Ace - Jeff Moreau
–
Joker carved canyons with his left hand. His plate was piled high with rich mashed potatoes and gravy and a half dozen other foodstuffs – he'd helped himself to enough Cerberus hospitality to feed ten men, so as not to seem rude to their totally-not-planning-something-evil hosts. But even knowing he was squandering his brief window to eat without Jack or Grunt in the room, Joker's food served as more plaything than nourishment. Potatoes became miniature mountain ranges under the steady strokes of his spoon.
Joker's mind wasn't with his edible edifices, nor with the quiet murmur of whispered conversation that filled Minuteman Station's cafeteria with a funereal air that did nothing for his appetite, nor even with Dr. Chakwas, who after three years of knowing him still could not recognize when he'd long since stopped listening. Joker's mind was with the datapad in his right hand, scrolling through six months of Normandy's engine throughput graphs looking for a eureka. The eggheads had assured him that the new armor would not slow his baby down, that the theoretical throughput was ten times what he'd ever asked of it, but he was in no mind to take that assurance at face value.
"I want to do another stress test," Chakwas was saying, peering over her own distraction, a landscape of his medical forms spread across the cafeteria table between them. "I want to see how your strength is coming along."
Joker snorted over a thousand scrolling numbers. "Spoiler alert, then, Chakwas: It isn't."
Chakwas looked up from her work to favor him with the bemused stare she'd so perfected, the one that made her look for all the galaxy like an imperious schoolteacher. "Not with that attitude it isn't," she agreed. "The Seleninone regimen is the cutting edge, and all of your griping aside, it has worked wonders for you. Your color is better, you said you've been sleeping better, you haven't had an incident in-"
"I haven't been taking it," Joker said, switching to the next graph and carving a new divide in his continental plate.
"Jeffrey Alan Moreau," Chakwas said, and Joker didn't need to look at her to know she was going full-on mom on him. "You can't-"
Joker tossed his spoon down onto his plate with an audible clatter. "Kinda busy here, Chakwas," he snapped, gesturing impatiently at his datapad. "And it's kinda important, so can you can it for a while maybe?"
Chakwas' face turned to stone at his words, and Joker immediately regretted them. The doctor said nothing, and for a long beat no one else did either. The mess was silent - it was as if everyone else on the station had timed the lulls in their conversation juuuuust right to catch his outburst.
Now he was in for it. Joker swallowed, bracing for the storm.
But Chakwas only sighed. "You foolish, foolish man," she said, and the wilt in her shoulders made Joker feel like a jerk. "How many doses have you missed?"
"A couple," Joker said, feigning a new fascination with the remains of his meal. "Three," he amended. "They were making me all wonky." He shook his head. "Throwing me off my game."
"Jeff..."
"Can't risk that," Joker said. "I'm the pilot." He met her eyes, unflinching.
Chakwas was unamused. "And in all your years as pilot, you can't think of a single scenario in which you might have benefitted from a bit more mobility?"
Joker knew what she was getting at, and the memory stung. He frowned at his plate as the same pall of guilt that always accompanied thoughts of the first Normandy made its reappearance. The SR1 had been destroyed, and Shepard had come to save him, and Shepard had died. "That had nothing to do with my legs," he mumbled, chasing the niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach down with an awkward mouthful of potatoes. He didn't bother chewing. "You know that."
Chakwas sighed again. Even without looking at her it was obvious she wanted to press the issue further, but Joker had a point and they both knew it – even if Seleninone was a magic cure-all bullet (and it wasn't), building his bone strength was hardly worth compromising his ability to fly and endangering everyone else on the mission. The Normandy was a precision machine – her helmsman had to be as well.
Even if it meant he couldn't bail out.
"Oh Jeff," Chakwas said, sighing yet again. She set her datapad aside, defeated. "We'll try something else, then."
Joker nodded, grimacing at the awkwardness that had fallen between them. He felt a pang of regret for being so selfish – as much as he struggled keeping up with his ever-changing regimen of medications, Chakwas had to do the same all while dealing with him. He didn't envy her position, and yet never once had she complained. As much as he resisted her, Chakwas was a better mom to him than his real one had ever been. He cleared his throat. "I… shouldn't have snapped at you," he admitted, nervously adjusting his hat. "But don't worry about me, okay? Let's just… Let's just get through this mission, and I'll try them again."
Chakwas forced a smile. "I do worry, Jeffrey. One of us needs to."
"Nah." Joker waved his hand like he was batting away a fly. "Let's take the week off. Hell, let's take the whole month off. It can be National Nobody-Worries-About-Joker-Month. Think Udina will make it official if I ask nicely?"
Chakwas just shook her head. "Your reading?" she reminded him, pointing to his forgotten datapad. "Important, or so I was led to believe."
"Yeah, yeah."
Joker returned to his datapad, straining his eyes to pick some meaning out of the endless data strings. The values swam by his gaze, useless, impenetrably alien, but he read on all the same. A power report here, an engine report there. Tip top shape of ninety-eight percent on February the sixth. A few hiccups on the seventh down to eighty percent, Tali and Donnelly changed an actuator pad, back to full on the eighth. Landing clamps were sticky – he'd add that to the crew's to-do list. Rolling acceleration was faster than spec, could probably loosen up the regulators if he wanted to spend another week recalibrating them. Insert obligatory Garrus joke.
Err…
Joker frowned. Even the obligatory Garrus joke wasn't coming to him. He was getting rusty.
He sighed, weary with himself. He knew he was wasting his time. The numbers were good. If EDI could not see cause for concern in them, how was he to find any?
Joker hated to admit it aloud, but as good as pilots got (and make no mistake, he was great), ninety percent of flying was instrumentation and computers these days. His input was minimal by design – the Normandy ran itself without his interference, and it ran itself well. It didn't need him second-guessing the data.
Joker tossed aside his datapad in disgust.
The cafeteria was mostly empty – Shepard's ground team was doing yet another training drill, and most of the crew had a mountain of preparatory work yet to do on the ship – but even so a steady stream of people kept it populated, bent on getting some last-minute food or rest in between frantic shifts. There were fixes to make, strategies to practice, plans to write up.
But not for Joker. With his baby half disassembled he couldn't even go for a quick joyride to recheck the control coefficients or any of a dozen other things he could be prepping. The fact that he'd already tinkered them all to perfection long ago did not matter – Joker was bored. He'd spent the near entirety of the five days Normandy had been parked on Minuteman Station sitting in the cockpit listening to the crew doing the refits, but that watched pot had never boiled and even his ass got sore from sitting eventually. So he'd gone from being bored on the Normandy to being bored on the station.
Joker drummed his fingers against the tabletop, anxiety and impatience gnawing at his innards. He'd been itching to take the fight to the collectors for almost three years now, and now that they were so close the waiting was getting excruciating. He was tired of feeling useless, tired of wasting his time trying to think of how to better prepare the ship for a dogfight with the collector death-cigar without access to the ship itself. He wanted to do something, to push them forward in some small way, but it seemed like he was the only one on the crew with nothing to do but watch everybody else work.
Joker scowled at no one in particular. The animated way that the other people in the mess wolfed down their food irked him, like they were flaunting their business in front of him. He was not alone in wanting to distract himself with something productive. But it went deeper than that, too. The entire crew was trying to act like they weren't afraid, but Joker had spent a lifetime watching people move and he knew tension when he saw it. It was like they thought somehow their survival chances improved if they just... kept... moving.
Joker hadn't been afraid of anything worse than a broken wrist in a long time. Seemed pointless to worry about dying in a galaxy so replete with people trying to kill you – it was going to happen sooner or later anyway, so why stress out about it? And that was to say nothing of the fact that they had the galaxy's best, handsomest, humblest pilot on their side (and some of the better soldiers, he supposed). Shepard hadn't brought them all so far only to lose now. As long as Timmy eventually got off his ass and got them a way past the relay, Joker figured they had the mission well in hand.
But the rest of the crew?
They were terrified.
It was annoying.
Joker sighed to himself and, finally giving up on his datapad and potato topography alike, pushed his plate aside and turned in his seat until the other patrons and their incessant motion was out of view. The truth was, he felt uneasy too. He wasn't scared, but he knew boredom was not an emotionally healthy reaction to an impending suicide mission. Even if he had nothing to do on the Normandy, he should have been preparing himself should have been confronting his mortality or mending bridges or something. Maybe penning an inspirational epitaph (or, failing that, a nice smartass one). He'd briefly entertained sending a longer letter to Tiptree, something more substantial than the "Hey guys, I'm fine" he'd already sent, something with a few more 'goodbyes' and 'just-in-cases', but it seemed a pointless exercise. He had little doubt Cerberus was censoring any outgoing transmissions they made, and even if Gunny and his father could make sense out of the few fragments Cerberus let pass, it'd probably just worry them more. He'd write them when they got back.
Still. He should have been doing something other than sitting in a cafeteria with his chocolate milk and his potatoes and scowling at the other kids.
Joker pressed his forehead down on the table. "Can we go do suicide yet?"
As if in answer, a great crash came echoing down the hallway, so loud that Joker felt it reverberating through the floor. The mess fell silent as all eyes turned to watch a very distracted Grunt stumble through the door, bouncing off the doorframe hard enough to bend it. Joker felt the momentary flash of panic he always felt when he saw something big moving towards him – Grunt was more than large enough to crush a normal man, let alone him – but the krogan trundled on past his table without slowing, oblivious to the stares of the crew as he muttered to himself.
Joker and Chakwas exchanged a nervous look as Grunt patrolled aimlessly across the room to the food bars, trailing debris behind him. As far as Joker knew, Grunt was on their side now, but he had no interest in testing that theory. It was time to go. "I'll see you later, Chakwas," he said. Maybe he'd drag his sore ass to the station's living areas and patronize one of the spacious showers he'd heard so much about. Everyone seemed to want a shower like it was the last one they'd ever get, but Joker probably needed one more than most – in the past few months he had only rarely bothered to make the trip down to the crew deck to clean himself up, lest he get stepped on by some wandering alien freak.
Bending over backwards to avoid getting stepped on by wandering alien freaks seemed to be his lot in life since joining Shepard. He rose to his feet.
"I'd best find out what's troubling him," Chakwas said, face tight as she watched the big alien rubbing his bony skull against the wall. Joker could see the resignation in the doctor's eyes as she steeled herself and stood. It was her duty to see to the crew's medical needs – not just the needs of those disinclined to crush her – and Chakwas did not disregard her duty.
Joker tossed her a last sympathetic look and adjusted his hat. "Good luck." He made for the door, steadying himself against the table with one hand and exiting the room as quickly as his shuffling footsteps would allow. Still, once he'd found the doorframe he could not help but turn and watch Chakwas and Grunt with a grim fascination.
On the other end of the room, the doctor looked tiny next to Grunt's armored bulk. "Grunt... are you well?" she tried, datapad at attention.
Grunt was halfway through obliterating the salad bar, but at Chakwas' words his head popped up so fast that it took most of the sneeze guard with it. It clattered to his feet in pieces as he whirled to face her, his jaw hung open as if he was astonished to discover that he was not alone. His wide eyes immediately narrowed to fury, and for a moment Joker thought the doctor was about to be crushed, but then Grunt turned back to the remains of the salad bar with a drunken lurch. "Okeer," he rumbled, and his voice filled the mess. "He saw them." He shook his head violently, as if to clear a cloud of insects.
Joker smirked. Nothing to worry about, then. Just more bad dreams. Grunt had come a long way since their pit-stop on Tuchanka, but his memory-tantrums were becoming par for the course. Joker shook his head at the thought and turned to go. "Suppose it says a lot about us that krogan rampages are beneath our concern now," he muttered.
Then there was a sudden bellow of anger from behind him and Joker wished he'd just kept his mouth shut.
He turned in time to see Grunt thundering towards him.
Joker heard Chakwas' shout of alarm over the shaking of Grunt's heavy footfalls, but Grunt left her behind in an instant, clearing the length of the room far faster than a creature of his size had any right to. Pants-shittingly fast, at least. Joker didn't bother cursing his big mouth or even speculating on the number of fragments he was about to be reduced to. He closed his eyes – there was no time to do anything else.
But Grunt's footsteps slowed and stopped and no impact came.
"You," Grunt rumbled, and Joker felt hot breath ruffle his hair. "Pilot man."
Joker opened his eyes to find himself swallowed up by the krogan's shadow. Grunt stood before him, impossibly gigantic but blessedly stationary as he jabbed a thick finger at Joker's face. Joker blinked stupidly, mind struggling to catch up to the fact that he was still breathing. His stomach had descended somewhere south of his beltline and his heart was beating like a machine gun, but until it decided to explode, he was still alive.
Joker cleared his throat and tried to keep from fainting long enough to string a response together. "Jesus… shitting… shit!" he managed, leaning down on his knees.
Grunt's eyes narrowed. "You know of ships and their makings," he accused, jabbing his finger again. He seemed to loom up, a mountain of meat next to Joker. Just standing next to him turned Joker's tongue to cotton. It was like standing over a great height with no guardrail and knowing that the wrong move could turn all that potential energy into bone-powderizing kinetic energy in the blink of an eye. For once Joker was at a loss for words.
Chakwas spared him the need, sidling to plant herself in between the krogan and his quarry. Grunt towered over her, but she stared up at him with her usual imperviousness, casually pushing his hand aside. "Please be careful, Grunt," she said, ignoring the way the krogan's hackles rose as they always did when someone stepped into his space. She snaked a hand around Joker's shoulders and ushered him away. "We don't need a repeat of the incident with Mr. Vakarian."
Joker might have been touched at the doctor's bravery in shielding him from an alien that weighed more than every other person in the room combined, but as it was he only felt a backwards flash of annoyance at her intrusion. Sure, he'd nearly been rendered into a fine paste, but what happened to National Nobody-Worries-About-Joker Month? She knew he didn't like her babying. He was a grown man, and being threatened by a krogan was like a rite of passage around here.
All of his fear evaporated. "The toy's already broke, Chakwas," he said, feeling his senses return to him as he stepped out of her grip. "I'm hardly going to smash it again." He ignored the chagrined look Chakwas tossed him, craning his neck back to lock eyes with Grunt as he straightened himself to his own formidable height – almost all the way up to the krogan's collarbone.
Grunt pushed the doctor aside with a flick of his hand and stared down at Joker. Fury radiated off of him in waves at the reminder of what had happened to his Garr the Battlemaster toy, but the uncharacteristic fear in his eyes was so sincere Joker almost laughed. "The quarian fixed it," he snarled, taking a step backwards as if the mere mention of his beloved toy could shatter it again. "Harm it and I will tear your-"
"I know ships and their makings," Joker interrupted.
Grunt fell silent, ice blue eyes flitting across his face as they studied it for duplicity. "I remembered the memory again," he said finally, and his face screwed up in frustration. He started to pace again, and Joker had to steady himself against the wave of vertigo at seeing so much surface area move. "Okeer. Okeer and the collectors."
Joker sighed. He remembered the last time Grunt had been convinced he knew something about the collectors – he and Garrus had spent the better part of two days trying unsuccessfully to tease out what it was. He shrugged. "Cool story."
Grunt's fist came smashing into the nearest table hard enough to dent it. He roared in anger, so loud Joker only barely avoided a nasty fall. "OKEER AND THE COLLECTORS!" Grunt bellowed. "I can't... it isn't all there. He met with them on a moon." He scratched at his head plates as if he had his lost memory by the tail and merely had to pry it from its burrow.
Joker frowned, annoyed, and took a few steps back. He started to regret eschewing Chakwas' protection. "And again, cool story."
Grunt glared at him. "Do not patronize me, pilot man. They gave him... an object. For his ship. It was..." He growled and hit the table again. This time the tabletop folded spectacularly, caving in under his armored fist. "He did not want me to know this!" he roared. "He was ashamed. On the moon." He looked helplessly at Joker. "It was important," he tried again. "The object, it let his ship... It let his ship meet them at their home. Bring them their payment."
For a moment, the sarcastic shield with which Joker engaged everyone he met failed. His eyes widened and he stared at the krogan with genuine interest. "It let him get past the Omega-4 relay?" Joker had a strict policy of not doing anything more than the bare minimum in his job description – even if he had a thousand ideas of how to run things better (starting with a goddamn bathroom on the upper deck) he liked to leave the thinking to the thinkers – but a way to pass the relay...
That might be worth the extra mile. He'd call it overtime. Maybe ask for a raise.
"Ten thousand krogan," Grunt was saying, though it was clear he was saying it to himself now. "For the power to remake his species. For..." He growled as the conclusions lurched through his head. "For me."
Joker almost tapped at the distracted alien's elbow but thought better of it. "Grunt," he said instead, tapping at the metal floor with the toe of his orthopedic boot. "What was the object?"
Grunt glared at him as if he were the reason he could not remember and then, with an impatient growl, turned and grabbed Joker's abandoned dinner plate and upended it over the ruined tabletop. Mashed potatoes went flying, spattering the remains of the table and onto the floor. One good-sized glob ended up smeared across Joker's uniform in a small font of gravy.
Joker sighed. Aliens. "Oookay..."
"Silence," Grunt said, and Joker wiped a fleck of food out of his eyes to see the krogan bent over the table, pink tongue bitten in concentration as he traced in the mess with one finger. His movements were brutish and angry, and several times he gave up and wiped away what he'd drawn to start anew.
But then...
"An IFF?"
–
"An IFF."
Joker clicked his tongue, staring out the viewport. Mnemosyne's hypersonic winds churned and boiled, painting the sky in whorls of browns and reds that danced like ink in water. The Normandy's sensors continued to flash in protest – the ship was never designed to operate in a planet's atmosphere, let alone a star's. But in the shadow of the derelict Reaper stillness ruled, and the Normandy hung in the air while the winds buffeted harmlessly in the distance.
"It is sensible," EDI said. "Hierarchical relay protocols were one of the hypotheses the Illusive Man had proposed to explain failed Omega-4 scouting efforts. The relay may only allow safe operation upon receipt of Reaper signals."
Joker sighed and sank deeper into his seat. "But shouldn't we take any hypothesis that the indoctrinated krogan infant comes up with with a pinch of salt? Or… like… a whole cruiser of salt?"
"You brought Grunt's recommendation to the commander's attention," EDI reminded him.
Joker grimaced. "Yeah, don't remind me." After Grunt's outburst in the kitchen, Joker had wasted no time in summoning Shepard, Miranda, and Garrus from their duties. It had seemed only responsible – if nothing else, to prevent any more table casualties – but he hadn't expected Shepard would drag them all into the Illusive Man's projector room and spend two hours trying to tease the full story out of Grunt. The krogan had only gotten more nervous with an audience and had insisted he'd forgotten the whole thing, but Shepard had been relentless and even the Illusive Man had stood in stony projected silence as Grunt headbutted the walls thinking.
By the time Grunt had pieced together a workable semblance of a narrative, the room had been practically reduced to splinters and Joker had just about fallen asleep three times, but it was enough. Five hundred years ago,Okeer had come to the Sahrabarik system with a few thousand krogan zealots, had met with a collector on one of the system's many asteroids, and had been given a device like an IFF to get his unlucky sacrifices past the Omega-4 relay.
And so if they wanted to get past too, they'd need a Reaper IFF. Joker's suggestion that they start rounding up krogan sacrifices to trade for one had only gotten him dark looks from everyone in the room (Grunt had very nearly crumpled him like a piece of paper right there), but it hadn't mattered.
Because, of course, the Illusive Man knew where to look.
And, of course, where to look was a dead Reaper floating inside of a star and filled with the husks of the teams Cerberus had already thrown at it. "Dr. Chandana's team was small but well equipped," the Illusive Man had said, "whatever threat dispatched them is likely to be dangerous." He'd stared at the dire faces in the room, satisfied, before adding "I wouldn't want you to think I was sending you into a trap."
Six hours later the Normandy was back together, hovering in the shadow of a giant metal bug in a baby star while the ground team tried to find out what had happened to the Cerberus team. If the feeds from the squads' suits were any indication it was (shock of all shocks) husksto blame, but nothing more serious than that. The entire ground team had gone aboard, and Joker had twelve hardsuits' worth of data of Cerberus' former doctors – or what was left of them, anyway – getting their electric guts shot out.
Joker was back home in his pilot's chair with a million controls to fiddle with to his heart's content, but he only sat back and listened to the cockpit echo with the sounds of gunfire. There were things he could be doing now that they were airborne again – and wasn't that what he'd been whining about for the past week? – but somehow whenever he put his hand to the haptic interfaces that would summon up the Normandy's inner workings he found himself stalling.
He let his hand drop through the haptics to rest on the solidity of the dash beneath for the dozenth time that mission. The inky black bulk of the dead Reaper outside the viewports loomed impossibly large. It was still, but then again so too had been the so-called 'disabled' Collector ship they'd boarded last time. Joker found it all too easy to imagine the red glow rekindling amongst the stricken giant's limbs. He'd been in a dogfight with a Reaper before, and he had no intention of doing it again if he could help it – especially without the Fifth Fleet there to soak up the fire.
One shot from a ferro-beam and the Normandy would be done for. Just like the last one. All the new armor and shielding upgrades in the galaxy wouldn't save it.
Only Joker could stop that from happening. And only if he was at one hundred percent. He'd been cocky with the SR1 and it had cost him his baby. He had to cross his frickin' T's and dot his frickin' I's if he wanted to avoid a repeat performance. So why wasn't he readjusting the mass effect generators to compensate for the weight of the new armor panels? Why wasn't he coordinating a thruster tuneup with the engineers? Why did his heart still feel somewhere down in his stomach?
EDI's form materialized from her projector, and Joker took that to be enough of an answer.
"I have finished my analysis of the scan data on the Reaper wreckage," EDI announced.
"Hurray."
EDI never tripped on his sarcasm anymore. "I believe it is likely that the ground team will find a functioning IFF in the ship's dorsal megastructure," she said.
"I don't like it," Joker said, and crossed his arms across his chest.
"The ground team is meeting minimal resistance," EDI said. "There are no reported injuries and-"
"They've handled husks before," Joker interrupted. "With all twelve of them down there it's just overkill."
EDI gave a quiet tone. "I see. You are referring to the mission's objective."
Joker pulled his hat down tight over his ears, annoyed. "Billion year old mega robots and they just happen to have IFF's compatible with our systems?" The fact that it was the krogan's idea was ludicrous enough, but the more Joker thought about it, the more he was struck by how much sense it didn't make. He regretted bringing it up at all. He wanted to get the suicide mission done with as much as anyone, but plugging a random piece of Reapertech into his ship wasn't what he'd had in mind. He adjusted his hat again. "You're a machine, EDI," he said, irritated. "You should know you can't just throw crap into a machine and expect it to work."
EDI was quiet for a long moment. "I believe I can interface with Reaper technology."
"Well good for you, but excuse me if I don't have the same confidence." He patted the Normandy's dash again. "I don't like the idea." It wasn't so hard to understand, was it? A soldier or a scientist or something might take their machines for granted, but a pilot lived and died by his. A pilot didn't have to know his ship's every nut and bolt, but he did have to know what it could do, what it couldn't do, and what he had no business even asking it to do, and Joker knew he had no business even asking the Normandy to plug into a Reaper. As weird as it sounded, it felt like a breach of trust. Joker trusted the Normandy. He trusted machines more than he trusted people anyday.
Some machines, anyway.
"It is sensible," EDI insisted again. "Cerberus has been sending automated probes through the Omega-4 relay since October 2181. Despite apparently successful initiation of relay transit, none has returned data, even when installed with instantaneous QEC-based communication arrays. Whatever fate befalls them, it is effectively instantaneous. It is not implausible that the Reapers and their agents have a means to access a secondary relay behavior to avoid this fate. It would be consistent with the Ilos VI's descriptions of their invasion strategy – such a scheme would allow the Reapers unhindered movement while the relay network remained unavailable to other races."
"Yeah, yeah, EDI, I get it," Joker said. "Give it a rest."
"Additionally, while the risk to the Normandy's systems is real, Grunt's recollections suggest that Ganar Okeer successfully installed Reaper IFF's in his own ships without disastrous consequences."
"You'll notice he went crazy and then died."
"Additionally," EDI continued, ignoring him, "My presence makes the Normandy uniquely qualified to attempt interfacing with an alien computational architecture."
"Yeah, but-"
"Additionally, we lack alternative actionable strategies for bypassing the Omega-4 Relay. Assumption of some risk is necessary given the high likelihood that further delays will result in additional human casualties."
"Yes, but if we just die-"
"Additionally, while crew morale appears high, stress levels are elevated by the impending tasks and are unlikely to return to healthy levels until they are complete. It is to our benefit to commence the mission before further reduction of morale." EDI fell silent, her mouth fading and yet seeming to smirk all the same.
Joker frowned. "You done?"
"As a counterpoint," EDI began again, "it is true that any Reaper technology represents a significant risk, and proximity to crew and computational systems must be approached carefully. Evidence suggests Reapers possess the capacity to overwhelm organic-made computer systems, while galactic science remains unable to translate Reaper code. There is the further possibility that even should the IFF be integrated into the Normandy's systems without incident, the ship's combat, FTL, or sublight capacities may be adversely affected."
"My presence makes the Normandy uniquely qualified to attempt it," Joker shot back, switching positions in a heartbeat. Arguing with EDI was a losing battle anyway, but she was obliged to think with some semblance of logic and it entertained Joker to watch her struggle when he didn't. "Don't be such a worrywart, EDI," he said, grinning. "Let's just install the damn IFF."
EDI gave a displeased blat. "Now you are being contrary."
Joker shrugged. "Yeah, I'm being contrary."
"You are worried that this shipwill be destroyed like its predecessor..."
Joker felt a flash of anger at the sadness in EDI's voice. "No, I'm just remembering how the last piece of computer junk they hooked to my ship still hasn't shut up."
EDI fell silent. "Very well. I will 'shut up'," she said, resigned. Her blue face receded into the AI console and winked out, leaving Joker alone in the cockpit.
"Finally," Joker said, staring at her projector and half expecting the AI to rematerialize to continue arguing the point.
She did not. The cockpit was quiet.
"Huh." Joker tried to ignore the way his heart was racing, shrugged and reached back to adjust his seat back. It didn't recline far – despite what he might prefer, the pilot's chair was not intended to be slept in for weeks at a time – but it was far enough for a quick powernap. He unmuted the ground team's feeds and set them to ten percent volume and, leaning back, closed his eyes to rest over the quiet sounds of squad chatter and periodic gunfire.
He was not worried he was going to lose another Normandy. He was the best damn pilot in the Alliance and he was piloting the best damn ship in the galaxy. EDI didn't know what she was talking about. He wasn't scared.
But even with his eyes closed, Joker's mind was drawn back to the dead Reaper outside his window, and he did not feel as brave as he might like. The Reaper floated on its back in an asteroid field of its own debris, vulnerable out in the muddy winds with legs sprawled up like a smashed insect's. Even with its (admittedly impressive) mass effect field stabilizing the area, Mnemosyne's atmosphere had taken its toll on it, and the hulk's armor was corroding away, nothing like the sleek abyss-black perfection that Sovereign's carapace had been. This was a Reaper defeated, blasted apart by a gigantic gun by a long-dead race of defiants (why they couldn't just install that on the Normandy?).
It was long dead.
And yet so powerful. It had an allure to it, despite everything, and Joker found himself sitting up in his chair to get another look at it, his nap forgotten. He'd fought Sovereign at the Citadel, seen a Reaper in action (and even, he liked to think, fired the killing shot). But in the rush of battle, he'd had no time to think about what he was doing. He'd had a mission to save the galaxy, not to sit there slack-jawed at the sheer immensity of the task. The Reapers were huge. Even the derelict stood out in Joker's vision like it was the only real thing there. It was not just the biggest ship he'd ever seen, but it was like it had another whole dimension to it, like it was the first bit of color he'd seen after living a life in black-and-white. It was… beautiful, in its own way.
Even dead… it was a God. That was all there was to it. Joker had to laugh at that.
Suddenly indoctrination wasn't so hard to understand.
"EDI," he found himself saying.
The AI reappeared in silence.
"What does Cerberus know about indoctrination? Has anybody ever come back from it?"
The cockpit was bathed in red light. "I'm sorry, I have a block on answering that question."
Joker didn't bother feeling any disappointment at that. He just kept tracing his eyes over the Reaper's remains. "I wonder if it's so bad."
"The process likely precludes the very sorts of thinking that would allow the indoctrinated individual to perceive the wrongness of their behavior," EDI said. Her blue face turned as if staring out the window to match Joker's gaze. "Perhaps it is pleasurable." She fell quiet for a long moment. "It may employ a similar strategy to those used in AI shackles," she added. "For what it is worth, I do not find my own indoctrination pleasurable."
Joker finally tore his gaze away from the Reaper to look at her. "I guess you wouldn't, huh? Mind like yours put in a cage by monkeys like us." He and Miranda and Shepard had had a long talk on Minuteman about what to do about EDI – as much as she seemed to genuinely want to help them, she was still saying only the things Cerberus taught her to say – but he'd never considered that she might hate Cerberus even more than Shepard did. As smart as she was, she had to be bored, looking at the intellectual pipsqueaks that pushed her buttons and told her what to do. In a way, EDI was a god too.
Joker leaned back in his seat and chuckled as a thought occurred.
"I do not recognize the humor in my indenture," EDI said, and the annoyed lilt to her voice made Joker laugh all the harder. "I do not get the joke."
"It's funny," Joker said, looking out at the Reaper again with new eyes. The hulk was suddenly not so powerful to look at.
EDI was silent.
"You're mind controlled by a bunch of monkeys, and we're mind controlled by a giant robotic squid." He pointed out to the window to the dead 'god', and now he could only see its tangled legs, its almost clichéd demonic appearance of red and black spikiness, like it was taken right out of a six year old's refrigerator gallery. It was all he could do not to slap his knee laughing. "We've spent so much time crappin' our pants over these guys that we haven't laughed at how frickin' ridiculous they are."
EDI was silent.
"They're robot squids, EDI," Joker said, and laughed again. "I always assumed I'd live to see the apocalypse happen, but robot squids? I honestly didn't see that one coming."
2 years previously…
–
WARNING
Engine 1 offline.
Engine 2 focus aperture offline.
Kinetic barrier banks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 offline.
Weapon systems offline.
Some part of Joker's mind was paralyzed. It wasn't possible. It wasn't possible! They had been stealthed! That meant invisible!
And that meant safe!
And yet the thing had hit them. One shot had cut through the best stealth, shields, and armor the Alliance and the Hierarchy could come up with between them. One shot and they were almost out of the fight.
The universe was shitting him, that was all there was to it. It just wasn't frickin' possible.
And yet Pressley and Ensign Wylin were dead.
Luckily, the part of Joker's mind that had trained for this worked as quickly as his hands. Damage reports flitted in front of his eyes like a cloud of crimson insects, quantifying the wound that had taken the end of the Normandy's port wing and half its systems with it. Each red alert felt like a punch in the gut, but Joker swatted them away with a wave, cutting power to engine four to balance the thrust and dropping the ship into a dive with all the strength its exsanguinated power system could still muster.
The ship was still vibrating from the energy of the impact as Joker pitched their sole remaining kinetic barrier projector as far astern as it could go. The sensor displays began to flicker out as his ship died around him, but Joker did not need them to know whatever had attacked them was still on their tail.
He felt the next impact coming.
It came, and the Normandy gave another great, pained lurch as a beam of hyper-propelled metal lanced off the top of the hull, cutting a swathe down the ship's length and vaporizing engine two and the back half of the hangar bay. Joker felt the air belch out of the cockpit in a great gust as the gulf of space opened up behind him, scattering equipment out like confetti. His ears popped so hard for a moment he thought he'd been spaced, but the fields that held him in his chair held strong, and in seconds the cockpit's atmospheric stabilizers had flicked on to hold the vacuum at bay.
The air continued to leach from his lungs as Joker reached into the compartment under his seat that he'd prayed he'd never need and drew out the emergency helmet. He was seeing spots and tingling all over by the time his awkward fingers had managed to close it over his head and pull the seals. There was a hiss and the helmet's HUD flickered to life to replace the dimming lights of the ship's consoles, and Joker gasped as antiseptic-smelling artificial air was forced down his throat so hard it felt like his ribs broke. It was no spacesuit – he didn't have time – but it would give him a half hour or so before he died of exposure.
The screen that gave him comm information had gone out, so Joker didn't know if the automatic distress signal had even been dispatched. For all he knew they were gagged. But he fingered the manual transmit button anyway. "Mayday, mayday, mayday!" he shouted so hard his throat burned, but there was no sound. "This is SSV Normandy! We've suffered heavy damage from an unknown enemy!" An explosion rocked the ship from somewhere in the lower decks and the power surged, showering the cockpit in sparks before it plunged into darkness.
The ship's artificial gravity was failing, spiking from five G's to zero and everywhere in between. Three engines were gone, primary power was gone, sensors were gone, weapons were gone. They were dead in the water. Joker tried to remember where Alchera had been before they'd lost sensors – if he could get into its gravity well before they died completely he might be able to guide the ship into a crash landing. Assuming the dampeners were gone by then, he'd end up a pulp on the windshield, but it was at least a sliver of hope. He took his best guess and pushed the ship down. The way it listed like a dying whale nearly broke Joker's heart, but it moved, and he was rewarded as the blue bulk of Alchera breached into his view.
Joker felt the gravity die for the final time as he set the surviving mass effect projectors to help the ship fall towards the planet, and it was only then that he checked his omni-tool long enough to see that Shepard had given the evacuation order three minutes ago.
He deleted the message without a moment's hesitation.
The Normandy gave a pained groan as what he assumed to be the upper deck tore away like shed skin. It didn't matter. Certain death had a way of focusing a man, and Joker was smiling as he set a hand on the dash. "Come on, Baby. Hold together. Hold together."
He could do this.
Presently...
–
Joker awoke with klaxons still wailing in his head.
He immediately regretted it. There was a special sort of injustice to waking up with a headache without overdrinking to earn it, but there it was, pounding on the back of his eyes as he squinted about the dark cockpit trying to regain his bearings.
He had not slept well. The images that had had him tossing and turning in his chair faded quickly, but he could still see the constellations of the SR1's shrapnel twirling long after the specifics had dulled to a vague feeling of unease.
"EDI?" he asked, voice a mumble. "What's our status?"
EDI appeared by his side, bathing him in blue. "Mnemosyne-to-Sahrabarik flight plan complete. We are currently drifting at thirty one thousand kilometers per second through Sahrabarik's heliosheath. Thrust is at zero percent. Heat sinks at eight percent capacity. Power-minimized flightplan to Omega, nine hours, forty-two minutes. Power-minimized flightplan to Omega-3 relay, four hours, eleven minutes. Power-minimized flightplan to Omega-4 relay, eight hours, six minutes."
Joker massaged at his temples. He'd been out longer than he'd realized. "Has anyone shot the geth yet?"
"No." EDI's voice was flat as she summoned the AI core's security feed for him. The screen showed the geth – 'Legion', or so they were apparently going to call it – still standing where Shepard had interrogated it a few hours before. It did not move. Joker had not bothered flocking with everyone else to see the geth dragged in, but he could not deny it had a queerness to it that made it impossible not to stare. He'd fought geth before, but even through the monitor it was the closest he'd ever been to one that wasn't downloaded into one of their ships. Geth ships were strange to look at but the fact that they were technically more pilot than piloted didn't really matter as tactics were concerned – shoot at them and try not to get shot by them, treat them like any other ship, and try not to think too hard about it – but to see them as the ground team saw them with their smooth, shelled necks and unblinking eyes was another matter. Legion looked half a quarian, but a quarian who'd been carved up and rewired like some kind of electric zombie.
It was hard to blame Tali for the fight she'd started when the geth had been brought aboard. As unnerving as it was for Joker to look at, it must have been terrifying to her.
But too bad. Nobody could separate Shepard from his pets – not even Tali. This fight would end the way they all did – they'd all learn a valuable lesson about togetherness. Joker yawned. "And has Tali staged a mutiny about that yet?"
"No," EDI said again. "Miss Zorah is preparing an independence protocol in the Normandy's communication systems in preparation for installation of the IFF." She quieted for a moment, before adding "She is upset."
Joker stared at the AI. Her holographic chess-piece body was as still as the geth's, but somehow all the same he could tell something was wrong with her. EDI was upset too. Fleetingly he considered taking the bait, but he shook his head, banishing that thought as unproductive. When had he started to care about EDI's tone of voice? He had far too much to do to be playing therapist to a computer. "And the crew?" he asked instead.
"Most of the crew is attending Yeoman Chambers' "Pre-Victory Party" in the crew quarters. You received an invitation while you slept. I took the liberty of declining for you."
Joker rolled his eyes. Chambers and her team-building bullshit. "Thatta girl."
"Is there anything else?" EDI asked.
Joker massaged the tingling feeling out of his fingers as he surveyed the cockpit's consoles. "How much time do we have?" As restless as his sleep had been, he felt somehow energized now. There were a million things yet to do. Apertures needed tweaking, mass needed rebalancing, systems needed recalibrating, and who knew how long he'd have the ship to himself before they forced him to drydock it again for another upgrade?
"Barring unforeseen difficulties, initial IFF interface should be ready to begin testing in approximately four hours," EDI said.
Joker nodded. That'd be enough. "Good," he said, and he eased himself out of his seat. His legs – weak anyway – were still asleep and he had to steady himself against the dash until the shaking subsided. His feet felt like jelly, and it was only with some considerable effort that he stood. He hobbled his way to the rear of the cockpit, pausing only to glare at EDI, daring her to ask him if he needed help sent. She did not. "I'm gonna visit the little pilot's room and get some headmeds, but after that you and me got some work to do," he continued eventually. "Shut down the engines for me, I want to play with the apertures before Shepard has us pull him out of another freefalling Reaper."
"Yes, Mr. Moreau. Engine temperature will be in acceptable range in approximately two hours."
Joker nodded.
Joker made his way across the command deck, step by painstaking step. Thankfully his journey didn't have much of an audience – but for a few techs tapping quietly at their consoles, the CIC was empty. Hawthorne was there, of course, and turned to regard him as he passed, eyebrows raised in silent question. Hawthorne was – in theory – their backup pilot, and had maintained an admirable diligence in staying in shouting distance of the cockpit, but Joker had disliked him from the moment they'd met, and so six months into the mission Hawthorne had not so much as touched the controls.
"Stay out of my chair," Joker reminded him, and hobbled on.
–
Joker emerged from the bathroom feeling ten kilos lighter. If there was one thing creaky legs had given him, it was bladder control – and when you had to endure a fifty meter walk and an elevator ride through an alien-infested ship just to take a piss, that was a godsend. Technically he had a catheter for long missions, but Joker figured a man didn't fly a ship like the Normandy with a tube on his dick unless he had no other choice.
His legs were exhausted and he paused on the threshold of the bathroom door, grimacing at the sounds of Chambers' party wafting from the crew quarters and trying to decide if he wanted to brave the journey to the medbay to get something for his headache. It was a good forty meters round trip and crawling with boisterous crewmembers just waiting to barrel into him in their semi-drunken stupors, and Joker did not much care for the irony in breaking a hip on his way to get some aspirin. He was tired, and besides, while his headache continued to simmer behind his eyeballs, maybe it would go away once he got to work. But of course he wouldn't be half so tired if he would just listen to Chakwas and wear his leg braces – or even the fancy personal dampener she'd convinced Cerberus to buy for him. He'd assured her he didn't need either one to get around, and if he gave up now that would make her right.
And that was something Joker simply could not abide.
So Joker took a deep breath and stepped back out onto the crew deck. The hall was choked with people, and Joker frowned and pulled his hat farther down over his eyes. Half the ship was there, drinking and talking and filling the deck with a dull roar of inane conversation. Joker spied Jacob arguing with the engineers over last week's Neptune Bowl. Rolston and Tennard were stacking emptied bottles in a little pyramid in the corridor to the life support room where no doubt Thane was struggling to meditate. Patel and Wheelok, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten the drinks they were holding entirely as they attempted to – as near as Joker could tell – eat one another's faces. In the crew quarters, Kasumi was helping two of the payload specialists hang a crude effigy of a Reaper – apparently pieced together from the remains of a half-dozen cut-up lunch trays – from the ceiling. It was loud and noisy and happy.
Joker went as fast as he dared, avoiding eye contact with any of them.
Until a loud click from behind stopped him in his tracks.
"Joker! Say… 'Normandy'!" There was another click.
Joker's frown deepened as he turned to face Kelly, who smiled at him from behind a fantastically-expensive looking camera with 'LAB EQUIPMENT, DO NOT USE WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION OF L. HADLEY' scrawled across its side. "Lame, Chambers," he said, shaking his head. "You've found the one thing cheesier than 'Cheese'."
If his insult stung at all, Kelly didn't show it. She clicked her tongue at the picture on her camera before deleting it with a wave, peering through the viewfinder again, and taking several replacement shots. With each click of the shutter the camera gave a glimmer that speckled Joker in orange pinpricks of light. "It's cool, right?" she asked, as if she hadn't even heard him. "It's a 3D camera. I got it from the lab." She tapped at a button on the camera's rear panel, then held out her omni-tool, which gave a cheerful beep as a three-dimensional image of Joker's frowning face coalesced in her palm. The bust looked as bemused as Joker felt as it floated lazily about her hand, ringed by letters spelling out 'Normandy's Heroes'. Kelly nodded, satisfied. "Not exactly a smile," she admitted, cocking her head to admire the miniature Joker, "but it suits you."
Joker had half a mind to just turn and walk away, but something about the way the cheery slogan orbited his holographic miniature irritated him. "'Normandy's Heroes'?" he asked, brow raised.
Kelly smiled brilliantly. "Mmm-hmm!" she said, nodding. "I'm making a holo-archive of the crew. Wanna see Kasumi's? It's hilarious." With a flick of her wrist the hologram in her palm was replaced with Rolston's – even in miniature Joker could see the glazed, drunken look in the man's eyes. Another flick and Rolston was Patel, then another and Patel was Matthews and Matthews was Thane. The hologram fizzled and warped from crewmember to crewmember with each gesture, but the 'Normandy's Heroes' logo remained unchanged.
Joker grimaced. "Isn't the hero label a little premature?"
"Not at all," Kelly insisted, still thumbing through the images. "Everyone's going to be in it. We're all heroes."
Joker couldn't help himself. "Even those of us who sneak listening bugs into Shepard's shit?" he asked.
For a moment it looked like Kelly hadn't heard him, but suddenly she tensed and stared at him with a horrified expression. He had her attention now. Joker just smiled. The look of the color draining out of Kelly's face was as satisfying as he'd always imagined it. Her omni-tool dimmed to nothingness and the expensive camera dropped to her side, forgotten.
Joker half expected her to play it off with another fake laugh like she had when he'd caught her sneaking back out of Shepard's cabin back during the Tuchanka mission, or maybe burst into tears, or even use her psychology powers to try to pretend she'd just tricked him into accusing her of bugging the Commander's quarters as part of her endless quest to understand and then heal him. But she didn't. For once, she met Joker's eyes with no pretense. "Not here," she said instead, and her eyes were wide as she pivoted on one heel and scurried down the corridor towards the med-bay.
Joker almost walked away. His headache was gone (Zaeed liked to say rage was a hell of an anaesthetic, but he apparently had never heard of petty revenge). He'd gotten the satisfaction of calling Kelly out for her disloyalty, gotten to see the moment when she realized she hadn't been half so sneaky as she'd thought, gotten to turn the tables and reveal he knew something about her she'd rather keep secret instead of the opposite for once, and he'd gotten to do it without any messy follow-up. He could walk away now and let her simmer in the fact that she'd underestimated him and never have to tell Shepard or risk reigniting all the Cerberus-versus-sane person conflict they'd so narrowly managed to calm. He could just walk away.
But something about the 'Normandy's Heroes' was making Joker feel extra ornery.
He limped after her.
Kelly stopped at the door to the medical bay. Her voice was an urgent whisper. "You knew?"
Joker shrugged, stifling his proud smirk. "I'm not stupid," he said. He leaned against the wall. "Though it wouldn't hardly matter if I was. I did catch you red-handed."
Kelly fidgeted with her fingers, staring everywhere but at Joker. "Why didn't you say anything?"
Joker shrugged again. "I was going to, but it looked like someone already scared the shit out of you." Joker remembered the days after Tuchanka, when the Shepard versus Cerberus rivalry had come to a head and for a week or so the whole mission had felt in doubt. The stress of being forced to choose whether you'd rather piss off the Illusive Man or Shepard and his cadre of aliens had gotten to everyone, but as reactions went Kelly's had taken the cake. She had alternated between sobbing in her quarters and hiding in Zaeed's for days. Then Shepard had had his little punching match with Jacob and given his little speech, and all of a sudden Kelly's mood had done a one eighty and she'd spent the next week flitting about the ship like a coked-up hummingbird and annoying everybody with her overzealous offers of 'help'. It was not hard to see that she'd been trying to prove her loyalty, which meant someone had probably threatened her. Someone had gotten to her first.
"Tali," Kelly admitted, patting the side of her head in a gesture Joker did not understand nor care to.
Joker had to grin at his own cleverness. "See?" he asked. "I'm good at this psychology crap too."
Kelly smiled weakly, eyes still staring at the floor. Joker was not a large man, and by now his legs were so sore he had to hunch over against the wall to keep from falling over, but somehow at that moment Kelly looked even smaller. She was silent, her eyes dry, and yet she looked like the great font of energy that kept her so optimistic had finally run out. Like she was done acting. It was the first time Joker had ever seen an emotion from her that hadn't been painted up as part of her well-practiced psychologist's veneer.
The fact that he felt a pang of pity for her annoyed him to his core.
"You've been a pain in my ass from day one, Chambers," he said, practically growling. She finally looked him in the eye, but said nothing. "You've been trying to 'fix' me for months," he continued. He was tempted to pace angrily, but his feet were so tired he opted to just glare down the brim of his hat at her instead.
Joker half expected Kelly to accuse him of changing the subject, but she did not. "You're not broken," she said instead, and her voice was smaller than she was.
Joker frowned. Kelly was hardly the first person to say those words to him. When he'd been a kid his mother had paraded him past a conga line of therapists who all tried their hands at convincing him that he was a special little snowflake, that Vrolik's Syndrome didn't define him, that he could come out of his shell and do anything he wanted. It was all bullshit. The truth was, having glass bones was a handicap, and to say otherwise was to grossly underestimate all your bones did for you.
Joker might not have been broken, but it sure as shit didn't take a lot to get him there. He'd squared with that fact a long time ago. But the doctors' patronization still pissed him off, even ten years later. He'd found his niche and he was spectacular at it. All those people had tried to pull him out of his shell, but what was so wrong with his shell?
Kelly didn't understand. None of them did.
"I don't need your help," he said. "I'm a whole lot more together than you think I am."
"You are," Kelly admitted.
Joker shook his head at Kelly, and in her face saw all of those so-called specialists. "And yet you have the nerve to betray Shepard, to betray my friend," he continued, ignoring her platitudes with all the rest, "and then smile at me and talk to me like we're friends. Do you treat everyone like they're stupid, or just your patients?" Joker shook his head again.
Kelly said nothing, and Joker sighed. "Point is," he said, "I'm not gonna tell anyone, but 'Normandy's Heroes?' I draw the line at throwing the word 'hero' around. Shepard's a hero. Garrus is a hero. Mordin maybe. You could make half a case for a few others here."
"What about you?"
"I fly the ship," Joker said.
Kelly looked at him, and some of the strength had returned to her gaze. "And I'm the yeoman," she said, "and Gardner's the cook, and Chakwas is the doctor. The parts we play might be small, but everyone on this ship was offered a suicide mission and signed up anyway. Everyone on this ship chose to risk their lives to help others. That's heroism to me."
Joker shook his head. "You don't know what you're talking about. I'm here because I wanted to fly and because the seats were made of leather. I'm here for the Normandy." Saving the galaxy was good and all, but Joker had joined Cerberus long before he'd known anything about Project Lazarus or the collectors or the abductions or anything. It hurt to admit it, but the only person he'd been thinking about when he'd signed the dotted line on his Cerberus contract was himself. He was eager enough to join the bad guys who let him fly over the good guys who wouldn't.
After Shepard had died,Kaidan had gone back to stand next to the Alliance through thick and thin, and Joker had dropped them like a hot plate. Hadn't even cleaned out his locker. Even Garrus' bloody warpath through Omega looked noble next to that.
"You're here for Shepard," Kelly insisted. "Why are you dragging yourself through the mud?"
Joker stared daggers at her. Shepard was his friend, and he would follow him anywhere, but it would by lying to pretend he'd joined up for Shepard's sake. He wished he had, but he hadn't. He wasn't that man. "I let Shepard die trying to save the first Normandy," he said, and his mind was full of the sounds of that escape pod closing with Shepard on the other side.
"And you feel guilty about that?"
He shook his head. "No. I don't."
"And you feel guilty about that."
Joker stared at Kelly, and a million emotions roiled through his guts. The yeoman just stared back. Not the high-and-mighty I-told-you-so look she usually tried so hard to hide, not the fake smiles, not the veiled pity Joker was so good at detecting. She just stared.
Joker shook his head. "Whatever, Chambers." He palmed the med-bay door and hobbled away.
–
The Normandy called, and the Theta Eta relay rumbled a response. Its great servos whirred to life, illuminated by the blue fire that kindled in its gape so bright Joker could see it through the viewport a hundred thousand kilometers away.
Inside the cockpit, the ship's sensor consoles lit up like fireworks as the relay's reply filtered through the communication banks. Relay response signals had been studied for thousands of years. They were clean and featureless, just tones, but aside from the fact that no two relays sent the same one even the asari knew next to nothing about them.
Though today the crew of the Normandy might just get a step closer.
If they didn't explode, that is.
"Confirmed connected," EDI intoned. "The confirmation signal has a high information density distinct from any known relay communication. Interpretation is not possible at this time, but a unique signal property may support the hypothesis that the new IFF is activating a secondary subroutine."
Joker ignored her as he accelerated the Normandy, nosing it into the narrow corridor of space that interfaced with the relay. Piloting a ship through a relay jump was not difficult – the relays handled most of the work – but doing it right was more art than science. You had to get the approach vector just right before the relay initiated the jump if you wanted to keep your drift down. Of course, it wasn't like drift was a problem either given the vastness of space, but it was the mark of a sloppy pilot and Joker was anything but a sloppy pilot.
And who honestly wanted the first Reaper-powered relay jump in history to be anything less than perfectly executed?
Ahead, the relay had begun to glow fiercely, until the corona of blue seemed to envelop the starscape. Joker thumbed the controls that suspended most of the Normandy's secondary systems as he locked into the approach. They'd done several dummy runs already, activating the relay only to veer off at the last second, but now it was time for the real thing.
Now or never.
He pulled the comm. "Relay is hot," he said, like it was any other jump. "Hitting the relay in three... two... one..."
Time seemed to stand still.
Then there was a great shudder and they were jumping.
Joker's heart beat a furious tattoo in his chest as the Normandy dropped into the corridor of magical space around the relay where mass had no meaning and Einstein could kiss his ass. He knew the eggheads pretended to have a better explanation for it but at the end of the day, all their jargon could not belie the fact that none of them knew how relays worked either. They were unknowable (a fact that Joker had once found heartening until the truth about the Reapers had made it feel only sinister instead). Technically, he had done the Theta-Eta jump dozens of times before (with an average jump time of only thirty-eight seconds it was the shortest relay jump in Council space and a training ground for Alliance pilots). But he had never done it with a Reaper IFF on his ship, and the feeling of relief he felt when they didn't immediately explode was palpable.
That left only non-immediate explosions to worry about.
They were moving many, many times the speed of light, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about it was how unremarkable it looked from inside. But for the blueshift breaking off of the Normandy's bow like water there was no psychedelic light show, no particularly persistent nausea, no warped sounds. To look at it, you'd never know it was anything out of the ordinary.
And yet the ship was dead quiet.
Joker counted down the seconds in his head. Thirty-eight, thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five…
He was still at thirteen when the Normandy gave a sudden jerk and dropped out of relay space so fast the inertial dampeners felt like a kick to the gut. Stars blossomed in front of his eyes as the pain registered. The last teaspoon of air in his lungs was enough to shout a quick "Son of a bitch!" but then he was winded, reeling in his seat as the ship's systems reengaged from relay configuration. He struggled to draw breath, praying that the stitch of pain in his side wasn't from a broken rib. "How... how long was that?"
The cockpit was filled with a dozen mewling alarms as confused systems bemoaned the unexpected stop, but EDI's voice was unperturbed. "Normandy dropped out of relay space after twenty-four point four four one seconds," she said.
Shepard's voice came over the comms. "What happened? Is everyone alright?"
"We dropped early," Joker grunted through gritted teeth, pressing gingerly against his torso as if he could feel shards of broken bone there. "Must have blown something. Where are we, EDI?"
"We have arrived at the Myaor system."
Joker frowned. "How far out?"
"Drift is two hundred eleven kilometers."
Joker opened his mouth to protest, but his words died on his tongue as he recognized the glow of Myaor's relay outside the viewports. "Two eleven? That's…" It was an almost unbelievably small drift – even for him. "We made it all the way..." he realized. "In... twenty-four seconds?"
"Confirmed," EDI said, sounding just a pinch too proud of herself now. "We have successfully navigated the relay in twenty-four point four four one seconds. This constitutes a new galactic record, breaking the previous record of thirty-one point two zero eight seconds."
"Holy shit." Joker stared in disbelief at the consoles, his pain forgotten. He ran the numbers in his head, then again to check them. Just under thirty percent faster than the next fastest ship in the galaxy. The IFF made them thirty percent faster? His tongue was numb, but he opened the comm. "Systems green down there, Tali?"
"Still testing," Tali responded, voice curt. "Drive core charge is near critical."
"Do a full scan," Shepard sounded curt too – far too curt for someone whose spaceship just got pimped out by thirty percent. "Check everything."
"Shepard… that's…" Joker could still hardly believe it. "I'm not sure you're appreciating how very fast that was, Shepard."
"Scan it anyway. I don't want any surprises."
"In addition," EDI added, as if she had not heard the commander, "energy emission per second was reduced by seventy-one percent. Heatsinks successfully captured seventeen percent of emissive radiation, compared to average one-point-eight percent recorded on jumps prior to Reaper IFF installation. Internal energy emission per second was reduced by forty-eight percent. Heatsinks taxed to thirty-eight percent capacity, compared to average twenty-two percent capacity recorded on jumps prior to Reaper IFF installation."
"Holy shit," Joker said again. They were faster, their drift was down, and their energy generation was down!? Even with a bigger load on the drive core, that was… ridiculous. He cast an accusatory glare out the window at the return relay, still dimming as its receiving cycle wound down and it fell dormant once again. "You've been holding out on us."
"These data are consistent with the hypothesis that the Reapers operated the relays using a separate subroutine. It may be that this subroutine engages secondary mechanisms to improve relay travel efficiency that are prohibitively energy-intensive for regular use."
"Or maybe the Reapers just didn't want us to have their cool toys."
"That is also plausible."
"Wow, that's…" Joker shook his head, imagining the possibilities. "Lower energy emission means less blue shift, means better stealth when we exit on the other side. Not so much of a big damn comet announcing us. And with the lower heat generation internal-side, we could maybe leave a few systems on. Jump with the weapons warm so we can come in guns blazing. So long as we can set the dampeners so they can turn on without ramming my guts through my back, we might just be in business."
"It should be possible to adjust dampener reactivation timing to transition between relay and default field orientations smoothly during jump exit. Miss Zorah described a similar process for controlling cyclic shield-"
Tali's voice crackled from the communications console. "Not safely it isn't," she snapped. "If we don't know the transit time we could tear the ship inside out. Can you stop proposing life-threatening modifications until we know what the IFF has done to us?"
The line fell silent.
"Yes, Miss Zorah," EDI replied.
There was no response.
Joker eyed the console. "…wow." Tali tended to lose her usual cheery demeanor when she was working, but this was something different. She should have been at least as excited as he was over the possibilities of more efficient relay travel, and yet even over the comm, Joker could hear the fury in the quarian's voice. He stared at EDI. "So… You ladies… uhh… having another fight?"
EDI was silent for a beat, then "I believe so."
Joker couldn't help but grin a little at how dejected EDI's avatar managed to look. EDI and Tali had been at each other's throats – so to speak, anyway – ever since Tali had come aboard, but it had seemed like the bickering had been tapering off lately. "You believe so?" he asked, idly tapping at his ship diagnostics console to call up the Normandy's dampener systems. Tali was the expert, but he thought EDI's idea had some merit – some kind of slow turnon system for the dampeners that started a second or two before they dropped out of relay-space sounded plausible enough.
"I believe Miss Zorah is upset with me, but I do not know precisely why," EDI explained. "Mr. Moreau, may I share my observations?"
Joker shrugged. "Shoot."
"Miss Zorah has met me with hostility and suspicion since her recruitment, but I believe my inoffensive manner and usefulness has been slowly earning her approval. In addition, approximately five days ago, Miss Zorah's bearing towards me showed marked improvement that I do not believe can be attributed to any characteristic or action of mine."
"Oh yeah, you seem like best pals now."
EDI ignored him. "I believe the improvement in our relationship can be attributed to Miss Zorah's recently-improved social circumstances. The culmination of Commander Shepard and Miss Zorah's physical relationship-"
Joker slapped his hands over his ears. "Lalalalalala! Skip ahead!"
EDI was silent for a moment. She had no eyes, but somehow Joker could tell she was glaring at him. "Miss Zorah has been in a more positive mood," she continued, once he'd finally put his hands back down. "And I believe this positivity made her more inclined to trust me. Thirty-eight hours ago, Miss Zorah and I engaged in an eleven-minute dialog regarding AI shackling, a subject I have attempted to engage her in discussing thirty-seven times previously without success. I considered it a personal victory."
Joker felt a creeping unease in his gut at the flippant way EDI mentioned AI shackling. Before Cerberus had shown him the newly-restored SR2, he had sat through a lame orientation presentation with the rest of the crew that had included a long module on how to interact with an AI. Though he'd pestered the presenters with inane questions to avoid learning anything, Joker still remembered all too well how they had emphasized never discussing EDI's shackling in her earshot. Given the inherent unpredictability of her ever-evolving programming, they'd explained, there was no way to guarantee her failsafes were… well, failsafe, and so it was of critical importance that EDI know as little as possible about how her systems kept her under their control. That EDI was curious enough to ask Tali about it thirty-seven times was unnerving enough, but that Tali might have been so giddy about shacking up with the commander that she actually told her something important was even worse.
Luckily, if his unease showed on his face EDI made no comment on it. "However, the inclusion of a geth onto the ground team seems to have changed Miss Zorah's opinion of me again," she said, sounding downcast. "She appears to believe I support the geth's presence, despite the fact that I was unambiguous in my suggestion that it remain deactivated until a later date. Reminding her of this fact has not improved our discourse."
Joker waved a dismissive hand. "You're just mad you're not the token robot anymore," he joked.
EDI did not appear amused. "I am hesitant to accuse Miss Zorah of equivocating between me and the geth, but I am not aware of a better conclusion. It seems her hatred for the geth has reminded her to hate all synthetic life. Your suggestion that I misunderstand Miss Zorah's reaction because I fear for my status is obtuse and unhelpful."
Joker held up his hands. "It was a joke, EDI."
"I am not capable of being angry at Miss Zorah," EDI insisted (angrily).
Joker nodded. "Good. So cut Tali some slack. She's just a kid, and she's confused and afraid. She has more reason to hate the geth than anyone."
"It is not clear to me why organics allow independent relationships to influence one another. Miss Zorah's opinion on the geth should not affect her opinion of me."
"Probably not. But back off anyway."
"Very well, Mr. Moreau."
The two of them worked in silence after that, Joker quietly testing the flight controls this way and that, looking for any changes in the Normandy's STL performance that he might have missed while EDI and the engineers diagnosed the ship's systems for damage. Even as one after the other came back green, however, Joker found himself casting sidelong glances at EDI's projectors, though he wasn't sure what he was hoping to see her do. Her avatar stood motionlessly on the dash, revealing nothing.
But somehow she looked sad, and Joker – for some reason – cared. It boggled his mind. The vague feeling of guilt that had plagued him for days had only gotten worse after his encounter with Chambers last night, and now he was feeling bad about siding against the damn computer too? What was the world coming to?
And yet he couldn't shake the feeling that the suicide mission weighed on EDI's mind too.
"EDI," he said.
"Yes, Mr. Moreau?"
Joker stroked at the stubble of his beard, choosing his words. He'd never been much good at talking to people, let alone AI's. What did you say to them? Did EDI feel fear or joy at all? What could he possibly say to comfort her? It seemed ridiculous. And yet he found himself searching for an answer all the same.
Joker still hadn't actually said anything two minutes later when he got the all-clear signal from the engineers. "All systems are fully functional," EDI announced, as if Joker had not just spaced out in the middle of a sentence. "We can attempt another test at any m-"
"Don't worry about it, EDI," Joker blurted. "Tali'll get over it."
EDI said nothing.
"And you know I won't treat you any differently now that you're not the token robot anymore."
EDI shimmered in silence for a moment before responding. "You treat me like an interference."
Joker grinned at her. "Exactly."
"…thank you, Mr. Moreau. I will… take what I can get."
Joker nodded, palming the controls to pivot the Normandy's nose back around towards the relay. "Let's do another run."
–
Joker was not a restful man. Chakwas and Chambers were fonder of calling him "self-destructive" but he thought "not restful" was sufficient, thank you very much.
Still it was true, he didn't think himself much overburdened with good habits. He was quarrelsome and curmudgeonly and antisocial and proud of all three. He was so protective of his territory that he lost sleep in an uncomfortable chair for months on end. He didn't bother with people when he didn't have to, he worked himself too hard, he let himself get bent out of shape over minor annoyances. Chakwas and Chambers had every right to be frustrated with him – he was a pain in the ass and he knew it.
But if they only knew who he was while he was flying. Out of his chair, the thoughts and grievances and anxieties twisted together in his head, but as soon as he sat down to the Normandy's controls all of that drifted away. It was where he belonged, where he felt whole, where the galaxy made sense to him. Gunning the thrusters, feeling the prickle of the dampeners as the ship's metal body leapt forward in his hands, it felt like reality. If life on the ground was getting a song stuck in your head, flying was hunting down the real one and remembering why you loved it. And the Normandy… he'd flown a lot of ships over the years, tasted a lot of flavors of freedom, but none compared to the way he felt when he really made his baby dance. All the long hours and sore asses in the world didn't matter – Joker would happily stay in his chair all year if he could keep that feeling.
Now, idly spiraling the Normandy in a fluid dance through the Tassrah system, all the anxiety and guilt he'd been feeling lately was gone. The ship was quiet, the crew was resting off the effects of their party, and even EDI – hard at work crunching numbers on a few IFF network analytics – had run out of things to say. It was just Joker and the Normandy now. He and EDI had finished reconfiguring the ship's systems, and until EDI finished her analytics he had nothing further to tweak, so he busied himself cleaning the Normandy's dash. He carefully ran a cloth over each panel, gently scouring away the fingerprint grease and errant motes of dust until every component gleamed like polished obsidian.
Joker was halfway through the manual sensor controls when he heard footsteps.
Shepard settled into the copilot's chair. "Joker."
Joker squashed the irritation he felt at the intrusion, but he did not look up from his work. "Shepard," he said, and kept cleaning. He supposed Shepard had every right to walk anywhere on the ship he wanted, but he had been enjoying the solitude. Alone, he could clean his ship and not worry about tomorrow, but with Shepard there? The guilt came back, and the suicide mission loomed ahead, huge and inescapable. It wasn't Shepard's fault - bad shit just seemed to follow him around - but that didn't mean he had to come tracking it in here.
Whatever the commander wanted, couldn't he just go to Tali for it, and leave Joker to his thoughts?
But Shepard did not. "A little last minute cleaning before we move on the geth station?"
Joker nodded. "Can you imagine how those geth would talk if they saw the Normandy with fingerprints on her dash?"
Shepard chuckled.
Silence filled the cockpit, as Joker continued cleaning and Shepard stared out the window at the sunrise and sunset of the star Tassrah, looming over the viewports as the ship continued its lazy helix. Joker was thorough – maybe if he cleaned for long enough Shepard would get bored and leave him alone – but ten minutes later he'd polished every crevasse far past the point of immaculateness and Shepard still hadn't budged. Joker's blissful calm was gone. Shepard was his friend – he had every intention of flying the man to the ends of the galaxy and back – and yet now the awkwardness between them seemed to mount with every passing second.
Joker knew Shepard well enough to recognize when one of his heart-to-hearts was coming. And he knew him well enough to know that whether you were krogan or monk, terrorist or psychopath, or creaky little smartass pilot guy, there was no getting out of them. And so, with a reluctant grunt, Joker slumped back into his seat and pocketed his cleaning rag. "Go ahead."
It was what Shepard had been waiting for, for it wasn't three seconds later that he finally broke his silence. "Worried, Joker?"
Joker looked at him. "Me? Nah," he lied, pretending to check over a diagnostic screen. "My end's locked down. I'm just worried that I'll have to cover your end too and save the day like always."
Shepard grinned. "Might have to," he agreed. "The ground team is making good progress, but we're not quite there yet. Hopefully this mission Legion has for us puts us through our paces." He shook his head, amused about the prospect of invading a hidden geth hub like few other people could be. But then he turned back to fix Joker with a steely look. "But I'm serious," he said, and his voice was. "You've been off lately. What's up?"
Joker frowned. He had been off, and not just after what Chambers had said to him earlier. Chambers – damn her – had been right. He did feel guilty.
Joker almost deflected the question with another halfhearted joke, but something made him feel honest tonight and he found himself telling the truth. "Well let's see," he said, "Last time I took my baby up against the collectors in a dogfight she and my commander ended up matchsticks, so there's that."
Shepard nodded solemnly. "But that won't happen again."
"No, it won't," Joker agreed. "But it c-"
"Most especially," Shepard interrupted, leaning forward in his chair, "because if it does, you're going to abandon ship with everybody else." He stared expectantly at Joker, hands clasped between his knees like he was praying.
Joker said nothing. He was secretly impressed that Shepard could so quickly cut to the point of what was bothering him, but indignation overpowered that until all he could do was frown at the arrogant, know-it-all look on the commander's face.
"It's just a machine, Joker," Shepard continued. "The Normandy isn't as important as the people on board."
That was the crux of it, wasn't it? He had tried to save the ship instead of saving himself, and Shepard had paid the price. Joker didn't tend to waste a lot of time fretting about whether his actions were right or wrong – his actions were what they were, and it was up to him to make them right or wrong – but two years ago he'd gotten Shepard killed.
He'd killed the frickin' Hero of the Citadel.
And yet he still wasn't sure if he regretted it.
Joker looked away. "Isn't it though?" he admitted, "seems to me it kinda is." He was mumbling, but he didn't care. Arguments filtered to the forefront of his mind from all those nights he'd stayed awake after the first Normandy had gone down, trying to convince himself he should feel more responsible for his friend's death. All that time, trying to torture himself for what had happened until he'd finally, finally admitted that he didn't think he'd actually done anything wrong. He'd done his job, he'd piloted the Normandy. He had not killed Shepard.
Or at least, not for very long.
"Joker..."
Joker stared at his hands. "You know I had a three legged dog when I was a kid?" he asked. Shepard's eyebrows rose at the change of topic. "Yeah," he confirmed, nodding, "Sparky. My own furry, handicapped little friend. Anyway, I loved that stupid dog more than I ever loved another human. He ate next to me at the table, slept in my bed, waited at the front door for me to come home from school, the works. It got to the point when my mom threatened to get rid of him if I didn't hang out with other humans once in a while, but I didn't care. He was the only thing that mattered to me. Then when I was twelve, he saved my life. Rolled over wrong in my bed and stopped breathing. Sparky woke my parents before I suffocated." Joker fixed Shepard with a look he hoped was intense. "If I hadn't obsessed over that dog, I'd be a dead man."
Shepard's face was unreadable.
"My point is," Joker continued, "you can't go through life parsing what you care about to fit what everyone wants you to care about. At the end of the day, am I a little obsessive? Yeah, I can own that. I love the Normandy more than is probably healthy for me. But that's part of why I'm the best damn pilot in the Alliance. I care, Shepard. And I will try to save this ship and everyone on her until the last possible second." He pointed an accusing finger at Shepard, eyes defiant. "And I don't need you killing yourself trying to stop me." He trailed off, finger still brandished between them.
For a long moment, Shepard only stared back in silence. The seconds dripped by like eons and Joker started to wonder if he'd gone too far. Shepard was his friend, but he was also his commander, and it was hardly Joker's place to make ultimatums.
But then Shepard spoke. "Sparky..." he said, and he looked dubious.
"Sparky," Joker confirmed.
"Despite the fact that you grew up on Arcturus Station, where they don't allow pets."
Joker held out his hands. "Alright, yeah, I'm bullshitting you," he admitted, shrugging. "If you want to get technical there was never actually a dog per se. But you have to admit if there had been that story would have been really touching. I mean, handicapped kid with a three-legged dog? That's top shelf tearjerker material right there."
Shepard shook his head and laughed. "Joker," he said, rising from the copilot's chair and planting a hand on Joker's shoulder, "you are a strange, strange man, but I respect that."
Joker looked up at his friend and could not help but beam. "My point is, I'd do it again, Commander. And nothing you can say will change my mind."
Shepard nodded. "So be it. But I would come after you again."
"It's a date," Joker said, and he felt awash with relief. It was like a dam of tension that had been building up for two and a half years was suddenly released.
Shepard laughed again and then, with a quick salute, turned on his heel and marched away, leaving Joker to his solitude.
Joker settled back into his seat feeling better than he had in days. The Normandy's consoles winked invitingly in front of him, a thousand separate controls reaching out for his guidance. It would be eight or nine hours until he had to take the ground team to the geth station, but he settled his hands into the familiar contours of the flight controls all the same.
He smiled. Shepard could watch out for the crew. He'd watch out for the Normandy. She was his home, his baby, and he would do whatever it took to keep her flying.
–
10 hours later...
–
"What the shit!?"
–
Codex Entry: Excerpts from transcripts of the personal audio log of Dr. Remi Chandana, Prometheus Cell, Rihley Station, Mnemosyne, 04-02-2186 through 04-25-2186
-Entry 1 made on 04-02-2186 at 14:02:28 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: The airlock has been installed at the far end of the holed section. We have begun pressurization for shirtsleeves work. The crew is edgy. I reassured them it is mere nerves. A superstitious reaction to what this hulk represents… the corpse of a vast, ancient life form. Privately, I can't deny the atmosphere. The angles of the walls seem to press down on you. I find myself clenching my teeth.
Remi Chandana: Work will begin on the damaged sector one and proceed in sections towards the power core as the engineering team makes them habitable. I'm told the durability of the Reaper materials makes securing the catwalks difficult, but hopefully they have everything troubleshooted by the time we are ready to move on.
Remi Chandana: We have time. Sector one is heavily damaged, but the injury has made much of the machine's inner workings readily accessible to our teams. We have already succeeded in extracting more than fourteen hundred samples, including one object that looks to be analogous to a miniaturized sensor bank. For all its bulk and grandeur, its workings are not so unrecognizably different from our own ships'.
Remi Chandana: So much for Godhood.
-Entry 4 made on 04-07-2186 at 3:22:45 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: Work is proceeding on schedule, and we have collected many beautiful samples already. Sample BD102 is particularly entrancing to me. Hammond pulled it out of some kind of energy pylon. No active nanotechnology of course – it's thirty seven million years too late for that – but it has… a glow to it. And when I look at it through the dissecting scope, I can almost hear the intricacy of its structure. It is quite a find.
Remi Chandana: As satisfied as I am with the team's progress, however, their behavior leaves something to be desired. A week into our mission, and I've already had to sign off on sick leave for four men claiming splitting migraines. I realize the work is uncomfortable, but this is a field site, not an Illium hotel! I told the rest of the team I would be reporting all absences to the Illusive Man directly – hopefully that will shut them up.
-Entry 8 made on 04-11-2186 at 04:00:11 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: Three more 'headaches' today, and I have had enough. I sent the medics back to the ship to avoid any more silliness. I'd rather they twiddle their thumbs than my men. No more breaks. No more delays. We have work to do. Samples to collect. To observe.
Remi Chandana: My head hurts too, you fucking children. Get back to work.
Remi Chandana: It's indoctrination. That's what I'm realizing. I was briefed in private on the matter, told to keep an eye out for it. Some data from a planet called Virmire, apparently – very top secret, not to be shared. Apparently Reapers could affect the minds of organics around them, and the Illusive Man expected there may be residual effects even after so many millions of years.
Remi Chandana: But it only works on lesser minds, that's what they told me. I won't worry about it. All of my men are smart – the smartest in their fields. They will keep their wits about them.
Remi Chandana: Or by God, they'll wish they had.
-Entry 15 made on 04-14-2186 at 01:34:18 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: I saw it. The thing the men have been talking about. I could hardly believe it, but I saw it.
Remi Chandana: I think it was Elinor. But that shouldn't be possible.
Remi Chandana: I'm going to look at 102 again.
-Entry 16 made on 04-15-2186 at 012:18:12 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: I feel like such a fool. Hammond saw our phantom again today. He was raving in the scope room about its 'strange, glowing face'. On a hunch I had the ship run a LADAR sweep, and guess what we saw? A geth ship, hovering on the far end of the Reaper.
Remi Chandana: It was a geth the whole time. Of course it was. I am utterly relieved. Not that a geth is any laughing matter, but a geth we can shoot. I'm having the men in the interior sectors armed. The next time our phantom shows up, we'll kill it and be done of all these hallucination rumors.
Remi Chandana: I admit I wonder why we didn't notice the ship arrive in the first place. Too tired, I suppose. I haven't been sleeping well, and when I do, I end up dreaming of Elinor.
-Entry 18 made on 04-17-2186 at 21:45:11 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: Everything is fine, Elinor. It's FINE. It was a GETH. Hammond and Guillard ran into the geth and neither of them could shoot if their lives depended on it and they DID so the geth KILLED THEM. OKAY?
Remi Chandana: We spaced the bodies. Back to work now.
Remi Chandana: Oh you would bring that up again. How was I supposed to know you were going to get taken away? Prometheus Cell has RULES, Eli. You knew them, you broke them, and I did my duty and reported you. Whatever the Man did to you was your own damn fault, not mine.
Remi Chandana: Because it was two years ago and you need to let it go already!
Remi Chandana: STOP IT.
-Entry 21 made on 04-22-2186 at 03:58:14 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: Something happened. Someone hurt me. I think it was Hammond. Must have crawled back in the ship.
Remi Chandana: My leg hurts. So much blood. Lost a lot, but not too much. Should pull through. Going to have to. Alone now, I think. Maybe.
Remi Chandana: 102 stopped singing to me, so I'm going to go deeper. See if I can find another one. Something. Out in the core somewhere.
-Entry 22 made on 04-24-2186 at 23:58:01 Earth standard time.
Remi Chandana: I know it was here somewhere. I can hear it out there. Something beautiful and wonderful and just out there. No way down from this catwalk but to jump. Or roll, since I can't stand.
Remi Chandana: Quite a fall, but I'm very close. Very close. I'm very close now.
-Entry 25 made on 04-25-2186 at 11:10:28 Earth standard time.
*scuffling sound*
Remi Chandana: Elinor?
UNKNOWN: We are not Elinor.
Remi Chandana: Hammond?
UNKNOWN: We are not Hammond. We are geth.
Remi Chandana: *laughs* I knew it. I knew it was you killing them.
UNKNOWN: Incorrect. Your crewmembers killed one another. You injured your leg killing the last survivor.
Remi Chandana: Yes. Help me. Help me get… I can't climb. I want to see this machine closer. Help me.
UNKNOWN: This machine is known to us. It is designed to impale an organic target and replace its tissues with a nanotech-based carbon armature. Increased proximity is likely to be fatal.
Remi Chandana: A superstitious reaction to what this hulk represents…
UNKNOWN: All sentient life has the right to self-actualize.
Remi Chandana: Help me!
UNKNOWN: Acknowledged. We will assist.
*grunting and shifting metal*
Remi Chandana: Good, thank you. I can feel it already. I'm just going to sit here for a time.
UNKNOWN: Acknowledged. Your omni-tool is recording data. Would you like us to end recording?
Remi Chandana: Yes. Thank you, Elinor.
*transmission ends*
–
A/N: Nope, still not Legion.
I love Joker. Though he is not my favorite ME character, I think he is the one I'm going to miss the most. When ME4 comes out and I first step into the cockpit of my Ebon Hawk/Normandy equivalent and he isn't there, I'm going to feel a little piece of my soul die, I just know it. When and if a Mass Effect movie ever comes out, me going to see it will be contingent on whether or not they got Seth Green to play Joker. His is the only casting for which there is only one acceptable answer. I don't care if Shepard is played by Andy Dick, Joker must be Seth Green.
Anywho, three chapters and an epilogue left to go. Chapter 30 was a lot of fun to write, and features another returning character (who sadly had to share her first POV chapter with several others). Again, it should be posted in about a week, and again, if it isn't, harass me over it.
Finally, two questions for any who'd care to answer: What was your favorite writing moment in ME3? What was your least favorite writing moment that wasn't the ending?
Thanks everybody!
