Disclaimer: Not mine. Bioware's.


Dead Man's Switch

Part Three: Damned If You Do . . .

Commander Kelly Singh was only a handful of years older than Shepard herself, with thin, tired features turned a livid shade of orange by the outdated comm hologram. "Well, good to see you alive, Commander. Do you have any idea of how much paperwork I'd have to do if you died?"

"I'm touched by your concern," snapped Shepard. She was far too tired to be tactful. Then again, that was likely the other woman's excuse, too. "Do you treat all your guests this way?"

"We don't get many celebrities in this neck of the woods, Commander," was the reply.

"I'm not a celebrity, I'm a soldier. Just like you. And I asked for a sitrep." Shepard was beyond patience. They were the same rank as far as the Alliance was concerned, but she was wondering if her Spectre status meant she could push a charge of insubordination.

"Look, Shepard," said the other commander wearily. "I imagine you've spent a lot of time running errands for the council and haven't a clue what the consequences of your heroics have been for us backwater colonies. The Alliance didn't have enough manpower to mop up the Citadel. No one did. But they were determined to do it. For the good of humanity, and all that. So, while the relief effort went on there, they were shuffling soldiers around like mad. They needed to man that relief effort, man everything essential, and have enough soldiers visible to present a brave face. That's hell to do when you've just lost a whole bunch in battle. They kept pulling troops from colonial outposts the brass considered 'low-risk.' To my surprise, apparently, despite our history, we're considered 'low-risk.' We were stretched thin before you arrived. Today I had troops drilling in the town square, to prepare for the unveiling--which, as you may guess, is now postponed, and the first bomb went off ten feet from them. Only two of them still on their feet."

"I'm sorry," said Shepard quietly. She knew too well what it was like to lose men, and the pain was raw in the other commander's voice.

"Not your fault as far as I know, Shepard, so don't waste your breath apologizing," Singh said brusquely, all business. "So that's the situation. Five bombs have been reported, casualties are now in the double digits by our best guess. It'll take days to get an adequate count of casualties. Bombs are hell that way; they don't like to leave bodies intact enough to be easily counted. It's not going to be easy to get an adequate headcount of the colony either, as some colonists drift in and out of town, there are strangers here for the unveiling and the colonists scattered in the panic. So trying to get an accurate idea of casualties from figuring out who's missing isn't an easy alternative. Our priority at the moment is to care for the wounded and try to figure out what the hell is going on. All bombs appear to have been intended for strategic locations. Three hit their mark; the one in the square, one went off at the garrison gate and caused us some temporary trouble when we tried to get out to start relief efforts, and a third took out the monorail that goes out to the farms. The one you saw was no doubt intended to disable the spaceport, and the one in street appears to have been headed for the hospital, but in both cases it appears the bombers panicked and hit the switch too early."

"What do we know about the bombers?" asked Shepard.

"Very little at present. All human by all accounts, which narrows down some possibilities. The reports we have say none of them were locals, but it isn't necessarily reliable—we've gotten big enough there are actually people not everyone knows." She sighed. "We'll know more if we manage to scrape up enough of them to DNA test. But we don't have any forensic scientists. Dr. Fletcher's the closest we've got to anyone qualified to do that sort of work, and that's only because he's an overarchiever. Mindoir's not big enough to have its own police force, Commander, or fire department. All we have in the way of civilian medical resources is the building you're standing in, and three doctors, one of them nine months pregnant. That means the military's responsible for relief, recovery, and investigation. Defense if it continues. And medical help if the hospital's overstretched." An holographic hand rubbed an holographic forehead. "We're coping so far, but I'm worried about that monorail bomb; there could be worse going on out in the fields that we don't know about. And unless the Alliance sends help–and I did ask for it–we may not be able to do deal with the recovery. You know what that's like."

Shepard did. Sifting through rubble, bagging bits of bodies. It was a long process, and one even more emotionally than physically tiring. And then someone had to sort them out and identify them. She shied away from the thought. "You think that's all?"

"I don't know," admitted Singh. "I'd happier if I could ID who was behind this, but we haven't had anyone try to take credit so far. I'm not a terrorist expert; I haven't a clue as to why someone would do something crazy like blow themselves up. I can't think of a single local crazy enough to do something like that, and if they're offfworlders, it seems a damn lot of trouble to go to for something, in the big picture, doesn't do that much damage."

"It's symbolic," said Shepard.

"Sure, symbolic. Of what? Most violent orgs are xenophobic, and we're not exactly alien friendly here for obvious reasons. We're not a hotbed of anything; we'd be insignificant if it weren't for the last raid. Alien bombers I could understand maybe, but no reports of that. Or maybe they're coming."

"Better paranoid than caught napping," said Shepard, and she momentarily saw something like respect flicker across the other woman's face. "Then again, not need driving yourself mad with paranoia either. It's a balance."

The other woman snorted. "Anyway. We've still got power, water and comms, so it isn't so bad. Hell, the spaceport's still perfectly functional; I just don't have any ships."

"If they were really trying to disable us, they'd have targeted those," agreed Shepard. "I'll come to the garrison—"

"No. You should—" Singh paused, apparently to select less confrontational phrasing. "I mean I suggest you stay there. It's the most strategic point within the town. I'll be sending a small team there to reinforce. Keep in touch." And, to belie her last words, she cut off the link without a further word.

"Well, thank you very much," Shepard told the far wall. She grimaced at the empty comm station, because she had no other immediate way of expression frustration, and glanced about the room.

Richard had called it the 'lunch room,' which seemed to make sense in terms of is usual function; the comm station was here, no doubt due to a lack of places to put it, but there was a table and a small food dispenser as well. A rather battered couch was at one end, beneath a rather cheerful anatomical diagram. It was a windowless room with the sort of metal pre-fab walls that every colonist was deathly sick of seeing. Many buildings at various locations throughout the galaxy were built out of kits, sheets of metals shipped in crates in spaceship holds for colonies, military garrisons, and research bases, each piece tagged with a number that corresponded that was neatly catalogued in the immense instruction manual that shipped with each kit. Most outposts ended up with a dreary sameness to the buildings. Architecture was rather depressing in space, really. Only the very large colonies, of which there were few, had the resources to actually build their own unique buildings rather than just use the kits.

Her father had shipped in wood from Earth to build a porch to their farmhouse, for her mother, who loved old-fashioned things. It was ridiculous, a ridiculous expense, a ridiculous element to the pre-fab house. The wood smelt richly of forest she had never seen, a warmer,wilder element than metal, and the boards creaked beneath her feet when she stepped up to the front door.

"Meg?" inquired a voice behind her; masculine and rich and rather tired. She turned; it was Richard, looking pale and tired. He wore the white coat that had signified a doctor for centuries open over a simple dark tunic and pants; his coat was reddened around the cuffs in a most alarming away. His golden hair was mussed.

She had spent a great deal of time as a teenager infatuated with him, her best friend's golden older brother. She had spent two years with him, her first serious relationship. Her only one, perhaps. She still had no clue what her relationship with Kaidan was, except that it did threaten to become more serious than the Alliance would probably approve of. Standing here, looking at Richard, she did not feel any of the old infatuation, the old attraction – or the old anger over the way he left her.

Instead what she did feel was a sort of unexpected, confused tenderness, worry about the weariness that made his face sag. "I've just finished speaking with Commander Singh," she remarked, to say something. "Charming woman."

He shrugged a little, leaning against the wall. "She's tired. We all are."

"You look tired," she pointed out. "How are things now? The commander seems to be trying very hard not to let me do anything." She was bitter. She needed to do something.

Richard was staring at his feet. "You have to realize, Meg. . .well. There are people here who don't like you."

"Don't like me? I don't even know them." Shepard didn't want to deal with interpersonal squabbles. People had died and she just wanted to shoot whoever was responsible.

"Well, it's not personally. It's just…there are people who are tired of the fact the first thing anyone ever mentions when they hear the word 'Mindoir' is you. There are others who take it a step further and think…well, generally they seem to think you're just a sort of pawn for the Alliance. To look good, recruit soldiers, and distract the people from the real problems in the colonies."

"Do you think that?" Shepard wasn't sure what was worse, coming back home to acclaim or infamy. She would have rather slunk back anonymously. Behind shades.

He looked up. "Oh, god, no. That's just not like my Meg. Not like you to do anything that wasn't real."

"More than real," said Shepard. "And I have the scars to prove it."

He lifted an hand and tapped the bridge of his own nose, where her scar ran. "I don't remember this one."

"Akuze," said Shepard simply. That was all she had to say. It was not something she wanted to talk about. However, awkwardness descended, and to fill the void she added, "Very dilute thresher maw venom. If it hadn't been diluted, I wouldn't have a face left."

"Ah." He was staring at the ground again, shoulders a little hunched. He was frailer than she remembered, built long and lean—or was it just that she was so used to well-muscled marines? Finally, he said, "You know you could have it removed. They're making quicker and more effective ways of removing blemishes all the time."

"I could," she replied, "but I'd never even thought of it. There are some things I need to remember."

"I see." Another pause fell, and he was still not looking at her. Finally, he volunteered, "Sue's gone into labour."

It took Shepard a moment to parse this, to realize the doctor she escorted through Mindorian rubble was not only Richard's wife but had a first name. "Oh. Then why aren't you with her?"

"I will be,'" he said stubbornly. "But she's insistent I work since she can't. Although it seems to be almost done now—god, Meg, how can you take it? All the blood and the people in pain? It's not new to me, really; I've done all sorts of emergency work, but never anything on this scale."

He was looking at her now, eyes a green glimmer in his weary face. "You manage," said Shepard. "You grit your teeth, and you go on, and you tell yourself you're doing the right thing. And then, sometime after, when all is safe and neat, you collapse for a few minutes. And cry, or have a stiff drink, or light a cigarette, or shoot up a drug, or have sex, or something to let it out. Then you go on."

"Is that how you deal?" He sounded professionally curious for a moment, more like a therapist inquiring than a friend. Or whatever he was.

She grinned mirthlessly at him. "I don't smoke"

He snorted. "I'm not sure that's entirely an healthy way to deal, Meg."

"There might be soldiers who deal with it better than I," replied Shepard steadily, "but I don't trust ones who deal too well with seeing civilians die. They can't go to pieces, but they need to care."

He shifted uneasily. "How are you doing, Meg?" he inquired, voice a little more earnest.

The question rankled for some reason. "I'm fine. Haven't you seen the vids? Hero and all. Fun times."

"That isn't what I asked," he said very quietly.

It still rankled. Perhaps it was because she shared personal information with so very few people – and so very few people asked. "I deal," she said finally.

"Do you still—"

"Yes," said Meg, before he could finish the question. She knew what he was referring to; her violent—quite literally—nightmares that drove them apart. The nighttime visions that left her flailing and blindly attacking her bedpartner. "But I deal."

He wasn't convinced, she knew. He was watching her, his shoulders bowed, his expression wary, and she wished earnestly for a moment he didn't know so much about her. She didn't like the fact that someone did know who she was, who she had been. Everyone had forgotten the kid she'd been—except for him. "Is there anyone else now, Meg?" he asked, and his voice was still very quiet.

"You're married," she retorted, before he went too far down any train of thought.

"God, Meg," he replied wearily. "That's not why I asked. I asked because—"

"Because you always thought I was damaged," Shepard retorted. She was tired. She had much better things to do than bicker with ex-boyfriends, especially when there were bombs going off in Mindoir. "Because you don't think I could ever have a stable relationship after what happened with you."

"No, I meant—"

"Well, there is someone else, Dr. Fletcher," Shepard informed him. "And he's wonderful. Among other things, he's far more patient than you ever were. And he's a soldier, too, so he understands."

He sighed, and raked a hand through his hair. "Look," he said. "My entire family died, and I was galaxies away, studying. Well, probably not studying. Probably getting drunk; that's what students do, and I did a lot of that my first few years. Instead you were at the very thick of it. You went through all that, you're all of the Mindoir I knew that I had left—and I wasn't strong enough to help you. I'm sorry."

That wasn't what she expected. She softened, just a little. "Is that why you're here? I was—really surprised. First you were going to be a doctor. Then you changed your mind and were studying chemisty. Then medicine again, and last I heard you were an anesthesiologist at some fancy hospital back on Earth. Now you're here—as what? In general practice, I suppose."

"I'm a jack of all trades," he replied a little wryly. "I've taught myself all sorts of things to deal with what the colony needs because—well, that's what colonists do. But I felt I owed Mindoir—something. Something for not being there."

"If you'd been there," Meg said bluntly, "You'd have died."

"You're probably quite right," he said. "But I can't help feeling guilty. Helps me deal. I'm not sure we're so different after all."

She bit her lip. Finally, she said. "Go to your wife. She needs you right now, even if it's to yell at."

He smiled faintly. "Well, only if all the patients are dealt with. She's a bit like you. Just a little."

"How so?" asked Shepard suspiciously.

"Feisty and tough," he chuckled. "And occasionally difficult to deal with."

Shepard ran out of responses, so she fell back on one that served her well when she was five and he was eight.

She stuck her tongue out.

He only laughed.

*

Shepard was fed up. She wanted to do something. But Commander Singh continued being frustratingly evasive; the flood of casualties had thankfully dried up, and she didn't know nothing about birthing no babies. So she reviewed what vid footage they had of the bombings a thousand times, plotted them out on a map, paced a great deal, and finally took herself to a room on the top floor to look over Mindoir.

She was only a couple of stories up so the view was hardly impressive. Especially given the prefab metal buildings were hardly the sort of thing one would put on a holo-postcard anyway.

She took out her sniper rifle, peering through the scope. Although there was nothing to shoot, the feel of it in her hands reassured her. She knew what she was doing when she was sniping. It was a state of mind; the calmness, the steadiness, the sureness of sighting and then squeezing the trigger. Everything else went away. She never even thought about the fact she was killing someone. It was too precise a state of mind to let emotions cloud it.

The streets were empty through the narrowness of the sight. Well, almost were one or two people darting around, looking furtive. She watched them through the rifle's sight, dismissing them as innocent. One was a child, looking frantic. Another was in uniform.

How quiet Mindor was. Night was falling. Mindor had short nights; only a few hours of darkness in summer. It was the way the planet was tilted. The days were not long either. One got used to it. The standardized days on Alliance ships, adjusted to match Earth's cycles, always felt wrong to her.

There was another figure now, running along the street. Toward the hospital. She just caught it out of the corner of her eye, and frowned at it; she thought it came from he hills, not from one of the buildings. Perhaps it was a wounded colonist, trying to find his or her way to help and safety. She turned the rifle toward it, and watched. It was a man, tall and skinny, with a ragged coat..

Something stirred at the back of her mind. As closer he came, heading toward the hospital, his image came clearer, sharper. She could see the odd bulges beneath his coat, something clasped in one hand.

She didn't have time to think about whether she was right or wrong. She sighted the gun and squeezed the trigger.

An explosion, far louder than a rifle could cause, rocked the twilight.

*

"Dead man's switch," said Shepard wearily.

"Pardon?" asked Commander Singh. The quality of the comm was uncertain. Something vital had been hit. There was almost picture, the commander's face flickering in and out like a flame-coloured ghost, and her voice was disrupted by static.

Outside the room someone was yelling; a child was crying. Shepard could distinguish Richard's voice calling commands. The lights wavered, and then steadied again. "Dead man's switch," Shepard repeated, holding up the lump of metal they had managed to recover from the last bomber. "Or what some engineers like to call a 'fail-deadly' mechanism. As opposed to a fail-safe."

Singh was not amused. "Ha. Ha. Ha," she intoned sarcastically.

"It works, so far as I can tell from what's left," said Shepard, "by requiring constant pressure on it, about the level of a firm handhold. The switch can be manually triggered, of course; I think that's how the earlier bombers triggered theirs, but it means the bomb will go off even if the bomber lets go of the switch. If they die or pass out, for instance."

"So, in other words…" said the other commander, reluctant to finish her sentence.

"Damned if we do, damned if we don't," summed up Shepard. "Granted, it's not a complete lost cause. We can always try to take them out while they're somewhere that causes the least damage. Assuming there are more of them."

"Well, now they're trying to cripple the colony," Singh said. "They hit the main power generator; we've got backup at the garrison and in the hospital and nowhere else. Comms to outside the planet are down; within the colony—well, they're kinda iffy, as you can see."

The door opened. It was an old fashioned door that swung back and forth, loosely mounted on hinges. Such would have been an unusual sight in more civilized parts of the gala, but they were not that uncommon on colonies, especially in areas where the power went out frequently. Powered doors were a pain in the ass when the battery ran down.

The door opener was Richard, staring at the orange screen of an omnitool. "Meg—Commander," he greeted. "Commander," he added, as he glanced to the flickering hologram on the comm.

"Doctor doctor," replied Singh, who was apparently not completely devoid of a sense of humour. Albeit apparently of a rather dry sort.

Richard swallowed, and looked to Shepard. "Well. The fact that you…took that one bomber out before he killed anywhere else meant we could get a DNA sample. With the other bombs, we have to . . . sift through and test all the remains near the denotation site until we found the odd one out to be relatively sure we had the bomber."

"Yes," said Shepard shortly. She did not want to think about sifting through rubble to collect the tiniest scrap of what could be the remains of a body. There had been far too much of that at the Citadel.

Richard ran a hand through his hair. "So I ran the DNA through our data bank just in case it was someone who was recorded. Most settlers are. And, well, Meg, do you remember Curtis Hauser?"

"No," said Shepard, and then "Yes. He lived on the side of town. His parents raised…corn was, was it? Turnips. No, it was turnips. A little clumsy; fell over his shadow once and broke his leg. But a good kid." She had been four years older than him, so she felt safe calling him a 'good kid.' It took her a moment to realize just why his name had come up. "Wait. You're not saying?"

Richard shrugged an eloquent shrug of his lean shoulders. "I hate to say it, but the DNA matches up."

A frown flickered across Singh's face, half-lost in the orange static. "He would have been lost in the raid, no? Taken into slavery? But why would an escaped slave turn to terrorism? I suppose a lot of them are just plain screwed up in the head."

Shepard had a much nastier suspicion. One that was ringing entirely too true to her. "What if he's not escaped after all?"

It was at that dramatically appropriate moment that the lights flickered. The static-y ghost of a holographic Singh disappeared. The lights strengthened, and the dim buzz of the generator that Shepard had become so used to disappeared. A blank vid screen at the far end of the room sputtered to light.

There was no perfectly groomed news reporter or glossy war vid on the screen. Instead it was the slightly fuzzy image of a batarian, all four eyes on the camera, standing before a small group of human. Purple grass grew about their feet.

"People of Mindoir," announced the batarian. "My name is Balak. Such a pleasure meeting all of you."

Balak. Shepard knew that name, had faced that batarian. She almost killed him. She should have. A cold serpent of dread coiled in her stomach.

"Today it has been my pleasure," continued the batarian, sounding entirely too pleased with himself, "to return to you the children of Mindoir, taken sixteen years ago. Well, perhaps there was a small catch to their return—namely explosives.

"I will return the rest at daybreak, in the town square. They will be armed with more than enough explosives to obliterate this abomination of a colony once and for all. There are no ships in port. The explosion will reach well into the wilds. You will not be able to outrun this explosion." He spoke coldly, clinically, perfectly in control of himself. The last time she had met him he had been closer to unhinged.

"However, I will, out of the kindness of my heart, give you one chance to avoid this fate. I know perfectly well that the great," the sarcasm in his voice was almost tangible, "Commander Shepard is currently here, on Mindoir. If she will surrender herself to me by daybreak, I will disarm the bombs and she will leave with I and your former children. If not…" he shrugged. "Boom.

"Commander. You have four hours."