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This mission was pretty stupid from the start, but its Samara's show, and its her daughter's life, so we're running it her way. It's stupid for a lot of reasons. For starters, Morinth kills with sex and I kill with ballistics, with explosives, with bludgeoning implements (I count two purpose-made weapons in the room, 18 just-waiting-to-be-improvised weapons), with fists and feet and with environmental factors (nice view); so of course we're making social until Samara turns up and turns it into a biotic wrestling match. Apparently getting Morinth high and smothering her with a pillow will not provide sufficient emotional closure [Samara's personal development plan is close to empty; the Code leaves literally no room for personal growth].
And now Morinth has opened her mouth and managed to make my evening stupider.
"Violence is the purest expression of power." she said that; with actual words and everything. On purpose, as far as I can tell. I can fail to laugh at her. I've fought a Thresher Maw on foot, twice, I've murdered two of every species like some sort of reverse Noah, I've out-headbutted Krogon Warlords [1] and out-diplomised Asari Matriarchs, I can do this. I can listen to her puerile dreck like she isn't an angsty teenager.
"But as Warlord Okeer said: 'The greatest insult you can give an enemy is to ignore him'."
I don't say: "When I defeated Ka'hairal Balak, I brought him in alive and healthy. He was not prosecuted as a war criminal, he was not held up as a martyr for Batarian freedom; he was charged with driving without due care and attention, with making unregistered modifications to a space-going vehicle [to whit: Asteroid X57], with failure to comply with local space-traffic control regulations and deviating from his flight plan and under various littering bylaws. No one has ever charged into battle shouting `for the guy with the littering citation.'"
I don't say: "The purest expression of power is when your enemy's greatest attacks result in trivial legal proceedings."
On the plus side, I'm learning to really appreciate Liara; she might be turning into her mother (did she really think that that the "Assari Commando" speech was worth repeating?), but realising that Asari maidens apparently spend about 300 years being trust-fund brats or whiny teenagers makes you really value the one who's already reached the pinnacle of her third carrier by the time she's 108.
I miss being able to invoke littering regulations to solve my problems. Cerberus is too much like Morinth; weak, desperate, poor, getting things done cheap using murder rather than doing it right using complicated systems of red tape. Hiding their secrets in jungle bases rather than putting them on the extranet buried under exabytes of proposed legislation. Putting together cover ups for their failures rather than unleashing judicial review and scathing intra-departmental memos. Giving the captains of their ships giant beds and aquariums full of dead fish rather than cramped quarters and a connection with their crew. Cheap. Tawdry. Like a street thug wearing a pile of bling. True power wears a cheap suit and works out off a cramped office with third-hand furniture on an old datapad. It employs tired-looking professionals in drab, worn camo, who will drill you between the eyes at 200 meters and then go back to thinking about poetry or whatever. I bet the shadow broker's agents don't live in terror of the the phrase "Could you pick her out of a line-up?" the way Miranda does[2]. They're probably balding overweight guys in their mid 30s who no one looks at twice.
Samara isn't much better; Justicars kill those that they catch doing wrong; the idea is to send a message like a mob enforcer. Unfortunately the message is always "don't get caught". They don't have the constitutional mass to make the message "We caught this person. This is what they did, this is how they tried to cover for themselves. We caught them anyway. We always catch them anyway. The ensuing rehabilitation process is tailored to reduce the chances of recidivism".
[1] Thank you "Effective communications strategies: Tuchunka".
[2] The answer is always "Yes".