"Traynor, I swear if you don't stop pacing I'm going to have a nervous breakdown too. What's got you so worked up, anyway?"
An ensign, one of the CIC crew whose name she couldn't recall at the moment, was frowning at her.
"Nothing!" she protested quickly, hands in the air as if to ward off further inquiry. "I mean, aside from the whole…war and everything. I'm fine!"
Turning away from the disbelieving look she got in reply, Samantha returned her attention to her console, where data streams had been minimized in favour of the life-sign monitors for the ground team. Only three remained at full-size: Julian Shepard, Liara T'Soni, and Ashley Williams. The trio had hit the ground only minutes before, and so far the only physical indications that they'd dropped into an active combat zone were slight elevations in heart rate - they, like the rest of those who fought by Shepard's side, were battle-hardened in the extreme. It was just as well, since there was absolutely nothing Sam could do at this point except watch and wait as the Normandy abandoned them planetside in order to join Sword.
She jumped guiltily when the terminal chimed, alerting her to incoming data streams, all marked urgent - she'd apparently been ignoring the silent alert used for regular transmissions. Shrinking all but one of the life-sign monitors, she got to work, making sure transmissions ended up in the right places and that the Normandy and the hundred-odd ships under it were all where they needed to be. She felt oddly peaceful despite the dozen different threads she juggled and the very real possibility that none of them would live out the day. Perhaps it had something to do with the steady pulse of light that marked Ashley's heartbeat on her screen, the second human Spectre steadier in the midst of a pitched battle than Samantha was while standing safely in the CIC. Not for the first time, she wished she'd managed to get something other than nervous stammering out the last time they'd crossed paths - perhaps the closure of confessing her feelings would have helped alleviate some of her current nerves.
There was a jump in Ashley's heart rate, and Sam immediately forgot what she was doing to thumb on the comm channel that the team was using.
"Any Alliance personnel in the vicinity?" the Commander was asking, and layered over her voice Sam could hear the sounds of battle: gunfire, the click of a thermal clip being replaced, and the shriek of a Banshee. Her knees went weak, and she began searching frantically for anyone she could possibly route the extraction request to. It was the work of seconds to locate the only shuttle still afloat in that part of London, but she didn't so much as draw a full breath until the got the all-clear from the pilot who'd picked up the squad.
"Are you alright, Samantha?"
That was EDI's voice, and although the well-modulated tones were usually more than enough to soothe Sam's nerves, at the moment the AI's supernatural calm only served to rattle the specialist even further.
"I'm fine, EDI," she replied tersely, quickly routing the squad's comm channel into her earpiece. She didn't want to let actually doing her job distract her from monitoring their status.
"That is a lie," came the cool response. "Your vital signs indicate significant stress, even accounting for the current situation. Are we not friends?"
Flustered by the unexpected question and the number of people digitally shouting for her attention, Samantha couldn't even begin to put together a coherent answer.
"Excuse me?"
"I asked a rhetorical question, a conversational trope I believe you are familiar with. I wished to confirm that you and I are friends, and in doing so offer an oblique reminder that it is considered rude to lie to one's friends."
"EDI, I just-" she was cut off by a dozen messages flickering across her screen in rapid succession. Most of them were varying levels of degraded, but it wasn't hard to put together a coherent picture anyway - she was good at her job. She thumbed on her mic. "Hammer's down, losses reported at about twenty percent so far. EDI," she continued seamlessly, switching the mic back off again, "Sorry, can we have our chat a bit later? Things are about to get sticky."
"Very well," the AI responded, a bit stiffly if Samantha was any judge of computer-generated voices, and fell silent.
The specialist swallowed a surge of guilt - EDI was her friend, and she had been a bit short. Still, there truly was work to be done now that Hammer had landed, so it wasn't as if she'd lied. Getting the right people on the right frequencies was quick enough, but it took significantly more of her attention to capture, clean up, and properly re-route other communications, some of which were more interference than sound. It was fortunate that the Commander and her squad had landed in the resistance FOB, out of the fighting for the moment…Sam's attention could only stretch so far, and she wasn't entirely sure what she'd do if it came down to a choice between monitoring the woman she loved or life-saving communications across the fleet. After all, there were other comm specialists in the Alliance, even if most of them weren't half as good as she was.
She watched the dwindling number of Hammer troops with dread, tallying up each notification of a truck or a squad down, comparing them with the number of enemy combatants reported, and coming up with a sick stomach. More than once, she reached for the button that would connect her, as intimate as a lover, with Ashley's earpiece…and every time she withdrew. Planning to tell her before the battle had been foolish; telling her in the midst of it would be utter lunacy.
In her ear and on her screens, the battle raged on, the remnants of Hammer struggling towards a nearly-impossible goal. A thickly-accented burst of chatter pulled a small, tight smile across her face - it sounded like Donnelly, if he'd been a ground soldier. An explosion echoed in her ear, although thankfully the volume was low, and someone called out 'Harvester down'. A Banshee screamed, guns fired, Ashley yelled…all the normal sounds of a fight to take back the Earth. She routed a nearby call for help to the Commander's helmet and checked that the reply made it clearly - comms were a complete mess.
She had cause to regret her actions almost immediately, when two voices shouted 'Brute!' within seconds of each other and Ashley's heart rate spiked dangerously. The jump was followed by fluctuations across the board, then a green light indicating medigel had been dispensed. Sam felt sick again, but she forced it down. Done was done, and she did nobody any favours by abandoning her post, especially not when distress calls were flaring to life all around and squad after squad was going offline. A Reaper had landed. Missiles were fired and went wild, the Reaper beam interfering with their targeting.
She heard Shepard's half of two conversations, and the Commander sounded tense, harried…worried. It unnerved her.
"Samantha," came EDI's voice again, layered over the endless gunfire in her ear, "I am going to attempt to guide the missiles. The Commander is opening a link from the missile systems, but I'll need you to keep it open and free from interference."
"Got it," replied the specialist tersely, quickly locating the signal in question and flagging it with the highest priority she had access to - that would keep it stable for the moment, as she worked to appropriate other channels as backup in case of signal loss. She frowned. "Link's not as strong as it should be, but you should be safe from disconnection."
"You have my thanks," the AI answered promptly, then fell silent again.
There were a few precious seconds of quiet, and then the Commander's left flank collapsed and Sam's ear echoed once again with gunfire, the screams of Banshees, barked orders, and brief acknowledgements. She turned the volume down again, tucking another small window up under Ashley's vital signs: EDI's progress bar. It inched along with painful slowness, almost coming to a complete halt several times, but after a small eternity it completed…to no effect.
"We're down to two missiles," the Commander breathed despairingly, as all around her Hammer continued to fall apart, "And we haven't even made a dent."
Sam wanted to scream, did let out a thin noise of fury between her clenched teeth as Liara's voice sounded in her ear, "Oh Goddess, more are coming?"
"Hold on, everyone," Shepard pled, her voice cracking a little as she continued. "We can do this."
Sam, watching the numbers continue to change steadily in favour of the Reaper forces, wasn't so sure about that. Still, she wouldn't give up, not now. Sword was arranged, ready and waiting to make the final push if only Shepard could pull off another in her long line of miracles and take down that Reaper. There weren't many soldiers left, but surely there were enough that at least one could make it to the beam and up to the Citadel to open the arms, right?
"Right," she murmured to herself.
The next few minutes were a blur of helping EDI to prep the last set of missiles, sighing with relief when the squad was picked up by a tank, trying not to panic as she helped to coordinate which parts of the fleet would disengage to chase down the departing Reapers, and very nearly missing the brief blurb that crossed her screen: "Shepard's tank down, squad on foot."
The vital sign monitors cut out. Sam's breath froze in her chest and she barely heard the scratchy, distorted version of the Commander's voice calling the Normandy for evac. It wasn't good but it was audible, so Sam didn't even bother with the minute delay of cleaning it up…or at least that's what she'd say later if questioned. Truthfully, she was too busy clinging to her terminal to keep from falling down, counting her breaths to keep from hyperventilating. Shepard wouldn't have called for an evac if it weren't an emergency, and she sounded fine, or at least uninjured. That left Ashley and Liara, and with the monitors off she had no way to tell which. For all that it felt like blasphemy, though, Sam wished with all her heart that the asari was the one in need. They were groundside in seconds and lifting back off almost immediately after, but before she could even start to ask who they'd picked up, everything went to hell.
"Shepard's down!" screamed a dozen voices. A dozen more just screamed, wordless, then fell silent. The brief quiet echoed painfully.
"Hammer's done for," was next, followed by urgings to withdraw, regroup, try again - as if there were second chances for a final charge. At last, Hackett's voice, soothing like her grandfather's had been, once upon a time, whispered, "Holy shit." into her ear. He announced that someone, somehow, had made it to the Citadel after all. Sword gathered, the Normandy among them, and everyone waited.
Sam, along with every other comm specialist in the fleet, began searching for the signal, for whomever had made it to the Citadel.
"Just found that chasm you were talking about," came Shepard's voice in her ear, weak and pained and nearly drowned out by static.
"It's the Commander!" she called out over the network, fingers flying over her screen as she passed the data along, tried to find a better signal, tried to figure out where exactly the soldier was inside the Citadel. Distracted, she didn't even hear the elevator opening behind her, or the thud of a new set of boots on the deck.
"She's okay?" Ashley's voice asked from far too close for Sam's comfort, and the specialist nearly jumped out of her skin. Instantly, hands came up to steady her, and the brief touch of Ashley's bare hand on her forearm made her skin tingle disconcertingly. "Whoa there," the Spectre said quickly, "It's just me." She stood there, whole and untouched, dressed in Alliance casuals, and the specialist had to clench her fists to keep from reaching out to touch her.
She's alive, was Sam's first, wild thought. Ashley was alive. More than just alive, she looked alright, uninjured, safe. Sam's throat closed and she forced herself to drag her eyes away from the other woman, lest she either burst into tears or break down and confess her love in the middle of the CIC. Ash had asked a question, hadn't she? About the Commander?
"She's, ah, well it seems as though she's in the Citadel…with at least one other person, although I've no idea who. She…she sounds injured," Sam admitted quietly. "Vital sign monitors have been down since your first run towards the beam, though."
And right on cue, several of the monitors came back up - including Ashley's, still full-size across the left side of her screen. Sam flushed and hurriedly minimized it.
"Oh look," she managed, her voice high and nervous, "Looks like some of them are online again."
She steadfastly ignored the searching look she could feel against the side of her face.
"Samantha," EDI's voice made her jump yet again, and she scowled. "Are you certain that you are alright? Your vital signs indicate-"
"Fine, EDI!" Sam squeaked, cutting the AI off before she could begin to elaborate. "I'm just fine, thanks! No, uh, no problems at all, just having a chat with Lieutenant Commander Williams here!"
"Very well then," came the quiet reply, and Sam hoped it was just her imagination that the digital voice carried a healthy knowing overtone.
"Lieutenant Commander Williams?" Ashley asked, arms crossed over her chest and a smirk on her face. She also sounded far too knowing for Samantha's comfort. "Sam, I'm hurt. I thought we were friends!"
Sam was saved, briefly, from having to respond by yet another in a lengthening series of convenient interruptions: the Citadel arms began to open. The Normandy hummed under her feet, moving forward to guide the Crucible towards its destination. They watched in silence as it docked - or at least Sam did. She could feel the other woman's eyes on her rather than the video feed, and she fidgeted.
"Listen, Ash, I…"
"Shutting down," EDI's voice announced over every speaker in the ship. "I'll see you on the far side." With that, half the Normandy's systems went dark, leaving them running the bare minimum - Sam's job was done. She spared a moment to hope that their projections had been correct, their precautions sufficient - she wasn't sure what it would do to her, much less to Joker, if EDI became a casualty of the war.
"It's not firing." That was Admiral Hackett. "Somebody get me in touch with Shepard, now. We've got to get this thing firing!" The order was followed by a burst of chatter that only dimmed when Sam muted her earpiece. There was nothing she could do, not when most of their outbound comms were run through EDI's mainframe.
She turned to Ashley once more, trying to find the words for her end-of-the-world confession, and instead found herself enveloped in a bone-squeezing hug. Ashley smelled of dust and smoke, her dark hair bringing the battle back onto the Normandy with her, and she felt warm and solid and alive. Sam started to cry, her face buried in the crook of Ashley's neck.
"It's okay," Ash whispered, and it wasn't but Sam nodded anyway, pulling back just enough to wipe awkwardly at her tears.
"Ash, I-"
"I know," came the quiet interruption, the Spectre's arms tightening around her once again and a slightly crooked grin playing over a tired face. "Sam, I may be a big muscle-headed soldier but do you really think I didn't notice?"
"You- I- Bloody hell, why didn't you say anything?" Sam demanded in a loud whisper, at once embarrassed and elated. "I was on tiptoes this whole time and you, you… you knew!"
"What can I say?" Ash responded with another grin and a little shrug, apparently not bothered by the fact that half the crew was watching them intently. "Sometimes a girl likes to be courted. And sometimes she gets tired of waiting and does the courting herself." Then, right there in the middle of the CIC, she brushed a soft kiss across a stunned Samantha's lips…and then a second, for good measure.
"It's mutual, in case you were still wondering," she murmured. "Now c'mon, let's go check on Joker."
Hand-in-hand, they went to do just that.
"All fleets, the Crucible is armed. Disengage and head to the rendevous point. I repeat, disengage and get the hell out of here!"