Requiem II
Prophets 2.1: libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum
The vision was fragmented-a damaged beacon, too broken to be very useful, and even if they had the cipher they might be searching between star systems for centuries for a relay that had drifted off course. Centuries, Sovereign might have had; but he had a schedule and some unfathomable deadline was approaching and they needed to find the Conduit. Snarling, Saren sent the geth forces off to Therum and Antibaar and Quana to look for more beacons. They, at least, were obedient; machines, computers, logical and rational and predictable with no unknowns-but aberrations nonetheless, to have been created by mere organics, they too would have to be destroyed when the Reaping came-
Sovereign again. Saren threw off the foreign thoughts with a grimace. Useless, anyway, when he couldn’t understand the vision. Benezia lectured on about cultural context and ingrained behaviors and physiological differences until Saren wanted to strangle her, but it was all useless.
“I need a cipher,” he snapped at her finally. “Go find me some way of downloading one.”
“Downloading,” Benezia said, her lip curling faintly. “You sound like one of those geth.”
Saren growled at her. She went. She found him the Thorian.
--
Saints 2.1: o quam sancta, quam serena
The news that he had been found culpable for Eden Prime-and that his Spectre status had been revoked-came as they were on their way to Feros. It was unpleasant but hardly unexpected, but Saren was furious anyway.
“They’re sending a Spectre after you,” Benezia said, almost idly. “The first human Spectre. Inducted just to hunt you down.”
“Anderson,” Saren growled.
“Shepard,” Benezia corrected. “Surely you remember her?”
That human commander who had used the beacon. That woman with the fiery eyes. Of course he remembered her. The reports came trickling in, a little slowly while they were in transit, and Saren would have broken things if it hadn’t meant looking like a fool in front of Matriarch Benezia and her asari and the geth.
And Sovereign. He could never forget Sovereign.
Shepard. She had killed the assassins he had sent after her. She had burrowed her way into a closed C-Sec investigation and found proof that satisfied the council. Saren wanted her dead and instead she was coming after him-unknown, unquantifiable, a prototype stealth ship at her command and the fragments of a Prothean vision in her mind.
She was coming after him. Saren hacked into the Alliance files and snarled at the image of her that came up-it was flat, gray and lifeless, nothing like the figure he remembered from his dream. No matter. If she were following him then he had traps to lay.
--
Prophets 2.2: de pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu
Sovereign touched down on Zhu’s Hope, and when Saren disembarked it was with Matriarch Benezia and two of her acolytes in tow. “Species 37,” she told him. “One of Exo-Geni’s classified projects. The Thorian is over fifty thousand years old, and this used to be a Prothean city.”
“Good,” Saren said, and shouldered his way past the surprisingly docile human colonists. They didn’t even flinch at the sight of the geth contingent that flanked him. Mind-controlling spores, the files had said; doubtless the Thorian was eager for more prey.
They went down the winding ruins into the Thorian’s lair. It was a massive thing; vaguely plant-like, with tentacles everywhere and a pulsating center like a beating heart. Saren eyed it. The center was hung, suspended, over a gaping chasm. If the tentacles holding it to the building could be cut away-
Later. There were three dropships waiting in orbit for that purpose.
“Shiala, Illris,” Benezia said. “One of you-”
“Matriarch,” the asari Shiala said. “I will serve.”
Benezia nodded. Shiala stepped forward and laid her hands against the nearest tentacle, her eyes filling up with inky blackness as joined with the Thorian.
When she spoke again, her voice was strange.
“The-old growth-welcomes you,” she said, her voice rasping. The Thorian’s center pulsed, as though in excitement. “What is it that you seek?”
“Information,” Saren said. “I want information on the Protheans-the ones who built this city fifty thousand years ago. Their language, their culture, their physiology-everything.”
Shiala hissed, her face twitching. “And what do you offer me, meat-thing?”
“This asari that contacts you is a powerful biotic,” he said. “Keep her.”
“Saren,” said Benezia, and he snapped at her for silence.
“Very well,” the Thorian said through Shiala’s mouth, and the asari’s body stretched out one arm and beckoned him closer.
And then the cipher was his.
Back on Sovereign and back in orbit, Saren ordered the dropships to land. “Aim for the tentacles,” he told the geth. “Kill it. Destroy the colony.”
“Saren,” said Benezia, her mouth twisting unpleasantly.
“Shepard’s already accessed the message,” he snarled at her. “She can’t have the cipher, too. Get to Noveria. I need the location of the Mu Relay.”
Benezia slammed the door as she left, the first time she had ever shown a trace of temper. Aberration, Sovereign said, cold. They will die. They will all die. She sees this and still she questions. I will tolerate no more of these doubts.
No. Of course not. The Reaper was right. They were certain and their course was set and if there was screaming in Saren’s mind, Sovereign’s voice would drown it out. Always.
--
Revelations: dies calamitatis et miseriae
The screaming was words now, with the cipher-a stuttering cry for help, a stifled warning, sent across the galaxy from planet to planet and far too late to stop the Reapers. Go away, Saren snapped at Shepard, who had appeared again, her presence in his dreaming as unwelcome as her intrusion in his plans while he was awake. What are you doing here?
She ignored him. All this, she said. What does this mean?
It means you’re going to die, he told her, a little bitter.
We all die. Life dies. It comes back.
Then you shouldn’t be fighting the cycle, Saren said, and together they walked between the dying stars as howling monstrosities stretched out at them from the far reaches of dark space.
--
Saints 2.2: quam benigna, quam amoena
Good news and bad.
The geth had found a working beacon. Shepard had found the geth.
She had been to Feros and to Therum, tracking their movements just as Saren had planned, but what he had not planned was that she would escape his traps-kill the krogan battlemaster he had hired, destroy the colossi the geth had built, rescue Zhu’s Hope and unearth Shiala and download the cipher herself.
She had the cipher. She had the vision. She had an asari-a Prothean expert, Benezia’s daughter-who could decode both.
Fiery-eyed and tenacious. Saren could almost admire her.
--
Prophets 2.3: libera eas de ore leonis
You said you would stop her.
“I-”
He had underestimated her. This Shepard was human but she was a Spectre, and the Council did not take such things lightly, and Sovereign’s fury was blazing through his mind. No more miscalculations, the Reaper seethed. She cannot stop this. She must not, or your punishment will be terrible.
“She won’t,” Saren growled, his claws digging into his thighs against the Reaper’s rage. “She’s too late, too far behind. We are close to the Conduit.”
Sovereign subsided. Make sure of it, it warned, and Saren could breathe again.
With the cipher the vision was understandable; with an undamaged beacon the vision would be whole. A star system, a mass relay, a skipping in the weave of time and space and then-
The communications system opened. Messages came filtering through. “Take the beacon to Virmire,” he ordered the geth. “Be careful with it.”
And: “Benezia.”
“Saren.” Her voice came crackling across the connection, cool as ever. “I have the coordinates. Transmitting now.”
“Good,” he said. In his mind was a human with blazing eyes; she dogged his steps like a persistent shadow and intruded into his dreams. He had underestimated her, but he would not do so again. “Shepard’s headed for you. Wait for her and kill her. Kill everyone with her. Make sure they die.”
My daughter might be there, Benezia didn’t say. Instead: “She’s proven difficult to eliminate this far,” Benezia said, which might have been a questioning but was not precisely so. Saren snarled in impatience.
“She dies, or you do,” he snapped, and terminated the connection.
--
Revelations: dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulae et turbinis
The end of the world. Saren was looking for a relay but instead he found Shepard.
Aren’t you afraid? she asked.
You again, Saren said, almost resigned now. Go home, human. Give up. You can’t stop this.
But aren’t you afraid? she persisted. It’s dark and empty and the Reapers want you dead.
He flicked his mandibles. A storm gathered on the horizon, drew closer, rained down fire from the skies. Voices screamed in a language eons gone. No point in fear. It will happen. It must.
Are you sure?
Doubt. He couldn’t afford doubt. Yes, Saren snapped at her. I have to be.
I don’t think you are, Shepard said, and this was just a dream so Saren could only growl at her for her impertinence.
--
Prophets 2.4: ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum (libera eas)
He had underestimated her, but he would not do so again. Who was this-this human-to come in and ruin his plans? The arrogance-the presumption-some upstart species that hadn’t even been in space a century and already thought they deserved embassies and Council seats and considered themselves the equal of the great powers.
She deserved to die. They all deserved to die. Organic aberrations-presumptuous, arrogant-to think that she would stop him, to think that she would even dare to try-
Saren growled and shook his head to clear it. The line between his thoughts and Sovereign’s was growing thin. Saren did not hate all organic life-only Shepard-but it was the same feeling, white-hot and bitter acrid, and for one long moment Saren wondered if he was losing himself in the blurring.
He was not one of the indoctrinated. He had free will. Sovereign needed his free will, or else he would be useless as an agent. Saren was no mindless thrall-he would not be-he would rather die with the rest in the Reaping-
No matter. Saren shoved the thoughts away. The Mu Relay was in the Terminus Systems; not even ex-Spectres were welcome there. He had work to do if the relay was to be found.
--
Saints 2.3: o castitatis lilium
Shepard escaped from Noveria with Benezia dead and the rachni queen freed; a Matriarch up against a Spectre was a close thing, but not so close that Saren was surprised, and he grudgingly gave Shepard his respect.
Forget her, Sovereign hissed in his mind. We are close to the Conduit. Go to Virmire. Finish the vision.
Yes. Virmire. “I’ll deal with her myself,” Saren said. “She’ll follow the geth to Virmire, and I will kill her personally.”
You are obsessed with this human, Sovereign said, displeased. Forget her. Nothing can stop us now. We have the relay and the beacon. Now we move.
No room for doubt. No place for questioning their success. Saren closed his eyes and wondered at Shepard’s certainty. Why did she try? The Reaping was coming. Did she really think that she could stop it?
Yes, Shepard said.
Saren opened his eyes again, annoyed. He wasn’t even dreaming and she was haunting him.
--
Revelations: dies tubae et clangoris (super civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos)
The beacon was waiting for them when they touched down on Virmire. A vision, complete-terribly comprehensible, and in Saren’s mind there was no break in the screaming now as the death cries echoed back and forth across a galaxy that had been gone for fifty thousand years.
What would Shepard make of it, he wondered, and then remembered that he couldn’t let her get to the beacon.
The screaming continued beyond the confines of his mind. Saren opened his eyes and discovered that the base was under attack.
The geth messenger was chittering nervously at him about salarian infiltrators, but Saren knew it had to be Shepard. “Get out of my sight,” he snapped, pulling on his armor with vicious jerks. “Get the defenses up. Pin them down!”
It scrambled away, the headlight blinking. Saren snarled again, grabbed his weapons, and stalked up to the battlements. A frontal assault by salarian infiltrators; of course Shepard was behind it, they would never try anything like this otherwise. She had taken down his assassins in close-range combat and sniped at Benezia’s commandos-doubtless she thought the salarians would make a good assault force.
Where was she?
Saren growled in frustration and summoned his flier. Shepard had come to him. He would find her. He would kill her. The flier shuddered beneath his feet as it rose up; Virmire’s sandy beaches sprawled out beneath him, clear blue water and green palms and sheer cliffs everywhere, and salarians were hiding behind the outer bulwarks as they sniped at his geth. Useless AIs-they wandered about aimlessly if they were alone, even the newer ones that had been constructed with much more processing power-
“Defend the towers,” he barked out over the communications channel. Shepard would have brought that prototype ship of hers; it would be a poor idea to let it land. “Fall back to the secondary defenses and bombard them with grenades-”
Messages came filtering in through his hardsuit. “They’re salarians,” he snarled back. “None of them are going to have any heavy armor. Stay low and out of sight before they can try their hacking.” He hoisted his sniper rifle to his shoulder, his mandibles flicking with anticipation. Three groups of salarians leading the frontal assault-and yes, there was an Alliance signature registering on his scanner-
He brought the flier in closer and took aim.
It wasn’t Shepard.
It was some other human laying siege to his command tower. Some human male, ducking behind a concrete barricade beneath a barrage of artillery, and it didn’t even take Sovereign’s approach for Saren to realize he had been tricked.
Shepard wasn’t here. She wasn’t the one with the salarians. She was back at the base, and she had accessed the beacon, and there was a distant explosion as the other AA tower went down.
A flicker of rage, entirely his own, shuddered through his battle-calm. He would kill her. He would see them all dead. Saren swung his flier around at a dangerous angle, shouting out orders to the geth below, and he was getting messages about another ship approaching and a nuclear detonator-
She was at the heart of his base. She was at the heart of his base and she would destroy it all in some grand delusion that she could stop the Reaping.
He would kill her for making him doubt.
Part III here.
The vision was fragmented-a damaged beacon, too broken to be very useful, and even if they had the cipher they might be searching between star systems for centuries for a relay that had drifted off course. Centuries, Sovereign might have had; but he had a schedule and some unfathomable deadline was approaching and they needed to find the Conduit. Snarling, Saren sent the geth forces off to Therum and Antibaar and Quana to look for more beacons. They, at least, were obedient; machines, computers, logical and rational and predictable with no unknowns-but aberrations nonetheless, to have been created by mere organics, they too would have to be destroyed when the Reaping came-
Sovereign again. Saren threw off the foreign thoughts with a grimace. Useless, anyway, when he couldn’t understand the vision. Benezia lectured on about cultural context and ingrained behaviors and physiological differences until Saren wanted to strangle her, but it was all useless.
“I need a cipher,” he snapped at her finally. “Go find me some way of downloading one.”
“Downloading,” Benezia said, her lip curling faintly. “You sound like one of those geth.”
Saren growled at her. She went. She found him the Thorian.
--
Saints 2.1: o quam sancta, quam serena
The news that he had been found culpable for Eden Prime-and that his Spectre status had been revoked-came as they were on their way to Feros. It was unpleasant but hardly unexpected, but Saren was furious anyway.
“They’re sending a Spectre after you,” Benezia said, almost idly. “The first human Spectre. Inducted just to hunt you down.”
“Anderson,” Saren growled.
“Shepard,” Benezia corrected. “Surely you remember her?”
That human commander who had used the beacon. That woman with the fiery eyes. Of course he remembered her. The reports came trickling in, a little slowly while they were in transit, and Saren would have broken things if it hadn’t meant looking like a fool in front of Matriarch Benezia and her asari and the geth.
And Sovereign. He could never forget Sovereign.
Shepard. She had killed the assassins he had sent after her. She had burrowed her way into a closed C-Sec investigation and found proof that satisfied the council. Saren wanted her dead and instead she was coming after him-unknown, unquantifiable, a prototype stealth ship at her command and the fragments of a Prothean vision in her mind.
She was coming after him. Saren hacked into the Alliance files and snarled at the image of her that came up-it was flat, gray and lifeless, nothing like the figure he remembered from his dream. No matter. If she were following him then he had traps to lay.
--
Prophets 2.2: de pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu
Sovereign touched down on Zhu’s Hope, and when Saren disembarked it was with Matriarch Benezia and two of her acolytes in tow. “Species 37,” she told him. “One of Exo-Geni’s classified projects. The Thorian is over fifty thousand years old, and this used to be a Prothean city.”
“Good,” Saren said, and shouldered his way past the surprisingly docile human colonists. They didn’t even flinch at the sight of the geth contingent that flanked him. Mind-controlling spores, the files had said; doubtless the Thorian was eager for more prey.
They went down the winding ruins into the Thorian’s lair. It was a massive thing; vaguely plant-like, with tentacles everywhere and a pulsating center like a beating heart. Saren eyed it. The center was hung, suspended, over a gaping chasm. If the tentacles holding it to the building could be cut away-
Later. There were three dropships waiting in orbit for that purpose.
“Shiala, Illris,” Benezia said. “One of you-”
“Matriarch,” the asari Shiala said. “I will serve.”
Benezia nodded. Shiala stepped forward and laid her hands against the nearest tentacle, her eyes filling up with inky blackness as joined with the Thorian.
When she spoke again, her voice was strange.
“The-old growth-welcomes you,” she said, her voice rasping. The Thorian’s center pulsed, as though in excitement. “What is it that you seek?”
“Information,” Saren said. “I want information on the Protheans-the ones who built this city fifty thousand years ago. Their language, their culture, their physiology-everything.”
Shiala hissed, her face twitching. “And what do you offer me, meat-thing?”
“This asari that contacts you is a powerful biotic,” he said. “Keep her.”
“Saren,” said Benezia, and he snapped at her for silence.
“Very well,” the Thorian said through Shiala’s mouth, and the asari’s body stretched out one arm and beckoned him closer.
And then the cipher was his.
Back on Sovereign and back in orbit, Saren ordered the dropships to land. “Aim for the tentacles,” he told the geth. “Kill it. Destroy the colony.”
“Saren,” said Benezia, her mouth twisting unpleasantly.
“Shepard’s already accessed the message,” he snarled at her. “She can’t have the cipher, too. Get to Noveria. I need the location of the Mu Relay.”
Benezia slammed the door as she left, the first time she had ever shown a trace of temper. Aberration, Sovereign said, cold. They will die. They will all die. She sees this and still she questions. I will tolerate no more of these doubts.
No. Of course not. The Reaper was right. They were certain and their course was set and if there was screaming in Saren’s mind, Sovereign’s voice would drown it out. Always.
--
Revelations: dies calamitatis et miseriae
The screaming was words now, with the cipher-a stuttering cry for help, a stifled warning, sent across the galaxy from planet to planet and far too late to stop the Reapers. Go away, Saren snapped at Shepard, who had appeared again, her presence in his dreaming as unwelcome as her intrusion in his plans while he was awake. What are you doing here?
She ignored him. All this, she said. What does this mean?
It means you’re going to die, he told her, a little bitter.
We all die. Life dies. It comes back.
Then you shouldn’t be fighting the cycle, Saren said, and together they walked between the dying stars as howling monstrosities stretched out at them from the far reaches of dark space.
--
Saints 2.2: quam benigna, quam amoena
Good news and bad.
The geth had found a working beacon. Shepard had found the geth.
She had been to Feros and to Therum, tracking their movements just as Saren had planned, but what he had not planned was that she would escape his traps-kill the krogan battlemaster he had hired, destroy the colossi the geth had built, rescue Zhu’s Hope and unearth Shiala and download the cipher herself.
She had the cipher. She had the vision. She had an asari-a Prothean expert, Benezia’s daughter-who could decode both.
Fiery-eyed and tenacious. Saren could almost admire her.
--
Prophets 2.3: libera eas de ore leonis
You said you would stop her.
“I-”
He had underestimated her. This Shepard was human but she was a Spectre, and the Council did not take such things lightly, and Sovereign’s fury was blazing through his mind. No more miscalculations, the Reaper seethed. She cannot stop this. She must not, or your punishment will be terrible.
“She won’t,” Saren growled, his claws digging into his thighs against the Reaper’s rage. “She’s too late, too far behind. We are close to the Conduit.”
Sovereign subsided. Make sure of it, it warned, and Saren could breathe again.
With the cipher the vision was understandable; with an undamaged beacon the vision would be whole. A star system, a mass relay, a skipping in the weave of time and space and then-
The communications system opened. Messages came filtering through. “Take the beacon to Virmire,” he ordered the geth. “Be careful with it.”
And: “Benezia.”
“Saren.” Her voice came crackling across the connection, cool as ever. “I have the coordinates. Transmitting now.”
“Good,” he said. In his mind was a human with blazing eyes; she dogged his steps like a persistent shadow and intruded into his dreams. He had underestimated her, but he would not do so again. “Shepard’s headed for you. Wait for her and kill her. Kill everyone with her. Make sure they die.”
My daughter might be there, Benezia didn’t say. Instead: “She’s proven difficult to eliminate this far,” Benezia said, which might have been a questioning but was not precisely so. Saren snarled in impatience.
“She dies, or you do,” he snapped, and terminated the connection.
--
Revelations: dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulae et turbinis
The end of the world. Saren was looking for a relay but instead he found Shepard.
Aren’t you afraid? she asked.
You again, Saren said, almost resigned now. Go home, human. Give up. You can’t stop this.
But aren’t you afraid? she persisted. It’s dark and empty and the Reapers want you dead.
He flicked his mandibles. A storm gathered on the horizon, drew closer, rained down fire from the skies. Voices screamed in a language eons gone. No point in fear. It will happen. It must.
Are you sure?
Doubt. He couldn’t afford doubt. Yes, Saren snapped at her. I have to be.
I don’t think you are, Shepard said, and this was just a dream so Saren could only growl at her for her impertinence.
--
Prophets 2.4: ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum (libera eas)
He had underestimated her, but he would not do so again. Who was this-this human-to come in and ruin his plans? The arrogance-the presumption-some upstart species that hadn’t even been in space a century and already thought they deserved embassies and Council seats and considered themselves the equal of the great powers.
She deserved to die. They all deserved to die. Organic aberrations-presumptuous, arrogant-to think that she would stop him, to think that she would even dare to try-
Saren growled and shook his head to clear it. The line between his thoughts and Sovereign’s was growing thin. Saren did not hate all organic life-only Shepard-but it was the same feeling, white-hot and bitter acrid, and for one long moment Saren wondered if he was losing himself in the blurring.
He was not one of the indoctrinated. He had free will. Sovereign needed his free will, or else he would be useless as an agent. Saren was no mindless thrall-he would not be-he would rather die with the rest in the Reaping-
No matter. Saren shoved the thoughts away. The Mu Relay was in the Terminus Systems; not even ex-Spectres were welcome there. He had work to do if the relay was to be found.
--
Saints 2.3: o castitatis lilium
Shepard escaped from Noveria with Benezia dead and the rachni queen freed; a Matriarch up against a Spectre was a close thing, but not so close that Saren was surprised, and he grudgingly gave Shepard his respect.
Forget her, Sovereign hissed in his mind. We are close to the Conduit. Go to Virmire. Finish the vision.
Yes. Virmire. “I’ll deal with her myself,” Saren said. “She’ll follow the geth to Virmire, and I will kill her personally.”
You are obsessed with this human, Sovereign said, displeased. Forget her. Nothing can stop us now. We have the relay and the beacon. Now we move.
No room for doubt. No place for questioning their success. Saren closed his eyes and wondered at Shepard’s certainty. Why did she try? The Reaping was coming. Did she really think that she could stop it?
Yes, Shepard said.
Saren opened his eyes again, annoyed. He wasn’t even dreaming and she was haunting him.
--
Revelations: dies tubae et clangoris (super civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos)
The beacon was waiting for them when they touched down on Virmire. A vision, complete-terribly comprehensible, and in Saren’s mind there was no break in the screaming now as the death cries echoed back and forth across a galaxy that had been gone for fifty thousand years.
What would Shepard make of it, he wondered, and then remembered that he couldn’t let her get to the beacon.
The screaming continued beyond the confines of his mind. Saren opened his eyes and discovered that the base was under attack.
The geth messenger was chittering nervously at him about salarian infiltrators, but Saren knew it had to be Shepard. “Get out of my sight,” he snapped, pulling on his armor with vicious jerks. “Get the defenses up. Pin them down!”
It scrambled away, the headlight blinking. Saren snarled again, grabbed his weapons, and stalked up to the battlements. A frontal assault by salarian infiltrators; of course Shepard was behind it, they would never try anything like this otherwise. She had taken down his assassins in close-range combat and sniped at Benezia’s commandos-doubtless she thought the salarians would make a good assault force.
Where was she?
Saren growled in frustration and summoned his flier. Shepard had come to him. He would find her. He would kill her. The flier shuddered beneath his feet as it rose up; Virmire’s sandy beaches sprawled out beneath him, clear blue water and green palms and sheer cliffs everywhere, and salarians were hiding behind the outer bulwarks as they sniped at his geth. Useless AIs-they wandered about aimlessly if they were alone, even the newer ones that had been constructed with much more processing power-
“Defend the towers,” he barked out over the communications channel. Shepard would have brought that prototype ship of hers; it would be a poor idea to let it land. “Fall back to the secondary defenses and bombard them with grenades-”
Messages came filtering in through his hardsuit. “They’re salarians,” he snarled back. “None of them are going to have any heavy armor. Stay low and out of sight before they can try their hacking.” He hoisted his sniper rifle to his shoulder, his mandibles flicking with anticipation. Three groups of salarians leading the frontal assault-and yes, there was an Alliance signature registering on his scanner-
He brought the flier in closer and took aim.
It wasn’t Shepard.
It was some other human laying siege to his command tower. Some human male, ducking behind a concrete barricade beneath a barrage of artillery, and it didn’t even take Sovereign’s approach for Saren to realize he had been tricked.
Shepard wasn’t here. She wasn’t the one with the salarians. She was back at the base, and she had accessed the beacon, and there was a distant explosion as the other AA tower went down.
A flicker of rage, entirely his own, shuddered through his battle-calm. He would kill her. He would see them all dead. Saren swung his flier around at a dangerous angle, shouting out orders to the geth below, and he was getting messages about another ship approaching and a nuclear detonator-
She was at the heart of his base. She was at the heart of his base and she would destroy it all in some grand delusion that she could stop the Reaping.
He would kill her for making him doubt.
Part III here.