Chapter 10 – Under Darker Skies

The Heavy – Long Way From Home

xxxx

Outer Council Space, early 2013

The AMF Damascuswas dead still inside as it coasted between relay jumps on the way to Thessia. The Damascus was a retrofitted, ex-Contractor frigate, a remnant from the fleet that had been stored on Hyetiana – the Contractor base. The 517th unit had taken it in the rush to the Citadel, but chose to utilize it as a replacement for the destroyed Akina. With a Crimson Cavalry pilot, the Damascus was a fully functioning Asari ship. The IMF had been reflashed, changing its designation from CRF (Contractor Recon Frigate) to AMF (Asari Military Frigate), but other than that it remained intact. Too little time had passed since the Contractor onslaught for it to be upgraded or ridded of its grey and red color scheme.

It was one of nearly thirty frigates had been repurposed after the Hyetiana assault. Five went to the Crimson Cavalry, doubling the strength of Ryala T'Deras' mercenary group. The other ships had been brought back to various homeworlds, namely Thessia and Palaven, and integrated into military forces in the attempt to bolster damaged fleets.

While the Contractor network had been destroyed, the galaxy was still in shambles. Rogue, ex-Contractor groups milled about and raised hell. Nearly every homeworld and colony had taken damage and casualties. The Citadel… well, most parts of the wards were still closed and under repair.

War. It been nothing short of an all-out galactic war that nobody had prepared for or expected. Well, nobody but the 517th and a select few. Many mobilized military units had been crushed out in the initial onslaught. The Contractor army had faced little resistance as it drove into Council space. The offensive was unexpected, and not a single race was prepared to wage such widespread war.

With the Contractor taken out, then central structure of his army collapsed. There was a lapse in the assault, giving the galaxy just enough time to strike back. And by then, chaos had run its course through the Contractor ranks. It was only a shell of its former strength, easy to cut through and slowly the allied races turned the tide.

But while the war might have nearing an end, the damages only became more evident. The Contractor had left a trail of blood and lies, striking fear into his opponents even after death. It was a grim reminder to many that they were not invincible, and thinking so nearly cost everything. The Council had been leveled, only one member remaining after two betrayals.

The Turian Councilor had held his position, refusing to step down until the galaxy was back on the right track.

The Asari enclave had temporarily elected a representative to serve in on the Council until the situation stabilized and they had the opportunity to properly go through the process of electing a councilor. The Salarians had quickly decided upon a new council member.

But people's trust in the Council as a whole was shattered. How could they be trusted when they let a paramilitary force develop unchecked? Many people were angry. Lives had been lost. Some felt that the Council did not fulfill their responsibility. So the three races had to overcome those grievances as they worked in close conjunction. The Great Rebuild had begun, starting on homeworlds and moving out to colonies in an attempt to repair the toils of war and safeguard remaining resources. One of the pivotal forces was a fleet of ships tasked to run supplies and intel between worlds.

The vanguard of the Great Rebuild fleet was the AMF Damascus.

xxxx

Kaira leaned forward on one command console of the Damascus, looking over the inventory list for their current run. They were lucky to have a fast ship, allowing them to relay information and basic supplies faster than anyone else. This time, according to the holographic list, they were carrying power cores to get more frigates up and running on Thessia.

They still had to deal with ex-Contractors here and there, but the massive army had been reduced to roaming bands of bandits. It was only a matter of time until they were tracked down and destroyed. They were, however, in the interim, a massive pain in the fringe.

The 517th had taken out a few strongholds in order to open up shipping lanes. But really, their main focus was repairing the damages. Chasing down bandits could wait.

Well, the new Council had been repairing damages as well. Kaira had been reinstated as a Spectre. No strings attached, she had her full status returned. The Turian Councilor knew well enough that the Kaira and the 517th were the only reason the galaxy hadn't been plunged into complete darkness. The new councilors could also recognize that. They were new, fresh and terrified by what the Contractor could have done.

The Council applauded her, in fact. Said that victory had been won because of T'Suni. The commander heard the same thing from people all over. Victory, they claimed.

What victory? Kaira thought to herself and looked away from the shipping list. We've gained nothing and only lost.

The 517th had taken a beating. Several of the maintenance crew had gone down with the Akina. Evitha T'Vanalia, the ship's captain, had been killed on impact.

And then Jackson. He had spaced himself on the Citadel. Rana had seen the whole thing happen, claimed that he did so to take out a Reaper drone. Kaira knew there had to be more to it. Perhaps the war had finally gotten to him. Perhaps he blamed himself for the Contractor onslaught. Perhaps he couldn't bear the fact that he abandoned his squad. All Kaira could do was speculate and she doubted she was going to get closure.

No, she had failed.

Failed to keep her squad alive. Time and time again. First Syaena, then Evitha, then Forrest. All of them had trusted her whole-heartedly, and her decisions ultimately got them killed. Some commander she was.

The 517th was even more broken then when they lost Syaena. For once, when it was the four of them, the unit was capable, balanced, complete. But with Jackson gone it was entirely different.

Delina had become even more bitter and cynical than when she joined the 517th. That was, when she spoke at all. Most times she steeped in an all-encompassing, undirected anger. Well, it was more directed at the Council. Still. The arms specialist had said several times that they were responsible for the countless deaths including Jackson's. She blamed them for that, too. While the arms specialist never said it directly, Kaira knew that Delina blamed her for not doing more to sway the Council or homeworlds during the war.

What more could she have done, though? Kaira stared at the bleak grey wall, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong. She had beat her head bloody trying to convince the Council to help. And on any homeworld, she was just a commando. Just a grunt in their eyes.

Then there was Rana. Poor Rana. It nearly broken Kaira's heart to see what the young commando had become. Gone was the light-hearted engineer with a field of innocence and curiosity about her. Rana had retreated to the lower deck of the ship both physically and emotionally. She didn't say a word, didn't come out except for food or missions. Kaira hadn't seen her shed a single tear or utter a single word about Jackson. The poor maiden was internalizing everything.

Kaira had tried to break through the façade several times with no success. She was hesitant to try more – the last thing she wanted was for Rana to resent her even more. To retreat even further. It was already impossible to get the engineer to talk.

'What is done is done.' She would reply. Every time Kaira inquired to the Citadel incidents or the maiden's general mindset. The same answer, a cover every time. Rana was not done with any of it – she had a picture of Jackson right above her workbench, for goddess's sake.

Kaira had her share of loss, too. When the going had got truly tough, Tahre, her bondmate of twenty years, had up and left without a word. Kaira didn't know where he had gone, or even if he had survived. She didn't care anymore. Too many years of faking a relationship just to keep a professional edge left bitter resentment towards the Turian.

The commander moved her gaze away from the wall, feeling an incredible despair. She hadn't told the squad her plans yet. Once they had seen the current stage of the Great Rebuild through, she was going to throw in the towel.

Kaira T'Suni was going to resign as a commando.

She was going to disband the 517th.

It was one of the worst decisions she had faced in four hundred years. She wished that she didn't have to take such an extreme course, but she realized that she had to accept it.

She would never be able to be a leader. Not as long as was responsible for getting her squad killed. She couldn't do it to them. She couldn't knowingly violate their trust. And she couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't bear the death, the destruction, the violations of trust.

The commander's fists clenched against the edge of the metal console. Seldom prone to outbursts, she fought back the urge to drive her fist through the holoprojector.

xxxx

Delina stood in front of a disassembled HF1 needle driver in a cramped corner of the Damascus cargo bay. The fucking ship didn't even have a dedicated armory. She had to work on a makeshift bench, all of the parts she needed strewn about in various boxes.

And that was why she had stopped working. She needed a new high-frequency isolator for the needle driver (it tore through them every few missions), but she didn't have one on hand. It wasn't something she could manufacture on the ship, and elsewhere was too backed up. It would take months to get one simple fucking part.

Normally, she wouldn't have been so bent out of shape over a little part. But at that point, it was the final straw.

Since the Citadel attack, an unavoidable rage had begun to burn inside. Everything fueled the desire for violence. It had alarmed Delina at first, but then it enveloped her. She didn't care why she felt that way. She just wanted a release. Enemies to shoot. Skulls to smash.

She knew why she started to feel that way.

It had started on Hyetiana, when she figured out that Jackson had split. She had felt something off in her gut the entire mission, but chose to ignore it. From the time he had come back with cybernetic eyes, something had been off. In the end, it bit both of them in the ass. She blamed the human for bailing like he did, and herself for ignoring her instincts. Delina snarled as she thought back; she should have confronted him rather than let things go to hell. The one time she didn't listen to her intuition.

Then the Citadel. Kaira and her had stayed in the docks, fending off Contractors while Rana went to track down Jackson. Then Rana had come back a shell of herself. Said Jackson spaced himself with a Reaper drone.

Delina wished he was still alive so he could see what he had done to Rana and the squad. And then she would kill him again.

And then there was Kaira, suddenly all depressed and self-pitying. Why the fuck did she have to be the martyr, the one 'responsible' for the deaths of Evitha and Forrest? The same damn thing happened after Syaena was killed, and it pissed Delina off just as much then.

Hell, the whole squad was responsible. Kaira might have been the commander, but they were one unit. They were all bound to their actions and subsequently responsible. Shit happened.

On top of that, the commander had a fresh fucking start. A new ship, reinstated Spectre status. And she was just going to throw it away.

It made Delina furious.

And Rana… Delina wasn't exactly mad at the younger Asari, but mad for her. She had gone from a warm, quiet maiden to a shell that carried out its tasks. Rana was devastated, and Delina knew exactly why.

The engineer had a broken heart. She was letting it destroy her from the inside out.

But hell, Delina knew how exactly that felt. She had been in the same uniform thirty-eight years earlier when Evia died. Delina knew how it felt to have her world crushed from the lowest, most intimate level. She knew what it was like to see dead the one person that meant more than the entire fucking galaxy. It had been worse with Evia; Delina had held her lifeless mate and realized there was one person to blame entirely.

Still, seeing Rana having to endure that… Goddess, it made Delina even angrier.

She couldn't take it much longer. It would have been one thing if they were going at the same rate as before the Contractor invasion, finding fights and hunting people down. But no, the 517th was tasked to be some transport shuttle. Delina had no release, no way to purge the violence from her mind. So it stayed there and began to fester.

She knew she had a responsibility to the squad. Hell, it was one of the few things that she was loyal to. But if she couldn't keep her own sanity, what was the point?

One last run, she had told herself time and time again. She would get back into the Terminus and say her goodbyes to Rana and Kaira. Then she would do what she really wanted to – get retribution. The remaining Contractor forces would do. Since Hyetiana, she was unfettered. She wasn't going to hold back her biotics anymore. She would have a full arsenal to bring death and destruction to anyone who stood in her way.

Then, maybe then, she would be able to find some peace.

xxxx

A small, side room on the second deck had been dedicated to engineering. It was cramped and underequipped, but it would have been enough to work.

Rana found that she could not work. Instead, she sat on one of the work tables and stared blankly at their three sets of hard armor laid out for repairs.

There was something symbolic about the grey metal armor. When the three Asari had donned the heavier protection, it was like… like they had stopped being commandos. The thin line between thug and enforcer was nearly wiped away in Rana's mind. Everything she had sought in becoming a commando was gone; replaced just like the traditional brown leathers.

Were they really just soldiers now? Perhaps that was all they had ever been. Rana tried to be honest with herself, see through any delusions. The 517th had been something different before the Contractor war began.

Yes, they had won, but at what cost?

Attitudes had changed.

All three members of the squad were different after the Citadel assault. Certainly not for the better, either. They barely spoke to each other anymore and when they did it was tense, laced with blame.

Motives had shifted.

No longer was the 517th held together by a common goal of bettering the galaxy, of staying together because of inextricable loyalties. Now the 517th was only a vessel for survival, clung to for fear of falling into the abyss.

Lives... Lives had been lost.

Evitha, the 517th's very own pilot had been impaled when the Akina was shot down.

The Crimson Cavalry had been nearly devastated on Hyetiana.

Tyva T'Deras, Ryala's last sister, had plunged from a coma straight into death.

And then there was Forrest. That death stung the most for Rana. There was little she could say to explain her attachment. The young commando glanced over to a small, picture she printed from an omni-tool image. The black-and-white image was from the Citadel, only a night before the Council betrayed their squad.

It was a simple self-taken holo of the couple standing on a Presidium balcony, the wards slightly out of focus behind them.

Rana knew she was still attached, still involved. Looking at the image only reminded her of the good, if not short, time they had together. Reminded her of the empty feeling that had plagued her since Forrest was spaced.

She knew the feeling was wrong. It wasn't how an Asari was supposed to act. She was supposed to appreciate the time they had together and move on. That was what culture, her peers, and everyone else said to do.

But she didn't want to move on. She wanted to feel, even if all she was able to feel right then was hurt and empty. Was it really so bad to acknowledge her attachments? Rana shook her head slowly and then wiped away a tear.

It wasn't over.

She reminded herself of that. Everyone seemed to have forgotten what Jackson fought against and ultimately fell to. If the Reapers were real, than Rana knew there were problems far greater than her own.

Rana knew that she should have held more of a grievance against the late Forrest Jackson. He had abandoned the squad halfway through a mission, and when they were finally able to track him down he nearly killed her. Yet at the same time, he didn't. Rana remembered as he tried to explain. He sounded broken, especially so as the one Reaper was destroyed above their heads. Then they had faced a Reaper Drone. Rana didn't understand what had lead Forrest to take out the Drone as well as himself. Perhaps he wanted to keep her safe.

If that was the case, he had succeeded. She left with her life. The young maiden also left with a heart shattered from seeing her lover spaced.

The young commando looked down and weaved her hands together in her lap. She would only be able to stay with the 517th for a little while longer. There were many things that Kaira and Delina did not need to know.

She didn't know what she was going to do, or where she was going to go.

Rana was certain of one thing: she would keep fighting.

xxxx