“This mission just got a lot more complicated.” — Spoilers for Mass Effect follow.

Yaroslev Tartakovsky Binary Helix Researcher Race Human Gender Male Voice Actor Lex Lang Appearances Mass Effect

is a human researcher for Binary Helix at Peak 15 , on Noveria . He works in the hot labs and was assigned to one of Binary Helix's classified projects. One of his journal entries can be found in the dining hall if the Asari Diplomacy assignment has not been completed; he expresses his concern over this mercenary group.

If Commander Shepard enters the hot labs at Peak 15, Yaroslev Tartakovsky is sitting on a chair, and has an unidentified condition that appears to weaken him. Why he is still there despite working elevators, or how he survived the rachni attack, remain unanswered questions.

Tartakovsky tells Shepard about Binary Helix's finding of a rachni egg aboard a drifting rachni ship. Binary Helix planned to clone the rachni and mass-produce an army: the egg they found was, however, a queen, and they chose to separate her children from their mother in order to make them more obedient. This did not work, with the rachni being driven insane without her presence.

Yaroslev has the codes that Mira can use to activate a neutron purge, but as soon as he rises to give them to Shepard, he is impaled through the chest by a Rachni Soldier. Shepard kills the rachni, then takes the codes from Tartakovsky's body. As Tartakovsky says wryly not long before he dies, "mother always said I would come to a bad end."