TEN

“Based on my analysis, we have to strike at the six locations highlighted on the first page of the report.”

Kahlee had given plenty of presentations over the years, often to powerful and important people. But at her core she was a researcher, not a public speaker, and she couldn’t quite ignore the cold, heavy knot in the pit of her stomach as she spoke.

“The names listed beneath each location are confirmed Cerberus operatives believed to have specific knowledge of the layout or defenses of the target in question.”

This particular presentation wasn’t made any easier by the fact that, apart from Anderson, everyone she was addressing was a turian military officer. They stared at her with the intensity of hawks tracking a mouse on the ground—eight pairs of cold, unblinking eyes.

“In order to use their intel without giving Cerberus advance warning, the strike teams will have to be en route before C-Sec arrests the operatives.

“Even if someone does send off a warning, these bases are in remote clusters that haven’t been directly linked into the galactic comm network yet. It’ll take time for any messages to get through to them.”

“What kind of window will we have between the arrests and hard contact?” one of the turians asked.

His uniform sagged under the weight of all the medals pinned to his chest.

Upon entering the briefing room she’d been introduced to the assemblage, their names and ranks thrown at her in rapid-fire succession as they went around the table. She hadn’t even made an attempt to try and remember them.

“Four hours,” Anderson chimed in. “Plenty of time for C-Sec to interrogate the prisoners and transmit the info to you.”

“Using the info, each strike team leader will have the authority to change the strategic plan for their target,” Orinia added.

“This information is reliable?” another turian, this one female, asked.

A thin white scar ran along her jaw, its color making it stand out from the dark red facial tattoos that signified the colony of her birth. She was the only female turian other than Orinia in the room, meaning she stood out enough that Kahlee could actually recall her name: Dinara.

Kahlee could have gone into a lengthy explanation about statistical analysis, margins of error, and probability matrixes extrapolated from incomplete, estimated, and assumed data. However, doing so could have created doubt in the turians’ minds.

“It’s reliable,” she assured them.

“Most of these targets are within the borders of Alliance territory,” Medals, the first turian, objected.

“Just before Orinia gives the go to the strike teams, I’m going to authorize a joint-species military action inside Alliance space,” Anderson explained. “Everything you do will be completely in accordance with existing Council laws and treaties.”

“That’s the kind of thing that could get you dismissed from your post,” a third turian noted.

“Almost certainly,” Anderson agreed.

“Two of the locations are inside the Terminus Systems,” Dinara pointed out. “You can’t grant us the authority to strike there.”

“Those are the most important installations,” Kahlee insisted. “The whole reason Cerberus has facilities outside Council jurisdiction is to allow them to engage in illegal or unethical research without fear of repercussions.”

“Attacking a facility in the Terminus Systems means a Council review,” Medals countered. “It could be grounds for a military discharge.”

There were murmurs of agreement around the table, and Kahlee feared the turians were turning against them.

“That could happen,” Anderson said, speaking loudly to be heard over the general grumbling. “But Cerberus doesn’t play by the rules. Neither can we if we want to take them out.

“If that’s a problem for any of you,” he added sternly, “you can leave now.”

There was a long moment of silence, but every turian remained seated at the table.

“The Terminus facilities are orbital space stations in uninhabited systems,” Oriana said, picking up where Anderson had left off. “If the strike teams complete their mission, there won’t be any witnesses to file a report against you.”

“Understood,” Medals replied with a curt nod. “No survivors.”

“Except for any prisoners you find,” Kahlee hastily added. “If Cerberus is holding someone against their will, they need to be rescued.”

“This is a rescue mission?” Dinara asked, looking for clarification.

Anderson and Orinia exchanged glances before the turian ambassador answered the question.

“We can’t confirm the presence of prisoners at any location. If you find any, help them if you can. But do not put the mission—or turian lives—at risk unnecessarily.”

Kahlee bit her lip to keep from objecting. Anderson had warned her that getting the turians to cooperate wasn’t going to be easy. They had to offer something the turians wanted: the elimination of Cerberus. If she pushed the prisoner angle, Orinia might pull her people out.

“What about the Illusive Man?” Medals wanted to know.

“Capturing him would be an ideal outcome,” Orinia admitted. “But we have no pictures of what he looks like. All we have is a basic physical description. If you see anyone matching the profile, try to bring them back alive.”

Kahlee wasn’t sure what would happen next. She thought there might be a vote or some spirited debate regarding the mission. At the very least she expected others to voice their objections or raise concerns. True, the turians were a military culture, and they were used to accepting and acting on orders from their superiors; but this was an unusual situation, and technically Orinia was no longer part of the chain of command.

However, whatever window there had been to question the mission had apparently been closed.

“Strike teams leave in four hours,” the ambassador declared as she rose from her seat.

Following her lead, the other turians stood and filed out, leaving Orinia alone with the two humans.

“I wish we could go with them,” Kahlee muttered.

“Each commander has crafted his or her team into a finely tuned military instrument through thousands of hours of training,” Orinia reminded her. “You’d only get in the way.”

“They’ll do their best to help Grayson if they find him,” Anderson assured Kahlee, reading her thoughts.

“I know,” she said, though secretly she had her doubts.

Kai Leng’s muscles strained as he pulled his chin up over the bar one last time. Then he dropped to the floor and knocked out a final set of fifty push-ups.

When he was done he threw a towel over his shoulder, strode to the fitness room’s gravity control, and dialed it back down from two hundred percent to one standard G.

He wiped the sweat from his bare torso and slung the towel back over his shoulder. He turned toward the locker room, then changed direction instantly when alarms began to wail.

Rushing over to the console by the wall, he punched in his security code to get a status update. The screen might as well have said: ALL HELL IS BREAKING LOOSE.

Three unidentified vessels were bearing down on the orbital space station. They were small enough to have slipped past the long-range sensors; that meant they didn’t have the firepower to pierce the station’s kinetic barriers and reinforced hull. Instead, they were coming in fast in an effort to get close enough to begin boarding procedures before the GARDIAN defenses could burn away their ablative armoring.

The database matched the energy signatures to turian light frigates, each capable of holding up to a dozen crew. The station had approximately forty hands, but the majority were scientists and support staff; only a handful had real military experience. It wasn’t hard to do the math: the turians would win this battle.

Kai Leng raced to his locker, but didn’t bother to grab his clothes. Instead, he grabbed his knife and pistol—a custom-modified Kassa Fabrications Razer. Gripping the Razer in his left hand and the twelve-inch blade in his right, he raced from the fitness center.

The station lurched as the first attack vessel’s boarding ramp latched onto the exterior, nearly throwing Kai Leng to the floor. The ship shuddered twice more as the next two frigates made contact a few seconds later.

The invaders would use high-powered lasers to carve a seam in the station’s hull, then apply concentrated explosives to blow open a hole so they could board. Given the turians’ reputation for military efficiency, he figured they had less than a minute until the halls of the facility were crawling with enemy soldiers.

The station’s main hangar housed several shuttles, but it was on the far side of the station. Going there was a fool’s errand: if the turians were smart, they’d hit it first to cut off a primary evacuation route. Fortunately, there were several small escape pods located throughout the facility … though not nearly enough for all personnel to make it out alive.

Kai Leng had taken the time to memorize the location of every one of the pods; he knew the closest was easily in reach. But he couldn’t leave yet—there was something too important he had to do.

The Illusive Man was asleep in his bed when the alarms rang out. Waking to the unexpected din, it took him a moment to orient himself. As soon as he had his bearings, he fired up the terminal at the desk in his private quarters.

He analyzed the information on the readout, evaluating their chances of victory. Seeing they were under assault by a trio of turian frigates, he immediately realized there was no hope in staying to fight. But if he was lucky—and quick—there might be enough time to terminate Grayson and still make it to one of the escape pods.

It had been over thirty years since he’d seen any active military service; he knew his skills were not what they once were. His best hope was to avoid enemy contact, but he wasn’t about to go out unprepared. Moving quickly, he pulled a Liberator combat suit from his closet and slipped it on. From the drawer in his bedside table he grabbed a Harpy pistol before unlocking the door to his room and stepping out into the hall.

He was immediately assailed by a wall of sound: shrieking alarms, shouts of fear and panic, the pounding of booted feet as the station’s crew ran up and down the hall. A scientist ran past him, his hands wrapped tightly around a Gorgon assault rifle, the heaviest armament on the station. The fact that someone had opened the armory was good; the fact that an untrained scientist was carrying one of its most powerful weapons was not.

The station was primarily a research facility; it wasn’t properly equipped or staffed to defend against a direct assault. Orbiting an insignificant planet circling an irrelevant orange dwarf star in the Terminus Systems, they relied on the secrecy of their remote location to protect them.

The deck trembled beneath his feet and he heard the faint echo of a distant explosion, and he knew the turians had breached the hull. A few seconds later he reached a t-intersection in the hall. From the left-hand corridor, he heard screams and the sounds of gunfire. He turned in the opposite direction, realizing he’d have to take a longer route if he hoped to get to Grayson’s cell while avoiding the turian patrols.

As he ran down the hall, his mind was already trying to piece together what had gone wrong. He liked to encourage the impression that Cerberus was all-knowing and all-powerful, but the truth was somewhat different. By galactic standards, they were a small organization, with limited people and finite resources.

Though the Illusive Man was a master of deploying those resources with maximum results, and had a knack for anticipating the actions of both his friends and allies, there were holes in his organization that left them vulnerable. Somehow the turians had found one. None of his agents on the Citadel had warned him of a potential attack, which meant the turians were acting alone. But how had they discovered the location of the base?

He saw Dr. Nuri coming toward him, flanked on either side by security personnel wearing heavy combat suits and armed with Gorgons.

“Come with me,” he ordered. “To the lab.”

Nuri shook her head. “We’ll never make it. The turians overran the entire wing. We have to get to the escape pods.”

Nuri was a valuable asset to Cerberus, but she had only the most basic level of combat training. Considering she wasn’t even wearing body armor, he didn’t see any point in forcing her to accompany them.

“Get to the escape pod,” he told her. “Hold it until we get there.”

To the guards he said, “You two stay with me.”

There was no objection from the guards; they were trained soldiers, and knew better than to defy a direct order. Nuri responded with a nod before dashing off in the opposite direction.

Leading his small team, the Illusive Man was still trying to figure out how the turians had found them. He knew Grayson had information on Cerberus. The Illusive Man had assumed that Grayson didn’t know about this facility, but it was possible he could have learned of it during the two years he was on the run. Still, even if Grayson was the source of the intel, how did it end up in the hands of the turians?

His musings were cut short as they rounded the next corner and came face-to-face with a six-member turian patrol standing less than five meters away. Both sides opened fire immediately, the turians dropping into crouches to present smaller targets while the Illusive Man and his guards retreated back around the corner for cover.

The brief initial exchange hadn’t lasted long enough for the weapons to penetrate the kinetic barriers of either side. But the turians were better equipped and trained, and had them outnumbered two to one; further engagement was almost suicidal.

“Fall back,” the Illusive Man shouted.

Keeping their weapons pointed at the corner should the turians emerge, the guards crab-walked backward in a shuffling retreat.

They’d gone roughly ten meters when two turians poked their heads around the corner and let loose a quick burst of gunfire. The Illusive Man pressed himself close against the wall, taking shelter behind one of the exposed steel ribs that ran vertically along the wall’s surface every five meters to reinforce the station’s hull. On the other side of the hall the guards did the same, the two of them cramming themselves tightly behind a single protruding girder.

The first two turians continued to lay down a wave of suppressing fire to keep their opponents pinned against the wall so they couldn’t shoot back. At the same time the other four rounded the corner and took cover behind the beams in the same manner as their opponents.

The Illusive Man peeked out and squeezed off a few token shots with his pistol, but a barrage of return fire forced him to duck back into cover. The guards huddled together on the opposite side of the corridor had a similar idea, and they were better armed. Working in concert, they leaned out—one high, one low—and unleashed a storm of bullets.

One of the turians wasn’t pressed tightly enough against the wall; his left side was partially exposed. By design, both guards aimed at this single target, their concentrated fire ripping through his kinetic barriers and shredding his combat suit in less than a second.

The turian screamed as the high-velocity rounds tore his arm and shoulder to pieces, nearly severing the limb. His compatriots returned fire as he slumped to the ground, blood gushing from his wounds. The Cerberus guards flattened themselves against the wall as rounds peppered their position, relying on the protruding edge of the vertical beam they were hiding behind to shield them from the assault.

With all the turian fire focused on the guards, the Illusive Man took the opportunity to lean out and let loose with his pistol, aiming at the injured turian lying on the floor before his kinetic barriers could recharge. The turian’s body jumped and spasmed as the Harpy buried a half-dozen rounds into the helpless alien’s torso, then went still. Before the turians could retaliate, the Illusive Man ducked back behind cover.

From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something flying past his position. His gaze drawn by the movement, he turned his head to see a small, fist-sized black disk adhering itself to the wall beside the Cerberus guards.

The Illusive Man dropped to the floor and curled up into a ball, covering his head with his hands just as the grenade exploded. The concussive blast tossed the guards like rag dolls, bouncing them off the wall and sending them ricocheting out into the center of the hall. Any chance of their surviving was immediately snuffed out as their twisted bodies were riddled with turian bullets.

The Illusive Man knew his pistol didn’t have the firepower to keep the turians at bay. But he was damned if he was going to let them take him alive. Rolling out from behind the covering beam, he grabbed for the nearest guard’s assault rifle.

Wrapping his fingers around the weapon, he mentally braced to feel the impact of the enemy rounds as they overwhelmed his kinetic barriers. He came up on one knee and raised the weapon, but never fired.

The scene before him was a masterpiece of brutally efficient mayhem.

In addition to the turian shot by the guards, two more were already on the floor. One’s throat had been slashed from behind, the cut so deep it nearly severed the head. The back of the other’s head had been blown off, the result of someone’s firing a pistol jammed against the back of his skull so the kinetic barriers couldn’t protect him.

The remaining three were engaged in close-quarters fighting with Kai Leng. Despite not wearing a combat suit—he wasn’t even wearing a shirt—Cerberus’s top wet-work operative made short work of the heavily armored turians.

At melee range the heavy turian assault rifles proved to be a disadvantage; they were too slow and cumbersome to be brought to bear on a target as lithe and mobile as the human butcher attacking them. Kai Leng’s weapons presented no such problems.

He stabbed his knife in an upward thrust toward the head of his nearest opponent. The sharply ascending angle brought it in beneath the turian’s protective visor, impaling him through the underside of his chin. The blade penetrated up through tissue and bone and into the brain, resulting in instantaneous death.

The weapon was stuck fast in its victim, but Kai Leng had already released his grip on the hilt. One of the turians had thrown down his own ineffectual weapon and grabbed Kai Leng’s wrist with both hands in an attempt to break his arm, or at least wrench the pistol from his grasp. But his combat suit made his movements clumsy and awkward, and the thick gloves prevented him from getting a proper grip.

Kai Leng slipped free and dropped to the ground, his leg sweeping out to knock the turian off his feet even as his partner fired a round from his assault rifle at the space where his human target had been standing upright an instant before.

Crouched low to the floor, Kai Leng shoved the nose of the pistol against the back of the still standing turian’s knee. The joints of the combat suits were less protected to maintain flexibility; the thin mesh material did nothing to absorb the projectile when he squeezed the trigger. With a scream the turian fell to the floor, the assault rifle slipping from his grasp.

It had all taken less than a second. By the time the Illusive Man processed what was happening and dropped the Gorgon to reclaim his pistol, Kai Leng had grabbed the injured turian’s helmet. One hand slipped beneath the chin, the other braced itself against the crown. The corded muscles of the tattooed human’s bare chest flexed and he let out a grunt as he wrenched the turian’s head at an impossible angle, breaking his neck and severing the spinal cord.

As the last turian was scrambling back to his feet, the Illusive Man shot him in the back. The first five rounds from the auto-repeating Harpy were deflected by the kinetic barriers. The next five were absorbed by the heavily padded layers of the combat suit. The final five pierced the flesh, damaging several vital internal organs.

The turian dropped to his knees, then slumped forward onto his face. Kai Leng added a final round to the back of the head from point-blank range for good measure before standing up.

“Is it clear the way you came?” the Illusive Man asked as he, too, stood up.

Kai Leng shook his head. “Our only hope is to get to the escape pod back in sector three.”

The Illusive Man nodded. “Dr. Nuri’s already there.”

The two of them ran down the corridors of the doomed space station, knowing they could come across another turian patrol around any corner. The only reason they’d survived the last engagement was because Kai Leng had been able to sneak up on the turians from behind while they were focused on the Illusive Man and his guards. If they ran into another patrol, the ending would be much different.

Fortunately they didn’t come across any enemy troops, though less than fifty meters from the escape pod they found grisly evidence that the turians had passed by earlier. Dr. Nuri’s body was sprawled across the floor, her lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling, a gaping shotgun wound in her chest.

Neither man made any comment as they stepped over her and continued on their way. A few seconds later they were in the escape pod. The vessel was capable of holding four passengers, but they weren’t about to wait around and see if anyone else showed up.

Kai Leng sealed the door; the instant he was done the Illusive Man slammed his fist down on the button that jettisoned them to safety. As they shot clear of the station, the older man slumped across the padded seat, panting heavily in an effort to catch his breath.

It had been a long time since he’d seen any action; his body wasn’t used to the intense physical exertions of combat. As he gasped for air, he was acutely aware that Kai Leng wasn’t even breathing hard.

After a few minutes he had recovered enough to speak.

“You eliminated Grayson, I assume,” he said.

Kai Leng shook his head. “There wasn’t time. It was kill him or save you. I chose you.”

The Illusive Man almost replied, “You made the wrong choice.” Instead, he bit his tongue as he realized he could just as easily have asked Kai Leng the same question back on the station, while there was still a chance to do something about it.

The encounter with the turians had rattled him. He had thought he was going to die. Faced with a glimpse of his own mortality, he had decided not to ask Kai Leng about Grayson because he didn’t want to know the answer. Not if it could cost him his life. He was a patriot, but deep down he wasn’t ready to be a martyr.

He also had to accept the fact that this was all his own fault. There had been no need for him to come to the facility to oversee the experiments in person. He could have stayed on his secure station and received regular updates. But he’d wanted to watch Grayson suffer. He’d let his desire for vengeance override his common sense, and it had almost gotten him killed.

The truth wasn’t pleasant, but the Illusive Man had made a career out of facing unpleasant truths. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. And he wasn’t about to chastise one of his best agents for doing something he had tacitly approved of.

“That operation was too well planned to be a one-off mission,” he informed Kai Leng. “Get on the secure channels. Find out who else was hit.”

Damage control had to be his first priority. He needed to evaluate the situation, take stock of his resources. After that, he could turn his attention back to Grayson.

He couldn’t be allowed to live. It wasn’t about revenge anymore. They’d turned him into a monster, an abomination. Grayson had become an avatar of the Reapers, and now he was on the loose. Finding him and destroying him was the only way to protect humanity.