Raiding The Barn

Participants

Redrock Agency

• Jasper Sullivan (Shuttle Pilot)
• Jason Wolfe (Alpha Team Leader)
• Renala T'Iavay (Alpha Team)
• Pip Summers (Alpha Team, Freelancer)
• Halisi (Alpha Team)
• Ilyna T'Rea (Bravo Team Leader)
• Steve Briggs (Bravo Team)
• Zaylus Velrin (Bravo Team)
• Skythix Teratus (Bravo Team)

Shadow Broker

• Viper

Cerberus

• Linda Vasquez (Target)
• UDI (Station AI)
• Unnamed Cerberus Personnel

Geth

• Numerous Platforms

Systems Alliance

• Captain Lee Riley (N7 Fireteam Leader)
• Abergel (N7 Heavy)
• Bonik (N7 Biotic)
• Tu (N7 Shield Specialist)
• Agent Augustin Lessard (AIA operative)

Summary

Deal With The Devil

Desperate for information on Vasquez' whereabouts after her unexpected betrayal and disappearance during the assault on the Children of the Revelator, Jason reached out to information brokers. He was put in touch with Viper, a mysterious, genetically modified human representing a powerful information broker. He was told that Vasquez is in the custody of the human-supremacist terrorist organization Cerberus, and he was offered a deal - Viper would guide him to Vasquez in exchange for help retrieving the Orb of the Revelator from Cerberus. Desperate to retrieve Vasquez, Jason reluctantly agreed, convincing himself that the artifact would be better off in the hands of Viper's employer than Cerberus. Hopefully.

Infiltrating the Barn

Viper remained tight-lipped about the specifics of her plan until the team was already en route, claiming that there were unfriendly ears in Freedom Falls, and that she couldn't risk being overheard. Upon departing, she explained that Vasquez was being held on a Cerberus space station called the Barn. The plan was to infiltrate the facility. To that end, she had acquired a Cerberus shuttle, and they stopped partway through the journey to swap to it on a barren ice world. They boarded the station without issue, and Team Alpha, the infiltration team, set out to find Vasquez, in Cerberus outfits provided by Viper. Their cover of transferring an experimental mech - a role played by Watty, Pip Summers' modified YMIR - held until they found Vasquez, but her panicked reaction upon spotting Jason alerted Cerberus. Halisi sedated her, but the damage was done. They would have to fight their way out.

Hell Breaking Loose

With the Barn's AI, UDI, alerted to the presence of the infiltrators, station defenses were deployed against them. It was time for Team Bravo to spring into action. Their job was to reach an AI node so that Viper could upload a virus that would disrupt station defenses long enough to let them make their escape. Faced with heavier resistance than anticipated, they found themselves having to fight hard to reach the node, leaving Team Alpha to face off against heavy Cerberus defenses, including experimental mechs and supersoldiers. Despite the overwhelming resistance, they managed to retrieve the orb, and, after Bravo managed to shut down the defenses, make their way back to the shuttle, fulfilling their deal with Viper. With many injured, but, miraculously, no dead, Redrock made a hasty escape from the Barn, beginning the cramped trip back to their own shuttle.

Third Party

As Redrock prepared to land back on the barren planet where they had left their shuttle, it quickly became apparent that their ordeal wasn't over yet. Their shuttle was hit by an EMP and forced to set down, and then they were set upon by geth. The battered and exhausted team mounted a desperate defense around their downed shuttle, but the geth forces were overwhelming. Just as things looked their most dire, help arrived in the form of the SSV Teutoburg, an Alliance stealth frigate. Deployed from the ship, Captain Lee Riley and her team of N7 soldiers cleared out the remaining geth. After the fighting was over, Riley revealed that the Alliance was aware, through means unknown, of the artifact in their possession, and demanded that it be turned over. Jason agreed, much to Viper's dismay, and the team was offered transport home aboard the Teutoburg. Jason was subjected to a less-than-pleasant interview by the ship's onboard AIA operative, Agent Augustin Lessard, but through Riley's intervention the rest of the team was spared the same.

Aftermath

Once they returned to Aite, Halisi was able to confirm that Vasquez' betrayal had been caused by a control chip disguised within her neural implant. After it was removed, Vasquez returned to her usual self - more or less. Deeply traumatized by her own unwilling betrayal and faced with an inescapable reminder in the form of the prosthetic limbs that Jason had adopted after his grievous injury at her hands, it would be a long time until she was fully recovered, and the scars would last a lifetime for them both. Many of Redrock's team were injured during the mission, and their recovery period would prove tumultuous, with more than one team-member reluctant to be hospitalized. Vasquez owed them all, and they all knew far more about what had happened to her than she was comfortable with, but she was back, and no one had died. With the Children of the Revelator destroyed and the artifact finally in the right hands, perhaps the nightmare was finally at an end, but many questions - and the looming threat of Cerberus - still lingered.

Related Events

• Fall of the Evening Star
• Return to the Evening Star
• Investigating Ogofau
• Children of the Revelator (Event)
• The Last Child

Related Story Posts

• What She Was Told
• From: Cuttlefish, to: Lioness, RE: Object Omicron Retrieval
• Cerberus Research Data

Trivia

• The Barn appears in Mass Effect: Infiltrator, a now-unavailable mobile game.