"It's a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Freeman," came a voice changed beyond recognition, speaking as if in several keys at once, from the screen rippling with interference.
—The Shadow Broker is with you too. End of connection." Our conversation ended, leaving the mysterious xenos to count the hundreds of millions of credits transferred to his account as the second half for completing the deal.
As I suspected, I was missing a key component for completing and stabilizing dextro and the amino acid chains of DNA. Alas, it was not possible to combine two types of proteins with diametrically opposite compositions even through biosynthesis; the final product either disintegrated or became too close to synthetics, moving away from organic life forms, and I needed a slightly different result. Of course, over the past thirty years, I managed to bring to fruition the biosynthetic technology of the Reapers and compile several suitable DNA chains, using which I was able to grow hybrids that were absolutely similar in appearance to humans, both with dextro and with amino acid proteins, but... but don't stop there after almost a century of systematic and purposeful progress towards the goal of creating a body with the desired DNA structure? And at the moment of my thoughts, the Shadow Broker contacted me, offering for a modest sum of one billion credits (a monstrous amount of money, fortunately my enterprises with the help of Benezia and subsidies from the asari government were generous with loans) to indicate the place and time of the meeting of one gang of mercenaries with collectors - a mysterious race with extremely advanced technologies living behind the Omega 4 relay.
Actually, I agreed without thinking, I only paid only half the amount as a deposit, and transferred the rest now, when Machiavelli reached the meeting place on his cruiser - a distant star system in the Terminus systems, where an extremely ugly , but a fairly powerful frigate of a design unfamiliar to the galaxy. This squalor looked like dried crap clinging to a metal tube with a structure of unknown purpose welded on top of it. However, the characteristics of this space crap were impressive: the shields were able to withstand a direct hit from three turian cruisers, and the cannon could easily shred these cruisers. My shields, however, should definitely withstand two direct hits, and the updated main gun will easily destroy their boat.
However, I did not dare to take risks, and therefore, before approaching the collectors, I sent a reconnaissance drone, which gave me the picture.
"Well, let's go." I connected directly to the cruiser's systems and, having accelerated the ship's Mass Effect core, "jumped" straight to the deployment point from a neighboring star system, finding myself in front of the enemy frigate's nose, figuratively speaking. In general, every ship with a Mass Effect core can jump like this, and this is literally every ship in the galaxy, but not everyone is able to survive such a jump, falling apart along the way due to a lack of core power or crashing into a fairly large space object when exiting the "jump." ". The mortality rate in cases of free jumping outside of relays is above 79%, and in fact only AI can safely calculate such a jump.
The collectors were clearly not happy about my appearance, but at the same time they reacted very quickly, almost having time to deploy their main fire. Alas, it almost doesn't count, and therefore a stream of melted iron, uranium and tungsten accelerated to superluminal speed, almost without noticing the shields of the smaller ship, sawed the collector frigate into two unequal parts, sending the fragments to the planet. In general, I am surprised that the collectors did not come to the inhabited galaxy on a battle cruiser. On the other hand, cruisers are usually used in battle, and collectors came to us for reconnaissance.
Such a spectacular appearance forced the lads of pirates and mercenaries circling nearby to drop everything and try to get away from the clearly aggressive and more battle-prepared guest in my person, which I did not interfere with, I just hit the vessels flying close with lasers a couple of times and, waiting for their departure, went to planet in the company of a shuttle filled with furs, adjusting its route as it goes through a remote connection.
It didn't take long to fly; already halfway to the ground, he was able to intercept the heart-rending attempts of some krogan to contact his comrades who had flown away. Having determined its location in a matter of minutes, my sensors recorded several dozen humanoid creatures: two dozen batarians, six turians, a couple of krogans, four asari, seven salarians and three dozen salarians with pronounced genetic defects, such as too small horns on their heads, outrageously thin epidermis, due to which muscles and blood vessels were clearly visible, and one had a small formation on the shoulder, suspiciously reminiscent of an underdeveloped second head. But the most important thing is fifteen humanoid, dark brown beetles with four eyes glowing brightly with yellow light.
And these guys, without waiting for me to reach them, cocked their weapons and started firing, forcing me to maneuver in the air. As it turned out, they have a very powerful weapon that quickly pierced my shields and even almost knocked out the shuttle. But these were not all surprises; some of the collectors, spreading the wings hidden behind their backs with chitinous plates, soared into the air and began to approach, also conducting, albeit extremely inaccurate, but continuous shelling. I had to land my drones now and let their VI distract the aggressive xenos, send the shuttle to dock with Machiavelli, and I myself began an air battle, pulling out from behind my back the Trickster combat rifle, created specifically for capturing living objects. Although in appearance the weapon resembles a machine gun.
Alas, in order to experiment on living xenos, I had to, as you might guess, capture them without killing them. And if it won't be difficult for me to attack a colony of the same batars, then I don't want to touch peaceful asari, turians, salarians and other xenos without a serious reason. Krogans are already outrageously tenacious and would rather attack in an attempt to kill and die in the process than pass out from the same blood loss. In general, to catch representatives of the races I need from the criminal formations of the Terminus systems, I created the Trickster, which shoots small, hollow balls, inside of which the process of converting chemical elements into electricity occurs. In the event of a collision, the integrity of the shell is broken, a small explosion of a sufficiently powerful electric current occurs, which is transmitted to the nearest object and, if it hits an organic target, overloads its nervous system. True, such shells are very difficult to manufacture, they do not penetrate shields well, and if the suit is protected from electricity (which is very rare among the rabble of Terminal systems), they will be of no use.
Once again dodging a laser-like (but much more dangerous given its size) beam, I myself charged the enemy with a beam of plasma from a repulsor, very quickly discharging his biotic barrier, after which three projectiles fired from a rifle overloaded the nervous system of the next beetle and sent him to meeting the ground. Gravity is such a bitch.
But things went much worse for my drones; if I managed to neutralize five, the mechs killed only three beetles, while losing seven, which immediately halved the composition of the battle group, and one mech lost its upper manipulator.
Deciding to help with his targeted salvo of missiles, he finished off three beetles at once, leaving two more for the mechs, or rather one and a half. But it was not worth sticking out so much, so the beetle lost a limb from a volley of plasma.
However, while I was dealing with the remaining beetles on the ground, my opponents were not sleeping and one of them created a very powerful singularity next to me, which began to attract me to itself, which significantly slowed me down for a second and the second beetle wisely took advantage of this second with targeted fire, knocking down the shield fully restored and the repulsor on his leg damaged. As a result, I flew under a binary mat towards the ground, trying to stabilize the flight with the remaining engines, and a well-aimed collector lost his head thanks to a mech with a sniper screw.
However, it took literally a second to do the recalculation, but because of my imaginary helplessness, the beetle remaining in the air, which is extremely biotic, risked getting closer to finish me off, which it immediately regretted. He's not the only one here who can indulge in biotics, so without further ado, I simply crashed into him like a shell fired from a cannon, and while the stunned xenos was trying to come to his senses, I grabbed him by the neck and sent electricity through the repulsors, incapacitating the beetle.
It was not difficult to deal with the remaining collectors, although in the end I only had five mechs left... but oh well, calling in shuttles with reinforcements, stasis capsules for prisoners and for trophies was a matter of seconds.
-You, I know you, you are the synthetic who hunts batarian colonies. We don't need problems." One of the mercenaries, a Krogan, pulled me away from diagnosing my integrity and scanning the collector, who did not dare to intervene in the battle, but was ready for battle, as evidenced by the Krogan-made shotgun pointed in my direction.
-Yes? It's funny to hear the scum from the Terminus systems "don't need problems." Then why are you here?" he glanced at them, causing the batarians present to twitch nervously.
-We traded with them. Collectors very rarely fly into inhabited systems and trade in their advanced technologies, and in return they ask for various rarities, such as three pairs of twins, seven women of different species pregnant with irradiated zero element, and genetic freaks." The talkative krogan nodded at the prepared "goods." —This time they asked for salarians.—.
—It's strange, it's much more profitable to trade with someone like the Shadow Broker than with free gangs.—.
In response, the krogan only shrugged and reached into the suit pouch with one hand. "They don't really want to glow." Listen, I don't give a damn who you are, whether you're a synthetic, a geth, or a fucking volus, we don't need problems. Let's do this, we'll give you the technologies given to us by collectors, and you won't touch us and give us a ride to some spaceport, since our friends have left." The krogan made an interesting proposal and even twirled the information carrier in the form of a small disk pulled out of his pouch.
However, the sound of the engines prevented me from giving an answer. And it's not that it was so loud, it's just that instead of the engines of five shuttles, I heard the roar of a much larger number of ships, including transport workers. Moreover, even though the ships did not have signs of belonging to any organization, they were clearly new, well maintained and had characteristic signs of unification. I wonder who they belong to?
Having waited until the ships landed and the mechs that got out of the shuttles began to drag on board the living and dead collectors, as well as their weapons, I saw how turians and salarians poured out of other people's ships, who began to cheerfully explore the wreckage of the collectors' ship, and some even tried to take them from my mechs the collectors themselves, thereby almost taking their own lives. But there was no need to kill them, one short salarian talked with his people and they left my mechs alone, and he himself headed straight towards me.
—Mr. Freeman, it's nice to meet you in person. You are one of the most important clients of the Shadow Broker." The salarian nodded and looked with interest at the disk still clutched in the krogan's fingers.
"So... The Shadow Broker knows that I'm a synthetic." He looked at the xenos, feverishly considering the information that had been revealed. -And what does he need? And why did he give me this tip—.
"Alas, the collectors diligently avoided my employer, and their ships are very dangerous and technologically advanced, so a collision with them is not advisable. But their technologies are very interesting and useful, so the Intermediary's interest in collectors is very understandable. I hope you didn't harbor any grudges, yet you got everything you wanted and I hope we will part with each other happy," the salarian jabbered in a manner characteristic of their race and looked expressively at the disk in the krogan's hands.
While we were talking, his xenos took the rest of the mercenaries and salarians who served as goods for collectors aside and simply shot them, getting rid of witnesses. This bastard didn't even blink an eye when his relatives were killed on his orders, continuing to stand with a soft and inviting smile.
And here's the dilemma, the salarian clearly showed that he wants to get the wreckage of the collectors' frigate and their technology. But this is not particularly important to me, because the Reaper's database contained much more advanced technologies. The problem is that I'm on the Mediator's hook and if I don't do as he wants, then the organics will find out about my origin and my dealings, which will make life much more difficult. Poorly, I need to change my body as soon as possible, get a biosynthetic shell, and then the Mediator will not have such significant leverage over me. For now, we'll have to play to someone else's tune.
Having made a decision, I activated biotics and plunged the krogan into stasis, leaving only its predatory eyes spinning in panic. Opening his fingers and taking the disk with a point-blank shot from a repulsor, he made a hole in the lizard's skull, getting rid of the last witness and handed the data carrier to the salarian.
"It's a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Freeman," the salarian took the disk and, activating his tooltron, ran his fingers over the holographic interface. —Your billion credits have been transferred back to your account. As I said, the Shadow Broker wants to have mutually beneficial cooperation with you.—.
It's funny, trying to bribe me with my money... is this an accurate calculation or a subtle mockery? In any case, you won't be able to hold me by the balls for long, Shadow Broker.
***
As expected, the collectors turned out to be very helpful. Not only was their DNA cleared of any mutations and bore traces of deep modification, which greatly facilitated the analysis and integration of genes into the genotypes I had already selected, but their chitin also showed excellent protective characteristics, not to mention weapons.
Well, okay, the main thing is that the collectors' DNA was indeed quadruple and gave several ideas on how to connect dextro and amino acids in one DNA chain. Actually, my attempts in this field are just developing in incubators, but it seems to me that I am closer to the goal than ever.
And while the new batch of biosynths was maturing, I plunged into work in order to take my mind off thoughts about the Shadow Broker and began creating the Phalanx Hives. All the drawings of my future ships and shipyards were modeled, double-checked hundreds of times, and the written VIs had a protocol of actions for any situation that came into my head. Hundreds of thousands of options were considered and modeled, tested and double-checked, a similar problem was sent to the best institutions in the galaxy with a very impressive monetary reward for the original contingency of creating a global production base using minibots in an uninhabited system and how to solve it.
In general, I was completely exhausted, but in my free time I decided to deal with the collectors' weapons and their chitin.
In general, the collector's body, due to extensive modification, is very responsive to control and in many ways is not inferior to artificial analogues, for example, muscle fibers are lighter than artificial nanotubes and are almost equal in strength and strength, and chitin is very flexible and surpasses even bulletproof fiber in strength, although quite heavy. But the created organic armor, due to the muscles, allows you to almost not feel the weight of the armor itself, fits like a second skin, is damn comfortable in battle and has fairly fast regeneration, which usually does not require repair when receiving minor damage. I also wanted to attach wings to it so that, like collectors, the wearer of the armor could fly, but this requires a specific nervous system, because since the armor is organic, you can't put VI into it to control the flight. But even so, the thing is very convenient and caused a stir in the market when it appeared.
In addition to the armor, there was an organic rifle that I spied from collectors. It shoots with biotic balls produced by an organ in the rifle itself. And although its lethality is average, its rate of fire and accuracy are beyond praise, and even its reloading/cooling is faster than its modern counterparts, yet the xenos have not yet reached the point of thermal charges, and I am in no hurry to correct this. When paired with armor, the accuracy of the rifle increases even higher due to the connection of its nervous system to the armor system, so it has become another pearl of my FreeMan Armory company.
Well, the last toy was the collectors' particle emitter - a miniature copy of the main caliber of their ship. The emitter releases charged particles in a continuous stream, creating a deadly beam of energy that burns through standard personal shields and armor almost instantly. True, the sea requires energy to form, but the enormous accuracy and lethality are worth it.
And so I did not release the emitter on the market, but I kept it for myself and replaced the standard firearm hidden in the forearms with similar guns, but purely on a technical, not an organic basis. My Mass Effect reactor supplies the emitters with a sufficient amount of energy, but the firearm still turned out to be useless and the repulsors showed themselves much better in battle.
"Damn, these are all just toys!" he threw away another gadget developed exclusively for burning time.
- A little more, just a few years... and I will again be able to feel the smell of flowers, the taste of food, the warmth of the sun and the touch of the body. A little more, and you will become my deliverance and my chance to live." Out of excess emotion, he stroked the capsule in which floated the forming embryo, which considered itself to have both organic and synthetic principles.