For Corentin IV, my Terribly British Beta
"It is now in your power to destroy us."
Camilla Shepard stared ahead, steely blue-grey eyes intently focused on the construct before her. So many years, so much death and destruction, the incalculable weight of the sacrifices that were required simply for her to reach this point.
The weight of history bore down crushingly upon her shoulders; her reaction was to straighten up her back, despite the pain the act brought throughout her body. Pursing her lips together, a mask of stony confidence fell across her features, as she clasped her hands behind her back and began to consider the enormity of her situation.
The power to destroy them, all of them, to the very last Reaper. Isn't that what she and Anderson, what so many others had fought for?
Besides, what were her other choices?
Synthesis, tantamount to so much genetic rape, a violation of the very essence of what each individual life in the Galaxy possessed. To spit into the very face of free will itself, and force this choice upon countless trillions. No...that would not be the path she chose.
Control, then? Just as quickly as she considered it, the notion was rejected. The problem being that she knew herself all too well; while she tended to do what was right, she had a ruthless streak; one that she was proud of, that she made no apologies for. But to step forth, to participate in some act of digitial apotheosis...to have handed to her the literal power of a Goddess?
It was too much. It would completely corrupt her, and she damn well knew it.
In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!
Galadriel's most famous quote sprung up unbidden in her mind, and she smiled, just a touch. No, there was only one choice, one possible course of action to take. God help her...because it called for outright genocide.
How terrible and stupid and wasteful it all seemed at the moment; after all she had endured, so many bloody idiotic heads she had banged together to get the Geth and the Quarians to put an end to centuries of pigheaded conflict. And EDI...oh...poor, sweet, dear EDI. She had rather taken a liking to her, despite herself...and Camilla couldn't help but feel no small amount of pride in having played such a mothering, nurturing hand in guiding her development.
All this time, spent trying to prove that the central thesis of the Reaper Intellect, that organic life was always doomed to war with and then ultimately fall to synthetic life was incredibly flawed. To now wipe the slate clean, to have to start again, to lose such...unique life-forms, who otherwise had every right to exist.
She would have to act now, and allow regret and self-loathing to come find her at a later date; a date in which the Reapers and their impossibly long chain of Cycles were no more. If she let herself consider the consequences of her actions any further, she would be riddled with doubt, and unable to make a decision. It had to be done. She simply couldn't see another realistic way out of this.
But it didn't mean she couldn't do this on her own terms, either.
She glanced down at her Omni-tool, frowned as she discovered that it did not possess nearly enough power for her initial plan: spawning one of her combat drones, and instructing it to take out the conduit while she retired to a safe distance...if such a concept even existed at this point. However, the micro-fabricator had just enough charge to fashion a few odd and ends. Unfortunately, all her other weapons, save for her short range pistol, seemed to have not survived the blast that she had been caught in during the mad dash towards the transport beam to the Citadel.
She reached down, searching her pockets, and after a few seconds, a wicked little smile crossed her lips.
She had found a single, solitary grenade.
And it appeared to be in perfect working order.
Camilla began to program the parameters for what she needed as she walked - albeit with a slight limp - towards the power cables that the Catalyst indicated, the ones that needed to be destroyed in order to trigger the Crucible. By the time she was there, she had already fashioned the remote detonator circuit and a bit of sticky utility paste. It took her the better part of five minutes, carefully opening up the grenade with her somewhat shaky hands, and tying in the radio-controlled detonator circuit. It would be short range, barely three or four miles, but that would probably be enough.
Affixing the entire package to one of the pipes with the paste, she dusted off her hands, turned on one heel, and walked away, past the Catalyst, and beyond, looking for a way back down.
"Where are you going? You must still choose!" the Catalyst called back out after her in a demanding tone.
Camilla paused for a moment, turning her head to head to the side, but only far enough to disdainfully regard the Reaper AI over one shoulder with but one eye.
"Oh, I'm sorry...was the plan for me to walk up to your precious power feeds, shooting madly with my pistol like some macho Yank, and then die from the resultant feedback and explosion?" She tutted condescendingly. She didn't need her Engineer's training to tell her that was the obvious end result that their destruction would entail.
"No no, poppet. We British think a little more outside the box when it comes to our applied violence. So have no fear, I fully intend to destroy you all...but I'll do it my way. Thank you very much."
She then gave a sharp, haughty turn of her head, her platinum white tresses whipping around her shoulders for a moment, as she continued to walk off, muttering under her breath "Stupid little git..."
The Catalyst growled, it's voice taking on a frustrated tone "So be it!", turned and walked off in the opposite direction.
It took about ten minutes before Camilla found a way down, back to where she and Anderson had faced off against the Illusive Man. She knelt down next to Anderson's body, stroking his face with warm affection and tenderness, before softly speaking.
"It's time for us to leave this awful place, Uncle David." Though he would no doubt have chided her for what he would call sentimentality, Camilla had absolutely no intention of leaving behind the body of the man who had been like a Godfather to her for most of her life. It was simply too disrespectful, even if Anderson would have said something like "It's only a body. Get out of here and go!"
She gritted her teeth, bearing down on the pain as she barely managed to pull the weight of his corpse up, and began what felt like a long and arduous trek, wending her way through the corridors, and back again through the charnel house of the walkway that lead to the Conduit. Which much to her relief, was still functional. By the end, it was the better part of an hour before she had dragged him over, the last of her strength threatening to drain from her battered and bloodied form.
"God above, this better work."
She held up her Omni-tool, and punched in the activation code. She was rewarded with a sensor blip indicating a successful detonation - or at least a successful transmission of the charge to the explosive - before the transmitter was immediately destroyed.
Regardless, she was possessed of a rock-solid confidence that her plan had just gone off without a hitch. Gathering her strength and gritting her teeth, she leaned her and Anderson into the transport beam. Almost a split second later, a wave of red swept through, missing her by a hair's breadth.
She fell over onto the ground, the weight of Anderson's body on top of her, glancing backwards and upside down, at an unbelievable sight: a crimson curtain of energy was sweeping at fantastic speed across the sky...the ground...possibly the entire planet. And every Reaper that it touched, immediately 'died', falling to the ground. She smiled, in almost-feral triumph, as justice was meted out to the terrible enemies of all Lifekind. If she didn't get out of this one alive, it would still be worth it, to have seen that all happening. The good news was that she had somehow managed to get through this unscathed, and that this energy wave hadn't killed her, as it had been intimated. Perhaps the Catalyst didn't have any idea what it was talking about.
She then glanced over at the Conduit, and it hit her.
I'll be buggered. What a damn lucky break.
Apparently the transport beam had protected her from the deleterious effects of the pulse.
Camilla wasn't out of the game quite yet; she managed to roll Anderson over and off of her, dragging him to behind a nearby fragment of a ruined brick wall, propping his back up against it from a sitting position, and then melting down likewise next to him. To the unfamiliar eye, he appeared to be sleeping or unconscious.
Darkness began to tug at the edges of her awareness. Whether it was death or simply exhaustion, Camilla did not know, but she had no regrets; the mission was finished. Humanity had won. The Galaxy had won as well. All that had to be done now was for those who came afterwards to win the peace. And if she was going to die, then dying here at home, in London...just struck her as a particularly pleasant way to go.
But then she groaned, clutching at her side, and realized she had not been entirely truthful. There WAS one lingering regret: she would have liked to have seen Samantha, just one more time. To hold her in her arms, breathe in the scent of her hair, to feel her warmth. She had never really been in love before, not like this; the Comm Specialist had melted her heart...and it would have been nice to have grown old with her.
Or even just to have her here, holding her hand one last time, as she slipped away.
Summoning the last of what remained of her energy, she turned her eyes to Anderson, and said, very weakly. "Right then, sir. Shall we have a sing-song while we wait for the end?"
Sunrise was upon them, and even through all the smoke, haze and clouds of debris from the battle, she could see the Sun's golden rays burning through. Taking a deep, pained breath, she started to sing very softly, closing her eyes as she did:
Bring me my bow of burning gold/
Bring me my arrows of desire/
Bring me my spear; o clouds unfold!/
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight/
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand/
Til we have built Jerusalem/
In England's green and pleasant land.
As darkness finally claimed her at last, one last thought guttered out from her mind as she began to feel herself slump to the side:
Blood hell. I forgot to turn on my distress beacon...
A/N: This started off life as a story I published a few months back. I took it down, thinking to move it and make an extended series out of it under a different writer name elsewhere. I've now decided that this just isn't going to happen, and I'd like to have it back up on my list once again, so to speak. I may, however, turn it into a spin-off series, about Camilla dealing with the fallout of her decisions (and possible sexytimes with Traynor), if I get enough positive feedback...but it won't be until after Once More Unto The Breach is done, I suspect.