Chapter 4
This was the sixth meal she'd requested be sent to her room. She refused to be cornered by Nihlus again. After the episode in her room, he'd dogged her, demanding explanations, and not even Anderson threatening to space him had deterred him, so she'd locked herself away. Which pissed her off, Skye Shepard hid for no man, not even pushy turians who didn't know when enough was enough.
Her reaction when she'd spoken of her past had scared the shit out of her, but after a good, medicated sleep, she was able to wake up, deal with it, and move on. She was good at moving on, she'd made a career out of it after all, but Nihlus seemed incapable of simply moving on. Dealing with him later on was going to be a bitch.
"Commander," Joker's voice crackled over her com, "Anderson has requested your presence in the com room, he said it was urgent."
Shepard rolled her shoulders, "Copy that Joker. Thanks."
She set aside the plate of nameless muck (pasta?) and pulled together her uniform. She twisted up her long black hair into a severe bun and stared at the woman in the mirror. Sunken, pale grey eyes streaked with blue and gold stared back from beneath the slashing wings of her black eyebrows. Those large, almond eyes looked out of place in her face, courtesy of her father. Her face was too angled and strong to be considered truly pretty, but she had always loved her high cheek bones and her expressive mouth.
Her mother had been a tiny woman from Japan, from whom she'd gotten her stick-straight, thick black hair, short height, pale skin, and soft step that made her a spy. Her proudly Scottish father had given her everything else, her eye color, her short temper, determination, and the strength that made her a soldier. It was hard to meet those eyes and not be reminded of all of her numerous failures, so she quickly pinched some color into her cheeks and turned away.
Shepard didn't look at Nihlus when she entered the com room, but she was well aware of his numerous glances. Anderson looked up, his face was drawn and his lips were thin, he was almost definitely about to unload some bad news.
"This mission has just become complicated." He clasped his hands behind his back, "Joker, if you would play the last transmission from Eden please."
A vid screen popped up and the room was filled with the sound of gun fire. A soldier wearing Phoenix armor was shooting at an unknown enemy, fire flying past her. She ran towards the camera as explosions rocked the person whose helmet cam was sending the transmission.
"Get Down!" She shouted as blue fire erupted around them.
The picture was grainy and shaking, and it was impossible to see the enemy clearly through the showers of dirt, blood, and fire flying through the air. Gun shots and screaming filled the com. Another soldier slid to a stop in front of the camera.
"We are under attack, taking heavy casualties!" His voice smacked of fear and desperation and he covered his head as something exploded nearby. He turned and fired a few rounds at something off screen. "I repeat! Heavy casualties! We can't-
An explosion nearly threw him flat and a soldier was shot down behind him, he shouted into the camera, "Evac, we need evac! They came outta nowhere-
The soldier stiffened in surprise and coughed blood onto the screen. He reached out as if to touch it before keeling over backwards. "Oh god, oh god, oh god." The soldier with the camera turned as an earsplitting mechanical noise made the very air throb. The camera caught the horrified faces of the other soldiers before turning up to show what they were seeing.
Reaching through the sky like the hand of some ancient deity was a machine unlike anything Shepard had ever seen. The ship was monstrous, and just seeing it sent a primal curl of dread whipping down to her toes. "Dear God," she whispered, "what is that thing?"
The noise continued to pulse through the com and block any other sound. The camera shook, tipped, and fell as fire ripped through the line of soldiers. Explosions shook the ground, and then the feed cut out, grey static replacing the last horrific moments of the soldier who'd sent the feed.
Anderson turned to her, "I'm having Joker make an FTL jump, we're still two days out from Eden Prime and this will take us there in about thirty minutes. We need to get boots on the ground now."
"A small strike team will be able to get in and out without drawing too much attention," Nihlus shifted from foot to foot as if he was excited that the mission had become dangerous, "I'll take point."
Shepard turned with a snarl, "Fuck that, this is my operation. You're simply here to observe, that hasn't changed. So sit back, shut up, and watch."
Anderson nodded to her and looked back at Nihlus, "In this I have to agree with Shepard. I will say this, if the mission starts to go south, by all means step in, but unless that happens, leave this to my people."
"As you wish Captain." Nihlus glanced over at Shepard, who studiously ignored him, "Then I will go get my equipment ready and meet you in the cargo hold."
Shepard saluted Anderson and trotted from the com room. It was time to collect Jenkins and Alenko and go kick some ass.
Jenkins was fidgeting with his assault rifle, an eager grin on his face. Alenko looked slightly sick and was squinting down at his feet. Nihlus was silently buckling the seals on his armor. That left Shepard, who was breathing deeply, finding that still place inside of her that was unaffected by the stress of battle. If she had any chance of pulling this off with a half-cocked rookie, a shifty biotic, and a nosy Spectre watching their every move, she needed to have her head in the game, but even she felt that manic energy of adrenaline surging through her system with every beat of her heart.
Anderson strode over to the back hatch and hit the button to lower the loading ramp. The hatch released with a hiss and opened in a gale of wind from the Normandy's engines. He shouted over the noise, "Get in, get the beacon, and get out. That is your mission. Survivors are not your priority, I know that's not what you want to hear, but this could become an intergalactic incident, so secure that beacon. Nihlus is only here to monitor the mission and provide necessary support. This is all up to you, Commander Shepard."
"Aye sir!" She saluted and turned to her team, "You heard the man. Get your asses off the ship, we have a scavenger hunt to get to."
Jenkins whooped and jumped down from the loading ramp onto the wildly moving grass, Alenko followed him. Shepard spared one last glance for Anderson before she jumped out after the two men. Nihlus landed with a quiet thump beside her and the Normandy's engines roared as she prepared to leave.
"Alenko, Jenkins," Shepard shouted over the thunder of the Normandy, "scout out the hill and secure the bottom, I want to know what it looks like out here."
Jenkins saluted, "Aye ma'am." He readied his weapon and moved off, followed closely by Alenko, who still looked faintly ill.
"Shepard," Nihlus approached her as the Normandy took off, the sound of the air and the engines nearly drowning him out, "I wanted to apologize."
God does he have to do this now? "Nihlus, now is not the time." She snapped. She started to head down the hill after Jenkins and Alenko, but Nihlus snagged her elbow. His touch predictably set nearly her entire arm aflame. She wrenched her arm out of his grasp.
He sighed, "Look, I know you must hate me, but I just want to apologize for stirring up memories that shouldn't have been touched and I wanted to tell you that I wouldn't ask again. I know what it's like to have someone drag up things that shouldn't see the light of day. If you ever feel like telling me, then that is your choice, and I won't force the situation again. That's all."
Shepard bit back a sharp retort. His apology was genuine, and it soothed something inside her she wasn't even aware was aching. Her next breath felt freer than it had been in a while. "Thank you, Nihlus," she offered a small smile, "now we have a job to do, or so I hear."
He smiled back, his mandibles flaring, and she relaxed, satisfied that things were better between them. He chuffed, "Or so I hear. Come on Shepard, we're lagging and soon we'll be getting those looks again."
Shepard's brows rose, "Oh you mean those looks we got after I stepped off of the elevator with a broken nose? Those looks?"
"Glad you remember the ones." Nihlus shifted his assault rifle into his hands.
Shepard snorted and settled into an easy, ground eating, lope that brought her quickly to the bottom of the hill where Jenkins and Alenko were waiting. She wasn't prepared for what was waiting at the bottom of the hill with them. Alenko was vomiting and Jenkins looked like he was about to join him and Shepard couldn't blame them.
"By all the Spirits," Nihlus whispered, almost to himself, "what could have done this?"
Stretching off into the distance was a trail of human corpses all burnt, their limbs curled into their bodies or stretched in stiff, unnatural angles into the sky. The ground was scorched and peppered with the black streaks of plasma fire and bullet holes, but this was not the sight of a battle, this was just a massacre. Whatever had killed the people here had taken no time in breaking their defenses and routing them out of the hill's defensible position. And judging by the tiny size of some of the bodies, these enemies were leaving no survivors.
Despite the horror etched onto Jenkins and Alenko's faces, Shepard retained an unaffected air. "Let's move, we have an artifact to recover and there's nothing we can do for these people." Her voice was cold. "Alenko, yak on your own time."
She hoisted her assault rifle from its holster and led them through the silent field of bodies. She looked impassively at the corpses at her feet before scanning her surroundings, whatever had done this had done it quickly and left just as fast, meaning that there was a great chance that the beacon would be in the middle of a hot zone, surrounded by enemies. Her eyes skipped over the body of a child still holding a half melted toy soldier in Alliance colors. Her fingers tightened on her weapon. I hope so, I could really use something to kill.
Movement in the trees made her halt and she quickly ordered her men to find cover. Shepard ducked behind a chunk of broken rock as some sort of machine floated over the rise, followed by three of its companions. She motioned for Jenkins and Alenko to take the two on the right and she lined up her own shots, trusting Nihlus to stay out of it. Two small bursts of gunfire later and the four machines exploded in a shower of fire and metal.
Seeing that all of the hostiles had been eliminated, Shepard motioned her men forward. They crept from their cover, weapons ready. Shepard nudged one of the machines as they reached even with their smoking wrecks.
"Looks like some sort of sentinel drone." Sparks flew from where the toe of her boot nudged the broken remains. "Keep your eyes peeled, there will be more and we don't know what kind of punch these R2-Douches are packing."
The sound of gunfire in the distance made Shepard's head snap up along with her rifle. She silently motioned to Jenkins and Alenko and they quickly converged on the sounds coming through the trees. Two sharp movements with her hand sent Jenkins and Alenko out on either side of her as they approached the fighting, but as they cleared the trees and got a good look at their enemies, even Shepard stumbled slightly. They were machines with one great glowing eye in their heads, they looked like Geth. That's impossible, the Geth disappeared 200 years ago.
Shepard and her crew took out the machines in a hail of bullets, causing a soldier in pink and white Phoenix armor to whip around to face the tree line where they were hidden, her own weapon raised.
"Easy soldier!" Shepard called, stepping out of cover, her rifle pointed down, "Lieutenant Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy. Give me your name soldier."
"Aye ma'am." The soldier dropped the nose of her rifle down and snapped a short salute, "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. Are you here to get us out of here ma'am?"
"I'm afraid not Gunnery Chief, we're here for the Prothean beacon."
Williams' mouth thinned in displeasure and her eyes narrowed behind her visor.
Shepard ignored her anger, "What can you tell me about what happened here?"
Williams sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly, "We were here to make sure that the beacon would be undisturbed until you were here to take it, it was supposed to be a quiet operation, no one even knew the beacon was here. At least that's what we thought."
"Commander!"
Jenkins' shout pulled her attention to where the man was standing. He gestured to the contraption in front of him, "Get a load of this, those sick bastards…"
It was a gigantic metal spike, on which a soldier had been impaled through his stomach. He hung from the spike, curved into a rictus of pain, even in death.
Williams spat on the ground, "These alien bastards have been taking the men, dead and alive, and sticking them on these spikes like some sick butterfly collection, God only knows why. They just came out of the sky and blew everything all to hell within the span of an hour. Anyone who was there when they landed is dead now, I barely escaped with my life, and I know that none of my men made it. Right now they're just eliminating any resistance left in the colony."
Shepard turned away from the impaled man and faced Williams, "You know where the beacon is?"
Williams nodded.
"Then you're going to take us there." Shepard gestured for Williams to join them.
She gripped her weapon tighter, "Ma'am what about the colonists and any survivors?"
"There's nothing more we can do for them other than clear out as many of these bastards as we can, the beacon is priority. The Alliance has been notified and they'll send backup." She glanced pointedly over her shoulder at Nihlus, sharing a meaningful look with him, "But I find it more than coincidental that we discover an ancient piece of Prothean technology and then a gigantic, mysterious, warship swoops down on an inconsequential outpost and proceeds to destroy everything. Something tells me that the best thing for the people still alive here, is to get that beacon off of Eden Prime."
