~ Finding The Heart ~

Storming The Gates

Disclaimer: The characters in this story are the intellectual property of Bioware, not mine.

WARNING: Rated MA. 16yrs+ readers only please. Foul language, adult concepts.

Author note: I've purposefully tried not to describe Shepard too much, after all, fans of Mass Effect will each have their own versions of Shepard, so I leave those parts up to your imagination.

Shepard was three teammates down on her original plan to assault Vido's stronghold - not the best start to this part of their efforts, but someone had to check out that other habitat on K02 at the same time as she hit Vido on K03. Someone had to make sure that if there were hostages - even if, arguably, being out here implied none of them were likely 'innocent law-abiding citizens' - that those people either got to safety... Or that the bomb, if there really was a bomb, [No of course there'll be a bomb, there's always a bomb. No bomb today? Bomb Tomorrow.] was disarmed.

She'd had to leave her two best techs – Tali and Legion - with that task. One would be going in first and alone, being the only one of them with a back-up soul... [Well, at least a portion Legion's runtimes had been copied, and were now stored on the biggest hard drive and flexible memory EDI could offer.] The other - Tali - was sent with the second team as back-up in that regard; her primary role being something completely different...

Technical skill notwithstanding, Tali had to be the most endearing person Shepard had ever met (except for Kaidan, maybe, although Tali was perhaps more doggedly sincere in the grand scheme of things). She was therefore the one member of her team who best stood a chance of winning the trust of the people they were trying to save, excluding Kelly, whom she could not send to the front line.

[Not after she'd endured capture by the Collectors and then having had a near miss with a nanomachine blender that would otherwise have turned her into liquefied-human-juice for a hungry baby Reaper. Anyone enduring that or anything like it, would probably be volatile afterwards. In fact it was often a question on Shepard's mind how she herself had endured all that she had endured and yet somehow stayed functional...]

Either way, Tali was the best bet: technical support and an emotional bridge-builder, who also knew how to use a shotgun.

Jack had gone with them, because Jack made a terrifying counterpart to Tali... Her presence would ensure that anyone who didn't listen to Tali, would definitely listen to intimidation and the likely threat of extreme biotic violence. Shepard winced then at the last detail of her plan for K02: that Tali wasn't leading that team; Miranda was. There lay a first in their history serving together, and the one decision out of the many so far on this mission, that Shepard truly worried she might live to regret.

On any other day, Shepard would have appointed Garrus. In fact he was her default choice for second-in-command but there was no way this time: she'd have had to pry him from her suit with a crowbar... So intent was he on accompanying her on this mission and so sure was he that she'd need him. It had to be someone else.

Miranda had always been overshadowed by Garrus in terms of leadership. Garrus – who'd done his learning about leadership, following Shepard around the galaxy in pursuit of Saren. Later, when he became a known vigilante, he'd earned the allegiance of the teammates he collected on Omega because he proved himself in practical situations, to be what makes the kind of leader that people want to follow. It had been obvious from the first moment she met him that Garrus might one day make a good leader with a bit of chiselling and polishing off at the corners. Miranda had been a different story...

When Shepard had first met Miranda, there had been a moment of reckoning where she could see Miranda operating under extreme circumstances and she had certainly seemed capable... but she'd never seen that side of Miranda since. Instead she had seen all the ways in which Miranda excelled at alienating all the people around her, making them want to do anything other than follow her. For all her brains, it seemed rather that Miranda just couldn't see that about herself, or didn't recognise why it was bad. So on the day that Shepard appointed Garrus and not Miranda as leader of the second fireteam on the Collector Base, Miranda's pride had been wounded terribly.

Possessing as she was of all her talents and all her skills, that moment had perhaps been the first time in Miranda's entire life, that someone other than her father had pointedly set her down as not good enough for something. She was used to being the best at everything, but it had been clear in that defining moment that Shepard had made the right choice: the crew backed Garrus and that probably rubbed salt right into the wound.

So why Miranda, now? There were other crew she could have picked, would have picked on any other mission prior to this one. Yet this time, Shepard had chosen Miranda in preference. Something in her gut had simply told her that she had to, that it was time to give her that chance. Something deep down told Shepard that for some reason she couldn't afford not to – it needed to happen.

"Alriiight!" Yelled Jacob, bringing Shepard back to the present as the external and rudimentarily armoured outer-doors to the habitat broke off their seals in an explosion of metal, plastic, air... and five Blue Suns who thought they'd be smart and camp the airlock. The doors might have withstood fire from the Kodiak shuttle that Shepard was recognised for using, they might even have withstood a few Mako cannon blasts, but they were not expecting the Hammerhead – something Shepard had only previously used on missions where there were no survivors left to tell of what had dispatched them. Watching their bodies drift away sent a chill down her spine – but that memory had been triggered and asserted itself so often that she was getting faster at dismissing it. Company, and the small enclosed space of the Hammerhead, helped.

"Right in the front door!" Yelled Jacob as bodies sailed past.

Shepard found the resolve to half-smile, imagining everyone else present in the Hammerhead would never again complain about her driving after today. He swung the thing left and right, banking to shoot a few of the stragglers he hadn't already gunned down, who'd been left to guard the outside of this glorified pirate base (that being about the sum of her feelings about Blue Suns mercenaries as of late: glorified pirates with delusions of professional legitimacy). Another sudden swerve and swoop upwards for vantage, followed by a drop back down, served as an unwanted reminder for why she preferred being pilot, not passenger. The hammerhead levelled to a sudden stop and the return to being stationary after such a roller coaster jarred her stomach almost as much as if he'd managed to do a barrel roll.

"Not picking up any enemy contacts outside the habitat Commander." Those were welcome words from Jacob as the rest of the Hammerhead's occupants breathed a small sigh of relief. Shepard grinned at them beneath her helmet: they were more worried about needing to stay in the Hammerhead, than taking their chances outside of it. She looked to her comrades and each nodded weapons-ready and prepared for combat, so she tapped the comms button on the side of her helmet:

"Kick the door."

The hatch opened. She, Garrus and Zaeed bailed out and ran for cover. As the Hammerhead banked again, turning to leave, Jacob's voice in her ear said:

"Give my regards to Vido. Just say the word if you need me to come on in there and hit 'em with the good stuff." – meaning use his biotics if they needed back-up, since none of the landing party had that particular skill.

"Will do." Shepard replied, and they began their advance toward the habitat.

"Never thought I'd say this but I guess I've finally met someone whose driving is worse than yours." – That from Garrus through the head-to-head comms channel.

"That mean maybe you'll complain less next time I'm driving?" She commented sweetly, hopping over a piece of melted outer-airlock door, already gone space-cold.

"Don't count on it. Your driving is still terrible." He replied and she smiled. It was good to have smart-ass Garrus back again after so much I-don't-like-your-lover-he's-trouble 'big brother' Garrus.

"Huh." She lifted her chin and raced the last few steps to the cover of the outer wall and where the outer doors had been. The emergency mass effect field which had sprung up after Jacob blasted the outer doors shimmered blue in front of them.

"You ready to drop that shield and resurrect it behind us?"

Garrus had taken up a position against the opposing wall as he readied his omnitool. "Yeah. Just give me a minute. Watch it though – might still be a bit of atmosphere to blow when it drops, I think Jacob damaged the inner doors a little with that blast."

She turned to look towards Zaeed who had just stepped up beside her, out of the way of the field and he nodded 'ready'. She turned back to Garrus and nodded:

"Do it."

She waited for Garrus to hack the system and implant the selective instructions that would be required to temporarily drop the shield at the outer door, assert one at the inner door (overriding safety protocols in the process), so that they could enter the ruptured airlock.

The mass effect field dropped and there was a violent gush of air that came screaming past, fading into the silence of vacuum as its molecules dispersed themselves. For some reason, seeing that triggered some synthesis of philosophy and choices made in Shepard's mind. In one startling moment of clarity a whole series of choices, a whole way of living that she had adopted since Horizon flashed before her eyes and began to form a pattern... There had been reason for choosing Miranda, deeper than she could consciously understand at the time. Her instincts began to explain themselves...

It's what I've been doing all along, isn't it?

She looked at Garrus as he led her and Zaeed into what had formerly been the outer airlock, and set about installing a new shield back where the old one had been, behind them, enabling the airlock to retain pressure integrity once more (without which the inner doors would not open). She studied him for a second and answered herself:

I've been making leaders.

Garrus placed a new anti-decompression shield behind them and removed the one ahead of them that blocked the inner doors. "Unlocking inner doors in 3, 2, 1..." - The inner doors flew open and through them came the sound of gunfire and a sideways rain of bullets, but Shepard didn't flinch. Rounding the corner from the frame where she'd been in cover and advancing calmly, she began firing as required... her mind and instincts were buzzing with a thousand actions, a thousand instincts that suddenly made logical sense. This particular task seemed mere child's play.

Garrus and Zaeed lay down suppressing fire as she stalked the gap between them, accelerating towards the one merc who raised his head to fire, thudding the butt of her rifle into his faceplace before he managed to get off a shot. She was peripherally aware that Garrus and Zaeed had followed her and were battling two others that remained combatant (another was already dead). Shepard was still thinking to herself when she came across the fifth, already shot and bleeding heavily, and disarmed her. When she pleaded mercy, she gave her a little omnigel to see to it that she was in no danger of bleeding out.

"Find someone better to follow for the rest of your life." She said, and left her on the floor as she pondered what made the two of them - her and the merc - different.

Everyone's always telling me I'm so damned special, unique... but I'm not. I just had the right conditions. A bit of gut instinct and the right conditions to become a leader instead of a bully – unlike that merc.

Meeting a real Reaper had just been the last piece of the puzzle, the impetus she needed to make the decision to be the absolute breaking best that she could be because she'd seen what was at stake.

The Reapers will leave none alive that could fend for themselves. Vigil counted for us the ways... How an entire galaxy's worth of sentient life could be extinguished brutally, subtly, methodically, and thoroughly.

Inevitably the best method the Reapers had to use she'd already experienced:

Take out the leaders and the rest will soon follow.

They advanced to the next room: clear. Down, then, the internal corridors at a jog without complication. Garrus found a security room of sorts and checked it out – Kasumi's work still seemed to be in play and nobody would even have known the way they'd come in if Jacob hadn't blasted the personnel entrance open with a thunderous explosion that half the habitat had likely felt if not heard. Shepard continued her musings as they moved through the customs offices (retrofitted as a supply room).

We talked to Sovereign on Virmire and maybe it started that far back... My mind just did the maths: A fleet of eons-old sentient machines?! Bad odds. Impossibly bad odds: a no-win scenario... Even back then I had an idea what might happen if I was extinguished. The Lazarus Project just ensured I lived to see it. It all fell apart...

She looked at Garrus who was now hacking an internal door for which the mercs had somehow bypassed Kasumi's tampering so it wouldn't open.

I don't believe in the no-win scenario. I needed a way to beat the odds... Cheat death... or at least its usual consequences. And I found it: When command structures break down... all you have left is that gut instinct to lead... or to follow... in whoever remains. But that gut instinct is something that exists in more people than we think– maybe even most of us, at some level. That's something they can't kill off quite so easily.

Garrus got the door open – a departure lounge ahead of the garage where the vehicles used to go between buildings under the dome were stored. As he did so, it was clear that in this room, they were going to encounter more resistance than they'd met so far. Garrus dodged a rocket which subsequently headed off down the corridor behind them into a wall with a boom and a cloud of shattering panels.

"For a moment there I thought you were going to lose the other half of your face." – That was from Zaeed, who had ducked even before the doors had finished opening, having some gut sense that Hell was incoming.

"I lost one half to these bastards already I'm not about to give them the other." Garrus said with a twitch of his mandibles in agitation.

Zaeed grinned. "Huh. Same here."

Shepard looked at the pair of them and contemplated how two people, who might as well be sworn enemies for all their differences, were presently working side by side and even laughing and joking together as a hail of bullets peppered their position.

That's my influence, isn't it?

That's why the Reapers wanted me taken out and studied. But before it happened, I was already working on a solution. My instincts knew we were going to need leaders who were hidden, who without thinking could and already did work in unison as a team, but who would be – any one of them – individually capable of taking control of any operation anywhere... Leaders who inspire action, rather than simply ordering it. Leaders... like these two.

Garrus switched to his sniper rifle, beaded the leader, and took him out. "There goes the leader – I love this rifle."

Zaeed waited for the retaliatory fire to cease then threw in an inferno grenade into where the origin of fire had been thickest. "That'll keep 'em down for a while!" – he yelled, confidently.

"Mmm... Why don't you take a little stroll through the door and find out?" Garrus gestured with the butt of his rifle.

"Hey you took out the leader." Zaeed grinned in feigned praise, "After you." levelling his invitation with a half-bow of his head and a sweep of his hand towards the door. Shepard shook her head and walked between and past the pair of them, firing as she went. They both followed, then.

So... She thought to herself: That's what I've been doing. Contingency planning. Reapers think I'm their biggest threat? Then here's ten more of me for them to chew on, scattered to the wind like air out of that airlock. She looked at Garrus and felt a little pride: Kill me, and ten more just like me will rise. I'll see to it. Acknowledging she'd died once already, it was already starting to look like a consciously smart idea.

She already counted Garrus. Ash was well on her way, albeit estranged and in need of correction from xenophobic tendencies (although she was infinitely better than she had been when they first met). Tali was almost as good as Garrus. Samara and Zaeed were already capable... they just needed only a little push in a specific direction (expressing/using emotions). Liara was definitely in the range – perhaps the one amongst them who'd come the furthest from where she started, to become what she was now. Grunt and Jack needed more work but could lead well in the darkest days... Kasumi had already proven herself capable when solitary, but she was well on her way to dropping her preference for walking alone and had the charm and wit to win over most people.

Miranda was the one obvious choice missing. Her skills and talents should have made her a formidable leader... which meant the biggest challenge Miranda had to overcome, was the fact that nobody wanted to follower her. So... When Shepard had had to pick someone else as second team-leader, her instincts had told her it was an opportunity she should not miss, and now she knew why.

As they cleared up the stragglers, one merc lost his nerve at the sight of his comrade being blown away in a hail of bullets and got up to run. Zaeed caught the man and threw him down on the floor on his ass. His visor tilted upwards as he looked at the figure now standing over him, and flinched.

"Massani!" The turian male wailed and tried to crawl on his back away from Zaeed, "It's-" - as Zaeed lifted the butt of his assault rifle with deliberation and then landed it against the man's visor, cutting that sentence short with an impact hard enough to crack even a Turian skull through a helmet. Shepard turned around just in time to see it and winced – it was more than a little excessive.

"What the Hell are you doing?!" – She scorned at first. Zaeed stood unmoving, and unresponsive. Shepard's eyes moved from him to the recently deceased and back again. She thought then, about the fact that the Turian had clearly recognised who Zaeed was. At first she'd imagined only that Vido's troops had been given a photo description of Zaeed to report in on sight, but that Turian had been terrified.

"He know you from somewhere?" She asked, more calmly.

"Yeah." He shrugged and stared down at the corpse as blue blood began to pool around his feet. "He was one of the six that held me down while Vido put a gun to my head."

She nodded, darkly summarising that the Turian had in fact had it coming.

"Think they heard that warning?" – She asked of Garrus.

"With Kasumi playing with the comms? Doubtful." Garrus responded, but Shepard was ungratefully reassured that life was being its usual predictable pain in the ass when Zaeed then followed up with what he was thinking to himself:

"They were probably expecting me anyway." It was true, and actually, it was part of the general plan to use him as bait - Shepard had only hoped to keep that card up her sleeve a little longer, was all. Zaeed then stood up straight, stretched his jaw and added, darkly:

"Vido knows I'm coming for him." -and with that the three of them made all the more haste.

REFERENCES:

"There's always a bomb." – That's a little nod to one of my all time favourite characters: Susan Ivanova from the TV series 'Babylon 5'. It's from the episode "Grail" if you want to look it up.

"Kick The Door" is a reference to one of my favourite cutscenes in the Halo game series (it's from Halo 3), probably also because it's one of my favourite tracks from the soundtrack to the series too. Sergeant Johnson says "Kick The Door" just before the Elites and UNSC launch an assault upon The Ark. The track, by Martin O'Donnell, that I'm referring to is:

7. "The Ark" - I. "Farthest Outpost"

Cheating death? No belief in no-win scenarios? They're fighting in a habitat on one of the moons of a planet named Kobayashi. I'm hoping someone reading this worked out that reference on their own! See the trivia section for the wikia entry for the planet – hell google it, you'll get both references then I'll bet: the planet was named as a nod to Kobayashi Maru scenario from 'Star Trek', as first mentioned in Star Trek II – Wrath of Khan.

"Hey why don't you go take a little stroll through the door and find out?" Is paraphrased from a scene from the film "Tremors" (1990).

"...for every one of you that falls, two shall arise" - is the quote I paraphrased from the film 'Hellboy' (2004) that refers to Rasputin's promise to the daemon 'Sammael'. See how the Reapers like the idea of multiple Shepards! Or I paraphrased "Cut off the head and two more shall rise" from the film 'Captain America: The First Avenger' (2014). Take your pick. Of course, my mind could also have flown to the film 'The Three Amigos' (lol) but I couldn't think of a quote from that apart from "You shot the invisible gunman!" - which doesn't really suit.