Noveria: The Phoenix and the Snake

"Alright, then." His lips split into a smile ans he returned to the elevator. "We'll need to stop by my office to pick up the keys, and we'll be ready to go." The elevator opened onto a new floor, and he led them to a single door set in the end of the hall. It opened onto darkness. As he stepped inside, thousands of motes of soft orange light appeared, glowing in mid-air. They began to move towards the room's center, brightening as they coalesced into a spinning nebula. [Redacted] waved his hand, and muttered "Light, diffuse." The hologram disappeared, and the entire room was suffused with a light glow, illuminating the far corners for the first time.

He stepped up to a large desk, pulled out a physical keyboard from one of the drawers, and entered a lengthy string of characters. "Password and fingerprints accepted. Retinal, vocal, and genetic patterns match records on file. Access granted." A panel on the wall slid out, presenting a Briefcase. The operative retrieved it, closed the panel, and left the room. "And now, we're ready. Let's return to the docking bay. We can take the same shuttle to the first waystation."

Pharos and Weiss followed [R], looking around with interest as they did.
"So," asked Pharos as they walked. "What do you do with yourself when you're not overseeing everything here? Noveria never really struck me as somewhere you can ever really relax." He chuckled. "The last three times I've been here have ended up with gunfights and having to evade the port authority."

"I've gotten good at skiing over the last year. There's a mountain in the southern hemisphere that's nearly as tall as Olympus Mons and has a nice covering of snow year-round. Combining it with simu-fire exercises can be entertaining to watch, though it has a tendency to end in broken bones. It would be nice to find a nice forest or beach to visit, though. None of the planets in the horsehead nebula are old enough to have developed multicellular life, unfortunately. Not much of a social scene, either."

By this point, they had returned to the shuttle. [Redacted] stepped inside and returned to his chair. When they were all aboard, the ship began to take off. "It's about forty-five minutes to the first waypoint. After that, we're going to go through a security inspection and shift shuttles. I apologize for the inconvenience, but maintaining the secrecy of Phoenix's location is of the utmost importance."

Pharos made a noncommittal gesture.
"Ah, I can understand it. After Cerberus, and now with my post in the Alliance, I'm fairly used to complex security proceedures."

He settled back in the shuttle and let out a chuckle.
"Who'd have thought we'd end up here, eh? I can barely believe what's happened in the past year." He looked across at [R]. "I guess I have to thank you for that, really. If you hadn't been part of the tribunal that got me sent for psych counseling, I don't think I'd have turned down the upgrades when Cerberus offered them; I'd have become another mindless killer, like Typhon or Thanatos."

Pharos chuckled again. "Being declared unfit for duty saved my life."

[Redacted] chuckled. "Funny, how such small things carry such an impact. Like that operation on Erszbat six years ago, remember that? Just the two of us, dressed in full monks' robes, surrounded by a sea of four-eyes. You'd never believe how one came up again..." The shuttle sped through the Pax system surrounded by a nimbus of blue light, while the old friends reminisced.

---

The ship came to a stop at the edge of the system, Pax's light only a distant gleam. "Well, here we are. Waypoint one." The shuttle's door opened, and [R]stepped out onto into a small space station. He led his two companions through a door and into a comfortable-looking room. A few earth plants were placed in pots around the room. From the other side of a window, a security officer snapped to attention. "Good morning, Sir!" He glanced at Pharos. "Sirs."

"Rudolph."

"How is everything on the iceball?"

"Cold. Anything to report from the waystation?"

"Nope. Nothing nearby on the scanners, and all arrivals have been as scheduled. You didn't happen to bring another cache update, did you?"

"No reason not to." He turned to Julia and added, "These stations and the shipyard don't have extranet connectivity for security reasons, so the daily shuttles bring in cached copies of the more popular sites. These sorts of postings can drive even the most disciplined soldiers restless with boredom, so we do what we can to help."

"There we go, Sir. Scanners have come up negative. You are clear to proceed."

The door on the other side of the room opened up, revealing a second different Kodiak shuttle. The operative led them inside, and entered the cockpit. Instead of a pilot's seat, the room was fitted with a strange console consisting of twenty-seven hexagonal sockets, an OSD data cable, and a large power button. [Redacted] opened his Briefcase to reveal Twelve six-sided crystals, each composed of thousands of different materials compressed together into twenty centimeter rods. "I never understood why optical keys haven't become more popular. Any half-drunk quarian with an omni-tool could hack an electronic lock; light is harder to manipulate." He carefully inserted eight of the crystalline rods into various sockets, stopped to consult his omni-tool, and then attached it via the OSD cable. He pressed the button, and the ship began to move.

"And now the ship knows the location of the next waypoint. Ah, yes, I should have mentioned that. We have two more waypoints go to through. On Noveria, there's no such thing as too much paranoia."

Weiss nodded as [R] explained the setup to her.
"Yes, when I was out on Charybdis station we ran a similar set up, although the cache updates were few and far between. Thank god I was only there for six months."

As they stepped into the shuttle Pharos chuckled at the security proceedures.
"You were wasted at Cerberus." he told [R]. "Didn't you try to get them to instigate something similar to this?"

"Once or twice. I was more focused on increasing security measures for dangerous research. You have to pick your battles, sometimes. Easier to convince them to divert money towards security that could have been used for research when the alternative was getting ripped apart by some hideous nanite monster."

"Fortunately," he added, a wry smile on his lips, "We won't be working with hideous nanite monsters. It will take years or decades before significant advances have been made from studying leftover Reaper parts. Right now, a lot of government scientists are still just trying to figure out how to work with them safely. For once, we'll let them take the risk, and start our own experiments only after they've figured out all the wrong ways to do things. While everyone else is focused on Reapers, our scientists can study other problems that are getting neglected."

Weiss shuddered and pulled a face.
"Ugh, Reaper tech. I can't believe after everything we went through people are still happy to working with it."
"Not many of them have our experience with it." Pharos pointed out. "They'll learn quickly enough. Probably the hard way."
Weiss gave him a disapproving look. "I just hope we don't end up with another Sanctuary situation. Messing with Reaper tech always ends badly, in my experience."
Pharos nodded. "No argument there, I suppose. I just hope the rumours coming our of Sur'Kesh aren't true. If they are, you might be right."

"Honestly, I'm more concerned about what the quarians will be able to do now that the geth are working with them again. Their industrial base may soon become unmatched, and we need something to counter it. Preferably something with no chance of turning on us in Rebellion."

"I've got a team looking for possibilities, but I think they're going to be a long time coming. One of the scientists is convinced that if she can find a way to genetically remove the aggression response from vorcha, we'd have the ideal candidates. I'm not convinced, but it's worth pursuing."

"But our main area of R&D has been in space-based weaponry, since we have both the capacity and the appropriate cover to be working on it. Picking up most of Quor'Shev's former experimental division didn't hurt either. You'll be able to see some of it once we get to the station."

As the hours passed, they stopped at two more waypoints, switching shuttles each time.

"And now, we're almost here."

Pharos and Weiss followed [R] through the waypoints, making polite conversation with their friend and host as the shuttles flitted through the darkness of the outer limits of the Pax system.
When [R] finally told them they were nearing their destination, the pair peered out of the windows with no small amount of curiosity.

"Where is it?" Weiss asked, craning her neck as she peered out of the shuttle.
Taller than the doctor, Pharos looked over the top of her head out into the inky black of space, his artifical eyes whirring quietly as they searched through a number of spectrums to see if he could see the station.
"How did you find this place anyway?" he asked [R] "I remember when you started hunting for it, but I never thought you'd really track it down. Cerberus were pretty good at hiding things, when they put their mind to it."

The darkness of space was absolute: devoid of stars, planets, life.

"The horsehead is a dark nebula; a thick cloud of dust that absorbs and obscures the light shining through it. Even on Noveria, where the dust is sparse, the stars are few and dim. The dust here is quite a bit thicker, and is quite capable of blocking out any light we emit. A few hundred thousand years ago, a jovian gas giant was ejected from the Pax system, and eventually made its way into the denser portions of nebula. I'm not sure how Cerberus found it, but they named the planet Erebus. From this distance, it's only visible in deep infrared at very low wavelengths." [Redacted] touched the edge of the window, and a haptic interface appeared; he dialed the controls to the left until a dim red globe was visible in the distance.

"I found after Cronos fell. While the fleet left for earth, we stayed behind. I wasn't entirely convinced that this magic superweapon of Hackett's would work, and I wanted a fallback position from which to continue the fight if everyone died in the skies above Earth. It was Grey who led us here; after his bluebox was destroyed, the graybox contained nothing more than knowledge and memories. Finally did something useful, in the end. I think Johnathan would have liked that. Once we found it, taking over was easy. We were sitting on the edge of the gravity well, making plans for the assault, when that blue energy wave washed over everything. By the time we made our move, everyone on the station was dead and Noveria was cut off from the galaxy."

"Phoenix Station was one of their earliest shipyards, from the times when Cerberus's membership was low and their presence hidden. Because of this, their systems were highly automated; the entire facility can be run with a few hundred people. Even so, we lack the trained personnel - and the material resources - to operate the station at more than a tenth of its capacity."[color] He smiled wryly. [color=#ff4000]"But I think our current operations are more than sufficient, for now."[color] He tapped a few more commands into the control panel, and the planet disappeared again. [color=#ff4000]"Molurus, we are on our approach to Central Control. Let's turn on the running lights for the guests."

On the window, more than a dozen white blinked into light, the closest less than ten kilometers away. "Welcome to Molurus Aerospace, my friends."