Whether Jarrion's scheme is in any way feasible of sensible I have no idea because I'm an idiot but this story is basically a big dumb joke anyway so who cares?
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! Anything you see that you don't like? It's all a joke!
"I must say, you made very good time in getting here," Jarrion said. Altrx just shrugged, as though it wasn't as big of a deal as the Lord Captain was making out it was but that he wouldn't mind a few more kind words all the same.
"Oh, it wasn't that impressive, really," he said, taking a drag and puffing out a thin cloud of something probably illegal and expensive. "I mean, I couldn't think of many other of my peers who could do the same or even close but, you know, one doesn't like to toot one's own horn."
This was the cue for Jarrion to give the go-ahead for horn tooting. Everyone else gathered into the ostentatious greeting room - again, senior personnel, Pak, Loghain and so forth - braced themselves.
"How did you do it?" Jarrion asked, obligingly.
Altrx took a breath and thence followed his explanation.
It involved - again - Altrx's vivid description of what his particular visualisation of the Warp looked like. Again he spoke of what should have been mountains and here instead were plains, lacking distinction. He spoke of how he had consulted the relevant map data to mark out the most populous spots between where they'd been and where they'd arrived.
In this way - so Altrx said - they could chart a course, moving between what appeared in the Empyrean as gentle rising slopes in the plain, the weight of souls pressing in from reality. Never would have worked back home, Altrx made clear, but here the stillness and silence of the Warp allowed it - indeed, required it, lacking the Astronomicon.
Altrx was was very impressed at his own ingenuity in having conceived all of this, and to be fair the results couldn't really be argued with, either.
Jarrion knew better than to interrupt the Navigator as he was giving his spiel so just nodded in all the right places and slipped in the occasional 'Is that so?' and 'Fascinating' as the situation dictated. Navigators got this kind of slack. They were important enough to not be worth annoying.
And what he was saying sounded convincing enough, at least to Jarrion. Was it believable? He didn't know what was believable at this point, really, given the circumstances. And it had worked apparently, so who was he to judge?
"Very well done, Altrx, very well done indeed," Jarrion said once Altrx had wrapped up and sat back to light up another one of his rollups. "And again I must commend your remarkable timing. Very, ah, what's the word? Dramatic? Convenient?"
This Jarrion asked while turning and looking upwards. This was such an odd gesture everyone present looked up, too. They just saw the ceiling. It was a very ornate and impressive but nothing there indicated what Jarrion might have been looking at.
"What are you looking at, Lord Captain?" Torian asked, in sotto voce. Jarrion clucked his tongue and brought his eyes back down again.
"Nothing. Just had the oddest feeling we were under close and critical observation. Like someone, somewhere is annoyed at just how lucky we are. Paranoia, I'm afraid. Occupational hazard. Anyway, we were saying?"
Shortly after Shepard and her crew had returned to the Normandy the lighter had come around to retrieve Jarrion and his lot, then returning to the Assertive. After sending off the armsmen for proper care and treatment (and disposal, as the need arose) Jarrion felt that a proper debriefing was in order.
Hence the gathering.
"Ah yes, that was it. This successful mission was the first step. I feel we have established ourselves, yes? Reputationally speaking, at least. Seen to be seen! Now, the second step. But first a brief question: how is the looking into the hows and whys of how and why we came to be here coming along?"
Jarrion's question here directed towards the mechanicus contingent sat at the table, consisting of Pak and another techpriest sitting next to them.
The techpriest sat next to Pak was one of the lesser priests and so one who Jarrion was not personally familiar with, and they were the one who'd been put in charge of analysing the circumstances of their arrival. Jarrion could not off the top of his head remember their name.
Pak and the tech priest both gave that tiny, almost imperceptible tilt of the head that showed they were having a brief noospheric conversation. The tech priest then said:
" ," in a flat, buzzing voice that came from the grille implanted where their jaw had originally been. This was pretty much the answer that Jarrion had been expecting, which is to say not much of an answer at all. But still, he could work with it.
"Right, good. Well, going forward we shall assume that this analysis will bear fruit, just not immediately. We shall assume, then, that we shall be here for the foreseeable future and move ahead with this in mind. So. Second step! Pak, if you would, please."
Pak again interfaced with the hololithic projector which, after some fluttering and sputtering, got a nice picture of Horizon just hovering above the table just for something to look at while Jarrion spoke.
"The colony - where we just were - is here, roughly," he said, pointing to one side of the planet. "What I would like is for us to obtain a little spit of land on the opposite side, somewhere either here, here or here."
There were several good candidates they'd spotted from orbit, all within reach of what appeared to be reasonable mineral deposits or other equally useful natural resources that had the auspexes had turned up. Nothing so much the colonists might feel robbed, but enough that could be put to immediate use.
"Torian, it'll be your job to do the negotiating on this one. Lease the land from them, buy it if they have anything they want to trade for it, I don't mind. I just want a foothold on this planet, yes?"
"Yes Lord Captain."
"Good man. Hope you brushed up on the lingo on the journey here. Once we have this spot I am going to be sending down a certain portion of the Assertive's manufacturing equipment along with a fairly substantial level of manpower. This is going to be our hub, yes? The plan is to make profitable contact with any other colonies like this one, get them the things they need and take the things they don't need as much in return, yes? Some of that comes here, we churn out some goods your average colonists might want, some spare parts we might need and so on and so forth. That'll be here. Always good to have a place to come back to."
So far no objections. Jarrion felt himself starting to get giddy. He'd always wanted to do something like this! Back home he'd never really got the chance. Father and his brothers were out there carving out the fresh territory, he was just there to keep the status quo behind them, protect what they'd built.
Now he was here and he could do what he liked!
"From there, expansion. Local contacts, yes? See what infrastructure they have already in place and do what we can to bring it under proper control, yes? Ultimately, in the long run, I want locals doing as much of the heavy lifting here as possible. Ideally speaking. Keeps us from spreading ourselves too thin and, well, why not? Making best use of what resources we have to hand is just prudence."
And what were locals if not another resource?
Jarrion could see it now, sitting happily at the centre of an ever-expanding, happy little network. One world over here wanting X but having too much Y, him being able to link them up with another world overflowing with X but lacking Y and skimming off just enough to be able to produce some Z that everyone would obviously want.
Growing, growing, just slipping in here and there, becoming ubiquitous, getting everyone what they wanted, when they wanted it. Becoming indispensable. Becoming who people turned to when they had a problem, being the one they turned to first.
That's the way you did it, in Jarrion's head. Conquer someone you spend the rest of your life keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't cause trouble. Get them to come to rely on you? Well...
All for the Emperor, obviously, and for the greater glory of His Imperium once a way back had been discovered. It'd be Jarrion's gift to the Lord of Mankind. What better gift could there be? Worlds ripe for the fold, immersed in the proper way of thinking, dependence woven in. Could annex without a shot being fired.
Beautiful, beautiful!
Later, though. For now more immediate concerns.
"So you're setting up your own colony here, basically? Is that what you're doing?" Loghain asked, snapping Jarrion out of his daydream. He frowned at her, which by this point was his usual response to most things Loghain said.
"Not exactly. It's a logistical and manufacturing hub," Jarrion said. To him these distinctions were important. "Any of these spots have good resources already and with the manufacturing capabilities the Assertive has - which, as I said, will be partially moved planetside - we'll be able to produce all sorts of things. And what room that frees up onboard ship we can fill with whatever anyone else needs."
"Sounds very exciting," Loghain said, resting her chin on her hand, elbow on the table.
"Rogue Trader, Trader. The daring do and discovering new worlds is one thing but you actually have to do something with those worlds afterwards. And this is what we're doing. Prosperity! And, later, proper Imperial control. But later! Once we've figured out how we arrived here and once we're all nice friends."
"You are…" Loghain said, failing to find the right words.
"Inspiring?" Jarrion ventured.
"You have some very odd ideas," Loghain said, by way of compromise.
Jarrion could tell when he was being damned by faint praise.
"Does my plan not have enough shooting people for your liking?" He asked. Loghain waved a hand.
"I do find the lack of it odd."
"I'd rather not have to take any shots I didn't have to. But if I do have to, I will."
"And what about the aliens?" The Inquisitor asked.
"What about the aliens? These are human colonies, yes? Those are the ones I'm going to be dealing with. If we find any alien ones? Well, we'll see. I hear this is a lawless and dangerous expanse of the galaxy. All sorts of bad things can happen out here. So I hear."
Loghain sat up straight again and beamed.
"That's more like it. A much healthier attitude."
Jarrion rolled his eyes and turned back to Torian.
"Speaking of xenos, how are the teams on the destroyed vessel getting along?"
It was the Master at Arms who spoke though, leaning in to get Jarrion's attention.
"The initial boarding teams have encountered light resistance, Lord Captain. Though the ship is heavily damaged it appears there are at least some surviving xenos onboard. They are not expected to present a serious problem and already pacification is proceeding acceptably. Once a proper foothold has been secured the salvage teams can start their work properly."
Jarrion was genuinely surprised to hear that there were survivors onboard. Did raise hopes about digging up surviving humans, he supposed, though he didn't really allow his hopes to get raised by that much. At the least it was good to hear that there was nothing too horrible going wrong.
"Ah, that's what I like to hear. I want that ship swept end-to-end, no xenos left breathing at all, that clear? Then I want it torn apart and I want to learn anything that we can from it. Pak, you'll be on that. I know you've been waiting to ask," Jarrion said, pointing to Pak who just nodded, though they also had to quickly tuck a mechadendrite back into their robe because it was quivering too much.
Suppose that's a lack of a poker face looked like on an Magos, Jarrion thought to himself.
"Very interesting…" Loghain said, quietly enough to make it obvious she wanted to be overheard.
"Oh please! I'm not going to start shipping the stuff back home. I just think it'd be foolish to clap my hands and declare the job done after shooting the ship once. I want to know more about these damn things so I can kill them more easily next time I run into them! And need I remind you that we are also looking for surviving colonists!"
What Jarrion had said was mostly true. Loghain held her hands up.
"You're the Lord Captain. I'm just an Inquisitor. Out of my jurisdiction, like you say."
"Yes. Thank you. Anyway, I believe I've said all I needed to say. This is what we're doing now. Once the colony has recovered some more they should contact us, I hope, or else we'll contact them and Torian, you can begin negotiations. Once that's concluded we can set up our happy little hub."
"What are you going to call it?" Loghain asked and Jarrion blinked at her.
"Call it?"
"This hub, this base. What are you going to call it?"
Jarrion hadn't thought about that. It hadn't crossed his mind at all.
"Uh, I don't rightly know," he said, casting an eye around to table for possible suggestions and receiving only blank looks and shrugs.
"You should name it something original like Bastion of Faith or Fortress Aquilla or the Emperor's-" Loghain said, waving her hands about as the names got grander and grander.
Jarrion had a feeling she wouldn't stop unless someone stopped her, so stepped in and said:
"I think I shall name it Home Away From Home."
Loghain pouted at him and then shook her head, sadly.
"Rogue Traders…"
"Shepard.. I trust the mission went well?"
Almost the instant I'd set foot back onboard the Normandy I'd been told the Illusive Man wanted a word. I hadn't even had a chance to get out of my armour yet, let alone have a shower. Not really in the best mood for a chat.
"Can we skip this part? You know what happened, I know what happened, I know you know what happened. We defended the colony, drove them off," I said.
Leaving out a few key details for the sake of brevity.
He took a quick drag before answering.
"Good work on Horizon. Hopefully the Collectors will think twice before attacking another colony."
I shrugged. See? He knew.
"We live in hope. I know I'd be touchy if I had my ship blown up out of nowhere. Take it you saw that?"
"I did. An unexpected development."
"That all you have to say?"
"For now. We are keeping the situation under observation. It is not our primary concern at this time."
"Fair play. So how are we going to pull the rug out from under the Collectors next? Take it you have something in mind?"
"The Collectors will be more careful now, but I think we can find another way to lure them in."
Very particular choice of words. Kind of gave the game away, really. Figures.
"And there was me thinking that I was just lucky bumping into Kaiden. You wouldn't happen to be the mysterious source of the news about me working with Cerberus, would you by any chance?"
He tapped out some ash.
"I released a few carefully disguised rumours that you might be alive and working for Cerberus," he said.
"Thanks for that. Why, exactly?" I asked.
"I suspected the Collectors were looking for you or people connected to you, now I know for certain. It was a risk, but I couldn't just wait for them to take another colony."
I could see the logic in this, actually. Leak news I'm alive, Alliance gets it, Alliance already feebly doing something about Collector attacks which it suspects might also be something else it doesn't really know yet. Alliance sends Kaiden to help out and also maybe catch me in the act if it is Cerberus doing this colony attacking thing. Collectors catch wind of Kaiden - old buddy Kaiden - being on a colony, colony gets attacked.
Pretty simple stuff in hindsight, but what a shot in the dark before!
Guess it had paid off. And I guess it was better knowing where to go than just waiting for them to strike at random. That's taking the initiative.
Still though. I know a colony had to get attacked somewhere, but being obliquely responsible for this particular one getting hit? There's no way to feel good about that.
And he'd just sat back and pulled it all together! And hoped it worked! Yeesh.
Nothing's ever easy.
"So now what?" I asked, deciding not to bother attempting to unpick his ethics or decision making process on that one. He'd only smoke at me and say something cynical, I'd expect.
"We have to keep the pressure on the Collectors. They'll be more cautious with their ground operations now so we need another opening. I'm devoting all resources to finding a way through the Omega Four relay. We have to hit them where they live," he said.
I raised an eyebrow.
"Their house?"
"Bingo. Your team will need to be strong, as will their resolve. No looking back. The same goes for you. I assume you put your past relationships behind you?"
What? What like all of them? Did he want me to not call mother anymore? Was I joining a cult?
"I'm not even sure what that means. One of the dossiers you sent me was for Garrus! Why would you go to the trouble of bringing me back from the dead if you didn't want me being me?"
Was I missing something here?
"If it affects the mission it's a concern. Shepard, once you find a way through the Omega Four relay to the Collector homeworld, there's no guarantee you'll return. To have any hope of surviving you and your entire team but be fully committed to this."
Oh, I get it. He was one of those people who thought professionals are friendless bastards.
Funnily enough, actually, I know how to have friends and also get things done. Tricky, I know, but I manage.
"Don't you worry about that, I'll have these guys tight knit as anything in no time."
He accepted this without argument, which was nice.
"I've forwarded three more dossiers," he said.
Did we have enough beds? Helped that some of these guys didn't seem to want beds. Jack really did seem comfortable down there on those crates in amongst those pipes...
"My super group not quite super enough yet for you?" I asked.
"Given the importance of the mission I felt it was better that you be overprepared. You keep building your team while I find a way through the relay. Be careful Shepard, the Collectors will be watching you."
"They should probably watch the other guy, too, given he blew up their damn ship."
"About that. We're still none the wiser as to who he is or where he came from, and from the looks of things they have technology that has not been observed anywhere else in the galaxy."
I knew this already. I'd seen it!
"Your point being? They're psychic too, some of them. You hear about that as well?" I asked.
Bleurgh. That really hadn't been a nice experience at all, that.
The Illusive Man nodded, puffed.
"I did hear about certain anomalous paints a very interesting picture. Particularly alongside what I've heard about their claimed point of origin," he said.
"You should talk to the guy. You'd probably get on," I said.
He cocked his head, just a tiny bit.
"What makes you say that?"
I thought about answering this question but then the sheer amount of detail I'd have to get into just made my head throb. Where would I even start?
"I couldn't even begin to explain. Just - I reckon they come from a place that you'd rather like, from the sound of things. Big on humanity, not big on aliens," I said.
"So you believe they are who they say they are? Time travel?"
Ugh. Hearing it aloud still makes my skin crawl. Ridiculous. I had to rub my face.
"I really don't know. I don't really care. Horizon's done, I'm hoping to leave and get on with this and hopefully never see the guy again. Best of luck to him in whatever it is he's doing, but I really don't need that in my life."
He stared at me briefly and then uncrossed and recrossed his legs.
"You continue with the mission, Shepard. I'll find a way through the relay. We'll keep an eye on this 'Rogue Trader' as far as it is feasible to do and as far as it relates to our primary focus: the Collectors. I'll contact you when I've got something. In the meantime, you have your dossiers. Good luck, Shepard."
"Aye aye, skip."
Torians negotiations on Horizon, surprisingly, went very well indeed.
The goodwill from having been a part of stopping the aliens was not insignificant. A sense of abandonment from all other authority had caused a certain degree of bitterness so to come through such an attack and find their colony littered with dead aliens and their ship hanging equally dead in orbit had a fairly big effect on their attitude. Which was nice.
That said, they were still not exactly what might be described as friendly, at least according to Torian. They'd been grateful, yes, but had rankled at even the hint of the suggestion of outside interference. They appreciated the help, but they didn't want anymore help, basically. No-one around there telling them what to do or pitching in to do things they could do themselves.
Independent spirit, Torian had said, as though they were dirty words.
But, still, they were at least open to the idea. Big planet, after all, and the unspoken implication that there would often be a very big, very dangerous spaceship in orbit wasn't something they couldn't see value in.
What they'd wanted in the end for the lease of a nice little stretch of land was fairly straightforward: assistance in the disposal of the alien bodies (this being something they felt it wasn't really their job to do, which was fair enough), material with which the colonists could themselves repair the damage done (they did not want help, as mentioned), weaponry, and also a very firm agreement that the Imperials would keep themselves to themselves on the other side of the planet.
More than fair terms, in Jarrion's mind. He couldn't have wished for better, in fact. An agreement was signed in very short order indeed and Home Away From Home began construction bare hours later just as work crews were cheerfully shoveling Collectors into pits some miles out from the outer boundaries of the primary colony.
Not long after this, Jarrion was as shocked as anyone when the teams working on the stricken alien ship reported actually, really finding surviving colonists. And not just a few, either, but rather quite a lot! He honestly hadn't actually expected what he'd said to Shepard to have any bearing in reality.
He was delighted, obviously, but still very surprised. It did present something of an issue though.
There were, as he saw it, three choices he could reasonably make.
The first and most direct would be, of course, to purge the pods they'd been found in and grant the poor colonists within them the Emperor's mercy. Who knew what these foul aliens had done to them during their (albeit brief) captivity, what taint they now had in them? Ultimately it would be for their own good.
Certainly, it's what father would have done.
Second, free them and return them to the colony. These backwards locals seemed to have a very high tolerance for contact with aliens - beyond a natural and understandable disinclination to being abducted, of course - so likely wouldn't feel the remotest disgust at knowing their rescued friends and relatives had been in alien clutches. Likely they would feel only relief, which could only serve to boost Jarrion's prestige. This would be valuable.
Thirdly, Home Away From Home could always use more workers, particularly in those areas of resource gathering with a projected higher turnover rate, such as the mines. These tainted, rescued colonists could be put to good use, no doubt, and serve a greater purpose than they might otherwise.
Decisions, decisions.
Ultimately, the second option seemed to Jarrion the only viable one. The other two would require a level of secrecy because he could imagine them both being things that the locals would be squeamish about and probably get upset over, which would harm his efforts in the long term. By contrast, appearing as a benevolent force returning these lost souls - something he hadn't even factored in as happening - would help him immensely.
So rescue it was. Open up those pods and get those people out!
The techpriests assisting the recovery teams refused point-blank to even try and find a way of interfacing with the Collector's technology to open the pods the way they might have been intended, preferring instead to cut them open or have the teams cut them open themselves with lascutters.
Mostly this worked, but in a handful of instances where the pods were already damaged or malfunctioning it did lead to a few unfortunate cases where the pods proceeded to catastrophically fail, leaving its occupant more or less completely braindead, or inches from death, or both.
This was, obviously, unfortunate, but Home Away From Home did benefit from the introduction of dedicated mining servitors, so it wasn't a complete loss.
Waste not, want not.
These various minor failures also proved useful to Pak, who performed a number of autopsies on those colonists who had not survived in their pods and a lesser number of vivisections on the more stable comatose ones.
Going by the Magos's findings - which Jarrion read and mostly understood - this had been done to check for obvious signs of genetic deviancy, and see how far these humans differed from baseline Imperial stock, if at all
There had not been a lot of interest that Pak had turned up. These humans appeared more-or-less as you might expect them to be, though with very little sign of mutation, which was a plus. Here or there Pak seemed to find signs of very, very low level genetic tinkering, but nothing even close to the sort of thing that might be a cause for concern, at least not by Jarrion's standards.
Pak had also found a few quite low-key implants among his subjects, which had excited the Magos no end. These they were presently dismantling and analysing with far greater care and attention than had been spent on the humans they'd been removed from. Jarrion was not particularly interested in what resulted from this beyond hoping, as with all things, that there might be some material value in it.
Still, all in all, a solidly successful start to the venture. One that boded well, Jarrion felt.
Onwards and upwards.