"What are you saying?" Liara T'Soni, asari scientist and Commander John Shepard's paramour demanded vehemently. She smashed her fists into the table and a purplish flare ignited around them as she struggled to control her disappointment.
"Exactly what it sounds like, Doc," Vega replied. He was seated at the table in the Normandy's dining hall on the crew deck and was somewhat unnerved by the asari scientist's reaction to the news he had unceremoniously delivered.
He was dressed casually now, having traded his heavy armor for a pair of utility trousers and a tight-fitting undershirt. "He wasn't there."
"But… the coordinates. I gave you the coordinates," she stammered. "How could he be missing?" She felt her heart sink.
She could remember the sound of his voice echoing in her ear, willing her to get aboard the Normandy. He saved her life. Again. And it was the last time she'd ever seen him. The image of him plowing forward, even in under threat of Harbinger's assaults, was burned forever in her mind. Had it not been for Garrus she'd have run down the Normandy's hangar ramp and rejoined Shepard. He would have hated her for it. But she didn't care. She only wanted to be by his side in the final moments of their galaxy-spanning adventure.
But it was not to be. Garrus clamped her tightly against his battered armor, the ramp closed and the Normandy escaped into space. When the final blast emanated from deep within the bowels of the Citadel Joker was already rocketing out of the Sol system via the Charon relay. And Shepard was gone from her life forever.
Then like a sick joke hope had been rekindled in her heart.
The distress and retrieval beacon hardwired into Commander Shepard's suit had been activated. Liara cajoled her crewmates to get the Normandy space-worthy again so she could be reunited with her love once more. For weeks she watched the blinking indication light on her console and imagined Shepard alone and battered waiting for her. She hoped, against all odds, that she would see him again and that he would be alive and well. He survived one terrible trip to the afterlife, so why couldn't he do it again? But as time dragged on and the repairs to the Normandy took longer and longer she felt the hope begin to fade. And then one day his beacon was deactivated and the hope that had accompanied her in the lonely hours of the night was replaced by terrifying doubt and uncertainty.
Vega let out an exasperated sigh and shook his head at a loss for words. "I don't know, Doc. I don't know."
"Something wasn't right," Garrus said suddenly. He leaned his full weight on two outstretched arms, palms laid flat on the table. Behind him a few errant cables drooped loosely from ceiling panels.
"What do you mean?" Liara asked, turning her cherubic blue eyes on an old friend. Being close to Garrus felt like the only way she could still be close to Shepard. They shared so much history that Garrus often filled her with warm memories of the human that had captured her imagination and her heart.
"C-Sec and Alliance personnel have been combing through the ruins, but with so many casualties and the sheer size of the Citadel it's no surprise they never swept the area James and I visited," Garrus' raptor like talons gently scratched at one of his mandibles as he formulated his next sentence with some thought. "What I don't understand is how the Alliance never received Shepard's signal. If we got it then surely they did."
"They wouldn't have known," Vega answered simply. "Every N7s kit is equipped with one of those transponders but no ID tag accompanies the transmission. Missions are normally well coordinated and supported, so usually they would know who the transmission belongs to. But Earth was a mess. The Alliance is probably swamped with emergency signals. Hell, wouldn't be surprised if they just stopped monitoring the frequency altogether."
"That's horrible," Liara lamented. "All those lives…"
"Too much to do and not enough people," Vega shrugged. "I mean you saw it down there—the place is a mess."
"True, but there still has to be an explanation about where his body went. The coordinates were accurate; we found his tags so that means he was there at some point," Garrus elaborate. He stood to his full height, towering of the seated Marine. He crossed his arms.
"Was there anyone else on the Citadel besides Alliance and C-Sec personnel?" Vega asked. He leaned back in his seat trying to posit a scenario in his head. The positive setting was that Shepard was alive and simply got up, dusted off his shoulder and walked away. But that was impossible. There hadn't been a soul left alive on the Citadel after the Catalyst blew.
"Yes," a familiar voice chirped from the far side of the deck.
The three of them turned around in time to see Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy, the quarian technical genius, round the corner—apparently having just come from the elevator. "Traynor and I have been analyzing communications to and from the Citadel after hacking into a comm-buoy nexus to see if there was any news about locating Shepard.
"Glyph helped us parse through all communications coming from the Citadel in the weeks leading up to our arrival. I uh, hope you don't mind, Liara." Tali's accented voice resonated bashfully from behind the mask she wore. Quarians' voices often seemed disembodied as their masks veiled their faces. Body language was an important facet of communication for all races, but Tali's presence was always characterized by warmth and sincerity despite the obscuration of her most telling features. Even James, who had only known her for a short time, had grown to care very deeply for the machinist with a heart of platinum.
"Of course not, Tali," Liara insisted, eager to hear what she had discovered.
"There was a lot of data," Tali continued. Wide hips swayed with each step, catching Garrus' eye as she joined them all at the table. "Most of it was C-Sec and Alliance troops briefing their commanders on the state of the wards. It didn't take long to pick out the patterns. Most of the information was the same, so using a quickly constructed algorithm I had Glyph search for transmissions that differed from standard Alliance sit-reps."
"And?" Vega leaned forward, anxious for the information. He didn't care about the how, he only wanted the what.
"And it didn't take long for something to break the pattern. Unencrypted transmissions from an unknown third party…" The omni-tool on her wrist illuminated as she punched in a few commands to play back the audio file. "This was the only transmission that aroused suspicion."
There was silence for a while, then the sound of white noise for several seconds. Finally, a male voice crackled over the sound of the static. "What have *inaudible*… anything good?"
"Yes… *inaudible*… we've got a lot but… *inaudible*… for now. Wait… we got something. Oh yes this *inaudible* worth a lot. More than all the *inaudible*. Not… *inaudible*… but who," the transmission ended with a chuckle that faded into obscure static.
"Whoever that was—it wasn't C-Sec or the Alliance," Vega pointed out. His bulky frame rose ominously from the table. "We need to find them."
"My best guess is they are scrappers—scavengers," Tali observed. The quarians were no strangers to scavenging; it had been a necessity of life when growing up aboard the Migrant Fleet. Every quarian's pilgrimage was about bringing something useful back to the fleet; technology, equipment, spare parts—anything that could make life in the fleet easier. But that particular quarian trait did not endear them much with other races in the galaxy.
"Scavengers? Who would pillage such a place so soon after the fighting?" Liara questioned with a mixture of confusion and disdain. She was not the same scientist Shepard had rescued years before on Therum. There was a cunning and guile to her that hadn't existed before. Yet her innocence and naiveté showed through at times.
"Scavengers are as old as war, Liara," Garrus explained. "They're vultures picking battlefields clean to turn a profit. Morality and reverence for the dead doesn't play into it."
"So how do we find them?" Vega questioned impatiently. Vega looked at Tali, then Liara. "Any ideas?"
Liara struggled to think, her mind was clouded with despair and the thought of Shepard's remains being carted off by some band of disgusting foragers.
But it wasn't so long ago that Liara had journeyed across vast expanses in space to retrieve his corpse. That was different. She knew what the Shadow Broker had in store for him and she couldn't allow it.
Handing Shepard over to Cerberus was another matter altogether—one she hadn't fully come to terms with. She knew the Reapers were coming and she rationalized that Commander Shepard was the galaxy's only hope at winning. Cerberus could bring him back. It was the only answer. That may have been true. But the truth for Liara was much simpler. She just couldn't let him go.
Tali sensed Liara's hesitation and could perceive the inner turmoil. She spoke up. "Liara and I could analyze the signal's frequency… every transmission has a line of bearing that leads back to the point of origin."
Liara blinked repeatedly as the sound of Tali's voice entered the confines of her mind. She shook her head like a person shaking off a slap. She was suddenly back in the room with her crew and she immediately knew where Tali was going with her idea.
"Yes of course, it's an unencrypted signal and they didn't use a QEC which means we can trace the signal to its origin," she exclaimed excitedly, but paused for a moment as the idea developed in her head. "But without additional intercepts we won't be able to narrow down the location of the source. It's far from precise."
"It's okay, Liara, I think we're accustomed to less than perfect," Garrus assured the asari.
Vega looked confused. The techno-babble was over his head. He had gone through communications classes, done courses on field-expedient antenna construction and ground wave radio propagation, but this sort of thing was far beyond him. They were talking about tracing a signal back to its point of origin across time and space. He stayed quiet for a few moments speaking up. "Okay, that's something. Let's do that."
"I'll get right on it," Liara declared with resolve. She turned around and stalked off toward her cabin.
"I'll help," Tali sang enthusiastically as she shuffled off in Liara's wake.
"Liara, wait," Garrus interjected. The asari stopped as Garrus glided across the deck to address her. There was a weightiness in each step. He was ill at ease. "I'm sorry we couldn't get him back. But we did get this." He held out Shepard's ID tags.
A glimmer of sorrow shimmered in the asari's eyes as she examined the tags. She was quiet. Then she forced a heartfelt smile. She could remember the sensation of the cool metal upon her naked flesh when Shepard kissed her during those lovely overnight stays in his cabin. "Thank you, Garrus." He dipped the tags into her open palm and her fingers curled around them. With the tags clutched tightly in her grip she turned around and continued to her quarters.
The door to Liara's compartment hissed shut and the asari scientist immediately turned to the task at hand. "Glyph," she greeted the data-processing VI as she entered.
"Dr. T'Soni," the VI welcomed in kind. The whitish-blue incandescence of its form shimmered brightly in the dimly lit quarters that still served as the Shadow Broker's command center.
"I want you to analyze the line of bearing intercepted off the suspicious transmission you and Tali discovered and identify any systems near the point of origin that might be of interest," Liara explained with the calm, calculating tone of the Shadow Broker. There was an objective now. She had a lead and she would pursue it relentlessly.
In the dark recesses of her mind an idea took form. It wasn't the kind of idea that formed in the mind of an innocent archaeologist. It was an idea more suitable for a Shadow Broker. It was an idea that she savored, despite its cruel nature. Whomever had taken John Shepard from her deserved no less.
"Dr. T'Soni, without additional cuts to narrow down the point of origin any analysis will be grossly inaccurate," Glphy responded mechanically. Cuts were additional lines of bearing from extra transmissions. The more someone transmitted the more cuts they created. The intersection of those cuts created a fix. The point of origin.
"Just do it, Glyph," Liara ordered in a tone that would brook no further discussion on the matter.
"We could set the Normandy's communications intercept suite to monitor the frequency the scavengers used earlier. Since they were operating on an unencrypted channel maybe we'll get lucky and they'll use it again and narrow down the search for us," Tali offered helpfully.
Tali felt slightly unnerved as she watched the asari scientist work feverishly at her bank of consoles. Her features were cast in sinister shadows by the light that emanated from the many monitors.
She wondered for a moment if she would act in the same manner had the man she loved ever been taken from her. She supposed that she would, then breathed a sigh of relief and thanked her ancestors that he was still alive and well.
"That's an excellent idea, Tali," Liara commended the quarian. "Glyph, tune the Normandy's intercept suite to the frequencies used by our friends and monitor the channel for any additional transmissions. Nothing else matters."
"As you wish, Dr. T'Soni."