"Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in the air. You will not be harmed."

The voice of Executor Palin, amplified by a series of speakers called out once again. It hadn't taken long for C-Sec to arrive at the CryNet base and erect barricades and blockades all around the large complex. After an initial communique from the Council and the Executor ordering the stand down of all CryNet personnel which had been ignored both sides had settled into a stalemate. We didn't want to actually hurt anyone and C-Sec knew that they would not be able to breach into the base. I had sent out various Phantom teams on reconnaissance missions outside of the base all of which were reporting the same things. C-Sec were waiting for a turian military force to arrive before they would make a move.

The news was worrying. If the turians arrived before Shepard managed to hunt down Saren and return, the only thing that would keep the turian's from attacking would be Niel's diplomatic efforts, informing the council that CryNet was invoking their right to seize any Charybdis technology. That the Normandy utilized some of said technology in its heat sinks. While technically true, as it was CryNet who provided those heat sinks it was also a very shaky defense. Hopefully the Council would know better than to actually give the go ahead for the attack when it came, as they knew that there would be a devastating loss of life on both sides.

"What's the estimated time until Raven and the Raiders arrive?" I asked from my position in one of the guard towers.

"Raven team should be arriving within the hour. The Raiders are another three hours out." CARLA responded.

"Where's Serpent now?"

"Currently within the C-Sec mobile HQ. Should anything go south they're planting EMP's to take out their equipment. Also it appears that the Executor is looking for a way into the base via the keeper tunnels."

I sighed "That will take them some time. Those tunnels are a maze."

"Yes but given enough time they may find a location to make an entrance." CARLA warned.

"Do we have any seismic sensors?" I asked.

"We have two, but their usefulness on the Citadel is going to be very limited. There's too much going on already."

"Good point. Could we lower their sensitivity so that they would only detect things closeby? They are meant to be used to cover a large area but if we were to reduce their sensitivity maybe we could detect if there is movement directly below us?"

"There would be too much interference. We'd constantly be getting hits or we wouldn't get any sensor trips at all. The only way I could see us getting any kind of knowledge on if they've found something is to just keep tapping into their communications or send a team down there and try to find something first." the AI suggested.

I frowned "I'd rather not task a team or even a single phantom down there when they are of more use up here. Damnit. We never expected to have to deal with a major defense of this nature. When this is done we need to completely map out those tunnels. Find those weaknesses."

"I'll be sure to remind you should we get through all of this."

"Gee Thanks." Sighing once again I gazed out toward the flashing lights of the C-Sec checkpoints in the distance "I guess the only things for us to do now are wait for the other phantoms."

"Not much is known about why a CryNet Phantom infiltrated the C-Sec HQ on the presidium, assaulted one C-Sec officer, leaving him unconscious and allowing the SSV Normandy to escape. The Normandy was placed on lockdown by the Alliance ambassador, Donnell Udina, after it had returned from a lengthy expedition into the traverse. According to sources who wish to remain unnamed the Normandy alongside its commanding officer the first human spectre, Lieutenant Commander Vanyali Shepard was hunting down the rogue spectre Saren on the garden world of Virmire. It seems that the Commander detonated a nuclear device on Virmire in order to destroy the rogue Spectre's base. Was the Normandy put on lockdown due to these events? Has commander Shepard gone rogue in her own attempts to hunt down Saren? The Council has had no comment regarding these recent events, so this reporter must question the safety of the Spectre program as a whole. If there have been two rogue spectres in such a short period of time is there perhaps a large problem with the program? If Spectre's are granted unlimited authority, it must be a slippery slope to slide from protecting the galaxy, to extorting it."

"Martin?" I looked away from the news monitor where yet another reporter was commenting on the current situation. There had been dozens of different stories about what was going on ranging from a coup attempt by CryNet to- and my personal favorite - a conspiracy by the council to pretend to eliminate CryNet while rebuilding them as a complete black ops program so that they can assassinate their political rivals.

"How are the talks with the council going Niel?" I asked the other director who had entered.

The older man sighed "It would have been so much easier if you hadn't attacked that officer in the C-Sec headquarters you know. Then they wouldn't have had proof of you being in there. Unfortunately he remembered you- or rather a phantom attacking him."

"It was either that or let the alert go out before the Normandy was gone and risk it getting caught by the defense fleet." I defended myself quickly.

Niel raised an eyebrow "Possibly but did you forget that it's extremely unlikely that the defense fleet would have been able to detect the Normandy if they were running silent? Regardless that's not why I'm here right now. This came came in a few moments ago addressed to the board." I raised an eyebrow as I took the datapad from Niel's hands. "It was caught before it reached us but CRISTINE thought it would be worth looking at. It states that the Turian 34th Infantry Regiment under the command of general Laedus would be arriving within the hour. It also provided us with a bunch of intel on the C-Sec forces which match our own reports and fleet strengths in the systems linked to the Citadel. Also and this was even more interesting, the defensive fleets closest to the Mu Relay."

"We have a friend." I stated. "And judging by the intel they've given us a relatively high ranking one."

Niel nodded "CRISTINE ran through the information given to us and said that judging by the amount of alliance specific intel we're probably looking at someone in the Alliance. Then judging by the level of information it's probably someone higher up in the chain of command who would have access to this information."

Tapping my finger against the datapad in thought I gave my thoughts "A few names spring to mind. Admiral Townes and General Granger for starters. Although the information given is nothing compared to what Townes has access to and Granger would probably use other channels. He knows how to send information to us should he desire to. What about Captain Anderson?" I asked suddenly.

"Anderson? I don't know, most of the information here he would have access to, but there are some definite pieces of information that I'm fairly sure are above his pay grade."

"True, but remember he is well known and well liked in the Alliance Navy. It could easily be that he has friends or has a higher clearance level than we think. He is a good friend of Shepard's as well and I'd imagine that he wasn't happy about the Normandy's lockdown either."

"But he's never expressed any interest other than the professional in CryNet, certainly not enough to warrant this risk." Niel argued motioning toward the datapad.

"Could be that he agreed with our actions and just wants to help out." I pondered. "Regardless we would be stupid not to use this information. CARLA, bring up our dossier on General Laedus and the 34th Infantry."

"Right away director."

"The 34th have made things quite a bit more difficult for us. Ever since they've taken over we've had to change our approach considerably in our resource gathering efforts."

I grumbled in annoyance as I listened to Basilisk's report "I suppose it's to be expected, this is the turian military. I'm sure they've trained on how to deal with forces such as us. Keeping their command staff off site and on their ships in space is a good way to make sure we can't get any infiltrators in."

"It's not just that director. They're starting to set up what appear to be EM field generators along the main roads and thoroughfares. While they won't short out our suits they will drain our energy far to quickly for confort. We won't be able to make our way through those areas cloaked."

"Are all ways in and out going to be covered?" I inquired.

"Hard to say, we managed to get a relatively good look at them and where they are being placed but we may have missed some. If the one's we've found are all of them, which I doubt, then there will definitely be some paths not covered. But like I said I doubt that these are all of them, the turian's wouldn't be so stupid as to leave us any room to maneuver undetected."

"No they wouldn't." I agreed quietly. "Basilisk, you need to deploy Serpent to the far side of the field. All off the phantoms aside from Raptor and Wraith will be searching for the power source for these fields. If the worst comes to pass then you are to disable those power generators or at least the power lines so that those fields go down."

"Sir if you don't mind me asking, why won't Wraith be joining us?" Viper asked.

"Wraith will have his own mission to complete." I stated hating that I couldn't be truthful with my fellow phantoms.

"Understood sir. If it's acceptable to you- -ould like to- -eliminate oppositi-"

"Operative Viper? Operative Viper do you read? Damnit!" I swore slamming my hand down on the terminal.

"The turian's have jammed our communications." CARLA supplied by way of explanation.

"Goddamnit." I muttered pushing myself away from the table that I was leaning up against and glanced at the monitors that were providing the outside view to the command staff inside.

"Director." I glanced at commander Alexis Alexander, one of CELL's highest ranking and most experienced commanders. Commander Alexander had once been an Alliance general who had resigned from the Alliance to join CryNet a few years ago. Her resignation, or defection as some in the alliance called it had been very controversial. It was one thing for CryNet to be employing many Alliance personnel but while they stung they were in general only lower ranking officers. Alexander's hiring had proven that CryNet was willing and in the market of hiring higher ranking Alliance officers. While they couldn't do more than complain and warn Alexander not to disclose sensitive information, she had left when her term was up and after then it was completely in her right to join CryNet should she desire. Nevertheless the alliance had made sure that all higher ranking officers were well provided for and happy and provided more incentives for them to remain with the alliance.

"Yes Commander?"

"It's relatively likely that the turians plan on commencing an assault soon. They will want to make sure that we can't find a way to bypass the jamming before they attack. If it comes to that do I have authorization to retaliate?" Alexander's piercing blue eyes bored into me as she waited for my response which took some time coming. Was I prepared to give the go ahead on what could be a major engagement and completely ruin any chance for CryNet to exist as a legitimate organization in the future?

"Yes. Authorization to retaliate against turian forces should they engage us is given."

The commander gave me a single sharp nod before turning back to her command terminal. I looked down in thought for a few minutes before standing. "Commander Alexander I leave this situation in your hands. I'm dispatching Wraith to get us an unjammed frequency."

"With respect director, don't you think it too dangerous for him out there with those EM fields? Won't the other teams be able to neutralize the jammers?"

"Quite possibly. However I am still sending in Wraith." I said firmly.

"Understood sir."

"And if you see him please tell Director Teems to find me in my office, I have something I wish to discuss with him."

"Hey Wraith!" I stopped and faced Nomad who had called out to me.

"Yes?" I asked as the Raptor second in command jogged over to me.

"This entire situation is pretty FUBAR and I've been hearing quite a few murmurings about troopers not quite pleased that they are facing down the Turian Military."

I sighed "No I imagine they are not but hopefully we won't have to face them down."

"Then there's a plan to defuse the situation?"

I looked down for a moment "Well we are trying to convince the Council to back down so that we can reach a compromise but they are not quite willing to back down at the moment. The commanders and the Directors hope that we can even the playing field or even put it in our favor by taking out their power and take their jamming down. Then hopefully the council will back down a ways. Hopefully Shepard will be able to catch Saren and bring him back which will also put things in our favor somewhat."

"Without triggering a war with the terminus." Nomad said skeptically.

I chuckled "I doubt that that's a thing that could really end up happening despite the council's fear otherwise. Shepard can be discrete when she needs to. She is an N7 after all."

"Well I hope she gets back sooner rather than later. I'd rather not fight the entire turian military today."

"Not today, not ever." I added.

"Agreed."

"Well I best get going. The director wants me to take out the jamming that the Turian's have set up."

"Very well. Good luck out there."

Giving Nomad a parting nod I continued my path towards the compound wall. Just as I was about to exit the building however I cloaked so as to make sure that if the Turian's had eyes in the sky they wouldn't know that I was leaving. Breaking into a light jog I went up to the wall and jumped up just enough so that I could grab hold of the wall with my fingers. Heaving myself over I dropped down on the other side and rushed under a nearby awning to let my energy reserves recharge.

Fully charged I entered a nearby apartment and began making my way out of the area. It didn't take long for me to enter the EM field and upon reaching it I quickly backpedaled and found a safe place to recharge as I consulted my map. The EM field would short out any monitoring devices that weren't shielded particularly from its effects and those were few and extremely expensive. That would mean that the turians would have to patrol or station guards along the entire perimeter in order to detect phantoms moving through. But since it was likely that the 34th was trained in dealing with phantoms those guards would be in relatively large groups making it difficult for phantoms to deal with them quietly. Not that it mattered for me.

I wouldn't be trying to stealth my way through, I would just run through as fast as possible and just try to get to the other side of the EM field. The turians would know that a phantom had managed to push past their perimeter, but they would then have to find me, which was extremely unlikely.

It didn't take long till I reached the point where my suit's energy reserves began dropping faster and faster it was when my cloak began to waver that SECOND warned me about being well within the field. Taking a deep breath to prepare myself I broke into a run, ignoring the low power warnings. Using the map on my HUD I navigated my way through the apartment buildings. I ran undetected for only a short period of time until I burst out of a building into an ally and took a team of turian soldiers by surprize. Their surprize was gone almost immediately however it did give me enough chance to dart accross the ally and into another appartment complex. Loud shouts for me to stop echoed out from behind me but I paid them no heed as I ducked into a side corridor in order to break their line of sight.

Grabbing a disc from my waist I held it firmly in my grip as I sprinted past abandoned suites. Up ahead was a large thouroughfare that would be exposed to turians all around. I had to hope that the turians were not yet willing to open fire without provocation just yet, or that it would at least slow down their response long enough to get to the other side. What I didn't expect however was the APC that was parked twenty meters in front of me its turret aimed squarely at me. That told me two things, firstly that if the turian's would not hold their fire then I would be hard pressed to survive right now but more importantly that where that APC was, the EM field was weak enough for it to operate, even if it did have EM hardening it meant that if I could get to it then my suit would also be hardened enough against the EM field to gain full range of my suit back.

And so I didn't bother slowing as I started to hear a turian shouting at me, instead I pressed a button on the face of the disk that I was holding and threw it as hard as I could toward the APC. Mid flight it started spewing forth a line of thick smoke that obscured its view of me and as soon as I entered it, obscured me from anyone else watching. The disk continued on its path and the moment it struck the side of the APC it released a large cloud of white smoke completely encasing the APC. Now I could travel the rest of the distance unseen and the moment I spotted the looming dark shape of the APC in front of me I dashed to the side as SECOND's voice rang in my ears.

"Cloak engaged."

Now out of the range of the EM field I slunk away and into another side alley and began climbing up to get an altitude advantage as I began my search. It took me about two hours until I had finally found their jamming device located within the primary staging point for the turians. It was slightly more difficult to get around undetected because they knew that I was around and were taking various precautions, but ultimately it was up to me to make mistakes in order to be found. Mistakes I was not making leaving the base practically wide open for me. The jammer itself was another issue entirely. It was being heavily guarded, the turians were correctly identifying it as one of the most likely targets for me or any other phantoms in the area and so the entire area was practically crawling with soldiers and various security devices.

Merely disabling it was not going to cut it here, the turian's would immediately realize that it was down and set up another jammer. It might give us a few minutes of time to communicate which while better than nothing was not what I was planning on doing. Instead I needed to make sure that the turian's didn't realize that it was either off or set it up in some way so that we could communicate even with the jamming field up. And so I completely bypassed the jammer itself and instead went to one of the turian's own relay stations that they were using for their own communications. These used very specific frequencies that were not jammed which was where my plan focused on. Introducing a virus into the systems of the turian computers was not easy, but it was doable with an AI assistant in the form of SECOND. The virus would piggyback onto the radio frequencies that were being used by the turians and appropriate a couple channels for us. We wouldn't get many frequencies but enough so that we could communicate should we need to, it would also provide me with all the frequencies being used by the turians themselves so that I could listen in on their own communications.

Task completed all that remained was to return the same way I had come and spread the newly acquired frequencies around, yet just as I was entering the base I stopped as SECOND alerted me to important traffic on the turian's communication nets.

"Intercepting enemy transmission."

"-getting reports of gunfire in the presidium sir." a turian voice reported.

The response came from a gravey turian voice, who was quickly identified as General Laedus "The presidium? Phantoms?"

"Unknown sir but they apparently came from nowhere so quite possibly. Maybe meant to draw us away?"

"It doesn't fit in their normal MO."

"Respectfully sir their MO is not known at this point in time. They after all did illegally participate in the stealing of a ship."

"And made sure not to kill or severely hurt anyone in the process. Why would they spare that one officer in the headquarters only to start gunning down civilians in the presidium?"

"Does it matter right now sir? We need to put an end to this immediately."

"Not until I have all the facts Colonel. Reroute recon teams to the presidium and prepare the troops to either redeploy or for attack depending on what the reconnaisance teams find. And lower the jamming field. I want to speak with their commanders, see what they have to say."

"As you wish sir."

My pace had quickened and when I entered the command rooms I was greeted by an argument between commander Alexander and Niel.

"We need to get out there and assist the council against the geth! It's the main reason we're here at the moment!"

"I understand that sir." Alexander said slamming her hand against the command console "But until we get some kind of communication up with the turian's I cannot allow any sort of movement out of this base. The turian's are twitchy enough as it is, if we make any moves they will misunderstand them and open fire and I'm sure that you will agree that that would be even worse."

"I can't get in contact with them until that jamming field is taken offline!" Niel responded.

"Which means that we will have to hope that either the turian's decide to take down the field and speak with us now that there's a hostile fleet approaching or the phantoms manage to take the jamming field down or find us a workaround."

"We will have both shortly." I interrupted glancing between the two. "I managed to gain access to their jamming and have been listening in on their frequencies. They're going to be dropping the field shortly and will want to speak with you sir." I told Niel. "Apparently there's been gunshots fired in the presidium." I paused for a second "What's this about a geth fleet? Are they attacking? How did they make it here without being engaged by the other fleets?"

"We don't know, we are kind of cut off at the moment. We just know that the geth jumped in system a minute ago and they must'ave had some kind of force here already because no ship has gotten this far yet." Commander Alexander told me.

"That's not good. The moment the jamming field is down you might want to recall the phantoms." I told her. "They should engage the geth wherever they are."

"I'll do that as soon as the jamming goes down."

"Jamming's down ma'am!" A nearby technician called out "Also a communication's request coming in from the turians."

"Patch them through." Niel ordered and a moment later a life sized holographic projection of a grizzled turian appeared.

"Director Teems. As I doubt that you are really performing a full scale insurrection and that this all is likely a huge misunderstanding, not to mention the very real fact that we are under attack by the geth I'm going to presume that the attackers on the presidium are not your men."

"You would be correct in assuming that General. We have had nothing to do with that attack."

"Very well. I've given the order for my men to stand down. It will likely take a few more minutes for the orders to pass all the way down, but when they are you'll be free to move about assuming of course that you will provide whatever assistance you can to combat this new threat."

"Of course General. That has after all only been our entire plan so far to safeguard the galaxy against Saren and his geth."

"Yeah yeah, you can stop with the politicking, a simple yes or no would have sufficed. We'll be sending you tactical data as it come in. Apparently the geth somehow managed to claw their way onto the presidium somehow so we'll need to root them out."

"Understood. Is there anything else that you require from us as of now?"

"No. Just get your boys out there. We're going to need everyone we can scrounge up."

"We'll be there general." Niel promised.

"Good. Laedus out."

Niel turned to look at the CELL Commander next to him expectantly. "Orders have already been sent. I've given the orders for the VTOL's to be spooled up. Phantoms are returning already. They along with the inquisitors will make up for the majority of the first wave. Transports will then return and pick up the rest of the CELL troops. I'll command the defense from here." She turned to look at me. "I'd suggest you head on down to the transports Wraith. They'll be taking off as soon as the rest of the phantoms report back."

I gave her a curt nod and turned back towards the exit.

"On my way."