AS THE GRAVITY CUT OUT, a quick shout pulled her Knights back and their armors' onboard computers activated magnetic fields in their boots keeping most to the floor. Some of her Knights were already in the air but adapted quickly. Their enemies flailed but many of them righted themselves with admirable alacrity. The Captain saw the two who had escaped her and was about to call for a chase. Then the howling began and atmosphere vented with a sudden hurricane ferocity that pulled everyone pell-mell through the air with a sickening speed. One of her Knights flashed by only to be broken against a wall then sucked back into the maelstrom a broken toy. She lost several more as they careened off bulkheads or were smashed against walls. Then she was hurtling through a gaping black hole and felt a sharp blow to the head and tumbled into unconsciousness.
THE FAR TRAVELLER sounded a proximity alert and there was brief consternation onboard until the object approaching the ship was scanned and shown to be nothing more than a small silver orb no bigger than a fist. All it did was request an open communication channel, to which Javik agreed.
"Heading to a rendezvous? I should warn you that if you seek an airlock at the top of the spire, you seek in vain."
"Who are you?" Javik demanded, suspicions fully aroused, although that never took much in the way of prompting.
"The master of this station," the voice replied evenly, "and your situation."
"That's easy to say," Mulholland chimed in behind the Prothean.
"If you scan behind you, you will see a rather large amount of atmosphere currently venting from the ring." A quick scan confirmed it, as well as bodies tumbling in its wake. "I did that."
Murtock came rushing forward to yell angrily over Javik's shoulder.
"If you hurt…!"
"Your crewmembers are fine." The voice sounded bored. "Staying that way depends on you."
Grunt dragged Murtock back and flung him at a chair.
"You're not helping," Grunt snapped at him. "Help or shut up." Murtock bounced right back up with a snarl on his face, anger making him bolder than it might otherwise.
"As long as Jack is still on that station, I'll say whatever the fuck I like!"
"Try it unconscious," Grunt thrust a fist as big as Murtock's head at him and glared over it. "You don't give her much credit, do you?"
"I give her all she deserves!"
Grunt just gave the man a contemptuous snort and pointed.
"Just stay there."
"'A way out is a way in', said the sage. I know of several. Interested?"
"What does this knowledge cost?" Javik wished he had weapons to lock onto that sphere. His board showed his engines only minutes from completion and full functioning. Weapons were an hour or more away.
"Almost nothing, although you won't believe it. Almost nothing at all."
"You are correct. I do not believe you."
"But you can. Listen, I'll bring you an advocate."
"Javik." Shepard's voice. "That you?"
"Indeed, Commandah. Are you speaking for this…?"
"Benefactor?" Wry and skeptical Shepard's reply. "For the moment, he is as he says. As for vouching for him…"
"I have currency for this exchange." the 'master' of the station broke in. "A gantry near your companions. My rules. Their escape." A pause and a dry crackle over the line. "Your choice."
"Commandah?"
"You heard him, Javik. Your choice."
Javik eyed his companions for a moment. All but the human male – Murtock – were calm and waiting.
"Send me the coordinates of this gantry."
THE CAPTAIN AWOKE to the even voice of one of her Knights taking a roll call. She felt a tightness all over her body and realized that her shell had closed all of its seals.
"Report," she commanded.
"We have been ejected from the Pivot, Captain." A Knight informed her. "Our current strength is at twenty-one. We are approximately 0.902 keimetros from our exit vector."
"Our strength is never in numbers but are as the Hands of the Beloved." She intoned, the Knights dutifully repeating the mantra.
"Communication linkages not functioning. Our vessel may be out of range or being purposefully blocked." A Knight informed her. "A resourceful enemy."
"Any cornered animalmay find fortune in its desperation." The Captain took her bearings. They had not been flung far from the Pivot. Inquisitoria were designed to fight the Enemies of the Faith anywhere. It did no good to be deemed 'unstoppable' just to be halted by something as mundane as being ejected into space. Their armor was designed to defeat any extreme, be it weather, sea or cosmos.
"Overlap armor scans. What moves?" Her Knights formed a circle around her and used each other's armor to boost their scan ranges.
"Vessel moving toward the Pivot. One hundred fifty keimetros," a Knight to her left informed her. "Its power output seems minimal." A moment after he reported, "The vessel is changing course."
"Form on me. Rig for negative gravity. We are returning to the Pivot."
A short command to her onboard computer and small gas-emitting nozzles folded out from a plate on the outside of either leg. Another command and she and her Knights were jetting in an ordered line back the way they had come.
IN THE KEEPER TUNNEL Jack and Shepard warily followed Vnkar's drone. It led them on a winding course, full of climbs, turns and doublebacks.
"How long were you watching us?" Jack asked of the drone.
"Long enough." The reply was laconic, the answers given as if the speaker anticipated the questions, as if they were obvious.
"Long enough," she echoed. "Why help now?"
"It suited me."
"Right outta the kindness of your heart, no doubt."
"Amusing. Of course not. I want something. You have the means, I have the means. My means meet yours and yours serve my ends. So it goes."
"Your means are control of this station?" Shepard watched the drone as it floated along. It didn't bob or hesitate. It stopped at a junction and they stepped through to see a long narrow tunnel, dimly lit that went up and disappeared into gloom above. The wall had been crudely and deeply notched, makeshift hand and foot holds. The pair began to climb, the drone always just above them.
"Control. Knowledge. Insight. The prerequisites."
"You'll trade this knowledge for…?"
"Passage off this vershet station to begin."
"Where do you think to go?" Shepard asked of him.
"I should care? You obviously don't come from somewhere with knowledge of either this station or those bastards. So either you're from a non-contacted pocket space or you're from that Galaxy over there. Either will suit me."
The pair exited the shaft to climb out upon a series of narrow ledges, these connected with actual ladders. The drone led the way.
"You're makin' a lot of assumptions." Jack was reasonably sure she didn't like this guy, whoever he turned out to be.
"You're following me, so to speak. What's that say about you?"
At the top of the ledges a door sliced open and orange light poured through it.
"You can think what you like," Jack growled at him. "This guy's full of shit, Shepard."
"I saved your lives," Vnkar countered. "We all get the truth when it's necessary."
"Spare me." Jack shot back. "You're so full of crap. You sound like a damn volus tryin' to sell somethin'."
"I trust her instincts." Shepard informed him. They reached the door and the drone entered without slowing and after a moment they followed it through.
"So you should. Yet, the simple fact remains that none of us have gone anywhere yet. Fact - you owe me and I want what I want and only you can give it to me."
They stepped into what on their Citadel was filled with the trees and open plaza of the Council Chambers but here was a large empty space. It took Shepard a moment to recognize the turian standing at the control centre, a near-palpable sense of deja vu washing over him, for a moment seeing Saren standing there and glaring. The turian turned to them and Jack encased him in a biotic field. Shepard bound forward and had a gun to his head before he'd finished that turn. The drone took up a station behind them but did nothing.
"Airk Vnkar, as I said. In the flesh." The turian said, voice cool and even, apparently taking no notice of the gun against his skull or the crackling blue field holding him fast. His face was bare save for a single red line that bisected his features, his armor turian, but a few generations older.
"You can't fault us, of course." Shepard told him, looking over the controls. Unfortunately the interface didn't have a system setup he readily recognized.
"Not at all. Would have been disappointed, actually."
"You gonna tell us you're our friend next and only want to help us help you help us?" Jack's voice held nothing but scorn.
"I wouldn't insult your intelligence with something that amateurish. I'll make an offering." He glanced at the gun at his temple. "Do you mind?"
Shepard shook his head. The field did not abate.
"Over there, in that black bag. Things to conjure with, charms and incantations against evil." He sniffed. "Sincerity with triggers."
Shepard glanced back at Jack who simply shrugged and tightened her field. Shepard retrieved the bag and cautiously opened it. Inside were guns. Inquisitoria weapons. He skidded the bag to Jack's feet after pulling a rifle and pistol from it. Jack found a gun that resembled a shotgun and two pistols.
"That's a good choice," Vnkar told her. "It's a burst weapon. Can punch through armor at a goodly distance. You'll like it. You can toss your others. They're useless against the Inquisitoria. Their own weapons work on them just fine, however. Help yourself."
The guns looked similar to models they knew, Shepard's rifle resembled an old Lancer, but sleeker, rimmed with chrome. The pistols looked like Carnifexes, likewise more compact. All had bullet-shaped tubes ringing the rear of the weapons. Shepard assumed they were the power cells. They dropped their old weapons in the bag. He waved Vnkar away from the Citadel interface and Jack pulled the turian away from it. Shepard pointed his new pistol at the former 'master of the station'.
"I'm no enemy of yours," Vnkar tried again.
"Easy to say now that you're not in control anymore." Jack muttered, clipping her pistols to her belt.
"I just saved you from the Inquisitoria," Vnkar told her. "Hesitation is not a quality they possess. Mercy is an alien concept to them. They deserved none."
"So you emulate them?" Shepard noted, studying the control layout. He also noted Vnkar's rather grisly means of activating it and swept the desiccated appendage to the floor then tapped a small control near the edge of the projection interface. It dimmed and came back. So far, that was similar. "There were more than Inquisitoria down there."
"I like the irony," Vnkar told him, voice toneless.
"You've obviously encountered them before," Jack noted.
"It'll be inevitable for everyone," he replied.
"You know where they're from?" Shepard asked, still studying the control interface.
"Yes. I know. That knowledge however…" his mandibles vibrated. "…is used sparingly."
"I don't want it."
"You will. Eventually. Inevitably."
"You think it's worth something?"
"Most definitely."
"What?" Shepard glanced at Jack who just minutely shook her head.
"My freedom."
"You had that."
"Not here. Out there."
"Freedom for…?"
"The necessary, the atrocious, the… inevitable. You can't stop the tide but you can move to higher ground."
"Pithy." Shepard locked eyes with Vnkar who looked back unflinching.
"What you face is beyond what you know," Vnkar stated. His eyes were steady, his voice cold and challenging. He cocked his head with a sudden thought. "Or is it?"
"That knowledge is used sparingly," Shepard echoed Vnkar and matched the tone. "What I don't know now I'll know eventually." He nodded at Jack and made a decision. "That you can count on."
"Shepard…?" Jack began, unsure of what he was saying.
"What do you trust more? Your instincts or him?" Vnkar stared at her through her field. "Decide."
Jack glared at Shepard for a moment then relented with a sharp nod and Vnkar was released from her biotic vise.
"Whatever," Jack said, not remotely pleased.
"You know how to use this, obviously." Shepard indicated the control panel. "Our cooperation buys your freedom."
Vnkar nodded.
"Naturally, you have …conditions."
"Blow all the gantries on the nearest arm to us. The one we were on."
Vnkar blinked at him, then shrugged a turian shrug.
"I'll have to simulate an emergency to blow all the explosive decoupler systems," Vnkar nodded to himself. "It'll create a lot of debris…"
"Naturally." Shepard stepped down from the control console and waved the turian back up. Vnkar walked calmly, hands visible. He knew the game.
"Standard warnings apply," Shepard added, walking past him and stepping closer to that angry lady with his back to her, not taking his eyes from Vnkar. Shielded by his broad form, Jack stepped forward and pressed herself against him. Not angry at him, just the situation. She lightly head-butted him between the shoulder blades and then stepped away.
"I keep my word." Vnkar swiped his finger-tool across the controls. All along the length of the Citadel arm, massive bolts silently exploded as internal pressures that held them in place were suddenly released. Gantries and the ships they held were violently expelled from the docking areas, many careening into one another to crumple into debris, some exploding harmlessly against the station, some crashing and detonating into each other as they spun free. Vnkar projected a screen above them and they watched the ships flung about, the turian seemingly enjoying the spectacle. "Mayhem I'm familiar with, chaos I know so well," he muttered to himself. The drone behind him suddenly chirped. Vnkar snapped around to glare at it then spun back to the panel. "Ah. Not so good."
"What is it now?" Shepard's gun was pointing in his direction but not at him.
"I have three drones. One I sent after you, one after your ship and one to the ring – to look for survivors."
"It found something?"
"Yes." Vnkar brought up another screen. On it, the heavy red armored figures of the Inquisitoria were stepping back onto the station. "That inevitability I mentioned."
THE INQUISITORIA immediately fanned out, making a systematic search. The breach they made to enter was quickly resealed. Any injured they shot, enemy and comrade alike. One dying foe, as an Inquisitor approached to finish her off, suddenly rose and struck him with a 'sticky' grenade before using her last energy to kick the red-armored Knight back into two comrades. Now down to eighteen, the Captain ordered her Knights to keep their kills at a distance. Something had shaken her, she knew. She was making too many mistakes, too many cadet-like misjudgments. She could not put a finger on just what had rattled her usual impervious self-control. She would conquer it.
"Captain. Update on our vessel. The Red Hand reports its position is currently 117.59 keimetros. It is heavily damaged but functional."
So. Her long-range internal comms were damaged or she would have received that report from the ship herself. A quick check of her armor's damage assessment agreed. It also reported several non-repairable malfunctions in her helmet rebreather assembly and combat scan analysis suites. Though it was not often done, the Captain reached up and tore her faceplate from her head with a savage precision. Piercing silver eyes stabbed around the Presidium. Dark pencil-thin eyebrows, sharp cheekbones and a chin like a knifepoint rounded out a thin-lipped face. Her skin was pallid from lack of sunlight with a ghostly smattering of barely-there freckles dusting her straight nose. Embedded in that pallid flesh were hair-thin sensors and armor linkages. Her voice was as flat and cold as before, somehow made moreso without the faceplate's filtering effect.
"Initiate automatic repair routines. Engage Tightbeam recall."
"Tightbeam recall non-functional. ARR initiated. The ship reports intermittent comm functionality. Combat analysis reports a vessel on approach to this location."
"Can it engage?" A moment passed.
"Affirmative. Limited attack capability. It reports only Seeker ordinance available at present."
"Sufficient. Deploy and attack."
"It is done."
"Someone on this Pivot believes they are beyond our reach, free of our wrath." She pointed to eight Knights. "Search the area and eliminate all survivors. Use care." The troop dispersed.
From somewhere to their right another grenade unexpectedly rolled into their midst and only one Knight had been too slow to avoid it. He'd shoved the Captain away as it exploded and the grenade tore the armor off his back and smashed him to the floor. Return fire silenced whoever had thrown it. Her Knight was still alive when the Captain made her way to him, his faceplate cracked. She could see one dark eye squinting against the pain, but he did not cry out or moan. His armor sparked but she walked to him unafraid.
"The Beloved saw your deed," she told him. The Knight nodded with some difficulty and his head then sagged and did not rise again. She pulled the faceplate free and detached his suit interface. It was not Command grade, but it would serve. Grafted into her own suit, the repurposed interface fed her telemetry from the Red Hand that appeared in the HUD overlay on her pupils. She walked away from her dead comrade just as his armor detonated. Something soft struck her in the back but she paid it no heed.
She indicated the rest of her Knights.
"We will serve as a second wave and complete our task of emptying this Pivot."
"Acknowledged."
The Captain, after a moment of black silence, intoned, "Knights. We must serve the Beloved as the Silent Dead. The Hand in the Shadows. To this we have come."
The Knights looked at one another at that pronouncement. To be as the Silent Dead was to be forever barred returning home. To be Lost was preferable to being Condemned to Failure. The Lost were always still out there somewhere beyond, still fighting for the Beloved.
"Yet we Serve and Serve we shall." In unison all Knights acknowledged.
Satisfied, she led them deeper into the station.
JAVIK KEPT AN EYE on the scanners and no one was surprised when the many gantries on the station silently blew.
"Interesting ploy," Mulholland said. "I was wondering why he wanted to know."
"Buys 'em time, anyway," Grunt agreed. "How're the engines?"
Javik checked his board.
"Mere minutes yet. We are almost there."
"So…" came over the comm. "How are you for accelerating your progress? We have the Inquisitoria back on the station and heading our way." Vnkar didn't sound particularly anxious.
"It will not be long," Javik told him. Shepard broke in.
"They've left a welcoming committee at their entry point. We're redirecting you to what appears to be a maintenance hatch on the side of the spire. Relying the coordinates now."
"Understood, Commandah." He altered their course slightly. A chime sounded from Javik's console, diverting his attention.
"My sensors have detected a vessel behind us. It is not moving very quickly." He activated a screen. "There it is."
"The Inquisitoria's ship."
"Well, that's just fuckin' great," Murtock griped.
"It's zig-zaggin'," Grunt commented. "Lookin' for something?"
"It might have been damaged," Javik told them. "There is little we can do at the moment."
Under it, something suddenly flared a bright blue. Javik fine-tuned his sensors and zoomed in.
"It has just launched something - assume a weapon."
"Going faster still not a choice?" Murtock swore luridly to the shake of Javik's head.
"Two minutes."
"Any damn contingencies, maybe? Or just more fuckin' numbers?"
"Yes," Javik eyed him with some pity at the human's cowardice. "There are escape pods aft. Feel free to abandon ship."
The proximity alarm punched the air with a suddenness that startled everyone.
"Intercept in four seconds!" the computer told them – and almost instantly after the Traveller was punched hard and rolled over. From somewhere behind them came a loud crack and the ship shuddered.
"Stabilizers are out! Hold on to something!" Javik yelled, furiously hammering at his controls. "My main fusion plant has been crushed! ME core is suffering a looping cascade breach! We have less than forty seconds to a catastrophic overload and detonation!" Again the computer hooted an alarm and five seconds later the Traveller reeled and began to burn. Abruptly those escape pods looked like a smart idea.
"All of you – abandon ship!" Javik called, his computer listing the many, many components of his ship damaged or outright destroyed. Moments away from escape to almost complete disaster. Just another day in the life of the Last Prothean. Javik sighed and locked the controls then followed his scrambling 'crew'. Grunt and Murtock went in one, Javik and Mulholland the other.
Moments later they were ejecting toward the Citadel.
Behind them the Far Traveller vanished in a great clap of silent thunder.
"Nice contingency," Murtock fumed in the pod. "This went to shit in record time."
"He's right there," Grunt surprisingly agreed. "Not our best."
"Were my ship not previously damaged, none of this would have happened," Javik complained, hoping those missiles out there would ignore the pods – or not see them. Sensors on the pod reported no locks – yet.
"These things steerable?" Murtock followed up. "Or didja forget that little innovation too?"
"They are preprogrammed to go to the nearest inhabitable object."
"So… no, then."
There were a few silent seconds from the other pod.
"No."
"Figures!" Murtock spat. "That's just fu-!"
The pods hit the station.
"SON. OF. A. BITCH!"
On the screen before them, the Far Traveller vanished in an eye-searing ball of blue light.
"Yeah… that was unexpected." Vnkar shrugged into Jack's glare. "Well, you've done the unprecedented at least. You've survived the mighty Inquisitoria." His voice held nothing but contempt for the word, some of his confidence from earlier deflating.
"Are you fuckin' kidding me?" Jack's ire propelled her directly into the turian's face. One biotically-flared fist came within a centimetre of his nose. Vnkar seemed neither intimidated nor impressed.
"'Calm' is not a quality you've cultivated, is it? I should have known. You don't take chances with those red bastards. You kill them and keep killing them. That's all." Vnkar turned and called up an interior scan of the spire, ignoring Jack's hiss of rage. He was doing everything he could to not join her in blind fury. "The deed is done, the past is gone, sayeth the Prophet." Vnkar chuckled dryly, like small bones in a wooden cup. "They seem to have the upper hand again. Is it too much to ask for competent help every few years?"
"Some of that blame is squarely on you. Like a man once said, nothing is over until it's over," Shepard said, a calming hand on Jack's slim shoulder. Her fist came down but the murder in her glare remained.
"How pastoral. Tell that to the billions upon billions they've butchered and the billions more they've enslaved." Vnkar went still for a moment. "Their inevitability is carved on a trillion grave markers." He thrust a finger at the control console. "I'm out of options that don't take us with them!"
"You give up too easy," Shepard told him as he stepped back up to the control console. "Scan for escape pods."
Vnkar grumbled as he ran the requested scan, then changed his tune. "Guess it's not a waste of time. Two breaches into one of the large empty chambers of the arm, just above this landing bay. All of the arms have them interspersed along their lengths. A lot of infrastructure runs through them, air, water, coolants, power feeds, that sort of thing." He pointed at the screen. Beneath two green blips signifying the pods, several blue ones were almost directly below. Other blue dots were heading away toward others, some yellow, some red. "Those are Inquisitoria."
"What are those?" Jack inquired, pointing to the yellows and reds. Even as she did, they started to flick out.
"Don't know. Likely non-Inquisitor survivors of my stunt. They won't last long." Vnkar called up a different map of the arm the survivors occupied. Gold icons lit up along it. "These are all the ships left on this arm. From what I can determine, this place has been visited for a very long time. Why they leave their ships behind, I have no idea." He pointed to a row of sensor hits in particular, halfway down the arm. "These are all functional – more or less. I can't guarantee their condition. Decay rates on some are approaching six figures."
"Any slightly more recent?" Shepard eyed the location, knowing it was likely their last chance. Vnkar pointed to five nearest them.
"Those. The oldest matches the one your friend just vacated. I'm sending the coordinates to this drone. Take it with you when you go. I'm out one, so be careful with it. Your friends can be reached in relative safety by going this way." He projected a map with a glowing line on it. "Once you have them it'll lead you to those ships." The drone bobbed over to hover beside Shepard.
"And where are you thinking of being?"
"Oh, I'll get there before you will." Vnkar turned back to the console. "But we can't have the Inquisitors bothering us the whole way, now can we?" He glanced back. "Any time's a good time." When Shepard seemed to hesitate, Vnkar just shook his head. "You either have instincts or you don't." Shepard snorted and turned with Jack on his heels.
"Try not to destroy the whole station getting there," Shepard admonished as they left. Vnkar's mandibles jittered as they disappeared.
"Not the whole station, no," he muttered to himself.