Perspective 4
Later, Ashley had a very hard time piecing together the opening moments of the Reaper invasion. The shock, fear and panic had splintered her sense of passing time, leaving the memories strangely fragmented. She recalled small moments: a child, crying in the door of a ruined building; civilian bodies, trampled by a fleeing crowd; more civilians running from a horde of husks, being cut down by the Reaper at the far end of the street.
There was something surreal about watching the enormous synthetic army march through the heart of downtown Vancouver, crumbling buildings and obliterating the Alliance's slapdash defenses. It was a pathetic slaughter, both in the air and at street level. They were called reapers for a reason, and every time their husks swept a street, they left behind piles of corpses, and the broken remains of one of earth's proudest cities.
Ashley had acquired a weapon somewhere. Whether it had been given to her by an Alliance marine, or she had taken it from the body of a dead security officer, she couldn't remember. The important part was that it was in her hands. An Avenger assault rifle. Just what the doctor ordered.
Vega did not have a weapon, but the young man didn't seem to need one. She had never seen a human being approach a combat state close to the Krogan's bloodlust, but Vega had managed it somehow. The man had taken one look at the husks beating down innocent civilians, and began to tear them apart with his own bear hands. He would pick them up and slam them into walls, snap their necks, or beat them with sticks or rocks or whatever piece of wreckage was near his hands at the time. He didn't know what they were, and had no concept of just what their masters were either. In mind, body and soul, he had defaulted to protecting civilians at any cost. If Ashley hadn't been there to exert some control and direction, the young man would have been dead in a matter of minutes.
As she fought, a feeling began to creep through her muddled mind. It was an old thought, left over from her days chasing Saren. But in the midst of the chaotic destruction, it was something to cling to, and a goal to work towards, and Ashley desperately needed both.
Get to the Normandy, beat the Reapers!
The thought overtook her. Any part of her mind which wasn't processing combat data was repeating it over and over and over again. And the Normandy was stationed at the far end of the Alliance compound. She had seen it every day from her apartment building, stared at it over bowls of cereal. It had been in dry dock for six months, being retrofitted as the Alliance wiped all traces of Cerberus from it, inside and out.
She contacted Anderson first and informed him of her plan. He seemed to approve, being more interested in getting Shepard on board. The council chamber had been hit by a Reaper's beam, and he was busy trawling through the wreckage. The Alliance facility itself was a rapidly collapsing structure. Three Reapers had landed nearby and their beams, when they weren't targeting escaping ships and loose clusters of fleeing civilians, were cutting the resistance's headquarters to shreds. Cutting straight through the structure was too risky; Ashley was not going to die of starvation, trapped in the air pocket of a ruined building, only able to listen to the carnage outside! She refused to die before the war had truly started! She lead Vega round the outside of the building, fully aware of a smaller Reaper unit one block away, hidden from view by clusters of buildings. Though like a shark's fin breaking the surface of the water, the elongated body of the Reaper rose above the buildings, bobbing in time to its movements. As Ashley ducked from doorway to doorway, cutting down husks and fighting the flow of panicking civilians, she couldn't help but notice that the enormous Reaper appeared to be following the same path.
After what may have been a few seconds, or an eternity, she reached the end of the street, and peeked around the corner to her right, coming into full view of the Normandy. The ship was still in dry dock, several stories above her head, silhouetted against the crumbling skyline of Vancouver. It sat there, motionless, silent, and horribly exposed.
Perhaps it was her imagination, but the blaring noise the Reaper destroyer emitted as it turned the corner to her left was almost triumphant. With a sudden shock, Ashley realized that she was standing on the street corner, completely and utterly exposed to it. Even from a block away it towered over her head, but it seemed to be ignoring her completely, and with a sinking feeling she realized that it was targeting the Normandy.
She turned back to the inert ship and began screaming at it hysterically, waving her arms above her head, willing it to move. Yet the docking clamps were still attached, and the Reaper was charging its beam.
The Destroyer fired, the thick red energy cutting a swath of destruction up the street towards the vulnerable ship. It was halfway to its target when the Normandy's engines suddenly came online. The ship sprang forward, tearing away from the docking clamps holding it in place, and shooting straight towards the Reaper. It was less than fifty meters away from an imminent crash before it suddenly flitted upwards like a swallow, vanishing into the broiling sky.
Ashley threw her hands in the air, overcome with relief. Her ears were ringing from the noise and her eyes tearing up from the sudden wind which had nearly knocked her to the pavement. But she was overjoyed nonetheless.
"Williams!" James shouted a warning from a few meters behind her. The Reaper, having lost its original target, had turned its attention to the only other visible target: the oblivious alliance soldier, standing on the street corner. Once again its beam cut a burning hole in the street, this time chasing her back into the shadow of the Alliance headquarters. She burst through a ruined doorway and took a hard right turn, feeling the heat of the beam as it burned the path behind her, missing her by metres. James appeared a few moments later, vaulting over a windowsill. He crouched beside her and took a long breath, examining the desolate offices in which they had taken shelter. Broken glass covered the floor, along with papers and tablets. It was deserted, aside from a few corpses. He said, "This is Loco!"
"No kidding!" Ashley reached up to her headset and tried her radio. She had to get to the Normandy. That was key to everything. Get to the Normandy, beat the Reapers. Outside the window, the Reaper marched past, appearing to have given up on its targets. It had plenty more to choose from, after all. "S.S.V. Normandy, this is Commander Ashley Williams. We're stranded at Alliance HQ! Requesting Evac."
"Are you insane?" Vega stared at her. "Comms have got to be going crazy right now! What the hell's-"
Ashley held up a hand as the static in her earpiece slowly morphed into a discernible voice. Feminine and authoritarian. "Commander Williams, this is the Normandy. Flight Lieutenant Jeffery Moreau would like to say-" the voice cut out to be replaced by yet another, far more familiar and at that moment, infinitely more welcome. "Ash! Ash, that you?"
"Joker!" Ashley grinned at Vega's astonished expression. "How'd you pick up my signal?"
"Had some help cutting through the muck. Long story! Be happy you got through at all. You'd think people asking for help'd be getting a busy signal. It's only the Reaper invasion, after all…"
"We need a pickup, Joker!"
"Yeah yeah yeah. I'm working on it. What was that, EDI?" Joker's voice paused; he was obviously speaking to someone on his end of the line. "Ash, there's a sky port on the far end of the bay. If you can get there, we'll pick you up. Keep your Comm tuned in so we can locate you."
"Roger that." Ashley said grimly. She looked up at Vega. "We need a skycar."
"Are you crazy? Those monsters are knocking everything that moves out of the sky right now!"
Ashley ignored him, peeking carefully over the edge of the windowsill. The Reaper had moved on down the street, leaving enormous craters where its clawed appendages had bitten into the pavement. There were plenty of abandoned sky cars scattered across the street, but the majority had been destroyed by gunfire, or the Reaper's recent trip.
"Vega, you ever stolen a sky car?" she asked, glancing through the window of the nearest intact vehicle. Most skycars were keyed to Omnitool codes, or DNA signatures. They couldn't be activated without the proper security code, and she wouldn't know where to start.
"Sure." James offered. "Remind me one day to tell you about my time in San Diego." He grabbed Ashley's rifle for a moment and used it to blow out the window. Then he handed it back. In the distance, Ashley could hear the sounds of gunfire and screaming. She crouched beside the car, rifle at the ready.
"Gonna be a few minutes, Williams." The bulky man reported, tearing out a panel and examining the wire beneath it.
"Roger that." She replied.
A full minute passed relatively peacefully, only two husks had attacked them. But Ashley kept her guard up, paying special attention to the smaller reaper, which had moved down the street behind them. She was just beginning to relax a little when an enormous flaming meteor cut past her and crushed a building at the end of the street, raising a cloud of dust. A few seconds later, enemy fire poured out of the ruins, spattering across her shields and the hood of the skycar. She dove to shelter in one of the reaper footprints and sprayed a few rounds into the cloud of dust.
"The hells' going on?" James demanded.
"keep working!" Ashley ordered as three husks came charging out of the smoke. She cut them down easily enough, noting with some dismay that she was running out of thermal clips for her Avenger assault rifle. Half a dozen dark, bulbous monstrosities followed the husks, taking cover in craters and behind ruined skycars. Their faces looked vaguely Batarian, but they had as much in common with that race as husks did with human beings.
They were firing out of some sort of cannon, though whether it was attached to their arms or being carried was entirely unknown. All Ashley registered was that they were excessively ugly, and trying to kill her. She responded in kind, firing in five and six-round bursts. They fell easily enough, but she had to take cover more than once to let her shields recharge. Each time, the Reaper minions would move up a line of cover and rearrange themselves, making it more difficult for her to keep track of their numbers and movements.
"Almost done, Williams." Vega reported from somewhere behind her. "Keep'em occupied!"
Ashley obeyed, aiming and firing as best she could. Sometimes she was able to knock one of them out of the fight, other times it was simply bullets wasted on suppression alone. She felt thankful of those long missions with John, where she had learned how to fight superior numbers. Four healthy enemies were far easier to deal with than five slightly wounded ones. She concentrated on the vulnerable ones, and those trying to flank. It was difficult, as she also had the task of suppressing their firebase. She couldn't exactly win, but she wasn't losing either, and against the reapers, that counted for something.
"I'm done! Get in here!" the thrumming of working skycar engines confirmed Vega's story. Ashley swept the entire enemy line with high velocity rounds as she charged from cover and leapt towards the waiting skycar. She made it through the passenger-side window just as the Reaper firebase finished recovering, and their small arms fire chased it until it was out of view.
Ashley cursed at Vega; her legs had still been hanging out the window when he'd taken off, and it took her a moment to crawl inside the rest of the way and reorient herself. No sooner had she done so, then a miniature version of the Reaper beam sliced off the skycar's driver-side mirror.
"Joder!" Vega cursed in Spanish and plunged the small vehicle through a narrow street, weaving up and down and back and forth to avoid the sweeping beam. The passenger window had already been blow out in the groundside firefight. Ashley leaned out and let a few bursts off, trying to ward away their strange spherical attacker. The thing followed them as they rose higher into the air, heading towards the bay. The G-forces presed against Ashley and she fought to keep her grip on the skycar. Their attacker exploded without warning, destroyed by the human fighter which had zipped between them towards an Arial battle going on by Vancouver's downtown core. Ashley took a long breath, silently thanking god, and the anonymous pilot. She lowered herself back into the vehicle and sighed, stealing a few seconds of peace. James Vega seemed perfectly at ease, except that his knuckles gripping the steering wheel were ghostly white.
"There it is!" He said, pointing across the bay. The small skycar shot out over the open water, racing towards the distant shoreline. Ashley's heart sank as yet another Reaper descended from the heavens and landed right on top of the skyport, putting its beam to use on the escaping shuttles and the crowds of humans heading towards the docks. She reached up to her headset. "Joker, we need another plan. This is going to get a lot more difficult…"
"Honestly, Ash. Where'd all your faith go?" the pilot replied. At the same moment, a sudden thrumming and a rush of air made both Ashley and Vega jump, and their little skycar was swallowed up by the Normandy's cargo bay. The frigate had swooped down behind them, matched their speed and swept them up inside. It was the most impressive maneuver Ashley had seen to date, and that was saying something. The ramp closed, cutting off their view of Vancouver's flaming skyport.
"It's almost like I'm not the best pilot the Alliance has ever seen. It's very hurtful." Joker reprimanded, putting the ship into a shallow climb.
"Damn!" James exclaimed, impressed.
"Where's Anderson?" Ashley demanded, opening the skycar's door. "We need to get to Anderson. He's got Shepard with him."
"EDI's trying to fi- Oh shit!" Joker's comm link turned to static and the ship lurched sideways, throwing Ashley out of her seat and onto to the cargo bay floor. The Skycar began to slid across the deck towards her.
"Williams!" Vega cried out another warning. Ashley rolled, pushing herself out of the way as the errant vehicle scraped by and slammed into the bulkhead. Ashley was very thankful that the Kodiak Drop ship on the far side of the bay had been secured with both magnetic and mechanical clamps.
"Taking fire!" Joker reported through the intercom as Ashley and Vega fought their way through the bouncing crates, towards the elevator. "Lots and lots of fire! It's almost like they don't like us!"
"I cannot imagine why, Jeff." That female voice responded. It sounded crisp, almost robotic. "The Normandy destroyed Sovereign and the Collectors. It makes sense that this ship would be a priority target."
"Yeah? No kidding, EDI! God! Move, girl, move! We're too goddamned heavy!"
The frigate shot up into the air again, and Ashley fell back against a half-circle of desks near the elevator. James was beside her, pulling her away as the skycar slid towards them in a strange kerking motion as the ship's artificial gravity fought the earth's homegrown gravity. The vehicle never made it close enough to do any damage, however, because for some hellish reason, Joker forced the protesting Normandy into a sudden nosedive, spinning as he went. James dived for the nearest desk. He gripped it with one hand, and held onto Ashley's ankle with the other. She had been unable to get a decent grip before the entire world had turned to chaos. Upside down, she watched as the skycar fell to the far side of the cargo bay, along with all the wreckage and loose crates. To her horror, the female voice came online again and said, "Jettisoning loose cargo."
"Wait!" she screamed, cursing the Pilot, the voice, the Reapers, the Normandy, that damned skycar, and life in general. The cargo ramp opened, giving Ashley a brief, breathless view of a rapidly approaching, gyrating ocean. The loose crates and the skycar fell towards the distant frothing waves, and then the door shut again and the ship righted itself.
"Whew…" Joker laughed. "So, Ash, I'm betting you're going to let your clothes air dry from now on, huh? Instead of tossing'em in the tumble-dryer? Now you know how it feels…"
"One day I'm going to kill you, Joker!" Ashley responded as she collapsed inside the elevator. James lay down on his stomach and kissed the floor.
"Loco…" he murmured. "Puta mierda! Es un pendejo loco!"
A few seconds later, the door to the CIC opened. Ignoring her aching joints, Ashley sprinted for the cockpit. Joker was sitting at the dashboard, hands flying across the buttons as if he were conducting a symphony.
"Hey, Ash!" he greeted cheerful as the Normandy twisted sideways at make the gap between two skyscrapers. "How's life?"
"Just shut up and fly!" she ordered, trying not to vomit. She strapped herself into the copilot's chair, trying desperately to ignore that bottomless feeling which cropped up every time another insane aerial maneuver was executed. A red beam lanced through the nearest building, trailing after the Normandy, and cutting the unfortunate structure in half. Ashley caught a brief glimpse of the hapless people trapped inside the falling superstructure, then Joker cleared the cluster of skyscrapers and threw the ship into a barrel roll, twisting the Normandy's path as he did so. Blue light flashed across the interior of the cockpit as the Normandy's cannons took out both of the spherical Reaper machines chasing it. The same type that had attacked Ashley and Vega in the skycar.
"If I'd stayed with the Alliance, I'd be on vacation right now." the Pilot lamented as he thrust the Normandy back into the reaper's deadly gauntlet. "Where the hell is Shepard?"
Ashley's radio crackled to life again. This time it was Anderson on the line. "Lieutenant-Commander Williams, we're in sight of the spaceport. ETA three minutes."
"We've made it to the Normandy. Taking heavy fire." Ashley reported as they cleared the same cluster once again. This time, however, the Normandy was racing into the open area over the bay. The open space was being contested by a brand new Alliance Dreadnought, and the latest Reaper which had just landed. The human ship had already fired its heaviest cannons at the infernal machine. Ashley couldn't even see a scratch. The reaper's red eye opened and focused on the aggressive ship, as an elephant would on a determined cockroach.
"Oh god…" she said, only vaguely aware that her finger still on the comm link. "They're going to take down that dreadnought!" She pounded on Joker's shoulder. "Evasive Maneuvers!"
"No shit!" the pilot threw the Normandy into a tight U-turn, its wing clipping the side of a building, showering the street below with broken glass and twisted metal. A second later they heard the explosion, and a shockwave chased them into the upper atmosphere.
"Normandy, we're going to reroute. Do you copy?" Anderson's voice turned to static.
"We read you." Ashley reported back, but she got no response. "We gotta go back down there, Joker!"
"Hang on a second." The pilot slowed the ship down, resting it between the gutted hulks of two more Juggernauts; remnants of the Earth's defensive fleet. "I gotta let her cool down a little. Look at that!" He pointed at a blinking red light which looked to Ashley like every other blinking red light. "That's saying our engines are overheating. And we're running out of fuel already. Frigates weren't designed to fly in atmosphere, Ash."
"Certainly not the way you pilot them." She replied coolly.
"You're alive, aren't you?" the pilot argued, sitting back to rest his hands a moment. He took a long breath. "EDI, let me know if any reapers lock on to our position. And keep an eye out for Shepard."
"Of course, Jeff." Said that female voice.
"Who is that?" Ashley glanced around the cockpit. It sounded close at hand, but all she could see was electronic displays.
"Long story. I'll fill you in later." Joker murmured, rubbing his face. his armpits, and the neck of his shirt were coated in sweat. "I knew it would be hard, but..." he shook his head.
Ashley laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "We'll be fine, Joker. But we need to go back in."
"We will." The pilot promised grimly. He adjusted the beak of his baseball cap, and set his jaw. "Just don't expect me to be happy about it."
"Jeff, we are receiving a distress signal from the radio of a downed gunship in the Vancouver bay. It has Anderson's security codes."
"What do you think, Ash? Legit enough to risk our lives again?"
"Let's do it!"
"Get back down to the cargo hold." Joker requested. "The Commander may need some help."
"Promise not to open the ramp in mid-flight again?" she asked, unbuckling herself.
Joker cracked his knuckles. "You're a dream-crusher, Williams."
Ashley did as Joker had requested, collecting James along the way. They waited in the Cargo hold, feeling utterly helpless as the Joker once again put the Normandy through the Reaper's gauntlet. Ashley bowed her head and started praying. The one part of combat which hated more than any other was being in transit. When she was on the ground with a rifle in her hands, at least she had some control over her fate, or felt like it at least. However when she was stuck on a ship during a dogfight, it was the worst feeling in the world. Her life was entirely up to chance, and the skill of the pilot. Thankfully the Normandy was being piloted by Jeffery Moreau, and she could take some solace in that fact by itself.
After another breathless eternity, the flight slowed to a reasonable speed, and he reported through the intercom. "Approaching the LZ."
She headed towards the ramp, shouldering her assault rifle. James had acquired one from the Normandy's armory, and they stood at either corner of the ramp, ready to lend Anderson and Shepard and helping hand. She wondered what they had encountered, and whether or not they'd had as hard a time as she had.
The ramp slowly lowered, blanketing the ravaged cargo hold in sunlight. Ashley squinted for a moment, overcoming the contrast between the bright exterior and the dark lighting of the cargo bay. A building had collapsed into the bay, forming a makeshift dock. A gunship had landed or crashed there sometime near the start of the battle. Shepard and Anderson had taken shelter near it. Reaper corpses were piled along the broken approach, and every available piece of cover was coated in bullet holes. Neither of the two men looked like they were in any better shape than she herself felt. They hadn't had it any easier themselves. Shepard was already sprinting up the makeshift ramp with Anderson following close behind. Shepard leapt aboard as the Normandy drifted to a halt.
There was something wonderful about seeing him wielding an Avenger rifle, wearing Alliance colors again, and standing on the deck of the Normandy. for a moment, she felt as though she were staring at the Skipper instead of the Cerberus traitor.
"Welcome back, Shepard." She offered.
"Welcome back? The Normandy's my goddamned ship, Williams." He grunted coldly. Without giving her a chance to reply, he turned back towards Anderson. Stung, Ashley turned her attention away from him, firing a few rounds at some husks creeping along the twisted wreckage behind them.
"C'mon!" Shepard commanded, holding out a helping hand for his mentor. At that very moment, an Alliance dropship flew past, collecting wounded soldiers from the wreckage.
"I'm not going." Anderson replied, watching the small vessel make its way towards them.
Shepard stood back. Looking momentarily stunned. He planted the butt of his rifle in the crook of his arm and frowned at the Admiral.
"You saw those men back there! There's a million more like them, and they need a leader!" Anderson explained.
"We're in this fight together, Anderson!"
"It's a fight we can't win. Not without help. You know that, Shepard, better than anyone else alive. Go get help for earth. That's an order!" the Admiral reached into his pocket and dug out a set of dogtags. He tossed them towards Shepard, who caught them with unerring aim.
"Consider yourself reinstated, Commander." Anderson said.
"I'll be back with every fleet I can. Good luck." Shepard promised, glancing past his mentor at the burning city. Anderson nodded in reply and rushed down the ramp towards the waiting dropship.
The Normandy rose into the air, the ramp closing slowly. Shepard stayed put, staring at the destruction until the ramp hissed shut. He turned, his tags hanging loosely from his fingertips. He was wearing a hopeless, glazed look.
"Going to put those on?" Ashley asked coolly, gesturing at the dog tags.
Shepard grimaced and started towards the elevator. Instead of answering, he said, "Joker, get us out of here."
The timing here might be a little off in terms of what we see of Shepard's side of the story, but we aren't exactly always going to follow cannon anyway. I'm planning to deviate a little more as the story goes on. Basically everything I wanted to say/do in the original game, but couldn't.
I wanted to give Joker a moment in the spotlight. We keep hearing that he's a really badass pilot, but we never really see it in-game, aside from MAYBE the end of ME2. I would have loved to see the Normandy slipping through the Vancouver skyline, dogfighting Reaper Occuli. Or even in space, above earth during the final battle.
I'm trying to go for smaller, faster updates rather than long chapters which take me forever to do. Just checked. This chapter is nearly 4500 words.
Small. Riiiiiiight…
Also, last chapter I made a mistake with Eden Prime vs. Horizon. It has been corrected. Thank you to those who pointed it out.