Battle in the Processing Plant
From FABT
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9 April 2184 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Strategic Cerberus-Liaran victory
Tactical Broker victory
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- "What are you doing!? Have you lost your mind!?"
- — Liara T'Soni to Feron Huul as he springs Tazzik's trap during the opening stages of the engagement.
The Battle in the Processing Plant, also known as the Processing plant ambush, was an engagement in the abandoned Processing Plant C of Omega's mines between the Shadow Broker's PMC forces and Liara T'Soni/Feron Huul and their Cerberus allies, serving as the second engagement of the War for the Corpse. Following a double ambush on Illium just two days prior that resulted in a failed assassination attempt on Liara T'Soni by the Broker's forces and Feron Huul successfully playing the angle of a triple agent (successfully manipulating the Broker, Liara and Cerberus into each believing he worked for/wanted to help the other), the Broker had already dispatched his top enforcer and hitman, Gukon Tazzik, to recover Commander Shepard's body from Alchera in preparation to sell to the Collectors, with the meeting originally scheduled to take place on Omega. At the last minute however, the Broker realized that Cerberus would discover this meeting place, and organized for the Omega meeting to be a fake to draw out Cerberus' ambush, while the real meeting would take place at one of the Broker's secret bases on Alingon, with the body taken there for safekeeping. The Collectors were informed ahead of time of this change in plans, but the Broker advised them to send troops to turn up to the meeting anyway so Cerberus wouldn't suspect that something was wrong. With the stage set for their fake meeting, Feron was informed of the plan and to lure Liara and Cerberus into the kill zone and that the Broker's men would handle the rest. Feron chose not to disclose this to his actual allies, believing that any change in their behavior would cause the paranoid Broker to call it off, so he allowed them to believe they had the upperhand, devising a plan of his own to undercut the Broker. Upon arriving on Omega, Feron and Liara went to Afterlife to meet with Aria T'Loak, the Ruler of Omega, in order to pump her for information on the meeting place's location. Aria was hesitant to help until Liara mentioned the Collectors were involved, something which piqued Aria's interest, as Collector activities at the Omega 4 Relay had significantly ramped up within the last year, with Collector cruisers seen coming and going far more frequently than she had ever seen in her 400 years of rule. Suspecting that the Broker's caution would make him choose somewhere where prying eyes were absent, Aria directed them to Processing Plant C, which was abandoned within the last 60 years. Not wanting to tip off the Broker, who likely had eyes watching them, Liara and Feron instructed Randall Ezno's Cerberus commando platoon to stay put, calling upon them once they were in position.
Heading for the meeting point, Liara and Feron moved into position just as the Broker's troops arrived ahead of Tazzik, with a squad of 15 mercs waiting to meet with the Collectors, who shortly thereafter arrived as well, bringing 10 of their own people from a Collector cruiser waiting in the asteroid belt. Feron informed the Broker he was in position just as Tazzik arrived, and having received Feron's mark that the operation was a go, he began to break off, but not before Feron had grabbed a turret and opened fire on his shuttle. The Broker's troops quickly scrambled in the direction of the gunfire, following their orders to trap and neutralize Liara, while the Collector delegation returned to their cruiser and back through the Omega 4 Relay. As Tazzik left, Feron threw a tracking beacon onto the ship, allowing him to track it to the real location of Shepard's body, while he took Liara and fled from the Broker's forces. Under fire the whole way, they were quickly reinforced by Randall's platoon, who pinned down and suppressed the Broker's forces in a fierce firefight as they made their escape, making a fighting retreat out of the plant. Both sides tried to outsmart the other, attempting flanking maneuvers and using smoke and flashbang grenades to cover an advance, but neither tactic resulted in anything but light casualties on both sides, with at least one Broker merc killed and three injured, while Randall's men suffered only a single injured commando. Eventually the Broker's men were forced to break off their pursuit, and Randall's platoon, along with Liara and Feron, escaped. The encounter overall was a victory for both sides: whilst failing to kill Liara, the Broker had stopped them from retrieving Shepard's body, buying time for his transaction to take place: however, Feron's tracking beacon he placed on Tazzik's ship allowed him to learn the real meeting's location, and subsequently led to them discovering and raiding Waystation X-RAY, and their ultimate victory.