Chapter 36: Hairs and Hostages

A/N: I KNOW THIS NEXT MISSION STARTS OUT SIMILAR AND THAT CAN BE SUUUUUPER BORING but please be patient and watch how it is different and turns into a newer, fresher experience!

Shepard sighed as she fastened the clasps on her armour and prepared her weapons. It still bothered her a bit that she didn't remember part of the previous day, and even more that she STILL hadn't had her talk with Thane, but she was determined to get through this mission quickly and efficiently.

They had arrived at 2175 Aeia in the Draconis system about half an hour ago and EDI and Joker had already traced the signal to it's source.

On arriving at the cargo bay she found that all three members of her chosen ground team for the mission had already arrived. Jacob seemed (understandably) wound pretty tight, but both Garrus and Thane seemed relatively calm and tolerant of each others' presence and as they leaned against the heavy cargo crates. Thank God for little things, she thought to herself.

The shuttle ride was smooth, though the shuttle had an odd sort of precarious atmosphere to it, like is things just shifted a bit everything would come crashing down. It made her want to hold her breath. As soon as the shuttle touched down, she let out the shuttle doors, eager to be out in the open once again. She gasped as her eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight to reveal a lush, temperate, garden planet with a majestic beach stretching out before them.

And a couple of kilometers down that beach lay the huge wreck of the Hugo Gernsback.

"There it is," Jacob said, the incredulity in his voice scarcely hidden. "It's mostly intact too, they could have survived the crash, but... it's been years..." Shepard scanned the area for life signs, finding none, before signaling her team to fan out as the moved forward. After about a kilometer, Garrus spoke up.

"Shepard! Over here! It's the beacon, or what's left of it anyway... He was crouched down next to a battered VI console, pulling away the vines and branches that obscured it and doing what he could to patch it up well enough to interact with. "Spirits, this thing looks like it has been here for ages! But why would they wait to signal? And why is it so far from the ship?"

Shepard shrugged and crouched down next to him to get a better look, accidentally brushing arms with him eliciting a soft growl, though from which of her two alien companions she could not tell. She shook her head and continued to work.

She didn't know why, but she had felt rather on edge around Garrus ever since she'd woke up in the med bay and was told he'd had to knock her out. She wasn't afraid of him or anything, it was just that the air between them seemed very charged of late, like the way your hair stands on end and sparks when you fly a shuttle through a lightning storm. Suddenly, the VI powered up, projecting a bright orange humanoid holo that flickered and sputtered as it presented itself.

"P-P-P-Pause in-in beacon protocol: 8 years, 237 d-days, 7 hours. P-P-Pause is recorded-ed as: "RECORD DELETED" by acting captain, Ronald Taylor" it said choppily. Jacob frowned.

"That's not right," Jacob said with a frown. "My father was first officer."

"Ronald Taylor was p-p-promoted under emergency command protocol-cols. Other flagged issues: Unsafe decel-cel-celeration andddddddddddddd-eeeeooooooo-!" With a spark and a shudder the console exploded into flame knocking both Garrus and Shepard backwards.

"Siha!" "Sunnuva!" "Shepard!" "Commander!" Exclaimed Thane, Shepard, Garrus, and Jacob, respectively. Thankfully, the flames went out as quickly as they had come. Not before they had done some damage though.

Garrus stifled a laugh as he looked over at her in surprise. She looked first to Jacob, who was apparently too busy trying to keep a straight face to answer at the moment, then to Thane, whose eyes were sparkling with mirth.

"What is it? Is it THAT funny to watch me fall on my ass? You were just as surprised Garrus, so don't you even!" She joked as she grinned back at him.

"No, hehe, it's not that. Hahaha. It's your fringe!" Garrus broke down into the very adult, very turian, very manly equivalent of a fit of giggles. Shepard looked to Thane in confusion, a roguish smile still tugging at her lips as she gestured to Garrus as if to say 'what the hell?'. Thane coughed into his fist to conceal his own chuckle.

"I think what our turian friend means to say is that your hair got a little, well let's say 'singed'." Her eyebrows shot up as she reached for where the shoulder length strands of hair that framed her face would usually be and was dismayed to find that at least half of each hair hair been burned away.

Turning on the mirror app of her omnitool, she was presented with what looked like someone who's bangs had been cut by an angry two year old! She covered her gasping mouth with her free hand.

"Oh my God! I look ridiculous!" she said, giggling through her fingers.

"You make it look good, Siha." The edges of Thane's mouth were twitching like mad as he tried not to grin. Shepard whimpered a bit, still smiling but fussing with the remains of her hair nonetheless.

"Joker is NEVER gonna let me live this down!" she groaned, getting to her feet with the help of Thane's proffered hand and dusting herself off.

"Well, what now?" Garrus asked as the three of them looked into the distance at their goal. He had barely finished speaking when Shepard strode past him, checking her gun for sand and scanning the area as she moved.

"We move on of course!" she hollered back at them. The men just shook their heads and followed after her.

Shepard felt invigorated by the shock and laugh she and her men had had, and if she was honest, just a little bit embarrassed. She kept a quick pace and, picking up on her intentions, her team stayed within sight but at a respectful distance. It wasn't long after that Shepard arrived at a make shift camp full of refugees a ways ahead of her squad. Hiding in the bushes nearby, she quickly took stock of the situation.

Right away she noticed something was off... different. There wasn't a single man in the camp. Every single survivor she saw was a woman, and there weren't very many of them to boot, perhaps a dozen. The ship that still towered over them in the distance seemed like it had taken some damage, but the survival rate should have been significantly higher and not gender specific.

As she stood to reveal her presence, most of the women gasped and hid, a few poking their heads curiously out from behind crates and makeshift tents. One survivor, however, ran eagerly towards her.

"You came?! From the sky?! The leader said someone would come!" her childlike voice and demeanor were strange. She looked at Shepard, her eyes wide and searching. "He delayed for SO long, but he still has power!" She turned away grimacing. "Some have lost faith... the hunters..." Suddenly she looked scared. "They will have seen your star! They will NOT let you help him!"

"Whoa, whoa! Slow down, love. You aren't making sense." Shepard said, quietly and patiently trying to encourage the woman, who sighed in frustration.

"I...I...I don't remember how to say it! He's our leader, and we serve so we can... go home! But... some want to fight him! They were... they were cast out, he exiled them so they hunt his machines and those who help him. They don't believe that rescue will come." Suddenly, the girls eyes grew wide with terror.

"He has his face! He promised to call the sky, but he sends NOTHING!" The girl backed up to join another who spoke up in turn.

"He forced us to eat. To, decay." A ripple of irate whispering and chanting spread through the camp as the second woman pointed at a surprised Jacob as he walked up next to his Commander. "He has a cruel face. HIS cruel face!YOU ARE CURSED WITH HIS FACE!" she spat angrily. Shepard stepped between the Jacob and the women, trying to obscure him from sight.

"Not the best reaction to the family resemblance, Jacob..." she said to him quietly. But the women weren't done. Shepard swung back around as chucks of rock and debris came flying at them, bouncing harmlessly off her armour.

"Devil-spawn!"

"Demon!"

"Hell-child!" The women were becoming more violent by the second, coming out from their hiding places and clustering in a group that was dangerously close to rioting.

"Maybe you should go back to the ship, Jacob. Things are getting really out of hand..." Shepard said to Jacob over her shoulder, eyes locked on the advancing crowd.

"But Shepard, if anyone deserves to be here it's me-"

"I didn't ask for your opinion!" she hissed. "If we are to get anywhere here we need to be able to communicate with these people! If they attack, we may be forced to use lethal force and the LAST thing I want on my conscience is a bunch of dead, unarmed, civilian women! So you will do as I say, and GO BACK TO THE SHIP!"

Jacob stiffened, but after a moment, he saluted and stalked off back towards the drop point. Shepard breathed a sigh of relief as the crowd began to calm and disperse, with none of them moving to follow him. She looked back at the two aliens, gesturing them forward to talk in a small huddle.

"Look, things are kinda tense right now and I really don't want to set them off so I'm going to do something kind of drastic here..." Garrus' brow-plates raised in a question while Thane waited patiently for her to go on. Straitening her shoulders and running a hand through her hair she steeled herself. "I'm going to try to have a talk girl-to-girl." Garrus snickered.

"Are you sure you can handle it 'Commander'? You wouldn't want to offend," he teased, earning himself a punch in the shoulder.

"Shut it you," she replied, sticking her tongue out at him. "As if I wasn't nervous enough." Garrus just laughed, Thane looking on with a look of bemusement on his face. Brushing a little dust of her armour and stow her weapon, she turned around and said under her breath "Here goes nothing!"

As she walked further into the camp, most of the women scattered before her, avoiding her eyes and going about their business. It was a few minutes before she found one she could approach as the woman cut up some exotic looking fruit with what looked like a camping knife.

"Hey, I was wondering if you could answer a few questions," Shepard started a bit uncertainly, holding her hands up to show she was unarmed. The woman didn't look up or acknowledge her.

"Oh come on, don't be like that." The marine coaxed, doing her best to remember what the girls in the sickening movies Kelly liked to watch spoke and failing miserably at it. "I just want to talk a bit..." The woman bit her lip, as she shook her head, eyes still focused on the fruit.

"I can't talk to you, I don't want the punishing." Shepard frowned.

"'The punishing'? No, I promise I won't hurt you! Neither me, nor my men will lay a hand on you, I swear." Shepard's voice was earnest and pleading, a tone not often heard from the mouth of a battle hardened soldier. The woman sighed in mild frustration.

"Not you, no. But him. He will punish!" Shepard took a step forward, searching the woman's face, trying to understand.

"Who? Jacob? He is gone, far away where you won't have to see him ever again." The woman paused for a moment.

"Follow me," she whispered in a voice that was barely audible, picking up her bowl and walking slowly ahead of Shepard to a medium sized tent at the far edge of the clearing. The woman went inside, not bothering to hold the flap aside for Shepard.

Garrus and Thane stood watch in the center of the camp watching both their Commander and the survivors for any signs of trouble. It made Thane a bit nervous, seeing Shepard go into the tent, out of his line of sight, but he kept reminding himself who she was and what she could do, She would little appreciate his interference. After a few minutes of no one stirring inside the tent resolved to check on her.

Suddenly, a woman's terrified scream tore through the air.