A/N: Please suspend your knowledge of physics for this chapter. Thank you.
Chapter Twenty-Five
With a roar of explosive energy the bomb detonated. The barrier held fast but as EDI had predicted the shielding dropped abruptly, sending a mild jolt of feedback through Shepard's hardsuit. She tensed and ducked as metal shrieked and air began to rush past her ears, the sound battling with her helmet's volume filters. She found herself suddenly clamped to Nathan's side as he tried to shield her from the worst of it. She felt a flash of annoyance at his overprotectiveness, but at the same time she also felt a rush of what she could only classify as grudging affection.
Bits of metal plating from the walls along with other random debris whipped through the room and over their heads as it was all sucked out into the suddenly wide open vista of empty space beyond. Shepard engaged her boots' mag-locks, anchoring herself to the deck so she wouldn't be dragged out with it. Jack started to slide but Nathan grabbed her arm and held her still while she sorted out her own mag-locks. Shepard couldn't really blame her for being a bit slow with it; Jack could probably count the amount of times she had worn full armour on one hand.
She nudged Nathan with her elbow and he finally realised he was still holding her. He sheepishly let her go.
Their barricade had held initially but now the various lockers and benches that had made up the protective wall began to slide back away from them toward the gaping hole in the hull. Shepard studied the breach with narrowed eyes. It looked like a child had grabbed a chunk of hull plating in a fist and tore it clean away, leaving nasty jagged edges behind. Those edges looked sharp enough to tear through armour and they were tall enough to prevent easy climbing. They might be able to use the escaping air and resulting reduction in gravity to their advantage there, though, if they were quick about it.
She activated her comm. "Joker, where are you?" she called above the rushing wind.
"Look out the window you just created, Commander!"
As she watched, the Normandy swung into view outside the breach. The outer airlock door slid open to reveal a fully vacuum-suited Samara standing ready, wreathed in biotic energy. She beckoned to them to jump.
They couldn't waste too much time if they wanted to use the escaping air to help them, not to mention avoid those prowling Cerberus frigates. Even with the air flow, it would be tricky. It would be a long, inaccurate jump followed by a zero gravity float just to get within range of Samara. "Jack, we'll need a boost to guide us over those edges."
Jack clapped her hands together, sending a wave of biotic energy flickering up her arms. "I got this, Shepard."
A loud crash shook the room, vibrating the deck beneath their feet. Jack ducked, and Shepard glanced sharply over at the door to the armoury to find a shallow dent now protruding from the metal. As she watched, there was another crash and the dent grew larger. Cerberus was trying to get in, and if they had any more of those oversized mechs it wouldn't take them long. "Let's go! EDI, you're first. Move it!"
The AI stepped forward, glancing at Jack, who nodded and braced herself in a wide, balanced stance. Without further preamble EDI took a running jump and released her mag-locks, launching herself up and over the jagged edge. She cleared it with a few inches to spare, aided by a biotic shield and a nudge from Jack. As soon as she was out, Jack let go, taking a deep breath and shaking out her limbs. Shepard cast her a questioning glance. She nodded firmly. She was up to this.
Outside Samara took over, gently but quickly enveloping EDI in a biotic field of her own and pulling her in to the airlock. Samara made it look elegant and effortless, but Shepard didn't spend too much time appreciating her work. Instead, she nodded to Miranda. "Go," she ordered. To her annoyance Miranda hesitated, giving her a worried look. Shepard knew she suspected the injury to her collarbone was worse than what she was claiming, she had said as much earlier, but now was not the time to talk about it. "Move, Lieutenant," she snapped.
Miranda acquiesced, taking a few steps before leaping out toward the breach. The room shook and the dent in the door became a tear, the jolt and the rush of extra air from within the station sending Miranda perilously close to the upper jagged edges of the breach. Jack surged a brilliant blue and let out a yelled curse, and Miranda's body twisted away just in time. She somersaulted through safely and into Samara's reach.
The sound of gunfire came from the hole in the door, prompting Shepard to grab Jack and pull her down out of the way as Nathan also moved to get out of line of sight. The gunfire wasn't aimed at them, however; the door was directly across from the breach and the gunfire was aiming straight at it. Cerberus was trying to cut off their escape route.
I don't think so, Shepard thought grimly. She grabbed the last frag grenade off her belt and primed it, tossing it through the tear in the door. She gave it a two-count then detonated it. As soon as she heard a muffled bang she slapped Nathan on the shoulder. The gunfire spattered to a halt. "Go, Briggs," she called to him over the roaring wind.
He hesitated, just like Miranda had. Had he figured it out too? She felt a flash of utter frustration. Why the hell couldn't the two of them just do as she said, when she said it? "Now!" she yelled, turning the full force of her glare on him.
He didn't look happy, but in the face of an angry CO his marine training won out. He stepped up before the breach and leaped as high as he could, which wasn't particularly high. Jack caught him, heaving him up and over the jagged edge. Shepard kept an eye on him as he floated out, unwieldy but doing a decent job of keeping his limbs away from danger. As he cleared the breach she let out a relieved breath.
Cerberus would recover any second now. "Time to go, Jack," she said, nudging the woman forward. The breach was wide, but not wide enough to comfortably fit two bodies past that edge at the same time. "You first. I'll be right behind you."
"How the fuck are you going to get over that shit without me?" Jack demanded.
"I won't. You'll turn around and grab me." And by then Cerberus would be firing on her rather than the very lightly-shielded Jack. "Ready?"
"Wait-"
"Go, Jack!"
The woman made a frustrated sound but detached her mag-locks and flew up and over the edge, covered by a sparking indigo corona. It wasn't quite as artful or smooth as Samara's version of the same move but it did the job.
Behind her, Shepard heard the sound of gunfire start up again. Out of time. She didn't wait for Jack to be fully clear. She judged the distance and took a running leap, trying to angle her body so she caught the flow of outward air. She floated up, the lower gravity and lack of biotic support to counteract the airflow sending her higher and faster than the others had gone. The upper edge of the breach was just as ragged as the lower, and its edges approached quickly. Shepard twisted her body, readying her good arm to fend them off if she had to.
Shots began pinging against her shields. Shepard spotted Jack in her peripheral vision, trying to reorient herself painfully slowly, as she floated out into empty space between the station and the Normandy. She was having significant trouble, flailing around ineffectually in the absence of gravity. She wasn't going to get the biotic field up in time—
Shepard saw a sharp piece of torn metal swinging in the escaping air as it twisted towards her. She flung out her arm and caught it before it could hit, the impact causing her to spin around. As her back oriented toward the sharp serrated edges of the breach she both felt and heard a screeching, scraping sound.
Alarms blared in her ears and red symbols lit up on her HUD. Suit integrity compromised. Pressure 86%.
She felt her stomach drop out from under her as bile rose up in her throat and adrenaline flooded her veins. No no no no… She flung her arm around behind her, fumbling for the breach, fighting not to panic and losing as an avalanche of very unwelcome flashbacks invaded her mind.
She floated away from the dying Normandy, eyes fixed on the last escape pod as it spiralled down toward Alchera. She took a deep breath, relieved that Joker would be okay. She would be too – it might take an hour or two but her armour was rated for this exact possibility and had about four hours of life in it…
Her thoughts had trailed off right there as her next breath was a little more difficult to take. The one after that was harder still, the air thicker, and she realised she wouldn't have an hour or two after all. She would only have a few minutes and that would be it. She had fought it, fought to find the tear in her air hose, fought tooth and nail to take that next breath, but it hadn't been enough in the end. She had taken her final wheezing breath through cloudy eyes staring down at the starkly beautiful but empty icy vista of Alchera.
It would not happen again. Not again. Shots were impacting on her shields and then her armour but she barely noticed as she writhed, almost wrenching her good shoulder as she tried to find the tear.
Emergency seals deployed. Suit integrity one hundred percent.
She froze at the calm blue text on her HUD, breath echoing harshly in her ears. She was floating up to the Normandy now, Jack's biotic shield surrounding her like a cocoon. She was out of reach of the gunfire. And her armour's emergency seals had worked as they were supposed to.
She took a deep, shaky, sweet breath. For a moment she had thought—
It didn't happen. Get it together, Shepard. You're fine.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing that beautiful clean air, the pain in her collarbone all but forgotten for the moment. She focussed on getting her racing pulse under control. The mission wasn't over yet. She couldn't lose it. Not yet.
She felt something knock her booted foot. Opening her eyes she saw that Nathan had a grip on her ankle and was pulling her in with the help of Jack and Samara's biotics. When she saw his familiar grey armour and felt his hand on her foot, she was ashamed to admit to herself that she was both mentally and physically exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse into his arms.
But she couldn't let on to the crew – Nathan especially – how close she had come to panicking. She reached out her good hand to Nathan and he took it, pulling her down to the deck below. She made sure she landed smoothly.
The four of them joined Miranda and EDI in the airlock and shut the outer hatch behind them. She immediately opened a comm channel to Joker as the decontamination cycle began to run. Time to blow this station to hell. Her voice shook a little, but she quickly corrected it. "Jo… Joker, think you can hit the core with the thanix through the breach?"
Joker's gleeful laugh came clearly through her helmet speakers. "Hell yes, Commander. With a little assistance from Garrus and EDI."
"I am performing targeting calculations now, Lieutenant Moreau," EDI advised.
"Ready on the thanix," came Garrus' confirmation from within the ship.
The ship tilted as Joker swung it around. Shepard used her grip on Nathan's hand for balance, realising belatedly that she hadn't let him go yet. She straightened, easing away from him and trying to stand up straight. Her knees promptly buckled.
He caught her just in time. "Shepard?"
"I'm fi— Ah!" she bit off an involuntary gasp as Nathan's grip unintentionally pulled on her collarbone. Her vision swam for a moment, but the adrenaline still running through her body dulled it somewhat. "I'm injured, but I'm fine for now," she told him in a forced, mostly steady voice. She nodded to the inner hatch as the decontamination cycle ended. "Help me to the cockpit."
"You do not look to be fine, Shepard," Samara commented mildly. Shepard tossed her a dirty look and ignored Nathan's dubious expression.
Nathan tried to do as she asked, but to her supreme annoyance her left leg gave out on her as soon as she tried to take a step. She looked down to find a bullet-sized hole in the armour covering her thigh. There was no blood; the suit's emergency seals had clamped down onto her skin. It had to have hit her around the same time as her suit had torn open, or else she would have seen more alarms.
"Get to the medbay, Shepard," Miranda told her, turning toward the cockpit herself. "You can't even stand. I'll take care of the station."
Nathan braced her as the deck shifted beneath their feet. She shook her head. No way. She wanted to watch the place blow. "Not yet. Cockpit first."
With a long-suffering sigh Miranda slipped an arm around her waist and helped Nathan half-carry her to the cockpit. Joker didn't look up, concentrating too hard on his flying, but he heard them enter. "Almost there…" he muttered for their benefit.
Shepard watched the station loom larger in the viewports as Joker brought the Normandy in close enough to fire through the hole in the hull they had left behind. It was still venting atmosphere, though it had subsided somewhat in the time since they had left. A cloud of debris slowly expanded outward, marking Joker's target nicely.
"Thanix is fully calibrated and ready to fire," Garrus reported over the comm.
EDI had slid into the co-pilot's seat at Joker's right. "Targeting is optimal," she added.
Joker glanced over his shoulder at Shepard. He didn't need to wait for her order in this circumstance but he seemed to have decided to anyway. She smiled. "Fire," she ordered with relish.
He slammed his fist down on the firing control and the golden stream of molten metal lanced out from the bowels of the Normandy, tearing into the hole they had created in the station's hull and piercing through its inner bulkheads. Without the armoured hull to protect it, the thanix ripped through the station like it was made from tissue paper. A gout of flame exploded from the top of the disc, where the core was located, followed by secondary explosions at power routing stations in a web expanding outward from the core. Finally, as the Normandy swung away out of range, the whole thing went up, taking the husks and remaining Cerberus troops with it.
"Get us out of here," she said, thoroughly satisfied.
"You got it, Commander." Joker evaded the two Cerberus frigates with practiced ease and headed for the relay.
Once they were through Shepard began to feel the adrenaline fade away, pain in her leg and her collarbone replacing it. She shifted her balance and almost toppled to the floor again. Miranda and Nathan caught her, the former giving her a piercing look. She sighed and gave in. "Okay. Medbay now."
Shepard woke feeling as though she had gone ten rounds with a krogan. She was exhausted, slightly fuzzy and a bit numb. She was propped up on a pillow on a bed in the medbay, hooked up to various monitors and an IV. She tried to weakly shuffle herself up higher against the raised back of the bed but stopped guiltily at a hand on her arm. Dr Chakwas gave her a stern look. "Don't try to move too much, Commander," she said. "You'll probably regret it."
Shepard knew better than to ignore that look. She subsided, falling back onto the pillow. "What happened, Doc?" she asked, taking note of the surgical dressings covering her collarbone and right shoulder area, and the lighter bandage on her left thigh. She was wearing a medical gown, too, meaning Chakwas had gone to the trouble of removing the shorts and tank she usually wore beneath her undersuit as well as the armour and undersuit itself. Damn, it had to have been pretty serious. The last thing she remembered was limping through the CIC with Nathan's arm supporting her.
"You passed out halfway to the medbay. Lieutenant Briggs carried you here." Shepard winced. He had carried her? Chakwas saw her reaction and gave her another stern glare. "You're very lucky he was there. If you had fallen… well. You should have come directly to me, Shepard. Your collarbone was broken badly and severely exacerbated by the recoil of your rifle. I had to go in and completely realign the bones. It was a difficult surgery."
Shepard's heart sank. They were heading to Palaven now. She couldn't be out of action. "How long will it take to heal?"
Chakwas sighed. "I've only just patched you up, Shepard. You marines will be the death of me. The bullet wound to your thigh was comparatively minor. I was able to dig the shrapnel out and patch you up nicely. You won't even have a scar. As for your collarbone, with your Cerberus modifcations and the bone-knitting serum I applied while I was repairing it you'll be ready to go in two days."
"And how long was I out for?"
"About four hours."
Shepard's sigh was one of relief as she did the math in her head. She would be ready in time for the rendezvous with the krogan and the turians. Just. "Thank you, Karin."
Dr Chakwas reached out and covered her hand with one of her own. Shepard met her eyes, surprised to find the doctor's usual exasperation replaced by concern. "Shepard… Lieutenant Briggs told me he had no idea you had been injured until it was time to jump over to the Normandy. Why didn't you let your team know you were hurt?"
Shepard looked down at her hand, covered as it was by Chakwas'. She fidgeted awkwardly. To be honest, she wasn't entirely sure why she had done that. "I couldn't," she finally replied. "They had enough to worry about. They rely on me to be strong."
Chakwas frowned and chided, "There's a difference between strength and bravado, Shepard. I know you know that." She did. She hadn't been trying to prove anything. The doctor peered at her intently. "Does this have anything to do with our Lieutenant Briggs?"
Shepard glanced sharply up at her. "Of course not," she protested immediately.
Chakwas saw right through her, of course. "I thought so. He's not like the rest of your team, is he? He's not quite as capable, and yet you insist on bringing him on ground missions. Oh, he got a medal somewhere, I know, but besides that he's really nothing special."
Shepard couldn't help the protest that welled up in her eyes, even if she managed to keep her mouth shut. Chakwas gave her a knowing look. Damn her, she had just said that to provoke a reaction, and she had gotten exactly what she wanted. "He doesn't have any special training and he's not the best in the galaxy at anything," Shepard told her grudgingly. "But he's a good soldier and he learns quickly."
"And you like him. A lot," Chakwas added gently. Shepard shifted uncomfortably, wincing as the seals on her bandages pulled her skin. "If I may ask, have you… done anything about that?"
Shepard hesitated, unsure if she should say anything or not. But this was Karin Chakwas, her good friend and one of the few people in the galaxy she could trust with anything and everything. Finally she nodded. "Yes."
"I see." Shepard was a hair's breadth away from getting defensive, but she stopped when she saw her old friend's concern fade into a pleased smile. "I'm glad. I think he will be good for you. As soon as you learn not to treat him like an idiot."
Now she did get defensive. "I wasn't—how do you figure I was doing that?" she demanded.
"You didn't tell anyone about your injury because you were trying to protect him, weren't you? You think he needs the invincible Commander Shepardat his side to be able to drag himself through a firefight."
The rebuke died on her lips. It hadn't been precisely like that, but… the assertion rang a little truer than she would like. She felt her cheeks warming. When Chakwas put it that way it sounded incredibly stupid. "He's never—I don't—"
"Mmhm. He's never thought of you that way, or at least, not like our Lieutenant Vega does. Oh, there was a certain amount of awe in his regard for you back when I first met him on the Citadel, but I haven't seen anything like that for a while now."
"Really?" She hadn't noticed that. She had been too distracted by the other, far more interesting looks he gave her.
Chakwas smiled gently and patted her hand. "Yes, really. When I see him look at you I see a healthy dose of respect, and a lot of affection. I don't see any of that old amazement, that 'holy-shit-she's-real' look that I sometimes see on Vega. You need to start giving him the benefit of the doubt, even if he isn't quite the soldier you are yet. I believe he could have handled knowing you were hurt better than you think."
With one last pat of her hand the doctor returned to her desk and left her to her thoughts.
Shepard frowned to herself. Was Chakwas right? Had she been coddling Nathan? Treating him like he needed to be looked after? She frowned to herself. He did need to be looked after sometimes. He had almost managed to get his head blown off on Menae when he tried to run into a pack of husks without realising there were a couple of marauders lurking behind cover nearby. That had scared her. So had the moment when the beam from the Reaper destroyer had almost hit him. Both times she had had to save his ass.
Had she taken it a bit far since then, though? Had she kept trying to keep him from harm, kept coddling him, even when he would have been fine without her? Looking back on their discussion from the other night, was she the one who had been causing problems by trying to protect him?
Before she could work it out, the medbay door slid open and Miranda stepped in, followed by EDI. Miranda, who was once more immaculately attired in Alliance BDUs topped off with a neat regulation bun, looked from Shepard to the doctor and asked, "Can she have visitors?"
"Yes, she can," Shepard spoke up before the doctor could respond.
Chakwas cast her a mildly irritated glance. "For a few minutes only, please. Shepard, don't argue with me. You've just had surgery."
Shepard gave her a pained look. "Yes, ma'am," she replied. She beckoned Miranda and EDI over with her good hand and shifted her weight a bit, trying to get more comfortable. It didn't work very well and caused a painful pull on her surgical wound, wiping the smile off her face. All right, maybe Chakwas had a point.
"How are you feeling, Commander?" EDI asked, standing at the foot of her bed. Miranda folded her arms across her chest and shifted all her weight to one leg, eyeing Shepard with a reproachful glare.
"I'll live," she replied, ignoring Miranda. "What have you got for me?"
"The station was completely destroyed, Commander," Miranda reported, tones clipped and official despite her stance. "No survivors."
Shepard shook her head. All those people turned into husks… "Good. The Cerberus frigates?"
"Gone. They didn't follow us through the relay."
"Anything from the Illusive Man?"
"Nothing, though I can't imagine he was happy."
Shepard smiled and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. "That warms my heart. So, we're in the clear for now. EDI, anything interesting in the data?"
EDI didn't respond immediately, which had Shepard opening her eyes and paying closer attention. EDI wouldn't require processing time for something like this; she had to be waiting for input.
She was looking to Miranda for guidance. Miranda was the one who responded. "Your guess was right, Shepard. They had turned the station into a processing centre with the purpose of creating husked and various other types of upgraded troops. Recruits arrived there intending to join the Alliance military and were instead converted into those… things. But it gets worse."
Shepard let out a slow breath. "Of course it does."
EDI took over. "The station had also been converted into a research facility of sorts. Cerberus was investigating ways in which they could exert control over Reaper troops. The data revealed they had captured some and at least partially succeeded."
Shepard's heart sank. "The Reaper troops in the control room."
"Yes."
"You said 'captured'. So those troops weren't converted by Cerberus?"
"No. There is no indication that Cerberus is capable of fully converting a human or any other species into its husked form."
Shepard sighed. "Well, there had to be some good news in there. To what extent were the Reaper troops being controlled?"
"Inconclusive. However, it is unlikely the minutiae of their actions were being controlled, at least at the time we encountered them. To do so would require a constant comm connection to the station, which we know Cerberus did not possess."
"Wait, but that's possible? The Illusive Man could sit safely in a room somewhere and move Reaper troops around like he was playing a vid game?" Shepard felt her stomach tighten in horror. It was bad enough that Harbinger was capable of doing that, but the Illusive Man too?
"The data suggests it may be possible, yes," Miranda confirmed. "But the technology has not been fully realised. It appears to be feasible for a small number of troops – maybe four or five – before it loses effectiveness. Many other factors were not even tested, such as signal strength, distance, and the presence of Harbinger or another Reaper."
Shepard felt drained all of a sudden. These revelations meant that Cerberus was a much bigger threat than she had originally thought. The possibility of having to fight not one but two galaxy-wide battles left her feeling exhausted. She lay back against the pillow, staring at EDI, keeping her expression hard and neutral with a supreme force of effort.
"There is one more thing, Shepard," EDI added hesitantly.
"That can wait until she's had a chance to recover fully," Miranda interjected firmly, eyeing Shepard before giving EDI a warning look.
Shepard narrowed her eyes. "What is it?"
The exchange had caught Dr Chakwas' attention. "If Miranda says it can wait, it can wait, Commander," she added, moving over to usher the two of them out.
No way. "Stop." Her Commander voice didn't carry quite as much weight as it normally did, coming as it did from a medbay bed, but it still caused them all to stop short. "They can leave after they finish their report, Doctor. Lieutenant Lawson?"
Chakwas sighed and gave her a look that plainly chastised her for pulling rank while partially drug-addled and lying in the medbay, but for whatever reason she refrained from pulling out her CMO trump card. Miranda drew herself up to attention, pinning Shepard in place with her icy blue eyes. You asked for it, that stare said. Shepard returned both their stares without blinking.
"EDI also uncovered data from the Lazarus project that had been stored in the station's memory banks," Miranda began. "That data would not have been kept on site if it had not been utilised frequently."
"It appears to have been used to aid in the development of further enhancements and modifications to the human form," EDI continued. "A number of Cerberus troops have been fitted with similar cybernetics to yours."
"Okay," Shepard replied slowly. "That's not good, but it's not entirely unexpected."
EDI glanced at Miranda again. Miranda took up the thread. "A significant portion of the Lazarus project files were kept encrypted. This in itself is not surprising. A number of the techniques I used to rebuild you were highly classified. What is surprising is that EDI has so far been unable to break the encryption."
"They knew we were coming. They prepared in advance," Shepard said.
"But why would they need to encrypt files specifically to keep them from us if they know I already know what's in them?"
Ah. Shepard sighed. "Only if there was something in there you didn't know about. Something they didn't want either of us to know." She felt like screaming in rage but squashed it ruthlessly. "All right. I'm going to need a full work-up, Doctor. I need you find out exactly what they don't want me to know."