Author's Note: I write a chapter about another force getting lucky and managing to steal from the Union and you guys get mad at me. I write several chapters closely following canon while having the Union curb stomping and you complain that the story is boring. I've concluded that I cannot please everyone, and hence I won't try to. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!


Chapter 21: Noveria Part 1

The Entire Citadel had been examined top to bottom. Any signs of Reaper indoctrination tech were not found, even after the Union deployed Custodians to examine the station which the various people debating about the structure couldn't decide if it was strange or not. On 'it's not strange at all' side of the debate people pointed out that if people suddenly started to drop dead from the effects of prolonged indoctrination then they would've definitely noticed by now, on the other hand the 'it's completely strange' camp pointed out that the Reapers wouldn't essentially leave the keystone to their entire operation in enemy hands without a way of taking it back. While the debate was raging on another effort was being made to locate a key piece of technology. Many thought that the Conduit would be hidden somewhere, some secret piece of Technology that the Protheans had hidden away where no one would be able to find it. Turns out the Union had made more work for itself than what was necessary. A group of Lich's reviewed various pictures of the Citadel and attempted to find everything that wasn't there when they were there, which as it turns out was a lot the Council having built several cities inside of the station after all. Then after that a group of Salarians went through the documents that the two sides had prepared and eventually found the one thing that was put there after the events of the last Cycle but before the Asari first came to the Citadel thousands of years ago.

"So it's this then." Sparatus looked over at the Relay Monument that was on the station since before the Asari arrived.

"That would seem to be the case." High Lord Xidre replied looking at the same statue of an Inactive Mass Relay that he had never seen before coming to the Citadel during this cycle.

"Always been funky if you asked me." A turian Grounds keeper looked around at one of the keepers performing maintenance in the area.

The Keepers are a group of insect-like creatures that wander around the Citadel repairing things and performing odd modifications. They were down right unnerving if you ask him, they don't talk, don't eat, don't sleep Don't stop, unless someone tries to stop them at which pointed they break down screaming into a pile of goo all over the floor. That wasn't nearly as disturbing as the implications they carry in front of this thing, it doesn't matter whose home they enter, how heavily guarded a area is, whose office they suddenly decide to rearrange near as anyone can tell there's no where on the station that these things aren't willing to go, except for this one statue. It's not like Statues hold a special place for them, the Krogan Monument regularly gets spit shined by the overgrown roaches, but they avoid this thing like a plague.

"So odds are good this is the..." Tevos turned to face the grounds keeper with mild concern before facing the rest of the Councillors and Sparatus sighed internally, was it too much to ask for Councillors who know how to keep a bloody secret?

"Item from the Prothean Era we were discussing from before?" High Lord Xidre on the other hand was able to flawlessly cover for the Councillor. "Quite. So many of our records of the old era were lost, we'd greatly appreciate taking the time to examine the monument closely!" Meaning that they were going to take it apart to try and figure out what this thing is.

"We'd like to take part in that examination." Valern stated raising a hand into the air.

"It's on the Citadel so it's a given that we're taking part." Sparatus snapped as he started marching orders. "I want this entire block cleared of civilians. There, There, and There are to be cleaned out and research facilities put in place. I want Guard's at every entrance leading into this area."

Sparatus knew that the Council couldn't win in a straight up fight wit the Lich's, the only chance for survival they have is to boot-lick and play nice while trying to get their hands on as much tech through open trade and the black market as they possibly could and assemble a few dozen warships while waiting for the Union to get put on the back foot from picking fights with the likes of Prethoryn and the Reapers while trying to slowly negotiate a position of power. Although Sparatus knew these facts he did not actively think of them at any time, certainly not in listening distance of the telepath's, luckily he had a million other things to think about instead ranging from AAA scores to that assistant who spilt kaffa on his good suit this morning.

Tevos knew the Council was on the way out, so she would do what Asari are usually want to do, plow and finagle her way into the good graces of would be enemies, what she needed was a in. Physically dead or not Tevos was still able to use her empathy to sense the emotions of the Highlord, he was capable of a variety of emotions his attempts to suppress them be damned, however lust was not one of them, and in fact when the Highlord found out what she was doing she was hit with such a strong wave of disgust that she nearly puked. So that plan was off the table, the other high ranking Union officials she encountered was the Admiral, Amanda Shepard. Another dead end there, not as strong a psionic as her daughter but she was able to sense the Councillor's probing, and sent back a feeling along the lines of 'I'm flattered, but no.' Well there was always the option to make sport of Union people then, Asari were Xenophillic by nature, chances were good that every asari who came into contact with union races in some form or another have made at least one attempt or is planning to make a attempt. This had two benefits: firstly the psi-ratings the science fleet conducted with the Asari indicates that what psi level the individual in question is usually directly proportional to the psi-rating of the 'father' of the couple that produced the child, with on average Asari-Asari pairings being the strongest, sadly that train of thought leads down an entirely different can of worms but if they can bag a powerful Union individual, high psionics and biotics, if the Union doesn't kill them all before the child reaches maturity. The second benefit? The more the Asari ingratiate themselves into the Union the greater the likelihood that they can jump off of the sinking ship.

Valern had several thoughts and opinions, most of them with little correlation to each other the bulk of them considering the most efficient method to acquire Union technology, there was for instance the Shadow Broker. Desolas should've sold the information he took from the Union to the Broker, logically a profit oriented individual like the Broker should've put some of the designs up for sale on the black market, but has yet to, not only that but the various brokers that Valern has already gone to have said that the Broker's services are not currently available. Of course they weren't, the Council's economy had been broken over the knee of the Union and stock prices were slowly dropping. Then the Broker should be trying to blackmail the Union with handing the information over to them the Council, but seeing as how the Union hadn't made any absurd demands like handing over the Shadow Broker he had to assume that he hadn't done anything so offensive yet. Which makes no sense, Technology was one of the most valuable forms of information in the galaxy why wasn't the Broker... then a Thought occurred. The Broker likely acquired technology from the Collectors, technology that most likely emitted the same indoctrination signal as the rest of the Reaper's technology was want to do. The Broker is likely under Reaper control already. Excellent! This means that Valern can arrange for a STG team to hunt him down, take all the information he has including Union schematics and then get rewarded by the Union for shutting down a Reaper operation. Need to arrange STG unit to hunt down Broker immediately.

Din Von was concerning himself with his own little operation, one that involved getting as many Volus over the boarder into Union territory as soon as possible. He recognised the General's scheme to promote them to a council seat for what it was, a attempt to hold onto the force holding the economy together before it jumps ship to a better offer, Din Von recognised the better offer and was working towards it, and if he ended up in a position of power over the Citadel Council in the process? Bonus.

If Xidre still had working lungs he'd sigh. Why can't they Sink this much energy into finding Desolas?

"I'll arrange temporary housing for the displaced residents and compensation for the store owners." Din Von stated as he began making the arrangements with his omni-tool. With that in mind, the Conduit was identified and everyone got to work.


Tali, Saren and Garrus were violently allergic to the Thorian being Dextro based life forms, so that eliminated them from taking part in the mission. That said they had picked up a new temporary member to their little band of misfits, a Asari who was looking a little green around the gills in every sense of the word.

"Binary Helix found something, a ship from the era of the Rachni wars." Sha'ira explained the details that she was able to pick out concerning what she and Benezia were on Noveria to do.

Wrex and the others got off easy in regards to the Thorian injections, Liara had to stick her head directly into the Thorian's mass so that it could learn how a Asari's brain is supposed to be built and use that to fix the damage done to Sha'Ira.

"As in..." Wrex asked hesitantly before having his question answered with stunning clarity.

"They found a Rachni egg on it." Sha'ira stated in simple terms. "Only the one, but still."

"What does my idiot brother want with it though?" Saren asked bluntly.

"For one thing, what kind of creature are you people talking about?" Skeletor was sitting in a corner of the meeting room.

Wrex grumbled while he got a picture from his Omni-tool and projected it on a nearby screen, a group of Krogan posing in front of the corpse of a large insect like creature.

"That clear things up?" The Lich stood up and walked around the meeting room until he was face to face with the screen.

"Yes. We know of these creatures. The Protheans attempted to weaponize them during the war against the Zha'Til." The Lich didn't need to breathe but felt the need to sigh anyway. "They took one look at their ability to survive in the harsh environments of their home world and decided that they would be the perfect foot soldiers to attack the Zha'Til, so they rounded up the most cunning, vicious and war like of the lot and deployed them enmasse. It wasn't long before they lost control of them though, the Protheans scorched 200 worlds before they decided that the threat they represented was gone."

"Then the Protheans are lousy at their jobs." Wrex stated bluntly. "Back in the day of blind exploration by the council some Salarian Pyjaks landed on the Rachni's home world of Suen, where they got themselves captured and their tech reverse engineered. The Rachni flooded every corner of the known galaxy and it wasn't until The Krogan got involved that the roaches were pushed back. We hunted the bastards to extinction and you mean to tell me those Helix Pyjak's are bringing them back!?" Wrex got into Sha'ira's face, looking about ready to tear the Asari woman apart.

"Saren, what do you make of this?" Shepard asked looking at the group's Spectre.

"The Council attempted peace talks with the Rachni to the last days of the war. Which is I assume the reason why the council Governments are attempting to cultivate them instead of wiping them out." He also quietly admitted himself that there was a strong possibility, strongest from the Turian's, that they also hoped to weaponise them against the Union. Or Maybe Helix didn't let them know what they were doing at all. "With maybe the exception of those two no one wants to see sapient life go through genocide." Saren looked over to the two Krogan.

"Shepard these things aren't any different from the Prethoryn!" Wrex snapped as he glared at Shepard. "If you let them loose on the galaxy..."

"Realistically though, it's not like they represent the same threat as they used to." Liara picked this time to pipe up. "The Biggest threat that the Rachni presented was their ability to hunker down on barren inhospitable planets where no one could get to them and continuously send ships out from. You on the other hand have Krogan, synth's and Dragoon's like Shepard admittedly not many of them. Not to mention I would imagine an astounding variety of implements of violence which could potentially be used to shatter any resistance from space." The Rachni are a threat to the Council, they aren't one to the Union, they've fought bigger and badder and walked away.

"For now let's just focus on breaking Binary Helix." Shepard voiced her opinion and everyone nodded in response.


Binary Helix wasn't having the best day, an... incident inside of Peak 15 had occurred, and right now the Matriarch they requested from the Council alongside an array of her bodyguards had been trapped inside. The Situation hadn't degraded so far yet that they had to tell the council about what they found, yet, but shell games would only take them so far.

"Sir we just got a ship requesting permission to touch down." A Asari assistant stated as she came into the chief executive's office.

"Don't bother me with such pointless trivialities!" Chief Executive Killira snapped slamming his fist down on the table.

"Sir. They just gave us a Spectre authorisation code!"

"Oh Damn it!" The Salarian cursed under his breath. "Put him down on the landing pad furthest away from us!" Kilira had the one real shot Council space had at being able to put the Union on the back foot in his laboratory and he was not about to let some spectre jar head mess that up! Opposite of Kilira's hopes not only was the ship touching down very close to the facility, but they were also heading towards his private docking bay, his occupied private docking bay. "They aren't...?" They did, and in the process not only opened a sizeable hole in his doors but also destroyed his personal shuttle that he still had three payments on. "Okay now it's personal." Killira turned around, snapped his fingers as he walked out of his office and got the attention of the Security guards therein. "I want Captain Ventralis, and all the men available, to meet me at my private docking station immediately!" Credit to the Turian Captain, he was punctual, but that much is expected out of the Turians, he even managed to beat the fuming Salarian chief executive there. "Open this door this instant! I want the head of the bastard that destroyed my shuttle!" Kilira snapped indicating the door.

"You might want to take a step back sir." Captain Ventralis stated as he began punching in the information into the door.

"I said open the door!" Under Kilira's orders the door ground open, when the Chief Administrator turned around to chew out the Spectre who blew up his personal shuttle he was greeted not by a Spectre surrounded by smoking ruin, but rather the barrel of a Great Graal Spike Thrower.

Kilira's head was pulverised, before anyone else could figure out what was going on a Charging Chief Wrund had lariat Chief Ventralis and his men with enough force to snap their necks. Letting out a Roar the clan Chief and his Krant ran wild in Binary Helix. Civilian Casualties, Collateral Damage? Where was those complaints when Binary Helix fired air to ground missiles in the middle of clan Wrund's territory? No this was simple vengeance for the indignity that had been dealt to them, for their murdered clans men. Shepard slipped in during the chaos unnoticed, the Union apprehended any ship that attempted to leave the area while she was making her way into the server room for Binary Helix.

"Peak 15 eh?" The situation concerning the Rachni was vastly different from what they had anticipated. But that would wait until later. Shepard's secondary priority was getting the details concerning the Quote Unquote 'Cure' that Helix had been working on for the Genophage. "So you took their money, took the samples they gave you to cure them, and then you sold it off to the Salarians. Clan... Linron was it? Well now we know who was responsible for renewing the Genophage."

The salarian Leo Captured, Mordin, was just a tool used to facilitate the project, and he had shown proper remorse afterwards and was now making amends for what he had done. Linron on the other hand, whoever they were, would soon be receiving a visit from some very upset Krogan. For now though, Peak 15.


"Wrund. Keep those bloody Pyjaks off our butts for as long as possible!" Wrex snapped into his communicator to the sound of gunshots.

"Not a problem Wrex!" Wrund laughed as he crushed the skull of some poor schmuck with a loud crunch.

"Well that should be plenty enough to get Garvug under control without a fuss." Wrex stated bluntly while he looked ahead at the Peak 15 facility, which was literally a mountain peak.

And even worse, it was in the middle of a blizzard so they wouldn't be able to just conveniently fly up to reach the peak. They'd have to go on foot, or more accurately go in via ground vehicle. The hammer head was a little delicate for this weather, but luckily they had a Tomkah, upgraded by the Tebrid's with all sorts of Bells and whistles. Still they had a ways to go before they would arrive at Peak 15, so they had time to talk about what they were getting into.

"So big surprise, but Helix sold you guys out on the Genophage Cure." Shepard stated and Wrex merely grunted in acknowledgement. "Specifically not only did they not even bother to work on the Cure and still took your money, but they also then sold all the data they gave you that was supposed to be use to cure the Genophage to Clan Linron of the Salarians." Shepard stated bluntly.

"Now where have I heard that name before?" Wrex asked legitimately curious.

"The Current Dalatress of Sur'Kesh is also the head of the Linron Clan." Liara piped up but soon regretted afterwards as Wrex was soon visibly seething with rage.

"Linron will answer for what they did I assure you." Shepard stated bluntly putting her hand on Wrex's shoulder trying to get him to calm down. "For now there are a plethora of other crimes that need to be answered for. Like the Rachni."

"One lone Rachni?" Wrex didn't seem too concerned. "That's not a big deal."

"One Rachni Queen." Shepard corrected and Wrex face palmed himself. "Yeah. Turns out that when Rachni Eggs hatch all by themselves without the influence of an existing Rachni Queen to calm them down they instead hatch out as a Queen. At least that's what the scientist who wrote this report seems to think." A fact that Wrex never became aware of because he and the rest of his Krant destroyed every egg that they came across. "And it gets worse." Of course it does. "The Rachni broke containment in Peak 15." Of course they did. "And Code Omega has been implemented so now the freezing cold of the outside has been let inside of the facility."

"Those idiots!" Wrex was visibly grinding his teeth now as he grimaced with sheer unadulterated rage. "The Rachni Homeworld was Tidally locked to it's sun. Half of it was constantly being torched, the other half frozen in the void of space. Rachni are adapted to survive in both 'so hot you'd instantly vaporise' or 'so cold you'd freeze solid in an instant' temperatures! A little bit of cold isn't going to slow those bloody monsters down!" If anything it'll severely inconvenience them.

"And the hits they keep coming." The ground started to rumble, paused, then rumbled again. Someone was shooting at them! "We got Geth incoming!" Kaiden shouted and then the weapons fire continued.


Matriarch Benezia was not having a good time. The Rachni Queen proved stubbornly resistant to their attempts to indoctrinate her and place her under their control, as had her offspring. She was now resorting to extreme measures. Screeching echoed throughout the facility as Collector's, Geth and the Mercenaries she placed under her control were dragging more Rachni corpses into a vat in the middle of the facility. Normally this vat would be used to store raw biological material, instead it was being filled with reaper nano tech and the corpses of the uncooperative Rachni brood. Benezia would rather directly infect the Rachni queen but her offspring's attempts to free her had been met with no small amount of success. So here she was, dumping as much Rachni raw material into a vat to process the abominations into something that would be actually useful.

"Benezia Matriarch." A familiar synthetic voice echoed over her coms. That would be the Geth, aside from the Rachni they were the only ones able to survive the cold of the outside, on the contrary thanks to the super conductors in their CPU's they actually thrived in cold weather. "Binary Helix is being destroyed by Krogan and a land vehicle is on its way to the facility." So assuming that the unlikely event that the Council finally grew some balls and decided to simply wipe them out already hadn't come to pass...

"The Union." Benezia quickly concluded while she looked down at the unborn monster they had been breeding, the nanotechnolgy inside of their giant artificial egg assembling the creature into an approximation of what they needed. "Buy as much time as possible."

"Acknowledged." The Geth replied before resuming their acts of violence. "I want the Rachni Queen found and brought to me, alive. We need the information inside of it's head to reach Ilos!" The remaining corpses were dumped into the vat and the Mercenaries scattered. "As for you." Benezia looked down at the creature that was rapidly forming in the vat. "We sunk a lot of work into you so we hope that you can deliver on our high hopes for you." In that moment a thin membrane appeared over the vat of boiling goo, enough genetic material having been prepared that the creature inside would be 'born' soon.


The Draconic's had a practice for a unusual form of swordsman ship, in which they telekinetically lift a piece of material, vibrate it until it turns into a super heated material, and then flatten that into a blade. In short it was possible to create a giant flaming blade to slice through oversized targets. The native animals of the Draconic homeworld were very large. Using this technique it became possible to cut through the Geth armatures that the Tomkah zipped by. That dealt with the big Geth, but smaller ones were still running around doing as they pleased, the leapers were even using the winds from the snow to get more air time and increase the range by which their own plasma weapons would strike at. Wrex and Liara had the answer for them, Singularities being fired off one after another to catch them when they got close, slams to smash the Geth oft three stories into the air into the ground breaking them into pieces, stasis to freeze them in midair, Kaiden followed up with the plasma turret mounted on top of the Tomkah blasting biotically charged targets turning the Geth in question into so much shrapnel and molten slag in the process. Eventually enough of the carnage outside had been made that they could start making their way to Noveria proper. All the cold air being let into the facility meant that there was an excessive amount of openings leading into the facility that they could now take advantage of. Or at least there should've been, but somebody sealed the entrance.

"So this Omega protocol was activated, then someone reinitialised the proper facility protocols, who isn't working for or with Binary Helix." Shepard used her fingers to track the course of events that occurred.

"Desolas!" Wrex's face twisted into a snarl.

"It could be mother too." Liara was dressed in a blank white Hard suit, a pitch black winter coat being worn on top, giving her two layers of insulation against the cold. "She's high enough ranking to do all kinds of overrides including getting the facility back online and locking out Binary Helix." Shepard looked at Liard incredulously.

"Does she have the authority to lock her company out of one of their own facilities?" Shepard asked just to make sure she heard that right.

"Plausible Deniability." Liara explained while she began looking around the facility. While Shepard and Liara were talking in front of the door leading into the facilty, Wrex turned around and climbed back into the Tomkah, into the Driver's seat, and proceeded to back the Tomkah away from the door.

"And where are you going!?" The entire vehicle glowed navy blue under the influence of Wrex's biotics.

"Oh." Shepard grabbed Liara and took her away from the danger. The Tomkah biotically charged forward and slammed into the front gate of the facility and tearing through the hallway, becoming stuck there in the process. Wrex opened the back door for Liara and Shepard to climb back inside and then the driver's side door to make a path. "Well, that'll do it." Liara nodded in agreement with Shepard's statement.

If the facility was back in lock down that meant that the other facilities were coming back online too, which for now meant the computers were starting to work too.

"Give me a few seconds." Kaiden was sitting on the driver's seat of the Tomkah while he initiated the hacking programs that the Tebrid's prepared to try and seize control over the facility, and surprisingly enough was failing. Not only failing, but something had been threatening to break into the Normandy's own computer systems.

"Dragoon Kaiden." EDI called out from the Normandy. "A hostile AI imbued with abnormal Coding is attempting to breach my firewalls from your location. I have to disconnect you." With that the Tomkah was powered down, its link with the rest of the fleet disconnected.

"Abnormal how?" Shepard asked holding a finger on her coms.

"Normal Citadel Coding is binary." EDI bluntly informed. "0's and 1's. This is Silq, Quantum computing language which includes everything from 0 to 3." The main breakthrough in Quantum computing is the Quantum Chip, the smaller a chip gets the more efficiently it can process the alternating charges that make up Binary's 1's and 0's until it gets too small to actually process a charge, this is where the Quantum chip comes into play. A quantum Chip is capable of both holding a charge and not holding one at the same time thanks to Quantum superposition, which effectively doubles a given computer's processing power.

"Could Binary Helix be responsible?" Shepard asked looking at Liara.

"Binary Helix deals in Genetics. Why would they try to build a computer?" Liara asked shrugging her shoulders.

"Quantum computing is the closest computing have come to recreating organic coding." EDI piped in. "Similar to DNA which is the coding of most living things, Quantum coding utilises four digits to facilitate coding. For this reason Quantum technology is pivotal to nanotechnology both for the extremely small size of the components and the complexity it capable of."

"Nanotech?" Ashley piped up having little else to do but sit inside of the Tomkah while the Nerds figured out what to do. "Isn't that the Reaper tech that was floating around in the Thorian goop at the end of your mission on Feros?" There was a silent pause throughout the group to Ashley's statement. "Dragoon Ashley's statement is rooted in logic." EDI stated having apparently run the numbers.

"So the Reapers are doing that stuff to machines now too?" Liara liked absolutely nothing about that.

"I'm gonna go outside and see if I can find a Geth that we can take back to the ship and take it apart." With that Ashley left the group to return to the cold of the outside.


Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: Agreed. Not really. *Shrugs.* No.

Clown2107: Like in ME2 it took him a little bit of prodding. Not for a while yet, that isn't to say that there aren't Salarian's trying only that they're very sneaky. The Union doesn't go out of it's way to exterminate Sapient species, as long the Thorian keeps up the good behaviour they don't need to get rid of it, that said they do know it's weaknesses it will be.

Gianfranco Cembran: Cheers to a new age and spell check!

Guest: Glad you like it.

Chronus1326: Sorry you feel that way.

Chronos0305: I don't really have plans for the toxoids, though I do admit it would be fun to see them take every life span reducing modifier and roleplay them as the vorcha. My own opinion about the Extradimensional invaders will be seen later on.