Alan
Alan looked over at Andrea - she'd made a hard choice, and so had he. Who was to say who would be right and wrong when the dust settled. There was never black and white, there was only ever grey. Would his call be any better than hers? Alan cleared his throat, "I understand your thinking, but like Kate, I wasn't going to leave that thing for the Illusive Man. I never bought his speeches on the value of humanity when he was responsible for so many atrocities. Admiral Kahoku, Thorian Creepers, even going so far as to clone Rachni? I may have been out of it for 2 years but I was never going to forget what he did, what he was capable of."
Cerberus history - Miranda had always managed to gloss over the details whenever he pressed her on the shady past of her employer. She'd held fast, a valued and trusted agent of TIM himself. But she'd been there when they encountered the Collectors on Horizon. She'd been there when they discovered the hell-hole that had been the Pragia facility. She'd been there when they boarded the not-so-disabled Collector ship. She'd heard Tali's side of the incident between Cerberus and the Quarian Flotilla.
Truth be told, it was hard not to hear Tali's side of the story - and that was one of Tali's best qualities. She never held back, always fought for what she believed in. And she believed with all her heart that Cerberus could never be trusted. It didn't take much for Alan to make his decision to destroy the base, but he definitely understood Andrea's decision. But to see the other perspective standing right there in front of him, to see someone who had made a different decision, made him take pause.
How many of his decisions had been easy? Too few. Most had been at a cost - what if saving the Rachni Queen came back to haunt him? He'd had no end of questions after that mission, but genocide wasn't a decision to ever be made lightly, especially when the creature had spoken so earnestly of her desire to live a peaceful private existence. Contrasted to the Thorian - the smell alone would haunt him to his dying day... again. The creepers that spat toxic venom on their victims, hoards of them, relentlessly chasing them and spewing that vile substance that had resisted even their most rigorous decontamination protocols. Tali had remained on the Normandy to assist Adams with some engine calibrations while they were on Feros. Just as well - the rest of the team had been forced to completely discard their armor (and more) in decon.
Alan paced from side to side as he thought through the situation - he was no scientist, but it made some sort of crazy sense. But it didn't make it any less crazy. A parallel, alternate reality? He'd watched old holo vids of science fiction shows in the past, but going by those he should be meeting with three men with different facial hair. He wasn't just here with a different version of himself, this was much less cut and dry. "We've likely all made hard decisions in the past, and yet we're all standing here right now. Something must be common to us all, there has to be a reason why four people who have made different decisions along the way would end up here, now." He scratched his head, "I guess what I mean is, why did we all end up here, the four of us... we have had a similar experience with the Collector base, though with different outcomes. We all know Garrus. It sounds like we all met Garrus at the Citadel, chased and defeated Saren, met Garrus again a couple of years later..." Alan faltered - the two year gap... they all seem to have met up with Garrus after an unspecified time, the implication being that these others had also been through the destruction of the Normandy SR-1. He decided to take another route before that part.
"Ok, so around the same time when I met Garrus I also met a Quarian called Tali; she was instrumental in helping me find evidence against Saren. Between her, Garrus, an Asari called Liara and a Krogan called Urdnot Wrex, we were a major pain in the publicity machine of the Alliance for a year". He chuckled, poor Khalisah al-Jilani, how she had tried and failed to bait him into revealing the details of his operation as ammunition on an opinion piece on the anti-human stance of the Council. "but I couldn't have done it without them." He paused, as Emony piped up, "Yep, I had Garrus, Liara, Wrex and Tali with me too, as well as Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams and Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko." Andrea and Kate both chimed in "same here". He grinned, "we're sounding more like a circus act all the time". As he paused, Kate stepped forward "Yeah, well as long as we don't start doing synchronized back flips I think we'll survive." Alan looked at her and decided to be direct. "So, what's your story?"
Kate
Kate grinned, "a little direct there, but heck, I'll bite! How about I pretend like you know nothing about me and you can make up your own minds when I'm done" she folded her arms and took a step back, Kate looked straight at Alan, who simply responded "Sure, carry on!". The challenge was issued, time to re-establish who was king of the shooting range. "Commander Shepard, Alliance Military, I grew up on ships, parents in the military. I joined the Alliance soon as I was old enough." Kate wanted no other life, the Alliance was in her blood. Despite both of her parents serving in the Alliance, they had somehow made it work. Her mother was always supportive of her desire to join up, which was reassuring. Kate had always been closer to her mother emotionally than her father, though she had learned a lot from his ability with a rifle.
She'd trained hard - focussed all her energy on success, never failing, never compromising. Then, Akuze. Kate took a moment and then continued. "After I lost my unit in a Thresher Maw attack on Akuze, I got... praised. Which never made any fucking sense to me then, nor does it now. For some reason, knowing how to stand on a rock and stay off the dirt was cause for celebration. I've fought many maws ever since, apparently my intel on Akuze has saved lives." But it didn't save her squad - fifty marines lost their lives, and they praised her. Lose fifty human lives, get praise and a gold star for surviving, but dare to fraternize with another marine and you could be booted out.
"Few years later and a couple more scars, I ended up being assigned the XO position on the SSV Normandy SR-1. While defending Eden Prime from a Geth attack, I encountered a Prothean Beacon." Kate grinned, it had been one hell of an encounter. She'd been too busy to notice Kaidan walking towards the beacon. She'd had to throw him out of the way, and as chance had it, she'd been zapped good and proper by that beacon. "I have to wonder what would have happened if I hadn't pushed Kaidan out of the way of the beacon - I mean, we're all here for decisions we made. What if I hadn't noticed until it was too late? Could he have handled that beacon?" Emony smiled, "Kaidan's got quite a head on his shoulders, he may have been able to handle it, especially with his biotic abilities." Alan frowned, "I had to push Ash out of the way - she got too close, Kaidan and I didn't notice until it was almost too late." Andrea pointed out the obvious, "well, it's clear that the four of us all got fried by that beacon or we likely wouldn't be here now... Ash didn't make it in my reality." Alan shook his head, "mine either - she died on Virmire, we were under heavy attack, she held strong at the bomb site, I couldn't reach her in time to get her out of there." The sadness reflected in their faces, Ash was dead for all of them. Kaidan had lived every time.
Kate paused to let that thought settle - all here having touched a sphere, all had previous experience with beacons. Ash died, Kaidan lived on. Perhaps that shared history was part of the reason they all met here in this space. She looked around the room - they all saved Kaidan? What if that wasn't all they shared? Ouch - gotta stop thinking... would that even be... well, she didn't know they existed, he couldn't know... there must be parallel Kaidans, he could be completely different in their worlds - would he be? What makes us unique? Why were they so different, and yet so similar? What would Kaidan be like if things were different? Back to the story... Kate shook her had, cleared her throat, now was NOT the time for that sort of thinking. "Ok, so after I got inducted into the Spectres I spent most of the next year hunting down Saren Arterius, a rogue Spectre."
It had been a wild year, Geth, Thorians, Rachni, more Geth, and some mercs. She'd paced up and down the SR-1 between missions talking to every single one of her crew. Kate liked to know who she worked with, that sort of intel could save you. Ship under attack? Throw the medigel to the crewman with better than average score in basic medical, not the engineer with perfect scores on the shooting range who would be better suited to removing intruders. "Turned out Saren was indoctrinated by a Reaper called Sovereign. I couldn't convince the Council to take action until it was too late, but we managed to defeat Sovereign at the cost of many Alliance ships. I was sent out after to clean up the remaining Geth presence, but we were apprehended by what turned out to be a Collector ship. We... I..." Kate took a deep breath, remembering the pain, searing burning in her chest as the oxygen starvation had kicked in. Couldn't breathe, the pain, the panic... she'd tried to avoid it all this time... breathe again, reload.
"The Normandy was lost, I got spaced. I woke up 2 years later in a med bay on a Cerberus ship." She had lost it all, and it hurt still like a fresh wound. She'd never had time for relationships or anything more than mild fun during her training. It was very well known throughout the Alliance that fraternization was frowned on, but that had never bothered her much. After Akuze, she re-thought a few things. Her parents had made it work, and it had been a battle with their superiors. But she got her unit eaten by maws in the middle of the night, their screams echoing through the valley for hours. And she'd been praised.
Never having thought about it too deeply, Kate had simply accepted Alliance life and protocol. Never really questioned it until then. She'd balanced Akuze against what she knew of her parent's relationship and it had festered inside her mind over the years. She'd stayed true to her training, remained a soldier to the core, until her time on the Normandy. She'd woken up one day and realized that something had changed - it must have been after Therum, or maybe after the beacon itself. Since their mission to Ilos, her time with Kaidan had really pushed some boundaries, and they'd risked their careers in their attempts to keep it quiet from the rest of the crew. It had been glorious, and her time with him in the following few weeks was treasured. But they'd had such a short time together before the accident. And then it was gone. Reload.
Next shot, line it up, she moved on rapidly "Turns out the Illusive Man rebuilt both me and the Normandy, so I spent the next few months taking his intel, gathering a crew, and used them to screw the collectors where it hurt. Mission complete, I told Illusive to fuck off, he didn't like that so much. Since then I've been freelancing, putting a dent in the merc population, looking out for fringe colonies, that sort of thing." Blunt, short, get moving, find more cover, engage cloak. "So, that's pretty much me," she found herself blurting out "so who else broke regs with Kaidan back on the SR-1?" Heat sink jammed. Damn.