"You're sh-shitting me. Your ch-ch-childhood nickname w-was T-t-tinkerbell?"
Jane Shepard chuckled wryly as she stared at the incredulous look on Simmons face, somehow humorous, despite the blood caked around his mouth and in his facial hair.
"Yeah, yeah it was. But I mean, I think the oldest person in the gang was nineteen when I joined. We weren't much more than street urchins."
"Wh-why You're n-n-not much of a fairy LT." he shuddered. Jane grimaced. Even with the medi-gel she'd applied to stop the bleeding, she doubted that he'd last more than a few another minute or two. The varren had seen to that, tearing out a huge chunk of his leg and damaging his femoral artery. He'd lost so much blood already, it was a miracle he was still conscious. She glanced over at the rest or her squad, or rather, what was left of them. Miller and Rubio were the only ones still standing. Delmont was leaning on the former for support, and the three of them were keeping their rifles trained on the batarian prisoners sitting in a row alongside the opposite wall. But all of her remaining men were bloody, bruised and in need of medical attention.
Four-eyed bastards.
Jane shrugged at Simmons. "Nah, it was because I could tinker with anything and get it work. Or stop working." The ghost of a smile touched her lips. "And I had a left hook that could ring anybody's bell. Kids right?" She was kneeling next to him, one knee on the ground, the other up, like the knights of old kneeling before a king.
Simmons chuckled wetly, spitting blood on the ground and groaning. "I-I'm going to die, aren't I?"
Shepard blew out a sigh. There was no point in lying to him. "Yeah, yeah you are Simmons." Just like Martinez did. She thought. And Gunnderson, Jordan, Vasilyev, Walsh, Kapoor and Choi. At least that sniper's bullet killed Choi instantly. She didn't have to suffer, not like the rest of you. Walsh had taken a rusty shiv to the stomach. Vasilyev's face had been bashed in by a batarian war-gauntlet. Kapoor had gotten stuck in a trap composed of electrified barbed wire that shocked him every time he moved. Jane had shot him herself. And that was still nothing compared to what the other three had suffered through. She could still here Gunnderson, that giant of a man, screaming for his mother as blood and milky fluid ran out of his eye sockets. The less said about Jordan and Martinez the better.
Almost a full three-fourths of my squad dead. But goddammit we're going to get the mission done.
He nodded to her. "H-hey LT? Th-thanks for t-trying." And then he was gone, eyes staring sightlessly at the rocky ceiling above them.
Shepard stood slowly and ignored the blood staining her hands, her chest, her legs. It wasn't hers. She inhaled sharply and ran the simulation on her omni-tool again.
31.7 percent.
"Fuck." she swore under her breath. The number hadn't changed. It wouldn't have, but she tried again anyway.
"That bad eh LT?" Rubio said roughly.
"Yes." Jane replied dimly. "It's going to take my tool another five minutes to get through this door." she sighed. "But after that, if my calculations are correct, if we fail, the alliance only has a thiry-one point seven percent chance of winning this campaign." Her squad was silent as they processed that information. Behind that door, the slavers had nukes. Outlawed by citadel conventions, but then, the Hegemony wasn't bound by those. She turned and looked at the prisoner she figured was in charge, the one in the red armor that had done the talking.
"You take prisoner now, yes?" he had said, her translator carving up his words. That what alliance do." They had surrendered. Most of them were in bad shape, held together by hastily applied bandages. A couple were missing limbs. The result of grenades going off in cramped quarters. Most of them would probably die. The slavers main base on the surface had a tunnel network that ran for miles in every direction. Near as she could tell, they were roughly five stories down. They had dogged the batarians through the system for hours, losing squadmates at every turn. Traps. Varren. Explosives. There just wasn't enough time to send a bomb detail down first. Mechs. Sniffer dogs. Anything. Shepard's squad had drawn a short straw.
Though not as short as the squads that had gone before them and triggered most of the traps.
"The diyahak's in the cavern, they will not be taken. They would die before being taken. Set missiles. Boom."
The nukes had been a rumor, more of an optional objective as they searched for the slaver's leadership. Until she'd interrogated that one. After that she'd started running simulations to figure out how bad things would get if the crazy fucks actually did it. It was worse than she had intially expected. Not only would every alliance soldier in the tunnels die, but the missiles were being kept near a fault line. If they went off, it'd change the surface of Torfan, and most of the people above them would die as well. Thirty-one point seven percent change that the alliance would come out ahead after that. And that was factoring in the canisters of nerve gas they had with them. Biological warfare. Also outlawed by citadel conventions. But it was the best solution she had been able to come up and the admiralty board had okayed it.
31.7 percent.
Jane knew what she had to do. Her squad prepped the canisters, the only way they could be sure not to damage any of the missiles while taking out the trash. Her hacking program forced the door to slid open by about a foot and she hurled the canister through, shutting it quickly and leaving the rest up to her calculations. Five seconds for the canister to go off. Between thirty and fifty seconds for it to permeate the room. Two minutes for anything breathing in there to die. Another minute for it to dissipate. Jane put on her helmet and sealed it, using her omni-tool to hack the door again and stepping inside. Rubio followed. "We're frickin heroes Shepard! You think they'll give us a medal for-Oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck fuck." Rubio gasped, vomiting on the floor. He'd always had a weak stomach.
Jane said nothing, the pounding in her chest, in her ears blocking everything out.
There were missiles in the cavern. Three of them. Even though they were of a batarian make and model she could tell.
That wasn't what gave her pause.
It wasn't all the bodies on the ground, faces twisted in agony from the gas.
It wasn't that some of them were bound and gagged.
It wasn't even that some of the bodies were human.
It was how small some of the bodies were.
Jane spun on her heel and headed for the lead batarian faster than anyone could have anticipated, wrapping her hand around his throat and jamming her pistol against the side of his head.
"WHY?" she roared. "WHY DID YOU LIE? THOSE WERE-" her voice caught in her throat as she tried to process it, thinking about the sacrifices the squad had made to get this far, just to...
"Didn't lie." He grunted, "Told you the diyahak's - fanatics would set bombs off rather than lose. You stopped them."
"THERE WERE CHILDREN IN THERE! HUMANS! TURIANS! BATARIAN!"
The batarian shrugged in her grasp and smiled thinly. "Where think you the slaves taken from Elysium? From the worlds hit after the Blitz?"
"Why didn't you tell me." she spat flatly, a cold fury gathering in her emerald eyes.
"Didn't ask. What problem? We live. You live. Human win b-"
She shot him in the temple before he finished speaking. His body hit the ground with a dull thump and Jane realized after a moment that the heavy breathing she was hearing was her own. She panted, eyes wide, staring at the puddle of blood forming from the crater in the batarian's head. She hadn't meant to shoot him, she'd just…
Jane turned to look at what was left of her squad. Miller and Delmont wide-eyed, Rubio staring at the corpse blankly and quietly telling the others what was in the chamber. The looks of horror and anger that spread across their faces was all Jane needed to see. All of them kept their rifles trained on the prisoners, most of whom sounded like they were starting to panic, chittering to each other in that godawful language that sounded like crushed glass. Jane felt the muscles in her face tense.
Then she shot another batarian and the rest of them got louder.
She said nothing, only moving slowly and methodically down the line, her pistol spitting death and her eyes cold and unfeeling. The squad stared wordlessly, but made no move to stop her. It was their vengeance as much as hers, only that she was the weapon.
Jane's Mark IV Kessler could fire fifteen times before needing to cool down. There were sixteen batarians in the room with them. All but one of them was dead within the span of a few minutes.
" You are the Kthaa de Torfan!" The last batarian in the line wept. "Kthaa, kthaa!" Jane paused, if only because her pistol had overheated.
"What did you call me?" she asked him tiredly as her language program worked to figure it out. The slaver repeated the word, babbling it over and over, but her omni-tool couldn't give her an exact translation, not for whatever dialect he was using. It spat out livestock killer. Slaughterer. Cutthroat. It was only when her translation program said meat trader that it clicked for her.
Butcher. The Butcher of Torfan.
Jane nodded.
Then shot him between the eyes as soon as her pistol cooled down.
She stared at the carnage briefly before tapping her omni-tool.
"Major Kyle? Hackett? Sanchez? Does anyone read?" She coughed into her comm, suddenly feeling very drained. There was a hiss of static and then…
"Kyle here, I read you lieutenant."
"Mission accomplished." She responded hollowly. "All enemy contacts neutralized."
"We'll be sending search and rescue into the tunnels to find you. Where's Echo located?"
"Fifth level, two klicks west of the elevator. What's left of us anyway."
There was a pause on the comm before the Major continued. Jane wondered briefly if he'd heard the resignation in her voice.
"Casualty report, Shepard?"
"Delta's gone. So is what was left of Bravo. Charlie was wiped out before we even got down here." She replied wearily, easing herself against the rock wall for support. "Echo… seven KIA sir. Maybe nine if you don't get here soon. It's…there was a lot of CQC sir, a lot of the slavers had blades, archaic maybe, but it's a mess down here." There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. She had expected one. So many soldiers wasted in the tunnels beneath Torfan's moon; to say nothing of the civilians.
She wasn't looking forward to explaining that one.
But it had been the right call. Hadn't it?
31.7 percent.
"C-copy that Lieutenant. Medical team on the way." The Major's voice floated out of it, stumbling over its words. He cared about the soldiers under his command. Always had. More than she did, or at least, she could hear them saying that now. Someone would have to take the fall for this massacre.
She figured it would be her.
31.7 percent.
Jane sighed and slumped over as the darkness started to take her.
Away from Torfan's godforsaken moon and into the blissful arms of oblivion.
Jane Shepard here is my Paragon Shepard, believe it or not. Engineer/Earthborn/Ruthless. This excerpt is my headcannon of the moment that defined her as having the Ruthless Background.
Rough past and rougher start to her military service, but spends rest of her career trying to make up for her mistakes. She wears the title of Butcher with shame.
Next chapter we'll take a look at my Paragade and another one of Shepard's Pre-game Service Histories. Stay tuned!