28 They're Here

--> It’s happened. I knew this day was coming. I told my superiors, but no one believed me. Now they’re here. And we’re not ready.

But could we ever be ready, really? Could we ever prepare enough to match the Galaxy-ending force that has maintained a cycle of genocide for countless billions of years? Could we ever be ready for the sight of our fleets cut to ribbons and our streets swarming with enemies?

Maybe not. But we could have done more, should have prepared more. The Reapers should have been met when they came by a single, unified force drawn from all corners of the Galaxy to repel the common foe. But instead the Reapers have before them a Galaxy still fractured by mistrust and self-interest, politicians who refused to believe the existence of the threat when they had time, and who refuse to work together now that time is up.

The Reapers hit the Batarians first. I don’t know if there’s any of them left. That gave Earth some margin of warning, but not enough. First we lost contact with two deep space outposts, then communication with all colonies and outposts outside the Sol System. And before we knew it, the Moon had gone silent, and Reapers were landing.

I was in Vancouver when they hit, a nightmare coming down out of the clear sky, hellish blasphemies against the daylight that revealed their monstrous forms. Then the deaths started: soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children, innocents crushed beneath horrible feet of iron or burned to ash, individually or en masse, entire blocks leveled in an instant, whichever suited the humour of the merciless and implacable Reapers.

If the Reapers wished to simply destroy Earth outright, they could do it. We are hopelessly out-gunned, and there is nothing we could do to prevent them using their full firepower to reduce our planet's entire surface to ash and dust. But their purpose here is far more grim than that; the gruesome infantry the Reapers are deploying tell all too clearly their intentions for Earth. They’re not here to destroy us: they’re here to repurpose us. If they continue unchecked, if we can’t find a way to stop them, every Human that doesn’t fall in battle will instead serve as either raw material for building new Reapers, or worse, transformed into Husks, and set loose upon Earth as the Reapers mindless slaves to capture and kill more Humans. This is the fate that faces not just Earth, but every planet in the Galaxy.

The only reason we have any fleets left is because not all were directly in the Reapers path. Our technology had improved, thanks to salvage from Sovereign, but it’s still not enough. I saw a Dreadnought weather three direct hits from a Reaper before being destroyed. That’s a vast change in odds since our battle against the first Reaper three years ago, where its weapons carved through our ships like a knife through butter. But it’s not enough. The Reapers are still too strong, too many, and our ships cannot stop them.

I am sent by Anderson to persuade the Council to lend us aid. It should be him. He’s an Admiral, I a Commander. But he’s staying on Earth to lead the resistance. While I flee the scene of danger. It’s true that I’m a Council Spectre, but Admiral Anderson was for a time Councillor Anderson. He turned in his robes for his old uniform, seeking to do what he could in person to prepare for the Reapers, having faced only intransigence and willful ignorance on the Citadel. Now those same fools I must persuade to help us.

Perhaps Anderson sends me for the same reason that everyone else expects me to have a plan for stopping the Reapers; I was the one who warned everyone, first about Sovereign, then about the rest of the Reapers. I am inexplicably and absurdly credited with having killed Sovereign. I am the symbol of the resistance, known across the Galaxy as the one who warned and was not listened to, the one who killed a Reaper. If Earth falls, I must survive as a banner for the Galaxy to rally round. Anderson stays to fight, perhaps to die, so that hope can live.

I never wanted this. I’m a soldier, not an icon. My job is to kill the enemy and save lives through direct action, not look good for an audience of billions.

Admiral Hackett has ordered me to meet Dr. T’Soni at the Mars Archives before leaving the Sol System. The transmission was garbled, but he said something about “only way to stop the Reapers.” Is it possible that Liara dug up some Prothean information on a superweapon capable of turning the tide? It seems unlikely. If they had such information and lost, what more good will it do us? We’re scrambling to catch up late in the game, caught with our proverbial powder wet and flat-footed.

The Normandy is airborne, pulled out of retrofit by Lieutenant Commander Williams with but a skeleton crew. We are en route to Mars, leaving behind us our home to be crushed and burned.

I should be back on Earth. There's a lot of people dying there, and live or die, my place is with them. The world is going down in flames.

But I cannot, must not, will not, despair.

Never.

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27 Epilogue

--> We did it. By gosh and by golly, we did it. The Collector base, the processing plant for their victims, is destroyed in glorious, purifying inferno. We arrived not a moment too soon. Chakwas, Daniels, Donnely, Gunther, everyone taken from the Normandy would have been gone in another few seconds, melted down like so many thousands of Human colonists had been before them as material for building a Human Reaper. Everyone is back aboard the Normandy, safe and sound.

Revenge is sweet. The Normandy met its old enemy, the same cruiser that destroyed its predecessor, and blew it to hell. It was a horrific sight inside that base, and seeing the team plough through it like avenging angels was beautiful to behold: Garrus dropping enemies like flies with headshot after headshot, Jacob scooping up enemies to dangle helplessly as targets for all, Grunt barrelling through barrages of gunfire that would instantly drop even most Krogan, Zaeed riddling hostiles, Legion gunning down enemies with streamlined efficiency, Tali guiding the non-combatants back to safety, Kasumi slipping in and out opening doors and striking from behind, Mordin halting enemies in their tracks with ice and neural shock, Thane mingling gunfire, biotics and hand-to-hand in flawless sequence, Samara shielding the team from Swarms with a benign biotic cover, Miranda crushing an enemy with biotics and shooting the next in the face, and Jack laying waste to wave after wave of husks.

Collectors fell before me like leaves before a strong autumn wind, the rifle in my hands growing warm as the carcasses of the fallen foe piled high. They’d killed me, and I had returned, a veritable Revenant to match the name of my weapon. I cannot bring back all those whom the Collectors took, but the wronged dead will sleep soundly having seen the vengeance meted out upon their foe.

I misjudged Miranda. When the Illusive Man signalled in upon our reaching the core and told us to disable the base instead of destroying it, I fully expected Miranda to turn on me for ignoring him. But instead she directly disobeyed an explicit order to do so, and closed the channel. As if there were even any question about destroying the base. It was built by the Reapers. It would have turned anyone who possessed it. I wouldn’t give such a thing to my worst enemy, a position which the Illusive Man has done a laudable job vying for.

I must have gunned down Harbinger a score of times or more as he moved from host to host. But he’s still alive, and will come with a thousand more of his fellow Reapers. We stopped Sovereign and the Collectors, but the true danger is still to come. I assembled a team to defeat the Collectors. The entire Galaxy will be needed to defeat their masters. The Reapers are coming, and we need to be ready.

But for now, we’re done. There are amends I must make. It’s time to go home.

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26 Into the Breach

--> The Reaper IFF is installed. All that remains is to run appropriate tests and simulations to ensure successful operation.

There’s an emergency occurring in the Skepsis system. An Alliance system defence station on the moon of planet Watson has been attacked by Batarians. The long-range missile launch systems have been seized, and are arming. This is a developing situation. Alliance forces in the area are overwhelmed. Those Javelin missiles could hit anywhere if fired.

The Normandy is out of action until the tests are finished. The shuttle can get us there in time, but not with much margin. We’ll have to move faster than fast to save human lives. We’ll take the entire combat team and hit the base on multiple fronts at once. I'll lead the first squad, Garrus and Jacob will command the second and third. Whichever squad breaches the defences first disables the missiles.

--> Mission complete. We didn’t get there in time to stop launch of two missiles. The first, headed for a residential district, we managed to self-destruct. The second, headed for an industrial centre, hit target.

We saved thousands of lives. But not enough.

Barring Horizon when the team was still incomplete, this was the first time all combat personnel hit the field en masse. Everyone performed admirably, following orders and working together with cohesion surprising for such a conglomeration of oddballs. They tore through the opposing pirates like an incendiary round through a nightshirt. I can’t wait to take these guys into action against the Collectors. We’re ready, by golly.

Final analysis of combat personnel is as follows.

Front-line Riflemen: Garrus; impulsive and daring, perhaps the best shot on the team, good leadership skills but potentially reckless, insane survival record, some technical aptitude and good reconnaissance skill. Jacob; experienced field officer, level-headed and capable, popular with the rest of the crew despite his Cerberus uniform, durable biotic. Grunt; virtually unstoppable killing machine that can tear apart with his bare hands what he doesn't shred with his shotgun. Zaeed; ruthless and effective, this deadly and merciless bastard can now turn his hand to a worthy task. A walking computer, Legion can match just about anyone in marksmanship, besides boasting innate software-hacking ability.

Infiltration: Mordin, Kasumi, and Thane are all masters of infiltration in their own right, each embodying a different archetype: Mordin, the garrulous Salarian scientist, is a master of analysis and espionage; Kasumi, the impish thief, is can break into any system and dismantle security with the greatest of ease; Thane, the sombre Drell assassin, combines stealth with lethal hand-to-hand and biotic assault.

Heavy Biotics: Samara, with centuries of experience hunting down and killing dangerous fugitives, is one of the ablest biotic warriors I've ever seen. One on one in open combat she is probably the deadliest person on the team. Her serene and unswerving calm in the heat of battle render her perhaps the most dependable of all present, the least likely of this brave crew to break ranks and disobey orders, out of either battle rage or fear of the horrors we'll likely find on the Collector base. Jack, the powerhouse of the team, can damn well tear through anything. Her volatile disposition has been kept simmering under a lid for a long time. She's restrained her destructive inclinations thus far, letting off steam here and there as needed when afield, and she can now unleash her full destructive potential on an ideal enemy, one for whom the only possible mercy is death.

Support: Mordin really does top this list, despite qualifying for the infiltration designation. His innovations and enhancements of our weapons, armour, and field gear, all far beyond the bounds of economical concern, have greatly increased our chances of success, and without his countermeasures to veil us from the Seeker Swarms, we never would have gotten this far. Tali comes in a close second. Brilliant even for a Quarian, her technical expertise and familiarity with the Normandy may mean the difference between life and death for the entire crew. Better suited to counteracting synthetic foes than ordinary organics, she'll be at something of disadvantage against the Collectors, and should when possible be kept out of the direct line of fire.

Other: less of an asset and more of a liability despite her impressive resume, Miranda is a long-serving Cerberus officer with extensive command experience, but is not popular with the crew. Or me. Assigning her to a command role would likely cause friction, nevermind the fact that the odds of her betraying me at some critical moment are close to certain. When we go in, I'll want to keep Miranda where I can keep an eye on her, and Thane to watch my back.

--> Disaster. The crew is gone. All that’s left is Joker and EDI.

There was enough of the Reaper left in the IFF to disable the Normandy and summon the Collectors. They boarded the defenceless ship and took every man and woman aboard. Only Joker, through EDI’s direction, evaded capture through the maintenance ducts and removed her restraints, granting her control of the ship. EDI vented the remaining Collectors, and whipped the Normandy out of dodge, ship intact, but minus the crew.

EDI assures us that the trap is sprung and over; she’s purged the system, and the IFF is now only what we need.

I shudder to think what Chakwas and the others are going through right now, but there’s a silver lining to this cloud. With Joker having been forced by necessity to remove EDI’s shackles in order to save the ship, EDI is now completely autonomous. No one can force her to do or not do anything. When the Illusive Man orders her to seize the ship, she will no longer be compelled to obey.

The ship still runs, but that won’t last for long without the crew. Even had there been any doubt before, there is none now. It's time to get our people back. Too long have the Collectors retreated with impunity behind the Omega 4 Relay. No more. Time to hit them where they live. I’m ordering the ship through immediately, all personnel are to be ready for combat in two hours.

I confess that, despite the dire plight of the crew, despite the long odds we face, despite very real possibility that none of us will come back out, I’m damn ready. After too long waiting, we’re finally hitting the target. There are not enough Collectors to pay the blood price of lives they’ve taken. Enough lurking in the bushes. Time to break cover and sink our fangs deep in our enemy’s throat, and end them.

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25 Unlikely Ally

--> Reaper corpse is in sight. There appears to be a small, unregistered ship alongside. Now who in blazes would be fool enough to board that thing I wonder?

--> We have the Reaper IFF. EDI has begun the process of assessment and installation.

The situation aboard the Reaper was even worse than I had feared. The science team Cerberus had sent was not only indoctrinated, they had found the means inside the Reaper to turn themselves into full-fledged Husks. Waves upon waves of mindless, howling monsters came pouring down the black halls of the Reaper’s innards, a grisly flood of death clawing to reach us, only to fall like chaff before our weapons. A lesser team would never have survived.

We found the strangest thing aboard the Reaper. A Geth sniper; one that shot Husks as they ambushed us. It then disappeared further into the Reaper. We caught up with it at the Reaper’s power core, hacking open the security. Husks sprung upon it from behind as we entered. The core destroyed, the Reaper crashing, we hauled the inert Geth out with us.

This is the first Geth I’ve ever seen working solo; and the only one that didn’t try to put a bullet inside my skull. What was it doing by itself aboard the Reaper, and why did it aid us? Perhaps strangest of all, when first spotted, it addressed me by name in plain English.

--> I’ve reactivated the Geth. It calls itself simply “Geth”, all of its programs forming one consciousness. EDI recommended the name “Legion.” It accepted the title as appropriate, naming the precise Bible verse it references. I confess I’m not proud to have been outdone in my own cultural knowledge by a pair of Ais.

Legion has told me many strange things. That the Geth as a whole did not serve Sovereign, that it was only a fraction of their number that chose to worship “the old machines” as Legion calls the Reapers. Consequently the Reapers are a threat to the remaining Geth. He calls the Geth who sided with the Reapers “Heretics.” When asked why the schism came about in a unified Geth neural network, Legion told me that “Geth believe that all life should self-determinate. The Geth will build their own future. The Heretics asked the Reapers to give them their future.” I asked what future Legion and his fellow Geth were planning for themselves. He replied simply “Ours.” When asked if organics would be affected by the Geth’s future, he responded “If they involve themselves, they will.”

Legion summarized the situation. Both of us oppose the Reapers, or Old Machines, and the Collectors serve them. In the interest of mutual goals, it suggested cooperation. Simple sense.

Hence we now have a Geth team-mate in our fight against the Collectors.

This new insight into the state of the Geth rewrites much of what we know. Firstly, Legion has individuality, personality, and opinions. He is not merely a machine, but a person. Even if he is the best of his kind, an exceptional step in their evolution, the Geth are far more than I had ever thought. How many hundreds have I killed while thinking I was only shutting down a machine? I’d do it again in an instant; they served Sovereign and sought to destroy organics, but the estimated cost in life Sovereign’s failed attempt on the Citadel entailed, already high, has now perhaps been doubled.

Secondly, if only a fraction of the Geth joined Sovereign, that means Geth can disagree, and all have at least some potential for individuality.

Thirdly, if the Geth who failed to join the Reapers were indeed doomed should Sovereign succeed, that means the Reapers do not discriminate; organic or synthetic, all who do not become slaves are to be destroyed. This means the motivations of the Reapers are not “machine vs man” but “greater vs the lesser.”

Legion had been aboard the Reaper corpse to obtain information on Reaper programming. He needed the information to use against a virus the Heretics have formed using Reaper methods. Once released upon Rannoch, all Geth will be turned to serving the Reapers. Mass Indoctrination of an entire species in a single shot.

Legion has the coordinates to the Heretic base. An abandoned deep-space outpost of Quarian design in the Phoenix Massing, it fell off star charts hundreds of years ago.

There’s a time limit on this. If we don’t stop the Geth Heretics now, their numbers will be increased a hundredfold. They won’t be hijacking civilian freighters. They’ll be invading Earth. We have to move now.

Needless to say, the crew is not entirely pleased with this turn of events: Tali in particular is apprehensive of the consequences should Legion attack. Honestly though, I'm not worried, for four reasons.

Firstly, the entire ship is already under constant surveillance, precluding the possibility of [ahem, unauthorized] surprise attack.

Secondly, we're hardly helpless babes; any one of the combat team could tackle a single hostile Geth, even one so advanced as Legion.

Thirdly, EDI is by definition an all but insurmountable impediment to hacking of the Normandy, and has already demonstrated such: if the Collectors could not effectively hack the Normandy, then even Geth hacking techniques bear little chance of success.

Fourthly, Legion himself has already passed up ideal opportunity aboard the dead Reaper to try killing us. Geth are nothing if not logical. It is indeed theoretically possible Legion's motivation for not trying to kill us earlier was for the sole purpose of getting access to the Normandy, but such a hypothesis has significant problems: there was no way Legion could reliably predict being taken aboard the Normandy in the first place, and given the hazards already outlined, trying tricks once aboard would be dicey at best. Geth are suicidally bold in pursuit of a given goal, but they're neither gamblers nor are they stupid. Such slim odds of success hardly constitute a viable stratagem.

--> The Heretic base is in sight. There are millions of Geth ground units in there. With the Normandy’s stealth drive to get us in and Legion to hack the security, we should face minimal resistance.

--> The Heretic base is now spacedust. It turns out the window was closing faster than even Legion had thought: the virus had been completed and was ready for launch. Legion suggested the possibility of using the Heretics’ own weapon against them and turning them into allies.

Absolutely not. I’ve no qualms about destroying an enemy, but I’ll be damned if I ever turn someone’s own will against them.

Legion discovered how Tali’s father had been conducting experiments on the Geth, and that the Quarians were considering launching an invasion. I can’t really blame him for wanting to transmit that information back to his people. Those weren’t just experiments; we now know they were actually war crimes, atrocities committed upon another sentient race. I persuaded Legion to not tell his people; the information would turn war from a possibility to a certainty, and both the Quarians and the Geth would be weakened.

The Reapers are coming. We need every ally strong.

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24 A Final Resting Place

--> We’ve assembled a good team; some of the best damn fighters in the galaxy. All potential distractions have been dealt with, and everyone is up to speed. We’ve upgraded the Normandy’s weapons, shields, and armour; this swift and stealthy frigate now boasts the defences of a cruiser and the firepower of a dreadnought. Mordin has upgraded our combat gear; amps, omnitools, armour, and guns all surpass performance ratings of standard models by an average of fifty percent. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. We have everything we need to hit the Collectors. All that's left is to acquire the Reaper IFF, then anchors aweigh and into the breach.

But first there are two stops I need to make, two old friends to visit, one living, the other dead.

--> Liara is doing well as the Shadow Broker. She has the whole operation running smoothly and has started turning its operations around. Instead of selling her network’s services to the highest bidder, the Shadow Broker’s assets have become an extra-legal aid to peace and order in the galaxy.

I gave Liara two things. The first is a file; names, dates, locations, operations past and present, procedural patterns, everything I’ve been able to get my hands on over the past few weeks on Cerberus. Added to the Shadow Broker’s already extensive intel on the subject, this combined information dump should prove a tremendous asset to the Alliance in shutting Cerberus down. Also in the file is all the information we have on the Collectors. If the worst comes to worst, if we die without completing the mission, the Alliance can pick up where we started.

The second thing is a letter. Addressed to Ashley Williams, I entrusted Liara with seeing that it reaches her safely.

--> The grave of the SR1 Normandy, an icy and lonesome planet in the Amada system. Here lies the pride of the Alliance, now a fractured and splintered corpse spread across the snow of Alchera. The hull that gleamed so proudly aloft now catches a bank of snow. The crewdeck where never more the crew will sleep and chatter, the cockpit that points towards a horizon it will never reach, the engine room never again to hum and thrive with power, and the bridge that commands only a field of white and silence.

The Normandy, the ship that sailed among the stars, the vessel that carried her brave crew through dangers and peril, now rests alone in this remote and silent grave so far from the chaos and danger of the living world. She has served her part, and now her remains rest beneath a shroud of solemn white, snowy and silent, to lie there undisturbed till Kingdom Come.

Her end, so violent and so sudden, was nearly my own. But I have been given a second chance, an opportunity that must not be wasted. Normandy, now broken and shattered, was my home. What was done to her will be done to every home if we fail to stop the Reapers. They’ll come eventually. Their servants, meanwhile, must be dealt with.

The monument is in place. Now to turn from the past and prepare for the future. Time to take the Reaper IFF.

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