"So lay it on me. What happened?"
Miranda cleared her throat, and straightened up at her place in the comm room.
"Well, according to the manifest, we'd just restocked our deep space rations. Our manifest claims 460 kilograms of dried stores, including MRE's and water packs. That was all we had in Cargo Bay One. No chems, no fuels, nothing else. Certainly nothing that could mix and produce an explosion. I compared it by EDI's logs, though. EDI's survey of weight said we were carrying 459.4 kilograms instead."
Shepard shook her head.
"So, someone nipped down for some mac and cheese."
All eyes in the room swung to Grunt.
"Don't." He said, a growl low in his chest. "Don't get me wrong, I like your human food just fine. Why the hell would I want the preserved stuff when we've got better right upstairs?"
"Fair enough. So we've got a little under a kilogram of missing weight. Tali, what did your team find?"
Tali's fingers flew over her omni tool. A display lit in the center of the conference railing. There was a schematic of the cargo bay. Different coloured outlines recreated the placement of the rations.
"This is where the stores were."
Shepard waited, leaning back on her heels. She could feel Garrus practically vibrating with excitement beside her. He was either on the trail of something and was waiting eagerly to unveil his discovery, or he simply had the hunter instinct ramped up.
"These areas of blue indicate residue of chemicals that we found. You can see from where we found them, that it indicates where the explosion took place and how far out it extended."
Shepard ripped her eyes away from Garrus's hands and examined the display. It was all contained in one spot. They were lucky that the rations had been shoved up against an interior wall. If they'd been placed near the hull like usual, it could have been a lot worse. Jacob spoke up.
"What was unusual, commander, was the types of residue we found."
"Right!" Tali took over. She was starting to get excited. "Everything got sucked out into the vacuum when EDI vented the bay. But we found traces of cesium, nitric acid, and hexamethylene-tetramine, as well as sulphur."
Shepard paused, and then nodded thoughtfully.
"Okay." She said, glancing around. "I'm going to confess that my expertise isn't in chemical compounds. Pretend that I'm in kindergarten and put in terms I can understand."
Garrus spoke up, cutting off Tali just as she was starting to talk.
"Nitric acid and hexamethylene-tetramine are high explosives. Cesium and sulphur show up in exhibitionary fireworks." He watched Shepard's face. "Cesium gives it a pretty, pretty purple-blue colour."
He was not disappointed. Shepard's eyes narrowed. He saw her chest rise slightly as she drew in a breath.
"So it was a bomb. But wait…why fireworks and high explosives?"
"Could be an amateur. Could be he didn't have enough of the nitric-tetramine stuff to get the bang he wanted. He might have thought the fireworks were more potent than they were." Garrus's mind was working furiously It was likely Omega, though whoever did this would have been smarter to do it in the Shrike Abyssal because it wasn't quite the rotten pisshole that Omega was. "Our rations were lightened. We got something else added instead."
"So where did we get that particular load from?" Ezmay's head swiveled back to Miranda, who shook her own.
"I'm not sure commander. We had both levo and dextro rations down there, not mixed, of course. But we got provisions on both stations. Omega didn't have everything we needed."
"Well, godammit." Shepard swore. "Tali, did you find anything else?"
"Yes, actually. We found a bit of coagulated blood. Just here." A brilliant red splotch lit up on the display.
This made his mandibles flare outward in surprise.
"Did we compare the DNA from the blood to the DNA Dr. Chakwas has in the personnel files?" Shepard asked.
"She's doing it right now. There's a lot to look at. Everyone on board now, plus those that we lost in the Collector attack." Tali nodded. "Someone could have cut themselves and it didn't get cleaned up."
"It would be in a state of decay by now." Garrus pointed out. He'd seen enough blood spilled on the Citadel. "Not coagulated."
"This is true." Jacob said. "But just to be on the safe side."
"Fair enough." Shepard said. "Garrus?"
He cleared his throat.
"I haven't found anything yet. You know we don't keep that bay aired up, and we don't keep the lights on down there beyond what shines down from Grunt's living space. It's hard to see. I'm going to go through it once more, look at thermal and infared, go through it with a fine-tooth comb. I can tell you that there wasn't anyone in there that wasn't our people when we were at Omega and the Shrike depot."
Shepard nodded. "So, someone at the suppliers slipped it in before we loaded it on."
"More than likely. It's the only logical explanation…" He trailed off. There was something else he wanted to say, but not in front of the present company. Ezmay cocked her head at him, and a look of understanding bloomed there.
"Joker?"
The pilot spoke over the intercom. He was still in the cockpit, hadn't wanted to tear himself away. It was easier for everyone this way.
"EDI found a signal embedded in our outgoing traffic not long before the explosion. Whoever encrypted it though, they weren't dicking around. We're still trying to crack it. Probably made by another VI."
There was silence in the comm room. Shepard broke it by leaning against the rail and cracking her knuckles. The sharp noises cut through the silence by a gunshot.
"Right then. Someone's gunning for our asses, then." She paused, steepling her fingers. Her eyes were fixated on Tali's display. Garrus could recognize the deep thought. Shepard had once joked that instead of a brain, she had a space hamster running tirelessly on a wheel. He imagined right about now, that hamster was running at about mach 12. Little legs were probably bloody, poor thing.
"Right." She said again, straightening. "We dock at Illium in about twelve hours. Everyone, you can go about your business as usual, but I want a security detail watching the Normandy. Thane, I want you, Grunt, and Samara keeping an eye out. Miranda, Jacob, Mordin, you switch in for them at a usual shift change. Keep an eye on the repair techs especially. Keep me informed if you find anything else."
She nodded. People began to drift off. Ezmay turned, fixing Garrus with a look.
"Officer Vakarian, I believe you left a great deal of money in my cabin from our card game. You better come collect it."
She didn't fool him; he wasn't coming up to collect credits. She knew….She knew there was something he couldn't say in front of the rest of the crew.
"I'll just walk with you then, Commander."
Ramrod straight, they both walked to the elevator and boarded. Garrus kept a practiced, bored expression on his face. He was suddenly paranoid. He held his tongue until they were safely in Shepard's cabin.
Something gave him pause. The air smelled different in Shepard's cabin. It smelled spicy, but then he remembered the spilled wine. Little cleaning bots had come and cleaned the broken glass and spills. He found the cards and money laying neatly on the table.
How fast a perfect evening could be ruined. He smirked. Just his luck.
"Out with it, Garrus." She said. When Garrus looked over to her, she was working her right shoulder. It must still pain her. "What aren't you telling me?"
"The supplier might have slipped in the explosives. One of the crew might have also planted the bomb."
Shepard paused, frowning. She let her arm drop to her side.
"You really think one of them would do that?" Black hair shifted as she shook her head. "No. I refuse to believe it. These people have been through hell and back with me."
"They might not have been gunning for you, Ezmay." He still felt weird saying her name. "The bomb was right underneath Grunt's sleeping space. It wasn't near the hull. I can't help but think that the placement was intentional."
"Clan Weyrloc, maybe?"
"Maybe. But didn't you damn near wipe out the entire clan?"
"Probably." Again, she was working her shoulder. "Dammit, this tightened up."
Garrus sighed, then jabbed a talon at the couch.
"Sit."
A half grin came to Shepard's face.
"Garrus, can't you think of better ways to cop a feel? I mean, every teenage boy on Earth tries that tactic."
"What am I going to feel? Your shoulder?" He rolled his eyes. "I'm not offering to rub you down. You need to get off your feet and stretch out that arm."
The curve of Shepard's back went convex as she sagged. Resigned, she plunked down on the couch.
"It's terrible, but I can't help but feel a little invigorated by all this."
"It's only natural." He replied. "People like us aren't content unless there's some kind of violence going on."
In a closet by her bed, Shepard kept a small selection of liquors. Garrus knew which one she favoured when she was fatigued. He plucked the bottle of lemon vodka and poured a bit into a glass for her. It was shame he couldn't try it; the smell was intriguing. He made a mental note to try something in lemon made for turians when he got a chance. Ezmay took the glass with an appreciative sigh and sipped at it. It burned down her gut, nearly as much as her shoulder burned when she raised her arm up and over her head.
"Who do you think it is?" Referring to the planter of the bomb. Her mind never stopped working.
Garrus was back at the liquor cabinet, perusing it thoughtfully. She kept a couple of turian ales for when they played cards, but he wasn't feeling it right now. With a sigh, he closed the hatch, and was about to reply when his breath caught in his throat. In the shiny metal, Shepard's bed was reflected. Below it, there was a small red light blinking ominously.
Blink…..blink….blink… He watched in horror as it began to blink in quicker succession.
Gods, he'd never moved so fast in his life. In one fluid motion, he spun and crossed the small sitting room in two swift steps. Shepard barely had time to register that he was moving towards her before he was picking her up. The tumbler of vodka fell and shattered on the table. One moment, she was comfortably sipping the vodka, working the kink out of her shoulder, and then next moment, she was slung over a turian's bony shoulder. Instinct told her not to struggle, but let him carry her.
They weren't quite through the door when it blew. Metal flew, bits of glass, water from the fish tank. Garrus and Shepard were thrown into the wall by the elevator. She shielded her face from the blast, but there was no way to protect her head from slamming into the wall.
The world went black.