"Deirdre, please, you're the only one who can help her."
The recorded message shut off for the fifth time. Shepard's hand moved to push play again, but faltered, lingering in the air over the keypad. She wasn't usually this pensive or recalcitrant; she received information, she acted on it. Yet, here she was, half an hour after she'd first decoded the painstakingly well hidden message, still listening. Her hands clenched.
Forcing herself to stand, Shepard turned and left her desk, fled from her room, and rode the lift down. Those she passed didn't dare to question why their CO was rampaging through the halls in her pajamas; they just got out of her way.
Usually, Shepard was respectful enough of the myriad peoples who populated her ship that she didn't just barge into rooms unannounced. But today was not a day for polite inquiries.
Shepard burst into Samara's meditation room and slid to a halt, heart pounding fast from exertion and fear.
"Samara," She cried quickly. "I need your help."
In the short time they had worked together, Samara had found Shepard to be one respectful of boundaries, and cultures not her own. When she was in meditation, the soldier was always willing to wait for them to speak; which was what made her abrupt interruption all the stranger.
Jolted from her mind's reverie, Samara turned her head. "Good evening, Commander." If her tone was sharp, it could not be helped.
"Sorry," Shepard spat in reply. That she thought to apologize at all meant something. "But I don't have time for pleasantries. Can you get me through to Thessia?"
Before replying, the Justicar's eyes roamed the firm figure standing fists clenched in front of her.
Shepard made an imposing sight even in her night wear. She was an older human; her hair had long since gone fully grey, short and curled against her forehead. Her height and weight, too, were in decline; slowing her tall, thick form was growing shorter and thicker. But she was still as muscular as she had always been, her firm arms vibrating with whatever it was Shepard was currently holding inside. Her skin was dark brown and marred with scars, including those red lines still healing on her cheeks.
Curiosity peaked, Samara stood. "Thessia?"
"Being a dead Spectre and Cerberus agent won't endear me to the authorities." Shepard quipped. "But I figure a Justicar could convince some people to avert their eyes."
"May I ask the occasion?"
A frustrated grimace came over Shepard's face. "It's a very long story, and I haven't got a lot of time."
Samara would not often insist upon anything from her employer; it was her duty to follow, not question, after all. But she was in a slightly foul mood, and the request was particularly outrageous. "The price for what you ask is steep."
The scowl deepened. "I'll pay whatever it costs."
"An explanation is all I require."
Shepard scoffed, eyes darting away. "How did I know you'd say that?"
Though she feigned slight irritation, Samara felt only curiosity now, an interest in what had Shepard so keyed up. It took quite a lot to shake the human; and Thessia was not exactly a tourist destination.
"Calm yourself." It was easy to see that, whatever had occurred, it had deeply disturbed Shepard. "Take a moment to collect your thoughts. Whatever your mission, I will do what I can to assist you."
A heaving sigh took the wraith from the air, and Shepard slumped onto a bench nearby. Her sweaty hands ran over her face and through her short, greying hair. "It's not a… mission, per se." She muttered. "… it's personal."
Samara sat upon the bench on the opposite side of the room, hands held in front of her. "Seeing as you have already helped me with a personal 'mission' of my own, I would hardly be one to judge."
That statement received a snort. "Yeah, well…" Her words trailed off, whatever thoughts they held dissipating before they hit the air. Dark skin wrinkled under the weight of her worries, brown eyes narrowing. "I guess you're right." Anyone else would've lapsed into thoughtful silence; not Shepard. Her voice took on its typical commanding tone and she moved ahead. "A young Asari went missing on the home world eleven days ago. Her mother's asked me to find her."
"An odd request to send to a Cerberus operative – and one of comparatively little concern, considering the scope of your typical missions."
Somber eyes, held down by world-weary concern, lifted to meet Samara's.
"She's my daughter."
They took a shuttle to Illium, where they planned to ditch the Cerberus merchandise and get a shuttle of their own to take to Thessia. They didn't have much to their name; without including Cerberus in the mission, they had no funds with which to use. Very quickly Samara's status came in handy. The asari of Illium were all too happy to provide a Justicar with a ride back to the home world, free of charge.
It was in a bar on Illium, awaiting the arrival of this ship, that Shepard told her story.
"I was young." She explained. "Just barely shed my cadet status when we met. I'd been… recommended by my superiors to see a counselor about, well, suffice to say they thought I needed help." Shepard's eyes darkened, her hands which were wrapped around her drink clutched it tighter. "This was forty, forty-five years ago, hardly a blink of an eye in your case, but a life time for me. A very long time."
"This surprised you." Clearly Shepard had not expected this.
"Knocked me on my ass more like." Chuckling depreciatively, Shepard let her half-lidded eyes slid up to meet Samara's even gaze. "We'd decided it would be best to end it. Her job made it illegal for us to be involved, my job meant I'd rarely, if ever, be in her corner of the galaxy." She shrugged and her eyes fell back to the table. "So we called it quits."
"Did you know then, about the child?"
"No, not until a few months later." Shepard admitted. "She called me, we talked it over, and she decided to raise the child by herself. Didn't tell her a thing about me, which was probably for the best too." Shepard's fingers took hold of her straw, stirring the ice around in the glass, creating a rhythm that filled the silence. Clink, clink, clink. "Sent me pictures sometimes. Vids, school achievement records. It was enough."
Samara's eyes narrowed. "As a mother myself, I sincerely doubt that."
Again, the depreciative laugh. "You're right. But as a Justicar, you know why I made the choices I did."
Oh, yes, she knew. Duty, responsibility; she knew what it was to put the tenets one lived by before the family one loved. Morinth's corpse was testament to that. Shepard seemed to know what she was thinking, for the human winced after she finished speaking. Before she could open her mouth to speak, Samara held up a hand. "It is fine." Shepard gave a terse nod, and the awkward moment passed.
"How did the girl go missing?"
"Vanished in the middle of the night." Shepard's face underwent a transformation; the blatant emotionalism which had been so clear a moment ago fell under the weight which appeared next, the hardened eyes and firm frown. "Could she have been kidnapped? Does Thessia have a lot of crime? Slave trade?"
"Not at all." Samara shook her head. "There is no enforced labor on the home world, and it is very unlikely any Asari would kidnap another in any of Thessia's cities. No one of any other race would dare try."
A vexed look overcame the Commander. "Then if she wasn't taken… she left?"
"Given your account, the young woman is likely to be at least forty years old now, old enough to perhaps enter the puberty stage for Asari. It is possible she left of her own accord."
"To do what? Go where?" Gritting her teeth, Shepard shoved her drink aside and crossed her arms. "She could be anywhere in the goddamn galaxy!"
"Possible locations can be narrowed down more than that." Samara chided gently. Shepard was clearly high strung about the mission. "Most young Asari attempt to find themselves through the arts, sciences, or combat. Art and science could be found on Thessia, and the fact that her mother has not found her there leads us to believe she is there no longer."
"That means combat." Shepard's eyes narrowed. "A mercenary group?"
"Many young Asari choose the life of a mercenary when they are young." Samara explained. "If your daughter did the same, it is likely she is attempting to join the Eclipse. They have a great many Asari members already."
"And they're on this planet." Realization dawned in her eyes, in the widening of her mouth. "Looks like we've got our first lead."
Tara glanced around the room with eyes widened by thinly veiled fear.
She had to remind herself that she had chosen this; she'd come here looking for trouble and trouble she had found.
Five Asari were gathered in front of the Eclipse mercs, five young Maidens trying to find their places in the galaxy, and Tara was beginning to wonder if her place was among them. The mercs were standing around their leader, probably trying to look tough, and Tara admitted to herself that it was working. Big aliens with guns tended to do that.
The leader that was speaking to them was another Asari, wearing Eclipse armor and a nasty smirk as she explained their mission.
"Should you succeed, you'll be welcomed gladly into our fold." The Asari's eyes fell over Tara and she fought the urge to flinch. "Now get it done, and don't let me see your asses again until it is."
That was the queue to leave; Tara spun on her heel and stormed away, avoiding the gazes of all the mercs chuckling at her nearby.
She had realized when she'd left Thessia that being a merc would be hard. She'd have to kill people. But she had, perhaps naively, assumed that the people she'd be killing would be trying to kill her back; that, as a merc, she'd be fighting other merc groups, killing other soldiers, people who had a fighting chance.
But murder?
Tara shoulders stiffened, drawing up towards her neck as she scowled. She couldn't murder someone. But if she didn't she'd never become a merc, and if she didn't become a merc, she'd never… scowl darkening, Tara considered her options and found herself perplexed.
"Hey. Hey!"
Snapped from her reverie, Tara's head shot up. "Uh, yes?"
One of the other asari recruits was grinning her way, the rest of the recruits gathered around her. "We've got a plan to fulfill the recruitment requirements and impress the hell out of 'em, too. You in?"
Impress them? How? Given that murder was considered the minimum requirement, what the hell did they have planned to 'impress'?
Panicking, Tara glanced towards the door. She should just go home and forget the whole stupid thing. Then her eyes darted back to the group. She swallowed dryly.
"What's the plan?"
"First things first," Shepard began as they left the bar. "We'll pass by the police station; if Eclipse is up to anything on this rock, Detective Anaya will know."
"I agree." Samara replied succinctly and nothing more was said until they entered the policeman's office.
Shepard glanced over the room, remembering when she'd last been there: the mission which had led her to Samara.
The Asari Justicar was quite unlike anyone else Shepard had recruited, and she'd worked with a fuckton of unique individuals. But none of them were centuries old monks sworn to justice, so determined upon their duty that they forsook all else in search of it. Samara was fascinating, to put it mildly; she'd seen so much, lived so much, and sacrificed so much that Shepard found it hard to grasp.
Shepard was very much in awe of her, and more than that, well… more than that, she couldn't indulge. Samara had already made that very clear.
Her eyes drifted lazily over the crowded room, until by chance they happened to stop upon the far corner. A young asari was trading heated words with one of the officers, and though the physical features differed, Shepard could see the signs of anger; the furious eyes, downturned lips, the 'brow' furrowed by irritation.
"Commander Shepard!"
Years of training had Shepard spinning to face the speaker, and she lost the young Asari in the crowd.
"Shepard!"
Tara's body jolted with an electric shock of emotion; she couldn't help the gasp that tore from her throat. Head spinning, she ignored the dismissing hand-wave and rolling eyes of the officer who'd been arguing with her; immediately she stumbled through the crowd, eyes on the far figure in the corner of the room.
She was armored, with a rifle on her back, shoulders squared and hair cut short, like a soldier. The closer she got, the drier Tara's mouth became, the more her heart kept a staccato beat. It couldn't be –
The human turned, and Tara could see dark, scarred skin, a round face, big emotive eyes a rich brown color; she could see her own features in that face, her short, flattened nose, her rounded chin. Though the years had passed over the human harshly, Tara stilled recognized her from her mother's photographs.
Tara had discovered them only a few years ago, while her mother was at work. Mother had never talked about who Tara's father was or what had happened to them. All she knew was that Mother had moved back to Thessia when she was conceived, to raise her among her people. No matter how much she inquired, how many times she begged, her mother never told her a thing.
So she'd started looking for herself; in her mother's files, her records, anything she could get her hands on. But it wasn't any computerized database that gave her what she needed. It was a small box hidden in the bottom of her mother's closest, stuff with old fashioned human photographs.
They were all of her mother and a dark skinned human woman. There were pictures of them cooking together, of them riding a shuttle together, walking around the Citadel, in bed (ew!). Most of the images were of her mother; the human was the one who seemed to enjoy picture taking. One of the images had her mother, hands over her face, failing to get away from the brightly grinning human who wrapped one arm around her shoulders, leaned into the frame, and took the picture with her other hand.
Since they were from an old fashioned camera, and not online, Tara couldn't find out much from the photographs. But she scoured them for days, until finally she noticed that in one of them, her mother was wearing a military uniform jacket. Now, she knew her mother had never been in the military, let alone the human military, so clearly the jacket belonged to the human – so Tara dove into research, trying to connect the ID number on the jacket to the face from forty years ago.
For humans, forty years was a very long time. Tara had realized that she might well discover this human was her father only to find she'd long since died. That fear had her in a nervous wreck for many weeks as she set her plans in motion. She had to convince her mother to take her to the Citadel for a vacation, to stay with relatives for a few weeks; from there, it was only a matter of convincing one of her cousins to take a weekend trip to Earth. Tara was relatively good at hacking, but she didn't want to test herself against the Human government, so she went about it the pedestrian way, using a library.
It was there she discovered the ID number belonged to one Commander Deirdre Shepard, who had died only recently.
Tara's heart shattered into a thousand pieces, and the depression remained with her the whole trip home. To have finally found who her father was, only to discover they were long dead? Sadness gave way to anger when she arrived home.
She could've known her father for years before her death, if only her mother had told her! She could have spoken to her, gotten to know her, learned from her! Instead, she was forced to settle on the next best thing.
Tara spent the next few months of her life researching Commander Shepard incessantly: her civilian life; her military record; her time as a Spectre; how she saved the whole galaxy from the reapers; how she died, and subsequently how everything she worked for was hushed up.
Shepard was a marvel, and Tara stood in awe of her shadow and wondered if it could possibly be true, could this amazing human be her father? It seemed impossible. Tara was just a computer geek with some general talent, who enjoyed vids and weekends with friends and had never, in all her life, come close to being as brave and amazing as Shepard was.
As the months passed and she found that with every new fact she learned, she became more convinced it couldn't be true, that she and the human Shepard could not be further removed, Tara's interest waned. It was only upon the start of a few new rumors that Tara's interest piqued again. Shepard is alive, people were saying. She's come back from the dead.
Though she'd convinced herself that Shepard was not her father and her obsession with the hero was borderline creepy, Tara immediately felt joy overcome her heart. Shepard was alive! Alive! But that joy was followed by a seeping worry sinking into her bones, old wounds rising to the surface. She was just a child, barely a Maiden, with no heroism or glory to her name. How could she even conceive of being related to Shepard? She was nobody.
It was then that Tara realized she would never be satisfied until she became somebody. So she left home, came to Ilium, and decided to join the Eclipse… which was quickly becoming the biggest mistake she'd ever made in her life.
"Commander Shepard?"
For the second time in a half hour, Deirdre heard her name called; but this was no summoning, no harsh command. This was a timid, youthful voice, barely convinced of its own authority, tremulous and thin. She and Samara had just left the police station, having obtained what little there was on Eclipse, and were set to go, only for this young voice to follow them out. One brow cockeyed, Shepard turned to face the speaker, and just barely stifled a gasp.
It was a young asari, just barely taller than Shepard, with a thick waist and dark blue skin and eyes which were the very same hue as her mother's. Even if Shepard had not memorized that face through hours of re-watching old videos and reexamining old photographs, she would have known her daughter by the resemblance to her mother.
The stranger who was her child approached timidly, wringing her hands as she did.
"You are Commander Shepard aren't you?" She seemed absolutely sure by the look in her eye. "I overheard you in the station. I, um – I need your help!"
A call for aid; that felt more like normal. Yet Shepard still felt as if she were high, walking on air as she turned to face the girl.
"What's your name?" She knew her name. She'd never forget her name.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Tara." The girl held her hand out in a human greeting, and Shepard couldn't help but smile as she shook it. "I've gone and gotten myself into some very big trouble, and when I came to the police for help they wouldn't listen."
"Take a deep breath and start at the beginning." How could she be speaking so evenly, so calmly? This was her baby standing in front of her on the verge of a panic attack.
Tara nodded, closing her eyes, hands fanning her face as she breathed. "Sorry." A sigh released the tension from her face, if only a little. "A few days ago I came to Illium to try and join the Eclipse mercs. I – I didn't really realize what they required, what I'd have to do… suffice to say I've changed my mind!" The girl nodded enthusiastically. "But the other recruits are planning something big for tomorrow and a lot of people are going to die if it's not stopped!"
Shepard took it all in as two people: one, the soldier, calculating, realizing the situation and planning ahead; and another, the parent, realizing that her daughter, still dewy from the dawn of life, was standing before her with a fervent passion that would not be denied, and an altogether foreign feeling swelled in Shepard's breast, one of paternal pride.
"Okay, let's go over this one more time."
The three were in a motel room, taking their ease. Shepard had shed her armor, and now wore only a black tank top and baggy black pants. Tara sat across from her, anxiously explaining what she'd learned in detail.
"Tomorrow there's an ambassador coming in from Thessia." Tara began. "She's coming in to meet with Illium politicians, I didn't gather what about, probably about the smuggling that goes on through here."
"Thessia has had difficulties stopping smugglers completely; and Illium is a hub of illegal and barely legal trade." Samara added.
"When her ship comes in tomorrow, the Eclipse recruits are going to destroy it." Tara glanced to the floor. "First, they're rigging the docking clamps with explosives, so that when the ship tries to dock, it will be sabotaged and it won't be able to land anywhere."
"They'll destroy the landing gear." Shepard clarified. Tara gave a quick nod.
"Then, when it's stuck in the air with nowhere to go, they're going to take a shuttle disguised as a police cruiser and board the ship, pretending to be officers sent to take the Ambassador and her family to safety. Then, they'll kill them and the pilots of the ship, take the corpses to the Eclipse as proof, and leave everyone on the ship to crash and die."
"I don't know whether to take this seriously or not," Shepard snorted. Tara looked affronted and Shepard quickly held up a hand. "Not that I don't believe you; I just have trouble imagining that a handful of unseasoned rookies could pull this off on a ship that's likely to have a ton of security already."
"Given Tara's description of events, a few details become clear." Samara leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "This young Maiden in charge of the group is unlikely to have concocted this plan without the ability to carry it through. It is likely she is the daughter of a well to do family, and probably supported by them. Being a mercenary is not a social stigma on Thessia the way it is on Earth."
"Okay, so if she's old money, she's probably got the connections, and if she's already trying to join Eclipse and willing to do this much to get there, she's probably ruthless enough to go through with it." Samara nodded as Shepard repeated what they'd covered. "Fine, I'll buy it. But there's still the matter of security. Illium is hardly Omega."
"True enough. But this much planning hints at forethought. Illium is not so protected that it cannot be hacked, tricked, and snuck through to achieve a goal."
"All right… shit." The woman's eyes widened just after she cursed, and she glanced back at Tara. "Uh, I – I mean, shoot. So it's happening. How do we stop it?"
"You could return to the police station." Samara offered. "They may not have believed Tara, but they will listen to Commander Shepard."
Samara watched Shepard lift her eyes, halfway to agreeing, until her gaze caught sight of Tara's face. Tara looked hopeful, hands clenched, her upper lip pulled between her teeth. Then Shepard's eyes returned to Samara.
"We could deal with it ourselves."
Samara inclined her head. "If that is your wish."
Shepard turned to look at Tara again, who looked as if she'd just been given the world on a plate. "What do you think?"
"Me?" Tara was taken aback. "Well, I… I made a huge mistake. I'd like the chance to make up for it."
"Ever shoot a gun?"
"Of course!" The maiden insisted. "I know how to fight!"
Shepard tensed, eyes roaming the young asari's face, before she sighed and nodded. "All right. But you stay with me and you follow my orders to the letter, got it?"
"Got it!"
TBC