LIX
Taming Cerberus: Doggie Treats
On the whole, the Mako was a superior ground vehicle to the M-44 Hammerhead. Rockets as well as an artillery weapon, armor plating, the ability to drive backward as well as forward—the Mako could handle heavier engagement than the Hammerhead. It killed things a lot faster, and repairs hadn't been as difficult. The Mako was designed to be durable. Shepard had said that when she went down to Alchera, everything else had been a wreck. The Mako had seemed completely salvageable. They just hadn't had the equipment to retrieve her or the hold space to accommodate her if they did.
But damn, if flying in the Hammerhead wasn't a much more comfortable experience. Garrus and Tali ragged Shepard about the way she'd handled the old tank, but they only ever exaggerated a little. The four mass effect hover jets on the Hammerhead meant it was a much, much smoother ride. Impossible to flip. On occasion, Shepard had managed to knock into a rock, but it was about fifty times harder for her to collide with things in the Hammerhead than in the Mako. Garrus occasionally wished for the Mako's gun and armor plating when they ran into things to shoot. The Hammerhead was made of glass in comparison, so combat was a much more drawn-out affair than the old Mako drive-around-and-blast-everything standby. They generally had to find a rock to hide behind and take potshots until whatever was shooting at them went down, and spirits help them if the thing had legs. But still, the trade usually felt worth it. For his stomach's sake, at least.
The interior was Cerberus luxury too. With windows.
As usual, Garrus had the gun. Goto, Massani, and the professor shared the back. The view outside the windows was spectacular, but no one felt particularly chatty. Not after what they'd seen back at Hermes station. "Keep an eye out for Cerberus security mechs," Archer warned them over the radio. "The VI has likely taken control of them."
"Well. We were planning on trashing the Cerberus equipment here anyway," Goto observed. She paused. "Wait. Were we not saying that aloud yet?"
"We were going to do reconnaissance," Shepard growled, glaring out the front window. "If nothing needed destroying, we were just going to spy."
"That's your story, and you're sticking to it," Goto answered. "So, how much were you looking to find wrong before you flipped?"
Shepard didn't answer. "Bad practice, turning on your employer," Massani observed. "Get a reputation that way. Stop getting hired. But sometimes it's necessary."
Garrus shifted his grip upon the gun. With their connection to Cerberus severed, there wasn't a lot of reason for Massani to stick around. Garrus had expected Massani to be off with some of the first crew members back on Illium. Since he hadn't left—well. Zaeed might think he had his own good reasons to turn on his employer. Not even employer anymore—Cerberus was that, and most of our own funds are gone after Illium.
He'd talk to Shepard about it when they got back to Normandy. Until then, he'd watch Massani.
Shepard rounded a cliff, and a little guard outpost came into view—not one of the research stations they were looking for but a number of installations Cerberus would have built around to keep intruders away from their project. They'd built stations like this on other worlds where they had something major going.
"Hostile activity detected," the Hammerhead VI announced, as two automated antivehicle turrets swung about and fired a couple rocket. Shepard turned a sharp right.
"Garrus!"
"I'm on it," he said, swiveling his seat and engaging the gun.
Combat in the Hammerhead consisted of a series of short, swift swoops toward the enemy, followed by hasty retreats, or finding a pocket of cover that Shepard would boost out of again and again until Garrus could take the enemy out with the weak vehicle gun. Alternately tedious and terrifying, depending on the kind of fire that they took, and probably incredibly nauseating without the inertial dampeners. But when their little spat with the corrupted Cerberus turrets was over with, Shepard frowned.
"Hey, the VI's flagging some sort of encoded transmission at this guard station. Hang on, can retrieve it in a second—"
"An emergency Cerberus data packet has been recovered," the VI told them. "It contains information on Project Overlord that other research cells need to review. Be alert for more packets in the area. Five more remain."
"I guess the Hammerhead VI hasn't heard the news yet about Shep's break with Mr. Illusive," Goto noted. "What're we gonna do?"
Shepard had the files up on her omni-tool. She scanned them, face set. "Backup files? Project findings?" Garrus guessed.
She nodded but said nothing.
"Valuable information for Alliance," the professor observed. "Certainly interesting to Council and Salarian Union too." It had been the initial plan, as Shepard had said. See what was happening, collect some intel, pass it onto a better ally as a show of good faith to give them all someplace to go after Cerberus.
But now that they'd seen what was happening . . .
Cerberus is full of crazy, unethical scientists. But they don't have a monopoly on crazy, unethical science. Garrus could hear the concern in Mordin's voice.
Everyone always thinks they can avoid someone else's mistakes. There's a group in just about every race out there who would take anything we gave them on Project Overlord and just try to do it all again and do it right. And we can't be everywhere.
It was a similar question to the one they'd faced on Tuchanka, but while Shepard had been in the krogan's corner since Virmire or before, she'd never agreed with what Archer and his colleagues had been trying to do here. A crazy VI-human hybrid killing everyone in sight wasn't any better than the geth in the first place. If Legion was telling the truth about the rest of the geth out beyond the Veil, it was actually worse.
"Take video," Shepard told Garrus finally. "Any other guard stations we come across and whatever's going on inside the bases. No data." At that, she shredded the Cerberus data packet, leaving the files as so many strings of binary out in the ether. She turned the vehicle around and began driving a different pattern, not heading for Vulcan station the way she had before but quartering the ground, looking for the other data packet locations.
"Experiment exists," the professor pointed out. "Once created, can be recreated. Knowing experiments took place, others may make attempts."
No one answered. They all knew it was true. The idea of starting a geth cult to manipulate them wasn't the best, but there were a few kinds of crazy who would find it tempting. At last, Shepard sighed. "Let's hope the footage serves as a deterrent instead of an inspiration."
It took over an hour according to the planet's clock to track down all the data packets. Shepard shredded every one.
The vid wasn't compelling, and Garrus told Shepard so. They had footage of them destroying antivehicle turrets and a couple YMIR mechs. It was clear that every time, they were responding, but not that they were responding to a virus or a malfunction rather than systems programmed to attack them for being someplace they weren't supposed to. The Alliance, the Council, and anyone else could see them clearly firing on Cerberus installations and equipment, but not why they had done it.
"That'll be good PR if nothing else," Shepard said, "but I'm counting on things getting worse at the research bases. Keep it rolling."
"You got it," Garrus said. As they turned at last to head toward Vulcan Station, Garrus thought about how Shepard had shifted since their break from Cerberus. She was looking ahead, past the mission with the Collectors to the alliances they needed to make now if they were going to beat the Reapers. Image and propaganda were huge parts of any large-scale campaign, and Shepard had an image problem. Not only their association with Cerberus for the better part of a standard garden world solar year, but everything the Council had done to shred her reputation ever since the Battle of the Citadel.
She'd seen it coming, back in the day. Their last in-person conversation before she died, she'd told him exactly what would happen. How the Council, to avoid the public panic and preserve the economy, was going to outright deny any Reaper involvement in the attack on the Citadel and pin everything that had happened on Saren and the geth. She'd known they would say she was crazy, or Saren's dupe. Give her perfunctory thanks for saving the Council and the Citadel but claim she'd still been an idiot.
Thanks to the Collector attack on SR-1, she hadn't even had the chance to fight it, and Cerberus's involvement in bringing her back had made things a whole lot worse. Even with the Collectors dead, Shepard had more than Reapers to fight. She had to fight the tide of public opinion, most of whom still thought she was dead, the idiot the Council had painted her, or a terrorist. Going back now, she'd have to worry about vids—his, but also the interviewers and every crap unauthorized sensationalist documentary, pulp fiction, or parody piece Sol and others like her had watched. She'd have to be more than a soldier; Shepard would have to be a personality.
Beth is going to hate this.
Not that she didn't have it in her. He'd seen it—back on the flotilla, at Tali's trial; in interviews where she'd made muckraking journalists look like gibbering morons. Every speech she'd ever given to the crew and the squad when they'd needed it, she'd been Commander Shepard in capitals and on the pedestal, the first human Spectre and legendary hero, not the woman behind the persona or the soldier she preferred to be.
On a day-to-day basis, Beth liked to leave well enough alone. She kept herself to herself, led by example, and expected professionalism from her people. She wrote her reports and did her own tasks on the chore rotation to model-level perfection, made it hard for anyone under her to do anything less. She got to know the crew one on one, made sure they all had what they needed and trusted in her competence and care as an officer. She didn't throw her weight around or bother issuing a lot of orders; daily operations were either left to the technical specialists on the team or to her subordinate officers to manage—Pressley, Williams, and Alenko on SR-1, usually Miranda now. She stepped in when she had to but mostly, everyone knew what they had to do and knew Shepard trusted them to do it.
In the field, it was the same story. Shepard picked her squads for different objectives—for the terrain, for the enemy, to build up the rest of the team—and she made herself into whatever the rest of them needed. She protected the more vulnerable members of the team in the midrange or on the flank, or else she infiltrated behind enemy lines and stirred up hell. She made calls in the clench, but her whole operation depended on her squad doing what they did best, and it worked best when someone else did most of the actual talking. Usually me.
The truth was that Shepard as an operative and Beth as a person was pretty quiet. Maybe even a little awkward. But she was smart, and when she had to, she could do presentation. About a million times better than you can. Charged with handling the PR objectives she faced now, Garrus knew what he'd do. Last time, it had ended with his Spectre processing suspended, a slew of disciplinary actions in his file in C-Sec, and a flight to Omega.
But you're going to have to handle it all again, aren't you? Shepard might just be able to get the Alliance back. The professor could probably get them the Union, and with some work, they might even bring in the krogan, which would be something to see. But the biggest military in the galaxy, the largest share of warships and ordnance to fight an enemy like the Reapers, belonged to his people, and Shepard would be counting on him to bring them all in line. The hothead. The dropout. Failed Spectre candidate, failed vigilante, Garrus vas Normandy, more comfortable as one of only two dextros on an ex-Cerberus ship than he ever was in the heart of turian society.
He'd do what he had to. The continuation of galactic civilization didn't have time for his insecurities, just like it didn't have time for Shepard's privacy. He did wonder, though, how their extracurricular activities were going to play on the broader galactic stage now that they'd survived the Collectors and had to worry about what came next. They were following Shepard's rules, keeping the sex to Shepard's cabin and refusing to discuss it with the crew, but neither of them were lying or hiding what they were doing either. He respected her for that, but spirits knew it had caused both of them some problems and would cause more when they both got off the ship. Three or four of the nonessential personnel had left Normandy already. The Shadow Broker knew. Along with all the other crap she was dealing with from a PR perspective, Shepard was going to have to decide how to handle sleeps with a turian.
She'll probably clear herself of the xenophobe charges, anyway.
There'd be opinions on both sides from his own people. We love a warrior, and Beth's that if she's anything at all. But there was still a grudge over the Relay 314 Incident—old soldiers who still thought the soft little primates from Earth had broken the rules and been coddled for it, who were still angry at how close the new kids on the block had come to challenging the might of the Turian Hierarchy. There were some creeps out there with human fetishes, convinced the humans were either more approachable or more challenging than the asari, depending on their perspective—and there were turians who thought getting it outside of your own species was both dirty and a dereliction of duty.
From the humans, though—Shepard would have her supporters, as well as way more curiosity than she would want or be inclined to satisfy, but there would be pushback too. There might even be some death threats. And he wasn't going to be around to help her deal with the worst of it when it hit.
If she even wants to deal with it. If she doesn't call this whole thing off as soon as we aren't traveling together. Whatever 'this whole thing' is.
He could help her today.
Temperature readings outside the Hammerhead were spiking, and ahead, Garrus saw a river of lava from an underground volcano.
"Great. Because the one thing we needed today was to figure out how to navigate burning rivers of magma," Garrus said under his breath.
The radio beeped. "Commander, this is Archer. I'm reading your signal near Vulcan Station. I advise extreme caution. Vulcan Station is our geothermal plant. They stopped reporting in shortly after the experi—" the radio cut out in a burst of gunfire on their end—the Hammerhead's automated systems shutting down communications in a crisis.
Shepard swung the Hammerhead around and Garrus spotted another turret, similar to several they had taken out along the way. "I'm on it," he said, focusing the gun controls.
Ahead, there was evidence of Cerberus installations on the rock banks of the volcanic river—artificial venting stations built to let off steam from the industrial operations of the geothermal plant up the hillside. "Scanning area," the Hammerhead VI said coolly. "Analysis: VI infection is present within plant machinery. Advise caution."
"It'll try to leverage the systems against us," Shepard said. "Got it. Garrus, what's the heat tolerance of this thing?"
Garrus considered. "We can probably handle a little steam," he said, eyeing the venting station and the nearby volcanic outflow. "I wouldn't recommend taking any lava baths."
"Right," Shepard said. "Massani, Goto, pay attention. Memorize what tech's working against us. I'm gonna want you to shut it down and hold it here until we've dealt with David Archer at Atlas station. I don't want him to un-override the engineer override at this station."
"Understood," Zaeed said.
"Shut down a bunch of dangerous industrial equipment that could kill us in a volcano that could also kill us," Goto repeated. "You give us all the nicest jobs."
Shepard shrugged. "Hey, if some of it goes missing after the project is shut down—" she suggested.
"Okay, I like you again," Kasumi said. Garrus heard the smile in her voice.
"Need some source of revenue now we're not with Cerberus," Massani agreed.
"Speaking of," Beth said, maneuvering the Hammerhead around and gazing hard at the venting station. She timed their acceleration so they hit the steam outflow, and the Hammerhead shot up ten meters into the air. Shepard gunned the engine and landed atop a cliff, following the release pipes back to where Vulcan station had to be. Garrus's innards clenched, but Shepard continued just as if they'd never been interrupted. "You both got all the credits you were promised, right?"
"A transfer right before the Omega-4 jump," Massani grunted. "Could retire now if I wanted. Somehow doesn't seem like such a good idea, if the Reapers are heading straight for all of us." Garrus glanced back at Massani quickly, revising his opinion, and the mercenary met his eye and bared his teeth. "Not what you expected, eh, Vakarian?" he said. "I been around. I know when something bad is in the wind." He nodded at Beth. "Shepard and me, we haven't always got along, but what's coming now is bigger than all of that. You don't need to worry about me. Now I got my money, I'm not in any hurry to get off the ship: Three squares daily and a good fight more often than not. When I do, I figure I can talk to some people. Get us some goddamn help."
"Thank you, Zaeed," Shepard said. "Kasumi?"
"We're squared up," Goto confirmed. "Though if I'd known what that Collector base was going to be like, I'd've asked for more. A lot more. Figure I'll head out when we all have an exit."
It was more than Garrus had expected from either of them. From Massani, a real commitment to the fight against the Reapers. From Goto, nothing like that, but enough loyalty to Shepard personally to want to make sure she was alright. Garrus smiled.
"Yes," the professor agreed. "Foolish to leave before guarantee of help from another allied force! Cerberus well manned and supplied. Enmity of Illusive Man serious concern. Also, will need help against Reapers!"
"Crap," Garrus muttered, looking ahead. The piping they had been following plunged under the ground and under another river of magma.
"Scanning area. Analysis: Debris field provides adequate support for vehicle," the Hammerhead reported.
"What—oh, no," Garrus said, seeing the broken bits of volcanic rock floating down the river.
"Sure we don't want a lava bath?" Shepard joked, then gunned the engine.
Behind them, Massani and Goto kept up a steady stream of cursing and exclamations until they were safe on the opposite shore. "Very exciting!" Solus said. "Debris field not actually adequate support for vehicle! Only adequate jumping point! Would like to test supportive capabilities of rocks further—er, on other occasion," he added, catching all of their glares.
Shepard followed the piping to another venting station—not the actual geothermal plant, but what looked like an auxiliary garage or a station to monitor the volcano's activity. Again, the piping from the geothermal plant went up a cliff, further upriver toward the volcano. There was another venting station in an aerial vehicle launching pad, but this one was inoperative. The VI was learning.
Shepard parked the Hammerhead and cut the engine. "Come on," she said. "Let's press some buttons and see what we can fix." She glanced around the squad, at the size of the Cerberus installation, and drew her pistol.
Garrus went for his assault rifle.
As they entered the Cerberus installation, Garrus caught sight of two more bodies right off the bat—technicians. Two cameras swiveled to face them.
"Mechs!" Shepard warned, dropping behind a curve of coolant piping.
Just two, it turned out—LOKIs, probably used in the installation for operations too uncomfortable for the human technicians. They shot down the mechs and went looking for Shepard's buttons to press.
"Cameras, vent stations, any backup mechs," Goto listed off. "Think there's anything else around?"
"If they weren't ready, it might have been enough," Garrus said, glancing back at the decaying bodies. "Still. I bet Prometheus Station is going to be a bit more interesting."
"Typical for you and Shepard to hog the good part," Massani remarked, kicking a downed LOKI mech. "Well. I've got the memory of that goddamned scrap at the Collector base."
"Warning: Operator controls are offline," a Cerberus automated message reported. "Core systems have been compromised."
"You think the venting?" Shepard asked.
"Logical hypothesis," the professor said. "Another danger. VI could block venting systems long enough to trigger lethal temperature at monitoring station."
"Work with EDI and Legion to keep this place under control," Shepard said, tapping her radio. She led them out to a junction in the pipes and saw a machinery panel with a button. Her eyes lit up.
"Warning," the automated messages reported again, "Pressure levels in Valve D3 have exceeded maximum threshold. Manual control is required."
"Backstop me, EDI," Shepard muttered.
"Yes, Commander," their AI said. "I cannot guarantee continual control over all the systems in the Project Overlord network. The hybrid VI is fighting hard to extend his sphere of influence. You will have to bring him offline to completely secure all outposts. But so long as a Normandy crew member remains in tightbeam range, I can use our equipment to hold your immediate areas."
"All I'm asking, EDI. Thanks," Shepard said. The display of the mechanical panel flickered, and she had access. She hit a button, and steam began venting outside the station off the launchpad.
"Got a log here, Shep," Goto reported, looking at another terminal. "Could tell us more about what happened.
"Play it."
A man's voice came over the system's tinny speakers. "Engineer's Log: We've registered a huge spike in energy consumption. My technicians traced it to the experiment underway at Atlas Station. We're trying to raise them now."
"Nothing we didn't already know," Shepard said. "But it's useful to have secondary records." She glanced at Garrus, checking he was still recording. He nodded—it was their first recorded proof that Cerberus's experiments here had resulted in the personnel casualties around the project bases.
They left the station and got back in the Hammerhead. The trip to the actual plant took about five more minutes—three more corrupted turrets and two more crossings over the lava outflow, but they got there. Shepard parked the Hammerhead again and they looked at the plant. It was around six times the size of the monitoring station, it looked like. Room for a lot more mechs and equipment.
"Let's go," Massani said, and they filed into the station.
It wasn't quite as bad as Zorya in the middle of a gas fire, but something had clearly happened here. The equipment was malfunctioning, and not like the computer systems had done it. There were holes in the piping, what looked like deliberate shorts and sabotage at wiring junctures—and they were usually near bodies.
"Tried to shut down the power," the professor observed. "Killed—gunfire and rockets."
"Be ready," Shepard told them.
They had to do some quick hardware overrides of debris in their way before they found the culprits—security rocket drones and more mechs. A lot more.
Garrus crouched behind a security railing on a catwalk bridge over buried power systems. The sound of the gunfire bounced off all the metal in here, becoming a whole lot worse than normal. He was grateful for the aural protection in his armor. He and Goto and Shepard worked on the mechs—Shepard hacked some, fritzed out the tech in others with him and Kasumi. The professor and Massani went after the environment, targeting piping and power junctures to explode near the mechs and drones. It was a tense few minutes, but eventually they were left in a big empty room of damaged power equipment, sparking metal fragments of hacked synthetics, and a couple engineer corpses.
"Come on," Shepard said. "Engineer override has to be somewhere around here."
They found another log first explaining what had happened—the project lead here recording Archer's declaration of a project emergency and his own engineers' efforts to sabotage the power plant to cut off power to the other stations. Obviously, they'd only partially succeeded before the mechs all went live.
"You want us to trash the plant when we're done here?" Massani asked Shepard. It'd been a good idea.
Shepard considered. "No," she decided. "We'll need the signal to unlock Atlas Station still broadcasting. Just lock this plant down."
"Can we clean up all the mechs first?" Goto asked, waving her gun at the catwalk extending out toward the plant's control systems. "More on the way!"
There was, and one of them was a YMIR heavy mech. Garrus dropped to the ground to dodge a rocket and the sound of its dual miniguns drilled through the air and shook the floor. Three . . . five security drones perched around the room, and four more LOKIs advanced across the space from their position to the control room stairway.
"Hell yeah!" Massani shouted, dropping behind some steel rebar.
"You know, I'd hoped I wouldn't need my rocket launcher on this planet," Shepard muttered through the radio, swinging it down from her armor and fading out to move to a better position.
"Nothing's ever easy," Garrus returned, breathing steady to avoid the response he always had to heavy rockets overhead now. Shoot the drones down, and you won't have that problem, he thought. "Massani, Goto, if you've got the LOKIs, the professor and I will take the drones," he suggested, twisting his wrist and making one of his targets explode into a shower of sparks and scrap.
"Reasonable division of labor," Solus remarked, aiming carefully for a sprinkler head set in the ceiling situated half a meter away from another drone. "Was sorry to miss working together in Collector base," he noted. "Never sorry to work with Shepard," he added. "Happy to assist team back to Normandy. Still. Fine operative, Garrus. Will miss joint missions when team dissolves."
"Yes, we all like Garrus too," Kasumi said, stabbing a LOKI through the wiring in its chest and fading back beneath her cloak. "Maybe not like the commander . . ." She paused, giggled, then added, "You do yell like we're all special operatives in the middle of combat, though."
The YMIR up the stairs self-destructed in accordance with its programming when it was too damaged to keep fighting. Shepard reappeared on the stairs where it had been. "Kasumi, after the Collector base, you are all special operatives. Even you. I'm sure the Alliance has a job for you if you want."
Garrus and Mordin took out the last drone seconds after Massani brought down the last LOKI. Shepard had been teasing, but Goto still made a face beneath her hood. "Eurgh. No thanks! One super dangerous deadly mission is enough for me. I'm going to go back to stealing." Garrus felt her eyes drift to him. "You aren't going to try to arrest me if we meet up next year, are you?"
"I'm off the C-Sec rosters," Garrus answered. "You don't run drugs or illegal weapons and hate kidnappers and slavers as much as the rest of us. So long as you stay away from murder, the two of us are good."
"You're sweet," Kasumi told him. "But no, I think I've had enough murder lately."
"Hostiles down," Massani reported.
Shepard nodded and jerked her head toward the control room. They followed her up there, and Garrus saw an override switch identical to the one Archer had used at Hermes Station. Over it, an armless and weaponless LOKI mech, kicking uselessly at the thing, and a meter away from the mech, a body lying in a pool of blood, exsanguinated from a fight back when the LOKI had had arms. The mech turned its head to look out through its central processor and sprinted away. Garrus shot it at the same time as Kasumi and Zaeed.
Shepard hit the override. "Override of Atlas Station lockdown accepted," an automated voice reported.
The radio buzzed. "A-aare you receiving this?" Archer asked through a fuzzy connection. "Commander Shepard, this is Dr. Archer. Please respond."
On the ground, the last LOKI still hadn't exploded. The light in its central processor blinked up at them, recording them for the VI watching through its sensors. Shepard gazed down at it and brought up her gun. "I hear you, Doctor. We've hit the override at Vulcan Station and are moving on." She fired. "Shepard out."
