Incursion

***N7***

Operations Chief Ashley Williams was nervous. Well, nervous was perhaps not the right word; uneasy suited her better. She'd been trying to convince the techs here on Horizon to fix the damn targeting systems on the defense towers for the last four local days. Now, Lilith had finally found a programmer named Johnson who didn't mind helping 'Alliance' with her gun problems. Johnson's eyes were glued to the screen of the master control terminal, fingers gliding over the console with the same fluidity that Ash handled her rifle. Johnson said he'd found the problem, and it would only take fifteen minutes or so to correct it.

That was what worried her. In her experience, it was at times like this that shit tended to hit the fan, to use a rather outdated profanity-laden expression. She fully expected something big, ugly, bug-eyed and distinctly lacking in elbows to drop out of the sky at any moment. John had said she was a pessimist, once. She had gotten a lot more so since the Normandy was destroyed.

Don't think about that, she told herself sternly, before old memories could surface.

"Ok, try it now." Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Johnson, who spoke in the tone of a man who was almost, but not quite sure, that he had fixed the problem. Taking his place in front of the control terminal, Ashley searched for a target to test the gun towers on. Of course, she couldn't fire them without getting the colonists up in arms, but it was the targeting protocols, not the weapons themselves that were in question. Frowning at the sensor board, Ashley wondered what, exactly, she could aim at without starting a panic.

The answer presented itself in the form of one of Horizon's 'buzzers,' docile, flying insect-like critters the size of cows that never failed to intimidate first-time visitors to the planet. They were large enough in fact, for the targeting systems to gain a lock on them. Grinning faintly, Ashley locked onto the buzzer with the nearest gun, stood up, then walked outside to check Johnson's handiwork.

The defense tower was rotating slowly, keeping in time with a black speck barely visible in Horizon's sky. She couldn't tell from where she was standing if it was aimed precisely, but it was definitely an improvement. Still, these guns were meant to surprise an oncoming ship with short-range firepower and hopefully destroy it before any real fighting could begin. Any serious assault would take them out from range before they could do anything. With that in mind, the cannons were probably as ready for action as they would ever be.

Some of the uneasiness began to bleed away. The window of vulnerability had passed. The way these things went, anything nasty that would have shown up – such as whoever was abducting human colonies – would have already done so.

Then the universe decided to prove her wrong.

The first sign that anything was amiss was the shadow that suddenly fell over the immediate area. Looking up reflexively, Ashley's jaw fell open in shock. The scene was horribly familiar. She'd seen it happen once before, and her sleep had been haunted by nightmares of it for months afterwards. A Reaper, dropping out of the sky, traveling fast enough that the sound of its arrival hadn't even reached them. Just like Sovereign had on Eden Prime. Just like they were supposed to do every fifty thousand years.

No, this can't be happening. It can't be.

Surely they would have heard something if the Reapers had begun their march, wouldn't they? A wave of noise suddenly slammed into her, almost loud enough to force her to cover her ears. Brought suddenly back to reality, Ashley turned around and bolted straight for the building housing the master control terminal. She burst in to find Johnson with his fingers hovering above the console, Lilith standing beside him, both of them apparently petrified with shock.

"Are those guns ready to fire?" she demanded of Johnson. He started suddenly, shaken out of his reverie.

"Uh…" he said, brain obviously in lockdown.

"Are those guns ready to fire?" she hissed more urgently.

Johnson suddenly shook himself vigorously.

"Uh, yeah. Sure. Knock yourself out."

Ashley nearly shoved Johnson out of the seat in order to get at the console. Mouthing a prayer under her breath, she targeted the oncoming Reaper – the guns had no trouble locking onto a target of that size – and confirmed the 'fire' order.

Immediately, a series of dull thuds sounded from outside as the defense towers opened up on the Reaper. There was nothing more she could do in here. Ashley sprang to her feet and rushed out the door again, pulling out her assault rifle as she went.

There were people running in every direction, confused and frightened babbling nearly drowning out the thud thud of the big guns. Here and there a scream rent the air. As for the Reaper, Ashley got out just in time to see it touch down. The lower half was obscured by a pre-fab house, but it was pretty clear that it had stopped falling. A tremor ran through the ground, like a small earthquake. The defense cannons were firing round after round, every one struck true, and none of them did more than vanish just before they were about to strike the hull.

Ashley's heart sank. The most powerful weapons they had at their disposal weren't doing much more than pissing it off. And it did nothing. For the next minute, the Reaper did nothing more than sit there as the towers patiently expended their munitions without effect. The Reaper made no attempt to return fire, didn't drop any ground troops and deployed no fighters. What the hell was it doing?

A memory from two years past surfaced suddenly; John trying to reason with Saren, trying to convince him that Sovereign was controlling him. Indoctrination. A sudden wave of panic came over her. Bullets she could deal with, how the hell was she supposed to fight an enemy that seized control of her very thoughts?

"This is all your fault, Alliance!" She started, surprised. She had almost forgotten that there were other people here at all. Delan, the mechanic, was staring at her with a wild expression on his face. "You brought those defense towers, you made us a target!"

Ashley opened her mouth automatically for a retort, but suddenly cut short when something flew overhead. She instinctively looked up. It was about the size of a skycar, roughly spherical with two short wings to either side, and a red eye that glowed malevolently at her.

At her, specifically.

Her rifle was up and firing before conscious thought could take hold. A screech of mechanical protest sounded from the eyeball-thingy, and it flew back a few meters.

Her rifle jammed.

Finding cover didn't even occur to her, she stood like a deer in a groundcar's headlights, staring down her rifle scope at the sphere, which stared back.

What was it waiting for?

The civilians were running, even Delan. Though she couldn't see them, Lilith and Johnson were running too. And still the sphere hovered before her, doing nothing more threatening than, well, looking threatening.

Breathing hard, she lowered her weapon. Not taking her eyes off the thing, her hands automatically went through the motions of clearing the jam. It watched her, silent next to the cacophony of the defense cannons continuing to fire fruitlessly at the Reaper. In a moment, her rifle was again functional. In a flash, she'd raised it again. Staring down the scope into the red orb, her finger rested uncertainly on the trigger.

Something told her that this thing could have killed her by now if it had wanted to.

Almost unwillingly, inch by inch, she lowered her weapon again. The sound of the big guns firing going unnoticed in the background. Everyone had fled, she was completely alone.

"Ashley."

She nearly jumped out of her skin. The voice was coming from the sphere; Ashley instinctively understood that it was not the sphere itself that was speaking, though.

"Ashley Williams."

It was deep, gravely, possessing an inhuman quality. Almost like Sovereign, but not quite. It was somehow very familiar.

"I need to speak with you."

"What the hell" she murmured under her breath. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't this.

"I have to speak with you."

The voice sounded so much like Sovereign had, but the tone was completely different.

"What the hell do you want with me?" Ashley yelled up at the sphere. Her hand was gripping her rifle so tightly she felt as though she were indenting the metal.

"To talk to you."

"You said that already" she yelled back. "Got anything else to say?" There was a pause.

"Not really."

Bizarre didn't even begin to cover this. Ashley's eyes flicked up to the Reaper sitting motionless in the background. It continued to take the pounding unleashed by the defense towers without any attempt to retaliate. Of course, Sovereign had withstood the combined firepower of the entire Fifth Fleet. This Reaper probably didn't even feel it. Then the tower next to her fell silent. It must have drained its power supply. The other cannons wouldn't be far behind.

Her eyes came back to the sphere. It hovered there, slowly shifting back and forth in the wind. Waiting, it seemed. Waiting for what?

Her answer, she realized.

"Fine" she growled. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Not here. Elsewhere."

"Where?" Ashley pressed, teeth gritting together. The sphere made some strange rotating-inclining motion, like a human jerking their head to indicate something over their shoulder. Which would mean this orb was indicating the Reaper.

"No way" Ashley ground out. "No damn way. If you think I'm going anywhere near that thing-"

"Near ME, to be specific."

"-then you've got another thing coming."

The sphere sat there, staring at her, considering her. The second defense tower shut down. Then a third, and a fourth. One by one, they shut down, until the all the guns were silent. The Reaper stood untouched, and she could hear the yells and shouts of Horizon's citizens in the background. The Reaper might decide to harm them if she didn't cooperate. It had just proven that they had no capacity to resist it. Then again, if it had come for her, wouldn't cooperating just give it a clear field of fire?

Why would the Reaper want her for anything in the first place?

Shepard. It had something to do with John Shepard. Her time aboard the Normandy was the single significant thing she had ever done with her life, and John had been at the center of all of it. But John was dead. And she was left with a choice.

She could fight, but her one rifle couldn't do much more than kill this sphere – if it could even do that. She could run, but that was only a fleeting thought. And then, there was the third option: she could yield.

Her finger tightened around her rifle trigger. Years of drilling telling her that only the tiniest bit of pressure more would be needed to fire. She tensed, ready to snap her weapon upwards and attack.

The sphere continued to hover, taking no action for either attack or defense, just like the Reaper.

Jaw tensed, Ashley removed her finger from the trigger. She made a decision. She only hoped she would retain her free will long enough to regret it.

"All right" she said, gesturing with her rifle. "Lead the way."

***N7***

Author's Notes: For anyone who didn't get 'She fully expected something big, ugly, bug-eyed and distinctly lacking in elbows to drop out of the sky at any moment,' it's a reference only the most diehard Ash-fans would recognize. Look on the main Mass Effect web page and look around a bit, or just go to the wiki, and you'll find an e-mail that Ashley sent to one of her sisters. She's telling her sister about Alliance regulations on 'fraternization,' and giving her an example situation; 'Some bug-eyed aliens are going to overrun the galaxy. They eat babies, smell bad, and don't have elbows. Nasty.'