16 Illium

--> Illium is the centre of Asari trade in the Terminus Systems. A superficial veneer of safety and upper-class tidiness masks a core of corruption and crime as dangerous and dirty as Omega. I was stationed here for a time before I was first assigned to the first Normandy; a cushy security assignment as a reward for Elysium. I didn’t much care for it.

Jacob has pulled a few strings and gotten a hold of an experimental armour design for the Normandy, Asari in origin.

Garrus has almost certainly broken regulations to provide me with Turian blueprints for a radical new weapon design, Thanix Cannons. The weapons fire a stream of super-heated molten metal rather than a solid projectile. Not only will it penetrate Collector ship armour, it will in theory, with the right calibration, penetrate the hull of an enemy ship, then the conservation of energy will transfer the force of momentum into heat upon the deceleration of impact, tipping the balance of the molten stream into a full-blown plasma explosion inside the hull before it passes out the other side. This technology and method, if it works as promised, is a massive improvement, not just over Alliance tech, but even Collector armaments. Their particle beam weapon drilled holes clean through the first Normandy. If they had used these Thanix Cannons, no one would have survived that attack. I’m reminded of the old Earth American patrol boats used in the second world war. Their lightweight, thin wooden hulls would allow enemy torpedoes to shoot right through them without detonating.

It will take some time for the new weapons systems and armour to be installed on the Normandy. Fortunately funds are not an object. I’m granting the crew shore leave in cycles, with orders to enjoy our brief stay on Illium and stay out of trouble.

I going to see how Liara’s doing. I don’t expect her to be any more inclined to trust me than Ash or Anderson, but I should at least give her what intel Cerberus has on the Shadow Broker. Being an information broker herself, Liara may have some suggestions for recruits here on Illium.

--> I expected civil courtesy from Liara. I didn’t expect her to welcome me with open arms. It turns out she has good reason to believe I’m actually me; she was the one to recover my lifeless body from the Shadow Broker’s agents who first found me. She’s waited two suspenseful years for the completion of project Lazurus. The poor dear was afraid I would hate her for handing me over to Cerberus. A significant risk, I’ll admit, but hardly worth hating her for. I owe her my life.

Liara does indeed know of two likely candidates for my team. Samara, an Asari Justicar, and Thane Krios, a Drell assassin.

Justicar’s are something akin to knight errants, a monastic order of independent individuals who pursue evildoers and bring justice wherever they go. Absolutely devoted to a strict moral code, they are selfless and tireless warriors, representing the highest beliefs of the Asari. Justicars operate above the law, but are not recognized or even widely known of outside of Asari culture, and there is some concern among the Asari in general about the diplomatic ramifications should a Justicar inflict justice upon a member of another species.

Thane is an assassin of high repute. Despite an extensive kill record, he has had no contracted hits for a stretch of many years. He reportedly has a target on Illium, but Liara cannot find anything regarding a fee.

I’ve given Liara the Cerberus intel on the Shadow Broker, and even helped her to discover one of his spies in the person of her secretary. Liara thinks she can use the information to finally track the Shadow Broker to his lair. I’ve never seen Liara so strongly hate or desire the destruction of anyone like this before, not even Saren or Sovereign who turned her mother into a slave of evil. She says the Shadow Broker was going to sell my body to the Collectors before she stole me from his agents, that her partner in the mission, a Drell named Feron, sacrificed himself to allow her to escape with my corpse. She’d thought him dead, but the Cerberus intel implies otherwise. She’s spent the past two years planning revenge. Now she has the chance to make it a rescue. I’m glad her mission to take down the Shadow Broker (a criminal mastermind with a galaxy-spanning network of spies) ties in with my official goals. Not only is the Shadow Broker a threat in and of himself, his dealings with the Collectors render him a potentially game-changing source of information.

Liara needs some time to work through the data. I’ll come by her apartment when she’s ready. In the meantime, I have two fighters to recruit, and Miranda’s sister to protect.

--> Samara and Thane both agreed to help me stop the Collectors. Each one was on Illium with the intent of killing a target. Both exhibit exceptional combat ability, with both biotics and more conventional methods, though with vastly different approach methods. Samara marched into an Eclipse hideout and massacred the heavily armed mercs in open biotic combat, a veritable goddess of grim and inexorable justice. Thane, in keeping with standard assassin doctrine, prefers the more covert approach; his target never saw him until just before he pulled the trigger in her face. Contrary to standard assassin method, however, he agreed to lend his aid against the Collectors, without charge.

Thane’s target was a wealthy Asari businesswoman with a nasty reputation of murdering her business rivals. Upon infiltrating her property in our search for Thane we discovered her mechs and security shooting the workers assigned to the building. It seems she got wind of Thane’s coming, and had ordered her men to clear out the building immediately. Questioning the workers revealed they hated their employer, but hadn’t quit because of rumours that anyone who did would disappear. Whatever nefarious business Nassana Dantius conducted, she wanted no chance of it getting out.

Samara is pursuing what she only describes as a very dangerous criminal. She’d tracked her target to Illium, but the Eclipse had smuggled the target off-world. I helped Samara find the name of the ship, and she vowed to aid me in my mission against the Collectors. The oath came with a warning that, if ordered to commit a dishonourable deed, she would be obliged to kill me.

I like Thane. He spoke of having done to much to make the Galaxy darker, that he wants to spend what time he has left making it brighter before he dies. Nassana was to have been his last mission, but an opportunity to stop attacks on Human colonies changed his plans. He suffers from terminal illness, non-communicable and painless, but his window is closing. If I can offer him more of what he seeks, atonement for past murder, I am glad.

Samara I do not like. While Thane seems to act from the promptings of his conscience, Samara apparently allows her Justicar code to dictate her actions to the exclusion of all else. As far as I can tell, the code in question is a worthy one that demands its adherents protect the innocent at all cost to one’s self, to smite the evil and the unjust wherever found, but it cannot possibly provide dependable moral guidance for every conceivable situation. I mistrust anyone who hides behind an institutional dogma rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. I believe Samara to possess righteous intentions, but her exclusive and absolute devotion to the code may indicate a hidden frailty of will, perhaps even mental cowardice.

--> Miranda’s sister and her adoptive family are safe in their new location. Miranda and Oriana’s father have no idea now where Oriana is. Unfortunately, the security of Oriana’s family came at a price. Niket, Miranda’s oldest friend, the man who first helped her escape from her father, had been the only link. Niket hadn’t known about Miranda stealing Oriana away from her father, and wanted to return the girl to a life of wealth and safety. When we began convincing him to deceive Mr. Lawson and permit Oriana to live with the only family she’d ever known, the Eclipse captain assigned escort Niket shot him.

It’s come as a welcome change to see Miranda busy thinking about the safety and happiness of another human being, her sister, rather than ceaselessly obsessing about her devotion to Cerberus and adulation of The Illusive Man.

--> Liara sent me a message saying she’d sifted through the data and narrowed down a solid lead. I’m on my way toward her apartment.

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