Chapter 14
Kevin awoke to a pounding head and the sound of his own breathing. He didn't even bother to open his eyes yet, fearing any light he saw would make it worse. He was breathing heavily and the sound of his breaths seemed to be echoing off of something extremely close to his face. What just happened? It didn't take long for him to remember the chaotic events leading up to his blacking out. The Illusive Man. The Kellius shutting down. Fear of suffocation. Fear of the vacuum. Ralik's fist.
The others backing away.
What was the Illusive Man's goal? He claimed Kevin was a valuable product of many years of research, but he tried to kill him. That was far too counter-productive for someone like him. Not only that, but did he purposely set him up to be at odds with his friends and shipmate? Even more, it sounded like he knew a lot more about Kevin than he ever wanted anyone to know. The very idea that he had been watched since his school days – a story of fiction or not – was unnerving. Kevin's mind was now a mess of noise. He had to filter it out, regain control of his thoughts. He needed to focus on what was going on right now.
The problem was, a sore face and a headache was what was going on right now. Fortunately, Kevin was able to shift his mental focus from the pain to some straight up facts. If he was breathing, that meant that Ralik figured out a way to save Kevin from the vacuum. With that comforting thought in mind, Kevin was able to stabilize his heavy breathing. The more he calmed down, the quieter his breathing got until it was no longer audible.
He then started to focus on the rest of his body. He could feel all his extremities. They felt as though they had been shrink-wrapped individually. Whatever he was wearing now, it was tight. Not stopping any blood flow, but tight. His eyes and ears no longer hurt, so Ralik must have had something in mind rather quickly. He was certain his eardrums were going to blow out. He lifted his left arm and went to place his left hand on his face to massage the impact point where Ralik had hit him. He wasn't able to, however. He was wearing gloves, as felt by his hands, and he was stopped before reaching his face. He must have been put in his hardsuit. It felt weird, though. Maybe they just didn't slip it on right.
Kevin decided to risk more headache by slowly opening his eyes. The room was dim, though recognizable. He was laying on a bed in the med bay. The strange thing was, everything was an odd hue of blue. He knew for a fact that his breather helmet didn't do that. He brought his hands up to feel out the general shape of his helmet to see if he could find out just what he was wearing. In the process, however, he got a look at his hands and he sprang forward to sitting up upon the sight. He had three suit-covered fingers on each hand! Three! The more he looked at his body, the more he came to realize that he wasn't in his hardsuit at all. Despite this, it was disturbingly familiar.
He was in a quarian environmental suit.
How? When? Why? His breathing had become heavy and audible again. Was he dreaming? Was this what happened when you got knocked unconscious by an angry salarian? What was all this? He couldn't believe it. He didn't want to. But Kevin knew he wasn't an irrational man in his own mind. He'd get to the bottom of this. Again, he needed to calm his mind down. He needed to focus on the facts. The facts.
Kevin let loose a long, deep breath in order to help himself calm down and prevent any hasty and irrational actions. As he calmed down, he came to realize a few facts that rang as extremely important to him. One was that he did not actually have three fingers. His index and middle finger as well as his ring and pinkie fingers on each hand had been bundled together in the suit. He could tell this by barely wiggling them separately in the gloves. Secondly, he didn't have two-toed quarian feet. It seemed the quarian portion of the suit from the knee down had been replaced by the portion of his hardsuit. It wasn't very flush, but it was sealed and tight. It actually looked like he was wearing boots on top of the environmental suit, though it was impossible to tell if that was actually the case. Once again he was able to calm down enough to reduce the noisy breathing he made.
He still needed to know what was going on. Things were a mess, if he remembered correctly. He turned his body so that his legs dangled off of the medical bed he had previously been laying on. This was almost too much to take in. He wondered who he had to thank for saving him. Surely the quarians wouldn't allow Ralik to commandeer one of their enviro suits. Especially after what went down in the briefing room. Just as all these questions began to float about in his head, he saw Ralik step into the dim medical bay through a permanently open door. He seemed surprised to see that Kevin was already awake, but not enough to warrant any unusual behavior.
"Oh, you're up. Glad to see sleep is still your strong suit. Let me call Tosh up," Ralik said with a stark lack of emotion. He activated his omni-tool and pressed a few buttons before focusing on Kevin again.
"Ralik. Were you the one that saved me?" Kevin genuinely asked. He immediately noted that he now sounded like a quarian as well. His voice was just as modulated as theirs, though he lacked the distinct accent they generally had. Additionally, he noticed how little the sounds he heard were obstructed by whatever medium was used to transfer sound into the helmet. It was impressive.
"Initially, yes. I'll expect a thank you later. If you want details, speak with Tosh." Ralik took a moment to gesture towards Kevin's new look. "That. . . That is mostly his handiwork. Tyr'Garloh was involved as well."
"Why would they help me after what happened?" Kevin wondered aloud.
"Like I said, speak with Tosh'Rolush. If he's feeling generous, he may even grant you their perspectives."
Kevin could hear a coldness in Ralik's voice. "Ralik, you don't really believe that I work with Cerberus, do you?"
Ralik had no time to properly answer that, however. Not after he hesitated long enough for Tosh to show up in the room. The first thing that Tosh did upon entering was activate his all important omni-tool. He tapped on it a few times, held it out to scan Kevin, then began tapping it some more.
"Folner, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Tosh. I can hear you," was Kevin's bland reply.
"Good. Audio intake and projection systems are functioning," Tosh analyzed. "Strange to hear your voice modulated. I take it by the fact that you are not convulsing for air that you can breath?"
"Yes, I can breathe fine."
"Better than expected. It looks like the breather system was able to handle the changes after all. The vitals that I was able to calibrate correctly are showing up fine, too. It looks like you'll be alright, Folner."
"What happened while I was out?"
Tosh looked to Ralik, then back to Kevin. "Ralik was able to sustain you inside the decontamination chamber over there before anything ruptured from the vacuum. Initial thanks are to be sent in his direction. After that I was asked to find a way to keep you from perishing. The decontamination chamber would only sustain you so long. Despite objections, I decided that since your hardsuit was missing the crucial helmet, and that I could not get one of ours to seal properly on it, I would place you in one of our extra suits that we kept for spare parts."
"And my legs?"
"There was no way for me to adapt the original quarian anatomy of the suit to fit that part of your human anatomy, so I had to use the legs from your harduit as a replacement. Don't worry, we were able to seal it up properly after quite a bit of work. Considering our species' differences, I was surprised that the suit fit as well as it did. It seemed a bit snug, but I did not think you would be picky about that once you woke up alive. As for the hands. . . After seeing how time consuming and difficult it was to transfer the pieces of your hardsuit from the knee down, I decided that you would have to live with three sets of bundled fingers. A small price to pay, yes?"
"Yes, a very small price. I have a lot of thanking to do, it seems," Kevin admitted. "Is there anything else I should know about all this?"
"Plenty. I had to make a few extensive adjustments to the suit's systems. Most of it you wouldn't care to hear, but there's nothing you should be worried about. I had to disable a few things due to Ralik and I's uncertainty of how it would interact with your body. Things like neural stimulators and such. Minor systems. The suit will be able to absorb your bodily fluids, both the ones secreted through skin as well as the ones expelled elsewhere."
"What about how everything is blue? Is that normal?" Kevin wondered, trying not to sound picky.
"Ah, yes," Tosh said, something clicking in his head. "The helmet will scan your retinas to determine how light is being absorbed. Give it a moment, let me activate the process. Once it's done, the visor should automatically visually correct for the color of the material. 'Should' being the key word."
Tosh tapped on his omni-tool once again and then looked to Kevin. Kevin didn't notice anything happening, and looked around for any changes.
"Keep your eyes still," Tosh ordered. "It can't calibrate if you keep moving them around like that."
Kevin took the quarian's advice and just stared off into space. Gradually, the color of everything turned less blue and began to look more like what Kevin remembered it as.
"Done. This is typically a one time set process. You might have to calibrate it again if you decide to take the helmet off and leave it off for an extended period of time."
"I can take the helmet off?" Kevin asked, surprised that their suits even allowed for that.
"Yes. The front-top half, at least. As you can imagine, we don't do it much at all, but the process isn't convoluted. Taking the whole suit off is another matter entirely. That takes quite a bit of preparation. Before I forget, I was able to get your omni-tool to work properly through the suit. It has been updated with anything you might need to monitor your suit and access any suit functions."
Kevin nodded and then fell silent. If the quarians suspected him of being an agent of Cerberus, why would they go to such lengths to help him survive?
"Tosh, I have a question," Kevin mentioned, his serious and solemn tone making it clear that he wasn't going to ask about more suit functions.
"Go ahead," Tosh replied.
"Why are you helping me? Do you still trust me while the others don't?"
"You can't lose something you never had, Folner," Tosh state matter-of-factually. "I don't know how much the captain wants me to say. You should go and talk to everyone once you are feeling able. Aft the very least, you've made a fairly good impression on us over the past few days. They will be willing to talk."
"What about you specifically?" Kevin pressed.
"I was asked to save you, not trust you. That is all I will say," Tosh said rather bluntly before turning to leave. He started towards the door and stopped just short of leaving the room. He turned his head to look in Kevin's general direction, but his body remained ready to leave.
"You have our internal comms now, Folner. Use it to call everyone to the briefing room when you've contemplated on what to say."
Once that was said, Tosh and Ralik left the room with purpose in their steps. Kevin figured that they had been doing things around the ship in order to bring it back to working order. He didn't know if they'd be successful or not, but pretty soon it wouldn't matter. The Cerberus pick-up team was going to show up soon whether or not he had the chance to talk to everyone. What was he going to tell them? 'I'm innocent'? How was he going to get to them through the emotional barriers that The Illusive Man so efficiently set up?
Kevin knew that if he couldn't win back the favor of the others by the time the Cerberus agents showed up, he'd be forced to pick a side rather than decide on one for himself. With the way things were right now, that side would almost inevitably be with Cerberus, since the quarians and Ralik would most likely attempt to take him out as soon as the agents showed up. As they should. It would prevent a lot of trouble if they planned on getting into a firefight. If Kevin somehow managed to avoid them and still didn't want to fall in line with Cerberus, he'd end up with two enemy teams on the same ship trying to hunt each other – as well as him – down.
Kevin imagined a chess board. Pieces were all over the place, but his current opponent, The Illusive Man, has just spoken the word 'check'. The man was obviously an ingenious social engineer. Kevin has seen where the check was coming from, but he needed a move that not only removed the immediate threat, but neutralized it so that it didn't come back to haunt him. That made him realize something. The Illusive Man was aware of the conversation before he made his interjection. He had to have some way to listen in on their conversation as they were making it. Listen in. . . Listening bugs?
Kevin was aware of the existence of listening bugs and their use in the galaxy, but he wasn't aware that the Kellius might have had some. How stupid he was, not even bothering to check. He should have felt the raised red flag when Tosh pointed out the black box sectors in the VI core. Even then it was probably too late. The Illusive Man probably got detailed data on everything that happened when the Kellius got back into FTL comm buoy range several hours ago. That meant he knew about the Melkanis relay and everything in between.
On top of that was the matter of the ship and its shut down state. He knew ships could be remotely locked down when in a docking bay, but to think that someone could wield such alarming power over a ship from anywhere was beyond disconcerting. The question was, how was he doing it? What connection point was there for him to just shut the ship down at will? He needed to find something internal to the ship that could have access to the entire ship and all its systems. And then it hit Kevin like a biotic slam.
Terra.
How devious. Something so beneficial to the ship that the crew would never notice any potential access points for hostile takeover. This had to have been part of Cerberus' design for the ship. Sure Terra was beneficial. It performed anything it had the power to at request, and helped pilot the ship and maintain systems. At the same time, however, it was that very control over the ship's systems that brought them down to a completely crippled state. That was going to be his eventual second objective. First he had to deafen The Illusive Man's ears, then he'd have to find a way to stop his influence over the Kellius' marionette. Terra had her uses, but he needed to make sure she could no longer be remotely controlled.
Suddenly, Kevin had an idea of how he was going to talk to the quarians. They were a foreign people to him, but he knew a lot more about them than he let on. They were a practical people. Kevin had to bring himself to them as someone who treated their current predicament like malfunctioning tech. Fix the problems right away to stop them from causing more. Salvage the situation when others would give up on it. Use other parts to make it better than it was before it went to crap. He could do this.
Kevin stood up off of the bed. The whole suit felt undeniably uncomfortable. He liked his hardsuit tight, but loose enough to move. He felt constricted. Stiff. It didn't help that his peripheral vision on both sides was cut down far more than he was comfortable with. There was plenty of visible space through the visor, but he was used to the sight through his hardsuit. It cut peripheral vision on the top and bottom while keeping a wider veiw. This quarian helmet had more overall visibility, but his precious peripheral side vision was cut short. He'd probably get used to it after a while as he always did when he got a new helmet, but right now it was only stacking on the other issues he had with the suit.
As he started to head for the door in the med bay, he noticed that the suit was actually rather flexible. He paused and did a few simple maneuvers such as jumping jacks, slashes with an imaginary knife and using the closest cabinet as cover from an imaginary enemy. Soon he began to see that though the suit was uncomfortably tight, it was far more tolerable when he knew he could move easier in it than he could in his hardsuit. As true as that was, Kevin couldn't help but notice how vulnerable the fresh environmental suit happened to be. This quarian suit was bland and exposed. There were mount points for armor and a slot for a shield module, but there were no ablative plates or sections and the shield module slot was empty. It was simply a plain, but functional, environmental suit.
Kevin shook his head and stepped outside the med bay. He activated his omni-tool and went to use it, but something was different. The interface layout had changed. Some of his usual buttons had shifted slightly, while others were in a jarringly different location. At least his omni-tool wasn't coming up in quarian. As he pressed on the appropriate buttons to navigate to the suit's internal comm system, he was quickly discovering the disadvantage of going from a five fingered physiology to a three fingered one. A disadvantage that the quarians, who grew up this way, didn't share. Quite often he'd move one of his fingers to press a button only to find that the other finger it was bundled with in the suit provided ample opposite directional pressure to keep the single 'main' finger from moving and pressing the button. This was going to take some getting used to as well.
Kevin pushed through all these hardships. They seemed ridiculous and menial compared to the task at hand. He got his comms working and he sent a broadcast to the others in the ship.
"This is Folner. I need to talk with everyone in the briefing room as soon as possible."
He stopped broadcasting right away, but there were no responses at all. Kevin sighed and decided to take up a seat along the edge of the table facing away from the automatic doors. Much to his surprise, the sound of the automatic doors opening sounded pretty soon. He turned around to see all the quarians and Ralik standing on the far side of the room between the doors, impatiently waiting for Kevin to make his excuse.
"Look, I know you guys didn't trust me and now you have even less of a reason to. Unfortunately, The Illusive Man isn't going to give us any time to figure it out on our own. Cerberus is coming, and they want the ship back and us dead."
"Correction," Arla spoke up. "They want us dead. They seem awfully content with you hanging around."
"I know what they said," Kevin snapped, irritated with Arla's interruption. "The thing is, I don't want to join them, and I want to keep my ship. Basically what I'm saying is, I need your help."
Some of them tilted their heads, but they said nothing until Ralik stepped forward.
"Help with what?"
"The Illusive Man has control of the ship and is keeping tabs on us, but we have an advantage. We have direct access to all the components he needs for this to continue to work and he does not. Not until his lackeys show up."
"What do you propose?" Siri asked.
"We need to locate and destroy his listening bugs," Kevin continued, walking back and forth on the opposite side of the table as he explained. "Once that's done, we need to find the source of his control over the ship and stop it there. After that, the ship is ours once again. I can't do this by myself, though. I don't have the ability or expertise to handle this as one person."
In the silence that followed, the quarians alternately exchanged looks as if wordlessly contemplating Kevin's proposal. Riik pointed something else out.
"You want us to help you reclaim your ship?"
"I want you to help me help you get back to your Migrant Fleet," Kevin quickly countered. "I've come this far in helping you, I'm not going to be stopped this short by some blue-eyed rich man in a chair. He almost killed me. Though I'll likely never get the chance, I'd like to return the favor."
The quarians all exchanged looks once again. Siri nodded to her team and she turned to Kevin.
"We've been trying to find a solution for a couple hours, with little success. Where do you propose we start?"
Kevin smiled, though it was likely that none of them saw it due to his new helmet. "The VI core. Tosh is somewhat familiar with it, so he could help me figure out how to isolate the listening bugs. Ralik I'm going to need your data mining skills in a bit, so you come too."
Everyone nodded and headed out towards the VI core. As they approached the room, Kevin noticed that the door had already been pried open. They must have already been snooping about the VI core to try and solve some of the issues. He didn't blame them. Once they all crowded inside, Tosh set to work right away. The glow from his omni-tool illuminated the immediate area and he started to try and access the VI systems.
"Give it another minute," Tosh stated. "There are new firewalls that weren't there before. I've been running algorithms to try and bypass them since I finished with Kevin's suit. It's nearly done."
Tosh continued to watch his omni-tool like a hawk, never once taking eyes off of it. He really wanted in on that system. Thankfully, the wait was short. Tosh soon began tapping on his omni-tool furiously. Kevin had never seen a quarian's fingers move so fast. Moments later, four haptic screens popped up from his omni-tool arrayed horizontally and displayed huge amounts of information. It seemed Tosh was an expert at multitasking, as each screen displayed something different and he was working on each intermittently.
"I've started my black box cracking program," Tosh announced. "That will take a few minutes. In the meantime, I'm going to try and isolate the listening bugs within the system. If they are feeding information to Cerberus, they have to at some point pass the data through here in order to pack it up for FTL comm protocols."
"Ralik, can you help him search? The sooner we get rid of these, the better," Kevin asked.
Without replying, Ralik also activated his omni-tool and started tapping. After a few impatient minutes of two omni-tools doing immense amounts of work, Ralik nodded his head.
"I've got something. Tosh, I'm sending you a set of parameters. See if you can isolate hardware profiles under those. According to the manifest, there should be just over twenty."
Tosh nodded and focused on a particular screen for a moment. "Twenty-two, actually."
"Where do we find them?" Siri asked her subordinate.
"Standby," Tosh replied. After a minute or so, he shook his head. "I can't find anything that gives physical locations for the installed hardware. No power routing, no in depth schematics, nothing. We're going to have to find them manually. Best I can do from here is monitor the feeds."
"I have a plan," Tyr said, stepping up to the plate.
"Go ahead, Garloh," the captain said.
"We'll have to perform a deck by deck sweep. If Rolush and Dolannus give us all the hardware profiles, we can manually search the ship ourselves."
"That'll take forever," Welkas added.
"I'm not finished," Tyr calmly said. "Rolush monitors the feeds from here. We will all have our own word to repeat throughout the ship. Rolush will let us know when a particular person is getting close to the location of a bug so we can search more closely."
"That could work," Tosh agreed. He and Ralik sent the profiles from their omni-tools to be downloaded by the others.
"Agreed," Siri said with a nod. "Alright team, move out to the bridge. We'll start there. Folner, what do you plan on doing?"
"I'm going with you folks. You can keep a close eye on me that way. Besides. I couldn't let you guys have all the fun."
The captain stood still for a moment, staring at Kevin. After a brief silence between them, Siri flicked her hood-covered head in the direction of the door. "Alright. Move out, then."
"Yes ma'am," Kevin said, almost excited.
They headed towards the bridge, but didn't all go in. The bridge was too small to fit them all. Instead, half stood in the bridge and the other half lined the neck of the ship.
"We're in position, Tosh," Siri called out over the comms.
"Monitoring feeds now. Ready whenever you are, captain," Tosh replied.
"My word will be 'captain'," Siri stated. "Let's keep our words simple and vocally diverse."
"Yes ma'am," everyone but Ralik replied.
Each person chose a simple, single word to repeat throughout the ship. Ralik's was 'Tarsil'. Bela's was 'BOOM!'. Tyr's was 'headshot'. Riik's was 'flotilla'. Arla's was originally 'stupid humans', but revised it to 'sniper' after a glare from her captain. Kar's was, unsurprisingly, 'pilot'. Kevin chose the word 'knife'. Not to take a shot at Arla, but rather because there was nothing he could trust more than his blade. She gave him a glare nonetheless, probably thinking it a reply to her 'stupid humans' choice. Once all that was decided, they began their sweep. They hadn't even hardly begun when Tosh radioed in.
"I'm getting two strong and two weak feeds from where you all are. It seems 'headshot' and 'captain' are the strongest on the strong feeds while 'pilot' and 'knife' are strongest on the weak feeds."
Siri and Tyr were both the furthest into the bridge while Kevin and Kar were halfway down the neck of the ship on the other end of the crowd.
"Tyr and I will search the bridge," the captain announced. "I want the rest of you searching the briefing room."
"Yes ma'am!" everyone acknowledged.
Over the next few minutes, this type of process repeated several times. The bridge was rather small, so Tyr and Siri were able to quickly find the two bugs in the bridge and physically disabled them by overloading the circuits within. Finding the two within the much larger and more open briefing room wasn't as simple a task. Eventually Tosh would radio in that a certain word was coming in stronger than the others, and half the team would divert to that person's side of the room and blanket the bugs with noise. Once a word rose above the noise after that, they were able to get close enough to begin scanning with omni-tools. The bugs didn't last long at that point. Soon the feeds for both the bridge and the briefing room were dead.
After how chaotic it was with everyone shouting their words endlessly, Tosh suggested that they split up and each search separate rooms. Riik and Tyr didn't like that idea, but the captain agreed with Tosh. Getting the bugs out as soon as possible was the current priority. Tosh made it clear to them that they should continue to shout their words, even between rooms. The hallways were probably bugged as well.
"Hey Folner," Bela called out.
"Yes?"
"Race you. The person to get the most disabled bugs wins."
"You're on."
Kevin was looking for any opportunity he could to lessen hostilities. A friendly challenge such as this was good to go along with. He and Bela both raced out the automatic doors while everyone else followed. Their haste wasn't in a race, but rather the need to get things done.
After they split up, their method of searching for the bugs changed slightly. Instead of following whoever was closest, Tosh used a 'hot and cold' system to pinpoint the bugs in each room. This seemed to work much better than the previous method, as each bug took roughly half the time to find compared to before. When all was said and done, there were two in the bridge, two in the briefing room, two in the first deck hallway, one in the mess hall, one in the med bay, one in the entertainment room, one in the short closed off hallway to the master quarters, two in the master quarters, two in the deck two hallway, one in each observation lounge, one in the crew quarters, one in the VI core room, two in engineering, and two in the cargo bay. The whole process took about an hour.
"That's it. All of the feeds are dead," Tosh confirmed.
"Good work, team. Report in back at the VI core room," Siri ordered.
Within the minute, everyone had reassembled back into the VI core room where Tosh was still feverishly slaving away on his omni-tool. Amidst the reentry, Kevin heard Bela calling him out again.
"Folner! How many?"
"I got three. You?"
"Hah! Four! Looks like I win," Bela bragged.
"What do you win?" Kevin asked curiously.
Bela's ego moment fell away quickly into thought. "I'm. . . Not sure. I'll figure that out later."
Kevin couldn't help but crack a smile at her silliness despite the dire situation surrounding them. Once he was able to focus on the issues at hand again, he stepped up next to Tosh.
"Any luck with those black boxes, Tosh?" Kevin asked.
"Yes and no. I've unlocked them and found our shut down problem, but I can't seem to isolate where the order to the VI came from. It seems to be coming from an undisclosed data port. If I can't stop this at the source, we'll just keep having to deal with this over and over."
Kevin simply tapped on Tosh's shoulder. When the quarian tech expert finally looked up from his screens, Kevin pointed to the TERA hardware against the wall with one of his big three fingers.
"Of course!" Tosh exclaimed. "How did I not see it before? The port was undisclosed because the TERA uses application masks to interact with the VI without causing conflictions in the kernel, and-"
"Rolush!" The captain yelled, cutting Tosh short of his in depth analysis. "Can you stop it from there?"
Kevin responded before Tosh could say anything. "There's a manual release to the connection to between the TERA and the VI. Let me trigger it."
"No, wait," Tosh unexpectedly interrupted. "I've been into the TERA before. The system is complex, but the code is easy to understand. I can fix this without crippling the ship."
Kevin looked to Siri for her ultimate decision. Siri nodded her head to Tosh and Kevin ceased his attempts to disconnect the TERA hardware from the VI core.
"I just need to backload a registry flag through the VI into the TERA. . ." Tosh was once again hard at work on his omni-tool screens.
"Aha. Done. All we need to do now is reboot both systems and we should be home free," Tosh stated. "The registry entry I loaded into the TERA's programming should be recognized by the system and will force it to ignore all commands external to the ship."
"Good work, Rolush," Siri said with another nod to Tosh.
"Thank you, captain," Tosh replied as he simultaneously began entering the reboot commands for both systems.
The lights all around the VI core and the life support system all faded to dark and the screens and lights on the TERA and the VI blinked off. Not more than a few seconds later, the screens popped back on and the lights around the room returned to their dim state. The life support system hummed loudly as it worked hard to restore the atmosphere throughout the ship to its proper setting.
"It looks like we're back in business," Ralik declared.
"Let's get back to the bridge," Kevin said. "We'll probably have to reenter the coordinates for the Migrant Fleet. If we hurry, we can get out of here before those Cerberus goons show up."
"Agreed," Siri said. "Everyone back to the briefing room. We're getting out of this mess."
"With all due respect ma'am, I think I'll stay here," Tosh objected. "I've already started work on reverse engineering these black box systems. I think we'll need a viable counter-system in case something like this happens again."
Siri nodded to Tosh on her way out of the room.
Back up in the bridge, Siri, Kevin and Ralik were bringing the systems back up to speed. Like Siri mentioned before everything went down, they were still a ways from the Dholen relay. About an hour, in fact. They reentered their destination and the mass effect drive core started up once more. Satisfied that the ship was once again back under their control, Kevin had the Kellius fire up the thrusters and finish their trip back to the Dholen relay. Meanwhile, they all walked back into the briefing room to further discuss what was to be done.
"I've decided against sending a message to the Migrant Fleet," the captain stated. "I don't want to risk giving away our position after we just back on our way. The Neema will have to deal with us as we arrive."
The quarians all nodded in silent agreement.
"As I ordered before, I want everyone to remain here for the time being. Let's just get home."
"Yes ma'am," the quarians acknowledged.
The next fourty-five minutes of travel through the Dholen system were quiet and uneventful. Conversations were minimal and anything said was done so in whispers. Bela was getting impatient and began slowly pacing around the circular briefing table. It was almost as if they expected that The Illusive Man's form was going to appear over the the holographic projector again. Kevin was sure that wasn't going to happen, though. The Illusive Man likely knew that he had lost control of the ship, and he probably wouldn't bother contacting them unless he had an edge.
Fifteen minutes from the relay, Ralik had taken the pilot's seat and was preparing himself to bring the ship within the appropriate approach vector to use the relay. Just as he was doing that, something was blinking on one of the terminals. He looked over and jumped from the seat when he read what he saw. He ran down the neck of the ship and stood in the doorway between the two rooms. He took his helmet off now that the atmosphere was stable and everyone looked up at him.
"Kevin, we have a problem!" Ralik blurted out with urgency.
"Not again. What's wrong now?" Kevin replied, only slightly picking up on the urgency that crossed Ralik's features.
"Sensors just picked up an approaching frigate. I recognize the profile from an STG mission. It's a Cerberus hunter-seeker!"
"Hunter-seeker?" Kevin asked. "I've never heard of that before."
"Rarely used. Rarely seen. As far as the STG knows, the hunter-seeker frigates are normally used for defensive strategies and lone ship strike ops. Fast, and heavily armed. Kevin, we don't have the gear to win a fight with a hunter-seeker!"
"And with the Kellius no longer under their control. . ." Tyr started.
"They're going to destroy it before it gets away again," Riik finished.
Everyone in the briefing room looked at one another. They needed to come up with something, fast. If they went to FTL, they'd miss the relay. All the hunter-seeker had to do was hang around the relay and they'd be sure to find the Kellius. They couldn't just slip by, they'd have to disable the Cerberus vessel. And from the look on Ralik's face, that wasn't likely to happen. Kevin got up from the seat he was in and ran for the bridge. They needed some fancy maneuvering.
Kevin sat down in the pilot's seat and took the controls. The Cerberus ship was nearly on them, coming from directly ahead of them. His first priority was to get out of the way of their mass accelerator cannon, but there was a rare opportunity. He brought up the kinetic barriers and lined up a shot with their cannon. It was the only weapon they had, and this was likely the only chance he'd have to use it. A firing solution was established and he slammed on the firing button. The burst of a released projectile the size of a golf ball shot out in front of them and headed straight for the closing enemy frigate. The hit on them was near instantaneous, but unfortunately, the hunter-seeker was unaffected. The ship's powerful kinetic barriers deflected the shot away from the ship, and before Kevin knew it, their ship was rocked in a similar fashion. Several terminals were beeping warnings about the sudden massive decrease to kinetic barrier integrity. They were just hit as well, and the shields would not stop another hit.
Kevin employed some basic evasive maneuvers, but doing so on a frigate felt slow and cumbersome. Additionally, the fact that he was running on only six fingers when he was used to ten made it even more difficult. In the end, the only thing he barely dodged was a second mass accelerator shot.
"Kar'Welkas, get up here now!" Kevin shouted back.
"Yes! What is it that you need?" Kar replied.
Kevin sat up from the chair and pointed for Kar to take the helm. "I need a pilot who can perform real evasive maneuvers. Take the helm and get us out of here if you can!"
Kar looked back towards his captain, but didn't hesitate to take the seat. Kevin was right. They'd need his skills right about now. He cracked his knuckles and started punching in all sorts of commands on the helmsman's terminal. Suddenly the Kellius was moving more like a frigate should, and less like a frigate trying to be a fighter class. Welkas dodged another mass accelerator shot with ease, and it was the last one that the enemy ship could fire before they were too close for firing solutions.
Kar's maneuvering was smooth and unpredictable, but that would only go so far. Once the enemy ship closed in enough, the Kellius was soon getting mercilessly pounded by a powerful GARDIAN laser grid – an offensive and defensive means that the Kellius lacked entirely. Because the lasers had no mass, they weren't being stopped by the Kellius' remaining kinetic barriers. They now relied on a limited amount of ablative armor in the hull, and Kevin wasn't sure just how much of that they had. Each time they were nailed with another hit, the ship rocked violently as the ablative armor they had absorbed and dispelled as much of the damage as possible.
"We're screwed if we keep this up," Kevin said with a shake of his head.
"We need ideas!" Siri called out. "If we don't find a way to stop these attacks, we're not even going to reach that relay!"
"Captain, I have an idea," Tyr said.
"I've been liking your ideas lately, Garloh. What do you have for us?"
"Their main objective was to bring the ship in, right? If we keep fighting, they won't get that opportunity. Rolush!" Tyr called over the comms. The conversation was temporarily delayed as the ship shook from another GARDIAN assault.
"Tosh here. What's going on out there?"
"Cerberus found us. I know you were reverse engineering that ship control software. I need you to fake a system failure, right now."
"I've only just compiled an alpha version, but I should be able to do that through the TERA. Give me a minute." Again the ship jolted, causing everyone to lose their footing.
"We don't have a minute, Rolush!" Siri pointed out.
"Acknowledged. Standby."
Suddenly, the ship started to fall into the same powered down state that it was in not more than two hours ago. Thursters went out, the drive went offline, the lights dimmed to the point hardly emitting any light at all and the consoles that Kar was mashing on disappeared. The ship was still slowing down, so Kevin figured that Tosh had understood what Tyr was going for when he made the request. He was making it easier for Cerberus to board.
"Let's make the scene a little more engrossing, yes?" Tosh said.
The dim lights in the ship began to flicker wildly, as if the ship had taken some serious damage. Haptic adaptive interfaces flickered on and off randomly as well. To top it off, the air began to fog up, as though the life support systems were malfunctioning. The ploy seemed to work, as the Cerberus vessel was no longer raining laser-based death upon them.
"Very nice atmospheric change, Rolush," Kevin admitted.
"Captain, we're going to have to pull of that counter-pirate plan you came up with a few months ago," Tyr mentioned.
"I figured that was what you were going for, Garloh. It's our best chance," Siri said.
"Counter-Pirate plan?" Kevin asked.
"The idea was born from the need to deal with boarding pirates," Bela informed. "It might work here as well."
Siri elaborated. "We fake a catastrophic system failure on our ship. When the pirates go to board, we ambush them and backfill into their own ship. We take their gear and detonate a bomb inside their vessel if it's something we can't bring back to the flotilla."
"That's a great plan and all, but if these are Cerberus agents, I highly doubt they will be as easily fooled or as averagely equipped as pirates," Kevin pointed out.
"I agree," Tyr said. "We'll need to mix things up a little. A straight forward firefight will not be in our best interest."
"If someone were to lure the majority of their forces into the engineering room, I could take care of the ambush part," Kevin suggested.
"No way. That's like signing our death warrant," Riik argued. "You link up with them and come at us while we're unsuspecting."
"Haven't I already told you guys that I'm not interested in joining Cerberus? You need to trust me, at least with this. I take out as many as I can out in engineering while you guys cut off escape and backfill into their frigate."
"This doesn't sound like the best idea to me," Arla mentioned.
"I can at least show how the skills of a contract killer can at times be beneficial," Kevin stated, directed at Arla.
"Let him do it," Siri ordered.
Everyone paused and looked at the captain. After a moment of silence, they agreed.
"Yes ma'am."
"I don't trust you, Kevin, but I trust my captain's judgment. If you even try to betray us, I'll make you regret it," Arla threatened.
"Just watch me work, Tavval. You might learn something."
Arla gave a familiar short and angsty sigh at his remark, but argued it no further for her captain's sake.
"Ralik, you are the only recognizable figure on this ship," Tyr said. "I hate to say this, but you will have to be our bait to lure the operatives down to engineering. It may not be your thing, but at least try to act scared."
Ralik sighed. "If I must. You know, Kevin, this is twice now I've been stuck picking up your slack."
"Shut it, Ralik, and start practicing your 'I just pissed my pants' face," Kevin snapped.
"Captain, I hope you have a plan. They are preparing to board," Tosh announced.
"Tosh, we're going with a modified Counter-Pirate plan," the captain said. "It's very likely that they will be technologically superior, so I'm going to need you to start working on their firewalls and communications the minute they board. Once we cut them off, try and stop them from leaving. Maybe make use of that alpha software you just concocted."
"Understood captain. Radio silence?"
"Yes. They might monitor once they get aboard. Hear that everyone? Radio silence. Alright, get to your positions. It's about to get heavy in here."
Everyone nodded and quickly separated. Kevin made a sprint for the master quarters. His knife was in there, and he was going to need it. He wrapped a belt around his waist for the sole purpose of giving the knife sheath something to attach to. Without a minute to lose, he made a break for the engineering room where he'd wait for the Cerberus operatives. The room was extremely foggy, but not so much that he couldn't see once his eyes adjusted to the dark. There he sat and waited. Time to play the assassin once more.