Chapter 25 – To Infinity and Beyond
AN - Law School is a high-maintenance girlfriend, but let it never be said that I started something I wasn't willing to finish.
March 10th, 2211 – The Citadel, Presidium – Percival Residence
Six weeks after the events of the SSV Hippocrates
It smelled delicious in here. A freshly-baked apple crumble pie sat cooling on the polysteel counter while a smaller, dextro-version one sat beside it. A huge pot of homemade pasta sauce sat on the stove, a pile of spaghetti in a large serving bowl some distance away and a pan of assorted vegetables currently cooking in the oven. In addition, Gwen had roasted a skirt'lana – the Palaven equivalent to Earth's fowl – for Cade. For us humans she had prepared a massive, roast chicken.
I leaned casually against the countertop, lost in thought, my arms folded a bit lower down my chest than usual thanks to the swathe of painful bruises that the krogan had left there yesterday.
A piercing shriek of laughter and the sound of rapid footsteps snapped my head back up and I watched as a small, blond-haired child launch herself into the arms of my scaly friend.
"Spirits, you're so big now!" Cade groaned.
The giggling four-year old in his arms laughed and tried to grab my friend's mandibles. Cade drew his head back and playfully snapped at her, which only served to incite the young child even further. Little Helen Percival hadn't seen her uncle Cade in nearly eight months and was determined to make up for lost time.
Another set of rapid footsteps, heavier and more insistent. "She's grown nearly four centimeters! I helped mommy record it!" boasted Tristan.
Percival's oldest child tugged at Cade's forearm and tried to redirect some of the attention Cade had been giving his sister back towards himself. He was a tiny carbon copy of his father, big for his size with the same blond hair and blue eyes. His sister however shared their mother's softer facial features, but otherwise had near identical hair and eyes.
Cade's mandibles flew open in mock alarm. "Four centimeters!" he gasped. "And what about you? How much have you grown?"
"Six," the six-year old boy said proudly. "I'm going to catch up to you and uncle Cloud by the end of the year, so you two geezers better watch your backs."
The child grinned cheekily my way and I snorted and pushed myself off the counter. I walked towards him and ruffled his hair.
"Won't be hard. Cade's always on his knees," I shrugged.
I moved to the fridge to grab another beer as both of the Percival children laughed at their turian uncle. Cade shot me a pointed look at my jab and I flipped him off light smile, eliciting another wave of laughter from the two young children. Percival and Gwen didn't allow any profane hand gestures, which naturally meant that both children loved watching us do them.
"Can I show you my new stuffed animal that daddy got me, uncle Cade?" asked little Helen. The blond-haired girl gave Cade her best puppy-dog eyes, not that her favourite turian uncle would have said no anyways.
"I'd love to," Cade replied. His eyes darted between Percival's daughter and the dextro-apple pie still cooling on the counter and for a moment I could see his inner angels waging war against his hungry demons. I couldn't blame him though, Gwen could bake with the best of them.
"And come see my new action figure!" chimed Tristan. The young boy grabbed Cade by the hand and dragged him towards their bedrooms. Cade shot me a pleading look but I merely shrugged smugly and sipped my beer. Unfortunately for Cade, he'd established himself early on as the affectionate, caring uncle. It was a role he enjoyed and was well suited for, but at times such as these it did serve as a barrier between him and his life-long dream of being the first ever turian diabetic.
I stood in silence in the living room as the two Percival children dragged their uncle around, tugging at his scales and picking at his freshly-applied dark-blue facepaint. For a moment I wondered what the brats would think of their favourite uncle if they could see him booster-jetting onto some poor slaver's back and jamming his knife in the back of his neck. They'd probably like him even more.
I'd seen John again this morning after setting up a university fund and handling the next twelve-months of rent for his grandparents. I had a nice talk with both Tanya and Viktor Connor and had politely convinced them to accept my charity, then had a quiet chat with John. We didn't talk much, but he had smiled when he saw me. It was a start.
The opening of the front door jolted me back. Guinevere walked in with a small, pink cardboard box. I quickly set my beer down on a coaster and moved to assist her.
"Here, let me take that for you," I said, my hands reaching out to take the box.
"Thanks!" she smiled. She took off her shoes and moved to check the pasta sauce as I placed the small birthday cake in the fridge.
"How are the kids?" Gwen asked over her shoulder.
"Cade's got' em," I shrugged, "and Percival's changing Anna right now."
Gwen stirred the pot of sauce, then added a few more herbs and stirred some more. "It's a shame Camilla couldn't come, Cade's been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about her, I would have loved to meet her."
"He's kind of in the doghouse right now, something about letting his best friend get his ass beaten by her angry father and recording it rather than stepping in and taking the blame," I scoffed.
"First of all," cried a flanged, indignant voice, "You're the one who wanted to fight him. Second of all, he was a goddamn krogan, how was I supposed to guess that Camilla, a human, was his daughter?"
Cade came back in with a kid in each arm. Both of them had their arms wrapped around their turian uncle and were snickering quietly at me. Cade had told them about my fight with the krogan nearly a dozen times since yesterday and they loved it more and more each time he told it. When Helen poked my bruises in the chest and Tristan asked if I'd be calling the krogan "daddy" I had very nearly cried. Kids were savage.
"Lastly," Cade finished, "you're the one with the wide spectrum of fetishes. Maybe if it had been an angry human father you could have pointed a finger at me, but a krogan? That's on you buddy."
"Cade!" Guinevere admonished. "They're kids!"
Both Tristan and Helen giggled and looked up at their uncle. Cade scoffed and rolled his eyes.
"Come on, Gwen, they don't even know what fetish means!" he exclaimed. He looked to Percival's daughter and asked her, "Helen, what's a fetish?"
Helen pursed her lips and tapped a tiny finger on her chin. "I dunno, some kind of puppy? What's a spec-trum?"
"It's something your uncle Cade is most certainly on, according to several psychiatrists," I said quietly. Cade shot me a dirty look while Gwen let out a light laugh. The kids didn't laugh, but they would soon in a couple of years. In a couple of years I'd be the favourite uncle.
"Does it have to do with aliens?" Tristan chimed in. Cade gave me a pointed look and Gwen blushed. Technically, I guess, but I wasn't about to explain it to him.
Before Cade could make another jab, Percival finally walked into the room carrying a cooing, smiling Anna, his youngest daughter. The last time he'd seen her prior to our return was nearly seven months ago, he'd spent nearly every waking moment with her since we'd arrived back on the Citadel. She'd be turning a year old today.
Cade set down his two kids who immediately bolted towards their father. They grabbed onto his legs and hung on laughing as Percival walked up to his wife and kissed her lightly on the cheek, as if the extra weight was nothing.
"How'd the cake retrieval go?"
"Perfectly," she replied.
Gwen smiled and took Anna from my friend's arms while Percival swapped stations with her, gently stirring the sauce. He tried a bit and smacked his lips together in satisfaction at his wife's cooking. When we were on missions we tended to subsist on Alliance standard ration packs. If we were lucky, sometimes the ship's mess sergeant would serve something relatively palatable.
"Honey, have I ever told you how much I love your cooking?" Percival sighed. He shooed away his two kids with a smile and hovered over the roast chicken, who was looking more and more like his undeniable one true love.
"Yes, repeatedly," Gwen laughed. "The sauce is done, you can start setting the table if you'd like."
Percival immediately grabbed the roast chicken then jerked his head at me and then towards the large bowl of spaghetti. I took his cue and grabbed it. As soon as the chicken hit the table he pivoted and retrieved the vegetables as I manhandled the pot of sauce onto a large coaster.
Meanwhile Cade handed plates and cutlery to the two Percival children and directed the two trainees to set the table. He grabbed the roast skirt'lana and covered the rear. Within half a minute of Gwen's directive, the entire table had been set and we could start dinner.
Dinner was saccharine, as it always was when we had dinner with the Percival's. Cade chatted non-stop with the kids, answering Tristan's questions about guns and armor and turian naval marines while conversing with Helen about how to deal with some girls who had been stealing her markers in pre-school. Occasionally Percival or Gwen would make a comment and the flow of conversation would shift briefly, but otherwise the chatter was light and wholesome.
I answered a couple of questions directed my way and made a few comments too, but otherwise kept to my food. Gwen really could cook, and as a biotic I could enjoy extra portions without fretting too much over ruining my physique. But nonetheless, even after all these years dinner with the Percival's still felt like an alien affair. It was nothing like the dinners we'd have at the shelter.
Anna kept her eyes trained on me as I ate, smiling and gurgling softly as babies are oft to do. Occasionally she'd direct her attention to Gwen when she'd spoon some food into her mouth or at her father when Percival would laugh boisterously at a joke Cade would made, but otherwise she would mostly look at me. I wasn't really big on making goofy faces but I did try my best. She laughed happily at my attempts nonetheless.
Finally the food was gone, Percival having consumed probably half of the entire roast chicken and a third of the spaghetti and sauce. Cade was making eyes at the pie and both the kids had started chanting for dessert. I helped Gwen bring the pies to the table while she took the cake out of the fridge.
Percival picked up his laughing baby daughter and bounced her lightly in his arms before kissing her atop her head. "Happy birthday, Anna!" he said tenderly.
And as one we all fully embraced a tradition dating back nearly four hundred years. Cade opened up first, his flanging voice giving the familiar melody a surprisingly aesthetic sound. Both Tristan and Helen did their best, even if they were about half an octave off. Percival and Gwen went for bass and tenor respectively while I quietly did my best not to sound terribly off-key.
Anna Percival looked widely around the room as her entire family sang Happy Birthday to her and at the awesome birthday cake in front of her. I ran to set up an omni-camera on a timer so that it could snap a few pictures. I got back just in time to stand beside Cade before the camera went off, capturing this moment for all eternity. Like every single birthday that occurred in the Percival household, the picture would go in the family scrapbook, alongside a few hand-written messages from each of the attendees.
And there's not much else to tell. Cade finished the entire dextro-pie and grumbled about how the cake wasn't dextro. Gwen apologized and told him that when it was his birthday they'd make sure to get him one. Both of the Percival children grew more and more manic as they ingested more and more sugar, but for once Percival was willing to let it slide in light of the occasion. My friend fed his baby daughter a few bites of cake while Gwen moved to snap a few more pictures from different angles.
I had both pie and cake, although I was definitely more of a pie guy.
You know, I can't count the number of video games, holo-films, and e-books that have been written about us Spectres but I can tell you that in ninety-nine percent of them it's always about us taking down a rogue krogan warlord, or eliminating a terrorist cell, or blowing up a secret hideout of some criminal mastermind.
They never really tell you the little things, the things that make us seem like people. The little things between missions, like a Spectre getting to go home to celebrate his daughters first birthday, or a Spectre going to the bar and getting his ass kicked by another Spectres' girlfriend's angry father. Sometimes it's nice to remember that we were more than living weapons resigned to going around completing suicide mission after suicide mission. It was the in-between that mattered, that made going on those missions more meaningful.
Six weeks ago I shot a deranged Systems Alliance officer in the head, stabbed a psychotic red-headed doctor through the heart, discovered a secret plot to convert the galaxy into homicidal, half-synthetic monsters, and fought a ship's worth of said creatures.
Today, I had dinner with the only people in this galaxy that I considered family.
If you ask me which story I'd rather the historians write about me one day, well, they better make sure they got down the cake-pie thing correctly.
March 11th, 2211. The Citadel, Presidium, The Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance— Main Briefing Room
Six weeks after the events aboard the SSV Hippocrates
"—And look, there's Vako and T'alis, and spirits, they even recalled Williams!" Cade hissed at us as more and more of our fellow Spectres entered the massive, auditorium-like briefing room.
Designed to seat three hundred, less than a third of the seats were currently filled with our fellow Spectre Operatives, some of which we hadn't seen in years.
Even more weren't present. Almost two-thirds of us were on missions in distant systems and were therefore too far away to be recalled to attend this briefing in person. Most of those that couldn't make it were still present, however, as each seat was actually a Quantum Entanglement Communicator. Those on missions and had access to one could still therefore attend in a loose, physical sense.
It made it look as if half the operatives in this room were ghosts.
I turned to Percival seated beside me and nudged him. "Do you think they're going to disclose the Hippocrates situation?" I asked quietly.
My friend shook his head and whispered back. "To be honest, I don't think so. Whatever this is about, it's something that's already got the whole of the Systems Alliance High Command andArcturus Station on edge. One of my contacts told me that they've re-assembled first, second, and fifth fleet in the Terra Nova system. If this was about the Reaper Cores they would be deploying directly, not wasting time re-assembling."
Lanto and Corribus entered the room next, we made eye contact and nodded at each other. They were followed by the familiar figure of Elektra. Her familiar flirtatious smirk was gone and in its place was a mask of professionalism and ice. I couldn't help but notice her make-up was still impeccable done and her long, brown hair looked like she'd just had it professionally braided.
She took the seat beside me and nodded at the three of us. "Boys," she greeted.
"Elektra," Percival and I returned.
"Bitch," Cade muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.
To her credit she said nothing. Instead she crossed one leg over the other and folded her hands in her lap.
She leaned in towards me. I couldn't also help but notice that Elektra had somehow decided to wear perfume to an important briefing.
"Is this about the Hippocrates?" she whispered.
"Percival doesn't seem to think so," I shrugged. "His contacts think it's something else. Anything on your end?"
"Nope," she shrugged, "they haven't said anything. Percival must have intel coming in from somewhere higher."
The number of Spectres entering and appearing on QEC's slowly started to dwindle. Just under a third of the three-hundred seats had Spectres physically in them and another third had Spectres sitting in via QEC. The other hundred-odd seats were empty – most likely their operatives were currently engaged in extreme covert operations but there was the possibility that there had been a few KIA's in the last few months.
The councilors appeared next on-stage using their familiar hologram systems. First Tevos, then Victus, followed by Jath and finally Lanllivan. Every Spectre Operative in the room immediately ceased their quiet chatting and directed their attention to the stage. A sudden hush swept over the room. No one could remember the last time all of us had been recalled for a mass briefing. It was probably also during the Reaper Wars.
Each of the four had guarded expressions on their face, but that only served to tell more than it hid. Lanllivan looked the worst, even from here I could see that subtle tightening of the jaw, the corners of her mouth pulled unnaturally down into the slightest of grimaces. Something was definitely eating at her.
Elektra nudged me and pointed discreetly at the salarian councilor. I followed her finger and watched her. Jath had never been much of a smiler in the first place. Sure, her mouth seemed to be drawn more tightly than usual, but what exactly was it that had caught Elektra's eye?
There. Jath turned to whisper something to councilor Victus and in that movement her robes were drawn more closely to her sides, allowing us to briefly glimpse the outline of a hard, oblong device strapped to her hip. Councilor Radal Jath was packing heat.
Tevos looked as serene as ever, but that wasn't surprising considering she'd had centuries to perfect her expressions and she had presided over the single-most devastating conflict in the last fifty-thousand years. Finally, I couldn't help but notice that Victus was subtly meeting the eyes of each of the turian Spectres.
Since the asari were the first to find the Citadel and establish the Citadel Council, councilor Tevos opened first as was custom.
She spread her arms. "Spectres, you are the right hand of the Citadel, the first line and last line of defense," Tevos began.
"We have called each and every last one of you here today, barring those on the distant-most fields of battle and on missions of utmost secrecy, because of a development so unsettling that all four of us voted unanimously to hold this session with all of you in attendance."
Cade crossed his arms and grumbled beside me, like me he was probably frustrated at the theatrics. "I appreciate the show but it'd be nice if you could hurry this along…" he whispered to no one in particular.
"Is that the title of your sex-tape?" Elektra smirked.
The turian eyed her angrily and was likely just about to make a sexist, profane rejoinder but both Percival and I dug our elbows into his scaly sides. I gave Elektra an admonishing look and she shrugged, smiling.
That smile disappeared instantly the moment Lanllivan decided to cut the shit and drop the bomb on us.
"Spectres, a mass defection has occurred. The Ninth fleet of the Systems Alliance Navy is gone," Lanllivan told us.
A wave of hushed whispers washed over the room as Spectres immediately began chatting quietly to each other.
Elektra and I both looked to Percival. His face was a mask of shock.
"Hey, slaps, snap out of it!" hissed Cade. The turian grabbed the big man's arm and shook him gently.
"Order!" bellowed councilor Victus. Immediately the noise began to die down. I clenched my fists tightly, how on Earth could a whole fleet be allowed to disappear. The Ninth Fleet had more than four hundred ships. How could an entire fleet be convinced to defect?
A picture of a man popped up on the holo-screen behind the councilors. He had short, brown hair, was clean-shaven and looked to be in his early to mid-fifties. His dark eyes were cold and calculating and he looked to be of average height and build.
His CSV popped up beside him. Enlisted in the Systems Alliance Navy at 18, made Lieutenant-Commander at the age of 27 and was given his first command soon after aboard the SSV Florence in the Fifth fleet under Admiral Steven Hackett. He served with distinction in the Reaper War and was bumped to Rear Admiral some time after. When they formed the Ninth Fleet in 2293, Hackett backed him for Fleet Admiral. His fleet apparently covered themselves with commendation after commendation for their actions during the Slaver Fringe Wars and in a series of border skirmishes with pirates in the Terminus Systems.
"This is Fleet Admiral Marcus Octavian, commander of the Ninth Fleet. The Ninth Fleet was supposed to assemble in the Utopia System for fleet-wide maneuvers and drills two days ago, but only a handful of Ninth Fleet cruisers and their frigate wolf-packs showed up," Lanllivan continued.
"When they were unresponsive to hails, Joint Air, Extravehicular, and Ground Recovery Specialists were sent to board the vessels. Inside they found crews from dozens of different ships in the Ninth Fleet chained and manacled. All of them told the same story – the rest of their crewmates had decided to follow Admiral Marcus Octavian on some secret mission, striking down their Alliance flags."
Statistics went up on the holo-screen. Nearly 90% of the Fleet had defected. It was crazy. It had to have had something to do with the Hippocrates. Nearly all the saboteurs had been humans who'd been serving in the Systems Alliance. This couldn't be a coincidence.
Nonetheless, how did Octavian convince more than ten thousand Systems Alliance personnel to leave with him? Were they all in the same gang as the saboteurs or something? Did all of them believe in the same fucked-up kool-aid that they called transcendence?
"Didn't you serve under Octavian, Percival?" Cade whispered to the former N7.
I had forgotten about that. Percival had been attached to the Ninth Fleet before joining the Spectres. Both Elektra and I looked at him curiously.
His face was a mask of shock and surprise and disbelief. Octavian was beloved of his men – Percival included. Steven Hackett himself had backed him for Fleet Admiral, half the Systems Alliance Navy High Command thought he'd make Chief of Naval Operations within the next decade, and he'd proved himself in conflicts again and again.
"I did," he shakily replied. "He was the best officer I ever served under, I can't believe he'd defect. He was absolutely committed to his men and to the Systems Alliance. Every single sailor under his command would have happily died for him if he'd asked them to, how could this have happened?"
"Maybe we should start calling the stock bad guys 'defectors' instead of 'saboteurs' from now on," Elektra dryly added.
Percival didn't reply. Instead he starred off into space. I could see a similar look of shock on several other currently-serving human Spectres who had formerly been a part of the Systems Alliance Military. Williams in particular looked noticeably distraught.
Councilor Jath coughed and addressed us next. "There's more, Spectres. Dozens of ships from each of the salarian fleets have also absconded. They've deactivated their trackers and are refusing all hails, but they too removed the dissenters and had them sent back to us before defecting. None of the Salarian Naval Personnel we picked up have any idea why they have decided to do so. STG is currently investigating."
"Asari ships have departed as well, dozens of ships from each of the fleets as well as several commando detachments. Asari High Command is scrambling internal affairs to investigate," Tevos added.
Victus raised his head and flapped his mandibles. "Turian fleets remain wholly intact," he assured us, "but that doesn't mean we do not have defectors present among our ranks. And if the Krogan Federation, the Batarian Hegemony, and the Quarian and Geth Collective have lost ships as well, they have yet to notify us."
A hand shot up among one of the Spectres, it was Spectre Operative Leliana T'sarion.
"Councilors, is there no lead to suggest why so many ships from the navies of three of the four Council species suddenly decided to defect? None of our contacts have reported anything in the last decade that would hint at an internal schism of this magnitude."
I tensed up. Beside me Cade dug his talons into the chair and Elektra swallowed softly.
The councilors looked amongst themselves then turned as one to address the senior Spectre.
"No, Operative T'sarion. This is as much a mystery to us as it is to you," Tevos replied sadly.
"That brings us to our final point. We need to know why they left, where they went, and who else might still follow," Victus ordered loudly. The former turian general and Primarch still had his battlefield-voice primed and prepped even after all these years, the flanging inflection that our universal e-translators gave every turian only added to the command and severity behind it.
"For those of you not currently on mission, you will be tasked with investigating the remaining fleets and their officers, as well as their associated command structures. Do not work with their internal affairs and do not utilize military contacts and personnel. At this point we do not know who we can trust and who we can't."
"This is a top priority directive," Jath finished. "There are nearly five hundred ships unaccounted for, including three dreadnaughts. If unchecked, they could wreak untold havoc on the galaxy."
I swallowed. A dreadnaught could lay waste to a whole colony in a matter of minutes if it chose, its mass accelerator cannon and its Thanix cannon could destroy whole major cities in a single shot. For three of them to go rogue? I shuddered at the thought.
Tevos spread her arms once more in preparation to deliver her customary closing statement. "Remember, you are our first and last line of defense, the right arm of the Council and the guardians of the galaxy. You have your mission, Spectres. Good Luck."
Percival, Cade, Elektra and I all exchanged glances with each other. Our mission – the mission to stop the Reaper Cores and galactic genocide – just got a whole lot more complicated.
March 11th, 2211. The Citadel, Citadel Tower – Council's Private Meeting Chambers
Six weeks after the events aboard the SSV Hippocrates
"Thank you for your patience, Spectres. The news of the mass defection caught us all off-guard," Tevos apologized to us.
We stood haphazardly around the briefing room that we had been in only days before. The four councilors looked even more haggard and worn-down that they had been merely an hour before, when they broke the news that nearly five hundred ships had gone missing from among our various militaries.
Percival was as rigid as a board, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. I stood in a similar pose beside the large marine, albeit looking much less tense. Cade had his arms crossed beside me and Electra stood further back, eyes forward.
Jath tapped on her omni-tool and the hologram of a planet popped up on the holo-table. Several cities popped up on its surface – Cairo, Osiris, Set, and New Thebes. It had to be Anhur.
"This is the garden world of Anhur, located in the Eagle Nebula, in the Amun System, one of the most populated colonies in the Terminus Systems," she started to explain. "Four days ago, an STG recon team picked up this partial transmission from Anhur's generator facilities planetside."
She pressed another button and a recording began to play. The voice on it was unmistakably male, human if I had to guess. What was most unsettling is the sheer amount of fear I could hear in the man's voice. Whoever this individual had been, he'd been terrified.
"This is Operations Chief Simon Merryweather, currently stationed at the Anhur Planetary Defense Cannon Generators! We're under attack by what appears to be a group of—"
The recording cut off after that.
I immediately raised my hand. "Councilor, the recording mentions a group. Could it be a known terrorist cell or a mercenary, or even a paramilitary group?"
Jath shook her head and brought up picture taken from a recon probe. I could see dozens of ships, most of them with the profile of Systems Alliance Navy vessels, as well as a few of salarian and asari design. So part of the Ninth Fleet must be involved.
"The STG recon team stayed for two days to gather as much intelligence as they could before they were discovered. They managed to send a comm. buoy with the encrypted data through the mass relay before they were found and shot down. All hands aboard were presumed lost," Jath said grimly.
We all cursed. The STG were our predecessors in a sense, and every Spectre respected them and their influence on our roots. They were the organization we had originally been modelled off of.
"Look here, Spectres," Lanllivan continued. She pressed a button and zoomed in onto one of the ships. The image of a familiar, gunmetal grey cruiser enhanced itself on the table. The words Exeter could be clearly seen on the side of the cruiser.
"If your reports are correct, the saboteurs are there, although for what reason we currently do not know. If this is an attempt to make progress on this "transcendence", then they must be stopped. We've confirmed some of the names of the other vessels present at Anhur, it appears to be the Ninth Fleet, specifically the first, second and third battlegroups," the human councilor finished.
"The asari and salarian vessels are also confirmed to be those that defected," Tevos added.
"But that can't be all the ships," Elektra pointed out. "That's a fraction of those reported to have defected, any idea where the rest of them went?"
Victus shook his head. "We do not have a clue, hopefully your fellow Spectres will turn up something in your investigations, something that the saboteurs missed or neglected to cover up."
Percival raised his hand. The former N7 had been uncharacteristically quiet and morose for the last little while. "What would you have us do?" he asked.
Councilor Victus turned to Percival and answered him. "Go and investigate. Follow the trail, find out what you can, and do your best to stop these saboteurs and their heinous goal."
"Will we have back-up?" Elektra asked.
The turian councilor ruefully shook his head and sighed. "We cannot send a Council Fleet or a military expedition in force to the Amun System, the Terminus Systems would view it as an act of war. Additionally, seeing as one of the lead saboteurs is a former N7 and another is a former high-ranking member of the STG, neither can we rely on special forces to provide support."
Tevos cleared her throat and looked at us apologetically. "Your fellow Spectres will have their hands full ensuring that the remainder of our military forces are uncompromised. Additionally, your knowledge of the Reaper Cores and the events aboard the Hippocrates make you the closest thing we have to experts on the saboteurs plans and goals. We have no one else to send."
Cade and I both grinned at each other. This was what we lived for, other than sugar. A few good weapons, a target-rich environment, zero jurisdiction and oversight, and nothing but bad guys between us and saving the galaxy.
"Nonetheless we are working on this resolving issue," Tevos assured us. "But even then, the STG recon group reported Anhur's planetary defense cannons are still online under the control of the saboteurs and would make an orbital assault absolutely perilous. In addition, there is a total communications blackout on the planet, they have control of the communications satellites and so we have no idea if they've occupied major population centers or whether or not they're merely blockading the planet."
Victus slammed a fist on his console, startling us. "There is too much we don't know, Spectres!" Victus spat. "And we can't trust anyone else! But a small strike force in a stealth-capable frigate can land, take down the generators, re-establish communications and perhaps stop whatever these fanatics are planning."
"It will be a dangerous mission," Tevos finished. "Once again, we are asking you to willingly put yourselves once more in the line of fire."
I internally rolled my eyes, it was cute how sometimes Tevos pretended that we sometimes had a choice when it came to missions like these. We didn't, and not because they were our orders, but because it had to be done, by someone, anyone.
"When do we leave?" I asked.
March 11th, 2211 – The Citadel, Zakera Ward – Arm's Edge
Four days after the taking of Anhur
I sighed and took a deep breath, savoring the familiar scent of the lower wards behind me in all of its wild, lawless glory. My legs dangled off of the sheer metal wall that I was currently sitting on. In front of me was nothing but the beautiful Serpent Nebula, awash in a sea of bright lights and colors.
I could see breathtaking swirls of blue and purple and white – color given off by light reflecting off of the non-recyclable debris that was constantly being ejected from the Citadel, if you would believe the rumors. If I squinted I could barely make out the familiar forms of several of the Mass Relays that led in and out of the Serpent Nebula.
If I were to somehow leap around three meters out, I'd find myself out of the mass effect barriers that encapsulated the Citadel and allowed it to maintain a breathable and livable atmosphere, floating in the Nebula itself where I'd probably suffocate and die in less than a minute. Definitely breathtaking.
This was my favourite spot on the entire Citadel. You take the elevator down from the Presidium to the Wards and then you just keep heading what everyone arbitrarily considers to be 'south'. But do take a car, because otherwise it'd be a long walk. Forty-four point-seven kilometers actually.
Eventually you'd hit the very end of the arms that comprised the Wards. There'd be a smooth, metal wall about three meters tall and about ten meters thick that was ridiculously easy to climb with the right equipment, and from there you could sit, stand, or lie down at the edge of the wall and just stare out into the Serpent Nebula.
It was actually not a well-kept secret. Colloquially known as the 'Arm's Edge', there was technically one on each of the four wards. They were ridiculously popular spots for suicides, gang executions, and "accidents", or dispute settlements as we liked to call them. Usually C-sec did a good job patrolling the Arm's Edge, but when you were a talented Spectre it wasn't exactly rocket science to slip past a couple of beat-cops watching a holo-vid on their omni-tools.
It was where I went when I either wanted to be alone or when I was about to go on another mission. It was somewhere where I could just sit or lie there and just stare out into the Serpent Nebula and think, to be alone with my thoughts. The Serenity was nice but almost always crowded, and the Citadel itself had very few places where you could truly be alone.
I stared at the shifting sea of blue, purple and white and sighed blissfully, savoring the sight and the peace that it brought me. A part of me wondered if Sarah had ever been this far south. Maybe I'd take John here one day when he was old enough to need a place where he could just get away from it all. His own little fortress of solitude.
And yeah, if you're wondering, I have pissed off of it. Multiple times. It was like pissing off the edge of the world.
The sound of bickering interrupted my reverie and I rolled my eyes. "Spirits, can you move your ass?" A flanged, familiar voice complained behind me.
"You made me hold everything, Kitiarian. Maybe if you weren't such a lazy bird I'd be able to climb this damn wall faster," another familiar voice argued back.
"That is speciesism and racism, slaps, and I expected better from a revered member of the Systems Alliance military and the famed Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance."
I bit back a smile as Cade pulled Percival up over the lip of the wall. Cade was dressed in his usual hoodie, turian sweatpants and band T-shirt while Percival had opted for a light-blue dress-shirt paired with dark dress pants and a pair of brown loafers. Sometimes I wondered if he'd ever been bullied as a child.
He also carried a cooler in one hand, which explained the trouble he was having climbing up the wall. You needed to use magnetic clamps, which every Spectre had a pair of. A good pair was only a couple-hundred credits on the extranet.
They slid down to sit beside me and Percival opened up the cooler. He took out a large sushi platter, a grease-covered bag, a small pizza box, a box of half-dozen donuts, and a small apple pie in a pink cardboard box.
Cade took out a set of plates and forks and we began to serve food onto our plates.
"God, Ryuusei makes the best dragon rolls," Percival mumbled through a mouthful of avocado, fried shrimp and rice.
That was true. Good, traditional sushi was hard to come by on the Citadel. Many of the sushi restaurants in the lower wards usually used fish from different planets, but Ryuusei always claimed to make their food with Earth-grown tuna, salmon, and the like. Technically a dragon roll wasn't traditional sushi, but I was willing to let that slide.
I grimaced as Percival followed up his mouthful of sushi with a bite from one of the burgers from the Serenity. Although Percival's diet was clean as hell ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, when we had our traditional pre-mission cheat meals he always went balls to the wall.
By the time I had taken my first bite, he had already set his burger down and had started in on a slice of pizza.
I picked at my own sushi. "How long do you reckon this next mission will take?" I asked.
Cade on the flipside had started with his share of the donuts, wolfing both of them down before starting in on the burger. He liked to go sweet, salty, sweet during our cheat meals. Fucked up in my opinion, but who was I to judge. The turian was an absolute madman.
"It'll take three relay jumps to get to the Amun System. No idea when we'll be ordered to leave, but I'd say we can expect our departure to occur within the next three days," Cade shrugged. "After that, it depends on how many saboteurs we go through."
I swallowed the last of my sushi, savoring it, then took a page from Percival's book, starting the burger next. It was delicious – synthetic beef and bacon more succulent than anything you'd ever tasted, topped with crisp lettuce, cheese, and fried onions. I also liked it a bit heavy on the ketchup and mustard, but I didn't like pickles in it.
"Several dozen enemy ships though, and against trained human marines, asari commandos, salarian tech specialists, and what-not. It'll be a hard fight," I pointed out after I'd finished chewing and had swallowed.
"Since when have you ever been scared to fight?" smirked Cade. "You think we can't handle a bunch of crazy human marines and a few pretentious asari commandos?"
"Yeah," Percival jumped in through a mouthful of sushi and pizza. "We all watched the combat logs dude, your saboteur kill-count is higher than both of ours combined, times two."
"God, chew your food man!" I said, disgusted. Percival shrugged sheepishly and went back to his sushi/pizza medley.
"We'll also probably have back-up," added Cade. "There's no way the Council would expect us to re-take an entire system of planetary defense cannons, a whole satellite network, and an entire occupied colony with just a frigate's worth of operatives. Who do they think we are? Commander Shepard?"
We all laughed at that. The stories we heard during the war had seemed too far-fetched, too impossible to be real. Shepard single-handedly taking down a Reaper on foot, Shepard and two squadmates taking on an entire Geth Dreadnought,Shepard gunning down whole platoons of Cerberus soldiers and raiding huge Cerberus facilities and generally slapping a whole galaxy's worth of bad guys around with just a three-man team.
I get that she was a larger-than-life figure who did some crazy shit, but come on. There had to be some embellishment there – propaganda to embolden those who had fought in the Reaper War, to give them a real hero to rally behind. If anything, it was probably Garrus Vakarian who did all the heavy lifting in combat. From the things I'd read and watched on the extranet, that dude fucks.
"Man, it'll be weird having Elektra tag along," Percival sighed. "When was the last time we worked with another Spectre?"
"More than two years ago," replied Cade. "The riots on Lusia, and don't forget Korlus. Williams worked over that outpost while we went after that warlord in his fortress."
Fucking Korlus.
"Honestly," continued the turian, "Can we even trust her? Look what she did to Cloud, and how sure are the councilors that the saboteurs don't have anyone in the Spectres?"
"It is possible," Percival admitted. "The fact that she pushed hard to be put on the mission is already suspect."
Cade nodded in agreement, but I shook my head.
"No, Elektra is a lot of things, but a fanatic isn't one of them. Cade, I know she fucked me over in the past, and Percival, it is possible that there is a mole in the Spectres, but I don't think its Elektra. I've known her for a long, long time. Siding with these people isn't something that she'd do," I said.
Even though I disliked her and barely trust her, I didn't believe that she was a traitor. I had known her for most of my life and despite what we'd gone through together I knew that she simply wasn't capable of partaking in something as insane as what the saboteurs were involved in. I remember the girl who I'd first met on Terra Nova so many years ago and I knew the women she had become. It just couldn't be possible.
My friends didn't press the topic any further, for which I was thankful. They took my words at face value and trusted my judgement. For a while we simply ate, enjoyed the view of the Serpent Nebula, and talked about whatever came to our minds – galaxy of fantasy, Percival's daughter, Sarah's son, and our past missions.
Eventually all the food was gone, even the cake. Percival was splayed out on his back, groaning in pain. Serves him right, he probably had as much of the food as Cade and I had combined.
Cade grinned sadistically and pulled a six-pack of beer and two bottles of liquor out of the cooler, alongside a trio of glasses.
"Up and at 'em, slaps. It ain't over just yet," he laughed. Beside him Percival pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and groaned even louder.
"I can't, just kill me. Roll me off the edge so I can float in space like the gas giant I've become," he begged.
"You know, we always tell you to leave room for the liquor but you never listen," I said in a chastising tone. "I thought you'd have learned your lesson by now."
"Besides," Cade chimed in happily. "Who knows if we'll ever get a chance to do this again. One of us might die on the next mission."
"Shut your bird mouth, you bird!" Percival shouted eloquently. With a groan he pulled himself up to a seated position. Cade poured a few fingers of liquor into our glasses and handed one to each of us before pouring some dextro brandy for himself.
Beer cans were opened and set down beside us as we all raised our glasses.
I remember all those years ago. Before my first ever mission I had come up here to try and calm myself down. I remembered how nervous I was, how anxious I'd been that I'd die—or worse, fail.
My first mission had been a resounding success, but when it was time for my second one I didn't feel any more confident or prepared than I had my first one.
When I came up here the night before my second mission, I found Percival and Cade with some beer and half a pizza. When I came up here the night before my third, they'd been waiting with liquor and some sushi. On nights before missions when we weren't on the Citadel, we'd always share a toast, talk a bit, and just try and share one last moment together, in case it was actually our last.
Stop me if it all sounds too lame.
"Here's to a successful mission," Percival began.
"And to a dozen more," Cade continued.
"And to a hundred more," I continued on.
"And to making the galaxy a better place," we all chorused. We clinked our glasses together and drained them. No matter what awaited us on Anhur, I knew that as long as we were together, nothing could stop us.