I've been in a bit of a funk. But we persevere. Slowly.
My general impression of (and personal stance on) Cerberus is that they're actually very competent and good at what they do, they're just so rich and removed from the usual consequences of their actions (largely because they hide a lot) that they tend to forget actions have consequences.
This leads to them making some very bad decisions because they assume, them being them, whatever they do they will do well, and mistakes are something that happen to other people, and no-one can match them anyway, and all their opponents will just grope around in the dark.
Their reach exceeds their grasp, basically. And that's before their brains all started to melt from alien technology. They're unused to being pushed back because, in their minds, they're the ones doing the pushing and do also do it secretly.
But yes.
Byrce was watching the passengers on the monitors.
He'd been doing this from the moment he'd got to the bridge. Indeed, he'd been doing it from the moment he'd stepped outside the room he'd lead them to - linking his omnitool to the ship's security system and keeping an eye on them until he'd reached the bridge, only then moving to watching a screen instead. When the captain had given him this or that update on their travel progress he'd hummed and nodded but still kept his eye on the screens.
The passengers scared him. Not a lot, but enough.
When this assignment had first come his way - passed down quietly from on-high, as most Cerberus assignments tended to be these days - he was blithely self-assured that it was just another mission and wouldn't be especially memorable in the scheme of things. It hadn't gone that way. First there'd been the mercenary attack, which had been unpleasant enough but nothing he hadn't been through before. Then he'd seen these strange people in action. Now he was worried. A little worried, sure, but a little could go a long way in a profession with as high a lethal level of turnover as his.
The Illusive Man hadn't provided him any information on the passengers, his instructions being fairly simple and direct: keep them placated, get them to the nearest secure Cerberus facility, leave the next part to the personnel there. Details on who they were had been light. Bryce had filled in the blanks himself, best he could. Professional incuriosity was typically a useful trait when working for Cerberus, but what you didn't know could often get you killed, so at least having some idea of what was going on was usually a good move.
Not that there was a lot to be going on when it came to the passengers. Not a lot solid anyway. Everyone everywhere had heard about them now, of course, and everyone had also made up at least one thing about them which they'd passed onto someone else, who'd also made something up.
In amidst all of the hysteria and conspiracy-mongering - people were nothing if not ravenous for the latest, most insane ideas - were a few recurring elements that stood out as more-or-less reliable, and Bryce could now add his own personal observations. He couldn't speak to some of the wackier ideas like them being time-travellers or from outside the galaxy or another dimension or some weirdo alternative universe version of their own galaxy or anything like that, but he could say that they were definitely…
…off.
And scary. Specifically the big one, the space marine. He was especially scary. Getting throttled by someone tends to give that impression, and them going on to easily murder hardened mercenaries just drives it home.
All of which was why he was watching them. In case they tried something.
The man in the hood had gone to sit or kneel - it was hard to see precisely - in the corner for some reason that wasn't clear, the waifish, silent woman was apparently browsing the extranet, the space marine was stood entirely motionless to the side, and the woman with the mechanical eyes (the Illusive Man's briefing had at least mentioned she was called something like 'Inquisitor Loghain', Bryce remembered) and the non-descript man were left to talk.
Bryce had listened in on them talking, obviously, but whatever language they'd been speaking in wasn't one the translation software was used to, so it hadn't meant anything. Once or twice a word might get picked up, but the rest was indecipherable. They'd known someone would be listening. Not stupid, Bryce supposed, and probably what he would have tried to do, but it was still annoying.
Not a lot was happening. It was getting to the point where Bryce felt he might as well just pass the job of keeping watch on them over to some crewmember when, out of nowhere, the Inquisitor woman stood and took a step towards the trooper stationed in the room, who reacted to the sudden move. A second later the trooper was on the floor.
Bryce blinked. He hadn't missed anything, he hadn't looked away. The trooper had noticed the woman coming at him, most likely asked what she was doing, then just dropped like a sack of potatoes.
"Hell was that?" Bryce said, keeping one eye on the live feed on-screen while scrolling back on his omnitool to see if some detail had slipped his attention. Nothing had, far as he could see. Trooper had just collapsed.
And now she was sitting on them.
"The fuck is she doing…" he muttered
"Should we intervene?" The captain, standing just behind Bryce, asked.
Bryce was not, as might have been obvious, the captain of the ship, but his instructions had come from the Illusive Man himself and so the actual captain of the ship - while having every right to object to having his authority overridden - was wise enough not to do so. As a career move in Cerberus it would not have been the best one.
Didn't make him any less happy about seeing that sort of thing happening on his ship though, hence his suggestion. There were armed and armoured men a second away - outside the very door of the room the passengers were in, in fact.
Bryce had concerns over whether it'd be enough armed and armoured men, given he'd seen what the space marine could do, but he liked to think highly-trained, unquestioningly obedient, loyal-unto-death Cerberus troopers, properly kitted out, in tight-confines and entirely aware of what was about to happen would do better than some Blood Pack not expecting it. He liked to think.
"No, not yet," Bryce said, shaking his head and raising a hand to bat away the suggestion. He did not see the Captain glare, nor did he need to.
The instructions had been clear in saying to give the passengers a lot - a lot - of latitude, and that getting them to where they needed to be was of overriding importance. Keep them placated, get them there. Once they were there it wouldn't matter, so just get them there.
What they were doing right now, whatever it was, would have got just about anyone else shot to bits and flushed into space, but guards weren't that hard to replace and it seemed to be keeping the woman occupied, so Bryce saw no reason to act yet. She was still in the room, they were getting closer to their destination, so it was fine, or at least near enough to fine he could live with it.
He did wonder what it was in service of, though, what she was doing. It was not normal behaviour. She was still sitting on the guy, looking him over. It was weird. They were all weird to start with, but this was a whole new level of weird. Not for the life of him could he imagine what was happening.
Behind him Bryce could hear the captain communicating, and though he was trying to be quiet Bryce could tell that he was talking to the security teams outside the room. Bryce didn't care. They needed to be ready anyway, so let the captain tell them to be ready.
Onscreen, the woman stood up and, somehow managing to get a gun into her hand without stooping to pick it up or without any obvious use of biotics, something Bryce put down to just missing a detail owing to a lack of fidelity in the security feed, shot the unresponsive guard in the face. Several times.
That was too far. Too rich even for Bryce's blood. Weird sitting, sure, shooting, no.
"Nope, they shot the guard. Too far," he said, opening a direct line to the security teams himself. "I want both teams on the door ready in case they try to leave and if they do I want you to make sure they don't - remember, we need them at least close to one piece, so - wait, the big one is moving. Both teams, the big one is exiting!"
The space marine had been standing watching the inside of the door but after the woman had said something to him he'd moved. The marine went stooping through, meeting the two security teams on the other side. The door not being locked had seemed a good idea at the time - locking guests in was generally seen as poor form, and it had been assumed by Bryce (the one who'd made the decision) that the guards hanging around would be sufficient if something had gone wrong, and more than sufficient to herd them back if they'd got the urge to go wandering.
Now that something had gone wrong Bryce was less sure about the choice he'd made, and hoped no-one remembered that it had been his decision to leave the door unlocked. The security teams looked up. They'd just finished getting themselves ready, and were only mildly surprised.
Two teams of five, all in full armour. Two shields - that is, the nice big guardian shields, very handy when on a ship - per team. Everyone with a stun baton. One shotgun a team for if things got especially dicey. Straightforward stuff for keeping people in line, nice and reliable. Good for what ailed you if what ailed you was troublesome individuals on-board a spaceship, at least in Cerberus's experience.
It seemed sufficient to subdue most threats you might need to handle non-lethally, at least from what Bryce had seen in the past. Certainly, enough for a group of, what? Five people? Even if one of them was very large. This close the space marine probably wouldn't even be able to get a proper shot off, right? Rush in, keep the shields up, keep the marine occupied, keep him boxed in, surround him, find a gap in that armour, jam a baton into that gap, and just keep hitting until he stops trying to get up again. Bryce had seen that work on Krogan, so why not a space marine?
They were professionals. They were well-funded professionals who weren't slowed down by the rules other professionals were. They had the hard edge on everyone. It'd be fine. The response was sufficient.
Quickly it became clear that it was not sufficient.
It had all happened so fast, almost impossible for Bryce to follow. The first team had been poised on the other side of the door, ready, and the space marine had just come and moved through them. Like they hadn't been there. Most of them just got bowled over but one unlucky sod ended up - Bryce saw - partially stuck in the wall opposite.
And that was just the start.
Bryce watched with slack-jawed horror as the thing moved from one man to the next, but in the time it took for him to actually understand what had happened and parse the violence meted out the marine had moved on again, leaving another corpse in its wake. And not usually a whole corpse, either.
Every move the space marine made killed someone. Punches caved in armour, the snap of an elbow cracked faceplates. Arms, legs and necks were twisted and wrenched and broken with barely a hint of effort. At some point the marine produced a knife. Not one baton made contact, either passing harmlessly through air that had seconds previously been occupied or else simply being effortlessly batted aside. The shields made no difference - one was wrenched from the grasp of its owner before being used to clatter the man holding the other one. The shotguns barely had a chance to get raised, let alone fired - the men holding them had died first.
Dead, all dead. Just like that. Taken apart.
The space marine took a moment to assess the situation, glancing about to check they hadn't left anyone breathing. This took perhaps a second, and once it was confirmed the thing flicked blood from its knife - some fucking knife! It was about the length of a man's arm! - sheathed it, brass-checked the ludicrously enormous gun it had been holding in its non-knifing hand, was apparently satisfied, and then kept moving.
Bryce had gone very pale indeed. He didn't even know what a brass-check was.
"Fuck me," he breathed. Mistakes had been made.
On the screen, security systems tracking automatically, the enormous warrior reached a door. All the doors on that deck were, of course, now locked, and so the door did not open. The space marine looked the door over briefly and then delivered one, two, three, four very precisely aimed, very quick, very powerful blows, metal denting and deforming underneath its gauntlets. The door bowed, a gap opening, and with a quick heave and wrench it was forced fully open and the marine carried on.
Bryce knew from personal experience that those doors were no joke.
"Fuck me! It's not stopping! Forget keeping them in one piece! Lethal force authorised for the big one, we'll work on the others afterwards. Fucking kill that thing!" He said, then turning to the captain: "What's the compliment on this ship? Trooper numbers?"
"Fifty. We upped it be-"
"All of them, now. Send them. Send everyone."
In an ideal world he might have had maybe one or two of those new prototype units he'd heard were being worked on like that one with the whips, but he hadn't asked and, besides, he sort of doubted he would have got them anyway even if he had. They were, after all, not quite ready yet. Normal bodies would have to do. Enough of them would have to make a difference. Would have to.
Bryce kept his eyes on the screens, a hand clasped despairingly to his face. He could see rushing teams of troopers running to meet the marine, and he could see the marine cutting through stragglers and unlucky crewmembers as it came the other way. Behind him on the bridge Bryce could hear animated and unhappy conversation between the captain and various other bridge crew about what their other options were. Bryce wasn't paying attention enough to hear the details, but he could tell that their options were limited.
The frigate hadn't really been designed with repelling boarders in mind, and there wasn't really an awful lot they could do other than keeping an eye on the marine's progress and making sure the doors were locked. Neither of these were doing them all that much good. It was down to the men with the guns.
Nothing worked. Most things didn't even get a chance to work.
Given that they weren't being sent in on - in hindsight, Bryce had to admit, pretty stupid - orders to try and simply subdue the marine, all the troopers were now fully loaded and shooting on sight, and positioned such that they had the opportunity to shoot on sight, rather than being instantly killed before they pulled the trigger. They hunkered down behind chest-high solid objects, of which the frigate had a surprising amount to offer. They positioned themselves so they were covering one another, so their fields of fire overlapped. They aimed and readied their guns in the direction they knew their enemy was coming from. It didn't help.
The marine cut straight through them. It moved so fast most of the troopers, ready as they were, barely had the time to get off more than a single burst of fire, and those that did either missed or, of those few that hit, saw their shots just glance off - a sight which somehow managed to make Bryce's gut drop even lower than it already had. A few sparks from that black armour was all they really had to show for it, then the marine was there, past their cover, killing them bare-handed or, increasingly, firing at them point-blank.
Troopers didn't so much get blown away as blown apart - close-range bursts from that massive gun not only making a mockery of barriers and armour but also of the flesh hiding behind them. Men went to pieces, literally. And that was when the marine hadn't switched to rounds that set people on fire. Or rounds that exploded into metal-shredding hails of shrapnel that kept trooper's heads down and mulched those whose barriers had already dropped.
Bryce despaired. He watched an engineer attempting to set up a turret - the key word being 'attempting'. No sooner had the man swung the thing out and set it down then the marine was on him, the engineer's head twisted a neat and perfect one-eighty, and the turret flung back the way the marine had come, clattering and bouncing loudly and uselessly around a corner where it couldn't do anything.
And so on.
Regardless of the specifics involved, it kept playing out the same. The marine started at one side of a room and reached the other side, or started at one end of a corridor and reached the other end, and anyone and anything in the way got killed. Nothing was slowing him down, at least not enough to matter. The whole thing was a nightmare, and a nightmare with an unavoidable, inescapable, approaching conclusion:
It was coming this way. He was heading towards the bridge.
Something that he probably should have done right at the start bobbed up in Bryce's mind.
"We need - shit - we need to, uh, need to send a message. Tell the boss. We need to tell him we're not making it, we need-" he croaked, casting his eyes around and alighting them on the back of the comms officer, sitting and apparently not really doing much. Bryce lunged over. "Priority message, right now. We need to tell-"
He got this far before noticing that the comms officer wasn't in fact doing nothing much, and was in fact instead setting the ship's communications systems to run through a complete diagnostic, the kind you'd usually wait until you were safely docked up to do because it put the whole thing out of commission for a good while. Bryce's blood froze as he watched - as if in slow motion - the man's hands move across the keys and set it all going, too late to do anything about it.
"You! What the fuck are you playing at?!" Bryce sputtered.
The comms officer rose so sharply it was like he'd been yanked up by the scruff of the neck, his arms whipping limply out and then flopping down by his sides. The effect was unnerving. Whatever he was playing at he was apparently playing it to the hilt.
"You should probably surrender," the man said, in tones that seemed very out of place and also oddly familiar.
"What?! What are you doing?" Bryce asked.
"Look at that," the man said, pointing, arm coming up as though it were asleep and being lifted by a fishing line at the wrist.
Bryce followed the point, and saw it was being directed at one of the monitors that was still showing the rest of the guests, still in their room. On-screen, the woman with the mechanical eyes was sitting with her legs folded, looking to all the world as though she was meditating. The nondescript man, however, was staring right down the barrel of the sensor strip and, when Bryce looked, the man gave a brief wave and then pointed to the sitting woman, then back to the sensor again.
This left Bryce none the wiser. He turned back to the comms officer.
"...what are you doing?" he asked.
"Since you can't work it out, I'm just borrowing your man here. So we could have a talk."
Bryce still had no real idea what was going on, but some wheels were turning. In his head dots connected. Dim shreds of scanty intelligence concerning some of the odder abilities supposedly possessed by these people that he'd been passed alongside a thrumming note of his own now very active imagination. An vague idea formed, and he didn't much like it.
"Y-you - that's - but you're - borrowing?!" He said, faltering, pointing to the monitor himself.
The comms officer smiled, or something a lot like a smile appeared on his face. It wasn't pleasant and did not fit.
"Witchcraft. But I'm sanctioned, so it's the good kind. Thought about having this conversation over internal systems, as one of my cohort has now accessed those, but I decided this would get your attention more. I could have done considerably worse things to you than what I'm doing, you know, but I felt instead it'd be nicer to give you all a chance to surrender," he said, again in the voice that plainly wasn't his own.
Bryce understood now. He could scarcely believe it and definitely didn't understand it, but there wasn't much use denying what was clearly in front of him, talking to him.
"A-and what if we don't?" He asked. The comm officer's heavy, sleepy arm moved to point to the sealed door of the bridge.
"That space marine isn't wasting any time, you know. He will get to you soon. It's just a question of whether you'd like him to kill you or not when he arrives," he said.
The sounds of gunfire were getting closer, even with all the doors still in the way. Bryce swallowed.
"If we surrender…?"
"If you surrender I will tell him to spare the non-combat crew. Those who haven't been killed already, obviously. Better than nothing, eh? We'll learn to fly the ship ourselves if we have to, I'd just prefer not. Those troopers of yours are all going to be killed though, I'm afraid. From the sound of things they're mostly gone already. Just the ones you have left here."
"The troopers?"
"Call me old-fashioned, but when I commandeer a ship I don't generally like to leave any of the armed, armoured crew hanging around. Personal preference. So send the guards to meet the space marine and that'll solve that. You don't have long."
Most of the ship's complement of troopers were already out in the corridors doing their best to stop (or at least slow down) the space marine, excluding those that were at that moment dead, which left perhaps half a dozen stood around the bridge. It was impossible to say how they felt about the situation or, given what had been done to them, if they felt anything at all. The helmets made it impossible to tell either way. Bryce licked his lips.
"Troopers-"
That was as far as he got before the captain grabbed him by the collar and hauled him around, bringing him in with both hands the better to growl into his face.
"You are not giving that order."
Fine time to grow a spine, Bryce felt, smacking aside the captain's hands.
"You heard what she said! Some of us can live through this!" He said.
The captain punched Byrce across the jaw, sending him toppling to the deck.
"This is my ship! Those are my men!" He shouted.
Wiping away blood, Bryce sat up and glared.
"Most of them are barely even human anymore! And they're going to die anyway! We're all going to die if we don't do this!" He shot back as he got to his feet. "And why would it matter? You sent most of them to die already!"
"No, I sent them to defend the ship, you want to send them to die!" The captain spat, gesticulating forcefully.
"Sounds like semantics to me," the comms officer said.
"Shut up! We're not just giving up like that and we're not doing what they're telling us to do! We're not done yet! We have options!" The Captain snarled, first to the comms officer, then to Bryce, who threw his hands up.
"Like what?!" He asked.
"He's getting closer…" said the comms officer in a thoroughly unnecessary sing-song voice.
"Shut up!" Both Bryce and the captain said as one, Bryce only now noticing the tears working their way down the cheeks of the man and the way his eyes were frantically darting around the bridge. Borrowed indeed.
The captain was running through his options. It seemed he only now considered how short his list of possibilities actually was, and how none of them were especially attractive.
"We can scuttle the ship," he said after a moment of consideration.
"Ooh, I like your attitude! Think you can do it before the marine gets there, though?" The comms officer asked, getting roughly shoved back into their seat by the captain for their troubles.
"Shut up!" The captain snarled, who found, when his attention returned to Bryce, that Bryce had pulled a gun on him.
"We're not going down with the fucking ship! We don't need to go with the fucking ship! We can live through this! You aren't getting a fucking plaque on a wall somewhere to acknowledge your heroic sacrifice! I don't know if you forgot this but we work for Cerberus! It's success that gets commemorated. Failure just gets remembered."
Oddly, producing a weapon brought a certain level of calm to what had been a very heated situation. It seemed that staring down the barrel did a power of good on the captain when it came to focusing his thoughts, and perhaps providing a fresh and clarifying angle he hadn't considered before. He didn't say anything though, but neither did he make any moves he might regret.
Bryce pressed his advantage.
"No medals for saving the lives of some assault troopers so they - along with everyone else - could die five minutes later when the killing machine arrived. Right? Look, I don't like it either, but if you want to live to do anything about it, you're going to have to play along on this one."
"He's right, you know," said the comms officer. Bryce and the captain decided to just ignore this.
"Fine," the captain said after a moment, unhappy but resigned, whatever fury had seized him now having passed. He sighed, and gestured for the troopers present to come over to him, which they did.
"Go, see if you can kill that thing. If you hurry you might get it at intersection B. Use grenades on the port-side bulkhead. Might be able to blow it into space if you're lucky," he said.
Damage to the ship would be a concern, sure, as a hole in the hull was always unwelcome, but there were systems in place for breaches and it was far enough away from any vital systems not to be that much of a problem. Assuming they even managed it, which wasn't assured. Bryce felt magnanimous enough to let the man have one final stab at pretending he had some control on the situation.
"Captain," the troopers said, nodding, before obligingly heading off to meet their fate.
The wait that followed this was quiet and awkward. Bryce did his best not to meet anyone's eye and instead fiddled with omnitool as though he was doing something important, which he wasn't. In the background the comms officer burst into tears and started sobbing inconsolably in between one bout of vomiting and a lot of heaving, attended by concerned and helpless members of the crew. The captain hung around the vacated comms officer's console, watching it like a hawk as the diagnostic continued on, agonisingly close to finishing.
About a minute after the troopers had been sent out a dull thump from somewhere worryingly close by rattled along the corridor and Bryce, who had been ignoring the monitors, glanced up. There was no hull breach, there was just more dead troopers, and a space marine striding past them. As much as he'd resigned himself to this it still wasn't something Bryce enjoyed seeing.
When it arrived outside the bridge, it knocked on the door. It knocked three times, firmly, and each one made most members of the bridge crew flinch. They looked to the captain who, resigned, looked to Bryce, mostly to make it clear none of this had anything to do with him. Bryce gave a significant look and a nod to the man standing nearest the door who, though clearly not wanting to, reached over with a shaking hand and pressed the pad to open it up (before retreating rapidly).
The doors hissed open, and there stood the marine. In the corridors of a frigate, the sheer size of the thing was impossible to ignore. It had to duck to get inside. Bryce stared. He wasn't alone in doing this. The thing had been terrifying enough the first time he'd seen it, although getting hauled up by the neck hadn't helped much. Now, spattered with blood and peppered with chips and divots from gunfire, it was so much worse. Every step seemed to make the decking shake.
Once inside, it swept the still-smoking muzzle of its ludicrously enormous gun around and across the bridge, then lowered it.
"Clear, Inquisitor," the marine said in a voice that rattled the diaphragms of everyone nearby. Bryce guessed - and was entirely correct - that the marine hadn't needed to make that audible to everyone on the bridge but had chosen to do so specifically for effect. Specifically the effect of loosening the bowels of anyone who might have been entertaining ideas of resisting. It had worked.
Not long after, the Inquisitor and the others arrived, having casually picked their way past the bodies and bits of bodies on the way there. The Inquisitor herself came up in front of Bryce, grinning good-naturedly with her hands on her hips.
"There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" She asked. Somewhere on the bridge a console beeped loudly and happily.
The captain of the ship made a sudden move. It wasn't clear whether he'd been about to lunge to hit something on the beeping console (the comms officer's, in fact), or reach for his sidearm, or someone else's sidearm, or anything, really. It wasn't clear because, as sudden as it had been, it wasn't as sudden as the response from the space marine. His arm shot out and his fist connected squarely with the captain's chest with the force of a pneumatic ram.
His dead - obviously, instantly dead - body was flung across the bridge, folded itself more-or-less in half, and rolled to a halt against a bulkhead, the crew who'd been in the way scurrying to get clear in time.
There was a pause, as there so often is following such sudden violence.
"I might have needed to talk to him," the Inquisitor said.
"Apologies, Lady Inquisitor."
"It's fine, can hardly fault you for your diligence and besides, I'm sure my friend here knows more than enough, hmm?" She said, rounding on Bryce, who took a step back. In response, she took a step forward.
"W-what?" Bryce said, unable to keep his voice entirely steady. The slight smile the woman had wasn't helping his calm.
"The nature of this arrangement of ours has changed, for better or for worse, and I need a little more information so I have a better idea of what I should do next. You, I am sure, have information."
For whatever reason at this exact moment Bryce thought it would be a really, really good idea to sit down, and so he did, flopping heavily into a vacant seat he hadn't actually known was behind him. It was only afterwards he wondered why he had.
The Inquisitor was still grinning at him, but it wasn't quite as good natured as it had been to start with. She'd stood in just the right spot to block his light, and as he looked up at her her face was in shadow and her head brightly haloed. The effect was not comforting.
"Now," she said, flicking a hand to the side and sending off her right-hand-man to do whatever. "I need to know what you know. Intimately. I'd prefer it if I ask some questions and you give me honest answers, but understand that I will know if they're not honest answers and I will get them another way. If you hold anything back, I'll kill you. If you even think about lying to me, I'll kill you. You're not going to have to work too hard to stay alive, but be aware if I feel you are not co-operating as much as you can, I'll kill you. Whatever happens, I will get what I want, whether or not you survive the experience. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Bryce said, keenly aware of every pair of eyes on the bridge burning into him.
"Good! I'm glad. So then, tell me…"
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
I was sitting in my cabin staring at a random spot on the wall when I heard the chirp of someone trying to get my attention.
"This better be important, I'm very busy," I said.
"We have arrived Commander. Approaching Horizon," EDI said.
"And not before time. There anything big and gothic in orbit?" I asked, crossing my fingers, braced for disappointment.
"Yes, Commander."
I blinked. Amazed that had been so easy. Was expecting at least two trips, maybe a little tooing-and-froing, maybe a little waiting, maybe killing some time throwing more probes at more planets. Instead, things had worked out perfectly! Pleasant surprise. Suppose even I can have a nice day sometimes.
"That's a stroke of luck," I said.
"You are an exceptionally lucky individual, Commander," EDI said. Even the artificial intelligences are talking back to me these days. Should have set a firmer tone sooner. Too late now.
"Sometimes. Sometimes less so. Have I mentioned that I died?"
"You have mentioned this, Commander. But, and permit me to mention this, you are also alive again. Most people would say that was at least moderately lucky."
"...point. Take us in, Joker. I'll be down in a second."
"Aye, Commander," Joker said, and though I couldn't see him I got the distinct impression he was trying not to smile, or was at least smirking at my expense. Fair, I guess.
One quick lift-ride later and I was there, striding purposefully (and impressively) onto the bridge. Or into the cockpit, rather. The front of the Normandy. I wanted to look out of the windscreen.
"Commander. Surprised to see you here, heard you died," Joker said, glancing back at me as he guided us in. Very hard not to roll my eyes.
"Ha ha yes look maybe I've used that joke too much. We in visual range?" I asked. He nodded, and I moved a little closer to the windows to have a peer. Nine times out of ten a window in space is pretty useless, but that one time it isn't usually makes it worth it. At least to me.
I can see Jarrion's ship clear as anything, hanging there over the planet. Still far enough away it's just a hair over a speck, but with every second we get closer more of it comes into view and, frankly, I'd forgotten how quietly terrifying the thing is. It's just unnecessary, and there's something scary about things - and the people who make those things - who go out of their way to do the unnecessary. It shows commitment to priorities I can't understand.
And also, the closer we get, the more I can see that the ship has clearly had some damage done to it. Engine assembly's taken some obvious hits - the scorching is obvious even from a distance - and there's some great jagged mass of something-or-other sticking out the bottom. It's not reassuring.
"That doesn't look healthy," I said.
"You're not wrong. What did that? To that?!" Joker said.
I dreaded to think.
Was going to find out though.
Further contemplation on this subject was interrupted by the sharp blaring of alarms.
"They're locking onto us!" Joker said, hands whipping across the controls.
"What?! Christ, open a channel now! Hail them!"
Here as me thinking I could approach a friend - well, 'friend' - without having to engage the stealth systems. Shows what I know.
"Channel open," said EDI.
"Jarrion! It's me! Commander Shepard! At least say hello before shooting us down!"
There wasn't any immediate response, but there wasn't any immediate sense of being exploded either, which had to count for something. The urge to bolt was strong, but given they had us locked doing anything sudden or stupid could end very badly very quickly, so we just had to wait for someone to answer the call.
Or wait to die, either way. Great fun.
Thankfully, someone answered. Once they did, what had previously just been audio-only turned into a polite face-to-face. Some guy who looked to be on the wrong side of his life and who looked to have had a rough few years. His uniform was crisp, mind. I didn't recognise the guy and, from the look on him, he didn't recognise me, either.
"You're looking rough, Jarrion," I said.
The guy made a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.
"It's the local. That, uh - what was her name again? Can't work out a bloody thing she's saying - where's that translation servitor? Hmm? Right, right, get it, come on…"
This he said while speaking and gesturing to someone off-screen, before looking back to me and holding up his hand. Guess that's his rude, unfriendly way of telling me to wait. Fair enough. He's the one with all the guns locked onto me, I can tolerate a little unfriendliness at times like that.
A moment later one of those servitor things gets trundled just to the edge of the picture. Even with it being what was fairly obviously a higher-end model - a lot less ramshackle than those ones I'd seen loading cargo, a lot cleaner and better-finished - it was also still fairly obvious a human mangled into something else. In this case, something with a whacking great speaker for a face. With little gold wings on it, too. Why not?
God those things made me uncomfortable. And the guy just didn't care. None of them cared. Guess if you're used to it you're used to it but still, how do you get used to that?
"Is it on? Well finish the ritual, then," the guy said, as someone in red robes with a hood - Pak? No, not Pak, though similar - did something with the servitor. Once finished they hurried out of sight and the guy finally turned back to the screen and to me.
"Can you understand me?" He asked.
"I can understand you just fine. Can you understand me?" I asked.
His response was delayed, because what I'd said had to crackle out at him translated from the speaker-faced servitor-thing. Kind of an odd experience for me as I was hearing it as the exact same thing as I'd said seconds previously in a weirdly accented monotone, but hell, there you go. The foibles of having translation software. It must have worked though.
"Yes. Why are you here?" He asked, somehow managing to look even unhappier now we could actually talk.
"I was hoping to speak to Jarrion."
Another pause and more crackling. I expected this would punctuate the conversation from here until the end, and decided to do my best not to pay attention to it from now on.
"You want to speak to the Lord Captain?" He asked.
"Yes please."
The guy shifted a little.
"He has expressed a desire not to be disturbed."
"Well it'd be a bit of a waste to come all this way and me not speak to him, and what I've got to talk about is rather important," I said, my natural gift for smooth diplomatic patter really shining through.
"If it is important you can inform me and I can relay it to the Lord Captain."
"I'd really rather talk to Jarrion directly, if it's all the same to you. I have something to discuss. In-person would really, really be better."
Here the man hesitated, his expression doing a fine job of blending annoyed and slightly worried. He stared at me a moment, clearly considering his next words, before raising a finger.
"One moment," he said, before turning to someone off to the side of the screen. "Who saw him last? The Lord Captain, who saw him last? What did he say? How was he?" He asked, though whatever whoever he was talking to said in response was inaudible to me. "Well I don't want to fucking fob her off if it turns out I should have bothered him, do I? You saw what he did to the old man, he's in a mood. Look-"
This was a man who had been given command authority and wanted to use it, but also knew his boss would be coming back and didn't want to do anything that might land him in trouble. I could tell. This was also a man who'd clearly forgotten I could understand every word he was saying. I could tell this, too.
He was a little slower on the uptake, and it was only a sideways glance at the screen - and at me on it, I assumed - that reminded him, and he promptly stopped talking. If I didn't know any better I'd say he looked a little sheepish.
"As it's urgent business I am sure the Lord Captain will understand the interruption. It is urgent business, isn't it?" He asked, quickly.
"Yes," I said. Keep it simple. The man nodded.
"Good, good. He won't mind then. Assuming you make it clear that it is urgent business and you informed me as much. We'll make ready for your arrival. The lighter bay will be open shortly."
"Great. Thank you."
Communications ended. Thank God for that.
"Wonderful, well that's step one," I said.
"Am I the only one who saw the guy with the speaker for a face?" Joker said, pointing to where the other side of the conversation had been on screen mere moments before. I gave him a - very, very gentle - pat on the shoulder.
"Don't ask. I'll tell you later."
Five minutes later I'm back in armour and I've got the squad down in the shuttle bay. They're all lined up, I'm pacing in front of them, thinking on my feet. One of the things I'm best at, so I'm told.
"Right. This is a fact-finding mission, mainly, maybe with an edge of chit-chat as we try to straighten things out. I want a light team because I don't want to be hanging around - in, do it, out, okay? So it'll just be two of you. Miranda, you're inoffensive," I said, pointing to Miranda, who clearly didn't know how to take this.
"Thank you?"
"And…Tali, because I can feel you vibrating with excitement."
Not that much of an exaggeration. She'd already expressed to me her profound disappointment at not having a chance to see Jarrion's ship close up before, and ever since the prospect of us paying a visit had come up she'd been giving me lots of significant looks. I can take a hint.
Tali is plainly fighting the urge to clap with glee.
"I know you said you wanted to be quick but do you think we might have time to see the engine? I can't imagine what it would look like in a ship that size," she asked.
"Uh, maybe we'll ask."
Not something I could see happening. Garrus raised his hand.
"I will now take questions, yes," I said, motioning him to speak.
"So what is the plan, exactly? I take it we're not expecting him to come quietly?" He asked.
"No, of course not. But you know, I'm starting to wonder whether he's even the guy the Council should be after."
"How you reckon that, Commander?" Asked Jacob.
I'd been thinking about this, and I'd been thinking about the best way of articulating it.
"Because I've been looking at pictures of the ship that attacked the colony and the more I'm looking at them the more I'm feeling that it isn't Jarrion's ship. Which kind of makes me uncomfortable. Anyone else getting that?"
General murmurs of general agreement.
I was unsurprised they'd seen what I'd seen. Pictures were not hard to come by. The net was awash with copies of the original images of the perpetrator and also with obvious fakes of varying levels of quality, presumably put out there by people just to piss me off. Those I mostly ignored so I could focus on the handful of reputable, properly-sourced images that I'd been able to beg, borrow or steal from my various contacts.
None of them were as clear or as useful as I might have wanted them to be but, taken together, they added up to something pretty difficult to ignore: not Jarrion's ship. Too big. And there's only so much shoddy photography and forced perspective can go to explain that. This raised some uncomfortable questions, at least for me, and a big part of this little trip was getting those answered.
Even if I was pretty sure all the answers would just make me unhappy.
"Glad we're on the same page. It just doesn't add up for me. And - and you guys may or may not have seen this - but Jarrion's ship is looking pretty sorry for itself right now, so that's something else I want to find out about," I said.
"Another ship, then. Different ship. Related?" Mordin ruminated, seemingly more to himself than to any of us. Got things going in the same direction I was thinking, though.
"That's kind of the problem, I have no idea, and I don't like having no idea. Jarrion got another ship he never told anyone about? Someone else? Big cardboard shell around a frigate by someone pulling a prank? I don't know. And I need to know if I want to get this sorted. So this is first-and-foremost a fact-finding mission, alright? Like I said. We are going over and we are going to ask some polite questions and we are going to find out some facts. And depending on those facts, well, the mission might not stay the same. Maybe violently. Hopefully not violently. But we'll get to that. Mostly I want to know what the hell is going on. Everyone think that's a good idea?"
I threw the floor open and looked about the group. Everyone seemed to be waiting to not be the first one to speak.
"Would hesitate to say 'good'," Mordin said, breaking the silence and opening the floodgates:
"Yeah, it's not really 'good'."
"Not great."
"Ill-advised."
"I cannot see this ending well."
"Another of your not-best ideas."
Cheeky swine, the lot of them. I get no respect.
"Well is it the best idea we've got right now?" I asked.
"Probably," they said, more-or-less in unison.
"Right, well, that'll have to do. Christ. Anyone else got any other questions before we get this moving?
"How come princess gets to come but I don't?" Jack asked, jerking a thumb in Miranda's direction. Miranda glared, but did not unfold her arms and did not rise to the bait. I looked between the two of them.
"Do you want to come on what should hopefully just be a tedious mission with a bit of talking?" I asked Jack, who looked at me as though I was joking.
"Uh, if it has a chance of going really fucking wrong and turning into a bloodbath on a huge spaceship? Yeah. Yeah I do. I haven't even seen the inside of that thing yet. Might not get another chance."
Mean, in fairness Miranda hadn't seen the inside either, but I could kind of tell she wasn't especially enthusiastic about coming in the first place. Glancing to her I saw her give a shrug. I turned back to Jack.
"Alright, fine, you and Tali. But put a shirt on or something, please. We have to at least try to be a little tactful," I said. I wasn't an expert on Imperial decorum but, as a rule, showing up wearing a strap and not much else isn't considered especially polite. Whether that's a good thing or not I don't have an opinion on, just saying how things tend to go. Jack grimaced.
"Ugh, I made a bad choice…" she said.
"Too late now! Selection locked in. You two be ready in twenty," I said, clapping once and briskly rubbing my hands to make it clear the matter was closed. I then looked to the rest of the group again. "Everyone else wait for me to come back."
"Or get ready to save you," said Garrus, blithely. I gave him some side-eye.
"Or get ready to save me, yes. Hopefully not that. I'd never hear the end of it"
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
So maybe half an hour after that I'm back on the Assertive, Tali and Jack (in a shirt) in tow.
Other than a few guys off in the distance fiddling with the other ships in the hanger there was only one person waiting to greet us and it was Thale, who I hadn't seen in what felt like ages. He was just as talkative as I remembered him being, which is to say not very, although this time he actually did talk to me, because he had one of those skulls floating by his shoulder whose job it was to apparently translate - these guys had a lot of translation devices going now, it looked like.
And what did Thale say to me via the skull?
"The Lord Captain is expecting you."
Verbose. But what else needed to be said? I nodded, and he led on, albeit after giving Tali a not-so-subtle once-over. Didn't say anything about it, but it was definitely there.
I think she's used to that sort of thing anyway, Quarian and all, but still. Not the best, eh?
(And not that she noticed, really, given that he had been gawking about the hanger.)
Thale led us into a lift, then into a conveyor, and then a walk, then another walk, a lift, and so on. This is one of the reasons why building your ships too big is a bad idea.
Since I'd been here before and, indeed, walked this very route before the last time I'd been, I wasn't as interested in all the sights as the other two, who were understandably a bit distracted and kept dawdling. Tali kept stopping to stare at and inspect things I told her we could look at on the way back, while Jack had her own questions:
"Hey," she said.
"Yes?"
"You still never explained what's with the skulls," she said, standing next to an alcove that seemed to exist solely to contain at least a couple dozen skulls, and with perfect timing a floating skull, topped with, of all things, a brazier (I think they're called braziers?), chose that moment to descend to our level, sweep some kind of sensor beam over us, bob in the air, and then carry on along its way. We both of us took a second to absorb this.
"Cultural thing," I said. "Serving after death, remember?"
"Right…"
We passed that relief again, the one of the Emperor stabbing a symbolic alien with a flag. I made sure to usher Jack and Tali past before they got distracted, and even with it back behind us I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Not long after, we arrived.
"Lord Captain's quarters," Thale said via the skull, opening the door for us and stepping aside.
I knew this. I gave him another nod and in we went. Nice to be trusted enough to just wander in, I must say. Again, I have this weird feeling Jarrion thinks we're much better friends than we are. Or else he just thinks it's a useful idea to keep me on-side. I'm not sure which of those I like least.
"Damn," Jack said once we were inside, and not for no reason. Jarrion's quarters had not got any less ostentatious since I'd been there last, and the little antechamber-stroke-waiting-room-stroke-whatever that we'd come into with its sideboards and luxurious sofas and couches and expensive doodads was pretty obviously set up specifically to get this kind of reaction.
"This seems inefficient," Tali said, staring at a fireplace. It wasn't lit, but that it was there at all was bad enough.
"I'm not sure efficiency is their main concern," I said, which she visibly conceded. Jack just let out a whistle.
"Cerberus stiffed you on your quarters, Shepard," she said.
"You're not wrong," I said reflexively, and I was going to leave it there when my brain tripped over itself. "Wait. How do you know what my quarters look like?"
Before that mystery could be unravelled however, a door opened, and out stumbled Jarrion.
Jarrion looked rough. Like he'd had a few uncomfortable nights. Hadn't shaved, no jacket, sleeves rolled up, waistcoat half undone, and the smile he gave on seeing me had more than a hint of desperation to it - the kind of look you get on someone who'd had a string of bad news delivered and was leaning into hearing the next bit just to get it over with.
Still armed too, obviously, but I'm hardly one to take issue with that.
"Commander! Come in, come in! Everything is awful!" Jarrion said, waving with one hand. The other, I saw, was holding a bottle of what I guessed from looking was more of that amasec stuff. Bottle was half-empty.
"Hello to you too, Jarrion. Here on business, I'm afraid. Can we have a word? You two wait here. They can wait here, right?" I asked, inclining my head to Tali and Jack who Jarrion regarded with blank indifference and an overly magnanimous wave of his bottle.
"Oh, by all means! Avail yourself of my chambers! Finger all the fixtures and fittings, if you feel fit. What does it matter? What does anything matter?"
I could see this going well already.
"Right. Stay here a minute you two. Don't actually finger the fixtures and fittings," I said, pointedly directing the last part at Jack who immediately pulled her hand back from the enormous, rusting, claw-thing mounted on the wall. She then held both hands up in front of her.
"What? I wasn't doing anything," she said, then turning to Jarrion and pointing to the claw, which I only just noticed also had a bone sticking out the other end of it. Lovely. "What did this come out of, anyway?" Jack asked. Jarrion's face lit up.
"Ah! That would be the power klaw of a Freebooter Kaptain who was-"
I could sense an anecdote approaching, and while I was sure it was fascinating I really didn't have the energy for diversions, so had to cut in.
"Jarrion?" I asked, yanking him off whatever track he'd been trundling on and back to the matter at hand. He blinked at me.
"Hmm? Oh yes of course. After you, Commander," he said, hand towards the door he'd emerged through. Sparing one last glance behind me - seeing Jack very deliberately keeping her hands by her side as she eyed up the room and seeing Tali examining that fireplace - I went on, Jarrion following.
I have no idea how big Jarrion's quarters are but they do just seem to keep going. Quite why he'd made me lead when he knew the way and I didn't I've no idea, but he gave me directions from behind and, after a few turns, we wound up somewhere more private. It is, again, wood-panelled luxuriousness.
"Drink?" He asks, moving towards a sideboard. I shake my head.
"No thanks, on business like I say."
"Of course, of course," he says, pouring himself one and then swigging from the bottle for good measure, hissing and wiping his mouth on the back of his arm as he sat down and took the glass in both hands. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Commander? How did you even know I was here?"
"Educated guess. And luck. Mostly luck. I'd have messaged ahead but, uh - well I'll get to that in a second. First I really do have to ask: you run into some trouble? Something's happened, I can see, but I'm having trouble working out what."
"Is it so obvious?" He asked, morosely, turning the glass about.
"Obvious enough I looked out the window and saw it," I said, nodding my head to the side in what I hoped was the vague direction of some damage.
"I can imagine. There has been an incident or two. Those aliens of yours attacked again, for one. Uh, what was it again? Collectors?"
"The collectors attacked you?"
"They did indeed! Three ships. A little insulting, in hindsight, but quite the unpleasant surprise at the time. Caught us quite off-guard! There's part of one of them still on the bottom of the Assertive. It rammed us."
That would have been the unidentified mass of something I'd seen earlier, no-doubt.
"Three? Not fans of yours, huh?"
One had been bad enough, I can tell you from personal experience. Though then again my ship isn't enormous, so maybe from where Jarrion's sitting it's less scary. He gives me a lopsided grin.
"So it would appear! I couldn't tell you why. Perhaps they took issue with the destruction of their other ship over Horizon previously. Xenos can be a spiteful and bitter lot at times."
"Think you're a threat, I'd say. As someone who they also thought was a threat I can say at least you're in better shape than I ended up in. So they did all this to you, the collectors?" I asked and Jarrion, mid-sip, shook his head.
"Oh no, not everything. Other than the ramming we came out of that little episode entirely unscathed. The rest of the damage you no-doubt saw was the result of, ah, a little visit from my brother, you see."
Oh dear. I think this is the point where things start going wrong for me.
"Your brother? The one you don't get on with?"
Vaguely I remembered him mentioning the guy once or twice. Not in a flattering tone.
"Hah! Yes! Him! You saw some substantial evidence of us not getting along, I'm sure!"
"And he's here now? In this galaxy? Not yours?" I asked.
Would explain why it looked like a completely different ship if it was a completely different ship.
"So it would appear, unfortunately. Was fighting orks and departed early specifically to make a mess of my hard work out of spite."
Glad to see Jarrion has his priorities in order.
"How'd that happen? I thought you got here by accident? He have an accident as well?"
"Sadly not. He passed through the same, ah, aperture through which the Assertive arrived and through which we recently made a return trip - have I mentioned that?"
"The trip or the aperture? Neither is ringing a bell. I think I would have remembered those."
"Hmm, most probably. But yes. It would appear so. Torian, ah, apparently relayed the details of my exploits to him and so he - my brother, not Torian - decided to come and, well, yes. Act as he usually acts. I may have lost my temper a little with Torian over his part in that. May have knocked him down. Frightfully embarrassing loss of control on my part but, well, my brother brings out the worst in me."
"Torian okay?"
"Oh yes, he's fine I'm sure," Jarrion said, clearly not giving the question any actual thought.
"And so there's now just a hole between wherever you came from and here? That people can just go through, back-and-forth? Easy as anything?" I asked, doing my best to keep my voice level and not let it slip that this was kind of a big deal. Jarrion took a gulp and finished the rest of his drink.
"So it would appear," he said. "Remarkably stable. Almost suspiciously so, I'd normally say."
It was hard not to sigh.
Sure, why not? At this point, why not? At this point I'm not sure what I wouldn't be prepared to believe is possible. Turns out not keeping an open mind isn't really an option. Every day something unlikely happens and I just have to deal with it.
All of which is ignoring just how bad this news is, despite how casually Jarrion said it. One enormous, incomprehensible ship packed with thousands of strange people arriving in some freak accident, fine. That's bad but that's not unmanageable. A full-on backdoor into what is apparently some other universe? Some futuristic hellscape? With who-knows-what just able to come on through whenever it likes?
Bad. Not a fan. Given what sort of things Jarrion has said (and implied) hang around where he's from - and what's happened recently - no, I am not a fan at all. This is another problem. This is something else people are going to ask me to try and fix. I can feel it in my waters.
"That's - I'm going to have to get back to that later. Right now though: so there's two Imperial ships around? Yours and your brother's? You reckon your brother was the one who attacked that colony, then?" I asked.
That got a rise out of him. I saw his eyes widen.
"Attacked what?"
"You didn't hear about that?"
"Hear about what? What did he do?" Jarrion asked.
"A colony was attacked."
Not sure how much I could have broken that down for him.
"Yes yes, I guessed that much, thank you Commander. Would you be so kind as to furnish me with some details?"
So I did that. Kept it light, to the point. Jarrion just listened, going paler the more I said. Tried to be a little evocative just to paint a better picture, tried to emphasise the reported level of destruction and death of this unprovoked attack. I didn't even really need to say a whole lot before all the colour drained from his face.
"Throne's mercy…" he breathed.
"Didn't think you'd be so torn up," I said, and he blinked at me.
"Hmm? Torn up? Over wha- oh, the, uh, enormous loss of life, is it?" He ventured, testing the ground as he went with that answer.
"Yes. That."
Going to go out on a limb here and guess that Jarrion's first concern on hearing this news was not the enormous loss of life. Going to go out on another limb and guess that his first concern was actually reputational damage and how best to personally recover from it.
There are people in this galaxy already who have attitudes like that, I know, but there's something about looking at a guy who has more-or-less told me he comes from an entirely galactic society of people like that. You know?
"Ah, yes. Most dreadful. Deplorable, truly. Awful. And it was most definitely an Imperial ship seen doing this?" He asked, clinging to a sliver of hope. I dashed this sliver.
"Just about everything makes it pretty clear, yeah."
"Suppose there's not much scope for misidentification. Oh well. That's just like Macharius - shooting first, heedless of the damage it might do to the greater scheme of things. I would have expected nothing better of him, naturally, but that he's done this already? I dread to think what he might be doing now out there, unmolested, unchallenged. Not to denigrate the naval prowess of the, ah, Systems Alliance, of course, and the, ah, various aliens, but the Divine Right is a formidable vessel, to be sure, and he has his escorts with him too, as always," Jarrion said, off-hand, before blinking as though he'd only just remembered something. "His escorts…"
"What?"
"My brother - glorious warrior that he is - never takes his ship anywhere without escorts, but they were nowhere to be seen when he attacked me. He won't have left them behind, so where are they?"
Before he could continue this line of thought or I could ask him a few clarifying questions about this line of thought there was the unmistakable chirrup of something in the room trying to get Jarrion's attention. The Normandy has things like that. Jarrion, train of thought disrupted and irritated about it, looked over at the door.
"Enter," he said. The door opened, and there was Thale and some other crewmember.
"News, Lord Captain. Felt you'd want to hear," said Thale, nudging the crewmember forward.
"Naturally," Jarrion said, dismissing Thale with a nod and turning his attention to the crewmember. "Come, come. More bad news, I take it?"
The crewmember, sheepish and evidently uncomfortable being where they were, stepped one foot into the room and stood straight.
"Yes, Lord Captain," they said.
"What else. Well, out with it. Let's get it over with," Jarrion said, sinking back into his seat.
"Torian has died, Lord Captain."
"Oh," said Jarrion, plainly not having expected this. "Oh," he then added.
For a rare moment, Jarrion looked like he was lost for words.
"They did the best they could for him, I'm told, Lord Captain, and it looked like he was stable, but he took a turn and they were unable to revive him. The medicae are very apologetic, Lord Captain, and are entirely willing to suffer whatever punishment you deem necessary for their failure," the crewmember said.
"No, no, it's quite alright, it's - it's alright. You may go."
"Lord Captain."
And off they went, clicking their heels and saluting and marching off again. That left just us two, and left it a bit quiet. Jarrion was staring into middle-distance. He kept staring into middle-distance for so long I felt I needed to say something.
"You okay there?"
He looked at me.
"Hmm?"
"Are you okay?"
He looked at me a bit more, then finally seemed to realise it was me he was looking at.
"Oh, I'm quite alright, Commander. These things happen. I shall need a new Seneschal before too long, yes. Most unfortunate."
"Jarrion?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"Totally fine. Well, I mean, it's a bit of a shock, I'll grant you."
"Didn't you say you knocked him down?"
"That's hardly relevant. I lost my temper with the man, I didn't kill him. But that's not really it. It's - ah, hmm. He was always a decrepit old man, even when I was a child. I was always expecting him to just keel over and die at any moment. And this was for years! And now he's actually dead. It doesn't feel quite right. Like someone's made a mistake," adding quietly: "Maybe this whole endeavour was a mistake…"
Jarrion blinked, stared at some more nothing, then shook his head.
"We were saying? Sorry, I've rather lost the thread."
Time to keep him focussed, I think. Needed to learn a few things and, also, was going to be needing a few things from him, too. Was here on business, after all.
"Your brother. Escorts, you said?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. Ah, two Swords - frigates. Never goes anywhere without them, as I say," he said.
More ships. Better and better. I scratched my head, rubbed my neck, and got my ducks in a row for the next bit because I could see bumper ground up ahead, so to speak.
"Okay, I'm going to be straight with you here Jarrion. I said I was here on business and I am. Council sent me, as a Spectre. They were not happy with the attack on the colony," I said.
"Ah. Perhaps unsurprising. Though I was under the impression that these aliens - Batarians, was it? - were not members of the Council and were, in fact, opposed to its interests?"
Never can get a solid read on how firm a grasp Jarrion has on the politics and history around here. Sometimes I think he's just pretending to be confused. It's what I would do, if I were him, so fair play.
"True, but they're kicking up a stink now and are onto the Council to do something about it, and also the Council probably feels this sort of thing sets a dangerous precedent, so it's a good idea to sort it out. And as a rule they have to at least be seen to care about, you know, hundreds of thousands of people getting murdered. Which is a bad thing, I feel I should point out to you. So yeah, they want it sorted. That's what they asked me to do," I said.
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"And what is that to involve?"
"Well, if it had been you who'd done it it was going to involve me persuading you to take your ship to a specific place and more-or-less hand yourself over. They have a small fleet set aside waiting and everything."
Jarrion looks at me like he's waiting for a punchline. Of course, there isn't one.
"Did they honestly think that would work?" He asks.
"I don't know, but that's what they asked me to do. Or, if that didn't work, I don't know, try and blow you up? Maybe they think I'm a miracle worker. To be honest I wasn't sure the best way to do it was if things did go South - it'd be a big job, even for me. Probably involve shooting my way out. But you're telling me now that it was actually your brother, who has followed you through a hole in space, and who has at least three very large, armed ships."
"Hardly call a Sword 'very large' but-"
"By our standards."
"Oh. Well, yes then. Ah, perhaps you might be so kind as to inform your Council that it was most certainly not me? I feel I should get on top of this issue before it complicates matters."
This struck me as a very man-who-has-had-a-few-drinks idea for how to clear up the situation.
"Have to level with you Jarrion, I'm not sure how far that's going to go."
"We simply tell them it was my brother!"
"Again, that might work on you or me - and for the record I'm inclined to believe you here - but I have to think the Council is going to be taking a pretty dim view of someone claiming to be from where you are, going around in a ship a little like yours, regardless of you saying you have nothing to do with it."
"But it's the truth!"
"Often not enough to get you where you need to go," I said, and I could see he was going to continue being aggrieved so I quickly carried on: "Look, listen, I got some ideas, if you're open?"
Jarrion shut his mouth and gestured for me to go on, adding:
"By all means!"
"Right. I've seen your ship - it's not going anywhere, least not right now, yeah?"
"My men are working as fast as they can…"
"I'm sure. What I mean is you are, for this moment at least, in orbit, and going to stay here, yeah? It's an alibi, or enough of one to work with if you do a few other things. You give me something I can give the Council. Stuff on these ships your brother has, some identifying information, a little threat assessment, what you reckon he's going to do next, where that space hole is. Something they can use to maybe go and do their own work, yeah? Something to keep them occupied."
"Does the Council have means to combat Imperial ships? Should the need arise, of course."
I'd been wondering this as well. Sort of a nagging thought in the back of my head ever since that colony had been razed. What would happen when someone started shooting back? In an ideal world we won't have to find out. It's a lot of spaceship to try and shoot through.
"I don't know. Maybe. But right now they're entirely in the dark. I need to tell them what's happened and what's out there right now. Because they think it's just you, and it's not, and so they're liable to make some bad choices.. Are you with me on this so far?" I asked, and he nodded, slowly.
"I will have some data put together."
"Great. Thank you. So I can give them that, and they can probably be unhappy about it but at least they can actually do something. Move some ships around, keep an eye out, whatever. And while they're doing that, they should leave you alone, at least until I get back," I said, and he was clearly brought up short.
"Get back?"
I cast a thumb back in the direction of Jack and Tali, or what I think is that direction. Hope they're keeping their hands to themselves.
"Me and my team are taking out the Collector base. Been putting it off too long but we're ready now and I'm done wasting time. After I finish here I'm going and I'm going through the Omega relay and putting that to bed. Then, when we're all back safe and snug I can turn my attention back to this particular problem."
"And what do you have in mind for this particular problem? I take it we are referring here to my maniac of a brother?"
"We are. Assuming he's still causing problems, how about you and I work on a way to kill him?"
Generally I'm against killing as a solution, but my sympathy is very limited when it comes to the sort of people who raze settlements from orbit just because they can. I'm only human. And there's always the possibility of taking a third option at the eleventh hour - my preferred way of operating, in fact. But really, from the sound of things, violence may be the way forward on this one. Sadly.
There's a very pregnant pause.
"Are you suggesting I murder my brother?" Jarrion asks, in tones that convey nothing of which way he's leaning. I really, really hoped I'd read Jarrion right for this.
"Well, when else are you going to get a chance like this?" I asked.
The next pause after I'd said that bit was agonising, and I really, really thought I'd fluffed it.
Then, I saw him start to smile.
"You are good at diplomacy, Commander. Hah! This endeavour may yet prove to not be a mistake in at least one respect, Emperor willing! My brother meets a sticky end by misadventure in another galaxy, I can repair my reputation with the locals and continue to enjoy the benefits of this unique and exciting opportunity. Hah! It's rare one encounters a win-win in this day and age."
Diplomacy is always easier when one side is just a tiny bit drunk. Apparently. And has a disdain for their sibling you can practically feel coming off them like a heat haze. And is maybe just a touch more trigger happy than he'd like to admit.
"I'll say. So we're on the same page on this one?" I asked, doing my best not to sound too relieved.
"Oh I'd think so. Solutions for every problem, it appears."
"My forte," I said, standing. Jarrion also stood. He extended a hand my way and I shook it, because that's polite.
"This is quite the productive working relationship we have, Commander."
"We get more done pulling in the same direction."
"Just so."
Leaving, we go back so I can get Jack and Tali and go. Perhaps predictably I find Jack having dismounted the claw from the wall and stuck her arm into it, inexplicably keeping the enormous thing in the air and looking very pleased with herself. Tali meanwhile is surreptitiously scanning something in a corner, omnitool out and glowing.
"Ahem," I say.
Jack promptly loses her concentration and whatever she was doing to keep the whacking great claw light enough to carry slips, and it crashes to the floor. She quickly disengages from it, and I can see an excuse coming so I get there first:
"Don't bother. Jarrion, I'm very sorry about that."
I move to pick the claw up to put it back and, cyborg that I am, even I'm struck by how weighty the bloody thing is. Christ, what did this come from again? A krogan would struggle. I'm struggling! Manage it though.
"Quite alright, I did the same thing, was younger then," Jarrion said, distractedly, his attention instead on Tali. "What is - what are they doing?"
"Tali, what are you doing?" I ask. I am hoping she picks up from my tone that she better concoct a convincing explanation on the spot, or else a lot of my hard work might turn out to be for nothing. Or at least, my productive working relationship might sour a little.
Tali is quiet a moment, looking between the two of us.
"I was running a diagnostic on my suits' integrity systems," she said, shutting off her omnitool and putting her arms down by her sides. "Was showing a breach. I think a wire got crossed. It's all fine."
Quick-thinking, there. Nice work.
"Ah. I see. Alright then," Jarrion said, clearly not convinced. "Well yes, Commander. Lovely as always. Uh, best of luck with your, ah, Collector issue. I assume you don't need any help with that?"
"You've helped plenty, Jarrion. We're going to be putting those guns to good use."
"Good good. The carapace too, I see. Well yes, yes. I shall see you on your return, then. The Emperor protects, Commander."
"Every little helps."
We left. Not so quickly as to be rude, but not slowly either.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
The welcome party back on the Normandy was about as lively as the one that had been waiting for us on the Assertive, being as how it was one person. Garrus, specifically. Leaning on a crate with his arms folded. Didn't he have calibrations to do?
"You're not dead," he said.
"Noticed that, did you? No, it went well. Or at least not badly. Get the team together in the briefing room I'll run it down."
He did that, and so that's what I did. I regaled them all with what had happened and what had come out of it. Good to keep everyone informed. Once I'd done that I stepped back and, as is my curse, opened up the floor. To my surprise however the first question went to Tali, not me, with Garrus asking:
"How was the ship? Worth the trip?"
"It was…confusing. Not like any ship I have ever seen. At all. Not a lot of it makes much sense. Too many skulls, too. I have to think it really must be from somewhere else," she said thoughtfully, rounding off with rather more enthusiasm: "Would like to go back and see the engine sometime though."
With that done, the group's attention returned to me.
"So, more of them?" Jacob asked.
"More of them, yes. Something else to deal with."
"And more to follow," Samara said, not phrasing it as a question which, coming from her, just makes me nervous.
"Maybe. I'd rather not think about it," I said.
"Stable passage to alternative dimension fascinating if true," said Mordin. Again, not a question. Do you guys not know what a Q&A session is?
"Oh yeah, it'll be great I'm sure. When it's not popping out problems for me.
"And Jarrion is okay with killing his brother?" Jacob asked.
Finally! A question! Can always rely on Jacob.
"Apparently. I kind of got the impression from him it's something he's been waiting for, and has realised this is probably the best chance he'll get. Whether it comes down to that we'll see, but it won't hurt having him on-side I'd think."
"Commander, they are requesting to transmit a data packet," EDI said, interrupting, much to my profound relief.
"Ah, that'll be the thing. The packet. It look okay to you, EDI? Not sending us anything suspicious?"
You never know.
"It is an unorthodox format, Commander, but does not appear harmful. I will partition it from the Normandy's systems for extraction as a precaution."
"Good plan. Once you've got it sorted wait until we pass a buoy then send it to the Council. Assuming you don't find anything unusual."
"Yes, Commander."
And back to questions. This time, Miranda:
"You think the Council is going to accept this? With the Space Hole and everything?" She asked.
I really hope that name doesn't stick. I'm hard enough to take seriously when taking about Reapers, and that at least sounds semi-serious. If I start having to warn people about the Space Hole too I'm going to be laughed into Andromeda. I'm just trying to do my job! It's not mu fault it's often ridiculous and unbelievable.
"Yes. No. Maybe? I don't know. And do we have to call it the Space Hole? But it'll take them some time to decide why they're unhappy about it, and that's what matters. It's not my problem, not right now anyway. Soon, probably. But first I want this Collector base knocked on the head, I want it done. I'm tired of getting pulled off-course. Oh and EDI, not to give you more work, but once you've extracted that can you spin up that IFF and see if it's working properly?" I said, glancing up at the ceiling though I really didn't need to.
"Yes Commander," said EDI.
"Alright. Now all we have to worry about is a suicide mission, which isn't so bad," I wagged my finger at the team. "I want all of your guys to have yourselves and your gear prepped and ready, because our next stop is going to be Sahrabarik. Assuming nothing else unexpected happens I'd say things are actually starting to look up. Right?"
Everyone just stared at me. Tali put her face in her hand, Garrus shook his head.
"What?" I asked.
"Why do you have to say things like that, Shepard?"
What? What?
Probably could have gone better, but at least it's done.
Shepard is so persuasive because she's got maximum charm.
Going back to the original ME it does kind of stick out to me how many of the conversations have someone adamant you can't change their mind but, if your number is high enough, they fold.
That's a videogame thing I guess though, and at least ME tends to have the arguments Shepard comes out with being actually fairly reasonable as things you'd say to someone that would change their mind. Or so I think, at least.