With her nerves frayed and entire universe upended, it was the perfect time for Sara to enact Operation Ghost Storm. Back aboard the Tempest and well into FTL, she sat at the head of the table in the meeting room and stared listlessly as one by one her crew filed in. Jaal, Vetra, Drack... even Suvi and Kallo. Cora gave Sara's shoulder a quick pat to jar her back to reality when Peebee finally wandered in. Most people would probably start with a greeting or maybe a joke. The best that Sara could muster was, "I trust Cora's filled you in on what we're about to do?"
She waited for the usual murmurs of assent. "Good." Sara opened up a radio channel from her omni tool. "We're ready to make our push on Meridian, then.
"The Nexus leaders think our search for Meridian is a waste of time, but we know they're wrong. Turning on vaults won't be enough without the heart of the system."
From her spot stoically behind Sara's right shoulder, Cora ducked her head down. "Just to clarify, you're defying a direct order."
Sara grinned up at her and shook her head. "No, not me. We. We are going to defy them."
She never thought she'd see the day that Lieutenant Cora Harper would smile back at deliberately planned insubordination, but it was a brand new galaxy, wasn't it? Her second offered a tense quirk of her lips before glaring up at the rest of the crew and daring them to balk.
Thankfully, they were met by Drack's pleased chuckle. "That's the spirit!"
"And the kett?" Jaal asked.
"That's where the Ghost Storm technology comes in," Sara replied, speaking directly into her omni tool. "Isn't that right Raeka?"
"Absolutely," the salarian Pathfinder chimed in from her ship, the Sarapai. "Our forced signals should divert some kett from you."
"Some," Vetra agreed. "It won't be all of them, but it'll be enough."
Kallo cleared his throat. "The Tempest is small and fast," their pilot said. "I don't need a big window. We'll drop you off and make our exit before the kett catch on."
Sara nodded. "Once we're on Meridian, it'll be a small team. Move fast, get in and out."
"And when you're ready, we'll extract you the same way we got you in," Kallo told them.
"Sounds like a solid plan," Sara replied. "Raeka, you good to go?"
"On your word, Pathfinder."
Sara pushed herself up and clapped her hands. "All right folks, this is it. Let's get moving."
And they did. It was almost surreal to watch her entire team disperse on her command and though she had no clue what any one of them were going to explicitly do, she was still filled with a sense of calm. She trusted them all to do what they needed to in order to prepare.
The adrenaline left her in a wave and she slumped down in her seat. When her omni tool went off, Sara sent it to the main viewscreen in the meeting room.
"So many high stakes, so much doom and gloom," Reyes' voice glided smooth through the speakers before his image materialized on the screen. "'This Pathfinder never stops,' they say! Does she even sleep, I wonder?"
"My bed on the Tempest is comfy, but I recall a certain lumpy mattress on Kadara that had its own charm," Sara snorted.
He grinned back. "Never a call just because. Can't just say you missed me."
She shrugged. "That goes without saying."
"Still it'd be nice to hear you say it."
"I've just been busy," she replied. "You know how it is."
"Too busy to show you care?" He gave a scandalized gasp. "I'm never too busy for foreplay, Ryder. Anticipation always makes it more enjoyable."
"Yeah. I've got a lot I'm anticipating right now."
"I saw." His face sobered. "I would tell you how proud I am over you defying Nexus brass, but I'm a little conflicted over you risking death. Again."
"You and me both." Even with him just being an image on a viewscreen, it was hard for Sara to look at him. She tried to breathe out the stress. "But if this gamble works, we might finally have a shot at calling this place home."
Reyes was quiet for a time. It made an irrational spike of fear lance through her chest over what that could mean, and just as she was desperately wracking her brain for anything to veer their conversation, he chuckled. "Does that mean after this, the only mission objectives you're going to address involve a secluded closet space and yours truly?" he asked.
"What?" And here she'd been anticipating more heavy worryings about her personal safety. The abrupt tonal shift made her laugh, "Oh, so romantic!"
"I mean, I was going for horny, but if it's romantic you want..."
"Yes, yes," she drawled. "Sweep me off my feet, you smarmy king of exiles."
"Of course!" Reyes leaned in close to the camera and lowered his voice. "I might have to use C-4 to knock you off your feet, but for you? Anything."
"Anything?" Sara rested her head on her hand. "I like that."
He nodded. "And I like you, but don't let it go to your head."
"You, Reyes," Sara said. "You asked me what I want and what I want is you."
That got a throaty sound out of him that flushed her cheeks and sent the hairs on the back of her neck upright. "Sara, the things I would do to you if I was there."
She glanced over her shoulder at the closed door of the meeting room, a giggle escaping her. "This isn't a private channel, you know. "
"I don't care."
And there it was, that pang of want. Sara shifted in her chair and crossed her legs. "Why do you have to do this when I'm in FTL?" she whined.
"Because if you were here with me, I wouldn't have time to talk," he replied.
"Promises, promises." Their images were in danger of dispersing with how closely their faces were to the viewscreens.
Reyes was looking at her, lazy and indulgent. "Come back to me and find out."
"Don't tempt me, just-" She could hear the dull pop of the Tempest intercom. "Business before pleasure," Sara sighed.
"We'll be in touch," he promised with a nod and she could only hope he meant physically as much as vid calls. Reyes touched his fingers to his lips before he pressed index and middle finger flush against the screen. "Stay safe, Madam Pathfinder."
Sara sighed as he cut the feed. Her time for procrastinating was over. She trudged off to suit up as Kallo brought them into the Civki System. Meridian, or Khi Tasira as the kett called it, was there. It was easy to spot considering it was the only manufactured structure that appeared on their sensors. From the bridge, she could see everything. Huge with silver spires, it looked like a giant space station nestled among kett ships.
She had to cross her fingers as Raeka's voice came over the intercom. If their plan didn't work, they were all seriously outgunned and would be essentially serving up a figurehead for nearly every alien species directly to the kett.
"Initiating Ghost Storm on my mark," the salarian Pathfinder said. "Three, two... go!"
Sara might have held her breath until Suvi spoke.
"Raeka, it's working!" Through the viewscreen on the bridge they could see the kett ships rallying to swarm the three other Pathfinder vessels as the Tempest sailed in cloaked.
"We're reading a bunch of kett headed our way," Raeka announced. "We're rolling back. It's all up to you now, Tempest."
Raeka wasn't kidding. From where she stood, Sara could see the Ghost Storm readings from Suvi's console. Every ship pinged like it was the Tempest. Sara could recognize Avitus aboard the Augur by all the aggressive firepower as it sat there obstinately outlasting its sister ships, the Sarapai and Rebekha. True to their Pathfinders, Sarapai was already retreating confident the kett would follow, and Rebekha was busy playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse.
All the while, the Tempest drifted closer to Meridian. Sara felt a pang of guilt as her fellow Pathfinders risked themselves for the sake of a show while she watched it all safely from her bridge. Knowing her leg of the mission was up next helped temper that guilt into something more palatable.
Before her, her crew was debating last minute options. "We should get them as close as possible to here," Suvi murmured, pointing at her screen. "Intense readings could be some kind of control center."
Kallo shook his head. "No decent landing sites. This could get messy."
Suvi shared a look with the pilot before looking back to Sara. "You'd better assemble your team," she told her, waving Sara off the bridge. SAM took it upon himself to amplify her hearing so that when the door closed behind them, she could hear Suvi ask, "How messy Kallo?"
Sara paused at the bay of the ejected escape pod and rapped her knuckles against the doorframe. "Knock, knock?"
"Ryder? Hey." Peebee backed up away from the doorway to make room for her.
"You should gear up," Sara told her. "Kallo's looking for a drop point even as we speak."
Peebee boggled. "Wait." She pointed to herself. "You want me on your team?"
"By the looks of it, Meridian is a Remnant fortress the size of a city block," Sara said. "Are you telling me you don't want to go?"
"No." Peebee blinked and shook her head. "I mean yes. Yes! Of course I want to go, I just didn't think you'd want me."
Sara found herself cocking her head to one side. "Are you trying to talk me out of bringing you?"
"No!" Peebee hopped on one foot and scooted around Sara through the door. "No, no, no, nooo! I am going- I am already there! I just need to get my armor- maybe a rebreather- you know, gear up."
"Great idea." Sara watched her dash off toward the lockers and then went to collect Jaal.
Once her team was assembled, Kallo gave them the bad news. There were no suitable docking areas. Their new plan of entry was a flyby.
"I'll get as low as possible," the pilot assured them, "but you'll have to eject over the target area."
Sara stood silently and absorbed the news. In her head, SAM was running the specs of descent and likelihood of significant injury on impact. Jaal with his mouth a grim line was equally quiet so that Peebee's nervous chuckle sounded uncomfortably loud.
Sara shrugged. "I've fallen out of so many things now I should be a pro."
"Yes," Jaal said. "Liam told me about you free falling into Habitat Seven. He said he could hear you screaming all the way down."
"I thought you were smart enough to get your intel from a reputable source," Sara drawled.
He snorted. "Was he wrong?"
"It was probably the only time he heard me scream good," she retorted, a satisfied grin touching her lips at the groans of her companions. "All right, we all know the drill. Watch your rate of descent, hope that shields take care of the rest."
Kallo got them in undetected, but as soon as they tucked and rolled and hit the ground, the real work started. Cloaking devices were for ships; they'd be clear as day to any troops stationed around the fortress.
There was a lot to take in. Survey the area, find out what they were dealing with, and do so quickly to avoid detection. Despite it being a station constructed of metal, Meridian had its own environment. Humidity made Sara's clothes stick to her skin even inside her suit and a little further in, it was sprinkling softly.
"Rain?" she muttered. "Inside?"
All her comment got was an excitable chuckle from Peebee. Jaal unsheathed his hunting knife and grouched, "Be alert."
"I thought it was important," Sara mumbled, and it was. If they could artificially create climate on space stations, would terraforming existing planets even be necessary? Kick that network on and little mossy knolls would spring up at the mouth of vent shafts. Berries and fruits and dark green leaves forming arbors around the life-giving consoles.
It was of course, a scientific pursuit, and one better spent being pondered from the safety of a lab and not traversing enemy territory. Jaal was right and Sara zipped her lips.
There was a decent amount of kett, but they didn't appear to be soldiers. Despite their numbers, they also didn't appear to be living there, but they were deeply entrenched. Little stations, impromptu labs, simple camps... all the makings of a dig site. How long had they been squatting there? How much time had they had to study Meridian? And no progress? Really? As nice as that sounded to Sara, SAM was always there to remind her just how improbable that was.
The kett knew something. They had to have figured something out. They just weren't sharing it with the rest of the galaxy.
"We need to find a central hub," Sara decided. "Something I can jack into so SAM and I can make some sense of this."
"Right." Peebee nodded. "Easy peasy. Should be fine, so long as we don't get caught."
Jaal snorted. "So don't get caught."
That simple. Sara allowed her team to lead her along the curling paths of the fortress. As they walked, it occurred to her that Meridian very much resembled any of the vaults they traversed. Perhaps it just meant that it was indicative of any Remnant structure or maybe Meridian was like any other vault and simply hadn't had the chance to grow a planet around it yet.
It was something to consider as Jaal pulled her flush against a corridor wall as he scouted ahead. Because if Meridian was like a vault, it was very likely there would be a couple of monoliths. And if Meridian was like a vault, well. Vaults were Sara Ryder's thing.
Jaal cleanly sniped what looked like a team of four kett researchers and Peebee swiftly hauled their bodies away. Sara tried not to think about her own dig sites back in the Milky Way and how she would have never seen an attack like that coming. If that had been her sifting for bone shards in rock beds, she would have been anticipating a water break, not a bullet to the back of her skull. She shook off the involuntary shudder, and consoled herself with the fact that her goals had been more simplistic than the kett's. Sara spent her researching days attempting to catalog prothean pottery. She wasn't attempting to obliterate all other life in the galaxy through exaltation.
With the bodies cleared, Jaal's merciless work had provided a path to an ancient console. It was Sara's turn now to be useful. She placed her hands on the interface and waited to feel it warm beneath her fingers. "Monoliths," she murmured as the schematics of the fortress appeared before them. "Of course there are monoliths."
And as for the monoliths involved, there were two more along with the central hub at the heart of the fortress. Sara could see the connecting threads that linked the two neighboring towers from where she stood. So. Activating the towers would activate the command hub.
Because lighting up Meridian as brightly as a festival wouldn't attract the kett.
But then again, there was already light. And an environment with artificial rain. That observation from SAM pulled Sara out of her misery and toward a very plausible possibility. Maybe the monoliths of Meridian were already activated.
"...They're active?" It was just inane muttering leaving Sara's lips, but she knew it was true. They were active. And if they were active, it would mean all they'd have to do was survive long enough to reach a command console. Half of their work was already done for them.
She might have giggled. "Command console's at the center most island of Meridian. I'm transmitting the navpoint to your omni tools. Let's get there now."
"Change of plans?" Jaal asked.
"Maybe," Sara replied. "What if we reactivate Meridian now?"
Peebee chuckled. "Kett won't like that."
"They won't," Jaal agreed. "I say we do it."
Sara nodded and fell in line behind him. "You know there's going to be a purification field." When she said it like that, it sounded like a threat. The purification field wasn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it could be advantageous. They'd have to make a mad dash, and that would complicate any firefight, but the field was indiscriminate. It would be a very efficient way to scrub the fortress of kett.
Maybe there wouldn't be any firefights. Maybe all the kett stationed there were researchers. As relieving as that thought was, it also felt unconscionable in a way. It didn't stop Sara from trotting toward the console on her navpoint, however.
Like any console at the mouth of a vault, this one opened a gravity well. The familiarity of the process had her leaping into the well and dropping deep into the center most part of the fortress before she had time to consider whether or not they'd be greeted by kett. Sara reassured herself with the knowledge that the she had used SAM to activate the gravity well through the console. The kett didn't have a SAM. There was no way anyone would be waiting in the heart of Meridian. Still, she drew her pistol just in case.
It was all worrying for nothing. Sara's assumptions about access were right, and despite being the first one in the well, Peebee beat her to the ground with a burst of eezo.
Even with auxiliary power, it was strange to see the central control hub alight. It was similar to Aya's vault in that regard and Sara wondered if all the vaults would have appeared as such if she'd ever thought to return to them. Touching the console opened up her mind to music that SAM quickly worked to translate.
"Flight control systems online. Welcome administrator."
"Administrator," Sara chuckled. "Okay..." She could be the "administrator." There were certainly worse things.
Information was dumping into SAM's data caches and across the screen as the systems reawakened and connected. Vessels. There were Remnant vessels- functioning ships- in the bowels of this place. "An entire Remnant fleet," she murmured. All in working condition and all on standby, but something was stopping them. "Huh. Meridian engine..? SAM, do you know what..?"
Then came the disappointment. "Connection lost. Meridian engine not found." The errors scrolled past her vision at a maddening rate. Even more frustrating was SAM's inability to do anything about it. There was no damage to correct. The systems were intact, the problem was they were searching for a component that did not exist.
Sara ignored the nervous glances Peebee and Jaal shared and continued muttering to herself. "What do you mean doesn't appear to exist?"
Perhaps SAM had spent too long with only Sara as an example. The AI sounded almost miffed as he dug up a recording that spoke in those same musical tones he'd translated earlier.
"Final administrator log: the opposition's weapon may cause widespread damage. All our weapons, all our ships, will not be able to protect us, protect my goal. We need to disengage Meridian from command console, which will remain here to draw fire. Meridian contains all the work of the jardaan. Nothing else matters. I will send it far. We can return one day. Continue the process of renewal. End of log."
"The Archon was wrong," Sara realized. "This isn't Meridian. Meridian is gone."
"No." Peebee joined her and placed her own hands on the interface, like that would accomplish anything. "There must be some way to recall it."
"Maybe?" Sara just shook her head. "Jardaan? Opposition? Were the kett the opposition or was that somebody else?"
"Does any of that even matter if Meridian's gone?" Peebee asked.
"Meridian's gone," Sara found herself repeating. She just needed to think. She opted to think aloud to gage if she sounded brilliant or insane. "Okay. So Meridian's gone, but shouldn't this thing know the navpoint of its location?"
"I mean yeah, but..." Peebee was waffling and SAM echoed that sentiment.
Contact with the Scourge would have altered Meridian's original path. Even with nonstop work and AI intervention, it would take countless years to determine the current location.
Frustration got the better of Sara's patience. "All this Remnant tech around us... the jardaan had to have a plan."
"I don't think they had much time for a plan," Peebee began.
"Well if the Scourge is messing things up, maybe that's where we should look." As soon as Sara said it, she knew it was more than just whining. It was true.
Peebee grinned over at her. "You have an idea, don't you?"
"I don't know yet." Sara pushed away from the console and started to pace.
Meridian, set on a path by its creators, disrupted by the Scourge, and now lost. Where could it be? If it was in the Scourge- and statistically that was the best bet- its path would be altered completely. Like an unmanned ship at the mercy of ocean currents.
An unmanned ship. Meridian was the unmanned ship. And if Meridian was the unmanned ship, then the Scourge was the ocean. All they needed was to predict the currents and track them, and then they'd have the location.
"SAM?" Sara stopped dead in her tracks. "Compare the orbital charts of Andromeda we came here with against the Scourge maps that Sarissa Theris stole from the kett. Is that enough information?"
The AI pulled the relevant data and overlayed the maps on top of each other. Things were lining up, patterns emerging, all they needed was for Meridian to appear. Coordinates, navpoints thrown to the wind as the Remnant console lit up and communicated with its fleet.
"The ships are lifting off," Sara realized. "They found a path!"
"Way to go, Pathfinder," Peebee snorted.
"Tempest, are you getting this?" Sara shouted into her omni tool. "This is the day everyone in the Initiative has hoped for-"
"Congratulations, Pathfinder. A great day for us all." That voice. It lanced explosive light across her vision. It wasn't SAM- why was that voice in her head?
"SAM? What is-? What is going on?"
"I believed you a fitting rival, but you are a false thing," the Archon told her. "A lie. Once I saw what made you special- your connection- I knew how and when to take it from you."
The biotransmitter. She thought SAM had neutralized it- he was supposed to have neutralized it! All that scrubbing of the asari ark and the salarian ark and she was the one with the time bomb ticking away in her skull.
The Archon confirmed it. "I let you find Meridian. And now, I'll use your SAM to weaponize it. All of Heleus will be exalted or, one by one, your worlds will die- starting with Eos. All I need to start is an implant like yours. And thanks to your memories, I know who else has one."
A special implant for a special SAM whose secret objective was resurrecting Elizabeth Reilly. Scott. That son of a bitch meant Scott.
"Another reason to take the Hyperion." So smug, as if he wouldn't have taken Hyperion simply out of spite. It was getting hard to breathe, but Sara couldn't tell if it was panic or legitimate pain. "Fall to darkness, Pathfinder. You were almost worthy."
All the while, SAM said nothing. Not a hint, not a warning, not so much as an apology. The AI was there and then following a sharp stabbing at the base of her skull and the dancing of stars, he was gone.
Sara's chest tightened and she could feel a hot, needle-like sensation through her arms and all the way up to her jaw. The last time she'd felt something like this was... was when SAM had stopped her heart. Her head was empty and silent and her thoughts were her own as all of her organ systems began to crash. There was a numb, surreal sort of madness as her knee hit the ground. She couldn't feel it, not past the agony in her chest. Somewhere past the blood throbbing in her ears, Jaal was shouting.
Had SAM known? Did he have a chance to react? He hadn't even said goodbye.
