Vindicates Chapter 3

Chapter 3 of Vindicates.

## Story

AGE OF VINDICATION

Location: Watchtower Hangar

- 2183, July 24

Samus stood in a large, almost empty hangar. All that stood in it were her own gunship and Rhodey's Spectral, disappointed with what has so far become of the "Vindicates" legacy. She'd listened to Rhodey drone on and on about how we needed a new Avengers, one backed by an army and fleets to patrol and protect the galaxy. She certainly had the means and resources to pull some of it off, but... things seemed to be moving too slowly.

Rhodey approached her and Samus spoke "It's been three months, Rhodey, three months. So far we've only completed a dozen intelligence and asset salvaging missions, we've approached one other person to join our little private club, and he refused."

"The people we've saved on the missions in between those were worth it, and Sam Gideon went back to the work for the government because they offered him amnesty, otherwise he would have joined. I can't force people, Samus."

"We need more members if this place is going to survive. The constant power outages are proof of that."

"I've been working on it Samus. So far I have several hundred crew members lined up to operate this station and the ships I've been constructing at the Stark shipyards, it just takes a while to do this sort of thing in secret. But our last mission finally yielded some intelligence on the whereabouts of two more potential members on the dossier for Team A."

"You know where John and Jane Shepard are?"

"Council Spectres are hard to find, the data cache we broke into gave us their general location, but we'll need to scan the systems."

"Finally. Are we taking your ship or mine?"

"Mine, we need stealth if we're going to get anywhere near the Normandy."

"My ship has stealth capabilities"

"For radar, not visually. I want to board without being seen"

**Location: Alchera**

- 2183, July 24

Samus and Rhodey arrived at the scene of a destroyed SSV Normandy. Rhodey piloted the ship through the debris field, scanning for life pods, but found nothing.

Samus sighed. "What do you think could have done this? They were hunting Geth..."

"No, it'd take something more advanced than anything the Geth have to destroy the Normandy."

"Well, what do we do now? We can't recruit them now..."

"Yes we can. This is just a minor setback"

"Rhodey, the entire ship is in pieces. We don't even know if any of the crew survived."

"We'll find out, Samus. We'll find out."

"In the meantime, we have another distress signal being relayed to us by the Watchtower's long distance transponder..."

**Location: Aegis IV**

- 2183, July 24

Isaac Clarke watched from his shuttle as the meteor impacted Aegis IV, contemplating how he alone barely escaped with his life.

He sat down for a moment before deciding to replay the recording from his dead girlfriend, Nicole. He didn't even notice that his ship was being boarded, he just wanted to hear her voice again.

Suddenly, a Necromorph jumped from the shadows to attack him, he fell to the floor unconscious.

Isaac awoke to a grey, black and blue faceplate with a randomized voice. He panicked as it held him down

"Hold on, we're not here to hurt you"

he turned his head and saw another one in yellow and green armour, he shouted

"where is it!?"

"Where is what?" the black one replied

"the... the... Nicole...."

"we've reviewed the data and tapes you recovered from the USG Ishimura, we can see you've been through a traumatic experience but we assure you, we've swept the ship clean and have found no traces of those things onboard, you're safe now" the faceplate opened to reveal a beautiful woman of dark complexion

"My name's Rhodey, I'm guessing you're Isaac?"

Sidenote: USG = United Spacefaring Guild, a non-military trading guild from Dead Space.

**Location: Watchtower Bridge**

- 2183, July 24

Rhodey stood before a holographic display, playing footage from Isaac's helmet camera on the table.
"So, these... Necromorphs. They're mutated and reanimated corpses, the result of a recombinant extraterrestrial infection. I can see by this footage here that they are extremely aggressive and seem to attack any uninfected organism on sight, their main purposes seems to be spreading the infection by killing potential hosts. And wherever they came from... it has something to do with these markers. I've heard about these things, the Markers, and the Unitology cult. They're going to be an issue, as Samus and I could be susceptible to the Markers' influence. We're lucky we got there after it was destroyed."

Isaac simply nodded in response. "Do you need anything else from me?"

"... You survived this entire event without much more than a few scraps and bruises. A whole UNSC warship was destroyed attempting to answer that distress call, multiple trained military and spec ops personnel all failed where you didn't, and you say you're just an engineer?"

"Yes..."

"Well, I call bullshit, but that's because I'd like to offer you a position here, paid, full time. We need people with your expertise, both for combat and engineering, this place needs some work done to it if you haven't noticed."

"I'm listening..."

**Location: Watchtower Bridge**

**- 2183, July 25**

Isaac and Samus walked up to Rhodey who was leaning on the centre table of the control tower, watching a large holographic display projected from it.

"They found Reach" said Rhodey, with true concern in her voice neither Samus nor Isaac had heard before

Samus asked "When? How are they doing?"

"Today, a few hours ago, and it's hard to say really. This is bad, they're literally one step away from Earth now. I'm already in the process of moving all of my assets from the planet. I really hope they don't find my companies shipyard, it's based on an inner colony world and we just got the patent to start building a new class of ship for the UNSC. It runs reverse engineered Forerunner tech, including shields and a new model of the MAC accelerator, but this comes too little too late, humanity is running out of time with all of these threats coming at us. I've heard chatter among intelligence agencies, they're getting desperate, considering all these crazy solutions... stuff like building a marker"

Isaac reacted in the way she'd expect "That's insane!"

"I've been trying to gather data from my channels, it's really classified so it's quite difficult, but piecing together what you told me and what I've found it seems like the markers transmit some kind of electromagnetic signal, and for some reason Isaac you have some kind of... I wouldn't call it an immunity, but a tolerance to it. It also seems to affect people more of lesser intelligence or just less strong willed people in general, that means me and Samus might be okay, like you are... relatively, but I'm not banking our sanity on a hypothesis. With your permission Isaac, I'd like to take some samples from you and some scans, I'm going to cross reference your genetic build-up with what data I can find on the signal, and try to come up with a way to block it"

"Do it" he responded "anything you need from me I'll be glad to give, you pay way more than my other jobs"

Samus leaned in on the table "What about metroids? Have you come up with any defences we can use against the ectoparasitoids?"

"What interests me about Metroids is that the Space Pirates have been researching them for years and they still can't figure out what it is that the Metroids abosrb from there hosts, they leave the tissue mostly intact except for the puncture wounds, it's a mistery I'd like to figure out one day, but not now, metroids aren't a priority for me at the moment, there activity has been minor in the galaxy thus far and they present a more physical threat, not a psychological one."

"They drain the life-force of there victims, and they are a massive threat to the galaxy"

"I agree, except "life energy" seems like some kind psuedo-science, but they are a threat which we have a weapon for: ice weapons, cryo-ammo, all of which I have made patents for and stocked up on. I'm more concerned with the enemies that pose a threat to our mind's. It's said that reapers use a similar form of mind control they call indoctrination, if we're going to be any good at physically combating these threats, we need to be immune from there telepathic abilities, otherwise we can't trust our allies or ourselves when we deploy against them. And we're running out of time."

"Fair enough" as Samus's response, satisified that Rhodey's priorities were indeed in the right order.

**Location: Cerberus Lazarus Station**

- 2183, July 27

Rhodey was on her own, momentarily pinned down by a host of Cerberus soldiers whilst her suits shields recharged. She tuned into comms to check up on her team.

"How are you doing with the distraction?"

Samus could hear the sounds of the GEN2 Ironman suit sounding an interior alarm through the comms. "Sounds like I'm doing better than you are, do you need me to come to your location Rhodey?"

"No I'm fine, momentary setback, they ambushed me and got my shields down, backup kinetic barriers kicked in and the suit can take a few hits on its own, too. Your suit's still at low performance, how are your shields still holding up?"

"My energy tanks absorb kinetic energy from the residue of fallen enemies to recharge my shields, I kill more than I get hit"

"Huh, I missed that when I was inside your systems, might need to let me take at that hardware. I've got the data we need, time to make our way to the rendezvous. Isaac, you have the ship ready?"

"Yes boss, still here, waiting. I won't disengage the cloaking until I see you"

Rhodey responded to the both of them "ETA 6 minutes, Samus you're further away from me so I'll wait for you."

"I'll be fine, and you're not getting anywhere near my suit."

**Location: Watchtower**

- 2183, Aug 2

A ship landed inside the hangar bay of the Watchtower. An Asari emerged, with two floating stasis pods on either side of her. Rhodey approached.

"I'm grateful you decided to take us up on our deal instead of Cerberus, we have better intentions than they do, I assure you, but... these bodies are far more damaged than I'd hoped, it's going to be difficult reviving them."

"I'm not even sure if this the right thing to do, I don't want to give them up to anyone. I feel like putting them to rest but... but I just can't. If there's a chance..." she thought about what she was going to say for a moment, then looked up "and I know the Starks have a formidable reputation among humans, an honourable one too."

"Yeah, I guess we do. You know you did good retrieving the body from the Shadow Broker, and the Shepards weren't the only ones I set out to recruit... I also wanted their crew."

"That's nice of you to offer Rhodey, but I've got... other responsibilities now. If you ever need an information broker... "

"Well I already have a network, but I'm always looking to expand upon it, so the offer is open to you too. Maybe we can exchange some intelligence, you'd be better at gathering information in Citadel space, as most of mine comes from human controlled territory."

"That seems like a mutually beneficial agreement. I want to be the first to know if you manage to revive them."

"Of course Liara. I promise. And you're welcome to come and check in on them anytime you want." Liara's Omni-Tool lit up and beeped. "I just updated your device with information on how to contact the station for intelligence, declassified operation reports and if you need it, emergency assistance. Consider yourself a reserve member."

Samus and Isaac approached to take the bodies. Rhodey decided to voice her concerns to her team after they bid farewell to Liara.
"We now have two issues to deal with, that we can't deal with: Necromorphs and Collectors. No one can get close to the Collectors without going missing, and they've begun abducting entire colonies. I have some theories as to how they're doing it but without some solid data I can't make us immune to it. Same with those Markers' influence related to the Necromorph threat. I haven't even started investigating the other problems developing yet..."

Samus shrugged. "I'm sure I could find out how the collectors are abducting people, my armour will protect me from whatever it is, and Isaac's immune to the Markers..."

"Maybe he isn't entirely, and we don't know how they're doing it. It could be a mind control thing too. We'll explore some options soon, though. We'll have to."

**Location: Watchtower Infirmary**

- 2183, Aug 7

Isaac entered the infirmary and spotted Rhodey, standing in a labcoat over her regular civilian clothes. He was dressed in his regular engineer armour.

"I'm here" said Isaac reluctantly. "I was in the middle of fixing a generater down on level-"

Rhodey interrupted him with an excited tone in her voice "They're waking up!"

"What? It's only been five days!"

"Where's Samus?"

"Don't know, last I saw her she was working on her ship."

"I called her as well. Look at this brain activity!" She gave him a digital tablet with readings on it he couldn't make much sense of. "I'm an engineer, remember? I fix things, not people. You're the one who fixes both, and flies. Makes me feel inadequate."

"You've been a tremendous help to us Isaac. You've already repaired most of the power issues we've been having with the station, and your combat skills are impressive for a non-augmented human."

"You're just saying that..."

"It's true, but back to the subject at hand; all I have to do is apply some adrenaline to kick-start them, and they'll be as lively as a Necromorph!"

"I'm already jumpy around corpses, why do you have to say it like that?"

Rhodey spoke aloud to her AI, "Jarvis, do it"

"Yes, ma'am."

The heart rate monitors spiked, and suddenly both of the Commanders awoke in a drowsy state, the adrenaline still fighting the narcotics in their systems.

"Hello there, my name's Rhodey Stark. You two have been out for a while, you're being treated in a remote facility for your injuries, the drugs will wear off soon."

**Location: Watchtower Bridge**

- 2183, Aug 7

John Shepard seemed puzzled "So, our ship was destroyed in a Collector attack, they tried to take our bodies but Liara recovered us, and you're putting together a team of teams to tackle the threats of the galaxy, including the Reapers?"

"The Reapers are high up on my list of threats, they're a galaxy instinction event lurking in darkspace. If you stick with me I'll give you the resouces you need to take down the Collectors, there's a pretty big shipment coming in soon for... well, I want to leave it as a surprise"

Jane raised her eyebrow "Why us?"

"The first two human spectres? One of which is an elite N7 biotic, the other a seasoned highly trained N7 soldier? Why would I not want you two on my team? By the way, have you seen what your actions have done to the Galaxy?"

They looked at each other for a moment puzzled, then back to the holo-table.

"The Citadel are now fighting the Covenant, they showed up at Reach a few days ago and drove them from it. Humanity has dedicated allies now because of you two."

John admired the footage of Citadel species fighting alongside humanity "we knew they were going to give us a seat and help us out, I just wish it didn't take them so long, because we missed it"

Jane looked at John, and they nodded at each other before Jane responded

"You give us a ship, and our crew back, and we'll work for you"

"The ship is... on it's way, and the crew... most of the old normandy crew, the ones that survived anyway, are still working for the alliance, most of your alien crew members have disappeared, I'll give you the locations and contacts of those who did survive, Liara is going to want to see you, but you're going to have to put together a new crew, I'll give you the dossiers for that as well, we need more Vindicates recruits and I figured you two would be the best to fill up our teams"

Samus chimmed in "ahh, Rhodey, we have another distress signal coming in on UNSC frequencies, some remote station out in one of the unchartered sectors"

"let me see" a hologram of the galaxy showed up in the middle of the table with a location plotted out "this... isn't good, I've heard some spook chatter about this place, if it is what I think it is. We need to mobilise now. John, Jane, how do you feel about deploying with your new team hours after awaking from a death coma?

the two looked at each other, shrugged and responded at the same time "sure"