Mass Effect Knight - katamuro (2024)

Chapter 1: In the Beginning

Chapter Text

The being of light in front of me swayed gently as the four large wings of fire behind it wafted back and forth slowly.

“You have a choice.” It said in a voice that seemed to penetrate right through me.

“What choice?” I thought

“To move on or try again.” It said the light from it's eyes obscuring it's features.

Moving on seemed final. It felt like kindness but something in me rebelled against that. I couldn't remember anything but I felt that I had to do something.

“I want to try again.” I said

The being lifted it's arm and extended a finger touching my chest.
“We shall help you.” it said and I felt heat pierce me as if molten metal was poured into my chest. The pain took over and I felt my mind fading.

“You must stop it.” The being said it's voice somehow sounding gentle.

I was never fond of mornings and waking up especially early in the morning and this felt like a very early morning after a particularly late night. The pain in my head was only rivaled by the pain in my chest. A hollow cough escaped from my throat. I coughed a few more times before it settled down. As I felt my lungs settle down I looked around the room and to say I was surprised was to say nothing. I was in a cell. Even if you haven't been inside one before you know what it is immediately. Just barely long enough to fit in the cot I was sleeping on and just wide enough to squeeze another one in. The door was solid enough. Metal with no visible lock or handle. I was in a cell with white plastic covered walls no window and a single strip of light running across the ceiling. Standing up I half expected to feel light headed but I felt fine. In fact I felt the best I have ever felt even that cough no longer bothered me. Three steps to the left and three steps to the right. I saw a panel that was almost flush with the wall. Pressing on it a toilet extended out of the wall.
Before I could do anything else the door slid away and two people walked in. A man and a woman both dressed in uniform. I couldn't recognise the markings but they seemed somehow familiar. Both of them were quite tall and both had rather tan skin.

“Hi.” I said trying to put on a friendly face which in my case wasn't much friendlier than my normal face.

The two soldiers seemed to be taken aback by the greeting.

“Hi” the woman said.

“I am sergeant Mills this is corporal Kato. Can you tell us your name?” she continued

“Sam Knight nice to meet you.” I replied

“How do you feel?”

“I had a painful dream. Something about pouring metal in my chest. I even coughed when I woke up but I feel totally fine now.” I said and stretched rotating my shoulders

“Sam. I think you need to talk to our XO.” she said motioning for me to walk outside the cell

“Can I ask a few questions while we walk?” I said

It turned out that I was on a ship, heading away from a planet and the lab where they found me a day ago. This was a routine anti-slaver mission by an Alliance fleet centered around SSV Einstein, they were just clearing up a pirate outpost that was rumored to be a temporary staging ground for slavers. It turned out to be a kind of laboratory that Nazis and Japanese back in WW2 had, bodies stacked high, highly illegal and immoral experiments performed on unwilling subjects. I was one of three that were still alive. The other two were currently in the medbay, one in medical cryo and the other one in a medically induced coma. I was the only one that seemed intact enough to not require medical help.

Before Sergeant Mills could say anything else we stopped in front of another hatch and Corporal Kato walked through, Sergeant Mills gestured me forward and followed me through it.

The XO was a woman that seemed to be in her late forties with a sharp facial features and the confidence in her eyes that seemed to radiate outwards. I knew subconsciously that trying to lie to her was futile. But then again I didn’t need to lie, just keep a few details back. After all if I started saying that I come from a universe where Mass Effect is a fictional universe they would quite quickly find me a nice padded room with no visiting hours.

The woman stood up and offered me her hand which I shook firmly.

“I am Commander Hannah Shepard, I am glad to see you up. You got a strong grip there.” she said smiling and released my hand

“Sam Knight. Thanks for rescuing me.” I replied

“Please sit. I know you have a lot of questions but I would also like to ask some. So let’s make a deal, question for a question?” she said and sat down opposite me. Corporal Kato and Sergeant Mills stood behind me right by the hatch.

“Ok, you start.” I said and tried to make myself comfortable in the seat.

“What can you tell me about the facility you were in?”

“Absolutely nothing. I don’t remember anything before waking up here. Last memory I have is visiting a museum in London. It was July 3^rd. Which brings me to my question, what date is today?” I said omitting the fact that was also 2017 and not 218X or whatever the current date actually was.

“February 12^th. You really remember nothing?”

“Well, I had a dream where a being with wings of fire poured metal into my chest but that’s about it. What year is it?”

“2173. What can you tell me about the visit to the museum?”

“It was a July, a bit warmer than I liked especially in London. I had been to the British museum before but I wanted to take my time to walk through it properly. I think I was near the entrance when I heard a loud bang and then I had the dream and then I woke up here. That is all.” I said

“Let me check something.” Hannah Shepard said and turned on her omni-tool. They looked far cooler in reality. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.

“By our records British Museum was the site of bombing by a radical ancient astronaut group on July 3^rd 2172. Six victims. Sam Knight is listed as dead on arrival to hospital. It seems whoever this group was that run that lab they kidnapped you to perform experiments.” she said reading from the report

“If everyone thinks you are dead no one will look for you. Clever.” I said

“You don’t sound angry or resentful.” she noted curiously

“Well, I don’t have any memories of their experiments and I am alive and intact.” I stated

“That is true. But there is the issue of what they did to you. While you were asleep we tried to scan you but there doesn’t seem to be anything out place, tried taking samples but whatever they did to you we can’t penetrate the second layer of your skin. A millimeter in and you are as tough as battle steel.” she said her eyes studying me.

“Hmm, well I can’t say I like the fact that they messed around with my body. Can I do a few tests?” I said

“Sure.” she said puzzled

“Stand back please.” I said and stood up, Hannah Shepard also stood up and took a few steps back.

Focusing inside, I felt the way through my body and when nothing felt out of place or wrong I swung my fist at the table. It wasn’t a very strong swing, I after all wasn’t planning on breaking my hand, just testing if the layer of the skin protected me against blunt force too. The results however surprised everyone. Instead of hitting the table and making me wince from pain my fist sunk into the table a few inches. A solid metal table. Lifting my arm I saw an impression of my fist.

“Well that was unexpected” I said and examined my fist. The others in the room of course were surprised but they didn’t possess all the information, they didn’t know that I hadn’t swung with all my strength or that the pain was minuscule. There was a slight cut on my knuckles and they oozed transparent liquid. In moments I saw the cuts close.

“You could say that. Can you not do any more tests, our quartermaster will not be very happy if more tables end up like this.” Hannah said

“Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry for the table. I didn’t expect that.” I said and sat down.

“Maybe we shall move to the medbay? We can do a few less intense tests there.” Hannah suggested.

Two hours later there were a couple more things I knew about my new self. The how of it however only presented questions. The chief medical officer Major Ray Shepard was not amused. After getting over the surprise of meeting both Shepards alive and well I wondered why only Hannah was mentioned. This must be the version of Shepard with spacer shepard then.

“You Mr Knight are a mystery I can’t seem to solve. Even attempts to do so end up in failure.” he said unhappily typing into a terminal

“What can you tell us anyway.” Hannah said putting a hand on her husbands shoulder and giving it a squeeze

“Well the obvious things first. Mr Knight here is 6ft 3inches tall, or 189cm if you prefer. He weighs 134 kilograms which is on the high side but you can see for yourself that none of it is fat.” Ray said and waved his hand at the mostly naked me standing on a treadmill. Until a few moments ago I was running on it. At 25 miles per hour. Without too much strain.

“His physical condition is comparable to the top athletes, including the genetically modified Alliance soldiers. He runs faster, hits harder, his reaction time is verging on super-human. He also has a second eyelid, transparent crystal considering the slight difference in refraction. Probably bulletproof or something. And his vitals after running for ten minutes at that the speed of 40 km/h is steady as if he was taking a light jog. You can get off there now.” Ray said and hit a key.

“So what am I?” I said not sure how to react to those words

“Superhuman. I read through the reports by the soldiers that were down there and looked at the footage recorded. From what I can gather the lab was trying to build a super-soldier. Since no records could be recovered we can only guess why and for whom they were doing it. The result however speaks for itself, or in your case yourself.” he said

“Supersoldier?” Hannah prompted

“Basically? Yes. To all scans you appear as human as me but you seem to be made of stronger stuff. You even bleed if that’s what you want to call it supercharged lymph liquid. It has traces of both medigel and omnigel in it. Your bones are denser, your muscles too. That is why you weigh so much.” Ray continued

“So what now?” I said dressing myself

“We report to the Captain and see what he says. You are an Alliance citizen but you are also legally dead. You are in a legal loophole. Let’s go.” Hannah replied

“Considering the process required I doubt that Alliance will try to research it, I saw what was down there, it was trial and error. You were incredibly lucky, the other two not so.” Ray said and gestured towards the other side of the medbay where the other two survivors were.

As we walked through the ship I decided to ask a few questions. After all I was incredibly curious who Shepard was in this version.

“So you and Ray are married?” I said casually

“Yes, for Twenty years now. Alliance brought us together.” she replied

“Any children?” I asked

“We have a daughter. Kate. She is 18. She joined the Alliance marines last year. She is the best of both of us.” Hannah said and smiled, I could tell that she felt proud of her.

“She must be one formidable person then judging by her parents.” I said

“She is. We are here. Captain Wu is waiting inside” Hannah said and signaled the marine by a hatch leading to what I guessed were the captains cabin.

Captain Wu was a tall, bald old man. He moved with the kind of precision that shows that despite his age he was still in total control of his body.

“Captain, may I present Mr Sam Knight.” Hannah said

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr Knight.” Captain said and offered me his hand

“Please call me Sam, I am not old enough to be called Mr Knight.” I said shaking his hand

“Of course. Sam. Now Hannah, what can you tell me about our guest here?” John Wu said turning his attention at his XO

Hannah Shepard summarized what she and her husband discovered about me In less than two minutes also presenting a datapad with the records. Captain Wu was in deep thought for another couple of minutes.

“Well, Sam. You present an interesting case. I think I know how we can help each other.” he said putting down the datapad and looking right into my eyes. His brown eyes seemed to shine with a mischievous light.

“Yes sir?” I said

“Hannah please leave us.” he said and Hannah saluted and left the compartment

“Your file says you were born in 2150 August 11 in Baltic District 2. Your parents took a chance and went to Elysium but a shuttle accident in 2165 left you to fend for yourself. Graduated from school with above average record and then there is just a string of odd jobs.” Captain Wu said

“I did what I could sir.” I said and wondered how close is my real history to the one here. Thankfully back in my own timeline my parents were alive and well.

“Don’t you have a dream? Something you want to do?” He asked

“Well, I wouldn’t mind exploring space. Owning your own ship also seems appealing” I said

“Why didn’t you join Alliance?”

“Just didn’t seem to be the right fit at the time. I was never much a people person.” I answered

“Well, here is my proposal to you. Alliance has a unit that has people with backgrounds similar to yours. Independent operators, highly trained, highly skilled. With your abilities you could be invaluable. I won’t lie to you it’s dangerous work but the pay is good and you can do a lot of good there. Serve as the shield and sword of the Alliance. Very appropriate considering your surname. What do you say?” Captain Wu said and offered me his hand

I knew that he was trying to recruit me into some kind of black ops program. If I had been my former self I would have declined. But here, knowing what I know, having this new body I knew that to stop the Reapers, to help Shepard stop them I must have more than iron skin. I must have skills. I must have connections. If in my previous life I was nobody then here I must be somebody. Maybe I can be that pebble that pushes the scales over and the galaxy doesn’t go up in flames.

“Well...It’s not like I have anything better to do. I accept.” I said grasping firmly his hand.

Secondary Codex Entry/Alliance Navy/Carriers/SSV Einstein

SSV Einstein is a currently serving command ship in the Alliance 5th fleet. Originally constructed as a Hermes-class carrier in 2158 it was named SSV James Cook and it formed the core of the 17th Rapid Response Group until 2166 when an accident during landing that damaged it's main flight deck. Instead of a costly repair that was required to rebuild the main flight deck Alliance Ship Procurement Bureau proposed to turn it into a command ship. With the new Independence-class carriers coming into service the plan was approved and in 2167 with the reconstruction finished the ship was renamed SSV Einstein.

SSV Einstein retains it's secondary flight deck giving it ability to launch and recover fighters and shuttles more easily than other non-carrier ships but the space that used to be the main flight deck has been repurposed to extend the ship's capabilities at command and control, medical and relief efforts as well as survey of unexplored star systems. The success of the ship lead to the reconstruction of the second Hermes-class carrier into SSV Hawking. Even with a lesser emphasis on direct combat strength SSV Einstein has been part of numerous combat missions, it's additional functions granting it superior capability when dealing with the turbulent Attican Traverse. More command ships are being constructed as new carriers are entering service.

SSV Einstein and it's sistership SSV Hawking are still referred to as carriers by both the public and the crews serving on them despite it being a misnomer and the clearly non-military naming of the ships. Their storied service history has made them widely known and has lead to many incorrectly assuming that Alliance carriers are named after important scientific figures in human history.

Chapter 2: Training montage

Chapter Text

14/08/2173 Hourglass Nebula, Ossun, Erinle

The alien version of mosquito buzzed away unhappy as it couldn't pierce my skin despite trying for the past five minutes which in an insects life must be a week or something. It is a liberating feeling to know that all the creepy crawlies can't pierce your skin. It was also helpful for when you had to lie in a swamp for two days waiting outside a compound for the VIP to arrive, without armour, kinetic barriers or any power sources just in case the compound's sensors were sensitive enough to pick it up.

Salarians sure knew how to pick a disgusting planet. I was pretty sure that if any humans found it first they wouldn't settle here on the account of smell alone given off by the toxic algae let alone the insects that routinely measured in inches.

The job was simple enough, get to the planet, find the compound and wait for the guy to arrive. When he arrives kill him and then exfil. It would never be disclosed what happened here but the salarians would get the message that Alliance doesn't take kindly to sheltering of known traitors and criminals. Not that I actually was part of Alliance in any official capacity. The rifle that I had was a standard Elkoss combine Reaper Mk7 rifle. You could find these in any weapon shop. Not that I actually paid for this one. My last job involved tangling with some turian arms smugglers. They had a few crates of weapons that in fact were still back on the ship that I relieved them of. Not that they would ever go looking for it. Alliance doesn't like anyone supplying separatists on Alliance colonies with weapons.

It had been two months since I had finished my training, two months of going out on missions. Always alone, always outnumbered. The orders arrived by untraceable omni-tool message, only a seal of red cross within a circle divided in half of black and white with the words Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam written on the outside of the circle. A quick extranet search pointed me towards Knights Templar but I was pretty sure that was just a ruse. Pretty sure.

The shuttle whined as it passed above me and went for the landing. Salarian shuttles looked like a supercar version of a normal shuttle, looking like they were flying even when standing still. As the shuttle landed I picked up the rifle and peered down the scope settling into a shooting position. Less then a minute later a human walked off flanked by two salarians, I was grateful that salarians were trying to keep this compound low key and hadn't installed kinetic barriers all around the facility. Six hundred meters to the target, even with the basic ballistic compensator that the rifle had, it was a shot I could now make quite easily. The rifle bucked against my shoulder and I saw the traitors head explode into mist. With the settings on my rifle set to heavy fragmentation shot it was to be expected. I folded the rifle and pressed it deep into the muck, in a few hours they wouldn't be able to find it, it would have sunk in too deep and in a few days the swamp would degrade the inner workings of it until it would just become an inert lump of alloy and composites. Then moving carefully I slid away from my position, it would take me the best part of today to hike back to where I left the turian smugglers ship. This brought the memories of my training back.

I died again. The records aboard the SSV Einstein were altered and I died again "due to complications". When the ship arrived back at Arcturus I was given a basic Alliance combat suit and shipped over to the station in a cargo shuttle. I was met with two men in the same basic Alliance armour that I was in, with helmets that obscured everything but our eyes. The helmet mikes distorted our voices just enough that even if we met again we wouldn't recognize each other.

They led me to another shuttle that took me to Bekenstein. What I didn't know at the time was that my training had begun the minute I stepped off the cargo shuttle. Everything and everyone I would meet for the next few months would be part of my training, every situation analyzed and studied by people whose combined combat experience could only be measured in thousands of years. Their task was not to make me or the other recruits into soldiers. Alliance did that well enough on it's own. Their task was to make us into operators like the Alliance N program or turian Blackwatch but completely deniable.

My first instructor was the pilot of the shuttle. As we broke through the outer layer of Bekenstein's atmosphere he stood up, walked into the passenger compartment where I was sitting wished me good luck with a wave of his hand and jumped out of the shuttle. There really wasn't much danger in the situation but the terror that I felt was quite real. Not that I realised it at the time. Switching on the autopilot and putting it into a landing sequence is harder than you think when you have no idea how to work the controls and when part of your brain is devoted to trying to make you scream like a scared little kid. Whoever designed the shuttle however must have been told to idiot proof it as much as possible. There was only one destination in the shuttle's computer. It would turn out to be the training base.

I was greeted by a man in full armour. He explained the rules to me which were simple. No real names. No sharing life stories or details of previous life. The only way out of the training for the next month was feet first. Then after the first month we were allowed to choose, to quit or to continue on.

At first the training seemed like the instructors wanted to kill me and the rest of the recruits. Twelve instructors from almost every species in the galaxy. Three humans, two asari, two turians, drell, quarian, krogan, elcor and even a volus. No salarians because there was no such thing as an ex-STG salarian. They seemed to take it as a personal challenge that a standard alliance combat knife could do no worse than scratch me. I would be lying if I said that I didn't think of quitting, every single night after that shuttle ride I went to sleep with the thought that if tomorrow was worse I will quit. It got worse but the same part of my soul that rebelled against moving on, rebelled against simply accepting that kindness also kept me from doing so.

And I learned that even my new body had limits. Oh at first it took time to brake through the limits imposed on my body by my own mind. My mind that was used to deal with my previous totally human body. But then when that limit was broken the instructors took me beyond it. Sparring with krogan in a test of strength and endurance, learning to deal with biotics, humans to show you just why the rest of the galaxy doesn't like us. However lifting the limits of my body was not as hard as the limitations of my mind. Drell with his perfect memory teaching to notice everything around you and recall it in an instant, volus explaining the intricacies of financial transactions and the way to trace them covertly. Quarian instructing us in the fine art of stealth, be it in a crowd or in the empty hallways that echo with every step. Turian former C-Sec officer showing how to investigate a crime scene and clean up after yourself. An elcor to explain everything you never wanted to know about toxins, poisons and their effects.

My final test came one night without any indication that it was coming. It started with me waking up and feeling something hot beside me. Even in the darkness without opening my eyes I could tell that it was an asari in my bed. Asari have a slightly hotter body temperature than humans, they come from a planet that is mostly covered in tropical jungle after all and a different skin texture than humans. Let me tell you, disentangling yourself from a woman, any woman is hard. Disentangling yourself from an asari huntress that had hundreds of years of experience and when your own hormones are screaming at you to just let her do what she wishes is a hundred times harder. Braking free from a kiss that was making my brain melt I caught her other arm, the one that wasn't below my waist and squeezed it just enough so that she would release the stiletto knife in her hand. Despite what Ray Shepard said my eyes were not bulletproof. The second poly-crystalline eyelid did give my eyes more protection but it worked as built in safety goggles rather than a helmet's visor.

Pinning her down, which was not hard given my strength and weight advantage I hesitated for a moment. She had arched her back just right giving me a full view and the seductive look in her eyes couldn't have been more promising. Instead of following up on the suggestion I jumped out of the bed as if it was a vorcha and not an asari in bed with me and went for my gun. It was a Devlon Industries Stinger Mk6. The standard pistol had more shots before overheating but I preferred the stopping power that the larger Stinger had. Before I could aim it I was however thrown in a biotic field through the open door. Combat against biotics was one of the things that was thought to me so I rolled with the momentum, luckily it was just a standard push and not something more advanced like Stasis which would have immobilized me in a mass effect field.

Without wasting time to stand up fully I half-crouched just enough so that I could roll sideways or jump away and pointed my gun at the door to my room. Kal'leena, the asari that tried to seduce and kill me, walked out her hands glowing with biotic energy, the bluish purple glow illuminating her whole naked form. The light show reminded me that I was also quite naked as a certain part of me reacted to her.

Instead of attacking however she tilted her head sideways.

"You owe me a hundred credits. He is not gay." she said loudly and a shadow separated from the corner and walked towards us cloaking field disengaging and revealing Knorr Vas Halat the quarian infiltration specialist that was also one of my instructors.

"Well he seemed a bit too curious of how I looked without a suit, for quarians that's pretty much a direct proposition. Are you sure? Maybe he is faking" he said

"Yeah, even if I knew nothing about human males I could tell." Kal'leena said

"Erm?" I said not really knowing what to say at this time.

"So how long has it been Sam? Don't worry we won't judge." Knorr said his tone implying otherwise

"A lifetime but never mind that. What is this?" I said before he could further speculate on the amount of sex I was getting or not getting as the case was

"A final test, which you passed with flying colours as you humans are fond of saying." Knorr said

"And the bit about me being gay?" I asked

"We had to decide who to send in. I won in that ridiculous game you humans do decide things. Stone, paper, cutters? We had a little side bet going." Kal'leena said motioning towards the quarian

"Rock, paper, scissors. I am glad you won. But could we get some clothes on before we continue with the conversation. You are a bit distracting." I said standing up and waving the gun in my hand in her direction. Shame was an emotion I learned to ignore during my training. And it seemed that Kal'leena wasn't against seeing me naked.

"Just a bit?" she said and turning around waltzed back into the room making her hips sway more than usually

"A test?" I asked looking at Knorr and he shrugged his shoulders and walked away so I followed Kal'leena into my room.

After getting dressed I decided to get some answers.

"Why is this a final test?" I asked

"We could train you and test you on nearly everything you can physically do and mentally can take, but the only one thing that could not be prepared for is the situation you just found yourself in. 112 trainees have passed through this facility, only twenty five have passed the final test. The test is individual. It's aimed to strike you where you are the least prepared, where you have the least amount of experience and confidence." Kal'leena explained

"What's next?" I ask pointedly trying to appear nonchalant

"Your training is finished, in the morning you will leave this base. After that you will be given a cover identity. They might have a mission lined up for you already. I do not know." Kal'leena said

"You know Knorr now owes you his life." I said after a brief silence

"How so?" she asks

"If I had woken up with him in my bed trying to seduce me with a knife in his hand it would have ended quite fatally. " I said

"He would have been fine. Knorr is as slippery as they come. Sometimes quite literally." Kal'leena replied

"So what would have happened if I went for it after I disarmed you?" I asked curious

"You should know by now that not every question gets an answer." she answered coyly

Taking off from the planet I quickly entered my flight plan into the orbital network, chatting for a few minutes with the traffic control guy. My cover had been that I was a freelance agent for an exotic vacation provider. The salarian seemed rather amused when I said that humans wouldn't come here even if someone paid them to.

My flight back to the Citadel was uneventful. The ship, more like a large shuttle that I had taken from the turians was surprisingly in good working order. I was already planning the next few days on the Citadel, leave the weapons in the usual warehouse, get the ship registered in one of my names. Maybe even take a few short cargo hops to solidify my cover as an independent cargo runner. My funding came primarily from my own efforts, all the weapons and armour that I got that I didn't need in my missions I would leave in the warehouse in the Wards and a few hours later I would get payment for them. I wasn't getting as much as I could selling them by myself but this way I didn't get asked awkward questions and I wasn't bringing attention to myself.

As the ship entered the Citadel arms and I was directed to a dock I marveled, not for the first time at the beauty of this place, it was hard to believe Reapers could actually build something this beautiful. Then again I wasn't exactly sure on the whole cosmological question of how a fictional universe could exist and if it exists is it still fictional. Did the people at Bioware create it or did it exist parallel to ours and some of it bled through into the minds of the creators back in my universe. I had thought of this question but I couldn't find an answer, likely only the being that sent me here knew for sure.

Landing the ship gently on a platform I took my time getting appropriately dressed, calf-high combat boots, 2170 version of traditional jeans but made out of fabric that had absolutely nothing to do with cotton being about ten times more comfortable, plain t-shirt and a real leather jacket. The jacket was another acquisition I had from a mission. An elcor collector of alien cultural items had been buying Earth culture related things by the shuttle load and then selling off the items that didn't interest him in a shop here on Citadel. The guy that I had just taken care of used the same shop to pass on information to his salarian handler. I had managed to convince the elcor that the items he was receiving had been stolen and that he would be in trouble if he didn't help catch the people who sold them to him. He graciously allowed to install a few hidden security sensors and being relieved that he wasn't held accountable gave me the jacket. The jacket also gave me enough room and cover to carry a Kessler Mk2, cheap and not very good but precisely something that a lone cargo runner would have in his possession.

Exiting the ship I allowed my omni-tool to connect to the Citadel network and not a second later I received a ping for several messages. As I got into one of the ever-present rapid transit cabs I scrolled through them noting the usual selection of messages. Mostly spam. How was it that even more than a hundred years into the future no one had invented reliable spam filters. One however was out of the ordinary. It seemed like the usual spam messages on first glance but on the second look I knew who it was from.

Dear Mr Ritter

Have you embraced eternity lately or are you waiting for another lifetime to pass?

Our staff of friendly and approachable asari maidens are always happy to entertain new clients.

Our office is located at Citadel Tayseri wards address of KLN0344.

For more information please call 7T3195HJ9A

The first and last sentences drew my attention, the last one especially since I remembered vividly the time when Kal'leena woke me up, it was 0344 on the clock. A quick extranet search later I found the address 7T3195HJ9A and directed my taxi there. It could be a trap but if I got the message right Kal'leena needed my help and I wasn't about to let her down.

Chapter 3: How to cook a hanar

Chapter Text

15/08/2173 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel

The address sent to me by Kal'leena led me to block of mixed warehouse and office units. It was not in the nice part of the ward, it was not even close to the nice part of the ward. Despite keepers doing most of the cleaning and upkeep there was still trash in this place, broken bottles, wrappers of bio-plastic from food intended for all kinds of species. The food waste rotting produced the kind of smell that reminded me of the salarian jungle. Just sweeter.

I took out a pair of AR glasses from my jacket's inside pocket and put them on, a pair of tiny cameras mounted in the frame would allow me to use them as binoculars including allowing me to see more in the light spectrum than a human eye can. I couldn't believe how useful they were and yet how cheap they were, a lot of people I have met here dismissed them as simple toys useful for games, reading, browsing the extranet on the go when you couldn't get comfortable with an omni-tool or a datapad but I had found them absolutely invaluable. The pair of glasses unlike more specialized military spec or even security spec visors didn't arouse suspicion. And yet their capabilities were almost as good as military spec visors that turians so loved to use and even many humans these days have been adopting that single-eye type of visor.

Looking at the office located at the address sent to me I switched on the glasses and then cycled through the various vision modes, one of which included Infra Red. But unfortunately it seemed that the office was well insulated. I remembered an article written back on my Earth how the police was trying to see if it could use wifi signals to see through the walls. Switching to my omni-tool I quickly found the network node that was the closest to the building and connected through it. A few minutes later with a quick program I managed to find on the extranet I could use the wireless network signal as a kind of radar.

Armed with at least some way to see past the walls I quietly dropped down to the street level. I couldn't go in guns blazing without knowing the real situation and trying to sneak into a building used by another operative was just asking to get my ass blown up, tasered or something worse. So I went in the front door. As a customer. After all I did receive an invitation.

Instead of Kal'leena the front desk was occupied by a hanar. I found hanar comical and vaguely disgusting. In games they just looked pink and squishy. In real life you could tell that they were made of flesh, that flesh maybe due to their aquatic origins looked wet most of the time and the way they moved out of the water frankly would have given the old me nightmares. They simply looked wrong to my strictly terrestrial brain, in fact they looked wrong to almost everyone but two groups, drell and salarians. Which was understandable since drell had been living with then for generations and salarians are amphibians so for them it just seems natural.

"This one greets you, this ones face name is Darolor. This one is sorry to say that this office is currently closed. This one apologizes and hopes you find what you are looking for elsewhere." the hanar said his bio-luminescence almost strobe like. Without my glasses I would have simply known that the hanar is nervous. With the glasses and the program that automatically processed and translated the various light sequences into words I could however see that the hanar was talking to someone else. A useful skill in a situation like this but not surprising, their brains did evolve to control several tentacles so it was logical that they could separate their minds into two streams. The second stream wasn't as sophisticated as the first but it was enough for him to signal about my arrival. His exact words were in fact, human, large, danger, maybe.

I grinned. I knew that hanar hated seeing teeth, something about ancient predators in the seas of their homeworld.

"No worries, mate. I'll probs come back. Cannae show me the girlies eh?" I said putting on my best ignorant human voice. Using different accents confused the translators sometimes. His brief confusion helped as I got closer to the front desk. The radar showed me that there are three more humanoid shapes in the back. I still didn't know the real situation and if I didn't leave quickly enough I doubted in the good intentions of the humanoid just behind the door leading to the back office. So I decided to act. While I was not a fan of shoot first ask questions later policy in my training it was made clear that sometimes that's the only policy available.

"This one is sorry..." the hanar started to say at the same time as I vaulted over the desk and jammed my right hand into his body.

"I forgive you" I said as the hanar twitched for a moment as the electricity run through it's body from my omni-tool and slumped into a gelatinous blob on the floor.

Without stopping and preserving my momentum I hung my head low put my left shoulder forward and rammed into the door. The cheap metal and plastic construction gave and the door simply came off the frame. Useful for me since that allowed me to bulldoze the guy behind the door who turned out to be a batarian. I could hear the solid thunk when the back of his head connected with the metal floor as I fell with the door.

Obviously this couldn't have gone unnoticed so I rolled sideways, off the batarian and the door still laying flat on the floor. Instead of drawing a gun, I wasn't about to start a shootout where a hostage could be involved I flicked my omni-tool menu to the combat section and selected an Overload. I had less time than I thought as the second batarian appeared from around the corner and seeing me opened fire a moment before I could use an Overload.

Despite having a damage resistant skin it's not quite bulletproof. He got two shots off before I hit him with an Overload and both shots hit me, one scraped painfully along the side of my head and the second one hit me in the shoulder the small grain sized bullet burying itself about a two centimetres deep. Nothing serious. Walking up to the twitching batarian I kicked him in the head and he went limp. A mild concussion is better than death in my opinion and I wasn't about to go ask his.

Walking around the corner I found the third humanoid. It wasn't Kal'leena but another asari I haven't seen before. With a slave collar around her neck. A collar made specifically for asari and other biotics, it connected right into the biotic amp and would shock the wearer if they tried to use biotics.

"Hah, anti-biotic collar." I couldn't help myself saying that knowing full well that asari would not see the humour in my statement even if she had not been just help captive by thugs so I decided to do the thing I came here for. Rescue an asari.

Either because the batarians were not that smart or because the collar wasn't intended to be a long-term solution it was not password locked so all I had to do was disable the power using my omni-tool. I went to untie the asari and noted that she was already halfway done getting out of her own restraints. Definitely not the smartest bunch of batarians.

"I am Mr Ritter. I got a message to come here." I said

"Thank you for the rescue, I am Erinnia. I sent the message. Mistress Kal'leena instructed me to send it in an emergency. She was taken by a squad of batarians commanded by the second hanar." Erinnia said

"Do you know what these guys wanted?" I asked puzzled, I could have guessed what this was about if it was anyone else but hanar? Usually they would send drell for missions like these, not hire a bunch of batarian thugs.

"We redirected a shipment meant for Kahje last week with artifacts. I don't know the details only Mistress Kal'leena does. She is taking them to our warehouse. We have an aircar nearby. We have to hurry!" she said and grabbed my arm. The same arm that was attached to the shoulder that got shot. I winced inwardly. The little slug hadn't stayed together but fragmented into smaller pieces. It will take a while for my body to push out those shards and repair the damage. No more than a few hours but until then my arm would be sore every time I moved it.

The aircar that Erinnia led me to looked like an angry krogan had headbutted it a few times. The aircars used on Citadel were built to be reliable but they were also built by asari who for all their technical prowess surpassing even salarians were not known for their sturdy construction methods.

"Does it actually fly?" I asked dubious

"What? Oh, the aircar? Yes of course." Erinnia said looking embarrassed, "it's mostly my fault, Mistress tries to teach me how to pilot it properly without the VI assistance but landing it is more than I can do now, and turning."

"You be the navigator then." I said and jumped into the drivers seat. X3M speeder or aircar as it is mostly known is a stupid vehicle. To my 21st century human eyes. It relies entirely on it's mass effect core for flight. It has a small array of thrusters in the back but without a mass effect core working you can't even change direction. Frankly they looked to me like a flying coffin. It didn't help that the asari style seating involved half-lounging in the seat. Aircars along with the asari designed elevators were the two weirdest things that no one seemed to question. Salarians and turians had plenty of their own designs for personal use and on their colonies but anywhere else you would see asari aircars and elevators. Considering that salarians found the Citadel not that long after asari I had a theory that the asari redesigned their elevators to be slow to drive salarians mad. Or make them die of old age.

"Do you have a plan?" Erinnia asked

"Storm in, shoot the bad guys. I am not geared for anything else and I doubt we have time to do it stealthily. Or do you have any suggestions?" I said glancing at her

"No, I am not much of a fighter, my biotics are not impressive. I usually help mistress Kal'leena with VI security and other remote access issues." she said meekly

"So a hacker then? I am guessing you didn't actually pay for that artifact shipment." I said as I banked the aircar following the route on the navigation screen

"Yes, that is why Mistress Kal'leena hired me." Erinnia replied

The route led us through the whole station into the Zakera ward's docks. As I circled around the area pointed out for me by Erinnia I saw a batarian shuttle docked. So it meant that either they found what they were looking for or they were pretty sure that it would happen very soon. Which meant that Kal'leena didn't have much time. Disabling the safeties on the aircar I turned to Erinnia.

"Hold on. We are crashing." I said and flipped the aircar pointing it's nose downwards. At the last moment I leveled off and braked, feeling the mass effect core behind me flip the direction in which it was pushing. The car skidded across the area in between the dock and the warehouse sending several crates flying before crashing into a container. The impact was harsher than I intended but it did what I had intended to do. It got us down fast and if anyone was looking it would have looked like an accident. Jumping out of the car with my Kessler Mk2 in hand I quickly scanned the surroundings.

"Wait here." I said to Erinnia, a biotic would have been useful but without the experience she would be a liability

Four batarians outside, two of them clearly workers, no armour, no weapons and the other two were guards, armour and weapons but no helmets. It seemed that they hadn't anticipated any trouble as both of the guards weapons were folded, shotguns by the looks of it. Without giving them a chance to draw them I aimed and Kessler barked four times. Phasic rounds to bypass shields. Both guards had a neat pair of holes appearing in their skulls. Kessler didn't have enough power to cause massive damage and the Phasic round mod sacrificed damage dealing capability for shield penetration.

The workers had enough time to see what happened but not to react in any other way but stare at me and the two dead batarians. The training said that it was better to kill them, no witnesses and all that, but while I had no problem carrying out a kill order against someone who deserved it I was not about to gun down two guys who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if they were batarians. I doubted that as workers they had a good life anyway, Hegemony's caste society places them just above slaves. Jogging up to one of the dead guards I took the shotgun that was still folded and in his back brace and unfolded it.

It was an AT-12 Raider. Not a bad shotgun but really only effective at close range. A fear weapon or a riot control weapon rather than one to be used in a serious fight. Without bothering to search the other guard I sprinted towards the warehouse. I saw the door open but instead of trying to shoot through the door at an unknown I shot the window right next to it and dived forward crashing through it. Three batarians were there. One that was opening the door and two behind him. I shot the one opening the door twice in the back and then threw the overheated shotgun at the one right behind him. While he was distracted I lunged forward and drove my fist straight into the third one's face. I could feel the bones crunch inward from my strike. Without stopping I let the momentum carry me and whipped my foot across the second batarians legs bringing him down. Quickly straightening out I stomped down on the batarians neck crushing his larynx and probably a few vertebrae.

I could hear shouts further inward so I grabbed another gun from a dead batarian, this time a Banshee assault rifle by ERCS. It was made for asari or batarian hands rather than turian so I could use it comfortably.

My glasses couldn't provide me the interior map of this place, too many metal containers reflecting the signal so I could only rely on my own senses and reaction speed. A few dozen steps inside I saw a glimpse of an open area and just as I was rounding another container I saw a batarian. He also saw me at the same time but I was faster and while he was still bringing his gun up I let the Banshee whine in a short burst. The heat indicator went halfway up and a dead batarian fell backwards, his own shot going up and wide over me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something pinkish and I was already turning to the new threat when a searing pain followed by a retort from an SMG hit me. I fell forward, towards the dead batarian and rolled through the fall dropping a rifle and snatching the batarians AT-12 in the process. Before I had the chance to aim it at the hanar who shot me he was hit by a singularity.

Now, a singularity isn't usually fatal to humanoids especially if they are in armour unless someone detonates it. All that you usually experience is a few seconds of flailing around in the air making yourself a perfect target but that's about it. Neither the event horizon nor the actual mass effect field are strong enough to do any damage. Just loss of mobility and disorientation from the mass effect field interacting with your inner ear.

For hanar however it was a different story. Without the support structure provided by bones…It doesn't end well. The hanar was immobilised, it's implanted mass effect generator that allowed it to float outside of water was not strong enough to counter the singularity but it held him securely in place. The same could not be said about it's tentacles as they were outside the mass effect field of the implant. A series of quiet, wet pops sounded as the tentacles got pulled into the singularity. The hanar screeched or rather his translator did as it strobed in pain.

"Thanks." I said as Kal'leena walked into my view and I noticed that there were several burn marks going along her neck and disappearing behind a collar. I didn't have to ask what the hanar had done. Despite their general weakness outside of water they like some of Earth's jellyfish produced a toxin that could produce strong chemical burns. Judging by the way she held her left arm it was also not the only injury she had suffered.

Instead of answering she took the AT-12 from my hands and pointing it at the hanar still in the immobilizing pull of the singularity pulled the trigger until the shotgun overheated pulping it and destroying the mass effect generator holding it away from the singularity. When the singularity ended a moment later the hanar looked like a shredded party ballon. Or a pile of pink jello.

"Well I am not eating balli'tak ever again." I said picking myself up, for those unfamiliar with asari cuisine, balli'tak was a bright pink asari jello but unlike the Earth variety it was savoury and made from a Thessian version of a crab.

Kal'leena was about to say something in return but instead she snorted and laughed. Looking at her laughing I felt the adrenaline abate and couldn't help but join in. And that is how Erinna found us. Injured, holding on to each other and laughing maniacally over a pile of shredded hanar.

Secondary Codex Entry/Weapons/Upgrades/Phasic ammunition

Phasic round modification is one of the three shield piercing ammo mods used in the galaxy. The modification is inserted into the barrel replacing one of the accelerator coils. It flash vaporises the outer layer of the round converting it into a charged plasma envelope. The loss of mass reduces the impact energy of the round as it strikes the target but the outer plasma envelope allows for superior kinetic shield penetration as the kinetic shields are simply not designed to intercept plasma. Despite the ability to practically ignore a kinetic shield there are several drawbacks, the plasma envelope only lasts over short distances, multi layer kinetic shields completely negate any shield penetrating advantage they have and both loss of acceleration and mass of projectile reduce armour piercing capability. Most effective use of Phasic rounds is against targets with cheap kinetic shields and light or no armour. Medium armour and above as well as multi layer kinetic shields are enough to make phasic rounds useless in a combat situation.

Chapter 4: Embrace Eternity

Chapter Text

Seeing Erinna's face cycle between puzzled and horrified as she took in the scene sent us into another bout of laughter. A few minutes later we managed to calm down and Kal'leena led us back to the middle of the warehouse where she sat down on one of the crates there.

"So what was this about?" I asked curious

"The contents of that container." Kal'leena said gesturing towards an open container that had several crates already pulled out of it. "Two weeks ago we got word that some batarian officials got in touch with one of the more radical hanar Enkindler sects. Usually we wouldn't have bothered with this type of thing but this time was different. Unlike the usual offers to sell ancient prothean trinkets as religious artifacts these batarians wanted to sell active prothean tech. One of them included a glowing ball that supposedly granted visions. There was a problem however."

"Anyone who touched it went mad." I said and Kal'leena nodded

"Yes. We know prothean tech sometimes gives you mental images or feelings but visions was unheard of. Whether it's biological or mental difference between us and protheans we are incapable of fully interfacing with prothean tech, maybe it is some kind of safety mechanism at work. IF these orbs didn't have them then the knowledge that they could grant if safely harnessed..." Erinna continued

"You can't harness it. We have to destroy them. Now. Which crate is it in?" I said and checked the shotgun hoping that it would be enough, it was never made clear in the games how tough those Leviathan mind control balls were.

"They have already unpacked it, it's there on the ground." Kal'leena said and looked puzzled at me as I rushed around the small pile of crates that hid the orb from me. It looked exactly as the ones from Leviathan dlc, translucent shining with soft white light.

"I hope this is enough." I said and leveled the shotgun on it.

"You can't! Prothean knowledge inside them could catapult the galaxy into a golden age. So far all that every species in the galaxy has dealt with has been scraps, bits and pieces of prothean tech. An intact, unlocked repository of knowledge could provide insights into technology that we could only dream about." Kal'leena stopped me

"That is not prothean." I said thinking what I could reveal to them. I couldn't let this thing remain active. Indoctrination be it Reaper or Leviathan in origin was as far as I knew a one way street. Once it's done there was no way back. Even now it was likely affecting us.

"How do you know?" Kal'leena asked and I could see a faint biotic glow around her healthy arm. I sighed. This was the last thing I needed right now, a fight with the people I actually came to rescue over a damn Leviathan indoctrination orb.

"You, I know you can hear me. I know you are watching. I know who you are. I know what you do. And I know what you are hiding from. We are all going to end up fighting them soon enough. Now let's agree to stay out of each others way. After all fighting each other only helps them. Do we have a deal Leviathan?" I said addressing the orb. For a moment I thought my gamble had failed but the light within the orb winked and then it started to dim, switching off, until it was just a dull obsidian glass ball. I took that as a yes.

I let out a breath I had been holding, relieved and then sat down on a nearby crate. Talking a Leviathan into abandoning it's attempts to indoctrinate people. That was already an achievement. I knew that Leviathans preferred secrecy and anonymity but they were also gigantic cuttlefish aliens with preference for mind control and slavery.

"You know I didn't really think this would work." I said putting the shotgun down

"Sam, can you please explain this?" Kal'leena said her voice shaken, she walked up to me and gingerly put her healthy arm on my shoulder as if afraid that touching me might somehow be dangerous. Considering she just saw me address a glowing ball that she believed was prothean in nature and the ball listened to me I could understand her reaction.

"Let's get somewhere secure first. My ship should be safe enough." I said not wishing to discuss the things I knew within an earshot of the Leviathan ball. Who knows if Leviathans could still hear through it even in it's passive state.

"But you will explain when we get there?" she persisted

"Yeah, fine. Let's just get out of here. We should also probably call the cleaners." I replied and tapped my omni-tool copying the warehouses location into the message and sending it on. They will know what to do with everything that's here. There was just one last thing I had to to first. My initial response to shoot it was stupid. I had no idea if it would just bounce the projectiles back. Looking around I dug into a few opened crates and found some kind of metal bar. I took this bar and then swung with all my strength at the Leviathan ball. The first strike bent the bar slightly and made a tiny crack in the ball. I struck it twice more until the ball was covered in cracks. That should stop it from getting activated again.

After borrowing an aircar that belonged to the batarians we took a short and silent ride to my ship. Once we got inside and I did my best at first aid for Nel'leena we sat down in the cargo bay. The only place big enough for everyone really in ship like this.

"Now, tell me." she said and I could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes that she won't be distracted this time.

"I think it's easier to show you." I said and taking her hand put it against the side of my head. Touch is not necessary for a meld but it does help and I guessed that considering what she has been through earlier and the painkillers in her blood now, she needed that extra boost. And it was easy to understand gesture. Mind melding despite what some extranet articles will have you believe is still quite a private thing for asari. It's an implication of trust, to let someone into your mind.

"If that is your wish." she steadied her breathing with eyes closed and then opened them again, this time totally black."Embrace eternity." I knew this was coming but it was still a bit creepy to see. Cool, but creepy.

What most asari don't want you to know is that they can't really read your mind unless you allow them. Only the strongest of matriarchs could even attempt to rip the knowledge out of someone's head and even then it's a risky proposition for both parties. Between two asari it is easier as both share the workload needed to initiate and hold the mind meld. With one asari and a non-asari all the stress and effort is shouldered by the asari. The recipient of the mind meld needs to be relaxed and allow the asari to look into their mind.

I hoped that I had enough control to direct Kal'leena only to what she needed to see. Leviathans. Reapers. Reaper war. I did kinda see it through the eyes of my Shepard but since I looked a lot like my custom version of him now I wasn't that bothered for her to see a few glimpses of him. He was me after all in a way, standing alone in the face of everything the universe threw at him. I was in the middle of showing her protheans when something changed. I could feel the connection get stronger, as if a wave had just crashed against the cliff of my memory. Then the memories of our previous meeting floated up. Along with my thoughts and feelings at the time. And a few memories that were definitely not mine. Focusing on the kiss we shared. My feelings and memories of the moment blending into her memories and feelings of the moment. Then the connection broke and I was back in the cargo hold. Kal'leena slumped against me, her head on my shoulder, her breath hot and ragged. I was faintly disoriented, one of the side effects of mind meld breaking abruptly. But remembering a simple meditation exercise from my old universe, I inhaled, held my breath for a second then exhaled centering myself.

"Did you see?" I asked and she simply nodded in reply

"What's wrong?" I asked concerned

"Your mind is too strong, it's like riding a storm that keeps throwing you at the cliffs. Your emotions, feelings are too strong. Too much." she said breathlessly and fainted

"What?" I asked puzzled looking at Erinna, who seemed to be blushing for some reason

"She must have been too tired." Erina replied

"I see." I said, not that I could actually say much more about this. Asari for all their centuries of sharing their culture with the galaxy somehow managed to keep more than a few things private. Things that you can't find even on the extranet like the Ardat-Yakshi. I guessed this was another thing like that but more embarrassing rather than life-threatening.

"It's very embarrassing, that usually happens only with maidens or inexperienced. Your mind must be exceptional." Erinna said and blushed even more confirming my guess

"Thanks I guess? Anyway let's get her somewhere more comfortable." I said and lifted Kal'leena in my arms and walked towards the small crew area that was tucked away right at the front of the cargo hold. I put her on my bed since the other one was still turian standard and I doubted that sleeping on something that hard is actually restful. No doubt that turians were so stiff. I rolled my eyes at myself for making such a bad joke.

A few hours later Kal'leena walked out of the crew quarters and saw me and Erinna re-arranging the cargo hold. There wasn't much else to do as we waited so might as well do something useful. I had been lucky and whatever that SMG was the hanar had used it wasn't high powered and it didn't penetrate deep. So while it wasn't comfortable I was more bothered about my now destroyed jacket. It had been such a nice one too and now it had holes in it, front and back. Frankly I wasn't quite sure what would I do if I got a round stuck somewhere important, going to the standard medical clinic was useless and finding someone with industrial strength cutting instruments and medical background didn't seem like a likely option. That gave me an idea to contact Ray Shepard and ask him a few questions about that. He knew I was still alive, he had been one of two doctors here that have actually examined me and I felt that Ray was a trustworthy man. Otherwise Hannah would have never married him. That was the impression I got from meeting them. Not like I had any other options at the moment for qualified medical help.

"How are you?"I asked when Kal'leena got closer

"Fine, next time I will be more careful." she said

I decided to ignore the bit about next time. I remembered the last thing swirling in the mind meld before the connection broke but I wasn't going to mention it.

"Did you see enough?" I asked

"More than enough. I am not sure I can even believe it but I know you do. I don't know how but you have seen it but you have and once you know where to look it's impossible not to see the connections. And we saw that orb react. I believe you. The question is what do we do now?" Kal'leena said her eyes determined and looking straight into mine

"We?" I asked

"Yes, we. After showing me all that you can't expect me to simply ignore it." she replied

"What are you talking about?" Erinna chimed in confused

Kal'leena looked at me but I shrugged, Erinna was her associate, I didn't know anything about her so it would have to be Kal'leena to decide how much to tell her.

"Sam showed me evidence that there is danger to the whole galactic society. We have time to prepare but we can't make it public. Not yet anyway. Not without very strong evidence. So we have to prepare for a war that is coming covertly while not arousing enough suspicion that the Spectres and C-sec would come down on our heads, not to mention STG, asari huntresses, turian Cabals or human N7's." she explained and Erinna fidgeted nervously

"That's a lot of people to avoid alerting." she said

"I know but I also know a few people we can trust with this and will help us. However it's not time for them to know yet. So we will have to do this as covertly as possible. We will have to mask our intentions." I said

"Erinna, I need you to contact our friends on Lusia and get in touch with Jarrg. We will need his expertise." Kal'leena ordered and Erinnia rushed out of the ship.

Looking back at me Kal'leena had lost some of that spirit that she used to command Erinnia just now.

"Was this your plan from the start? Is that why you joined the Unit in the first place?" she asked

"Well, I needed the experience and I needed the training. I also needed connections no normal person could get. This seemed like a good way to get all three." I answered

"How do you even live with this? Knowing this? How do you even sleep at night? I don't remember most of it but even the few things that remain in my mind are enough to make me want to crawl into a corner and sob. End of everything. Death of billions. I am 432 years old. I was there for Geth war. My gene-mother was a quarian and my mother simply could not leave even after he died. So I was there for the beginning of it. I saw the kind of war synthetics could unleash upon us. That was 278 years ago and it still haunts me. What you showed me was orders of magnitude beyond that. How do you deal with it?" Kal'leena said her voice full of pain. I had not known this but it explained her easy camaraderie with Knorr back when she was one of my instructors.

"As I was told by the person who recruited me into the Unit, I have an appropriate name for my task. To serve as the sword and shield of humanity. I am here to do this. Hopefully not alone." I replied. What else could I say? That I was inter-dimensional soul and mind transfer and I was sent here to prevent the flow of history as I know it from a series of games? My thoughts strayed for a moment towards Shepard. I needed to check up on the future Commander and see what she has been up to. After all she was the only one I knew for sure that could fight against Reapers and win.

"Not anymore you are not. As I said you can't get rid of me now." she said and smiled, "so what's your plan?"

"I need money. Loads of it. I also need people I can trust. Need weapons, supplies, ships and bases to operate from. But first I think I need better weapons and armour." I said listing off things. Really my plan was to create a good version of Cerberus. No illegal experiments and no assassinations of Alliance admirals.

"I have contacts that either can get you the supplies you need or know someone else who can. I am afraid I can't help you with money. I have been a huntress for the past three centuries." Kal'leen said

"Don't worry, I have a plan for that." I said and a smirk formed on my face. The ship I was in gave me an idea. I knew the things that I needed, I needed supplies, bases and ships. I also knew who had all those things. Pirates, slavers, mercs. Keep what I needed and sell the rest.

"I don't know why but seeing that expression on your face makes me worried. I will go try to find something to eat." Kal'leena said and walked away leaving me alone to my thoughts.

There were several things I needed to do before starting my plan. First I needed armour and weapons modified for me, cooldown based weapons were useful but heatsinks allowed to for more firepower. Maybe there was a way of merging two and creating a hybrid. I needed to make sure that I wasn't actually working for Cerberus. I was quite worried about that at the start but when half of my instructors were not human and there was not a Cerberus logo in sight I had put it out of my mind. Now I needed to make sure. I also needed to contact Ray about a few medical questions and check up on Kate Shepard. Well I could do the last two at the same time. I didn't have a doubt in my mind that I was going to be quite busy for the foreseeable future so I wanted to enjoy this bit of downtime as much as I could given the circ*mstances. I followed Kal'leena towards the crew quarters, there was a small galley in there and I know I had stashed a few packs of instant coffee there. A few minutes later I sat down with a mug of steaming coffee and started to type a message on my omni-tool.

Secondary Codex Entry/Small Arms/Heat sinks

Currently in the galaxy two ways to manage your weapons excess heat are used. Most common one is using a large internal non-removable heat sink that absorbs the waste heat generated by the weapon. The heat sink continuously passively vents heat into the environment however if the weapon's rate of fire exceeds the passive cooling rate an active heat vent is engaged in a form of expelling some small percentage of the cooling medium as steam.

The second approach is to have a single use detachable heat sink, commonly known as a thermal clip that is capable of storing only a certain amount of heat until it fuses and is incapable of absorbing any more heat requiring replacement. Smaller than a traditional non-removable heat sink it is also much cheaper as it can be constructed from cheaper materials and low grade omni-gel using the simplest flash forges.

Each approach has it's advantages and disadvantages but the large internal heat sink is currently most popular method. It simplifies the supply lines for active combat units, forces the soldier to be careful when aiming, discouraging the spray and pray tactic. It rose to popularity during the Krogan Rebellions among the turian troops as it allowed for units even totally cut off from supply lines to continue fighting. And as the turians remain the galaxy's largest armed force they are also the galaxy's largest customer for armaments of all kinds. They set the standards for various Citadel small arms regulations. With that in mind companies that make small arms prefer to design their weapons with the internal heat sink as standard.

Asari huntresses have been known to use thermal clip based weapons but as with all asari combat units it's a matter of personal preference. Thermal clip weaponry is slightly more popular in Terminus systems, mostly due to their lower complexity and the ability to convert any weapon with a broken internal heat sink to use thermal clips. Several arms dealers buy broken or worn out weapons from Citadel space, retrofit them to use thermal clips and sell them on. Such weapons are not as reliable as Citadel standard and generally are not as effective but the decrease in cost is a satisfactory exchange for their customers in Terminus.

Chapter 5: Vorcha attempt to cook

Chapter Text

Timeline so far.

11/08/2150 – Sam Knight is born

20/01/2153 – Hannah and Ray Shepard are married

11/04/2154 – Kate Shepard is born

03/07/2172 – Radical ancient astronaut group bombs the British Museum killing Sam Knight

11/02/2173 – In a raid on a rumored slaver staging ground Alliance navy battle group finds an illegal laboratory performing experiments on unwilling human subjects. The goal was assumed to be a creation of a super-soldier by Major Ray Shepard the ranking medical officer aboard SSV Einstein. Sam Knight with the mind of a person from 21st century where Mass Effect is a game is found and brought aboard the SSV Einstein along with two other survivors.

12/02/2173 – Sam Knight is recruited into the Unit, a secretive organization existing outside the Alliance chain of command tasked with being the secret sword and shield of humanity. Sam Knight officially dies a second time.

18/06/2173 – Sam Knight completes his training for the Unit

14/08/2173 – Sam Knight assassinates Jed Shu a former Alliance Navy intelligence operative who killed an agent and two analysts when they discovered him selling information on human colonies to batarian slavers.

15/08/2173 – Sam Knight receives a call for help from Kal'leena one of the instructors from his training which leads him to a Leviathan indoctrination orb that was sold by batarians to a hanar religious group as an artifact of Enkindlers.

16/08/2173 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel

Kal'leena was watching Sam sleep from under half-lidded eyes when Erinna came back. Sam had gone off to sleep and she needed time to sort out her thoughts and meditate.

"Mistress are you alright now? Your control?" Erinna asked

"I am fine. I would say it is embarrassing to lose control but his mind is different than any I have met. I am not sure that many could be able to resist the lure, his mind is focused almost unnaturally. It is like a blade of a sword, forged into a beauty of purpose, form given shape by pure purpose. It seems almost unnatural in a way. I know that it could be too dangerous to meld with him but a part of me just wants to walk over there and do just that." Kal'leena answered

"But you won't mistress?" Erinna asked

"No, I am not going to do that. I am old enough to know better. I am not ready for children yet. I could not risk it right now. Not with the things he has shown me." Kal'leena said with sadness in her voice

"Mistress, who is he?" Erinna asked

"Human, Sam Knight." Ka'leena answered simply turning towards Erinna

"Of course mistress." Erinna said thinking that Kal'leena simply didn't want to reveal his secret and sighed

"Erinna, I would tell you if I knew. But all that I know only makes me ask that question even more. He is a puzzle. A puzzle that I fear we are not meant to solve." Kal'leena said turning back to look at Sam.

After waking up and taking of the usual morning business, I noted another thing in my to do list. Get human showers. Turian ones have only two modes, mist or rather unpleasant needles. Just because my skin could actually take it didn't mean I was ok with that. And considering the yelp I heard when Erinna was in the shower I doubted that asari liked it either. Both of them had stayed over citing that their office and apartments could be watched.

"Kal'leena do you know any good weapon and armour masters here on Citadel that can do discrete orders?" I asked when all three of us were sitting around our makeshift table. I knew that my old self would have been more than a little distressed sitting, drinking, eating on boxes filled with all manner of weapons but right now I somehow felt it totally appropriate. And it wasn't like we had any choice. The shuttle might be useful but it wasn't big enough to contain a proper galley. The one it had was just barely big enough for two people to squeeze in side by side.

"Erinna?" Kal'leena said and looked at Erinna

"Yes, mistress, Jarrg said he will be ready to receive you this morning. He is also hoping that you remembered your promise from last time." Erinna replied

"I am sure his real words were far less polite than 'hoping' I remembered my promise." Kal'leena said amused

"Yes, mistress, you are quite right." Erinna replied

"Jarrg?" I asked wondering what kind of promise would it be

"He is a krogan master craftsman and that means he makes weapons and armour. His work might be expensive but he has nearly a thousand years of experience doing what he does, you can't get anyone better than him." Kal'leena said

"What about that promise? Is it a problem?" I asked

"No, Jarrg knows I visit human space often and I promised him that I will bring him cookies. For some reason every krogan I have met that tried human cookies goes crazy for them. Someone could make a fortune if they managed to get a freighter full of them to Tuchanka. And start a war. I don't understand it, I even got a doctor friend of mine to analyze some just in case there were some kind of chemical compound in them that affected krogan more than humans or asari. But he didn't find anything. Krogan simply love cookies." Kal'leena explained looking puzzled

"Do you have cookies for him?" I asked stifling a laugh

"I think it would be better if you bring them, here the address of the warehouse where I stored a container full of them. Pick a selection and then come meet us at his shop." Kal'leena said sending a message to my omni-tool

"I am off then." I said finishing the last of my coffee went to gear up. This time I would be prepared even if this was literally a cookie run.

Later, Zakera Ward lower levels

Arriving at the warehouse I was met with a rather inaccurate hail of gunfire coming from a group of vorcha camped out in front of it. While I had kinetic barriers and a hardsuit this time the aircar wasn't so lucky. It only had basic anti-collision barriers and they were not designed to hold out against gunfire. So, second time in as many days I crashed the aircar. Into the group of vorcha that fired at me. Not on purpose this time, I was already going for a landing when they opened fire so their only accomplishment was bringing the aircar on their heads and destroying a perfectly good aircar.

I was not angry, just frustrated. Citadel the shining beacon of galactic civilisation. Yeah, full of vorcha and batarians in the lower levels of it's Wards. So it was not anger but frustration that made me forgo drawing a gun and going for my knife. It was a turian design, a straight blade about 15cm long and nearly five centimetres wide it was made more for chopping rather than cutting, the natural metallic exoskeleton of the turians might not be bulletproof but it was hard and required more effort to get through than human, asari or salarian skin.

A vorcha rushed me, it's claws extended and I made a turn and sidestep letting him past and at the same time brought down my blade. One of the vorcha's arms dropped to the floor. Vorcha ignoring the loss of his appendage tried to swipe it's claws with the second hand and promptly lost that one too. I decided not to prolong his pain and struck him with my fist putting in as much strength and momentum into the strike. The result surprised me more than it should have. Half of the head caved in, vorcha's body flew out from me and struck a wall with a rather unpleasant sound of several bones snapping in process. Up until now even during training I had never fought with my full power.

Another vorcha tried to bite through my boot. He was already missing his lower body so I kicked his arms away and stomped hard. The squish made me note to clean my boot this moment I could feel the call for battle sing in my blood. That weird sensation where you feel it spreading through your body, you feel it somehow getting hotter and the almost physical need to crush your opponents. The next twenty two seconds I punched, kicked, sliced and stabbed my way through another five vorcha. Some of them had been injured in the crash, others haven't but by the end of those twenty two seconds no vorcha were left alive.

A bullet striking my kinetic barrier brought me out of the combat trance and I dived into the nearest cover as my training dictated.

"RHAAAW, HUMAN MEAT GOOD. SURRENDER AND BE SOUP." the vorcha screamed and I honestly couldn't tell if the vorcha was taunting me or it was stupid enough to think that an offer of being soup is going to be accepted. Seeing that my kinetic shields were at full I quickly peered out from the makeshift cover and seeing the vorcha that screamed I put three rounds in his head. Standard squash head rounds blew out the back of the vorcha's head. I doubted that vorcha had any kinetic shields or armour but they were usually tough enough to survive the kind of wounds that would kill everyone but vorcha and krogan. Well and me.

Shifting to a shotgun, standard issue M-23 Katana which I modified by disabling the fire-control software. It is useful for new recruits making them fire slower, giving the weapon more shots before overheat but I had no need for that. The vorcha didn't seem to be very organised but their numbers were enough to cover for lack of coordination. There were two distinct groups, the ones armed with guns and the ones armed with a wide variety of sharp implements. Both groups were equally bloodthirsty.

Not letting them get closer I straightened from my crouch, aimed the Katana and four shots and three dead vorcha later I ducked back down. The vorcha that were shooting didn't seem to care if they hit their own and my shields went down rather fast. I haven't had time or money to properly invest into modifying a suit of armour that I needed so I made do with a light Mantis Mk3 made by Hahne-Kedar, I chose it mostly because it was a comfortable fit and the basic colour pattern was the right kind of drab.

My shields restored I vaulted over the metal barrier that I was using for cover and using only my right hand for my shotgun I threw an incendiary grenade into a group of vorcha that were armed with SMG's. The grenade exploded setting the vorcha on fire. Aiming Katana loosely at the vorcha running at me with oversized cutlery I let it overheat just before I dove back into cover. Probably didn't do much damage but all I needed was a few seconds for my shields to charge back up. I felt a few hits on my armour, no penetration but I would need to inspect it thoroughly to see if they did any damage.

Changing my weapon to Avenger assault rifle I breathed out to steady my aim and with a smooth motion brought it on target. There were four vorcha left. Using controlled bursts I quickly put them down.

Standing up I quickly scanned my surroundings and not finding any hostiles surveyed the battlefield. A lot of dead vorcha. The cleaners are clearly not going to be hurting for work if my adventures on Citadel continue with such intensity.

I walked back to the aircar and grabbed a duffel bag I had brought with me. After all I was getting cookies for a krogan, I doubted I would have been met with open arms if I brought only a single pack back. Quickly finding the right container I filled my bag with packs of cookies and ordered another aircar. Note to self, invest in a personal aircar and modify it with proper kinetic shielding and maybe a few others extras.

Tayseri Ward, Level 19

Walking into Jarrg's shop I saw Kal'leena and a krogan who I assumed was Jarrg huddled over a table behind the counter. It looked like a traditional weapon shop, display cases full of various weapons, a counter and a back room with storage and a table for modding.

"Cookie delivery" I said and hoisted the bag on top of the counter.

"Just in time too, I was getting a bit hungry." said the krogan and I noticed that apart from his lips and eyes he was almost entirely blue. His skin was light blue and his plate was dark blue with a few deep furrows on it that I guessed would be connected to the kind of stories old soldiers preface with "There was that one time..." followed by a story that seems like total fantasy but more likely than not ends up true.

Opening the duffel bag he perused the choice and taking out a pack tore it apart.

"Mhm, cookies" he said as he dumped a whole pack of chocolate chip cookies in his mouth and then chewed with gusto crumbs flying everywhere

"Hi Sam, what took you so long." Kal'leena said and waved at me

"A few vorcha were not happy with me taking the cookies. I had to persuade them otherwise." I said shrugging my shoulders, it really was not a big deal. Vorcha were easy enough to deal.

"Yes, smelt the blood and fire on you human. Good battle?" Jarrg asked after he finished chewing the cookies.

"You know, this is the first time I actually get into a firefight while going to get some cookies." I said still a bit stunned from how ridiculous it sounded.

"You just haven't been around krogan enough. By this point I am pretty sure that most things involving a krogan have a firefight in them somewhere." Kal'leena said with a sigh

"Well at least that gave me an idea on what I need in my armour." I said

"Then you have come to the right place friend. Come, let me hear what you think you need and then I will tell you what you really need." the krogan said and waved me in.

Three hours later, I was looking at the holographic version of my armour. The weapons were easy enough. I simply requested a faster firing M-6 Carnifex, M-96 Mattock with a fire selector to switch between single shot, burst fire and full auto, Harpoon sniper rifle modified with a multi-spectrum scope and M-27 Scimitar shotgun with both semi-automatic and full auto settings as well as an expanded heat sink. The armour was what forced me to argue with a krogan and asari who between both of them had over a thousand years experience in all things weapons and armour. Jarrg of course was insisting on heavy armour plating and toxic seals, Kal'leena was arguing for mobility and hardened weave for increased protection against biotic and tech attacks. In the end I had to show him that I wasn't as soft as other humans for Jarrg to accept a few of my conditions for the armour design. Then we argued about what to use as a base to modify. But in the end I managed to bring them over to my side and after Kal'leena put in some artistic touches we were all happy with the finished product. Now all it needed was to be brought into the real world.

Secondary Codex Entry/Equipment/Armour/Modification

Armour modification can be handled by almost anyone proficient in using basic tools. All basic armour sets manufactured by companies licensed in Citadel space use Basic Armour Framework or BAF for short. This allows for kinetic barrier generators, built in microcomputers, medical interfaces and mechanical movement augmentations to be installed in practically any armour irrespective of who is the manufacturer of any single piece of equipment as long as there are free interface points. It also decreases drastically the time needed to switch modifications to prepare for different types of missions. The drawback is that while modifications do allow for relatively easy customisation of any given armour set they are also less effective than specialised armour sets. An armour set modified with hazard and toxic seals would never equal the environmental protection of a specially built hazardous environment suit. BAF standards have been in use by Citadel species for well over a thousand years without significant change until humanity's entrance on the galactic stage in 2157. Medigel and it's addition to the medical interface in armour has revolutionised medical aid on the battlefield. Light injuries can now be sealed and mitigated in a matter of seconds, heavy injuries can be stabilised until proper medical help can be found. Medigel can also be used as suit sealant in cases of a breach in hazardous or low pressure environments.

But even the existence of BAF has not made professional armour craftsmen a thing of the past. A professional can take install more modifications in a suit than it has interface points under BAF standard. A master craftsman can rework a set of armour into a unique piece, drastically increasing capabilities and optimising it for the use of a single person. As such the time needed and expense of modifying an armour this was usually costs as much as the basic armour itself if not more depending on the level of modification required. The best armour craftsmen remain krogan but it is rare to find one that would accept an order without prior introduction by a trusted client. Turians hold the second position and they are easy to find on the Citadel or other multi-species space stations. Humans have managed to take the third spot in less than 20 years despite far less familiarity with BAF and mass effect technology in general.

Multiple human companies now produce armour suits not just for humans and asari who share their body type but also for turians, krogan and even quarians. Sirta Foundation is famous for producing not just quarian armour attachments to up-armour basic quarian suits but producing a complete line of quarian compatible undersuits with all the required paraphernalia. Other human companies use those undersuits to build upon with their custom armour designs. Currently Sirta Foundation is the only known supplier of Migrant Fleet approved suits in Citadel Space.

Chapter 6: A helping hand

Chapter Text

As Jarrg had said that crafting the weapons and armour to the quality that would satisfy him would take at least two weeks we left him to it. Through another contact of Kal'leena I got rid of the weapons in the cargo hold of the shuttle and was pleasantly surprised by Erinna when a delivery of asari shower, beds and a proper compact ship's galley arrived with a coffee machine. I was ready to kiss her there and then for the coffee machine alone but she wasn't on the ship at the moment.

Installing everything in the right place was easy enough and by mid afternoon I was sitting in the galley drinking coffee from my new coffee machine, I had installed the galley first then the beds and I had left the biggest job, showers until last. Right now I was taking a break with Kal'leena who had been helping me by mainly reading the various instructions in asari. Kal'leena was not fond of coffee but was more than happy to sit and drink a cup of hot cocoa while discussing matters.

"So I say we go find us some pirates or slavers and promptly requisition their credits and equipment. They can't complain to C-Sec and I doubt they would surrender to us anyway so that problem would take care of itself." I said

"You want to start a war with all of the pirates in the Terminus systems? We could hit a few of the smaller gangs but they don't have equipment that's worth much. So we would need to hit the bigger ones, like Blood Pack or the ones funded by the Hegemony. It's too risky right now." Kal'leena said

"So what do you suggest?" I asked

"We sign up as freelancers, do some merc work. In the end we are going to be doing the same thing but at least we will have some backing. I know a few volus who would happily pay us a lot of money to get some of their riskier investments back." Kal'leena said

I really didn't want to be muscle for a volus loan shark or be a merc for the highest bidder. I was already working for one shady organization, signing up for another one seemed like asking for trouble. And I still needed to make sure that I wasn't working for Cerberus. I knew that they recruited from Alliance but I doubted they would use aliens as instructors and knowing their love of crazy experiments I would have already been sent to clean up after it failed.

And that was when it hit me. Jack. Pragia.

"We are going to Pragia." I said and looked at Kal'leena. She saw the look in my eyes and simply nodded in confirmation.

"Where is it?" she asked simply and I appreciated her not prying, I hoped that knowing where Cerberus was torturing children would be less of a shock than knowing about the Reapers but I wasn't about to launch into an explanation. And while apocalyptic visions were actually a thing thanks to the Prothean beacons knowing the location of a secret facility belonging to a terrorist human supremacist group could not be explained in the same way.

"Nubian Expanse I think. Don't know the exact coordinates." I replied

"I will find it. Erinna should be back in an hour with our equipment and temporary weapons and armour from Jarrg for you. How fast do you want to be there?" Kal'leena said standing up

"Thanks. Best speed. I just hope I am not too late." I said, I didn't know when Jack breaks out of Teltin facility, it was never mentioned in the games but from her descriptions it sounded like she was a teenager at the time, maybe early teens. Since she was born in 2161, that would her thirteen now. I couldn't prevent what had already happened to her but at least I could help her get out and maybe stop her from becoming what she was when Shepard met her. For now I had a shower to install as there was nothing useful I could do at the moment.

17/08/2173 Nubian Expanse, Dakka, Pragia

Finding the right planet and getting there was the easy part thanks to Kal'leena, she was by far more experienced in the astronavigation part of the space flight so 4 mass relay jumps later were were there. Now came the hard but enjoyable part, kicking the stuffing out of the morally bankrupt Cerberus goons.

Gearing up I was glad Jarrg had sent me new equipment. The stuff I had previously was not bad but it was on the cheap side and abundant side. Just what you need for covert missions so it's harder to identify you but not as good when assaulting a base. Light Crisis Mk6 armour manufactured by Jormungand technology painted blood red even came with a note attached how blood is less noticeable if the armour is the same colour. Considering the close quarters nature of the fight ahead I selected Savage Mk9 shotgun also by Jormungand and Karpov Mk7 by Rosenkov Materials. All top of the line and unfortunately quite expensive, my bank account had only a few thousand credits left. An oversight I was looking soon to correct. While my primary mission was to rescue Jack and any other children I wasn't going to let an opportunity go of getting a siphoning a few credits here and there from Cerberus local accounts.

"Are you going alone?" Kal'leena asked

"Yes, I need both of you in the shuttle. There might be some children in need of medical attention, biotic children. Traumatized biotic children." I said not looking at her, right now I felt shame. Shame for forgetting about this place, about the children. I could have been here months ago, told Alliance at least. How many of them died because I forgot? I knew that the answer to that question would only bring me more shame and self loating but I couldn't help but ask it. But all the answers were inside the facility. Feeling the pit in my stomach grow into a miniature black hole I took a deep breath to calm down. Later I might have time to blame myself but now I needed my head in the game. Breathing in, holding my breath for a second and then releasing it I centered myself on the task.

"I understand. How are you getting down? I doubt they will allow us to just land." Kal'leena said changing the topic

"By jumping." I said and walked over to the armory table I had set up, "I made a kinetic harness. It uses a pair of mass effect field generators, the kind people use in low or high gravity environments to move about normally. Instead of providing a steady level of gravity I modified them to be able to output nearly all their charge in less than a second. Now I could jump from orbit and still land safely. One generator will negate my kinetic energy upon striking the ground and the second one will make sure that I don't turn to jelly from sudden deceleration." I explained as I picked it up.

"That is useful. Like the levitation I can do with my biotics but more powerful, I wouldn't be able to do it from this heigh up." Kal'leena said impressed

"That's where I got the idea." I said making sure the harness is properly attached and opened the cargo bay doors "Wait for my signal to come down."

"Good luck." Kal'leena shouted, the shuttle might have been flying slow as the shuttles go but the wind was still strong. I nodded and put my helmet on. It was a standard breather helmet obscuring everything but my eyes. I wasn't going to show my face on internal footage of the facility to Illusive man. Unlike the Leviathan who simply might ignore me Illusive Man was not the guy to let someone destroy his project without repercussions. Even back when I was playing the game I never believed his statements that they were operations gone rogue. A control freak like him would never allow that.

Looking at my omni-tool I waited until the trajectory matched up and dove out of the shuttle. I didn't know how good were their anti-air defences so I needed to seem like a piece of debris falling down. A bag of trash jettisoned from a ship. Nothing noteworthy. I had to wait until the last possible moment to trigger the harness.

Looking at the HUD in my helmet I noted calmly that I had attained the terminal velocity and it would be another 39 seconds before I could trigger the harness. That calmness of my mind would have surprised a lot of people including myself from back before I got thrown into this world but the training and whatever that thing with wings of fire did to me have changed my whole perspective on what I should find alarming. Falling at nearly 60 meters per second was not.

As I watched my altimeter drop I set the altitude my harness would deploy. Thankfully the Teltin facility was big enough that I could actually land on it and not in some random part of the jungle.

At a hundred meters above the facility the harness deployed, spinning up the two mass effect generators, one slowing me down from 220 km/h to a gentle in comparison 30km/h. The second one made sure that the g forces didn't actually rupture all my soft tissue. The harness worked for about second before burning out and I fell the last ten metres or so.

The impact wasn't so bad. There was only a slight dent where two of my armoured boots struck. A two hundred kilo mass striking at just over 30km/h made sure that anyone who was sleeping would be awake and any guards would be on high alert. At least I wouldn't have to go looking for them so shooting them would be easier.

I didn't have time to stand around as my HUD informed me that I was getting painted with a targeting laser. Diving forward into cover of some kind of air conditioning unit I drew my Karpov. As a stream of projectiles slammed where I had just been I peeked out, found the turret and sent an overload it's way followed by about a dozen shots from Karpov. It didn't explode into little pieces like in the game but it was definitely out of commission. Taking down another three turrets in quick succession I stood up. Karpov really was a massive upgrade over the cheap guns I had been using. And the armour had a nice combat microcomputer to take on some of the load from the omni-tool when launching combat programs like Overload.

Quickly scanning my surroundings I found the entrance and as I suspected my landing forced a lockdown. The lock on the door was lit a steady red. Scanning it with my omni-tool I set it to manufacture an electronic lockpick. In essence it was a small one-use electronic device that forced a lock open by burning out circuitry that kept it locked. Manufactured out of omnigel it's only downside was that you had to manufacture it for a specific lock. Not just for a specific lock type or model but a specific lock. Made it's usage a bit wasteful in comparison to proper tools you could use to break in but it didn't require the technical expertise and it was impossible to trace as the lockpick fused itself with the lock after it was done. The procedure went like this, the omni-tool application responsible for the lockpick would scan the lock, send fabrication order and ten seconds later a circle of about an inch across came out of the minifabricator in the omni-tool.

With my omni-tool done I slapped the small circle onto the lock and let it work, which it did a few seconds later with a puff of burned electronics and the click of the door getting unlocked. I let it slide open and threw a flashbang down. I had to do this carefully, couldn't afford to get kids in a crossfire so flashbangs and pistol would be my main weapons and the shotgun reserved for anything that my Karpov couldn't take down or where there was no danger of collateral damage.

A moment after flasbang detonated I sprang into the corridor leading down. There were two security guards dazed from the flashbang and I shot them both with a quick double-tap. I couldn't take prisoners and even if these two were not involved directly in the abuse and torture they still watched it happen without doing anything. Letting them go was out of the question.

I connected my omni-tool to theirs and data-mined them quickly. My omni-tool was the one item that connected me to my mysterious employers, it had a variety of special issue software and encrypted communication interface that allowed me to send and receive messages without trace. I didn't care about their personal stuff but I hoped that they would have the clearance keys to open doors and a map of this place. I didn't want to spend precious time exploring this place and unlocking every single door.

While the simple VI inside the omni-tool churned through the data I opened the door to the facility proper. The guards hadn't locked it behind them so it was a simple issue of pressing the button. Quite careless of them but it wasn't like they would have expected an attack from outside.

Without pausing I pivoted rapidly to give myself the best field of fire but didn't see anyone there. The corridor was painted the same sterile white as in the games. Holding my pistol at the ready I walked forwards. The facility couldn't house more than a few dozen staff in addition to all the children so even if half of them are guards, I should not have too much trouble.

I heard him before I saw him, must have been in the corridor when the doors locked and now he was pounding on one. He was a scientist if his clothes were any indication and when he saw me he turned towards me.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" he demanded and for a moment I entertained a thought to lie to him. Make up something about unscheduled security check. Only for a moment. Instead I pointed my gun at him.

"How many kids died in the last month?" I asked, my voice distorted by a voice changer and I could see understanding dawn on his face. I could see the wave of fear wash away the arrogance that was in him.

"Don't kill me please! I will tell you everything." he pleaded and actually dropped to his knees

"How many kids died this month?"I asked again

"Three." he said hesitantly not meeting my eyes.

"Where is Subject Zero?" I asked

"Two levels down. In her room." he answered and he looked up at me

"What's her status?" I asked and let Karpov point downwards slightly as if I was no longer thinking of killing him. That should make him think that if he tells me everything I want to know he could still come out of this alive.

"Oh, she is well. She is making progress. We made sure that she only gets the treatments we know are working." scientist said and lifted his head to look at me. I could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes. My omni-tool chimed and displayed a message on my helmet HUD that it finished sorting through the data so it updated the map of the facility. So I pointed my gun at this face and pulled the trigger. I had no need to listen to human garbage anymore.

Along with the codes and the map I also got the link to the security system of this place. Which told me where the various staff members and subjects were. It was one way only giving me read only access so I couldn't take over the facility. The room that the scientist was trying to get in had two other people in it. Both staff members, both marked as part of the medical team, not research. I didn't think there was a difference and frankly did not care. I opened the door and saw the relief on their faces quickly change to fear when the saw my gun and the dead scientist behind me. Two shots later I closed the door.

The next level down I met with some resistance, guards had made a makeshift barricade, a couple of tables on their sides. I changed to my shotgun and blasted it to chunks. The guards didn't survive that. Most of the scientists were in locked rooms, most of the guards were trying to converge on my position to put me in crossfire. A room to the right was marked as surgery and the security system reported that there were three people inside. Opening the door I saw the three people in blood-stained surgical clothing and between them on the table lay a small form. I couldn't tell what kind of child it was anymore.

"Who are you?" one of them demanded holding a scalpel, I guess she thought that facility wide lockdown was no reason to stop her work.

I let my shotgun reply, three times just to be clear. When I walked out of the room I couldn't tell what kind of humans they were anymore. After that my anger turned cold and clinical. I no longer was kicking ass of some Cerberus goons. I was excising a cancerous portion of human race with fire and steel. I didn't bother to keep track of my shield status, I simply walked, saw targets, aimed and shot.

When I got to the level below four goons were opening cells and getting the children ready for transport. Someone must have understood that the facility was compromised and gave the order to evacuate. They hadn't seen me come down the stairs from above so I had the element of surprise. Two of the goons were smart, they were wearing full armour including helmets. One smart goon and one stupid goon were guarding the children while the other two were each opening a cell. Shooting the stupid goon in the back of his head as he was turned away from me I shifted aim to the second goon and only managed to deplete his shields when he opened fire. Letting my shields absorb it I leaped forward and unsheathed my combat knife. Using my momentum I drove the blade straight through the armour as I collided with the goon and drove him to the ground. The other two goons were already turning towards me and I rapid fired my Karpov until it overheated into the second smart goon. His shield broke on the fifth shot and another four ended his life. As I was about to rush the last goon he was lifted off the ground and sent flying into the wall with enough force to crack his head against it, dazing him. Next to me a scrawny teenage kid stood with two arms raised in the direction the goon had been sent flying and panting deeply. I unfolded the shogun and finished the Cerberus goon off.

"Thanks." I said. Grabbing the omni-tool from the goon I put it on boy's wrist and switched on the map mode putting a marker on the roof, "Here, this will guide you to the roof a shuttle will be there it will take you to safety."

"Thank you." he said and nodded as I went to unlock the other cells. There were seventeen kids alive. Most of them needed medical attention but all I could give them right now was a chance to escape. Leaving them to the leadership of the kid who helped me I went on, quickly sending a message for Kal'leena to land the shuttle. There was only Jack left.

As I got across the room with the makeshift fight ring I saw a guy in a lab coat flying right into the wall, the crunch that accompanied his face hitting the wall sounded quite final. As I turned the corner I saw Jack pound another scientist with her biotics enhanced fists. They must have been covered by small warp fields as the level of damage seemed far too excessive for a girl her size. Blood splatter flying freely with every punch, coating her and the walls. I put my pistol on my hip, letting the gun fold up and secure itself.

"Jack. I am not going to hurt you. I came to help you." I said but that didn't seem to draw the response I wanted. She stopped beating the scientist, rose to her feet, her fists clenched and glowing, ready to attack. This was never going to be easy was it?

Secondary Codex Entry/Human Biotics

As biotic potential is tied to the presence of element zero in the nervous system, before 2148 there were no human biotics. However due to poor understanding of element zero and it's effect on human biology the rapid expansion of it's use by humanity in the years following lead to a high rate of exposure among the population on Earth and in various colony worlds. Element zero storage and containment was also insufficient leading to millions of people being exposed in a short time period before the first victims of these exposures were apparent. It was not until years later when the children born of such exposures started to develop health issues outside of known science of the time that the governments of Earth and Alliance started a systematic track and trace program. But by then it was too late. Millions of children would be born exposed to element zero, many would die without ever being properly diagnosed and treated. But few, no more than one in ten, would develop element zero nodules in the right places in their bodies allowing them to use biotics. It wasn't until after the First Contact War and several scientific exchanges with asari and salarians that the existence of human biotics and the effort to train them would start in earnest. Efforts by many Earth governments would be set up to help and train these children but none would be as infamous as BAaT. Biotic Acclimation and Temperance program would be the largest set up, to handle biotics from countries that were unwilling or unable to set up their own biotic school programs. Unfortunately for the children the people chosen to run the program would be Conatix Industries, a corporation that somehow was chosen without consultation from the Alliance oversight council.

Conatix Industries would go on a recruiting drive, using fear and greed to motivate parents of biotic children to give them up, sometimes relinquishing parental rights altogether. It wasn't until an accident that resulted in the death of a turian mercenary hired to train these children that the BAaT and Conatix would be investigated and subsequently shut down in 2169.

Current(2175) estimates are that there are a between hundred thousand and three hundred thousand potential human biotics living at the moment with more born every day. New programs set up by Alliance and governments of Earth in conjunction with asari have proven to be more effective with much better safety records. Current notable biotic schools not run by Alliance are Skye Academy on the Isle of Skye, Kronstadt Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, f*ckuoka Harmony College and Casablanca International School for the Gifted. Locations of Alliance biotic training facilities are considered sensitive information and are not available for public information.

Chapter 7: First meeting, wrong place, no time

Chapter Text

Jack was standing in front of me ready to fight. I didn't doubt that I could knock her out but I didn't want to do that. I had to get her to come with me of her own will. To give her a choice, let her regain some control over her life and actions. It was going to be dangerous. More for her than for me. As powerful as she was I knew that whatever was done to me made me more than a match.

"I am going to take off my helmet" I said and moved my hands slowly to my collar and unclipped my helmet.

"Look, I am not one of them." I said as I pulled it off and I saw her hesitate, after all her entire life she had only seen the people at this facility. I doubted they rotated often or at all given what they were doing here so I hoped an unfamiliar face would be enough.

"Jack, you can be free of this place. I can take you where you will be safe. I have a shuttle ready on the roof. The other children are already waiting there." I said and extended my hand. She looked at it puzzled at first but hearing my last words launched herself at me with a shout. I evaded easily.

"Calm down Jack. I am not going to hurt you. I am not going to let the other children hurt you either." I said in a soothing voice and I saw that she hesitated again before leaping at me. Evading again I tried again.

"Jacqueline. Look at me." I said putting as much authority in my voice as I could. Surprisingly she did. Straight into my eyes. Not surprisingly I saw a mix of anger, pain and fear and it seemed like she was using anger to push the other two away. Considering what I knew about her that seemed to be about right. Hopefully I could get her help that would change that.

"I came here to rescue you." I said calmly still looking straight into her eyes and she stopped. Her entire body froze apart from her eyes. I saw a tiny tear roll down her cheek, so small that anyone else would have missed it or would have mistook it for sweat. I didn't know why but she seemed to believe me at that moment. I did come here to rescue her. As horrible as it seems I didn't know the other children, I had not heard of their horror stories. But Jack I knew. I knew what would have been in her future if I had not come here. I had to try to change that. Give her a chance.

"Why?" she asked looking down at her fists as if seeing them for the first time. Seeing the blood on them.

"Because that is why I exist. To save people. As many as I can." I replied seriously. And it was true, I was here to fight against Reapers, to save as many as I could. I didn't know if I actually would succeed, if I would even survive until the Reaper war. I was fairly sturdy, maybe up to krogan level but without the secondary and tertiary organs and I didn't know if my regeneration ability would be good enough to regenerate severe injuries. Not that I was complaining. I was far sturdier and with higher chances of survival than practically any other human in the galaxy.

"Who are you?" she asked her voice hoarse and quiet as she wiped her bloodstained hands on her trousers.

"Sam Knight." I replied.

"Did you kill them?" she asked surprising me. It was not just the question but also the tone, flat as if she was asking about the weather.

"The scientists and guards? Every single one I met." I said honestly and surprised myself at the satisfaction I felt saying those words. Of course logically I understood that killing was wrong. But it was also necessary. Every single human and alien I have killed since my arrival in this universe was for logically sound reasons. This time however both my logic and my emotions seemed to be in total agreement that killing them was not just justified but also right.

"Good." she said in a voice that made it seem that she didn't know herself how to feel about it. And how could she know. Her entire life had passed in these walls, being experimented upon, being forced to fight.

"Will you come with me now?" I asked the crucial question. I couldn't allow her to continue on the same path as in the games. It might have made her a compelling character in a game but this was now real. And I would do everything I could to stop her from going through that. Even if I had to stun her and carry her away. I just hoped that I wouldn't have to do that.

"Sure. Why did you call me Jacqueline?" she nodded glancing at the eviscerated body on the floor and then the broken one by the wall.

"It's a female version of name Jack. You are girl, so..." I said lamely, I just blurted it out without thinking it and I couldn't really tell her that it was the name that she used to write poetry in her hopefully now prevented future. And that I knew that because I read though the files Shadow Broker had on the crew.

"I like it." she said and looked at me again and I could see that somewhere there behind the slowly dissipating anger and the pain she was trying to hide was a shadow of a smile.

"Come on, we don't want to stay here longer than necessary." I said suppressing a grin and putting on my helmet I walked away. Moments later I heard her bare feet slap the floor behind me.

Arcturus Stream/Arcturus/Arcturus Station

Ray Shepard was just putting on the finishing touches on the family breakfast he was cooking when his omni-tool buzzed. He and Hannah had taken a temporary leave from their duties aboard Einstein while it was getting getting maintenance in Luna shipyards to visit their daughter, Kate who had been assigned to Arcturus as an aide to an admiral. Ray knew it was not what Kate wanted but after the surge in recruitment following the First Contact War and Mindoir they had more people than ships to assign them to. Her turn would come soon enough as the navy was growing faster than ever and new ships were entering service by the dozens every month. So it was a rare thing for all three Shepards to be in the same system for longer than a few days and Ray was going to take advantage of it to the full extent without interruptions.

Which meant that if the message got through the rather sophisticated filter he had one of the techs on SSV Einstein set up for him the contents must be truly important. Switching off the power to the cooker he opened his omni-tool. When Hannah walked into the kitchen to find Ray reading something on the omni-tool with the kind of expression that she only saw him use when treating injuries from victims of Mindoir raid. She knew that this was one of those moments when you discover something that you never wanted to know.

"What's wrong Ray?" she asked her voice full of concern which only grew when Ray looked up.

"We...h" he started to say but choked on the emotions, he had seen a lot of things during his service, things that would have made anyone lose sleep but reading what Sam had sent him was too much even for him. "Sam Knight sent me a list of patients with their medical history." he said distancing himself professionally. He needed to start acting and feelings right now were a detriment to what he needed to do.

"Sam Knight? You mean..." Hannah said surprised. She knew that Sam had been recruited for something so secret that captain had asked Ray to alter official records so that Sam Knight would be recorded officially as dead en-route to Arcturus. She understood of course why Sam had been recruited, you simply didn't get people like him. With his physical abilities and the calmness he had displayed during his brief stay on Einstein she was sure that he would make an excellent soldier. Captain must have thought that his talents were better used in a more covert role. She understood the reasoning behind it and the necessity but she did not approve. Hannah Shepard did not like deception, as a commander in Alliance she had her fair share of run ins with people from Alliance Intelligence Service and Office of Naval Intelligence. She had seen them work and she preferred a straight up fight every time.

"Yeah. Him. I can only guess but it seems like he found another lab engaging in amoral experiments. He rescued the children and is bringing them here. To us." Ray replied his voice wavering as he spoke, his emotional control still not fully regained

"Children?" Hannah said horrified.

"Yes, early teens and younger. 18 survivors. He said we are the only ones he trusts enough to ask for help." Ray said and turned to his wife, his own expression mirroring hers. A mix of grief, horror and anger. And in that moment the door opened and Kate walked in carrying freshly baked bread rolls from the bakery down on the promenade.

"They didn't have any bagels this morning Mom so we will have to do with bread rolls." Kate said as she walked in but then noticed the expressions on both of her parent's faces. "Mom? Dad? What's wrong?"

"Kate, we need you to get us an appointment with Rear-Admiral Katsuragi. Before you do however let me tell you why." Hannah said putting a hand on her husband's arm with a slight shake of her head when he was about to stop her. She knew that Ray wanted to protect their daughter from the world and in this case from the shadowy side of the Alliance but Hannah knew that Kate was good enough that sooner or later she will draw the interest of the people from the shadowy side of the Alliance. It would be better for her to glimpse it now while both of them were here to help her and with Sam Knight, someone that Hannah was sure would be the better example of that side of humanity.

"Sit down, we might as well eat while the food is still warm." Hannah said and gestured towards the table. She didn't doubt that Kate would have many questions and she didn't want to let Ray's efforts in preparing this meal go to waste. Having strong stomach was also a necessity for an Alliance marine.

18 hours later. 18/08/2173

Kal'leena guided the shuttle expertly into our assigned landing spot in one of the internal Arcturus station bays. I was surprised when we requested docking that it was granted immediately and in one of the internal bays too that were usually reserved for Alliance ships.

But I was astounded by the reception committee when I opened the cargo bay doors. Walking down the ramp I saw three people standing in front with easily more than thirty people behind them. Alliance medical by the look of their uniforms with a few security sprinkled in. I recognized two of the people in front immediately. Ray and Hannah Shepard and I knew who was the third when I took a closer look. That red hair, those determined emerald eyes, those sharply angled eyebrows. Kate Shepard. The future hero stood in front of me. As a nineteen year old 2nd lieutenant straight out of training. She hasn't yet gained the sharpness and hardness of the version I used to see and that made me feel as if I was seeing something forbidden.

"Good to see you Sam." Ray said and extended his hand once I walked down the ramp.

"You too Ray. Wish it was under better circ*mstances too." I said as I shook his hand, "you know more than I do about treating cases like this so go ahead do your thing. We can talk when they are all safely in a hospital. I suspect most of them will need prolonged stays."

"After reading what you sent me I agree. But don't worry these children will get the best care Alliance can give them. We owe it to them. Excuse me." Ray replied giving the signal to the people behind to follow him into the shuttle. I had talked to the children before we got here explaining what was going to happen so I was glad to see that none of them were fighting back. Including Jack.

I saw Jack walk out with two medics trailing behind, I could see the tension in her posture and as she looked at me I gave her a reassuring seemed to calm her marginally and she let herself get seated into one of the ambulance cars waiting outside the landing area.

"How did you find that facility?" Hannah asked

"It's complicated." I said and wondered for a moment if there would actually be a point in my life here where I would be forced to explain how I know things that I know. And if people would understand the choices I had made. Hopefully that won't be soon.

"Classified?" Kate asked before her mother could do the same.

"Something like that. Kate I assume?" I replied trying to sound like it was a 'yes but I can't really talk about it' answer instead of 'no but if I tell you the truth you will think I am crazy'.

"2nd Lieutenant Alliance Marines Kate Shepard." she said crisply and then she grinned,"I wish I could say I heard good things about you but my parents only told me you existed yesterday and were rather vague with details. But considering what you did you are not a bad guy."

"I shall settle for that. As an old proverb says A man is judged by his deeds not his words. And since I can't say many of the things I know..." I replied and couldn't help but grin in return, hers was infectious, radiating charm and youthful energy. I was about to say something else when my omni-tool chimed.

"Excuse me, I need to take this." I said and looked at the message. It was a two tone chime I set up for mission assignments. Quickly taking a look at contents of the message and responding with the confirmation I turned back to Hannah and Kate.

"I am sorry but I have to go. Take care of the children and watch Jack, she might get into fights with the other children. I will be in touch." I said and walked briskly back into the shuttle and run up to the co*ckpit.

"Kal'leena, can you take this shuttle back to the Citadel? I will meet you back there in a week, maybe two." I said as I grabbed my go bag. It had everything I needed for my next mission. What it did not have I would acquire on the spot. I didn't want to leave the kids and run off to get shot at again but I didn't have much choice in the matter. I doubted that going rogue would be looked upon favorably by whoever my mysterious superiors were. They wouldn't invest so much into training someone if they didn't have some kind of way to keep them in line. And considering my training I knew the methods they would employ. Even my reinforced skull would not withstand a high powered rifle shot or an accidental power cell explosion in an aircar for example a thousand meters in the air. But that was just my paranoia talking. The training and my assignments so far made me think that the Unit recruited only the most highly motivated people and the first assignments were geared towards entrenching an idea that Unit only gave missions for all the right reasons.

"A mission?" she asked and I simply nodded. I considered briefly if I should ask her about the Unit. She should know more about it, she has worked for it much longer than I have. But it's also possible that she was given a cover story. I would have to ask her but now was not the time. It would require a lengthy conversation and my ride to Terra Nova was leaving in less than 20 minutes.

"Yeah. The urgent kind. See you later." I said and waved her a goodbye as I walked off the shuttle and headed out of the landing bay. Kal'leena was an asari huntress so she understood that the mission takes priority. I was about to weave into the foot traffic that is always present in public access transport terminals like this when I saw Kate Shepard and she waved me over. I couldn't resist and walked towards her.

"You are not leaving on your shuttle?" she asked curious.

"No, I need to use a passenger ship. Is there anything you need? My ship leaves in 17 minutes." I replied keeping my tone neutral. I had noticed that her voice sounds different than the one in game. I didn't know whether it's some kind of age thing or if the version of Shepard currently standing in front of me was simply different.

"Oh, nothing urgent, just wanted to talk to you. Let's make a deal, I will show you a shortcut to the passenger terminal and you answer a few of my questions." she proposed with a small satisfied smile. She knew that I had no real reason to refuse her.

"I can't promise that I can answer every question but let's not waste time. Lead on." I said and gestured for her to go

"I can live with that." she said and grabbing my arm led me into some kind of side path or technical corridor

"So...are you really a supersoldier?" she asked about a minute later as we squeezed past an electrical conduit and trying to sound nonchalant still holding my hand. I was usually good with directions but I doubted I could repeat it on my own, we have been turning left and right, squeezing past all kinds of machinery. Also I have to admit that I was a bit distracted by her holding onto my hand and how her uniform seemed to hug her every curve. I mean sure both Kal'leena and Erinna wore tight-fitting asari clothing, something in between what Aria wore and the commando leathers. But they were asari, and I had found that the whole head crest thing bothered me more than I thought it would. Or at least it made it immediately clear that they were not human, I guess my subconscious just found it weird enough. It's one thing to see it on screen and another thing to really see it with your own eyes. Kate Shepard however was beautiful, young and human. I couldn't help it. So I admit that I was a bit too distracted to follow where we were actually going.

"Depends on what you define as a supersoldier. I am sure that by the you would also qualify, same as most Alliance soldiers by the standards of the time before gene therapy. All those subtle genetic mods that you get when you join are a significant boost." I replied as we stepped over an open floor panel.

"Well sure, but Dad said that you are more than that. By a lot." she said unsatisfied with my answer

"That is true. I am not sure actually on the level of modifications done to me. The most obvious ones are my increased strength, my skin that has roughly the same level of protection as light combat suit without the kinetic shielding and my healing factor." I replied and catching myself on a thought that really I shouldn't be telling her this. I was behaving like a typical guy who gets asked by a girl to tell her about himself. I was bragging to a pretty girl with a hope that she would like me. Kal'leena was right back then to give me that test. Now at least I knew precisely what one of my biggest weaknesses was. Women. At least I shared that fault with a large part of sapient beings in the galaxy.

"Does it still hurt to get shot?" she asked as we plunged into a stream of people going perpendicular to our direction.

"Yes, but I can't really compare. I was never shot before I got this body. It hurts but it's more like hitting your toe against a sharp edge than anything." I replied and we stopped in front of a large gate separating a passenger embarkation area from the rest of the docking area.

"And here you are. Delivered in 6 minutes. You still have plenty of time to check in and get to your seat." Kate said sounding chipper and pivoted on her heel to face me, "I hope we see you soon. It will be good if you can visit the kids. Dad was assigned as their primary doctor so he will be on station for a while too."

"I will try and I would have stayed longer but I have orders. I am sure you understand. It was nice meeting you Kate. Ray has my contact details if anything comes up." I said and giving her a sloppy salute turned towards the gate. I really didn't expect to meet Shepard that soon. Or see her before she becomes the Reaper kicking badass. I thought about what kind of changes was I already bringing to this version of Mass Effect universe. Rescuing Jack, meeting Shepard. I didn't regret my actions but I also knew they would have consequences. I hoped that they would be the kind that I could live with.

Boarding the ship I put those thoughts away for later. Now I needed to concentrate on the mission. I had terrorists to track down and kill.

Chapter 8: A space oddity

Chapter Text

25/12/2173, Eagle Nebula, Amun, Anhur, New Thebes

What should have been a quick in-and-out mission turned into a months trek across various human colonies tracking down other terrorist cells. Well, I called them cells because their MO was the same. A group of 3-4 people that perpetrate increasingly more violent and deadly attacks until either I or the local security takes them out. The worst part was that the backgrounds of the people in each cell seemed totally random. Lawyers, students, ordinary workers, housewives even kids. It's like someone just grabbed a bunch of people off the street and made them into terrorists. There were no prior connections, no prior history of violence or anti-Alliance or anti-human sentiments. They also never seemed to communicate with each other and yet somehow their attacks were organised.

And that's how I ended up on Anhur sitting in a grimy apartment with my sniper rifle for company on Christmas. It has been almost a year since I have arrived in this universe. It was making me think. Maybe it was the weather, it was currently snowing. I had always liked snow. Or maybe it was seeing those silly Christmas decorations in the window a few apartments down from the one I was aiming at. I missed my family, I missed the silly arguments and the day long preparation of too much food that is not going to be eaten all anyway. I wanted to be warm and cozy and watching the most Christmas movies of all time, Die Hard and Die Hard 2. Both of them were an integral part of my Christmas since childhood.

Instead I was in a cold apartment freezing my ass off while waiting for the other members of the cell to arrive. While my body didn't get frostbite or burns as easily as my old body I still felt the cold and heat as all humans do. The blinds on the window had been closed and all I had to go on was a thermal image from the scope. For the past two hours the terrorist was just sitting on the floor. Not moving a muscle, just sitting in the middle of the room with his back towards me. My wait however was rewarded when I saw two more people walk into the apartment, correction, one human and one batarian. Human and batarian heat signatures were different enough that I could tell them apart. I would have liked to say that it was unusual but Anhur was settled by both humans and batarians. It was a strange combination, I really thought that the only species that humans could live with more or less comfortably were asari. What I have seen here on Anhur only reinforced my belief. Batarians were slavers and a caste society and to the current humans that was pretty much dark age barbarism. Normal humans that is.

Why was I waiting in a building opposite with a sniper rifle? Because the last attempt to capture and interrogate a similar cell ended up with them blowing their stash of explosives, I was simply thrown out of the 4th floor window but the local security I lead there and the people in apartments around them were not so lucky. So from then on the standard procedure was to eliminate the terrorists and then go in and investigate.

Both of the newcomers sat down, in a circle around something and after adjusting the settings on the scope I could see a faint outline of the object in the room. I still couldn't see it properly so I decided it was time. Three shots later I was walking out of the apartment building and crossing the street. I walked at a pace that told the other people that I was in a hurry to get somewhere but I wasn't worried about it. It was common around here, people hurrying to work or from work, always not enough hours in a day to do the things that needed doing. My clothes were also the same as people who lived in this district wore, hardy workman's trousers, worn walking boots and a faux-denim jacket with a hood.

The hood was currently covering my face so I was confident that at most what the people around here would remember was an ordinary guy just like any of them. It was important to look like on of the people that lived here, people are less likely to tell police if they think you are one of them. Group loyalty by association.

And these days with the whole issue of batarians using slave labour and human companies unable to keep up and the current attempts by the human part of the Anhur government to outlaw slavery the people who lived here, mostly human workers and a few of the free batarian worker caste, were unlikely to tell the police about another worker.

Opening the door to the apartment where the three dead terrorists were I was hit with a wave of foulness. The smell, the stink if you want to be more precise was overpowering. It was a gag-inducing mixture of human and batarian waste, food and sweat. Trying to breathe through my mouth I entered the apartment. It was like most apartments here a two bedroom affair with a living room that also doubled as the kitchen. Stepping over piles of trash carefully so that I don't slip and end up getting soiled in this muck I approached the three dead bodies. A quick search and scan later I had everything I needed from them and I turned my attention towards the thing in the middle.

As in the previous hideouts for these terrorists cells there was that odd obelisk thing, it resembled two thick segmented tentacles wrapping around each other. A quick scan told me that it was made out of local basalt. Nothing unusual, every time I came across one of these it was made out of local materials, stone mostly in black or red hues. I must admit that when I first started investigating these terrorist cultists I thought that they were either under Reaper influence or Leviathan. It just seemed to fit indoctrination, random people coming into contact with an artifact and then perpetrating seemingly random bits of violence.

But now I knew better. Despite the odd shape the obelisks were not Reaper in origin. I have been sending them back to my Alliance handlers and they have been sending me back reports of the analysis. They were handmade and apart from the bizarre shape there was nothing unusual about them. No circuitry, no organic traces. They were not even old, the oldest one that I have found so far dated only to a year or so ago. It was a cult but no one was talking about it. Recruitment seemed to happen at random and they were instant fanatics. I just didn't know of what. None of them had ever spoken a word of what they believed in.

I switched my omni-tool to detective mode and started scanning the entire apartment, there might be a clue here that I could overlook but I knew that the analysts that I have never met and never will might be able to pull a thread from all this chaos.

With the scan done I performed a basic manual search of the bodies hoping to find something useful but they didn't have anything apart from their clothes and omni-tools.

Grabbing their omni-tools, I set up a small cleaning charge. In essence it was an acid grenade, made specifically to melt organic matter so it wouldn't go through the floor and after melting most of the organic material in the apartment it would spray a neutralising agent that would render the acidic sludge left into powder, desiccating it. After it has done it's job the device will simply overload and explode into bits small enough that no one would be able to tell what it was. So instead of three bodies whoever comes in would only see a thick layer of dust on the floor.

Exiting the building I walked briskly back to the closest transit terminal where I could order an aircar. My temporary base was in the wealthier part of the city, a single human renting an apartment and coming and going at odd hours would draw less attention there than in the poorer parts of the city, where most people worked certain shift patterns. Especially considering that my cover was a trade representative for an independent shipping company based out of Bekenstein. I had even had taken some meetings to talk to the various companies about supplying some of the products. Of course it would never get further than just talk and considering the modest sizes of orders I was talking about I would be just one of many such representatives.

As the aircar arrived I quickly changed inside, exchanging the worker clothes for something more presentable. The aircar flew through the city on autopilot weaving through the traffic.

New Thebes could be described as a typical cyberpunk city. It looked like something inspired both by Bladerunner and Ghost in the Shell, the pyramid like mega-structures belonging to batarians and the skycrapers tightly packed in between them being of human make. Factories belching smoke intermixing with the clean armoured glass of stock market towers. The heavy clouds reflected the dull orange and blue glow of the holographic adverts back creating an illusion of twilight. The snow diffusing the light further making everything in the distance blur together.

One of these towers was the apartment complex I was heading to and the aircar started slowing down and turning towards it to land on the roof. The availability of aircars had made a drastic change on the design of high-rises, instead of having a lobby on the ground level it was on the roof as the people who lived here wouldn't actually walk. The ground level entrance was only for heavy goods vehicles and for the sentient part of the workforce tending to the building and the needs of it's residents.

I hopped out of the aircar as it landed and walked past the guard on duty acknowledging him with a nod heading towards the lifts. My apartment greeted me as always with a security report transmitted straight to my omni-tool. I didn't install any traps or anything like that because anyone skilled enough will be able to get through them and anyone who wasn't was not worth it. And the presence of the traps would alert anyone that found them that I wasn't just a normal person. So I simply didn't keep anything incriminating inside and had a standard security system. I downloaded the data from the omni-tools sending it along with the scans of the cultist apartment to get analyzed. My job was done for today and after taking a long shower I went to sleep. Even with all the modifications that were done to me, increased endurance of body and increased endurance of mind through training I still needed sleep. Laying in bed the thoughts came. I was sent here to a fictional universe by a being with wings of fire. I had assumed that I was sent here with my knowledge and my upgraded body to stop the Reapers. However in the months since I haven't done anything for that goal. Of course what I was doing was important too and it was also for a good cause but it was not stopping the Reapers. I needed to prepare an army, or at least a highly competent squad to help Shepard. Not even as much during the events of Sovereign's attack as the Collector attack. I also needed to dismantle Cerberus. After seeing Pragia and sending the reports to my superiors I had hoped that I would be set upon Cerberus but that hasn't happened yet. Cerberus might have started with good intentions and Illusive Man might have had the best interests of humanity at heart years ago but now and in the future to come he will be a monster. As monstrous as Reapers themselves. Which made sense as he was after all indoctrinated. It might not have fully asserted itself until the Reaper invasion but indoctrination does shift a person's thought patterns.

I needed more freedom to act, to go on my own missions. I needed to gain freedom of choice. And to do that I needed to know who I was working for. Parting on good terms usually relied on both parties agreeing on a compromise. And I couldn't compromise if I didn't know what they wanted. Falling asleep to this thought I hoped that soon I could finish up with this mission so I could go and visit the kids I saved on Arcturus station and maybe even see Shepard.

26/12/2173

The morning greeted me with the beeping of my omni-tool. Looking at the clock I saw that I had managed to sleep for 5 hours, which was enough for me in my new body. Reading through the report that the analysts had compiled overnight I went through my morning exercise routine. The scan of the room was a total bust, nothing useful there but the omni-tools did give me a lead. A space station built by Ishimura corporation was noted as some kind of transfer point. It would take several days to get there as it was built in a star system without a Relay. I had to leave the turian shuttle in Kal'leena's hands and so to bolster my cover I obtained a human shuttle, AT-39C, a modification of the stock AT-39 where some of the cargo area was sacrificed for more comfortable quarters to allow for long range voyages. But even with the shuttle optimised for longer voyages it still would take a better part of two days to get there from the closest relay. Gathering up my stuff, it still all fit into a single duffel bag. Not because I haven't got more stuff but because I keep leaving it. I now had bags like this hidden all over Alliance space and some of the more popular destinations in the Traverse. Just in case. My paranoia was working overtime the last two months. Mysterious killer cultist terrorists would do that you. I walked out of the apartment and took the lift to the roof where an aircar was already waiting for me. I remember back in my old universe the whole smart home thing was taking off with people buying all kinds of things that could be controlled from a smartphone or over the internet. They constantly promised it being all so easy and it never truly was. In 2173 it was actually all very easy. The omni-tool and a basic VI made everything work just with a wave of the hand. Inputting complicated passwords by hand was replaced with secure hand shaking protocols with encryption algorithms that the spy agencies back in the 21st century would gladly pay an arm and a leg. And that was just civilian grade stuff now.

To preserve my cover I sent out messages to the various companies I had visited informing them that I was getting recalled and that we have their prices and will contact them if we decide to make an order. Nothing unusual at all since the location of Anhur and the political instability were enough to diminish any gains provided by the low cost of the goods produced. A standard courtesy email that the people on the receiving end usually don't even read fully.

The spaceport was quite traditional to my eyes, both batarians and humans didn't care much for limiting their impact on the planet like asari so instead of building the vertical spaceports with lots of mass effect field assisted docking points they just flattened a piece of land and covered it concrete. Cheap and cheerful as the saying goes. Just cheap really as there was little to be cheerful about a dark grey reinforced concrete field stretching for a couple of kilometres on the outskirts of the city.

I liked the AT-39, to me it had the proper spaceship feel, it's short stubby wings, the rounded nosecone where the co*ckpit was and two twin engine assemblies mounted in the short wings. Two facing front and two facing back, each engine capable of vectoring independently. I also liked that in addition to the usual kinetic shielding the ship was also armoured, an inch or so covering most of the hull. I knew that against serious weapons it would do no good but it made me feel better and made the ship look cool. My inner nerd had loved it on the first sight.

Climbing into the co*ckpit I went through a pre-flight check and after the VI gave me an all green signal I powered up it's mass effect core and lifted off with practiced ease. I was not a great pilot, I would never even get close to someone like Joker or Cortez but I was confident that I could outfly Vega.

When the shuttle exited the atmosphere of Anhur I couldn't help but feel excitement, not just at finally getting a proper lead but also at simply getting off the planet. Anhur was not a pleasant place to be even without all the human-batarian tension. I also loved flying in between planets, star systems. I loved waking up and seeing the empty space outside, the stars distorted slightly by the blue-purple mass effect field surrounding the ship. Even though I knew I was going into a fight and will likely kill more people before the New Year the simple knowledge that I was flying through space at many multiples of speed of light gave me comfort. After all it was a dream come true for my real-Earth geek brain.

Chapter 9: Secrets in the Dark

Chapter Text

30/12/2173

Arcturus Station Storage room B122

The room was in complete darkness, the only entrance into the room was an airlock so nothing could leak through into the room. No light, no sound, no air. The room was empty save for six round holo-projectors mounted into the floor. If there had been someone in the room they would have heard the quiet hum as the projectors warmed up and then flickered to life. Two of them nearly at the same time and the third one joining them a few seconds later. Each holo-projector produced a hologram of a different colour. One was the traditional blue, second was orange and third one green, the colour of the two century old green on black monitors.

"Nice to see you again, Mr Blue, Mr Orange." a voice said originating from the green holo-projector before the image resolved itself fully into a tall woman in a business suit with a blanked out face.

"This is unusual. Why a full council hasn't been called Miss Green?" Mr Blue asked, his hologram just a basic human shape without any features. Even his voice was heavily scrambled sounding flat and devoid of emotion as an elcor's

"This matter is not for the full council. It has not attained that level of importance." Miss Green said

"And yet you call use here." Mr Orange noted, his hologram that of man in a classic suit his face obscured by a mask.

"Because we need to have this conversation. It has been delayed long enough. We need to talk about Iron 6." Miss Green said resolute.

"What is there to talk about him. He is a good agent, he has been doing good work. Our analysts believe he is getting closer to resolving that terrorist threat. He opened our eyes to the threat represented to us by Cerberus. Considering the short time he has been active he has achieved far more than we had hoped." Mr Blue said his voice flat monotone

"Yes he is impressive and his record serves as evidence of his skills. I however found some troubling information about him." Miss Green said and tapped something in mid air. Both Mr Blue and Mr Orange looked to the side for a few moments, reading whatever Miss Green had sent over on screens outside of the holoprojectors pickup.

"I have sent you just a few things that we have been able to prove. We know he has co-opted Silver-9 to follow him on some kind of quest that is apparently of galactic importance. Copper-3 has reported that he let Silver-9 see something in his mind which greatly disturbed her. Copper-3 has also reported that those artifact orbs might belong to someone or something called Leviathan." Miss Green laid out her accusations.

"I have seen the reports by Copper-3 but so far all evidence simply points that Silver-9 and Iron-6 have started a mutually beneficial relationship. Iron-6 knew Silver-9 had centuries of experience and a list of useful contacts that puts most of our other operatives to shame. In return as I understand Silver-9 gets to experience something that even the elders of her kind would envy her for if they knew." Mr Orange sounded bored and tapped his index finger against his forehead.

"I would normally agree, but his assignment has been going on for a long time and Copper-3 reports that Silver-9 has not been discouraged. We know that she has been contacting people from her old life. Unfortunately Copper-3 has not been able to provide us with the contents of those conversations. Silver-9 has been very careful about her contacts." Miss Green retorted

"I am disturbed by something else. This Cerberus. What do we know about it?" Mr Orange changed the subject

"Not nearly as much as we would like. But it's clear that they are monsters." Mr Blue said and even through the scrambled monotone you could hear the clear loathing in his voice.

"Up until now they seemed of no real consequence. This facility however proves otherwise. We have to take a closer look at them, I agree. But how did Iron-6 know about them? As far as we know he simply knew they were there. He knew what was being done inside. And instead of coming to us he raids the facility himself and gives everything to the Alliance." Miss Green replied

"Is this not what we need him for? To take the fight to all the enemies of humanity wherever they are and whoever they are? I see it simply as Iron-6 doing the work we recruited him for. The details of how it is accomplished are not as important as that it was done." Mr Orange said

"Miss Green I have also been reading the reports that have been submitted. I have followed Iron-6 mission reports and the reports about him provided to us by our own analysts." Mr Orange nodded his head towards Mr Blue who simply nodded in affirmation

"It seems while you were busy trying to find fault in Iron-6 you have neglected your duties as Coordinator. He has been in the field for months. Tracking down this group on his own without backup. We all know about his peculiarities. All of us here have read the reports of his training. We know he is highly capable and surpasses any other agent we have in physical performance. However from where I stand it seems that you have been setting him up for failure. For reasons unclear. And now where he seems to be succeeding on a mission alone, where standard procedure would tell you to send in a whole team of specialists, you have called us here to cast doubt at him as a person. Mr Blue has kindly provided me with a full record of an incident on November 12th. And I compared it to the version sent to me by you. Do you want to tell me about it?" Mr Orange's voice had become almost the same kind of monotone as Mr Blue's but without any voice scrambling and with every word Miss Green seemed to sag a little more.

"Iron-6 first befriended and then started a physical relationship with a police detective, Joan Cheng. She was useful as a contact inside the Terra Nova police department. The relationship quickly progressed from physical to romantic as reported from analysis of the surveillance data. This seems to be corroborated by recorded conversations between her co-workers. Until November 12th when while attempting to arrest the suspected terrorists Joan Chang along with several other police officers and more than a dozen civilians got caught up in a terrorist suicide explosion. Joan Chang lived but both her body and her memory had been severely damaged. One of our charities has financed her recovery, with cloned organs and some level of implantation based on greybox technology she will make a full recovery both mentally and physically. Her memory is coming back gradually and the doctor's think that she would be able to return to her duties in the next six months without issue. Iron-6 is not aware of this as he was barred from interacting with Joan Chang after his first visit to the hospital." Miss Green answered

"So, Iron-6 now has a personal stake in catching these terrorists? The kind of reason that drives good men cruel. And even after this you didn't send backup. This is a failure in your duties as Coordinator. I will have to bring this before the others. We will look into the matter you brought before us but any action to be taken against Iron-6 or Silver-9 if there is indeed a real need would most likely be the responsibility of another Coordinator." Mr Orange said and his image flickered out.

"I did tell you not to play games." Mr Blue simply stated as he had expected this kind of result right from the start and vanished too.

Miss Green's hologram stayed for a few moments more and then was gone too leaving the room in darkness again. The owner's of the holograms have never met face to face and will never meet. No one would have any evidence to connect these people to each other as even the chamber itself, the holo-projectors didn't keep records. The consequences however of the words said in this room echoed through all of human space.

XRT0189P star system

Ishimura space station was not really a space station, it turned out to be a mobile ore processor. They were originally built before humanity knew about the real scope of the mass relay network so the thought behind their design was to make one central industrial unit that would serve as the home for about a dozen or so smaller mining ships. These ore processors would be sent out to different star clusters and the mining ships would then mine the easily accessible eezo and bring it back for processing. Once the eezo is extracted the ship would move on. Since there was no eezo in Solar System scientists thought that it was extremely rare and there would be no need to create long term mining bases. They had taken an idea from a movable oil rig and modified it for use in space.

Ishimura Corporation had bought several of these once it was clear they were not really needed and refitted them to serve as mobile rest stations. They would daisy chain them across star clusters to provide access to regions of space usually reserved only for purpose built exploration ships. Ishimura Corporation was actually two companies, Ishimura Exo-Geology and Ishimura Exo-Archeology. They made their living from going into regions of space no one had any real interest and trying to find something worth selling. It didn't matter if it was a rich eezo deposit or a prothean ruin or coordinates of a garden planet ripe for colonisation.

This space station had gone dark a few months ago. And everyone had seemingly lost interest in it.

I knew what had happened. Or at least I had my theories. They found something. Something older than protheans. Something meaner than protheans. I knew that there were such things in existence. Before protheans there had been thousands of cycles. Reapers were good at cleaning up but they were not perfect. Something might have been left behind. It could have been some kind of trap to prevent aliens coming and looting their world after they were all dead. Indoctrination, as dangerous as done by Reapers or Leviathan but with no detectable signs. A clever, ruthless trap from an alien enemy I had no knowledge of. That thought bothered me.

I stepped onto the station with all my electronic senses extended. The station's VI was unresponsive. It wasn't dead as it would still perform basic tasks like opening doors and powering local data storage modules in terminals but any queries beyond that it would ignore. Like switching on the lights or powering up the life support. My senses were a better version of those AR glasses I had used, built into the helmet it was a combination of sonar, infrared, radar, enhanced optical and electromagnetic field sensor. I was surprised by how easily I was able to modify my own equipment and assemble the code to manage it. Oh it wasn't the prettiest code but it worked. Something I had noticed during my time here is that people, human and alien alike rely heavily on simply iterating the technology rather than innovating. It sure made for some very efficient and easy to use things like the omni-tools but at the same time the technology didn't really change much in decades or even hundreds of years. It explained how asari could keep their place in the galaxy's pecking order by simply using even the tiniest bits of information siphoned out of the Prothean beacon they had on Thessia and how salarians were the only ones close enough in terms of technology to them. And how humanity despite achieving space flight just over 200 years ago could compete with batarians who were already flying around in space ships when the simple idea of powered flight was seen as a daydream on Earth. Any true innovation seemed to take decades to actually implement. I suspected it was asari influence. With their long life spans they didn't care if it took 10 or 50 years.

I saw the first corpse when I entered station proper from the aft, I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, the body had dessicated in vacuum. Mummified by moisture leaving the body and by the cold. Judging by the hands around it's neck death was clearly not natural.

Deeper into the station there were more bodies. The long halls were full of mummified dead, all running away from something deeper inside the station. Blood was rushing through my ears, even the thumps of my footsteps didn't produce enough sound in this macabre floating space catacomb. I knew that I was getting spooked by what would most likely end up something quite mundane but I couldn't help it. After all my presence here was a direct consequence of intervention of someone from outside the natural spectrum of understanding. I was startled awake on more than a few occasions by the recurring dream of ending up back in front of that angel. I didn't know if it was really an angel but I had no better word to describe it. So if one side of the coin existed then why wouldn't the other?

Fifteen minutes later and by the tally I was taking with my omni-tool seven hundred fifty nine bodies later I stumbled upon a different scene. I was nearly at the stern of the station when I saw the first people killed not by suffocation but by other people. The carnage was awful. Dozens of bodies in different stages of extremely violent death. Torn limbs were the least disgusting way these people have been killed. The walls had been painted with blood, great big spills of it across the floor, the ceiling, the walls all rendered in helpful false colour of my sensors. Not that it would be red after all this time in vacuum. This was in total contrast to the actions of the terrorists. Yes they were brutal and yes they were violent beyond any measure but so far they seemed methodical only resorting to mindless violence when they were on the verge of getting caught. Here they seemed to have lost any and all semblance of their minds going into a total killing frenzy.

As I let my helmet sensors record the scene I got a faint return from the next room. The magnetic sensors noticed an unusual electromagnetic field. Raising my weapon, an M-4 Shuriken machine pistol I walked crept forward. On the internal schematics that I managed to download earlier the compartment was marked as forward observation deck, one level below the bridge.

As the doors slid open I saw what was inside. As I suspected. In the centre of the room there stood a massive black obelisk. A carbon copy of the ones I had found in the terrorist layer but roughly ten times the size. I guess it was the opposite. The ones I have been finding were the copies of this one. I could see it was worn by time and weather. And it was clearly technological. I scanned it using my omni-tool. Inside the obelisk there was a radioisotope power source. Judging by it's size and by the isotope used it was designed to provide a low trickle of power for thousands of years. Possibly tens of thousands of years. The obelisk itself was made up of layered microscopic lattice, as if it's makers had made micron-sized metal mesh and then spun it into the structure. Omni-tool suggested that both the shape of the obelisk and the proportions were a product of the design, made to produce that artificial electromagnetic field, the signal coming from it. The signal could barely reach a ten meters so it wasn't a communication method. Why would anyone build something like this to communicate across what was basically a loud voice range? That didn't seem to make any sense.

Walking around the obelisk I noticed cables running from it to a hallway out the other side. Since there was nothing else I could get from being here I followed the cables.

The cables lead me to the bridge. Strangely there were no bodies on my way following the cables. The bridge was a big one. It was made to seat at least twenty people with the captain's chair on a raised platform in slightly forward of a cluster of terminals. I suspected they were meant to be production control. The space station/ship was on the outer edges of the star system but there was just enough light for the bridge not to be in total darkness. The huge panoramic window let the ghostly bluish light of the distant blue dwarf fall on the bridge, creating deep shadows behind the consoles and seats.

Which is why the slowly blinking red light on the captain's chair drew my attention. Approaching it I saw that it was still occupied unlike the rest of the bridge.

The occupant of the chair was also desiccated like the rest of the people on this tomb-ship but unlike the rest he had chosen to die. His right hand still clutched at a pistol and the left side of his head was mostly missing. It was his omni-tool on his left hand that was the source of the light. I opened the near-field communication option and my omni-tool beeped in my helmet as it found a download waiting. The file was not large but it still took a few minutes to download as the captain's omni-tool had been put in low power mode restricting it's use of energy. I didn't know if this guy was really the captain but he was sitting in the captain's chair.

"What happened here?" I asked out loud. I knew that there would be no answer. It simply was the kind of thing you do when you stare into the eye sockets of a long dead mummy on a starship full of dead bodies. When the download finished I decided not to stick around and quickly walked back to where I had docked my shuttle. Only after a very thorough decontamination sequence and a long shower I allowed myself to get a coffee and sit down to review what I got from the download. There were many text files and a video file. I played the video.

"I am Clark Isaacs, Doctor Clarke Isaacs and if you are listening to this then I am dead. As is hopefully the rest of the crew. That might sound awful but it really was the best thing I could do for them. We didn't know what we were playing with. Prothean technology has lulled us into a false sense of security when it comes to alien artefacts. But that doesn't excuse our actions. What we did was dangerous and irresponsible and if there is such a thing as afterlife, something that I used to deny strongly to anyone who suggested otherwise, I am sure that we all will be burning in the deepest parts of hell. I would like to say that someone made me do it. But it was my decision. My responsibility. I have left my research notes along with this message so that no one in their right mind would ever attempt what we did. The obelisk, the beacon is evil and we should have never tried to control it. If you can destroy it, do so and the place where it comes from. Leave not a single piece of it for anyone else to find." Isaac's face and tone had been calm, collected if remorseful but then he looked away momentarily as if gathering strength and looked back into the camera a broken man "If after seeing what happened on this ship and having my confession still leaves you with some small measure of pity for me please tell Nicole that I loved her. And that I am sorry."

I looked at the coffee cup in my hand, finished it in a few quick gulps and went looking for something stronger. There was a bottle of bourbon left over by the previous owner of the shuttle. I was not a fan of bourbon but I suspected that I will learn to appreciate it while reading the research notes. The bottle was where I had last seen it, deep in the cupboard behind the ration packs. I let the bourbon fill my mug halfway and was about to walk back to the seat where I had my terminal but after a momentary consideration I took the bottle with me. Sitting down I opened the first text file. The title said, Discovery at Tau Volantis.

Chapter 10: From here to there

Chapter Text

By the time I finished a quick read through the files I had finished the bourbon and was glad that I didn't have any other kind of alcohol on board. Otherwise I would have drunk it all in an attempt to distance my mind from the information on the file.

The obelisks were a weapon. Yes, obelisks. Plural. Alien civilisation that called Tau Volantis it's home had built dozens of them, all placed around their planet in huge necropolises. Each built to last as long as possible and to safeguard the obelisks.

Clark Isaacs called them Necromorphs, a familiar name to me, but not because they were zombie-like monsters. No, that would have been too easy. This species believed that they could only achieve their destiny through death. And not just individual death but death on mass scale, in fact death of everyone, everything on their world. From what Doctor Isaacs wrote these Necromorphs devoted hundreds of years, their entire culture to building their own tombs and the weapon to use in their suicide. When the necropolises were finished the obelisks at their hearts were activated turning everyone inside into psychotic killers.

From the few passages that Isaacs translated he surmised that the Necromorphs had believed that if they sacrificed their whole species in one huge orgy of violence and bloodshed they would be transformed, morphed into the avatar of their god. Unfortunately either Isaacs didn't find any images of the god or the Necromorphs themselves never actually recorded what it was supposed to look like. I had my suspicions as this sounded quite familiar.

But theory of the obelisks origins aside, as chilling as it was the real reason for my disturbed mental state was the experiments performed by the company he worked for. A list that included such entries that made me think Cerberus was just a playful little doggie rather than the three headed hell beast it was. A list that made me think back to such real world monsters as Mengele and his work at Auschwitz or the leaders of the Imperial Japanese Unit 731. Isaacs was lucky that he put a bullet in his head, finding him alive would have been worse. For him.

There were two truly useful things in the document. One was the explanation of how obelisks worked. My initial thought that it was similar to indoctrination was the right one but instead of using some kind of energy field like the Reapers the Necromorphs invented a bio-technological plague. Semi-organic nanoscale robots acting as a virus would enter the hosts bloodstream and from there would get into their brain. There they would make the changes required to make an average person into a killer without remorse. And the reason why I have been chasing terrorist cells instead of fighting against some kind of zombie apocalypse was quite simple. The bio-chemical make-up of their creators was just different enough that the nanites could not multiply, could not cause instant burst of murderous rage instead turning them into terrorists plotting to kill as many as their can before their own death. Not like in the direct proximity of the obelisks where the people near it were exposed to hundreds of times more nanites. It also meant that someone had infected them, deliberately. In fact that was what most likely Phase 2 mentioned in the notes I had managed to download. No one had gone into the detail of what exactly it was but there was not other explanation I could find.

The second useful bit of information was a location on Tau Volantis named only as Source. Or The Source. Isaacs theorised that it was some kind of research lab or a factory where they made the obelisks. Whatever it is, there might be some crucial information that might help to cure people infected. Maybe even a way to remotely shut them down. Checking the navigational data twice I set the course for the relay.

31/12/2173, Sol system, Earth, Geneva 2238 hours

Mr Orange sat down with a barely audible sigh of relief in an antique leather chair and let his head rest on his clasped hands. To anyone watching him it would have looked like an old man was sitting at his desk in a prayer. Despite the genetic modifications, despite the best that human and alien medicine could do, despite the doctors telling him that he still had decades to live Mr Orange felt old. He was old by any measure but asari or krogan at 98. Miss Vermilion told him years ago that the organisation that they had started would be the death of them. He would have liked to talk to her again but she was now living a quiet life somewhere on Eden Prime, or as quiet as life can be for a rancher out in a new colony. She had the good sense to walk away while she still could and for a moment he wondered, like he had done many times in the past, if he had accepted her invitation would he have been spared this exhaustion that had seeped into his bones. It was a but a pleasant distraction, a nice what if dream that he toyed with for he knew that he couldn't have walked away from this. The organization was his creation, he had seen the need of a super-secret branch of pan-human government even before First contact war. As the humanity rushed to colonise any planet within reach he knew that sooner or later they would meet aliens. It's main goal was to police humanity, the traitors, the ones who would betray their own people to aliens. No matter who they are or where they were. What Mr Orange didn't expect was that the galactic community would be so familiar. Below a layer of different biology and the veneer of different cultures the rivalries, the politicking and the machinations were the same as on good old Earth. Simply on a million times larger scale. At first it had delighted him. It made the organisations job so much easier. Gathering intel, bribing corrupt officials, establishing back channels to the people in power of each species had been far easier than he had anticipated. He had been elated with the rapid growth and progress of his organisation. What he thought would take decades took years.

Now he was afraid. Not the fear of losing power, or fear of dying. No, it was a fear that if everything was so familiar even across species boundaries that what he was doing was in the end futile. Just as his organisation was worming it's way into the political and economic structures of the alien governments so were theirs doing the same. Ten years ago he would have said that the humans still had the upper hand, humans were more driven, willing to take risks and use chances that asari, turians and salarians didn't. Now he wondered if they simply knew a better way. If the reason why it was so hard to find agents working for aliens was because they simply were so much better at hiding. It was like trying to find a black cat in a dark room. You would never know it was there until it made a sound.

Mr Orange reached for the bottom drawer of his desk and drew out a bottle of the finest armenian cognac and a glass. With a practiced motion he opened the bottle and tipped it letting the amber liquid spill carefully into the glass. At just over a finger filling the glass he put the bottle away inhaling the familiar scent.

This was a present from Mrs Viridian, predecessor to Miss Green, just before she had left her post telling him that a bottle just like this had helped her through many difficult decisions. He had been fond of Mrs Viridian, she was exactly the type of person who was needed as Coordinator. She cared about her people but she also knew that the cause was bigger than any of them. This mess would have never happened if Mrs Viridian was still here. He regretted the day when he allowed Miss Green to take the post. Miss Green had too much ambition, not content to be Coordinator she wanted to move up, replace Mr Blue or Miss Mauve. She might think that she was good enough to replace even him, Mr Orange. She should have known better. But she had been dealt with. It brought him no joy knowing this. Indeed he blamed himself for not seeing what should have been apparent and acting on it sooner.

The current problem was that she was unfortunately not alone in her ambition. He has seen the seeds grow, their growing influence, the familiarity of the galactic affairs, it all had given the younger people in the organisation illusions. Illusions of their own importance and that nagging voice asking for more power. Use their influence to take control of the Alliance in a more direct way.

As he took a careful sip of cognac Mr Orange replayed in his mind the crucial parts of the last report forwarded by Mr Blue from Iron 6. Mind enslaving obelisks. A suicide weapon by a non compos mentis alien species. A few images from the ship turned into a slaughter house. He had wanted to send a team to help Iron 6 but with dismissal of Miss Green a few of the more ambitious of her supporters have been making waves. So until he had a good enough grasp on the situation he needed all the agents loyal to him and Mr Blue close to deal with any trouble they would make. Iron 6 would have to fend for himself for just a while longer.

Finishing off his cognac he stored the glass and the bottle back in the drawer and stood up. The image of the praying old man vanished and he once again projected the kind of steady, experienced persona that was capable of leading the most powerful secret organisation in Alliance space. Mr Orange had a party to get back to.

05/01/2174 Tau Volantis

Dropping out of FTL into Tau Volantis system I set the sensors for passive detection only and input a circuitous route towards the planet in the file. Just in case there was anyone here with a ship and a reason to put a few holes into anyone that comes looking. A few hours later I was approaching the right planet, 4th from the star, a frozen ice ball with just enough atmosphere left for weather to form, resulting in what I could only describe as a single planetary snowstorm. I didn't know how long such a thing lasted but considering it was covering the whole planet I doubted it would end anytime soon. Landing on it would be a challenge but I had to go down there and destroy the Source. It had to be destroyed so that no one could use this technology again, Leviathans and Reapers was enough mind-enslaving aliens for me.

As I swung the shuttle in an orbit around the planet bleeding off speed so that I could enter the atmosphere safely I switched the sensors to active scan, flying without them into a snowstorm was just plain stupid. Even if I could survive a crash from a sub-orbital flight I would be stuck on the planet and die shorty after.

A few seconds later the active sensors pinged what it classified as a debris field. Changing the trajectory slightly to approach it I saw what was clearly left after a battle, debris from several ships in orbit degrading slowly towards the planet. The shuttle's computer identified several pieces as belonging to a human Veracruz armed cargo ship and an asari Saro-type light corvette. Veracruz was a quick and dirty chop shop job during the First Contact war, the fleet needed an assault carrier to carry the troops to Shanxi and be able to take a few hits while it was launching the shuttles. So the fleet engineers took a Helium-3 fuel barge stripped out most of the fuel pods and mounted standard cargo containers instead. Reinforced the whole ship with extra struts and bolted armour on top of them. Made it look like an oddly shaped brick. When the war ended as quickly as it started and the ship had not been finished yet the Fleet decided that it would be better if they made a proper assault carrier and sold the ship into private hands. What I was seeing now was that it had somehow broken into several pieces and I could still recognise what was left of it because of it's distinctive shape.

Here I have to admit that all that knowledge was just me nerding out. I always liked spaceships, I always liked reading about their fictional design and fictional histories. Here I was in a real sci-fi setting with real spaceships that had real design histories. So I had terrabytes of documentaries, articles and books written on spaceship design and their history. Human and alien. Which is how I knew that that the Saro-type light corvette didn't belong to any asari. Asari built them and sold them on an open market with downgraded tech. I had seen real asari tech and it's decades ahead of anything humans have at this point. As I scanned the wreckage I noticed a power signature from the asari corvette. It was faint but steady and considering that her aft section was one giant gap where her engines and mass effect core should be I guessed that it was some kind of VI distress beacon feeding from emergency power cells. I needed to know what happened here before I attempted to land so I started a careful approach hoping that I didn't hit anything my kinetic barriers could not hope with.

After an hour of very careful approach I arranged for my shuttle to align with the wreckage a few hundred meters off. Quickly getting my armour on I attached an EVAMP, Extra-Vehicular Activity Manoeuvring Pack , to it and went into the airlock. EVAMP was basically 20th century tech with a slight 22nd century twist. It still used gas jets to propel you around, it still looked like a rocket pack but in addition it also had additional kinetic barriers so that I wouldn't need to rely on the ones in my armour and it had a built in autopilot in case of an emergency. Handy when you worked alone.

Shutting off the artificial gravity in the shuttle I pushed myself out gently and drifted a few meters away from the shuttle. I had used it only once before so it took me a few minutes of careful flying to get comfortable with the controls and the response of the EVA pack. Pushing myself to a gentle 3m/s I aligned myself with the wreckage and for a few minutes I just enjoyed the feeling. Zero-G, space, stars and the strange planet below me. Despite the reasons which brought me here, despite everything I knew about what is going to happen, despite everything I have experienced here so far. I enjoyed this moment. It appealed to the kid in me, the kid who used to read scifi novels and dream about space. It had been a long and painful road but I was here.

Saro-type corvette was not a big ship, at just over 50 meters long and 20 wide it didn't look like a typical asari ship, more like an extremely large metallic sunflower seed. Approaching the airlock closest to where the power reading was I let my omni-tool run it's usual hacking routine and was rewarded moments later with the airlock opening slowly. Since the pressure inside was the same as pressure outside, and by that I mean that there was none the small stupid computer that controlled the airlock and fed from emergency power cell let me gain access with generic Council search & rescue codes.

I drifted into the opening and let my magboots connect with the deck plating. Despite the asari love of composites for building nearly anything they built starships out of good old steel same as everyone else. It was far too versatile, cheap and allowed the use of magboots which is a very easy safety feature for working in zero-G.

The search through the ship didn't take long, the damage to the ship making my progress slow as I had to go around damaged sections of the ship several times. Surviving VI core was heavily degraded, it had survived the battle damage well enough but the radiation from the star did it's work on unshielded circuitry. So instead of trying to fix it I did a full memory dump of what had survived and after a few more minutes of searching for anything else useful left the ship.

Getting back to my shuttle was fast. Waiting for the data retrieval software on my omni-tool to parse through the data I downloaded was not. The first thing it found was the crew manifest. Thirty two people. As I scrolled through the list one name jumped out at me. Nicole Isaacs. She was listed as part of xeno-archaeological team but nothing beyond that. After another hour I shut down the software. It hadn't found anything else useful, the rest of the data recovered was just basic logs that a ship and it's crew produced during normal operation. A few personal messages but nothing of consequence, nothing that would tell me why they were here or what happened to them. Who destroyed these ships. Since I didn't get any answers here there was only one place to go. During my EVA I had the shuttle scan the planet for any power signatures or anything that would tell me that there is someone alive down there but the snowstorm was making it impossible to tell for sure. The VI in the shuttle was simply not smart enough to understand if what it was seeing was a genuine signal or a reflection from the storm clouds. I angled the nose of my shuttle down and let the engines push it down gently. Flying through a snowstorm was never a good idea, I just hoped that it looked worse than it was.

Chapter 11: Dust to Dust

Chapter Text

05/01/2174 Tau Volantis

Let's just be clear first, I am not a piloting genius, I am far from Joker or Cortez, but I am better than Vega. So my landing wasn't pretty but the shuttle was in one piece, mostly. It was on the ground and with some minor repairs to the thruster assembly it would take off again. It wasn't entirely my fault either. As it turned out the snowstorm covering the planet was made up not just of snow clouds. Once my shuttle dipped low enough I was met with a layer of pure thunderstorm. Sandwiched between the upper slow atmospheric currents carrying frozen water vapour and the lower warmer faster currents carrying snow clouds the middle layer turned into one huge electrical storm fed by the potential difference between the upper and lower layer of clouds. There after getting hit with a few dozen lightning strikes the shuttle lost power as the on-board computer thought that the mass effect core had built up a critical level of charge and shut it off. For then next ten seconds the shuttle fell like a brick. Luckily it was better streamlined than the true flying brick – UT-47, so I still had some basic aerodynamic control. After wrestling with it for another half a minute I managed to stop it from falling straight down. By that point the shuttle was out of the thunderclouds and the emergency power came back on so I had the thrusters back but not the mass effect core.

There was no time for fear, no time for anything but the purely automated responses drilled into me by the instructors so that is what I did. Most spacecraft kinetic barriers are manually adaptable and so I switched them into crash mode and did one of the most aggressive deceleration burns I have ever encountered. Even my improved cardio-vascular and nervous systems were on the verge of blacking out as the shuttle's engines applied all their considerable thrust to the effort of saving it from being a pile of smoking wreckage on the ground.

Seconds later I exhaled in relief as I saw that both the speed and the altitude indicators were stable and were not flashing red anymore. There were however a few other yellow and red warning lights. Only two were actually important. In the heroic effort to slow down and stopping the shuttle from falling a few of the smaller thrusters burned out. The second warning was about the mass effect core being down and I had absolutely no idea if I could bring it back online until I landed and had a long, hard look at it. It was a simplified human version of a turian design so it should be pretty robust but still I had to find a place to land and fast.

After making sure that there is nothing that is going to make the shuttle fall out of the sky in the immediate future I switched my attention to the "incoming communication" notification flashing to the side of the more important readouts and tapped it.

"This planet is private property of Ishimura Corporation, any trespassers will be met with security and escorted to the temporary detention centre until deportation can be arranged. Any resistance will be met with deadly force." the message said and repeated after a few seconds. Automated threats, not that they would deter anyone serious enough and you had to be to actually get here. Corporate owned planets existed but they were rarely owned by a single corporation, too much of an expense no matter how big and powerful you are. Even Noveria was owned jointly.

Quickly locating the signal source I banked the shuttle carefully to avoid stressing the thrusters that I still had, and let the sensors go into active scan mode again. The cloud cover was so thick that it was impossible to say if it was day or night, the darkness was near absolute and only the faint glow of what I suspected was the constant lightning discharge made the darkness into a cold grey gloom turning everything monochrome. I doubted that even the best pilot could fly out here using only his eyes, the shadows, the snow and the lack of variety to the landscape made it impossible to judge distances. Half an hour flight time at barely over 500kph and I was setting down in what had appeared to be a natural cavern in the side of a hill on first glance but once inside the signs of engineering by a sentient mind were clear. The entrance to the cavern was wide enough for several shuttles to fly in without endangering each other and inside, it could fit two or three frigates like SR1 Normandy easily. Despite this being an alien world and alien design by a mind so twisted that it could see a species wide suicide as the ultimate goal the purpose of this cavern was easy enough to understand, it was a covered landing field. Would make sense that the species that lived on this planet would require something like this, the weather must have been better when they were still alive and building this but I would not expect it to be radically different. Inside there was a row of shuttles, all of them human-made and clearly intact with no discernible damage. Whoever piloted them must have known about the middle layer and taken countermeasures. Landing the shuttle on the other side of the huge bay I took stock of the equipment I had. The armour and weapons I had were aimed at blending in, they were the kind that an average merc would wear, not cheap but easily available. Nothing that would allow anyone to discern identity of the wearer without taking some intensive scans. They were solid enough when dealing with pirates or mercenaries but I had the feeling that I would need more than that for what is coming next. The snow covered tomb world, insane suicide cultists, inhuman and inhumane experiments. All of that made me wish I had waited for response from HQ, I know that they preferred when we were making decisions on how to carry out our missions on our own but this was serious enough to warrant some backup. No use crying over spilt milk however so I geared up. Taking 16 grenades, twice what I usually have and even an extra ammo block. Full weapon loadout too, sniper rifle in the form of the trusty M-92, ERCS Banshee Mk6, M-3 Predator and a Storm Mk4 shotgun. Usually I took only the weapons that would suit the particular situation or engagement type but this time I had no real information what was going to oppose me or what kind of environment is going to be deeper inside this ancient alien mega-structure.

Stepping out of the shuttle I felt the temperature drop even inside the suit. It compensated quickly enough but for a few moments the wind chill made me shiver. Or maybe it was the knowledge of what happened on this planet and my imagination working overtime to conjure up spectres of long dead species. Holding the Predator at the ready I quickly crossed the cavern to where I saw some doors. When I was approaching the hill in the shuttle I had tried to scan it but the presence of several heavy metals such as iron, nickel and lead made it impossible to get any detail. All that the sensors would tell me was that the density of the area was far less than it should be considering presence of metals.

The landing bay was constructed from a curious blend of concrete, lots of heavy metals in it and it had been fashioned into huge slabs before somehow being fused together. This type of construction was usually called megalithic on Earth. Approaching the door I was greeted with the first sign of modern technology, a basic airlock, prefabricated for building bases and camps in hostile environments. Bypassing their basic lock code was a matter of seconds and I was in.

Corridors, endless corridors, a labyrinth of crisscrossing, winding corridors. Dark grey walls marked in what I assumed was necromorph script but worn down and faded over the thousands of years of being exposed to the wind. The airlock might have been modern but the facility inside was still original necromorph construction, apart from the lights which must have been put in by the people who were now down here. Equally spaced every 10 steps they were again the basic orange LED light, just bright enough to navigate around. I have been inside it for nearly an hour and I had found plenty of artifacts that would have made any xeno-archaeologist jump with joy and plenty of evidence of recent human presence here. The walls inside were made of the same stuff as the cavern outside so my omni-tool scanning feature was useless, all it was getting back was endless echoes as if the corridor itself was constructed to subvert any attempts at scanning. As I was checking the map again, it was automatically filled in by the mapping software in the omni-tool showing me where I had been already, a security mech walked around a corner.

"Intruder detected" it said before aiming it's weapon and firing. Security mechs have been around for a hundred years at least and their current iterations were pretty good at dealing with simple situations, no one however would expect them to fight trained soldiers and win unless they had at least ten to one numbers on their side. But then again usually they were not so trigger happy either. I dove for the ground and twisted, aiming roughly at it's upper body as I squeezed the trigger several times. It must have been the cheapest version as it didn't have any shields and two shots impacted full force with the rest either missing or harmlessly passing through less important areas of it's body. First blew out the lower part of it's head and the second hit it squarely in the chest. Slowed down but not deterred it started to aim the weapon again but I swept my leg bringing it down from it's feet and then with a couple more shots disabling it's arms. It was sent on a patrol, so it must have some kind of map of this place including the origin point and identities of whoever gave the orders.

Fifteen minutes and several security mechs reduced to scrap later I stood in front of a staircase winding down to the lower level. I knew now from the map inside the bots logs that his facility had several underground floors overlooking a huge empty cavern on the bottom. From the topographical map I got from scanning the area I had thought that the necromorphs tunneled into a natural hill. I was wrong. The whole thing was artificial, a huge pyramidal shape with a flat top like a cross between a mayan and egyptian pyramids. Over the eons it had been worn down into a smoother shape appearing more natural. The bots logs noted that the personnel with security clearance were at the bottom of this facility right in the region of the huge void. Notes left by Isaacs were pure speculation when it came to this place and so far I had not find any surviving computer systems of necromorph origin to tell me what was the purpose of this place or what could be down there. Stepping carefully down I wondered what Nicole and the rest of her people were still doing here. Even if they had some kind of falling out between them that destroyed their big ships there were at least two or three shuttles in the bay right now that were capable of interstellar flight. They could have sent for help. Unless of course they were still trying to dig up whatever secrets this world held. I wondered if they knew what the Obelisks did and if Nicole knew what had happened to her husband. If she did and she still continued on with the mission then the only choice at that point I would have would be to kill them. People like that are too dangerous, letting them live would only allow them another chance to try it again. Especially since there was currently no evidence linking any of them to the infected terrorists or the massacre on that ship so even if I handed all of them over to authorities they would likely walk away with a fine for breaking Citadel law by excavating a dead alien civilization without permission. Hopefully it was a choice I wouldn't have to make.

This level was a repeat of the previous one, a labyrinth of corridors and mostly empty rooms with bots patrolling them in a pattern that made it easy for me to avoid them or ambush them when trying to go around them would have taken too long. Only when I neared another staircase down I noticed the climbing temperature of the environment around me. Until then it was at a steady -10C, cold but tolerable when compared to the -50C outside, not including the wind chill factor. Now it was slowly climbing. Which meant that there was a power source large enough to heat up the huge space.

Holding my weapon at the ready I walked down the stairs and through a shorter than I expected corridor to emerge into an enormous cavern. I couldn't see much since it was all in darkness with only a faint outline of long staircase down leading to a camp on the bottom, the only illuminated spot I could see. My omni-tool beeped, it was notifying me that the space I was in was too big for the automap feature to map, which meant that the void was at least a kilometre long from where I was standing. Whatever was down there was clearly massive. I was just about to start down the path when I saw movement.

Three shapes resolved themselves from the background, all humanoid as far as I could tell but wearing large flowing robes made out of innumerable pieces of cloth wound around and around until only the most basic shape could be discerned. Their hoods were drawn far down so I could not see their faces. At first they appeared unarmed but a moment later I saw that they were armed after all, if those vicious looking scythes with a pistol grips on their belts were any indication.

I stood there watching them as they had simply stopped a dozen paces away and made no move to draw their weapons or in fact do anything but stare at me. If they were actually staring at me and not at the ground. The hoods made it impossible to tell where they were looking. Deciding to risk it I put the gun back on my hip.

Two of them looked at each other and then one gestured for me to follow and started down the steps. I waited for a few seconds to see if the others are going to move but seeing no reaction from them I followed. As I stepped down the first flight of stairs the others followed without uttering a sound. I needed some answers and while no doubt shooting all of them was the safest approach to take, gathering intelligence required sacrifice. I just hoped that it wouldn't be me this time.

Secondary Codex Entry/Extinct Civilizations

While protheans are the best known extinct civilization and they are credited with the creation of the mass relays, Citadel and the remnants of their bases provided most of the species known in the galaxy with the technological leap needed to use faster than light travel the galaxy has at many points in it's history been home to other civilizations. Several of the better known ones are inusannon and zeioph but there are dozens of worlds in the galaxy that bear the tell tale signs of an advanced civilization. Some have left behind baffling monuments of inscrutable purpose, others have left only the signs of war or industrial pollution as proof of their existence. Ancient cities, outposts, stone or metal monoliths covered with alien writings all have been carefully noted and promptly declared off limits by the Citadel Council. Research into these civilizations is almost always met with scorn and ridicule by the foremost minds of the galaxy in the field of history and archaeology, and it is not a surprise that most of them are asari. Their long lifespans have given them an overwhelming advantage in the field and they have dominated it for the past 2500 years. It is rumoured that several monasteries devoted to Athame in asari space have been used as repositories of ancient artifacts from dozens of civilizations even more ancient than protheans. But as such monasteries are not open to visitors and are under protection of Justicars or asari huntresses it is impossible to verify.

Due to this fact any remains and artifacts left over by extinct civilizations are sought after by every single galactic power, locations of these finds are closely guarded secrets until research teams make sure that there is nothing left over that can be used. Corporations like ExoGeni are afforded more leeway than others as they take on the task of researching such places and the risk of breaking Citadel law in case of a valuable find. So far there is no information of any significant discovery made from the remains of any other civilization other than protheans.

Chapter 12: Ashes to Ashes

Chapter Text

Following my silent guide down I could not help but conjure up an image of descending to hell, it was getting warmer as we followed the ancient steps down. Despite all my training, despite all that I have seen in this universe and all I know from my original one, my mind could not help but conjure up all kinds of scenarios where I get to the end of the steps and get captured by the rabid cultists that have just been waiting for an appropriate human to sacrifice to their dark god, whatever it was. It didn't help that as soon as I entered the cavern there was something just beyond the visual or aural range. A whisper, a movement, an oppressive feeling. But I haven't talked to an actual live person in more than a few days, this whole necromorph business was quite literally a horror scenario and it didn't help that my guide, who must have been human at some point clearly was not anymore. The way it walked was just wrong for any kind of legs I have seen in this or any universe so far.

Moving at a rapid pace it took us less than ten minutes to climb down and enter what must have been some kind of ceremonial chamber between the steps and the area beyond. The chamber was basically a two and a half meter high wall with an opening at each end, roughly twenty meters long and four wide. At the other end of it there was a gate half of which was cut into with a laser creating a circular hole in the middle of it. The walls were covered in necromorph script and in pictograms depicting the obelisks, rough humanoid shapes and bigger horned humanoids. The orange lights were casting reflections on the stones that really added to the whole underworld vibe. Not that I had much time to admire the carvings of the masters long dead as I kept following my guide who had not varied the speed of it's walking. Too smooth for something purely biological.

Something struck me as odd however seeing all that was left of the necromorphs so far. No lifts, no power, nothing that I could recognise as computer systems. The only thing that even suggested a civilization advanced beyond iron age was the huge megastructure itself with what was clearly an inside landing field for some kind of air transport. That is if you don't count the obelisks themselves. However I could not follow that thought through as we reached the circular hole and stepped through it.

Beyond it was clearly the center of whatever the people here came to do. A few glances around and I revised my earlier statement, not people, not anymore. All covered from head to toe, all moving far too smoothly. I wondered if I brought enough firepower. I wished I had M-451 flamethrower from ME2. Or maybe Cain, then I could have stood up there and just take a few pot shots down. Probably wouldn't have been that effective, aiming Cain with precision was always more of a suggestion than an actual thing but it would have been quite satisfying.

As we walked through the camp no one reacted in any way visible to me or detectable by the sensors in my suit. No one but my guides seemed to care that there was a stranger among them. It was now a positively comfortable 15 degrees celsius here and the darkness was mostly dispelled by the light rigged up all around, however all of them seemed to be set to soft diffuse orange light making anything directly outside of them become a half-shadow. Most disconcerting especially with the silent not-people scurrying around.

Our destination was a small dome shaped house. It looked older than anything else in here, made out of bricks and if my guess was right then they were simple mud-bricks, uneven, rough, crumbling from age even protected as they were from the elements in here. My guide simply stopped in front of it and waved a hand at me in a vague motion that didn't really say anything to me. So I adopted a ready stance, my arms within reach of my weapons.

A few minutes later a shape emerged from the building moving this time in a positively human manner despite being dressed the same way as the not-people I had seen so far here.

"Ah, a visitor, what an unexpected pleasure." she said her voice sounding genuinely pleased. And quite human.

"I would like to say the same. You are the first person I have seen so far." I replied deciding that it would take too long to dance around the issues here. It has been a long few months and I was not in the mood for diplomacy. Not down in a pit under a pyramid on a planet of a long dead species.

"I see. May I inquire what brings you here, to this planet?" she replied sounding offended this time

"You should know more about that than me. You are here after all, digging. But first before we commence with the rest of our business here I have something to do first. Where can I find Nicole Isaacs, I have a message for her from her husband." I said

"I am Nicole Isaacs." she said and uncovered her face, "I have been waiting for him to arrive. Is there something wrong?"

"Your husband is dead. He took his own life after the experiments he had been doing on board an Ishimura ship went out of control. In the message I found he asked whoever found it to tell you that he loved you." I explained without sugar coating it.

"I see." Nicole Isaacs said and there was sadness in her voice.

"Unfortunately whatever he was doing on board that ship did not stop with his death or the deaths of everyone on it. His notes led me here to what he believed was the origin of the obelisks. Can you confirm this?" I said putting a bit of steel in my voice. By this point I was pretty sure that she had been in on it and that they were not doing anything good here either but I needed more information in case leaving a big crater in place of this hill would not stop it.

"Yes, they come from here. They were spun into existence ten thousand years ago. A way for them to do what needed to be done. A holy mission that was corrupted by a single blasphemer. " Nicole said and I could see her eyes brighten slightly. In red. Glowing red just behind her irises.

"What was this mission?" I asked resigning myself to a simple fact now that I would need to kill everyone here.

"To bring back the Great One. Hundreds of millions of years ago the Great One after some titanic struggle laid down on this planet to rest. However he fell into a deep slumber from which he could not wake up. This planet had already been home to life but it would take millions of years for it to become sentient. The Great One would call out in his sleep to them, but it was to no avail until eleven or twelve thousand years ago they dug into the ground looking for precious metals and finally found him. They spoke to him and were offered a chance. To become part of the Great One and to ascend to a higher plane of existence. And they almost succeeded in doing that. Almost. If not for the damned blasphemer the Great One would have been freed from the frozen soil of this planet millennia ago. I wish he was still alive so that I might grant him the punishment he deserves." Nicole said speaking the last words with such venom that I almost shot here right there and then.

"What did he do?" I asked. As long as she kept answering questions that I had I was not about to start a fight.

"He was one of the lead scripture writers for the Obelisks, he was responsible for making sure they did what they were supposed to. However he was different from the others. Either some accident or a mutation he was born with he was unable to hear the glorious voice of the Great One. He altered the code within the Obelisks, he made them kill. Instead of leading necromorphs to their place of transformation, where their sacrifice would be honored for all eternity as part of the Great One he made the Obelisks turn everyone into senseless killing machines. Instead of the great joining in death as they were promised they killed each other damning their souls to be wasted. Never to join the perfection of the Great One." the thing that used to be Nicole answered

"So what is the Great One?" I asked hoping that my guess was wrong

"We cannot comprehend him, our minds are not enough. He is so far beyond that our attempts even guided by him fall short. We can only hope to join with him, only then we will be able to answer that question. The others have already started the process, becoming more than human. In honour of the people who lived and died here I call them necromorphs. For now however I am not able to join them. I still need to oversee the task. But once it's done I shall join them in the eternal bliss." the thing that was Nicole said in a tone of voice that was both full of awe and the kind that teachers use to softly scold children who are being too stupid. All the time she had been talking to me the red glow in her eyes had been growing.

"I see." I said and in one motion raised my Predator and shot her twice. One was right in the middle of her forehead and the second one was slightly off the mark hitting her just to the right of her nose. Spinning around I shot at my guide and used the motion to unsling and unfold my shotgun. My guide was tougher than Nicole and a few shots to centre mass did not do much but slow him down so I aimed my shotgun and pulled the trigger.

Anticipating some anti-zombie action I loaded it with incendiary rounds option. Which proved to be highly useful as I was seeing now. My guide taking the full brunt of the shot was now twisting, twitching and doing his best to appear on fire and in pain without actually making any sound. Letting my HUD feed me info on my targets I selected the next one and fired twice then ducked and rolled into another one letting my weight bowl him over. Then I punched him and heard the rough crack of the neck vertebrae. Before I could stand up several were upon me. I had a stupidly high pain tolerance compared to most sentient species known, only krogan had a higher tolerance than me but then they had to deal with the whole blood rage thing. But even with my pain tolerance and with my dual protection of the armour and my own skin the hits that I was receiving from these creatures were just barely tolerable. Which was a testament to the strength of these things. But my training had provided me with an answer what to do in similar situations, though they had never thought about fighting something like a necromorph, but the general principles still worked. Grabbing the blade I swept it low across their legs as I used all my strength to push in one direction. The blade bit deep and if not for my enhanced strength I imagine it would have stopped there but instead it severed cleanly one leg and made a very deep gash in another making the creature topple and allowing me to escape in the confusion created by it's fall.

Coming to my feet I didn't stop to grab the shotgun on the floor, they were too close now anyway and despite their clearly superhuman strength and toughness I still had the advantage. So far they seemed to be behaving like husks, or something close enough.

One arm extended with the blade pointed at them, I grabbed my Predator with my second hand and was about to wade back into close quarters battle when I heard a very strange thing. A laugh. Slowly turning towards the source of the sound I saw something that I had been dreading since I had seen the red light appear in Nicole's eyes.

"You are a fine warrior for a creature of flesh and bone. Not as fragile as these other humans. They had to be changed before they were worthy of being called my servants. But unlike them I can't see your mind. What are you?" the creature that used to be Nicole said, red glare now dominant in the eye that survived. It jerked up with sudden motion and the other necromorphs backed away, bending their backs in subservience

"A slightly less squishy human. The real question is what are you?" I asked, this all was so familiar to me. I had thought at first that this was Reaper doing but they never seemed to have employed technology like this. Unless of course this one was much older than the others and the techniques had not been perfected yet when it was cast down to this planet.

"I am beyond your comprehension, I am a god, I am the Great One. The one who controls ten thousand stars. Your life is but a grain of sand. I shall take it and do with it as I please." the creature screamed at me in Nicole's voice that had been distorted by what I imagine was Reaper implants of some kind.

"A Reaper then. All of you sound alike." I replied and shot Nicole's corpse three times this time as I rushed forward and swung the blade at her neck. If something has a head, it's a weak spot is a lesson I will never forget from my days of gaming.

The creature was faster by a fraction of a second and evaded me so that the blade only grazed the side of her neck.

"Reaper? No. I am far beyond that now, their minds might be nations but my mind is a galaxy on it's own. They think themselves perfection, a pinnacle of all possible life organic or synthetic. But I am free from that folly. Perfection is a lie. Only the hunger is real. To consume or be consumed that is the ultimate perfection of life. And I shall consume everything." the creature said through Nicole and lunged at me. Twisting to the side I let my other hand gain momentum and then rammed it right into her middle. The light suit that she was wearing beneath all those rags did not stop me, neither did her skin or muscle and my hand buried itself deep inside. Then I kicked her away leaving the grenade that I had been clutching in my hand inside. The corpse of Natalie sneered before exploding. I didn't wait for the other creatures to attack and rushed back the way I came dropping a grenade behind me. I still had plenty left so it didn't matter if it simply slowed them down rather than killed them. I had a plan and I needed time to make it happen. Then I heard the rumble. At first I thought it was an earthquake but then I remembered that in the survey of this planet it was recorded that no tectonic activity is happening. It was dead like Mars. So there was only one thing that could make that sound. The Great One, trying to free itself from it's earthen prison. Which meant I didn't have time to do this carefully. Without slowing I ran up the stairs and into the labyrinth.

Half an hour later I emerged back into the shuttle bay. I had run out of grenades and was down to my Predator and the M-92 and the rumble had become a definite thumping sound with plenty of cracking. Great shuddering cracking that echoed through the structure. I had no time to fix my own shuttle but there were others to choose from. But first my plan. I run from shuttle to shuttle slaving the controls to my omni-tool, before jumping into one and quickly running through the takeoff sequence. The shuttle must have been sitting cold for a long time as it took at least five minutes to spin up it's mass effect core and reinitialize all the critical systems. All the time I was sitting in the seat and attempting to gauge by the sound and feel of those thumps how close the thing was to the surface. Once the system readouts all turned green I pushed the throttle up and all the shuttles rose as one, slaved to my controls. I had not time to do this gracefully so I simply aimed at the opening and pushed the throttles forward making the shuttle jump out of the landing bay as it was a bullet fired from a gun.

And right in time too as less than ten seconds later the whole structure started to come apart as the nightmare creature rose from the depths of earth. It was telling the truth, it was not a Reaper. It had too many tentacles, it looked fleshy despite the huge bulk and a clearly scarred carapace. It looked like a Leviathan's ugly cousin. Some unholy combination of a crab, octopus and a centipede and all of it a thousand times bigger. As I circled around it I could see the battle damage, one claw missing, a score of tentacles ending as short stubs, masses of scar tissue and deep gauges in it's body. Letting the scanners record the thing I noticed that it was not just organic. Certain parts were grafted on, the sensor reading reporting that they were made from non-organic material. I was so fascinated by the creature that I almost missed how one of it's metal appendages rose and the shuttles systems registered a buildup of power inside it. Banking the shuttle sharply I avoided the searing particle beam. Deciding it was time to kill this thing I set the command to the shuttles. There was an explosion where I had landed with my shuttle. I had rigged up a self destruct to the drive core in case I had not returned so now it turned into a sizeable warhead. By my calculations it should be about a kiloton or just a bit more. The explosion staggered the creature, which meant that it had no kinetic barrier protecting it. The other shuttles were gaining altitude at their highest speed. Without human occupants they were capable of quite a lot. I let the shuttle I was in circle around again gaining a bit of distance and altitude.

I sent another command making one of the shuttles stop gaining altitude and dive at the creature.

The creature attempted to intercept it but the shuttle hit just before the power level in one of it's mechanic tentacles rose high enough to fire the particle beam. The shuttle's core went super-critical and inverted the mass effect field inside it compressing the deuterium fuel inside the fusion cell and briefly creating a small pure fusion reaction. A fireball of pure plasma struck the side of the creature with the shockwave reaching me a few seconds later forcing me to fight the controls to keep it on the course I wanted. I needed a direct visual of the thing for the second part of my plan. The Great One was still alive, thankfully it still didn't seem capable of generating barriers so all it had was it's carapace and the huge bulk for protection. I couldn't really tell how injured it was but now it was missing more tentacles and the side that was struck looked smooth as if someone polished it, all the bumps, scars and other less friendly things had been scraped away by the nuclear fire.

It was clearly still alive, letting out a titanic roar that reverberated inside the shuttle so without further ado I sent the command to the other shuttles through my omni-tool. I was very grateful that they were human built. As part of my software package I had been given all kids of over-rides and one of them includes the safety limiters for the mass effect cores. Anything that flew and contained a mass effect core had a safety set into it that prohibited it from accelerating to FLT speeds while the sensors detected something above a certain mass or size in front of it. In theory it stopped terrorists from weaponising ships and shuttles and in practice it stopped anyone ramming into staff accidentally. However humans, bless their ancient distrustful ways, had rigged it in a way that while still complying with the Citadel law also allowed the military to use them as kinetic weapons. Meant only for the last-ditch defense in case of unstoppable alien invasion the codes were usually kept under the strictest control. But as it usually is, whoever my patrons were they had clear access to both Alliance High Command and to the highest government circles of Earth.

The shuttles had risen to just below the storm clouds and now engaging their thrusters and their cores to the full accelerated to FLT straight down. All five of them dove half a second apart, in a staggered pattern to maximise the kinetic force of each strike.

Each one struck at hypervelocity, just about 14 kilometres per second, taking in the account the mass of the shuttle my omni-tool was telling me that each strike was worth about 0.7 kilotons. Five times point seven came out to a total of three point five kilotons. That would have been woefully inadequate to kill a fully functional Reaper but this monster was organic in nature for the most part, already had been wounded and was not capable of generating barriers or shields of any kind. As I continued to circle the strike zone letting the more sensitive mining sensors of the shuttle I requisitioned probe the ground I waited for the dust to settle. The snowstorm kept going as if nothing had happened at all and I didn't have to wait for long as the wind and snow swept the dust cloud away letting me see clearly the results of my gamble. And it had been a gamble. I didn't know nearly enough about it to say for certain how much force you needed to kill it and I didn't know anything about it's regenerative capabilities just what simple observation and logic told me. And they told me that if the Great One had been able to regenerate on it's own, if it had been able to leave the planet it would have long ago and would have went on a rampage until someone stopped it. And it spoke of hunger which led me to suspect that on a frozen world like this, a dead world it was unable to find any sustenance. If I hadn't killed it I have at least injured it and delayed it. Quite probably long enough for me to signal my patrons so that they send a ship here to pulverize what's left of it into small chunks, maybe even burn it later with a well placed nuke or ten.

To my relief both my eyes and the sensors were telling me something quite encouraging. The thing was lying there in several pieces with at least one hole penetrating through the middle and most of it's appendages gone. I was tempted for a second to fly down there and attempt to kick it to make sure but my fatigue won over. I was too tired even for gloating. I was not blind enough to my own emotions not to see how this Obelisk mission had impacted me, emotionally more than physically. The constant chase, loss of Joan all the more painful as we never got to experience in full what had sparked between us, this quite literally pre-historic space monster and all this time the tiny voice in the back of my mind telling me that I was wasting my time. That Reapers are coming and I still haven't done anything to stop them. The active ones. I had actually managed to stop this one. One, mostly dead Reaperified ancient creature. But I needed to do more. To at least set up some kind of covert support network for Shepard when she finally faces them. Maybe with sensor recordings of the creature and my conversation with it I could convince the top people I worked for that Reapers were real. Not much of a chance but at least they could come up with some battle tactics against huge monsters. After all you could never be sure that this was the only one of it's kind.

As I was thinking about all of this I let the shuttle's autopilot follow the rather complicated program that the now dead Ishimura pilots had set up to avoid the worst of the storm layer. Cranking up the heating inside I started peeling off my armour not looking forward to the smell that all the hours and exertion had produced. There were no showers on this shuttle but at least I had a sink and a bathroom and there must be a packet of wet wipes. There was always a packet of wet wipes. With a mental effort I moved the Reaper problem aside and set myself a simple three point plan. Wash myself. Find coffee. Write a report back to HQ while drinking the coffee. I liked the plan. I followed the plan.

Chapter 13: Back on track

Chapter Text

08/01/2174, Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel, Zakera ward.

It took longer for me to get back than I had anticipated and it seems the previous owners of the shuttle had eaten everything else so I was down to emergency rations which I have to say are as unappetising as they have always been. It was hard packed dry dirt in texture and vaguely salty, vaguely sweet, slightly greasy day old oatmeal in taste that had far too many mystery ingredients for my liking. And as I learned the hard way soaking it in water is not an option, the hard packed dirt texture is replaced by soggy, lumpy cardboard texture while also producing a smell that could have been easily used to fumigate. I tried to find out what it was made from but apart from the generic nutritional value and a disclaimer that all the ingredients were organically sourced the extranet could not come up with an answer the few times I was close enough to a comm buoy for a connection. Apart from my battle with the food my journey was uneventful. I spent my days writing reports, exercising and planning my next step. I just had two things to do first.

So finding myself on the Citadel I was incredibly relieved, while human presence on it was still quite small compared to a decade later and so the food of choice would be either asari or batarian. What salarians was best left for salarians. Even krogan would rather eat a salarian than salarian food. Despite the closure of batarian embassy four years earlier there were still plenty of them around to support a batarian food import business. Or if I was feeling adventurous there was always the krogan cuisine, which despite their ability to eat nearly anything is mostly digestible by the other levo species. Mostly. Some of the spices that they used were not always easy to distinguish from neurotoxins.

But I had already decided back on the shuttle that I would just go to the nearest asari fast food joint and get myself a double of lurn and jossy, basically their version of fish and chips but with a thick blue-green seaweed instead of chips, chopped and fried slightly on high heat and a vaguely lobster like creature instead of fish. Ordinarily any non-asari who were also not biotic did not eat their native versions instead opting for reproductions sourced from planets without eezo in everything but as I had found out a while ago trace amounts of eezo worked in a similar way on me as caffeine. But as I didn't know what long-term effects on me it would have I only indulged on rare occasions.

I had sent a message as soon as I dropped into Citadel space to Kal'leena hoping that she was also on the Citadel but I got an automated response back saying she was out on business and she would return in a few days. Hoping that was true as I had far too many questions to ask her before I went on doing anything else I headed for the rapid transit terminal.

Two hours later I found myself in Chora's Den. When I played the games I had simply assumed it was a random name to make it seem authentic but here I found out that Chora was actually a real person. She was an old turian mercenary tough as nails as they say which in this case her being turian and all was probably literally true. This version of Chora's Den was not as sleazy as the one I remembered, the central bar area did not have asari dancers on top instead had several screens showing a variety of info feeds, the kind that mercenaries and other assorted rabble that rattled around the various corners of the galaxy would find interesting. The booths along the walls were all equipped with smart privacy screens so I couldn't see what was going on in them but judging by the flow of the people inside for the past hour or so I was pretty sure that Chora did not allow anything more than slight over the clothes action and only if her girls and boys were fine with it. At least that what I thought seeing two batarians get kicked out by Mogk, her asari bouncer. I must say she was the meanest looking asari I had ever seen. Taller and more muscled than any asari I had seen she also had a glare that made even some of the krogan patrons shiver. Draining the last of my drink I motioned to Chora again. I was in the process of tasting every drink on the menu.

Roughly half an hour ago Chora had taken an interest in the strange human who has been sampling all the levo-compatible drinks in her menu and despite drinking an amount of alcohol that she knew would have made a krogan woozy the human kept drinking. So Chora took over from one of her bartenders and starting personally pour him drink after drink. And yet he was still behaving as if he was completely sober. Chora liked a challenge.

"What will it be this time?" she said tapping her claw on the bar counter.

"You know what, surprise me." I said as I looked at her, by this point I have consumed at least two thirds of her drinks menu including the co*cktails and yet I have not reached my limit. I don't know what drove me here really, curiosity or fatigue or both but I knew that I was not moving from this bar stool before I could get at least slightly beyond tipsy. Maybe then I could forget about Joan, forget about Kal'leena and forget about everything else and find myself one of those nice asari for one night. But I knew that without a great deal more of alcohol that would compromise my usual strict sense of propriety I would never do it. I had unfortunately carried it over from my previous life. I did not do casual relationships or hook ups.

"Heh, you asked for it." Chora said and brought up three bottles from under the counter. One of them glowed slightly purple in the fluorescent lights. Another one was pale green and the third one simply looked like vodka. She poured two measures from one, another measure from the second one and topped it off with a half measure from the purple one. Squeezing a bit of asari lemon analogue she put the drink in front of me with a clear challenge in her eyes. I took the glass and looking straight back in her eyes downed the liquid. The mix burned down my throat like I remembered vodka doing it back when I was in my old body. There was a slight mint like sweetness to it which made my mouth feel cool as I sucked in air.

"That was something. What's in it?" I said putting the glass back down on the table feeling the afterburn from it. Considering how it affected me it must have been borderline rocket fuel.

"You are one tough human I can tell you that. First time I seen anyone but krogan drink this. Two parts ryncol, one part elasa and a dash of horosk. I wouldn't pour horosk for any human but seeing what you have drunk so far I doubt it would give you any trouble." Chora answered making it clear that my earlier guess was right. IT had been rocket fuel. I get elasa that is just asari variety of whiskey or something like that but horosk was a purely turian alcohol, their variant of absinthe if I remembered correctly and I was sure that the only reason krogan didn't use ryncol as fuel was because they would rather drink it.

"Isn't ryncol usually radioactive?" I said wondering if this counted as an attempted poisoning.

"If it's cheap. Or if someone is feeling authentically krogan and tries to make it the way they do on Tuchanka. The stuff I have is clean. Anyway you are still conscious." Chora said sounding disappointed but before I could reply I heard a familiar voice behind me.

"Mr Knight? Mr Sam Knight?" she said her australian accent clear even through the noise of the bar.

Turning slowly around I couldn't help but smile as I looked at her. Her long black hair cascading down her back. While she was dressed in exactly the kind of clothes that people coming to this kind of bars would have she still looked out place. Dark trousers, black high heel boots just above the knee, white t-shirt and a black and white leather effect jacket making her colour scheme very similar to the one she had in the game.

"Who wants to know?"I replied not even trying to hide as my eyes took in her form. I couldn't help but compare her to my world version of her both digital and the actress she was based on. And it would likely make her underestimate me, if what I knew about her from the game still held true. Miranda Lawson as I live and breathe.

"I am." she said smiling back a smile that promised quite a bit. I knew she used her looks as a weapon as much as her biotics or an actual weapon. But I was still at an advantage, I knew who she worked for and what he wanted.

"Then I am Sam Knight. Can I offer you a drink?" I said gesturing to the seat next to me.

"I would be delighted." she said and slid into the seat and yet somehow managing to accentuate every curve of her body as she moved. I wondered if this was a skill she had learned or just her natural ability at work.

As we both ordered something I turned my full attention on her and thought about what to do next. It was pretty clear that Illusive Man had Cerberus stake out the Citadel and likely any other major port hoping to catch me. He simply was not the kind of man to let destruction of his facility go. However he could never guess that I knew all about him and enough about Cerberus to seriously damage them. Which I had thought about doing but I had been busy with another crisis.

"I would be remiss in my duties as a man not to tell you that you are the most beautiful woman I have seen in the past six months at least." I said meaning every word.

"Then I would like to return the sentiment and tell you that you are the most impressive man I have seen in the past six months." Miranda said letting her eyelashes flutter just a bit as she looked at me, making me wonder if the flush I was feeling was from the alcohol I have been drinking or something else. Seriously how does she do that, it looked perfectly natural and yet just by that I knew how much actual effort and control it must have taken.

"I am pleased to hear that. But what brings someone like you to a place like this?" I said not wanting to stop our nice little game but knowing that it would be best to speed it along before she actually charms me enough. I was a reasonably normal guy after all and even if you discount the old crush I had on her prototype because of the TV show called Chuck and the fact that she was one of my favourite characters in the game, she had the looks and the knowledge to charm any more or less straight man.

"If I said I was looking for someone like you would you believe me?" she answered and leaned forward slightly giving me an easy view of what was down her neckline not that the simple white t-shirt hid much anyway. That was a bit of a cheap shot on her part but I wasn't going to complain.

"Without a doubt in my mind. Just one question. Is this personal or business?" I asked and for a moment hoping that this was just some random coincidence and Miranda simply had the same idea I had from before and I was indeed the most impressive human guy she could find. But as soon as I thought that I chased that it away. No such coincidences exist. Not when it came to Cerberus. She did know my name after all. My true name and none one of the dozens of aliases I have been using.

"And what is that your are implying there Mr Knight?" she replied her tone hurt. I guess my words could have been construed to imply that she was a hooker.

"What I mean were you looking for me specifically or just someone like me, Miss Lawson." I said deciding it was time to stop playing games. Startled she sat up straight and I could see that she was ready to leap off that stool and fight. Her reaction told me everything I needed to know. A pity.

"There is no need to be alarmed Miss Lawson. Yes I know who you are and I know the people you work for. But let's be civil here. I have absolutely no ill will towards you." I said opening my hands in a placating gesture.

"Who do you work for?" Miranda asked her voice tense. She clearly was not yet as experienced as her version in game. Which was a good thing. Maybe I could lure her away from Cerberus. It was 2174 and she had run away from her father when Oriana was a baby. Oriana was 18 or 19 in 2185 so that would make it 2167 or 2166. So she has been with Cerberus for about 7 years now. But as stir-crazy as Cerberus is I doubt they would have been sending her on missions when she was a teenager. She would have likely been sent to some kind of university. It would have been a complete and utter waste by Illusive Man not to continue her education. Miranda Lawson was far more than beauty and biotics, she as also brains.

"I wish I knew. Honestly. When I tried to look into it the only thing I found was an ancient human religious order called Knights Templar." I answered truthfully. That was something from my training. Never lie when you don't have to. Lies have a habit of making a mess of themselves. Tangling up with no rhyme or reason.

"I don't believe it. You are far too well informed." she replied tersely

"That's your choice. But I am telling you the truth. For example, I know you work for Cerberus. And I know what Cerberus does. What atrocities Illusive Man orders under the guise of protecting humanity. But I also know that you are not like the rest of them." I said and I could see my words making an impression, I just hoped it was the right one.

"Here, let me give you some food for thought." I said and reached into my jacket inside pocket, I saw her tense up again probably preparing to fend of an attack but as I brought my hand back into view holding only a datachip she relaxed slightly. I had prepared several copies on my flight here to drop off at the Alliance embassy and at the SPECTRE office. Maybe some good would have come of it but I haven't made up my mind yet.

"What's on this?" she asked clearly not sure anymore what to expect

"Information. And an extranet address where you can reach me." I said and waving my credit chit over the payment console I left her behind. I could have just continued talking but that would have been the wrong approach. Miranda Lawson I knew liked to make up her own mind, liked to take the information given and then decide what she is going to do about it. I hoped that her sense of right and wrong was still intact. Getting into a cab I flicked open my omni-tool to find a message waiting for me there. It wasn't marked as high priority but seeing who it was from I decided to answer straight away. It was an open invitation from Ray Shepard to meet. Tomorrow. He had been assigned to one of the Citadel clinics on a medical exchange. For now I needed to get some sleep, that last drink had finally tipped me over the edge and I was feeling rather tired.

Secondary Codex Entry/Alcoholic Drinks/Ryncol

Ryncol is a krogan family of drinks traditionally brewed on Tuchanka from a variety of ingredients and several different ways of preparation depending on the clan that is brewing it. Some notable examples of traditional ingredients include varren dung, crushed pyjack, clixen fire spit and clan Urdnot signature, Thresher Maw venom. Practically all ryncol brewed on Tuchanka will be slightly radioactive as the water used in the process is radioactive. As most water on Tuchanka harmless to krogan and easily negated for most other species with some anti-radiation drugs. Citadel Health Service reminds adventurous visitors that it is still not recommended for other species to drink ryncol produced on Tuchanka as the ingredients used in it are sometimes a mystery even to the krogan that brews it. Ethanol content varies from 65% to 85% by volume. Due to deficiencies in the process methanol is usually present in quantities large enough to cause poisoning in non-krogans. Ryncol is a multi functional liquid on Tuchanka. It is used as fuel for lamps, generators and even an occasional vehicle. It is used as a degreasing agent and as mild anesthetic for krogan medical procedures. Citadel Health Service reminds that krogan meaning of medical procedure is fatal to other species so any such help should be refused especially if it's being offered by a krogan 'medical professionals'.

Clean versions of ryncol exist, specially made for sale in Citadel space. Drinking it without passing out immediately remains a badge of honor for many young men and women across the galaxy. It is best to avoid any offers of ryncol made outside of Citadel space. Setting off radiological alarms in spaceports is not taken lightly by the security personnel.

Chapter 14: Geometry of Light

Chapter Text

08/01/2174 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel, Chora's Den

"Look girl, I don't much know about much about humans and your relationships but I can tell you that that guy is one of a kind. So you better catch up to him." Chora said to the young human woman who had been silently fuming for the past ten minutes after the guy who could drink like a krogan walked out. This wasn't the first time she had seen this, humans for some reason being fond of talking about private stuff in public. And the woman seemed like trouble, Chora saw the way she moved and it screamed silent killer to her. Unlike the guy who was clearly some kind of special Chora could not help but tease her. Humans in general were fun to tease.

Miranda looked at Chora and decided against saying anything just in case her temper got the better of her. Instead she nodded and stalked out of the bar looking for the nearest rapid transit point. This mission had seemed simple enough at first, find the guy, flirt with him and get him to talk and if he revealed anything interesting enough get him somewhere private and wait for a capture team. Instead this guy recognised her, knew she worked for Cerberus and who knows what else. While he was talking she had run several scenarios in her head how this was possible and one of the morel likely ones was that the whole mission was a trap. Someone from Cerberus sold her out to her father and sent her on a mission to get captured. But when Sam Knight walked out without even attempting to capture her or put a location beacon on her she had to reconsider. The only problem was that none of it made any sense. Postponing the problem for later she decided to focus on the task ahead, she now had a datachip which apparently provides some information on her employers that they wouldn't want her to know. Miranda had always been curious and from the early age she had preferred knowing rather than not knowing something. As the cab arrived she sat down in the drivers seat and manually typed in the code of her personal safe house here on Citadel. If the intel was sensitive in nature when it came to Cerberus she would not want to look at it in her usual apartment paid for by Cerberus. Miranda might be a trusted operative but she knew better than to think that her apartment hadn't been bugged.

Same day, two hours later, apartment Z351, Feng Hu Apartments, Bachjret Ward

Miranda Lawson always prided herself on being objective, being able to look at events from a dispassionate point of view. She was also smart enough to understand that being completely objective was impossible but she believed that she came closer than most people.

So looking at the information given to her by the target assigned to her just a few hours ago she could not help but see all the reasons why Cerberus was regarded as a terrorist organisation. Miranda thought that after all these years working for them she knew the worst that they would do. She was sorely mistaken. Her knowledge didn't even cover half of what Cerberus has done and was responsible for. She had carefully searched extranet and various secret databases where Cerberus had gained access and she had verified that 90% of the information on the datachip was genuine and true. The other ten percent were simply impossible to validate without arousing suspicion. The examples were simply too specific. The images of children from Teltin facility alone were heartbreaking enough but knowing that it was done in order to create a perfect biotic that grated strongly against her very core. Miranda herself was an attempt at creating a perfect human. Her sister as well. She knew exactly what the kind of people that were thinking of perfection could do. Her father was cold, callous and calculating. Extreme narcissistic tendencies.

Miranda patted herself on the back mentally for being so careful with setting up a totally new data terminal, untraceable, when she decided to take a look at what was inside the chip. If she had loaded it into her omni-tool she was certain that a hit squad would have been dispatched already to her location. She knew that Cerberus had killed for less, she had killed for less on behalf of Cerberus. This was a veritable treasure trove of information, the kind that even Shadow Broker would pay more than enough for her to buy a nice chunk of a planet. And yet she knew that Sam Knight had only revealed a portion of what he knew. He didn't say it but after seeing this he didn't need to. Miranda wondered for a moment if he also knew who Illusive Man was, where he came from maybe even his real name. She had met him once and while he had not been a physically imposing man his gaze and his presence told everyone who was in control. She remembered how impressed she was with that. How she wanted to be in that position too. Now she was not so sure anymore. Despite saying that everything that Cerberus did was to safeguard humanity she now saw that many of the things they did made them lose their humanity.

Miranda needed to talk to Sam again, somewhere where they would not be overheard. Then depending on what he said she would decide what to do. Right now her choices were limited and she did not like either of them. But it wouldn't be the first time she had to choose lesser of the two evils and right now she did not know which was the lesser one. She knew that this is not something to be decided in a hurry so she opted to do something both useful and relaxing. She took of her clothes and put them in the cleaning unit in the kitchen and then padded with her bare feet into the bathroom where she would enjoy a long shower and a good scrub, two things that always took her mind off from the current problems no matter what they were. As she switched on the water she took off her underwear and glances briefly at her reflection in the mirror opposite the shower. For a split second she remembered Sam Knight's face and how he looked at her but with a shake of her head she dispelled the strange notion that she was seeing something different in his eyes that the usual look of lust she so often saw from men and women and walked into the shower letting the hot water stream over her body washing away her worries. Even if only temporarily.

Same day, Arcturus Station, Storage room B122

Mr Orange's holoprojector hummed into life and projected his likeness into the darkness of the room. Mr Blue's hologram was already there waiting for Mr Orange. This time it was Mr Blue that asked for a meeting.

"Iron 6 has been compromised." Mr Blue said without waiting for a question from Mr Orange

"How? His last report was true, your own follow up team confirmed nearly everything it said." Mr Orange said puzzled and his left hand reached for something out of the holoprojectors field.

"By Cerberus. Miss Green before we handled the situation with her and others sent out a file to Cerberus informing them that it was Iron 6 that raided their facility. She also sent an abridged version of his file to them. Cerberus has likely already dispatched agents to intercept Iron 6." Mr Blue said and for a moment there Mr Orange could swear that the usual monotone had an angry undertone. Miss Green had indeed caused them more problems than she should have and even now after she has been safely neutralised along with her supporters Mr Orange knew that the organisation will never be the same.

"Did she leak anything else?" Mr Orange asked

"No, Miss Green might have been too ambitious for her own good but she was never actually stupid. She kept her identity and any possible connections between Iron 6 and us completely out of the file. At this stage I am satisfied that our internal structure is now secure. The recent revelations obtained by Iron 6 and the follow up team are a concern however." Mr Blue replied and Mr Orange knew that it was more of a question than a statement.

"Yes, I know. Miss Green's actions and the reports I have seen concerning the matter investigated by Iron 6 are changing our priorities. Cerberus as well. We no longer can continue on as we have so far. How is the progress on Prism?" Mr Orange said and raised a glass to his lips

"Currently at Theta stage. Projected completion schedule is stage Omicron in 18 days and stage Psi in 28." Mr Blue answered and shifted slightly, a change so slight that no one would have noticed but Mr Orange has been meeting with Mr Blue like this for years and knew exactly how motionless Mr Blue usually is.

"Is there something you want to say?" Mr Orange prompted raising his glass in Mr Blue's direction

"I have reservations of activating Prism. In my assessment Prism as a reaction to Miss Green's actions is too severe." Mr Blue said a hint of unease in the way he spoke. A slight delay between words.

"If it had only been Miss Green then you would be right. But you know as well as I do that Miss Green was just one of many. There are now only two of us left from founders and all the replacements we have found for our original members have proven to be less than satisfactory. It is why Miss Maroon came up with Prism all those years ago. I wanted to believe she was wrong but as you can see she saw this right from the start. And considering the revelations provided to us by Iron 6 activating Prism might be our only chance to salvage what has left of us before it's too late." Mr Orange said and his hologram made a motion sitting down on empty air.

"Then we shall proceed as planned. Iron 6 however cannot be used in Prism, his exposure to Cerberus leaves us little choice." Mr Blue agreed.

"Then we shall proceed without him. As useful as he was and as intriguing a mystery as he was Prism is far too important. A retirement package then. What about Silver 9 and Copper 3?"

"Silver 9 is currently involved in preparation of stage Lambda. Once that is done she shall be relieved. Copper 3 is no longer our concern as per stage Zeta. Type or retirement package for Iron 6?" Mr Blue reported and Mr Orange nodded going through the mental checklist of Prism.

"Full package. What is the progress of the follow up teams on Tau Volantis?" Mr Orange asked changing the subject

"Iron 6 has left little for us to work with but everything we can extract shall be transferred to Mr Slate as per stage Rho." Mr Blue replied

"Very well. We shall proceed as planned then. Anything else?" Mr Orange asked and as an answer he saw Mr Blue's hologram disappear. Shutting down his own hologram Mr Orange poured another two fingers of the golden liquid into his glass inhaling the scent and then emptying the glass in one go. Prism. A plan made by Miss Maroon when they had all come together to found the council. Mr Blue, Miss Maroon, Mrs Viridian, Mr Slate, Miss Indigo and him, Mr Orange. Mr Maroon had always been the smartest of them, able to see patterns that no one else could have guessed at. Her death he still saw as one of his biggest personal failures. Despite Prism signifying the end of his life's work he was grateful that Miss Maroon had written it. Even now as he was drinking his cognac assets were being redistributed, each stage of the plan erasing just a bit more of the organisation that he had created. And once it has been set in motion it was impossible to stop it. When it's all done only four people will know what it truly was. Once it was done Mr Orange would stop being Mr Orange and would only retain the power that his public persona had. It will take time to get used to, working within the confines of the system again. Mr Orange looked at the report he was reading, the report that Iron 6 had tried to amend very carefully. Mr Orange read the word Iron 6 used to call the creature and did not like it one bit. Reapers. Leviathan was bad enough but it had been singular and Iron 6 was able to negotiate with it. Reapers was plural and sounded like something that you could not negotiate with. Sighing Mr Orange stood up and looked out at the vista opening below from his panoramic window on floor 284 of the tallest building in St Petersburg. As preparations for stage Sigma he had an election to win.

Primary Codex Entry/Systems Alliance Secret Organisations

There are several prominent secret organisations most infamous example being Cerberus but on the other end of the scale there was an entity known simply as Organisation or Unit by people who have come across it. It is impossible to say how big the Organisation is or who it is controlled by or what it's true goals are but two things are clear, it acts in the interests of the Systems Alliance and humanity in general and no person, company or government have been positively identified with the organisation. Alliance Office of Naval Intelligence, Alliance Secret Service and Alliance Internal Security have all been on the hunt for any details on this organisation for years but it has eluded all their efforts so far. Described as a shadow cast by a shadow by several senior Alliance intelligence operatives it has been theorised at various points that the Organisation is an old total deniability unit set up either by the CIA, FSB or Chinese Ministry of State security but after a thorough investigation that theory has been proven wrong.

The Organisation was founded in 2148 just a month before Systems Alliance by a group of private citizens only identified by their code names even in the internal records, Mr Orange, Mr Blue, Mrs Viridian, Miss Maroon and Mr Slate. The commission as they called themselves separated the various areas of controlling the Organisation between the founding members of the organisation with Mr Orange retaining the overall control to coordinate between the branches. The military branch of the organisation had adopted Knights Templar symbology as a cover with other branches adopting similar disguises. Prism was enacted during the first days of 2174 marking it as the end of the Organisation. Although that is being disputed as a cover story for the organisation going totally underground. Though the Organisation was dismantled after 27 years of operation the assets including manpower had been shifted to appropriate branches of Systems Alliance or divisions of corporations owned by the various members and supporters of the Organisation. As such while the Organisation might have ceased to exist, the people behind it shall continue to act in their new roles for the protection of Systems Alliance, humanity at large even if they have to protect it from itself.

Primary Codex Entry/Systems Alliance Secret Organisations/Prism

Prism was a multi-stage plan written down by Miss Maroon, one of the founders of the Organisation as a way to reintegrate it and it's members back into the everyday political, economic and military organisations of the various governments around the world. The initial plan had been written before the formation of the Systems Alliance however it had been kept updated since then by a dedicated team of analysts. The plan calls for a deliberate and total dismantling of the Organisation in such a way that all traces of it's existence are erased. Miss Maroon had convinced the rest of the founders to keep the plan ready for the day when the Organisation starts failing from the inevitable internal strife. Prism once enacted cannot be stopped as each stage of the plan is compartmentalized and only the top members are aware of the full picture. As such each branch, each cell is not even aware of the significance of their actions until they are done. This plan while drastic has been deemed necessary as the amount of power and information that the Organisation possesses is too dangerous to be left intact if there is a significant risk of abuse by it's leadership. The name Prism comes from the concept that once fully coherent as a beam of light entering a prism the organisation will be divided into separate parts, but even separate they would still continue on the same general course. Change rather than destruction, preserving the resources even when changing the form.

Chapter 15: Freedom to make your own mistakes

Chapter Text

09/01/2174 Serpent Nebula, Window, Citadel

As a testament to how truly exhausted I was after getting back to the hotel room after taking a long luxurious shower I fell asleep almost instantly and waking up the next morning found myself very surprised by several high priority messages on my omni-tool that failed to wake me up. Considering that I had set up a truly disgustingly loud and annoying set of sounds to play for cases like this I asked myself if I was actually quite drunk last night. I remembered everything perfectly and I was not feeling any after effects like a normal human should have after a night of hard drinking. Deciding to get a decent cup of coffee first I ordered room service which arrived six minutes later via a service bot, a cylindrical kart on wheels with several compartments to keep things hot or cold as needed. Taking a pot of coffee out and a plate with croissants, I turned my attention back to my omni-tool.

Going in chronological order the first message I saw was a reply from Ray Shepard, directing me to either pop in at any time at his apartment if it's after work hours or visit him in the clinic where he worked. Another message was an automatic receipt that billed my account for the docking fees, third message was another automatic response from Kal'leena's secretary VI. The fourth message however made my lazy morning attitude disappear. A message from the organisation. Inside there was nothing apart from an extranet link which I opened and after a few seconds was rewarded with my omnitool displaying a 5 inch tall blue holographic human woman. She proceeded to scan me using my own omni-tool. Ten seconds later she was satisfied with the scan and looked directly at me. "Sam Knight, identity confirmed. I am Tana, a VI that has been tasked to debrief you for the final time before your retirement." she said sounding awfully chipper

"Final time?" I asked not liking the implication

"Cerberus has gained information about you including several of your cover identities and past involvement in missions undertaken for the Organisation. This security breach is unfortunately making your further employment by the Organisation impossible. In the file that is currently downloading to your omni-tool you will find an appropriate retirement package as well as your new official identity. The organisation is grateful for your service. Be advised that no further contact will be possible with the organisation through electronic means or through anyone you are suspecting of working for organisation. Have a nice day." the VI explained and then it winked off leaving me a bit stunned.

I guessed that Cerberus knew who I was when I saw Miranda but getting fired for that seemed a little excessive. Forgetting about the rest of the messages I found the file and opened it. The first file there was my new official identity. Sam Knight, N5, a former staff lieutenant in the Alliance military, my service record reflecting exactly the type of service that a member of Alliance special forces would have. Highly classified and with barely a hint of what I had actually been doing for my years of service. No doubt that if If someone actually looked into it they would find all the right people who would swear that I trained with them or I served with them, maybe even a few stories to go along with that. Looking at the addendum I saw that it was true. There were several pages of people that I have met and served with as well as various stories that I should remember.

The second part of the file dealt with my retirement package. Apparently that involved a personal ship, property on Eden Prime and an extremely generous amount of credits deposited in one of the more secure volus banks. Looking at all of this I could easily retire and spend the rest of my days having a quiet life on Eden Prime, maybe even start a family. No doubt that was appealing, after all I never pretended to be a complicated man and before all this in my previous life that is indeed all I wanted, a woman who loved me, a good family. But I was here, I had been remade as much in my mind as in my body now. I knew that if I went after it my quiet life wouldn't even last a decade, it was 9 years before geth and Saren invade Eden Prime, it was 12 before Reapers arrive. Seems like a long time when looking at it but I knew that even if I had decades I would still need more. Thinking about this I looked into the third part of the file. And I must say that it surprised me more than the previous two together.

In the third part of the file there was a small info-cache about Cerberus, known agents, known front companies, location of several supply caches. All in all it was enough knowledge to cause Cerberus a lot of trouble. Much more than the file I compiled earlier which was filled mostly with good guesses because I knew where to look. Not enough to cripple it but the potential was there. I saw the writing on the wall as they say. Even "retiring" me the organisation clearly knew that I wouldn't sit on my ass on Eden Prime and grow space potatoes. Yes, space potatoes were a thing.

So they offered me a mission. Clever of them. After a while I lifted the cup to my lips and found that I had spent enough time reading through the file that my coffee has gone completely cold. Deciding that this was a good a time to stop as any I went through the rest of my messages. Only one was important. It simply said 'Same time, same place, M'. So Miranda decided to talk to me after all rather than sending in a Cerberus hit squad. Then again she still might decide to send one in or she might be luring me into a trap but I could only hope that it was not the case this time. If her portrayal in game was in any way similar to the real person here then she was still a decent person. No doubt she had to make hard decisions and do things she did not want to while working for Cerberus but underneath that ice queen persona was a person who cared deeply. Deciding against sending a reply I quickly cleaned myself up and after getting dressed I started the first day of my peaceful retired life. Ha.

The cab ride to the clinic where Ray worked made me doubt that the wording Rapid Transit actually applied to it. Was there some kind of asari conspiracy that made everything go slower once you were actually in it. Depositing me on the roof of the clinic the cab took off like it was trying to go supersonic. I did not have enough time to get any decent clothing so I was dressed in cargo pants, combat boots, grey t-shirt and a thin waterproof jacket which was a ridiculous thing to wear on a space station if not for the fact that it allowed me to remain armed without attracting attention. Fashion in 2170's was as always a very individual thing if not more so. So far apart from clear Alliance military all the humans I have seen have either been dressed in the way that would not have looked out of place in early 21st century or were dressed so outlandishly that I knew they looked out of place even here, on a space station full of aliens. Citadel really was a place of contrasts, officially it was not encouraged that people living here or even visiting here were armed however there were no specific laws that prevented you from carrying certain types of personal defense weapons as they were called as long as you filled in the right paperwork. But hospitals, C-sec offices and any other official areas had security screens in place. Going through them, they would scan you and simply lock any weapon you might have on you. An effective measure against the more traditional weapons produced from the standard templates by a wide variety of manufacturers. You could still override the lock but doing so would alert the security and C-Sec. Once through the doors I saw a large reception area with a rows of seats and an asari receptionist sitting behind a desk with a terminal and typing something on a holographic keyboard as another asari, a patient probably was speaking. I waited until the asari patient was done and then walked up to the receptionist.

"Hi, I am here to see Dr Shepard. My name is Sam Knight." I announced myself not knowing what name would Ray put me down as, or if he would put me down at all, after all he was the one that signed my death certificate.

"Do you have an appointment?" she said and then looked at me. I smiled. She smiled and then blushed. I was at a loss, this was the first time I saw a girl, alien or not, blush while looking at me and I wasn't even doing anything to make her blush. Just in case I checked myself discreetly to see if there is anything about me that would cause such a reaction but I was just a tall guy in some cheap clothes.

"No, I am a friend of Ray's. If you just inform him that I am here that should be fine." I said deciding that pressing ahead would probably be best.

"Yes, of course. A moment. My name is Alana by the way." she said with a slight stammer and quickly typed out a message and sent it. Then she looked at me intently and the blush only seemed to increase. It says something about me that I could handle a conversation with a kilometer long monster that was older than some stars who was in the process of trying to kill me but a blushing girl tied my tongue into knots and I was just standing there looking her in the eyes as she was looking into mine. We might have been slowly moving towards each other. I am not sure. I am not even sure how long we were like that.

"Ahem. Am I interrupting something?" Ray said and both mine and Alana's head turned in unison to look at him.

"No, eh. I was just coming to see you." I said repressing my own stammer and moved away from Alana a little bit too fast to be natural. Not that I didn't appreciate the attention but I wasn't used to this kind of attention and I was very much aware of my own hormones hammering inside. Taking a breath, I held it for a second and exhaled centering myself.

"Come on, let's talk in my office." Ray said and turning around gestured for me to follow. Walking through a set of doors Ray paused and looked at me with a glint of humour in his eyes.

"So how long has it been since you..." he said and he didn't need to specify what he was asking.

"Just asking as a medical professional." he added when I didn't answer

"If you start counting from the day you found me then, since the day you found me." I replied, it's not like it was a problem for me but it seems some people found it strange.

"It's been almost a year." Ray said flabbergasted and gestured for me to walk through another set of doors, this time opening into what I assumed was his office. A bit spartan but it is what I would have expected from an Alliance military doctor on a detached duty.

"Well, running around the galaxy shooting and getting shot at doesn't really land itself to a good dating life." I said and sat opposite his desk as he walked around it and sat behind it. A floor to ceiling window opened up into the ward showing mostly other buildings but with a soft glow of the nebula behind them.

"Sure but it's not like you are constantly doing that are you?" Ray noted

"No, but I am not a one night stand kind of guy. Anyway what is up with Alana's reaction to me? I might not know much about women but that seems unusual."I said keeping a tight control over my voice, Joan's loss still burned within me. I looked to the side. I know it really wasn't my fault but it wasn't just that I felt guilty about her injuries. She survived after all and considering I have managed to change bodies and yet retain my mind there was something to be said about existence of a soul. But my guilt was amplified by the shame I felt in my reaction of her survival. She survived but I could only think how much I had lost when I knew that coming out of the hospital would not be the woman I knew. It only lasted a split second but those few moments were enough for me to be ashamed of myself.

"Alana is young and impressionable and is currently going through a phase where she is attracted to dangerous guys. And you radiate danger. Doesn't help that Jackie and the rest of the kids have told everyone here how you rescued them from the evil clutches of Cerberus. And Erinna has regaled us with the story of how she met you. So to Alana you are basically a sex symbol." Ray said suppressing his laughter at my reaction to his words.

"Wait, what? Jackie? Erinna?" I asked confused

"Yeah, didn't she tell you? I thought she had a way to contact you. After you left those kids with us we had to get help from someone who knew more about biotics than us. So we asked asari that were with you. The kids were already comfortable with them. Kal'leena helped arrange it but since she is away on business quite often Erinna has been coming around to check on them. Most of the kids are fine now and have been discharged but we still have a few hard cases. And since you deposited them into my hands they sent me along. It's been hard and it's been a lot of work but we have learned so much on how to improve quality of life for biotics, even designed new implants. Even with asari help we still lost Mark, I don't know if you remember him but he was one of the older ones." Ray explained standing up and turning towards the window.

"Jack is a hard case too?" I asked, wondering if her difficulties were physical or mental.

"Jackie?" Ray said turning back towards me, "Goodness no. We adopted her. She is now officially Jacqueline Shepard."

"Wait, what? WHAT?" it seems today was a day for many surprises. Jack Shepard. That could be either the most awesome thing ever or the biggest disaster ever. The kind of trouble that SISTERS Shepard could get up to was just hard to imagine.

"Yeah, she is a good girl. Had a few rough months first and Hannah had to take some leave but we are good now. Hannah thought it wouldn't be a good idea to take a biotic teenager that was going through puberty and put her in a cruiser on an extended patrol so I have her here with me. She is going to the 12th Tayseri ward school, it's a mixed species school but they have asari teachers there so they can handle the biotics." Ray continued and my mind was boggling at the words Ray was using. Jack. Good girl. School. My mind conjured up an image of Jack, buzzcut, angry and in a traditional school uniform. I had to see this to believe it.

"I must say I did not expect to hear that. I expected her to be enrolled in Ascension project by now." I said not really focusing, the image of Jack Shepard in my mind, I mean I knew I had changed things by now but Jack ending up being a Shepard, that is something I couldn't have seen.

"What do you know about it?" Ray said his voice serious now

"Ascension project? Well the academy, I think Jon Grisson Academy it was called in orbit of Elysium. A school for gifted kids but after the mess with the BAaT a biotic program was added in. Why?" I said still preoccupied with the idea of what kind of trouble could Kate Shepard and Jack Shepard get into. Or out of. The possibilities were endless.

"Sam how do you know about it?" Ray asked and I finally noticed how serious he was

"What? It's not like it's a secret is it?" I asked and then I remembered, that it started in 2176. There was still two years before that.

"Actually it is. More precisely it's a draft proposal sitting on my terminal at home, a terminal that does not have network access. I haven't even told Hannah about it." Ray said looking at me for an explanation

"Look, if you are wondering if I or someone else have been spying on you then don't, you haven't been spied on, I checked. And no me checking doesn't count as spying. I just know things. Believe me you don't want to know the things I know, why or how I know them. Because explaining that would require to explain things that you shouldn't know. Things that no one should know. So can we drop it please?" I asked hoping that Ray was less curious about it than he seemed. Or that he knew that having certain answers was not always good.

"So what you are saying forget about you knowing something that you should have not known at all and just move on? Just like that." he said and I nodded in response. He looked at me, then turned his head to look at the holopicture frame where the Shepard family was shown and then he shrugged.

"You know, I wish I could say this was the strangest thing about you. But it's not. So ok, fine, I will drop it but promise me that if there is a time when you can tell me you will." Ray said exasperated

"Hopefully such a time won't arrive," I started saying but seeing the look in Ray's eyes I continued "but I promise. I will tell you when I can."

Ray seemed satisfied with that. A message flashed up on his omni-tool. "Sam, I am sorry to cut this short but I have a patient. You should come by around six and we shall have dinner together I am sure Jack would be glad to see you." Ray said heading out of the office.

"Sure, no problem. Something serious?" I asked standing up and following Ray.

"No, just another krogan who wanted to try fish from the lake on Presidium." he replied

"But it doesn't have any fish." I said remembering this conversation from the game

"I know that, but the krogan didn't and whoever sold him the fish didn't tell him it was dextro, meant for turians."

"But why bring him to this hospital, I would have thought that any half-decent clinic could deal with a krogan's upset stomach."

"Because a krogan with diarrhea is a biological hazard. And this hospital is the closest one they could find with appropriate facilities." Ray said as we emerged back on the rooftop. I heard the sirens before I saw the ambulance and decided I didn't want to stick around considering the face Ray was making.

"Ok, see you at six then." I said and jumped into a waiting cab and just before the door closed I heard him mutter something about another scrapped ambulance.

Chapter 16: Zero no more

Chapter Text

Walking through the door of the krogan armorer's workshop I was met with an angry snarl followed by what most people would call shouting but for krogan was barely even considered a raised voice.

"I told you senile pyjack, I don't want Garrod, I want you to make my weapon. You made one for my father and my father's father. Now it's time for you to make me a weapon, a weapon worthy of a clan chief." A krogan in green and yellow armour bellowed at Jarrg who stood there and if I understood krogan facial expressions well enough he was clearly not impressed but then again even I was not impressed by the other krogan as he was clearly young judging by the partially fused plate and he was only two thirds the size of Jarrg.

"And I told you that I don't give my weapons to varren dung like you. Your father was a great warrior who knew when to let a weapon talk and when was the time to put it away, your father's father was a friend of mine back when we were both whelps and happily stomping some turians into the ground. You are none of that, now stand aside and let me give my attention to someone actually worth it." Jarrg said and swivelled one of his eyes at me with a slight crinkling of his lips, I imagine he was amused and interested to see what I was going to do with an angry krogan that has just been deemed less worthy than a human. I didn't know either at the moment and I didn't have long to come up with something.

The krogan turned around and looked at me and I could see that the accusation and implication stung deeply. His blood red eyes locked on me and with two large strides he was but a step away from me.

"You, puny human, how can you be more worthy than me? I will tear out your guts and use them to make a leash for my varren, though I doubt they are strong enough to hold them. I shall split your skull and drink ryncol from it. I shall…" the krogan was trying to insult me but I didn't want to waste time answering C-sec why I killed a krogan, not that they cared much when it came to krogan but there would still be an official report which I wanted to avoid. So instead of waiting for him to attack me I used all my strength to headbutt the guy. Maybe I was slightly angrier that I thought. I heard a crack and the krogan dropped like a sack of potatoes to the ground. I could feel the skin split and my blood running down my forehead. And my neck will be stiff for a few hours.

First looking down at the unconscious krogan I looked up at Jarrg with a mute question.

"You hit him, you deal with him." He answered still with an amused grin on his face and turned away as if stacking mods on the shelf was a far more important matter than an unconscious krogan on his floor. Not wanting to argue I grabbed the krogan by his foot and dragged him outside, I saw a nice smelly looking alley around the corner where I left him safely. He was alive but I must have given him a concussion and there were a few cracks radiating out of the place on his headplate where I hit him. Calling an ambulance for him through a nearby public terminal I walked back to the shop, someone would have seen me but this area of the Ward was not known for liking C-sec.

"Are you sure you don't have any krogan ancestors Sam? We do have some colony ships that never made it to their destinations." Jarrg asked still the same amused grin on his face

"I told you last time, krogan and humans can't have children, we are not asari. Humans can have children only with other humans." I said shaking my head from the sheer strangeness of this conversation and remembering the last one. You don't forget explaining the birds and the bees to a twelve hundred year old krogan.

"Yeah, yeah I remember. But you dealt with him in a very krogan way. A clan chief way." Jarrg said and I could see that he had been impressed. I couldn't really tell him that I just copied what Commander Shepard could do in ME2. So I simply nodded with as much poise as I could and walked up to him.

"Glad you liked it. Is my armour ready?"

"Of course it's ready. Weapons too. I even modded them properly. Come on, let me show you." Jarrg said and waving for me to follow went into the back of the shop where his workshop was. I have to say that I was quite surprised seeing the tools in it, a lot of them looked very familiar to me, lathes, belt sanders even an anvil with a kiln. Jarrg went to a large work table and hoisted a huge crate from underneath it.

"Here it is." He said tapping in the code and opening the crate. Inside there was the armour I remembered designing all those months ago with Kal'leenas help. Blood Dragon Armour, white with the dragon across the right shoulder painted on in deep blood red.

"It did take me longer than two weeks I originally promised, it was a challenge, to build an armour for someone as tough as a krogan but smaller and more flexible. Krogan armour is simple in comparison, here I had to get devious." Jarrg said and did that slow krogan laugh I remembered so well from Wrex and Grunt before continuing. "Removable ballistic plates, dual kinetic barrier generators, triplex weave in joints, built in support exoskeleton. No strength enhancement however, that would put too much strain on the power pack. Stealth field generator and something I borrowed from turians."

Picking it up and turning it around Jarrg showed me an articulated plate on the back which covered a thruster.

"Turian Havoc troopers use this, a thruster and a mass effect generator working together will make you able to do very high jumps. Though the turian version needed a generator half the strength that is in this one. "

"I am now worried to ask about the price." I said indeed quite worried, this armour looked like it could do everything I ever needed it to do and I knew that such luxuries did not come cheap, a good suit of armour could cost upwards of quarter of a million credits, a great suit of armour could cost as much as half a million.

"Bah, don't be. Your girlfriend came in and paid for it, she also helped me make the modifications. She said you would need the best when you came back." Jarrg said waving his huge arm dismissively at me.

"Kal'leena and I are not like that" I said slightly to fast then added "how did she pay for it? I know how old she is but I didn't think she had that much money."

"We came to an arrangement." Jarrg said and I knew what Kal'leena had done.

"Cookies?" I asked even though I was sure of the answer.

Jarrg only nodded in reply.

"Anyway, she was right I do need the best." I confirmed knowing full well that Jarrg's cookie obsession was only rivalled by love for weapons.

"Then you are going to like this." Jarrg said and pulled a large weapon case from under the table. "Look at this." he said and opened it. Looking inside all I could do was smile.

"Hue, hue, hue." Jarrg laughed seeing my smile and I knew that we understood each other perfectly.

It took me a few hours to get familiar with the armour and weapons that Jarrg provided me with and I left his shop with a weapons case in one hand and armour case in the other. It was already 1705 hours so I only had an hour to get back to my hotel room, get cleaned up and get to the address that Ray gave me. Even using the rapid transit shuttles it would take the best part of half an hour for the road itself, I also needed to bring something as a gift to Ray, after all it would be rude to show up with empty hands after everything he did for me and now Jack.

Fifty minutes later I was standing in front of the door belonging to Ray's apartment, in one hand I had a metallic container that held inside a 45 year old scotch and in the other a small hamper of "Galactic Delicatessen Levo edition". I would have brought a gift to Jack but I knew next to nothing about who she was right now. The Jack I knew, even viewed through the narrow lens of a game, did not exist. Pressing the sensor plate to announce my presence I settled in for a wait but three heartbeats later the door swooshed aside and I was assaulted by a tangle of limbs somehow attached to a torso that flew into me with what must have been a low power biotic charge. I stumbled back a few steps and looked down at the perpetrator. What I saw surprised me more than what happened a moment ago. Instead of the sickly looking, rail thin and razor edged kid I was looking at a gangly, braided teenage girl with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Didn't expect that, didncha?" she said and as if to affirm her words punched me in the stomach grinning wildly.

"I certainly did not." I stared at Jack trying to reconcile the mental image I had with what I was seeing in front of me. She was at least an inch taller than when I rescued her and easily a few kilos heavier. She also had hair which was tied into at least a dozen short braids sticking out in all directions.

"I hope you don't greet Ray the same way, I can take it but Ray..." I said making a show of rubbing my stomach as if I was hurt.

"Nah, K won't let me. And I knew it was you, the VI butler told me." she replied with a typical childish petulance, another thing I was not expecting to see from Jack.

"I see. Can we go in now?"

"Sure but Ray is not here yet. He messaged earlier saying he was going to be a few minutes late." Jack said and with a whoosh of displaced air charged back into the apartment and judging by the sounds of it crashing into something.

"JAAACK." I heard someone shouting and followed in curious. It was a short hallway followed by a living room with Jack laying sprawled across an expensive looking tub chair on it's side which tripped her as she charged. Just to the side from the hallway entrance where I was standing emerged from what I guess was the bathroom a rather angry looking Kate Shepard. In practically nothing. She must have been in the shower as she was standing there dripping wet and holding a towel to cover her front. I was however behind her.

"What did I tell you about biotics at home?" she said as she moved toward Jack and then noticing me. Her head whipped toward me and her eyes getting that 'deer in headlights' look as her intentions changed and she twisted in place to put the towel covered area towards me. An understandable reaction but a bad idea as the sudden change of direction along with her original motion and the wetness of her feet made the choice of her destination for her. I saw her foot slip backward, her over-correcting and then slipping forward. And then I moved. It really was just an automatic reaction and not out of some desire to hold an attractive young woman in my arms. So I moved a step, dropped the things I had in my hands and steadied her by holding her shoulders. Needless to say while she was trying to balance herself holding onto a towel was not an option.

"Are you alright?" I asked as she looked up at me and cringed inwardly at how stupid that question was. I was however very careful to look her directly in the eyes. Though I must say it was as good a sight as anything else about her. Pale green with a ring of gold flecks around the iris complimented her auburn hair currently plastered to her face. The blush that was growing hotter by the second made it only that much better. It started on her cheeks but it went down to her neck and back to her ears making it really hard not to glance and check where else it went.

"I..." Kate started to say something but was interrupted by the sound of the door unlocking. Of course it would be the exact time for Ray to come in. Of course it was. I would decry it as some kind of cheap comedy moment from a romcom if I wasn't actually in a world from a game. So I span Shepard around and gently but firmly pushed her back into the bathroom, then with my left foot I pushed the towel on the floor, wiping up the biggest pools of water and sent it flying back into the bathroom too just before the door closed. Then I bent down to pick up the things I had dropped earlier. Which is how Ray found me. Bent over reaching for the hamper and the metal container, a tub chair on it's side, Jack standing with her eyes as wide as possible and blushing furiously the way only teenagers can. The scene must have been weird but at least I was not holding his wet naked daughter right in front of him.

"Oh, hey Sam. Jack using the biotic charge again?" Ray walked in holding a bag of what looked like boxes of takeaway chinese food.

"Yes?!" I stammered somewhere between a question and a statement.

"Really I don't know where she gets the energy to do that, her school is supposed to have lessons for biotics that even tires out asari girls. Have you been drinking Kate's coffee again?" Ray shook his head in wonder and looked at Jack

"It tastes good." Jack replies averting her eyes

"That explains it but you know you are not supposed to drink it, large amounts of caffeine are not good for biotics. And Kate gets cranky if she doesn't get enough of it. We don't want that." Ray said as he walked across the living room and into the kitchen.

"Kate's coffee?" I picked up the hamper and the container with the scotch

"I don't think it counts as coffee the way she makes it, more like scalding hot caffeine extract. It's really Hannah's fault, she drinks it the same way, hot enough and caustic enough to degrease engine parts if needed. "Ray answered as he was unpacking his bag pulling out the containers.

"You don't drink it the same way do you?"

"No, caffeine doesn't really affect me much anymore so I go for taste these days. Here where I come from it's customary to bring a little something for the hosts." I said putting them down on the table

"Thanks. Just caffeine or other stimulants too?"

"So far most of the ones I have tried including the asari stuff. Alcohol too. Trying to get drunk is futile and expensive."

"Really..."Ray sounded like he was about to propose an experiment but before he managed to form the thought the bathroom door opened and Kate walked out in standard Alliance BDU's and her hair tied back in a loose ponytail.

"Now that everyone is here, let's eat." Kate said and brushed past me as she walked into the kitchen.

The rest of the evening passed by without incident. Kate behaved like nothing had happened, Jack kept bouncing off the walls, sometimes quite literally, Ray kept sharing amusing anecdotes of his life as a military doctor. All in all it was a nice relaxing evening. I must have been strange company but none of them seemed to mind that and when it was time to leave they extracted a promise to visit again. Not that I put up much of an effort to refuse it so on my way back to the hotel room I indulged myself in feeling the warmth that Shepard family had managed to give me. I didn't realise how much I missed being with people. Kate Shepard, I wondered if I would be able to shift the balance even a little to make it easier for her when the time came and seeing Jack, the scars still vivid, made me lose all the doubts to what my next mission will be. In a few hours I was going to meet Miranda and I would be remiss if I didn't bring her a gift to compliment the one I gave her during our first meeting.

Chapter 17: Divided loyalties

Chapter Text

09/01/2174 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel, Chora's Den

Miranda sat in Chora's Den again at the same time as yesterday and was pointedly ignoring the smirk on the turian bartender's face. She had studied facial expressions and body language of almost every species as studying volus or quarian facial expressions was useless as they never appeared anywhere where she might meet them without their suits, so she was quite confident that the turian woman was smirking as she looked at her. Miranda knew better than to try to explain to her that she wasn't some lovesick puppy so instead she nursed her asari mojito analog and glanced at her omni-tool again. It was her spare one, the one that she kept secret even from Cerberus, containing everything she would need to run if it came to that. After she escaped from her father with Ori she was always prepared to run again if needed.

Looking discreetly around Miranda noted how very similar this was to any number of human bars she had been to, it seemed not to matter what planet or what species the bars were all the same. Filled with drunk people either trying to drink themselves into not feeling anything or drink enough to throw caution to the wind and go off chasing a thrill, be it sex, drugs or a fight.

What surprised her most of all were asari. For all their supposed wisdom and their long life giving them an ability to look past a lifetime of most of the other species they seemed to throw themselves into the same distractions as any other species, even more so than other species. She had seen an asari wearing a partially transparent silk dress and trading kisses for drinks with basically anyone. She wondered briefly if alcohol was a way to sterilise her mouth after every kiss or if she had enough of it that she didn't care about how unhygienic it was.

Miranda had spent her time before the meeting trying to gather as much information about Sam Knight and his mysterious employers even going as far as paying one of the Shadow Broker's agents for information on him. Unfortunately it seemed Shadow Broker knew even less about Sam Knight than she did. His service record was perfectly made, his parents were listed as dead in a shuttle accident, no siblings and no known lovers or any other attachments. If he wanted to, he could run anywhere and do anything and Cerberus or anyone else would likely never find him again.

But this was not about Cerberus anymore. In her search to verify the truth behind the data given she had uncovered even more evidence of what Cerberus have been doing. She had been part of some of that but she had never seen the overall picture. As it turned out the noble goal of keeping humanity safe and secure was just a front for pure power grabs, financial gain on behalf of the Cerberus supporters or plain old revenge. Illusive Man's actions and decisions baffled her, one moment he seemed to be playing the long game, next he sent agents chasing momentary gain. If she had not met Illusive Man, if she had not talked to him she would have assumed there were multiple people under that guise. But she knew better and that puzzled her even more.

Deep in thought she finished her drink and was about to order another one when Sam Knight sat on the barstool next to her.

"Good evening Miss Lawson" I greeted Miranda and I could not help but feel optimistic at her surprise that turned into mild annoyance before turning into a vague smile that touched her lips for the briefest of moments.

"Good evening Mr Knight." she replied deadpan regaining composure

"Shall we go somewhere more private?" I gestured to a row of private booths lining the wall.

"That would be for the best." she nodded and headed for the nearest vacant one. I noticed Chora giving me a wink. If only the situation could be that simple.

Once inside I pulled out a multi-spectrum frequency jammer and put it on the table between us.

"Wouldn't want anyone to overhear us. So any pressing questions you want to ask me first?" I leaned back in the seat making myself comfortable, I doubted that the conversation was going to be quick or easy for either of us.

"What do you want from me?" she demanded as soon as she sat down

"Straight to the point I see. Well to be equally blunt I want you to replace Illusive Man. He is no longer capable of seeing the divide between a necessary but hard action and straight up evil. You have seen things that Cerberus has done, how many of them have been because there was no other way and how many of them were done simply because it was the easiest way to achieve the objective? When collateral damage is ignored instead of being regretful. Illusive Man, or if you want to know his real name, Jack Harper is no longer capable of seeing the difference." I explained.

"What makes you think I am capable of becoming a replacement for Illusive Man? Or that my judgement is any better than his? I did join Cerberus of my own free will and even back then they were called terrorists?" she said her voice steady but not disagreeing with me on the evaluation of Cerberus deeds. That was good. I hoped she dug deep enough to see just how much of Cerberus had been compromised.

"Because I know why you really joined Cerberus. Oriana. You ran from your father, from everything you knew because you couldn't bear to see him turn Oriana into what he wanted you to be." I said and prepared myself for an outburst of anger instead I got a shocked look before she averted her eyes. No doubt at the moment she was reevaluating the threat that I posed to her and her sister.

"I don't pretend to know what you went through or know what you feel but your actions speak for themselves. Actions not words matter. And yours say as much about you as Harper's say about him. Jack Harper was broken by what he experienced during the First Contact War, he might have had a noble purpose at some point but he only thinks of himself and Cerberus when he talks about humanity, everyone else is expendable." I said after a few moments of silence.

"So, this is the plan then. The organisation you work for does not like the competition and decided to take it out using internal strife using my emotional connection to my sister." she said her tone ice cold only matching the icy glare she was directing at me. I might have been a tad quick with mentioning her sister.

"That would have been a plausible explanation if I still worked for them." I said keeping myself relaxed.

"And how do I know that is true?" she asked

"The very fact that I am talking to you right now, that Cerberus was able to find me at all. My previous employers decided that Cerberus knows too much about me. How that information got leaked I do not know but Cerberus interest in me was too great of a risk, I had become a liability. There is a reason even people who work for them have no real idea of who they are. They are a secret organisation and they take the secret part very seriously." I explained

"Even if that is true you know why I joined then you know I can't go against Cerberus just because I don't agree with their methods. You know what is at stake." Miranda replied the look in her eyes changing from ice to regret

"Yes, which is why you have to do what I suggested. For Oriana's safety." I handed her another data chip, a bit of information I had dug up in preparation for this meeting, Shadow Broker's fee was worth it even as substantial as it was. Miranda took it and after a brief scan for any malware loaded into her omni-tool. For a few minutes she sat engrossed in what she was reading. Not that I blamed her. If what I had given to her before made her re-evaluate her loyalty to Cerberus enough to meet me a second time instead of sending a gang of goons after me then this would change a lot more.

"So, Illusive Man and my father. Playing me from the start. Using my sister as a hostage to keep my father in line. Using the threat of my father to keep me loyal. Outsmarting both the father and the daughter. But I still can't be sure that you are not just playing me. So far all of this proves that I am in danger and my sister is in danger because of what you have just told me." Miranda said as she finished reading and I could see her shoulders slump a little as the implication hit her. Henry Lawson was one of the first Cerberus supporters, their goals of human dominance aligned, their philosophies of results at any cost identical. But Miranda knew that already. What she didn't know was that Henry Lawson had been trying to gain more power in Cerberus, trying to undermine Illusive Man. So when Miranda ran it was a perfect opportunity for Illusive Man to put him on a leash. Officially Henry Lawson cut all ties but that was just the story. In reality Illusive Man had contacted Henry and told him that unless he cooperates fully then both of his precious examples of genetic legacy were going to receive a bullet to the head.

"You will simply have to trust me. You have played this game before. You know the score. Anything I say or do will never be the concrete proof that I am what I say I am. Not really. In this line of work nothing ever is a 100% sure thing." I said trying not to sound like smug bastard.

"Why do you want to do this?" Miranda asked her eyes probing

"Because humanity needs Cerberus, not as it is now but as it promised to be, a vanguard of humanity standing between it and any who will do it harm. Cerberus needs to stand where Alliance or the Council can't or won't. But Cerberus needs to help, not to cause more pain and suffering. You saw Teltin files. How many children did they kill? How many parents grieve for their children? I could go to Alliance and tell them everything I know about Cerberus or even go to C-Sec but it won't stop Cerberus. Even if we take down most of Cerberus cells some will survive to start it all over again with Illusive Man in charge. Illusive Man IS Cerberus. So the only option is to remove him." I ended my speech with rather more passion than I had intended but thinking about what Cerberus actions did always get my blood boiling. The sheer arrogance and stupidity of the methods Cerberus used to get it's way was just too much. And constantly saying they are doing it to protect humanity even while murdering innocent people.

"Tell me how." Miranda said simply and I could see that she had made the decision. Miranda I knew was always loyal to the idea of Cerberus rather than the organisation or it's leader. I was glad that Miranda in front of me was the same one. I leaned in and started talking.

Later, Tayseri Ward,A Touch of Blue Hotel, Room J32

Sam

I kissed Miranda and she kissed me back with seemingly no reserve at all. For a moment there, well ok, for a few moments there I was lost to the sensation of her silken, zephyr-like lips that had just a hint of sweetness to them. I couldn't help it, I have never been kissed like that so my control slipped a bit. She was after all the third woman I have kissed in my life. The next thing I know we are on the sofa, she is straddling me and we both have lost half of our clothes on the way here. Breathing hard as if I had just run for miles I noticed that her bra was laced in a pattern of small five petal flowers. What that bra contained was pressed hard against my chest. Judging by what I was feeling press against me, her swollen lips and the dilated pupils suggested that I had been not alone in my loss of control. That gladdened me greatly, to put it politely.

"Wow" I said the most cliché thing ever. I gave up trying to unhook her bra with one hand while the other was down south of her belt and put both of my hands on her hips and I used my thumbs to caress her abdomen on both sides of her navel. Lowering my head I planted a kiss on her neck and hearing her make a soft moan I was about to continue with what we had started when she put her hands on the sides of my head and brought my lips in contact with hers again. But she did not kiss me.

"Wait, we can't. Not right now." she breathed out quietly, her lips caressing mine softly as she spoke.

I nodded masking my movement in a nuzzle against her cheek.

"When?" I whispered, the reason for all this forgotten and could not help but trace my lips against her ear. She cast an appraising glance at me as she pushed herself off me.

"Soon enough." Miranda answered giving me the kind of look that promised way too much for my brain to handle but thankfully she turned around and strode towards the built in bar on the wall opposite the door and she did not see me stare at her slack-jawed. I knew my brain was short circuiting in the worst way possible but somehow I just couldn't bring myself to care about it.

Miranda

Miranda had to call up all the self control she could muster to walk away from Sam, she had not expected that a few kisses could burn so deeply with passion. She had always prided herself on her ability to distance herself from what was going on with her body and keep calm, it allowed her to ignore pain and push through injuries and discomforts alike. It allowed her to use her biotics for far longer than any other human she had met so far. And yet his kiss, his touch had gone straight through and now the fire was burning deep inside her. She had not encountered this kind of raw passion yet. What surprised her was that a part of her answered so eagerly. An ember so deep inside her that she didn't know it existed and Sam was the fuel that made it burst into a flame. As she reached into the bar and pulled out a bottle of something that looked expensive and strong she commanded her hands to stop shaking and taking two glasses from the rack poured a third into each glass. She swallowed the contents of her glass and turned towards Sam and then as if on queue the door slid sideways and two Cerberus operatives burst in. She felt the stun charge hit her in the small of her back. Then another one hit her in the left shoulder. She did not have time to even call out. Feeling her muscles relax she slid down to the floor her head turning in the direction of Sam. The last thing Miranda saw was the boot of a Cerberus operative.

Sam

Seeing Miranda fall to the ground without even making a sound put me in full battle mode, leaping forward I collided with the nearest operative driving him to the ground. The other one got off two shots with the stunner before my fist impacted the front of his helmet. There was a crunch as the helmet's visor cracked. Turning toward the guy on the ground I went for his gun when I felt the stinging pain against my back as if I was bitten by a hundred wasps. It was followed by the sound of a riot gun discharge. Made to take down groups of unarmoured people they were basically stun shotguns. I got hit with the whole blast on my own due to proximity of the shooter. I whirled around but another blast caught me in the side and I tripped over my own feet. Extending my hand to break my fall I felt it go numb and instead of a palm I hit the floor with my elbow. Rolling myself to face upwards I tried to say that I give up to the Cerberus operative aiming the riot gun at my head but all I managed was.

"Igshp"

I was still conscious when I felt as they tied me to a stretcher but all of it was far away, all my senses dulled to fuzzy incomprehensibility. I wasn't that worried about myself. I knew that they would not expect me to be as resilient as I am, my body and training made torture quite ineffective and there was no needle that could pierce my skin to deliver truth serum or other drugs. The only way would be to make me drink it but even then their effect was not a forgone conclusion. I let myself drift off my consciousness bouncing on woolly waves in a hazy sea. Surprisingly it was quite pleasant as kidnappings go. It was by far the most relaxing thing I have experienced in a year.

Chapter 18: A dance for two

Chapter Text

Despite my training and despite the work I had been doing for the past year I had to admit that Miranda's plan to take down Cerberus was far better than the one I had come up. Not that I was surprised by that, I was not stupid by any measure but when she explained her plan to me I had to admit that she was quite superior to me in terms of planning covert operations. The biggest advantage over my plan was that it didn't actually require me to kill Illusive Man, not that I had any qualms about doing so but I doubted a leader of extremist terror network group with ties to dozens of economic and industrial leaders of humanity had skipped the lesson on useful paranoia when it comes to his own protection.

The first part of Miranda's plan was to get me captured by Cerberus. Usually I would object to that and if it was anyone else I would have declined such a plan but it was Miranda and her explanation really did make sense. My capture would allow her to successfully complete her mission without rousing suspicion and would get her in along with me into a Cerberus base. Once we were in, my job was to cause a distraction and ultimately break out while she would use the time to plant a few worms into the network. These worms would map out the whole network connecting the cells and give us a lot more information to go on. Without it, using only the information that could be bought from Shadow Broker or remembered by me from what went on in games, would make an already difficult task impossible.

So I was rather alarmed when upon waking up, by way of a bucketful of cold water applied directly to my face, I found Miranda tied up right next to me still unconscious. There were two more people in the room, the guy who threw water at me putting down the bucket next to an identical but still full and the guy who could have stepped off from a set of some B-rated spy vid where his entire appearance screamed Bad Guy. He was tall, thin and wiry with closely cropped hair, goatee and a thin french mustache. And he had a long jagged scar running along a side of his face.

"Well, well Mr Knight. It seems we have finally got you." he said and I kid you not twirled the end of his mustache.

"We will be asking you questions Mr Knight and I suggest you answer them if you do not wish your stay to turn unpleasant. My name is Gant, a pleasure to work with you." he said bowing slightly

"And by unpleasant do you mean you will try to torture me in hopes I will break before you run out of things to try?" I asked not in the mood to beat around the bush.

"No Mr Knight. We know that it would be quite useless to try to torture you. We run a few tests while you were unconscious and while your unique biology presents an obstacle to my preferred methods of persuasion it also has given us an opportunity." Gant walked over to a table just to the side of me and picked up what looked like a cross between a scalpel and a pair of pliers.

"What opportunity you might ask Mr Knight. You are a man or iron skin so torturing your body would be futile and considering your training in the un-redacted parts of your classified personnel file you would also have techniques to deal with more elaborate mental torture. A shame really, I have just finished sharpening all my favourite tools too. So if we can't work on your body and we can't work on your mind what are we left with?" Gant went on clearly in love with the sound of his own voice

I looked at him not understanding what he was driving at. The guy clearly had a few screws loose but he did have a point. Direct physical torture on me is very hard to do, that much was made clear during my training. It's not impossible but compared to a normal human torturing me is like trying to torture a krogan. I heal too fast and my pain threshold is just too high for the normal methods. And then it hit me. I looked at Miranda again and then back at the torturer.

"Yes, I see you understand Mr Knight. if we can't touch your body or your mind then the only thing left is your soul. So we are not going to torture you Mr Knight. At least not directly. But i wonder how long will you last when she starts screaming. It will be beautiful. I thank you Mr Knight for providing me with such a chance." Gant ended his monologue and gestured towards the other guy. He lifted a bucket and emptied it right onto Miranda.

Now, I understand the situation we were in as I looked at Miranda. And while it was clearly not the time, I couldn't help myself from being a bit distracted with the way her wet clothes clung to her body and the angry look she sent towards the goon. Miranda is gorgeous .Always. Angry Miranda with clothes sticking to her every curve was...divine.

"What is going on here?" Miranda demanded

"Ah, Miss Lawson, I have to admit I did not expect to have the pleasure of your company. But I simply had to take this chance while I could. But you understand, sacrifice for the cause and all that." torturer smiled as he picked up another instrument and gestured towards her.

"You can't be serious Gant. Illusive Man will kill you for this. Your skills are not that rare to get away with this." Miranda said

"Quite possibly but only if he knows about it. But that's not how the story will go. You see we will tell him that you tried to stop Mr Knight from escaping once he was in our custody and he killed you for your trouble. And of course to stop him from escaping we had to kill him. And my men are loyal so no one is going to tell him anything." the man gloated obviously enjoying the whole situation far more than anyone should.

"Why are you doing this?" Miranda looked puzzled as she asked no doubt running through a dozen different scenarios that would make sense

"Why Miss Lawson, you didn't think that your rapid ascent in Cerberus ranks had gone unnoticed? There are quite a few others who are not so charmed or intimidated by you to simply step aside and let Illusive Man's favourite pet give orders. Personally I do not care but favours done to a right person are a rare and precious commodity. Gaining them is hard and I prefer not to squander such brilliant opportunities. And it's not everyday I get to work with such quality material. It is going to be quite a challenge really, we can't leave any obvious marks on you so the methods I will have to use will test my skill." Gant said and with a look of clear regret put the torture implement back on the table.

"You are insane." Miranda said in disbelief

"And that is precisely why Cerberus hired me Miss Lawson so all I am doing right now is fulfilling my purpose." Gant smiled widely and made a show of looking for something on the table.

"And this is exactly what we need." he said and picked up a remote."batarians are such a vile species, they really have no place in our galaxy but once in a while I am amazed at their ingenuity. To keep asari slaves from tearing them apart batarians came up with this neat little thing. It is attached directly to a biotic amp and when switched on creates a constant suppression field stopping anyone from using biotics. There are of course cruder methods of doing that but this little contraption also allows for a different set of functionality." Gant went on explaining and gesturing towards the back of Miranda's head where I had noticed a small black half-ring just below her ears going across her neck.

"Like what?" I asked guessing the answer but dreading from saying it.

"Like this." Gant pressed the button. I could see Miranda blink once, twice and then a sound I never could imagine would pass through her lips filled the room. A sharp keening sound with no thought attached to it, just a vocalization of incredible levels of pain. Her eyes went wide and her whole body rigid. Then Gant released the button and Miranda stopped screaming and shuddered.

"Batarians never really bothered to explore the possibility of control, they simply have an on and off switch for pain just like I have shown you right now. Incredibly useful if all you want is to get someone's attention. Not that useful if you are trying to create art. So I personally modified this to include level control. I must admit to be quite excited, this is the first time I am actually using this as I had no subjects with the required potential to practice on. So forgive me if I am not quite as skillful with it as I should be. I am really quite sorry as it would not be my best performance despite having such great audience." as Gant continued speaking I saw that there wouldn't be any chance of continuing with Miranda's plan. Gant will simply torture Miranda, it won't even matter if I tell him everything he wants to know. He will torture Miranda and when he is satisfied he will kill us.

"I heard enough." I said and summoned as much strength in all my limbs as I could. Metal cuffs that were attaching me to the chair protested and squeaked but it was the chair that gave way first, the arms breaking off at the point of attachment to the back of the chair. I stood up and swiped at Gant hitting him with the chair arm on the side. It wasn't a proper swing so I didn't actually kill him but I bet a few of his ribs have found themselves in several pieces by the way he clutched at his side with a look of surprise changing to agony on his face.

Turning towards the goon I rushed him but I wasn't fast enough, the remains of the chair were still arresting my movement so he had time to reach for his gun and shoot. He must have been a good shot as even with so little time he put the shot nearly centre mass, the bullet hitting me an inch or so to the right of my heart. It staggered me just enough that I didn't manage to crash into the goon using my greater mass to take him out of the fight permanently but I still hit him hard enough to bring him to the ground and me along with him. He hit me in the face with the gun in his hand but that pain was nothing compared to a small blossom of fire expanding in my chest. Without further ado I rammed my forehead twice into his face and I must have hit his nose both times as I heard the crunch of the bone fracturing and the slivers were driven deep into the brain.

I rolled away clumsily but couldn't quite pick myself up. The gun must have been set for maximum soft tissue damage on unarmoured targets as my chest felt like someone was driving a dozen red hot needles into it. I wasn't bleeding but I couldn't move. I needed a bit of time to heal up.

"Sam hang in there. I have medical training." I heard Miranda yell and craned my neck to look. She was already working her way out of the restraints.

"Just give me a minute. Or five" I replied and let my head down again. I will heal enough to move in a few minutes but I would need someone qualified to take out the leftovers of the bullet. When I got shot before their weapons were dialled to deal with barriers and armour which means they didn't really fragment and I could deal with it usually by sticking a probe with a magnet into the wound to get it out or just waiting for my body to push out the offending pieces of metal.

Mirandas worried face appeared in my view as she ran a scan with an omni-tool and was about to apply emergency medical program when she frowned.

"You are not bleeding. And the penetration is shallow" she scanned me again perplexed

"Yeah, I will get to that later, for now we need to get out of here. We didn't count on Mr Crazy over there." I nodded towards Gant as he was still where he dropped his breath shallow and rapid. Going into shock I guess.

"How many Cerberus goons between us and exit?" I asked to bring Miranda back on the task

"I doubt there are more than five counting the one there. Gant never works with a big team, there are not that many people who have a stomach strong enough to work with him." Miranda answered and picking the pistol up walked over to Gant, scanned him and then shot him.

"That was a mercy." I said, I was getting used to the pain now and sat up slowly.

"It wasn't. He managed to administer medigel so he was going to live. We couldn't afford anyone to actually know what went in here." she replied as she went over to the goon I killed and did something to his omni-tool.

"We really need a second gun. It would be better if one of us had a shield generator but let's work with what we have. I will be in front, you take them out from behind me. I can take a few more hits." I slowly picked myself up and for the first time since I had been transported to this universe I felt wheezy. I used to get the same feeling as a kid after running too much.

"Sam I don't know how you are still standing, never mind moving. I can't use you as a shield. If you get hit bad enough to stop moving I wouldn't be able to move with you at all. I am strong but not that strong. I wouldn't be able to fight and drag you at the same time.I have a better idea. Here help me with this." Miranda turned her back towards me and lifted her hair. Of course, biotics. I keep forgetting about that. Walking up to her I unlocked the collar and carefully removed the ends that were inserted into the amp.

"You sure you are ok to use biotics?" I asked

"No, but we do not have much of a choice here. I can create a barrier and it should hold enough for us to deal with the others. Then I can do something about the whole thing. Here take this, I will need to concentrate" Miranda handed me the gun

"I am still walking in front of you." I raised the gun to a firing position and then nodded to Miranda. For this to work we basically had to be really close. She pressed herself against my back with one hand around my waist and the other intertwining her fingers with my right hand. Breathing deep she extended a barrier around both of us encasing us in mass effect field. Walking out into the corridor like a particularly clingy pair of lovers we were met with an organised response. Two Cerberus goons firing handguns at us from the far end of the corridor and two kneeling just in front of them with SMG's. Neither we nor they needed to aim carefully to hit each other but luckily even though they were in full armour none of them had kinetic barriers. So we walked forward with me one arm extended pulling the trigger methodically to stop it from overheating and them just blasting at us. The bright flashes of their rounds lancing at us as a stream of metallic death being stopped by Miranda's barrier, my single gun returning fire without obvious effect, Miranda clinging to my back both of our clothes wet, breathing hard into my ear from the strain making me forget about the pain from being shot. It was distracting me by bringing a few images that were less than appropriate at the current moment although I couldn't deny that our brief make-out session just before being captured was partly responsible for these thoughts but right now I had to focus on the task at hand. Moment's like these get stuck in your head as if they last hours, as if you experience it from every angle, fear, adrenaline and a mix of other chemicals your body produces to deal with extreme stress imprinting the memory in your brain.

An eternity later one of the kneeling goons falls clutching his neck, distracting the guy behind him halving the firepower getting thrown at us and then moment is gone and it goes from slow motion into fast forward. We have already walked half way across the corridor, they are no more than a leap ahead. Miranda's is breathing as if she has just run a marathon and I know that the next few seconds are decide our deaths or victory.

"Now" I yell and Miranda releases the barrier letting go of me and throwing her arms forward she redirects the energy into a push, it's not a strong one as pushes go but it staggers the goons still firing at us. I keep firing even as I leap forward and somehow manage to hit the distracted guy with the handgun as I barrel towards them, not fatal as far as I could tell in my mad dash but serious enough to leave him out of the fight for now. The gun overheats and I throw it. That is just enough distraction for me to get close and I deliver a sloppy cross to his right cheek and the guy's head whiplashes backward his eyes rolling back. The last guy rolls back and starts to aim his gun again when Miranda comes flying and hits him with what I could only describe as a ninja kick. The kind that you see in movies where it's all wires and special effects. I loved it.

I look around and see that there is no one to fight any more.

"You ok?" I ask Miranda

"No injuries although I am going to have a killer headache later. Quick lets do what we came here for before more Cerberus arrives to secure this place. They have activated the silent alarm. "she answers and walks through the door that the guys were guarding.

Behind the door is a typical control room, several screens and what looks like a mobile server tower on one side, a rack of armour and weapons now mostly empty on the other and a coffee machine on a table in the middle. On the table are also our omni-tools. She grabs hers and hands me my own and then sits down in front of one of the terminals.

"What are you doing?" I ask as I see her hands flying over the keyboard and multiple windows appear on the screen.

"I have to modify the record of what happened here, I have to make it look like they grabbed you and brought you here for initial interrogation without me. If I was never here they can't suspect me. And I am planting the worm." Miranda explained

"That makes sense." I admit and spend the next few minutes marveling at her skills.

"It's done. Let's get out of here." she says and we step out of the room.

"Die traitor" I hear the quiet words and my eyes lock on the guy I thought was disabled. Instead of a gun he clutches a grenade and I see it's set to release detonation rather than time. There is no time to think so I simply grab Miranda and push her back into the control room putting myself in the door frame. The explosion pushes me into the room after her.

Frag grenade luckily I think as my face hits the floor, if it had been high explosive then the blast wave would have killed Miranda.

"you ok?" I mumble as I see Miranda's face appear in front of me again. I can feel the application of medigel as a cool wave against my back but even as hard to damage as I am a frag grenade in close quarters is serious.

"You are not going to say to give you a few minutes again are you?" Miranda says mockingly but I hear the concern in her voice. "We have to bring you to a hospital."

"No hospital. Shepard." I feel my conscious slipping, it seems even for me this much damage this close together was too much

"What? You can't be serious, Sam." Miranda sounds exasperated

"Shepard can help." I mumble and the darkness overcomes me.

Chapter 19: Difference in taste

Chapter Text

10/01/2174 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel

I woke up to the sound of raised voices, groggy I couldn't quite make out what they were saying. I was laying on my stomach in someone's bed, I knew that because unlike hotel beds or hospital beds this one had a distinct person smell. Quite pleasant in fact and distinctly female, briefly wondering how I know that I craned my neck to look around. Definitely a room that belonged to a woman. A woman with not a lot of stuff but definitely a woman.

Pushing myself off the bed I found that I still had my underwear on but even a cursory glance around the room told me that I wouldn't find any more of my clothes here. I guessed they didn't survive the blast.

I actually hurt. My back was sore and my chest felt a bit too tight but a simple breathing exercise told me that while I was not 100% I was combat ready. It seems someone actually removed the fragments of the bullet and the frag grenade allowing my body to heal faster without needing to devote energy for pushing out the offending metal scrap like what I usually did, no back-alley doctor would have the diamond tipped scalpels needed to cut into me.

Opening the door I found the source of the raised voices. Miranda stood on one side of the living room, Kate Shepard stood on the other side with Ray in between them and Jack sitting on a high stool in the kitchen area chewing on a long piece of candy enjoying the argument as if it was a TV show.

"You can't just show up with Sam injured and pretend like there is nothing to say." Kate said testily

"I don't know you. I can't trust you. Sam might be a friend of yours but I have known him for a day. The only reason I am still here is to get an explanation from Sam." Miranda countered

"Sooo...where can I find some clothes?" I said bringing everyone's full attention to me

"Saaam!" Jack yelled and actually bounced a few feet into the air in surprise. I bet she was proud of that.

"You are actually awake." Miranda stated clear note of disbelief in her voice, not that I could blame her as it's not every day you see a guy take a grenade and wake up a few hours later.

"Yeah, I am guessing getting stunned and then that blast from the grenade was a bit too much." I replied rubbing the back of my neck, a bad habit I seemed to have somehow inherited from the male Shepard in game.

Ray walked up to me and did a quick scan. "You should be ok with a few days rest. And I do mean that you have to take that rest and not to run off on another mission like the last time. You might be made of tougher stuff than the rest of us but a few of those pieces I took out from you actually came away bloody. You will take a few days rest. Doctors orders."

"Sure doc. Now that I am unemployed I can actually do that." I agreed easily, I did need to spend time thinking about what to do next and not just react to events.

"This is impossible" Miranda said and actually sagged onto the couch. She looked exhausted.

"It's not. As I promised I will tell you what I can but could I get some clothes first? Where are my clothes anyway?" I asked feeling a bit self-conscious.

"In the recycler, they were shredded and singed. Let me take a look if I can find something that will fit you. You are a bit taller and quite a bit more muscular but I think I have something that will stretch well enough." Ray walked away heading towards the master bedroom which meant that I had been sleeping in Kate's bed judging by the décor of the room.

"Can I get something to eat too? I am starving. Getting injured will do that to me. " I asked hoping that if I get Kate to do something she will stop blushing while staring at me. I didn't have a nudity taboo or a body image issues any more but being the object of close attention of two women and one teenage girl was not a situation I was comfortable with.

"Sure, it is time for breakfast anyway." Kate said and moved towards the fridge.

"Miranda did you get something to keep your electrolyte levels up?" I asked turning my attention to Miranda, the fight must have taken a lot out of her biotically.

"Jack was kind enough to share her favourite energy drink with me." Miranda replied and the disgust in her voice was hard to miss.

"I did warn you." Kate pointed out, not looking as she was busying herself in the kitchen.

"You did. And I look at it as an educational experience. I never knew you could be disgusted in so many ways at once." Miranda agreed

"Heeey, don't say that, utuuk is nice." Jack protested weakly

The next ten minutes passed in what would easily pass for a normal breakfast conversation. Ray returned with some sweat pants and a t-shirt both of which were a bit snug but it was miles better than being mostly naked. Kate cooked breakfast, Miranda explained that utuuk was an apple like fruit that was grown by asari very much like apples were by humans. The difference was utuuk juice was not fresh squeezed but was made by fermenting squashed utuuk fruit in a cask with spices. It was almost like unfinished spiced apple cider. Unfortunately fermented utuuk tasted as if someone boiled horseradish in honey. Asari sometimes produced extremely odd taste combinations.

After eating practically everything that was put in front of me and seeing everyone else attack their food with the same fervor I judged that it was time for an explanation. I hoped a good breakfast would make Miranda less critical. And people who have shared a meal together tend to be less confrontational with each other.

"So what do you want to ask?" I said after I finished clearing the table and sat back down.

"There are far too many questions in my mind for my liking. But let's start with the most obvious one. What are you?" Miranda looked straight into my eyes as if daring me to lie.

"The most honest answer? I don't know. Not really. Nearly a year ago an Alliance raid on a suspected slaver staging ground uncovered a secret lab where they found me. I was not the only experiment there but I was the luckiest one. I came out alive and stronger than ever, no debilitating side effects, no missing pieces. But I have no memories of what was done to me, I know nothing of how it was done to me or who did it. All I know is that I woke up in a brig on a ship where Ray was the doctor. I was then recruited into what I believed to a covert total deniability operations branch of Alliance intelligence. I spent a a few months in training and then for the past six months I have been going on missions. If you want a rundown of my physical characteristics then I believe Ray can do it better than I can, he has the required medical background knowledge after all." I replied trying to sound as calm about this as possible. I saw that Jack grimaced when I said I had been an experiment.

Miranda looked at Ray and quirked an eyebrow in a way that suggested he needed to start talking.

"Sam is in simplest terms superhuman. But that kind of label would apply to everyone in the room by the standard of stock humanity. As Alliance soldiers both Kate and I have more than a fair bit of genetic engineering in us to make us better equipped to deal with the dangers of the galaxy. In fact I have a bit more than Kate because mine were done before Sudham-Wolcott Genetic Heritage Act was passed by Alliance. You and Jackie are both biotics and your abilities would look like magic to humans before the contact with the Council.
So to better illustrate how he differs from us you could compare him to a human version of a krogan. His body is still made from the same stuff as all of us but it's as if whoever made him like this dialed every property to 300% of normal. He is faster, stronger and more resilient than it could be possible without some major illegal cybernetics or very extensive and highly illegal genetic modification. The science of how it was done escapes me even after having spent the last two years studying his tissue and blood samples. No doubt the secret organization he got recruited into did the same but I doubt they got any further than I did." Ray explained sounding quite comfortable discussing the subject

"Why do say that Dad?" Kate interjected before Miranda could ask a follow up question.

"Because as far as I can tell the science to do what was done to him does not exist. It's not genetic engineering, it's not cybernetics or surgery. It's as if every cell in his body down to molecular level was changed, modified to be superior in every way. I can't explain it. I doubt there is anyone that could. Living here on Citadel I had seen the level of medical technology of salarians, asari and turians. None of them are capable of doing anything like this. Not even close. Maybe protheans could have done this but we don't know enough about them to be sure. Whatever technology was used to do this it's either far ahead of us or is based on a completely different understanding of science than we have." Ray shrugged

"You sure it wasn't Cerberus?" Jack asked and I saw Miranda twitch as she must have suppressed her initial reaction to deny it could have been.

"As much as I would like to think that they were behind this I know for sure they are not capable of doing this. Otherwise it wouldn't have been just me but a bunch of super-powered Cerberus agents running around and wrecking things. No, Cerberus despite all of their sins have nothing to do with what was done to me." I assured Jack as I knew that to be true beyond any doubt.

"Who recruited you?" Miranda asked this time

"I don't know. I thought they were Alliance but I know now they were not or at least not properly. But I can't really say much, apart from the facilities that I had been to during my training all my interaction was through email. And the training facilities were just temporary so there was nothing to identify them. It sounds worse than it is. They might have been extremely secretive about themselves but every mission they gave to me was above board. I was never in doubt about the need for them or their legitimacy. The need to what was asked of me was easily checked by extranet. Before I came to the Citadel i spent the last four months going after a violent terrorist cell." I replied hoping that my sincerity would be enough to convince them. I had theories about who they were but there was nothing I could prove. And at this point I thought that they were not my problem.

"So your greatest secret is that you don't know." Miranda said clearly skeptical

"You could say that. I don't know who I had been working for, not in detail but that is not that unusual in my former field of work. You know that Miranda. There are plenty of specialists who get hired without the knowledge. I don't know who made me like I am now either but the real question you want to ask is 'can they make more'. And the answer to that question is more than likely no. For the simple reason that where I was found I was but one of many experiments. And while galaxy is big I doubt that Alliance, Cerberus or our friends on the Citadel council would have missed an army of superhumans if that what was they were trying to make there." I continued with my explanation. Of course there were things I could not tell them. Like me being from a different universe where all this was a piece of fiction and that I knew what the future held. Because as strange and bizarre the story I was telling sounded putting the whole different universe thing on the table was just not going to fly.

Miranda looked at me as if trying to scan me with her eyes and determine if I was actually telling the truth. Jack looked confused and was very still as if her movement could disturb whatever she was thinking about. Kate looked like she wanted to either punch me or hug me. Probably both.

"That was interesting but I have to get to work, Jackie here is going to school and Kate is on duty in less than an hour." Ray said and in a few moments I was left alone with Miranda as the Shepard family went about their morning routine that was interrupted by me. I am usually fine with silence but being stared at intently by Miranda does get a bit unnerving.

"What now?" Miranda said finally

And then I explained. She told me I was crazy. I laughed and didn't argue.

Chapter 20: Intermission

Chapter Text

16/01/2174 Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel, Tayseri Ward

My plan for getting the resources I needed to take on the Reapers had not changed since I explained it to Kal'leena. And since I now had the full freedom to pursue it how I wanted I intended to go out, find some pirates and kick their ass. As it turned out with more planets getting colonized by humans piracy has been increasing. Especially with batarians smarting from the snub from the Council. Not that batarians were at any point liked by the Council. Merc bands operated more or less as they saw fit in the Traverse and the Terminus and as long as they didn't break the laws too overtly in Citadel space they were treated as legitimate private security companies.

Miranda did not think much of my plan. But after I explained how this would lay down groundwork for the confrontation with Cerberus and Illusive Man that was coming she grudgingly agreed that it was a workable idea. I thought that she looked particularly cute when she did that.

Her own mission was to get back to Cerberus and try to map out as much of it's structure and it's sponsors as she could with the help of the worm that she planted. I thought it was the more dangerous assignment, I would only be getting shot at by criminals and I was free to shoot back, she would be in the den of evil pretending that everything is fine while navigating the pit of vipers that was Cerberus hierarchical ladder as she attempted to climb it and not fall for the intrigues weaved by other agents on the inside. When we parted at a rapid transit terminal I saw her steel herself with a breath and as she exited the cab she was in the Ice Queen mode that I knew from the games.

I spent a week recuperating, pain was gone by the second day and I was back in shape by the third day but all three Shepards on the station decided that they won't leave me be until I have properly rested. Which in their opinion meant a run down of things the Citadel had to offer for entertainment. Ray thought that it was imperative for me to learn the finest points of culture in which he included elcor, hanar and volus theatre. Elcor plays were actually interesting, although they had a disclaimer that non-elcor were inable to appreciate it properly. Volus stage plays had far too many numbers and graphs in them. The less is said about hanar the better.

Jack's idea of relaxation was to drag me to bioti-ball games and turian wrestling matches. Bioti-ball was fun but watching half naked turians wrestle was odd. They didn't differentiate the sport into male and female categories either. Not that there was anything to look at, male and female turians are almost identical without their clothes on. Kate was less exotic in her entertainment preferences which included places with good food and movies.

And so it was at the end of the week as we were walking out of a cinema Kate laughing as she recalled a funny moment from the volus situational comedy that we just watched that I found myself with a realisation of two things. First that I was feeling happy, actually happy. A feeling that I did not have much practice in both this universe and my original universe. And the second was that if someone looked at me and Kate right now they would think we were dating. I had missed the moment where my left arm had found it's way around her waist supporting her as she was leaning heavily into me shaking with laughter recounting a funny moment and I was laughing along. I wasn't quite sure what to think of this. On one hand she is an extremely attractive young woman whose company I find rather enjoyable, one the other hand she is the future Commander Shepard the Saviour of the galaxy. It felt almost sacrilegious to think of her that way. Also there was that moment with Miranda which hinted at something more, even if it had been an act at first to spring a trap.

Thinking of Kate I simply could not see how this young woman could be responsible for so much in less than a decade. But I could believe that she managed to bring a whole galaxy together, she easily made friends and even after a few days hanging out together it was like we had been friends for years. I could see her getting to know her alien crew and making every single one loyal to her. But I could not warn her, I had no evidence that would convince a human of what I knew was coming, so I resolved myself to prepare in her place. And I would rather let her have these years without them being overshadowed by the doom that the Reapers were bringing. When the time comes she would need help and she would have it. As I was lost in thought she grabbed my collar, pulled me close and then pressed her lips to my cheek.

"What was that for?" I asked surprised

"For showing me a good time. This will be my last chance at civilian comforts for a while and I couldn't have hoped for better company." Kate said smiling at me

"Ah, I know you have been looking forward to a shipboard assignment, SSV Manila was it, one of the newer cruisers so it shouldn't be as cramped as the old Geneva's. What kept you? I would have thought someone with your aptitude would have been assigned long ago." I noted as we walked towards the rapid transit terminal.

"It was for Jack. I know I delayed my career but I wanted to be there for her and the specialists at medical agreed that Jack needed as normal a family as we could make it. That's why mom stayed for a few months too but she got her own command now and you don't turn down a command of a ship." Kate replied her smile faltering slightly and I kicked myself mentally for bringing it up

"All I can say is that you did good. Not that you need me to tell you that. I had only seen Jack briefly that one time and I can see a clear change." I said and stopped. We stood in front of the terminal and I could see Kate hesitate slightly as if to say something

"I will be shipping out too, now that I am free to choose my own goals I need to make a start on my to do list. So this is a goodbye for now." I said

"You are? I thought you lost your job?" Kate asked

"And that means that now I am my own boss. As a parting gift they have given me a ship and a few names and places I need to visit." I replied thinking on the intel I was given, it would be a nice start. Cerberus distributed cell structure might make it hard to take down but also that meant that coordinating a response would not be easy. I tapped the terminal to summon an aircar.

"It's about Miranda isn't it. I knew it, no guy could turn down someone like her." Kate stated pointing an accusing finger at me

"It's not like that." I replied, quickly, maybe too quickly considering the smirk on Shepard's face. And yes that was definitely a Shepard Smirk, patent pending. "Yes she is involved but it's work. You could say our activity fields are related and are overlapping in a manner and now we have to do some cleaning up. It's going to be hard but the result should be worth it."

"Oh I have no doubt that it's going to be hard and that she is going to like the result when both of you are finished." Kate teased her grin lighting up her face

"Shepard!" I shouted reproachfully and I could feel my face heating up but I knew it would not be visible. I thanked whoever remade me that emotional biological responses were practically non-existent.

"I can't blame you throwing yourself on a grenade for her. I am not batting for that team but even I can appreciate how snug her outfit was. It's like someone made her just to give other women body image issues." Kate continued laughing at my expense

"Done?" I asked amused, Kate was only saying that as a joke and I was not going to say how close to the truth she got.

"Done. Ehh, I could say something but I won't. " Kate said grinning impishly.

"How did someone like you came out of such serious and reasonable people like your parents." I said shaking my head in mock disbelief

"That's only because you didn't know them from before. My father started out as a marine corpsman and my mother was an ensign when they met in a brig after starting a brawl. A brawl that thrashed a bar and spilled out on the streets of Armstrong City. The best part is that they started it with each other." Kate said

"I have nothing to say to that." I said and both us lapsed into a silence and I saw the timer on the terminal down to 30 seconds "This was a good evening. Hopefully we will have a repeat some time later. And Kate, if you ever need help, you have my contacts. Even if you are on the far side of the galaxy I will come. So stay safe"

The aircar slid into it's place right in front of the terminal with a hum of it's mass effect core changing the pitch. Kate looked at it and then at me and stepped close and hugged me.

"You too. I will have two dozen marines as backup unlike you. If you find yourself on the Citadel again look in on dad and Jack for me." Kate said and let me go

"Of course." I nodded

"I should go." Kate said and climbed into the aircar, she sloppily saluted and I replied in kind just before the door closed and the aircar sped off. As I ordered another aircar I mused to myself that this what I was going to fight for. Saving the galaxy from Reapers was obviously a fight well worth fighting for but it was also a bit abstract. I knew I was here, in this universe to fight them, it was the whole reason for my existence here however it didn't feel personal. But moments like this, of friendship and warmth, was personal and I needed this connection. Not to keep me motivated, no I was plenty motivated. But it would keep my head screwed straight, help me keep from turning into another Illusive Man. Because as much as I wanted to stop him I could not condemn him. Experiencing what he did and getting a dose of Reaper indoctrination must have played havoc with his mind. I had to keep things in perspective and stay away from thinking that results at any cost strategy could ever work.

Thinking of my next steps I returned to my hotel room. It would be a busy day tomorrow.

12/03/2174 Bekenstein, Milgrom, Business District Cordoba Tower level 212

Miranda stepped into the holo-communication system and sighed inwardly. After losing a second cell at the hands of the same man Illusive Man decided to take every precaution and investigate everything about Sam Knight. And who better to lead the investigation than the only Cerberus operative left alive after meeting him? Miranda had tried her best not to put anything that didn't come from Cerberus sources into the final report and it ended up as a series of suppositions. Verified sightings of Sam Knight were few and associated actions as an operative of unknown secret organisation were no more than educated guesses. Even his name was not a known fact as taking on a name of a dead person with no relatives was a classic tactic when covert operatives needed a fake identity.

Miranda had sent her report earlier today and now she was summoned to appear in front of Illusive Man himself. She wondered briefly if her career in Cerberus would have been going the same way if Sam had never shown up.

"Miranda, I have read your report. The issue of Sam Knight is troubling." Illusive Man said exhaling a cloud of smoke.

"I did not find any mention of the origin of the tip that led us to him in the files I received. I understand the need for security of a valuable asset but the origin might have given us more leads to follow. " Miranda replied coolly, showing displeasure at not being trusted enough but being a professional about it. This had been her go to persona, a way to keep others at an arms length. To everyone she must appear competent and confident with just enough justified arrogance that would make everyone doubt themselves first before doubting her. Not that such things worked on Illusive Man.

"That particular asset is no longer available. It is of no concern. Your recommendation at the end of report is intriguing." Illusive Man tapped the cigarette against the ashtray

"Sam Knight might as well be working for one of our cells. His actions are in line with our own procedure when dealing with rogue cells. I have reviewed the records from the Teltin Facility and the mission files of the cell used to capture Sam Knight and in both cases a particular disregard for proper operating procedures is evident. The lead scientists at Teltin were engaged in pseudo-science and Gant was a complete maniac. The funding Cerberus spent on those two cells was being wasted.

And currently he is engaged in anti-piracy action in the Traverse. He brings publicity to the problem of piracy and batarian slavers. Cerberus could use that to push Alliance for more hard line policy against batarians. Leaving him under observation without interference is most efficient. Going after him right now would require a considerable investment of resources and I do not see the need to do so for mere revenge." Miranda explained as she remembered a recent report where Sam had managed to interrupt sale of several dozen human children. One picture in particular showed a teenage girl carrying a toddler, brought to mind her own escape from her father's clutches. Miranda had spent weeks on passenger ships going from system to system while caring for her sister. Despite the constant fear of being captured, despite the cramped conditions and feeling more tired than she had ever felt it was a fond memory for Miranda. It was only her and her sister. Rocking her to sleep, feeding her or just holding her Miranda finally understood what had been missing from her own childhood. And that she would do everything to give Oriana a normal childhood.

"Your assessment of the situation is based purely on fact then?" Illusive Man took a drag of his cigarette

"Of course." Miranda replied coldly, she knew where this was going and she was disappointed in Illusive Man. He had been someone she had admired and seeing the curtain raised and revealing what was behind it made her reassess every interaction. He tried very hard to appear as more than a man. To appear in control.

"So this has nothing to do with it?" he asked and gestured towards a recording of her kissing Sam. Looking at the run time Miranda was slightly surprised herself. Time had indeed vanished for those twelve minutes and seventeen seconds.

Seeing herself from the side Miranda could not help but feel the fire rekindle itself inside her again. Even if the recording was being used in such a way she still felt the same after two months. That on itself had meaning.

"That was my role in this operation wasn't it?" Miranda replied keeping her face aloof and her posture relaxed. She had more than enough practice keeping her inner self away from others. Her father had seen to that.

"Then we will follow your recommendation. Now, I have a new job for you." Illusive man said turning away as if forgetting to stop the video. Miranda listened to her new orders and watched herself moan silently in pleasure as Sam kissed her neck, his hands moving across her body, her hands moving across his, watched herself as they lost clothes and she straddled him. And when Illusive Man finished with his instructions at the same moment as the recording stopped she knew that the next time she saw Sam she would not mind continuing where they left off.

Exiting the holographic communication field Miranda repressed the urge to close her eyes and sigh. Illusive Man and Cerberus had once again proven to unworthy of the lofty ideals they espoused. The trick of using a display of her own sexuality to make her lose her balance was simple and cheap. She expected more from Illusive Man.

Thanks to her tap into the Cerberus network Miranda now knew a lot more than she should know as an agent of her position. Unfortunately it revealed her own ignorance when it came to the organisation she was working for. The things she had seen so far were leaving far too many questions unanswered but one thing was a certainty. Cerberus had to die. And if it had to be her that walked into Jack's Harper's office and pulled the trigger then Miranda would make sure she did not miss. Any enjoyment of the deed would be purely coincidental.

Returning to her quarters she sat down at her terminal and started to design a new uniform for herself. Miranda decided that if even Illusive Man could not help but think of her as a woman first and agent second then she would start using her looks the way they were designed for, as a bludgeon. Triple ballistic weave, nanogel liner and full medical weave, all tailored to fit her like a glove and accentuate her best sides from all angles. Knee high, high heeled boots with magnetic soles and a kinetic shield harness made into the shape of belt to accentuate her hips. Hours later striding through the polished metal and glass office of one of Cerberus front companies Miranda did not let her thoughts slip outside of her Ice Queen mask. Miranda was pleased with the result. The male Cerberus operatives that had seen her definitely looked like someone hit them over the head. For now Illusive Man had given her a job, she would make sure Cerberus people were in place on the new joint human-turian ship building project. The details were few but it was set to bring the best of human and turian ship building experience together. With her new identity as a corporate negotiator for Cord-Hislop Aerospace she would have all the right access. Smiling coldly Miranda felt excited to try out her new look on the Alliance requisitions officers.

Chapter 21: Snake in the mud

Chapter Text

20/01/2174 , Serpent Nebula, Widow, Citadel

I had underestimated the ability of the C-Secs bureaucratic apparatus to delay me. I now fully understood why Garrus hated all the red tape that came with his job. Three days ago the morning after I said my goodbye to Kate Shepard I went into one of the C-Sec offices to register a company. If I had only known what kind of headache it would be I would have tried Illium or something. Instead this was the third day of me running around the Citadel and it's various C-Sec departments trying to get all the documentation in order. One small mercy was that all the documents were electronic so all I had to do was walk around with a datapad. Registering a private military company with permission to operate in Council space took gigabytes of documentation. From permission to carry weapons better than civilian issue pistols to registration with Citadel Astro-mining department to Citadel Astro-ecology department and so on and so forth. By the end I had spent thousands of credits and had visited dozens of offices and seen hundreds of people. Asari, turians, salarians, volus, elcor and even hanar made up Citadel's bureaucratic apparatus. Hanar were the worst. Their pinkish pulsating floating bodies were not nice to look at in the first place, but when they moved their tentacles to type things, that was the type of thing where nightmares came from. They were also unbelievable snobs, as if Enkindlers themselves had appointed them to their jobs.

Now three days later I was standing in front of my ship, two heavy bags in each of my hands. They held everything I needed for the first part of my plan. The arms of the Citadel stretching above me, the purple haze of the nebula obscuring, if only visually, the ships moving within. This ship, BAC TSR-3 was given to me by my mysterious employers and if I had their address I would send them a thank you card. It was large enough to be comfortable for long journeys and yet small enough to be nimble and agile. After reading about it's history I couldn't help but be impressed. Walking up to the airlock I input the code to unlock it. The airlock hissed and slid aside giving me entry into the ship.

The layout of the ship was pretty simple, there was a single main deck which housed the co*ckpit, two crew cabins, bathroom and a small common area, all of that in the long front section of the spacecraft. The back end was cargo and engineering. Cargo was accessible either by an airlock from the crew area or by the lowering of the cargo lift which also doubled as the floor of the cargo area. It was just about big enough to fit in a Mako if you took off the wheels and made it sit on it's belly. Engineering which housed the mass effect core, two main engines, and everything else needed to keep the ship flying was not accessible in flight from inside. Any work that needed doing had to be done either in a pressurized dock or by getting into a spacesuit and going outside.

Walking towards the co*ckpit I dropped the bags in what would be my room and opening a hatch to the co*ckpit stepped inside. Two seats next to each other, physical controls and not the new fashionable holographic displays. Dropping into the seat I pushed in the button for main power. There was a slight whine as the capacitors charged from the station and then with a faint click of discharge and a shudder the fusion reactor lit. A few seconds of it drawing power from the station until it went into self-sustaining mode and I flicked a switch to disengage the umbilical cable.

Next was the mass effect core. This time all it had to do was switch from sleep mode to idle. The ship had been given a clean bill of health already before it's ownership was transferred to me so I was not worried. But I still had to go through the pre-light list. It was standard procedure and as boring it would likely be for me after a hundred times, this was my first personal ship. Not pilfered from some smugglers or a part of my cover identity. This one was registered in my name and I was free to go wherever I wanted in it. So I took my time to go through the checklist and enjoyed every moment of it.

Half an hour later I was ready to fly. I sent a request for a flight path and paid the docking fees as I was waiting for the reply. It didn't take long and as it downloaded into the ships navigational computer I pushed the power levers up, spinning up the mass effect core and the main drives. While I was still in atmospheric envelope of the Citadel I had to use the air-breathing electric jets which lead the ship fly like an airplane with VTOL capability. Lifting off carefully I swung the ship around using the flight path displayed on my co*ckpit screen and giving it a gentle nudge accelerated away. As I was flying through the arms of the Citadel I saw hundreds of ships around me going in every direction, from the huge dreadnoughts doing a show-off pass by the presidium to small pinpricks of light further away moving like startled fireflies in the night. Exiting the atmospheric envelope of the station I switched to the fusion jets and felt the slight kick as the more powerful engines pushed the ship even faster. It really was an illusion as any delay in between the acceleration and the inertia dampening effect of the mass effect field would have been fatal to the crew when pushing more than 20g's of acceleration.

Approaching the relay I angled the approach in a way that would give me an exit drift of around 5k kilometres. Right on the outer edge of the zone where most pilots aimed for. As I felt the Relay grab my ship I relaxed. It was going to be a busy few weeks, my schedule of hitting the Cerberus assets I knew about was tight as they would start to shift them around as soon as they found out that I am hitting them. Adding to that I needed to raise the profile of my newly established PMC.

25/01/2174 Almarcrux, Caspian, Maroon Sea

I hated mud. Hot mud, cold mud, brown mud, green mud. Any kind of mud. It always manages to get stuck in the worst places to clean and you could never be sure what was in it. Slowly crawling across a field of mud, completely covered head to toe was not a nice experience even if I was in fully environmentally sealed armour. Unfortunately there was no other way. The slaver camp was on the only piece of properly solid ground for dozens of kilometres in every direction, a rock formation jutting out of the mud sea. It was a good position. Both to defend and to prevent escape, not that anyone could without at least a sealed helmet for air, the atmosphere was a mix of ethane and methane. The only tactical option of assaulting this base was dropping from above and that approach was covered by an old but still perfectly functioning GARDIAN tower. Hence me crawling in the mud to get to the base.

I was in the nearby Hercules star system on an unmanned Cerberus listening station near the Mass Relay when I came across intel that listed this location as a batarian slaver base. The station VI had been recording ship signatures and comparing them to the list of known pirate vessels. This had been going on for months and I could not grasp a reason why Cerberus was just doing nothing while humans were being taken as slaves.

Crawling the last kilometre had me sweating and I could feel the strain in my body. Having to rely completely on the passive scanners in my helmet and omni-tool to give me direction was not easy holding the course so several times I had to change direction, zig-zagging across the mud field. Reaching the edge of the camp I let myself have a few minutes to recover and then I saw my first target. A batarian coming out of the closest prefab building right at the edge of the base, only had a pistol on his hip. Looked like some kind of Carnifex variant. Waiting until he was within distance I threw a knife driving it into his head right up to the hilt. Fifteen centimetres of razor sharp carbon-ceramic composite dropping him like log, dead immediately.

Syncing my omni-tool with the dead batarian's I rummaged around the memory seeing if there are access codes or anything useful in it. Unfortunately whatever his name was, he was more interested in storing some truly vile p*rnography on his omni-tool rather than codes. I activated my omni-tool's manufacturing capability and an oversized knuckle duster with short thick spikes formed over my right gauntlet. This was my own recent improvisation, omni-blades while possessing a far superior cutting capability were simply too power hungry. In my left I held my own Carnifex.

I entered the prefab the batarian had come out of I came upon a scene that I expected to see but really hoped I wouldn't. Three batarians standing around a body on the floor. Red blood stained their knuckles and boots. Storming into the room before they turned towards the sound of the cycling airlock, I punched the closest one to me in the back of the head and I could feel the spikes bite deep into his skull, pivoted and kicked at the second one. The kick was not as well aimed as I hoped, only a glancing blow that sent the slaver to the floor in a loud crash. Aiming with my pistol I shot the third batarian in the chest twice and then immediately aimed and shot the one on the ground. Only then I looked at the victim. The young man had scrambled away into the corner holding his hands over his head in a protective gesture.

"I am not going to ask stupid things like are you ok. Can you walk?" I said keeping my voice level. The young man nodded and using the wall for leverage picked himself up. Judging by the yellow angry welts and enough bruises that it was hard to tell where one ended and another one began it looked like it hasn't been the first time batarians had entertained themselves in this manner.

"Do you know how many slavers are there?" I asked knowing that every moment was precious and I needed as much information as I could before more batarians showed up. I didn't know how this base was wired up, if there were internal sensors or if someone in the central hub was keeping tubs on everyone's vitals. Unless they were completely incompetent and had no one keeping watch.

"More than ten. Their faces are too similar for me to tell them apart." young man said mumbling the words through swollen lips

"Ok, take his gun and wait here. Which building are they using to hold people?" I exchanged my pistol for a shotgun and enabled Cryo rounds on it. Really useful for slowing down enemies, makes it easier to manage when it's a situation like this with only one of me and plenty of them.

"The far side, next to the landing field. " the man said as he shook in shock. Knowing there was nothing I could do for him right now I picked up the pistol, still in it's folded state, activated it and put it on a crate near the young man.

"Take this. Which way to the barracks?" I asked and he stared at the pistol.

"The prefab with the comm dish. They live there." he answered stating the obvious and grabbed the pistol.

Still seeing no activity I decided not to wait any longer and left the young man and headed towards the barracks at a jog. There was a batarian just behind the outer door sitting with his feet put up on a crate and a shotgun laying on the ground. He was watching something on the datapad, the back of his head towards me, hearing the airlock hiss he turned his head to look at who was entering. The shot was easy and what used to be his head spread out on the wall behind him messily.

Opening the inner door I stepped in and a shot rang out. Unlike the batarians so far I had my kinetic barriers on and all it did was ping my shields. Katana Mk5 in my hands kicked four times as I swept the room before I was forced to dive in an attempt to evade the shots from several more batarians on the far side of the sleeping quarters. Letting the heat gauge on the shotgun go down I threw a couple of disc grenades, flashbangs. The helmet muffled the explosions and I rolled into a new position leveling the shotgun and squeezing the trigger four more times. I liked Katana shotguns, they could fire about 4 to 5 shots before overheating and they were easy to modify. I had modded mine for rapid fire, had to change the standard ammo block and ammunition shaper to a pre-formed ammo block with a fast cycle ammo shaver. Instead of forming individual pellets out of the block each time a shot was fired all it did was break a few layers off the top. The block itself was not a single piece of metal but rather layers of compacted little pieces. Like staples but all in one block. The upside was obvious. Faster shots and less heat generated, the downside was a more rapid use of an ammo block and a chance to jam if there was enough damage to the assembly.

But it has worked perfectly so far. The cones of deadly projectiles with cryo effect swept the room and it might not have killed all of them but they were incapacitated. Few of them had armour on and they were the only survivors as the rest had chunks missing where my shots had struck. Chunks that were quite vital to being alive. Letting the heat dissipate again I picked myself up and finished the batarians still alive.

The barracks were connected by a prefab corridor to the command centre. Rushing through it before they managed to lock it down I entered the main room of the command centre and a volley of shots hit my shields. I quickly dodged to the side and behind some crates. The room was full of crates. It looked like the batarians had been using this as a storage area for some reason. Looking at the markings they were full of weapons. Mostly cheap Hahne-Kedar and Elkoss Combine. Cheap and easy to come by anywhere in the galaxy. Probably planning to expand once they have a few more raids in. Successful slaver gangs drew more batarian recruits.

Waiting for their guns to overheat I glanced at my omni-tool noting the positions of the enemies filled in by the sensors in the helmet, the HUD in the helmet being a bit simplistic for a proper view. One of the batarians was standing behind the same type of crates I was hiding behind but the other one was on the steps leading to the second floor and the curve of the stairs were giving him a good position. Covering him from the side I was approaching and a higher vantage point. As soon as I heard their weapons overheat I jumped out of cover and sprang into a run. These batarians however were more experienced and instead of waiting for their rifles to cool down they dropped them and took out handguns. My barrier took a dozen shots before collapsing then my armour was hit twice before I had a good shot at the nearest batarian. Without properly aiming I let off three blasts from my shotgun in rapid succession which was enough to collapse the kinetic barrier and leave the batarian slumped on the stairs with half of his chest a bleeding wound and left arm in tatters. Before the other batarian managed to aim at me properly I lobbed a grenade right at him with some force. The grenade hit him in the torso staggering him before exploding. Only a flashbang so it couldn't take him down but gave me ample time to let me bring my own gun on him and finish him off.

Heading upstairs I found several officer's quarters and a comm/security room which was left unoccupied. Going through the logs I discovered that two thirds of the batarians were away on a raid while this group were left here to guard the captives and wait for a transport ship from the Hegemony to pick them up. And it was due shortly. Tapping away on the console I unlocked the slave pens and disabled security on the GARDIAN tower so that in case the pirates returned I had something to greet them with. My current problem was that I couldn't fit all the captives I have freed in my ship. Even if I could stack them like wood in my cargo hold my ship's life support was simply not designed for so many people. It wouldn't be able to process all that CO2 quickly enough. In my opinion there was only one way to get these people home and that was to capture a ship from the slavers. Thankfully the cargo ship would be here in a day or two and they usually only had a few guards. No reason to lug a ship full of armed batarians if you could use that same life support capacity to haul more slaves.

Walking downstairs I was faced with several people, one of them was the guy I had found earlier. He was being treated by a younger girl while the others were rummaging around the room. Noticing me they stopped and turned towards me.

"Are you with the Alliance?" a man in his thirties asked me

"No, I am not with the Alliance. We can't signal the Alliance either because we are too far from the comm buoy to make a connection." I said knowing exactly what will be the next question

"How do we get out of here?" the man asked

"In a day or two a cargo ship is going to arrive, it was meant to take you all to batarian space. Instead we are going to take it, kill the crew and fly to freedom. There are enough guns here for everyone. They won't be ready for an attack. We have the advantage here." I said projecting as much calm and determination as possible. These people were fragile right now, after days in slave pens, beaten and dreading their fate, they needed something to lean on. A display of confidence and a clear goal would hold them together until they do what needs to be done.

"Tell us what to do." the young man stood up, still holding the gun I gave him. That was exactly what I was hoping to hear.

Secondary Codex Entry/Vehicles/TSR-3

British Aerospace Corporation's Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance 3 was a late 2150's design. One of dozens that sprang up after the First Contact War, it was at it's core a re-development of the mid 1960's British design for an aircraft of the same purpose. However it soon became clear that a ship like this would require FLT capability. The design was enlarged and using technology reverse engineered from damaged turian shuttles salvaged after FCW allowed a quick breakthrough in developing a compact mass effect core. TSR-3 went into production in 2162 and in the initial trials with the Alliance Navy proved to be popular with both the flight crews and maintenance crews. Three person crew was required, pilot, weapons specialist and navigator/sensor operator. It's radial fusion jet engines were a proven human technology as was the majority of the technology used to build it, apart from the compact mass effect core based on a turian design and the kinetic shield generator of asari origin.

However despite the popularity and the low cost per unit Alliance Parliament cancelled the program in 2163 in favour of their "big ship" navy. Frigates and cruisers were to be multi-functional ships and only dreadnoughts and carriers retained as specialist ships. By that time BAC had produced over 1200 TSR-3's and several hundred more spaceframes were only waiting for the mass effect cores to be installed.

Faced with a loss of billions of credits in both research and development and the production cost for already completed TSR-3's BAC decided to sell them on the civilian market. TSR-3 was re-branded from Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance to Transport, Survey and Rescue. Internal torpedo bay was redeveloped into pressurized cargo bay, crew comforts increased by reducing the crew complement from 3 persons to two as there was no need for a separate weapons specialist. The craft proved to be popular and BAC even restarted production for a time until 2165 with the end number of produced craft at 3500. The military origin of the craft made it easy to modify and upgrade as it had been designed with that in mind and BAC has continued aftermarket support with release of conversion kits that could allow the basic craft to specialise in one of the roles fitting the re-branded TSR name. TSR-3 at 31m long and 14m wide gives a sharp, predatory silhouette, while it is designed to take advantage of the mass effect core in flight even without it the ship is perfectly capable of atmospheric operation. It's twin engines have an air-breathing mode that allows air to pass through the engines adding to the thrust and as an added bonus aiding in the cooling of the ship systems.

The relative simplicity and reliability of TSR-3 has led it to become sought after in the used ship market by smugglers, bounty hunters and others who have to rely on the strength of their shields or the accuracy of their weapons to carry them through the day.

Chapter 22: A step in the right direction

Chapter Text

26/01/2174 Maroon sea, Caspian, Almarcrux, Former Pirate base

The story of the almost slaves was quite simple. They were part of a colonization cooperative that bought and outfitted a standard Kowloon-type freighter. A couple of months ago fifty seven people, the first group of colonists reached their destination and set up a simple mining colony. They started making regular cargo runs selling off the metal they mined. Someone must have talked to the wrong person and when the ship was away on another run the pirates attacked. They had nine people armed but the outcome of fighting twice that number of batarians in armour was obvious. But they fought bravely anyway and killed several before being overwhelmed. Batarians angry with their own losses executed the injured or the ones too old to sell well.

Then they brought them here and I showed up a few days later. That was their story as told to me by Jason Nguyen and Frederica Powels, Jason was a mining foreman, wiry and medium height his Vietnamese ancestry gave him jet black hair despite being on the north side of 40. Frederica was a mechanic as she described herself, she was somewhere in her 30's, she was short but the combination of close cropped dirty blonde hair and hands that were clearly no stranger to hard work she looked far more like a miner should than Jason.

These people were highly motivated to get some payback against the slavers and I was in the position to give them first part of the plan was simple and straightforward and my role in it was actually minimal. As soon as the batarian cargo ship showed up on the sensors of the GARDIAN tower I let it get close enough and then powered it up and clicked on the wide band broadcast on the comms.

"Batarian ship, land immediately and do not resist the GARDIAN laser is fully charged and is locked on to you." I said as the barrel of the laser pointed towards the ship a few kilometres above me. At this distance the laser would punch through the ship, there was no way to evade for something bigger than a shuttle.

"Who is this? Kharn is that you with your stupid jokes again?" the batarian captain presumably replied, one of the advantages of translators, it was easier to pass as someone else using audio only as the translator would simply use the closest approximation of the voice when translating. It's why turians didn't sound like vorcha when talking despite their languages being very similar to human ear when heard without translation. Vorcha sound like they do because there was no real effort to translate their language properly so they get by with the simplest phrases and idioms. Turians have spent time and effort getting their languages properly translated and not sound like like they were angry snarling or squawking when talking to other species. Only Asari and quarians had vocal cords close enough to human that their language actually sounded like a language.

"Batarian cargo ship, I repeat, land immediately, do not resist or I will burn you out of the sky." I commanded

"You will pay for this whoever you are. You won't get out of this system alive. I will spit in your eyes when Horsha strings you up" the stupid batarian answered.

"You asked for this." I said and pressed the trigger. I had turned the power down as low as I could. A few dozen kilowatts, just enough to burn some plating but hopefully not hit anything important. A laser is invisible but the gas in the atmosphere glowed as the energized particles passed through it connecting the ship to the tower with an easily visible line.

Telescopic camera on the tower wasn't in good condition so I could not aim it precisely but I saw a glowing dot rake across the belly of the ship.

"Batarian ship, next shot will be full power. Respond." I tried hailing them again.

"Don't shoot. Don't shoot. We are landing." I heard a different voice say after about a minute of silence

The rest was easy. The ship landed, it reminded me of a brick laying flat with the quad engine assembly sticking out the aft. There were six crew on the ship not counting the captain who had been promptly relieved of command after my demonstration, armed colonists boarded the ship and a few minutes later they brought the batarian ship crew out and locked them in the cages. Then the colonists started loading it up with everything that wasn't too hard to rip off. And the ship could fit a lot, it was twice as long as mine and a good ten meters wider. Jason said it was a common sight for Traverse and simple enough to operate. At first I wanted to send the colonists back in a loaded freighter, set the GARDIAN IFF to see pirates as hostile and leave on my own ship but Frederica found something among the supplies looted from another Alliance colony. Two standard shipping containers of LOKI mechs, 60 mechs in each.

"Why didn't batarians use these? Even I would have had issues getting through so many of them." I asked as Frederica was showing me an open container with another one right beside it.

"These are standard colonial defense issue. Unlike generic LOKI mechs these are already programmed with friend or foe identification. Batarians are a foe by default same as anyone with a valid Alliance ID is a friend. As basic as these are they are new so they likely didn't have anyone familiar with the system to reprogram them." Frederica answered

"Activate one, I want to see how it reacts to me." I said and nodded at the nearest mech. Frederica shrugged and went through the activation sequence on her omni-tool

The mech's eye lit up blue and then it unfurled itself standing up straight. The eye flickered for a few seconds before it's head turned toward me.

"Automated security protocol engaged. No hostiles found. For other commands enter authorised ID". It stated.

"List authorised ID types." I said

"Alliance military ID, Alliance civilian ID, Hahne-Kedar employee ID." it replied and having the first one I simply sent my almost genuine Alliance ID.

"ID accepted. Sam Knight, Staff Lieutenant N5, retired. Command authority established. Full functionality enabled." it stated and I grinned. That was exactly what I needed. One hundred and twenty LOKI mechs with my support was enough of a force that I was no longer concerned about the returning batarian slavers on a frigate. All I needed to do was to convince the cargo ship crew to help me and I had just the right thing to say on my mind.

29/01/2174 Former pirate base, Almarcrux, Caspian, Maroon sea

I was getting tired of waiting for the batarians to return when the GARDIAN tower's sensors pinged the frigate. The tower's VI identified it as Tor'vak-class frigate. I had been waiting aboard the cargo ship with a hundred and twenty of my new metal best friends. The ship had been moved so that it's cargo doors were pointed towards where the frigate would be landing. There just wasn't space for it to land anywhere else. Our captive cargo ship crew were going to talk them through the landing so as not to arouse any suspicion, I had to rely on them because I knew that I simply could not pretend to be a pirate long enough to do the job and if my own efforts to make them do what they are told were not good enough, there was a colonist with a gun pointed at each one of them to motivate them properly. When it would land Jason up in the tower would use the GARDIAN laser to keep it on the ground. My part was to storm the ship and take it.

As the seconds counted down I felt the tremor when the ship landed. It was a delicate procedure when landing on planets as the pilot and the VI had to be very precise when approaching the ground and at the same time reducing the power fed to the mass effect core as that was the only thing keeping it flying. Waiting for the go-ahead from Jason I flicked through the orders given to the LOKI mechs. Twenty five of them would storm the cargo-hold to make sure any people taken were kept safe and batarians could not use them as hostages. Another twenty five were storming the engineering deck. The other fifty would be going through the ship with orders to detain anyone and if resisted then lethal force was authorised. That left twenty that were going with me to the bridge.

"It's down. Give them hell." Jason said over the open comm-channel and I sent the activation command to the mechs. The tarp that was hiding them was thrown away, they unfurled and their eyes flickered blue.

"Phase one start" I said to the mechs

"Roger, Roger" they replied in unison. That was my fault. I modified their responses to commands when I had been particularly bored. I knew no one else would get the joke but it was funny to me.

Their eyes turned yellow, they turned and stomped shakily towards the ship. Each one was armed with a weapon from pirate's own stash. The sound of over two hundred metal feet striking the ground in unison as they rushed the ship was loud, unmistakable and brought a grin to my face. I stepped out of the ship and followed them.

The mechs got halfway to the ship when the shooting started. One LOKI went down and then a chorus of 'Target Engaged' sounded as the other LOKI mechs started shooting. Batarian pirate turned into a stain as dozens of LOKI mechs shot him with pistols, assault rifles and submachine guns that they were armed with. It briefly made a horizontal rain of tungsten that simply swept away the pirate. More return fire came from inside the ship and LOKI's started falling but the distance was covered and a couple of pirates couldn't stand up to the firepower of dozens of guns. I rushed forward into the ship holding my Katana shotgun. Narrow confines of the ship would make it deadlier than any other gun I had.

"Phase Two start." I shouted, that gave them the command to divide into separate teams.

"Roger, Roger" the mechs replied making me smile again

The sound of gunfire in the ship was deafening, rapid fire patter of assault rifles and submachine guns, single punctuating rapport of handguns and shotguns. The stomp of metal feet on metal floor panels, batarians cursing and shouting. Mechs proclaiming loudly that targets are engaged and hitting the ground with a loud clang. It was a cacophony of violence unleashed and I was right in the middle of it, grinning under my helmet. It was a just reward that the mechs and the guns they stole were now killing them.

Marching along the passageways my reaction time gave me an edge. A batarian stepping out of a side compartment got shot in the chest by me and finished off by the mechs. Three batarians crouching, trying to make a stand in the galley were quickly dispatched as I overloaded their shields by rapid firing my shotgun and the mechs syncing their targeting solutions followed up by riddling them with bullets. The door to the bridge greeted me with a red lock light so I slapped a disposable digital pick on it. It pulsed into life, made a digital whirring sound and then puffed with smoke as the lock light turned green. The pirates must have relied on standard security protocols. It wouldn't have worked otherwise. Tapping the door to open I darted in low to make myself a smaller target but still my barrier caught a few shots. The mechs coming in after me made the four batarians switch targets giving me a golden opportunity to return fire. Fifteen seconds later they were dead and I sat down in the captain's chair.

Bringing up my omni-tool I went through the status of the other mech teams and was glad to see that the cargo hold and engineering teams were finished and reporting all-green status. A couple of minutes later the ship was clear of hostiles and I had the after-action report.

Out of 120 mechs fifty two were mostly intact with another twenty missing limbs, thirty four dead batarians, seventeen dying, two captive. Captain and purser. The captain had been caught in his own quarters enjoying himself with a captive while the purser simply didn't put up any resistance when he was found by mechs.

I briefly thought of giving the order to kill the captain but decided to first get any intel out of him and then give him over to the people he had captured. The purser however was worth having a nice long talk with.

Sitting there on the bridge of a captured frigate I knew that this had been pure luck. I didn't plan for this, I just rolled into the situation and did my best and somehow it all worked out.

Next time. Next time I would be more prepared. I needed people to crew the ships, I needed people for combat, I needed people to manage supplies. This reminded me of a conversation I had with Miranda almost three weeks ago.

Flashback

"You want to establish a mercenary company?" Miranda said her skepticism clear from her expression

"Not quite. It will be registered as such but it won't be taking contracts the same way as the others. First of all it will be doing it's fighting against pirates and slavers in Attican Traverse and Terminus systems. Batarians have basically turned part of their navy pirate and are selling weapons and ships to anyone in Terminus as long as they cause trouble for humans or other Citadel species. Which means there is plenty of trophies to be had. No one likes batarians, not even the other criminal warlords in the Terminus. By establishing ourselves as trustworthy, as an independent force against pirates we will grow our operations. I know there are enough independent colonies in Terminus space that would welcome someone not affiliated with Citadel or Alliance, providing security without asking for their independence. That way we get friends. " I explained my thought process

"And you get their loyalty in exchange, they will be joining your ranks to protect their own worlds. But since it's not a government you can control it the way you wish with no need to give representation to the people under you. Clever. Using their own self-interest to gain control. And since you don't control how they live their lives on their planets they feel free while you control the space around them. All trade and travel go through you since you will be providing security." Miranda said impressed with the idea

"That sounds evil the way you say it. I don't intend to control the worlds we will be protecting or the people on them. The loyalty that will come from this friendship will be payment enough. Safe harbour and recruits I know I can trust." I said shaking my head with a smile. What Miranda said wasn't wrong but the way she said it. Makes it easy to believe that she would become a right hand woman to someone like Illusive Man.

"And what will you be calling this organisation? White Knights?" Miranda quipped making a pun on his last name

"No, that would be silly. And since you seem to think that a colour is required in the name…" I went quiet for a moment and then my face lit up with a mischievous grin, "I think I will call it Grey Wardens."

Flashback end

Returning to the present I thought that despite my initial reason to call the organisation I was going to build because of a game I had played by the same developer that made Mass Effect I did think it made sense to call the organisation Grey Wardens. Grey would mean that we are not pretending to be good, it would symbolise the resolve to do what is needed and wardens is another word for guardians, as to ward something means to protect it. It is a name that seems humble and it would imply that our actions even if it's an attack are meant to protect.

I had underestimated the amount of piracy because official news sources belonging to Citadel species or Alliance prefer to downplay that. Small things where a few dozen people disappear are seen as not important enough to cause a fuss. Only larger attacks where the count of victims goes into the hundreds or thousands get screen time.

And it was all because Citadel really hated anyone that rocked the boat. That was practically their whole attitude towards the Alliance, humans wanted things to change, they wanted things to get done and instead they were being given a run around.

Now thinking back it really was their only modus operandi. The Council was against any change of status quo that they themselves were not in control of. Making quarians outcasts not just from their own planet but from galactic society was their doing. Abandoning any attempt to help krogan into galactic community, no attempt to educate, no attempt to heal the wounds. Instead they put up the DMZ so that krogan can't rebuild their civilisation and be anything but big scary brutes to the galaxy at large.

Even their refusal to declare Skyllian Verge a region of batarian interest had the goal of preserving status quo. Council correctly assumed that neither humans nor batarians would back down and with how stubborn both are a conflict was inevitable. Humans and batarians in the mid to late 2160's were roughly equal in fleet strengths, even now humans had only a slight edge in technology but not numbers. Citadel Council must have thought that Alliance and Hegemony would fight a mostly quiet war, bleeding each other, focusing on each other while the Council would wait for the right moment to step in and show everyone who is the top dog in the galaxy.

But if I did what I intended to then Grey Wardens would be in the middle. Securing the region against batarians and giving the Alliance an easier time to develop their own colonies. How would the Council react to this was easy to predict. They would send a SPECTRE to 'investigate'. Maybe I would get lucky and they would send Saren so I could shoot him without putting any effort into locating him. But before that I had to deal with this mess of my own creation. Standing up I decided to go see the new people I had freed. Maybe there will be at least a couple people who knew how to fly the frigate.

Secondary Codex Entry/Batarian Ship classes/TT300 type freighter

TT300 is one of the most ubiquitous batarian cargo ships with atmospheric landing capability. First ships launched in 2129 by Lorek Shipbuilding Consortium and it quickly gained popularity due to it's simplicity and a large cuboid cargo hold. In fact it's a ship designed around the cargo hold that was made to fit four standard batarian shipping containers. Being shaped as a brick makes it rely on it's mass effect core for atmospheric flight but leaves plenty of space for all the equipment. It's four main drive units are simple fusion torches fed by the primary reactor which makes it quite fast both at sublight and FTL. LSC heavily updated the design in 2160 and started selling the new version as TT400 boasting a higher lifting capacity due to upgraded mass effect license to build the older ship was sold to several batarian and Terminus shipbuilding corporations which keep churning out their own modified versions.

General characteristics

Length:68m

Width:23m

Height 19m

Empty weight:290t

Max takeoff weight:890t

Powerplant: STS55C fusion reactor coupled with KFY18 mass effect core

FTL endurance:48-72 hours at maximum cruise depending on modification

Maximum FTL cruise: 8ly/24h

Secondary Codex Entry/Batarian Ship classes/Tor'vak-class frigate

Tor'vak-class torpedo frigate entered service in 2144 and continues to serve in Hegemony's forces. The design is unusual as instead of going for a spinal mounted mass accelerator like all the other batarian ship designs it uses a turreted dual cannon underslung on it's main hull and for it's main armament uses two torpedo launchers located at the 'roots' of it's large crescent shaped wings. The wings are actually used to store the torpedoes safely away from the hull. This left a larger than usual cargo hold. In military service the cargo hold can be used to store two APC's or two shuttles or a combination of both. This feature is also what made the frigate popular with the pirates.

General characteristics

Length:150m

Wingspan:100m

Height:26m

Empty weight:2500t

Max takeoff weight:4500t

Powerplant: STS120A fusion reactor coupled with KFY25 mass effect core

FTL endurance: 86-108h depending on modification

Maximum FTL cruise:11.5ly/24h

Chapter 23: Signs and Portents

Chapter Text

06/02/2175 Chalkhos Fortress Monastery, Thessia, Parnitha system, Athena Nebula

Kal'leena sat on a cold marble bench in the winter garden overlooking the city below, ancient fortress city Chalkhos. Not much of it has been left now apart from the fortress itself. Many of the buildings standing abandoned and slowly crumbling away. The city had dwindled to barely a few hundred inhabitants in the last thousand years. The mountain range where the Chalkhos was built had always been a rough place to live. So much colder and drier than the coastal cities, little land to grow food, no pasture for animals. It once had been important as a city guarding the passage through the mountains from the coastal trade cities to the bountiful agrarian cities of the planes on the other side of the mountain range. Now the city mostly lived because it's remaining inhabitants were too stubborn to move anywhere else. And the ancient monastery dedicated to Kurinth still stood high over the city, it's ten thousand year old stone walls weathered and forbidding.

The sky was overcast, the clouds heavy with snow and the western wind gentle for now. Kal'leena had seen the forecast and it would soon shift to the north, gusting until it would stir the clouds enough for a snowstorm to form.

The winter garden was open to air, located on one of the dozens of towers along it's mile long wall, it was home to carefully cultivated wintergreens, stone-creep lianas and many, many more plants that Kal'leena wouldn't even guess at. She hadn't thought about taking on gardening yet but seeing this garden she imagined that once she was heavy with child she could start her own little garden and learn all the strange and delightful names of such plants. She would also teach her daughter and they would cultivate it together for at least fifty years before her daughter would be ready to leave her home. The fantasy however evaporated as she saw another asari enter the garden. Kal'leena was here to ask for wisdom and help, to deal with the things that Sam had shown her. Because if they didn't then neither Kal'leena nor any other asari would give birth to any more daughters.

Kal'leena stood up and put her hands together in a gesture of greeting towards the matriarch that was approaching her. She was a prioress at this monastery, one of the high priestesses of Kurinth and she was also Kal'leena's mother Anto'naya.

"Hello mother." she said awkwardly, she hadn't spoken to her in over a decade, ever since going to explore the human space.

"So formal, child. Have we quarreled?" asked the prioress, her tone reproachful but there was a hint of a smile on her lips

"Sorry, ma." Kal'leena replied grinning now. Even if nothing would come out of this at least she would have talked with her mother.

"I am glad to see you girl. You look well." Anto'naya said and came closer to grasp her daughters hands

"So do you ma. I swear you do not look a day over five hundred." Kal'leena said smiling

"I see your compliments haven't changed. Something else has." Anto'naya said sensing an unease about her daughter

"Let's sit first." Kal'leena said and both of them sat down.

"I met a human male. Sam. He saved my life and he showed me something. A memory." Kal'leena said not sure how to approach the subject. She had rehearsed the conversation in her mind on the way here but now that she was here she just felt like the words simply wouldn't convey the meaning well enough.

"Ah, so I am to be grandmother finally. It is about time you settled down. Did this human die or was he not able to come with you? It would have been only proper for me to see your lover" Anto'naya asked her smile gentle

"No, I am not pregnant. We didn't do it that way, yet." Kal'leena said not noticing her slip of a tongue

"What way did you do it then?" Anto'naya teased

"MA!" Kal'leena yelled

"Alright, alright girl. Go on." Anto'naya said patting her daughters hand to calm her. Kal'leena had never been able to take the teasing which made it so much fun to do.

"I will just show you. That will be faster." Kal'leena said and gripped her mother to initiate a shallow mind-meld. For a moment both sat stiffly lost in the memory being replayed.

"That was not pleasant." Anto'naya said as the meld ended and she rubbed her temples.

"I know. And I have forgotten most of it. The memory was too much to hold on fully." Kal'leena said

"I can see that. Even incomplete, fragmented as it was. The horror in it was substantial. And this human, Sam. He showed you everything?" Anto'naya said, her mind recalling similar scenes from her own life. The geth uprising had left deep scars that even nearly three centuries have not fully healed.

"No. I couldn't hold the meld. He has seen far more but his mind is too much for me. I wouldn't be able to keep myself from going too deep. The call of Tevura was too strong. I was never trained as a mind-seer. There is also a second memory. Here." Kal'leena said and both of them stiffened again for a moment.

"Ah, I see now. Quite alarming." Anto'naya said after Kal'leena had replayed her memory in the warehouse where Sam had made a deal with the shining orb.

"They were not prothean ma. I had a piece of it analysed later and it was over a million years old. And whatever made it was still alive ma." Kal'leena said her voice shaken. With her mother she didn't have to keep her emotions in check and what Sam had shown her had affected her far more than she had thought at first.

"I saw that, girl. This Sam clearly knows more. Before we speak more about this there is something you should see first. Follow me." Anto'naya said and stood up ushering her daughter into the monastery. Both mother and daughter stayed quiet, lost in their thoughts as they descended down the ancient steps, worn smooth as much by the passage of time as by the feet of thousands of asari that had walked them in over ten thousand years since it was built.

As they descended deeper the chill of the winter garden didn't leave them, the stone of the ancient fortress cold to the touch and even an occasional glow globe barely dispelling the gloom.

After some time Kal'leena started noticing that the stonework was becoming rougher as they descended until it resembled a barely worked natural stone. Before she could ask her mother about this they stopped. In front of her was a door with no handle but with the ancient asari cuneiform etched into the marble door.

"I won't ask you for the traditional vows that asari who enter this place take. You will promise me that you won't tell or show this to anyone but your human. No other asari even justicars or the matriarchs of the Council. No aliens. Only Sam." Anto'naya said looking straight into Kal'leena's eyes

"I promise mother." Kal'leena said with a nod.

Anto'naya turned back to the door and then glowed with the release of biotic power as she put her hand on the engraved symbols. The door started to roll sideways and Anto'naya kept the biotics flowing until the round capstone that was the door rolled away enough for them to enter. Once inside Anto'naya located the ancient electro-chemical generator that was right next to the door and turned the key letting it whine into life. The lights strung along the ceiling flickered one after another as the generator was building up power. They had entered a large crypt. Kal'leena saw that there were dozens of niches along the walls going further into the darkness on each side.

"This is the crypt of the Daughters of Kurinth. They were the first huntresses of our kind. We don't know exactly when they came here and built this but it had been a place of pilgrimage long before the fortress or the city stood here. The murals girl, look at them." Anto'naya said and gestured towards the wall

And there on the wall, carved into the wall was the story. A tall humanoid figure with a triangular head with asari around it but shown smaller. Hunting and fighting. Kal'leena assumed it was Kurinth teaching the asari the art of hunting and warfare. Other scenes from life. Then midway through there was a giant squid like creature and it was being attacked by more humanoid figures with triangular heads. Then next to it another mural was showing all the triangular headed people dead with the squid like thing above them and Kurinth hiding along with asari around it in the tall grass. The last mural showed Kurinth being carried by the asari up the mountain.

"That squid thing. It looks similar to the ones in Sam's memory." Kal'leena said

"That is what I thought. There are more depictions of these triangle headed people in other temples. Until today I thought that they were simply shown that way because they were divine. But now I have my doubts. And the squid was explained as one of the deep sea lanayar that were blamed for sinking ships by our seafaring ancestors back when we were still a people of superstition. But now seeing what you saw in Sam's memory I am no longer willing to accept that." Anto'naya said

"We will need a mind-seer. She will be strong enough to see more in Sam's mind. Sam is also sure that they are coming and soon. Within a human life time at least. I promised to do everything I can to help him in this fight. I have already called in every favour I could but it won't be enough. Can you help ma?" Kal'leena pleaded

"Of course. Everything that is mine is yours. And I know just the person to help you. However let us depart this place. The cold is getting to me. Let us talk over some hot tea." Anto'naya said and turned to exit the crypt. Kal'leena looked one last time at the murals, shuddered with the half-remembered vision from Sam's mind and followed her mother. She knew her mother.

08/02/2174 Attican Traverse

Recruiting proved to be much easier than I had expected. A third of the former miners joined straight away before we even left the pirate base and after they saw the devastation left behind in their mining colony by the batarian pirates most of the others joined too. The second group of captives brought on the frigate had been grabbed from a few outlying homesteads on their colony of Rosetta in the Kepler Verge and the batarians hadn't stuck around to blast the buildings or make life harder for anyone who hasn't been captured. So we safely returned them to their colony. But hearing about what I was planning to do a dozen or so ex-Alliance soldiers and a few experienced spacers joined up. So we actually had a full crew for the freighter and the frigate, even if none of us had any experience with batarian ships.

Not that it was especially hard considering the general level of batarian technology. Their computer systems were far simpler than Alliance tech, there were only a few haptic screens on the whole ship and most of them were later additions by the pirates, salvaged from civilian ships they must have captured. Most of the controls were physical buttons, dials or levers. The VI was basic even without a proper personality matrix, it wasn't even secured for unauthorised access.

The ships captain proved to be a complete waste of time, he was some minor Hegemony noble and had thought that we would ransom him back to the Hegemony. Several of the colonists disabused him of the notion after they stabbed his eyes out before they killed him. Apparently it was some kind of batarian cultural notion that because batarians had four eyes they were superior to everyone else in the galaxy as they only had two eyes, and hanar had none at all. So it was a big deal with other batarians becoming very pliant after they saw what happened to the captain.

The purser turned out to be far more interesting person to have a conversation with. He bargained for his life with all the funds that the pirate crew had and with some information that he had on the other pirate groups in the region.

As I suspected batarian pirates were being supported by the Hegemony, a portion of them were actual Hegemony military forces with Hegemony ships but the majority of them were small time noblemen like the dead former captain. Without the wealth or connections required to move up in the batarian society they would gather funds to establish a small pirate gang and then go on raids, ships and weapons sold at discount by the Hegemony. According to the purser a few years of successful raiding would net enough profit that a minor noble could retire from such life and buy out an estate on the home world. Not that many did. Most of them found this kind of life to their liking, raping and pillaging across the Terminus and the Traverse until a turian patrol caught them and killed them. The purser had filled in a lot of the blanks I had about batarians. They were secretive even before humanity arrived on the galactic stage so knowledge was limited at best. Not that anyone was willing to risk going to batarian controlled space and research their culture or religion.

There weren't any big revelations, the purser himself came from one of the outer colonies and has never been to Khar'shan but has noted that over the past decade that the orders from the nobility that come from there are more aggressive and blood thirsty than before. Priests have been asking for ever greater number of slaves which has driven even more batarian pirates to raid. I suspected that it was the influence of Leviathan of Dis. Batarians did grab it back in 2163 and they must have been experimenting with it. Or it has been experimenting with them. You can never be quite sure when it comes to Reapers.

Our next stop was Illium. I could not risk going to Alliance or Citadel space at least until I got the ship registered under a new name with a new registry, somehow I couldn't see Alliance or Turian patrol just letting through a batarian pirate frigate. There we would also sell the loot from the pirate base.

Secondary Codex Entry/Asari/Old Religions

Before the rise of pantheistic religion of siari the asari were mostly polytheistic in nature. Athame, goddess of prophecy and fate was always seen as the central deity for worship but others were not forgotten. Just like with old human polytheistic religions there were goddesses for every facet of life. From Kurinth, goddess of war and the hunt to Piares, goddess of death to Tevura, goddess of love, sex, travel and law. A modern asari huntress or a commando might still say a prayer to Kurinth before going into combat and many incantations beseeching Piares are used in funerals it is Tevura and the myths surrounding her that remain popular with maidens. It is in many ways her legendary behaviour that they try to imitate, travelling the galaxy in hopes of finding love or sex. A common question asked is how does law enter into this. For a non-asari it seems like an odd choice however law, love and sex have been all intertwined in asari culture. There are many laws that cover relationships in asari society due to their biology and reproductive method. There is a scroll of sutras that is nearly two meters long that covers all the differences between recreational and procreational sex and what is allowed and not allowed in each case. Although modern asari no longer strictly adhere to the rules they still hold an important cultural significance and even a cursory examination of some of the sutras bring a deeper understanding of asari attitude to the rest of the galaxy.

Asari old religions have hundreds of goddesses, demons and semi-divine offspring, however due to how long the asari have been a scientific civilisation much of the old religions are a mystery to modern asari.

Secondary Codex Entry/Batarians/Culture & Society

Batarian society is infamously secretive with very few details known to outsiders. In fact most of what is known in Citadel Space comes from a famous salarian traveler and adventurer Gama Vascode who had allegedly snuck onto Khar'shan and spent a week there undetected in 2097 CE. Batarian society is usually said to be caste based and that is true on some level, however societal stratification is much more elaborate than just caste. The four major castes of batarian society are slaves, freeborn, nobles and priests. Slaves do not have any rights, they are property of nobles or priests, freeborn batarians while are not forbidden from keeping slaves are not likely to afford one, most freeborn that have enough wealth to own slaves buy into a noble patent first. Freeborn batarians while making up nine tenths of the batarian population hold less than a fifth of wealth and have little sway in how their government operates. Noble batarians make up a tenth of batarian population and they take up most of the leadership positions in the governments, companies and military. Priests are the group that varies the most in the batarian society. Depending on the nation state priests can be humble preachers, teachers and philosophers that devote their life to the understanding the teachings of the Pillars of Strength or are as much politicians as they are religious figures.

Batarian society is patriarchal in nature, batarian males are expected to compete with other batarian males over the females, status and patronage usually by display of strength, wealth or prowess. Bloodsports, either an arena style combat or a real time hunt pitting a batarian male against slaves or beasts, remains popular despite the dangers it represents. Displays of sexual prowess are also held in high regard. It is believed that this is one of the reasons why batarian pirates are known for being indiscriminate when it comes to choosing partners/victims. Species, sex and age seem to matter little, only the social position. Marriage and concepts of chastity and fidelity do not exist in batarian society. The traditional arrangement is a sort of a loose group marriage formed around three to five females and one to seven males forming the outer shell of a family unit.

As with almost everything when it comes to batarians facts are hard to come by, no doubt STG and Citadel SPECTRE records hold more information however they are not available for public access.

Secondary Codex Entry/Batarians/Economy

Batarian economy is almost entirely focused on it's own domestic markets. Food, entertainment, consumer goods and everyday electronics are rarely exported outside of batarian territory and even then mostly to the Terminus as it hosts a large enough population of batarians. There are only two commodities that Hegemony imports en-masse. Element zero and slaves. Most of them from the Terminus systems or the Attican Traverse.

For everything else Hegemony prefers to rely on it's own industrial capabilities to produce, going as far as putting exorbitant import taxes on anything that was produced in Citadel space. This however produced a very active grey market where Citadel space produced goods were being smuggled into Hegemony despite heavy penalties for anyone caught. Asari and salarian omni-tools and luxury alcohol are top of the list with human commercial grade electronics now in Top 5.

Hegemony's weakening economy draws little sympathy as they had been a thorn in the sides of every other Citadel species.

Chapter 24: Embrace Eternity again

Chapter Text

12/02/2174 Illium, Tasale, Crescent Nebula, Attican Traverse

The elevator was taking it's time ascending the tower, not the highest in the city but in the top 5 easily and it was offering quite a view, the glass walls of the elevator, crystal clear as it was climbing along the outer wall. It was done with a message in mind of course, anyone who had to ascend up the tower had to be properly impressed upon just how high it was above the street level unlike the people in the top offices who had the rooftop landing rights. It fitted well with the impression I was getting of Illium.

Nos Astra, a city of stark contrasts, if you know where to look greeted all of it's visitors with the permanent twilight haze, the star due to the location of the city and peculiarities of the planet's orbit was just peeking over the horizon as it always did and sent scattered light shining into the asari city, light reflecting from the glass, steel and crystal composite towers, creating deep shadows behind them. It made for an unintentional sign showing both the beauty and the danger of the city. Nos Astra offered all the comforts of a developed asari colony with all the freedom of Terminus, and almost all of the dangers that come with it. Crime in Illium tended to be financial in nature most of the time but heavy presence of Eclipse mercenaries and various other smaller outfits meant that getting shot is not out of the question especially if venturing into the lower levels of the city. Deals made at gunpoint are not common, mostly because doing so in public or within the reach of Nos Astra's rather thorough surveillance system was seen as crass by the people who owned the city. The definition of legal was nebulous on purpose but the Illium's governing council and their police force did not take kindly to overt violence. Illium in that regard can be likened to an asari commando in a ten thousand credit dress, elegant and desirable with a hint of excitement hidden in plain view. As long as the commando stays still all she presents is a pretty picture, but movement betrays her true nature as a predator. Same with Illium, pretty to look at but dangerous when it makes it's move.

And I have been safely conducting business here, selling off the loot, buying up more bots and equipment as well as doing some minor repair work on the captured ships. Pirates were generally not known for their quality of routine maintenance and I was happy enough to let Jason and Frederica to crawl over the ships with a fine tooth comb. They might not have been proper ship engineers but batarian engineering was simple and parts could be fabricated easily.

I had been enjoying the simple work, helping out where I could, when Kal'leena's message reached me through the extranet relay. It was a reply to the automated response I left on a Citadel's message server and as it had not been flagged as priority it took several days to bounce around the galaxy as it made it's way through the comm relay network.

The message was to set up a meeting here on Nos Astra. No details beyond a name and address. Tanisa Noleia, 1039B Contina tower.

Looking at the floor counter currently counting up the seven hundreds I glanced at my omni-tool and brought up the information that I could find on this Tanisa Noleia. An asari matriarch somewhere around a thousand years old and very respected as a psychologist, held several doctorates with the latest acquired from a university of Amsterdam in 2170 for human psychology. Some purely asari sources cited her as having worked with Justicars sometime in late 20th century Council Era. It made her office a very curious location to be meeting Kal'leena, hopefully she hadn't thought I was actually crazy so this wouldn't be some kind of friendly intervention to get me treatment with a professional. Because if it was I doubted I could fight my way out, asari matriarchs especially the kind that worked with Justicars were usually quite proficient in biotics. And I wasn't about to get medicated against my will.

Sighing I glanced at the floor counter again and saw it counting down the last few floors. It pinged quietly as the doors slid open. I walked into the empty lobby, it was a late hour but I still expected there to be a receptionist at least. Looking around I saw a single opaque glass door set into a wall with a small computer terminal recessed next to it. Walking up to it I gestured at the screen hoping it would connect me to someone inside. Instead it displayed 'Stand by Scanning in progress' as several beams illuminated me. This was serious security and I did not doubt for a moment that if I had not been invited I would get hit with a stun charge or ten if not something worse.

A few seconds later the screen displayed 'Please proceed' and the doors slid open. Beyond was a long corridor with several rooms each side, each one marked with a symbol in what was probably an archaic asari language. Similar to current asari script but clearly a more elaborate version. Like the difference between calligraphic handwriting and machine typewritten English. I could probably look up what it meant but stopping, scanning the symbol and then doing an extranet search while someone was waiting for me seemed rude. I kept on walking towards the office at the end, it was the only one with a green unlocked holographic sign on it.

An asari was alone in the office as the doors slid open before me, she had her office walls set to almost total transparency, her back to the floor to ceiling window that was currently dimmed just enough that the city was still visible but the glare of the star was not distracting. Tanisa Noleia was attractive even for an asari, high cheekbones, full lips and large bright grey eyes with just a hint of blue, bright cerulean skin and pale face tattoos that reminded me of two ornamental vines stretching across her cheeks up and forming eyebrows before coming together on her forehead as is she was wearing a tiara. That gave her a somewhat regal appearance so as she looked up at me from her work I couldn't help but admire how she presented herself. The security systems would have told her who I am and since they had allowed me in she did actually expect me. She stood up from behind her desk and practically floated around it to stand before me. Movement so smooth that I would have not believed it was possible if I had not seen it. No wonder there are whole fansites dedicated to matriarchs and videos of them have been consistently trending.

"Mr Knight. My name is Tanisa Noleia. A pleasure to meet you. Kal'leena has spoken to me about you. Please sit." Tanisa said and gestured towards a lounging sofa at one of the walls. Walking over I sank into it and a moment later Tanisa joined me, sitting close enough that I could pick up a complicated scent of her perfume and her body heat, asari were running a bit warmer than humans after all. The perfume tickled my nose in a familiar way that I couldn't place at the moment so I focused my attention on the asari.

"What did Kal'leena say about me?" I asked cautiously as this was not the kind of reception I was expecting. An asari matriarch getting close and friendly rang all kinds of alarm bells.

"Kal'leena has shown me the vision. The parts that still remained in her mind. She has shown me several of her memories involving you. " Tanisa said softly with a gentle smile and for a moment my mind flashed to the last test in my training.

"Can you prove it?" I asked hoping that Kal'leena only showed her memories relevant to the Reapers

"Before you spoke to the orb you joked about balli'tak." Tanisa replied and the gentle smile twitched with humour

"And you believe it?" I asked hoping that while this all seemed like a trap it was just my paranoia overacting.

"It is not so simple. Most asari do not understand the complexities of what a mind-meld is, even the ones who use it frequently for recreational purposes. It's an ability that we have as an instinct and most asari do not need to know anything beyond that. However there are asari like me, mind-seers. Trained in body and mind to hone the ability to see the mind of whoever we touch. It is a necessity for our people as sharing of thoughts can sometimes lead to unexpected results if the mind is not ready. Mind-seers could be likened to therapists, surgeons and psychologists all at once but we only work with the mind. Most of my clients are asari but other species do take advantage of my services. Many come here because their minds are troubled or make them experience what is not there. Because of this I know how to distinguish between a real memory, even the ones granted by the prothean beacons and the imagination of a troubled mind. I have seen fragments remaining in Kal'leena's mind and they do not have the signs of the imagined. But those were only fragments and viewed through the mind of another, months after they were originally seen. They have intertwined with her own emotions and memories making it impossible to say for sure." Tanisa explained, her voice pitched low enough that I could hear every inhale and exhale as she talked. Her hand now resting on my shoulder. This was clearly done on purpose but the reason currently eluded me.

"I take it you want to see it directly?" I asked just to be sure. I thought it was pretty clear because of her explanation but it was better if it was said directly. Who knows what a thousand year old matriarch has in mind.

"That is correct, I need to see the vision myself. Kal'leena takes after her mother in temperament so her training was more martial, I did give her some basics but she has not kept up the practice. I have scolded her accordingly." Tanisa said in mock seriousness as she tapped a finger to her lips

"What exactly is your relationship? I thought her father was a quarian?" I asked refocusing my attention away from her lips.

"My sister, Anto'naya is her mother." Tanisa said clearly amused at my reaction

"So, why this seduction play? I doubt I am the most impressive human you have met and even I know that not all mind-melding is sex." I said shifting slightly just to be able to roll away if the answer was not to my liking

"Because while not all mind-melding is sex that is where it originates. To better prepare for a meld physical acts are often required. And our body chemistry is easily triggered by scent, touch and sound to simulate the physical act and emotional connection. It is as much for me as for you, to make the transition easier and less taxing on both of us. Are you ready?" Tanisa explained and I could see the flush on her face and deeper breathing. Now that is something you couldn't read about on the extranet.

"Ready." I replied feeling my own physical response. I could tamp it down, control it but if this is what was needed for the meld then I might as keep it as is.

Tanisa put her palms flat against the sides of my faces, brought her forehead to touch mind and looked straight into my eyes as her own shifted to black.

"Embrace Eternity" her breath mingled with mine as our minds connected. For a moment there I could feel the tug and then we were there together. Shared mind space, it felt more solid than the meld I had with Kal'leena. Instead of her being dragged into my memory I felt balanced on the precipice. The vortex of my memory just beyond surrounding a fortress of ice crystals, all jagged edges and us standing on the highest spire.

"huh, this is different" I thought and the reply came at the same moment "it is how I see your mind, the tempest of emotion and memory held back by your will."

"I see. Any particular order you want to see things?" I thought but even before I finished the thought I knew the answer. Tanisa would see the beginning first. It was a much deeper meld than the one I had with Kal'leena but more orderly, our communication was instant and it was intention as well as word. I knew exactly what she meant and she knew exactly what I meant. No possibility of a lie or misunderstanding. So I drew her in to Sovereign's speech first. Then the Vigil's explanation of how prothean empire fell. Then Javik and the flashes of the prothean fall. The husks and the dragon's teeth. Floating Reaper in Mnemosyne, the effects of indoctrination. Reaper forces attacking Earth, Thessia, Palaven. Reaper troops and ships, the liquification of people to build a new Reaper. And finally Leviathans hiding in the deep from their own creation, their booming voices so similar to Reapers and yet different. The enormity of the time between the creation of Reapers and our cycle. I felt the meld pulse. Once and I saw an asari girl diving in the sea, I knew it was somewhere on Thessia. Twice and the girl had now become a woman and was standing in front of a priestess of Tevura as she anointed her in her service. Third time as Tanisa stood before a rock wall with carvings on it, another asari next to her. I felt a shift in the meld coming and then the connection came crashing down. I was back in the real world with Tanisa in my lap, her hands wrapped around me and her head resting on my shoulder. Her breathing was ragged as if she had just ran a marathon and I could feel the sweat on her crests pressed against my cheek.

"Are you ok?" I asked the most cliché question I could have

"I will be." Tanisa replied still breathing hard not moving away, "too intense. Too much all at once."

"Sorry." I glanced at my omni-tool to check the time. The meld had taken over half an hour.

"Not your fault." Tanisa said and flopped back onto the sofa, stretching her legs across my lap, "each memory is intertwined with more, emotions, connections, understandings. Normal memories are loose, pull at it and you can see parts of it. Understand them, take them piece by piece. These are dense, like metal wires wrapped around a central core. Takes effort to understand. Look at one and it weighs you down. And your mind is full of these. Like swimming with weights attached to your legs into a hurricane."

"That's not normal for humans is it?" I asked thinking if whatever was done to transport me here also affected the memories I have. I was showing her the memories I have of the game but it never felt like the game, it all looked real. No computer graphics or looking at the character from behind.

"No, human memories are just like asari memories. Or turian or quarian memories. Drell have perfect memory but they are still similar enough. I should have been able to look without being affected. Instead each memory pulled me closer and closer towards your mind. " Tanisa said still laying down on the sofa, eyes closed but breathing normally now.

"Is that bad?" I said feeling a bit awkward now

"Any closer and we would have become one. The sex variety of mind meld. And if that went on for long enough a year from now we would have a daughter." Tanisa said and looked at me to gouge my reaction

"Oook. But no babies were made right now right?" I paniced slightly, I hadn't even know it was possible for asari to have children by accident.

"No. And you would have known if we had. The experience is quite different. And we would have woken up with far less clothing, believe me I have done this before." Tanisa teased

"Did you see what you needed?" I asked trying to put the whole thing back on tracks.

Before answering Tanisa moved her legs off my lap, stood up and straightened her clothing.

"I did. As Kal'leena said they are real. I do not have any explanation how they even exist but they are real. I hoped they were just the ravings of a sick mind, that I could have simply given you some help and sent you on your way. Told Kal'leena that it was just foolishness. I didn't want to believe it. Now I have no choice." Tanisa sighed as she approached a drinks cabinet and poured herself a glass of something dark, drinking half of it quickly.

"House Noleia is with you. Kal'leena was already in process of inspecting the assets we had on Illium and once I talk with my sister to confirm I believe we can offer more. House Noleia might not be one of the Great Houses with ships and factories and whole cities in our power but we do know a lot of sentients across the galaxy. Tomorrow Kal'leena will contact you to get into the details. For now I think it's best if we both rest." Tanisa said as she looked back at me.

"Are you sure you should be on your own right now? Kal'leena collapsed when I showed her far less." I said concerned

"Unless you actually want to knock me up right now I think it's best if you leave." Tanisa said seriously which made new kinds of alarms blare in my mind and I shot straight up and crab walked to the door.

"You are quite right. The hour is late and we will need all the rest we can get tomorrow." I said as I rapidly retreated out of the office. The ride back down the elevator let me calm down and sort out the confusion in my own head. I was ready for a fight, ready for a lengthy argument, ready even for a dismissal. I hadn't been ready to be propositioned by an asari matriarch. It was going to be awkward tomorrow. I could tell.

Chapter 25: Starting position

Chapter Text

3/02/2174 Illium, Tasale, Crescent Nebula, Attican Traverse

The invitation next morning lead me and Jason Nguyen to a restaurant that my auto-translator said was called "Shark fin grilled cream" which didn't sound right but who was I to judge what asari thought was a good restaurant name. Jason has the experience I lacked, organising a group of people going deep into the Traverse, any needs that I could not think of and a thousand other little things that needed to be talked about. Once inside all I had to do was walk up to the receptionist and I saw recognition in the receptionists eyes, Kal'leena must have given a description, not that there were many humans on Illium and this establishment was way off the tourist locations.

"You are expected Mr Knight, please follow me." she bowed slightly and lead the way into the restaurant. The restaurant made an impression of a cosy dinner place. Tables were arranged in a seemingly random pattern with decorations breaking lines of sight and likely muffling the sounds. Giving a kind of tasteful privacy while still being in a public place.

The table that the receptionist brought me to had Kal'leena and another asari sitting there already.

"Your guests have arrived Noleia-sama. Anything else I could be of service?" receptionist asked

"No, that will be all." Kal'leena said and the receptionist ducked out

"Noleia-sama?" I asked looking at Kal'leena surprised at the japanese honorifc

"Sam, good to see you again. I am not sure what was the translation used but in one of our dialects it's an honorific used when dealing with important customers." Kal'leena smiled at me and then turned towards her companion "and this is Olennia Noleia my cousin and also an experienced financier."

"Nice to meet you Olennia. I took a liberty of bringing Jason Nguyen with me, he has experience in that I lack." I said nodding my head in greeting

"Before we get into the complicated topics lets order." Kal'leena said and pressed what I thought was some kind of decoration in the middle of the table but as it turned out it was a holographic menu projector. A few minutes later our order was finalised and sent to the chef. As it turned out the translation of the restaurants name was correct. The signature dish was a kind of gumbo that had grilled shark fin along with various smoked seafood in a dish of creamed vegetables and Thessian rice analogue.

"Matriarch Tanisa has said that we are to give you full support. I have prepared a list of assets we have on Illium for now and I am working up a full inventory of the available resources. Until I know more about your needs it will have to do but I will rework the list once I am fully briefed." Olennia said and I could clearly see that she was quite puzzled why Matriarch Tanisa was promising anything to some random human. I looked at Kal'leena raising my eyebrow in question and Kal'leena nodded for me to explain.

"The Citadel Council has grown complacent and plays political games in Terminus and the Attican Traverse, they rely too much on the Spectres and dismiss any danger that is not clearly apparent, confident in their power over the galaxy. I know that there are threats out there that are a danger to us all, I have shown this to Kal'leena and Tanisa and since we are having this meeting they both agree with me that something must be done. To combat this threat we will need everything we can get our hands on, people, ships, resources. For this I have established a private military company named Grey Wardens and I have been attacking pirates in the Traverse. The last pirate base I raided has given me two ships and several dozen recruits. Until yesterday my plan was to continue raiding pirates and expand as I go into Traverse and eventually Terminus. But with more support the plan could be accelerated. So I will gladly take anything that is offered." I explained as best as I could without going into the details. I didn't want to go into the whole thing 'Reapers are real' and explaining that there are murderous dreadnaught sized alien bent on exterminating all spacefaring species in the galaxy would ruin the appetite.

There was a chime and no more than 30 seconds later the food was delivered. I ordered the restaurant's speciality along with some bread rolls that were recommended in the menu. They were crusty on the outside and soft inside with a flowery smell that reminded me of rosemary. Jason not having the ability to deal with eezo in food went with tran'taki, an aquarium grown fish baked in pastry with cheese sauce, one of the few food items marked as safe to eat by humans. Kal'leena had chosen untunas, a seafood selection prepared in variety of ways with grilled vegetables and jossy, the asari version of fries but made out of seaweed. Olennia had an angrily red soup that smelled incredibly spicy with bread rolls like mine and a small bowl of what looked like frozen flaked fish.

"Let us eat and then we can discuss the details." Kal'leena proposed and without waiting for anyone to reply dug into her food with gusto. Jason followed the example cutting into his dish spilling the cheese sauce which steamed nicely and spread a heavy herb smell. Olennia took some of the frozen fish flakes with small wooden tongs and dropped it into her soup then scooped it with a spoon. Deciding to focus on my food I spooned the gumbo and for the next fifteen minutes I was dead and mute to the world, the gumbo was rich, spiced just the right amount and grilled shark fin was excellent. Scooping the last of it with bread roll I sat back fully satisfied. Looking around I could see similar expressions on the faces of others with Jason having finished first and now nursing his beer.

The drinks menu had been as expansive as the food menu but our choices were simple, light beer for Jason and fruit wines for the rest of us. Asari knew their way around making wine, they made them from a large variety of fruits and berries including several aquatic versions.

"I must admit, this is the best meal I had in months." I said tasting my wine. Zesty with a minty aftertaste, exactly the freshness that I needed after a filling meal.

"Same for me and considering the prices I am glad I am not the one paying." Jason nodded in agreement

"There were no prices in the menu" Olennia noted distractedly as she reached for her glass

"Exactly!" Jason exclaimed

"I am glad everyone approves. Last time I was here no one knew humans existed. Now let’s get down to business." Kal'leena said dabbing her lips with a napkin

"As I said before I will gladly take anything offered. Currently 'Grey Wardens' have two ships if we don’t count my personal ship, a freighter and a frigate, both batarian. Thirty eight people not counting me, fourteen ex-Alliance with the rest being former colonists. We have crew for the ships to fly them and we could probably use the main gun but torpedoes require someone qualified in ordnance not that we actually have any on board. And I would prefer to have another ship, a corvette or something similar to bolster our capability. Our ground force is mostly LOKI robots with some modifications of my own design. It doesn't sound like much but several hundred LOKI's shooting in generally the same direction is enough firepower to give even a krogan krannt pause. LOKI's are much cheaper than hiring proper mercenaries and losing a dozen doesn't hurt that much. They are cheap to repair and modify. If we could get a security VI hub that would allow us to give them more complex commands and make them less prone to be hacked that would increase their efficiency by half. " I said relaxing into the seat

"Our current funding is limited, most of the Noleia wealth on Illium is not easily accessible but we do have at least 15 million credits that I can access and a long list of contacts that owe us various favours. Do you plan to recruit from other species?" Olennia asked

"All apart from batarians and vorcha. I can't trust batarians and they are going to be our primary targets for a while. They are the most active slavers." I explained

"And vorcha are vorcha. You have robots to throw as shock troops." Kal'leena nodded in agreement

"Have you picked a home base yet?" Olennia asked making a note on her omni-tool

"Not yet. For now I think it would be best if we keep mobile. I planned for the freighter to play the role of the supply ship until we get a few more ships. Jason any thoughts?" I said and turned to Jason

"We need a couple autodocs, a trained medic and a new galley in the freighter if we are going to use it as a support ship, batarian galleys are an accident ready to happen and believe me keeping people on rations, even the best ones, is a quick way to have unhappy crew." Jason replied

"Those are really good points. The medical situation slipped my mind." I said glad that I brought Jason and finished my drink.

"Then I have several dossiers to show you. Several huntresses that would be best suited for such tactics, I know of a turian ship crew that is currently for hire and a hanar VI expert to control those mechs. We can move on to outfitting the ships after we have the crew roster." Olennia said sending a download to our omni-tools.

"I think we need desert for this part." I said and tapped the menu projector to begin my order.

“And coffee” Jason added.

Earlier that day Tanisa Noleia, 1039B Contina tower

Tanisa was tapping her foot as she waited for her call to Anto'naya to connect. Interstellar real time communication were usually reserved only for the most urgent of events, shifting enough bandwidth in the comm buoy network was expensive. A second of her call was enough to buy a high end omni-tool. Calling it real time wasn’t exactly true either as the distances involved were too great but the VI’s built into the holographic communication software smoothed out the experience and asari network was one of the best with delay time between Thessia and Nos Astra at less than 2 seconds. Tanisa had now been waiting for over 5 minutes for her sister to answer, which was not unusual, the monastery only had one high bandwidth communicator and it wasn’t in her sisters office. Finally the holographic projector fizzed into life assembling a translucent copy of Anto'naya in front of her.

"Sister, what is wrong?" Anto'naya asked concerned as the call was marked urgent.

"It is true, I have seen enough to have no doubt." Tanisa said and for a moment allowed her emotional control to relax so that her sister could see just how much the revelation has affected her.

"I prayed to the goddesses that it wasn't. Are you coming to Thessia?" Anto'naya sighed with resignation

"Not yet, I have obligations towards my patients. I can't leave them with no help, a week will be enough for me to arrange replacements." Tanisa said while restoring her control

"Of course. I will get our novices to sweep the landing field, it has been a bit neglected in the past few years." Anto'naya agreed

"There is more. I saw glimpses of Benezia and her daughter. They were involved on the opposite sides. What was shown was disjointed, there was a lot more there but knowledge is odd. Out of order in time. Layered on top of each other, different perspectives, different choices leading to different outcomes but all of it together and somehow true. Yet the roles of Benezia and Liara were set. They are pivotal to this." Tanisa said

"I see. That is unfortunate but I do not see what I can do about this. Benezia is rather popular right now and House T'Soni has been our political opponents for several generations. Benezia is not going to listen to me unless I have Athame herself to prove my words. " Anto'naya said

"We need to send someone to check if she has been seen in the company of a turian. Someone young, rash, prone to making big splashes in specialist circles. If she has then her role is set otherwise we might be able to sway her. And tracking down her daughter is worth it. She may be a T’Soni but I heard she had a falling out with her mother over her duties to her House, she might actually listen. Last time I heard she was making a fool of herself in the academic scene. Hopefully she hasn't tired of that and joined Eclipse sisters." Tanisa replied

"Easy enough to arrange. The Matriarch Council has been pestering me about not sitting in on their meetings for a few decades. I will make a proper appearance, with all the right speeches about tradition and all the proper admonishments they expect from me. The next one should be soon enough and that will let me spear two fish in one strike. As for her daughter, knowing both of her parents she is going to persist until everyone who is making her life difficult right now is dead. From old age or otherwise." Anto'naya said

"I bet that will make some of them very happy with you. You know they will think we are making a play considering that I just gave Kal'leena an open pass to draw on as much of the local funds and you know what your daughter likes to spend credits on." Tanisa chuckled

"Let them think that, it will distract. How sad that we must rely on their greed to blind them in order to do what is needed." Anto'naya said

"I know sister. But you know what would happen otherwise, even if I shared the memories. There are always enough matriarchs that do not wish to stand up to the storm, they would rather dive and wait it out. We will talk again when we meet. Tevura's grace be with you." Tanisa said

"And may she walk with you" Anto'naya replied with the traditional send off for travelers and ended the call.

Tanisa stood there for a moment before walking back to her desk and opening the list of her clients. Some of them might be willing to wait for her to be available again but others need regular sessions and finding suitable replacements is going to take a lot of favours.

Later same day, Nos Astra, various locations

It had taken us several hours to go through the list of people we needed and all the various supplies a rapidly growing private military company required. Jason was tremendous help with a hundred different suggestions that I would have never come up with. The list of supplies not even including the basics like weapons, armour, food, hygiene items and even clothing grew fast enough that all the credits we made from selling the liberated slaver equipment ran out only half way through and we had to start allocating the funds that Olennia was able to access. By the end of the session we had eighteen recruits waiting for interviews and over a million credits worth of goods to be bought. Olennia left to contact the possible new members of the Grey Wardens while I went with Kal'leena on a shopping trip. Jason was sent back to the ship to prepare to receive the supplies.

Shopping with Kal'leena proved to be more fun than I thought it would be, she seemed to relish the challenge of haggling with volus merchants and putting haughty maidens in their place when they tried to scam us with processing fees, hidden service charges or additional administrative rates. By the end I had to hire a cargo drone for all the items that weren’t bought with delivery to ship in mind to follow us as while I could lift the purchases they were just too bulky to carry. One volus merchant sold us an omni-fabricator from Ariake Technologies, a model that has had it's DRM management chip disabled. Illegal in Council space but practically a requirement in Terminus. How did volus on Illium have a 'cracked' human-made fabricator was a question that was not going to get an answer, even if volus was willing to share the story it was one of those no questions asked deals that netted us a fabricator for a fraction of a price.

Our last stop was a ship dealer that was friendly to Noleia according to Olennia. Located in spire on the outskirts of the city we had to take an aircar over, flying over it I noticed that the spire was different than the central ones with a honeycomb look to it and as we got closer I saw that the middle part of it was divided into dozens of long term docks. We landed the aircar at the public transport terminal and followed the omni-tool map to an office that was marked as ‘B’Yarri Ships’. Walking into the office as I expected the ship dealer turned out to be an asari with peculiar teal facial markings that wound across her cheeks up to her forehead and over to her crest.

“Nerissa?” Kal’leena exclaimed in surprise

“Kal’leena, good to see you. How long has it been ten, fifteen years?” Nerissa said pleasantly and clasped hands with Kal’leena

“Twelve. Last time we saw each other was in that tiny bar deep in the Kithoi Ward. “Kal’leena said

“Yes, I was succeeding in getting very drunk before making some very bad decisions that I was going to enjoy without remembering a thing after.” Nerissa said

“I was with you until the bad decision part, how was it?” Kal’leena said laughing

“Splendid, I do not remember a thing after you left. And who is this with you? Don’t tell me you decided to get all matronly?” Nerissa smiled brightly

“No, quite opposite in fact. I am helping to establish a mercenary company. How about you, any daughters?” Kal’leena said

“And here I thought this was a social visit. Let’s go straight to the hangar, I have just the right ship for you. We can talk on the way down.” Nerissa looked at me and winked as she sauntered over to an elevator at the back of her office.

“A friend?” I asked

“We served in the same huntress unit, I decided to go freelance but Nerissa had enough of that life. She knows her ships so we are in good hands. Come on.” Kal’leena said and followed Nerissa

I suspected this was going to be a long elevator ride.