Work Text:
Adrien Victus, Primarch of Palaven, wouldn't say that he "listened in" on Shepard's call with Alliance command. Of course not. But the Normandy's QEC was very close to the War Room, and if Shepard strode out of one of her conferences calling for her pilot to get them to the Kronos system ASAP and for every possible member of her ground team to assemble for a briefing...well. Obviously something big needed immediate attention. She hadn't asked either him or Wrex for input, so it had nothing to do with turian or krogan interests. A glance at the latest reports of Reaper movements didn't indicate anything of note happening in the Kronos system, so logic suggested it was Cerberus. And anything that warranted Shepard taking multiple teams to such a backwater system meant a major raid on a large facility.
As he was keel-deep in messages from both the Protectorate and High Command, Adrien didn't think any more of it until the Normandy dropped out of FTL and Adrien's comm noted they had settled around the planet Varrastis in the Kronos system. Adrien spared a half-thought to ask whatever Spirits the Normandy had to bolster Shepard and her team, and another half-thought to silently wish her good hunting in taking down that misbegotten pack of varren.
Not being in the loop any more than that, Adrien continued his own work: currently, the amazingly boring but terrifyingly important puzzle of shepherding Hierarchy supply chains. When the chaos in the Crest seemed sufficiently untangled, Adrien handed it off to an aide for the moment. He was stretching at his station, shifting from foot to foot and rolling his neck, when he heard it.
Shepard's voice. Very low volume, as if coming through a mobile earpiece (and on the very edge of Adrien's hearing, especially over the hum of the ship), but the pitch was unmistakable. It was coming from the direction of Wrex's station along the far wall.
Adrien narrowed his eyes at the krogan's back, then glanced over at the Alliance personnel in the room. They all were working at their own stations, apparently not having heard. He wasn't surprised: turian hearing was superior to that of just about every race except the drell, especially at higher frequencies. It certainly wouldn't be the first time he could hear something a human could not, even within the human hearing range.
Adrien debated what to do with this information as he stepped back to his console. Then he thought about the sheer number of highly-trained operatives Shepard had needed to take down to Varrastis...and he opened up an internal message to Wrex.
AV: Are you listening in on Shepard's team channel?
He glanced up at Wrex a second before he hit send. The krogan's back stiffened...and then Wrex snorted, moving to type a reply.
UW: Damn turian ears.
AV: So, yes.
UW: Not my fault that Shepard still uses the same channels for her team comms as she did when we were going after Saren.
UW: Or that she's still constructing her daily encryption keys the same way.
Adrien's mandibles twitched, and he coughed to cover his chuckle. His fingers hovered over the keyboard to reply, then stopped.
This was probably a bad idea--Shepard was a Spectre, not one of his soldiers, after all--but...he was terribly curious, and Shepard was incredibly important, and using Wrex's logic, it wasn't his fault that the krogan leader had circumvented Alliance encryption....
The Primarch of Palaven gave in to temptation, his talons flicking over the interface.
AV: How are things going down there?
Adrien expected to have to pay for the knowledge one way or another. Wrex was shrewd and ruthless and still torqued about Adrien's handling of the bomb on Tuchanka. (Adrien couldn't blame him for that, given that he himself would curse the long-dead turian generals who had planted that bomb until the day he died.) Thus, Adrien was surprised when Wrex's reply was a comm channel ID and an encryption key seed. (He had to stifle an outright laugh when he realized what Wrex meant - evidently Shepard used a phrase featuring Saren Arterius' name, an anatomically impossible sexual practice, and today's date as her encryption key.)
Adrien entered the info into the comm and casually fitted an earpiece into his ear, routing Shepard's team channel through it at a volume he was certain the humans couldn't hear.
The sounds of battle, even secondhand, gave him the familiar spike of adrenaline, and Adrien found himself gripping the edges of his station.
After listening for a few minutes, he frowned.
Things were not going well.
Later, he would learn the details. That Alliance intel had identified a large lab on Verrastis working on an advanced eezo engine design that could greatly enhance Cerberus' mobility throughout the galaxy, should they complete it. Shepard had known about the facility's size and significant complement, and thus she'd brought down her entire team. A sound strategy that dealt appropriately with the perceived threat. Her team had made good progress, cleaning out waves of mechs and Cerberus forces as they made their way into the labs.
It should have been an easy clean-up from there. But clearly Alliance Intel had found the secret lab but missed several major training and indoctrination facilities not far from the lab's position. Either that, or Alliance Intel had a Cerberus mole who had constructed a clever trap.
Because as soon as Shepard was committed, more Cerberus troops arrived outside the base, chasing away Shepard's shuttle pilot and landing reinforcements that streamed into the facility behind her, locking up her exits. Then more reinforcements showed up. Then even more.
That was the point where Adrien started listening, hearing the beginning of the slow pincer move as Shepard's team finished clearing the lab and found Cerberus troops coming up behind them, attempting to bottle them in the building. And as they dealt with that wave, and the next, Adrien stared at his console, eyes unseeing but his tactician's mind grimly plotting how the tide of battle was turning.
"Computer," Adrien murmured, "show a layout of the base."
Adrien had his suspicions about the Normandy's "VI" and the body that it walked around in, but he had bigger bones to gnaw than whether or not a Council Spectre trusted an AI to guard her back. And she did trust it to guard her back - had taken it down with her to do exactly that, in fact. But as far as Adrien could tell, it also resided on the ship, where it monitored everything. It likely knew that both he and Wrex were listening in.
"Please," he added.
After the slightest of pauses, the war room holo table abruptly switched to a floorplan, helpfully labeled with turian tactical notation.
Adrien reached out, turning it, taking it all in.
Across the War Room, Wrex shifted, turning toward the display and squinting hard at it as well.
Adrien could immediately see how Shepard was a victim of poor terrain. The lab layout was a labyrinthine set of narrow, short halls. The Cerberus reinforcements had caught Shepard's team in an awkward place and bottlenecked them in a hallway with no better options than pushing through. There was little cover, and the lines of sight made sniping difficult. And Shepard's progress was slow enough that Cerberus was piling up to reinforce their position. Adrien watched as the glowing notation indicating Shepard's teammates pushed its way forward meter by slow meter. When they could take down Cerberus' shields, T'soni was making good use of her singularities in the tight quarters, but even as Adrien watched, a few indicators popped up indicating Cerberus shield generators onlining somewhere behind cover. Engineers had arrived, and Cerberus was starting to wear down Shepard's team by sheer numbers. They would be running low on thermal clips soon. And there were Atlas mechs coming up on them.
"Joker," Shepard said over the fire of battle. "Any other Alliance teams in this system?"
"Negative, Commander," the pilot responded. "Closest reinforcements are at least 20 hours away."
Adrien's fingers moved back to his own console, though he already knew the answer. The Hierarchy had nothing close, either.
Which was frustrating, since he could see how precarious Cerberus' hold on the battle was. If Shepard's team could move just another few dozen meters into the cargo bay at the end of the hall, they could take a few of Cerberus' shield generators for their own. They would have excellent cover, good sightlines for the snipers, and from what Adrien had seen of Shepard's vanguard tactics, Shepard herself would have the room she needed to effectively use her biotics.
It was just a matter of getting her there.
His eye was drawn to Cerberus' completely undefended rear flank, reminding him of how much a small, determined team could do when ripping through back lines. Reminding him of Menae.
Over the team channel, a scream sounded, and T'soni's indicator blinked red as she was hit hard by a round from the Atlas' heavy gun. She managed to hunker down behind cover, her breathing hard and pained. The Prothean tossed his last grenade to cover his sprint to her side so he could stabilize her.
The art of reading the battlefield was more instinct than science. And Adrien felt the prickling under his crest of an op starting to slip out of hand. Shepard's window was narrowing.
Through the blue haze of the display, Adrien found himself sharing a significant look with Urdnot Wrex.
"Computer...." No, what did the crew call her? "...EDI. Does the Normandy have another shuttle?"
"Negative, Primarch Victus," came the immediate reply over the War Room speakers.
Wrex spoke up. "Any more of those varren coming to the feast?"
"If you are referring to Cerberus," the AI said rather primly, "then no. I detect no more incoming shuttles."
The part of Adrien that felt the weight of Palaven on his cowl knew this was a terribly reckless idea. But the Primarch in him knew that Shepard was the key to all of this.
And the father in him dearly wanted to rip into Cerberus with his own claws.
Adrien pulled out his earpiece, tossing it on the console. "Notify Commander Shepard that she'll have her reinforcements if she orders her shuttle pilot to return to the Normandy. He's not doing any good flying circles that far out, anyway."
EDI didn't reply, but Adrien did not wait for her, heading for the War Room door. Shepard knew the value of a heavy gamble as well as he did. If things on the ground were as bad as he thought they were, she would see the necessity.
Wrex grinned and pushed away from the railing, shouldering ahead and through the door first seemingly out of sheer spite. Still, he was in good humor, thumping one meaty fist into an equally meaty palm as they strode through the conference room. "Bored to death here, anyway. Hope you still remember how to fire a gun, birdbones."
Adrien snorted but found his mandibles pulling into a smile as they both walked straight through the security checkpoint without stopping. "Don't you worry about me, Wrex," he said. "I was killing brutes before Shepard dragged me here." The two human soldiers looked alarmed but said nothing as the machinery beeped indignantly.
Adrien followed Wrex in turning sharply past the Normandy's comm specialist, who was frantically tapping at her interface, arguing with the ship's pilot over the ship-channel. "--trying, but there's no one in range!"
"Well, boost the output or something!" the pilot said. "Turian, quarian, hanar, batarian pirates we can bribe, anybody! We got norhting but a whole ship of you, me, and an assload of engineers up here. They need reinforcements, now!"
Wrex huffed as the lift door closed on the pilot's confused, "Wait...what? Why is Cortez coming back up? What's--"
Wrex sighed. "How quickly they forget."
Adrien just watched the deck indicator as the lift started to move.
In a burst of sound, Shepard's voice, tight and backed by the sounds of battle, came over the lift's internal speakers. "What reinforcements, Primarch?"
"Ha!" Wrex laughed. "You didn't think I'd let you have all the fun, did you, Shepard?"
"Wrex, this is not a one-man job, and I need you to--"
"You have two battle-tested veterans on this ship, Commander," Adrien said. "And I am not about to let you be killed by a pack of terrorists."
"Are you two kidding me?" An explosion, then another. "I need you both alive."
Adrien kept his eyes on the deck indicator. Spirits, he knew elcor that moved faster than this lift. "And we need you, Commander. If we lose you, there's no guarantee your successor would agree to this plan to cure the genophage--"
"I'd like to see them stop me," Wrex rumbled.
"--and without the genophage cured, Wrex's people die, my people die, and your people die." Finally, the lift doors opened on the crew deck.
"Don't take too much time getting dressed, princess," Wrex said as Adrien stepped out, dodging a startled human as he turned and loped the few strides to his chambers in the environmental control room.
He started tugging off his clothes as soon as the door closed behind him. "If you have things under control and don't need us, Commander, just say so."
Perhaps that was petty, Adrien thought. Especially as his words were followed by another explosion over the comm line, and what sounded like a volley of fire from the Atlas. And a rocket. It in no way sounded like things were under control, and they all knew it.
"All right. Fine," Shepard said. She did not sound happy about it. "But if you two get yourselves killed, I swear, I will find you in whatever afterlife you end up in and beat the shit out of both of you." The comm channel cut off on the roar of Shepard's shotgun.
Adrien found himself smiling again. It might have been Shepard's consent to their plan, or it might have been his undersuit falling over his plates like a second skin, the clinging cushion of it utterly familiar. He felt sure of himself for the first time in what felt like months, as he reached for his armor.
"Must be a good fight," Wrex said over the comm. "Those always make her swear."
"So long as she holds out, she can swear at me all she likes," Adrien replied.
"She'll hold out." Wrex sounded absolutely confident. "She took down Saren and the Collectors. A bunch of husks in fancy armor've got no chance."
Adrien stepped into his boots, kicking the wall to settle his claws in them. He hoped that Wrex was right. As much as he itched to lay into a Cerberus line, he hoped that this was unnecessary. He didn't like the idea of Shepard, let alone Vakarian (Vakarian, whose forward-thinking "task force" had saved somewhere between tens and hundreds of thousands of lives) being that close to taking a random bullet, like T'soni had. They were too important.
"Shuttle ETA, three minutes, Primarch Victus," the AI said.
Which is why, Adrien thought grimly, as he slid his pistol into its holster, we're not going to lose either of them today.
"Acknowledged," he said. His hand hovered over his assault rifles before picking up the old-model Revenant and sprinting back to the lift.
Another interminable lift ride later, and the door opened on the unmistakable sound of an annoyed krogan.
"-no, no, and no. You are staying here until you figure out how to cure the genophage."
A pillar blocked Adrien's view, so he couldn't immediately see what Wrex was jabbing a finger at until the salarian doctor circled slightly into line of sight. His sidearm was in his hands, a bulky heavy pistol of some sort he was obviously checking over. He looked admirably calm for someone who had an irritated krogan leaning over him.
Solus' head twitched slightly toward Adrien before settling his attention back on his gun. He'd obviously worked with krogan before, as he avoided adversarial eye contact. "Work complete. Findings and protocol documented. Any reasonable scientist could pick up where I left off. Should I die, which is highly unlikely." The salarian slotted his pistol in its holster. "Ex-STG. Can handle myself. Part of Shepard's ground team during Omega-4 relay mission, if you'll remember."
Wrex harrumphed. "I don't care if you're Warlord Gresk himself back from the Void, you're not--"
The salarian's sharp reply actually cut Wrex off. Or maybe it was the direct eye contact. "Shepard, is my friend. Will help her."
Wrex looked startled for a second, then growled deep in his chest in a way that boded nothing good.
At his side, in Adrien's line of sight but not Wrex's, the salarian's omnitool booted up, deft fingers loading what looked like a weapons haptic.
Luckily, that was when the shuttle arrived, bursting through the cargo bay's mass effect field curtain. The cargo bay filled with the roar of its engines as it turned and settled to the deck, side door opening before it even touched down.
"Gentlemen!" Adrien called over the noise, striding between them, straight for the shuttle. "Our ride is here. Save it for Cerberus."
He was relieved when the doctor immediately followed him, omnitool now powered down. Adrien was amused at how the salarian immediately positioned himself to use Adrien as cover. "Agreed. Wasting time. Need to hurry. Shepard's situation deteriorating rapidly."
Adrien sighed as they stepped up into the shuttle. "Am I the only one on this ship who didn't have access to Commander Shepard's comm channels?"
"Shepard's encryption schema, predictable," Solus said, with obvious disapproval.
"So I've heard." Adrien turned, looking back into the cargo bay, where Wrex was staring after them as if he still was trying to figure out why they weren't still arguing. "Are you coming, Wrex?"
"Rrrrgh!" Wrex stomped toward the shuttle, the entire vehicle shaking as he stepped aboard. "When this is over, you and I are gonna have words, salarian."
Solus, wisely, had already taken a seat and strapped in. Perhaps to keep the krogan from tossing him out again. "Looking forward to it," he replied. "Personal vocabulary, voluminous."
Adrien took a seat himself, suppressing a sigh. This was going to be a long mission.
-----------
Jane Shepard did not need more reasons to hate Cerberus, really, but they kept adding to her list anyway. Garrus was wounded, mouthplates and mandibles clenched tight whenever he moved. Liara was seriously hurt, Javik of all people squeezed into her cover mostly to keep her upright. The asari was gamely warping her way through the Atlas' armor plating. Shepard suspected that she was still fighting mostly to spite Javik.
The fact that several of the Atlases appeared to be extra-large models with accompanying extra tough armor plating was just icing on the cake. Pistol and small-arms fire was just bouncing off, and this last one had just hunkered itself down in the doorway, blockading the entire exit as it kept them pinned with suppressive fire.
"Team One, this is Team Two," a familiar turian voice growled in her ear. "Coming up behind, about to draw fire."
"Thank fuck," Shepard muttered before engaging her comm. "Understood, Team Two. We'll push out once we have the room."
"If he dies, please just shoot me," Garrus muttered next to her, hissing in pain as he set his back to their cover to let his particle rifle cool down. "I don't want to have to explain to High Command how I let the Primarch of Palaven get killed trying to rescue me."
"Ha," Shepard said, dosing him with medigel. Again. "I'd feel worse about needing to be rescued by our VIPs, but--" she stopped, wincing as another Atlas rocket hit their cover.
"...but we totally need to be rescued? Yeah." Garrus peered over their barricade. "The Atlas is moving."
"Primarch Victus' team is fragmenting their lines, pushing rapidly toward the cargo bay," EDI said, splashing an incineration blast over the confused Atlas' side as it started to turn. "Cerberus comm chatter increasing. These forces do not react well to--ah...more Atlases incoming. Cerberus engineers have broken into another lab off the cargo bay and are booting up several experimental models."
"Of course they are. Alert Victus and Wrex." Shepard reloaded her Wraith and raised her voice. "All right, people. Come on, we're leaving."
She took a deep breath, letting it out as she pushed power to her aura and watched the edges of her vision go blue-purple as she turned to face the Atlas. "Let's break some more of the Illusive Man's toys on the way out."
Charging the Atlas that had pinned them down for the last five minutes was remarkably satisfying. Between the charge, a shotgun blast to the Atlas' knee joint, and another shotgun blast to take out the shield generator right near the door, things turned around very quickly.
"Aw, yeah, payback time!" Vega crowed, joining her in strafing around the Atlas until it collapsed, its armor plating containing the engine core's explosion more than usual.
"Door clear!" Shepard yelled, sprinting to the side to try to flank the rest of the Cerberus forces that were scattering to their own cover around the bay. "Go, go, go!"
Things moved pretty quickly after that, her team battered but hungry for payback. Vega shadowed her, the two of them punching a hole in Cerberus' side and pushing them back toward where Victus and Wrex were coming up on the other side of the cargo bay. EDI followed at a more cautious pace, overloading their shields from cover. Garrus hopped up on a stack of crates to gain a reasonably sheltered sniper's perch and started picking shots. Liara and Javik hung back, but every now and then a biotic detonation would take out another engineer and usually the shield generator they were trying to set up.
Shepard pressed her team hard to clean up the riffraff and get everyone into cover. Which meant that when the cargo door to the Atlas lab opened up and three more of the monstrosities--one of the huge ones, two smaller ones with clearly modified heavy weapons on their arms--entered the bay, everyone was already reloading.
"Hoooly crap," Vega said from the next crate over. "What kind of gun--"
Evidently the answer was: some kind of advanced gatling gun, as the smaller mechs opened up and the crate Shepard was in front of vibrated alarmingly as it absorbed a seemingly never-ending volley of rounds. The noise was so loud that Shepard's helmet engaged sound dampeners. She didn't dare try to pop up for a shot, but risked a peek through a crack between the crates.
Just in time to see the Atlases' shields all flare, shorting out in a chain reaction that painted purple lashes all across Shepard's retinas. The overload was followed by the tinny, high-pitched whine of--
"Oh man, is that a Revenant?" Vega breathed with something like reverence.
--a machine-gun as its superheated rounds sprayed the entire group of Atlases, methodically chewing through their armor. The biggest one fared the best, its armor damaged but holding, but the other two staggered, their mechanics sparking. A biotic grenade landing in the middle of the clustered mechs took them both out, their explosions staggering the big Atlas in front of them even further.
Which just meant that when a krogan in very familiar red armor charged with a battlecry and slammed his shoulder into its leg that it went over with a whine of gears and actuators. Then the krogan leapt on top of it, fired his shotgun straight down into the pilot's canopy, then slammed his boot through the cracked glass and...kept stomping. Until the pilot stopped moving.
"Dang," Vega said.
EDI stood up from behind cover. "No more enemies detected. The area is clear."
"Good! All right, turian, settle up," Wrex called, giving one last stomp for good measure before calling up his omnitool.
"Very well." Primarch Victus came around a cluster of crates with what, yes, looked very much like an old-model Revenant cocked against his hip. He raised his own 'tool and flicked a finger.
A moment later Victus' mandibles flared in a smile while Wrex cursed loudly. "What, it didn't give me credit for those two little ones? Salarian, your software is a piece of crap!"
Victus waved a hand as he stowed his Revenant. "I'm sorry to have to hurt your pride, Wrex, but a full-auto Revenant does much more damage than your grenades."
"Hah! My left pair."
Shepard's brow furrowed, but then her trail of thought was derailed by the sight of Mordin moving into the cargo bay behind Victus. Because of course. Might as well have the gang all here. All of the incredibly important people that she'd risked life and limb to gather and keep safe, now rushing into the warzone together. Why not? At this point, Shepard expected Eve to be bringing up the rear.
Shepard sighed as she let go of the last of the biotic prime she'd been holding.
"Are you all right, Commander?" Victus called.
"Fine," Shepard said, moving out from cover. She stood, wincing as something in her ankle slid unpleasantly in a direction she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to. Oh yeah, she'd come down wrong after tripping over that dead guardian. Right. "Thanks for the save."
"You're welcome, Commander." He spread his hands. "I admit, this has been a refreshing change of pace."
"Heh," Vega snerked, stowing his Wraith. "Turians."
"We are predictable," Garrus said, hissing a bit. Out of the corner of her eye, Shepard saw him start moving very slowly toward her.
She moved to meet him halfway, but then Mordin was there, tsking at her. "Sit, sit," the salarian said, setting his bony shoulder into her middle enough to ease her back against the crates. "Sprained ankle, several minor gunshot wounds, two broken phalanges, biotic exhaustion. Eat recovery gel before you pass out."
Shepard grumbled but sat back and fumbled a gelpack out, biting through the foil to get at the sickly sweet inside. Ugh. Orange. Her favorite. "What are they...wait...did you give them the killcount program you made Grunt?"
"Wager for weapons was Primarch Victus' idea. Offered software as impartial arbiter." Mordin shrugged as he tipped her head back and to the side. She let him, wincing a bit at the expected injection into her neck. God, that was one thing she hadn't missed about Mordin: the random unexplained injections after battle.
"Kept them occupied," Mordin continued, undeterred. "Much like Jack and Grunt. Stay still, eat all of gel." Then he was gone, jogging over in Liara's direction.
Shepard's recovery-fogged brain was stuck chugging through the image of Victus as Jack for a long second. "Wait," Shepard said to Mordin's back, where he'd paused to scan Garrus but let Garrus wave him off. "Primarch Victus' idea?"
Garrus chuckled as he slumped down next to her. "How do you think he got that Revenant? He won it off General Alterus on Menae."
"You uh...think he'd let me fire it?" Vega asked.
"Probably," Garrus said, shifting with a sigh. "So long as you promised to still respect her in the morning."
"Hey, I am always respectful to beautiful ladies. Especially ones that can rip through armor like that."
Shepard would have had something to say to that, if she wasn't busy swallowing orange goo.
"You can keep your Hellstorm until we get back to the ship," Victus was saying to Wrex. "It'll give you time to say your goodbyes."
"Probably just break your wrist." Wrex stamped his foot on the floor a few times until what sounded like bits of glass and steel from the Atlas' canopy fell out of the joints of his leg armor. One foot was leaving bloody footprints on the floor behind him.
"Maybe." Victus tilted his head, obviously admiring the pistol in question on Wrex's hip. "Always wanted to fire one. Besides, you should be glad I'm taking it off your hands. Those are illegal in Citadel Space, you know."
"Pffft," Wrex said, reloading his shotgun. "What, like that XT-10 barrel you've still got on that Rev there? Those're illegal in Citadel Space, too."
"No, no, you must be mistaken," Adrien said, reaching back to pat the Revenant in question. "This is just a little harmless modding on a perfectly legal XT-7."
"Uh huh," Wrex said. "And I'm the queen of Thessia."
"Spirits, they actually like each other," Garrus chuckled, wheezing. "I need to record this. We might need blackmail material later."
Shepard grinned. "For Wrex or for Victus?"
"Either. Both." Garrus leaned back against the crate, omnitool out and recording the Primarch of Palaven and the Overlord of the krogan as they started critiquing each other's aim. "Definitely both."