Chapter 1: 180 Days
Date: 180 Days since Citadel EMP (CEB)
Location: Unknown World
It'd been one hundred and eighty days since the Normandy had crash landed on the unknown world. It had been found that John Shepard was the one that had gotten onto the ship; Ann had fallen behind and the Normandy had been forced to leave her; something Jeff still hated. After the crash landing Admiral Anderson had taken charge of finding who was still alive and with EDI's help they'd found just which decks were still okay and which were damaged. Overall the SR-3 had done very well; most decks were in tacked, but with engineering gone and the engine severely damaged it became quite apparent that nobody was going anywhere.
Over the course of the hundred and eighty days Tali and Kal had worked tirelessly to build a systematic gps satellite so they could figure out what kind of planet they'd landed on. Not only would the satellite tell them things like whether the planet was safe for quarian and turians or even humans to consume the vegetation, but it'd also give them the weather, send off a signal back to earth and find other ships that were in the system; if there were any.
As it turned out the planet could support both varieties of species. It had both vegetation for levo and dextro consumption. The animals on this world that seemed to have evolved were of both varieties as well and they seemed to know that each other were poisonous to the other kind. The satellite told them many things about the world, while on the side they'd landed on was levo, across the ocean was a huge dessert that contained the more predatory dextro species; however on both sides of the world were few mixes of both species, though these were less predatory and were not afraid of the SR-3's crew. This made for easy hunting parties.
The planet had two large oceans, one on each side of the two large continents. Anderson had made a comment about how this world seemed to mimic earth with its oceans and continents. With the satellite they found that this world was one of eight that circled a very large planetoid that gave off a blue glow at night and during the day one could see a white outline in the sky above. The satellite had scanned the planetoid above and found that it was a Saturn-type planet with rings that circled around it. The planet they were on; which the crew had named planet Normandy, was settled between two very large bands of rings. These rings ran on either side of planet Normandy, and had many large meteors in the bands; some being just ice meteors, while others were made of rock and other particles left over from the creation of this system. This also explained why the satellite wasn't picking up many things in the system. The ice particles had large amounts of e-zero in them and the radiation from these particles was causing interference.
EDI however found a way to overcome the interference, when she had Cortez give her the Kodiak. She used the vehicle to grab the satellite and because the vehicles doors were destroyed in the crash only she could do this mission. It had taken her hours to maneuver away from the many ice rings and finally get the satellite to a position where it could do some good. As she was doing this she also dropped off two newly built comm. buoys, one that was close to the planet and the other was attached to the satellite. She then returned to the crash site.
After three weeks of no contact with anybody still, they found a turian destroyer ship floating in the gravitational field of another planet nearby. The ship was giving off a signal for help. John, Cortez, Kal, Tali and EDI all suited up and got into the Kodiak, which now had a newly designed door thanks to the efforts of some of the crew.
It had taken close to three hours to get to the destroyer and once there it had taken Kal, Tali, and EDI to break open the airlock; which had been broken and wouldn't open. John took the front, as he usually did. The air inside was breathable; however his suit began to find oddities in the air; mostly of decay. As they went deck to deck they found husked turians left and right; however all were dead and inactive. Then they came to the cargo holds where they found two dozen starving soldiers and civilians; most were so starved that their bones showed worst then they usually did. These survivors were escorted through the ship and to the destroyers own shuttles, which the two quarians piloted back to the habitable world of Normandy.
Days later, after many hours of cleaning the destroyer and going through each level until all of the dead bodies; both turian and husks, were taken care of the John brought on a skeleton crew consisting of the original engineers of the destroyer and some of the crew from the Normandy; Jeff included, the destroyer named the Orpza was brought onto the surface of the planet. The destroyer was ten times the size of the SR-3 and had the guns to match. It also had the equipment that was needed to fix the frigate and bring it back online. Fortunately the captain of the destroyer was still alive and agreed to allow the crew of the Normandy to use the destroyer's facilities and equipment to repair the Normandy frigate.
The crews of the two ships got along very well and began to hunt together, John was able to show the turian soldiers which kinds of animals were good for turian consumption and which they needed to stay away from. Shifts were taken at night when the predators were active. Hunting parties would go fetch the food needed for the day or two. Soldiers and engineers helped each other when it came to fixing equipment of a part of a ship. EDI monitored the satellites and no matter of many times somebody sent a message outside of the system nobody received a message back.
Location: Earth
One hundred and eighty days of rehabilitation later Ann Shepard was finally out of the hospital and back into action. Beside her was her husband Garrus, who was for once in civilian clothing. "Lost your armor?" she asked which caused him to glare slightly at her. Giggling she leaned against his body as they walked side by side through the ruined streets of London.
"My father," he began in his usually raspy voice, "as I'm to call him," he chuckled at the argument they'd had of him calling Argulis Vakarian Sir all the time and how Argulis said that even if he wasn't his son in this reality he was his son in another. That had been the end of the argument because just like his father in his time Argulis couldn't be thwarted. "says that no son of his would wear armor so damaged. So until mine is fixed I'm in casual wear."
Ann couldn't hold it back any more and burst out into giggles. "Okay." she snorted in trying to contain her giggles at the situation. "I'll contest that your father has always been a bit pig headed, but at least your father back home didn't seem to care about that."
"Oh he did." Garrus smiled. "I just wore it to piss him off." This caused both the laugh slightly.
However their laughter was short lived when the sound of falling debris caught their attention. Ann grabbed her pistol that was on her hip, Garrus doing the same. As they rounded the corner the found Aberdeen and Thel tossing large pieces of debris into a bin, Thel was getting the much larger pieces with his biotics. "Boys." Ann greeted the two.
"Ma'am!" Aberdeen gave her a salute.
"Ah the resurrected Shepard finally comes out of her hole." Thel joked. "The sun hasn't shown since the day the heavens quaked and yet the Shepard is out to glean what she can of the situation we're all in now."
"You have a lot of animosity towards others, don't you?" she asked with a raised brow as she crossed her arms over her chest her pistol still in hand.
"I have my reasons." He snarled back as he threw another large debris into the bin that was suddenly taken away by one of the geth drop ships.
"He's upset because his clan wants him back now that he's a hero and has the Alliance Star of heroism." Aberdeen stated.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Ann asked not quite sure what was wrong.
"No!" Thel yelled his suits speakers giving off an echo from his yell. "Before the war I was considered non tradable because of my biotics; now that I'm a hero every clan that I've ever been a part of; that is those that are in this system, want me to rejoin them because now I have worth!" his body was giving off a blue aura because of his anger. "My last clan dropped me off on Dia Zepla; an old krogan world that's still rich in its mines and then left me there to rot." He said in a very calm voice. "Now that I'm considered a hero I have worth? Well they can stuff that shit up their cloca for all I care because I'm not being a part of a clan unless they want me for me and not because of my status." Another geth drop ship hovered above them and dropped another debris bin to be filled. "Excuse me Shepard, but we have work to get back to."
Ann nodded and left the two men to get back to work, when they were far enough away Garrus spoke. "Another reason I'm glad I wasn't born a volus." This got Ann to raise an eyebrow at him. "I know I wasn't worth shit before I met you, but now I'm a four or is it a five times hero?" Ann nudged him with her armored elbow which caused him to laugh. "You know it's true. You give my life meaning and worth."
"Smooth talker." She muttered but stopped when she swore she spotted something. Quietly she walked over to a hole in the wall and gasped when she saw a tiny little girl trying to hide there. "Hey there." She said quietly. "You all by yourself?" the little one nodded. Bringing her omni-tool out she scanned the little girl and found that she was cover in blood, mud and what looked to be excrement. "My name is Ann Shepard, won't you come out for me?" the little girls eyes darted towards Garrus. "Oh that guy?" she asked the girl. "That's my husband, Garrus Vakarian." She turned towards Garrus and gave him a signal to move back a bit. "Have you ever seen a turian before?" the little shook her head no. "Well that's what he is. He's big isn't he?" the girl nodded. "He may be big, but he's a big softie when it comes to kids." Ann gave her a wink which got a small giggle out of the child. "
Struggling a big the little girl very carefully wedged herself out of her little hole and into Ann's arms. Upon picking the child up Ann found her to be very light. Turning towards Garrus she spoke. "I'm going to take her to the levo camp near the river." He nodded as he turned to continue to search for survivors. Looking down at the little girl Ann felt her heart shift slightly at the bright blue eyes that looked back her. This was the reason she did what she did as a soldier. Not for the fame, or even the respect she got; heck not even for the free alcohol. It was all for the millions of innocents like the little one she was currently holding and as she got closer to the camp with every step she suddenly felt as if there was hope. If a child this small could survive without help from anybody for one hundred and eighty days there was hope that the people lost beyond the Sol relay could also survive and when they were found there would be a very big celebration to welcome them home.
M-Angel: Well here's the first chapter to the final chapter of our hero's trilogy. This is going to be a fun story to do. I already know this because I know how I want this to end, but there might be a spin off to this story; I haven't really worked out all of the details. Just throwing the idea out there to everybody. So now that I've written the first chapter to this and given to you guys a couple days earlier than I thought I would I'd like to say Happy Valentine's Day to everybody and hope you enjoy this story. xoxoangii will be helping me with the other chapters. I just wanted to get this out quickly.
Reviews are greatly welcomed!