Chapter Text
We wear our hearts from the sacrament
For we don't beg for mercy
Paragon
Shepard finally had to personally back up the Cyone depot. The Turian and Asari forces sent to the crucial garden world were holding out, but the Reapers had punched through a weak spot in their defenses following an attempted Cerberus assault.
“It says about 72 hours ago the reactors went offline,” Garrus said, reading a report sent in from Hackett and the Primarch. “Station’s cold, Jane. Totally deserted.”
“Fuck.” Shepard paced up and down the shuttle, chewing her nails. She squinted to see in the dim interior. They were keeping power use to a minimum, engaging a miniature stealth drive similar to the Normandy’s. “Anything on the troops stationed here?”
Garrus shook his head. “No. But we have to get this depot back online. No fuel means Reapers are gonna run all over this cluster.”
The Sileas cluster was two relay jumps from Thessia, the Asari homeworld. This wasn’t just a fight to keep the ships running. It was a fight to keep the Reapers from advancing. Maybe if the Matriarchs had joined the alliance sooner, they wouldn’t have been backed into this kind of corner. Reaper scouts had already infiltrated their home cluster, and Shepard’s team was going to spend a little time after this jumping from system to system, drawing enemy fire and letting pinned Asari assets escape. In order to successfully do that, though, this reactor needed to be secured.
“So we go in, figure out what the hell happened, and get the reactors back online.” Shepard folded her hands behind her. The shore party for this mission consisted of herself, Garrus, James, Tali, and Ash. Shepard still worried about Liara fighting. Maybe she was coddling the Asari, but the galaxy needed its Shadow Broker in one piece and brokering the shadows. Tali’s presence was nerve-wracking enough, but Quarians knew a thing or two about fuel reactors and Shepard had personally purchased Tali a set of tech armor last time they were at the Citadel. “You sure you’re up to this, Princess?”
“I’ve got it, Jane.” Tali fiddled with the color balance on her translucent kit, settling on a shade of purple. It’d be easier to pick her out from among potential enemies. Cerberus tended to stick with the default yellow-orange. “You’ll always be able to count on me, sis.”
“Once we’re on the ground, we rendezvous with Captain Riley, head of an N7 engineering team. Tali, I want you to stick with whatever’s left of her squad. They’ll be actually working on the reactors. The rest of us run face-first into whatever shit Cerberus or the Reapers have down there.” Shepard exhaled. “We all know our jobs?”
Four heads nodded.
“Steve, you find a spot to lay low with the shuttle until Captain Riley gives you additional orders, and Joker, EDI,” Shepard said, checking that the channel to the ship remained open, “keep Cerberus busy in the air. I’d like some compliments on your flying from our guest in the cargo hold.”
“Got it, Shep,” came her snarky pilot’s reply. “One scrambled Prothean brain, coming up.”
“At what point do we stop differentiating between Cerberus and the Reapers?” James asked.
“They’re nominally not husks,” Ashley corrected the marine. “And even if the Illusive Ass is indoctrinated, Cerberus operates totally different from the Reapers. Strategy’s different enough.”
“Approaching drop zone,” Steve alerted them. “T-minus two minutes.”
“Okay.” Shepard stood by the shuttle door. When they touched down and it opened, she was assaulted by the overall mugginess of the planet. Asari favored hot, humid worlds much like the Salarians. They’d evolved from an aquatic species and sometimes Shepard found herself wondering if they could breathe water. As the rest of her squad snapped their helmets into place, she took a long, hard look at hers. It got about halfway over her eyes when her chest locked up and tendrils of shadow closed in from the edges of her vision. She jerked it off again and hyperventilated until she felt Garrus tuck her bangs back behind her right ear.
“Not today?” he asked, holding out his other hand for the helmet.
Shepard shook her head. “No. Won’t be able to focus if I’m freaking out.” She put the helmet in his outstretched hand and Garrus set it on one of the shuttle seats. Shepard took a few deep breaths, fighting the urge to rub her eyes and ruin the precise, artful eyeliner Tali had done for her. The Quarian’s idea of “war paint” was anything but intimidating to a Human. Shepard looked more like she was walking onto a stage than a battlefield, but maybe Quarians did things differently. Or maybe their pre-mission ritual was just something to reaffirm they were still girls through all this. Either way, it had been a nice distraction from the nightmare she’d had last night. Dark forests, shadowy trees, chasing Tali and Legion until they’d been blasted apart by Harbinger’s laser eye…
Shepard messed with the audio balance on her music and took her spot at the head of the squad. She held her Carnifex in her right hand and took deep lungfuls of wet air. She tasted the metallic saltiness of industry as she and her shore party ran to the door that opened into the main body of the complex. Dark, scuffed metal was everywhere, accenting thick walls of smooth concrete. Bright yellow panels marked the doors to the No. 1 Reactor Core. Safety railing and catwalks were also painted in the same color. The only light inside the building came from the emergency auxiliary. Flickering fluorescents forty feet up cast flat shadows and sucked out color. They were met by a Turian officer with a dark carapace, ochre colony paint on his chin and rear phalanges of his mandibles, and orange and black light armor.
“Commander,” he greeted them, “Corporal Nyrek reporting! Captain Riley is on point, waiting for you.”
“How long have you served in this outfit, Corporal?” Shepard asked. She’d never met Captain Riley and wanted a feel for who she was working with.
“Three tours,” Nyrek said with pride. “Been through thick and thicker. The captain always sees us through.”
“Good deal. Stay sharp,” Shepard replied.
“Always, Commander. It’s an honor, Commander.”
Machinist
Jane surveyed their surroundings while Tali sidled up to an N7 operative with a spinal exosuit and her stripes down her right arm. The soldier crouched at the top of a steep ramp. Some sort of green gas swirled around on the lower level, too heavy to rise.
“Confirming,” she said into her comm, “Toxic radiation cutting access to most of the grid. Survival in hotspots not possible.”
“It looks nasty down there,” Tali commented.
“Ventilation system is shut down. Might be enough auxiliary power to activate fans on the main floor,” the soldier said, standing up and turning to face her. “Hm. Quarian engineer. Maybe you’ll have better luck than us. Those suits protect against 10,000 RADs?”
Tali shook her head. “They’re not generally primed for it. But maybe I’ve got something else that can help.” She opened her omni-tool and Chatika sprang out, taking on a similar hue to Tali’s armor but more pinkish. An external server bank sitting on the opposite hip from her sidearm housed Merry when they weren’t in active use. Tali was still working out the kinks of how to best integrate the Geth into her combat suite. So far, she’d needed to summon Chatika, have Chatika send a prompt to Merry, and then Merry would deploy their own drone. A white sphere materialized next to Chatika.
“We will attempt to increase efficiency of deployment process, Creator Tali’Zorah,” the Geth said. “We find this method… inelegant.”
“Agreed, Merry,” Tali said. “Is there any way a Geth would be able to get through a radiation field lethal to organics?”
“Scanning…” Merry peered down the ramp. They compared their data with what Samwise had ambiently gathered, coming to a minor consensus. “Radiation in excess of operating parameters. Contact with EM hotspots risks disruption of processing ability.”
“Dammit. Guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way,” Tali said.
“Yeah,” the soldier said. Her eyes narrowed through her transparent helmet visor. “So… that little thing is really a Geth?”
“Yes,” Tali said. “Merry operates autonomously. I have another one integrated into my suit to maintain homeostatic functions. It’s a… symbiotic sort of relationship. I get a functioning immune system and the Geth obtain data on interacting with organic beings.”
“You really trust them that much?”
Tali nodded. “They don’t want to work with the Reapers. They want to be free just like us.”
“Hmph.” The soldier extended a hand to Merry. “Put ‘er there, little guy.”
Merry turned to look at Tali. “Interpretation?”
“She means a handshake,” Tali said. “Like this.” She took the soldier’s hand and demonstrated.
“This platform lacks hands.” Merry hovered, rolling their eye back and forth in apparent confusion. They floated forward until the edge of their drone touched the soldier’s hand.
“Close enough,” the soldier said. “We take all the allies we can get at this point.”
“Yo, Princess!” Jane barked from across the room. “Move out!”
“Coming, sis!” Tali called.
The soldier looked at Tali completely dumbfounded. “...Sis? Isn’t that—”
“Commander Shepard.” Tali smiled. “Yeah.”
“Hey, before you go, quick question kid,” the soldier held out an arm to keep Tali in front of her. “Is Commander Shepard really going steady with that Turian?”
Tali shrugged. “If by ‘going steady’ you mean they’re a couple? Yeah.”
“Huh…” The soldier looked over at Jane standing next to Garrus. “Wonder what that’s like?”
Tali shrugged. Her experience with her Human sister’s sex life had been confined to listening with her ear pressed against the door of a private shower. Jane really didn’t know how good she had it with a boyfriend she got to go to bed with every night.
The rest of the squad stood in a loose half-circle around another Human soldier, presumably Captain Riley. She wore bright red armor with white stripes down the arms and middle of the chest. Her helmet completely hid her face. She cut a striking contrast with Jane in dark armor and her face exposed.
“We split into two teams,” Riley said. “It’s a dual-reactor system. We need both fuel rods unlocked before initiating a restart.” She opened a map on her omni-tool. Updates came in real time from Cortez’s shuttle as he scanned the facility from the air. “We’re blocked here. Kozlo over there is working on the obstacles.” Riley pointed to another soldier in black and yellow brute-forcing his way through a computer system.
“And this is why you’re the captain,” Jane said, smiling brightly. “Damn, I love it when I get somewhere and people are already working on the problem.”
“Got it,” Kozlo said as the doorway behind Riley opened.
“Be prepared,” Jane said. “We’re facing an unknown enemy here, Captain. Ready your squad to hit Reactor Two”
“If they’re still on site, my team’ll help send ‘em to hell.”
“I’ve got an excellent engineer I want to send along with you,” Shepard said. “Best of the best the Migrant Fleet has to offer.” She beckoned Tali forward. “Admiral Tali’Zorah vas Normandy, this is Captain Riley.”
“Hello.” Tali hadn’t worked with any Humans aside from Jane and whoever else happened to be around her. She was a little reluctant to break away from Jane’s squad and join Captain Riley.
“Appreciate the offer, Commander, but my team’s solid. Well-oiled. We know each other.”
Oh thank Keelah…
Tali let out the breath she’d been holding, fogging up her helmet. Jane nodded in understanding and looked back at her own team. “I get it. You work with someone long enough, they sort of become part of you.”
The squads parted, Tali following Jane forward. They skirted the edge of the reactor core, avoiding the radioactive gas leaks. Tali located a console used to control an overhead crane transport. As she used it to clear a path for Captain Riley’s squad, Shepard and the others fanned out to find any sign of their unseen enemies. Merry hovered close by, periodically scanning.
“Anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” James asked.
“Yeah,” Ashley said. “Something’s off.”
“Scars? Don’t act like you don’t feel it too. Your face has to hurt under there.”
Tali heard the light tapping of a mandible twitching against the inside of a helmet. “I’m trying to focus,” Tali and Garrus said in unison.
“See anything with the elf eyes, Legolas?” Jane asked Garrus.
“Not yet. Cycling views gives me nothing.”
“Just stay sharp, everyone,” Jane ordered. “Riley and I have visual on fuel rod controls. We locate the vents and this gets easier.”
“Got one over here,” Ashley said. She approached the console. Tali took stock of the massive reactor building. It reminded her of the center of a liveship, packed to the brim with tubing, coolant, wires, storage cells, and dozens upon dozens of screens scrolling endless streams of data. Ashley called Tali over. “Take a look at this.”
The console displayed a security feed of the area below, labeled sector A1. Tali reviewed the console commands and keyed in the ventilation order, routing through auxiliary power. Fans whirred to life, sucking the contaminated air down through the floor and pumping it away.
“How many more times are we gonna have to do this, I wonder?” James asked. Jane shrugged, descending to the lower level and activating the fuel rod control. The station’s VI called out the all clear.
Only Garrus remained on the upper level, Widow scope to his eye and tracking something. “We’ve got movement. Ready to go, sweetheart?”
“Always, babe,” Jane replied. “Defensive positions!”
Ka-pow!
Purple sparks rained from a barrier engine glued to the top of a support column behind another crane armature. Half a dozen husks fell over one another scrambling towards the squad. James followed Shepard’s orders, falling back and deploying a mobile fortification to create extra cover for himself and Tali. Tali directed Chatika, though it seemed like she was also receiving orders from Merry as well. That was simultaneously fascinating and concerning. Tali might opt to deal with it later, or she might take a step back and see how things evolved naturally. Would synthetic beings attempt to uplift other, less sophisticated synthetic beings? What might that look like?
She’d have to survive this fight to find out. Tali charged her plasma shotgun, forgetting for a moment that this wasn’t her old one and Garrus hadn’t fully redone its mods yet. The blast went off, burning through a husk, but Tali wound up on her ass.
“Gotcha, Sparks.” James scooped her up under her arms, tipping her back onto her feet in one fluid motion.
“Thanks.” Tali fired again, leaning into the shot this time. Another husk’s cold, white face erupted in flames.
Jane baited a couple of marauders and a cannibal as Ashley engaged the leftover husks with Tali and James. Garrus operated as a separate unit with Jane. Across the depot, Captain Riley’s squad engaged their own enemies. Gunshots echoed through the forest of equipment and ricocheted off the high ceilings. Chatika spun around, releasing an upgraded anti-Reaper pulse that momentarily disoriented their hybrid foes. It gave the squad the opening they needed to get the upper hand and push forward, back up onto the main reactor level. Jane stabbed her omni-blade through the face of a staggered marauder. She jerked the blade back and the undead thing fell in a heap at her feet.
“Captain, status report?” Jane said into the comm. She frowned when Riley replied that her squad had a casualty. Tali knew that frown. It was one of disappointment and confusion. From the way Riley had been talking, Tali thought that her squad operated like Jane’s. Everyone did their job and nobody died.
“Warning! Coolant leaks detected, reactors one and two. System restart impossible.” The station’s security VI repeated the message over and over.
“Fuck ass bitch titties,” Tali groaned.
“Read my mind, Princess,” Jane said. “Tanks are… This way.” She stepped over dead enemies and rounded the corner to locate the tanks. They were huge orange cylinders stacked one on top of the other. Garrus and James each took one side of the circular valve and threw their weight into sealing it. When that one stopped leaking, they could tackle the second one about thirty feet to the right. Shepard flitted between the reactor console and the coolant tanks, performing a last check before initiating the restart in tandem with Captain Riley.
Tali and her drones scanned the area. She counted another eight barrier engines scattered in and amongst the reactor’s supporting infrastructure. She tagged each location and forwarded the data to the rest of her squad. They bunched together near the middle, five sets of eyes and two optical sensors poring over their surroundings to find where the Reapers would emerge next.
“Down below!” Ashley called. Tali heard the chaotic rumble of running husks, their feet beating against the metal grate floor. Garrus flung a trio of flat discs that stuck to the floor at the bottom of the ramp. They blinked, light flashing faster and faster until the husks closed in on them. Only then did they explode, throwing the husks into the air. He left them for the others to deal with, focusing on the barrier engines. Merry lurked at the top of the ramp and Chatika flanked from the other side. They shot down into the fray. James laid another mobile fortification to slow the husks down. Jane, Ashley, and Tali all pumped bullet after bullet into the oncoming tide of Reaper forces.
Archangel
“More up top!” Garrus called. He aimed high, tracking a pack of husks along the yellow catwalks surrounding the top of the reactor.
Jane fell back, switching guns and aiming the Mantis at the same pack of husks. “Ready for round two, babe?”
“Really think you can out-shoot me twice in a row?” Garrus fired the Widow and two husks dropped to the floor. Their still living… undead?... comrades stumbled over the corpses.
“No cheating!” Jane cracked off a couple of shots. Two more husks fell.
“Turians don’t cheat.” One more bullet, two more husks. “I’m just that good.”
“Fuck, that’s hot…” Jane bit her lip.
Ka-pow! “Distracted?”
“Dammit, I always knew this relationship was going to come back and bite me in the ass.”
Garrus chuckled, recalling the first time such a statement had been made. “I think that’s already happened.” At the same time, Tali teased, “Your ass isn’t the only thing he’s biting!”
“Just… just shut the fuck up and help me kill these.” Ka-pow! Ka-pow!
“I love you, too, gorgeous.” Garrus toned the flirting down for now, having successfully put a pink blush in Jane’s cheeks and a smile on her face. A real one, not that fake-ass shit she gave Captain Riley. He still wished she’d talk to someone about whatever had happened to give her a fifty percent chance at a panic attack any time she had to put on a helmet. If it was a requirement, like Rannoch or their first run at Tuchanka, he’d seen her be able to get over it, but not without a lot of mental effort and ripping the thing off the first chance she got.
A marauder reared its head on one of the covered catwalks, aiming down at Garrus and Jane. Garrus’s bullet blew the crest off its head while Jane’s flew through its eye and left a trail of fire eating its organic and synthetic components from the inside. Garrus had modified all her guns to take incendiary ammo. It just suited her.
The marauder had friends. Garrus saw Jane take a moment to check on the rest of their squad holding the line against wave after wave of suicidal husks trying to overwhelm them. They were even making incremental progress. Despite Cerberus softening this place up for the Reapers, Garrus doubted the Illusive Ass had planned on Jane Motherfucking Shepard showing up to bolster the defenses.
One of the marauders jumped from the top catwalk, hitting the floor between Garrus, Jane, and the rest of their squad. It landed hard on one knee and rose, three cybernetic eyes locking onto the closest target: Garrus himself. Jane abandoned her gun, snapping out an omni-blade and pouncing as Garrus shot from the hip. He hit his target, narrowly missing Jane who stabbed the marauder from behind, plasma blade eating through its bronzed carapace. She twisted the knife, shearing circuits and flesh and bone.
“Mine,” she growled at the dead thing.
Another pair of marauders followed their ally. Garrus shot one as it fell. It hit the floor several feet away in a limp heap. The second met its end via Jane’s omni-blade cleaving its head clean off in one graceful motion.
From the lower level, James whistled. “Damn, Lola!”
MY girlfriend!
A warning shot, that’s all it was. That’s all Garrus was going to admit to if Jane confronted him about it. The newly killed husk behind the distracted lieutenant gave Garrus a little more plausible deniability. Jane’s focus was elsewhere, forward onto their next task.
Paragon
“Commander, we’re being overrun!” Captain Riley shouted through the comm link. “Position indefensible! We’re not gonna make it!”
Fuck ass bitch titties…
Indefensible over Shepard’s dead body! “I’m sending help! James, Ash, bring ‘em home!”
The Alliance soldiers snapped into salutes and sprinted away. Captain Riley would have an easier time adapting to two Humans with the same basic training. They’d gel better with her tactics and be more flexible. That was what she told herself. A sneaky voice inside Shepard said she was trying to get rid of the Humans, that they were a threat to her place as the galaxy’s hero and the Alliance’s golden girl. Ash was a Spectre. James was on his way to N7. They’d surpass her eventually, and she couldn’t have that. She had to stay on top at any cost.
Shut the fuck up!
Shepard turned the volume louder on her music, drowning out the compulsive overthinking. She didn’t have time for it, because when she opened the door to the next area of the reactor complex she was greeted by a brute flanked by two marauders. They extended their own shields over the brute, which also had a kinetic barrier. Shepard’s bullets dissipated in flashes of blue and then purple.
“Did they make the damn thing out of a biotic Krogan?” Tali cried. She fell back onto Shepard and Garrus’s position while Merry and Chatika orbited the squad like moons.
“Barrier engine on the other side of the wall,” Garrus pointed out. He tapped the side of his helmet right above his scouter. “Hack in, I’ve got the view set so you can see it.”
Shepard snorted. “Never thought you’d voluntarily let Tali hack your shit, babe.” She felt the kick of her gun deep in her shoulder. It wasn’t the right kind of dull pain, but it was something.
“I figure I should probably pick my battles a little more carefully,” Garrus said. He and Shepard took turns shooting while Tali attempted to hack through the distant barrier engine. Chatika pulsed again, staggering the marauders. The brute, however, appeared unaffected. It likely didn’t get a lot of directions from the Reapers. Just “kill”.
Shepard took out her anger at herself on these Reapers. Who cared about dirty shots when you were fighting technology zombies? Was there even enough of a creature left in there to feel the pain? Shepard doubted it.
Part of training had been teaching the soldiers when to turn their empathy off, when to stop considering an enemy a person and see them as just another obstacle. That had been the hard part for Shepard. She’d never found an enemy to which that line of thought came naturally. Until the Collectors, and the Reapers after them, and Cerberus, And before that maybe the Geth? Had she had any feelings for the Batarians during the Blitz and after? The mercenaries she’d faced? The other Spectres? Shepard could wonder, or she could keep killing. Killing Reapers was at least an act of mercy. The nearly black blood spraying from severed hydraulic lines replacing arteries watered the field of her resolve. This was all just Reaper bullshit trying to get in her head. Shepard was a good person. She didn’t take the easy way out. She fought and killed and had died for what was right. And killing Reapers? That was so fucking right.
Tali disabled the engine. The brute’s artificial biotic shield disappeared and the drones’ harrying began to do real damage. Shepard stepped into the armored monstrosity’s path, doing the one unambiguously good thing she knew how to do: protect someone. As long as she protected someone, saved someone, everything else she did wouldn’t matter.
The brute swung its massive arms, swordlike pincers clawing the air where Shepard had been. She parried its feint, following her momentum and catching the thick ribs sticking up out of its shoulders. She swung herself up onto the beast’s back, forged a single plasma skate and brought her foot down to cleave the brute’s head from its neck. It lurched forward, limbs still moving despite no head to guide it. Shepard rode out its death throes, jamming her Carnifex into the brute’s spine and unloading a full clip of incendiary ammunition into it. Flesh crumbled to ash. Shepard’s knee fell through the decaying back as her friends approached from either side of the brute to help her down. The marauders lay dead, bodies undergoing scans from Chatika and Merry.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, here, Jane,” Tali said. “They’re feeding me data we can hardly make heads or tails of.” She cast her suit HUD to her omni-tool display to share. Her tech armor had held up well so far. Shepard was at least happy with the purchase and would be writing a good review on the company’s extranet site. Quality product, highly capable of protecting my favorite Quarian.
“The comm’s been silent since we sent Vega and Ash out,” Garrus said. “No alert of a rendezvous with Riley. The hell’s going on? This place isn’t that big.”
“Steve, what’s your visual from the air?” Shepard put a hand to her earpiece.
“You’re clear for the moment, Commander. Can’t raise Captain Riley.”
“Fuck ass bitch titties,” Shepard and Tali muttered as one. “Okay,” Shepard said. “What about Ash and James? Anything?”
“Negative, Commander” Steve replied. “No one’s answering my hails. But I’m tracking some movement toward the pickup point. Finalize the restart then we can rendezvous there.”
“Roger, Steve. We don’t leave a man behind.” Shepard wordlessly directed Tali towards the reactor’s main console. The Quarian set her drones to scan the perimeter and followed the prompts to get the depot reactors back online. Shepard spun in a slow circle, eyes piercing the shadowy crevices hidden among the machinery. Garrus stood at her back. Four eyes were better than two.
Through the door the brute had come, a red light flared as the station’s VI alerted Shepard and the squad to a successful reboot sequence. They passed beneath it and headed for the extraction point, Shepard at the head, Tali in the middle flanked by Chatika and Merry, and Garrus bringing up the rear. Tali sent Chatika forward to hang off Shepard’s left hip. The depot was quiet aside from the sound of whirring fans. Too quiet.
As she approached, Shepard saw Captain Riley and Corporal Nyrek standing alongside Ash and James. She raised a hand and waved to get their attention then tapped her earpiece.
“Commander, you saved our asses,” Captain Riley said. “My team is in your debt.”
“Thank my LC,” Shepard said. Ash looked down at her feet. James stood with his arms crossed and head to the side like he was waiting for Shepard’s praise as well. “And the Lieutenant. But what happened with the comms?”
“Not sure. Probably Reaper interference.” Riley shrugged.
“Okay. Let’s move out. The shuttles should be waiting for us.”
To the side, Garrus and Corporal Nyrek were in their own quiet conversation while Tali checked up on Ash and James.
“You’re doing the Hierarchy proud here, Corporal,” Garrus said. “Keep up the good work, and stay on your CO. Humans can get a little trigger happy and need someone to guard their six.”
“Aye aye, Mr. Vakarian, sir.” Nyrek saluted. “It’s… easier than I’d expect, but still easier said than done.”
Garrus chuckled and patted the soldier on his shoulder. “Believe me, I know. They’re not as fragile as they look, but sometimes you wonder if they have an actual death wish.”
“I’d hope not, sir,” Nyrek said. He looked at Captain Riley then back to Garrus before she noticed. “I— This squad wouldn’t be able to make it without her.”
Shepard wanted to ask if anyone else felt like this whole mission was too fucking easy, but Riley had lost several of her team. It would be incredibly insulting if Shepard acted like that was no big deal. People died in war, that was true, but the hope was people didn’t die if they didn’t have to. The two squads parted ways, entering their own shuttles. When the door shut behind them, James said what Shepard was thinking.
“Anyone else wonder how they lost three men and we’re still at a full squad?” The burly marine sat heavily in a seat and buckled himself in.
“Shit happens and people get unlucky,” Ash said. “We’ve lost a few ourselves.”
“Yeah,” James relented. “But those were voluntary. Sacrifices, entonces?”
“Who’s to say her team didn’t sacrifice themselves for her?” Garrus said. “COs are difficult to replace. It’s a lot of knowledge and experience wrapped up in a single person.”
“I’d hope none of you guys would do something so stupid for me,” Shepard said. “It’s my job to get you all out alive, not use you to save my own skin.” She stayed standing and crossed her arms, eyes on the floor.
“The whole ‘nobody dies’ thing applies to you, too, you stupid bitch.” Tali grabbed Jane’s face and made the Human look her in the eye. “We’re in this together, remember?”
“Ash, James, what did you two see from Captain Riley’s squad?” Shepard asked. She gently pushed Tali away.
“Kozlo and the others were dead when we got there. Riley and Nyrek were the only ones left.” Ashley rolled her shoulders and took her helmet off, letting her braid tumble free over the shoulder of her blue and white Alliance armor kit. “I don’t know what could have happened to them, but there were a shit ton of Reapers between us and them. So it seemed like a simple numbers game.”
“That’s what you get when you don’t have a heavy hitter.” James flexed his arms.
“We do have one when you’re not around,” Tali said matter-of-factly. “We have Jane.”
James clutched his heart. “You wound me, Sparks. Cut me real deep.”
“She’s not wrong,” Garrus said. “Tactically speaking, Captain Riley’s squad didn’t look like they lacked for anything either.”
“I guess she’ll give her own report to Hackett.” Shepard started formulating hers, figuring out what she’d say and how she’d word it. This was always the hard part of every mission. It had to be accurate, but she didn’t want to throw anyone under the bus. Shepard opened her omni-tool and began pecking over the small keyboard, deleting whole lines when she noticed a spelling mistake.
“Dammit!” Shepard slumped forward, forehead mashing the keyboard. She could talk in class, she could answer questions and discuss things. She couldn’t write for shit. She could barely read, too, but that was what the audio pen was for.
“Sheep?” Coach Jett called, voice echoing in the quiet library. “The fuck are you, kid?”
Shepard startled. What time was it? Shit, shit shit! She was late for practice. She’d missed practice! Her first instinct was to hide under the table, go radio silent and hope Coach wouldn’t find her. Shepard was good at disappearing. Some people had made the comment that she had a natural talent for it and might find a spot as an infiltrator once she finished at the academy. So if Shepard could just shrink down and disappear…
“Sheep?” Coach approached through the stacks upon stacks of books that Shepard couldn’t read by herself. She crouched next to the table, keeping herself steady with one hand on the edge and fingertips of her other hand on the floor. Her black ponytail flopped to one side. “Kiddo, what’re you doing down here?”
“I… Um… S-sorry, I missed practice. I have an… an assignment due and…” Tears leaked from the corners of Shepard’s eyes. “I was supposed to be done by now, but…”
Coach sighed. “Let’s see where the problem is, okay? You can’t focus on skating or sparring if you’re so worried about a grade that you cry under a table.” She held out a hand. Shepard took it, letting the older woman draw her out of her hiding place. Coach was something like ten years older than her, almost thirty or maybe a little past it. She stood by Shepard’s shoulder, leaned over, and wiggled the computer mouse to wake the screen back up.
Shepard slid down in the seat while Coach Jett attempted to read what she’d attempted to write. “I… I don’t… I never really learned…”
“Fuck. Where’d you go to high school, Shepard? Shouldn’t they have taken care of this?” Coach narrowed her eyes at the lines upon lines of text underlined with red. “You speak English well enough. I thought it was your first language. Are you like French Canadian or something instead of normal Canadian?”
Shepard shook her head. “I didn’t go to school.”
“Okay. Well then your parents really screwed up your homeschooling.” Coach right clicked a few words and the computer fixed Shepard’s mistakes.
“Didn’t have parents either.” Shepard closed her eyes and another wave of tears escaped. “I can’t read well. I write even worse. I… I’m not s’posed to be here. This was a mistake.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been here for what, a few months? You can’t decide if this is where you’re supposed to be in such a short time.” Coach squeezed her shoulder. “We just gotta find someone to work with you is all. And maybe get things lined up so you don’t have to do as much writing. I can sponsor an IEP as an instructor. We’ll figure this out.”
Shepard furrowed her brow. Coach wasn’t disappointed in her? She was going to help ? Shepard didn’t know what to say or do. She didn’t know what Coach wanted from her right now. There was always something else she was supposed to be figuring out with other people. Something they hid for her to find. If she succeeded in finding it, things would be okay and they’d leave her alone. “...What… Why?”
“Because you need it to be successful. I make sure my recruits are successful.”
“I… It’s not fa—” Coach dug a thumb into Shepard’s collarbone, cutting her off.
“It ain’t about fair, Sheep. It’s about need. A leader does what their squad needs.”
Shepard didn’t respond. She didn’t want to stand out, be different. Standing out was what got her into the whole mess of her life in the first place. She’d go along with what Coach wanted, only she wouldn’t be unprepared when the other shoe dropped and Shepard had to reap the consequences.
Coach Jett sighed. “Shepard, I know you’re a kid from the shit side of town. I know that the military is a huge leg up for kids like you. It’s your way out of drugs, gangs, abuse, what have you. I’ve seen a ton of ‘em come through here. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one as… feral as you are. You’re a grown-ass woman hiding under a table from your figure skating coach. Yeah, I’m a biotic, but we get some meat on these bones and you could probably floor me. Whoever convinced you that you’re this weak, this powerless, we’re gonna prove ‘em wrong.” Coach fixed a few more spelling mistakes. “Now that this is getting more legible, you’ve got a lot of good points here. You’re not stupid, Sheep. You might not be Grissom material, but you’re just as worthy of being here as the scholarship kids who broke the ASVAB scale. If the reading and writing thing is this hard for you, we can work on it.”
The next day, a woman with brown skin, tight black braids, and a noticeable baby bump who called herself “Horse” showed up at Shepard’s barracks. “So,” she said, “Goose has taken a liking to you, huh?”
Shepard nodded. She stayed in the doorway, wary of the new woman. Horse had the same black N7 hoodie Coach Jett wore sometimes. Shepard held out a hand to introduce herself. “I’m Shepard.”
“Brittany Brown, retired Marines, but you can call me ‘Horse’. And this—” She patted her stomach, “is who Goose has been calling ‘Colt’. I think it’ll stick, actually.”
Horse tutored Shepard for months in reading and writing while Coach set up and got the education plan pushed through. The best part wasn’t the massive world of books that opened up. It wasn’t fawning over baby Colt when Horse brought him around, just like Jane would have done with one of the little kids in her gang. It wasn’t the eventual ability to get good grades without an emotional breakdown either.
The best part was that nothing bad happened to cancel this out.
“Sweetheart?” Garrus turned Shepard’s face to look up at him. She blinked a few times, eyes refocusing.
“Did I zone out again?”
“Yes. You did.” Garrus leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose. “We’re about to land in the shuttle bay.”
“Shit.” Shepard looked at her barely written report, only a few lines on the omni-tool’s tiny screen. There really wasn’t much to write, not much had happened. And maybe… maybe that was okay.
Admiral Hackett at least thought it was okay. He congratulated Shepard on a solid victory that ensured further operations in the sector. Hackett assigned a dedicated task force to maintain the facility against further Reaper incursions. Riley’s mission report offered glowing reviews of Shepard’s entire crew. Shepard felt a little queasy at that. Riley was the superior officer. Really Shepard should have been the one honored to work with her and had said as much during their introduction.
“I can’t shake a weird feeling, Admiral,” Shepard said. “This felt too easy.”
“I’ve fought enough battles to know you don’t question the easy victories,” Hackett said. “We never know how many of them we’ll get.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Shepard snapped into a salute. “Next stop is dealing with emergency transmissions from Asari High Command, then a few more side trips until we dock at the Citadel for deliveries.”
“Kasumi will meet you there,” Hackett said. He returned Shepard’s salute and ended the call.
Pilot
Steve sidled up to Garrus who was obsessively fiddling with the Commander’s Mantis sniper rifle at the weapons bench. Whenever he didn’t have any strategy meetings or cannon calibrations to take up his time, the Turian could be found down here managing the armory. He’d apparently spent a fair amount of time in the SR1’s shuttle bay sorting and valuing the weapons the Commander “acquired” during their fight against Saren and the Geth.
“It sounded like quite an ordeal getting that reactor up and running,” Steve said.
Garrus shrugged. “Jane and I have been through worse.”
“Well, glad you were able to get some help from Captain Riley’s team. Sometimes I forget we aren’t all alone in this war.”
“You and me and her both.” Garrus picked up the gun and aimed it down the length of the shuttle bay. He found something about it lacking and began taking it apart with practiced methodical swiftness. Steve was struck by how much more comfortable the gun looked in Garrus’s hands than the Commander’s.
“So… This is Shepard’s gun, right?” Steve reached for a piece of the barrel and drew his hand back. On second thought, he decided that Garrus was too particular about his guns for Steve to intervene. And this was Shepard’s gun.
“This one is… it’s kind of our gun.” Garrus laid his hands flat on the ends of the table. His small, gray eyes darted back and forth, focusing on different pieces of the dismantled firearm. “Jane refuses to use anything more powerful. So whenever I get an idea, I come down here and try to help this thing keep up.”
“Really? Shepard turn down a more powerful gun?” Steve raised a brow and crossed his arms.
“Javik’s not entirely wrong about her sentimental streak.” Garrus narrowed his eyes. His right mandible twitched. “We came across a few better guns for my… ahem… skillset , and she got the idea that she’d keep this one.” Garrus smiled at some memory. “Spirits, maybe my head is just bone all the way through.”
“Come up with a plan?” Steve asked.
Garrus shook his head. “No. I’ve still got no idea what I’m doing. With the gun or with this.” He pointed to a velvet box sitting among the Mantis’s pieces. “Cortez, you mind if I speak a little freely with you?”
Steve shook his head. “Nah, go ahead.”
“You’re an alright guy. Great shuttle pilot. I’m glad we’ve got someone like you on this team.”
“Um… thanks, Garrus.”
The Turian rolled his eyes. “Well you don’t have to get all bashful on me. I just appreciate someone who’s candid and a team player. It’s refreshing, considering some of the people we’ve worked with.”
“Can’t imagine there was a lot of honesty on a Cerberus vessel,” Steve said.
Garrus shook his head. “They tried their damnedest, but Jane saw right through them. Well… most of them, anyway. She swayed a few to see our side of things, but there were a couple who didn’t come around until it was too late.”
“One of them was that Chambers woman?”
Garrus nodded. “Jane told Kelly things that she hasn’t even told me. Not in any detail, anyway. I can’t imagine what possessed her to pass all that along to the Illusive Ass. But I know that she was trying to help Jane as best she could because of what’s going on now that she’s not here.” He kept his eyes on the gun in pieces on the table. “Thanks for helping Jane stick up for herself. She’s not used to it. At least… not used to doing it like that, anyway.”
Steve shrugged. “Grinds my gears when people get told how to feel. You can’t move on if you bottle everything up.” He rubbed his ring finger. Hiding from everything about Robert in an effort to move on hadn’t gotten him anywhere.
“Yeah. I’ve learned that Humans can’t do that. It’s not healthy for them.”
“Not sure it’s good for Asari either. Liara’s hardly left her office since we left the Citadel.” Steve looked at the ceiling and wondered what Liara was doing or if she was okay. He, like some of the other Human crew, felt a little intimidated at the prospect of disturbing the blue alien woman’s solitude.
Garrus shrugged. “Ashley says she’s just got a lot going on. Running her network is a big task. But, I agree something’s off. When I met Liara, she’d barely been off her homeworld. Now? She’s got Asari Matriarchs ordering hits on her. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud, though.”
“You? Proud of her becoming functionally a criminal mastermind?” Steve scoffed. “Weren’t you a cop?”
“I’m not anymore. There’s a reason for that.” Garrus stretched, bracing his hands on his armor’s collar and rolling his head around. “Besides, Liara’s someone you can trust with that kind of power. She wouldn’t abuse it.”
“She’s done a good job so far,” Steve agreed. “If not for her intel network, I don’t think this war would have gone on as long as it has.”
Garrus nodded. “I just wish she’d been able to find something about what the Alliance did with Jane for three months. I guess even the Shadow Broker has her limits.”
“Would it really help knowing?” Steve frowned. What did Garrus mean by that? Sure, Shepard had been grounded and kept under lock and key, but the Alliance had to have known where she was. As long as she was on Earth, there wouldn’t have been a way for the Batarians to get ahold of her to exact their own sick form of justice.
Garrus began putting the dismantled sniper rifle back together. “Maybe it might help me sleep at night instead of laying there feeling scars I know she didn’t have before she got arrested. I’m a simple man. As long as I have a gun to play with and a death to plan, I’m pretty content.” He snapped the last piece of the gun back into place.
“Hm… And how would Shepard feel about some extrajudicial killings from the nominal expert on Reapers from the government of Palaven?”
“She loves watching me kill for her. And I fully intend to hunt down whoever hurt her and bring them to justice. Then I’m setting their corpse on fire and making love to my impossibly sexy badass of a wife in the ashes.” Garrus laid the gun aside and picked up the velvet box. “But that, much like what’s in here, is probably going to have to wait until this damn war is over.”
Steve opened his mouth to reply, but James burst through the shuttle bay door with Tali in tow. “Scars! Ven aquí! It’s time for your dance lesson!”
Garrus slipped his velvet ring box into a pouch on his belt. He massaged his temples with his forefingers. “Dammit, I wish I’d never let them talk me into this. I’ll catch up with you later, Cortez.”
“Yes, yes, we know, ‘the things you do for love’,” Tali mocked, giggling as she did so. “C’mon, bosh’tet. You’re going to thank us later.” She grabbed Garrus’s wrist and tried to haul the much taller alien away.
“Can’t fool me, Scars,” James said to the Turian. “I know that wasn’t a trick shot. We’re putting you through your paces.”
“Ah crapbaskets…” Garrus sighed. “Cortez, if they kill me, tell Jane I died well.”
“Sure thing.”