and must be planning to build it, whatever "it" was. The connection to her didn't seem clear, but there had to be one. Her eyes strayed to the core of the diagram. The orb. Admiral Wilson had called the Mass Effect Shard a Meridian Orb. Terra Firma had a schematic to use the Mass Effect Shard as a weapon.

Shepard sat back in her chair with a thunk staring at the datapad in her hand. So, it was a document tying Anchor to Terra Firma and Terra Firma's plans for weaponizing the Mass Effect Shard. Liara had sources, true, but coming across this sort of intel couldn't be random. Assuming the authenticity of this mass effect weapon, the schematics should be restricted to the deepest cell members. Unless Liara had established deep contact into Terra Firma, it seemed unlikely.

Shepard's eyes wandered to the pile of folders and papers shoved to the corner of her desk. She moved them aside, and her fingers touched the silver button. Light glinted off the metal as she held it up. No, this information may have been sent by Liara, but it hadn't been discovered by her. Liara might not have even known the contents. It had Spectre encryption. Shepard thought back. She must have mentioned Anchor's name that night in her apartment. He must have remembered and recognized it in the data mined from the Terra Firma strikes. It was a warning then.

It was a complicated way to get it to her. There must be some concern her terminal, messages, or communications were monitored or hacked. There must be suspicion all her crews' messages were monitored. Sending it to Cortez made sense in a way. Distant enough but trustworthy enough to be a good recipient. But, it was also from Liara. Maybe in addition to keying on the recipient of a message, the senders were also flagged. Likely, Kaidan had a direct red flag no matter whom he contacted onboard. Being the shadow broker, she had several servers and round about ways of delivering information circumspectly. Shepard recognized the sending address and the initials but most others wouldn't. Even with all that it had been encrypting. Maybe it was to prevent Liara or Cortez knowing the information. Maybe the concern for someone sorting the message's contents was more than a precaution. She stood up and placed the silver button on the glass shelf next to her empty hamster cage. She deleted the original messages from Cortez's datapad.

She could review this all again later. She transferred the decrypted documents to the data chip with the decoder. Her eyes moved around room as the chip turned in her fingertips. The display case of model ships rose over her desk. She opened the glass and pulled down the geth dreadnought. The data chip slid easily through a slot in the casing and clattered into the hollow middle. Getting it out, that, would be a little more difficult.

The other time she'd put a datachip in it, she'd damn near cleaved the dreadnaught in two trying to get it out. She rattled it over her head so hard she'd loosened her teeth. Finally, with it still lifted over her head, she fallen face first on the bed. If she had to glue it back together, it'd never be the same. It was a limited edition. The dreadnought lifted out of her hands as Kaidan pulled himself up and rested back against the headboard. His skin ignited blue, and he squinted into the slot in the ship's hull.

She still hadn't met a biotic that could do the sort of fine detail manipulations he could. Even at a distance when abilities began to wane, he could do little intricacies. Maybe she could levitate a book on the other side of the cargo bay, but Kaidan could turn each page. He could probably fold a page into a paper airplane for all she knew. He wouldn't be here helping her extract the datachip this time though.

Shepard's smile faded as she stared down at the dreadnaught. She slammed it back into the case and threw the door shut with a glassy crunch. A jagged crack split up the glass. She'd get the datachip out herself. She'd just have to work at it. She backed up and turned to the door. She'd wasted enough time up here. She was on duty.