Guilty Sparks

by General Rage

Fleeing from the glassing of Reach in the belly of the Pillar of the Autumn, the crew of the SR-2 Normandy find themselves stranded with their UNSC allies on a strange Forerunner constructed ring world called Halo with the Covenant hunting them. But Halo holds a secret, one deadlier than both the Covenant and Reapers combined... and it's hungry.

10. Bad Medicine

Chapter 9: Bad Medicine

July 30th, 2185

Vik's shuttle was, and this was putting it mildly, out of place in the pristine design of The Lucen's hanger deck. The ship was a CT-68 Kilixen Runabout Shuttle, a really old, oversized shuttle built for a small family to go on camping trips. It had been popular for awhile, but was quickly replaced with sleeker, less ugly models that had better mileage. The CT-68 had been retired and wasn't even seen as a collector's piece even if it was pristine.

Vik's shuttle has no doubt seen better days, although when those days were was anyone's guess at this point. It was dirty, scratched, dented and possessed a slowly cracking paint job. That wasn't even mentioning the scorch marks on the nose and engine thrusters. How the quarian was keeping this thing running, Liara couldn't tell. All she could see was the spray painted word on the nose of the shuttle, "Truth." He had named his shuttle, "Truth." For some reason she wasn't all that surprised.

The ugly hunk of metal that served as a spacecraft had first floated into the hanger sputtering from its engine as it landed. Vik said he would sleep in it, like he did most of the time when he was on his own. The deckhands tried to get it to stay in one of the hanger docking clamps where the shuttles were supposed to stay in, but the "Truth" was far too big. It would have to remain on the floor, pushed off to the side against a wall. Liara appreciated that she wouldn't have to bother getting the quarian a room, but the shuttle was still an eyesore.

It was bulky, its cockpit was bloated, the engine was loud, even when it wasn't gasping for life whenever Vik turned it on or off, and in general its design was just ugly. The giant nose of the craft, coupled with the extra width and those decorative little wings on top that served to offer extra stability to the ship all just screamed excessive. It no doubt served as a decent home away from home, but couldn't they have tried to make it look less like an oversized stuffed bird that still thought it could fly?

While the ship was an unpleasant looking thing, her owner was desperately trying not to seem a nuisance. He asked if Liara needed an extra engineer or tech analyst. Those were all fine and good suggestions for him to help out with, of course, but they weren't important right now. She told him she just needed him working on those files of his. She needed him to find what the Swords and the Covenant were so desperate to kill him over.

He got to work pretty quickly, closing himself off inside his ship as he looked through his files and did whatever else he was doing in there. Liara had no cameras on board Vik's shuttle and she didn't intend to impede on his privacy. And knowing his paranoia he probably spent his first hour aboard the ship looking for any bugs in his shuttle anyway. It would've been a pointless exercise if she tried. Besides, she wanted him to trust her. That was going to be crucial if they were going to be shipmates.

She gave him a day to settle in before going down to see him proper. She figured he'd need the time to work and it had been a long day, being chased by assassins and all. She knocked on the shuttle's hatch a few times and it opened with a loud groaning hiss, Vik pushing it open as he did.

"I'm going to have to lubricate that again." He said sounding annoyed as he looked at the door's mechanism. He then turned back to Liara "Hey, Doctor T'Soni. I've been expecting you."

Inviting her inside the shuttle, Liara found herself in a similar situation to Vik's apartment. The inside was a mess of papers and data pads and the entire wall in front of her was loaded with pictures and that familiar board resided in the middle of them. He wasn't joking about needing that board before. It seemed to be the centerpiece to his whole paranoid delusion... whatever that delusion was exactly.

Off to the left side was a little kitchen in the corner with a small fridge, cupboard and a sink. Also a food filtration device on the counter top, used to decontaminate food of potential pesticides and toxins. There was also a tiny little stove beside the sink. Beyond that kitchen was a bedroom, or what passed for one. It was a bunk bed in the back corner. She could barely see it through the open sliding door. Its mechanism was obviously broken.

To the left of that, along a wall, was a small closet and shelf packed with paperback books of various titles. A lot of them were underground or counter-culture, almost all had titles about various conspiracies. "Dirty Deeds on Noveria: What They Don't Want You to Know!" and "Hierarchy Black Ops: False Flags, Assassinations, Coups and More!" were two examples.

The right side led to a cockpit, as well as a small desk with a rather decently comfortable looking chair, a terminal on top of the desk and a holoscreen embedded into the wall right over it. Vik probably used it to watch movies or holovision when he wasn't busy working.

"I know it doesn't look all that impressive, but its home." Vik spoke up humbly. "And it gets me from Starport A to Starport B... with relatively decent gas mileage."

"How exactly do you keep this thing running?" She asked, honestly wishing to know.

"My people have been flying ships that are over three hundred years old by now." Vik explained. "I can handle a close to thirty year old junker. It comes with the territory. Getting replacement parts, fuel and such isn't always so easy, however. I have to take an odd job or two now and again just to make due."

"That can't be easy given the status of quarians in the galaxy." Liara observed.

Vik just nodded as he picked up one of his papers and moved over to his board to place it within his web of conspiracies.

"I get terminated with barely minimum wage a lot, yeah." Vik admitted. "Mind you, a lot of folks are happy to have me on the job, but just as many people see me and other quarians as temporary solutions. They don't like giving us too much money because they hate the idea of us sending it back to the fleet. The old 'minorities ruin economies' thing people use to justify discrimination is still alive and well. I'd stay away from the Terminus as it's worse than Citadel Space, but there are more job offerings open and most people here can't be as picky."

Vik finally put the paper somewhere on the board. Liara gave it a quick read and saw that it was an article on suppression of some political protests on a Turian colony. The headline read 'Workers Strike gets heated on Gothis!' Vik had drawn lines to a number of similar Hierarchy police actions, as well as a story about a steadily increasing military budget.

"A holoscreen would probably make organizing this project of yours easier." Liara told him rather bluntly. "It certainly wouldn't be as messy."

"Yeah, but I need it to be like this." Vik explained scratching the back of his neck, slightly uneasy as he spoke. "It's, uh, well I gotta feel the evidence, I guess. I need to touch it and see the strands that connect it all. You don't get that with a holoscreen, doesn't feel right."

Liara perched a curious eyebrow at his explanation.

"That sounds a bit obsessive compulsive, if you don't mind me saying." Liara told him, sounding troubled by it all.

Vik could only shrug at the comment, seemingly unoffended.

"I don't pretend it makes sense to others." Vik admitted plainly. "It just makes sense to me and that's what counts in the end."

"I suppose we are all entitled to our quirks." Liara replied back, trying to sound accepting. "It makes us unique."

She turned her head, spotting something in the corner of her eye. It was another pill bottle, like in the apartment. This one was full, however. The cap was still off the top though. Liara picked it up along with the cap and closed it.

"What exactly do these do?" She asked Vik with a concerned look.

Vik turned back to Liara from his board, his shoulders slumping.

"They're special suppressant agents." He explained hesitantly. "They reduce mental susceptibility to panic attacks, flashes, spasms, severe headaches and other things. The pills are supposed to keep me calm and my mind from wandering too much."

"So why'd you stop taking them for so long?" Liara asked him once more.

Vik took a moment to answer, timidly rubbing his hands together.

"It's complicated," he tried to explain, his two slender fingers scratching at his suit. "They make it hard to think straight, I can't focus as much on my work, they dull me. I usually take the required dosage every now and again, but I haven't been doing it as much lately. You need to think, keep sharp, especially on Omega. You can't be dulled or you're dead."

After what had happened down there she couldn't exactly argue with his point. She had seen the side effects of him not taking the medication though. He froze up and broke down, his fear overtaking him. It must've taken all his strength not to run again when that final charge came rushing at them. Vik seemed a lot more at ease now though, which meant he was on the pills again.

"If you don't like them so much, why'd you change your mind?" She asked him.

"I figured it would be more professional if I wasn't jabbering like an idiot." Vik explained. "I haven't had a captain in awhile, but I remember I'm supposed to show respect to him or her. That means proper conduct."

Liara smirked a little.

"And here I thought you had problems with authority." She observed.

"Just corrupt authority." Vik clarified. "There may be only ten percent of people in power who aren't bosh'tets, but they do exist, however rare they are."

With any luck, Vik saw her as that ten percent. Regardless, precautions would be needed.

"Well, if you're serving on this ship you'll need to keep taking those pills of yours," Liara told him with a stern look. "I want you to take at least enough of a dose to allow you to think freely without going off the rails while we're in the field. Understood?"

"You saved my life and gave me a place to stay, plus you're also a doctor so I'm not in any position to say no," Vik replied before giving a salute. "I promise to keep up with my prescription, ma'am."

With that, Liara put down the pill bottle and moved on to her next topic.

"Now that is clear, there's still one other matter," she said as she crossed her arms. "Why aren't you with the Flotilla?"

It took a bit longer for him to answer that one. He walked to his work area and sat down at the terminal. Liara walked up alongside him, still waiting for an answer as she leaned back against the shuttle's wall.

"I'm not on Pilgrimage," he admitted, looking rather sullen. "But I'm not an exile. I just... left."

Liara raised an eyebrow.

"You can do that?" She asked.

"Every quarian is free to stay or go if they want." He explained. "It's just more advisable you stay. Strength in numbers, family, all that. But, I couldn't stay. It wasn't safe."

"For you?" Liara pressed further.

"For everyone." Vik clarified, still sounding gloomy. "I was putting people at risk just by being around them, so I left. I got into some..."

He paused there, seemingly unsure of what to say next. He started bobbing his head up and down. His breathing became more erratic, but only for a moment. As soon as he settled himself, he continued.

"My Pilgrimage didn't go so well and I got into some trouble. I saw some bad things, learned a lot of harsh truths about how the galaxy works," he said, doing his best to just get the words out. "I was afraid that was going to catch up to my family and the Flotilla, so I ran. And I've been doing that for... three years now."

Three years on his own? And he had been living out of this crappy shuttle the whole time? It was certainly not unheard of for quarians to squeak by off of charity and the goodwill of others, and a lot of pilgrimages took years from how Tali told it. But Vik had put himself into self-imposed exile because he was afraid someone was trying to hurt him. Whether it was true or another delusion, Liara didn't want to pry too much on that point.

"What about your family?" She asked him. "Do they know where you are?"

The quarian shook his head sadly.

"Last time I saw or talked to my dad was three years ago," Vik answered, his voice pained with regret. "We were on good terms then, I bet he hates me now. Or he thinks I'm dead. I have a cousin, too. Dad and my uncle were born during a population decline, so an extra quarian mouth to feed was welcome. I'm probably one of a few quarians who are lucky enough to even have a cousin. She's pretty much the closest thing to a sister I have. Or had. At this point she probably hopes she never sees me again."

"Why's that?" Liara asked him confused.

"Because I left the Fleet without telling them why or even that I was leaving in the first place," Vik spat out, sounding angry at himself more than anything. "I just left. I thought it would be better that way for some stupid reason. Shows what I knew."

Vik's head slumped down as he finished speaking. His posture as he leaned into his terminal's monitor signified shame and disappointment. This wasn't a topic he enjoyed speaking about, especially if he was being stingy on details. Liara decided to let it go for now, she had gotten what she needed. Vik wasn't an exile. That was all that mattered right now. If anything that meant he'd be loyal to his crew, and if he felt he was part of the Lucen, then they had nothing to fear.

With that in mind, and the fact she was down here for other reasons, she changed the subject.

"I'm sorry for troubling you with that," she said, somewhat apologetically. "How about we talk about your progress on finding out why Balak sent those Covenant to kill you?"

Vik's mood changed abruptly, happy to once again ignore his past it seemed. Sitting at attention, he quickly scrambled to pull up files on the terminal's screen. His six fingers dashed across the command console and touch screen as he pulled up several documents.

"It wasn't easy to pinpoint what set them off," Vik admitted as he worked. "I frequent so many anti-Hegemony extranet sites that it's hard to narrow down the list of things that they may have seen. They monitor all of them you know. Any one of my posts could've pissed them off."

"It would have to be something fairly recent to put you on a list and big enough to attract their attention." Liara surmised.

"I was thinking the same thing," Vik agreed, looking back to her. "So I retraced my steps in cyberspace over the past couple of days. I think they may have used my posting about the ship to narrow down their search for me like you did, and getting into Aria's security helped them figure out where I was. So anything after the date I posted the picture was ruled out. I also checked to see if anything I posted got censored or taken down by a hack attempt of some kind. Eventually, my search turned up a post I made that got deleted, but the source of the deletion was not from the site's admins. I back-up my work just in case something like that happens, however, so it doesn't matter. I got a copy of the short article I posted right here."

Vik turned the terminal around and reveal a blog posting with a number of pictures scattered among the words. It showed what appeared to be a press conference at some building, headed by a Batarian in an official looking suit. The picture had been ripped from an article from the only media outlet the Hegemony allowed to be based outside of their space, The Imperial Galactic Chronicle. The headline read aloud; 'New Genetic Advancements by Batarian Medical Scientists put Alliance to Shame!'

Liara looked to Vik so he could elaborate.

"A few years ago the Batarian-owned Charlan Medical Research Center on Anhur has claimed to be making strides in a number of fields, mainly in genetic engineering," The quarian explained. "It's mostly the routine stuff, gene therapy and the improvement of physical capabilities. The article here details that they recently found a way to increase natural biological resistances to toxins in the atmosphere, as well as durability in arctic environments. The biggest selling point for the facility is that they claim to do it all without the use of slaves."

"They don't exactly have a choice in the matter. Anhur made slavery illegal back when the Anhur Rebellions ended in 2178." Liara recalled. "Why would batarians brag about being forced to forgo slavery?"

"A lot of people see batarians using slavery as a crutch." Vik explained with a slightly mocking tone. "Especially on Anhur which boasts an equally as high human population alongside the batarians. The common belief is batarians can't function if they don't have slaves. So Charlan claims they don't need them to outdo the Alliance and that they can function just as well with slavery abolished. A 'testament to batarian ingenuity' they say."

Vik grunted a sarcastic huff as he finished his sentence. Clearly he didn't buy the Chronicles' story. And honestly, Liara didn't either.

"So what's really going on in Charlan?" She asked him.

"One, they're still using slaves as lab rats for their science experiments." Vik claimed. "And two, their plans go beyond just regular everyday gene therapy. You know how Citadel Law prohibits adding things into the genetic structure? That you can only improve what is already there? That you can't give people tails or wings or feathers that they don't have? That's what they're doing there."

"That's a pretty bold claim, Vik." Liara told him, resting her back more firmly against the wall. "I assume you have proof of it."

Vik nodded and pulled up another file.

"I was suspicious of the place so I did some digging." He began. "Ever since the Charlan facility opened, there have been a number of steadily increasing missing persons reports from the human settlements on Anhur. More recently, there's been a lot of heavy ship traffic coming to the planet from the Terminus Systems and many of the ship's descriptions match known slaver vessels from there. I figured that out when I cross referenced the daily shipping manifesto. They don't say they're carrying slaves as cargo of course, but the registries match."

Vik pulled up the manifesto. He had indeed done his homework, many of the registry numbers matched known slave-ships in the Terminus. Slavery was of course legal for the most part in the Terminus Systems, but it was suspicious for them to go to Anhur, a non-slave colony. So Vik may have been onto something about using slaves as guinea pigs, but that didn't prove that they were doing illegal genetic research. There was also the other problem.

"How exactly did you get the shipping manifesto for the Anhur Docks?" She asked.

"I broke their shitty security system." Vik stated at a rapid pace. "All I had to do was send a virus in one of those 'You may already be a winner' emails to one of the employee terminals. The dumb bosh'tet opened it and after that I had the run of the place for a good hour before they flushed me out of the system. Does it matter? That's kid's stuff compared to this!"

Liara had also done far worse, so she wasn't going to argue. She just needed to be sure he had gotten this without hurting anyone. At least not physically, she doubted the poor person who opened that message was still employed there. It was a bit disturbing Vik didn't seem to empathise, but he was on too much of a roll right now to think about that fact much from the looks of it. He was already bringing up another file for her to look at. This one looked like an internal office memo with the Charlan Center's logo plastered on top.

"After I figured out slave ships were headed to Anhur, I travelled the Amun system directly for a more personal touch." Vik began to explain. "Using the local comm-buoys as relays nodes I was able to get into Charlan's internal mainframe and uploaded a worm program. Unfortunately, I underestimated their internal security. Once they found out about the worm they quickly moved to isolate it. I needed to pull the plug or they would've tracked me down. I thought the whole exercise had been a waste, but before I initiated the worm's self-destruct runtime, it transmitted an intercepted message from the higher-ups."

Liara looked more carefully at the memo and began to read it aloud.

"We are pleased with the progress on 'Project: God Worm'." Liara read with growing interest. "New specimens will be arriving soon for final phase. If acidic compound melds as well as the bio-armour, and our benefactors are pleased with the results, we will begin final distribution. Also, concerning our other priority, with the biological agents proving a success, we feel it is imperative that we move to stage two. Our off-site facilities will continue where we left off. You must now focus all attention on the other as vital experiments that have fallen behind expected parameters."

It was vague, but the implications were there. The batarians were probably performing illegal genetic experiments at Charlan. This was potentially big stuff.

"Why didn't you go to the media with this?" Liara asked Vik curiously.

"Well I tried," he admitted with a sigh. "But when you're a grubby little quarian who has no press credentials, contacts or pull in the mainstream media, people tend to think you're unreliable source. Especially when you have a bit of a reputation online for talking about how the Eclipse Mercenaries and the Turian Biotic Cabals have worked together on a number of Black-Ops to protect Hierarchy Interests in the Traverse."

"Conspiracy theorists do tend to make news media and governments uneasy." Liara agreed, remembering how much trouble they had with the Council on the Reapers.

Vik nodded in agreement, interpreting what Liara had just said as recognition of a kindred spirit.

"Yeah, it's even worse when you talk about their corporate sponsors and how they make half of their profits by denying funding to other forms of space travel and fuel economy." He declared righteously. "If we invested more in fusion core and fuel cell technology we'd be able to cut our helium-3 consumptions in half, but the Big Gas companies can't have that now can they? That's their money pit after all."

They were getting off topic, best to nudge Vik back onto the right path.

"So, the media rejected your evidence then?" She asked him.

"Like I said, they didn't trust me as a source." Vik reiterated. "They didn't want to stake their reputations on an indistinct office memo and the hunch of a 'buckethead.' So I turned to less than conventional means through my regular post sites. And when the Hegemony found out I had posted it, they scrubbed the article and eventually traced it back to me on Omega. We both know the rest of the story from there."

Vik certainly had some compelling evidence that this was what the Covenant were trying to cover up, but they needed to be sure. Liara thought she had an idea of how to figure that out. The memo had suggested other projects were going on at Charlan. And if their "benefactors" were who she thought they were, maybe someone on this ship could confirm Vik's little conspiracy theory for him.

"Vik, follow me." Liara began, looking to the quarian with a sly little smile. "There's a member of the crew I should really introduce you to properly."

The quarian seemed a bit dumbfounded and confused at the request, but followed Liara regardless.

---

Kayap sat on his cot, scratching his head in thought as Liara stood over him. Vik was nearby, eyeing the short little alien curiously. Liara didn't bother giving a cover story, the quarian wouldn't be fooled and he had already seen enough about what was really going on anyway. The real concern was if Kayap knew anything about Charlan and if he could confirm Vik's theory.

"No sure of name," Kayap finally said, his hands upturned in bewilderment. "But me hear talk from friends before. Say they go to Four-Eyes place so they can make them stronger. Sangheili call it 'uplift' and Four-Eyes call it 'upgrade'. They use lot of 'ups' I think."

"Why didn't you mention this before?" Liara asked him, trying not to sound accusatory.

"Me not think important." Kayap explained quickly. "Me not sure if even true. Sangheili lie a lot. Once make a squad think they have bulletproof armour and send charging off to fight. They not bulletproof."

Kayap's voice whimpered slightly upon speaking that last sentence and his shoulders slumped. The more Liara heard of what the Covenant had done to his people, the angrier she got. It was repulsive to think aliens so religiously inclined valued life so little. What kind of God did they pray to?

"How often did stuff like that happen?" Liara asked the unggoy.

"Whenever we get too scared to fight, they lie and say enemy almost beat." Kayap explained sadly. "We don't believe, they just threaten to shoot dead. We no choice either way. Lie just to make easier for them to keep us in fight."

"You must've had some strategy on how to survive a firefight." Liara assumed aloud.

"Mostly Kayap better at ducking," He replied sheepishly. "Also stay close to leader... and run when he shot."

She couldn't blame him. With such an abusive command structure, it was a wonder they didn't just join the enemy the second their leader was dead. Perhaps the Covenant instilled some form of indoctrination on the unggoy to keep them loyal, or at least docile. That and, like Kayap suggested, they probably just didn't have much choice in the matter.

"Back to the Four-Eyes place you were supposed to go to," Liara stated, returning to the original topic. "Do you think that is Charlan?"

"Me not sure," the unggoy admitted earnestly, "but if they make things stronger there then it might be. Me not pay attention much to names of Four-Eyes places. But me know others said they go there soon. They were on Kayap's ship before me sent off with others to yours."

It was evidence that lent itself well to Vik's theory. Overall, it seemed like they had substantial enough evidence to at least follow up on the lead. If the batarians were doing illegal genetic research for the Covenant, then it was imperative that they shut it down before they got too far along in it.

As Liara turned back to the quarian, he finally spoke up about the strange alien in front of them.

"So... this little guy is one of them?" He asked, careful in how he spoke.

"He used to be, but he decided to join us." Liara explained. "He says he doesn't have a choice, they'll kill him if he goes back. Nearest we can tell, his people are the meat-shields of their military structure."

Vik shook his head knowingly upon being told that.

"A whole race of draftees being used for cannon fodder," he stated snarling. "It almost reminds me of how the turian Hierarchy trains their kids from birth to be perfect little soldiers when they grow up."

"To be fair, even though it is mandatory the Hierarchy at least trains their soldiers to be the best they can be." Liara argued, she then pointed towards Kayap. "They just shove a gun into his hand and tell him to run forward."

"Yeah," Vik relented, "I guess you can't really claim the Hierarchy trains meat for a grinder when that's not how their military doctrine works in the first place. There are worse people than them anyway."

Vik looked back to Kayap, who remained silent. The quarian's eyes studied the little alien more closely as the conversation continued.

"What's with the back pack?" He asked.

"His species apparently breathes methane." Liara explained. "We keep refilling it from the ship's methane storage supply, but I've already ordered a shipment of more. I think it would probably be more prudent if we somehow fix the atmosphere in his room."

The idea was going to take a lot of time and money, but if Kayap was going to stay here, then Liara wanted him to be comfortable. That and it would be more cost effective than constantly replacing his supply of methane.

"That would be difficult for sure, and definitely require an airlock system of some kind." Vik said as he looked around the room. "I think the bigger problem is his armour. You do intend to bring him out into the field, right?"

"More than likely, he's our only link to understanding how his former comrades operate." Liara replied.

"Well, he won't last long with that shoddy looking combat harness he's wearing." Vik warned. "No shields, bare minimum armour at best and that tank is gonna explode right off if it gets punctured by incendiary rounds."

Liara had to agree, she had been concerned about Kayap's safety ever since he had come aboard. She had no idea how to fix the problem though. None of their current armour sets fit him. Not even the volus suits they had in storage. Nothing would fit him.

"Any ideas?" Liara asked Vik.

"Well, I've had to become a bit of an expert when it comes to suit repair," Vik answered, tugging at some of the jury-rigged pieces of his envirosuit. "I've been borrowing pieces from discarded armour and the like for awhile now. If you give me some spare parts from some of your armour sets that are in storage, I could probably upgrade his harness to something that can actually give him a fighting a chance. A proper shield for one, less exposure on his arms and reinforcing that tank he carries so it doesn't become a potential bomb in a fire fight."

Kayap suddenly jumped from his cot and ran up to the two.

"You give better harness?" He asked. "Me not have to duck and run so much?"

"Of course," Liara assured him with a kind smile. "And if you're right about this genetic upgrade being at Charlan, we can probably take it and give it to you, turning it on the Covenant."

"And maybe we find other unggoy there," Kayap suggested happily as he jumped up and down. "Then they come with us! We all have better leader and comfy beds!"

Liara's expression saddened. She said nothing, but politely stopped Kayap's bouncing with a hand on his shoulder. He mistook it for her agreeing with him as he still seemed pretty jubilant. She didn't have the heart to break his optimistic hope of having other unggoy join them. That wasn't to say they wouldn't want to, but it was hard to defect when you had the fearful prospect of getting killed for trying. If there were other unggoy there, he'd probably have to fight them, possibly kill them.

It was best he not think otherwise. She couldn't have him emotionally compromised if they were bringing him down there. She briefly wondered if maybe she should leave him up here, just in case. But there could be Covenant other than Kayap's people down there and she would need the insider knowledge.

Kayap went back to his cot, seemingly assured that he'd have fellow unggoy joining him. Vik, however, seemed to share Liara's concerns. He even had another one she hadn't considered at first.

"Illegal genetic experiments are never pretty." He warned. "The Hanar once tried to cure Kepral's Syndrome in drells by changing the chemical make-up of their lungs. It ended up killing every volunteer when their chests exploded. If they're doing something to the unggoy in there, we might not like what we find."

"That was always a possibility, even if the unggoy weren't there." Liara told the quarian. "We all need to be prepared for whatever horrors may be inside that building."

"I'm just asking if the little guy can handle it." Vik explained, sounding concerned. "Some of those unggoy could be his friends after all. It's... never easy when it's personal."

Vik paused slightly as he spoke and Liara turned back to Kayap who hadn't overheard them this time. Could he handle it? Vik had a point. She had thought she had been fine confronting her mother on Noveria. It had not been fine. Could Kayap handle a similar position? She then recalled how he had saved her from that hulking alien on Tuchanka.

"He's stronger than he looks." She stated. "He'll be okay."

"Let's hope so." Vik agreed.

---

July 31st, 2185

They were getting close to Anhur, and Liara decided to round up everyone for a quick pre-mission briefing herself. She came to Saya's room last. She opened the door to the communications hub to find the salarian kneeling on the ground, his sword's hilt pressed to his forehead while the blade touched the ground. Upon recognizing what it was, she waited to speak.

She had heard of these meditation practices before, they were common among the more expressly devout followers of the "Wheel of Life," a salarian concept of reincarnation born out of how short their species life-span was. Salarians were not known for being terribly religious, but for those who believed in the "Wheel" there were certain practices you followed. Mainly, there was a belief if you concentrated hard enough you could potentially see your past selves and maybe even your future-self through the ether of time. While there were different ways of obtaining this high level of concentration, the most common was in the form of regulated daily meditation.

Saya eventually raised his head, perhaps sensing Liara's presence in the room. He took his sword and placed it back into the sheath on the square of his back. He then stood up and turned to the asari. He said nothing, but even through the darkened visor that hid his face, she could tell he wanted her to explain her intrusion.

"We have a mission." She explained politely. "I'd like you in the briefing room, if it's not too much trouble."

Saya nodded once, although he did not move. Liara could only assume he was waiting for her to leave and he'd follow. It was hard to understand someone who didn't talk. In either case, she had promised Wrex she'd talk to him the next chance she got. Now was as good a time as any. She needed to make sure there wouldn't be any issues on this mission.

"Listen," she began, "I need to talk about something with you first. I couldn't help but notice how you seem to be at odds with Wrex. I'd like to understand what that is about."

Saya pointed to his throat at first. She could only assume it had to be him reminding her about his obvious inability to speak.

"I apologise," she said, "I know it can't be easy to communicate for you. Is there any way I can make this easier for everyone, including for yourself? Do you know some form of sign language, perhaps?"

Saya's head pulled back slightly. He then held up his hands and began creating signs with them. It was salarian sign language, Liara wasn't especially adept in it but she knew enough of the common signs to understand. Saya's fingers formed the words he wished to speak, creating shapes and objects quickly for her. He pointed at himself, the fingers interlocked at one point in a spread out pattern and then he pointed at his throat again.

Now she understood.

"Your problem with Wrex is your voice?" She realised, confused at the meaning. "What are you talking about?"

Saya balled one hand and into another, then jabbed his two left fingers into his right palm before raking them across his knuckles and pointing at his throat again. It all became suddenly clear.

"A krogan took your voice." Liara reasoned from the meanings of the signs. "That couldn't have been Wrex."

Saya shook his head, acknowledging that it wasn't.

"So who did?" She asked.

Saya pulled up his omni-tool. In an effort to speed up the explanation he pulled up an article on it for her to read. It was about a krogan pirate gang that had raided a salarian colony over seven years ago. These were the culprits, obviously, but she didn't understand the full story.

"What exactly happened?" She asked.

Saya touched a command and the article shifted to an STG after action report. She could tell by the signature logo atop the page. She read through it quickly. The officer described them finding the krogan pirate gang on Tuchanka, they had taken them down, but unfortunately there had been a complication.

"Sergeant Saya Empa severely wounded," The report read grimly. "The doctors say the krogan crushed his windpipe and the knife just missed a critical artery. That's nothing to say about his bodily injuries. They say he'll recover, but he may never be able to talk again."

Liara looked back at the salarian, her face more understanding than before.

"How long were you in recovery?" she asked.

Saya held up all three fingers on his right hand. For a salarian, that was too much time. But it didn't all fit in Liara's eyes.

"It can't just be your voice." She told Saya. "That pirate took something else didn't he?"

Saya stared at her for a long while before he used his omni-tool to bring up another picture. This time it was the symbol of the Spectres, the Council's Elite operatives. It didn't take much for Liara to figure what it meant.

"You were a candidate for the Spectres while you were still a sergeant." She reasoned. "I can only assume you were just starting your military career."

Saya nodded.

"And after the krogan pirate beat you within an inch of your life, you weren't able to serve in the capacity they wanted." Liara presumed. "The inability to communicate, the injuries that no doubt made things more difficult for you..."

Saya held up his arm and rubbed it on its muscle. He used to be stronger, better than he was now, but he didn't make the cut, not ever since he almost died.

But while it was a decent enough reason to have issues with krogan, that didn't give him an excuse to treat Wrex with such disdain. Liara tried her best to impress this on him.

"I can understand your anger, but you can't blame Wrex for it." Liara informed him. "You can't hold what one krogan did to you against him."

Saya shook his head vehemently. He pulled up another program on his omni-tool and typed viciously at the commands, writing out a quick few sentences.

"Can. Do." The words read. "On Tuchanka long. Saw them. All savage. All same."

"Wrex isn't like that." Liara assured him adamantly. "He wants to change the krogan, to make them better. He's a good man. You just need to give him the chance."

"Maybe. Heard of reforms at STG," Saya typed on the Omni-Tool as he stared ahead at the asari. "Doesn't matter. Won't work. Krogan too far gone. Keep on Tuchanka. Let kill each other. Inevitable outcome anyway."

Liara wasn't about to get into a shouting match over this. Saya had his reasons for disliking the krogan if all he had ever seen of them was their worst side. She couldn't deny those parts of their culture existed when there were krogan like Wreav around. However, Liara had seen the better side in Wrex. The only thing she could hope for was that Saya was open to seeing it as well.

"I'm not asking you to be his friend," Liara told Saya firmly with a resolute look. "But he is mine and he is also a part of this mission and this crew. So if nothing else, when we're in the field, you treat him with the same respect you'd show me or Kirrahe. Understand?"

She wasn't sure if Saya was willing to do that at first. He stared at her for awhile, doing nothing. Then he stood at attention and nodded in compliance after giving a salute. That was all she needed to see. He would keep his anger buried, at least on mission.

"I'm glad to see you can be professional about this." She told him.

Saya made a few signs with his hands. He clasped his fingers together before interlocking them and then pulling at them. He then held out his palms and circled them together before bringing them towards himself. He then stuck out his left hand and clutched it. It was a pretty simple sentence to understand for Liara. It said, 'Being a professional is all I have left.'

---

Anhur was the kind of planet the races of the galaxy scrambled over to scoop up. It was a garden world, rich in minerals, perfect soil for whatever crops you wanted with minimal genetic alteration, a warm temperate climate and lush vegetation. For the layman, it was hard to imagine that any place that looked this nice had some darker secrets beneath it. Liara had spent time on Illium though, so it wasn't so hard for her to imagine.

Charlan was outside the limits of the capital city of the planet, New Thebes. Liara had to admit, a batarian research center so close to a human settlement seemed suspicious. It wasn't the fact batarians lived on Anhur, which had long been an accepted fact. The trouble was that Charlan wasn't closer to a place more densely populated by its owner's own species. Vik's accusation that they were responsible for the missing human colonists over the past few years was looking more plausible.

If the quarian conspiracy nut was right, then this was more than just an intelligence operation, this was a rescue mission. Luckily, they had a few krogan aboard more than willing to play heroes, along with Liara's own ShadowNet mercs. Saving any potential prisoners would be their job of course. Liara's group would focus on figuring out what, if any connection, to the Covenant existed within the walls of the research facility. Breaking inside wouldn't be easy though, a fact confirmed when they saw what was in their way.

They had landed their shuttles within the nearby woods, but even from the deep thicket within the dark of a moonless night they could easily see the outer ring of security that surrounded the building complex. The front gate was a no go of course, way too many guards looking over it. The walls were thick with batarians as well, and none of them looked like your standard rent-a-cops. They had high grade assault rifles and the guards in the towers sported Kishock harpoon guns. That was not your standard issue firearm.

"Hegemony Military," Vik warned as he eyed through the scope they were sharing amongst them as they sat in the bushes. "Undercover obviously, but they don't give that kind of ordinance out to regular nine to five security mooks."

"Think they were expecting us?" Wrex asked Liara. "They have to know we got away with Vik by now."

"Possibly, but it doesn't change anything." Liara replied with her voice as steadfast as ever. "We just need an opening."

They weren't getting that from this angle so it was time for a bird's eye view. She had the shuttle pilot circling high above. It had a sophisticated camera system installed that allowed it to act as a makeshift satellite. It wouldn't be very stealthy in most situations, but in the dead of night with no moon in the sky currently, it blended in well enough. That and it wasn't like this research center could just call up gunships to shoot it down, they weren't in Hegemony space after all. As far as she knew, the place didn't have an air target scanner either. They weren't expecting to get attacked from above.

The shuttle sent her back a feed of the entire building complex. While it was picking up heat signatures all around the perimeter, there was little to no coverage on the back entrance. It served as an entrance for lower level employees, had one guard kiosk and three members of security working detail. Their way in was a small, inconspicuous door past a small lot for vehicles to land or drive into.

It was certainly more manageable than trying to get through the side or front entrances. They just needed to be careful. There were still some patrolling guards on the roof that, according to the security schedule Liara had managed to acquire in her usual way, passed by an area that overlooked the back entrance periodically. If they stayed too long, they'd notice something amiss.

"Just like we planned people," She told the others as soon as they got a good look at their way in. "We move in with a small team, keeping most of our men back. When we verify what we're looking for we hit them hard. Once we call them in, we'll have around fifteen minutes before the local law enforcement catches wind of things and arrives. We cannot be here when they do."

"Yeah, this is pretty damn illegal." Wrex admitted. "At least those fifteen minutes will be fun while they last."

With that, the ShadowNet and Krogan teams were put on stand-by, while Liara led Wrex, Saya, Vik and Kayap around to their way in. The treeline extended far enough for them to get close, but not close enough for them to make it across the open terrain without the three night guards potentially spotting them. Luckily, that was never Liara's plan in the first place. She turned to Saya.

"Go." She told the salarian in a whisper.

Saya just nodded and activated his cloak. A patch of bushes pushed themselves apart, informing them that the salarian had gone ahead. Everyone now kept their eyes glued to the guards' positions in front of them, anticipating Saya's first strike.

"How many times do you think he's done this sort of thing?" Vik asked the others. "STG is notorious for pulling a lot of Black Ops, sometimes even against allies. They steal military secrets, medical research, keep tabs on government officials. It's how their government keeps up with the other two Council races."

"I hear a lot of STG ghost stories," Wrex informed the quarian, "and there are even some that are true. But even I think you're going a bit overboard there. Besides, should YOU really be lecturing them on being overly paranoid?"

"Trust me on this, the Salarian Union is like any government body," Vik replied as he looked back at Wrex. "They got a lot of secrets and a lot of lies, and our mute friend over there probably even knows a few. They haven't even learned from their mistakes. They're still working on uplifting Pre-Space Flight races, like with the krogan, just covertly now."

Wrex rolled his eyes a bit at the suggestion.

"I've heard this before." The krogan groaned. "Which one do you think they're uplifting exactly?"

"A race of primitive fish-like creatures called the Autlutans." Vik answered nonchalantly. "I heard about it in the latest download from 'Galaxy Exposed Weekly.' It's a great article, I can show you it."

"No, just forget I even asked." Wrex growled in annoyance.

The first of the guards to go was the one in the kiosk, dutifully watching ahead with rigid discipline. Liara half expected him to be too enthralled with a sports game that was playing or something, but from the looks of it he was on high alert. His four eyes kept staring straight ahead, never once shifting from his careful scan of the area. It would sadly not help him.

Saya had already slinked his way in through the back door ever so silently. The batarian had a hand over his mouth and a sword thrust through his chest mere moments after the salarian entered. Saya's cloak dropped for a moment as he positioned the guard in his chair, his arms covering his wound and his head forced downward. He then turned the cloak back on and slinked back out, invisible once more.

Already knowing where he was going, Liara moved the binoculars to get a view of his last two targets. The other two guards were on patrol, side by side. They were keeping themselves covered fairly well, watching all corners, keeping their flashlights up, but they couldn't protect each other from something they couldn't see.

In a flash, Saya appeared behind one of the guards and sliced his sword across the first guard's neck. Before he even fell to the ground, the salarian looked over to the second guard and stabbed him through the throat as well, silencing him before he could even scream. It all just seemed so easy.

Vik's assumption was probably right, Saya had done this before.

Liara didn't need to tell the others it was time to move, they already knew. They all rushed up to the entrance. Wrex took the time to grab one of the bodies and drag it over to be disposed of in a dumpster near the back. Saya had already placed the other body inside. Vik in the meantime got to work on the door. Despite the success, Liara had since learned not to jinx things by saying 'so far so good' and other such clichés. So, she just stuck to mission parameters.

"Great work, Saya." Liara informed the salarian. "We'll take this end. You know what to do from here."

Saya simply nodded and backed away. Wrex took up position in front of the wall and cupped his hands together.

"Try not to step on my face, please." He grumbled.

Saya rushed towards the krogan. When his foot hit Wrex's hands, the krogan boosted him up to the top while the salarian's second step used Wrex's shoulder to further support his jump. Saya was launched to the roof overhead where he landed skilfully before activating his cloak and vanishing into the dark.

"I'll give him credit, he didn't stomp on my face," Wrex grinned as he looked at Liara knowingly. "Although I bet he wanted to."

Vik was still working on the door when Liara and Wrex joined him. Kayap was at his side, trying to get a look at what the quarian was doing. Vik, sensing the unggoy was crowding him looked at him somewhat incredulously and the unggoy politely stood back.

"You sure you don't want the cloaked STG agent with the sword with us?" Vik asked Liara.

"We'll need him in a more versatile capacity." Liara told him. "The sooner he takes out internal security the sooner we'll have free reign inside."

"What's taking the door so long anyway?" Wrex asked.

Vik grumbled a little under his breath as he kept pressing commands on his omni-tool.

"They got this place locked up tight and this sort of thing takes time." He explained, sounding just a bit agitated. "I don't want to make a mistake and set off an alarm. Just bypassing the lock may trigger it so I'm trying to remotely disable it. Which isn't easy since I only got a tentative connection between both systems in the first place."

"Just do what you need to, Vik," Liara told him patiently. "But we have to be quick about this regardless."

Vik nodded and continued to work. Wrex and Liara pressed their bodies against the doorframe. They alternated looking ahead and up towards the roof, trying to see if they were going to get spotted by any of the roaming guards above. Kayap tried his best to mimic them, although his methane tank seemed to get in the way.

"What exactly do we expect to find in there?" Wrex asked all of a sudden. "What exactly do Balak and the Covenant hope to get out of experimenting on kidnapped test subjects? I mean, what's their end goal and how does it feature into whatever plan they got?"

"The memo suggested some form of biological armour." Liara reminded him. "They could be trying to give the sangheili more protection along with the unggoy."

But Wrex shook his head.

"The sangheili are already hard enough to put down," he stated with a grimace. "The unggoy I could see, but if their lives really mattered so much to them they'd invest in better armour, not a doctor's needle."

"My credits are on Self-Repairing Cell research," Vik suggested confidently as he continued to work. "Everyone has been trying to duplicate the Krogan's and the Vorcha's natural regenerative abilities for centuries. Or they could just be perfecting the Turian's 'Juggernaut' program that got blacklisted back during the Krogan Rebellions. Every major bio-weapons manufacturer on the market has been dreaming of super soldier that can't feel pain and shrug off bullets like they're nothing."

"I have a feeling it's not exactly that simple." Liara told them both. "Nothing about this Covenant has been so far. Let's save speculation until we have more information."

It was then the door's holographic light turned green and Vik lowered his omni-tool in triumph. The door opened with a swish. They were in. The quickly got inside as the door shut right behind them. They found themselves in a darkened corridor, next to a supply a closet and a door marked "Storage."

Before they went any further, Liara brought up a holographic map of facility on her omni-tool. It was derived from blueprints her operatives had acquired for her. She quickly pinpointed their position on the map.

"Alright, we should be here," she began, pointing at the map. "Everything in detail is the low level public knowledge sectors, the main labs and offices. We need to get to the blank section of the facility, the things they don't want us to know about. The quickest route from here to there appears to be this one."

Liara outlined a route that would take them through the twisting halls of the complex and get them to the "Off Limits" sections the fastest.

"We just have to wait for now and let Saya do his job." She continued. "Once the cameras are gone we should be able to slip through the facility without being spotted."

"I just hope he's quick about it." Wrex grumbled. "I hate waiting around."

"Worried he won't get it done?" Vik asked.

Wrex just chuckled.

"Oh, he'll get it done, but in my experience the sneaky types like to take their time with things." Wrex explained. "Sitting around and waiting never was my speciality to be honest."

---

It wasn't difficult to get inside. Doctor T'Soni's blueprint made working through the ventilation system easy, although there was the concern of running into a fan or two by accident. Eventually the main security room was located and inside were the three camera operators. In front of them were dozens of screens, none of them pertaining to the secret labs from the looks of it. Saya briefly wondered how much these three actually knew, but that thought was pushed aside. It didn't matter what they knew, they were in the way and that was simply unfortunate. At least it would be quick, like it always was.

The one on the right died first, move before he even suspects anything. The sword had already plunged into his neck, cutting between the shoulder blade and collarbone. The silenced pistol was already up and aiming, the trigger hand rested on the arm to steady the aim. The second guard turned to look, hearing the sound of his dying friend, but it was already too late. One shot and the man was down, the bullet plunging through his upper left eye. The third guard never even saw his shot coming. The second bullet rips through the side of his skull and he face-planted onto his controls.

It was over, Saya let go of the first guard, letting the body fall back into the chair. Quick and clean, they barely felt anything. It was now time for the slightly easier part. Pushing the second guard's chair out of the way, Saya plugged in a data module into the system and let it upload. The quarian's program would be transmitting any second now.

---

Vik's omni-tool soon came alive, a green light flashing on its command console. He quickly turned it on and found that Saya had done his job.

"He uploaded the virus," He announced jubilantly. "We got a live feed of their cameras and direct access to them as well."

"Huh, that was faster than I thought it would be," Wrex said shrugging, only slightly impressed. "Guess he doesn't like waiting around either."

Vik had already set to work on the cameras. He transmitted a feedback loop into the system. Any subsidiary security stations would not pick them up as they made their way to the "Off Limits" section. Now they just had to avoid any roaming guards.

Liara took point, Kayap was close behind while Vik monitored the cameras. Wrex picked up the rear, keeping his shotgun trailed on the path they had been. Vik was switch feeds between cameras constantly as they went, trying to keep up with their position. He spotted a number of batarians in the halls, but for awhile it appeared that none of them were patrolling towards them. It wasn't long before that changed.

"Crap, second hallway to the left." He said in a hushed voice.

Liara thought fast, the sound of footsteps suddenly growing louder as she thought. She spotted a door that they were passing by, leading to one of the offices no doubt. Acting quickly, she opened it up, pressing the holographic display with a swat of her palm. They all rushed in, finding themselves in a small meeting room of some kind. They then let the door close shut with a swish. They narrowly missed the two man patrol as it passed them by, their ominous footsteps soon fading. When Vik saw it was all clear, they exited and continued on their way.

By then they didn't have far to go, the rest of the halls were pretty clear. Soon they were close to their destination. The only obstacle now was a single guard at a security checkpoint that led into the High Security levels. He was in his own little kiosk, fairly content with his job it seemed. Liara brought up the blueprints again as they hid within another one of the offices, keeping a watch on the checkpoint.

"We need to remove him." She reasoned.

"Think we can call in the salarian?" Wrex asked.

"No time," Liara said as she readied her suppressed pistol. "I'll go in. Vik keep an eye on the cameras, Wrex, Kayap, be ready to move."

No one argued, either they trusted her or they were relieved they didn't have to go. She preferred to believe it was the former. Slowly she crept out of the office and made her way to the kiosk. The guard was a lot more relaxed than his colleague at the front. No ardent stare, but he was keeping an eye on his monitor, for what she couldn't be sure from here.

She slinked over across the hall, her gun at the ready. She pressed herself into the side of the kiosk and slowly rose up to the batarian's eye level. She placed the barrel of the gun up to the glass. For whatever reason, the guard chose that moment to turn away from his monitor that was displaying a number of camera feeds to look in Liara's direction. The bullet cut through the glass, but did not shatter it, and impacted in the center of the batarian's head. He slumped back over in his chair and fell onto the floor.

Liara took a breath as she looked at the body, but didn't pay it too much attention. She looked up at one of the cameras and motioned for the others to follow. Moments later they had hopped over the checkpoint and moved to the door that led into the secret section of the facility. Along the side of the wall near the door they could see biohazard suits hung up on racks. Words over the door said "Top Personnel Only" in big bold batarian print.

Opting not wait for much longer, Liara entered the security kiosk and looked at the dashboard. She found the button that opened the door and pressed it. The doors opened wide with a metallic hiss, compressed air being released.

"Decontamination chamber," Vik observed with a shake of his head. "That is never a good sign. It means dangerous chemicals and gasses and all that sort of crap. Lucky me I got my own suit."

"Yeah and we're really happy for you." Wrex grumbled sarcastically. "Get in already."

Wrex lightly pushed the quarian forward along with Kayap. Liara joined them just as the doors closed and the decontamination sequence started.

"Do we know what we're looking for exactly in there?" Wrex asked over the sound of the cleansing apparatus that was spraying them down. "Cause we don't have a map after this point."

"We need to find a secure terminal first," Liara explained, "we'll figure it out from there. We'll search the labs. We'll try not to get spotted, but at this point they won't bother to call the police to take us down for trespassing. They'll just put us down."

"Yeah, let's avoid getting shot for the standard bad guy reasoning of 'knowing too much' if we can," Vik added nervously. "Especially since we barely know anything about this place at all at the moment."

The doors opened to the inside of the inner sanctum, revealing lab equipment and little medical slabs in small alcoves lining the halls. The lights inside were significantly dimmer and there were even traces of bloody cloth in small trash bins to the side. This was just the preliminary entrance hall and already it seemed to take on a more sinister persona than the main building had.

They could neither see nor hear any guards nearby, but they remained cautious all the same. They continued to pass vacant laboratory cubicles isolated from the hallway. Inside each were various pieces of medical equipment, including slabs, scalpels, and even some overhanging surgical lights. From what they could see through the windows, one of the labs had a holo-board displaying pictures from various operations and individual x-rays. They depicted kig-yar and unggoy subjects primarily, displaying anatomy and bone structure, but it was hard to make out details. The room had no proper terminal in any case. No sense breaking in here when the information would be clearer somewhere else.

As they searched, Kayap kept running up to every window he could fine, peering through them to get a better look. He seemed frantic and impatient, his head twitching around as he scampered about, looking into the various labs they passed by. It was obvious what he was searching for. Liara quickly grabbed him by his backpack tank before he could rush off to another window.

"Kayap, if they're here we'll find them, along with anyone else who was kidnapped." She tried to reassure him.

"Me just want know if they okay." He said nervously. "This place smell bad, me no like it."

"On that we can all agree." Wrex added, peering into one of the various rooms himself.

He was taking a long hard look at one of the medical slabs. It was covered in dripping blood, bluish blood, but he couldn't tell what kind of species it had come from.

"I'm starting to get a Virmire feel from all this." The krogan stated with a grimace.

They soon came to another corridor, but this one held a surprise. They found themselves looking at a laboratory behind two sets of viewing glass. There were large slabs surrounding by computing equipment and medical tools. But these slabs weren't empty like the others. They had unggoy bodies on them, ripped clean open and on display for any passerby.

Sensing Kayap's terror as he looked wide eyed at his dead people, Liara pulled him back from the scene and made him look at her. She put her index finger to her lips and gave him a stern look. Kayap placed his hands over his face mask in acknowledgement. They couldn't have him screaming, especially when it became clear that there weren't just dead bodies inside that room, not for long anyway. The door to the small medical theatre opened wide and the team hid behind a corner.

Liara, sensing an opportunity for some intel gathering, got her omni-tool ready. She pulled a small reconnaissance bug from her pocket and placed it on the ground. These things were used a lot by infiltration units in the Alliance to get into tight places they couldn't get most people in. The little bug crawled across the floor on its six little mechanical legs before it got a good angle on the room. It transmitted a picture back to Liara's omni-tool to display the whole way. Revealed inside the room were two familiar faces, Trox and the golden armoured sangheili, Vorsa.

With them were two others, one was a batarian scientist of some sort in full biosuit gear. The other was, surprisingly, a turian. From the appearance of the new face's body structure, Liara could tell that the turian was in fact a woman. The waist gave it away. She was the wearing maroon armour with a goldenrod stripe pattern going down the chest. She was carrying a Phaeston rifle with an attached scope in her arms. That was a military-grade weapon from the Hierarchy standard arms. The helmet she wore made it impossible to see her face, but it was clear to Liara that this person didn't look like a Blood Pack merc. Not just because Turians weren't allowed in, but she didn't even have their company symbol on her armour.

One thing was clear, if they were here then this place did indeed have a connection to the Swords, just like Vik said. As exciting as this was, Liara made sure to keep the others quiet. She put a single finger up to her lips and looked to the others as the bug kept filming. Then, she turned on the bug's laser microphone to listen in on the four room occupants.

"Not all the subjects are taking to the modifications as we expected," The batarian scientist spoke gravely. "The adrenaline is boosted, yes, but they're uncontrollable, psychotic even. And I won't even get started on the survival rate for the surgical procedure."

"We have reserves." Vorsa replied unmoved at the sight of the dead unggoy. "My only concern is that enough survive for my needs."

"It would be more prudent if we could make the procedure less fatal..." The scientist tried to explain.

Vorsa just grabbed the scientist by his collar and pulled him close.

"I am tired of your delays." He growled. "Balak promised me better soldiers for battle and all I've gotten so far are excuses."

"Perhaps if you bothered to let your own men volunteer for the experiments," Trox cut in, pulling Vorsa away from the batarian. "They could definitely survive a similar procedure."

Vorsa looked at Trox, seemingly insulted by the suggestion.

"My soldiers need cunning and vision, not blind rage." He explained. "I need to make the unggoy less cowardly. That is the purpose of these tests. My people do not lack the courage to fight, nor do I wish to see them degraded into mindless beasts."

"We've made progress in other areas," Trox reminded him sternly. "The mgalekgolo have responded well to their treatment and the kig-yar are progressing as well. Not to mention the other projects with the bugs. I'm just saying, I even got some of my own men lined up for some special genetic advancements. It couldn't hurt giving your soldiers an edge."

"Cybernetics are one thing, but warping our bodies is another." Vorsa argued. "Sangheili are perfect enough warriors as they are born. Giving us tools to fight better is acceptable, changing how the Forerunners intended us to be is another."

Trox just shook his head in frustration at Vorsa's resistance. He then turned to the turian.

"Anything you wish to add?" He asked her. "You've been eavesdropping for over an hour now."

"I just find it ridiculous you pulled me off training duty for guard detail over a bunch of nerds." She growled, looking to the Batarian scientist with a simple turn of her head. "No offence, Eight-Eyes."

"I don't wear corrective lenses." The Batarian informed her begrudgingly.

The turian just snorted, turning back to Trox.

"I expected some action when I signed on with the Blood Pack, but so far you have me either running drills with freaky midget things and overgrown sacks of worms or lording over science experiments." She told him. "If you don't mind me saying, I expected a bit more from you krogan."

Trox stomped over to her, and even though he himself was wearing a face covering helmet you could sense the anger in his face just through his voice.

"I'll explain this again, Ms. Catonis." He growled. "You are not signed up with the Blood Pack, you are a freelancer. We promised you good pay and decent accommodations for sharing military experience, keeping your mandibles shut and doing as we tell you. And I don't care how valuable your insight is because you used to run with some elite assholes back when you weren't discharged, I'm older, I'm smarter and I can break your back with one biotically charged headbutt. So if I tell you you're on guard duty, you're on fucking guard duty. I write your checks, you honour our contract, if you don't like the job then quit. Let's see how long you last in the mercenary circuit when word spreads you can't handle sitting on watch and you like to talk back to your employer constantly if you don't get what you want."

Liara could see the turian gripping her gun hard, her posture stiffening as Trox spoke down to her.

"Now if that is all, would you mind not following me around anymore tonight?" Trox asked. "Get back on your patrol and let me and Vorsa finish up here already."

The Turian balled her hand into a fist, but in the end she relented and brushed past the krogan.

"Fine, you and your boyfriend hug it out then." She snorted back as she left. "Send me pictures when you're done, dipshits."

The turian left, Vorsa baring his teeth at her as she did.

"Undisciplined garbage," he sneered angrily. "Were she one of my men, I would've seen to her punishment personally. Such disrespect deserves nothing less than a branding of a mark of shame upon them."

"She has her uses. Knowledge of turian military practices will prove valuable." Trox explained. "Balak says as much at least. We need to focus on more pressing matters. Specifically, moving the test subjects to the secondary facilities and research centers for further experimentation, or at least what is left of them. The knowledge in them is too valuable to lose at this stage."

"The transport is on its way, we'll have them ready before dawn." Vorsa assured. "Hopefully after this we will get some actual results."

The three left out another door in the room and Liara closed her omni-tool. As she went to pick up the bug, the others focused on what they had just overheard.

"This just keeps getting better." Wrex grumbled. "Now the damn Blood Pack is here along with that crazy gold-plated asshole. This is gonna get violent real fast. Which will be fun when it does, but still..."

"And they're moving their captives," Vik brought up, "we need to find them fast."

"We have time," Liara assured him, "they're moving them at dawn. We have until then."

She looked over to see Kayap up against the glass, staring at one of the dead unggoy corpses. The dead alien's broad mouth was wide open, its dead eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. They hadn't even bothered to cover the poor thing up post-mortem. No one cared enough. She pulled Kayap away from the glass.

"Come on," she said to him, leading him away. "We can't stay here."

Kayap tried to look back, but Liara motioned Wrex to block his view. She couldn't have him breaking down, not here, it was far too dangerous.

---

Finding a proper terminal was harder than it looked. The facility's secret levels were like a maze of wall to wall R&D labs. There had to be more work going on than just the Covenant-based projects. They had to be doing some other kinds of research back here. Either way, this was mad science mass produced. Charlan was an assembly line of amoral genetic research spewing out biological weapons like they were brand new omni-tools or cars, and all of it serving the Hegemony. Even if they found out nothing new from this place, getting it shut down would still make this mission a win in the end.

Using the directions on the walls, they eventually found their way to their real objective, the mainframe room. Inside were all the answers they could want. They just needed to get inside one of the sensitive terminals and start digging.

Liara was the first in and once everyone was inside she made sure to lock the door down as well, considerably easier than opening it up, it just required overriding the lock. They couldn't risk getting interrupted when they were so close.

Vik had already started breaking into the computer. He was well under way by the time Liara had finished locking the doors leading into the room. Considering that he was trying to break into the highly incriminating secrets of this damnable place, the wait was reasonable. The quarian eventually stood up proudly from his work.

"Done," he said sounding satisfied as he dusted his hands against each other. "Now we can get a closer look at their dirty laundry."

Vik stepped aside to let Liara in. She moved through the files carefully, trying to find the ones that pertained to their interests. It wasn't hard to eventually isolate what they were looking for, the scientists here saved all their work, on video no less. She opened the file marked "Recent Developing Projects." Inside she found a slew of videos and audio files; she played one of the first few.

"Progress of adapting specific evolutionary traits has been troublesome." A batarian voice said. "Bonding genes together is always risky. DNA may be the 'building blocks of life' as many claim, but it of course doesn't work the same way as standard construction. This is especially so when you're splicing genes between species that aren't even supposedly native to this universe. Vorsa continues to assure us his people have reserves, but I've noticed he never lets us test on his own kind. We'd probably be more successful if he let us. They're stronger than the smaller aliens and could survive some of the procedures better. But he thinks they're already perfect, there is no need for improvement, at least not genetically. I disagree, but Balak says we need to keep him comfortable. He's compromised with us on cybernetics, so we just have to accept we won't be able to work on Vorsa's soldiers. We'll need to make due. Chief Scientist Dhakal signing out."

Just as Vorsa had said, his people weren't being researched on and that meant the experiments were having some trouble. As they had seen with the unggoy, Covenant volunteers kept dying. But they had to have some success, the memo had suggested as much. Liara opened another file.

"The strains are finally taking root, but there are side effects, particularly among the... what are they called? Unggoy? Yes, that's it. The ones that survive are certainly less prone to turn and run in a fight, but their aggression has sky-rocketed. The injuries among most of our surgical staff are growing and few of the unggoy are even controllable after alteration. I'm afraid if we don't find a way to ease this aggression streak, we may have to turn over the project to our other associates. The kig-yar have adapted to their strain much better though, but they are in a considerable amount of pain. We're trying to fix it with drugs, but there is only so much we can do. I'm just glad they haven't adopted the vorcha's violent streaks from surgery."

"Vorcha?" Wrex spoke up in shock. "They're splicing vorcha with the kig-yar? Why?"

Liara put up her hand to quiet him as she continued to listen.

"The mgalekgolo are the only real substantial success so far." The audio continued. "No increased aggression, no physical trauma, their bodies have adapted quickly. Well... if you can call them bodies. I'm still a bit confused about how it works myself and they aren't big talkers either so they can't explain. Point is 'Project: God Worm' has been deemed workable and we're now in the process of production. But we'll need more Thresher Maw samples before mass distribution can become attainable."

"Thresher Maws?" Wrex reasoned rather shocked. "How the hell are they getting Thresher Maw DNA?"

"Those giant worms do get around." Vik mentioned. "Plus, you said they have been on Tuchanka for awhile."

Liara wouldn't have been surprised to learn if Vorsa and Trox had helped kill some of the Maws themselves to help in the research. But that was neither here nor there, she needed to learn more. She picked out one of the video entries and set it to play. It showed a lab with an unggoy in a small observation cell slamming his body into the glass over and over again, Blood was pooling from his fists as he continued to strike the glass. His shoulder was cut open from his continued slamming into the glass and he even began smashing his head into it constantly.

"Keelah, what the hell is he doing?" Vik asked amazed as the unggoy grew more enraged.

Eventually the glass cracked and then broke as the unggoy tried to claw his way out of the room. Narration filled the rest of the video.

"The subject seen here had the most adverse reaction we've seen so far. The amount of pure adrenaline we've added to his system, coupled with the dulling of the nerve system, made him almost incapable of feeling pain. Thus it reinforced his already raised testosterone levels. The subject took two clips worth of pistol rounds before he finally went down. It was... disturbing... even to me. Supplementary note: Vorsa saw the footage. He said everything seemed acceptable... he just wishes they could last longer... and that they could be controlled."

Liara shook her head at it all. She looked to Kayap. He had been trying to watch, but everyone had gotten in his way. She was glad he couldn't see. There was too much information here to sort through piece by piece in any case. They needed to get what they could.

"Vik, get us a proper floor plan of this place." She ordered. "Once you do, we move out and find where they're holding the test subjects."

Vik set to work again, uploading everything he could for later study. One thing was clear already, Charlan's strings were currently being pulled by Vorsa. He was the face of the Covenant as far as the scientists were concerned. They were working to his ends. He wanted to improve his lessers, make them better fighters. To what exact end, she couldn't be sure, but Wrex had a few ideas.

"If they're really testing with Thresher Maw DNA and making their little midgets crazed balls of violence we may be looking at some potentially tougher fighting ahead." He warned. "We need to get rid of as much of their research as possible."

"We can do that by saving their test subjects, maybe even freeing some of Kayap's people." Liara suggested. "Without all the genetic research that has already gone into them they'll be back to testing at square one."

"We could also get rid of their back-up files on their progress too," Wrex added, "but Liara, that unggoy on the vid didn't look salvageable. It may be already too late for them. In that case, our only option would be to put them down."

It would accomplish the same goal, but Liara didn't like the prospect. She hoped not all of Kayap's friends here had been turned. At the very least, she hoped that was the case for Kayap's sake. He hadn't been handling this as well as she hoped.

It was then Vik called out.

"Got a floor plan and one third of the relevant data," Vik said aloud as he looked over to them. "Lot of juicy secrets on this mainframe, enough to bury the bosh'tets who work here for decades."

"Delete what you can't bring and-"

Liara was unable to finish. The main door's lock suddenly exploded from the outside. The smoking metal was forced open and walking in through the fog was the Turian Freelancer.

"And I thought this was gonna be boring." She quipped with her gun pointed at them. "Thanks for fixing that. Nice one with the locked door by the way, but you kinda talked a bit too loud. Now get on the floor and-"

Liara tossed out a throw attack that sent the turian tumbling to the ground and into a wall. Everyone immediately ran to an adjacent exit, Wrex shooting off the locking mechanism to speed up their retreat. Vik pulled out last, the mainframe still undergoing automatic deletion as he fled. The team ran through the busted door and kept on running.

"So much for stealth." Wrex reasoned as they made their way down the corridor.

It didn't take long for the turian to recover her senses. She followed their path out of the room. She pushed herself into a corner and fired at the group as they retreated. Her shots went wide though, only blowing out the glass of an observation chamber. Liara and the others went to ground, scrambling behind one of the terminal stations adjacent to the side of one of the chambers. As the others covered their heads, Wrex opened fire on the turian himself, forcing her back into cover.

"We better move before her aim gets better." Wrex warned. "We got a place we can get to from here?"

Vik brought up the floor plan of the secret levels he had downloaded and shifted through them.

"Well there's this room called 'Containment' around the corner," He informed them, sounding a bit unsure, "but I don't like the sound of it to be honest."

"We just need to lose her. We won't have to stay for very long." Liara assured him. "Besides, they may be holding some of the test subjects in there with any luck."

It made sense, they were supposed to contain the test subjects weren't they? In any event it was better than standing out in the open. Liara ordered Vik to lay down a turret to preoccupy the turian freelancer. He grumbled, still not liking the idea of heading to the room, but he didn't argue. He put down a turret and let it open up on the turian's position. She kept her head down while the group ran, letting their mechanical ally pin the turian to her corner.

Eventually the turian sped out like mad, firing her gun as she ran. She ducked to the ground near an adjacent observation cell and its terminal station. She then lobbed a grenade over to the turret, the blast messed up its circuitry for a split second before she stood back up and fired a single shot clean into its barrel, causing it to bend and then explode when it tried to fire. The turian turned before it blew up and radioed in.

"We got ourselves some rats." She said. "They're somewhere in experiment observation and containment. We need a lockdown, now!"

---

Vik hacked the lock on the containment door, allowing them inside the room. Once inside, Liara and Wrex kept their guns trained on the entrance way. They weren't sure if they had lost the turian, but they weren't making any assumptions. If someone came through that door they were dead. When they were sure no one was following them, Liara lowered her gun and took a look around.

The room's had distinctive metal grating below as its floor. Dim glowing lights illuminated the area. Most prominently, however, were the walls. They were lined with large metal pods, electrical wiring coming out of their tops and going up into the ceiling. She knew what they were, they all did, and it wasn't too shocking to find these sorts of things here. This was, after all, the "Containment Room" according to the floor plan.

"Stasis pods," Liara observed aloud as she glared at them.

"You think the people they grabbed are inside them?" Vik asked.

A possibility, but Liara wasn't so sure. Her gut was telling her something was off. Then a screeching sound was heard, filling the room with a terrible wail.

"Welcome, Asari." Came a voice over what sounded like an intercom system, one that was instantly recognizable.

"Vorsa, he knows we're here," Liara stated, her eyes darting about the room.

"How?" Wrex asked.

Liara searched the ceiling and found something in the corner, a camera looking straight at them.

"I don't know what you put into the systems that allowed you to get this far, but it has been purged." Vorsa declared. "So shall be your fate as well. You've trapped yourselves in an enclosed space. Now this facility's failures will rend you limb from limb."

The stasis pods shut down one after other and their doors began slowly opening. Gas vented from the machines and as the smoke cleared it revealed the contents of the pods, unggoy. Kayap, seeing them as they slowly roused, rushed over to one of the pods and looked over to get a better view.

"Togap!" He called out. "Togap, that you?"

Liara walked up behind Kayap, showing concern as the unggoy began to wake.

"You know this one?" She asked Kayap.

"He friend, we under same leader before he go with another." Kayap explained. "Not seen him after."

The second Kayap finished explaining, he was kicked in the face by the rousing unggoy. The little methane sucker skidded across the floor, Liara moving out of the way as he fell. Vik rushed over to pick the fallen unggoy up. Liara turned back to Kayap's former friend, who was snarling at her. His pupils were pure white and the muscles in his arms were bulging slightly. The unggoy lunged at the Asari and Liara was forced to swat him away with her biotics. Togap hit a wall, but he got up almost immediately.

"Togap!" Kayap shouted out as he hurried to stand on his own two feet again. "Stop! They friends!"

"He's not the only problem." Vik gulped.

The quarian pointed to the other stasis pods, other unggoy with similar pure white eyes and muscles in their arms clambered out of their pods. Now fully out and about, it was easier to see their suits. They had relatively basic yellow and red armour, with two cylindrical pipes on their backs with tubes running to their masks. They began to surround the group, snarling and pounding the floor with their knuckles and fists.

"Vik, turret, Wrex, shockwave." Liara ordered as she pulled back into a defensive circle with Kayap in the center. "Do it! Now!"

Vik set down a turret and pulled out his shotgun. Wrex let loose a shockwave to clear his area a bit and fired away with his assault rifle which was already at the ready. Liara took aim with her pistol and threw out a singularity to keep the rabid unggoy from getting too close. With Vik's turret chattering away, Liara let loose a throw attack that detonated the singularity, spilling the unggoy across her section of the room. Many were injured, some were dead, but those that could still breathe and move kept on moving, possessed by an overriding need to kill.

One of the unggoy got close enough to grab Wrex by his face. The little alien beat and clawed at the krogan chieftain, but Wrex managed to rip him off and slam him back into the ground before stepping on his face. That seemed to keep him down.

Vik was only faring slightly better, and only thanks in part to his turret. His shotgun should've been more than enough to put the unggoy now, but in their current state they seemed to brush off the pain with ease. One of the unggoy grabbed Vik's turret and threw it aside, smashing it against a wall. It turned to attack the quarian and Vik unloaded into the alien's face. Part of the unggoy's jaw fell off and he came at Vik again while he tried to reload a thermal clip. It was then Kayap finally grabbed for his own weapon, the needle gun, and fired them into the unggoy. The crazed alien was forced back slightly, as the projectiles struck his face. The small explosion that erupted from the needles as they ignited killed the unggoy dead.

"Thanks for the save." Vik told him with a gracious thumbs-up.

But Kayap just stared in shock at the dead unggoy, seemingly not believing what he had just done. He had killed one of his own people, almost on instinct alone. He couldn't seem to stop shaking as his arm fell to his side.

It was then Liara decided to end the fight and sent a powerful throw attack hurtling towards the remaining unggoy as they charged. The rabid creatures were thrown violently into a nearby wall, hard enough to snap their spines or break their skulls. That seemed enough for what was left, but one of the unggoy kept moving towards them. It was Togap, crawling along the floor with his limp legs and broken back. He kept clawing towards them, still determined to kill.

"These guys must be like that one we saw on the vid." Vik realised. "They locked them here because they couldn't control them. I knew I had a bad feeling about this room."

"It's just as well we came here." Liara told him. "Rejects or not, they were keeping them alive for a reason. They were hoping to perfect the process to make them more controllable, remember? We may have just set them back a bit."

Wrex stepped out in front of the others and levelled his rifle at Togap's head. Kayap tried to rush up to stop him, but the krogan had already pulled the trigger. Togap finally fell silent and Kayap just kept staring. Liara kneeled down beside him.

"There was nothing we could do." She told the unggoy, trying to comfort him. "What was left of your friend was gone. We had to put them out of their misery before Vorsa and the batarians did something worse with them."

Kayap just nodded, but he still didn't look happy about it all. He kept staring at Togap's body for awhile longer, before he turned away. This was what Liara had hoped to keep Kayap from seeing, but once again life proved to be beyond her control.

Wrex took out the camera with his rifle, giving them some privacy again.

"If this is what they did to the Unggoy, how can we be sure the test subjects aren't worse?" He asked.

"We won't know until we find them." Liara replied. "We assume they're alive and rational for now unless proven otherwise. We just need to figure out where they are."

"I may know," Vik spoke up as he waved them all over to him.

He pointed to a large space on the floor plan.

"This area is titled as the 'Subject Operation Theatre' in the plans." He began. "They must use it to work on the lab rats they kidnap and show off their procedures and end products to their employers. They said they were moving the test subjects at dawn, right? It's the perfect place to gather them. It's back on ground level, it's big enough to house everyone and it's close to a landing pad inside the facility's walls. That might be where they're storing them until that ship arrives."

"What's the fastest route from here to there?" Liara asked.

"Power Conduit Duct below us," Vik explained as he focused the floor plan map on their position. "We can all fit but we need to get past this grating and-"

Wrex grabbed the grated floor and heaved, pulling it clean up from below. The power conduit duct was now exposed and Wrex squeezed his way in.

"Come on, Princesses." He called back. "Just because I can save the day on my own doesn't mean I want to!"

Vik looked to Liara seemingly confused. She already guessed his question.

"We all have our quirks, you'll get used to his." Liara assured. "He does it to everyone, honest."

Vik just shrugged and followed after Wrex.

---

The power conduit duct was indeed rather tight, but they managed to squeeze by. Although they were hiccups, such as Vik accidentally invading Wrex's personal space every couple of feet.

"Quit stepping on my tail." The krogan said in an angry hush.

"Hey give me a break, your species is the only one that hasn't gotten rid of those things for some reason." The quarian argued in a shared hush whisper. "And I'm not used to being this close to one of you. You're kinda scary."

"I don't feel like arguing about strange evolutionary traits with you Mr. Weak Immune System." Wrex shot back.

"Knock it off you two," Liara shushed at them. "Do you want to start getting shot at by Vorsa and Trox's people?"

"I refuse to answer that because I know you'll hate my obvious response." Wrex quickly added.

Wrex finally punched the top of the duct and they all climbed out to their destination. They found themselves in the lower portion of a large theatre. Chairs were facing them from and upper balcony. All of them looked down upon a large space below through a thick plate of glass that stretched up high to the ceiling. They all stared down below at ground, littered with technical equipment, surgical tools, portable stasis pods... and the kidnapped test subjects.

The site was shocking to behold. Various people from all sorts of races and walks of life were strapped to tables with heavy clamps, stuffed into stasis pods or simply placed on the floor, too weak to try and get away in any capacity. They saw humans with lesions covering them, turians with their plates peeled off, asari with stitches and biotic dampeners strapped to their heads. Some people were missing arms, others appeared to be blind with covers over their eyes, and there were others covered in bloody bandages to hide their terrible wounds.

"Keelah," Vik said as he looked down upon them all, "I never thought I'd hate being right more than now. Ancestors, there's even more than I thought."

"I count at least 45 captives down there." Wrex spoke up. "I can only imagine they're just the survivors of this place. There had to be a lot more before we showed up."

At least they weren't too late for these people. Liara placed her hand up to the glass as she looked down upon the poor wretches the batarians had mutilated.

"Why so many different species?" She asked in abject horror. "It seems so... random. There's no proper fixed base line for the tests. Illegal genetics experiments usually involve only humans because of their desired genetic diversity."

"We weren't sure if they'd be compatible with our required process."

The voice came from behind, everyone turned at once to see Trox and members of his blood pack lording over them above the balcony. Their guns were aimed squarely at the group, their fingers on the trigger.

"Vorsa figured you'd try and save the test subjects." Trox continued as he stared down at them. "You heroic types are so damn predictable. But hey, at least you brought the quarian along, now we can terminate all our problems in one go."

Liara and the others had their weapons drawn, but they were clearly outgunned, stuck between the Blood Pack and a long drop to the floor below, which they were separated from only by a sheet glass. It wasn't a favourable prospect. They needed a plan, but Liara wasn't sure if she had time to come up with one.

Then, bursting through the lower door of the theatre sitting area was the turian freelancer again. Her rifle was aimed at the four, specifically at Liara's head.

"Glad you could join us, Catonis." Trox observed. "Saves us a few bullets. Now take care of them."

The turian looked straight at Liara as she approached, her gun still drawn.

"Try glowing blue again and I pop your cute little tentacle–laced head, asari." She warned. "You ain't sucker punching me this time. Now drop your guns."

Wrex was about to take aim, but Liara stopped him from doing so, that wasn't a good idea. She had a better one. She clicked a command button on her omni-tool, opening a channel to Saya. He could break this little stalemate, she just had to stall.

"Tell me, Trox," she began with a sneer. "Is this what the Blood Pack has been reduced to? Helping out slavers to mutilate people for science experiments?"

"If the pay is good, then yeah, that's what we do." Trox replied.

The turian seemed taken aback by this claim, her head rising from the sight on her gun. She walked over to the side of Liara's team with her gun still trained on them all. She looked down at the operating theatre below her for a brief second before speaking.

"You didn't say anything about this place using slaves." She spoke to Trox. "You said all the participants had volunteered."

"Volunteered, forced, whatever," Trox said rolling his eyes. "I'm paying you. That should be all that matters. What do you care?"

"My contract states no slaves and no civies," The turian explained adamantly. "It distinctly states that, in bold even! You didn't bother to mention this research involved kidnapping people."

Trox just huffed, clearly unmoved by the concerns of the turian.

"You're working in a batarian facility for a batarian boss," the krogan growled. "Don't tell me you never put it together on your own?"

"Parts of it, maybe, but I just-"

"And you still took my money," Trox added accusingly. "Free tip lady, you wanna make it in this business? You leave that garbage morality at the door. You do the job you're told, whether it's guarding slaves or fucking up weak-kneed civilians. There's no money to be had in playing nice. Now stop pissing around, do what I pay you to do and kill these four."

The turian straightened up and took aim at Liara's group again, her finger on the trigger and the barrel pointing at Liara's head. The asari glared at her as the turian prepared to fire, but the freelancer stalled.

"I do like the money," she admitted, "but that wasn't the reason I got into this business. Besides..."

The turian turned back around to face Trox, her gun now pointed at them.

"I just really don't like any of you." She stated flatly. "At all."

The turian suddenly fired towards the krogans above, but she wasn't aiming for them. Her shot struck a pipe above them, spewing out a torrent of steam on the Blood Pack. The momentary cycle of hot air distracted them enough for Liara's team to bring up their guns and start firing. Two krogan went down as the bullets flew and Trox began to retreat.

"Vorsa!" He called out as he ran for the door. "Get in here!"

The krogan was soon gone, but the turian freelancer called out to him one last time in hopes he was still in earshot.

"Consider our contract agreement revoked, ya bastard!" She cried.

The turian grabbed for her helmet and pried it clean off, tossing it to the ground. She turned to the others, revealing feminine turian features at last, including the larger spaces around the eyes, the longer plates across the cheeks and the slightly smaller fringe. Her face was covered by a red upside-down U with lines going off in different directions. One line reached for the crown of her forehead, two other lines spread out from her yellow eyes to her temples and two more were located further down the U close to her nostrils before they angled downward towards her cheeks.

"I've been meaning to say that for awhile." She said to the group with glee. She then gave a cocky salute. "Nelanax Catonis, former Hierarchy soldier, now at your service."

It was a surprising and sudden turn of events. Certainly not what Liara had been hoping for, but it was certainly faster than Saya. Liara was clearly still unconvinced, however, crossing her arms to give the turian an apprehensive look.

"Forgive me if I don't sound thrilled." She told Nelanax sternly. "You were shooting at us before."

"That was my job then and they've just revealed they were in breach of my contract all along." Nelanax responded dutifully. "So, now my job is making them pay for abusing my trust. I don't want to have a reputation that I was working for slavers."

"And yet you were working for a batarian terrorist group." Vik brought up rather venomously. "Did you really not figure out what they were? I thought you turians were smarter than that."

"At least the ones I know are." Wrex added in a rather unexpected form of agreement with the quarian conspiracy theorist.

Nelanax looked a bit despondent over the accusation, clicking her right mandible slightly.

"They never approached me as a terror group." She explained readily. "The Blood Pack subcontracted me. They said they were interested in former turian military experts willing to work freelance. Some guy called Kreave recruited me as a freelancer, said he wanted me to better train his vorcha and new krogan recruits to his chapter. Before I know it, I'm training batarians and a bunch of freaky looking aliens I've never seen before. That was a concern, yeah, but I thought they were like Blue Suns or something. They never told me about where they were from."

She seemed sincere, but Liara wasn't about to just openly trust a mercenary. She said she had been hired by Trox's former boss, Kreave, who Balak had said was now dead back on Tuchanaka. If he had been willing to recruit biotics into a mercenary organization that was usually against them, would he really have had qualms about electing a turian to teach some of his people? It certainly fit the story she had overheard from before. She doubted it was a lie, but that still didn't explain the other concerns.

"If you were supposed to be training people, why are you here on security?" Liara asked her.

"Trox showed up a few days ago, said he was signing my checks now and that he needed me for security here." Nelanax answered immediately. "He said there was a possible leak about our associates' business practices and to expect a possible break-in. I've been here for less than two days and they only gave me access to the observation level. I'm only in here because Trox's freaky alien friend said they'd be going down there over an open channel. I was only the closest; you probably got everyone of Vorsa's boys headed here right now."

It was still sketchy, but if she was telling the truth they didn't have much time to make a call. She had had questionable relations once before and Shepard trusted her. Liara looked to Wrex, trying to see if he had his own opinion. He had been in a similar position more than two years before as well. He had been a mercenary, he hadn't seemed the most trustworthy and he hadn't even told Shepard about his brief job working for a Rogue Spectre when they first met. All Wrex could give was a knowing look. It was her call, not his.

She came up with an idea.

"You said you were training Trox's people," she began with a demanding tone and look. "Do you know where?"

"Yeah," Nelanax admitted. "I'll tell you once we get out of here, but only if you let me help. I do not wanna be known in this business as someone who will take up work with terrorists and slave-rings."

She was offering help, they were in the middle of a group of well-armed soldiers and they had to get these people out of here. Later, she could do a full background check and if her info panned out, maybe they'd have another lead. So Liara made the only decision she felt she could make.

"How do we get down there to the captives?" She asked her.

Nelanax smiled and pointed her head up top.

"Catwalks above," she said, "they use them to fix the lights and maintenance. We can take a ladder from there down, express style."

They followed her up to the catwalks via a back entrance. Moving up a flight of stairs they soon came to a grated walkway. They moved quickly down it towards a ladder at the far end of the room. If Vorsa's people were coming, they had little time to get down there and even less time to get everyone out.

"I'm signalling the teams outside to move in." Liara told the others before looking to Nelanax. "Is there a structural weak point in here? Can we blow out a wall to speed the exfiltration process up?"

Nelanax looked around below her before pointing out a large wall near a small generator.

"I think that's the back-up for this room in case of a massive power failure," she said as she kept moving down the catwalk. "They have them all over the facility. It's got enough juice in it to make a real big hole if it blows."

"Looks like the wall it's against is near the east end of the facility." Vik said as he looked at the floor plans. "Blowing a hole there would lead you directly to the outside."

"But you'll need some really powerful explosives to accomplish that." Nelanax advised.

"We have somebody who can manage that." Liara assured.

Almost as if on cue, part of the ceiling gave way as a panel fell down onto the catwalk. Jumping down from the ducts above was Saya, his sword in his hand. Nelanax was seemingly impressed by the salarian's entrance.

"Kickass, a ninja frog." She beamed.

Liara pushed her way past the surprised turian.

"Saya, I need you to deal with that generator," she said pointing towards the object in question. "It can help blow a hole to the outside."

Saya complied and jumped off the side of the catwalk. The salarian spread himself out to slow his descent before special jump-jets on his armour activated. He slowed down to a quiet crawl and landed safely on the ground in a kneeling position. He then rushed over to the generator, past the captives, to begin his work.

"Well, that's one way down." Nelanax observed before she reached the ladder. "Wish I could do that."

She clambered onto the ladder and readied herself to slide down.

"Come on then, let's check these patients out of this whack-job hospital." She said to the others.

She then slid down the ladder while the rest of them looked on a bit befuddled.

"Is it just me or is every other line out of her mouth a catchphrase?" Vik asked sounding a bit incredulous.

"I've gotten used to working with those kinds of people over the years." Liara replied.

They all followed Nelanax's lead down to the ground below. Liara had called in the krogans and her ShadowNet. It wouldn't be long before the firefight outside started. Once it did, they'd have a very small time frame to get out of here. They'd need to have the captives safely away from this place and somewhere the proper authorities could pick them up. Just outside the facility would probably be good enough, they'd stay until they heard sirens.

They began gathering up the test subjects; most of the team was pulling them off of their gurneys or picking them up off the floor. Vik was bringing the ones in stasis pods out of their sleep carefully so as not to damage them. The captives were then herded away from the generator. It wasn't easy moving so many people, but enough appeared to be able to stand on their own that they could assist.

Kayap stood as a lookout, overlooking the entrances and exits to the room. Vorsa's people would be coming. They couldn't be taken by complete surprise. He stayed atop a terminal, looking everywhere constantly. His needle gun was out and ready, Liara just hoped he wouldn't hesitate to use it after what he had seen in the containment room.

Saya finished priming the back-up generator to blow. He had spread and poured gel into every orifice and significant area he could find. He even put some extra on the wall itself to add to the chain reaction. Once all the kidnapped patients were out of the way, Saya turned away from the wall, moved away and pressed the trigger as his back was turned. The generator was embroiled in a fireball as the high walls of the facility shook violently. The smoke cleared soon after to reveal that the blast had taken out the wall as Nelanax said it would. They could now hear distant gun shots outside. No doubt is was their people already moving in. The explosion would've caught their attention.

"Let's move them back so our men can get them to safety." Liara ordered as she went to help one of the human test subjects.

It was then that Liara heard Kayap wail loudly. He ran from his position, arms flailing.

"Unggoys! More unggoys!" He cried out.

Everyone instantly ran up to defensive positions, pointing their weapons forward. Liara was concerned they'd be facing more rabid science experiments let loose, but it wasn't like that. These unggoy carried guns, wore their traditional armour like Kayap's and seemed a lot less deranged. They hadn't been experimented on. When they spotted Liara and her team they pointed their weapons towards them.

"These ones will go down easier, right?" Wrex asked.

Before Liara could answer, Kayap ran out into the open in front of them.

"Stop! No fight!" He called out to both sides. "We no need fight! We be friends!"

"Kayap, get back in cover!" Liara ordered.

"They not crazy! Me can make them join!" Kayap tried to assure her. "It not same as before!"

He didn't wait for Liara's approval, he just went ahead and he started talking to his fellow unggoy in his native tongue. Her personal translator implant couldn't make out the words, it just sounded like panicked gibberish to her.

"What is he saying?" Wrex asked, annoyed by no doubt a similar problem.

"He's telling them they don't have to fight us." Nelanax spoke up.

Everyone looked to her, amazed by how she had been able to translate.

"You know their language?" Vik asked surprised.

"They downloaded it into my translator so I could talk to them and them to me." She explained. "First step in teaching is communication."

"Well, continue translating for us!" Liara commanded.

Nelanax returned to listening in on Kayap's speech as he frantically pleaded back and forth between his former comrades. It was a pretty rapid fire conversation.

"He's saying that you're a better leader, you treat him like an equal and you never hit or punish him." Nelanax informed. "He wants them to join up. They say they can't, it would brand them as heretics."

Kayap kept getting more desperate approaching one of the unggoy with an earnest look in his eyes.

"He's trying to remind them of all the abuse and shit they've pulled, how they took them all away from their families, telling them about the experiments they've done on them here." Nelanax informed everyone, growing a bit more concerned as she spoke. "I don't think they're listening."

Indeed, the unggoy Kayap was talking seemed to refuse the argument. He cast his hand out in a swish motion vehemently shouting something at Kayap.

"The other guy is saying they can't betray the Covenant because of their families. He's... talking about some kind of rebellion. It almost got their race killed." Nelanax continued, trying to keep up. "He's saying they're too strong, they can't disobey, and that they'll get something better when their service is complete."

Kayap grabbed his fellow unggoy and shook him violently, practically screaming at him now.

"Kayap is saying, no paradise is worth this," Nelanax spoke at an even more quickened pace, trying to keep up with everything. "He says the sangheili are horrible masters and that the unggoy are all expendable to them, that if they try to fight us they'll all die! That they have a chance if they join you..."

The unggoy Kayap was shaking then spoke something softly to him and Nelanax's eyes grew wide.

"Shit," She said as she switched her rifle to incendiary rounds. "The bad guy midget just said; 'Then this is going to end soon whatever we choose to do next.' Fuck."

Within an instant, Kayap was thrown to the side by his fellow unggoy who raised his gun up to fire on Liara. The plasma pistol charged up, giving off a big glowing green light. The asari had no choice, she fired. The unggoy fell down dead as the bullet pierced his skull.

That single shot opened up a firestorm as everyone opened up on the unggoy scattered about the operating floor. They weren't entirely slaughtered within the first few seconds to their credit. The unggoy ran to cover where they could, scampered away lines of fire and tried to cover each other with plasma bolts. But it was a losing battle for them.

Each of the team managed to thin their ranks considerably. Nelanax's incendiaries caught some of the unggoy's methane packs, causing them to explode in only a few hits after the initial shot. Wrex sent out a shockwave that popped a few of the unggoy up, giving him a chance to fill him with lead.

Vik set up a turret that sprayed the area with bullets. Some got caught, others bolted away as fast as they could. Vik fired at any that were close enough with his shotgun, causing them to scamper off to get gunned down by Wrex or someone else. One of the unggoy tried to slink around the flank to catch the quarian off guard, only to find a drone that popped up in his face that then shot an electrical blast straight into the little alien's face.

Saya was beside Liara, simply firing his pistol into the groups of unggoy as they moved about. When they managed to get close enough, Saya bolted over the top of his cover and ran into battle. He slashed into one of the unggoy as he rushed forward. He jumped off the body and fell down to stab into another before firing off his pistol into the unggoy nearby, taking them down with precision.

There weren't many left before too long. Liara tossed a few singularities to pull the unggoy out of cover. She fired at their floating bodies one by one. She wasn't getting flashy. They just needed to keep them at bay until their back-up arrived. It was then one of the unggoy rushed out of cover with what appeared to be a grenade in hand. He wasn't throwing it though.

"Goddess." Liara muttered at the realisation of what was happening.

She took aim at the alien and fired off a number of shots, but the unggoy kept coming. He got a bit too close, and clicked the grenade's button. Then, suddenly, a flurry of needles flew into the alien's back. Liara dived away as the pink explosion cloud erupted, followed by a giant blue explosion. She looked up to where the needles had come from and saw Kayap keeping his gun trained on the place the suicidal unggoy had been, now just a black ashen smear on the ground. She got up and moved over to him, lowering his weapon once more.

She had been here, she didn't know how personal it was, but she had been here. And she kenw what Kayap needed to hear.

"You tried, Kayap." She consoled him. "That's what's important. You tried."

Kayap finally took a breath and looked up at the asari. Nothing more was said, nothing more was needed.

The fight had ended, for now. This was most definitely not Vorsa's main attack. Unggoy were cannon fodder, he just wanted them to waste a ton of ammo on them. But that wouldn't pay off. Moments after the last unggoy died, their back-up arrived. ShadowNet operatives saw to the captives, Liara organizing them as best they could to bring them out.

"The east-end of the Outer facility has been secure, Clan Leader." One of the krogan reported to Wrex. "We can establish a perimeter around the area and defend the evacuees till we're ready to leave."

"Good, we need to be ready for the sangheili." Wrex warned. "They're on site and coming soon, so..."

Wrex paused, his head looking up to the ceiling like he heard something. As he sniffed the air, something caught his attention, bringing his assault rifle back up to his eyes and pointing up at the ceiling.

"Crap, scratch that," he warned, "They're here."

Liara took note of the warning and looked to the other end of operating theatre. Dropping down from the other end of the catwalks appeared a pack of sangheili in black armour, led by one that was wearing gold. Vorsa was staring straight at them. His men all armed with energy swords, but he was standing there with no weapon drawn.

Liara looked to her people.

"Get the hostages out." She ordered. "We'll hold them back."

The operatives complied and began shepherding the patients out the hole in the back of the room. Everyone else took up defensive positions. All except Wrex's krogan, who stood out in the open, with their guns primed and ready to fire. Wrex had to hold up his hand to make sure they didn't shoot just yet, as they probably would've if he didn't.

Vorsa stepped over one of the dead unggoy as he approached. Liara bit her lip slightly as Kayap kept low beside her. He had good reason. Vorsa had just sent all of Kayap's friends to their deaths. Who was to say he wouldn't just shoot him down right there? Vorsa was eyeing Liara in particular. She wasn't exactly sure if he was smiling or not, it was hard to tell with their faces and armour.

"Weak aren't they?" He asked aloud as he kicked at the corpse of an unggoy. "When we found them their pathetic little world was a wreck, barely recovering from ecological collapse. They weren't good warriors, but they were useful in probing the enemy. The Forerunners have a place for us all in their grand plans it seems. I suppose trying to make them better fighters was futile all along."

"You call yourself a warrior and you send people weaker than you to do your fighting." Liara sneered back. "You bully them into submission and treat them like dirt. Why they haven't killed you I have no idea."

Vorsa chuckled at the notion.

"Fear is a powerful motivator for lack of faith, asari." He explained. "These ones understood it, yours has forgotten."

Kayap hid deeper among his cover while Liara stared Vorsa down through the barrel of a gun.

"If you think I'm going to let you take him or anyone else in here, you're sorely mistaken." She told the gold plated bastard in front of her.

"The Covenant has no use for traitors in any case," Vorsa stated shrugging. "He'll die with you as an example. There is nothing he can do to regain favour. He is marked, as all you infidels and heretics are."

"You going to keep talking or are you going to fight, Golden-Boy?" Nelanax demanded aloud.

Vorsa gave the turian a single look.

"You seem to have a knack for creating backstabbers, asari." He noted.

"She chose to join up, just like Kayap did." Liara replied. "I'm a better boss it seems. I can see why they'd think that given the management around here."

"You call him by name as well?" Vorsa asked on the verge of laughing aloud. "You have the ability to warp mass with your mind and you call that wretched pile of gas-breathing refuse by name?"

"I don't treat people like garbage." Liara responded adamantly. "Simple as that."

Vorsa rolled his eyes at the sentiment.

"At the very least these stupid creatures allowed me and my men to analyse your combat styles." He stated. "This should be over swiftly."

Vorsa reached to his side and ignited his energy sword.

"Recover the test subjects, alive if you can." He informed his men menacingly. "Cut down the rest."

The sangheili rushed forward, bellowing a war cry from their mandibles with their swords stretched out to their sides. Some of them had plasma rifles in their free hands and opened up on Liara's team as they closed. Vorsa took up the rear and was one of the few sangheili who didn't pull a gun. Was he that confident in his swordsmanship, Liara thought, or was it just plain ego?

The sangheili closed the distance, their shots forcing the krogan into better cover. Even they didn't want to take a plasma bolt to their faces if their armour failed them. They still fired their shotguns and rifles at the sangheili, but it didn't seem to deter them. What their shields didn't absorb, their energy swords halted. They held up their swords across their bodies and the shots seemed to be blocked by the plasma-based blade. The tiny mass effect propelled fragments melted against the searing heat of the energy that comprised the sword. Then, when they were close enough, they tried fighting the krogan hand to hand, so to speak.

The sangheili had closed to within slashing distance of their targets. The krogan were able to hold their own in an all out brawl, but the sangheili they were fighting were quick, nimble and far more flexible. They dodged the giant humpbacked aliens' blows with ease, and seemed to be toying with them at times. They had all the chances to strike the krogan down, but simply swatted them away with their free hands.

Some of Wrex's people tried shooting the Covenant soldiers, but even at close range the sangheili avoided the attacks. One of them used his sword hand to both push a shotgun's barrel away from his head before cutting the gun in two. The krogan, angered at the loss of his weapon, retaliated by head-butting the sangheili. The Sangheili fell to the ground from the successful strike, but easily rolled away from the forthcoming stomp towards his head.

The others weren't having nearly as difficult a time, but they weren't faring much better. Vik kept backing up, not willing to stand for long against the sangheili as they kept blocking his shots. He tried to drop a turret, but it didn't get off many shots before the sangheili cut it down. It offered a moment to fire his shotgun at them though, hitting their shields from afar. That forced the two sangheili to retreat behind a terminal for cover, where they continued their attack on the quarian by firing plasma rifles at his position. The quarian was forced to go to ground behind one of the abandoned stasis pods. He sent out a drone to keep the sangheili preoccupied while he reloaded his gun.

Saya was more comfortable with the close combat from all outward appearances. The salarian didn't hesitate to meet the sangheili with his sword out and ready to strike. He wasn't foolish enough to try and connect with the energy weapon. The shiakala wasn't an ordinary weapon, but it was still, at its core, just a sword with some extra upgrades. The plasma sword would cut it two with ease. So Saya would have to play smart.

As the first lunging slash from the sangheili came towards him, Saya twirled around him to the left. He sliced at the Covenant soldier's arm with his own sword, electrifying the blade as he passed it over the arm. The sangheili grunted, but barely flinched. He wrenched back, slashing upwards, Saya jumped back before the blade could make contact. The sangheili charged forward, lashing out with a strike, but the salarian ducked down and rolled around his target, slashing out at his back. An electrical shock bit at the upper shoulder blade of the sangheili, forcing him forward. He spun back around, intending to lop Saya's head off, but the STG agent ducked and delivered a powerful kick to the Covie's stomach.

That was the end of the easy hits. The sangheili retaliated with a swift kick that sent Saya flying backwards. He smashed into a computer terminal and the sangheili lunged for the kill. The salarian dodged out of the way, just in time for the plasma sword to plunge through the terminal instead of him. Saya stabbed his sword downward, straight into the sangheili's arm that held the sword and turned up the juice. An electrical shock permeated through the Covie's body, but despite the pain he would not yield. The sangheili balled his fist and punched Saya away from him. The shiakala slid out and Saya was forced sliding back across the ground. The sangheili simply stood back, switched his sword his good arm and prepared for another round. One thing was now clear to Saya; these guys were tougher than they had first appeared.

Nelanax was struggling to put her attackers down as well. Bursts of fire flew straight for the sangheili that was approaching her. He just didn't seem to be all that bothered by her attempts. His plasma sword was quick to move over and block wherever bullets came flying at him. The shots melted to nothing at the energy sword's touch. Going for the kill shot was proving ineffective, she needed another strategy.

As she backed up from the sangheili some more she bumped into a small medical tools table. Arrayed on it were a number of small scalpels and bone saws, among other surgical equipment. She doubted any of it would be enough to rip into her attacker enough to kill him, but it could probably catch him off guard.

She picked up one of the electrical cutting tools on the table, some kind of saw blade, probably used to cut open ribcages. She turned it on with one hand and fired off another wild burst with her rifle in the other. The bullets went wide, but they were the distraction. She just needed to get his attention on her long enough for him to move his sword back into place, allowing her an opening to toss the saw at him.

The tool spun through the air and collided with the sangheili's left thigh. He jolted from the pain in anger for a split second. Enough time for the turian to close in and deliver a swift kick to the injured leg. The sangheili bent down under the pressure and Nelanax kneed him in the chin, forcing him onto his back. She would've finished him then and there, if he hadn't pointed his plasma rifle back up immediately and began shooting. Nelanax bolted away from the injured sangheili and ran to the cover of an overturned medical table. At least she had halted his advance.

It was from her new cover that she spotted Vik, now pinned behind his terminal as plasma bolts struck his position. She spotted the two sangheili that were giving him grief. Considering that they now played for the same team, she decided to help him out. She activated a grenade and tossed it into the sangheili's position. They noticed the explosive land and bailed from their position. They got far enough away from the initial blast radius that one of them only had his shields taken down and a bit of shrapnel lodged into his back. He pulled back to safer cover despite the pain.

The other sangheili avoided the explosion altogether, but his attention was now on the female turian rushing at him like a freight train. He fired his plasma rifle at her, but the turian dropped down and slid forward. She kicked the Covie in the chest with both her feet. The sangheili was forced back slightly. He then ignited his plasma sword and thrust it down towards her. She rolled out of the way, the blade cutting into the floor instead of her body.

Nelanax picked herself back up and threw a punch at the sangheili. He blocked it along with the following kick that came for his face. He then swung out with his sword towards her head, but Nelanax stopped it by grabbing his arm just moments before the blade reached her neck. She could feel the searing heat just inches away from her and she growled at the slight pain. The sangheili kept pushing forward, inching his blade closer. She couldn't beat him in a test of strength on this level, so she fell back on one of her old standards. She brought up her foot and kicked him in the crotch. The sangheili didn't seem nearly as hurt as most others were, but it forced him off her. Nelanax then went for her knife and stabbed it into the side of the sangheili's head as he tried to recover.

"Mind if I pick your brain?" She asked, seemingly laughing at her own quip.

She kicked the sangheili off her blade and looked back to Vik. He had been out of cover for awhile and had pretty much seen the whole ordeal.

"Are you a vid trailer or something?" He asked the turian, seemingly bothered by her one-liner.

Nelanax just smirked and pulled out her own pistol.

"You're welcome, quarian." She said, brushing off the question as she went back into the fight once more.

Vik just shook his head and followed her back up to the others.

Both Wrex and Liara were side by side, still trying to hold off Vorsa's men. Saya passed them by, still avoiding and dodging the sangheili chasing after him. Liara, spotting this, threw out a throw attack in the sangheili's direction. It forced him flying upwards straight into the catwalks above, where he crashed into the railing. He wasn't killed by the impact of the guardrail, however, as he quickly turned his attentions to the asari and began firing on her, forcing her to go to ground.

"They seem particularly tougher to put down this time." Liara observed as she kept her head low behind a stasis pod.

"Probably because their leader ain't cutting and running like he did on Tuchanka." Wrex suggested as he fired off another slug.

"We'll kick their asses like we did there, Clan Leader!" Said one brazen krogan, assured of their imminent victory. "Watch this!"

He and another one of Wrex's men jumped forward into no man's land. Wrex held out his hand to stop them, but he was suddenly preoccupied. One of the sangheili got too close and he was forced to send him flying away with a shockwave. Another took aim at him from afar with a plasma rifle. Wrex armed his shotgun's carnage mod and fired one blast straight at the sangheili's position. The blast sent the sangheili reeling backwards. His shining armour was blackened by the explosion and he appeared to be bleeding, but he quickly scrambled to cover and continued to blind fire at his enemy.

Wrex turned back to his fellow krogan just in time to see Vorsa approach them. What happened next occurred in the blink of an eye. One of the krogan raised his gun to fire, only for a plasma sword to get punched through his gut. Vorsa pulled the sword out and slashed it across the second krogan's face. They both fell to the floor in heaps. Wrex growled at Vorsa as the Covenant officer glared at him.

"You may have surprised us on your homeworld, Urdnot." Vorsa acknowledged. "But we were far more prepared for this fight."

Wrex said nothing, but he did switch to inferno rounds and prepare another carnage shot. Vorsa shook his head.

"I find guns so... barbaric." He declared as he lifted his sword high. "Any brute could use a firearm. It takes precision and cunning to learn the ways of the sword. Far more elegant a weapon, wouldn't you say?"

"Maybe," Wrex relented, "but krogan don't do elegant."

The Krogan Clan Leader raised his gun to fire, but Vorsa was on him in seconds. He cut the shotgun in two. Wrex dropped the gun and returned a biotic punch to Vorsa's face. The sangheili was pushed back and Wrex tried to follow up his strike with a charge. Vorsa just flowed around him and slashed at Wrex's hump. The krogan grunted, but was undeterred. He wouldn't let Vorsa force him into his preferred fight.

Wrex went for his pistol and prepared to shoot, but Vorsa was a step ahead of him. The sangheili commander sliced at Wrex's leg, causing him to falter before he kicked him to the ground. Wrex fell forward and onto his back, allowing Vorsa to get on top of him. The snagheili's foot stomped down on one of the krogan's hands. He went to stab Wrex in the face, only for Wrex to clutch at his sword-wielding arm and hold it back.

Liara looked on in shock. Everyone else was too busy with their own problems along the defences to help. She needed to do something. Wrex was struggling to keep that massive blade of plasma from cutting into his brain. She could fire at Vorsa, but his shields would probably absorb it. She needed to put him off guard.

That was when something hit her foot. She looked down to see it was one of the Covenant's plasma pistols. She looked over to where it had been slid in from and saw Kayap.

"Press trigger and hold!" He called out. "Fire when it glows big!"

She understood what he meant and grabbed the gun at her feet. She pressed down on the trigger until the weapon hummed loudly, a giant bolt of energy formed on its end. She aimed it at Vorsa and fired. The huge ball of plasma collided into Vorsa, destroying his shields. Shocked at what had just happened, Vorsa wasn't as focused on killing Wrex. The krogan kicked him off and away from the defence line. He followed it up with a powerful biotic throw that sent Vorsa hurtling into the back of the room. After stumbling for a few meters, however, Vorsa managed to stay on his feet.

"Fine," the sangheili commander growled. "If you wish for a more brutal death..."

He shouted something in another tongue. Stomping out from one of the entrance doors appeared an imposing-looking Mgalekgolo, similar to the ones on Tuchanka. Knowing Wrex was still hurt and would need time to heal, Liara rushed over to drag the krogan into cover. Wrex still had his pistol in hand and fired it back on the giant walking tank. The bulelts bounced off the creature's armour and it continued to charge up its main weapon. In the last moment, Liara managed to get Wrex into safety as everyone pulled back. The Mgalekgolo fired his weapon and a giant flaming ball of plasma rocketed towards them. They managed to get out of the blast radius, but Liara could still feel the heat as the explosion rocked the ground.

Everyone else soon pulled back with them, they had no idea how to fight that thing. Liara turned to Nelanax, hoping she had an idea or suggestion.

"I don't suppose you trained some of them." She posited to her.

"Actually, yeah," Nelanax answered dutifully. "They have this big orange space on their backs. Looks all gross and pulsating and crap. I think that's their weak spot."

Then they needed to get him turn around, Liara looked to Vik for the answer.

"Send a drone out, force him to turn his back to us." She ordered.

"On it." Vik concurred.

Vik let loose a drone program, it appeared near the Mgalekgolo and sent out a blast. It didn't seem to bother the giant alien much, but he still saw fit to turn and smash the drone with his giant club-like shield on his other arm. Everyone popped up to fire into the creature's back, only to find that it was not orange, but brown.

"That's not supposed to be there." Nelanax said confused.

Liara was suspicious, but looked to Kayap.

"Do they have those?" She asked.

The unggoy shook his head.

"Mgalekgolo all bright behind." He confirmed. "That not how they look before."

Regardless, Liara fired her pistol at the brown back, but the bullets seemed to do nothing. Wrex peered closer at the alien's back and his eyes went wide in shock.

"That looks like Thresher Maw hide." He observed. "That thing has the natural defences of a thresher maw!"

It all clicked suddenly, Project: God Worm, now she understood the name and the goal. They had fused thresher maw DNA with these giant aliens to remove a potential weakness.

Mgalekgolo turned once more to fire, charging his weapon again. Everyone made a break for cover as another barrage headed their way, taking pieces of the operating floor with it. Then, it suddenly stopped. The survivors of Liara's group looked back curiously. Nelanax quickly piped up.

"I'm getting something over their comms line, I still got the frequency." She explained. "I'll tune you in."

Trox's voice rang over their speakers as Nelanax transmitted the frequency code to the rest of the team.

"Repeat, pull out." He said.

"I am winning, you fool! We could be rid of them!" Vorsa shouted in protest.

"The cops are almost here, we heard the sirens just a minute ago." Trox explained. "We cannot risk losing Project God Worm. It's the priority. His brother is already on our escape ship, get the second over here or we'll be back to square one!"

Vorsa growled and at that moment, every Covie in the room began to pull out. They fired off shots to keep Liara and her people pinned, but it wasn't long before they had all left. Liara was tempted to go after them, but if the police were almost here then they needed to be gone too. That and the hostages still needed to be seen to a safer position.

For now, they were done.

---

The police showed up only a few minutes later. Liara had spotted a shuttle leaving the Charlan Facility moments before they arrived. They left the tortured and mutilated patients in the parking lot to be found. Hopefully there were ambulances already on the way to the building and they'd be getting medical treatment in no time.

Liara couldn't stay to find out, none of them could. They had lost two of their own and had wasted enough time recovering their bodies from the scene of the crime. They couldn't leave any evidence behind, just a bunch of traumatized witnesses who weren't in any shape to give faces or names. The rest of the team made their way back to the extraction zone and waited for the shuttle to land. While they did, she gathered Vik, Saya and Wrex together to handle their plus one, Nelanax.

"Well it seems I saved your asses." She told them with a cocky grin. "No need to thank me, all in a day's work. So, who am I bunking with?"

"Excuse me?" Liara asked with a perched eyebrow.

"Well, I'm joining the crew right?" She asked. "That was the deal."

Vik rolled his eyes slightly. The sentiment was shared by the others as well.

"That wasn't the deal." She replied with an incredulous look. "You said you'd give us information if we let you help us and got you out. We didn't say you could join the crew"

Nelanax snorted at the refusal and insisted on her inclusion.

"I took a big risk for you back there," she told them, pointing back at the facility. "You realise that, right?"

Liara accepted that she had put herself at risk. Trox wasn't going to forget her betrayal, if it was a sincere one of course. But that wasn't enough to allow her to join.

"We appreciate your help, but it doesn't mean we suddenly trust you." She informed the turian. "You turned on Trox and the Blood Pack mainly because you didn't like them lying to you."

"If I had known what they were about I'd never have taken the job." Nelanax replied, annoyed by the suspicious stare she was being given. "I saved your quarian's butt back there, I was pretty much the only one who managed to kill something in that fight and I'm offering to help you more. What is not to trust?"

"Get used to that, you're a merc." Wrex told her. "Trust is earned, especially in the hired gun business."

Nelanax grimaced, annoyed at it all. Finally she sighed and approached Liara more earnestly.

"Look, I promised to tell you the location of that training camp I was at if you got me out." She reminded her. "I'm good to my word, but I'd be of more help if I came along. I know the place, I got the outline, I know where they keep everything, I have it all memorized. I've been with the Blood Pack and these new aliens for awhile too, so I know a bit about their strategies, their functions, who some of the key players are. I'm a goldmine here!"

"You're still a relative unknown." Liara informed her gravely. "You're asking me to put my trust in you and so far all I know about you is that you pulled a gun on your former employers. What is going to convince me you won't do the same to me if you get pissed off with us?"

"Check out my background," The freelancer insisted urgently with a pleading look. "Look up my record in the military, whatever you need to do to figure out I'm trustworthy."

Liara had planned to do a background check anyway, but she was still not sure. She just seemed too eager; maybe Vik's paranoia was rubbing off on her already. She crossed her arms as she continued the conversation.

"Why do you want to help us so much?" She asked the turian. "We can't exactly pay you a higher salary if that's what you want."

"Credits ain't why I got into this," Nelanax told her adamantly, with an earnest tone of voice as she spoke. "I came for the action and I came for the thrill. You guys are after these new crazy aliens and all the shit they brought with them. Taking them down sounds like the kind of action they've been stiffing me on. So think of this as pro-bono if you want, no charge, I just want to get the chance to kick their asses for the shit they put me through. When I said I didn't like them back there, I meant it. I was only sticking around until my contract was up or if something better came along. You came along."

Liara's looked softened slightly as she took Nelanmax's words in.

"I helped them, yeah," She admitted, "but I can help you take them apart, if you let me."

Liara still wasn't sure about her, maybe she could be trusted. A background check was in order in any case. Plus, it would probably be easier to monitor her aboard the ship than it would be by just cutting her loose. She'd need to be careful with this one, but someone with insider knowledge of Balak's organization, no matter how little, could prove useful.

"Fine, you're welcome on the ship." She told her. "But I'm going to be watching you."

"Kick ass," Nelanax beamed, "I guess I should finally just learn your name then, since we're ship buddies."

Liara sighed, she might as well. They hadn't properly introduced themselves before after all.

"I'm Doctor Liara T'Soni." She said stretching out her hand for Nelanax to shake. "This is Saya Empa, Vik'Sajee and Wrex."

Nelanax took Liara's hand, and also seemed excited at the revelation of who they were.

"No way! Liara T'Soni and Urdnot Wrex?" She asked. "Commander Shepard's crew? Shit, now I know I picked the right side."

"I take it you've heard of us then?" Wrex asked with an intrigued look.

"Who hasn't heard of Urdnot Wrex?" She replied. "Spirits, you're like a fucking legend in the merc world! Moreso after you kicked the Geth Ship on the Citadel straight in the sack over two years ago."

"Good, then you know what we're capable of." Liara told her with a slight hint of a warning. "I don't suppose you have any other things you need to bring along?"

Nelanax looked back in the direction of the Charlan facility, the sirens still blaring.

"Nah, brought most of my guns with me anyways." She admitted turning back. "You got a holovision up in your ship though, right?"

"I'm sure we could find one." Liara replied.

"Great, then I'm all set." She stated as she headed to the shuttle.

Wrex stood by Liara as they watched her go to take a seat in the shuttle.

"We keep picking up weirdos everywhere we go it seems." He said to her.

"What does that say about us?" Liara asked in return.

She quickly changed the subject to the aftermath of the mission.

"We got a bit of a wake-up call." She told him. "Charlan proves these Covenant have been active for awhile and they're getting help from the batarians to make them even tougher. Plus, Vorsa just showed us how ruthless he and his people can be. They took everything we could throw at them and we could only severely wound them at best for the most part."

"These sangheili are strong, and I think my own boys just got their first lesson." Wrex added as he looked to the other krogan. "No matter how tough you think you are, there is always someone who is just as or tougher than you, and maybe smarter. I think they'll start taking this thing a lot more seriously after today."

Wrex slowly turned back to Liara, a concerned look in her eyes.

"I hope you don't go off looking to fight Vorsa again alone or something." Liara told him. "You have nothing to prove."

"I know, don't worry." Wrex assured her. "I'm not petty here. He caught me off guard, all of us. Next time, we'll gang up on him. See how he likes it."

Liara smiled and nodded, happy to hear he wasn't some shamed by a near loss to someone else.

"I was worried for a second back there. That I was going to..." She couldn't finish the thought for a moment, the words sticking in her mouth. "Well, I didn't."

"You can't get rid of me that easy," Wrex boasted with his arms wide open. "And I wasn't worried for a second. I knew you had my back."

They began walking back to the shuttle.

"Now stop worrying about the 'almosts', okay?" Wrex asked as they climbed aboard. "We won today, be happy about that."

There was a lot to be happy about. She had put Charlan out of business, scattered Balak's bio-weapons research and saved a lot of people. On top of that she had added to her crew and got a new possible lead. It had been a good day and with any luck she was one step closer to bringing Shepard home. She just hoped, wherever he was, he was having a good day himself.

---

AN: So that brings our crew count to SIX, folks. Nelanax is the last inductee into Liara's little squad. I'm really excited for her because it's the first chance I get to do a turian female. They need to be done more, seriously. I have a pretty good backstory for her lined up, but you'll have to wait for that to come out in public.

Also, Anhur is a real planet in the Mass Effect universe if anyone wants to ask. Look it up, Google "Anhur Mass Effect", you'll find it, trust me. Same backstory and everything, honest, didn't make it up. BioWare created it and everything, I just used it.

Also, the TVTropes page could still some of your love. While you're goggling Anhur, type in "Guilty Sparks TVTropes" and feel free to edit if you can.

Next chapter brings us back to Halo, finally. We'll give Liara a rest for now. We still have a ring world full of mysteries to solve, a glass-bones Pilot and Biotic Ex-Con to save and some plot points to set up. We'll find ourselves in Alpha Base soon, where Shepard will learn more about Spartans and why ODST Majors are assholes. See ya then.