It was supposed to be a standard mission. That's what she was told. A patrol in to the expanse to clear out the remaining geth pockets. Eirwen sat at her computer staring blankly at the blinking cursor for her latest report. The words refused to come to her as she lit a cigarette only to place it in the tray and let it smolder. The stout glass of scotch beside her tinkled with ice as she sipped it and sighed. The entire trip was fraught with worthless attempts to calm the citizens of the galaxy for its own lack of understanding. She was a Spectre; not some damn space cop sent to chase down bogeymen and all that would come after them.
There was always something else. Another problem to be attended to and in her exhausted mind, she thought the galaxy would fall apart if it wasn't for her to hold it up. At least that's what the Council and the Alliance made it sound like. As she turned the volume up on her music player, Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude blared off the four walls; a dreaded dirge of loneliness and despair wrapped in a shroud of mesmerizing pain.
If anyone who truly knew her understood what that song meant they would have realized it was a clue to her inescapable mood. Her eyes burned as she dimmed the lights of her cabin and returned to her desk; still at a loss for the inexcusable lack of enthusiasm her report would have. She took the clip out of her platinum blond hair and hung it over the back of the chair, letting her neck cool. She groaned in exasperation as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
The hardened soldier began to type slowly her brief report only to stop when a rattle from her glass drew her attention to the gentle swaying of golden liquor. She shrugged off the unintentional vibration and kept working. It would only be a matter of time before Kaidan or Garrus would come in with their own problems to lie in front of her to fix. She hoped that for once she would get a night to herself and unwind after another search and destroy mission, but alas, it never seemed to go that way.
She chuckled to herself at what her parents would have thought of the sight of her sulking alone in her quarters while her team could be heard on the other side of the door laughing and comingling. She never found a use for it. She was detached and while her fondness for the turian was stronger than anything she had anticipated, she still kept him at arm's reach; for her protection as much as his. So many people had died who had come in to contact with her she felt like a cursed object. Her past was filled with the remnants of broken souls and unrequited remorse.
It was as if the fates had made her life a cruel joke and after several months of rehabilitation and counseling after the Akuze incident: that left her the only one to survive out of fifty; they had almost made her go out on a medical discharge for post-traumatic stress. She kicked her heels up on the desk and heard the hull creak all around her. It was an unnatural sound. She was used to the sounds of a ship in FTL, but the way the core in the belly of the ship sputtered and groaned, she thought that something had been amiss.
A hard jerk threw her from her seat and on to the floor. Her tumbler of watered down booze shattered to the floor at her feet, sending sickeningly sweet liquid on to her uniform. She shook her head and in all the chaos tried to figure out what had happened. An unbreakable silence filled the ship. It was the eeriest lack of sound she'd ever heard. The sudden void of light and noise reminded her of her finally days on that fated planet, alone and wounded physically and psychologically.
"Joker! Status report!" she yelled in to the comm. She felt around her jacket pocket and pulled out her cigarettes and began to light one when the emergency lights came on, glowing a dark red. Her pale white skin reflected it back as if she was aflame. "Pressly!" She paced around the room, stumbling several times in the red out. She looked at the dead control panel to the door and frowned.
"Damn it," she grumbled as she exhaled a puff of smoke in to the dwindling air.
"Shepard! Are you alright?" Garrus' gravelly voice called from the other side of the heavy doors. She left the cigarette jutting from her lips as she proceeded to put her hair back up and strolled up to the door.
"What the hell happened?" she asked. Her hands came up to the cold steel of the door and rested. "Is everyone alright out there?"
"We're fine. I don't know about the others in the CIC but those that are here seem to be unharmed," he explained.
"Communications seem to be out," she stated with a concerned scratch to her head. "I know we're running on He3 right now, so we need to hurry up and fix this problem before our more critical systems start to fail." She rested her head on the door and took another inhale from her cigarette.
"Understood, Commander. Some of the marines went to get a pneumatic jack to pry your door open. They should be here any minute now," Garrus remarked.
"Yes, yes, fine. Make it quick," she grumbled coldly. She leaned her back against the door and slid down till she was sitting. She sat for a few minutes flicking ash on the floor beside her before growing irate with the wait. It was quiet on the other side of the door and she feared that she had been left alone. "Garrus?" her voice came out with a small tremble in it.
"Shepard?"
She sighed and shook her head for her foolishness. Of course he wouldn't leave her stranded there. He'd always been by her side. For better or for worse. It was strange for her to have someone that she relied on as much as they relied on her. She had done her best to deliberately push aside her feelings and attachments, but as much as she had tried, he still remained; always beside her, never questioning or doubting even when she doubted herself.
"Nothing."
"Are you sure you're alright?" he asked softly.
"Peachy. I'm sitting in a locked dark room; in a ship that could at any point lose power," she snapped sarcastically.
There was a long silence between them and the sound of metal scraping along the door alerted her to the turian's armor against her door. She leaned her head back and muttered quietly to herself about inane and unsubstantiated phobias. The metal began to squeal from behind her. It sounded like it was all around like nails on a chalkboard. Everything began to shake and the hiss of air made her jump at the possibility of decompression. The door split in two sending her on to her back. She squinted up in annoyance at the crewmen that surrounded her.
Eirwen hurried to her feet and dusted her hands off. The marines and Garrus looked her over to see if she had in fact been injured, but she waved them off and glared. Something wasn't right. Amidst the deathly silence of the interior of the ship, something in the air seemed off. She wanted to write it off as paranoia, but it was something that she couldn't shake. Those gut feelings of hers had always been her saving grace and now as she stood looking over some of the battered people who were looking to her for direction; she pressed passed them and walked up the stairs to the CIC. The door had been shoved back, breaking the hydraulics and sending fluid all over the floor.
Dr. Chakwas was tending to some of the injured and nodded when the commander came in. She didn't bother with the technicalities of military protocol; she needed to know what had happened and how it could be fixed in the shortest amount of time.
"Joker, please tell me you know what happened," she said as she plopped in the navigator's seat beside the pilot. He glanced at her, at a loss, and from the look on his face, he was in pain. His arm held his chest, protecting his fragile ribcage from outside contact. "Are you alright?"
"Never better," he winced. She knew he was lying. The ragged breathing, the sheltering of his torso, all were signs that he had been injured in whatever happened. "We picked up an anomaly just seconds before we made contact with it."
"An anomaly? What do we know so far?"
"Not much. Sensors went out before we could get an accurate reading. We were just about to hit the relay when we had a power spike and then everything went out," the winded pilot winced at the dead console.
Eirwen looked out in to the expanse of space and sighed. There was nothing more fearful a prospect than being adrift in the void of space. There was a faint glint in the blackness that caught her attention. She leaned closer to the window to get a better perspective. It was strange. The stars that had become familiar seemed lesser than before.
"Commander Shepard," Kaidan muttered from behind her.
She spun around to the man and folded her arms with a heavy blink. The lieutenant handed her a datapad, saluted and waited for her to look over the document. She merely scanned it and a pit formed in her stomach. Forty-eight hours was all they had before they would be at minimum life support function. Whatever had happened had drained most of their power from the element zero core and He3 was hovering around fifty percent.
"Put non-essential staff in stasis to conserve power. I want Tali and Adams working on getting power restored. Comms and navigation come second. I want to know where the hell we are."
"Uh, Commander, we have a problem," Joker remarked hesitantly.
The helmsman pointed out the window towards a ship. It was rather rugged looking. Not as sleek as anything in the Alliance or their allies, but the markings that heralded its name were strange and unknowable. As the vessel approached, Eirwen placed her hand on her side arm and frowned. The ship circled them twice and the thought that they might have made it in to the Terminus System unexpectedly came to mind. These were perhaps scavengers looking for an easy score on some Alliance tech, but as they came alongside the ship and stopped; the sudden jostle of something hitting the side made her jump.
"Damn it! We're being boarded. Get Vakarian and Wrex up her immediately," she ordered.
"Nothing can get inside. They would have to cut through part of the hull to make it here," Kaidan responded before leaving to get ready for a confrontation.
"Are we looking to have some fun, Shepard?" the hulking mass of krogan asked, shotgun drawn and pointed at the door.
"Aren't we always?" she replied back with a smirk.
"That's what I like about you, Commander; you're always looking for a good time," he chortled with amusement.
Garrus handed her an assault rifle and readied his own.
They listened to heavy boots thudding along the hull overhead. They followed it until it was just outside the airlock. Several bangs came from outside. They were loud and evenly spaced. The noise stopped and the hissing of air from outside the hatch spoke volumes. Eirwen heard the footsteps on the grating and the rushing of air came to a stop.
"Hello?" a man's voice called. He knocked at the door that separated them. "Is anyone in there?"
Eirwen put her finger to her lips and approached the door.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"We found your ship adrift and stopped to see if you needed any assistance."
She glanced over her shoulder to the aliens. The language was human, but if they were in the Terminus there were plenty of reasons that humans would be here as well.
"Suggestions?"
"Can we trust him?" Garrus questioned.
"If we can't: we can always kill them and take their stuff. You never know what we can use to fix our own ship," Wrex stated with a grin.
She looked back at the locked door and sighed. They were both right, but if their aid was truly sincere, they could definitely use it.
"Primary systems are down now. So we have no way to open the door on our end," she explained quickly.
There was a long pause between her and the man. She heard him scratching outside the door and the subtle mumblings of a man at work. She took a step back and pointed her rifle, awaiting the door to slide open allowing the man to board her ship. The panel flickered to life and the chime of it being pressed caused the three man group to ready. When the door swished open they drew down on the man. He panicked and dropped his helmet to the ground and threw his hands up.
"I'm unarmed," he stated.
"State your name. What ship did you come from? Does the Alliance know we're here?" she fired off rapidly; her eyes narrowing on the rugged faced man.
"Isaac. USG Kellion…" he paused at the last question and was perplexed. "Who the hell is the Alliance?"
Eirwen lowered her gun cautiously and cocked her head. She was now just as confused as he was. She nodded to her companions who followed her lead in putting their guns at their sides.
"Well, Isaac, I'm Commander Shepard, the commanding officer of the SSV Normandy, Alliance Navy, and we seem to be at a loss as to what happened. Are we in the Terminus? All we know is our mass effect core is out of commission at this point." She waved him along as they walked along the deck towards the lower level. She felt somewhere in her gut that she could trust him. It was an odd thing, considering the curiousness of his looks that he was giving to all their hardware. "Comms are down, along with navigation and we are running on backup power. Currently, we have NCOs already in sleep chambers to conserve on energy, but if we don't find a way to get our drive core back online that'll be the least of our concerns." She stopped at the emergency hatch to the cargo hold and looked at the man with intrigue. "You seem confused."
Isaac shook his head and stared at the turian and krogan briefly before resuming his exploration of the technologies employed on the ship.
"Is this an EarthGov prototype? I've never seen anything quite like it. I can tell you're military, but this is remarkable."
Eirwen lit a cigarette and pulled the hatch. She inhaled the harsh smoke and smirked.
"I'm not at liberty to say." She placed her hand on her hip and swayed on her heels. "What are you guys doing out here?"
"We were on our way to one of our ships that lost radio contact. It's probably an array that's out. So it wouldn't take long to fix." An audible beep came up and he looked up at the screen that emerged from his suit. Eirwen walked around him and stared in to the face of another man. He was stern and gruff looking, kind of like Captain Anderson.
"Isaac, what's going on over there? Who is that woman?"
"Hammond, just relax. Everything is fine. This is Commander Shepard of the Normandy. It seems we've stumbled across an EarthGov prototype that has failed testing." Eirwen started to protest that they were EarthGov. She didn't even know what the hell that was. "It seems their shock point drive is out."
"We don't have time to help them; let EarthGov deal with their own problems. We need to get to Aegis VII and fix our own vessel. CEC wants a full report on the situation," Hammond growled.
"I hate to interrupt this friendly chat, but…" Eirwen jumped in unexpectedly. "What's Aegis VII? Where the hell are we?"
"You're on the interior side of the termination shock of the Cygnus system," Isaac muttered.
"Well, that's great," she grumbled with a huff.
"Commander, it's Tali, we got some of our primary systems back online. The tantalus drive is not at one hundred percent, but we can get the core systems to run a diagnostic on other programs if necessary."
"Finally, some good news," Eirwen murmured happily.
"Oh, and we got communications back up," the quarian chimed with glee.
"Well, I guess I shouldn't be staying then. You seem to be well underway to fixing it yourselves. I won't be taking up more of your time." He started to leave when Shepard followed him to the airlock. "You know, if you can get to the Ishimura they might have some engineers that might be able to aid you in repairs."
"That sounds like a good idea," she agreed with a thankful smile.
"I don't know if that's such a good idea, Commander," Kaidan uttered. "This is a top secret vessel. We don't even know who these people are."
"Do you think I can come with you to ask for assistance, while they continue working on repairs?" she asked, ignoring and noting the lieutenant's complaint.
"If you're going, Commander, then I'm going with you, as well," Garrus insistently stated.
"I don't know. It might be easier to hang back here and help however you can. From the look on Isaac's face, I don't think your reception would be taken too lightly," she snorted.
"I'll have to get clearance from Hammond for you to board, but I don't think it should be a problem," Isaac said with a shrug. He pulled up the stern faced man and asked if Eirwen could join them. The bald man grumbled about the limitations of having another person join them, but accepted when Isaac argued that she could get some people up to her ship to fix it and get them back to Earth.
She told him to wait while she got in to her armor. Figuring that the ship hadn't docked alongside them, she was going to have to make the jump from one ship to the other. As she pulled on her boots with helmet in hand, she strolled up to the airlock and pointed to the door that she was ready.
"I'll be back in a couple of hours or so. Play nice kids. Pressly will be giving me a full report when I get back and I will be checking on you all periodically. If anything springs up, let me know," she ordered.
They stepped in to the airlock and as she pulled her helmet on she sighed in anticipation. The airlock opened and as her magboots gripped the plating the door to the small shuttle opened. Isaac made the first jump and stood aside to let her make her leap. She crossed with ease, but he caught her arm nonetheless. When they stepped inside, she was greeted by guns pointed at her as well. She pulled her helmet off and walked past the armed guards with nary a care and sat at the back of the ship without a word.
"This is Hammond and Kendra," Isaac introduced before taking his seat at the front of the ship.
The engines hummed and in a flash the FTL kicked in. It was a familiar sound. As they came out of it, Eirwen saw the strangest sight. They had entered a debris field and saw the gaping maw of a cataclysmic impact. She rose from her seat and neared the man that was watching a recording of a woman on his screen.
"What the hell happened?" Eirwen questioned in awe. She rested her hand on the back of the seat and leaned closer; refusing to go farther than she already was. The pilot hailed the ship in question, but static was the only response they got back.
"It seems like a damaged array. Isaac and I can fix that in a couple of hours," Kendra replied.
When the ship came in to view Eirwen gasped. A huge chunk of rock hovered just below the ship. A heavy sinking feeling hit her in the gut. Something was wrong.
"Where are the running lights?" Kendra asked out loud.
Isaac looked up at the marine and frowned. They both had the same thought. There was something not quite right about the situation they now seemed to find themselves in.
"Take us in: nice and slow," Hammond told the pilot.
The sudden jolt as they broke the ship's barrier threw Eirwen forward and was caught by Isaac's arm shooting out in front of her. The pilot was becoming frantic. The shuttle began to groan and nosedive towards the hull of the ship. Hammond and Kendra argued about what to do and as the blast shield covered the window and the order was given to brace for impact, Eirwen held her breath and looked behind her to see her helmet rolling in her direction. She couldn't put much faith in the crudeness of the vessel she was in. It rocked and swayed violently and the sounds that came from the hull cried like it was going to be sheared in two.
She closed her eyes and felt heat encompass her. It was followed by a white light and she thought she had died when they collided with the ship. She heard an audible gasp and couldn't tell if it was hers or someone else's. Everything grew still. The whir of the air flowing through the cabin and sparks of electricity from wires made her open her eyes again.
"Are you alright?" Isaac asked.
"I'm fine," Eirwen muttered as she got off the floor and grabbed her helmet. She licked her lips and tasted blood. The fine cut in her lip oozed blood. The faint hint of sweet iron was overpowering to her taste buds.
"Good, let's get off the ship and see what happened," Hammond spoke to the group and disregarded the stranger's split lip.
Eirwen pulled up her omni-tool and muttered coarsely at it. As the group watched her, Isaac prepared and stood from his seat. He placed his hand on her shoulder. In silence they looked at each other and he nodded for her to proceed. She picked up her helmet as he led her to the door only to stop again and apologize for the rough landing that none of them had come to expect.
"Don't worry about it," she replied. "What's the worst that could happen?"