Summary: A Disobedient Guard Dog and a New Assignment

Chapter 5: 2381CE – A Disobedient Guard Dog

Sae sighed as she watched the body of Jack Harper, former mercenary turned Alliance Black ops, slump to the floor. Given she'd just blown his head off, he wouldn't be getting up again. And good riddance to bad rubbish. The idea of the Cerberus program had been understandable, even if she personally thought it had been foolish with so many eyes on humanity. The fact that the Black Ops group had gone rogue right after being ordered to return from their clandestine war in the Terminus only proved her right. Admittedly, the idea of using them to deal with the Batarian state-sponsored pirate groups that had hit Elysium hadn't been a terrible plan. But letting them expand to the point they had, while technically effective, had ultimately been moronic.

Oh sure, the group had developed a few new pieces of useful tech, which the Alliance would quietly shuffle through other R&D groups before making them known, but the psychopaths had done so by a lot of insanely unethical research. And, before she and a half dozen other Sirens had been assigned to hunt them down, they'd managed to do some unfortunate damage to humanity's image. Sae wasn't going to cry over the butchery their operatives had committed on Torfan, not considering who they'd been butchering. But the fact that their field team, under that total nutjob Kei Lang, had livestreamed the slaughter to the extranet had tipped the scales for a lot of people who already viewed humanity as a troublemaker on the galactic scene.

Thankfully, the hundreds of thousands of non-Batarian slaves that had been freed during various operations had offset that enough that the situation was merely polarized, rather than grim. Less thankfully, the trio of races that help real power in Citadel Space would certainly have been aware that Cerberus was state-funded. Which meant that the polarization extended to the Council as well. The Asari had already not been particularly happy with them for the way Eridium tech was cutting into their economy by making eezo less important. Now, the Matriarchs Conclave was fanning the flames in the background against them and the only thing keeping them from doing more was the fact that their Maiden population were rather enthusiastic about humanity. The Turians honestly didn't care much and had been quietly placated with more help for their new Eridium-based military tech programs. The Salarians…had actually outright approved of the tactic. Which was fucking disturbing and Shepard didn't want to think about it.

Stepping up to the mainframe in the room, she fell fully into Phase Shift to help Mira crack the security on the system. Even as she did, however, she wondered to herself if it wasn't maybe time to get out. She was 99 years old and had been in service to the Alliance since her teens. Sirens didn't really retire. But she could certainly shift to R&D if she wanted to. Well, maybe she'd talk to Anderson about it. He was always good for bouncing ideas off of. He also tended to have an ear to the ground about the latest projects. He might have some ideas…