23 Exit Strategy

--> Tali has completed her inspection and given me her report on the Normandy. She’s done what discreet probing she can without giving herself away to either EDI or the engineers, and has not found any failsafes or command overrides. The only part of the ship she has not been able to covertly investigate is the AI core. EDI has undisclosed contingencies in her programming. I’d wager my old Vindicator that’s where the Illusive Man has hidden his leash on the Normandy.

EDI is linked extensively throughout the ship to all primary and secondary systems. Removing any of these connections without immediately tipping her off is impossible, so we cannot act until the last moment, and then we won’t have time for surgical removal of all the links. There are two ways to counteract the Illusive Man ordering EDI to commandeer the ship. The first is to shut down or destroy EDI completely. Drastic and potentially suicidal, this measure should be considered a last resort. The second option is to disable all communications, starting with the quantum entanglement particles linking directly to the Illusive Man. Surrendering to the Alliance without being fired upon will be risky if we cannot signal our intentions. It’s a chance we’ll have to take.

That still leaves the Cerberus crew. Most of them are like Jacob; they work for Cerberus because they want to do the right thing. Once this mission is over, once the Collectors are dealt with, I’ll give anyone who wants to the option to drop off on Illium before I take the Normandy back to the Alliance. I think most of them are as loyal to me as they are to the Illusive man, and would be amenable to either option. There's only one person I’m worried about: Miranda. 

Miranda is a veritable Cerberus fanatic; she’s the Illusive Man’s devoted agent, through and through. When I break contact with Cerberus after concluding the deal and completing the agreed-upon mission, there’s no telling what she’ll do.  And given her potent combat abilities, everything from marksmanship and hand-to-hand to crushing an opponent through the power of dark energy, she poses a significant threat should she choose to strike without warning.

I’ll need someone watching my back. Someone capable, someone that I can trust and count on. First thoughts of course turn to Garrus. I’d trust him with my life, and have already done so on countless occasions. He’s one of the best damn fighters in the galaxy, and has survived battles that should have killed him more times than I can count. But despite his wariness and cunning, deception and subterfuge are anathemas to him. He could more easily swallow a Thresher Maw than conceal his mistrust of Miranda. Moreover, he’s only just dealt with the issue of treachery already, and the subject is a sore one for him. Best leave him out of this.

Jacob is out of the question. He’s as solidly dependable a chap as could be wished, but he not only trusts both Cerberus and Miranda, he also has a soft spot for the latter. He’d refuse to believe Miranda might turn on me; such backstabbing is in direct contrast to his forthright nature.

I’m not sure if Jack or Grunt would be the worst possible option (except for a certainty Zaeed. I don’t trust that man as far as I could throw him.) Jack and Grunt both possess the subtlety of a freight train, and would refuse to wait around for the possibility of Miranda committing treachery. Either one would instead insist upon going to kill her immediately. Jack in particular stands the risk of doing real damage to the ship should a fight break out.

Samara, absolutely bound by her code, would also insist upon confronting Miranda directly, though with potentially less lethal results. Whether Miranda is a traitor in waiting or not, that would be a terrible idea. If she is a traitor, we’d be betraying ourselves prematurely and compromising our chances of completing the mission. If she isn’t a traitor, confronting her with the suspicion would only serve to sow discord and undue mistrust throughout the ship, again compromising the mission.

Neither of the girls would do. Tali is undoubtedly loyal, and thanks to her mask has an excellent poker face, but she’s primarily a mechanic and hacker, Miranda far outstripping her in combat ability. Kasumi is cunning and sly and deadly at stealth attacks, but would be inclined to take the whole thing as some kind of game, perhaps even dropping hints to egg Miranda on.

Mordin might be a good choice. He’s an ex-spy with exceptional observational skills, but he has a hard time keeping his mouth shut, and I wouldn’t bet on the frail Salarian wining in a fight against the nimble and biotic Miranda.

Thane. Where the heck did this guy come from? He seems almost ideally tailored for this task. A master of deception and concealment, he not only possess the trained perception and combat ability to spot impending trouble and take effective action, he also has the ethical restraint to strike only when absolutely necessary.

Apprising Thane of his new assignment while on the Normandy is too risky. I’ll inform him of the plan next time we're off the ship and away from the surveillance bugs that are aboard.

Going after the Collectors on their home turf will be one of the most purely dangerous missions any of us have ever been on, and I'll be hanged if I see us succeed only to all die at the hands of a souped-up computer and a deluded biotic tart.

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22 Overlord

--> Cerberus is asking for my help in containing an emergency taking place on Aite in the Phoenix Massing cluster. The report is vague and urgent, saying only that disaster is imminent and details too sensitive for broadcast over open channel. Whatever’s going wrong, whatever Cerberus has been up to, better it be investigated by me than someone else, and better now rather than later.

--> Damned fool Cerberus. Some experiments are illegal for a reason. Does the Illusive Man think he can ignore obvious dangers without consequences, or does he simply not care about the damage if there’s a chance it will give him what he wants? How many lives have been lost to satiate his curiosity and greed?

Project Overlord has been developing a Human/VI hybrid in the hopes of exploiting the Geth’s worship of Sovereign: fabricate an VI god we can control, hope the Geth worship it, and we control the Geth. Madness. Depraved, unholy madness.

The Human subject, David Archer, brother to the chief scientist Dr. Gavin Archer, was plugged into the VI prematurely when the Illusive Man threatened to cut funding for want of results. Now the Archer/VI hybrid has gone berserk, turning all security drones against the scientists, even activating all the on-sight Geth Cerberus had been using in tests, and tried to launch itself off-world through the extranet. We managed to shut down the upload by destroying the entire com dish, but that still leaves us with a series of Cerberus research stations on the planet filled with dead Humans and homicidal robots under control of the VI. The only Human survivor we know of is Dr. Archer.

Time to clean up this damned mess.

--> I’d foolishly assumed David Archer’s role had been voluntary. I was wrong. He had been plugged into that damned VI like an electrical appliance, a tool without the choice of consent to the horrible state he was thrust into. The incoherent sounds the VI screeched at us throughout the mission grew clearer and clearer as we neared the centre. The sound of its voice became coherent enough as we reached the last doors for us to finally understand the words. It wasn’t an angry mass of synthetic noise as we’d thought. It was English, badly garbled but eventually decipherable “Make it stop, please. Please make it stop.”

We pulled David Archer out of that hell-hole and are taking him to Grissom Acadamy. If anyone can help him, it will be the Alliance doctors and teachers there.

Dr. Gavin Archer is lucky to have seen the last of me with his face still mostly intact. Humanity has real enemies, creatures that will eagerly destroy us and subject us to horrors. We don’t need Humans doing the Enemy’s work.

As horrific as project Overlord was, it is just one more entry in an already lengthy list of atrocities committed by Cerberus. How Miranda and Jacob can continue to tell themselves that each incident is an anomaly, and the Illusive Man is responsible for non of it, is quite beyond me. I'd known Cerberus was crooked and cut-throat before. If I'd known a few weeks ago what I know now, I'd have never agreed to this deal; I'd have instead gone straight to the Alliance, no matter the ensuing delay. But I am here, and I intend to make damn sure I don't waste it. The Illusive Man's empire of evil must at all costs be exposed and destroyed.

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21 Tali's Trial

--> A rather sudden and unlooked-for turn of events. Tali tells me her superiors have charged her with treason. She has no specifics, only that she is ordered to return to the Migrant Fleet to stand trial. She says it cannot be on account of working on a Cerberus ship; she got full and explicit leave for that purpose. She has no idea what the exact nature of the charges are.

I smell a rat. There’s something more to this than Tali’s actions.

Setting course for the Migrant Fleet.

--> Well that was unexpected. I thought I would be providing moral support to Tali. Instead I’m her legal representative. The Admiralty declared Tali to be vas Normandy instead of vas Neema, barring her Quarian captain from speaking at her trial.

Tali is accused of sending active Geth back home to her fleet. She admits to sending Geth parts, per her father’s requests for Geth material, but denies sending anything that could have spontaneously reactivated, or having reactivated, pose a threat. Tali’s father was conducting experiments on Geth parts and software for developing new weapons and hacking techniques; all details purportedly open and officially sanctioned.

But something went wrong and her father’s lab ship, the Alerai, is now overrun by Geth. It seems to me fairly clear that someone was getting a little too advanced in their simulations and accidentally kick-started the dormant Geth.

The Quarians have already tried to take back the Alerai, but the teams sent in were repulsed with heavy casualties. The vessel’s engines and weapons are offline, and it seems unlikely anyone aboard that ship is still alive. The Admiralty are debating whether to simply blow it to bits. I’ve volunteered to instead board and reclaim the Alerai. We've been granted permission.

This is not the first time, nor indeed will likely be the last, that I've seen the consequences of fooling around with advanced artificial intelligence. One would expect that, of all people, the Quarians should know better, but it seems the greedy and power-hungry never will learn. There should be a proverb about this sort of thing, perhaps, “the forbidden fruit of folly is seldom plucked but once.” Or on second thought, the old proverb that tells us “as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly,” is probably sufficient.

--> Alerai secure. It was as I expected. Given the circumstances, how could it have been otherwise? The ruthless efficiency of the carnage therein was unmistakable. We stepped over the broken and bloodied corpses of the Quarians, marines and technicians, soldiers and civilians, adults and children, to find awaiting us the grim metallic figures that had so mercilessly torn them to pieces. Tali’s father had indeed been conducting illegal experiments on dormant Geth parts, and reconstructing full Geth for more advanced experiments. They screwed up; the Geth gained the advantage and slaughtered every last Quarian aboard, down to the last child. They’d taken all of the available Geth parts and assembled a small army inside the ship.

They’re now once again only so many pieces of rubble.

Tali's Father left a message for her, his recorded image speaking hollow words of attempted comfort to his bereft daughter. I've seen loss countless times before, and will again for as long as I live. Tali has lost something that can never be regained. She must come to terms with that and move on. There is nothing I or anyone can say that will give her the solace she craves. When a wound is suffered and the flesh made raw, it must be treated and sewn together again. A scar will always remain, but the body must seal the injury and survive.

Though it would clear her of the charge of treason, Tali begged me not to reveal to the Quarian Admiralty the truth about how her father had reactivated the Geth himself; she couldn’t bear the thought of him being immortalized as an infamous warning to future generations, and preferred the prospect of her own threatened banishment.

We returned the hearing, and I commandeered the floor. Tali and I had done a little digging prior to retaking the Alerai, and it payed off. I justly accused the Admiralty of bringing their disagreement about potential reinvasion of their homeworld into their judgement of Tali. I reminded them of how Tali had helped defeat Sovereign, of how she’d brought back with her to the fleet invaluable information on Geth evolution, demonstrating her abilities, loyalty, and judgement, and how there was nothing in the way of evidence that she had suddenly grown so foolhardy as to endanger the fleet.

The Admirals cleared Tali of charges. If necessary, I’d have presented the evidence from the Alerai to clear Tali’s name, regardless of her requests. Not only would allowing her to unjustly bear her father’s guilt been ethically untenable, he is dead and she alive.

I intend to see to it she remains thus.

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20 Dangerous Paths

--> Garrus’s old contacts on the Citadel have spotted Sidonis. The traitor went to a specialist criminal named Fade to obtain false ID and a hiding place. We’ll take the Normandy there right away. Thane also has business on the Citadel. He has a son who is trying to follow in his father’s footsteps and has been hired for a kill. Thane wants to stop his son making the same mistakes he did.

--> Thane’s son Kolyat had been hired by a Human crime boss on the Citadel named Elias Kelham to assassinate a Turian political candidate who was telling his constituents that all Humans were uniformly criminal and racist in nature. He then sent his security to harass Human shopkeepers. We found Kolyat at the last moment and had a textbook hostage situation on our hands. Kolyat made the mistake of raising the gun from the Turian to point it at me. He’s now in C-Sec Custody, his target alive and well.

Thane paid his son little heed in the past. It will take time for them to patch up matters between them. At least we stopped the young Drell from committing murder.

--> We found Sidonis.

Garrus and I have both killed many times, but always by necessity.  This situation with Sidonis was different. Garrus was going to kill a man, not to prevent future deaths, but to avenge past deaths. There's no question the traitor deserved death. I’d have had nothing to say but for the fact that Garrus wanted me to talk to Sidonis first; to draw him out for a clean shot.

I can not look someone in the eye with a lie while someone else shoots him unawares. I told Sidonis the facts: Garrus was here to kill him; if he had anything to say for himself, now was the time.

The sorry bastard didn’t even beg for mercy. He pleaded his cowardice more to the air than to me, his words tumbling out over themselves like rocks from a collapsed dam too long holding back a flood of guilty misery, telling of how he’d betrayed his fellows to save his own miserable skin, of how he saw their faces wherever he looked, how he wished it were over.

Garrus wavered, his simple Turian view of a black and white world troubled by the wretched creature before him. Sidonis walked away with his life. It is not for his worthless sake that I am glad Garrus chose mercy over vengeance. Had he pulled that trigger, if he had taken a life that was no longer a threat, it would have been his first step down a dark and dangerous road.

There is blood on both our hands, and the hands of every soldier. Killing is our trade, and our duty: it is necessary. But where to draw the line? I'm no saint, and cannot say for certain. Were one to attempt to draw the line of just action, it seems better to err, when tenable, on the side of mercy, that we kill only when doing so will save lives.

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