He opens his eyes to the pop and crackle of static, and Anderson's voice calling his name. "Major Alenko. Major Alenko, acknowledge!" Acknowledge... Kaidan fumbles for the radio at his belt.
"Yeah. I'm here." He chokes on the clouds of dust and debris and his head is screaming, pain stabbing behind his eyelids, but he runs his hand over his body and feels nothing but minor cuts and a whole lot of bruises. His muscles hurt as he pulls himself up from the rubble and shattered glass, but he stands without too much difficulty. He blinks a few times and takes a cautious breath, then puts one foot in front of the other. He's got a job to do, and he's felt a hell of a lot worse than this and survived.
His training kicks in almost immediately, taking over as his stomach drops out when he surveys his surroundings, a callous rank-ordering of priorities the only thing that keeps him from being overwhelmed by guilt at the cold and lifeless bodies of men and women who had been thrown by the blast to land like broken dolls, some still lying in pools of blood where jagged scraps of metal had torn into them. He swallows hard, fighting his body's own need to panic, and flee, at the terrifying scene playing out outside: Reapers, more than one, stalking the Earth like they own it, each step adding to a trail of destruction several orders of magnitude worse than what he sees in this room. It had taken the combined efforts of every fleet the Citadel had access to for them to fight off a single Reaper scout three years ago, and it had been anything but an easy victory. But the only option other than fighting is rolling over and accepting death, and he does not plan on committing suicide. He refuses to accept the Reapers' victory as inevitable. Shepard didn't, when everyone told her that defeating one was impossible. She's the only person Kaidan's ever met who is quite literally too stubborn to die, and that's what they need right now. Shepard and the people who follow her are Earth's only remaining hope.
"Major, I can't raise the Normandy," Anderson's voice interrupts, and Kaidan frowns. The Normandy's buried deep in some garage, isn't it? From what he's heard, the Alliance is stripping out everything down to the faucets in the head just to make sure Cerberus can't use the ship to spy on them.
But it's not like the Reapers are likely to postpone their invasion so the tech guys can triple-check launch clearances, and where Shepard goes, the Normandy goes.
"I'll get on it," he replies. And then, after a slight pause. "Shep-"
"She's a little banged up, and a lot pissed off," Anderson cuts in immediately, and relief surges through Kaidan, enough to push him forward.
"So basically, the same as usual," he quips, as he scrambles over twisted metal and rock out onto the open ground that will get him to the airfield. If the Reapers haven't destroyed everything there already.
It feels wrong to be joking as the world burns around him, but in the military they have all learned that inappropriate humor is sometimes the only thing that keeps the weight of reality from crushing you. A soldier who takes everything too seriously, who is paralyzed by fear, is worse than useless.
He still almost falters when he finds himself at the edge of a smoking crater that used to be a park. Kids played here almost every afternoon, he'd even talked to a few of them, the fearless ones who run up to show the real Alliance solider their toy versions of the ships that are docked in the hangar he's trying to get to now. Most of them are military brats, with parents working on the base, and the older ones had a habit of asking him about his postings and trying to figure out if he'd ever met anybody in their family. The little ones just like to pester him until he shows off his biotic capabilities in a simple but harmless way: moving something with his mind, or creating a tiny firework of artificial light. It surprises him sometimes, how what he does can still be viewed with wonder. The Alliance military has mostly gotten used to biotics now, it's nothing special anymore. If it's acknowledged at all it's only in the negative sense: biotics are unstable and dangerous. Making those kids laugh was a necessary counter to all of that pressure, and now Kaidan finds himself wondering if any of them are even still alive.
With heavy footprints, he routes his way around the crater. Marine training means he can run over uneven terrain without thinking about it, yet he still finds himself shaken and jolted every other step by the impact tremors created by every step the nearby Reaper takes. He is no more significant than an insect to that monstrosity in the sky. It will destroy him and everything he's ever known as easily as stepping on an anthill. Kaidan blocks out those thoughts and shuts down the part of his brain that reacts to the primal terror of the Reaper's presence, concentrating instead on getting to the Normandy, as quickly as he can. There is no time to waste.
It would be bad enough if the only threat was the Reapers' continuous aerial assault, those superheated lasers that annihilate anything caught in their path. But as Kaidan skirts the fractured fenceline trying to dodge them, ducking into buildings that no longer have walls, a wave of husks - once living human beings - throws itself at him. He fires blindly until the assault stops and looks down to see more broken corpses than he can easily count piled around his feet. Some of them still spark with the remnants of the biotic charges he'd hit them with, and spent thermal clips litter the ground. He takes a few quick breaths, and runs again.
The radio at his hip still sputters out panicked calls for help and the more controlled requests for status reports from senior officers. Anyone who can find a working frequency does, and their words all cut into one another, overwhelmed by bursts of hissing static and the high-pitched whine of electronic feedback. What little sense he can make of it all is overwhelmingly not good. But Anderson is still alive, making slow but steady progress toward the landing zone, and Shepard apparently hasn't gone too soft in her months off-duty, because she's holding her own against more of the husks he'd just fought his way through, keeping herself clear, and waiting for a pickup. Just like old times.
Kaidan is surprised by the giddiness he feels at the sight of the familiar shadow passing over him in the sky. He hasn't set foot on the Normandy in over three years, and this isn't the same ship. That Normandy is a crumbling wreck buried under the drifting snows of Alchera. But the voice cutting through all of the static to call him out on a private channel is exactly the same. "About damn time!"
"Joker?"
"None other. C'mon. Get your ass up here." The Normandy swoops in so low that Kaidan barely has to jump to haul himself smoothly into the cargo bay. He tucks himself behind the still-opened crates of equipment and tools scattered all over the place, and does his best to ignore the hostile glares the uniformed MPs are shooting in his direction. Wind howls loud across open sky, the ramp is angled sharply down; from here it looks like a knife cutting through the ground beneath their feet. As he watches, people below them scramble like ants. And the Reapers continue stalking the Earth, here from out of nightmares, to harvest and destroy.
Kaidan clings tightly to his pistol and barely keeps himself from wasting the few shots he has remaining firing into the empty air, just to feel like he's doing something. He listens to the chatter cutting through the shifting bands of his radio, and flips tiny biotic pulses between his fingers as he tries to convince himself that it's a good thing he's hearing less screaming now, when the truth of it aches deep under his ribcage: there is nothing left but silence and static. Everyone is dead.
"You okay, Alenko?" Joker asks, a quiet voice in his ear.
Kaidan watches Vancouver burn, and shakes his head. "No," he whispers.
There is a pause, so long that he begins to think that maybe he hadn't responded aloud after all. "Yeah, I know," Jeff Moreau replies, soft and serious.
