17 The Shadow Broker

--> When we got to Liara’s apartment we found a police investigation underway. Someone had shot at Liara through the window. A Spectre, an Asari named Vasir, was overseeing the investigation. Turns out she was the one who tried to kill Liara. Long story short, Vasir and a small army of Shadow Broker commandos blew up an entire building and killed dozens of people trying to finish Liara off. I’m pleased to say none of these professional murderers will be continuing their careers of indiscriminate homicide.

As Vasir lay bleeding her lifeblood out on the ground, riddled with bullets far past what would have killed an ordinary soldier, she spent her dying breath accusing me of being no better than her because I’m “friends with Cerberus.” She then lacked the courtesy to stick around long enough for me to tell her off. Yes, I am affiliated with Cerberus, a terrorist organization guilty of a long list of crimes and atrocities. The difference is, unlike Vasir, I’m not doing the bad guy’s dirty work. I’m not the one who murdered innocent civilians. I am by necessity of circumstance taking Cerberus resources for my own ends, saving people from the Collectors. Funny thing is, she kept telling me not to dare judge her. I don’t have to. She’s gone to meet Someone who will.

Liara has the Shadow Broker’s location narrowed down to a star system in the Hourglass Nebula, Sowilo. Time to pay the fellow a friendly little visit.

--> Rather than carry out the painstaking and time-consuming process of searching every planet in the system, Liara calculated the most likely hiding places and prioritized the most bizarre and descriptively prestigious options. Sure enough, we quickly found the Shadow Brokers base, a cruiser of unregistered design, in a site high on Liara’s list. Hidden in the constant storm that follows the edge of the sunset on planet Hagalaz, where the oceans boil during the day and snap freeze ten minutes after sundown. Pleasant locale, this place.

Whether the Shadow Broker lacks the technological sophistication of the Collectors or the storm concealing his ship also hinders his sensors, the stealthy Normandy has managed to slip into a parallel course without apparent detection. Preparing for shuttle launch. Garrus, Liara, and myself will be taking on unknown odds together just like old times.

--> Mission complete. We successfully infiltrated the Shadow Broker’s ship and stormed his office. Quite a sight he was. BigAndUgly’s the word for him. An immense dark red-skinned biped with a three segmented jaw and more eyes than I could count while busy shooting at them.

I’d initially planned on offering him the chance to surrender, but he didn’t seem interested. It’s not like he didn’t know who we were; being the Shadow Broker, and referring to us each by name, he knew everything about us. Which begs the question of how he thought he had any chance against Liara, an Asari pureblood possessed of biotic ability exceptional even for her kind, Garrus Vakarian, AKA Archangel, a Turian vigilante who survived half the thugs in the Omega Nebula trying to kill him, and myself, Humanity’s finest marine. Spectres are the best fighters in the Galaxy, and I’ve killed two of them.

His hubris was somewhat justified on account of a unique defence system in his office, a shield projector in the ceiling that rendered conventional weapons fire against him nearly useless. But lo and behold, Liara had the brilliant idea to destroy the shield projector. Pulled the whole mess down on that monster’s head.

Naturally, the Shadow Broker’s staff started noticing something was amiss, and started radioing in for orders. Liara stepped up. She commandeered the Shadow Broker’s translator, ordered standard procedures resumed and a report on all operations within the next twenty-four hours. No one, not even the people who worked for him on his own ship, had ever seen the Shadow Broker; he was completely anonymous. With control of his terminals and office, Liara is the Shadow Broker.

This turnout surpasses my best hopes for mission results. I’d expected to salvage some data before pulling out of a potentially crashing ship. Instead, Liara now has full access to all of the Shadow Broker’s resources; all of his agents, all of his intel, everything his Galaxy-spanning network has accumulated, is now at our disposal. This is an enormous challenge, but Liara has embraced it. With her direction, this immense web of ominous power with feelers in every major organization and government in the galaxy can be turned from a threat into something better.

I’d suspected that, despite Liara’s hopes, Feron would be long gone, but I was wrong. He was alive and imprisoned on the Shadow Broker’s ship, having spent two years subject to intermittent torture whenever the Shadow Broker got bored. Feron is surprisingly sane and calm despite his treatment, and is even helping Liara sift through the tremendous mountains of information available to her.

The scope and detail of the Shadow Broker’s intel is incredible. Liara can access up-to-date information on what The Illusive Man ate for breakfast, on my crew’s internet activity, on the identity of nearly all major crime bosses in the galaxy, on security codes for top-level access to Turian and Human governments, the list goes on and on. The immediate danger is being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of information available. Liara seems not only to be handling the situation, but even perhaps thriving in it. She never ceases to amaze me.

The Shadow Broker had extensive information on Cerberus, enough to allow the Alliance to put a sever dent in their resources and sniff out a great many nefarious operations and plots, past and present. The list of tamperings in politics conducted by Cerberus, slander, bribery, and murder, is extensive. This information, once revealed, rewrites much of recent history.

Unfortunately, even the Shadow Broker had little information on the Collectors. We do know that he knew about the Reapers, perhaps even before we did, and had been searching for clues the Protheans might have left behind. It doesn’t quite make sense that, knowing about the Collector’s and their connection to Reapers, he had been conducting business with them. Did he calculate his dealings as being of insufficient benefit to the Collectors to constitute a tangible aid to the Reapers?

I now leave Liara one of the most powerful people in the Galaxy, with perhaps the most demanding job in the Galaxy. If anyone is capable of steering the Shadow Broker’s ship, it is her.

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