Plan for the Galaxy Chapter 58

PFTG

A/N Hello loyal readers! Thank you all so much for your patience. I was a little burnt out after that three chapter update last month, then I had a short holiday which wasn’t really a holiday. Long story short, this took far longer than I expected. But it is here now and I hope that you enjoy it.

…

CHAPTER 58 – Start of Phase Two

(Brock POV)                                  

Despite being stuck in a hospital bed, recovering from having a leg crushed and ripped off and then replaced with a cloned body part, I didn’t have the luxury of unlimited rest. Jane had died a couple of days ago and I was too unconscious to do anything. That meant I was running behind on some very crucial tasks.

The first thing was a short session of working out the medications I would need to take with Liserias. I wanted to get something else done but my dedicated medic was diligent. By that I mean she was a pain in the neck and refused to let me get back to work or even let me send any messages until I was done.

Finally I got out of the turian’s clutches, not that I ever left the hospital bed. With my leg having been replaced, I wasn’t allowed to put any weight on it for at least a week. Despite my leg being replaced by an exact copy, there was going to be a decently long rehabilitation process to make sure that every nerve connected correctly I wasn’t understating it so say that it was extremely complicated. Even with the futuristic technology it would mean probably three months of continuous checking to make sure that the nerve reattached properly and the muscle fibres were blended. If I recovered without it attaching properly, I would be permanently crippling myself which I wasn’t a fan of.

Still, I had to do what was necessary and being stuck in bed meant that I was going to be able to take my plans to the next stage of things. That meant carving out a kingdom.

But for now, I opened my omnitool and called a certain someone.

“Brock!” Liara exclaimed the instant the call connected, the angle she was looking at me from told me she was sitting at a terminal and not receiving it on her omnitool. “I’m so happy to see you alive! How are you? No, are you ok? Where are you?”

I smiled. The asari was young, but she did genuinely care and that was worth a lot. “Good to see you too, Liara,” I said fondly. “I’m recovering from having a clone leg installed to replace the last one. The doctor is keeping me in bed for a week and I am going to be moved off to one of my company’s facilities while to do my rehabilitation.”

She put a hand to her mouth for a moment. “Well, I am just so glad that you are ok,” she said, her eyes getting a little teary.”

“Me too,” I said honestly. “What have they had you doing for the last week?”

“Lots of interviews,” she explained. “News networks, then the President of Armali University contacted me about getting involved on the ruins on Ilos, I have had things to do with my family estate and I have had a lot of meetings in general.” She hesitated for a moment. “But, now that Jane has gone, I don’t know. I feel a little down. Jane was a good friend. She made a mistake with driving you off the crew but she was a good operator before that and she was excellent as a Spectre. I consider her a friend.” Her eyes got even more teary. “And now that she is gone, I regret the disagreement we had and wish that I could go back and talk to her again.”

I nodded. “I understand,” I said. “I only heard the news when I woke up this morning. But I am glad that you brought it up. I need your help regarding Jane.”

Liara visibly sat up straighter, even though I only saw he from her chest up. “What can I do for you, Brock?” she asked, sounding serious.

“I have had some reports that there are some parties that are interested in getting hold of Jane’s body,” I said, lying. Beau hadn’t told me any of that, but I knew and remembered from the games and other material about the Mass Effect universe that the Collectors were making a play for corpse Shepard. “I need you to go and get it before they have the chance to do anything with it?”

“Why would someone try and do that?” she asked, even as she started to tap away at her terminal.

“There are a lot of sick people out there,” I replied. “And the reapers have many allies. They know that Jane was leading the charge to stop them from being able to return through the Citadel. They would likely do something out of spite.”

“Goddess,” she sighed as she continued to tap away. “I can see that happening. I hope that we can get prepared for the reapers. I suspect that we have only delayed them.”

“I agree,” I replied, drawing her attention away from her typing. “From what we know this is a race of super powerful sentient starships that want to wipe out all advanced life in the galaxy. If they can live long enough to be able to hit the protheans and the civilisation before that and however many before that, I doubt that they are going to be bothered by not coming in through the Citadel in a single instance.”

Liara paused as she considered that. “I hate to say it but you are probably right,” she conceded, rubbing a hand against her temple. “It hasn’t been made public but the Council has been sending out discrete messages to each of its governments to begin a buildup of military vessels. Did you hear about that new ship that destroyed Sovereign?”

I kept the amusement off my face as I replied. “Yes, I did,” I replied. “My Head of Security informed me when I woke up that there is apparently an alien race out there that is powerful enough to destroy the reapers in a single shot. It has much greater firepower than anything that the Citadel races can bring to bear.”

The attractive blue woman nodded. “Yes,” she confirmed. “It has the Council of Matriarchs in a panic. They had considered themselves powerful enough, or at least wise enough, that we wouldn’t need to look at further militarisation. The Destiny Ascension was the proof of our ability to have the most powerful punch in a battle. Seeing as not only did another ship have far greater power, but the Ascension was almost lost to the geth of all races, it appears as if they are having to reevaluate. They are not enjoying the process. I think they have had their pride wounded.”

“Huh,” I said eloquently. “How did you hear about this?”

Liara gave a soft smile that had tinges of cunning; the potential future Shadow Broker was shining through. “With my mother unable to be contact in the wake of Saren’s betrayal, the details of what she had been doing were hidden. As I am the only daughter that she has, I have been brought in to cover for her until they are able to make a definitive decision on what to do with her seat on the Council of Matriarchs.”

I gave a slow nod as I considered that. That was never really gone into in the ME games and I have no idea what the extended canon said about that. The only thing the games showed was that Liara was an information broker two years after the events of the first game.

“Well, I believe that you are fully capable of taking it to those old biddies,” I said, smiling at her. She giggled a little and nodded.

I saw Liserias come in, a medical drone floating along behind her. Looks like it was time for more treatment.

“All right,” I said, winding up the conversation. “It looks like the doctor is going to check up on me. I should go.”

“One moment,” Liara cut in before I could close the call. “I am just wondering, why is it that you didn’t get Jane yourself?”

I considered the question for a moment. It was a reasonable thing to ask. I could have sent a collection team or two to get Jane’s body before any Collectors got to it. I didn’t really have an excuse, other than I knew that Liara also had the resources. But I guess it was also because I knew that Liara could do it, I just figured I would leave that the same. Besides, if things went the way I expected them to go, I had a feeling that someone else was going to be interested in the body soon anyway.

Luckily, I had other plans that would serve as an excuse.

One of the standing orders my people had had was to find planets that had either one of two characteristics. The first being garden worlds. And there were plenty of garden worlds in the Terminus region that only had very minimal populations.

Part of that is because of the general lawlessness that existed out there. The games never really covered it in any depth but just reference that the power of the Terminus systems would be a threat to Citadel security if they went to war. While not exactly true, there were other factions that existed in the terminus that had a lot of relative power. Individually they wouldn’t cause an issue, but if the Citadel came after them, all the Terminus factions would likely unite and have enough power to threaten the Citadel.

Outside of that, they were far more interested in their own power. And they also generally stayed to themselves, at least for now. The largest faction was headed by a group of asari outcasts. Not Ardat Yakshi or anything like that, but other criminals or undesirables that had fled asari space centuries ago and established their own planets in the Terminus. There were even a few shipyards out in the Terminus, which made sense. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a threat to the Citadel Fleets.

But as they mostly left people alone, it meant that usually they didn’t have any problems with other people who wanted to start independent colonies in the Terminus. Colonies like Horizon were plentiful in the Terminus, but navigation was tricky and there was a distinctly lower number of Relays out there.

Luckily for us, the anti-slave raids in the Terminus meant that we were able to get the locations of a number of garden worlds that had a small population. Once we conducted our raids, we managed to clear out most of the undesirables at those planets and, hey! Free real estate!

Still, the main thing was that it meant that my people were easily able to find a place to establish ourselves in the Terminus where we could build up a fortress world, place our shipyards, move most of our development and factories and provide a safe haven, similar to what we gave the quarians.

Now that we had finished the events of Saren’s betrayal and all of the things involved with the first Mass Effect game, it was time to move on to the next step.

Not that we were going to be getting rid of our established bases, such as the Eden Prime facility, or the orphanage on the Citadel, but I wanted us somewhere that we could grow more without having to risk oversight from the governments of the galaxy. Or their spy organisations.

“Honestly,” I began, “I am going to be moving most of my company out of the Citadel space. We are looking at something more suitable to our needs and we need to make sure that we have the space for it, and that we don’t get too much oversight from the Council. Not to mention, much of our work for the near future will be focussed in the Terminus regions. Not only pirate raids or anything, but actual work. I will have people in contact with the Citadel, as well as our established Citadel businesses, but the majority of things will be moved to a planet that my people found a year or so ago in our raids on pirate bases in the Terminus.”

Liara’s face fell. “Oh,” she mumbled. “I had thought… I mean, I didn’t expect…”

I gave her a soft smile. “I know,” I replied. “Unfortunately, now that the galaxy knows about the reapers and we have another powerful group out there to worry about, I think it is time to begin to prepare for them. I will be in Citadel space regularly, though. I have plenty of business opportunities that I deal with personally. And I need to make sure that you get that access to the Eden Prime prothean site.”

Her smile grew wider, but she still looked a little sad. “I hope that you will contact me when you come to Citadel space?” she asked.

I nodded. “Of course,” I confirmed. “After all, everyone needs a good friend, if nothing else.”

The skin around her eyes tightened slightly but she nodded. “Farewell for now, Brock,” she replied, sitting back in her chair. “I will let you know when I manage to get Jane’s remains.”

I said goodbye and signed off.

“That young lady would willingly court you,” Liserias spoke up right next to me.

I smiled. “I know,” I replied. “And she is beautiful, intelligent and kind. I do think that there could be something there, if I let it.” I grinned at the turian medic. “Who knows? Maybe once this reaper nonsense is taken care of.” My grin widened in genuine amusement. “Not to mention this mysterious ‘powerful race’.”

She gave an amused snort of her own. “Well, I’m glad that you are open to the possibility,” she said as she started scanning me.

I considered for a moment. “I am,” I agreed. “Maybe not with her, necessarily, but I am open to it now.”

“Good to know.”

Liserias scanned me for a moment in silence. “I’m not interested, just so you know.”

I blinked. “What the hell?”

…

Getting back into the swing of things meant that I was getting lots of messages from all over the business again, giving me updated reports on all of the mission outcomes from our anti-slave raids, or whatever projects that Chop, or Horaxus or Nelathie were working on, or any of the dozen other things that were going on at any point in time.

That didn’t mean that I wasn’t expecting another call.

My intercom chimed as Malaea paged me from her desk. I had moved to the orphanage now that I had been released from the hospital the day before, but I was under strict observations and movement restrictions. I didn’t care though. It meant that Klara was happy to see me every day. It was a luxury that I wasn’t able to afford much. But with me here, security in the neighbourhood had been beefed up so much that there wasn’t a spare fly in the district that Jurt didn’t know about.

“Boss,” Malaea’s voice came over the speaker. “You have a Miranda Lawson on the comm.”

“Thanks, Malaea,” I replied. Actually, I just remembered that she was now pregnant. I should get her a gift. I jotted down a note first to remind myself, before activated every security program that I had available. Finally, I answered the comm. Voice only though.

“Miss Lawson,” I greeted her, not having a video for her to see me in a weakened state. “I must say that I was expecting this call.”

“Is that right?” her voice came back smoothly, with just a hint of suspicion. “And why is that?”

“Well,” I replied, feeling chaotic amusement run through me, “after your proposition at that gala so long ago, I had hoped that you would have contacted me soon after to assure me that your proposition had, in fact, been genuine. You never did so I assumed that you were just making either a recruitment pitch or a snatch and run. I have to admit that I did feel let down.”

Not true in the slightest, but I have no idea if she was taking it as honest or not. I actually wished that I had a video screen to look at to see her reaction. Oh well, I would have to imagine it.

“That isn’t why I contacted you,” she replied, her voice sounding strained.

I let my mouth twist in an amused smirk. I was getting in her head.

“Pity,” I replied. “After all, a woman of your beauty and talents would be someone that any normal man would waste away days wishing that you would make them any proposition genuinely. I am only a man, after all.”

There was a faint creak that came through the speaker but I had no idea what that was. Still, I may not be able to see her, but I could imagine that there was a dangerous expression on her face. Time to rein it in.

“Well,” I continued, sounding a little downhearted, “if you are not here for personal reasons, then I must assume that you are calling on behalf of the Illusive Man. Am I right?”

There was a very short pause. “You are correct,” she replied, her voice far more business-like now that we were moving onto something she was more comfortable with. She was able to recover from her anger or embarrassment rather quickly. “The Illusive Man has asked me to make a call on his behalf.”

“Hmmm,” I replied slowly. “I thought that I would be afforded more respect than to have someone lower on the totem poll contacting me. I am the President of my organisation. No offence to you, Miss Lawson, but you are very much not. Some would take that as an insult.”

“The Illusive Man is exceptionally busy,” Miranda started to reply.

“As am I,” I rebutted, cutting her off. “My time is no less valuable than his is. Don’t think that just because he hides his face and name from the rest of you that he is worth more or engaged in more enterprises than I am. Respect, Miss Lawson. If Henry didn’t teach you that much, the I would have expected the Illusive Man to do son.”

There was a long pause and another creaking sound came through the speaker. “I will pass that message on, Mister Nielson,” she said, her voice sounding more strained than it was before.

“Good,” I replied. “Now, what was the message that you need to pass on?”

“The Illusive Man asks that you turn the body of Spectre Jane Shepard over to Cerberus,” she replied primly.

“Interesting,” I said slowly, as if I wasn’t expecting it. “Why?”

“That is classified,” she replied instantly.

“That’s nice,” I shot back. “But if I am going to pass over the corpse of a comrade, I want to know why they are not being allowed to just have their remains put to rest.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the call. “We believe that we are able to revive her,” Miranda eventually said.

I blinked, not having expected the candid response. “I am not here to waste my time on guessing games and magic shows,” I rebuked the hot terrorist.

“This is not a ruse, Mister Nielson,” Miranda spoke up quickly, clearly believing that I was about to cut off the call. “Our medical labs have the technology to be able to completely rebuild her body, whatever the damage. That includes any neurological reforming and doing so with the old material. We would naturally be able to make her more durable and ensure that not only is she the same Jane Shepard, she will be a tougher version of her!”

I shook my head at the comm. “Sounds like straight up cloning to me,” I replied. “And I know that Cerberus has the technology to be able to straight up clone. What would stop you from just having an army of cloned Shepards at your beck and call? What would stop you from just programming a loyalty package into her brain that would make her nothing more than a Cerberus tool? That seems exactly like something that you would do.”

“Naturally we would need to take some precautions,” she began.

“Be careful with what you say next,” I replied coldly, cutting her off. “Before I mistake you for Henry Lawson. Because that is exactly something he would do.”

There was a much longer pause as she worked through what I said. I was really regretting not having the camera on because I don’t know if she was feeling anger or shame or any of the other potential emotions she could be feeling right now. I know that she hated Henry Lawson a lot and did everything in her power to distance herself from the man.

You know, like running off to his best friend and coworker who would report on everything that she was doing.

“The Illusive Man is extremely insistent that nothing like that be done to Spectre Shepard,” she finally replied. “He is adamant that no personality programming take place. He doesn’t want people to be able to think that she is someone else or have any different personality traits. She is a hero of humanity. That is who he wants back.”

“Uh huh,” I said, making sure I sounded as sceptical as possible. “And after what has already been inferred in this conversation, what possible assurances could you give that you are being honest in this endeavour? After all, going by his psychological profiling, having a spare Shepard in case he doesn’t get what he wants out of the real one is something he would do.”

“I guess in this instance that trust is going to have to come into play, Mister Nielson,” Jack Harper’s voice cut across the comm. “Our shared history would hopefully have done something to bridge that divide between us.”

“Ah, such as listening in quietly to supposedly private conversations,” I replied sarcastically. “Though, it is interesting that trust is brought up in our shared history here, Mister Man. After all, I have been able to show my side where I have altered plans and missions to maintain the agreement we have. I seem to run short of memories where you have shown that same level of commitment to our peace deal.”

There was a moment of silence as the Cerberus stooges considered what I said. It was true. As I told Jane, I had altered my plans twice to accommodate their requests. They have not done anything to show their own trustworthiness.

“And, how would we go about gaining your trust in this manner?” Harper spoke up eventually.

“That is the question,” I agreed. I already knew that Cerberus were capable of doing this. I also knew from the DLC that there was that mission of fighting off a Shepard clone. If that happened then I would just have to deal with it.

The fact of the matter was that it would be a massive use of resources for Cerberus to bring Jane back. Billions of credits would go into bringing her back to life, and there would be a ship that would be made for her. There was the problem with a bit of boosted popularity that they would enjoy once Jack let slip that Jane was working with them.

All of that was ultimately manageable. I just disliked the idea of a terrorist organisation having my friend’s body.

“Once you are done,” I began, “I want to see her. And I want progress reports sent to me on her physical recovery.”

“Easy enough,” Jack replied. “Is that all?”

“That’s it,” I confirmed. “I don’t care for the intricacies of your operations. None of that is my business. I do, however, care on the recovery of Jane.”

“Understandable,” Harper said. “Believe it or not, I also care for Jane Shepard’s recovery. I will keep you apprised of all relevant information.”

“Yes,” I agreed sarcastically. “I trust the man who won’t even reveal his actual name to pass on information honestly. Just tell me where you want to make the handover.”

“Miranda and her security will meet your people on Omega,” Harper said. “I’ll let Miranda give you the details.”

“Yes, sir,” Miranda cut in, showing that she was still part of the conversation.

“Very well,” Harper said, a note of finality in his voice. “Until next time, Mister Nielson.”

“Just send through the details, Miranda,” I replied, feeling drained from this conversation. Mentally, if not physically. “I’ll have my people meet you for delivery.”

“As you say, Mister Nielson,” Miranda replied, the note of distant professionalism back in her voice.

I cut the call, not bothering to be nice about it. I was tired and just done with Cerberus nonsense for the moment. I wouldn’t be meeting her on Omega, but I would make the trade. I just didn’t care enough to deal with them right now.

Miranda would be good once she came out from under Harper’s thumb and had her eyes open to his constant betrayal of her trust. Besides, once they drain a significant portion of their resources getting Jane revived, I would no longer need to play nice with Cerberus or Jack Harper.

…

(Miranda Lawson POV)

Miranda looked at the desk in front of her. The frame of it was twisted, bent by the pressure she unwilling put out when her biotics activated during her conversation with Brock Nielson.

The man was infuriating. What made it worse was that he asked legitimate questions, and not just nonsense. The only thing she was glad about with the conversation was that the camera was off so he couldn’t see her frustration or her shame.

She was a product of Henry Lawson. It was something that she’d had drilled into her mind from a young age. All of her accomplishments, all of her successes, were a result of the efforts he had put into cloning her.

She hated him for it. That and his controlling nature.

It was why she had run away; why she had stolen Oriana away. She wanted nothing to do with the man. But no matter what, no matter how far she tried to distance herself from her father, there was always that little voice in her head that told her that she was Henry Lawson’s legacy. That nothing she did was from her own merits.

At the same time, she was a realist. She knew the risks in reviving Shepard. They would need a guarantee that there would be enough interest to not attack Cerberus the moment she was revived. Jane was both extremely capable of violence and not a fan of Cerberus, according to reports.

But for him to claim that she was acting like… that man… she had felt sick in her stomach at the comparison.

The sad part was that she couldn’t refute it. It was something that Henry Lawson would do. He was obsessed with control. And now she was acting like him.

It had led her to clench her desk’s edges so hard it snapped the metal frame when her biotics came to life. It was another thing that galled her; her own lack of control at times. And Brock Nielson, smug bastard that he was, somehow knew how to bring those emotions out of her.

She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath to centre herself. Once she was calm, she opened her eyes again and started to tap away at her terminal. She had plenty of work to do and thinking of a certain handso… smug face wasn’t conducive to a productive environment.

…

(Brock POV)

“Lift your leg up,” Liserias droned. “Now hold…”

I strained as I lay on my back, my new leg sticking up in the air as I followed my doctor’s instructions. The physical rehab for having a leg attached was harder than it should have been. After all, it was my leg, exactly as it was, though with only a little less muscle.

Despite that, the effort that it took to hold my leg in the air without a brace or harness seemed disproportionate to the size of my leg.

“Good,” Liserias continued after a few moments. “Now, slowly lower it back to the bed.

I huffed as I controlled the leg returning to the bed. I had been at this for about fifteen minutes now and I was getting bored. It was straining, but more in the way of holding up a leg in the air after running a marathon when out of training.

It only happened once. Never doing that again.

“Good,” Liserias said. “That will do for today. Keep doing your exercises and you should be back on your feet walking by the end of next week.”

“Thanks, Liserias,” I said, wiping a drop of sweat off my brow. “No one really tells you how it feels to go through this. I hope that I get over the weakness quickly.”

She shook her head and started putting away her things. “The body heals when it heals,” she replied. “Medigel helps, for sure, but there is nearly always a part of the mind that tells you that the cloned limb isn’t really there. That it doesn’t really belong. That always goes away with time, but the first few months are always the hardest. Your muscles might have been cloned, but they don’t have the ‘muscle memory’ of the original. The only way to get that is the slow path of exercise. As long as you keep that up, I expect that you will be fully and completely healed within six months. I wouldn’t clear you for participating in field operations until then. No combat simulators for four months either. Let your body heal. In the meantime, keep up with your exercises.”

I sighed in defeat. “I will,” I said, trying hard to not complain about the timeline. If I had lost the leg in my other life, it would have meant that there was nothing in my future other than a clunky prosthetic. I had a whole limb again. Scar-free and obviously not matching the rest of me, but it was a genuine flesh and bone leg.

“Good,” she said. “I will be back tomorrow.”

She walked out of the room, passing Persei who had walked in, holding a tablet.

“Hello Brock,” she greeted with a small smile. “How is your therapy?”

“Harder than I want it to be,” I confessed to my advisor. “But as long as I get the results I am looking for it will be worth it.”

She nodded. “I’m glad,” she replied. She glanced down at her tablet. “Are you in a position to get some other work done?”

I nodded. Anything to break the monotony of being stuck in bed.

We went through a long list of orders that needed be taken care of. It was a little harder than usual to get the necessary metals for some of our projects, mostly due to the Citadel and Alliance making priority acquisitions to rebuild their respective fleets after the geth attack. The turians had also made some orders, but not enough to be able to slow the market down all that much.

Unfortunately, it also meant that costs were up. Supply and demand and all that. Luckily, all of the business interests that I had meant that there were still plenty of credits coming in, so we weren’t at risk of going broke. Still, we had thousands of people to take care of and feed, which wasn’t free.

To counter that, I decided to use the increased demand in the market to start selling our own deposits of raw eezo from the asteroids that we had hidden in the galaxy. We still had two that hadn’t been touched at all, other than surveys. That was billions of credits available to us right there. This time though, instead of selling to the asari and going for exclusivity, I instructed Persei to establish several shell corporations and we would sell the eezo directly. It would mean that we could get more money, pay less taxes and be able to avoid troublesome middlemen.

Luckily, we had plenty of people in Shieldstar now that were capable managers and administrators. They were also extremely loyal, for the most part. A couple of bad eggs and opportunists tried to get out with a profit, but only one of them managed to get free before they were caught. The rest were merely exiled from the organisation as they were not causing risk to anyone else.

Finally, we started winding down the meeting. We just had to book appointments.

“Alright,” I said, beginning the last stage of the meeting as I was already feeling a little mentally drained. “I want to make an appointment with the gaming company for next week. The purpose is to get a general overview of the Pokémon games, but privately, I want to see if they have enough that I can just turn over creative control to them completely. If it is going well, I don’t want to focus much more time on it than I need to. I just want to get money from it and let it go.”

Persei nodded and made a note on her tablet.

“Next,” I said, “for when I am able to walk, but not before I am fully able to return to combat if needed, I want to be able to get meetings with the batarian ambassador, the volus ambassador and Councillor Tevos. I don’t need to worry about an appointment with Valern at this stage, nor Sparatus or Anderson. And, sorry to say, we are going to have to get back in costume for the batarians.”

Persei pursed her lips in annoyance but nodded as she typed up the orders.

“Lastly,” I said. “I want to have scouting and recon teams sent out to look for planets that have very specific requirements. Gas giants, hydrogen based. Some methane allowed, as well as a small level of oxygen, but it must be mostly hydrogen based. The larger the better.”

“What’s that for?” Persei asked, looking at me in confusion.

“A bit of insurance,” I said mysteriously. “A backup plan, if you will. If the reapers get too far into the galaxy.”

She blinked. “I… see,” she said hesitantly, indicating quite clearly that she did not, in fact, see.

“Actually,” I said, realising I forgotten one thing I needed to do now. “There is one more thing. Now that we are moving to the Terminus, I want us to have offices set up on Illium, Arcturus Station and convert the office that we have on the Citadel to focus on security for the independent colonies that start up in the Terminus. We are going to be focussing on survival shelters and early warning systems. I want to set up a proper meeting with Beau, Ely, Hectar and Nelathie. Maybe dig up someone that would be more suitable to dealing with finances and emergency shelters. An engineering team too. If we are going to do this, I want to do it right.”

Persei nodded and made a note. “Is that all?”

I sighed, feeling grateful that it was over for now. “Yes,” I said. “But how is everyone doing? How are you? Have you started painting again?”

My assistant gave me a wide smile and spent a minute talking about some of the water works that she wanted to emulate in her new hobby. And, just for a moment, I felt unburdened by the weight of the galaxy as two friends talked about nothing life threatening, or making plans for something life threatening.

…

(Jack Harper/The Illusive Man POV)

“We have taken collection of Shepard’s body,” Miranda’s voice came over the comm. “Doctor T’soni’s held up her end and we are heading back to the base to begin.”

Jack couldn’t help the tiny flicker of amusement that passed through him. After the conversation between her and Brock Nielson, she was refusing to mention him if she didn’t have to. After all, the businessman did have a way of pushing her buttons, from what he had heard.

“Excellent work,” he replied to his subordinate. “Spare no efforts to getting this done quickly, Miranda. You will not fail at this assignment.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman replied. “I won’t let you or Cerberus down.”

Misinformed young woman. He was Cerberus. “I know you won’t,” he replied. “That’s why I put you on this. I expect results. I will make sure that the Normandy is completed by the time that you are done.”

It was a project that had taken a lot of time and money to even begin. The Alliance and the Hierarchy had both labelled the Normandy project as classified. Thankfully, the admiral that had passed the information over was both very pro-human and a very poor gambler. All it had taken was a promise to pay off his outstanding debts to have the man pass along classified information.

Now his own people were running through the designs and perfecting them for his needs. As it was only going to be rated as a heavy frigate, there was plenty of time for the construction to take place. It would all depend on whatever timeframe that Miranda established for him to put the order out to begin construction.

A small frown flickered across his visage as that thought led him to consider the status of his, and by his he meant Cerberus’ fleet was going.

Prior to the amendments that had been made to the Treaty of Farixen, humanity had been on the path to decommissioning a newly built dreadnought. It would have been his for the taking.

Then the amendments happened after the alien Council breached the Treaty, leaving humanity out in the cold after an invasion on a human planet.

This might have been extremely good news for the Alliance as a whole. After all, the Alliance had initially doubled its allowed fleet capacity. Then they had made it to the Council, which raised their allowance for dreadnoughts to the same level as the asari and the salarians.

That all meant that the Alliance hadn’t needed to decommission a dreadnought, because they now were given the power to keep them for the benefit of humanity.

A ridiculous notion. Humanity shouldn’t need to ask permission to be able to protect themselves from outsiders. Since when should any human bow to the whims of a foreign race?

He shook the maudlin thoughts out of his head. The changes were a net benefit for humanity, but they still lacked the foresight to make the orders for more dreadnoughts and ships. With the threat the reapers possessed to the galaxy, not ordering every dreadnought to begin construction was shortsighted. Humanity needed a better leader; one who would look out for humanity’s best interests, no matter the cost.

Really, all the blame for this could be laid at the feet of Brock Nielson. Jack had no compunctions in admitting that he admired his fellow human. He had done a lot to benefit humanity, even if he hadn’t been doing that as his motivation. Between the work he had done raising the profile of the humanity to the masses, and the work he had done for Shepard, he had done more than most people could to make humanity acceptable to the Citadel races.

Unfortunately, all of that was detrimental to the goals of Cerberus.

A galaxy that accepted humans readily, made it harder to recruit those who felt disillusioned by the aliens around them; those who felt that they were being pushed around by those who thought that humans were beneath them. Even on Eden Prime, Cerberus recruiters were finding it hard to get a foothold on the population.

Oh, there was plenty of resentment at both the Alliance and the Council among the people there. Unfortunately, in Jack’s opinion, the ones who wanted to do something about it were heading to Shieldstar to join up there. After all, they had visibly done the most the save the planet from the geth. It made sense that they show that appreciation.

Jack was frustrated by it to no end.

Still, he had received word that Brock Nielson was heading out into the Terminus with the majority of his resources, and his adopted daughter. Not from any agents hidden in Nielson’s people; all of them were annoyingly loyal to the man. But it meant that there would be less competition for those on Alliance planets that wanted to do more than the Alliance would allow.

Still, maybe it was time for him to part ways with his agreement with Mister Nielson. He had what he wanted from the man. The businessman vigilante was going to be mostly out of the way. Oh, he would ensure that he would still send doctored reports from Miranda’s team, but there was no way that he would facilitate a meeting between them if he could avoid it.

Yes. Now that he had what he wanted, and Brock Nielson was mostly removing himself from the public, it was time to quietly end their association. Not so far as to go into direct conflict, but no longer would Cerberus stay their hand if they came across a Shieldstar team.

A chime from his terminal let him know that the next reports were in. he stubbed out his cigarette and turned to read them. He was confident that this current boost in human popularity was only temporary, before humans started to receive the normal discrimination again, especially without Brock Nielson in the way to temper it.

Then, Cerberus would rise.

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