I
You and Whose Army?
"Well, would you just look at that."
Lieutenant Commander Calista Marie Shepard was taking in the sight in front of her in barely disguised awe. The SSV Normandy's experimental drive core was spinning away, casting blue light over the engineering deck. Shepard wasn't the most technologically minded of people, even though she adored ships, but anyone in their right mind would be amazed at this sight were they to stand before it. She had heard talk about this huge 'engine' of the ship, and how it allowed for the Normandy to remain in stealth when it wasn't travelling at faster-than-light speed, and after being on board for a fair few hours, she had finally made the trip to engineering to see it. It was awe-inspiring.
She couldn't believe her luck that this was now her ship, or as close to it being her ship as she'd ever gotten to in her career. Though she was itching to get back to marine duty, some part of her was glad for the almost extended rest being transferred to the Normandy afforded her. She felt she'd barely sat down for 6 years, nearly 7 actually, since the Skyllian Blitz.
Ever since then, her life had flown past. The weeks in recovery immediately after were the only part that seemed to drag on. After that she gained her N7 vocational code which involved a relatively brief stay, for the first time in her life, on Earth. She'd been promoted a couple of times, and bounced around Systems Alliance space, but now she was on the Normandy as its Executive Officer, Anderson finally being able to fulfil his promise of placing her as his second-in-command. She hid it from the new faces of the crew around her, but she was incredibly excited, not only because she was on the most beautiful and advanced ship in the galaxy, but because this type of ship wasn't going to be wasted on routine patrols or any of the like, it was going to get the best assignments and missions. It was going to kick some ass.
"She's a wonder, isn't she?" A voice right next to Shepard's broke her from her reverie. She had to blink to get the lingering impression the drive core had left on her retinas before she took in the face of Captain Anderson. He laughed at her blinking. "Yeah, you can't stare at it too long, but you can't look away, either."
"It wasn't that, I was just… blinded by your handsomeness, Captain," Shepard replied with a slight smirk.
"I don't doubt it for a second," Anderson said, laughing. "So, first impressions. What do you think of her? The Normandy, not just the drive core."
"She's amazing, sir. It doesn't seem like all this should fit inside."
"Ah, she was built with deception in mind. Seems appropriate, doesn't it?"
"Indeed, sir," Shepard said, her focus now back on the core, while the Captain's stayed on her for a small moment.
There weren't many soldiers like Shepard, the captain thought to himself. Before Elysium, she was a nobody, not registering on Command's radar. A few infractions here and there, some embarrassing, some he couldn't help but smile when he read their reports, but mostly, she was a model soldier. Stellar test-scores all along the board, nary a foot out of place and, perhaps for that very reason, she had been completely uninteresting. It was after Elysium, on the newly-promoted Admiral Hackett's suggestion, that Anderson kept a close eye on Shepard's career.
The woman herself was tall, even an inch or so taller than Anderson, who stood at a proud six feet and two inches. Her deep red shoulder-length hair, either dyed or surgically modified, looked purple in the blue light of the drive core. She had striking bright green eyes that, Anderson thought, might have influenced the decision to change her hair colour. Though Anderson was loathe to give it much thought, he knew she was good-looking. Her celestial nose and full-lips might not betray the fact she was a soldier, but her stern gaze and proud stance definitely would.
"I need you to get suited up, Shepard. We'll be going through the Arcturus Prime relay soon on the way to Eden Prime," Anderson said, now the model of officialdom.
"Aye, aye, Captain," Shepard said, turning around and making for the door to the cargo bay. Anderson stood watching the core for a while, deep in thought.
"Take a photo, Private," Shepard said loudly across the cargo bay as she got changed. The nervous young man, Fredricks she thought his name was, flinched in surprise. The commander hadn't even looked at him when she admonished him for watching, and he disappeared quickly into the engineering section. There was someone else watching, too, but Shepard wasn't quite sure why. The turian Spectre, Nihlus, had appeared from the elevator and merely took one step off before he tucked his hands behind his back and perused Shepard as she started changing into her hard-suit in front of her locker.
When she'd finished and shipped her weapons on her back, she strode past him, nodding her head once in a formal sort of greeting and stepped on the elevator behind him. When the elevator had finally finished its ascent, Shepard made her way to the comm room, intent on calling her mother.
"This is Commander Shepard," the voice from the comms terminal called out.
"No, this is Commander Shepard," Calista replied, through a grin.
"What? Oh! Callie! It's good to hear your voice! How are you, sweetheart?" Hannah Shepard asked.
"Mom, less of the 'sweethearts' and 'dearies' and what have you, please. I could be on the CIC," Calista said, shaking her head.
"Just answer the question, girl. Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, everything's fine, I'm just checking in. We're heading out now, just about to leave Sol on the way to Eden Prime. Not heading into anything dangerous, but… you know, not sure when I'll be able to get in touch again."
"Oh, okay."
"You good?"
"Yeah, can't complain. Well, I can, but I'm not going to. How's the ship?"
"Amazing, Mom. You should see her. I can't describe it. I hope I can show you around one day."
"I'm sure you'll be able to."
Just then, the pilot's voice chimed in over the Normandy's announcement system, telling the crew they were coming up to the mass relay.
"Mom, I've gotta go. We're going through the relay now. I'll speak to you soon. Love you."
"Okay, sweetheart. Speak soon, love you, too."
After one final farewell, Shepard knocked the comms off and quickly left the room.
"Aye, aye, Captain. Better brace yourself, sir. I think Nihlus is headed your way," the pilot of the Normandy said through the comms from his seat on the bridge of the ship. They had passed through the relay with no fuss.
"He's already here, Lieutenant," Anderson replied sternly back through the comms. The pilot, Jeff 'Joker' Moreau, shook his head. "Tell Commander Shepard to meet me in the comm room for a debriefing."
"You get that, Commander?" Joker asked.
"I got it. Dammit, Moreau. Anderson was in a good mood earlier," Shepard replied, standing just behind Joker's chair.
"I've never seen him in a good mood," Joker said, in a disbelieving tone.
"It's normally when he's not around you, Joker," Kaidan Alenko chimed in from his position in the co-pilot's seat. Shepard chuckled to herself and turned around. As she walked down the aisle from the bridge to the CIC, Joker cocked his head around the back of his chair and watched her.
"Alenko, what do you think about our new commander?" He asked.
"Shepard? I don't know. I've not had much chance to talk to her yet," Alenko replied, not even turning his head, still busy with the readout in front of him.
"You don't have to have talked to her. I mean, just look!"
"Joker, I know what you meant and I'm not dignifying it with a relevant response."
Joker was still watching Shepard as she spoke with Navigator Pressly. "So is she just not your type or are you… you know?"
"Stop gawking and please stop talking. Come on, you've got work to do."
Joker finally managed to pull his eyes away from Shepard, who was now talking with Dr Chakwas and Corporal Jenkins, and turned back to the helm. "Okay, so seriously now, what do you think of Shepard?"
Alenko eyed Joker for a few seconds before sighing and resigning himself to go along with the conversation the pilot was stubbornly adhering to. "Like I said, I'm not really sure. She seems nice enough."
"Have you heard about her and Elysium?"
"I think just about everyone in the Alliance has. It's probably mostly just rumour, though. Propaganda, that kind of thing. How long ago was it now? 6, 7 years? She was what, 22 years old? I don't want to doubt her, but… it doesn't seem possible."
"Well they don't put a Star of Terra around your neck through hearsay and gossip. I think she's legit, but that's what makes me wonder, what with her and Nihlus here. This isn't just a shakedown, I'm sure of it," Joker said.
"Joker, this is a pretty big thing for the Alliance. Working with the Council and the turians, of course they're gonna send along the best. I've said it before, but you're just being paranoid. Stop worrying," Alenko said, looking at Joker again.
"Hey, I'm not worrying, I just don't like being in the dark."
To Shepard's surprise, Nihlus was alone in the comm room, he was watching a vid of some kind, which Shepard recognised as a tourism piece for Eden Prime, the world they would shortly be arriving at. As he heard Shepard's footsteps, he turned to her, and told her he'd hoped she would arrive before the Captain, giving them a chance to talk, and that Anderson would be with them soon.
He then moved on to ask Shepard what she knew of Eden Prime, which was little to nothing besides what she was briefed on. She knew it was one of the first colonies outside of Sol, because of that it was a source of pride for the Alliance and that it was very successful and well known for its agriculture. She also knew it was on the borders of the Terminus Systems, and because of that, danger could only ever be a day or two away. Other than that, she had little to no knowledge of it.
It was the pride the Alliance had in the planet that Nihlus was interested in, along with its safety, and he wondered aloud if the Alliance was ready to protect its colonies, if it was ready for what the dangerous galaxy had in store. It came across as rhetoric. Shepard wasn't really sure what to think. It didn't seem Nihlus was merely sceptical of the Alliance, it seemed that Nihlus was sceptical of it and of Shepard herself.
Just then, the doors opened behind Shepard and Anderson came striding in. "I think it's time we told the commander what's really going on."
Shepard had guessed this wasn't a simple shakedown run, that this wasn't just a test for the Normandy's maiden voyage. Anderson told her that the research teams on Eden Prime had discovered a Prothean beacon on the planet, and the Normandy was on its way to pick it up and take it to the Citadel for study. It showed that the Alliance was willing to work with the Council and not just hoard any knowledge the beacon could hold for themselves, and they would be doing so in an Alliance vessel that was developed by human and turian minds. It was incredibly important.
What Shepard would never have guessed, in a million years, was that Nihlus wasn't there simply to supervise the effort, but to evaluate her. He told her she was the Alliance's candidate to become humanity's first Spectre, and this was just the start of her work with Nihlus. His behaviour toward her was suddenly explained.
As if the fates hadn't conspired enough to put pressure on Shepard's shoulders, Joker interrupted the briefing with a transmission from the surface of the planet. It showed soldiers in heavy combat with an enemy of unknown description, and then, just before the feed went dead, an image of large, black, metallic fingers or tendrils wreathed in red lightning dominated the sky.
Whatever it was, it was big and ugly, and though they had no real way of knowing such, it screamed danger and deadliness at them. It was an unknown, and soldiers like Shepard did not like unknowns.
In the cargo bay, Shepard was speaking to Jenkins and Alenko as they suited up. They were the ground-team she would be in charge of for this mission, and she was giving them a quick brief on the beacon and what she had seen via the transmission from the surface, though it wasn't much.
"All I know is that it's bad," she said, as she finished.
"What do you think, though, ma'am? Slavers? Pirates?" Alenko asked.
"It could be slavers, but I wouldn't have thought pirates would have much interest in Eden Prime," Jenkins replied, clearly agitated. Eden Prime was where he had grown up. He had family down there.
"That was before we discovered the beacon, though," Shepard said.
"I can't see what pirates would want with a Prothean beacon, ma'am," replied Alenko.
"Me neither," Shepard said, her brows knit in thought. "That thing at the end, I've never seen anything like that before. It had to be huge. It was off in the distance, peaking through the clouds. It wasn't anything pirates or slavers would have. It has to be something else entirely, something we're not thinking of. We have to assume that they're here for the beacon, and that kinda shit in the wrong hands could be very bad."
Eden Prime might very well have been a paradise before this. Even through the red skies the battle on the planet had caused, the lush greenery still shone, as stubborn as Mother Nature, even in the far flung reaches of the galaxy, intended.
Nihlus had gone on ahead of Shepard and her team. All pretence of her evaluation for Spectre candidacy lost quickly over the increasing importance of the mission and the deterioration of the situation on the planet.
Jenkins hadn't lasted long. Strange floating turrets the likes of which none of them had ever seen tore through his kinetic barriers and put him down before any of them could react. It didn't take long for Shepard to fill two of them with slugs from her M-8 Avenger assault rifle, and for Alenko to smash the remaining one into a rock with his biotics, but the damage had been done.
"God dammit. What the fuck were those things?" Shepard asked Alenko as she scanned the horizon.
"Not a clue, ma'am. Drones of some sort, never seen anything like them," Alenko replied grimly as he removed Jenkins' dog tags and took a few thermal clips from the body in case they were needed. "Ripped right through his shields. Never had a chance."
"Shit." Well this is going fan-fucking-tastically so far, Shepard thought to herself. "You good, Alenko?"
"I'm good, ma'am."
"Okay, we'll leave him here for now, we'll make sure he's taken care of once we finish this. Let's stick to cover like white on rice. Watch your back and scan the skies. These things could come from any fucking direction, so stay frosty, Lieutenant."
"Aye, aye, ma'am."
They pushed forward into a lightly wooded area for a while, sticking to the trees and small rock formations taking down a few more of the drones, until Shepard raised a fist to Alenko, motioning for him to halt. She had seen a human figure in between the trees sprinting roughly in their direction. As it drew nearer it became clear it was a woman, a soldier in fact. Shepard, in cover behind a rock outcropping, watched as the woman started sprinting right toward them, two drones on her tail, taking pot shots. Just as the woman drew level with Shepard, the commander grabbed and pulled her into cover, throwing her indelicately to the ground against the rock. The drones sailed past, and went to turn, but struggled with their forward momentum, allowing Shepard and Alenko to take them out in short order.
"Holy shit. Thanks for your help, Commander. I didn't think I was going to make it," the woman said to Shepard a few deep breaths after the drones exploded. She got to her feet with Shepard's help. "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212. You the one in charge here, ma'am?"
"That'd be me. Sorry about the bump. You okay, soldier?"
"I'm good. Bastards gave me a few scrapes and burns, nothing serious. The others weren't so lucky," she answered, then put her head in her hands.
"Do you know what these things are?"
"I think they're geth," Williams said, almost breathless as she looked back up.
"Geth? Those drones are geth?" Shepard asked, her brow furrowed beneath her helmet.
"It's not just drones, they've got big bipedal units here, too."
"The geth haven't been seen outside the veil in almost 200 years," Alenko piped up with. "Why are they here now?"
"The beacon," Shepard answered. "They sure as shit didn't come to look at those ugly fucking gas bag things. Williams, did you get eyes on that big black… hand… thing?"
"Yes, ma'am, it… it was a ship, must have been a geth dreadnought. It made the most God-awful trumpeting sound I've ever heard, that's when our comms went down. I'm assuming you saw it from our distress call."
"Yeah, couldn't really tell what it was, though. We'll worry about it later. We need to get to the beacon and get it out of here before the geth get hold of it. Do you know where it is, Williams?"
"The dig site is just up ahead, over that hill. It might still be there," Williams said, pointing roughly in the direction she had just come.
Shepard took a moment. "Okay, Williams, you're coming with. Need someone who knows the lay of the land. What's your ammo situation?"
"Not good. Nearly out, ma'am."
"Alenko, fill her up with what you got from Jenkins. This is Staff Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko," said Shepard to Williams, "and I'm Lieutenant Commander Calista Shepard of the SSV Normandy."
"It– it's an honour to meet you, ma'am," Williams said, then nodded at Alenko with a smile as he passed her some thermal clips.
"The honour's all mine, Gunny. All right, now that the bullshitting is done with, let's say we show these synthetic bastards that they fucked with the wrong colony."
"Aye, aye, ma'am. It's time for payback," Williams said, with a slight snarl.
As they reached the brow of the hill Williams had mentioned, it became obvious the beacon was no longer at the dig site. They looked down into it from prone positions above it. It was a circular chunk taken out of the ground, with freshly dug dirt surrounding the small dais that was, as Williams pointed out, where the beacon once stood. Around the dais were strange, metallic tripods that stood a few feet tall.
"Did they dig those tripod things out with the beacon, Gunny?" Shepard asked.
"I don't think so, ma'am. I've never seen them before."
Just as they were about to stand up and make their way down to the dais, two of the geth bipedal units Williams had referred to before appeared carrying a human male by his arms between them, his form limp, his heels dragging in the dirt. The geth were making strange noises, as if in conversation with each other.
"Not gonna lie, not a fan of this situation right now," Shepard said as she shouldered her AR and drew out her beloved M-92 Mantis sniper rifle, scoping in on the left-most geth.
"What are they doing?" Alenko asked in a whisper. "Is that guy dead?"
"Can't tell… shit, I can't get a shot." The geth had stopped and stood either side of one of the tripods, the nearest of them with its back to Shepard, and draped the man over it, facing him up. If Shepard were to take the shot from the angle she had, it could go right through the geth and hit the man, and she wasn't certain he was already dead.
The geth had started to walk away, back from where they had come, but Shepard's focus was on the man still draped over the tripod. He started to move, and just as he lifted his head, a large spike suddenly shot upwards from the tripod with a loud crack and a thud, spearing the man through his back and leaving his now lifeless body impaled upon it fifteen feet in the air.
"What the fuck?!" Shepard shouted. "Open fire!"
In a split-second the geth nearest to the group's head exploded as it turned to see the commotion, a slug from Shepard's rifle penetrating the unit's single, large and glowing photoreceptor with precision. The second geth fell not long after to sustained fire from both Williams' assault rifle and Alenko's pistol. As soon as firing ceased, Shepard scrambled her way down to the tripod, and was met with the ugly sight of the impaled man slowly sliding down the spire, his blood flowing down it like a grotesque fountain.
"What is this medieval bullshit?" Shepard said, her face a grimace of anger and disgust as she gazed upward at the skewered colonist.
"Gotta be some kind of warning," Alenko replied. Williams just stared at the poor man, her face pale.
"Okay, so the beacon isn't here, and we need to stop this shit from happening to any more colonists. Gunny… Williams…" Shepard was trying to get the woman's attention, but she was transfixed on the macabre sight in front of her. "Hey, Williams! I need you in the here and now, soldier. Come on," Shepard added, almost gently.
"S-sorry, ma'am." Williams said, snapping out it. "What do you need me to do?"
"I need you tell me where they could have taken the beacon. We follow that path, prevent the geth from going all Vlad-happy on more civvies, secure the beacon and make sure the Alliance fleets still have a colony to save when they finally get their asses here."
Just then, Nihlus got in touch, mentioning that he'd meet Shepard at a small spaceport up ahead. "Williams, what can you tell me about a small spaceport near here?" Shepard asked.
"Actually that was where I was going to suggest heading. If they've moved the beacon, it must be there."
"Okay, good. We've got a turian Spectre waiting for us there, name of Nihlus. He came with us on the Normandy. Williams, take point, show us the way."
The reason for the tripod-spikes became apparent as they left the dig site and headed toward the small spaceport Nihlus had mentioned. At their next sighting of a cluster of tripods, they found even more colonists impaled upon them, but their corpses seemed desiccated and dark, as if burned or left upon them for weeks. As Shepard and her team got close, the spikes withdrew back into their bases, bringing their inhabitants down with them. The carcasses stirred and planted feet on the ground. They were grotesque, barely passing off as human any more. Large blue-lit cables replaced veins beneath their torn, dark flesh, and synthetic blue eyes affixed to their prey. But this particular prey was ready, and it didn't take long, or many shots fired, to dispatch these new and terrifying enemies.
"Put a hole in the head of anything impaled on these things before they have a chance to pull that shit on us again," Shepard ordered her team. "We'll have time enough to dwell on this mess in briefings and therapy sessions once we get the fuck out of here. Let's move."
They managed to find a pair of survivors in a locked prefab building, unhurt but understandably terrified, one even on the verge of a full mental breakdown. Shepard had at first sympathised with the man, before he started blabbering on about the end of days. When he became even more manic and got a bit too close to her for her comfort, she restrained him in a blood choke and laid him gently down on the ground as he passed out, reassuring his partner he was fine but that he'd be out for a while.
When they left the prefab, locking it behind them, they pushed on toward the spaceport, which was thankfully just around the corner. When they got in sight of it, it wasn't the station that had their attention. Instead, the geth dreadnought dominated the sky again, just as it did in the distress call vid on the Normandy. Before Shepard could get a proper look, it started to ascend, parting the red clouds its invasion had caused, and disappearing from view as it exited the planet's atmosphere.
"That fucker was huge," Shepard said, not even trying to hide her amazement and still looking at the space in the sky where it had been. "How did the geth build that thing?"
"Maybe they found the plans in another beacon from somewhere, that's why they're here for this one, ma'am," Alenko conjectured. "They might be planning a full on war with the galaxy."
"Whatever it is, it's not good," Shepard said. "I have a feeling the beacon went up with that ship. We need to make sure, though. We'll push on and–"
"We got contacts, Commander!" Williams interrupted.
The ground ahead of them was a long, rocky and grassy slope that led downward toward the spaceport, but at the bottom stood a dozen or so geth, some of whom were interacting with more of the infernal tripod spikes, which housed even more colonist victims. It only took one geth to spot Shepard and her team before they all started firing at the humans, who quickly jumped behind rocky cover. The geth closest to the tripods made their spikes retract freeing their dead slaves, setting them on Shepard and her team.
"Those reanimated corpses are running right for us, and holy fuck, I can't believe I just said that!" Shepard backed out of cover. "Stay here, I'm going to distract them. When I give the word, start firing on them." She sprinted back the way they had come, out of sight of the geth but in sight of the running cadavers, who zoned in on her once they got to the top of the slope, ignoring the in-cover Alenko and Williams as they ran past them.
As the last of the husks passed the two waiting humans, Shepard gave the order, jumping into cover and out of the line of friendly fire. Alenko and Williams made quick work of a few of the husks, efficiently popping heads with accurate slugs, allowing Shepard to take out some with little trouble. As Alenko and Williams ceased fire, they watched as Shepard engaged the last husk in close combat. A side kick from her to its stomach sent it flying backwards to the floor, she then followed up with a jump and sent her feet down onto its head, obliterating it. The two watchers looked at each other in surprise.
"That was grim, but oddly satisfying," Shepard shouted over the geth's weapons fire as she reached Alenko and Williams.
The geth were stopping the team from moving forward any more, using suppressing fire on their position to prevent them from even peeking out of cover, let alone advancing toward them.
"Alenko," Shepard shouted. "Can you use your biotics to create a barrier around us as we try to push forward?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good, we just need to advance a little. Williams, I want you to flank them while I suppress them, and get into an enfilade firing position, catch them unaware. Try to make it so you can line a few up, or at least push them out of cover. Here, take a couple of these grenades, and don't be afraid to use them all. Take the geth nearest to you out first. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Williams, taking the proffered grenades.
"I spotted fourteen of them, but there could be more. When you're not firing, stay in cover and try to keep moving. Alenko, when we get to cover, keep the barrier up while I suppress them and stay in cover, too. Focus on your barrier. Okay. Are we ready?" Alenko and Williams nodded.
"Good luck, Commander," spoke Williams.
"Luck's for losers, Gunny," replied Shepard. "Let's do this, then. Go, go, go!"
It all happened exactly as Shepard had planned. Alenko's barrier protected Shepard while she pushed forward down the slope and fired at the geth, pushing them back into cover. Williams darted low and to her right as soon as she had the chance. She then got side on to the majority of the geth, and put four of them down with her first barrage. Her grenades then took out a few more, before she reloaded and then forced some more geth out of cover, allowing Shepard to hollow them out. After a few short minutes, the last geth fell.
"We're clear, Commander," Williams spoke through her comms after scanning the battlefield.
Shepard peeked up from cover, confirming Williams' statement. "Fuck yeah, Gunny," Shepard said as she strode toward the other woman, holding her free hand up in offer for Williams to take it. "That was perfect," she said as Ashley grabbed her hand. "Good work on that barrier, Alenko."
Alenko was stood off to the side, staring at something on the spaceport platform ahead of him. As he got close enough to it, he realised what it was.
"Nihlus is down!" Alenko shouted, pointing to an inert figure face down on the ground as he ran toward it.
Alenko was right, Nihlus was down, but he was also dead, a fact made patently obvious by the single gunshot wound to the back of his head and the deep blue blood pooled around it.
"It looks like he was executed, probably a pistol from close range. Not enough mess for anything of a higher calibre," Shepard said, crouched down next to Nihlus' corpse.
A sound then came from a stack of crates nearby, and three weapons were instantly trained in its direction.
"We're Alliance soldiers. Come out from behind there slowly or we start firing," Shepard ordered.
"Wait, don't shoot!" A clearly terrified voice came from behind the crates, before a distressed dockworker shuffled into view. He looked haggard, either from being previously overworked and tired or from the stress of being in the middle of a damn war zone. "I'm one of you, I'm human."
He proceeded to explain, after Shepard's questioning, that he was merely hiding and told them that he witnessed Nihlus' death at the hands of another turian named Saren. According to him, Nihlus relaxed when he met his fellow turian, as they seemed to know each other, and so let his guard down. When Nihlus turned his back on him, it allowed Saren to put a slug through the back of his skull.
"Do you know where the Prothean beacon is?" Shepard asked the dockworker.
"If it's anywhere, it'll be over on the other platform. You can take a cargo train to get to it, but that's where Saren went," the dockworker replied.
After warning the man to keep his head down and watch out for the Alliance rescue team, Shepard and the others took the cargo train.
"It's still here." Shepard was relieved that the beacon still was on the planet. It seemed that instead of merely taking it with them, the geth chose to try and blow the thing up instead, along with the entire colony. The team quickly defused any ordinance they detected, and took out a few geth stragglers. "Normandy, the beacon is secure. Requesting immediate evac from my position."
"Commander, it wasn't doing anything like this when they dug it up," Williams told Shepard. "It's glowing, it looks like someone activated it."
"So, they activated and possibly used it, and then just left it here? Aren't these things supposed to be treasure troves of information? The one on Mars advanced our technology 200 years, and we've barely scraped the surface of what's in it. None of this makes sense. Besides getting the beacon, this whole mission has been FUBAR from the get go," Shepard said, rubbing her temples underneath her helmet.
"Well, at least we can get out of here now, Commander," Williams consoled, as Shepard started forward toward the beacon.
"We might have to–"
As Shepard got close to the beacon, she was pulled up into the air, the beacon humming with energy, its lights brightening. Shepard hovered just in front of it, her arms and legs locked straight and her head pulled back. After only a few seconds, before Alenko and Williams could do anything, the beacon exploded, propelling Shepard backwards, where she hit the ground hard with a loud thud.
"Normandy, this is Alenko!" He shouted through his comms, his voice an almost panicked scream. "Shepard is down, the beacon did something to her then just exploded. Get the medical team prepped and on standby!" Williams rushed to Shepard, who lay on the ground, unconscious.
AN: A somewhat rushed chapter, but one that gets Eden Prime out of the way quickly. Like I said, this fic is going to be focused more on Shepard's interactions with her crew rather than the overall story, though that will be important. This chapter might be the most action-packed until the end, but that remains to be seen for now.
Updates: added a couple of paragraphs describing Shepard.