42 Defectors and Crime Syndicates

--> It’s easy to forget that not all of the combat-ready forces of the galaxy are government-sanctioned fleets and armies. Besides local militias and makeshift civilian resistance, there are also the criminal elements, from local gangs to galaxy-class mercenary bands. The Blue Suns, Eclipse, and Bloodpack are the three most powerful and well organized of these disreputable brigands. They have thus far taken but little part in the Reaper war, beyond of course avoiding the Reaper invasion front and taking advantage of whatever resources become exposed. If they could be recruited, it would add a welcome boost to our combat-ready forces in this everywhere and everything against the Reapers.

There are two difficulties with such a plan. The first is getting them to cooperate with our command structure. The second is getting them to work together without tearing each other’s throats out. They are, after all, criminals, and have fought each other perhaps even more than the authorities.

As fortune would have it, the second difficulty seems to be clearing itself up already.
Prior to expulsion by Cerberus from her seat of power on the pretentiously named waste bin of Omega, Aria T’Loak was the biggest crime boss on that station, the centre of criminal enterprises in the whole of the Terminus Systems. Despite her sour disposition, Aria was an unusually pragmatic crime boss, providing what little security and stability Omega had. She’s currently trying to unite the Blue Suns, Bloodpack, and Eclipse under her rule. She's smart enough to realise that it’s in her interest to help combat the Reaper threat, and that she has the means to rally these disparate factions into a joint force for that purpose; and her own personal power of course.

Under any other circumstances, helping a crime lord amass more power would be a capital offence, but we need more guns on the ground, and Aria’s coalition presents an opportunity to take advantage of a resource that would otherwise be very difficult to utilize. I am officially requesting permission from Alliance Command to proceed with perhaps the most unorthodox mission ever undertaken by an Alliance officer.

--> Orders received. I am authorized to solidify Aria's control of the Terminus gangs, and ordered to take all reasonable measures to obtain Aria's cooperation against the Reapers.

As part of our deal with T’Bitch, I will help her retake Omega and its stores of Ezo. The Cerberus occupation force there is commanded by Oleg Petrovsky, one of the Illusive Man’s top military strategists. He should prove a tough nut to crack. Aria has made it clear she cannot operate with my combat team. She named no names, but it seems perfectly obvious the individual in question is Garrus. Archangel united the merc bands once before in a group effort to kill him. Bringing my best friend along would in this particular case be inadvisable.

I’m leaving the Normandy under Ashley’s command: her orders are to continue running standard interference against Reaper occupation forces. Williams knows the ship and crew, and should have little difficulty keeping the Normandy intact and her crew alive.

I can't say I'm looking forward to seeing Omega again. Aria's company is also something I'd hoped to avoid. It's no accident such a waspish and unprincipled individual feels at home on that filthy rock.

--> Aria's coalition has breached the Cerberus defence fleet and engaged the entrenched enemy in a street-to-street, door-to-door fight through the dark and dirty streets of Omega, the garish and neon lights of shady vendors illuminating a gruelling and savage fight between mutated soldiers and murderous hoodlums. The run-of-the-mill gang warfare of Omega has merely been replaced by an augmented and intensified variant, one where the usual factions have been united by the intrusion of a new adversary, the jack-booted control of Cerberus domination.

We've got our first foothold, now it's time to make our next move. Cerberus has blocked off most of the avenues of advance with energy barriers. Aria's engineers are trying to find a way to bypass control directly, but with little success. There are, however, chinks in the armour. A small team can bypass the barriers through maintenance routes without attracting attention. Aria's ensuring all teams are ready to assault the moment the shields go down.

--> I've received an encrypted transmission from Ashley. She's caught wind of some Cerberus defectors on the run in the Minos Wasteland, and is taking the Normandy in to investigate. Apparently she found it necessary to correct Javik's assumption that the goal is to kill the defectors.

She also relayed a surprising update from Hackett. The Crucible is being built far faster than I'd anticipated; Alliance engineers have through herculean effort completed perhaps fifty percent of the known work. Once decoded, the plans are easily translated for seamless construction. But even at this late hour, we still don’t know how it will utilize the massive power it stores. The means for its application, the Catalyst, is still a complete mystery.

Despite being our single most well-informed expert on Protheans, never in all of her work did Liara find anything regarding the Catalyst, and neither her extensive network of intelligence nor any government and their official archives hold a solid lead on what it might be. Javik is himself a Prothean soldier, and doesn't know squat; not surprising as this Catalyst was obviously a tremendous military secret of the Protheans. They apparently safeguarded this secret very well. So well perhaps, we may never discover it.

What an incredible irony. We've discovered and are well on our way to completing the designs for this Prothean super-weapon, only to have the same security of knowledge that preserved the plans for our time prevent us from finding the last and crucial component. Could such success be achieved only to be thwarted by one final, obstinate, detail? God send that our fate will not prove so fickle.

--> Aria and I have made contact with an old friend of hers. Nyreen Kandros, ex Turian military, it seems she and Aria have a history. Apparently they parted ways when their incompatibilities grew more clear than infatuation. In Aria's sneering words, Kandros “practically oozes virtue.” It's hard to see how this upright Turian soldier found anything compelling in Aria. I personally find our Asari confederate to be a pain in the neck.

Kandros is running an underground network of militants in opposition to the Cerberus occupation. They call themselves the Talons. She's agreed to coordinate with our assault, on the condition that we ensure the safety of civilians. It seems she not only commandeered this local gang she now commands, she's whipped them into shape to resemble a regular militia, uniformed and orderly. The ranks all seem to bear a strong loyalty for their leader. They speak of her with genuine regard, and salute with more than token spirit as she passes by. I admit I'm impressed Kandros successfully transformed what had been an ordinary gang of lowlifes into a disciplined and conscientious defence force that prioritizes safety of civilians over their own lives.

All forces are set. Petrovsky's defences are waiting for us. He thinks this is a game of chess. He's about to find out that his enemies don't play chess. They play dirty.

This is going to be bloody.

--> Operation complete. Omega is under Aria’s control. The Cerberus forces there have been driven out, Petrovsky taken prisoner. Aria had wanted to kill him, and I’d have had no objection, but she let him live long enough to surrender. Given that he’d ordered his men to stand down and formally asked for quarter, I could not in good conscience stand by while Aria strangled him. Aria and I nearly came to blows when I demanded she desist. But the matter is resolved, and Aria will be sending Omega’s considerable supply of Ezo to the Alliance, in addition to fielding her forces alongside the Alliance soldiers in combat.

Kandros is dead. She sacrificed herself to save civilians from Cerberus monsters. It appears Cerberus is not content merely to modify their soldiers using Reaper methods, they’ve begun going the whole hog and manufacturing monsters of their own design from the bodies of prisoners. It is becoming more and more obvious that, whatever the Illusive Man’s original intentions were, Cerberus is irredeemable. Everything the Reapers are doing, Cerberus is doing, only slower.

With Kandros gone, it's unclear what will happen to her followers. The Talons will almost certainly fall under Aria's command. Whether they will maintain their own structure and discipline without their leader remains to be seen. Omega needs Kandros. One hopes her example, her spirit, will not be forgotten. I've sent a report to the Turian military, with a recommendation for Kandros' posthumous exoneration and commendation.

I now take my leave of Aria, and Omega. Normandy awaits!

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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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35 Survivor

--> Cerberus just gets worse and worse. They’re carrying out a full-scale attack on Eden Prime. This isn’t just a raid, hit and run. This is an occupation. Our forces are overtaxed as it is, and the resistance on Eden Prime has had but minimal aid from the Alliance.

Hackett has issued a priority order to the Normandy. Cerberus is looking for something specific on Eden Prime. Something Prothean. We don’t know anything else at this time, but anything Prothean is by definition worthwhile, and if Cerberus has devoted a full-scale invasion and occupation force in search of this artifact, it must something big.  Guess there was more to that dig in 83 than we'd thought.

--> Mission complete. It wasn’t a Prothean artifact Cerberus was after. It was an actual Prothean. Years ago we’d found Prothean stasis pods on Ilos. Those failed from power loss. This one didn’t. Out of thousands of Protheans sleeping deep beneath the surface of Eden Prime, one survived. We found a living Prothean.

He calls himself Javik. He possesses telepathic ability even more advanced than that of an Asari, more or less the same method by which the Beacons communicated their message, and can after only brief contact speak English fluently, if contemptuously. This bitter and surly fellow constantly refers to the “primitives” that surround him with intense disdain.

He’s a soldier, not a scientist or an engineer, and knows no more than we about the Prothean super-weapon. Nevertheless his help will prove invaluable. He cannot tell us how best to build it or what it does, but he can provide us with accurate translation for the Prothean script the plans are provided in. Even Liara, our best Prothean expert, knows only a little of the Prothean language. Getting full translation of the instructions will cut short the decryption process and allow construction to begin immediately.

Beyond that, Javik’s true power lies in what he represents. After the Battle of the Citadel and the destruction of Sovereign, I was seen as the embodiment of Humanity’s defiance of the Reapers. When I died, The Illusive Man moved mountains to have me revived (while he was still interested in fighting the Reapers), to ensure that the symbol of the Reaper’s failure was seen alive and fighting. By that same principle, Javik represents the defiance of the entire Prothean race; he is the Survivor of his cycle, living proof of the Reapers’ failure to exterminate his kind.

Javik has agreed to fight alongside us against the Reapers. For now, staying with the Normandy offers optimal exposure, both diplomatic and combat. Future arrangements can occur if necessary. Once the upcoming summit is complete and the terms of cooperation between the species have been determined and agreed upon, Javik will be asked to either go to the Citadel for diplomatic employment, or join the frontlines at a point of his choosing. I sincerely doubt Javik will be inclined to sit quietly on the Citadel giving speeches while there are Reapers to be killed. That maverick means business.

Garrus told me of a Turian proverb: if even one survivor is left standing after a war, it was not in vain. In this context, that saying holds true. Let the whole Galaxy see the Survivor of the last cycle alive and fighting. Let the Reapers know of their failure. It is yet to be determined whether or not they can feel fear. We shall see.

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34 The Means of Resistance

--> There’s something not quite right here. A vague doubt has been growing in the back of my mind for several weeks, with precious little time to spare for examination; only now that I turn to address it do I comprehend the astounding weight of its implications.

To the best of our knowledge, a certain pattern has remained an absolute constant in the execution of every Reaper invasion: across all previous cycles, the Reapers commenced their invasion by signalling the Citadel Keepers to open the station, actually a large mass relay, to where the Reapers hid in dark space. The Reapers would then surge through and capture the Citadel, and through it, control of the entire Mass Relay network. All movement, all communication, between star clusters instantly shut down, each star system isolated and vulnerable, each fleet and world a hanging fruit for the Reapers to pluck at their leisure. So it was for the Protheans before us.

But unlike previous cycles, the Protheans successfully laid the groundwork for the survival of the next cycle. A team of Prothean scientists hidden in a top-secret research bunker on the planet Ilos survived the Reaper invasion, suspending themselves in stasis until the centuries-long harvesting of the galaxy was complete, and the Reapers withdrew back to dark space. The surviving scientists, no more than a dozen in number, completed their design on Ilos: a small-scale secondary-class Mass Relay, aimed right into the heart of the Citadel. A one-way trip, they went to the Citadel, and rewrote the Keepers’ reception protocols, rendering Reaper signals meaningless.

When the time for our Reaper invasion came, when Sovereign, the Reaper assigned to hide in the Galaxy and choose the time, signalled the Keepers to open the Citadel, they ignored him. So he sought another way into the Citadel, a Turian Spectre named Saren Arterius. With an army of Geth at his back, Saren boarded the Citadel through the Prothean relay, or Conduit as they called it. A fierce battle ensued in and around the Citadel, with the timely arrival of the Alliance fleets putting an end to the Reaper, driving off his Geth like so many jackals. The Reaper invasion had been thwarted. For a time.

The Reapers were denied their easy one-step trip back into the heart of the Galaxy, but they still had other means. They began the long trek on foot, so to speak, and arrived here after three years of FTL space travel. Their course took them through Batarian space first, but their primary goal was the homeworld of those minuscule insolents responsible for the death of Sovereign: Earth.

The Reapers are an arrogant breed, and resented in the extreme the temerity of primitive and puny Humans successfully thwarting them. But once Earth was taken, why not proceed with their established strategy? Once into the Relay network, they could reach the Citadel in less than twenty-four hours. Why on Earth are they instead crawling through the Galaxy in their gruesome conquest upon our people while still leaving us the means to manoeuvre? They could still seize the Citadel, and through it the Relays. But this time around, they have so far completely ignored the Citadel. It cannot be through idiocy; Reapers are cunning and adaptive, and would never abandon in entirety a tried-and-true strategy because the first step was compromised. It cannot be through hubris; the Reapers are taking losses only because our fleets can still mass, evade, and strike where they choose.

The only possible solution is that something has changed about the Citadel. This change must have occurred after the battle against Sovereign. I know for a fact that the Citadel’s control of the Relay network was in place at the time of that battle: Saren used it to lock out all Relay access to the Citadel to prevent both escape and reinforcement, and I used the same means to open the Relays again for the Alliance Fleet.

So what happened? Is that control blocked somehow? Could it be that, despite their denial, for all of their adamant insistence that Reapers were a myth and Sovereign an isolated threat, the Citadel Council actually did something about it? That they realised their greatest strength, the Citadel’s control of the Relays, was also their greatest weakness, that should any enemy accomplish what Saren so nearly achieved, all resistance across the Galaxy would be crippled and blind? Did the Council uncouple the Citadel from control of the Relays?  If so, then we owe our only means of resistance to the Citadel Council.

I have no conclusive evidence, but this hypothesis matches all of the available data, and explains an otherwise inexplicable mystery.

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