They happened to get back to the Normandy's airlock at the same time as Dr. Chakwas. They hugged, and Liara asked, "How was it, Doctor?"
Chakwas smiled and said, "Liara, the trouble with being invited to lecture at a symposium is that you then have to listen to other lectures. None of which - strictly in my professional opinion, of course - were as good as mine."
Kate said, "Glad you haven't let it go to your head."
Liara pointed to the small antigrav cart that Chakwas was pulling behind her. "I am glad she brought us presents, Shepard."
Chakwas smiled. "I did. After your experience on Eden Prime, I put in a requisition for a new neural scanner. They're singing its praises in all the journals. It might help us to better understand that vision you had."
"I'm all for that," Shepard said. She glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, then dropped her voice. "The last time I talked to the Council, I got the impression they just want to bury this whole thing."
"Bury it?" Liara asked, also quietly. "How?"
"They don't want to believe the Reapers are real, any more than they wanted to believe Saren was a traitor. Oh, they'll accept the proof once you throw it in their laps, but they aren't going to just take my word for anything, even after...everything."
Chakwas frowned. "But they had a Reaper crash right in their laps, for Christ's sake. And what about Ilos?"
"They think Sovereign was built by the Geth. And Vigil is gone. It used up the last of its reserves talking to us. And none of us thought to record it. We were too busy worrying about Saren." She looked at Chakwas. "So, if you can help prove that vision was real, and not just some hallucination, just tell me what I need to do."
Chakwas nodded. "Thank you, Commander. It's an intensive scan, so I'll need you in the infirmary for about a standard day. Then we'll need to send it back to Earth, or the Citadel, for analysis."
"A whole day in sickbay. My dream come true." Kate rubbed her forehead. "We'll have plenty of time on the way to where we're going."
"Well, that's your business," Chakwas said. "Mine, as you once put it, is to clean up the mess when we get there." She gave them each another hug and flagged down a passing crewman to take the cart to the infirmary.
"If I may ask, Shepard, where are we going?" Liara asked when they were alone.
Kate clapped her on the shoulder. "You're part of my crew now, T'Soni. So you may ask." They kept walking. Liara gave her a puzzled sidelong look. "That's a little joke," she added. She took Liara's hand in hers. A crewman saw them and smiled.
The nightmare was real.
The Normandy staggered as another lance of fire pierced the barriers and the hull without apparent resistance. Liara had no idea what was happening. It didn't feel like an attack - more like the Goddess herself had abruptly decided to blast them all out of existence.
A crewman ran, ablaze and screaming, past Liara as she fought her way aft through the flames and smoke. She recognized Shepard at once. The suited figure, facing away from her, was securing its helmet, as calmly as if the person inside was standing in an empty meadow rather than on the deck of a burning ship.
"Shepard!" It wasn't Kate she wanted now. It was the captain - the Old Man - who would make everything all right, who would, somehow, save them all.
"Distress beacon is ready for launch," the figure said. It was the voice of Shepard watching Reapers choke out the sky - sharp, but under firm control.
"Will the Alliance get here in time?" Liara was surprised at how calm her voice seemed, too. The ship rocked and pitched her forward, and she caught herself on Shepard's shoulders.
They looked at one another for a moment, though neither could see the other's face. Later, Liara would realize that was the last bit of comfort she would ever get from her Kate.
Shepard staggered toward a fire extinguisher. "The Alliance won't abandon us. We just need to hold on. Get everyone onto the escape shuttles."
"Joker's still in the cockpit. He won't evacuate." Liara turned to face Shepard. "I'm not leaving, either."
"Get to the damn shuttles. I'll haul Joker's crippled ass out of here," Shepard made herself say. She would not let the last, and worst, part of the nightmare come true. If the Normandy came apart around her, she would die knowing Liara had made it to safety. Nothing else was thinkable.
"Shepard..." It held all the things they had said to one another, that last night, and the things they hadn't.
"Get the hell out of here!" Kate's voice was a lash. She turned her back.
Liara's body obeyed, taking her back the way she had come, before her mind realized what she was doing. It's up to me, she told herself as hell came to the Normandy, all around her, in black and yellow and red. It's up to me.
She waved the last survivors into the last shuttle, shouting things she didn't remember. Her hands pulled the safety harness down over her. A sickening jolt made her vision swim for a moment as the shuttle blasted free. She tried to turn in her seat, to look out the viewport at the receding ship, but she hit something unyielding and fell back into her seat. She looked down at the harness in suprise, not knowing how it had gotten there. Her hands tried to free herself, but she seemed to have trouble making them work.
"Ma'am - no." The crewman next to her - just a kid - grabbed her nearest hand and pulled it away. She cursed him in Asari and strugged to pull free, but he held tight. At last she came to herself and stopped. I'm in charge here, she told herself. It's up to me.
The shuttle spun lazily as it shot away. For a last moment, the Normandy came into view, receding quickly, but even at this distance she could see it crisscrossed with blazing red scars that flickered in the night. Then a line of yellow annihilation sheared it in two. The blossoming sea of flame lit the inside of the shuttle to an eerie, silent day.
"No," Liara whispered, her whole body taut with unbelieving horror. But she could feel the bond flickering like a dying candle, like what was left of the Normandy. She could feel the air rushing out through the tears in her suit, the impossible thinness of space flooding in. Her lungs heaved and her throat rasped. Her hands clawed at her helmet, to tighten it, to get it off, she was past knowing. The crewman tried to stop her again, but this time his arm was flung away with enough force to snap it. At last, her muscles went slack and her scrabbling ceased. Her last thought was, "Liara...Liara is all right," and then there was only a dim sensation of gratitude as blackness rushed up to meet her.
The boss listened without interruption to Lawson's report. Inside, she was frightened, but she didn't show it. His body was rigid, his eyes glowing almost white, as he exerted his iron self-control to its limit. To someone who didn't know him, the only outward sign was the long, rolling cloud of cigar smoke he let out as she finished.
"Ms. Lawson. You were ordered to not lose Shepard."
"Yes, sir." There was no apology in her voice. No apology was possible for this debacle.
He drew in a long breath. "But...perhaps it is unreasonable to expect you to have single-handedly stopped this...thing that destroyed Shepard's ship." His tone suggested that it wasn't very unreasonable, however.
"Yes, sir."
Some of the tightness left his face and body. "All right, then. What are our next steps?" He didn't ask whether Lawson had something ready. That was a given.
"Crane succeeded, sir." Lawson couldn't keep the relief from her voice. "She got a full image and stored it in the data bank we provided her. She then made a backup copy of the bank and ejected it as the Normandy passed through the Batalla system. Three days ago. We have search teams looking for it now. It transmits a homing signal that masquerades as background radiation. They tell me they can locate it within a week."
"What about the original copy?"
"We designed it to be as durable as possible. It might well have survived the Normandy's destruction. We believe that the remains of the Normandy crash-landed somewhere in the Amada system. We have teams there as well."
"And Crane?"
Lawson shook her head. "She wasn't able to get suited in time."
"How do we know?"
"One of our operatives was in an escape shuttle with two crew members who witnessed her death. There was debris in the way and they weren't able to reach her."
His eyes narrowed. "Did anyone else see this?"
"Not according to the reports we've intercepted."
He made a note on the holopad in front of him. "Then it seems we've done the good doctor a favor. The reports of her death will turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. The unreliable artifacts of understandable panic and confusion. Chakwas is too valuable to lose. And, in fact, this will make it easier to return her to the Alliance. In time, of course, we'll bring her in. But that's in the future."
He lit a fresh cigar. "This is hardly good, but it could have been worse. Shepard's memories and knowledge will provide a rich intelligence haul. And since Crane demonstrated that the imprinting process works, we have the opportunity to build our very own Commander Shepard." The eyes glowed like blue coals. "Or an army of them."
Lawson cleared her throat. "There is one problem. The imprinting isn't meant to last for long periods. The tests indicated that after six months, the imprinted data begin degrading, and the pre-existing memories begin resurfacing. This causes the subject considerable confusion and distress."
He rubbed his head. "Wonderful."
Lawson went on, "We planned to remove Crane and reinsert Chakwas before this happened. According to Crane's notes, she tried to re-imprint several test subjects - to refresh the new programming - but the success rate decreased exponentially after the first imprinting. As a side effect, by the sixth attempt, all subjects had died."
"Then we have to refine the process."
"There is one thing that would help," Lawson said. "Shepard's body."
"What body? It's been decompressed or blasted to atoms."
"Maybe not. The report filed by the pilot, Lt. Moreau, indicated that Shepard was fully suited and was thrown clear of the Normandy by the initial explosion, before it was engulfed."
"Then the body burned up in atmospheric re-entry. Anyway, why does it matter?"
"If we had the body, we could use tissue regenerators to reconstruct the brain. The knowledge and memories will be lost, due to cellular breakdown, but we can imprint them. You see, Crane also tried re-imprinting subjects with their own brain images. The results of those tests are much more robust. No degradation of the imprinted information after five years, so far, and no significant decrease in the success rate after repeated imprinting. It has something to do with not having to redirect the pathways to - "
He waved away the details. "What about cloning?"
She shook her head. "Didn't work either. The variations are tiny, but apparently they're enough to cause problems. Crane did of course manage to get us some tissue samples, just in case."
"Very well." He made another note. "We need to work on that as well." He leaned forward in his chair. "Meanwhile, find the body, Ms. Lawson."