by Joan Jett
“Tali, what kind of security do they have?” asked Shepard.
The quarian worked with her omni-tool. “Short-range radar and exterior cameras to cover the approaches. Rocket turrets too. No way to get to the entrance on foot . . . unless . . .”
“What is it?”
“This rain has got to be hard on exposed electronics. Anything that moves, like a camera or a radar antenna, can’t be completely sealed against this kind of environment. They must be accustomed to minor breakdowns. I could send a drone down to overload some of the circuits, just enough to open a gap in their sensor coverage for a few minutes. That would give us time to infiltrate.”
“Do it.”
Tali reached into a pocket and produced a small device. She interfaced with it through her omni-tool for a few moments before releasing it into the air. It zoomed away down-slope, staying close to the ground as it flew. “Go get them, Chiktikka,” she murmured.
I caught Shepard’s eye through his visor, and saw him smiling in amusement for just a moment.
We waited for several tense minutes, staying behind the ridgeline while Tali monitored her drone’s progress and issued commands through her omni-tool. Finally she nodded in satisfaction. “That’s done it. There’s a blind spot in their coverage, wide enough for us to reach this side entrance on foot.”
Icons appeared on each of our HUD displays: the entrance Tali had designated and a path across the open terrain.
“All right, everyone stay sharp,” Shepard commanded. “We’re going in.”
Shepard, Ashley, and Wrex led off, descending the far slope and setting out across the open ground at a fast jog. Tali and I followed, trying to look in every direction at once. Garrus brought up the rear. I felt horribly exposed as we crossed the open terrain, expecting alarms to sound and rocket turrets to open fire at any moment. Tali had done her work well, though, and we approached the facility with no sign of any opposition. Tali began to work on the secure airlock we had chosen for our point of entry.
When Joker’s voice sounded over our helmet radios, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Uh, Commander, I’m suddenly picking up a lot of radio chatter out of that place.”
“Have they detected us?” demanded Shepard.
“You know, I don’t think they have. Wait one.” There was silence, then: “No, it’s not that. There’s a shuttle inbound to the facility, looks like they’re going to be landing at the far side, a couple klicks from your position.”
“Should we abort, Commander?” asked Ashley.
“No, we’re going to stick to the plan. Joker, you and Kaidan be ready to come in hot if we yell.”
“Roger that, Commander,” said the pilot.
The airlock control panel turned green. We entered into the belly of the beast.
Chapter 22 : The Hound's Lair
17 April 2183, Cadmus Station/Binthu
We emerged from the airlock into a small, dimly lit staging area. Environmental suits hung in racks to either side, while cases labeled for electronic and mechanical tools rested on the floor. Apparently this airlock saw little use, mostly serving Cerberus personnel who had to go out onto the surface for repair work. Certainly we found no one there when we arrived.
Tali quickly located a surveillance camera and hacked into its control circuitry, looping an image of the empty room before our arrival. Unfortunately she found no computer or network access panel to work with. Shepard decided to risk infiltrating further, looking for an office or other workspace. He listened carefully at the main door, and then had Tali open it while he and Ash took a quick look beyond.
We moved down a short corridor, slowly and quietly, keeping close to the walls. The stark white walls had compartment numbers, labels, and the Cerberus logo painted everywhere. I decided I didn’t like the Cerberus aesthetic, much too stark and utilitarian, with no thought for beauty or ease. At least we found the labels useful. We moved away from EMERGENCY SURFACE ACCESS and toward EXTERIOR MAINTENANCE, SURFACE SECURITY, and LIFTS.
We came to a turn in the corridor. Shepard suddenly held up a fist, a signal I had learned meant stop and be quiet.
I heard a voice, human male, approaching our position.
“Damn cameras are always going out, and then we have to go out in that crap and fix them, and then they go out again. I don’t see the point. They’ve never spotted anything.”
“Orders,” said another voice, also a human male.
Shepard caught Ash’s eye, pointed to his eyes, held up two fingers, drew his hand across his throat. Ash gave a thumb-up gesture.
“To hell with orders,” said the first voice. “We’re out on the ass-end of the galaxy, sitting on a planet nobody could possibly want. Nobody ever comes here.”
Two humans appeared around the bend in the corridor. They had just enough time to widen their eyes before Shepard and Ash uncoiled and struck with brutal violence.
“There’s irony, if you want some,” murmured Garrus.
“Wrex, Garrus. Get these two down to the staging area where we came in, and push them through the airlock,” Shepard ordered quietly.
“Shepard!” I objected, but Garrus and Wrex had already begun to obey.
“They’re already dead, Liara. If they have tracers on them, I want those tracers showing up outside.”
I set my jaw and nodded. They weren’t unarmed and helpless, I told myself. All they had to do was sound an alarm. Don’t be too fastidious when you’re surrounded by people who will gladly kill you if given the chance.
We turned the corner and moved further down the corridor, approaching EXTERIOR MAINTENANCE. Once again Shepard stopped us. Then he and Ash moved forward like heavily armored ghosts, crouching below a transparent panel set into about ten meters of the corridor wall. They reached a door, took up positions on either side, and then leaped through as it opened.
Moments later, Ash reappeared in the corridor, waving us onward.
I stepped into an electronics and machine shop, currently occupied by two dead technicians, apparently not a very busy place even when living personnel manned it. I saw half-empty coffee mugs, an ashtray containing several dead cigarettes, and evidence of a card game abandoned in mid-play.
Shepard set Ash to watch the corridor, with orders to have Garrus and Wrex join her once they returned from their errand. Tali and I located a computer and began breaking into the facility’s network. Let me correct that: Tali began breaking into the facility’s network, while I watched and made the occasional helpful comment. Once again I was amazed at the quarian’s cyberwarfare skills.
“Hmm. Cerberus is actually somewhat competent when it comes to network defense,” she observed after a time. “This network is air-gapped from the main administrative and operational networks.”
“What can we tell about what they’re doing here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. They’ve been doing maintenance on a lot of equipment I don’t recognize.”
I leaned close, watching the data scroll past on the screen. “I do. Most of it has to do with genome sequencing, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and cybernetic enhancement. This must be a research facility.”
“Not what one might expect from a terrorist group,” observed Shepard.
“It does remind me of what we saw on Noveria.”
He grunted, his expression thoughtful.
“Saren wanted to raise the rachni as an army,” said Tali. “Is that what Cerberus is after too?”
“It would make sense,” Shepard said slowly. “What little we know about them says they’re not seeking simple political change within the Alliance, like an ordinary terrorist group. They’re human supremacists, seeking human domination over the galaxy as a whole.”
I frowned. “What arrogance. Humans have been members of galactic society for less than thirty years. Admittedly your people have made a great deal of progress in a short time, but to think of ruling the galaxy?”
“You’ll get no argument from me. M
ore important is what they’re trying to accomplish here. I think Tali is right. They’re looking for ways to build or improve a military capability.”
“Assuming that’s so, what are your orders?”
He grinned. “We shut this place down.”
“How?”
“Still working on that. Tali, what more can you get from the maintenance network?”
Tali looked up. We could hear but not see her smile. “How about a map of the entire facility?”
We soon had Tali’s map loaded onto all of our omni-tools. Cerberus apparently called their Binthu facility Cadmus Station, a reference I found obscure. Three sub-facilities each housed about a hundred personnel: scientists, technicians, armed guards, and administrators. They rested several kilometers apart, connected by tramways, rather like the labs on Noveria. Each of them apparently supported a different research project. Presumably Cerberus saw the same need to contain each project if it got out of hand.
Shepard wanted to get closer to the working area of our facility, to see for himself what work was being done. That would normally have required the use of a secure lift, carrying a very high risk of detection. Instead Tali located a maintenance access running parallel to the lift shaft. If we could reach that, we would be able to climb down and emerge very close to an observation platform above the main research area.
We moved back out into the corridors, Tali continuing to hack surveillance systems as we went. Twice we had to stop while Cerberus personnel used the corridor ahead of us, but none of them noticed our presence. Soon we paused a few meters from the main lifts, around a corner where we would not easily be seen. Shepard opened an access panel, exposing the maintenance shaft.
Wrex pushed forward and looked down the shaft. “Better let me go first,” he muttered. “Krogan are no good at heights, and if I fall you don’t want anyone below me.”
Shepard nodded. “Wait at the bottom until Ash and I get there.”
“Right.” Somehow the krogan folded himself into the small opening and began his descent.
The climb down covered less than twenty meters. None of us had serious difficulty, although I could hear Tali muttering fearfully to herself as she swung out onto the ladder. Wrex and Shepard had to crowd together once they reached the floor of the narrow shaft. Wrex grumbled in irritation, but became silent after a sharp glance from Shepard, who listened carefully at the access panel before slowly easing it aside.
One by one, we emerged onto a darkened observation platform.
We found ourselves on a flat ring platform, about three meters wide with an inner diameter of about thirty meters, placed around and above a large work area that we could not see from our point of entry. The main lift opened out onto the platform not far away to our right. Two ramps connected to the platform, one hundred and twenty degrees away from the lift on either side, leading down to the work area about ten meters below. The platform had a chest-high railing wall of steel and ceramic, but above that a thick transparent partition stretched almost to the chamber’s roof. A few computer terminals stood around the inner edge of the platform, all of them currently inactive. We had the dimly lit platform to ourselves. I guessed most of the Cerberus scientists and technicians took the lift straight down to the work floor, rarely using the platform.
We moved silently up to the inner edge and peeked over the wall to see what was in the work area below.
Wrex made a disgusted sound. “I told you,” he growled, just loud enough for Shepard to hear.
The work area contained a set of laboratories, arranged radially from the center, each with its own team of scientists and its own equipment. I counted at least thirty workers on the floor. Around the outside of the space, set into the rock walls, we saw cages closed by kinetic barriers.
Each cage held a rachni warrior.
“All right, how did these guys get rachni?” demanded Garrus.
“Possibly from Noveria,” I suggested. “Cerberus might have infiltrated the research team there and diverted some of the rachni here for their own study.”
“Let’s move around the edge of the platform, and get away from the lift,” said Shepard. “Tali, see if you can get into one of these computer terminals, without turning on the display and giving away our position.”
He and Ash led the way around, all of us following, carefully avoiding showing ourselves above the opaque wall. The sight of Wrex creeping along the floor amused me, although I had to admit he was quite stealthy when he wanted to be. After a few moments we had broken any line-of-sight from the lift if it happened to open on our level. Tali reached one of the computer terminals on its pedestal, opened an access panel, and began to work with her omni-tool and an array of tiny electronic devices.
Not a moment too soon. Behind us we heard the lift come to life. Someone was coming down to the observation platform or the lab floor.
“Shepard, we’re in luck,” said Tali. “This terminal is connected to the administrative and research networks.”
“Good. See what intel you can pull down from their systems.” Suddenly Shepard’s face became almost preternaturally calm, his eyes steely gray, as if an inspiration had struck him. “Do you think you could release some kind of virus into their networks? Something capable of taking a specific action across all their systems when we give a command?”
“Sure. What do you want to do?”
“I want to lower every kinetic barrier in this entire station, all three facilities, at the same time.”
Tali turned to stare at him for a moment. “That’s . . . clever. Yes, I think I can do that.”
“Good. Get to work.”
The lift passed our level and kept going. I saw Ash and Garrus ease out the breath they had been holding as they watched the lift doors on our level. I lifted my head just far enough to watch the doors down on the lab floor. They opened and a party of four humans stepped out onto the lab floor.
Two uniformed security guards, faceless behind visored helmets, remained in the rear of the group. An older male, grey-haired and bearded, wore a scientist’s coat very like most of the workers already on the floor. He spoke at length to the fourth member of the group, a female human.
A very striking female human, I realized as I looked twice.
She reminded me a little of Sha’ira, perhaps a little taller and more generously curved, but with the same effortless grace. She wore a bodysuit unlike anything I had seen thus far from Cerberus, pure white with black accents, closely hugging her shape. She had shoulder-length black hair, very pale complexion, features combining gamin charm with easy sensuality . . . and the coldest blue eyes I had ever seen on any human.
I watched the body language of the other humans on the lab floor. The older scientist deferred to her. Most of the other scientists and technicians avoided her gaze, as if they feared her. The armed guards positioned themselves to provide her with the greatest possible security.
That woman is obviously very important within Cerberus . . . and probably very dangerous.
I glanced over at Shepard. He looked back and nodded. He had seen her, had made his own dispassionate appraisal of her significance.
“Tali, we may not have much time,” he murmured. “How’s it going?”
“The virus is in place and spreading through their systems,” the quarian reported. “Data-mining their network is proving more difficult than I expected. Their network surveillance is very good, and I have to piggyback all my communications on hijacked administrator sessions. That slows me down a lot.”
“Keep at it, but be ready to pull out fast. I think a VIP is here, and she doesn’t look like anybody’s fool.”
Indeed, a few minutes later I saw the moment when the visitor understood something out of the ordinary was taking place. One of the technicians interrupted her conversation with the older scientist, pointing to her computer terminal, making urgent gestures, and saying something we couldn’t hear.
The woman in white opened her omni-tool and tapped a
t it. Suddenly her gaze speared upward, right to where we hid in the shadows far above.
Shepard reached out and gently placed a hand on the quarian’s shoulder. “Tali. Now.”
Tali triggered a control sequence on her omni-tool.
Down on the lab floor, eight kinetic barriers faded into nothingness.
Eight rachni warriors leaped out of their cages into the lab space.
Shepard and Ash immediately leaped to their feet and ran for the head of the nearest ramp, Garrus and Wrex moments behind. Tali disconnected from her terminal, and the two of us took up the rear.
I glanced down to the lab floor and immediately wished I hadn’t. Most of the Cerberus scientists were unarmed and unarmored. The rachni warriors tore through them like so much damp tissue paper. The lab floor, so clean and orderly a few moments before, now resembled an abattoir. I fought the sudden urge to retch.
Alarm klaxons blared, red lights flashed, and an enormous voice sounded. “Security alert! Loss of biological containment in habitats Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.”
Shepard, Ashley, and Wrex took up a position at the head of the ramp. Ashley and Wrex used assault rifles to wreak further chaos down on the lab floor. Shepard settled in with his sniper rifle and began to pick off Cerberus personnel who tried to escape up the ramps or into the lift. He immediately fell into what he called the zone, that state of consciousness in which he was capable of hit after flawless hit.
“Security alert! Loss of biological containment in habitats Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Armed intruders present in habitat Alpha. Security reinforcements report to the lab floor in habitat Alpha.”
Across the open space, I heard the lift begin to move.
A high-pitched battle cry sounded from the lab floor. I looked down just in time to see the white-clad visitor blazing with blue-white light, a heavy piece of lab equipment flying through the air toward Shepard’s position.
A biotic!
Almost without thought I called up my own corona, catching the missile and deflecting it to one side. It struck the transparent panel and shattered it, creating an enormous hole and causing a rain of shards in all directions. Shepard, Ash, and Wrex all ducked and rolled.