Chapter 34. Last Will
As a result, we stayed on Lesussa for another three hours until Rila and Falere were ready to leave their mother again. I also talked to them and even unnoticed by the monastery guards, I handed over a couple of communicators for more frequent communication with Samara, bypassing the rules when escorting the asari back to the planet. There, of course, I had to tinker and connect them to the local network as communication devices of the monastery, so as not to raise the alarm of the temple by detecting an unauthorized attempt to communicate with an unknown device, but this was a short-lived matter, and the girls were very grateful. When I refine the nanites to the required level, the first thing I will do is cure Samara's daughters.
Having said goodbye to Ardat-Yakshi, we finally left the planet without any particular purpose. Well, at least it seemed so, I was extremely tense, although I tried not to show it, I even remained in my combat exo-armor. The urgent news that Erada watched about the successful prevention of a terrorist attack on one of the central asari planets helped a little to distract him. In general, Victoria's art has already been broadcast on all government channels, only they were attributed not to a hijacked corporate heavy frigate, but to the valiant fleet of the space forces of the Azari Republics.
Actually, the turian was so absorbed in the news that she did not notice how I turned in the pilot's seat to the girls sitting not far from me with a large-caliber pistol lying on their knees. But the justiciar noticed and tensed.
"Hey, Ivon, we're having some communication problems," the turian noted when the signal from the communication hub disappeared and the news report was cut off.
True, she discovered the reason, which turned out to be the blocking of all incoming and outgoing signals of the ship by the captain of Victoria, quite quickly, and as soon as she finally raised her head, her partner's gaze became intense. —Ivon, what's going on?—.
In response, I extended my hand and unclenched my fist, causing the deactivated bugs previously held in it to fall onto the floor.
"Ivon, it's not me!" Erada immediately jumped up, but instantly froze when the barrel of my six-shooter gun was pointed in her direction.
"Sit down," he forced the drooping turian woman to return to her chair. -I know it's not you. It was not difficult to compare the results of the ship's diagnostics and video recordings of the interior, and by a strange coincidence, at about the same time they appeared, our new friend walked through the same places.—.
After my words, the asari sitting not far from us jumped up, covered in biotics, but instantly calmed down: a machine gun on the back module, which a few hours ago had torn asari and combat robots to pieces, aimed straight at the face, triggered a tub of ice water, instantly adding prudence and caution to Cynthia, forcing her to sit down back.
"However, this incident forced me to check the personal terminals, instrumenttrons and communicators of all Victoria passengers. During our first meeting, I was too depressed to pay attention to such trifles, but in vain. Do you know what I discovered? You both have the same communication ID code in your contacts. And if you called him the unremarkable name of your detective office, then Cynthia didn't bother leaving him under the name of the Shadow Broker," he shared with the girls. -Are you even a justiciar, or is that also a lie?—.
- Justiciar! At least she was. But the justiciars are too constrained by their code, so I left them. Sometimes in order to achieve something you need to act a little...more flexible. Not to kill the terrorist after refusing to tell where the bomb is planted, but he won't tell him to torture him yet. Don't drive the slave traders out of the Azari sector, but pursue them to the edge of the galaxy if necessary and destroy them," admitted the darkened Asari. "And I started working with the Mediator because his information helps deal with threats preventively, and not deal with the consequences. How did you even find them on such a large ship with such a small crew?—.
"I see." The asari said, ignoring the question and activating the particle emitter in his forearm, which instantly burned through the barrier of the asari who was not ready to attack, burned through her armor, her heart, came out of her back and damaged Victoria's body from the inside.
However, the Phalanx minibots quickly began to repair the damage to the ship.
"Will you kill me too?" the turian woman asked quietly when I began to approach her. -You know, I didn't betray you. The Shadow Broker sent to spy on you, but at first I was afraid that you would notice, and then I decided that it wasn't worth it. Do you hear? I didn't betray you!—.
"I know." He calmly answered the turian who had jumped up. -To betray someone, you must initially be loyal to him, and you were just a spy. —.
The turian's mandibles parted as if she wanted to say something, but instead she looked down, where she saw the fading blade of the rezotron entering her chest and cutting her heart into two parts. A second later, the body of the already dead turian hung on my arm, leaving me in silence, broken only by the sound of the bots working to clean up the mess.
***
Since there wasn't much to do, and my hands were burning with nanites, figuratively speaking, and there were fresh bodies on my hands, I decided not to put the matter off and try to revive them. Of course, such an experiment has already been worked out, but these were small rodents, but intelligent ones with a developed department of the higher nervous system are a completely different matter.
So, without delaying the matter, I dragged the bodies to my workshop, which gradually began to look more like a laboratory. And if I injected the justiciar with nanites without any problems, watching how they closed the wound in the chest and restored the body's performance, from which the previously dead body began to breathe again, then there was a hitch on the turian.
"Well, no, I can't do that." He nevertheless moved the syringe with nanites away from his partner's body.
It's one thing to experiment on an almost unknown asari who turns out to be a spy, and another thing to experiment on a partner with whom he's worked for a year. I'm not a monster. Although experimenting on intelligent ones also sounds and looks very...very. Yes, if Mom or Liara caught me now, they would both be horrified, although I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, there are various criminals, pirates, murderers, bandits, why not use them for a good cause?
In general, having transferred Cynthia to the medical observation room, where she occupied one of the three beds, I went to the turian sector. Except that on the way he stopped by one of the developed asari planets, where he purchased a batch of naval coffins, a kind of sealed polymer capsules where the body is plunged into stasis for return to its homeland and further burial. They were originally invented for the navy, yet a warship often cannot leave the combat zone without an order, and when the conflict is protracted, the body begins to deteriorate, and even the flight back can take weeks. As a result, when the deceased gets home, he is a disgusting piece of rotting flesh.
Over time, this technology has become ubiquitous because the convenience is undeniable, interstellar flights are an everyday matter for all ships, including the civilian sector, and on civilian ships it also happens that someone dies. I need these coffins to collect experimental material. Well, show respect to Erada's body in order to keep it relatively intact. In this very coffin, I handed it over to the patrol of the Turian Hierarchy fleet on the border with the asari sector. I think they will figure out what to do with their relative.
While he was doing all this, he tried to bring Cynthia back to consciousness, but he went too far with the current supply and burned out some of the synapses, as a result of which the asari lost all her memory and the ability to walk - her legs simply did not respond to brain signals. And if the functions of the musculoskeletal system can, in theory, be restored, then the issue with memory is complex. In general, it was not in vain that I decided to postpone attempts to return Samara to consciousness, I would not want her to lose her memory due to my mistake.
During all this fuss, I somehow forgot about the Shadow Broker and his interest in my person, which is exactly what I was trying to achieve. No matter what anyone says, it's quite unpleasant to find out that someone I considered a friend turned out to be a spy. However, the Mediator decided to correct this oversight and contacted him first. After killing the asari and the turian, I kept their tooltrons for further gutting for information, but I never got to them and at some point I even forgot. So the notification of a message coming on one of them at the time of my experiments with nanites came as a surprise to me.
Well, the text of the message "Operation Report" from the Shadow Broker did not leave much room for interpretation. In general, I decided to get in touch with him, so already on the captain's bridge, through the main terminal, I contacted the most famous information broker in the galaxy.
"Hmm, Mr. T'Soni, I suppose." came a synthesized voice from a dark projection of a shapeless figure. —What about my agents?—.
"Dead," he said, looking intensely at the projection of the Mediator.
-It's extremely unfortunate. Don't get me wrong Mr. T'Soni, I wasn't trying to harm you in any way. Erada was supposed to make the first contact with you on my behalf, but almost immediately stopped communicating. Cynthia was sent for the same purpose. After all, your father, Gordon Freeman, was my old and very valuable partner," the Mediator finished, attracting my attention.
But if a child would happily pounce on information about his father, then I knew much more about Ultron. And the Shadow Broker himself aroused hostility and suspicion in me. The information broker must have noticed something like that on my face, because he hastened to end the idle chatter and move on to a more constructive direction.
—Ivon, I understand that you probably don't trust me, and that's right, you can't trust the first person you meet. However, I believe that we can establish mutually beneficial cooperation as we once did with your father. As a gesture of goodwill, I am passing on the coordinates of my agent, who kidnapped your krogan friend named Shiagur," admitted the Intermediary, information from whom actually began to flow to my terminal. "I didn't order the krogan to be kidnapped, just to talk and find out about you." Agent Quadra has always been unpredictable and a little crazy; his betrayal, although possible, was still quite unexpected. It was recently spotted in the Mrril system in the Attic Traverse. There, on the planet Sorus, there is an old prison for... unreliable elements. Contact with the prison was lost long ago as unnecessary. Perhaps your friend is still there. I hope for our further fruitful cooperation. End of Communication.—.
The dark communication screen disappeared, and I continued to stand on the captain's bridge, frowning at the floor. The mediator evoked conflicting feelings. If he really was working with Ultron, there could be an explanation for this; after all, the help of an information merchant of his caliber in preparing to confront the Harvest would be invaluable. And even now the Mediator is probably able to drag me into the SPECTER. What about SPECTER, with its help you can bypass this stage and now begin to establish connections with the ruling elite of the races of the Citadel space. But something inside me whispered not to believe him, or them? Some underlying feeling prevented us from even thinking in the direction of full-fledged cooperation. In an amicable way, I need to contact Liara and ask her to dig up information from Ultron's base about the Shadow Broker, but after my escape, my mother put Liara under surveillance given the revealed status of our relationship, and Liara herself, although she understood my reason, was offended when I disappeared so suddenly. Over time, of course, she calmed down, but when I asked to help with one matter at the last communication session, she refused to help in my "stupid adventure." Well, okay, over time my asari will finally thaw out.
However, you can simply pretend to cooperate and yourself assess all the risks associated with the Mediator, regardless of my feelings. Well, for now it's really worth checking the information received, after all, Shiagur treated me kindly and it would be extremely disgraceful not to pay him back in the same coin.
***
Attic Traverse, Mrril system, satellite of the planet Sorus. Two weeks later.
The Intermediary's data turned out to be accurate and suspicious activity was indeed occurring on the remote, snow-covered planet. However, I was in no hurry to destroy the local garrison in the form of very good air defense systems and a couple of dozen ships of various configurations, from fighters and frigates to transporters. Instead, I decided to conduct a reconnaissance operation and find out more precisely. Well, at the same time I'll check out my new exo-armor.
Yes, yes, I not only worked on nanites, but also developed different configurations of different types of armor. In the end, it's not difficult, I just had to draw up a sketch and purchase materials, and the Phalanx minibots would build them. It's quite a relaxing process to create new types of armor, I must say.
One of these results was "Stealth Freeman - 4". As the name implies, stealth exo-armor was developed for quiet operations such as reconnaissance, sabotage or silent assassinations. The only weapons are repulsors and an omni-emitter in the chest, and the armor itself is lightweight for greater mobility and less weight, which makes the protection lame. The kinetic shield does not have the same safety margin as other types of Fremen, but it is distinguished by its ability to withstand an attack of any power, excluding fighter missiles and the main caliber of ships such as frigates and higher. This type of shield is called adaptive and similar to it is used by scouts: the concentration of all the energy of the shield at the point of impact makes it possible to completely extinguish the kinetic energy of the charge, and after that the scout turns on tactical camouflage and becomes invisible to the enemy. By the way, I also have this tactical camouflage, thanks to which I become invisible to both the visual and other spectrums. In general, the new black Freman with a gray mask suited the situation perfectly.
It was not difficult to fly around the patrol and enter the prison, the entrance of which seemed to be hollowed out in an ice slide covered with snow; there was no need to even break into anything. When I got to the entrance, a cargo truck with food was just flying in, and its roaring engine, like a thousand Warrens, drowned out the work of my almost silent engines. Then I had to wander around the interior in search of the manager's office, with which the construction diagram provided by the Intermediary helped, but I finished this quite quickly without any problems getting inside the premises. Agent Quadra was not there, which was just fine, so by connecting to the cameras and forcing them to ignore my presence, I was able to exit Tactical Camouflage mode.
"So, let's see what we have here," my words were heard in the quiet, clean office of Agent Quadra, the predominant white color of which evoked thoughts of a hospital.
It was not difficult to hack the prison manager's personal terminal, although I must admit that it was much better protected than most devices that I had previously hacked. And the first thing I did was copy all the data contained there onto a portable storage device. And while the information was downloading, I checked the list of contained objects, among which I found Shiagura. In order to make sure that it was really him, I connected to the CCTV cameras of his holding cell and what I saw seriously disturbed me. An absolutely naked krogan, covered only with plates of natural armor, sitting on the bare island of a metal schonka and motionless looking at the wall caused serious concern for his mental state.
A quick look at the recording for the day showed that the situation could not be worse, the krogan moved only twice a day, when food was brought to him. Well, even then he only quickly threw it into himself, after which he returned to his previous position and continued to stare at the wall. What did they do to him to break this old lizard?
Viewing the records of other prisoners showed that. This Quadra agent was a complete psycho, sociopath and sadist. Horrible experiments were carried out on the xenos captured here, be they krogan, asari, salarians or turians, breaking their psyche. Some were turned into mindless biorobots, carrying out any order without the slightest objection, be it to bite off and swallow one's finger, or to kill a close relative. Some withdrew into themselves after the torture they had endured, while others became violent psychopaths. And invariably at each such procedure there was a salarian present who looked at the torture with a smile, showing pleasure from the emotions of the victims almost physically.
After this, I decided not to leave any of the staff alive, and not to quietly take Shiagur out as I had previously planned. So while I had access to Quadra's terminal, I changed my access to the prison systems and security system, giving myself the ability to remotely control them. Well, when the downloading of the files was finished, I headed down to the prisoners' cells. Shiagur was in the farthest chamber of the lower level and did not even pay attention to my appearance, continuing to stare at the wall.
-Shiagur, hey. It's me, Ivon." He patted the indifferent lizard on the shoulder, taking off his helmet. -What did they do to you?—.
The krogan refused to come to his senses, no matter how much I tried to rouse him, only after a powerful slap in the face, from which the krogan's head twitched and his lip broke and began to ooze blood, the old man's gaze became more meaningful.
-Baby? More games of my mind?" the lizard wheezed in a voice unaccustomed to speech.
-You're wrong, I'm real. And I'm here to get you out of here." He tried to smile, but all that came out was a tense grimace.
- Pull it out? No, I'm already dead. My girls are already calling me to them. Only this body keeps me here. It's not proper for a krogan to die without a fight," the lizard wandered in, but a moment later he fixed his gaze on me, after which he growled with a hatred I had never seen before. -If you are real, help me get to the salarian! Rrrrr, I can't leave without taking revenge!!!—.
All I could do was agree and open the doors of the locked cell.
At the beginning, Shiagura's movements were rather clumsy, it was clear that he had lost the habit of walking, a couple of steps during meals was clearly not enough to maintain his shape. Nevertheless, the krogan rushed towards the salarians in white coats who appeared around the corner faster than I could finish them off, and his reprisal was extremely cruel. He bit off half the head of one, after which he chewed and swallowed a piece of the skull with the brain in front of the second salarian, who almost shit himself from fear, and then with a furious roar he grabbed the skinny xenos by the chest and torso, squeezing him in a steel grip and breaking his ribs and bones tore the amphibian into two parts, staining himself, the floor and walls with green blood.
This idea could no longer be hidden, so I blocked the complex and activated the air defense systems, targeting all ships except Victoria, so that no one could escape. All we had to do was go through and clear all the premises of soldiers and executioners who mistakenly considered themselves scientists. Although there was serious resistance in some places, the plasma volleys did not allow the Quadra fighters to realize their numerical advantage, and broken communication lines did not allow the enemy to orient themselves. Unexpected attacks from stealth from behind made it possible to easily deal with the enemy, turning clearing a fortified base into an easy walk. Unless Quadra's personal guards could cause problems due to the presence of combat mechs manufactured by FreeMan Armory. But I've already connected to their local network and changed the attack priority, so as soon as I give them an order, an unpleasant surprise awaits Quadra and his guards.
Before opening the ceiling to the room with the salarian locked in it, I decided to warn Shiagur about this. And apparently I did it in vain, because as soon as the bulkheads opened, the krogan, shouting "Stay out of the way," hit me on the chest, throwing me back, and he rushed head-on at the enemy right under the bullets. Well, at least the mechs helped and managed to kill most of the guards before they were neutralized. Shiagur, as if not feeling pain, rushed from xenos to xenos, tearing them apart with his bare hands. Apparently he fell into a bloody rage - a state of madness when the krogan's nervous system cannot cope with incoming pain sensations, it shorts out and he does not feel pain, rushing at everything he sees until he falls dead or is calmed down.
When I was ready to fight again, it was all over. It took Shmiaguru with the support of the mechs a matter of seconds to deal with the armed crowd. True, he himself was seriously wounded and was bleeding from numerous holes in his body that were not provided for by nature, so that if he was not helped, he threatened to die in the near future, and exhaustion from long captivity clearly did not add to his health.
However, I decided not to bother with this, allowing the krogan to enjoy the moment of triumph. The lizard accidentally or deliberately left Agent Quadra for last, and when all the other xenos were dead, not listening to pleas for mercy, Shiagur grabbed the salarian who was trying to crawl away from him by his horns, lifted him to his feet and, with an effort, tore his head vertically into two unequal parts, after which he himself fell without strength
"Hold on, big guy, I'll help you now." He ran up to the lying krogan with a fixing gel, preparing to close his wounds, but was intercepted by the hand of the lizard himself.
"No need, baby," the old man croaked, looking into my eyes, and then turned his gaze somewhere higher. -It was a good fight, I got my revenge...and I can leave. My family....are already waiting...for me. Deliver...my body...to Tuch...ka. Clan...N...kmor.—.
Shiagur's last words were barely audible and after them the krogan completely fell silent. Well, it's a pity that things turned out this way. All I can do is take care of the local prisoners and fulfill the last request of the krogan who once helped me.