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Slaves of Cerberus	By : NakedOwlMan Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 138070 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all the characters in it are owned by people that are not me. I have not made a cent off this work of fiction

Chapter List
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The group sitting at the conference room table looked up as the door opened. Rooker was somewhat relieved to see that Commander Taylor had seemed to have recovered from their defeat and retreat minutes ago. Striding into the room with back straight and eyes unwavering, Jacob turned his attention first to his XO. "How bad did they hit us, Rooker?"

Rooker stood up, glancing down at a datapad in front of her. "Well, the good news first: only a few injuries, no casualties, and we're still flying," she reported. "But that's about it as far as the positives go. Our barriers are in bad shape, our weapons are barely functioning, and if we push our thrusters past a certain speed we'll be lucky if the engines don't explode or discharge radiation through the whole ship."

Jacob nodded, then turned his attention to the other side of the table. "Tali, give me an estimate. How long would it take for us to get this ship back to 100% again?"

Tali frowned, fingering the edge of one of the orange and purple sleeves of her blouse. "It depends. If we went back to an Alliance facility... a day, maybe two."

But Jacob shook his head. "Not an option. How long with the resources we have on hand?"

"A week at the absolute soonest," Tali said. "I mean, we have barely enough power to run life support. The B42 and B46 power conduits quite literally exploded due to the strain of keeping the barriers up. Not to mention the..."

Next to Vega, Cortez suddenly flinched. Vega glanced over in concern. "Everything okay, Esteban?"

Cortez nodded, but still wore a look of concern on his face. "Yeah, it's okay. Just... thinking about how close we came to losing this ship."

As Tali finished her damage report, Garrus spoke up. "Jacob, what's the next move here? You said we're not going back to an Alliance facility, but you can't possibly be thinking of taking on those drones again in this ship. Even if we do manage to get the repairs done, we'll just be heading back in for the same punishment."

"Perhaps it would be wise to contact the Alliance again," Javik observed. "We now have evidence of the threat Cerberus could potentially pose."

Jacob leaned forward on the table. "Do we? What we have is evidence that Cerberus is beyond the Omega 4 relay, and that they're keeping it protected. Other than that, we're still exactly where we were when this started: a Spectre went rogue, stole an Alliance ship, and then vanished. Hell, the Alliance would probably be thrilled that they're hiding out behind the Omega 4 relay right now."

"Jacob's right," Rooker said. "We're in the Terminus Systems, after all. The Alliance has no authority or interest in this area. And until Cerberus ventures out of the Omega 4 relay again and enters Alliance space, the brass could probably care less what they do. We report back now, odds are they'd recall the Orpheus and order us to wait for Cerberus to make the next move."

"And I have no intention of doing that," Jacob said. "But the question is, what do we do next? How do we contend with those drones, when all we have is this beat up frigate?"

Tali cleared her throat. "I actually might have some ideas about that, Jacob," she said. She interfaced her omni-tool with the holo-display on the center of the table. "Since we jumped, I've been looking over the sensor readings from our battle. And there were some things I noticed that might give us a way to deal with Cerberus's defense systems."

A hologram of the exterior of the Orpheus gleamed at the center of the table. Tali stood up and pointed a finger at the ship, glowing spots and trails marking where the drones had attacked them.

"Look at the pattern of these attacks," she said. "The Oculus drones we fought against during the war were powered by individual Collectors, their bodies modified and stripped down until they were little more than a nervous system. As a result, they were fairly autonomous. But look at these attacks and the patterns."

Hitting a button on her omni-tool, Tali started a time-lapse on the hologram, the spots and streaks of attacks appearing on the ship schematic as the recreation of the attack was displayed. "Their strikes are coordinated, timed perfectly with each other. One drone opens up a weak point on the barriers, and three more immediately follow up within less than a second, at the exact same spot. There's no way that individual drones could manage that sort of planning on their own."

Tali hit the hovering buttons on her arm, the image of the ship changing to a technical schematic of one of the drones. "The Orpheus sensors managed to get a partial scan of one of the drones during the battle," Tali narrated. "It was somewhat shielded, but there was one major difference between these drones and the Collector drones I was able to spot right away."

She pointed, and the room leaned forward. "What is it?" Vega said. "Looks kinda small to me."

"It's a tightbeam communication device," Tali explained. "At first, I thought maybe the drones were using them to communicate with each other. But that would be like setting up a QEC to talk to your next-door neighbor. Complete overkill considering the distances involved. Thankfully, Ensign DeSilva was able to capture some of the signals coming off the drones in the middle of the battle, and I was able to triangulate the source of the signals."

Tali pushed another button, and a hush came over the room as they saw what appeared. The familiar rocky landscape of Omega.

"Guess that explains why they stopped there before going to the relay," Grunt observed. "So they've got, what, a Cerberus agent running those drones from Omega?"

"A VI, most likely," Tali said. "I'm not sure how they managed to set something up like that without Aria's knowledge, but however they did it, it's just about the only thing that would be able to coordinate these attacks so precisely."

Rooker considered this. "So you're saying that, if we manage to take that VI down..."

"The drones will be useless," Jacob said. He immediately got on his communicator. "Joker, set a course for Omega. As fast as you can get us there without this ship blowing up under us."

"Roger that, Commander," Joker said over the comms.

Garrus let out a weary chuckle. "Back to Omega, huh? Thought I'd seen the last of that place the day Archangel died."

Vega gave Jacob a concerned look. "We gonna be able to dock there, Jacob?" he asked. "I mean, I've heard Aria's gotten pretty paranoid since the war ended. And, no offense, but we do have quite a few former Cerberus members on this ship. With everything that's happening, we might not be able to get close to that station."

"I still remember how she insisted that Shepard go without us on that mission to liberate Omega," Cortez added. "Aria may trust Shepard, but I doubt she'd trust any of us."

But Jacob seemed unconcerned. "I'm sure she remembers how me, Shepard and Miranda took care of a little mercenary coup four years ago. And maybe I can convince her of what's really going on if I lay the facts at her feet. The two of them fought Cerberus alongside each other, after all. Aria has to know that Shepard would never even think of joining back up with them again. And right now, it's pretty much our only option."

Rooker looked back at Tali. "When we get to Omega, are you going to be able to find where the VI signal is coming from?"

Behind her breathing mask, Tali frowned. "It's strange. I definitely know that the signal is coming from Omega. But when I try to narrow it down to a specific place on the station, it seems to... jump. But I should be able to get a better reading once we're on the station, for sure."

"Alright, then," Jacob said. "Everybody get prepared. Considering what we've seen from Cerberus up 'til now, I doubt this is going to be as easy as docking on Omega and pulling out a few wires. Get whatever gear you need and wait for my orders. I imagine we'll be at Omega within the hour."

"Jacob, just a minute," Tali said. "There's one other thing... well, I don't know what it means, if anything." She hit a button on her omni-tool, and the holo-image of the Oculus drone returned. "Like I said, the drones were shielded, and we weren't able to get a perfect reading on them. But what I did see is... well, I don't know what..."

Garrus laid a hand on Tali's shoulder. "It's alright," he quietly reassured her. "Just tell us."

"It was the other major difference I saw between this drone and the ones we fought in the war," Tali said. "Those were made by the Reapers, and they basically made them as cannon fodder. But these drones are different. Tougher barriers, thicker constructions. Building just one of these things, at least from what I could tell from these scans, would probably cost about as much as it takes for the Alliance to build a half-dozen fighters. To have built more than twenty of them... I can't imagine where those kind of credits would come from."

Tali looked at Jacob, and Jacob was surprised at what he saw in her eyes. Confusion... and fear. "We're not just dealing with a bunch of terrorists who lucked into hijacking the Normandy, Jacob. This is something big. Much bigger than we ever could have possibly imagined."

Jacob considered the implications of this, and shivered. "Well, we're not going to be able to find out any more about what it is we're dealing with until we take out those Oculus drones," he said. "Thanks for all of this, Tali. We'd have no idea what to do next without you."

The praise did little to change Tali's mood, but she nodded in recognition.

As the group filed out, Cortez moved around the table and got Tali's attention. "Can I ask you something, Tali?"

"Sure, what's up?" Tali said, as she deactivated her omni-tool and the display on the conference table.

"When you were talking about the damage to the ship, you mentioned some power conduits that exploded," Cortez said.

Tali let out a sigh. "Yes, the B42 and B46 conduits. From what the engineering team on the Orpheus tells me, they've been overdue to be replaced for a year or so now. One of them even said the B46 blew out during a routine training exercise a few months ago. Unfortunately the Alliance isn't willing to put up the credits for anything more thorough than a bare-minimum patch job. So chances are they're just going to keep blowing out anytime this ship sees any action."

Cortez thought about this. "So the B46 has been bad for a while," he said, and then forced a casual smile on his face. "So, morbid question I know. But if somebody had been standing or, say, sitting in front of that conduit during the battle..."

"They would have been vaporized in less than a second," Tali said. "Thankfully, nobody was around when it went. Otherwise... well, we would have definitely had some casualties then."

"I... suppose we would have," Cortez said quietly. "Thanks, Tali, that's all I needed."

As Tali walked away, Cortez heard the voice in his head.

At least down here... I can go quiet.

"Dammit, Riggs..." Cortez said under his breath, before turning and leaving with the rest of the team.
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Slaves of Cerberus