39 Rachni

--> I've received two messages. The first was from Surkesh. The Salarian Dalatrass sent a grim transmission prophesying the doom of all galactic society, beginning with her culture, and had the gall to blame me for Mordin’s death. Despite the Salarians officially refusing both military aid and technical assistance with the Crucible, there appear to be schisms forming in Salarian leadership. The STG has joined the fight against the Reapers, and certain Salarian captains have promised their ships in support of the Crucible. Even some Salarian scientists have volunteered immediate service for the project. It’s heartening to see that, despite the idiocy of their politicians, the Salarians are not uniformly fools enough to sit back and watch the Galaxy fall around them.

The second message was from the Citadel; Councillor Vallern discreetly confides in me a suspicion that his human colleague is crooked, and has asked for my help in dealing with suspected corrupt dealings by the Councillor Udina.

At a time like this, the Salarian Councillor wants to dig up petty criminality? Of course Udina is dirty. I’d be surprised to hear that he wasn’t. I'll get back to Valern on this later. In the meanwhile I have more urgent matters to attend to.

--> The Cerberus forces holding the defence cannon have been dealt with. If they aren’t working on behalf of the Reapers, they’re making a darn good impression of it. That wrinkle nearly cost us the Krogan.

Now that we have a breathing space I can turn my attention to the rumours coming from the Rachni relay. Wrex's scouts aren't the only disappearances reported in that quarter. I have a bad feeling about this.

The Rachni were a force that terrorized the Galaxy millennia ago. So far as I know, this enigmatic and creepy species was the only non-biped race besides the Reapers ever to achieve space-flight. They are fast, cunning, and deadly. And they are very hard to kill. It was only through the arming of the Krogan that the Citadel races managed to defeat them. The Krogan hunted the Rachni to extinction, following them to their home system and killing every last soldier, worker, and queen.

Or so they thought. During Saren’s attempt to hand the Galaxy over to Sovereign, his agents found a derelict ship adrift in the depths of space. Held in stasis aboard that ship was an egg; a Rachni queen. They took it to Noveria, there to breed in secret an army of Rachni soldiers. But the Queen’s offspring, taken from her care, turned mad, and nearly destroyed the research base. I was there. My team found the station crawling with rabid, armoured insects the size of bears slaughtering every victim that fell into their clutches. The Queen I let live. A caged innocent who had done no wrong, the last member of a sentient race which knew of beauty, I could not murder when mercy was humbly asked. Freed from her confinement, the Queen left for a distant world, there to raise her children in peace, telling them of the mercy granted them. She promised to come to our aid when the Reapers returned.

Instead, we met Rachni among the Reaper forces on Tuchanka. With mutated and grotesque bodies, almost unrecognisable as Rachni, their mechanized joints and the artillery welded onto their backs made clear their exclusive purpose of destruction.

We’re headed toward the Rachni Relay, there to rendezvous with Arlakh Company. We’ll find out what happened to the Krogan scouts that disappeared. If it was Rachni, we must reach the heart of the nest and find the Queen. There are three possibilities. The first is that she lied, and joined the Reapers willingly. The second is that she has been turned, and is no longer a true self. The third is that she is prisoner, bound and controlled. If either of the first two, she must be destroyed. If the latter, she may be saved.

--> We’ve landed at the site of the scouts’ disappearance, on the planet Utukka in the Mulla Xul System. The Krogan of Arlakh Company are led by none other than Urdnot Grunt. The proud great monster baby has come a long way from being a mistrusted “tank-bred.” He now holds command of the finest Krogan fighting team in the Galaxy. His immense carnivorous jaw stretched wide in gleeful pride as he told us of how he’d won his way to command. With him and a troop of his fellows at his back, I’m confident we can tackle anything we find ahead in the tunnels the scouts never came out of.

Night is falling. That shouldn’t matter, we’re headed underground anyway. But for all his eager ferocity, Grunt is as close to worried as I’ve ever seen him. This place smells wrong, he says. And he’s right. But it’s more than the smell. Something about this whole place feels wrong; something warped is lurking beneath. We’re about to plunge into a darkness concealing Heaven-knows what unthinkable horrors.

I’m a marine. This is my job.

Shame Ashley's missing out on this.

--> Mission complete. That Stygian pit was a veritable labyrinth of twisted passages and whispered menace, half-heard sounds alternately approaching and retreating as we pushed forward into the darkness.

We were cut off from the Krogan by a cave-in almost immediately upon entry.

We found webbing first; great, dark strands of clinging blackness that barred entry towards the innards of the caverns. Then we found wires, Reaper nodes, and more artificial barriers blocking access. These lengths and walls of metal, intermittently found along our path into the tunnels, should have seemed less alien and threatening than the webbing and clustered egg sacks they stood amongst. But instead the unnatural metal, undeniably Reaper in origin, screamed silently of an Alien hatred for us, greater than from any organic form we might find.

Then they hit us. From all angles at once, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, dozens, scores of the insecticival monsters poured out upon us. All was blood, bullets, and carnage, and then they were gone; only to return again in even greater numbers when we pushed forward again. That place was crawling with mutated Rachni, the Reapers were breeding an army down there, and we walked right into the middle of it.

We found the Queen. She was herself, prisoner and bound, breeding against her will the offspring that the Reapers warped and weaponized. Her shackles broken, she followed us out of the tunnels with all haste and fear. The Reaper-controlled Rachni would rather destroy her than see her free.

The Krogan team, tough as they were, were hard put to survive. They still retain the numbers to continue as a coherent fighting force, but they took casualties. Grunt himself nearly lost his life charging alone into a horde of Rachni to cover our retreat. He didn’t need to do that. A couple of grenades, rationed and held in careful reserve from the rest of the fighting, finished off the last of the enemy that swarmed after us. I’d thought Grunt dead, having seen him plunge off the side of a subterranean cliff, taking one last enemy with him. But that indomitable reckless wonderful stupid fool pulled his Krogan hide out of there. Covered from hump to hoof in the blood of his crushed foes, Grunt stumbled out after us. That Krogan is hard to kill. It seems even his best efforts can’t achieve it.

The Rachni Queen is now sent to help in the construction of the Crucible. Despite the misgivings of the engineers, her workers, hive-minded as they are, prove quite efficient at whatever task they are assigned.

It is probably in great part due to that hive-minded nature that the Reapers found them uniquely easy to dominate. Given what we know, it is almost certain that the Rachni invasion thousands of years ago was driven by Reaper influence. Even more interestingly, Javik tells us that the Rachni were an active enemy even during his time in the last cycle, fifty thousand years ago. This seems to break the rule of Reaper doctrine, that they defeat, enslave, and eventually destroy all space-faring species present in any given cycle. It seems the Reapers thought the Rachni too much fun to eliminate, the archetypical scary monsters with which to terrorize the Galaxy between cycles.

I dare say the Rachni Queen is embarrassed, to say the least. I’d found her on Noveria a pawn of Sovereign. Rescued and released, she’d promised to return the favour and send aid against the Reapers. Instead, I had to come after her again in very incriminating circumstances, once again rescuing her. She may not have been able to uphold her prior boast of direct military aid, but her children can help us build the Crucible. I don’t think anyone, least of all her now, wants to risk sending any more Rachni against the Reapers. We’ll keep them safely out of the enemy’s reach.

In the meantime, the Reapers have lost their source of Rachi terror-troops. They still have what they’ve already fielded, and may even be able to clone a few more, but they’ll have to ration that resource carefully, instead of flooding every battlefield with giant insect monsters like they’d planned.

The Alliance, hitting the Reapers at any weak spot that presents itself, is still losing ground. The Arcturus Stream, Exodus, Kite’s Nest, Gemini Sigma, and Attican Beta Clusters have all been occupied to one extent or another by Reaper forces. We’re losing resources fast. We need to finish building the Crucible before we lose the means to do so.

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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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15 Opportunity Strikes

--> Priority message from The Illusive Man. A Turian distress signal was intercepted by Cerberus. The message indicates encounter with a Collector vessel. The Turian ship was destroyed, but purportedly managed to disable the Collector ship. This is an unparalleled opportunity to case a Collector vessel for intel, most crucially on how to navigate the Omega 4 Relay.

The Normandy SR1 was torn apart by a Collector ship without even the chance to return fire. Turian military scientists could have developed secret technology capable of disabling a Collector Ship. Theoretically.

The Normandy is en route. We can get there, search the ship, and get out before Turian rescue arrives.

--> Situation confirmed. The rubble of a Turian frigate is drifting near an apparently lifeless Collector ship. The enemy vessel is adrift and devoid of energy signatures. The hull seems oddly undamaged. Could the Turians have used electronic warfare? I don’t know. Something smells fishy here.

There could still be Collectors alive inside the ship, if so they’ll be making repairs as fast as they can. I’m going in with only a small team, Garrus and Grunt. We’ll slip in, link EDI in to the Collectors’ computers, mine for data, get out, and blow the Collector ship to rubble.

--> “It’s a trap!” The distress signal was a fake. The Collectors had destroyed the Turian ship and forged the signal to lure us in. As soon as we linked EDI in to the Collector servers, a virus attempted to cripple the Normandy and the Collector ship began powering up. Swarms of Collectors and Husks closed in on the squad. Had it not been for EDI opening doors for us we would have never survived. Had she not been managing the Normandy’s software defence, we would have had no getaway option. We got out of there just in time, and the second Normandy very nearly suffered the fate of her predecessor.

Turian transmissions use redundant encryption. EDI detected their absence using the same Cerberus protocols The Illusive Man would have when his agents first found the signal. He knew it was a trap and sent us in blind.

I don’t mind walking into a trap to deliberately spring it under the enemy’s nose. I do object to being lied to. I did of course already know The Illusive Man couldn’t be trusted, but I didn’t expect him to deliberately and needlessly endanger a major investment. I am reminded of that old entertainment series Star Trek, when the supremely logical Starfleet officer makes the mistake of assuming his enemies are also logical. If The Illusive Man’s judgement is as compromised as his scruples, the future of Cerberus is not a rosy one.

The interior of the Collector Ship didn’t look like a ship at all; more akin to some form of dark and twisted hive. Pods for holding prisoners lined the ceilings and littered the floors. We found no surviving victims, only their discarded bodies thrown carelessly aside in heaps. Thank goodness that at least their suffering is over. There was room in that ship to hold every Human in the Terminus Systems. The capacity’s implied intent must not, will not, be fulfilled.

A fascinating and horrific discovery was made. The Collectors are not an original species. Segments of their DNA strand matches patterns found in the cryogenic chambers on Ilos; the Collectors are what’s left of the Protheans. The Reapers didn’t even have the decency to outright destroy them. Instead they kept the last Protheans in a twisted and warped form with no semblance of free will, empty husks with no purpose but to serve as the slaves of their own doom. This is the fate that awaits Humans and every other race in the Galaxy should the Reapers succeed again. A clean death and oblivion would be a preferable fate.

This Collector ship was the same one that destroyed the original Normandy. A man would have to be more than blind not to see a pattern here. Could it be purely revenge that motivates the Reaper’s slaves (if that word even has meaning for them) to target me specifically, or could there be more to it? The Illusive Man wanted me alive and free as a symbol. Perhaps the Reapers want to take me alive for much the same reasons, to turn me into a living symbol of their power by taking the one credited with Sovereign’s death and turning him into their slave for all the Galaxy to see. That is not going to happen.

The virus attack and narrow escape notwithstanding, EDI got the information we need. The Omega 4 Relay leads directly into the bull’s-eye centre of the Galaxy. The only possible explanation must be that a small safe zone is carved out in the midst of black holes and exploding suns therein, a pocket in space likely smaller than the standard drift range of most ships, which exit light-speed with a margin of several thousand kilometres. The Collector ships use a form of IFF signal to ensure the Relay places them within the safe zone. Bitter irony that we now know the tool we need was on the ship we just left.

Fortunately the Illusive Man has another bright idea. His scientists have been studying a top secret find hidden in the periphery of a brown dwarf, a derelict Reaper corpse. The team went silent a few months ago, and The Illusive Man hasn’t sent an investigation yet. Given the connection between the Collectors and the Reapers, it is almost certain that the Reaper will have the requisite IFF to navigate the Reaper-forged Relay.

The Illusive Man has made it quite clear he’s willing to endanger our operations by providing faulty information. If he knows anything more about the situation of this dead Reaper and the risks entailed in boarding it, he hasn’t seen fit to tell us. Boarding a Collector ship is one thing, a Reaper is quite another. Sovereign warped people’s will by its sheer presence. Within days, weeks at best, anyone in its vicinity lost themselves to Indoctrination. It is quite possible that The Illusive Man’s survey team suffered the same fate. If the scientists are still alive, it is in a state that precludes even the possibility of rescue. We have no idea who killed this Reaper, only that its death pre-dates the Protheans. If it’s stayed dead this long, hopefully it will stay dead a little bit longer.

The Reapers will come, sooner or later. When that happens, we need be ready for them. We need to improve our weapons and defences, we will need to unite all spacefaring species against the coming invasion. It won’t be easy. Authority figures are determined to disbelieve the Reapers even exist. If Anderson and I can’t find some way to persuade or circumvent the Citadel Council, the Galaxy will remain blind and fractured until it is too late.

One thing at a time. Anderson is doing what he can in official circles to counter the propaganda of safety. My job is to deal with the immediate threat of the Collectors. When we make our move through the Omega 4 Relay, there’s no telling what we’ll find. We’ll be one squad serving the purpose of an army. We have a good team, some of the best fighters in the Galaxy, but we could use more. We also need to make sure that everyone is at their best, no distractions or complications. We’ll need the best tech and upgrades Mordin can conjure up; standard issue weapons and armour won’t do. The Collectors can detect even the stealthy Normandy, and we can’t afford to be chased away like a scared and fangless rabbit again. We need to improve our ship’s armaments, and find some way to toughen up defences enough to survive open combat with a Collector ship. It’s a tall order, but we have no choice. I’ve put the question to the crew about how to best upgrade the Normandy. Garrus and Jacob say they have some ideas. When we put in to dock on Illlium, we can overhaul the Normandy and implement the designs Garrus and Jacob provide. The Illusive Man can take the bill.

I am told Liara is on Illium, working as an information broker. In direct contradiction of what The Illusive Man initially told me, she is hunting the Shadow Broker, not working for him. The Illusive Man seems to have no concern for even pretending to be trustworthy. He’s told me so many lies I’m starting to lose track. He told me the Alliance was ignoring the Collector threat. Ashley and the Horizon garrison were a direct contradiction of that. He told me the Collector ship was disabled. The question I ask myself is no longer “where is he lying” but “where is he telling the truth.”

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14 Distractions... and a Seed

--> Any good soldier knows that, before going to war, any matters at home must be squared away, all distractions dealt with. If unfinished business is left hanging, focus is compromised. When we finally launch through the Omega 4 Relay, we'll be in uncharted territory in the enemy's element without intel, without support, without backup; it will be a mission as dangerous and demanding as any of us have ever seen. There'll be no room for hesitation, no margin for error: every soldier will have to have a clear mind absolutely focused and clear of doubts or regrets. It won't be enough to have the best. They need to all be at their best.

--> Jacob has a missing Father. Ten years gone, and word of his missing ship surfaces. An anonymous message through the Cerberus Network about his father’s ship, the Hugo Gurnesback. Lost for ten years in the Alpha Draconis system, a distress signal suddenly appeared. Jacob doesn’t expect his father to be alive after all this time of radio silence, but he would like to find out just what the heck is going on.

Zaeed Massani wants to attack a refinery held by the Blue Suns. Something about revenge. As the refinery utilizes slave labour, it seems I also have cause to stop by.

A trip to Tuchanka is necessary for both Dr. Solus and Grunt, but for very different reasons. Mordin received word that one of his assistants in a secret STG op, re-establishing the waning Genophage, has been captured by Krogan clan Weryloc and taken to Tuchanka. I immediately agreed to help Mordin effect a rescue. Grunt, for unknown reasons, has begun to grow increasingly anxious and angry, saying he doesn’t know why, only that he wants to kill, rend and destroy, with his hands and teeth. This anger, he said, seemed foreign to him, a sickness rather than a response or choice. Krogan Medicine is not a popular study, and the Krogan are understandably defensive concerning such matters, and only rarely at best consent to divulging relevant information to the galactic public. If a cure to Grunt’s condition can be found, it will be on the Krogan homeworld.

Miranda has with verbalized regret asked for my help. She needs my assistance to oversee the safe relocation of her twin sister, whom she helped escape from their father. She tells me Mr. Lawson is a ruthless man of wealth and ambition set upon defining his legacy, and his daughters were merely tools to that end. Miranda’s sister, Oriana, is on Illium. The scheduled relocation occurs in a few days time. I’ve agreed to bring the Normandy into Illium in time for Miranda to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

Jack has completed her research. She’s found the location of the secret Cerberus base where she was raised, and wants to blow it up. It seems she was taken by Cerberus in her infancy and raised to become a super-biotic. The methods used were horrific. Other children were used as test subjects to ensure that Jack herself would not die from the treatments they inflicted on her. 

Cerberus is composed of isolated Cells, the commanding officer of each answering directly to the Illusive Man. It is a system that allows people like Jacob to believe that, because they personally are doing good things, Cerberus as a whole is good. It is uncertain if The Illusive Man knew the extent and nature of means that Cell was using toward their assigned end, but I suspect he didn’t care to look too closely, so long as they delivered their end product. But instead Jack broke out and tore the place apart. It now lies deserted and empty, an abandoned house of horror that Jack wants to thoroughly and finally obliterate. I can certainly sympathize, and have promised Jack a detour to that end before we make our move through the Omega 4 Relay.

--> The distress signal from the Hugo Gurnesback originated from the planet 2175 Aeia. When we investigated, we found Jacob’s father, Ronald Taylor, the only surviving officer of the ship, the rest of the remaining crew all cognitively compromised. They’d crash-landed on 2175 Aeia, a planet capable of sustaining human life, but providing only toxic food that resulted in significant neural decay. The decision was made to reserve food stores from the ship for the officers who were building the distress beacon, the rest of the crew would have to eat the indigenous plants and hope for treatment upon rescue; a calculated sacrifice of limited scope to ensure the eventual recovery of all concerned. 

 

But in the end, Ronald Taylor had slid into the role of supreme being on the planet through his maintained intelligence and control of the security drones, dominating the camp, turning out the other men, and living for ten years in a harem of the crew women. When after ten years food stores from the ship ran low, and he faced the threat of also surviving on the mind-decaying vegetation, he finally activated the distress beacon. 

 

He is now in Alliance custody with charges pending, his crew in rehabilitative treatment. Jacob has denounced his father and put the matter behind him. For a moment, when we met Ronald Taylor on the planet, I’d thought Jacob was going to kill him. I’m pleased to see he not only had the self possession to refrain without my intervention, but the strength to, once resolved, put the issue behind him.

The tip about the distress signal came from Miranda. She told Jacob that she’d been keeping a promise. It seems those two have more of a history together than I’d thought. Given their disparate characters, I’m not surprised it didn’t work out. Jacob is a true-blue honest and straight-forward chap, a regular brick whose greatest fault lies in trusting too easily, believing that because his own intentions are pure, Cerberus is too. With the likes of Jack and Grunt aboard, he’s far from the most powerful team member, but he and Garrus are the most trustworthy and dependable squadmates I have.

--> It turns out Zaeed founded the Blue Suns, him and his business partner Vido. Vido turned on him and tried to murder him. That was twenty years ago. Now that he’d finally caught up to Vido, Zaeed was so reckless and angry he deliberately set the whole bloody refinery ablaze when we moved in. Consequently we had to devote our immediate attention to saving the slaves from the fire. Zaeed seemed to think it my fault that Vido got away. After I explained to him the principle he had just so clearly demonstrated, the danger in putting personal emotions ahead of the mission, he ruefully consented to fall in line. Hopefully the demonstration of priorities has not been wasted on him.

--> Tuchanka is in the midst of political revolution, as in there is a movement for the clans to stop killing each other and work together. Wrex has been busy over the last two years. Not only did he rise to the position of Chief of clan Urdnot, he’s busy at work trying to establish regular diplomatic ties between the clans, foment alliances and cease constant infighting. I’d known since I first met him that Wrex was, despite possessing the typical ferocity and bloodthirst of his kind, more contemplative and thoughtful between battles than most Krogan, but I never would have expected him to possess the magnetism and will required to compel his warlike kin to put aside traditional animosity and unify in mutual interest of survival.

It seems nothing was strictly wrong with Grunt, he is merely hitting maturity, and was experiencing what was more or less the Krogan equivalent of teenage angst. Upon successfully weathering the Krogan Rite of Passage, a sequenced battle against beasts in an arena that culminated in surviving a Thresher Maw, Grunt was granted full citizenship in the clan, becoming Urdnot Grunt. When told to choose a Battlemaster to serve, Grunt surprised me by declaring me his Battlemaster. It seems that despite our initial cold terms, Grunt has grown fond of his “matchless” commander. I’m touched.

Now having found his place and purpose, Grunt has ceased fearing and resenting his rage, and instead embraced it for its purpose, making him a vicious Krogan warrior with Clan and allegiance. As he puts it, “our enemies are in trouble, Shepard.”

Having touched base with Wrex, calmed Grunt, and solidified respect in clan Urdnot, we can seek out Mordin’s assistant, Maelon.

--> Weyrlock hadn’t captured Maelon. He’d gone to them willingly, to undo his and his teacher’s work by curing the Genophage. He’d stolen the STG Genophage data, and was conducting experiments on living subjects; Human, Turian, Varren, even Krogan. Weyrlock Guld, the clan chief, was a racial supremacist megalomaniac with delusions of destiny, intent upon reviving the Krogan Rebellions and forming a Galaxy-spanning Krogan Empire, killing all Turians and Asari but keeping the Salarians as slaves and food.

Creating the Genophage was arguably the lesser of two evils. I’m glad that the decision to deploy it was never put to me. I can readily understand and sympathize with any Krogan wanting to cure the Genophage, but when the Krogan in possession of a potential cure also possess the intent to “spread across the Galaxy in a sea of blood,” I have no compunctions about shutting down their operation with lethal force.

When we fought our way through the base guards and confronted Maelon, he insisted he was doing the right thing, that the end justified any means to achieve it. Mordin declared his goals unacceptable and his means the same. Had I not intervened, he would have punctuated the sentence with a bullet. 

The research base has been gutted of all data, the servers inside wiped clean.  Weryloc Guld and his guards are dead, Maeolon has been sent packing, and his research is in Mordin’s custody in the Normandy’s lab.

I wonder how long he can keep his hands off it.
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12 Fighter, Mage, and Rogue

--> I’ve recruited three more individuals, each of whom is easily worth a full team by themselves. A genetically-synthesized “perfect” Krogan, Grunt, brutal and deadly. A biotic of extraordinary power, Jack, rumoured to be the mightiest Human biotic alive, and a master thief of unparalleled ability, Kasumi Goto.

The Krogan we had sought out was not Grunt. The scientist who fabricated him, the Warlord Okeer, was one of the only Krogan scientists worthy of note in the galaxy. Furthermore, as one of the few Krogan Warlords to survive the Krogan rebellions, he possessed a millennium of combat experience. But most interesting of all, Cerberus caught wind of him dealing with the Collectors, presumably trading something for technology to help him create a cure for the Genophage. Beyond that, we knew only that he was conducting research at a Blue Suns salvage yard.

But we’d been wrong in our assumptions. Okeer didn’t want to cure the Genopage, he instead sought to create the perfect Krogan, to “inflict upon the Genophage the greatest insult an enemy can suffer: to be ignored.” He had bought technology from the Collectors, and he had paid them in Krogan. He grew thousands of Krogan in vats, selling some to the Collectors, but handing most of them over to the resident Blue Suns commander, Jedor, for use as shock troopers. Okeer didn’t care a whit for the lives of thousands of his kind, no guilt at all for having handed them over to the Collectors, or that Jedor had been unable to control the Krogan given her, and so used them for her troops’ target practice. The only thing Okeer cared about, what he sacrificed his own life for, was his final masterpiece, a single, perfect, Krogan.

We left the research base with no new intel on the Collectors, only the tank holding the Krogan specimen that Okeer had sacrificed thousands of lives, including his own, for. Such wanton waste. This Krogan, Grunt, could be superhuman and not justify the thoroughly amoral means to his making.

When I awoke Grunt from his tank I gave him promise of worthy enemies, and thus have won his temporary loyalty. He will fight for us, for now. Out of all that waste, at least a little benefit will be gained. Let this brutal and battle-hungry great beast of a Krogan vent his potent rage against the Collectors. I take grim pleasure anticipating the carnage he will inflict upon them.

> Jack was being held in stasis aboard the independent prison ship Purgatory. Imagine my disgust to learn that Cerberus was buying her from the Purgatory’s captain, a Turian named Kuril. It seems this procedure of selling useful prisoners is (or I should say was) standard practice on the Purgatory. I agreed to collect Jack, but planned to make it quite clear to her that, once aboard the Normandy, she was free to go if she wished. I’m not about to become a slave trader. But compelling Jack’s compliance would have been impossible anyway. Had she proved intractable, nothing short of a lethal shot would have prevented her from killing us all.

There is no honour among thieves. Kuril betrayed us, and tried to take me and team prisoner. It seems someone had offered him a pretty price for me; I should be very interested to know whom.

When we commandeered the cell block controls for Jack’s level and pulled her out of stasis, she tore through three heavy mechs in her initial charge alone. We pursued her to the docking bay, finding a trail of chaos and mayhem in our way. It seems we accidentally opened all the cells, not just Jack’s. Inmates and guards were killing each other all over the place, both parties were trying to kill us, and anyone, prisoner or guard, who was unfortunate enough to be in Jack’s path didn’t live to tell about it.

From what we saw in that ship, the way the serial killers were abused by their keepers, I have a hard time feeling pity for any aboard the Purgatory. I heard reports of official government forces moved in afterward to restore order. There can’t have been much left for them.

When we caught up with Jack in the docking bay, she initially refused to even consider taking passage aboard a Cerberus vessel, then quickly changed her mind and agreed to join us in return for information, everything we had in our Cerberus files. It seems she and Cerberus have a history. I shall be most interested to hear what she finds.

Looking at the trail of wreckage Jack left behind her, I am prepared to say I have never seen more absolute and widespread destruction inflicted by any one individual. There are doubtless Asari, even Alliance, biotics possessed of more skill and finesse; but for sheer strength and raw destructive power, Jack is without match. When the time comes hit the Collectors with as much hell as possible, she will likely prove the most valuable asset we have.

> Kasumi is the best thief in the galaxy, not the most famous. She has no criminal record of any sort. Cerberus would never have found her had she not contacted them. She agreed to assist in the mission to stop the Collectors, but, in return, asked for help with a heist to recover her old partner’s memory implant. It seems he discovered something big, stole something too important, and paid with his life. But the information was locked away in a memory device, or greybox, as Kasumi called it, inaccessible to anyone but her. It was in possession of organized crime lord Donovan Hock.

Having seen Kasumi’s talents in action first hand, she didn’t need my help at all recovering that greybox. It is clear she brought me along more for the purpose of testing my abilities than anything else. As for her own capabilities, her hacking and decryption skills exceed anything I’ve ever seen before, except perhaps for Tali. Kasumi virtually waltzed through seemingly impregnable security without effort. And in combat, she exhibited stunning feats of athletic prowess, obviously utilizing significant physical enhancements.

The greybox contained both the dangerous information, supposedly something that could implicate the Alliance, even start a war, and memories of Kasumi and Keiji’s time together. Keiji’s memory urged Kasumi to destroy the greybox and all the data inside, otherwise she would become a target for those looking for it.

I would greatly like to know the specifics of the potentially volatile information, but as the danger lay in its revelation, not its continued concealment, and to spare Kasumi the temptation to spend the rest of her life reliving her and Keiji’s past, I urged her to do as he said. I am sorry for her loss, but dwelling upon shards will not restore the broken vase. She needs to come to terms with her lover’s death, and move on.

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