AN: Sorry for the late update. School has been absolutely insane for the past couple weeks. I have a month left until graduation, so it's trying to get all of the end-of-the-year stuff done. But fear not! I shall have another update for you within the week! I have a feeling some of you will be itching to know what happens next. :)
And thank you to all who have provided feedback thus far. I love hearing your thoughts and reactions and truthfully, you all make me smile like a fool. As does each Favorite and add to Author Alerts. You all make me smile like a fool. I appreciate you all!
-Tac
Complications
Blood.
There was so much blood.
/ - /
"Mom, be happy you don't have to deal with the Council on a regular basis, or even at all. It's like pulling teeth." Shepard pushed her food around with a distracted fork. She wasn't overly hungry. "You would think that they would be a bit more forthcoming with something."
"Just don't be like your father."
She laughed, stopping her rearrangement of the gelatinous blob that covered her tray—eggs, she thought—though they were a poor knock off; all of the nutritional value without the attempt to make it look edible. "Dad would just cut the channel at the first hint of bullshit. Be damned proud to do it every time, too."
Hannah echoed her laugh. "Yes he would. Speaking of your dad, have you talked with him lately?"
"No. He's been just as busy as the rest of us. You know how hard it is trying to get three different schedules on three different Alliance vessels to line up?" She took a bite of the egg. At least they didn't taste as bad as they looked. "I was lucky enough to catch you on a break."
"Just make sure to send him a message sometime. I'm sure he misses hearing from you."
"Mom—"
"I know, I know. It's just that you're off chasing god-knows-what and while I'm perfectly content with knowing you're fine, well, you know how he worries about his little blue jay."
God, her mother hadn't dusted off that childhood nickname for years, even more so since it was something that typically only her dad called her, being it his idea of a joke that just sort of stuck over time. If she felt the need drag it out, it meant that Shepard had really dropped the ball on keeping in touch; it was rather hypocritical of her to do after consistently reminding her crew to check up with family whenever they had the chance. It always resulted in her mother getting on her case.
She sighed. "He never used to be like this. Hell, before I enlisted, you'd always get after him for not sending something saying he was still alive and kicking."
Hannah's voice grew soft, adopting a similar tone to one she had used when she had to tell Shepard that dad wouldn't be coming home for the holidays, back when it actually mattered to her. Shepard knew an unintentional guilt trip when she heard one. "I know. Just try to keep tabs with him, okay? He does worry."
Before Shepard could answer, Joker cut in. "Hey Commander, we're about to pass through the Armstrong Cluster. You still want to check out those readings the admiral forwarded us, or should we push on to Noveria?"
"We can't afford to ignore them unfortunately. Tell the others to meet up in the comm room. I'll be there in a minute."
"Aye aye Commander."
She turned her attention back to her mother with a nonchalant shrug. "Duty calls."
"I understand. Just don't forget about that message to your dad, alright?"
Shepard propped a boot up on the table as she tightened the lacings, giving a distracted reply. "Sure thing mom."
"I'm serious Jay."
Shepard looked up at the image of her frowning mother on the screen. "I promise. I'll call him next chance I get, okay?" She stood and grabbed the plate of now cold eggs, quickly weighing the pros and cons of finishing them off. Unfortunately, if she and her team were preparing to go planet-side, she'd need all the calories she could get. That meant eating the cold blobs of yellow. "But I do need to go. I'll talk to you later."
"You're doing the Alliance proud, you know that sweetheart? Stay safe."
"You too mom."
With the channel closed, Shepard left her room performing a sort of balancing act, attempting to tuck her shirt in with one hand while the other still held the plate, fork precariously balanced between her teeth and all thoughts focused on what to cover in the debrief. She was rather impressed with how gracefully she spun away from a potentially messy collision with Kaidan seconds later on his way up to the CIC.
"Multi-tasking again?" He asked with a raised eyebrow, a smirk barely being kept hidden.
She gave him a slight nudge in the ribs with her elbow as she walked past and into the mess, shoveling the rest of her breakfast down before tossing the plate into the sink.
"Would I ever be doing anything else?" She joked, tucking in the rest of her shirt and giving her hair a quick once-over in a reflective surface before turning to follow him up the stairs. "So what are your thoughts on this potential geth incursion?"
"I think it's well beyond 'potential.' Based on the readings, we can assume that the geth already have a strong foothold on several planets in the cluster." He allowed her to pass him upon entering the CIC. "Commander, we're looking at a fully fledged attempt by the geth to take the system."
She returned the salute of the guards posted at the door before facing him with a frown. "The geth haven't been this hostile towards organics for years. Why now?"
"They haven't been hostile towards humanity." He corrected her, reaching forward and tapping the console for the comm room. "The quarians and the geth have been at each other since the Morning War, and that was over three centuries ago. It hasn't been a sustained war, but the effort to destroy one another is as potent as any war could be."
The door slid open and Shepard was faced with the battle-ready faces of her main squad. She gave a general curt nod, Kaidan taking his place next to Ashley. Shepard pretended not to notice the insistent gaze the Chief placed on the LT, knowing that she would be probing him with questions later. They were a few minutes late and showed up together. Ash would by itching to find out why.
"Good, you're all here. Hackett has brought to our attention that the geth have got the notion in those little flashlight heads of theirs that the Armstrong Cluster is up for the taking. Joker?"
"Yes ma'am?
"Pull up the star map of the cluster."
The galaxy map popped up on the large holo screen, the lights dimming to accommodate the brightened room. Shepard stared at the five individual systems with calculating eyes, hands clasped behind her back.
"Tali, Alenko. What can you tell me about these incursions?"
"From what the sensors could pick up," Kaidan began, "Four out of the five systems appear to have been infiltrated by the geth. For now, they seem to have left the Grissom system alone, though we can only speculate at the time."
"The geth have been running interference that has been messing with the ship's radars and communications." Tali continued, "The lieutenant and I have been working on gaining a little extra ground that would help paint a better picture of what we are dealing with, but without destroying the main source of the interference on each planet's surface—"
"We're flying in a little better than blind." Shepard sighed. She didn't like it when she couldn't see all the pieces before her. It left too many variables that needed to be considered and too much room for mistake. "That means we need to go in on foot to really know just what we're dealing with."
"We can expect an outpost to be armed—at a minimum—at platoon strength. If the geth intend to keep their hold on the system, then we'll be facing more than just simple scouts. It would be best to be heavily armed."
"Do I ever go anywhere not heavily armed?" She asked the turian with a grin. "Joker, what's the closest system?
"That would be Gagarin. Looks like the geth have set up shop on Rayingri."
Shepard nodded, turning to face her squad. "Then that's where we'll hit first. Lieutenant, suit up. You did wonders with our equipment back on Feros, so we're going to need you to run countermeasures against the geth's jamming devices when we reach planet side."
"Yes ma'am."
"You too Garrus. Feel like shooting up some synthetics?"
"As long as you promise to stay away from anything that looks Prothean."
"I second that request, skipper." Ashley piped in.
There was a general smothering of laughter that rippled though the room, to which Shepard rolled her eyes. She had been on the receiving end of jokes since her last brush with the Protheans, but the lightheartedness was good for the crew. With each step closer to Saren, tension rooted itself deeper and any chance they got to chip away at it was imperative. She had seen instances where stress tore units apart from the inside out and she would be damned if she let it happen to hers. If that meant dealing with a few jabs at her pride, then so be it.
It was nice to see Ashley warming up to the crew, too.
"If you're done taking shots at me," she said with a short laugh, "The rest of you can remain on standby. We don't know what we'll be facing when we get down there, so be ready to act as backup if we need it. Any questions?" She paused for a moment, but she knew there weren't going to be any. There was so little information to go on; questions would be wasted until things were clearer. She scanned the room once more before giving her crew leave. "Good. Dismissed."
The crew filed out of the comm room and she was about to head down to the armory herself when Tali stopped her.
"Shepard, can I ask you a favor?" The young quarian asked, nervously wringing her hands together.
Shepard felt for her. Perhaps out of the entire crew, Tali was the least prepared for this mission of tracking down Saren, being violently and unexpectedly thrown into the fray back on the Citadel. But instead of backing down from the challenge, she willingly put aside her Pilgrimage for a higher calling and faced it with a spunky determination that Shepard found rather admirable. She had also integrated with the Normandy crew very nicely and had a knack for the ship's technology. Engineer Adams had nothing but praise for the quarian.
"What can I do for you Tali?"
"I understand it could be difficult with bullets flying everywhere," she started, still staring at her hands, "But I wanted to ask if you could keep an eye out for anything geth related. You see, I want to bring something back to the Flotilla that has a fair amount of worth to it. It's almost expected of me to because of my father. The Flotilla always needs to add ships to their numbers and we can never have enough resources but I want to bring back something of worth."
"You want something that could help you against the geth." Shepard finished, filling in the blanks. She had spent some time talking with Tali, learning about the quarians and the struggles they faced almost daily. It gave her a new-found appreciation for the Alliance and its resources. Even in the most dire of times, humanity never had to face such hardships as the quarians have.
Tali finally looked up. "Exactly. We get very few chances to actually study the geth, and to pass up an opportunity like this would be detrimental. Please Shepard, my people—"
"I don't see a problem with it. Just tell me what I should look out for."
Despite the mask that obscured her features, Shepard could see her face light up. "Really Shepard? You would do that? Oh Keelah, thank you!"
She couldn't help but smile at how Tali perked up immediately, running through different things that would come as a blessing to the quarians; any sort of salvage, a console if she ran across one. Shepard had to admit, Tali was adorable—deadly with a shotgun and one hell of a technician—but adorable nonetheless.
Before long, Shepard was at the familiar setting of her locker clipping the last of her firearms to her suit, running through possible situations in her head. Not knowing what she was dragging her squad into was maddening, and she knew she wasn't going to be able to account for everything that could happen, not even a fraction of possibilities. She bit the inside of her cheek. All of this went against Rule Fifteen.
She seemed to have been doing that a lot lately, breaking the carefully laid guidelines her father had drilled into her head time and time again. She ran through the ever growing list in her head.
Rules 9, 12, 13, 15, 19…the infractions just kept on going.
She grabbed her helmet and took the elevator down to the docking bay, knowing that Garrus and Kaidan were waiting for her. Both were leaning up against the MAKO when she entered, the tank expertly patched up from the last time she took it out.
Shepard was aware that when her eyes fell on Kaidan, she ever so slightly smiled. It was just a twitch of the lips, but it was enough for her to realize how far she into dangerous waters she was treading.
In the weeks since their discussion in her apartment, Kaidan had finally dropped some of the walls he kept around himself and opened up. He told her about BAaT and Commander Vyrnnus, all the while weaving in an underlying concern for her; which she thought was incredibly sweet, all be it unnecessary. Shepard knew that when Rahna finally came up, it was a huge vote of confidence from him when she took it all in stride and accepted it.
"Things happen that we eventually regret," she had told him, "Trust me, I have my fair share of them. But it's a necessary part of life, y'know? We can't erase them. All we can do is learn from them, and hope to god that others don't judge us because of them."
There were simpler conversations too, ones that didn't ere so much on the heavy side of things. During one night on the Citadel, the topic had turned to scars when he asked where the one that cut through her eyebrow came from. It quickly became a show and tell where one tried to one-up the other afterwards.
"My first battle wound," he explained with a laugh, running a thumb over the faint scar on his chin. "Got into a scuffle with some other kid when I was ten. Gave him a black eye and a bloody nose though, so I guess he got the worst of it."
The night had ended with her balance threatening to give way as she was laughing so hard with Kaidan in a similar state, while confused pedestrians on the Presidium looked on.
She would never openly admit it to anyone, but she could listen to him talk for hours.
It hadn't been easy for either of them to get to get to this point. Personal experiences made them wary to begin with, but the major obstacles they were having trouble getting around were the fifteen regulations telling them that they shouldn't be doing this.
With both of them being two very by-the-book kind of soldiers, fraternization was that one thing that raised all the red flags and sirens, but for the most part they had tactfully ignored them. It didn't mean that they weren't cautious. It was an unspoken agreement that on duty hours and whenever the crew was around were spent in complete professionalism, where not so much as a knowing glance would be shared between them. It was only when they were certain that they didn't have an audience that they relaxed.
Shepard was fairly certain that most of the crew remained oblivious to the growing relationship between her and Kaidan, though she was aware that Ash had figured it out almost instantaneously. She more often than not gave a mischievous grin and a wink as she left them alone at his work station or in the mess hall. Ashley had even pulled Shepard aside a few times just to ask if "the LT had balls enough to make a move on his commander yet." She was always disappointed when Shepard had nothing new to report on. She knew it wasn't going to take long before the Chief grew tired of their lack of progress and would decide to take matters into her own hands.
She paced up to her waiting ground team. "You guys ready?"
"Thought you would never ask." Garrus said, climbing into the MAKO, "And if you have nothing against it Commander, I'm driving."
"Like hell you are." Shepard almost dove into her seat to beat Garrus there, protectively gripping the wheel as she eyed him. "Mine."
"Approaching the drop sight Commander. Let me know when you children are done fighting."
"Quit while you're ahead, Vakarian." Kaidan chuckled, sitting in the back. "She'll never give it up."
With the bay doors opening, she was certain of just one thing at that point. Kaidan was going to lead her to break the one rule her father held above all others.
/ - /
"How're those countermeasures coming along?" Shepard whispered into her helmet, back against the rock and peering around to the heavily fortified outpost a half klick* ahead of her. They only had a few minutes before a patrol would find them and all hell would break loose.
"Working as fast as I can, but they have some heavy duty firewalls that will take some time getting through."
Time was the last thing they had. "Garrus, move up and cover the left flank. We need to buy Alenko some time."
"Got it."
Pressed against the rock face again, Shepard let out a breath. She had expected some heavy resistance, but nothing of this grandeur. She counted two armatures and a colossus, more than a dozen foot soldiers with some armed with rocket launchers. In the tall towers she could just make out the silhouette of a turret, each personally guarded. She glanced over to where she had parked the MAKO, seeing only Kaidan's boots from her angle. All she and Garrus had to do was hold out until he was ready.
"Incoming patrol Shepard. I think they know we're here."
Her grip tightened around the trigger of her rifle. "Steady…"
A round whizzed past and chaos erupted a second later, the synthetic clicks of the geth rising in the air. All of the enemy's firepower seemed to be focus in on her and Garrus a moment later. They could hold the geth off at these positions perhaps for five minutes, maybe six, but she had faith that Kaidan wouldn't make them wait that long.
She dropped geth after geth, steady three-burst shots tearing through their shields with little resistance. Empty clips littered the ground around her feet, another dropping to join them as she reloaded. She's have to switch weapons soon or risk her rifle overheating, to which it would only be useful as a blunt object to beat the geth back with, but she had no plans to let them get that close.
Her shielding rippled, deflecting bullets that would have been otherwise painful. "How're you holding up Garrus?"
"Two out of the four turrets have been taken out of commission, but my sniper rifle overheated and my shield reserves are taking a beating. We have to move positions soon."
It had already been about three minutes. They were past the halfway mark.
She lobbed a grenade near one of the armatures, hoping to take out one of its legs. It exploded prematurely, taking a few foot soldiers with it and raining debris on the rest. Not the outcome she had hoped for, but she wasn't going to complain.
3 : 27 : 00
Another clip fell to the ground and she resumed her methodical trigger pulling. Pop-pop-pop. A synthetic down. Pop-pop-pop. Another one. Pop—
Instead of a stream of bullets, her rifle beeped loudly in protest and the controls locked in place. She swore and threw it to the ground, pulling out her less-powerful pistol to resume holding the geth at bay. Over her headset, she could hear Garrus having similar problems.
She was showered in rock and dust a moment later as a particle beam hit the rock above her, just barely missing its intended mark. There was an explosion from a rocket not too far off.
3 : 52 : 00
"Drop ship incoming!"
She looked up, a massive ship dropping in enemy reinforcements. Damn it, they didn't have the firepower to deal with that!
4 : 03 : 00
The geth were gaining ground. They wouldn't be able to hold them off for much longer.
4 : 11 : 00
"Kaidan!"
"I need another thirty seconds, that it!"
She dropped her pistol, it suffering a similar fate as her rifle. She was down to just her shotgun and sniper and…shit, just three grenades. "You have fifteen! Make it happen!"
She accidentally clamped down on her tongue, the metallic taste of blood flooding her mouth.
4 : 21 : 00
Her shields were just about gone, the energy cells just barely hanging on to what little was left of them. They had to move…
Her hardsuit's computer suddenly came to life, the static dissipating and leaving the scanners perfectly functioning. Just in time. Despite the enemy's numbers being fewer than she had expected, the colossus was still advancing on their positions. It wasn't as much as a threat with the smaller armatures destroyed, but it was still deadly.
"Fall back!"
Kaidan provided a cover fire as she and Garrus dropped back to a safer distance, allowing her the few second she needed to devise a plan to deal with the remaining geth forces.
She split her team up to three tactical positions, having Garrus sweep right and use the last of her grenades against the colossus from that side in an effort to take down its shielding. With her rifle up and running again, she could flank left and hit it from the other side. Kaidan was left with the frontal assault as he had full energy reserves and ammunition, and his biotics would also do the most damage from there. And if all went according to plan—which she was completely prepared for it not to— when the colossus shorted out it would take the rest of its friends with it. Simple enough, really. It just had to work.
Praying that her suit's energy reserves would hold out just long enough, she dashed up the ridge and dove behind cover, popping out a second later to release a fusillade at the monstrosity of a geth. Her rounds harmlessly bounced off, blue momentarily shimmering around it. She looked across the field, seeing Garrus hadn't gotten into position yet. She bunkered down, bullets chipping away at the rock around her, and waited for the explosions. One second. Two. Three…there!
The colossus let out a grinding shriek, staggering from the force of Garrus' attack. Again, she rained hell down upon the geth from her vantage point and her bullets met no resistance. It was only a matter of time now.
"Take it down!"
The colossus faced an onslaught from three sides and without any added protection, the bullets ripped through precious electronics without mercy. Its massive body shuddered and listed to one side, a pulse of energy being released before it collapsed to the ground in a heap, kicking up a cloud of dust. The remaining geth that had the unfortunate luck of being near it stood no chance, and the few that were still attempting to take shots at her and her squad were dead within seconds. Shepard cringed as a sharp screech pierced her helmet as the damn thing finally died, leaving the battlefield quiet.
She collapsed against the wall covered in sweat and dirt, the adrenaline already starting to ebb away. She spat out some blood. She was looking forward to a hot shower when they got back to the Normandy.
"Garrus, report in. You still good?"
"All clear on my end. You really cut it close, Alenko."
Shepard chuckled, waiting for his response. Apparently, so was Garrus.
"Hey Alenko, did you catch that?" He jokingly repeated.
Still no response. Something wasn't right. Panic started to blossom in her chest as she pushed herself up from the ground and quickly made her way back down to Kaidan's last known position, which was still partially obscured by dust.
"Lieutenant?" She called out, looking around, her tired muscles complaining at the sudden movement. He wasn't where she had ordered him to be. She fought to keep the growing sense of fear under check. He couldn't have gone far. "Alenko, report!"
She rounded a corner and came to face the motionless colossus and the dozens of geth corpses that covered the area. Still no sign of him.
"Shepard, over here!"
She spun around, seeing Garrus' figure wave her over before kneeling down. Her feet couldn't carry her over to him fast enough.
What she saw when she reached him caused her heart to plummet.
"Kaidan!"
* klick - 1000 meters / So "half a klick" is 500 meters, which is also 1500 feet.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Successful Cliffhanger Accomplished! - 50G