0540 Hours AST, April 19, 2183
Vehicle Bay, SSV Normandy SR1
Therum, Knossos System, Artemis Tau Cluster
Kaidan stepped off the elevator into the vehicle bay just as the bay doors opened with a grinding shudder. There wasn't a howling scream of equalizing atmospheres like there would've been if the doors had opened further up, but what there was was bad enough.
Kaidan choked as a punishing wave of blistering heat, smoke, and volcanic gases rolled into the hangar. Therum's atmosphere was officially rated as "tolerable", and with no enemies in the vicinity of the LZ, he hadn't thought a helmet would be necessary. Won't be making that mistake again.
He had spent the past almost six hours in the Normandy's CIC, keeping watch over the sensor gear, trying to form as accurate a picture as possible of what the ground team was facing, and attempting to relay said picture to them on the occasions the planet's horrible weather allowed communications. It wasn't the most thrilling work, but it was vital, and vastly more exciting than what the other nine Marines assigned to the Normandy's detail had been doing: namely, sitting in the ready room in their armor and kit waiting for a call to reinforce the initial ground team on the surface.
That call had never come. Instead, Kaidan had watched from tens of thousands of feet above the planet's surface as Commander Shepard, with one armored personnel carrier, one turian policeman, one teenage quarian mechanic, and one antisocial krogan warrior had laid waste to a seemingly unending force of geth of all shapes and sizes. Towards the end, he'd done the math in his head and realized that there had been almost a full company of the robots down there, backed up with giant spider tanks.
Commander Shepard had methodically shredded them all.
It was surreal. On Eden Prime and in the firefight through Tayseri Ward, Kaidan had seen the Commander fight, and although he'd been just as efficient as one would expect from a graduate of the ICI, he hadn't been the unstoppable one man army that the history books painted the Lion of Elysium as. This, though…
The rest of the Marine detachment had already crowded into the vehicle bay by the time Kaidan got off the elevator, possibly in the hope that there might've been a geth or two hiding at the LZ for them to shoot. Looking out the now fully opened bay doors, Kaidan knew at a glance they'd be disappointed.
The Normandy was slowly floating in to hover over a seemingly nondescript industrial site, one of undoubtedly dozens that dotted this region of Therum's surface alone. A few silos for fracking liquids were to port, a mineshaft sunk into a low rise to starboard, the ship's Mako that the ground team had taken sitting apparently abandoned in between. A magnificent vista of red sky and black soot billowing from volcanoes spread out in the background, but Kaidan paid it little mind. He was more concerned with the pressing issue of where, precisely, Commander Shepard and the aliens were, as Joker maneuvered the frigate ever so delicately toward the ground.
A sudden loud rumble, loud enough to be heard over the Normandy's engines and the noise in the vehicle bay, grabbed his attention.
The large round door of the mineshaft had rolled aside, and the figure of a krogan pelted out at a full sprint, followed by a turian and a choking cloud of dust.
Horrified, Kaidan pushed through his Marines and the Navy crewmen who had entered the bay to the edge of the ramp as the Normandy halted its descent. A third form, very obviously a quarian in an envirosuit, sprinted out of the mine, as the hill it was set into heaved and began to collapse in upon itself. My God.
A second rumble, so loud as to be more accurately termed a roar, filled the air, not just making itself heard over the frigate's engines but drowning them out. The entire hill sagged and fell inwards before his eyes in seconds, forming a massive sinkhole at least a third of a mile across. The stench of sulfur rose from the gaping cavity in the ground, stronger than ever.
But just before the mineshaft's entrance had slid down into the new pit, Kaidan had spotted a fifth armored figure sprinting out of the mine, with yet another figure slung across its shoulders in a fireman's carry. Inwardly, he sagged in relief. All members of the ground team plus the target were accounted for.
Outwardly, he raised his voice to be heard over the clamor of the stunned personnel on the vehicle bay. "Okay, everyone, show's over! Marines, stand to and prepare to assist with recovery of the Mako! Navy, if you don't have immediate business in this bay, I want you out within thirty seconds!"
As his Marines moved to obey and the grumbling sailors began to filter back toward the elevator and the doors leading to the engine room, Kaidan strode over to the wall of the bay and hit the intercom. "Joker, I take it you saw that?"
"Sure did," came the instant reply. The sardonic tone of the helmsman's voice was readily apparent. "Can't see if anyone made it out though, LZ's directly below the cockpit at this point. Should I continue the descent or will we just be swimming in molten sulfur if I try?"
"Can confirm that all members of the ground team are safe," Kaidan replied. "All standing by the Mako waiting for extraction. You're good to continue." He paused, then added, "Might want to send Doctor Chakwas down here. The Commander's got a fifth individual slung over his shoulders, looks like an asari. Probably the target and she doesn't look capable of standing on her own, might need medical attention."
"Roger that, passing it through Pressley." The intercom cut off. Kaidan turned from it and walked back over to the ramp as the Normandy finished its descent.
The lip of the ramp touched the burnt turf of Therum ever so gently twenty feet away from the Mako and the ground team, the frigate itself hovering steadily in the air. The krogan, Urdnot Wrex, was the first to board, helmetless, his hide showing several new scars where he must've been hit and quickly healed, as krogan were wont to do. The turian, Garrus Vakarian, and the quarian, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, followed him aboard, their postures clearly showing their exhaustion though neither seemed visibly injured.
Kaidan nodded respectfully to each of them as they passed, with Garrus and Tali returning the gesture and Wrex ignoring it. He had been skeptical of the Commander's plan to take all three of the aliens as his ground team without a single Alliance Marine backing him up; it was all well and good to test them under fire, particularly Tali, but surely that could've been done one at a time, with a squad that was already intimately familiar with Alliance procedure?
Yet together with Commander Shepard, they had obliterated an enemy force a hundred times their strength in size and firepower. Kaidan mentally shrugged. If there was one thing he had learned today, it was to trust the Commander's judgement.
Shepard himself came up the ramp last, as the Marines rushed down it to secure the Mako and haul it back aboard the ship. He was staggering slightly, from a combination of what seemed to be minor injuries and the asari still slung across his back. Kaidan moved to help the Commander as he lowered the alien woman gently to rest against one of the support beams in the center of the hangar.
Dr. T'Soni looked astonishingly young to have been worth all this effort, perhaps nineteen or twenty, but Kaidan knew enough about asari to know that appearances were very misleading. The green lab uniform she was wearing was covered in grime and soot and was peppered with scorch marks, but Kaidan could see no serious injuries as he looked her over.
Nevertheless, her eyes (blue as the rest of her) were flickering open and shut, her chest was barely rising and falling, and she appeared to be only semi-conscious.
The Commander stepped back from her and considered her with a grim look on his face. "We found her trapped behind some kind of energy field in the Prothean ruins below ground. No way through directly, so we had to undermine a tunnel beneath them with a mining laser that someone had left lying around."
"I take it that was responsible for the new sinkhole?" Kaidan deadpanned. In the background, the Mako had been successfully turned around by the Marines and backed into the vehicle bay. He could hear the whine of the engines slowly starting to increase in volume.
The Commander's frown deepened. "It was. We successfully retrieved her and began to bring her back to the surface, with only a minor interruption from a few geth and the most incompetent krogan battlemaster I've ever seen or heard of. She seemed relatively fine until we began running, at which point she collapsed." The Commander lifted his gaze. "Ah, Doctor Chakwas! Good thinking to come and see if any of us were injured."
"In point of fact, it was Lieutenant Alenko who requested my presence here, by way of Joker and Lieutenant Pressley," the gray-haired medical officer, trailed by a couple of sailors carrying a stretcher, said. "He was apparently under the impression that you had a wounded prisoner of some sort."
Commander Shepard looked back at the semi-conscious Dr. T'Soni slumped on the floor. "Whether she's a prisoner remains to be seen. And I didn't see any wounds on her other than minor cuts and scrapes, but it's definitely a good idea to go check her out. She's almost certainly extremely dehydrated if nothing else." Nodding, Doctor Chakwas motioned for her accompanying sailors to place Dr. T'Soni on the stretcher, then led them back into the elevator. The hangar door began to close, obscuring more and more of the surface of Therum; they had already risen several hundred feet above ground.
The Commander watched them go, then turned back to Kaidan. "The real question is, what do we do with her once she's given a clean bill of health?"
Kaidan had wondered that himself at various points over the past few days. "Were you able to get any idea as to what her role in all this is, sir? Were the geth defending her, or attacking her, or…?"
"They appeared to be attacking her," a new voice said. Garrus Vakarian had finished stowing his weapons and gear. "Emphasis on appeared." The hangar door closed.
Commander Shepard shook his head wearily. "Garrus, I agree that there were several oddities in her story, but are you really expecting me to believe that she deliberately trapped herself in that energy cage?"
"Commander, are you aware of the third most common method of contraband smuggling onto the Citadel?"
"I fail to see what that has to do with-,"
"Are you?"
"No," Commander Shepard said irritably, "I am not. Do tell."
"It's rather ingenious," the turian said. "In return for an extra cut of the profits from the sale of whatever it is, usually anywhere from twenty to thirty percent, a gang member will be sedated by their fellows, then have the package- drugs, a compacted SMG, what have you- surgically placed inside their abdominal cavity. As often as not, it'll fool customs scanners. They then walk to their gang outpost in the Ward and get opened up again."
Well, that's disgusting, Kaidan thought, but I still don't get the point. Commander Shepard said much the same thing out loud.
"The point, Commander, is that people have been known to subject themselves to far more unpleasant things than say, trapping themselves in an energy cage for half an hour, in order to accomplish their nefarious goals. Neither you nor I know anything about this woman, other than that she's nearly twice as old as both of us combined, occasionally teaches a class or two at a university so large that her own dean probably doesn't know who she is, and she's the only child of Saren's biggest ally. And now she is aboard this ship and in position to fatally compromise us in any number of ways."
"I understand, Garrus," Commander Shepard said testily. "Like I said in the mine, we'll keep her under guard at all times until further notice. As soon as Doctor Chakwas gives the medical okay, I want you to help me interrogate her." The Commander looked round at Kaidan. "You as well, Alenko. I'll also need you to have Dr. T'Soni moved from the med bay to the brig when Dr. Chakwas gives the okay, we'll interrogate her there."
Kaidan fidgeted. "Excuse me, Commander, but the Normandy doesn't actually have a brig, it's-,"
"Too small," the Commander finished. "Of course it is. A ship that's designed to spend most of its time hunting down smugglers and pirates doesn't have a brig. Is there any place else on board that might be suitable?"
"There's a fairly roomy storage compartment accessible through the med bay," Kaidan offered. "Mostly being used for medical supplies and spare parts at the moment. If we moved the med supplies into the med bay and the spare parts down here, there'd be enough room to stick a cot and a few chairs in there."
"Alright, sounds good," the Commander nodded approvingly. "I need to go file my report on this mission with the Council and the Alliance, then discuss our next move with Pressley. I think the brass would like to know that we had geth on another one of our colony worlds and nobody had any clue. Once that's done, I'll need to see you, Garrus, so we can discuss precisely what this interrogation of our guest is going to look like. Kaidan, I want you and the rest of the Marine detail to clear out that storage room. Once Dr. T'Soni's been moved, I'll want a Marine stationed at the entrance to the storage room and another at the entrance to the med bay itself until further notice. Any questions?"
They both shook their heads.
"Good. Make it happen."
1130 Hours AST, April 19, 2183
Port Medical Storage Compartment, SSV Normandy SR1
Orbit of Planet Archanes, Knossos System, Artemis Tau Cluster
"Please state your full name, date and place of birth."
The asari shifted uncomfortably on the chair that had been dragged in from the wardroom for her. "Forgive me, Commander, but I do not understand why that is necessary. We already learned each other's names on Therum."
Commander Shepard tapped his datapad. "It's a formality. Just tell us."
"Very well. My name is Liara T'Soni. I was born on the fourth day of the month of Raelia, in the year eighteen thousand and twenty four of the Thessian calendar—I am uncertain as to what that translates to in the human calendar-, in the city of Armali on Thessia. May I ask why I am being questioned in this manner? I thought you came to Therum to rescue me."
Commander Shepard did not immediately answer her question, instead looking at Kaidan. "Her answer checks out against the record, sir." That had been one of Garrus's first suggestions for the interrogation—there was always a possibility that they were dealing with an imposter or plant, although even the turian hadn't thought it likely.
It was Garrus who answered her. "We came looking for you, true enough, Doctor. But it's an open question whether you needed to be rescued."
Dr. T'Soni looked even more confused now, and slightly apprehensive at the coolness in the turian's voice. "What? I don't understand. That doesn't make any sense, how could I not have needed rescue?"
When Dr. T'Soni had been brought to the infirmary, she had been, according to Dr. Chakwas, in a state of near total bodily shutdown brought on by stress, fatigue, and dehydration. The Normandy's surgeon had immediately hooked her up to an IV drip of nearly a gallon and a half of water, and had refused to allow any interrogation or other stressful activity for the next six hours, even though Kaidan and the rest of the Marines had readied the storage room in one.
Despite the rest she'd gotten, Dr. T'Soni still seemed utterly exhausted. Her eyes were purple-rimmed and bloodshot, and she was speaking deliberately, as if having to make sure each sentence was correct before it left her mouth. Kaidan was no stranger to exhaustion himself- he had been up for almost sixteen hours at this point, having been just about to come off shift when the Normandy entered the Knossos system and came to general quarters- but the Alliance, like all other galactic militaries, made sure its sailors and Marines could handle fatigue.
A university professor, on the other hand, would not have the benefit of that sort of training. Getting tired isn't the mark of a civilian; letting it overly influence your thoughts and actions is. Dr. T'Soni was acting just like her biographical data indicated she would. This doesn't seem like an infiltration specialist to me.
Commander Shepard leaned forward and folded his hands on the small folding table that separated himself, Kaidan, and Garrus from Dr. T'Soni. "Doctor, do you remember who I am?"
"You are Lieutenant Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance Navy, and a Council Spectre," she answered promptly. "Although I did not think there were any human Spectres."
"I'm the first, appointed to specifically to hunt down and neutralize Saren Arterius, my predecessor." Kaidan thought he saw a light flicker in the asari's eyes at the mention of Saren. "Have you been keeping up with the news lately, Doctor?"
"No. I was actually trying to establish a comm link for that purpose when the synthetics showed up, but-,"
"They're called geth, doctor. We'll get to your account shortly, but if you are unaware of the events of the past few days, Doctor, then we should start by enlightening you. Approximately one week ago, our colony world of Eden Prime was attacked and devastated by the geth."
The Commander proceeded to relate the events of the past week to their sort-of prisoner, taking care to make them as brief and simple as possible, both to aid in civilian understanding, and to avoid sharing as much potentially classified information as possible.
Through it all, Kaidan continued to quietly watch Dr. T'Soni. She was a good audience for the Commander's story; she expressed horror and sympathy even at the bare facts of the devastation wreaked by Saren and his geth on Eden Prime, and awe at the sheer amount of geth that had been deployed on Therum in pursuit of her. She was suitably impressed at the magnitude of the task facing the Normandy's crew, and the look of stunned disbelief that crossed her face when she learned that her own mother was confirmed to be working with Saren was not one that Kaidan would soon forget.
It was that last one that cemented the impression that had been growing in Kaidan's mind since he first glanced over the dossier Ambassador Udina had given them in FTL en route to the Knossos system. The raw pain written on Dr. T'Soni's face as she learned of Benezia's betrayal would have taken a professionally trained actor to fake. And while it was true that their information on Dr. T'Soni didn't show things like the asari equivalent of high school drama classes, there was nothing in what it did show to make Kaidan think she'd ever taken them. Or that she'd done well enough in them to be able to put together a performance like this.
She was a stressed, exhausted, hungry civilian scientist in over her head. That was all. And Kaidan was becoming rapidly convinced that this trip to Therum had been a waste of time.
Well, maybe not a complete waste. They had saved an innocent scientist and removed an unexpected infestation of geth from a human colony, after all. But they were no closer to finding out where Saren or Benezia were or what they and their geth were trying to accomplish.
On Shepard's other side, Garrus still looked slightly suspicious, but Kaidan could tell that the turian was reluctantly beginning to reach some of the same conclusions he himself had.
"I-I don't know what to say," Dr. T'Soni managed when the Commander had finished his recap. "I cannot begin to express my sorrow at the loss your people have suffered, Commander. If my mother truly was a part of this, then I can understand why I would fall under suspicion, although I would never in a thousand lifetimes condone anything like this for any reason."
"IF your mother was part of this?" Garrus wasn't quite as brusque as he'd been earlier. "I understand what you must be going through, Doctor, but the recording we have was first identified as her by Councilor Tevos and then confirmed by machine analysis."
"I merely cannot reconcile this with the mother I knew. Benezia has spent her entire life, nearly a thousand years, advocating for peace and understanding between the species of the galaxy. To throw it all away… I do not understand what possibly could have been worth this."
"That's the other question we were hoping you could help us answer, Doctor." The Commander looked sympathetic. "We are almost certain that the reason Saren, Benezia and their geth attacked Eden Prime was to gain access to a Prothean beacon that our scientists had recently discovered there. Given your acknowledged expertise in the Prothean civilization, perhaps you could help us figure out precisely what information they may have gotten from it so we can get some idea of their intentions."
But Dr. T'Soni had very obviously stopped paying attention after the word "beacon". The exhaustion seemingly fell at once from her drooping shoulders and her eyes lit up. "A Prothean beacon? Commander, your people found a functional Prothean beacon? With all of its matrices functional?" She sounded breathless with excitement.
"I'm not exactly sure about that last one, but yes." Kaidan addressed the asari directly, slightly bemused by her sudden change in demeanor. "Our research team on Eden Prime uncovered it almost a week and a half ago. The only reason we were even at Eden Prime in time to respond to the geth attack was the fact that we'd been sent to pick it up for examination by the Council. The geth attack seemed centered on the beacon's location, and we're reasonably certain Saren was able to access it."
"Where is it now?" Dr. T'Soni was practically quivering. "Has it been safely isolated for study?"
"I'm afraid not." Commander Shepard replied. "Unfortunately, when we attempted to secure it for transport, the beacon somehow was able to download some images into my head and then disintegrated."
Several emotions flitted across Dr. T'Soni's face—disappointment, dismay. Then her eyes bulged. "The beacon telepathically stored information in your mind?" When the Commander nodded uncertainly, she let out a soft scream.
"By the Goddess!" To Kaidan's astonishment, the asari jumped up out of her chair (they hadn't bothered to physically restrain her, the three of them, two of them biotics and all three armed being thought more than enough to contain any attack or escape attempt) and began frantically patting down her grimy lab uniform. "The implications of this- the greatest discovery in this field in at least a century- no, two centuries- why this human wasn't immediately taken to a fully equipped research facility- make that five centuries, the Xawin Ruins were a hoax- tell me I didn't leave it on Therum-,"
"Doctor, please-,"
Unable to find whatever it was she had been looking for, Dr. T'Soni abandoned her search of her pockets and leaned forward across the table, placing her face within a few inches of the now completely nonplussed Commander Shepard's, apparently trying to peer into the corners of his eyes while still excitedly talking to herself. "The contact of such barely understood technology with a sapient mind—no, never mind the possible effects of that, Liara, this proves beyond any doubt Saivia Calena's longstanding theorem that the beacons were designed to transmit information in this manner! Oh, I wonder if it would be possible to-,"
"Dr. T'Soni!" Kaidan had risen to his feet; on Commander Shepard's other side, Garrus had done the same. Neither of them had drawn their pistols, but their hands had moved perhaps a few inches closer. "Please. Sit. Back. Down."
All at once, Dr. T'Soni seemed to come back to herself, her expression wilting. "I- yes, of course." She slowly sat back down in her chair. "Please forgive me."
"You're forgiven." Commander Shepard had very quickly regained his composure. "Did I hear you correctly in saying that you didn't even know for sure that Prothean beacons could do that?"
"No, Commander. I didn't know, I mean. It was a longstanding hypothesis among the scientific community, but without access to an actual, functioning beacon, there was no way to know for certain. This one that your Alliance excavators discovered was a priceless find; I would have given anything to have had a chance to examine it."
"So there's nothing you would know about what sort of information it might contain?" The Commander didn't bother to hide his disappointment.
"Not without direct access to the beacon itself. I'm sorry, Commander. I would very much like to discuss these images that were transmitted to your consciousness with you, however. Perhaps that might help you learn of Saren and my mother's plans."
"Maybe." Commander Shepard stood. "This interview is over. You are not to leave this room without my approval. There's a cot over in the corner in case you need to sleep, and I'll have the steward send in a meal for you shortly since I assume you have not eaten in quite some time. I will check in with you when I have decided what to do with you." He inclined his head in the asari's direction, then turned and left the storage compartment. Kaidan and Garrus, neither of whom had resumed their seats, followed.
The Commander strode briskly through the quiet medical bay, past Doctor Chakwas at her workstation and Private Robert Breazale, the Marine Kaidan had set to guard the storage room door. He paused only briefly to allow the med bay door to open, then stepped out past Gunnery Sergeant Williams into the corridor beyond and headed toward the starboard side of the ship.
Kaidan and Garrus Vakarian trailed along behind him. This had been agreed beforehand, like the general pattern of the questions they had intended to ask Dr. T'Soni. It would not do to openly discuss this in front of the general crew: they would learn what was going to happen to Dr. T'Soni only insofar as it concerned them.
Commander Shepard pressed a brief key sequence into the pad beside the door of his quarters, then led them in and closed the door.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
"Well, Vakarian?" the Commander said. "Do you still think she's plotting to assassinate me and blow up the ship?"
The turian hesitated. "I still have my suspicions about her, Commander. Several of the more glaring holes in her story weren't addressed in this session, such as this supposed failure to talk to her mother for fully half her life, and until they are, I won't be completely sure she poses no threat… but I will admit that I still have nothing but suspicions."
"And what would you recommend we do?"
"Keep her and keep interrogating her until every hole is filled," Garrus said bluntly. "That falls directly under your prerogative as a Spectre."
Commander Shepard folded his arms across his chest and looked down at the floor, obviously thinking. "And you, Kaidan? What's your take on this?"
"Sir, my take on this is that Doctor T'Soni is exactly what she looks like on the surface. She's an innocent civilian who can't help us or hurt us. Maybe I haven't dealt with criminals for years, but I just have a hard time believing that anyone but a professionally trained operative could fake all that. And nothing we have on her suggests she's even had amateur training."
"Your ideas on what to do with her?"
"Sir, Officer Vakarian may be right that you can detain her as long as you want, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. If you want my opinion, it's that you should take her in, drop her off on the Citadel, and pay for her ticket back to Thessia since she probably lost both all her pocket change and her ID on Therum." Not our fault, but I think we can spare a few credits each. I'd pay for it myself if I had to.
The Commander stared at the floor a moment more, then looked up. "That's a good philosophy, Kaidan. And it's in line with my thoughts on this, more or less. We have nothing but conjecture pointing to any wrongdoing on her part, I can't justify continuing to hold her to myself." Commander Shepard pulled out his datapad containing his notes from the interrogation, glanced at it briefly, then laid it on his desk. "But I disagree that she can't help us."
"What do you have in mind, Commander?" Kaidan hadn't been around turians as much as the Commander had, but even he could see the disappointment on Garrus Vakarian's face. The turian didn't let it into his voice, though.
"It's a three day FTL flight back to the relay in the Sparta system. We're going to try to use that time to get answers to your remaining questions, Garrus, to put your mind at ease if nothing else, but Dr. T'Soni will be clearly informed within the next hour or so that she is not a prisoner on this ship and that we are going to drop her off on her preference of the Citadel or Thessia as soon as possible."
The Commander paused, his face still clouded in thought. "And I am also going to take her up on her offer of a discussion of the visions I got from the beacon. No one may have experienced one of those things before except Saren and I, but he came to Eden Prime looking for the information on that beacon, and this is all we know of it. If there's any chance someone familiar with the Protheans can help pick out anything useful from this mess in my head, then I am going to take it."
He looked between Kaidan and Garrus, standing there in the dimness of the captain's quarters. Kaidan could see the decision on his face, and suddenly noticed how tired the Commander looked. He hadn't paid close attention during the previous few days, and if he'd noticed anything he'd just dismissed it in the back of his head as a natural byproduct of how busy Commander Shepard was. But after what the man had just said… Are these visions keeping him up at night? If anyone could sympathize with that, it was Kaidan. He'd had another implant flareup not two hours before.
"Are there any questions?" Kaidan and Garrus both shook their heads no. "Good. You can return to your normal duties. Vakarian, make sure you calibrate the damn altimeter this time. Dismis-,"
An indicator on Commander Shepard's personal workstation lit up a bright amber with a loud buzzing noise. The digital label under it simply said "URGENT".
The Commander pressed the button. "Commander Shepard here."
The voice of Lieutenant Pressley emanated from the workstation. "Sir, we've just received a communication from Fleet Headquarters on Arcturus Station in response to your report."
The first thing that Commander Shepard had done on his return to the Normandy from Therum's surface after giving Kaidan and Garrus their instructions, changing from his armor into casual duty fatigues, and reporting to the Council—so really, more like the fourth or fifth thing—had been to submit a report to Arcturus informing them of the geth incursion on one of their colony worlds.
"What did they say, Pressley?" The Commander looked tense.
"Your report went straight to Fleet Admiral Drescher; I'd guess that's a perk of being a Spectre. As soon as it landed on her desk she ordered an immediate check of our communications with every single officially sanctioned colony in the Traverse and Verge." Kaidan knew what was going to come next.
Commander Shepard apparently did too. "How many failed to respond?"
"Two, sir. Chasca, in the Maroon Sea and Feros in the Attican Beta. They're both fairly remote pilot colonies." Therum was remote too. "Only a few hundred colonists apiece and no infrastructure to speak of yet, it could easily be explained by any number of environmental or mechanical causes." Even over the intercom, Kaidan could tell Pressley didn't believe that.
"I take it Arcturus wants us to investigate?"
"Since you were made a Spectre, they have no official authority over you anymore, so Admiral Drescher and Fleet Command politely request that we immediately investigate these colonies. Should they indeed be under attack by significant hostile forces, you are further requested to immediately relay that information to Fleet Command, who will promptly dispatch relief forces."
Commander Shepard smiled darkly. "Well, since they asked so politely, how could we say no? Which one is closer?"
"They're both roughly equidistant in lightyears, Commander, not that it particularly matters. More relevantly, the most direct relay jump to Maroon Sea from Artemis Tau actually routes through Attican Beta, so it would be a quicker journey to Feros."
The Commander pondered that for a few seconds, drumming his fingers on his desktop. "Pressley, set course for Maroon Sea and Chasca. We'll start with the most distant one first, then work our way back." When Pressley acknowledged and cut off his end, Shepard looked back at Kaidan and Garrus, still quietly standing there. "It looks like you'll get your way after all, Garrus. Dr. T'Soni will be staying aboard longer than planned."
A/N: Well, y'all said you were okay with long chapters in your reviews and you're getting a short one anyway: third shortest so far. Not that I'm going to consistently give you short ones, mind, just that this is a bridge chapter and I felt pressured to get it out in November to boot.
It's been a while. In my AN for Mark Shepard III, I said that I hoped to have my thesis successfully done and defended by the end of October and consequently have time to get this out in early November. That didn't work out for various reasons, and I ended up defending on November 19th. Successfully, thankfully, but it still pushed this back way more than I'd like and now my final term paper of graduate school is breathing down my neck—due on December 4th. Once that's done, there shouldn't be anything in between you guys and at least two more chapters before New Year's, as well as Jane's Fighting Ships 2183 Edition, which I announced a while back on my profile.
Sorry if Garrus came off as a bit of a paranoid jerk. Someone has to be bad cop and he fits more naturally than anyone IMO.
As always, please follow/favorite/review!