Day 23: Family Troubles

Day 23

     We arrived at the location and split up: K8 and I went to the roof of an adjacent building to take out the rocket launchers on the roof, the others went to take out those in the street. K8 and I were able to cover those on the ground through the expenditure of lots of ammunition, they were very heavily armed and armoured and we were too far away to actually bring them down. But we were able to buy the squad time to execute whatever plan they came up with.

     We had some close calls as the rockets ripped through our cover apart, but with a lot of luck and a heroic display of our skills we were able to keep then at bay and take them down.

     Eventually the team cleared out the building. Apparently Braxis was taken down and almost died; he’ll survive, he has that redundant nervous system an al, lucky for him. After gathering a couple of prisoners, we carried them back to the ship. As we approached the Phoenix, we saw a Turian talking to the sentry, as I got a little closer my heart sank and I dropped my Salarian prisoner and ran. That was Adrien!

     I could tell he was nervous when I approached him, and by the spirits he had every reason to be with what he told me next: Asari commandos, and some hired thugs had attacked my family in the supposed safe house Adrien brought them to. They were in grave danger! I quickly told the Commander about the situation and told him I was leaving; I have to protect my family. At all costs. I asked KQO to get in touch with some of my contacts and I headed to Adrien’s ship and left for Palaven. I need to keep my family safe.

    

Days 21&22: A little R&R on Rannoch...

Day 21/22

     After the attacks on the ship we were able to find information about the STG’s orders to assassinate Aliya. So we devised our own plan. The memorial was nice.

     We landed on Rannoch and commenced the much-needed repairs on the Phoenix. While we were docked I was alerted to a situation outside. The commander had gone to meet with President Tali’Zorah, so the message was relayed to me: someone had murdered one of the crew. I quickly ran to the scene and found the LT impaled by an I-beam. An I-beam! How does someone even think to do that!? I quickly took one of the techs, Ariel I think her name was, that was one of the first on the scene to where he had fallen and had her scan the area to see what she could find. We found that the I-beam had been thrown biotically from across the shipyard. I brought Nienna and Lúthien to the scene to check the readings; Lúthien deduced that red sand was used, but that she had never seen red sand produce an effect that powerful. Her mother, on the other hand, did. Who in their right mind would take a drug like that? It’s an obvious suicide mission; this red sand was so pure that it causes neural decay at an alarming rate. The Asari were able to trace the biotic power of the assassin and we were able to bring him in, to the hospital, for questioning. His mind was too far-gone to be saved, but we were able to persuade him that Lúthien was an angel, and I was a demon and based on what he told us was where he was going to go. It was fairly entertaining. He told us of that the Council was suspicious of Aliya’s death and he was send to trick Joe into meeting with her to verify the status of her death. This might have worked, except the assassin was too brain dead to report back.

     KQO was able to alert those of us in the hospital that a signature of red sand was approaching the hospital. We made preparations and were able to take her down before she was able to inject herself with the drug. We took her back to the Phoenix for questioning.

     That’s when we got the reports that a group of Salarians had opened fire on civilians. We rushed out to the location to help them out.

    

Day 20: The Unexpected Target

Day 20

     We had a short respite before the next attack came. WE sent out a distress call to Rannoch asking for help and an escort. By the time the ship arrived we were not receiving any communiqués from the Quarian ship. We got K-QO to scan the ship and found no living thing aboard. Not one living soul. We then scanned the hull and found nothing. This was greatly troubling.

     K8 went to the hull of our ship to try to get a visual of the thing that we knew must be somewhere. As he was surveying the ship he was decapitated. It’s a good thing that he moved his core processing to the chest area. Then we knew that there was something really dangerous after us.

     We hunkered down as best as we could. We found, through Aliya’s scanning and K-QO systems, a way to track the machine, and increase the polarity of the hull to try to slow the thing down, as it was moving incredibly fast. Artemis and I went down to Engineering to protect Aliya. The Commander and the rest of the crew were in the CIC to defend the main bulkhead.

     The thing was in the service ducts and heading for Engineering. Artemis and I prepared ourselves as best as we could, considering we didn’t know what the hell we were dealing with. Joe burst into engineering right before the thing did. Aliya opened fire with her widow and took the shields down. Joe pulled out his katana and struck the hand that also had a katana and disarmed him. The machine still fired its silenced pistol at Aliya, she tried to duck, but wasn’t going to make it in time, I charged her as soon as the gun was raised. I tackled her to the ground. Good thing I did, the bullet embedded itself in the ship right where her head was. Artemis then opened fire and blew the machines head off with her Krysae. Nienna appeared then and contained the blast with a barrier.

     Something isn’t right here. These assassins are all targeting Aliya. She must know something, or have some invaluable intel if they can ignore the rest of our crew (including me!). We must keep her alive, I must keep her alive.  

    

Day 19: Boarding Party!

Day 19

     That was painful. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a wound quite like that one. I can't believe that I let myself get injured that badly! I'm General Corinthus! I should be above this type of rookie mistake. I can expect this kind of thing from Aliya, or Joe, but me? This is unacceptable. I completely blacked out and woke up in the medbay next to Aliya, but I remember that part. We were boarded by a few Salarian STG cruisers and attacked. K-QO was down, due to a virus that was uploaded to her somehow. We manually sealed the bulkheads and prepared for attack. Braxis, Joe, Aliya and I were down in Engineering waiting for the Salarians to come through. Once they came in things got really hot; Aliya went down in a spray of blood, then everything went dark and I woke up in the medbay with a bullet wound to my lower diaphragm next to Aliya.

     I was told afterward that Braxis and Joe, after seeing two of their squad mates go down, charged the Salarian line and chased them back to their ship. The others in the cargo hold faired a lot better. They had both of the Asari and all the biotics of this team, so they had a little bit of an advantage there. Once K-QO came online again she was able to use the GARDIAN lasers to destroy and disable the cruisers and limp away towards Rannoch.

Day 18: Backroom Politics

Day 18

     We did it! We opened trade between Irune and Palaven, now we just need to fix the other problem in the galaxy: the Council.

     After arriving at the embassy station orbiting Irune, I was escorted, along with Artemis, to see my brother. After protecting our conversation from any type of eavesdropping, I told him the plan: That we could open up a new route through the relays from Irune to Palaven directly and that we needed him to ready the Volus relief efforts. Arian informed me that the Asari are watching everything that is going on in the station, especially him and the Turian dealings. He isn’t sure, but he suspects an Asari spy is in deep with most things going on in this station. So we’ll need to think of a way to distract the Asari while we set up this new route.

     Once I debriefed the crew on the situation we all agreed that we needed to infiltrate the Asari embassy. This would be the most direct way to distract them and allow Adrian sufficient time to prepare the supplies and get them to Palaven. KQO scanned the Asari embassy for the security systems and revealed something startling: the Asari have an AI spying on the station. The Asari just get crazier and crazier.

A few members of the crew made some BS extranet news accounts of the Asari’s depravity on the station. Some of that stuff was ridiculous, why would you ever want to eat Volus babies? How would that even work? This was incredibly successful in getting an angry mob in front of the Asari Embassy’s doors to distract the Asari from our covert entrance via the air ducts. Nienna, dressed in her dancing outfit, walked into the embassy so we could have some eyes on the inside. Lúthien and the Geth stayed outside to keep the Volus riled up and the guards distracted. I don’t really know what the Krogan was doing.

     Once inside we wound our way to the elevator shaft and descended to the level with the AI. All was silent as we exited the elevator; the floor was abandoned. We cautiously made our way forward when we heard the whine of a weapon charging up to fire. We hit the deck and attempted to take the AI firing a spitfire down. KQO informed us that the AI was drawing power from the ship to boost its shields and maintain a ridiculous rate of fire. After a few intense moments KQO was able to cut off the AI’s access to the station power and Artemis blew the bloody thing’s head half off.

     Somehow a riot broke out above us and the Volus found a way into the same air duct that we came in. There were more than a few Volus casualties as a result. They died for a good cause. They helped save Palaven, although no one will ever know that.

     We hurriedly left the station and used the confusion to mask our flight from Irune to Palaven. KQO asked the relay AIs for passage to Palaven and Aliya was able to capture the request code and pass that on to Adrian and the relief fleet. The siege on Palaven is being relieved even as a type. This was a successful mission, and that brings us a little bit closer to ending a little bit of the craziness in the galaxy.