Author's Note: Expect a Codex shaped package later today. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 23: Noveria Part 3

After the comparative warmth of the deep tunnels where the Rachni made their base of operations being outside in the bitter cold again wasn't quite so pleasant. Liara spat out and expanded a biotic barrier around the group of four to keep the snow away from them. In the meantime the group kept following the path that the Rachni had prepared for them and eventually arrived at the place that had been indicated for them. A mass of syntho-organic matter that typified the Reaper's antics, with random pieces of Geth Tech shoved inside. Shepard learned bits of information from the Rachni biology. Certainly they're telepathic, that much couldn't be argued, but also more than that. The Rachni Queen has a specialised organ for creating Quantum Entangled Particles. Quantum Entanglement was the process by which a particle is split in half and placed into two separate consoles, enabling instantaneous one to one transmission between the two sources, usually the Rachni uses this to enable communication between queen and young even across entire solar systems. The Reapers took advantage of that, manufactured that same organ and hard wired it into the Portable factory the Geth built to mass produce their back up bodies, let alone cutting across solar systems to relay commands, the Geth are easily able to cut through the signal obstructing ice and snow across the planet. Right now the biggest concern was cutting it down.

"Stasis." Shepard commanded and Liara flicked her hand erecting a biotic field around the transmitter, which was then followed up with a blast from the plasma shotgun which caused the field to be disrupted, and then explode taking the whole transmitter with it.

"Can we go back in now?" Liara asked as she put the field back up. "It's freezing out here!"

Suddenly a loud screeching noise echoed out despite the noise from the snow.

"Drop the barrier. Now!" A few moments later a creature climbed onto the roof of the Facility, even through the raging snow storm the silhouette of the Rachni queen was unmistakable, however this creature was well over twice the size of the Queen that they were familiar with, or in other words it was the Rachni breeder that the other Queen mentioned to them. To them the Rachi Breeder looked like a giant black mass in the backdrop of the snow storm, however this isn't the case for Shepard and company to the Breeder. Shepard's already telepathically seen how the Rachni see the world. Sight is sound and sound is sight, therefore similar to how humans see using light bouncing off of a object the Breeder most likely sees by sound bouncing off of objects, in other words a form of echo location, in this way they were quite lucky to have a raging snow storm obstructing the creature's vision. That was the extent of the good news.

"I know you are here 'Dragoon.'" Liara's breath caught in her throat at the sound of that voice, the one belonging to her very own mother Matriarch Benezia. "Warped and broken attack dogs of the 'Stellar Union.' There is no difference between you and this creature, only that she serves a noble goal and you serve the beings that destroyed the galaxy!"

Shepard didn't say anything, didn't risk giving themselves away to the broken creature that was stalking them. Even so there was an unmistakable feeling of dread when confronting a Behemoth looming over you. For now they just had to focus on- The group sunk down as they heard the sound of metal giving way.

"Shit." The roof collapsed, the Rachni Breeder was the heaviest creature in the facility, made even heavier thanks to a biotic field, taking herself and the Team with them into one of the lower rooms of the facility. This is where they made the nest for the Rachni husks, the entire area had been utterly Ravaged, furniture and laboratory equipment chewed up into an unrecognisable state. Standing up the group saw the faces of the enemy before them.

"And I thought you guys couldn't get uglier." Wrex took in the creatures before him, not even he would speak of a respected enemy like the Rachni in the face of these creatures.

The basic resemblance to Rachni was still there, four spindly spider-like legs supporting a large body that stood upwards and with two appendages to either side, but the similarities ended there, the large body was bloated with a sack of turquoise organs grafted on, grown through genetic engineering, nanotechnology? Doesn't matter. The extra organs presumably powered the twin pair of cannons that had been grafted on in place of the Rachni's tendrils while the entire head had been replaced by a singular geth like robotic eye. The monsters screeched at them, in a high pitch voice that was doubtlessly laced with the ultra sound that typifies Reaper technology, with the Ultra sound nullifiers and the Thorian vaccine they were double immunised against the Reaper's favourite weapon. Even worse than all of that though, was a single non-husk Asari looking over them from above with eyes of contempt.

"Mother!" Liara shouted up to the indoctrinated servant looking down at them. "What have you done! You brought back the Rachni! And you've warped them into these abominations!"

"I've preserved them!" Benezia stated, eyes glowing with a foreign power that absolutely, positively, did not belong there. "As they preserved the ones who came before, entire civilisations that their people wiped out!" Benezia pointed to the pair of Dragoons with an accusatory glare.

"Why are we the bad guys here?" Shepard asked looking to Kaiden who shrugged his shoulders by way of reply.

"If that's their idea of preservation, I want no part in it." Wrex stated indicating the breeder with his shot gun. "Speaking of which." Wrex cocked said shotgun with malicious intent.

The Breeder screeched as it pointed both of it's twin guns down at the group and fired, twin particle beams delivering fire down on top of the group's heads. Liara countered, erecting a biotic barrier around the group in order to block the twin beams.

"Shepard." The Dragoon in question heard her comms crackle to life. "You busy?" Ashley's voice was on the other end.

"Little bit." Shepard stated as she prepared her rail gun.

"We got the Queen and her brood onboard the evacuation craft, along with their Hanar interpreter."

"So we have free reign to wreck?" Shepard gave a predatory grin as she spoke.

"Wreck away!"

"I don't know what you find so fascinating!" Liara watched in awe struck horror as the pick like leg of the Breeder was raised above their heads. "But there's not a biotic barrier in the galaxy that can stop that!"

Wrex grabbed Liara and charged away, Kaiden and Shepard both jumped into different directions. The leg slammed down hard enough to lodge the led eight feet into solid floor deep enough to get it stuck, which was then followed up by Shepard making a second jump into the air and dropping her blade down on the leg in a chop, the blade initially getting stuck before the built in memory metals started to vibrate the rest of the blade though. The rest of the Ravagers swarmed at the dangling Shepard leaping at her heals to pull her off while the breeder continued to bring it's leg up and down to shake Shepard off. "Bugger off!" Shepard pulled herself into a standing position on top of the leg while the Ravagers started to spew acid at her.

Pulling out her rail gun Shepard jammed the weapon into the wound and fired point blank. The Breeder screeched loudly as it stumbled backwards on three legs, however now Shepard was far enough away that she could simply erase her existence with her particle cannons and prepared to fire them.

"One two Punch." Wrex instructed and Liara nodded, the latter releasing a singularity at the back right leg of the breeder, and Wrex following that up with a plasma blast to the leg, producing a biotic explosion big enough to sever the leg at the joint. Kaiden was preparing to sever a third leg which would slam the heavily mutated frankenstein behemoth of a monster into the ground however.

"YOU WILL NOT HARM MY CHILD!" Benezia's body lit up, not only with biotics but every inch of her body was covered in glowing lines of circuitry. Chunks of concrete and rebar were lifted up into the air, and then slammed down at the group like an artificial meteor storm.

Near light speed AI predictive algorithms flared and Kaiden dodged out of the way of the falling rocks narrowly allowing him to reach the door and leading out of what was left of the rooms this thing had torn through to reach this facility and pry it open.

"Safety, warm air and no bugs beyond this door!"

Wrex grabbed Liara again and charged. Shepared leaped through the air as the Breeder reared up and slammed down just to move forward, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. The Floor gave way as the massive creature found itself falling down into the hollow tunnels and shoddy foundation of the facility below, and was screeching until she reached the bottom with a loud crash.

"NNNOOO!"

Wrex grabbed Liara by her arm and football threw her into the air aided by a Lift as she tackled her mother to the roof of the facility. In Liara's hand was a biotic boot clamp, C-Sec standard issue, she just hoped that there was enough of her mother's original implants underneath all this reaper tech for this to work. Benezia's hand curled into a fist, glowing with biotics, and then stopped, light other than the alien influence of the Reaper entering her eyes. Liara didn't hesitate though, slamming the palm of her hand into the side of her mother's face and the biotic clamp with it causing her entire body to shake and jolt as if being electrocuted before falling into unconsciousness. And then Liara injected her with the Thorian Vaccine straight through the neck before she rolled over and started breathing heavy with exhaustion. Everyone took a moment to breathe, thinking the worst of the situation behind them.

"SSSHHHEEEPPPAAARRRDDD!"

It was not. Slowly, the three super soldiers leaned over the pit where the Breeder landed. Two legs severed, organ ruptured, body broken. It should be dead already. The entire body glowed orange and crackled, the spattered organs wrapped around something, the facilities nuclear power generator, and pulled both it and themselves back into the creature's body. Two hydraulic stabilisers were pulled over and attached themselves to the severed stumps of legs and acted as prosthetics, making mechanical grinding noises as the creature stood up on unshaky legs.

"Great. The ancient genocidal synthorganic warship knows my name." Shepard would be having nightmares about that tonight.

Wrex snorted in derision as he biotically shot a chunk of rubble into the air.

"Liara! Why don't you tell it exactly what you think about what it's been doing to your mother!"

Liara biotically grabbed the hunk of rock by way of response.

"Gladly!" Before chucking it down at the monster that destroyed her mother with a screech. The hunk of rubble slammed into the monster with a great thud. Wrex continued to shoot hunks of rubble into the air while Liara continued to slam them down on top of the monster in the hole.

"Biotics better be part of the next gen of Dragoons." Shepard stated bitterly.

"Agreed." Kaiden followed up.

The two Dragoons fired their plasma weapons into the hole exploding the hunks of rock in the Possessed breeder's face. Course it wasn't like the rest of the swarm was idle either. Pulling themselves out of the rubble the Ravagers charged their weapons to fire. Wrex threw them into the air too, and Liara threw them back at their 'Mother' Kaiden whipped out the particle beam and swept through the Ravagers bursting their sacks in the process. Said sacks released acid all over their fellow Ravagers causing the creatures to let out synthesized screeches of pain, Kaiden didn't know that this would happen but he'll take what he can get, which in this case was the Breeder's severed leg still lodged in the ground. Ripping the leg out with brute strength Kaiden swung it like a bat knocking the majority of the Ravagers into the hole, the rest being finished off by some peppered shots from Shepard. The Kaiden held the stake-like limb over the hole.

"Wrex, if you'd do the honours." Kaiden asked indicating the leg in question. Wrex held out his hand and used a biotic Slam on the leg in question, sending it through the grafted reactor that the Breeder had strapped to herself. "She's haunting your nightmares tonight, Think of this as premature payback."

Kaiden stated indicating the hole. Shepard walked over, brandished her weapon, and fired the plasma shotgun directly at the still biotically charged stake that was now skewering a nuclear reactor. The explosion that ensued rocked the entire facility, shaking the whole thing so badly that dust and concrete was falling out of every hole and crack throughout the facility.

"These suits protect against radiation right?" Wrex asked looking at Shepard concerned. Shepard opened her mouth to answer him, paused, and then didn't.

"Lets go back to the ship before we have to find out shall we?"

So apparently the Union had cures for radiation poisoning, or at the very least treatment. And while the suits do indeed protect against radiation poisoning the Union as a rule err's on the side of caution. So now the four people that Joker had to fly out of the facility had IV tubes full of suspicious liquid sticking out of their arms.

"So. Would someone mind telling me what the Union is planning on doing with my mother?" Liara asked looking around the room that had grown quiet. "I know what their policy is concerning Reaper technology, as I also hold no delusions as to what has been implanted inside of her body." What has nearly taken over her body to be more precise. Reaper technology.

"For now, she and her former aide Sha'ira, are being kept for observation." Skeletor fully admitted to his perverse feeling of fascination as he studied the results from the tests conducted. "Your mother especially presents a unique opportunity to study the effects of indoctrination on Thorian spores."

'No' Liara imagined the mad scientist saying in her mind with a sleesy used shuttle salesman grin on his face 'We aren't going to kill her, we're just going to keep her locked in a cage for the rest of her life as we poke and prod her to see how well she holds up with our vaccine against the brain melting technology shoved into her body.'

Killing her might've been the more humane alternative.

"I'm going back to Tuchanka." The entire mission left a bad taste in Wrex's mouth and that means gargling with Ryncol. "I still have to work out the finer details with Wrund concerning our new alliance."

Shepard nodded her head in agreement as Wrex left. Liara curled in on herself, trying not to cry and looking to be on the verge of failing miserably. Letting out a sigh Shepard stood up and walked over to Liara's bed sitting at the foot of it.

"A giant Syntho-organic Rachni monster possessed by an ancient genocidal war machine just died cursing my very existence." Shepard explained bluntly. "I may not want to be alone tonight."

The Stellar Union was not happy with the contents of the files that Shepard had found on Binary Helix. Proof that Dalatress Linron, current head of the Salarian Union's governing body, was directly responsible for a project that renewed the genophage and set back Krogan fertility by at least a hundred years. A message was sent through the Citadel Council directly to the Salarian Union making these facts and the Stellar Union's intention to express their displeasure with the Dalatress in person known. The Stellar Union's 'Diplomatic' war ship filled with Krogan from clan Hailot was soon intercepted by a Salarian cargo ship, outdated by six generations, which was filled with the tied up and gagged people of interest in several Salarian clans including the Dalatress alongside a datapad detailing the ones the Salarian union apparently missed and a bottle of Surkeshian wine. The Salarian Union government was a composite of several warring factions, even the Dalatress Linron has countless political rivals after her position. That was the Carrot. The stick of the situation though was a massive stack of files taken from the Terminus cluster of countless zombie attacks that was reportedly being made into a documentary/movie series. No one wanted season two to be about the Salarian Union's downfall.

Wrex welcomed back the various Krogan clansmen that were arriving from Stellar Union territory battered, bruised and with acid burns with open arms. The armours and weapons they had went there with didn't last a single battle against the Prethoryn, neither did some of the Krogan who were using them. The arms and armours that they bought from the Union were indeed of superior quality, they lasted at minimum five engagements against the Prethoryn, with the most expensive lasting ten. When they returned to their clan sites they discovered their war torn nuclear paradise torn down and replaced with a parking lot, or a farm, apartment complex, water treatment facility, the Tebrid's and custodians had been quite busy it would seem. They also discovered a mass defection of all their clans men who had not followed them into battle, even the ones they left behind specifically to watch the women were being made to work the fields that had taken over their territory. Then Wrex introduced them to a facility where Krogan were being bred via the artificial womb technology developed by the Lich Necropsy, where thousands of fetal Krogan were growing, the sons and daughters of Krogan that would otherwise not be born. Even better than that, thanks to Okeer's research and the work of the Tebrid's mapping the Krogan genome each and every one of them were theoretically not only fertile but also immune to the genophage, their bodies immune systems tuned with Genophage anti-biotics and equipped with genophage bacteriophages, the only thing left now to make for certain was to wait until they came of age and test their virility the old fashion way. So the various Krogan of Tuchanka were forced to swallow their grudges and celebrate with the rest of the clans watching the news of the Dalatress's arrest.

Before she left Ashley scribbled into the ship she gave to the Rachni coordinates on where to meet the Union. Though the Rachni were an ancient terror back in their prime in this day and age they are a joke to deal with, the previous strategy of bunkering out on tomb worlds and mass producing offspring hitting the not so small hitch of there being aliens that prefer the use of tomb worlds to inhabit, let alone invade and fight. For now the aliens returned to their home world of Suen, a otherwise inhospitable planet tidally locked to it's sun so that 48% is constantly burning, 48% is frozen solid while the remaining 4% is a barely inhabitable equator. The fact that the Rachni were able to build cities on the surface to withstand these extremes is a testament both to their extreme hardiness and their engineering prowess. They'd make suitable allies in the future but first the Queen was prioritising rebuilding her civilization, in the mean time though the Chozo were setting up defensive space structures in the area in case anyone else started to get ideas, Sam was assigned to the area just as a additional measure.

The Queen in turn gave a set of Coordinates to Ashley before she left the ship: the thing that Desolas had been after, pried from her consciousness by Matriarch Benezia prior to her escaping confinement. It was called the Mu Relay, a Mass Relay the exact coordinates of which were lost even to the Reapers by a combination of the passage of time and the force of multiple Mass Relay explosions pushing it far far away. The Rachni knew about it since the Prothean generation, another quirk about their biology is that certain information gets passed down genetically, like a Butterfly's migration patterns the Rachni have been stuck in a cycle of being used by other races and then wiped out for so long that the information to map the relays has been ingrained into their very DNA. One of these Relays was known as the Mu relay, displaced during the series of explosions that marked the end of the last cycle the Mu Relay is a direct line leading to the Prothean home-world of Ios, identified using the the contents of the deciphered Prothean Beacon. And even worse than that Desolas and his Reaper Master had a head start on them.

"Should we go to Virmire first?" Tali asked looking at the rest of the group concern on her features, currently hidden by her mask.

"Not really." Saren seemed to disagree with the notion. "We know where my idiot brother is or is going and we know that whatever he is after will be there. Virmire is a waste of time right now and he knows it."

"So Ios then?" Ashley and Kaiden were sitting off to the side looking at the group.

"""Ios!""" The others agreed unanimously.

"So any idea where Shepard and Liara are?" Saren asked looking at the duo suspiciously.

"Well that's a little awkward." Kaiden was ultimately forced to admit as he let out a sigh. "They're well..."

"Kaiden. There's no gentle way of saying that they're having sex." Ashley reminded her coworker bluntly. "We've been cooped up in a test tube for fifteen years, I think all of us are a little backed up."

Tali went quiet and awkward, Garrus laughed at them, Saren just face palmed.

Multiple security measures were set up around the Mass Relay monument, a cage of lasers was surrounding it, multiple security checks had been built with security fields of shields, biotics and psionics blanketing the area. Custodians were taking apart the area of the station around the monument in order to uncover any hidden components while Admiral Kraken was examining the blueprints, and also playing bejewelled.

"It's hard to believe that you're taking things seriously when you're diverting your attention to that game." Valern said as he was looking at a datapad with a schematic of another unknown component that the Custodian's had dug up.

"It collects my stray thoughts. Makes it easier to focus." It spoke volumes about what the Tebrid was doing that he only had one game going at the time.

"Aren't you also directing the Custodian's around the site?" Valern asked looking at the creature confused.

"And talking to you. Hence why I'm only playing the one game." As the admiral spoke their eyes lit up as they saw what was being shown on the screen.

"So that's it!" The Admiral stated as he looked down at one of the components the Custodian's had found.

"What's it?" Valern asked feeling like his partner in crime here had just found something important.

"So you can do that kind of thing with Mass Effect fields instead? Well I suppose that makes sense though. But where's the transmitter? You won't be able to send anything out like this." It was then that the Tebrid made a horrified face. "Dragons, they sacrificed themselves didn't they?"

"What did you find out!?" Valern snapped as he pulled down to look at the tablet.

"We need to go get the rest of the Councilors, and I need to contact my government." Excitedly saying that the Tebrid almost took off with his hover platform, and then the Conduit started to come to life, it's various rings spinning around on itself inside of it's laser grid. "Oh that's not good." The Tebrid admiral stated bluntly, and then the Conduit spewed death all over the citadel.

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: Both of these things are true. Collectors, possession makes it feel like you're fighting the Reaper's directly.

Gianfranco Cembran: All these things are true.

Guest: Cool.

DaveTheAnomaly: The concept is the same, the black hole mining rig is powered by the massive amount of radiation being given off by the blackhole itself. The difference between a true Penrose and a Matter Decompressor is that the Decompressor doesn't produce enough excess power to make selling it profitable.