A/N: Work on the next chapter is in progress, but I had to do this.

Timeline is JUST after Ilium, before the Citadel Arrival.

FROM: FLEET MASTER, SOL, 1ST FLEET SOLGUARD, ADMIRAL OF THE RED IVAN P. DRAGUNOV

TO: 5TH FLEET, COMMANDING, ADMIRAL OF THE RED TRADIUS J. AHERN

ENCODING: BLACKFLASH 774 – SUPERNOVA ONLY ENCRYPTION KEY ATTACHED

ROUTING: SOLMAINCOMMS → ARCRELCOM → CITFLTCOM

CHECKSUM VERIFIED. KEY VERIFIED. DECRYPTING

SUBJECT: Cerberus + Shepard = Bad

Did not get back to you after drell message, apologies. You know.

Now, have angry High Lords pacing at Headquarters. Video of Shepard fighting Tetrimus everywhere. Mindful of discussion we had at Arcturus, but details appreciated.

Attached are files we have. Cerberus intel, assessments, STG tidbits, AIS 'estimates.' Feed into EDI and provide AIS guidance on proceeding.

Shepard scheduled to be at Citadel two days, sharp time limit not my fault.

FROM: 5TH FLEET, COMMANDING, ADMIRAL OF THE RED TRADIUS J. AHERN

TO: FLEET MASTER, SOL, 1ST FLEET SOLGUARD, ADMIRAL OF THE RED IVAN P. DRAGUNOV

ENCODING: BLACKFLASH 774 – SUPERNOVA ONLY ENCRYPTION KEY ATTACHED

ROUTING: CITFLTCOM → ARCRELCOM → SOLMAINCOMMS

CHECKSUM VERIFIED. KEY VERIFIED. DECRYPTING

SUBJECT: At this point I wish it was fucking hanar

You sound more incoherent than usual, still refusing to use a fucking omni-translator like a normal human being or has exposure to Branson just rotted out your brain?

And of course the fucking High Lords want a report on Shepard and Cerberus. Why, fuck me running, I have all kinds of goddamned information on the group we thought was gone and a pack of people we assumed were all dead just laying around. And as for solving the problem, I'll just call up that guy we know who can deal with this mess.

You know, Michael McDoesn'tExist.

Shit for brains nobles. I'm hoping we don't get told to try to take them out. Because that has only one answer.

The short version is: ha ha ha ha… wait, you are serious? Hell to the fuck no.

I'm guessing they won't take that, so gently remind them to watch Shepard tank everything the most powerful assassin in the galaxy could throw at her – including a fucking aircar collision – and then channel a tokamak and walk that shit off. Oh, and you can also include footage of Garrus Vakarian taking down Tazzik, if you haven't already pissed yourself at that point.

Fuck, this is going to be no fun at all to write.

Cerberus 2.0 in General

From what I can tell, most of Cerberus's current forces are built along much different lines than Cerberus 1.0. The old Cerberus used strike impact units – heavy armor, heavy machine guns and explosives, lots of snipers. Basically, right out of Rachel's playbook, hardly shocking since she was probably the one running the military aspects of the group. More of that Penal Legion-style bullshit, great against batarian State Guard and useless against everything else.

New Cerberus – based on what we saw on Ilium, plus your intel – seems to be running much lighter. The armor is some kind of slimline armored jumpsuit with plates of hyper-compressed laser steel over the vitals. Strong kinetic barriers and omni-armor back that up. It makes them a LOT more agile and maneuverable than the old clunky crap Cerberus had before, and yet they can take harder hits.

The weapons load is a trio. Mostly they use some kind of Mattock conversion. Choked out to twice the old bore, rapid-fire, some kind of liquid cooling system, integrated removable heatsinks. This thing is nasty, Ivan. Seeing it from the vids on Ilium, it was cracking Silaris armor – which is very hard to do – and going right through most barriers. Phasic rounds, probably, although we also saw high-ex and saboting variants.

The sidearms are some kind of rapid-fire shotgun that looks almost exactly like Shepard's ODIN and a light pistol that is definitely a Shepard design – both are very ugly at short-range and the pistol in particular is armor-piercing. With Nos Astra completely blown the fuck up and Horizon a cloud of smoke, the only ballistics we've gotten is from her strikes on pirates, and most of those were glance hits from missed shots.

Cerberus troop doctrine feels more elegant and flexible than Rachel's run-and-gun bullshit. If I didn't know better it feels like one of the old school boys – Raeder, Petrovsky, Adams, and Guilis. Most of 'em are dead, but maybe they trained somebody up. Definitely more sophisticated than old Cerberus, they go for the weak points first, never get let themselves get flanked, and will fall back and cover their retreat with traps if it even looks like they're getting surrounded.

Main points – speed, distraction, heavy focused firepower, backed up with bots and heavy battle-suits. There's no real weak points to hit here – they deploy engineers with omni-drones to cover flanks and scout, are very mobile, and can reconfigure to fight multiple opponent types. The bastards have had more than two years to plan and perfect their playbook, don't expect stupid mistakes.

Best hard counters to what they have would be Ns, at least five teams' worth, with a focus on biotics, snipers, and denial tactics. Those armor suits are environmentally sealed and seem to have onboard medical kits, so gas and bullshit like that won't do much.

Cerberus ATLAS

The ATLAS was a battle-suit design submitted by BenCore Enterprises about a year or so back for the contract to replace the old AGAMEMNON suits. Didn't win the bid – cost too much – and we ended up just retrofitting the old Ags to use new gear, but I thought it had a lot of promise and potential.

Now we're seeing the goddamned things in Cerberus.

The ATLAS is a conversion of an old diving mech, refitted with heavy myomer instead of hydraulics. This gives it rapid, smooth movement with no easy joints or hydraulic lines to take out. The pilot sits in a cockpit with synthetic sapphire for protection, although laser steel shutters and a full-camera HUD can be used if that's too much of a target.

The thing packs two racks of internal missiles, a re-configurable weapons arm, and a conventional arm with a flamethrower. The weapons arm usually packs a minigun or heavy cannon, but as we saw on Ilium, can also pack rapid-fire flak, anti-air or anti-tank munitions, or even plasma sprayers.

The whole thing is armored very heavily – makes it a bit clunky, not as agile as some other platforms, although the myomer means it can carry three times the armor of even the turian suits. Heat exchangers on the upper back are the only weak point I see, and to hit those you got to get in close.

This thing would feed an AGAMEMNON Mk II its ass on a platter, and as we saw, could take at least a single hit from an Adept Rail Cannon, which is fucking scary. My recommendation to counter is a pack of anti-armor missiles – shoulder launched, from highly mobile infantry. But that is not an optimal solution – just the one available on short notice.

One more thing: keep in mind this thing can drop from orbit. We saw it do that to a fucking war priestess and wipe her a second later like a batarian state guardsman, do NOT underestimate the firepower these battle-suits are packing.

Hard counters… artillery, aerial attack from outside ground-to-air missile range. Stacking it up against armor units (tanks, not battle-suits) might also work, but be prepared to take losses. Their lack of ground mobility is their only real weakness, and since they operate in teams with infantry backup, that's not much of one to utilize.

Cerberus Heavy Centurions

These are what I think is their officer corps – kitted out about the same as the regulars, but with a heavy alloy and omni-field battle shield and what looks like a ZEUS tuned up by Shepard. They stay in the rear, deploying smoke grenades, omni-drones, and infowar bullshit to ruin your day even more, and coordinate via encrypted short-range laser burst comms.

The officers are usually accompanied by those goddamned mechs. Identify them by the gold on the shoulders and the shield, and I'd honestly recommend a trio of snipers to take one out, using chip shots for the first two teams and anti-material for the last team. Their shield generators are stronger than the grunts and that shield is nearly five centimeters thick, so good luck punching through.

Cerberus RAMPART Mechs

Intercepted comm chatter by EDI managed to sniff out the name of these things. Each one is like a Stage III LOKI, but heavily upgraded with thick armor, inbuilt rapid-fire explosive miniguns, and some kind of bullshit X-ray laser burster for close in work.

The worst thing about them is they don't stay down. Unless you do enough damage to scatter the thing into burning chunks, the armor plating and the internals seem to slowly heal. The weight of all that armor means they're kind of slow and aren't good at evasion, but the armor itself was bouncing shots from asari plasma rifles. Anything that can do that is gonna laugh itself sick at Avenger fire, and even Crossfire rifles may not punch through.

Worse still, if reports are accurate, every one of the mechs has some kind of conduit to that Vigil thing, so you can deal with hax and all kinds of stupid infowar nightmare scenarios coming down the line.

Best counter is definitely artillery, from the spotty footage we saw on Korlus. Failing that, high-explosives, mines, and anything that scatters their formations. Focus fire from snipers and designated marksmen on joints might work – and if all else fails, the guns don't seem to regenerate the way the mech itself does, so you can take out the miniguns at least.

One other thing: like I said, Vigil's connected to these mechs. Do NOT even ATTEMPT to hack these things. You will get counter-hacked and then Vigil is inside your system and that, Ivan, will not fucking end well at all.

Known Cerberus Agents

I won't lie, Ivan. I know some of these people, and they are not going to be anything our guys can take down short of a full N7 team. For all of the below, I cannot recommend poisonous gas, mines, and omni-drone missile barrages enough – you get into range of these fuckers and they will take you apart in seconds.

Two things to remember with all of these people, Ivan: most of them have seen hard shit. Bitter emo bullshit is their calling card, so expect goddamned villain monologues from some of 'em. Might give you an opening on one. Second, Cerberus is into mad science, so there's no telling what kind of complete cheating cybernetic, bionic, bionetic, or God knows what else the fuck is in their bodies.

I'm gonna write this up as if we were being tasked to take them out, since given how pissed Manswell is, we might just get that order.

Randal Ezno: Former Marine major, worked under me for a bit as a lieutenant back before Pinnacle. Very tough bastard, cold, logical, doesn't get riled and can't be baited very easily. Went AWOL when krogan mercs roasted his family, ended up hunting them all down and killing them – keep in mind, this was before Cerberus got their hands on him. Randal's joining up with them bothers me, as I thought he had more sense than that, but… who knows.

Randall is a heavy hitter, no doubt – one of the toughest sons of bitches I've ever held a line with. Very skilled with heavy weapons, explosives, and skirmish tactics, good battle-suit pilot, handy in CQB. Smart, and he listened when I taught my officers, I'd say he's probably at least as good as a War College graduate. Biotics as well, although he typically doesn't use them for anything but defensive tactics.

Randall doesn't strike me as the type of guy who is in it for causes or hating aliens – even killing was just a job to him. Might be possible to get a dialogue going before a fight.

The best hard counters for a guy like this are a barrage of missiles from long-range, followed by some phase disruptors and Vanguards to tie him up in CQB while a sniper takes him out. He's good at focusing on single targets, but bad at multiple opponents.

Ryan Vaught: Yeah, this stupid fuck is still alive, and is one of Harper's point men, apparently. Thought for sure we wiped this bastard back on Halcyon, but the fact he's still around and now working for Cerberus isn't good news at all.

Vaught is a master poisoner and old school kind of assassin, the ones who plant bombs or boobytrap your house or hit you with some kind of viral agent. Not much in a straight fight (though he's got a nasty left hook), but never runs without backup of some kind.

Vaught is also a very good data hacker, and is familiar with all the back-alley bullshit from the old days, as well. Connections are expected, probably to the Circle of the Fallen, the Black Rim pirate groups, and possibly those weird Elcor Pure guys.

Killing Vaught isn't the problem – a pistol would do it. Finding the slick bastard is gonna be a mess, though, since he is slippery like an oiled-up snake. EDI's put together a behavioral script, send it to the AIS and see if they can't pin him down, then hit the bastard with a DACT team before he can react.

Rasa (?): I remember reading reports about this crazy bitch back in the day, when she almost killed that lunatic Tyriun no Kage. Some kind of hotshot assassin that worked for the Broker, and then went to Cerberus for reasons unknown. Skillset is poisons, thrown weapons, short to medium-range takedowns, heavy bioware, and can disguise herself very well. This is the one they send after you when they want you dead and are tired of fucking around. We're short on data on this one, but I suspect the best way to handle her is dump a bunch of Vanguards on her ass. That or a nice five-centimeter round from orbit.

Brooks? Davis? (full name unknown): We have even less information on this one, some kind of infiltrator specialist with a penchant for seduction, poison, and hacking. Supposed to be some kind of sidekick to Rasa, operates as a team player or solo to infiltrate. The STG was kind enough to shoot us a few things – she's infiltrated us pretty hard in the past, and she was good enough to fucking kill and impersonate a lieutenant going to the War College and finished the course, graduating in her place.

In a fight, she's probably not gonna be that tough, but an infiltrator that skilled is only going to go hostile when you're on the toilet and your nearest weapon is in the bedroom. Given she goes for seduction, I figure you're pretty safe, but younger team members could fall for this crazy skank and we could have her in the fucking Command Center and not even know it.

I really don't have a hard counter for that kind of thing, go talk to Yonis.

Volinski (full name unknown): Another guy we know almost nothing about, some kind of Brazilian sniper specialist from what the data we have says. Focus on guerrilla tactics, traps, explosives, and high-tech fuckjobs. Has a quarian wife (which is some kinda Cerberus fetish, apparently – data says two more have quarian wives, what the fuck?) and is expert-level in hacking and data penetrations.

Not a huge threat – sniper with explosive rounds, and a couple of grenades would finish him. Good luck pinning the slippery bastard down and keep in mind he's a sniper specialist – word is he's almost as good as fucking Mikey was, and maybe as good as Delacor. I'd recommend targeting the wife first to draw him out, a sniper fight is gonna end up with a lot of dead soldiers.

Side note: 'Volinski' is a Polish-American Noble House of the Third Rank. We made inquiries to the Viscount, but he swears no one in the Family is of Brazilian origin. The Volinskis are fairly liberal and notably critical of mainstream Brazilian prejudices. They employ a significant number of Brazilians as household staff and it's not impossible that this mystery sniper is a bastard son of the House.

Kai Leng: We both knew Kai back in the day. Wish the bastard really was dead.

Doesn't look like much has changed. Still can't hit shit from more than six meters away on foot, waving that goddamned sword around. Lost his legs and his eyes in some kind of bullshit, not sure what other kind of cybernetic crap he has, but expect at least sub-dermal armor.

Kai was taught how to throw knives by Kahlee, so that's a threat you need to be aware of. He's got a bunch of variants – poison, explosive, other shit – so short-range and CQB is not good, even ignoring the fact that his main weapon is a fucking monomolecular sword.

One other thing: Kai is the most badass battle-suit pilot I've seen. Do not let the crazy bastard engage you with a battle-suit, you'll lose your ass off.

Hard counters for Kai are anything at range that ruins his stealth – frag grenades and EMPs would work best. In close you're dead, doesn't matter how good you are, but from a distance, he can be handled.

Unfortunately, he works with Pel, making distance fighting problematic.

Theodore Pellham: I though Pel had gotten killed alongside Kai, but I'm not surprised he's working with Cerberus – that bullshit on Palaven with the turian chick he was banging really fucked his head up and I don't think he ever got over it.

Pel is kinda like the comic book guy Targeter – lethal with any kind of gun. He prefers heavy shit, the heavier the better, and he can use a lance cannon like a fucking sniper rifle. Pel's a big man and will always have heavy armor, tends to tuck himself into cover and pick off people attacking Kai Leng from a distance.

Pel's an easier kill in theory than Kai if only because you'll know where he's at, but the fucker's love affair with big iron means you will face hell trying to close range – and he's good at traps too, so expect mines and worse. If you can separate him from Kai, CQB is your best bet as that is not his forte.

The information we have seems to indicate he has one cybernetic arm, but given how old he is, I suspect more. Kai and Pel always work together as a team and they can read each other's movements from more than twenty years of fighting alongside each other. Keep that in mind.

Sara Shepard (?): AKA the 'Butcher.' Still not 100% sure if it is really her or not, let's call it 99%, but whoever it is fights like she did in most respects.

Shepard is a master biotic, particularly of the dancing kanquess. This is a biotic charge that has almost no cooldown and does very little impact, but allows her to jump all over the goddamned battlefield – she can get behind you in an instant. Or above you.

Whatever happened to her, she's augmented to hell and gone. Before her death she was a good but not great soldier. Now, she can snipe enemies from nearly a kilometer away while running at almost forty kilometers an hour, take out multiple krogan in hand-to-hand combat, punch right through combat armor, and has enough biotic power to drop heavy mechs. Her weapons include Saren's old pistol, probably souped-up by now, and some kind of double-barreled, choked-out, Mattock thing. On top of that, she uses an improved ODIN shotgun and a warp sword.

Shepard can use a lot of biotics only asari could use before, but both Tela and the Stellarch of the Temple of Athame said she's sloppy. That means she wastes power – extended combat might drain her.

Shepard must be heavily armored internally as well as externally, and presume that even sniper shots to the eye socket may not work – go with the heaviest anti-material rifles you can, or better yet, anti-tank missiles. Shepard is blindingly, stupidly fast now, so conventional denial and attritional tactics simply will NOT work against her.

Shepard can get very angry – especially when her friends or family are threatened or injured. Ask von Grath if you want more details, but based on what we saw on Ilium, where she was smashing thirty-story buildings out of her way, it's safe to say she's still fucking pissed-off.

Shepard had a LOT of theoretical and technical knowledge of tactics, and I taught her strategy myself. Expect her to improvise rapidly and be aware she's very good at reacting on the fly. From what I can see, she's actually run with and improved on what I taught her, and unlike the rest of Cerberus, is not doing anything I wouldn't do – blowing up Umlor is something I fucking dreamed about for years, and killing Okeer in single combat? Hilarious.

Hard counters? Not much of one, honestly. I spent about an hour thinking and I'm pretty sure I've got nothing – me against her, I think she'd beat my ass. Still, she's always using that dancing kanquess thing, so mines and traps would be the place to start.

Or a fucking orbital bombardment, if you're smart.

Garrus Vakarian (?): Our info is even sketchier on him. He was the 'Archangel' on Omega, and what we know is a mix of that intel plus bits from the turian military records they shared with us. His specialty is sniping – according to Lieutenant Commander Williams, he is extremely good. Unlike most snipers, though, he's willing to go directly into CQB.

He's using a modified SKYTALON battlesuit with integrated omni-armor and flight capabilities, so maneuver and angle are things he is a master at. Between that ability to reposition and his sniping skills, this guy is a really scary menace. He's going to be moving faster than our DACT do and outgunning them if we're not careful.

I never trained this guy, so I don't have much insight on his skillset, but I can tell you from experience most SKYTALONs were hotshots and this guy seems the same – you pin him down with heavy crossfire and some explosions, along with anti-air missiles, and he'll go down in a pile of fuck like every other SKYTALON.

Liara T'Soni(?): First off, the fact that the shy fucking science girl I trained turned into one of the goddamned 'Sisters of Vengeance' is terrifying. Why? Because she didn't used to be a killer. She didn't have the will or the hate to do it. She could fight, fight hard even if it was protecting Shepard, but she didn't have that edge.

Jesus fuck she does now.

Liara was an extremely strong biotic back in the day – fought down her own mom to a standstill on the Citadel, and only lost because of Reaper bullshit from what Synthia told me. She's good at biotic parkour like the Commissars use, nasty with warps and singularities, and has a stasis trick that can trip up almost anyone. I had to work very hard to make like training her was easy, and more than once she nearly got me with biotic bullshit I didn't expect.

She's only gotten scarier with time. She's picked up fighting with a warp sword, mass area siege biotics, poisons, hacking, stealth, and probably all kinds of other infowar bullshit. From what little we saw on Ilium, and from some crime scene reports EDI managed to salvage, she's extremely fast, capable of taking down at least four opponents in CQB at once before they could react, and cold-bloodedly killed at least ten thousand people with an FTL crash to take out one enemy.

All the cutesy sentimental bullshit and hesitation I warned her would get her killed is gone, all that's left is a hardened murderer with a dash of panache in how she goes for elegance in her kills. Liara's still using a pistol Shepard made her that can turn into a cut-down shotgun, so at short and medium-range she can hit like a truck, and at long-range you're dealing with siege biotics.

If her barrier is strong enough to take explosions that drop entire buildings and she was strong enough to make Tetrimus and Tazzik run away, most of what we've got is gonna be like throwing spitballs at a tank. For hard counters, treat her like a war priestess and use the standard kit: gas mines, ranged explosives, radiological attacks, mass phase disruptors, and snipers.

I still can't believe she turned out like this. I don't know whether to be impressed or disgusted.

Telanya Vakarian(?): The other half of the Sisters of Vengeance, and another one I didn't train. Saw the aftermath of the Citadel fight, she and Garrus held off seventy-plus geth by themselves – I'm not sure I could have done that even with Kyle at my back. Bitch was tough and a hard fighter even back then.

We have less information on her than Liara, but it looks like she was the other half of the assassin equation – worked on sniping, remote traps, and drones. Not anywhere near as strong a biotic as Liara (a given, since she's a clanless), but very strong defenses and it looks like Liara taught her how to use a Wall invocation.

Based on bits of video, she's also picked up the biotic parkour stuff, and she's definitely a menace with some kind of souped-up Spear of Athame rifle. Hard counters would be like dealing with asari commandos – trip-mines to limit mobility, shotguns to break armor, and, where possible, phase disruptors. While I'm sure she's formidable from surprise, she doesn't appear to have the skills to throw down directly with the big boys, which is why she got her ass handed to her on Ilium.

Zaeed Massani: Fucking seriously?

Jesus fuck.

Okay, we've both fought against this bastard, and the shit he pulled on Gravalax I got to do clean up on. We've also seen Firestorm in action plenty of times.

This is, after Shepard, the worst fucking possible headache to have to face.

Zaeed uses heavy armor, inferno grenades, and flame units alongside 'Jessie.' From what I recall, Jessie is some kind of archeotech weapon (Arcann era, possibly older than that) shoved into the shell of an Avenger. The thing can reconfigure itself – heavy machine gun, sniper rifle, shotgun, flamethrower, minigun, plasma flak launcher, heavy plasma impact bombard, and saturation ion discharge have all been seen. May be more, fuck if anyone knows but him.

Zaeed has a cybernetic arm with a built-in extra kinetic shield, and keeps flash-paks and drop mines on his belt at all times. He's a master-class hunter and tracker, did bounty work for years and operated in the worst parts of space with no issues. Very good sniper, very good at suppressive fire, and his ability to shift weapons styles means you can go from dealing with sniper fire to heavy machine gun fire to fucking plasma bombardment in a matter of minutes, making hard counters pretty much impossible.

He's very hard to kill – he walked off being shot in the head, remember – and almost never deploys solo. We're not sure if Firestorm is working with Cerberus directly, but if they are, it's more of the same – each member carries multiple weapons, inferno grenades, and lots of shit that causes fire.

Zaeed nearly killed Kyle at Gravalax, and that should tell you exactly how fucking dangerous he is. I'd recommend catching him in the same orbital bombardment you use on Shepard.

Vigil: Might as well save the best for last.

I've included the STG report on Vigil (which is hilarious, if you don't mind realizing we're likely to be the ones on the end of the joke). In short, Vigil can turn invisible, teleport, hack everything, and probably has Inusannon weapons systems that could blow a hole in a dreadnought, not to mention it can shapeshift.

I'll be blunt: this is a non-starter. Killing this thing is flat-out fucking impossible – the fucking Reapers couldn't kill it. It makes any kind of infowar not only useless, but hazardous, it can infiltrate ANYWHERE, and is probably reading this fucking message for all we know.

Since it is almost certainly immune to EMP and conventional damage, I'd suggest using a fucking Kyle torpedo or pure antimatter against the thing. Other than that, I don't see a way to even harm it… assuming you can even see it.

Other Forces, Suspected or Confirmed

We've ID'd a handful:

Mordin Solus: ex-STG medical doctor. Skilled with infowar, crack shot, survivalist skills. Probably the most dangerous STG agent after Master Agent Kolar and nearly as old.

Tali'Zorah: Trained her on Pinnacle, daughter of the quarian admiral Rael'Zorah. Defensive focus, uses an omni-shield and omni-armor, heavy use of infowar and drone techniques. She's going to be ugly to get at if she's gotten better, assuming she doesn't get any more limbs blown off.

Jason Dost: ex-Marine lieutenant, ran security on the quarian exile exclave with the SA on Caleston. Has a quarian wife. Not much intel on this, but he seems like a defensive sort and can certainly use a fucking Revenant better than most can.

Unknown Krogan: Biggest krogan I've ever seen, but he looks like a teenager, his crest isn't fused, which is a sign of youth. Faster than most krogan, seems to defer to Shepard. Uses some kind of energy shotgun that just obliterates whatever it hits – the science boffins think it is an anti-particle cone, in which case the only hard counter is to GET THE FUCK AWAY.

This gets worse and worse.

Jonathan Angel: ex-Marine captain, involved in the Six-Fourteen Incident which killed his family. Went AWOL and is suspected to have travelled to Omega to hunt down the killers. Trained by Zaeed back in the period where we used some of the Penal Legions to do focus training. I vaguely remember the guy, seemed solid and had a rare skill with heavy weapons. If he survived Omega all these years, he is definitely no one to fuck with.

Matriarch Trellani: The Stellarch gave us Trellani's complete file, and the STG handed over their own report.

Bottom line: let's hope she died on Ilium.

Trellani was the only Clan member ever allowed to join the full Church of Athame and rose up to the third-highest rank. From what we saw on Ilium, in bits and pieces (the initial assault was only recorded by security cams, and EDI didn't find much) she can blow a five-meter-wide hole in a fortified armaplast wall, and she could STOP Tetrimus's Beam attack, which was thought to be impossible.

Trellani was one of the most skilled biotic researchers in the galaxy, who'd made up dozens of invocations over the years. According to the Stellarch, she was also one of the few masters of asari abilities to share memories and mind-healing, which is probably how Shepard can suddenly do asari biotics and use a warp sword without fifty years of training.

The standard war priestess package for counters should work, in theory: once she lost her biotics she got her ass handed to her. Assume she has more sense than most of those fanatics and that mines and the like will be less effective.

I can't emphasize enough how dead the Asari Republic wants her – she has a two billion-credit bounty on her head. That's billion with a 'b,' and a higher bounty than Aria, P., and the Shadow Broker combined. Whatever she knows is dangerous.

Jack Harper: The leader of this mess. We thought he was dead after the main organization got taken out, but it's clear that Shepard was not completely truthful. We have information now that she met with Harper at her wedding and that he was feeding her some kind of intel.

Tactically, he's a gunman. Nothing special. No weird sub-dermal armor, no magical blue bullshit, no mysterious space powers. We ever catch this guy on his own and he's dead.

Of course, that's not going to happen. The Broker has been trying to off this guy for twenty years and gotten exactly fucking nowhere with it. Harper is a master hacker, very good at infowar techniques, and most importantly, has Vigil backing him up.

Localizing his base of operations is also not going to be any fun as it's most likely mobile. I presume he's not stupid enough to HQ at wherever Shepard operates from, and he probably has bolt holes all over the fucking galaxy by this point.

Conclusions and conjecture

Alright, here's my half-ass conclusions (which are mostly guesses)

First, as long as Vigil is aiding Cerberus, we might as well forget any direct hostile action. They have already infiltrated us, the Silver Legion got bitchslapped by Vigil singlehandedly so hard nine percent of the units died, and we are completely in the dark as to their location, funding, or resources. Pursuing that line of thought won't get us anywhere because we have no ability to stop Vigil.

Second, so far, Cerberus has been careful not to do anything blatantly evil. People can argue about Shepard blowing up the pirates but let's face it – no one living on Umlor who wasn't a slave didn't somehow contribute to the shit. Archangel had a single fuckup, and the Sisters are clearly not giving a shit about collateral damage, but Cerberus itself hasn't done anything like in the old days. This may mean Harper is not as in control as we assumed, or that Shepard is stopping him from acting that way.

Third, and most importantly: I can't imagine any reason that Shepard's closest friends and wife would follow an impostor. I know the High Lords would like her to be a fake, but it's likely she isn't, and we have to deal with that. Killing her is almost as impossible as killing Vigil, and the political fallout from that (not to mention the whole saint angle) would be unmanageable.

Her goals? No idea, except probably to kill the Collectors. We'll have to wait for her to address the Citadel Council.

Setting up a way to take her out? Unless we have some method to instantly kill her entire group plus Vigil, like setting up a meeting with some guy who would manually detonate Kyle torpedoes right under their feet, we don't have a good method.

Shepard is someone I got to know, a little. She'd been treated badly and didn't even really know it, and despite me giving her shit, she was grateful for me even bothering with her, which made me physically ill from anger. If Harper has the brains to support her and not double-cross her, he's going to eventually win her loyalty, especially since this version of Cerberus is going around saving aliens instead of killing them.

Instead of figuring out how to blow her up, we need to be working on how to get her back in Alliance Blue. Any other option is going to end badly and with a lot of dead people, and given how strong she is, they're gonna want to send me, you, Delacor, probably Yonis, and a lot of other high-level N7s.

And honestly, Ivan...

…I don't think we can take her.