Author's Note: Happy Easter everyone! I've already talked about my biggest gripe with Mass Effect 3, so I'm going to do the same for 2 now.
The Shadow Broker. So As I understand it the current Shadow Broker, or the one featured in the titular DLC, was a Yahg, a massive hyper aggressive race of aliens was convinced to leave his home world to become a operative of a stealth oriented organisation. A ten foot tall Marvel's King Pin mock up of a alien, who isn't even part of a Spaceflight organisation, was recruited as a secret agent. Am I the only one here who sees literally everything wrong with this scenario? Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 36: Chasing Shadow's Part 2
Grissom Academy, a habitat built in cooperation between multiple races for the purpose of acting as a joint educational front. It wasn't the only one of its kind, but it was the nearest to citadel space, and as such was now hosting some of the new students. Krogan, young sons and daughters of Tuchanka sent here by their parents in the hope that knowledge might be able to temper their bad habits, Quarian's who were looking for a better life than their parents had led, Batarian's who were separated from their families by force and were now being subjected to re-education in order to remove their Reaper induced 'cultural traditions,' Salarian's mere month's old and already demonstrating a level of intelligence comparable to a human six year old, Vorcha of Omega fresh from their communal nest and were now receiving the full benefits of their accelerated learning ability, and the numerous children of the Eden Colonies. Of course it wasn't just exclusively citadel races that would be going here, nor were citadel races exclusively going here either. Flerkin, Draconics, Lithoids, Humans and even Tebrids were arriving at the school as well.
"Alright yah lil ankle biters!" Jack was standing in front of the newly arrived class from Citadel space. "Y'all so called psykers?" Jack backed away as she used both of her hands to point behind her. "Follow me!"
The Salarians, almost each and everyone of them were female, followed after Jack, and by no coincidence it was also only females following her. Rumours of Salarian mad science echoes through every corner of citadel space, the newest fad of psionics only fuels the rumours, it didn't help any that said fad also coincides with the citadel suddenly lifting restrictions on Salarian reproductive laws, and if the newly hired Asari biotics instructors could be believed then there was also a massive number of Salarian biotics on top of that. Females and Biotics, two things that normally don't leave the home-world, the Salarian's had prepared a fuel truck and was actively dumping its contents onto the fire of conspiracy.
While Jack had been busy leading a new generation of Salarians Shepard had picked through the rumours of the Shadow Broker and followed them to their natural conclusion: Hagalaz.
Hagalaz was a garden world only by the strictest of technicalities, a oxygen and nitrogen rich atmosphere capable of sustaining life, but paired with a day night cycle that was over three months long, resulting in one side turning into a desert while the other side is frozen solid with a massive ring of storms following the dawn and dusk of the planet. Naturally, the Citadel didn't want to deal with such lunatic conditions when trying to establish a colony, thus the planet was left in the custody of the Salarians who were given the task of documenting the planet's flora and fauna and identifying any useful genetic markers for resilience against extreme conditions. That scientific survey was then interrupted by the discovery of rich mineral deposits on the planet which in turn led to criminal organisations to strong arm the planet away from them in a series of criminal raids and it's mining deposits quietly auctioned off one by one to various companies.
Thus Hagalaz represents everything you could ever want in a secret base: a dangerous planet that any sensible legal organisation would avoid like a plague, while at the same time acting as enough of a hub of activity that it is entirely justified for there to be supplies being regularly delivered to the planet. According to the rumour mill, this world was the ultimate final resting place of anyone who had pissed off the so-called Shadow Broker to such a degree that he wanted a talk with you in person before he killed you. That part still bothered Shepard, who the hell has enough confidence in their abilities to invite the people planning on taking a swing at you into their office and killing them in person. The list Shepard had been given included several Krogan battlemasters and more than a few Asari Huntresses, so at the very least not someone scared by the notion of fighting biotics, and physically strong enough to take on a Krogan. Well finding out the details of the Shadow Broker could wait until after they found his base.
The question was a matter of figuring out where the bastard was, because as much of a feat it was that Shepard was able to narrow the search radius down to one planet it was still a planet. Luckily Shepard was one of perhaps a dozen of the most singularly powerful psykers in citadel space, and like many other worlds the Thorian had spread its influence to this world.
"Well?" Liara asked looking at Shepard as she meditated in the specialised chamber that was made specifically for psykers. A combination of Thorian matter turned Prothean organic computers lined the walls in a series of tubes hardwired into dozens of Grey Boxes with networked VI programs filtering the details under the management of a AI. It was one of the most disturbingly effective surveillance tools that Liara had ever heard tell of, even with dozens of years of Salarian rumours spreading around the galaxy.
"They like to scare each other with stories about a ghost ship, sailing the storms of Hagalaz as the sun rises, acting as the Wrath of Hagalaz itself coming to sweep all on the surface of the planet away." Shepard replied as she thought about it some more. "Polly, start compiling memories of the ghost ship, eye witnesses only."
"Acknowledged Dragoon Shepard." The Psionic Oversight Liaison-Experimental AI that Shepard had affectionately dubbed 'Polly' began pulling numerous images together on a nearby flat screen, images of a horizon full of nothing but storm clouds pulled directly from the minds of the planet's inhabitants below. From the images of the storm, something began to be pulled out, too far away from anyone looking at it to be interpreted as anything other than a black dot. Then though the images had begun to change, narrowed down to those who had looked through the use of binoculars or who had braved the storm to get a closer look. Liara will never hold more than a passing interest in ship designs, only their relevance to her job as an archaeologist was what was important, but luckily that's what the Extranet is for.
"EDI can you look up out-dated ship designs for me?" Liara asked looking up at one of the omni-present camera eyes that dotted around the Normandy.
"Acknowledged." An 'antique ship repair enthusiasts' website was quickly accessed.
"Right. Polly see if you can get the specs on that thing for us." It took several minutes of work for them to get what they had been looking for, it looked to be an old Salarian Cargo Freighter, heavily modified though. Now that there was hard evidence that there was something in there another poignant fact that needed to be addressed, namely that there did not appear to be anyone in there. "Near as I can tell the only people on that planet are the ones at the mining colonies." Shepard stated as she held her chin pondering the possibilities.
"Is the Shadow Broker a VI or an AI?" Liara asked looking at Shepard with concern. "Given the council's stringent laws against such things, maybe?" Liara thought about it some more. Current rumours has stated that the Shadow Broker has been active for over a thousand years, longer than even the long lived Asari, longer than what the Krogan have been active for. If it is organic then they've had to go through multiples, given the way that they've apparently been running their organisation a lot of them. Who they are or were though is ultimately irrelevant. Break into the ship, and drag the bastard out whatever he was, rip out whatever secrets he was keeping on the Reapers or their minions and throw him into the storm he was hiding in and let the lightning turn his corpse into ash and scatter on the winds. Shepard didn't have much a ground team at the moment, Tali was a must, her experience with antique ships like this was a must, Garrus stayed on the ship with Oriana just in case someone tried something while Shepard was away.
Dodging lightning wasn't the most ideal circumstances to land a ship, needless to say they had to be very precise with their shuttle, and needed a Biotic Barrier to block the lightning.
"I don't think this is a standard Salarian Ship Shepard!" Tali shouted over the howling wind and cracks of thunder and lightning in the distance.
Yet another benefit of Hagalaz: an unlimited supply of electricity. Tali spotted High grade top of the line Kinetic barriers, lightning rods and capacitors dotting the ancient ship's hull, the sophisticated array simultaneously blocked the lightning and channelled it into lightning rods which in turn stored them in capacitors to act as a power source for the ship itself. Then Tali saw their opening by virtue of the Omni-Drones that she scattered around the ship.
"Where the hell did they get Rare Crystal Capacitors!" Tali shouted staring in horror at the half dismantled section of the ship. On the plus side, the insistence that the ancient ship be outfitted with top of the line latest technology probably meant that they had a way into the ship itself.
"Which way is it!?" Shepard's voice echoed in Tali's and Liara's heads.
"You see those?" The Quarian indicated the additional after market modifications that have been made over the years, turrets, particle throwers by the looks of things, and a drone spawner. "That direction."
"Lovely." Shepard stated as she cracked her neck and got to work.
On that note Shepard charged. The enemy had a minor advantage in that Shepard couldn't mess around with the minds of drones and turrets. But that only sealed one of the tools in Shepard's arsenal when she had many. Particle beams and drone attacks bounced off of near impenetrable dragon scales as she ran forward, the Dragoon apparently had to make a point out of the difference in their durability as she directly walked up to one of the particle cannons and shoved her fist down it's barrel leading to it to self destruct, Shepard's arm and armour left unmarred by the blast. Liara deployed a singularity in the middle of the drone swarm, Shepard followed that up with a dose of her plasma shot gun which caused the singularity to explode, turning the drones into shrapnel, which being held together by a biotic field further exploded tearing holes through out the ship in the process. The biggest gaping hole was still the one left behind by the cycling of new technology.
"Ladies." Shepard asked indicating the hole in question as they surrounded it.
The three women hopped down in the hole, in front was Shepard with her proven armour acting as a meat shield for whatever horrible surprise was waiting for them on the other side, in the middle Tali, in the rear Liara with a biotic barrier in case something tried to come up from behind them, trying to spew plasma through a biotic barrier was stupidly suicidal, and they had to assume that they've been working on armour that could take some abuse from particle throwers, so that left Liara wielding a rail gun.
"Whatever is on this ship it needs oxygen to survive." Tali stated as she used her omni-tool to get a read on the atmosphere inside of the ship. "I'd say about five times the norm."
"Is that why I'm feeling light headed?" Liara pressed a button on her shoulder and made her helmet fold around her head from her back.
"Probably. But who the hell needs that much Oxygen?" Shepard asked as she walked forward.
"Any ideas EDI?" Liara asked as she kept an eye out on their surroundings.
"No sapient creature in the Union database meets that requirement Dr. T'Soni. There are however reports of one in the citadel database."
"What is it a Elcor?" Shepard asked immediately going to the largest alien that she's ever seen and talked to, well talked is a bit of a stretch but she saw one back in the strip club in Illium. If not for announcing his arousal before speaking she'd thought he was the most bored person to ever step into a strip club.
"Yahg." EDI's announcement made Liara pause ever so briefly.
"The Mot's a Yahg?" Shepard asked sounding incredibly confused.
"They are a pre-spaceflight species discovered by the Citadel over sixty years ago." EDI stated filling in the information in question. "The Council made diplomatic contact with them on their home-world of Parnack, and for their trouble the entire delegation was slaughtered to the last."
"And the ship that they arrived on?" Shepard asked sounding mildly concerned.
"Self destructed." EDI stated bluntly. Which doesn't exclude the possibility of the Yahg reverse engineering the damned thing. Lovely.
"EDI, tell my mom about the situation the Council FUBAR'd when you get the chance would you?" Shepard stated letting out a sigh.
"Acknowledged."
"And somebody tell me what the Shroud a Yahg is?" Shepard followed up while Tali found a vent that they could enter the actual inhabited part of the ship through.
"They're giant aliens, taller than the Krogan and twice as wide." Tali began using an omni-tool app to begin cutting through the vent she found earlier. "They evolved to fill the niche of a Apex Predator on their home world and operate on a strict pack mentality, the death of the ambassadors apparently stemmed from them treating the local Yahg as equals instead of acting submissively." And one was aboard this ship. The ship itself was modified exclusively to house them, so there was a distinct possibility that a Yahg was somehow running the show.
The spot that the group arrived in appeared to be some kind of hydroponics bay, filled with a variety of bizarre looking fruits, one was orange and lumpy, another bright green and growing on floating lily pads, a third looked like some kind of sea foam cactus, a fourth a berry bush that was groing in the middle of a pile of snow. There were other plants that looked equally bizarre but by now the idea had been gotten.
"I've never seen plants like this before." Liara commented looking at the plants in question. "They could be native to Hagalaz." Tali accessed a terminal with her omni-tool and made a disappointed sigh as she found out that she couldn't eat the plants. "If memory serves the plants were considered too high maintenance for the exotic flora trade."
Tali however made a more relevant discovery, no Thorian spores being fed into the plant's fertiliser mix. Hagalaz was not a agricultural world, so of course it hadn't received priority in getting laced with the Thorian's spores. However there was something mixed into the fertiliser that was familiar, a fungicide exclusive for use against the Thorian. Shepard raised her fist into the air indicating for the group to remain silent, suddenly the sound of boots marching throughout the metal halls echoed out far and wide.
The Shadow Broker kept an army of private mercenaries on hand at all times, Hagalaz was bought in blood and there were still plenty of people left who were willing to bleed for it. A group of mercenaries, Asari, Batarians, Turians, Salarians and even Vorcha were patrolling the halls of the ship, most likely looking for the group of people who had infiltrated the ship and kill them. Three people entered the Hydroponics where Shepard's group was hiding, the people in question unnoticeable because of the fog of psionics clouding the minds of the defenders. Shepard didn't need long mind you, she just needed long enough to determine two facts. The first, was the calibre of equipment that the enemy was carrying, after all they had access to Rare Crystal, it was important to determine if they had any other highly unpleasant surprises up their sleeves. The Second, to determine where on the ship the Shadow Broker was located. For the answer to the first question, while the Broker had acquired the on sight factories from the numerous refineries of Hagalaz to upgrade his ship he had yet to begin outfitting his men. As for the second?
A biotic field crumpled the door leading into one of the larger rooms on the ship. It had been built for Salarian's after all, Shepard would bet that several walls had to be taken down to make this room.
"That was unnecessary." Liara mentioned that he was big, she didn't mention how ugly he would be. "My kind doesn't believe in keeping our doors locked." The Shadow Broker was as massive as Liara described the Yahg to be. "If you die from an intruder in your living space it is because you are weak." The Yahg's skin was a ugly maroon colour, his face lined with spiked frills framing eight eyes with a set of jaws that fanned outwards in three different directions full of sharp teeth.
"Well that's hypocritical of you!" Shepard laughed as she strolled around the office arms spread wide. "You are hiding on a planet on the edge of habitable space, that no one has officially colonised, in the middle of a massive equator of uninhabitable hurricanes, snow and electrical storms, on a antique war ship filled with heavily armed two bit criminals and psychopaths! Like a Coward!" The Yahg snorted.
"Thank you for coming here, the dissection of your body should prove most illuminating, do try not to put up too much of a fight I'd rather not damage it." The Shadow Broker requested, ignoring Shepard's obvious provocation as he turned his head to face Liara. "Dr. T'Soni I presume? Or are you still a doctor? I've heard you're between careers at the moment. Once I've had your memory of me thoroughly scrubbed from your mind I will be able to get a rather considerable reward for ransoming you back to your father." Liara's face screwed in confusion. "Interesting choice to bring along the Quarian, perhaps you thought she'd provide insight into my ship, I expect she'll provide far more insight into my own projects in applying Mass Effect based technology to Union Tech."
"You would like that wouldn't you? After all you possess no semblance of real power." Shepard stated as she continued to walk around the room. "You can't fire off a black hole with a gesture of your arm, you can't rip a man's secrets out of your mind, you can't even survive reentry into a planet without a ship! You are a giant fat balloon waiting to pop! And us?" Shepard gestured to either side of her to both Liara and Tali. "We're the needle!"
"Is that a fact?" The Shadow Broker asked sounding calm, if not bored. The huge desk that the giant alien had been sitting at was not only flipped over into the air but then smashed against the ground as the three intruders dived out of the way. "RRRAAAWWWRRR!" The Shadow Broker was vastly too big for any one shield to protect his body, instead several of them activated at the same time, in his right arm a massive omni-tech shield wide enough to protect his entire body, in his left he pulled out a massive weapon, a huge customised tri barreled grenade launcher with a massive ammunition barrel the size of something that you'd normally you'd use to dispose of toxic waste. From the floor of the office various machine turrets popped out of the floor and all weapons turned on the group of intruders.
"Liara Defence! Tali get those things on our side!" Shepard took the football tackle of the Shadow Broker head on, already sending a telepathic probe into his skull, and for her trouble got slammed into the far wall of the Shadow Broker's office.
"Psi-blocker, union standard issue." The Broker shoved his weapon into Shepard's abdomen and pulled the trigger, warped ammunition hit Shepard with enough force to shove her through wall with the force of the launch alone, and then the grenade imploded, Shepard felt space twist and parts of her armour was ripped off, by the time the light died down Shepard was reasonably certain that the only reason she was still alive was because the armour was so unreasonably durable. In the meantime the machine guns opened fire on Tali and Liara had only narrowly blocked them with a barrier. That in of itself would be a problem but then the Shadow Broker turned around and showed off what those three barrels are really for as he started to release a rapid fire string of grenade shots. Panicking Liara threw up a singularity and caught the Grenades as they were about to hit them which detonated, and instead of exploding spewing shrapnel everywhere the gravity well increased in severity several times over, absorbing bits of broken desk in the process. when the singularity ended several balls of freshly recycled material were dropped onto the floor. "Recycler Charges. A Mixture of Union and Citadel technology. Efficient for both mining and military." The slugs didn't stop coming, meaning that Liara had to maintain a barrier on top of the hail of those things threatening to turn her into indiscriminate biological matter.
The Broker stumbled as he got hit in the back of his head by a mace, he immediately spun around to shield bash Shepard but got chin smacked by the mace for his trouble. Shepard continued to beat the massive alien with her mace, smashing dents and groves into the shield while smacking the gun away from her, slowly forcing the Broker into the line of fire for his own machine guns while Shepard repeatedly slammed her weapon into the Broker's vitals. The guns weren't strong enough to breach his shields but his sheer bulk was blocking the shots for Liara and Tali, which bought the first time to hit the giant meaty wall with a stasis field. Shepard ran up to broker, started to let loose on his head with repeated mace strikes until something would finally break.
"RRRAAAWWWRRR!" With a roar the Broker broke free of his bondage and smashed Shepard away from him with his gun. The Broker took aim with his weapon and fired, suddenly the entire space around the broker warped in a gravity field and with a snap the gun, all the ammunition inside and the Brokers arm was crushed into several balls of raw material that then harmlessly fell to the ground. "GAAAHHH!" The Broker with his missing arm stumbled backwards.
"Nice hacking job." Liara commented watching the giant brute stumble.
"GRRR!" The Shadow Broker charged, Shepard was faster, pouncing onto the broker's back as she whipped out her collapsible blade and stabbed it into the broker's head. "Get! OFF! Of! ME!" The Broker grabbed Shepard and growled as he threw her off of him and across his office, the rectangular device that he had surgically implanted into this skull skidding across the floor with Shepard's blade through it.
"My Turn!" Shepard jumped off of the wall and pounced on the broker and stabbed her fingers into his eye sockets as she performed a far more invasive intrusion.
When the Council's forces returned to Parnack they did so in the dead of night, Yahg dragged out of their homes and filled with drugs before being shoved into some place small and dark as they lost consciousness. By the time they had re-awoken they were stumbling their way out of freezing cold chambers. They stayed there for years kept in the same kind of chambers that the Salarian's used for common cattle, bits of their tissues ripped from their flesh, from the bones, from their corpses. Of course they fought to escape, but the Salarian's never let them anywhere near them, all of their experiments were done through the use of machines. They feared them, feared what they would do to them if they got loose, as they should.
The Salarian's tested them, their capacity to learn new languages, their ability to build things and problem solve. The Salarian's meant to 'Uplift them' 'Enlighten' their 'Primitive Minds' Not now, not within their lifetime, not even within their children or grandchildren's or Great Grand Children's lifetime. They were a weapon, a potential resource that the small and weak aliens might one day exploit to use against their enemies and towards that end needed to know everything that they could about them. They would rue the day that they ever heard of the Yahg. We let the Salarian's think they tamed us, then we showed them that they hadn't.
Hagalaz, that was the name of the planet was, a place that while technically liveable was blighted by weather far too hostile to ever set up a colony here. Too hostile even for the Yahg, of the Twenty Yahg to escape the facility only one had survived the storms, the freezing cold, the blistering heat long enough to spot the pattern, to know that salvation came from staying ahead of the storms. Long enough for him to come here. Another blasted Salarian, this one considered himself the king of information, his men thought they had dug my corpse out of the snow, I explained to them how mistaken they were. I took over his operation, modified his ship to suit my needs, reprogrammed his crude VI's, assumed his identity and hired my own personnel. And then they came. Insect like aliens, Their bodies filled with so much technology that it was impossible to tell where the circuits stopped and the flesh began. They were willing to share it, for a price.
"Twenty Left Handed Salarians."
Other odd 'prices' were handed over to him over the years, never directly though, it was how I was able to detect their 'indoctrination' before they could affect me. I did some more digging, it wasn't hard to figure out that the Collectors were Protheans, heavily modified of course, or what their real objective was. But So what? I hold no love for this galaxy, and currently Parnack holds no place in their plans nor will it with the Council's blockade. Let the Reaper's come, let them wipe the galaxy of both the Council and the Union, then once they have left the data Archive of the two factions technology that was sent back to Parnack will activate, with his race's advance information processing and learning capabilities they will be thoroughly advanced to the current estimated Union Level of technology and then they can take the entire galaxy for themselves.
"The Collectors know the way into your Precious Union Space!" The Broker, Korback that's what his name was, growled despite Shepard's fingers in his face. "They're already there assessing your people like cattle before the butcher! Sorry to disappoint you!"
"RRRAAAGGGHHH!" Shepard screamed as she ripped through the Broker's mind, the alien's gray matter leaking out of the holes where his eyes use to be as clear watery soup, the brain dead monster falling over as Shepard fell back on her back. "Huu. Mot!"
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: I think Andromeda was generally poorly done, with lazily thought out squad-mates and cheaply done and un-creative aliens, any possible high point in the series marred by it's massive slew of glitches. For Andromea to see a sequel the massive backlash from the fan base has to be removed first.
Guest: Citadel Part 3. The exact quote was: "For propaganda? We plan on taking miss Sha'ira to Thessia, we're hoping the presence of the Prothean cipher in her mind might awaken a sleeping giant inside of the temple of Athame."