Hello there,
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If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
Shuttle
"Before you meet with the Illusive Man, we need to ask a few questions to evaluate your condition."
"Come on, Miranda? Tests? Now? Shepard took down those mechs without any trouble. That has to be good enough."
Ignoring Miranda and Jacob, who were arguing like a couple, Shepard kicked Wilson in the stomach. "Get up before I throw you out of the door, Wilson."
Wilson stopped pretending and crawled away to the back of the shuttle. "I'll ask this only once: who are you actually working for?"
"Will you let me go if I answer it?"
"You're only alive because I wanted to know who ordered you to kill me. Speak, and I'll let Cerberus deal with you."
"The Shadow Broker. He wanted you dead. I don't know why."
The Shadow Broker? Now this was intriguing to hear.
Now that they had their answer, Mirand shot Wilson again, and Shepard groaned.
"What? You said you would let Cerberus deal with him."
"Yes, and now we have a corpse in the shuttle. Jacob, set up a barrier." This woman needed to learn some restraint.
"Uh, sure." Jacob did as he was told, setting up a biotic barrier to cover the inside of the shuttle. Shepard hacked the security protocols, opened the door, and threw Wilson's body out.
"Next time, don't shoot someone if you are going to spend the rest of a shuttle ride with their cooling corpse."
"I'll be sure to remember that."
"He is good enough, right?"
"Yes."
"Wonderful, now, why don't you two start telling me how exactly I ended up in a Cerberus base?"
—
Apparently his pod got buried beneath ice, and Cerberus found it by chance while searching for any remnants of Collector tech.
His ship was gone, half of his crew was dead, the Alliance had declared him dead, holding a massive statewide funeral, and his team had to disperse.
Garrus was somewhere in Omega, fighting as a vigilante against gangs and mercs; Ashley, Kaidan, and Jenkins were working as a unit.
Wrex was whipping up the Krogan into fighting shape, Liara was still on Illium with her mother and Rana Thanoptis, and Tali was leading a special operations team for the Fleet.
On less eventful news, the Council had not started a massive armament program to fight the Reapers, because some parts of Vigil's memory banks had broken down, only leaving the scientific knowledge it possessed, mostly about the mass relays and the Conduit.
Better than nothing.
Benezia and Thanoptis had not recovered their memories of working for Saren and couldn't be witnesses, and with his death, the Council opted to bury their head in the sand and ignore the mountain of helmet cam records he had given them.
At least the Alliance had shared his laser weaponry and anti-proton torpedoes with the Council, and coupled with the Collector tech from the cruiser, fleets across the Citadel space were getting refits.
Again, better than nothing.
Now, he was supposed to meet the Illusive Man, leader of the terrorist organization Cerberus, because the Alliance had not expected the Collectors to start kidnapping entire human colonies on the outskirts of the territory.
With the majority of the fleets under refit, which had only happened because the Geth outside the Veil were destroyed and there were no further signs of danger, the Alliance couldn't respond to the smaller colonies and only protected the largest ones.
Cerberus was offering cooperation, and Shepard was inclined to accept under the current conditions, and only because they apparently had a stealth ship ready for him.
—
Cerberus Station
They docked at a small station, and without any delays, the Illusive Man wanted to speak to him.
Shepard obliged.
Standing in the comms room as the QEC systems scanned him to create a hologram, on the other hand, Shepard was soon greeted with the sight of the Illusive Man.
Tim took a drag from his cigarette and spoke, his voice flat and calm. "Commander Shepard. We are glad to see you alive and well."
"We?"
"You may not share our vision, but to all of Cerberus, you are seen as a hero—the greatest humanity has ever known, in fact."
Shepard didn't know how to feel about terrorists seeing him as a hero. "Thanks."
"Now, I wanted to talk to you about a matter that we both know of."
"Which would be?"
"That our place in the universe is more fragile than we'd like to think." Tim took another drag before continuing.
"That one man—one very specific man—is the only thing that stands between humanity and the greatest threat to our brief existence."
"The Reapers." How very interesting that the galaxy decided to ignore the threat, while Cerberus took it very seriously.
Tim nodded, but something other than his smoking had garnered Shepard's attention. "Good to see your memory still intact. How are you feeling?"
"Tired from the stasis." He could still kill them all, though.
"Understandable, and may I say, modifying a stasis pod to last two years, while working on limited oxygen, is something that could only be expected of you." TIM's praise sounded genuine.
"You're going to make me blush."
TIM ignored Shepard's sarcasm and continued. "We are at war, one the Alliance can't respond to because of mismanagement."
"Miranda and Jacob filled me in on the Collectors and your offer of cooperation, but what makes you think they are related to the Reapers?" Shepard had spoken to Harbinger, but he was the only one who knew of it. Cerberus either had intel, or they were guessing.
"Sovereign wanted to harvest all life in the galaxy, and hundreds of thousands of human colonists disappearing fit the bill." A logical conclusion and a correct one.
"You are correct in that they are related. I spoke to Harbinger, another Reaper, after clearing out the Collector cruiser."
TIM lowered his cigarette, considering the confirmation that the Collectors were in fact working for the Reapers. "Then you understand better than me that this can't be allowed to continue."
"Alright, let's say we are on the same page. What do you have for me?"
"Your ship is almost ready, but in the meantime, another colony has gone silent, Freedom's Progress. There is a shuttle ready to take you there so you can assess the situation on the ground. Miranda and Jacob will brief you on the rest." Now that they had definitive proof, it was time to gather evidence on how the Collectors operated.
"Alright, I should go then."
—
Freedom's Progress
Miranda was a wonderful conversationalist.
Cue the sarcasm.
Jacob was more revealing in his background, having served in the Alliance as a corsair, an initiative they used for deniable missions when Shepard was busy with something else.
He had given up due to all the red tape, even though the whole operation was supposed to be beyond the rules.
—
"We should be there shortly, Shepard. The Illusive Man put us under your command. Do you have any orders?"
"Keep up and follow my orders. On the other hand, I have some intelligence on the Collectors that may be important if they are still present on the colony."
He still had the cam recordings and showed Jacob and Miranda what he had gathered while on the cruiser, especially the bugs, Collector tactics and tech, and how Harbinger had possessed a Collector, turning it into a heavily shielded biotic powerhouse.
—
They landed on the colony, and it was like a ghost town, with flickering lights, the dead of the night, and not a single soul in sight.
All they needed was creepy music right now.
The Collectors were long gone by the time the shuttle arrived.
He didn't have the materials to repair his pistols, nor a charging station, and had to rely on the M-8 Avenger provided by Cerberus.
The only enemy Shepard and his current team faced was more mechs.
"You two, take out the mechs ahead; I'll deal with the flankers."
He had rested enough to do more daring tricks with his biotics, but his micro-fusion cell was out, so no anti-gravity generator for now.
Launching himself at the LOKI at the top of the stairs, Shepard slammed the remaining mechs at the wall and fired at the downed FENRIS mechs. A chain of explosions coincided with Miranda and Jacob finishing the mechs across the platform.
Logging Miranda's comments about the security systems in other colonies being shut down for later, Shepard and co. pressed forward, stopping to deal with two more mechs right in front of the door of a housing unit before opening the door.
Only to have three Quarians point guns at them.
"Stop right there!"
"Oh, Quarians. Lower your guns." Shepard holstered his rifle, and so did Miranda and Jacob while giving him an incredulous look.
"Praza, I'll handle this." A familiar voice ordered the Quarian trio before she turned to face them.
Seeing Shepard alive and well surprised his Quarian teammates, who couldn't believe their eyes. "Wait, Shepard?"
"I am not taking any chances with Cerberus operatives." Praza still didn't lower his gun, and Shepard slammed the trio to the ceiling, disarming the Quarians before letting them fall.
Ignoring her groaning teammates, Tali took a step closer to Shepard. "Shepard, is that you? You're alive?"
As if the Collectors could kill him. "Of course I am, Tali, but what are you doing here?"
"Tell me something only Shepard would know." It seems Tali learned her lessons on not trusting so easily.
Shepard grinned. "You kept asking me how I made micro-fusion cells, and I said I would tell you once you were grown up."
If Tali was blushing, he couldn't see it because of the mask. "Ancestors, it is you, but how?"
"Long story made really short, I survived the Collector cruiser's self-destruction, put myself in a stasis pod to wait for rescue, which got buried beneath ice, Cerberus found me, and now we are working together to stop the Collectors because the Alliance messed up." Shepard gave a quick explanation of what happened after Normandy's destruction and how he ended up here with Cerberus.
Shepard glanced at the not-so-sneaky Quarian trio as they reached for their weapons. "Next time, it'll hurt." They froze, like an Elcor caught in headlights.
Miranda didn't seem to care about letting two friends catch up. "I would like to know what the Quarians are doing in a human colony."
Tali narrowed her eyes, but if Shepard hadn't killed them yet, he must have a good reason. "One of our people was here on pilgrimage. His name was Veetor; we came to find him."
"If Veetor survived the attack, he might be able to tell us what happened." As in, how did the Collectors manage to take the entire colony without firing a single shot?
Tali agreed. "That's the hope. We've seen him, but he might not be in the best state to answer questions. He was injured and, ah, nervous—"
Prazza was finally willing to act civilly and gave a blunter answer. "She means that he was unstable. Combine that with damage to his suit's CO₂ scrubbers and an infection from an open-air exposure, and he is most likely delirious."
"When he saw us landing, he hid in a warehouse on the far side of the town. We suspect he also programmed the mechs to attack anything that moved."
"Alright, we'll find him together; if he can tell us what happened, that's good, but if not, there is nothing to do." Being a Quarian on a pilgrimage wasn't easy, much less when you were stuck on a planet under attack by an enemy that neutralized the entire colony without any resistance.
He wouldn't make things harder for the kid.
"Good idea. Two teams can clear the area faster."
"Now we are working with Cerberus?" Prazza scoffed, and Tali turned to him, taking an aggressive step that stopped Prazza dead in his tracks.
"No, Prazza, you're working for me. If you can't follow orders, go wait on the ship; otherwise, shut up." My, the little Quarian was all grown up and asserting her authority.
She left Prazza standing there like an idiot before turning to Shepard to inform him of her plan. "Head for the warehouse through the center of the colony. We'll circle around the far side and draw off some of the drones to clear you a path."
"Alright, keep in radio contact."
"Will do. Good luck, Shepard; we'll see you on the far side." Not that Shepard needed luck, but Tali would offer it nonetheless.