"It seems to be my fate on this mission to be used as the bait."
Across the comm link, Garrus laughed at her complaint. "Hey, it's not my fault a pretty girl makes for a good distraction."
Liara rolled her eyes as she approached the house. Even in the dark, she could tell that it looked perfectly ordinary, just another piece of new prefab construction on a moderately sized colony world. "Lt. Williams is perfectly attractive as well."
"Yeah, but I've got the sniper rifle," Ashley pointed out. "So I get to supply the covering fire. Now settle down you two, it's show time."
With a sigh, Liara walked up to the manor's thick oak door and gave it a knock.
"Go away, we're not buying whatever crap you're selling," came the gruff response a few moments later.
Thinking back to that day on Therum, she summoned up her best lost-and-frightened explorer voice. "Oh, I am so very sorry to disturb you. My sky-car crashed and this was the nearest house I could find. Perhaps you could just let me call the rental company. I would be ever so grateful…"
The door opened, the Cerberus soldier behind it curious enough to at least give her a closer look. It was the last mistake he would ever make. A split second after he became visible, his head exploded in a spray of blood and bone that only Liara's hastily raised barrier preventing from soaking her. As his body dropped to the ground, she got her first good look inside the house.
Superficially the interior was much like the exterior, of decent quality but entirely unremarkable. There were two more uniformed soldiers there though, playing cards across a small table in foyer. At the sound of the shot impacting, they rose, pulling their pistols out of their holsters. Before they could get a clear shot at the intruder though, Liara loosed a wave of biotic force at them, hurling the pair to the ground. While they lay stunned, she threw the doors wide open.
"Let's go," she barked across the comms and while her comrades rushed towards the house, she drew her submachine gun and opened fire. The shots caught one of the soldiers in the head as he attempted to rise and his body crashed back to the ground in a heap. The second man was able to dive behind the table but she ripped it out of the way with a tug of her biotics. Deprived of cover, he rose firing, but his shots were wild and her barriers deflected them easily enough.
A well-placed burst from Garrus as he charged inside put the second soldier down, Ashley following behind seconds later. "So far, so good," the marine noted, looking at the dead. She gave Liara a bemused smile. "See, that's why you make good bait. You seem so harmless."
"What is it now?"
Brooks groaned as she sat up in bed. Getting woken in the middle of the night seldom put her in a good mood, especially if it was the whiney voice of Sgt. Heller doing the waking.
"Ma'am, we have a perimeter breech."
"Fucking hell. Show me." She pulled up her omni-tool and seconds later, she was watching footage of Shepard's pet asari as well as a turian and a human she recognized from her briefing files as Garrus Vakarian and Ashley Williams storming through the base's ground floor.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Get security up there and kill them." She thought for a second. "No, wait. Kill the human and the turian. The asari, I want alive." Two hostages were far better than one. If you only had one, you couldn't really execute them to show you were serious without losing all of your leverage. That was doubly true in this case, since the Illusive Man had given strict orders that Jack be kept alive until she came to term.
"Will do, Ma'am." Heller hesitated before he added, "We are a bit thin on base at the moment. Remember, we've still got a team out looking for our missing soldiers."
Brooks growled. That must have been a damn diversion. She began hunting around the room for the pieces of her armor. There was a reason she didn't leave her gear in the armory. "Fine. Do what you can to slow them down and get my team ready now. I'll lead the counter-assault myself. And tell the field unit to take their time getting rid of whoever they find with that omni-tool. This is rapidly ceasing to be amusing."
They won't be back here in time to help anyway. I might as well send a message.
"Base, this is Centaur 1. We're closing in on the target location. Any new intel to report?"
"Negative, Centaur 1. Signal remains in place. 2nd floor, north face of the house. I do have new orders for you once you get there, though. Operative Lilium says no survivors and no easy deaths. I think she's pissed."
Sergeant Crowder grinned beneath his helmet. He knew there was a reason he'd joined up with Cerberus. The Alliance was all about rules and rights, insisting on treating whatever alien freaks the galaxy spat out like they were real human beings. It was bullshit if you asked him, which, of course, they hadn't. Instead, showing a little too much "enthusiasm" with a captured turian pirate had earned him a dishonorable discharge, but with Cerberus, his talents could be properly utilized.
His team crashed through the front door without resistance, and as they stormed up the staircase, Crowder started to wonder if they'd caught their prey napping. This is almost too easy, he thought. A little fight adds savor to the rest of the entertainment.
His second in command gestured with his rifle in the direction of a closed door on their left. "It should be right in here, sir."
A swift kick of the sergeant's booted foot smashed the door open and in the infra-red light of his helmet's optics, Crowder could indeed see two people laying on the floor, piled in the center of the otherwise darkened room.
"Roll them." From beneath the pile, he was picking up a heat signature, probably from the captured omni-tool. But if it was still on, why was everyone asleep? Suddenly, doubt replaced his anticipation, the instinct of a solider who'd set a trap or two himself.
Corporeal Fuller kicked over one of the two bodies, and as the limp form rolled up onto its back, Crowder could see that instead of some enemy, the face belonged to the missing Trooper Alvarez. That wasn't what had his interest though, because right there on the floor, next to the omni-tool, was a small but intricately wired device that had just started beeping very loudly and very fast.
"Found it." Liara turned her head at Garrus' words. The turian was using his visor to scan a wall panel with his visor that, to her eye, looked very much the same as those next to it. "I'm getting electrical readings coming from behind here," he explained. "Definitely looks to be a mag-lock."
"Good work." Liara touched her omni-tool, opening up a connection to the final, absent member of their team. "Tali, Garrus should be linking you into Cerberus' system now. To start with, there's a door we need you to open. Then move on to the comms and try to find Jack."
"Will do, Liara." The quarian seemed very pleased with herself as she informed them, "The other squad took the bait. The explosion was pretty impressive."
"Don't go getting smug just yet," Ashley chimed in. "That was the easy part." In spite of the stress of the mission, Liara smiled at their banter. In the lonely years she'd spent tracking down the Shadow Broker, she'd nearly forgotten how much better it was to fight alongside friends she trusted rather than mercenaries who might betray her if a better offer came along.
"I know. I'm starting the hack."
Liara nodded and signed off for now. Combining the Shadow Broker's access to bleeding edge cyber-ware and intel on Cerberus' security protocols with Tali's skills, the second omni-tool they'd captured should enable them to control or disrupt many of the base's computer systems. Should. Such things are never certain and Cerberus is cunning.
Seconds later, the wall panel slid open, revealing a set of stairs that lead down into the underground level of the base. From beneath them, Liara could hear the shrill blaring of klaxons. "It's fortunate we're not depending on the element of surprise."
"No," Garrus agreed, "We're the kind of idiots who like to let the bad guys know we're coming. Makes things more sporting."
Ashley joined them at the door. Even over the wailing of the alarms, the heavy booted footsteps of approaching Cerberus soldiers were becoming audible, and the marine cocked her rifle. "Here goes nothing."
"On your six!"
Liara spun around, hurling a warp in the direction Ashley had indicated before she could even see clearly who was approaching. The biotic bolt struck an oncoming soldier in the chest and the man crumpled to the ground. Due to the confusion of their attack, he hadn't had time to properly fasten his armor, and the loose chest-plate had provided scant protection against her attack. Indeed, thus far, resistance had been fairly light. Between the squad they had lured away and Tali's partial control over their systems, Cerberus hadn't put up much of a fight. Liara just hoped that the jamming of their comms prevented them from realizing that fact until it was too late to kill the woman they were here to rescue.
"Do you have a location on Jack yet?", she asked Tali, conscious once more of the need for haste.
"Not yet. Everything related to her has extra encryption walls around it. I'm working on a bypass, but it may take…" Tali paused as she processed incoming data. "You have more soldiers headed your way. Maybe 10 of them."
Liara closed her omni-tool. From down the central corridor of the base came the sounds of fresh footsteps, the aforementioned troopers rushing in to join the fight. As they came into view, she took particular note of the woman at their head. With her long, dark hair and brown skin, Liara suspected she might be the "Maya Brooks" who had been Zaeed's contact when he betrayed Jack. She also seemed to be a skilled fighter, at least if the way she slid low to avoid the first burst from Garrus' rifle was any indication.
Brooks' return shotgun blast sent Ashley scurrying for cover in one of the many side rooms that branched off of the hallway, and Garrus followed the marine seconds later as the rest of the Cerberus squad joined in the assault. Two of their shots impacted against Liara's barriers and she retreated as well but, somewhat separated from her friends, she made her way through a doorway on the other side of the corridor.
A sniper round from Ashley into the leg of one of the approaching soldiers encouraged them to pull back too, the Cerberus squad withdrawing to a defensive formation at the other end of the hall. While Liara took a moment to catch her breath, Brooks called out to her, her tone arrogant, with little of the strain of battle showing. "Nice of you to deliver yourself here, Doctor. Dealing with a hostile Shadow Broker could've been a problem for Cerberus, but as a prisoner, you'll be a very useful asset."
Liara tried her best to stay equally calm. "You are quite confident for someone who's lost a number of her soldiers already."
"There're more where they came from."
Before Liara could reply, Tali's voice cut in on the squad's comms, sounding slightly frantic. "There's some kind of security layer we didn't know about kicking in and blocking my hack. I'm trying to work around it, but I'm losing control of some of… Keelah, they're sealing the doors."
From outside her cover, Liara heard the harsh sound of metal slamming into metal, and she realized that it was Ashley and Garrus who were now sealed in, leaving her alone. The Cerberus troopers were starting to move forward once more and there was no way she could fight that many by herself. "Do you still have any access?"
"Some. I'm trying to force them back out of the affected systems, but…"
There wasn't time for that. The Cerberus soldiers would be on her in seconds. "Seal the door in front of me as well. Now."
Mercifully, Tali worked fast and the heavy metal door slammed shut in front of Liara moments before anyone else could come through it. Exhaling, she took a moment to look at the area she'd taken refuge in. It was yet another hallway, this one leading into a part of the base their team hadn't explored yet. Tali was silent for now, probably focused on fighting for control of Cerberus' systems. For now, Liara would have to make do as best she could on her own.
If the door opened again or was blow down, her position there wasn't very defensible and so she hurried along the corridor in the hopes of finding someplace better to either hide or make a stand. At its end was a ladder leading downwards and from the bottom of the shaft, she heard the sound of voices.
"… stuck here while everyone else gets to have all the fun," a man grumbled.
Another replied, "You're fucking stupid if you think that's fun. Those are Shepard's people we're dealing with. They…"
Without waiting for the two soldiers to finish their exchange, Liara floated down in a biotic bubble, opening fire on her enemies before they could react to her sudden appearance. The burst from her submachine gun struck home, but between their shields and heavy armor, they were only staggered, not subdued. Their assault rifles flashed in reply and the Shadow Broker groaned as the rounds slammed into her barriers.
She replied by hurling a powerful biotic bolt into the solider on her left, but even as he was thrown to the ground, the other one struck. Rather than bothering to reload, he swung his rifle like a club, slamming it into her weakened shields.
Driven to her knees, her gun flew across the small room and Liara only barely rolled out of the way of the next blow. Imitating her attacker's tactics, she manifested a biotic field around her fist and punched upwards. The impact tore through the soldier's chest-plate and she could feel his ribs crack as the metal was driven back into his body. He fell away from her, but before Liara could rise, the other soldier had regained his footing enough to fire a second burst at her. Her barriers couldn't absorb the full impact and a grunt of pain escaped her lips as her light armor cracked and one of the rounds pierced her side.
Ignoring through the pain, she focused her remaining biotic energy into a singularity. The enemy soldiers were yanked off of their feet, rendered temporarily helpless within its event horizon. As they floated, Liara yanked out her spare pistol and emptied her entire clip into them before reloading and doing so again. This was no time to take chances.
Once she was confident the two were dead, she now had time to appraise her injury. Her side pounded where she'd been shot, and drops of blood were trickling out onto her light armor, but thankfully the wound wasn't life-threatening. An application of medi-gel eased the pain and stopped the bleeding, and seconds later, she was ready to go on. The guards had been better equipped than most of the soldiers in the base, and she was curious to see what they'd been protecting.
The door in front of her had its own security panel but she was confident she didn't need to trouble Tali with it. Her own cracking programs were sufficient, and a few seconds later, the door slid open. The room that lay behind it was white and sterile, reminding Liara of a hospital, but this one only had a single patient. In its center, lying on a slab of a bed, her ankles, wrists and neck bound to the metal, and an IV running into her body, was Jack.