Their shuttle flew through the interior of the Citadel, heading straight for C-Sec HQ. Below them on every level, Cerberus troops and C-Sec personnel were duking it out… and C-Sec was getting wholly slaughtered. The invading Cerberus soldiers were far better equipped in every way - each member of theirs shielded by combat armour and cutting-edge weaponry, while the C-Sec officers, lacking any meaningful defences, were getting routed into exposed kill zones and gunned down effortlessly. As the shuttle slowed and descended to the HQ dock, she saw a fresh volley of fighting overrunning the defenders ahead of them on the docks. Up the steps from the docks was the C-Sec entrance, riddled with holes from kinetic weapons and blackened from a large fire burning on the second floor that overlooked the lot.
Cortez gave her the signal.
"Okay, people! Coming in hot! Get to cover!" she ordered, jumping off the hovering shuttle onto the dock below them.
"On it!" Garrus hollered, jumping down behind her with Liara.
Spotting them arrive, Cerberus Centurians and Shock Troopers switched to defend their recent capture from them. Still, the cover was plentiful near the drop due to the nature of the location, with shipping containers and downed transport shuttles present. The trio advanced, dock by dock, cutting through the higher defending numbers with superior skill and gear. The three had fought together more times than could be counted, and they had long settled into tried-and-true functional strategies, each playing their strengths and waiting for the other to step in when their weaknesses left them at a disadvantage. The last Centurian, firing from near the C-Sec doors, was lifted two stories into the air before a combined warp sent the body rushing to the ground with life-ending force. Having two biotics in the squad made for effective close-quarters movement.
"Shepard!" hailed a strained-sounding voice from the top of the steps, and the trio cautiously climbed its length before finding the voice belonged to Commander Bailey. He was propped up against the wall, one arm over his midsection, looking wounded but lucid. "Shepard. I saw those Cerberus troops on you. I thought you were done for."
"Bailey? What are you doing here?"
"Getting my ass shot off trying to retake headquarters. Cerberus took it in the first push." He spat onto the ground, cursing. He turned his head to the C-Sec entrance doors. "We gotta kick them out of there. Everyone in C-Sec's flying blind without the network."
She offered a hand to assist. He grabbed her arm and pulled himself with a grunt to a standing position.
"How bad's the situation?" Garrus asked, chiming in. "Do you know if the Councillors are alive?"
"They split up. I'll know more if I can access a terminal inside."
"Can you get us in?"
The C-Sec Commander turned toward the door, wincing in pain. "I'll get the door. If no one interrupts me with a bullet this time." He input his credentials, and thankfully, the door unlocked.
The group raised their weapons and advanced cautiously into the building. Near the door, a lobby desk sat unoccupied, with bullet holes behind where someone may have been sitting. Bailey threw himself into the empty seat in front of the terminal, grunting as he did so. The terminal lit up at his fingertips. "Here we go. C-Sec network access, courtesy of Cerberus."
"How's that going to help?"
"Cerberus has control of the main channels, but I can set up a new one. Without it, our people have no plan and no chance…." He clicked into something. "Hello… a warning from Councilor Valern. He's supposed to be here, meeting with the executor. 'This move may provoke retaliation…'" Bailey read verbatim from the message, "Well, that's an understatement. If he's inside, he's in trouble."
"Why would the councillor be meeting with the executor?"
"Usually it means someone big's about to be prosecuted. I guess that someone had Cerberus friends."
Garrus, on the other side of the desk, lowered his rifle after assessing the area. "The message from the councillor we received earlier mentioned Udina… but that's insane. Does he even have this kind of pull?"
Bailey shrugged. "You know who'd have the answer to that? The councillor."
"One councillor is better than zero. Where am I headed?"
"The councillor could be in the executor's office. It's a fairly defensible position."
"I'm on it," she said, turning away from the lobby. She motioned to her squad to follow, then checked the channel for Thane. "Thane, you hear all of that?"
"Yes. I'm nearing the building, but running is difficult. I'll try to get to you."
.
The Cerberus troops in the next block were caught entirely unawares by their presence, most facing away from their entry point. Their introduction was swift. Combat engineers tried unsuccessfully to set up turrets but were too late.
"Troops in the lobby, they're dug in," Garrus reported over the comm after their efforts cleared it of the enemy.
"I can see more through the cameras," Bailey confirmed. "They're all over the station."
They approached some of the bodies of the C-Sec employees on the floor. Garrus knelt and examined them. "Entry wounds to the back of the head. Looks like a surprise, not an execution. We got hardcore traitors here."
She shook her head. "Same as Mars. Cerberus sure likes sleeper agents. Let's continue."
The trio advanced deeper through the floor, moping up the Cerberus soldiers they could find. They found the executor's office up a flight of stairs and positioned herself alongside the frame to ready herself. Once in place, she gave the signal and hit the door control, and they cautiously advanced in. On the floor were bodies. One was the executor.
"Bailey, looks like they got the executor and two salarian bodyguards."
"Damn. All right, keep searching. If you don't see the councillor's body, don't count him out yet."
She had begun snooping around the room for clues when she heard Garrus call out her name. The turian was leaning over the windowsill in the office, pointing to the cafe the windows overlooked below them. A chair beside one of the cafe's tables, seemingly with no occupant, moved independently. A moment later, the shimmer of a cloaking field materialized, revealing the panicked and very alive face of the Salarian councillor.
"Found him. He looks unharmed," Shepard reported over the channel.
"Get him someplace safe!" urged the C-Sec commander.
She had turned to motion to the two with her to move back down the stairs, which took hardly two seconds before her head turned back to the councillor and saw that the salarian was no longer alone. A second figure from the rafters above had jumped down and was dangerously close to the salarian. Moving silently, the figure was quickly approaching the councillor unnoticed. Sensing imminent danger, she raised her gun, shot out the glass and lept off the second-floor window to the ground below. Seeing the commotion behind him, the mysterious second figure flipped over the councillor with unnatural agility and trained his palm blaster on the salarian. It was a Cerberus assassin, judging from his lithe frame and armaments.
"Don't even think about it," she warned, steadying her gun. Opposite her, the man maintained silence and a similar distance from the councillor, moving in an arc to keep the salarian between them, blocking her line of fire toward him.
The salarian councillor rotated and raised his hands to plead. "Shepard. He's going to kill us all."
"That remains to be seen."
Valern shook his head - he wasn't talking about the assassin. "I mean Udina. He's staging a coup. The other councillors are headed for a trap."
Behind her, Liara and Garrus rushed out of the stairwell, having caught up with her. "Three-on-one, pal. It's over."
"No," the assassin finally responded, palm blaster glowing brightly and primed to fire. "Now it's fun."
Seeing the end, the councillor raised his hands to shield himself in a final, futile gesture of defence, but the shot didn't come as he imagined. Behind the Cerberus agent came the low whirl of a gun unfolding - a certain drell assassin had appeared behind, utterly silent in his movements, holding a pistol to the agent's head. Realizing he had been caught, the would-be Cerberus assassin spun, knocking the gun away and attempted to quickly subdue the one who had surprised him, but his opponent was no amateur. The two began trading lightning-fast punches and blocks, elite assassin on elite assassin, and while in the grips of seeing the exchange of blows, Shepard grabbed the councillor and yanked him out of harm's way. The Cerberus agent managed to grab Thane's arm and flipped him on the ground, only for the nimble drell to recover perfectly into a roll and return to standing position with his gun raised and fired. His target vanished, however, and each in the party searched with their weapons, trying to determine what became of their dangerous quarry.
From Thane's left, the shimmer of a cloak de-materialized, and the Cerberus assassin reappeared, wielding a wide monomolecular blade. Thane fired upon the moving target but was too slow to hit, and the killer ran toward him, swinging the sword. Unable to evade, Thane blocked the blade's path with his pistol with precision, then spun, delivering two kicks to the sternum and arm of the agent before they could recover. Momentarily stunned by the wiry force of the drell's kicks, Thane reached up and struck down with a fistful of biotic power, knocking the agent to the ground and sending his blade skipping across the flooring. He picked up his dropped pistol and popped the heatsink.
But the fight was not over - the nameless assassin grabbed the tossed blade and quickly jumped to his feet, throwing himself toward them. Thane also ran in, head down, gun drawn, firing toward the rapidly advancing form, now closing in. His shots glanced, and the lethal palm blast of the Cerberus agent was narrowly evaded by slick and timely angling of the drell's body - but by either a lack of agility or error of judgment brought about his deteriorating body, Thane couldn't avoid the blade suddenly pointed toward him as his inertia slid him towards the assassin. The cold, sleek edge ran through him and then was pulled, spilling his blood onto the floor as he collapsed.
"Thane!"
Realizing the odds and now exposed, the Cerberus assassin turned and jumped off the balcony to the story below. She ran after him, fury burning in her heart, consumed with thoughts of annihilation, but the assassin jumped off the railing and onto the roof of a waiting shuttle, lifting him up and away. She fired her weapon at the shuttle's retreating form, hoping for a hit, but in vain. From behind her, sporadic pistol gunfire joined. Not expecting the secondary fire, she turned and saw that Thane had pulled himself toward the doorway before collapsing to the ground again.
She ran over to his slumped form. "How bad is it?" she asked, knowing it was terrible. His breath was ragged, and blood actively dripped from the front and rear exit wounds.
"I have time," the drell rasped weakly, "catch him."
She cursed internally and managed to get one more breath in before her omni-tool lit up with Bailey's voice. "Shepard? What's going on up there?"
She gritted her teeth, wanting to shut everything out while Thane lay before her, dying by degrees, but she still had her mission. Things were about to get much worse if she didn't act now. "Thane needs medical help fast, and I need to take care of an assassin."
"He must be going after the rest of the Council."
"Get the word out – Udina's trying to seize power. I've got to get to the councillors."
"They're being taken to a shuttle pad on the Presidium. Start driving–I'll try to raise them on the comm."
Beside her, the drell was succumbing to hypovolemic shock from blood loss, looking extremely pale. She lightly squeezed Thane's shoulder, the most she could do, and signalled Liara and Garrus to jump into the nearby parked C-Sec shuttle. She wanted to yell in frustration, but the looming danger boxed her in. There was only forward.
She got in and punched the accelerator, zooming them upwards and over.