The operation became a painful blur, the Turian ships that made up the majority were slowly falling. Hours streamed by and she ate, drank, took stims, developed the nausea and blurriness of having a body forcibly overridden, cannibalizing energy sources and drowning in its own insistence to rest. She was suited; she could not dig her fingernails into her palms. She bit her tongue for the focus. She maintained discipline and did not take her helmet off. She didn't want Garrus to smell exhaustion, and she force fed energy through her voice, turning her microphone off to test before she spoke, to cough and clear her throat, get the striations of fatigue out like smoothing fabric.
She took time to remind herself that this was not the worst time she'd spent in a suit. There was no thresher venom, there was air. She'd be fine.
Eventually all the accumulated pain kept her awake. She'd wrenched and strained joints and muscles, added some painkiller to the mix once the level of pain meant she'd definitely be awake, so it wouldn't result in getting the fatigue out of her voice by screaming. She itched. She smelled rank, suspense sweat soaking and humidifying her suit, the unpleasant drag and drift of fabric across over-sensitized skin, developing blisters and rashes.
These were all tiny concerns next to the fact that they were saving dozens of lives potentially with each ship. The Turian that had shot at Garrus had been a Vakarian. She wondered if he knew her.
But his head was still on and functioning.
She continued this game of countering mundane visceral misery, attempted balance with the intellectual insistence that it was going to be fine. She had lots of practice. She'd drift and slip occasionally into neutral out of fatigue, but she'd rev and get in gear when and as necessary.
About forty two hours in they had hit the eighteenth ship.
It was bound to happen, someone had physically seen the shuttle land and they were target practice on arrival. She was assured at this point that no communication or emergency broadcast would make it off the ship, so they could contain alert to here. This was an Alliance ship and they were forced to work their way through room by room, unable to make it to the ventilation system. They barely made it off the shuttle before it was disabled. Three people had it under fire before they managed to get out. Legion had blocked targeting of her on their way out of the shuttle, taking a hard hit to the joint of his left arm, the elbow shredded with smoking metallic edges and sparks, the forearm and hand dangling uselessly when they got into a more fortified position. He calmly twisted and yanked once, set his ex-arm against his back with a magnetic click, and switched from his rifle to a pistol.
She cloaked, repositioned to give him more space, sighted and took down one of the three with a head shot, adrenaline doing its thing where it hyper magnified the aspects of the stim that caused her body to shake and hands to tremble. She had to consciously breathe and settle to keep the tremor out of her voice when she asked afterward "Legion. Status."
He returned calmly "I am well, Shepard Commander."
She answered, disbelieving "You just twisted off your arm."
He returned mildly "I will use my pistol. There is no damage that cannot be reversed."
She paused, sighted, cloaked and took out the back of the head of a person crouching down, thinking they were safe, a spray of blood "Promise me that you're not going to leave it as a memorial, like the hole and the N7 piece."
Garrus said gruffly, after another shot had sounded "Shepard, leave the boy alone, let him dress the way he wants. You'll drive him to start smoking."
She was caught in the rush of a brief spill of laughter, for the first time having Garrus and Legion on the same side. Camaraderie under fire was a beautiful thing. It was like fireworks in the bleak, close and intimate and warming her face, brightening her eyes, quickly gone.
She couldn't afford laughter for more than a few seconds, had to grind down her focus to each shot.
They had to slaughter their way through the entire ship. She didn't recognize anybody, but she recognized the uniforms, the food, the things that didn't change with indoctrination. She gritted her teeth and apologized for each lethal, invisible shot that came from her, all head shots, all timed to her determination to get it right on the in breath, the sorrow on the out breath that she had….gotten it right.
It took them three hours to clear that ship, 33 casualties.
She'd memorize their names later.
Legion refused to consider not going on to the nineteenth ship, and she needed him. He piloted the shuttle with absolute precision.
She asked quietly as Legion guided them to the next ship, this one also Alliance, getting the shuttle in quietly, as she hoped their luck would hold. "Do you feel pain, Legion?"
He said calmly "Not as humans feel pain. I do experience distress. I am aware of how this mission could fail without my assistance, and that causes me to wish to continue."
She smiled with a bitter, shaking edge and said "Right there with you. Thank you, Legion."
He answered solemnly, managing the controls with one arm in a way she couldn't with two "You are welcome, Shepard Commander."
Garrus kept his head, Shepard kept her hand, Legion lost his arm.
Hopefully to be reattached…
She had no way of knowing if he was lying. She had no idea whether or not it would be better if he did feel pain, attachment to his own body.
She did know she felt pain. Garrus was stoic. There was an element of silence that they maintained, as though if they were physically quiet they would not set anything off, in the midst of a long dark tunnel without knowing who was going to be around the next corner or whether or not they would be able to save them. They moved through the vessels, verifying life signs and body locations, transferring controls to EDI and David.
There was no eye contact through suits.
She had a quiet, private conference with David between this ship and the next, asking tensely if David or EDI would be able to remotely have the overtaken ships target the untaken ships. She did not want it to happen, but they could not afford a run of bad luck. They now had the majority of the air power. They could, she wanted it to be unnecessary.
The ground still had not communicated anything.
She still did not know how to run a ground assault or how many people were down there. Too many. No ventilation systems. No solid way to call them up or dummy them out.
They might have to kill every single person they met on the ground.
Why hadn't she studied and drilled more crowd control methods?
Nine to go. No quips. No new ideas. Her body was pain, ache and numbness inside her suit. Her eyes were drawn back to where Legion's severed arm had been on his back, but he had left it on the floor of the cockpit of the shuttle. They'd had to change shuttles often.
She just hoped they'd be able to take this shuttle with them when they left. He had assured her he could get a modular arm, he had accumulated spares he upgraded in his quarters…but…
She missed Thane. She missed Jack. She missed…any three other people that could have taken down a set of ships and cut this mission time in half…she almost thought she would have allowed a second team out…and then her internal compass balked and she realized she had enough people for a second team. She could have sent Kasumi, Liara and…and anybody else…but she hadn't. She was preserving indoctrinated life and that was her mission.
Her responsibility.
She felt the political claws dig in, the spotlight and isolation of it. Her crew did not doubt her, but that was a bubble that did not extend to the outside worlds. Identifying herself as an indoctrinated person had polarized factions. She sat down, closed her eyes to try to think about that, find her way in the darkness of that circumstance. She replayed Garrus's voice and recognized his now-realized vague unwillingness to say it "There are growing factions more interested in preserving those who have not been indoctrinated than salvaging those who have been. It's part of the Turian soul. Treason under any circumstances is not likely to be forgiven."
So much in those sentences. She was slowly starting to absorb the horror of what they were doing, what was being done, what treason had grown to mean. There was a line, indoctrinated and not indoctrinated and she had hoped to have those be the only dividing categories. No. There was having-been-indoctrinated and what it took to get there, how with each individual indoctrinated life they put un-indoctrinated lives in danger. Garrus was right. This wasn't catching someone in a scan. This also wasn't unanticipated by her, but the magnitude was experienced in a long painful bleed-out in the dark, claustrophobic setting, the sense of predators scenting it in the depths, circling. Un-indoctrinated lives had inherently, spiritually and practically more tactical value 100% of the time, and the more resources became strapped, the more that math would tip, the more potential ballast of moral obligation to the indoctrinated would be thrown overboard to assure lighter weight and liftoff.
She had been spared some of this calculation because her crew, her men, had faith in her. Faith that wasn't earned in daily lives, between strangers and rivals. Faith would not be taken up by every random port authority guard trying to make it home alive, knowing the enemy looked just like them.
She was worth several billion credits, apparently. She was worth saving. To the Normandy. Not to many other people whose faith in her, already battered by public relations and misinformation…or accurate information…took a dive on the knowledge of her indoctrination. She was still not wrong, she still should have disclosed it, it's just that now she knew more fully it was not to gain support, but to allow the previously indoctrinated to have someone to identify with, and she needed to protect them.
The mistake of sitting became obvious when she had a moment of thinking she could not stand. She refused to admit it, and rallied her muscles. She would not waver. The whirring of her thought process continued, speeding on its path, undeterred by the screaming of her body or the pressure of the mission. She watched it like a movie playing out, desired distraction and horrified realization.
This moment was enough to gain insight. She was the bad guy right now. She was unable to take time, to be understanding or creative, to find ways to bring the indoctrinated back into the fold of the sentient without casualty.
Just as she'd done when she let Garrus kill and she'd known it to be wrong.
She saved what lives she could, but that was a sop against the ruthless, cold fact that she was going to scour Eden Prime clean of situational hostiles because she needed something. She wasn't going to ask for help or accept help, she was going to drive herself and her crew too hard, and then she was going to use whatever the fuck was there to her advantage and she'd spit directly in the face of her own morals and defend that choice. She could only afford morality in certain circumstances, and that extended to everyone right now, with their challenges and skill sets and fears.
Check your privilege, Shepard. The fact that you take more risks with more competent help does not absolve you of the consequences of asking others to take risks without that help.
She knew better. She just couldn't do better.
She was soul sick and soul sure.
Time to go. She led them into the first of the Batarian ships. The ship was dark, lit in a deep red that made her eyes water until she was able to change the filter settings on her visor.
Things were vaguely looking up because right or not, shooting a Batarian was not as painful of a process as shooting an Alliance soldier or a representative of the Hierarchy. She'd still prefer to save them, and they did save them. Due to a providential floor plan for the ships, ventilation was close to and easily accessed from the bays of the ships. David had managed the physiologic change of the gas to Batarian requirements, no deaths. The last nine ships fell without a shot. All told it took seventy eight hours.
More providence, no new ship arrivals in that time, holding pattern on the ground and no communication between ground and ship.
Indoctrination working for them.
Except where it was fucking them over every moment.
With the final ship down, she kept her voice steady. She still had to care, could not drop the weight, she was not over the finish line, only no longer running uphill. She did not allow the relief to weaken her resolve. She did take off her helmet, took a breath of un-recycled air and let the stink and horror seep out as it could, as it should, counting the lost lives, 33, against the saved lives, 588. That math was going to have to stand and she could truly hope that there were fewer than 588 people on the ground.
Please.
On the way back to the Normandy she stated "I have eight hours of sleep coming to me. Legion, you need to repair yourself and pass rifle proficiency before I will take you anywhere. You're out for the next 24 hours, I don't have time. Garrus, four hours of sleep for you required in the next ten hours. I will sleep for eight and prep for two."
She opened up a channel to Liara "Liara, we're on our way in. I want you to spend the next eight hours gathering all you need to know about the ground site, coordinate with David and EDI. You are my Prothean expert and tactical advisor. I need to sleep."
Liara acknowledged her, congratulated her and Jane felt the unwelcome and dissonant congratulations slither down her spine like cold oil, thick and inevitable.
She was the ambivalent owner of nine Batarian cruisers that gave her a headache when she attempted to board.
She'd thought she was going to be able to help the formerly indoctrinated integrate back into society, and now she was realizing that was going to fail. She needed to create a new society.
Jane spoke to EDI and David next, and advised them of the plan, asked them for alternative plans, to brief Liara.
There was no way in hell anybody was stepping on that planet without her out in front. There was no way she was abandoning these soldiers on Omega without someplace to go.
She was self-imposed isolated with these thoughts, this idea tangled in things she had not properly anticipated. She was in the familiar, solitary, cramped and miserable part of command where she realized she had more job to do than she had thought, diminishing resources and diminishing allies when she needed them most. She felt the unfortunately familiar
buckling and folding that the blast forge of reality creates when tested against planning, necessitating reinforcing a line of defense with the premonition of being flanked.
She got out ahead of Garrus, expected Legion to follow orders, expected everyone to do their job as she had demanded, and asked only of herself that she get to her quarters, clean her gear with the discipline of the soldier she was. She was physically relieved, psychically burdened, thinking of time ticking away on too many fronts. She completed tasks, cleaning, showering and finding her bed, laying down in it, experienced the gratitude of letting go of tenuous and strained consciousness, and chewed on issues in her dreams for eight hours, not admitting the concept of free time when time was so short and the number 33 existed with new significance.
She woke with Garrus's arms around her and she wondered if she smelled of distance and isolation, something she needed. Part of his hetak, to know her that well. He was not inside, his touch was not sexual but a presence to be taken entirely for granted. The prior days had pushed her into a place of no admittance. It was to protect him, not her. No admittance to her thoughts as she thought them, no admittance into her body or willingness to lose her hold on her will. Intimacy, not sex. Love, not pleasure.
He was physically with her but behind her, his chosen and assigned place.
She wondered what Command smelled like to him briefly, imagining some bizarre chemical mix from Captain's quarters, inner sanctums rarely breached, a place she'd hardly ever been until they were hers. A blend of the best the housekeeping staff had to offer in antiseptic and polish, entitled right to the best, distance and autonomy. Something redolent of corollaries on Palaven, his brain translating her into landscape she had never seen, could never sense herself.
She allowed herself the briefly self flagellating thought that hers should hold a whiff of bullshit, and it probably did.
She resented having to sleep, and as far as she was concerned she was in the middle of an operation, so she got up, silent and bleak, still exhausted, and her first breakfast item was a new stim. Her second and third were the food he'd brought for her.
She felt the stim raise her through levels of awareness she'd been too dull to measure. Several tracks of thought restarted, contemplating today, tomorrow, next week, months from now, full contact with the reality that this was only one planet, one fleet, and not a Reaper in sight, only their shadow.
Garrus busied himself with fitting himself back into armor as she ate. She didn't taste it, she didn't thank him, and she fitted herself back into her own armor.
He followed her down to the conference room and she nearly cried with how much she loved and appreciated this man, how much he loved and appreciated her, and that she could not tell him right now, and how telling him later would also never be enough. She had the few seconds of the elevator ride to be desperately, helplessly in love before she shut it off and the necessity of distance and autonomy descended again.
She longed for silence, darkness, and some quiet whispered words with Thane, but he was far away and it had become abundantly clear she did not have the resources she required for what she needed.
She needed a Goddess and a Prophet and a Promised Land.
Right now she had a suit and a gun and a shroud of invisibility that would serve only her.
She sat in the conference room, seeing real time images of Eden Prime. Not 588 people. There were 77 people. Turian military males and females. Batarian military males. Human Alliance males, females and colonist men, women…and children. Twelve children ranging from 10-17. There were records of infants and smaller children…
The statistic hung in the air after David's disclosure. It was possible the infants and smaller children were inside one of the buildings, but it was unlikely. Shepard said it herself. "Infants and smaller children would be of no value to the indoctrinated, only a liability. Unable to provide any function, necessitating time and maintenance of a person otherwise needed to dig." People familiar with running a ship were left on the ship. Children that were small enough to get into tight restriction in a dig would be of value.
Seven infants and young children, likely gone. She took one more glance at that thought and amended to hopefully gone. Hopefully gone quickly, mercifully, not left to starve, not indoctrinated and incubated or liquidated…
She stopped that thought and decided she'd find out whether she wanted to or not.
Dig they had. Dig they did. Eat, sleep, dig. Everyone. They isolated where they ate, where they slept, their routes to and from work. Much of the location was entirely abandoned, which gave them some cover, but also meant there was a high turnover in a few locations, Groups of tens and twenties, not twos and threes.
There was exposed framework and still structure being uncovered. Liara postulated they were likely about 2/3 done with the excavation and had not begun with exploration, methodical and incurious.
There was an exposed pod that looked very much likes the ones from Ilos.
They had the military IDs of everyone on the ground taken from the ship logs, and the names of all the colonists. They knew exactly who was down there.
It was too late to get the crowd control training she needed or have the equipment she wanted. Too many targets. She insisted on a few measures, but she had little faith in them. She was not going to ask Garrus to put down his rifle and pick up a new weapon intended for shorter distances.
They had used gas grenades at Feros, had saved a colony then, but that was with about sixteen confused people, all the same species, not military trained Turians and Alliance soldiers, Batarian fighters mixed in. She had a few gas grenades of her own, unfortunately unable to work on mixed species groups, possibly lethal to humans while maybe not bringing down a fully grown Turian.
Legion had approached although he was not technically invited to the briefing and informed her that he had repaired his arm, Garrus had tested his proficiency, and he was ready, willing, and…anxious to join the landing party.
She told him that he was to coordinate with Garrus on long range and leave attempts at tranquilizing to her and to Liara. He was to keep track of how many casualties, how many people down, the goal was 77.
Three snipers. One biotic.
Shepard had a terrible feeling about all of this but had no other choices that she could flush from her panicked and desperate mind.
Legion solemnly acknowledged the command.
She had really hoped for someone to decide they had a colony-wide weapon that could drop like a net and safely take everyone down…but they only had the combination of stealth, blitz and hope.
These were not all of the indoctrinated vessels, more could arrive at any time, so could the Alliance, so could a Reaper.
They got down in the shuttle and landed back from the approach that she and Garrus had taken in the simulation, the least exposed, the most oblique, and the sense of danger was ramped up as she remembered every trap, every reset, everything they had missed.
It was a beautiful place, and she just now remembered the spot, on the other side of the compound, where Jenkins had fallen.
She controlled her breathing, gave up the sense of planning and began the reality of execution.
They moved slowly, cleared building after building, confirmed that there was nobody behind them. They edged to a building that had approximately twelve people in it, sleeping. Twelve people quickly and silently darted by Liara and Shepard, nobody woke, hopefully nobody would wake. Each building they passed through had a camera in it accessible from the Normandy so they would know if the status of this building changed or anybody woke.
Two of the children were here, now they were safe.
The next building had fourteen people sleeping, approached from a rear entrance, same outcome. Three children in this group down and safe, eleven adults, a mix of species.
Five children safe, twenty one adults.
They cleared a few more empty unused modular buildings, then attempted approach of the area used for meals. They were spread out, people in front eating, in back doing prep, approximately 24 people here, the rest were down in the dig.
Two children down, tranquilized first, before drawing the attention of the adults, one gas grenade in the room and one shoved back into the hazy dark. Stealthed she was hard to find, and she was able to move around in the smoke, took down three more people, saw Turians wavering on their feet, Batarians barely affected, a human female down with foam from her mouth, the children already down affected by the gas that was pooling on the ground thickly, foam from their mouths and convulsions.
Legion and Garrus targeted the Batarians and Turians, and they were not armed, but they were in close quarters, lunging for the covered exits. No time or method to disable them only. Fatality was 100% here, all attempts to preserve life lost when tranquilizing dart met gas crawling across the ground at a dosage too low to save Turians and Batarians through disabling them and too high for humans to survive it.
She shelved the use of grenades, they moved back through the food preparation area, no exits.
Twenty four dead. Some ugly suffering, and Shepard put mercy bullets through small and large brains of those she'd tried to spare.
27 to go.
Gunshots had been heard, she had it reported, people were coming out of the dig, converging on the pod. They moved quickly to the location, to find bodies of people tightly meshed around the pod. Nobody targeted Shepard's team, they were completely ignored.
David's voice sounded to the team "They have access to explosives intended for blasting…they all have explosives under their clothing."
Jane watched as more people poured out of the dig, moved to join the mass of bodies trying to protect or sabotage, she could not tell and had no choices. Children and adults and Alliance and Turians, Batarians…
Whatever they wanted to do, they could not further organize. There was a slight chance that head shots could eliminate detonations if the explosives were rigged a certain way and the option to detonate was taken away from the individual.
She said quietly and firmly from cover "Head shots only. Fire."
Garrus's rifle sounded, taking out the closest and largest target, a Batarian shot through an eye cleanly, a spray of red blood. As she watched he toppled down and then his body burst with the detonation of the explosives strapped to his chest, out and back. That set off the other explosives in a chain reaction, different heights and colors of blood, plate and skull and viscera, moments in slow motion as she tried to target something, anything that was not disintegrating in spray. Frozen vignettes played out in horror as her scope captured images, until she closed her eyes, nothing more to see unless it was on the ground.
She'd had to hope that if they hadn't opened the pod yet, it could not be opened by conventional means, and she was right. The pod and platform were undamaged, dripping with the remains of the uncounted and unnamed creatures that had swarmed it.
Others tried to come up through the ramp of the dig, the imperative to move to the pod still active, and they were picked off one by one.
In the eerie silence following Legion assured Shepard that the number 77 had been reached.
The ramp down had been vandalized by the last person up, the dig was unreachable. The pod was intact. Shepard calmly went and got a hose she had seen on the way in, sprayed down the pod and her armor, began to move what she could of what remained of the bodies aside after politely asking Liara to examine the pod as the resident Prothean expert.
Legion and Garrus remained silent and on guard, watching over Liara's progress.
Shepard signaled to the Normandy to send crews to begin ferrying survivors to Omega, identifying remains for return.
Liara confirmed she believed it to be a live Prothean, or what had been a live Prothean when they went in.
She looked dazedly at her companions and though briefly of Thane saying "It has become commonplace to you to speak to mechanical Gods and have an evolved Geth AI wear your armor like a favor in battle, to share the bed of a Speaker of the Spirits in the form of a Turian whose ancestral home has walls that echo with his words. You slip among stars unseen and you gather adherents and followers on every planet and station, eyes turned your way and hopes tuned to your ambitions."
My ambitions.
My ambitions involve a live Prothean.
Liara was over her shock, or at least appeared that way, and so did Jane. They could both fall apart later, and she promised herself she would. Later.
At the end of the other ticking clocks, came the slow realization that Liara had absolutely no idea what to do with this pod and the only idea she had was…to look around…
Look around.
Look around at bits of bodies and pools of blood, foam and fragments of fabric.
Liara, Garrus, Legion and Jane went through and combed each of the outbuildings, and found some research. Research only Jane could decipher.
Brain whammy #1, still the winner and champion.
Before the pod opened she knew who and what was inside, what his last moments conscious had been, what he had expected, what he had wanted…
And that she would not be any of those things.
He woke as he went in, bits of body under his footsteps, solitary.
She had a hallowed moment of feeling the importance of a historical event, to look in the eyes of a Prothean.
In the several eyes of a Prothean.
In the several eyes of a Prothean that was lunging for her, snarling and saying with conviction "Indoctrinated."
Oh fuck.
Well, he wasn't wrong.
He also fortunately wasn't that strong yet, and she had him spun with his arms around his back quickly, the obvious clicks of two rifles drawn on him.
His wrists were wide and slick, his skin slippery under her palms, so she had to twist to get leverage. His armor was bulky and she was shorter than he was, but she had officially had it.
She said after a deep breath, carefully "My name is Commander Jane Shepard. I saw what got you here. You are the only Prothean alive and we just worked very hard to preserve your life, so as much as I would like to end it right now, I won't. This…" She turned the Prothean to look at Liara "Is Liara. She is a Prothean expert and a dear friend, and if you so much as give her a small bruise, I will kill you and consider it a fitting end to this entire mission." She turned him again to face Legion, who had his rifle at the Prothean's head "This is Legion. He has a rifle. He will watch for small bruises. He is under my orders to kill you if you lunge at another member of my crew. My crew includes everyone at this site. Liara will explain and offer you choices. She is not indoctrinated. I will remove my distasteful self from your presence to help make the transition and those choices easier."
Liara, bless her, kept her cool, gave her a nod of acknowledgement.
So much better than the panicked and clueless Prothean expert that she'd once been.
She let go of the Prothean's wrists and backed away toward Garrus, who had a view no doubt of one of the several eyes on the Prothean's face through his scope.
She had had enough and she wanted to go back home and wash the blood of children from her boots and gauntlets.
Crews bustled around the base, security perimeters set, bodies ferried off. Over the course of the entire mission, over the last several days, the Normandy had managed to accrue several shuttles worth of people, relays of personnel, agents brought in from wherever available in that time frame to help manage and maintain security. Liara and Kasumi had called in some agents to here and Omega, Zaeed had kicked in names of those who were reliable, especially since this was glorified babysitting. Pay high and job done, no questions. They had enough people now to occupy the ships, return them to the owners after their data had been mined and transferred to the Normandy, which for most of them was already done. Enough people to pilot Batarian cruisers to Eurydice and defend them in transit and destination. They had Geth escort ships and although Aria would not allow Geth on Omega, they could keep indoctrinated people restrained and at a distance until human agents could shuttle them in when their number came up for surgery. Nearly 600 people was going to take a while.
Now she needed to write up the losses from each ship, inform Palaven and Earth and…just them, fuck the Batarians. Seriously, fuck the Batarians.
Fuck the Prothean too, while she was at it.
The Prothean stared at her, one hand wringing at a wrist where she had gripped him. He did not lunge again. He looked shocked.
Good. Shocked is good.
She turned on a boot heel, Garrus following, and they went back to the shuttle, back through the familiar path, one she never wanted to revisit.
Threatening someone had made her feel better, no denying it. She could ride that adrenaline a little while longer. She could keep that tone, that certainty and that grip.
She could not fall apart just yet. She really did not want to fall apart at all.
Garrus said quietly "While you were asleep I identified the crews of each ship. I have the identities of those at the base. I have reports ready for Palaven and Alliance command and I can send those off after we get back. Do you want me to hold them until the ships are returned?"
She blanked a moment and had not thought about that. She said "What do you suggest?"
He replied "I would suggest having each ship broadcast its arrival upon entering the Palaven or Sol Mass Effect relay. Geth can get them to the relays and then stay behind. Ships can be escorted in by local fleets, and their positions of origin won't be leaked, we won't have convoys attacked. We need to arrange for legitimate pilots for each craft and not let anybody involved otherwise as a mercenary agent be taken in for questioning."
Her head tipped back and she said "Good. Let's do that. Do you know a few Turians who can take over?"
He smiled and said "I do."
She smiled back "Okay. What do you want to do with a few Batarian cruisers?"
He tilted his head and said "When Thane gets back in touch, we can ask him if he wants to use a few for bait and misdirection."
She thought a moment and said "That's a lovely idea. Garrus, I don't think being indoctrinated is going to work out so well for me, or for the rest of the people similarly afflicted. It's not just Protheans with a prejudice and opinion. We're going to need more cruisers. We're going to need bases. We need to give ex-indoctrinated a place to go. I'm going to lose support."
Garrus nodded gravely "Yes. To all of that."
She nodded and said "Okay. When Thane gets back I'll ask him about that too. We need to give people a place to go. I offered to let people fight with me, and I need to be able to extend that to giving people a place where they are safe from retaliation and neglect and aggression."
Garrus said quietly "That's going to be tough for everyone."
She said softly "Yes. It is. Okay. That's for tomorrow. I need to head to the CIC and check in, need to coordinate with the Alliance to pick up their ships. I need to talk to Aria. After that I'm done. The Prothean is Liara's problem for a while."
Garrus asked lightly "What the hell are we going to do with a Prothean?"
She shrugged and said dismissively "Assault him, insult him, take it from there."
Garrus shrugged back "He started it."
They still had jobs to do, the shuttle landed and they broke off to their separate after mission tasks. She authorized a ridiculous amount of money to Aria and to the Clinic for housing and security and surgery. Aria was…eventually…happy to do business again. She coordinated with Hackett and arranged for pilots to make the transition at the Mass Effect relay. She gave him abbreviated and incomplete facts, stated that the Alliance members and colony members that had survived were undergoing surgery.
She stated that she would maintain a presence at the discovered dig, but was willing to share the site with other Prothean scholars. She would provide sufficient security to protect the site, considering it was in the Terminus system and the Alliance was unable to provide it.
She'd give orders to have the pod and platform lowered back down, let Hackett assume what they were after was in the dig itself. The Prothean would remain classified.
Hackett was not pleased, but did want his ships back. She promised to update him on the disposition of crew and surgery, but did not release where they were being treated or promise she would guarantee their return to Alliance authority.
Hackett made no mention of any plan of rescue or aid, and Shepard felt enough of that abandonment of colonists, the sort that had made her risk her life repeatedly in places like Eden Prime and Horizon that she was not about to let Hackett get one ounce more of information than she absolutely had to give, and she gave that so the Alliance could inform next of kin.
EDI had data mined the vessels, David had helped, though at the moment he was sleeping. Reni had allowed him to push himself hard, but EDI could manage current coordination and communication. Joker was also getting some sleep, so it was just Jane on the quiet CIC and EDI's pride at the completed mission, which Jane echoed for EDI's sake. She said quietly "Without you, it would have been impossible."
EDI said quietly "I told you once I aspired to be exceptional, and missions like this make me proud."
Jane's hand had lingered by the console near EDI as she said "They should. Anything I need to know? Anything you need?"
EDI said calmly "Everything is proceeding as planned, we have sufficient personnel to coordinate and maintain security. For optimal efficiency you should sleep."
Jane smiled and said "For optimal efficiency I have you. Good night, EDI."
EDI said with a hint of pride "Good night, Jane."
She checked in verbally with Kasumi, who said she was doing fine and happily raiding Batarian accounts.
So…sleep was something achievable. She wondered what she had forgotten and what she needed to do and an overfull roster of everything rushed at her until she decided she had asked the wrong question…the same one Garrus had once asked "Is anybody going to die as a direct result of you sleeping?"
Maybe.
Adrenaline and anger let loose and she was suddenly fully aware of her exhaustion and the unprocessed dark pulling her down.
She was blessedly in some shock, she recognized in detachment.
She had a job, and she'd do it. She cleaned her gear, scrubbing off multicolored blood spatter and dried on…things…that she hadn't gotten off with the hose. When Garrus came in, out of his own armor, she was staring down at a shin guard, turning it slowly in the light. He stepped over and tried to take it from her, but she held on tight, eyes unwilling to tear themselves away.
He picked her up, sat down with her on his lap, and guided her hands through the simple tasks, finishing with his efficiency, discovering what was a scratch and what was a stain, helping her move on when she had mostly been finding scratches and attempting to scrub them off until they widened and deepened.
He stood with her in his arms, stowed her gear, taking the last piece from her hands and setting it aside with a final snap of storage closing.
Over. It was over, but it was just starting. She needed to change her thoughts about herself, change her identity, add the underlined and asterisked exception that would always follow her: Indoctrinated. Indelible ink, not erasable pencil.
Would someone die from her falling asleep?
Definitely. She'd slept while people died, seen an ancient library and danced while children dug in a deepening, inescapable well…
Never mind sleeping, children had detonated on her order.
She did know what happened to the infants and children. Their bodies had been found in an abandoned outbuilding. Neatly stacked. Shot through the brain.
A mercy.
Right. Mercy.
Her nails dug into his plates, finding scratches in the plate like the scratches in her armor.
He was silent, and stoic, and he had a job to do. Clothes came off gently, carefully as her fingers found the flaws in how he was made, wondered how many scratches came while under her orders. He carried her into a warm shower, she knew too cold for him, it would make him feel vaguely slimy and it should, it was with her, and that vague scent of bullshit would never wash off.
Her hand came to rest on the ruined side of his face, chipped mandible and scar, she hadn't decided before now if it was her fault or not. She had saved him, but not saved him enough. It was her fault he had been on Omega. He had loved her and she had not cared to know, and then she had died.
She got distracted by his eyes, just as the shine in her armor had caught her, his solemn, watchful eyes that had been with her…longer than anybody. She imagined nails digging in too deep, drawing blood, and he would like that, but not now. Her hands relaxed, her eyes drifted shut as warm water cascaded and he offered her the cool press of his crest, and she could barely breathe.
Just Garrus, nothing else. Just his arms and his eyes and his crest.
She understood he had a job to do, she was his job, and she was grateful, sinking, but would not be lost alone in the dark, he would find her. She had faith. His hands moved to wash her body, wash her hair, turn her and drop his crest to her shoulder, kiss there, she respected that he had a job to do.
She could be present for him, not be lost, be found, and she struggled to be that, to not want to follow blood trails down the drain, reach for unknown names and snuffed out futures.
Here. Now. Garrus.
She repeated the words to herself with each breath, was swept away by arms and towel and brush, wondering how many Vakarian dead he had reported, catalogued as she slept.
Here. Now. Garrus.
She wasn't broken. Thane knew she did not break, she bent far and snapped back and she would not break. Garrus might break, so she needed to be present.
Bed and dark and blissful, wished for permission for the job to be done, for now, his and hers. She reached for him after he carefully eased his huge body into bed, dipping the mattress down so she rolled to him, with final permission for oblivion, for him to watch over her.
She considered thirst and need, wondered about sacred and did not care about the inspiration as her hand scratched along plate, as she moved her mouth to his, as her body shifted from darkness to burning, to demand. She wanted to tell him she loved him, to thank him, and she did, with mouth and hands and body, but most of all and overwhelming those things she wanted him inside, to take the oblivion offered, separate from him as a person but a result of him being a person, just as he sought her blood. She took scent and claimed it, rolled him to his back, with his head to the side to protect his fringe until she took her fists and put them under the back of his head to hold him up so she could be fascinated by his eyes. She kissed him, drew blood without ceremony from both of them, drove her body onto his, knowing her Turian would feel loved and not used. It was profane and sacred somehow, not to be repeated, not to be taken away until now was gone. She released her fists and cradled his head in her palms, fingers on his hide. She pulled him gently to the side again, so he cradled her, so she was where need drove her, where she could bend but not break, where they bent together, composite creatures drawing strength from each other's close bond.
Shimmering waves of tears coursed down her cheeks and then stopped, her job over, his goal reached, as he watched over her, gave her his voice and his breath and his body, and she was bared to her blood-spattered and scratched bones.