Hey there, all. Sorry for the delay. But we're finally on Ilos, and the Battle of the Citadel should soon follow! I've altered the Ilos plot somewhat to make it more coherent, but nothing big. Enjoy.
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As Shepard walked through the crew deck of the Normandy, he tried to wipe a big grin off his face. Things like this were definitely something where Tali had a clear advantage, due to her face being most always hidden beneath her helmet's mask. The Spectre's body was flooded with endorphins; he felt content, happy and ready to take on the galaxy. However, it would not at all do if it became too clear how he just had spent his free hours. Not that a lot of the crew did not already suspect, but that did not mean he had to confirm it so blatantly by facial and bodily cues.
By the time he reached the CIC on the first deck he thought he had his face under control again, and his gait had changed back from a light prancing to a normal walk, too. He was again Jonathan Shepard, first human Spectre: All serious and professional. Or so he hoped, at least. It was a pity he had to return to business again so soon, but then he supposed the matter of saving the entire galaxy probably justified it. Probably.
At the CIC Pressly stood at one of the consoles around the galaxy map in the centre of the room, and watched it intensely until he noticed the Spectre. "Ah, Shepard," he said. "Just in time. There it is, the Mu Relay". He pointed vaguely to the console, but it only had a schematic map of their region of space. "The rachni were thorough, it seems. If Benezia's information hadn't been this ridiculously detailed we'd never have found it in this nebula."
"I don't know," Shepard answered light-hearted, "we have a good navigator, after all." Ever since the whole incident with Chairman Burns Pressly had been somewhat antipathetic towards Shepard. Hence it was not like he could really be 'won over' anymore, but Shepard was in high spirits and thus just felt like giving out compliments regardless.
He went on to the cockpit. Ashley, Liara, Garrus and Wrex were already standing there, making the room feel a bit overcrowded. He arrived just in time to see the nebula making way for the mass relay. Lid by the enormous amount of dark energy in its centre, it looked majestic against the backdrop of the cosmic dust around it.
"Aligning with mass relay," Joker announced as the ship went parallel to the gigantic structure, and some seconds later: "Initiating relay sequence... now."
The Normandy became wrapped in blue flickering Dark Energy. A regular event, normally - but this time Shepard had no idea what to expect on the other side. Nobody did. The archaeological databanks Liara had used on the extranet indicated that the Mu Relay's counterpart had to be in the same system as Ilos itself, and pretty close to the planet's orbit, too. The general astrography of the system was known - but what enemy forces would wait for them there, what Saren would be up to, what they had to do, all that nobody knew.
"Jump concluded," Joker reported, "minimal drift, stealth systems are engaged. Reading astrographical information from the system... huh, we're in luck. Just the right time of the year, Ilos is nearby. Nearing the planet."
"Any signs of enemy activity?" Shepard asked.
"Ah, yes, Com... sir," Joker answered. "Huh, must be a popular tourist spot this time of the year, too. Picking up over a dozen geth warships in orbit."
"Then keep some distance," Shepard ordered, "if they get a visual of us our stealth won't be of any use."
"What are they doing?" Liara asked nervously.
Pressly's voice came through the communication system, though it could also faintly be heard from the CIC: "Picking up heavy use of active sensors by the geth ships. They're searching for something."
"They have no more idea where the Conduit is than we do," Garrus mused. "That has cost them their time advantage."
"Then we'll ride their tailcoats," Shepard decided grinning. "Let them do the searching. We go down where they do."
"There's one area they seem to be especially interested in," Pressly reported. "A ruin city. They seem to have spread out their forces to several strategic points there. Hm, they're probably expecting us. Only one group is really mobile."
"The one doing the actual searching", Shepard concluded. "The one with Saren, most likely. We need to intercept it. Joker, take us into the atmosphere quick and steep, drop us in the Mako, and then get away fast again from those geth," Again, as in earlier engagements, he could not risk having the ship caught on the ground or getting engaged in combat against superior numbers. "Liara, Ashley, Wrex; you will come with me. Tali, too. Sorry, Garrus, but you know the limitations of the Mako".
"I do," the turian answered. "Good luck!"
"The rest of you, gear up and meet me at the Mako!" Shepard ordered
He had not expected that battle would begin so quickly, but he was ready for it. He commed Tali and rushed to their cabin, where they both got their armour - Shepard changed into his, while Tali affixed hers to her envirosuit. Then they ran down to the ship's cargo bay. Wrex and Ashley had beaten them to there, while Liara came a moment afterward.
"I can't believe we're going to land on Ilos," she said as she entered the vehicle. "It has become a nearly mythical planet in the historians' community."
"The galaxy is at stake. Focus on the mission!" Ashley said sharply.
"Oh... right, of course," Liara answered. Shepard thought Ashley had been a bit too needlessly aggressive to the asari, but then, even she probably was not immune to the sheer nervousness they all felt, so he did not say anything.
The hangar door opened. Shepard breathed out nervously. That's it then. Endgame. Ilos' endless jungles could soon be seen below them. Since they made open terrain a rarity, the Normandy had to fly just about two hundred metres above the surface. The drop would have to be a very accurate maneuver. Shepard trusted Joker with it, though; he was more unsure about his own skills at the Mako. Nonetheless, when the hatch was fully open, he accelerated.
The Mako fell towards the ground. Stay constant, stay constant, stay constant. Shepard desperately hoped not to mess up the drop, but he nonetheless managed to spot something as he came closer to the ground: Geth, still far away but advancing toward their position. The drop indeed was just at the edge of their perimeter, and battle would commence immediately.
The Mako hit the ground. Single stone cubes and rubble lay around, and everything was covered by strange, brown, alien lichens. Around them larger vegetation grew, which was just as strange to the eye. Ruined alien structures rose in some distance. Shepard drove the Mako into some thicker vegetation, right behind a stone cube, and waited for the geth to come. Insect-equivalents large as a fist hovered around the vehicle with buzzing sounds.
"This is not how the vids had showed it," Liara muttered.
Tali, who monitored the vehicle's sensors, announced: "Geth approaching. Looks like two Armatures and several light units."
Shepard remembered how he had feared battle with two Armatures back on Feros. Not anymore, though. He had gotten a grip on geth behaviour in battle. They were tough, but limited in tactical flexibility. As Tali explained it, geth on low-scale tactical ground missions basically were dumb, as not enough runtimes were around to strengthen the neural network. Unfortunately this did not hold for fleet actions or large-scale strategical operations, which was why the quarians had lost the war. However, in tactical engagements the geth just were not clever enough to come up with more than a few basic maneuvers. That was why it was possible to engage and defeat them even with inferior numbers. Their single tank could well take on two geth tank equivalents plus support. And that's exactly what will happen now.
Some minutes later, the Mako drove past two smoking wrecks of geth machinery.
As they advanced, the vegetation retreated except for the ever-present lichens, and the rubble and ruins began to stand closer to each other. It was an architecture like Shepard had never seen before. Even the Prothean skyscrapers on Feros had looked nothing like this, stripped as they had been to their barest concrete fundamentals. It seemed the Protheans had a tendency towards multi-level cities. Even well below the highest heights of the local skyscraper ruins here, there seemed to be no definite ground level.
The Mako drove through an open field full of huge stone cubes and entered the ruin city. Covered in foreign vegetation they looked almost as if they were entirely made out of organic material.
"Another witness to the fall of the Protheans," Liara commented, speaking to nobody in general.
"And yet the Conduit is here," Tali replied, "These are no mere ruins."
"The fate of the galaxy is decided here," Ashley declared tensely and not without some theatrical pathos.
"Yes," Wrex agreed unmoved. "Just like on Feros, and on Noveria and on Virmire. We should be getting used to it."
"If anybody cares," Shepard interfered, "we have enemy contact!" Some heavy bipedal units approached the vehicle from some distance.
Tali looked at him. "We all trust you can handle that. Now where were we before you so rudely interrupted us?" she joked and turned to the others again.
Of course, she then immediately turned toward her instruments again. But as long as they were only up against single geth groups, everybody in the Mako was confident of victory. However, as they drove on toward where Adams suspected Saren's group to be, nervousness still grew. It was unlikely they would be defeated by the too widely dispersed geth here, but it was still possible they would come too late to stop the rogue ex-Spectre.
As the distance between the Mako and the geth group they believed to be with Saren only decreased ever so slowly, these fears grew further. Anxiety and tension rose inside the Mako as it made its way through the city, which now became more compact: Thick, grey walls of massive concrete now rose to both sides of the vehicle. It still fit through, but only just so. They encountered more geth on the way, small patrols of light units, but no larger concentrations of them. There were actually enough geth around that the team would have no chance if they were all to focus on them, but this did not not happen. It seemed they were more occupied with other issues.
"Stop!" Liara shouted. Shepard immediately did. He did not know what the asari meant but trusted her that it would be important enough.
"What is it?" Ashley asked.
"There's a Prothean terminal outside," Liara explained. "It seems to be still running."
"You can't be serious," Tali exclaimed, "How can you think about..."
"It could tell us where the Conduit is!" Liara interrupted her, and without a further word dismounted. So did Shepard and the rest of the team.
"We really shouldn't waste time on this," Ashley commented. "Saren already has a head start. We have to find the Conduit before him."
"Unless he already has found it," Tali replied. "Then we're just walking into a trap."
"That's a chance we'll have to take!" Ashley insisted.
Shepard did not pay attention to them. He watched as Liara worked on the console. An unclear holographic image hovered above the console, probably a garbled VI avatar. Suddenly, a record started playing. Most of it was not understandable, but Shepard could make out some parts.
Ashley was still in the middle of the argument when she noticed this: "It's not like we have another ch... hey, what is that?"
"Too late," the record said, followed by static. In fact, most of the message was lost to that. "...Unable to... invading fleets... no escape."
"Incredible," Liara whispered.
"Sounds like some kind of message," Tali said. "Too bad our translators don't understand Prothean."
"Pro...thean?" Shepard asked confused. The interferences were bad, but he had been able to understand the few properly transmitted words in the message. "I... I can understand them well enough. It's a warning against the Reapers."
"The Cipher!" Liara exclaimed. "I can understand the message as well. It must be the Cipher!"
"...not safe..." the message went on, "...seek refuge... side the archives..." Nothing is safe. The first thing Shepard had understood about the Cipher were the emotions. Overwhelming emotions of despair and mourning, about an entire galaxy lost to fire and destruction. Alien emotions, but primal enough that they had shaken him badly. Those emotions were coming up again as he listened to the message. "...called Reapers... the Citadel... overwhelmed... only hope..."
The sound of the static interferences changed, and so did the voice. It was sterner now, and it held no hope at all. "...act of desperation... the Conduit... all is lost..." Shepard and Liara looked uncomfortably at each other. The message went on in a desperate, almost preaching tone: "...cannot be stopped... cannot be stopped... cannot be stopped."
"We... better go," Shepard said and entered the Mako again. Tali seemed to realize how distressed he was and quickly squeezed his hand. However, Shepard was almost too lost in thoughts to appreciate it.
"What did you find out?" Ashley asked.
"It said something about the Conduit," Liara answered instead of Shepard, "but the message was too degraded to help us. We should just continue our approach toward Saren."
Wordlessly, Shepard began to drive the Mako again. Emotions from the Reaper genocide against the Protheans were in his head. This all will be repeated if we fail. The last words of the message dominated his thoughts. As far as Liara could tell and according to what Sovereign had said, the Reapers had invaded the galaxy over and over again, several times, always wiping out all advanced life. Nobody, it seemed, had even been able to stop them. Cannot be stopped... cannot be stopped...
Again, like after Virmire, he began to wonder if this was all his fault. If he had not spent so much time on the ExoGeni case, or had not alienated the Alliance with the BAaT case... Maybe the whole galaxy is doomed now because of my personal crusades. Not that they had not been fully justified, but still... Desperately he pushed the Mako to full throttle, both to reach Saren as fast as possible and to push this thoughts away.
His mood seemed to infect the others. It was eerily quiet inside the Mako, as it drove through ever more parts of the city, heading straight towards Saren's group of geth. They went through trenches, passed rubble and crossed a large open area with several statues. But Shepard did not pay attention to them and did not even only wonder if that was how Protheans had looked. He was too focused on getting to Saren. Even though this took frustratingly long.
"Does this city go on forever?" Ashley commented after some time.
"Be thankful it doesn't span a whole planet," Wrex reminded her of Feros.
"The Protheans tended to concentrate themselves in large cities, while they..." Liara began to lecture, but was cut off by an annoyed growl by Ashley.
Before she could say anything herself, though, Pressly spoke through the communication system: "Shepard. Saren's group has come to a halt. I think they've found what they came looking for. Several other geth groups are closing in onto your position or are trying to intercept you."
That's what they were occupied with. The geth had not concentrated their numbers to take on the Mako, because they still had been busy searching. Not anymore, though, which meant that most likely Saren had indeed just found the Conduit. Or at least the way to it. ...cannot be stopped...
"You heard him," the Spectre said. "We have to get to him ASAP, or we'll be pinned down and he'll get the Conduit. We'll just break through any enemy resistance, no long engagements, so prepare for a rough ride."
"Like every time you drive the Mako?" Tali muttered.
Shepard grinned and accelerated the Mako to its maximum. But his amusement was desperate, a way to deal with his anxiety. Cannot be stopped... Saren has found the Conduit. And it might all be my fault. Desperately he dashed through narrow corridors framed by rubble and stone. He did not even stop to fight geth. Even if they had time to fight them, with every geth unit not with Saren rushing towards them they'd lose if they were to stop. Don't stand still, or you'll die. Not that this would greatly matter if Saren reached the Conduit first. ...cannot be stopped...
Driven by this horror vision, Shepard sped the Mako up. He knew what the tank could take. It flipped over several times, but the Spectre simply always continued. Neither rubble nor geth nor even cliffs in the architecture could stop his wild dash. When two Armatures appeared in front of him, he simply bolted through one and kept going. Everybody was roughly shaken in this wild ride, but nobody said a word. They all knew what was at stake.
Thus, after some time Tali announced coolly and professional, as if the vehicle had not just so barely avoided another 360° flip: "Target enemy group ahead."
Several tank-level and bipedal geth units stood in front of a massive entrance to a large, vast and by the looks of it mostly subterranean structure. A bunker, most likely. In fact, the entrance's stone door was just closing. Closing again. Saren has entered it. Is the Conduit inside?
Shepard began firing as soon as he had closed the distance to the geth, with the Mako still at full speed. For the first time on the planet, he had real trouble in combat with the geth. The enemy held massive numerical superiority and tried to keep him away from the door Saren had just passed at every price. It took a drawn out, time robbing battle all over the place until the geth were downed, and the Mako took quite a beating.
Worst of all, it gave the other geth units nearby a chance to close up to them. When the Mako came to a halt again, Shepard checked the sensors: They would soon be in trouble again. He also got a closer look at the bunker and its now barred entrance. He did not even want to consider just how thick the walls and the door were.
"I do not think we will get past that door with brute force," Liara commented.
"We'll have to try!" Ashley replied aggressively.
Shepard grinned lopsided. "That's just what I had in mind. The Mako's cannon is big enough that we can at least attempt to shoot our way through."
"But... what if the bunker collapses?" Liara asked nervously.
"Then we'll have denied Saren access to the Conduit," Shepard answered, "He wants it. We only do because he does." He took another look at the sensors. "Tali, take the helm and pound the door. Everybody else, dismount. Seems like we'll have to hold our position for some time. Defend the Mako at all costs!"
The Mako's main gun began to thunder as Shepard exited the vehicle. The first few shots merely chiselled away some stone splinters, but slowly and gradually some progress could be seen. However, then the geth arrived.
Not occupied with searching the ruins for the Conduit anymore, they now had only one aim: To stop and kill Shepard and his team. And while the Normandy was relatively safe due to its stealth capabilities, the Mako and the squad had no such protection. The first wave of geth units were just light bipedal units. The squad made a stand around the Mako and defeated them easily. But then Geth Armatures, Geth Destroyers, and hordes of other units appeared.
Liara's biotics flared up, Ashley's assault rifle fired and Wrex even entered into close combat with some geth units. And yet, there was only so much they could do against the enemy's numerical superiority. Worse yet, missiles began to pound on the Mako. Apparently there were now enough geth together that the neural network could correctly determine their primary target. Tali did her best to keep the tank out of harm's way, but there was only so much she could do while at the same time maintaining the fire against the bunker. If the Mako were to break down, they would all be lost. Shepard would then have to order the Normandyto do a bombing run on the bunker, which would certainly be a suicide mission, given the geth fleet in orbit, and one with unclear chances of success, too. And the life of the squad would be forfeited anyway.
Cannot be stopped... Shepard pushed those thoughts away. He had a battle to win. Or at least to withstand. The question was just what would break first: The Mako, or the door the vehicle was still firing at? Smoke rose over the tank, but on the other hand, the door already looked battered, too, and shock waves went through the bunker's outer walls at every further shot. Still, simply defending the Mako would not be enough. And besides, he had no intention to let Tali get killed inside there.
"Wrex, with me!" he ordered. He had spotted an Armature on a nearby platform, placed perfectly to fire at the Mako but without any cover by other units. It was time to take the fight to the geth.
He and the krogan ran towards a pile of rubble leading upwards to the platform. They used some of the stones there as a temporary cover against some Geth Troopers trying to intercept them, and then stormed upward. Unfortunately, the Armature was already expecting them. Well, at least it's not firing on the Mako anymore. Shepard released a biotic push which only made the geth tank stagger a bit, but that bought him enough time to run for cover. The Armature turned toward him, but that was when Wrex appeared, firing and presenting a much juicier target. The tank shifted its focus, which in turn allowed Shepard to go on attacking. Eventually both him and Wrex just stormed forward, running around the Armature and even beneath it.
Thank god so few other runtimes are nearby. That beast is dumber than the Council's policy on the Terminus. He moved freely beneath the metal belly of the Armature, and it was too stupid to fight him effectively.
"Shepard!" Wrex shouted, "Get away from there, it's going down." And so the Armature was. Shepard looked upwards: Smoke came pouring out of several parts of it, and its movements became shaky. He ran. He heard an explosion above him; the beast's white hull flashed up in his peripheral vision - than he felt a force rapidly pushing him forward. He landed painfully on the ground, but had escaped the Armature's collapse.
Still groggy he stood up and looked around. A blue glow receded from Wrex' hands.
"Jon?" That was Tali, through the communicator "Come to the Mako now, the way is open!"
The Spectre sighed – Can't I get a break? - but then waved Wrex to follow him and ran again. His left side hurt, and he was exhausted, but he just kept pushing himself on. Cannot be stopped... He nearly fell down the rubble they had used to reach the platform, and had to come to a halt at its base. He saw that the Mako was hardly in any better shape than the Armature they had left behind - it, too, was surrounded by smoke, and its formerly pristine hull was now torn and devastated. He had to suppress a manic chuckle. And it we just acquired it, too... Then he caught himself and ran the remaining meters to the tank, which was already starting to go. Wrex reached the open door before him, and he and Ashley pulled him in.
"The geth are still following us," Tali greeted him. "We have no chance if we don't find a way to get rid of them." She was fully professional and concentrated on her task, and despite the desperate situation she sounded very calm.
And then the whole galaxy burn... but this we can stop... He looked outside. The Mako had entered a subterranean tunnel. Its lights illuminated strange looking roots and other organic matter Shepard could not identify, and really did not want to, either. The whole scenery looked rather creepy. "Turn the cannon around and fire at the ceiling. We're collapsing it."
"What?" Liara and Ashley exclaimed nearly simultaneously. Wrex grunted. Tali said nothing.
"Either we can create a barrier that way," Shepard explains, "or we'll bury Saren here alongside us. That would fulfil the mission, too." And quieter: "Though I would like to actually see my success."
"Then let's hope it's the former," Tali said calmly and fired.
Dust began to rain from above and some shots later the first chunks came crushing down. A tremor shock wave went through the walls, and then part of the ceiling collapsed. Everybody held their breath - but the collapse stopped and remained localized. As Shepard had planned, the entrance to the bunker had been sealed by rubble. A collective sigh of relief went through the Mako.
The primitive looking entrance of the bunker soon made way for more technological looking surroundings. The Mako entered a corridor with a very high ceiling and with wall that made it look somewhat like the interior of a factory, not very different to what one could find in industrial areas on Earth or Terra Nova. The only odd thing about it were some sorts of tubes or round containers sticking out at various places.
"I thought Saren would have set some kind of trap or ambush for us," Ashley said. "They must have been in too much of a hurry."
"Or we just haven't run into it yet," Wrex answered.
"Don't jinx it, you two," Shepard said.
The corridor went on and on. After a while, Ashley spoke up again: "What are those things on the wall? Some kind of containers?"
"They look like stasis pods," Liara replied. "Incredible. The Protheans must have tried to keep themselves alive through cryogenic freezing. So... this bunker might have been the last refuge of their whole species! This is amazing." The asari got ever more enthusiastic and now spoke in one go, without pause or interruption. "I've spent my whole life studying the Protheans, but I never thought I could find anything like this. Just imagine what mysteries it might hold! Imagine what secrets it might reveal!"
"You might want to remember why we're here," Tali answered, very dryly but by now Shepard knew her sense of humour. "You know, such issues as Saren, the Conduit and, oh, the fate of the entire galaxy."
That was true, of course, but Shepard had to admit, it was good to hear Liara that way again, with the same unbridled and somewhat naive enthusiasm she had possessed when she had first come aboard. Before she had gone through several battles, before they had been forced to kill her mother.
"I'm sorry," Liara apologized, "I was swept up in the moment. I just hope we have the opportunity to study this place in detail once we're done."
"I wouldn't bet on it," Wrex commented.
"And of course the krogan with his uplifting comments again," Ashley complained, "I can't believe..."
"Ahem," Tali made herself heard. "We have a problem here." She gestured forward, showing the problem: The tunnel split into three.
"Okay. This is bad," Ashley commented.
"Subterranean tunnel networks were not unknown to the Protheans," Liara said, "And if this facility really holds an entire colony in cryogenic stasis it makes sense that it is not just a single tunnel. So it might be there are a lot more forks and crossings than this, actually." She paused. "And we have no idea which ones Saren used."
"I'm picking up an energy signal from deeper within the tunnels," Tali said. "It doesn't look geth in origin, though."
"Could it be the Conduit?" Shepard asked.
"That's what I was thinking," Tali replied.
"Well, in any case, it's all we have, so try to go for it!" Shepard ordered.
The bunker's network of tunnels turned out to be vast and complex indeed. Apparently, they had indeed 'stored' the population of an entire major colony here. Noticeably, though, some sections were lacking light or appeared to be in a state of bad disrepair. Come to think of it, just how were the other parts maintained this well over 50,000 years?
Strangely, they encountered no geth. Tali still sat the driver's seat, and she drove the Mako at full speed towards the mysterious energy signal. Since there was no hostile resistance and since the tunnels were comfortably broad enough, it was nonetheless a smooth ride. The only thing disturbing this strange peace was everybody's tension, the fear that Saren might already have gotten to the Conduit.
Finally, Tali brought the Mako to a halt. "The energy signal comes from here," she announced. "To be exact, from beyond that small door to our side."
"So, is it the Conduit?" Ashley asked.
"I detect no geth here," Tali answered. "If it was the Conduit, I think they'd already be here. They can pick up that signal as well as we do, after all."
"Still, we have no other hint, and we don't have the time to go through the entire tunnel network," Shepard said. "Let's see what's behind that door."
As it turned out, it was an elevator door. The elevator, strangely enough still working after 50,000 years, brought them to a vast, open hall, stretching in all directions from them. The walls, reaching far above and far down below them were full of stasis pods. However, roots and soil had entered this hall, too, so that it in parts looked almost like a natural cavern. A sort of bridge spanned it, leading towards a terminal standing right beneath an especially large root. A holographic light flickered there, similar to the damaged hologram they already had encountered earlier. This one seemed to have fared not much better: There was light, but did not actually depict anything. It was just flickering, orange light.
However, it seemed the important parts of the system were in fact still working: "You are not Prothean. But you are not machine either." The synthetic voice came from the terminal. "This eventuality was one of many that was anticipated. This is why we sent our warning through the beacons."
"What is it saying, Jon?" Ashley asked. "Looks like some sort of VI program. If very battered up."
Shepard grinned lopsidedly. Apparently the Cipher in his mind meant he did not even notice when he understood Prothean. "It's a greeting," he told her. "It still seems to work well enough."
"I do not sense the taint of indoctrination upon any of you," the VI went on. "Unlike the others that passed recently. Perhaps there still is hope."
"Others?" Shepard asked. "Saren was here?"
"The one you call Saren was here," the VI confirmed. "Together with his machine servants. They want to undo everything we have achieved here. To stop them, you must know what is at stake. You must break a cycle that has gone on for millions of years. And you can only do that if you understand it, or you will make the same mistakes we did."
Liara, understandably, looked amazed by the prospect of that, but Shepard was a bit suspicious. "Just who are you? And what is this facility?" he asked.
"I'm Vigil," the VI answered. "I'm an advanced non-organic analysis system with personality imprints from Ksad Ishan, chief overseer of the Ilos Research Facility. That is where you are. You're safe here for the moment. But that is likely to change. Soon, nowhere will be safe."
"All right," Shepard said, "What do you have to tell me?"
"We do not have much time," Vigil replied. "I will show it to you."
An energy beam came out of the terminal behind the damaged hologram and rose Shepard into the air. And here we go again...
In what almost was just a single instant, Shepard saw everything he needed to know. The necessary information seemed to be uploaded directly to his mind. He saw the Citadel, and massive fleets of alien dreadnoughts rushing through it. The Citadel was not just a Reaper built space station - it was their main mass relay to dark space, the path of their invasion. He saw the Keepers inside the Citadel - small, seemingly benign creatures the Reapers in truth used so that no race would search for the true origin of the Citadel. And he saw how they activated the Citadel mass relay, prompted by the Citadel itself. The Reapers came out and in a single strike destroyed the entire Prothean central government and main fleet.
All over the galaxy, the mass relays, controlled by the Citadel now in Reapers hands, went dark. The single Prothean systems became isolated and easy prey for the Reapers. Systematically they wiped out one after the other, killing most people and turning the rest into indoctrinated slaves they used to strip the planets barren of any resources of technology. This was different from the beacon visions: This time he saw a detached, analytic view on it, not a desperate plea full of alien emotions.
Then he saw Ilos. A secret project had been located here, aimed at developing the first Prothean made mass relay. It would be a miniature version of the original relays found among the stars. And in this instant his mind knew what it was: The Conduit, a small mass relay leading to the Citadel. Saren had never been searching for a weapon, but for a backdoor to the station! And because this project had been so secret, all knowledge of it had been destroyed in the Reaper takeover of the Citadel. Thus the Ilos Protheans had been able to build up the cryogenic chambers, undetected by the Reapers. However, the Reapers had stayed for centuries, and energy was dwindling. Vigil, designed to supervise the facility, had been forced to shut down more and more stasis pods, until only the top scientists remained.
Normally, Shepard would have been angry about that but right now that was just a small detail in the instant explosion of knowledge in his mind. He saw the Prothean scientists getting to work again. They worked for years, for decades, fully knowing that their species was doomed. And then they used the Conduit to get to the Citadel. There they manipulated the Citadel's control program. And then he saw Sovereign - and when he sent the code to the Citadel for the Keepers to open the mass relay, nothing happened.
Over decades it sought ally after ally, servant after servant to find out just what happened. And after he knew, there was still one problem: How to get one of its agents into the Citadel. At first Saren had sought the Conduit to solve the mystery, but now he had come to use it the same way the Prothean scientists had - as a backdoor into the Citadel. And once there, he would rewrite the Citadel's control program yet again, this time to allow for the return of the Reapers.
The vision ended, and Shepard landed on the ground again. This time, he managed to land gracefully on one knee and quickly got up again. Nonetheless, he was helped by Tali, who apparently had already waited for the transmission of information to end.
Cannot be stopped... but this time there was hope. He had seen it in the vision. He stepped forward to the console, which opened and revealed an optical disk. It would serve much the same aim Saren had: To take control over the Citadel. Just that the Prothean program would of course keep the relay shut and the Keepers out of the Reapers' reach.
„The one you call Saren is trying to activate the Conduit," Vigil said. „His machine servants are connecting it to a power source of their design. But they cannot fully control the Conduit. Hurry. It will take him some time to open the Conduit. If you're fast enough, you will be able to follow him."
Shepard nodded and turned around without another word. The rest, not knowing what he had seen, looked confused, but followed.