A/N: What's this? ANOTHER story? I know, I know, I have plenty of other stories that I should be working on instead of starting new ones. But sometimes I just can't write on some stories (for a variety of reasons), and I get the inspiration to start new ones. In this case, I don't expect this story to be more than a few chapters, and most of them won't be this long. Of course, it all depends on how ME3 turns out...
Please note that, for each of these chapters, I've thought through these dilemmas extensively, and the conclusion I reach is due to analyzing every detail as much as possible. In this case, there is actually a LOT more info than I comment on in this chapter that supports my conclusion. I'll explain further if you still don't believe what I put here is adequate.
In a world of hard choices and being forced to pursue the lesser of two evils, there sometimes exists a third option—a way to save them all.
Chapter 1: Virmire
Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams cursed as a glowing streak of blue impacted the side of the large crate, leaving a scorched dent where her head had been less than a second before.
And her shields weren't even recharging yet. Her career sure loved to remind her of her mortality as often and as clearly as possible.
When it wasn't blacklisting her surname or sticking her on some out-of-the-way colony, that is. "Commander, can you read me?" she called out into her comm unit, hoping that Shepard could bring some backup.
"The nuke is almost ready," he replied. "Get to the rendezvous point, Williams!"
The torrent of geth fire nearly drowned out all other noise. A quick scan of the situation—something she had mastered over the past year—painted a dire picture. "The geth are laying down some heavy fire! I'm not sure we can make it to the rendezvous without taking heavy casualties!"
A few seconds went by, until the reassuring voice replied back with exactly the news she wanted to hear. "Hold tight, Williams, we're coming!"
Despite the situation, she smiled. All they had to do was hold out a little longer. "Just hang on!" she called out to her remaining STG teammates, "Shepard's on his way!"
Changing their tactics to stalling the geth, things managed relatively well. Only one salarian went down, but he might still make it if his wounds weren't too bad.
That was until she saw the geth dropship fly right by the AA tower, toward…
The bomb sight! "Heads up L-T!" she radioed in, "Just spotted a geth dropship headed to your position!"
"It's already here!" Alenko reported, a very subtle inflection of panic creeping into his normally unwavering voice. "There are geth pouring out all over the bomb site!"
The situation had very suddenly gone from bad to worse.
"Can you hold them off?"
"Negative! There's too many. I don't think we can survive until you all get back here!"
Before she could even think through their options, Alenko made everything a lot simpler in the most horrifying of ways. "I'm activating the bomb!"
Where a quick retort would have followed from their commander, a noticeable silence existed instead.
"It's done, Commander! Now go get Williams and get the hell out of here!"
The geth were still attacking them relentlessly, but she'd be damned if she was going to let Kaidan sacrifice himself for her sake. "Screw that! We can handle ourselves! Go back and get Alenko!" she shouted into her comm unit, far louder than she needed to.
But she knew what that would mean. The bomb would go off too soon for Shepard and his team to bail hers out and then reach Kaidan…or vice-versa. No matter what, one of them was going to die here.
The reply came quicker than she expected. "Alenko, radio Joker and tell him to pick us up at the bomb site."
Despite the immediate relief she felt upon hearing that Kaidan would live, that he wouldn't die directly for her sake, she couldn't kill the intense queasiness in her stomach or the mild shock and numbness upon hearing that she was about to die.
"…yes, Commander, I…" Kaidan's voice was hesitant and sad, but Ashley could tell that he was feeling the same way she was, just from the sound of his voice.
"You know it's the right choice, L-T." She believed it, too. That bomb had to go off. And Kaidan was the superior officer—not to mention the fact that he was both a powerful, stable L2 biotic and a tech specialist.
And despite the fact that she respected, admired, and even appreciated the salarians with her, they were all special forces on a known suicide mission, and Kirrahe had even told Shepard that, if he had to choose between saving a few STG operatives and the marine generously assigned to coordinate the two forces—her—or even any of his crew, Shepard should choose his crew. The STG team had accepted this suicide mission well beforehand; Shepard and his crew had flown in to investigate on orders from the Council, without knowing that doing so would trap them into an all-or-nothing suicide mission whose success determined their survival.
But still, as the unbelievably intense fire pounded the heavy crate she took cover behind (she was surprised it had held together this long already), her now-final thoughts shifted to her family. Her mother—her sisters, God, her sisters—she would never see any of them again. Never see Lynn take her teasing in stride, never see Sarah walk around with the spunk and toughness of a marine, never see Abby actually understand what she was trying to hide from everyone else and talk to her about it later, never see her mother laugh at the legendary antics of her daughters…Ashley couldn't help it when her eyes started to water up.
Who cared about tears when you were about to die in a nuclear hellfire anyway?
"Williams! I want you and your team to head to the bomb site, double time! I don't care how heavy that fire is, improvise!"
Hearing her name barked out in a manner not unlike that of their shared drill sergeant, she processed the order right through the haze of memories. Years of training and unwavering determination set right back in. "Acknowledged!" she yelled into the radio. Then, to her team, "Fall back! We need to run to the bomb site or we get left behind! Now!"
Normally, a staggered, orderly retreat would ensure the fewest casualties. But in this rare situation, having her and the entire team simultaneously fall back at run-like-your-life-depends-on-it speed, without warning, got them to the elevator doors without taking any more wounds. Even the previously-downed salarian, who had managed to get back up and meagerly fight, made it inside. Since the elevator doors were on the opposite side of a large, pillar-like structure—and they had been right on the opposite side of that structure—they were all inside and heading down without having to worry about getting shot.
Forcing herself to focus on the situation at hand, she realized that the geth dropship was the only remaining threat to them until they reached the bomb site.
The elevator doors opened earlier than she expected, but only hesitated for a moment. Keeping an eye out for the dropship, she proceeded toward the bomb site at as quick a pace as her wounded salarian teammate could match. Which, considering he was a salarian without a crippling wound, was pretty damn fast.
After taking another elevator down, they ran into an area that provided plenty of cover against a potential dropship, and it was even devoid of any geth or krogan.
They traversed it as quickly as possible, opening the huge door that led directly to the bomb site.
Her heart lurched when she saw Kaidan sitting against the bomb, hunched over and clutching his side. Any wound like that was bad enough to need immediate medical attention—
"It's Saren!" one of the salarians shouted, snapping her attention to the silver turian to her left.
The bastard was lifting Shepard up by his neck singlehandedly, obviously strangling the spectre. Just before she could bring her weapon to bear, a loud blaring sound emanated from her right—the bomb. She didn't know what it meant, but their time had to be running out.
Apparently, Saren was as distracted by the noise as she was, because by the time she shifted her attention back to Shepard, the marine's fist was colliding with the turian's face.
She hated referring to anything marines did as "badass" to anyone outside of the military, but that was just too awesome to let slide.
She and the STG opened fire on Saren, peppering his shields with bullets. Shepard was too dazed by the strangling to contribute, but the pressure was enough to force the turian to flee onto his waiting hoverboard-thing. Returning fire himself, Saren forced the STG to take cover long enough for him to escape.
Ashley hated the thought of Saren escaping, but the Normandy's arrival, along with the loud reminder that the nuke was about to go off, put things into perspective.
They all managed to get aboard the Normandy quickly, and Joker gunned the throttle as soon as no one was at risk for flying out of the closing cargo-bay doors. The inertial dampeners prevented the rapid escape from being too violent, and she allowed herself a moment to feel the utter relief spread throughout her body before returning to the situation at hand.
Only two of them were seriously wounded—that salarian and Kaidan. Chakwas was already standing by, and with over half a dozen medically-trained personnel nearby, their conditions were stabilized in short order.
She couldn't help it when her mind played through the 'what ifs'. What if there weren't enough crates between her team and the geth for them to make it to the other side of the pillar (and, by extension, the elevator)? What if there were geth at their flank as well, preventing them from falling back to the bomb site? What if there truly hadn't been enough time to make it to the bomb site before the bomb went off? What if there was a whole other group of geth between the AA tower and the bomb site?
What if she really had died there?
Thoughts of her family and the sorrow she'd felt when she accepted her imminent death flooded her mind once more, and this time she really couldn't hold back the tears. She had always been prepared to die without hesitation, but having time to accept the reality of it was another thing entirely.
And now Ashley was trying to accept that she hadn't died, and that she was out of the fire once again, at least for now. Thanks to Shepard, really. He'd pulled off the impossible, yet again. He'd brought his whole crew back safely and completed the mission.
The fact that he came to her later and apologized for leaving her to save herself still elicited a chuckle. Then again, she knew exactly how he felt—like Eden Prime for her, Akuze had ingrained the insatiable urge—no, responsibility—to bring everyone back safely or die trying.
Which is why she told him not to feel guilty in the slightest. That he'd taken on a suicide mission and an impossible situation and still brought everyone home alive. She felt like she might have been overstepping her bounds as she said it, but she told him that his whole unit from Akuze were smiling at him right now, from the afterlife—that he'd taken the second chance he alone had been given and made the most out of it.
He smiled, too, then, in a way that she hadn't seen before. Like it was coming from a deeper part of his soul than he ever let all but his closest friends see.
And Wrex—astonishingly, Wrex came by to tell Shepard that he'd done the right thing, and that Shepard seemed to care more about the krogan people than most krogan did. After everything, Ashley wasn't entirely surprised that Shepard had gotten through to the old krogan so thoroughly.
"Help me out here, Shepard." Wrex wasn't speaking loud enough for everyone to hear, but she had surreptitiously taken position nearby, in case the krogan moved to harm her commander. "The lines between friend and foe are getting a little blurry from where I stand."
The waves crashed against the beach loudly, sending random sprays of foamy water everywhere. As far as visual metaphors went, it was pretty damn fitting, she decided.
Shepard didn't move or tense up. He didn't draw his weapon or take any defensive stance. He even looked…not at ease, but like he was tired. "If we went and recovered whatever cure Saren might have in that base, what would you do with it?"
"I'd give it to my people, of course," the krogan replied, mild surprise evident in his tone.
"And what would happen then?"
Wrex answered as if he was treading down well-worn paths, now. "We'd stop dying as a people, and start caring about our future."
"And I would love to see that," Shepard replied, eliciting a subtle widening of the krogan's eyes. "But the krogan population would explode again, wouldn't it? How would it not?"
Wrex didn't immediately reply. He wasn't delusional enough to know that the krogan would choose to breed at a fraction of their normal rate, or that they could even enforce such a choice. "Yeah."
"That kind of population growth is bad for any species; our population would outgrow our ability to sustain it. Eventually, just like before, we'd end up fighting over what colonies and resources we already have…wouldn't we?"
Ashley finally understood exactly what Shepard was trying to do. Wrex was too smart and too reasonable to believe that a cured-krogan people would actively avoid a likely war over needed colonies and resources as their population exploded. Shepard was coaxing Wrex to see the long term consequences of his desires, but with a tone of pleading rather than accusing.
When Wrex didn't answer after a noticeable stretch of silence, Shepard softly continued. "I want to help the krogan people too, Wrex. I really do. I don't think the genophage, or at least exactly as it is now, is the right way to deal with the issue. But you and I both know that outright curing the genophage, without some other kind of solution ready, would be really bad for both the krogan and everyone else." Shepard took a slow step forward, arms open. "And that's assuming that Saren even has a cure, and isn't just cloning krogan slaves, with some device that indoctrinates them as part of the process."
Wrex stared at Shepard for several moments before lowering his gaze—and the volume of his voice. "We'd just be tools, then…organic geth, cloned to fight instead of built." The krogan's gaze lifted back up to the human's, an emotion Ashley couldn't identify dancing in the red eyes. "But isn't that what the krogan are to the Council already? Tools to be thrown at the rachni, and then thrown into the corner until we're needed again?"
For the first time in the conversation, Shepard appeared anything but lax. "No. The krogan never have been, and never willbe tools to me, and as soon as I get a chance, I'm going to make damn sure the Council doesn't think that way, either. The krogan aren't tools! They have art, culture, philosophy, history! They saved us from the rachni! And you're saving us again, genophage or not, from the geth! We owe a lot to the krogan, and that includes preventing a population explosion that would lead to war—or worse—on a galactic scale. I can't promise you that I will find a way to help the krogan and find a better solution than the genophage, but I can promise you that I will try. But right now, here, I don't think we're seeing a solution to the genophage…I think we're seeing something far worse than the genophage: krogan being bred en masse as tools, instead of the valuable race you are."
Neither of them spoke for a little while, but both of them kept staring the other down. Finally, Wrex grunted and relaxed his posture. "Never thought I'd see your powers of persuasion work on me, Shepard. But believe that you care about the krogan, and that's more than I can say about a lot of people. I trust you."
Man, she thought, Shepard could out-talk Udina on politics.
A/N: You'll notice that, in the game, Ashley says that her team is pinned down, and that she doesn't think that she could make it in time to the bomb site anyway. But when you actually arrive at the AA tower, it would be VERY easy for her team to fall back to the elevator, and then run to the bomb site. Even if there were (which wouldn't be true, as there aren't any geth corpses between them and the elevator) geth between them and the elevator before you got there, there couldn't be more than a few.
There's also more than enough time for them to get to the bomb site; you spend a while talking with Saren alone, after all.
The next chapter will be about the Destiny Ascension choice, followed by Zorya (Zaeed's mission). After that, I don't know. Maybe the Collector Base (long story).
Please tell me what you think!