Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ladders… christ, he was just about done with ladders.

Nathan heaved himself up another rung, feeling a drop of sweat slide down toward the tip of his nose. It felt like he had been climbing for hours, although he was pretty sure it had only been maybe fifteen minutes. Glancing over his shoulder at his passenger, he was careful to let none of his frustration show. "How are you doing back there?"

At least Dr Felishaw had the good grace to look profoundly embarrassed by the whole situation. He shifted his weight slightly, readjusting the grip he had on the collar of Nathan's armour. His legs were braced on Nathan's heavy belt. "I'm perfectly fine, please don't worry about me. I really must thank you again, Lieutenant. I can't imagine how, uh, difficult this must be…"

"Don't mention it," Nathan grunted, climbing another rung. He was doing his best to keep up a steady pace, but Felishaw was a good deal heavier than the combined weight of all his guns, even if he added a grenade launcher to that calculation. Of course, for Felishaw to have room to cling to his back he had had to pass his guns up to Sporritt and Ngandu, so he was feeling a bit like a pack animal rather than a soldier right now.

"My turn next, Briggs," Sporritt offered cheerfully. The bastard didn't even sound out of breath.

"Shut up and climb," Nathan grumbled.

They had to be almost at the top. Which was a very good thing, seeing as how he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep going. Shepard had offered to spell him – her cybernetic enhancements meant she would be able to carry the heavy, round human just as well as he could despite her smaller frame – but he figured it would be better for the group if their commander wasn't utterly exhausted when they reached the top. They still had to get off the planet without running into Cerberus and she was the one who could make that happen.

Speaking of Cerberus, about five minutes after the group had started climbing Garrus had commed Shepard to warn her they had found the entry to the Prothean facility. So far there had been no sign of them, but it was only a matter of time until they caught up. Nathan wanted to be out of the ladder shaft before they did. He pushed hard, the others matching his slower pace.

"We are about to reach the exit," Javik announced, an edge to his imperious voice.

"Be careful, stay in cover if you can," Shepard warned. "Everyone else, quiet."

Nathan, Sporritt and Ngandu all stopped behind Shepard as Javik crept the remaining few metres up to the top of the ladder. He made some sort of motion with his hands and a low rumbling filled the shaft.

"What's that?" Shepard snapped, on edge. She had been on edge since they landed.

"It is our way out. A mechanical tunneller with an independent power supply. The designers of this place could not predict the shifting of the sands of this planet fifty thousand years into the future, so they deployed a contingency plan."

Shepard swore. "Your contingency plan is going to draw way too much attention to us." She activated her comm. "Jarvis, do you read?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Come and get us, now."

"Dangerfield isn't back yet, ma'am—"

Dangerfield's voice cut in. "I'm cut off from you, Jarvis. I'll meet you at the extraction point."

"Copy," Shepard acknowledged. "Hurry, Private. Get moving, Jarvis. Javik, let's get out of here. Quickly."

The rumbling cut off and Javik made some more hand movements, and finally a hatch slid ponderously open with a grating of stone on stone. Dirt showered down onto their heads, setting Felishaw coughing and spluttering and shaking against Nathan's back. Nathan braced himself on the ladder and nodded in response to Felishaw's embarrassed apology.

As soon as there was room enough, Javik lifted himself up and out, followed closely by Shepard. "Clear for now," she called back down. "Come on."

Ngandu and Sporritt climbed out after her, leaving Nathan and the wheezing doctor on his back. He pulled himself up to the top of the ladder and flattened himself against it so Ngandu and Sporritt could haul Felishaw off his back and out of the shaft. He breathed a sigh of relief as his muscles throbbed with the sudden removal of their burden. He climbed out of the shaft and propped his hands on his knees, breathing hard.

The sudden sharp pull backwards on the collar of his armour followed by the prick of something sharp against his exposed throat came as a complete surprise. He found himself yanked suddenly down to his knees, collar held in an iron grip, some sort of blade at his throat. With a rush of adrenaline he went still, eyes darting from side to side in an attempt to see who – or what – had gotten the drop on him. His attacker had made no sound. In fact, he couldn't see the hand holding the sword – sword? - at all, which suggested a really good tactical cloak.

He must have made some sort of noise himself, because Shepard was suddenly whipping around, Mattock raised and in firing position. Her eyes filled with alarm for a moment before narrowing and turning icy cold.

He swallowed. So this is what it's like, being on the wrong end of her gun.

She was still as a statue as she stood there flanked by Javik and the other two marines, rifle straight and steady and unerringly pointed straight at him. His attacker must be small enough to be able to completely hide their own body behind his, if Shepard couldn't get a bead on them. He strained against the hold on his collar just a little, and was met with the immovable counter-force of the grip on his armour and the sharp edge of the sword at his throat. No one that small is that strong, he thought incredulously.

"Let him go," Shepard ordered, voice tight. "Now."

Nathan tried unsuccessfully to catch a glimpse of his elusive attacker in his peripheral vision. They didn't respond to Shepard but he could hear some sort of whirring, clicking sound that sounded like it was coming from a mechanical voicebox, similar to a VI. Was he being held hostage by some sort of mech controlled by a VI? It would explain the strength, but… No, that made no sense. Virtual intelligence systems had improved in leaps and bounds over the last few decades, especially in combat situations, but to this date no VI had the ability to utilise a tactical cloak effectively in combat.

And what a tactical cloak. He had never seen one this good, and that was including Kasumi's own custom-built top-of-the-line version. The lack of troops on the shuttles suddenly made sense – the troops had been there after all. They had just been very well cloaked.

The whine of a shuttle's engines split the air overhead. Jarvis and Garrus, right on time. Ngandu and Sporritt craned their necks to see, but Shepard didn't move.

A three-round burst from her rifle suddenly scored the ground beside him. He almost jumped, tensing his muscles in an effort to remain still. "I know what you're trying to do," she warned his invisible assailant. "You need time for your friends to get here." She paused, and her voice was icy cold. "I'm not going to stand here and wait. You're outnumbered. One last chance to leave."

"Commander, why are you allowing this to continue?" Javik demanded impatiently from behind the three marines. "The success of our mission does not require this man's presence." He made an offhand gesture in Nathan's direction.

Nathan couldn't help glaring in the Prothean's direction, but when he returned his gaze to Shepard her eyes betrayed the fact that she knew Javik was right. She would leave him behind if she needed to. Hell, he knew Javik was right too, but that didn't make it any easier to stare down the possibility of being left in the clutches of Cerberus, even if it was for the good of the mission. Nor the fact that Shepard would be the one doing it.

But she shook her head. "We don't leave anyone behind, Commander Javik," she told him firmly. She was speaking oddly slowly. "I just needed to… Now, Dangerfield."

The tone of her voice hadn't changed at all, but as she said the word 'now' a loud boom echoed over the top of the sound of the shuttle engines, coming from somewhere off to Nathan's nine o'clock. Abruptly the sword fell away and the hold on his armour loosened. He sprang into action, diving forward and throwing himself onto his back, omnitool raised and ready to throw an overload, the only weapon he had, back at his attacker.

As soon as he moved, though, Shepard opened fire. A small, slight woman fully covered head-to-toe in the lightest armour he had ever seen flew backwards with the force of Shepard's barrage. She thudded down onto the dirt before him, motionless, bleeding profusely from what looked to be multiple shots to the neck. He didn't see a shield generator on her belt; that first round had to have been intended to take out a biotic barrier so that Shepard could finish her off. Nathan crawled over and searched for a pulse, but he knew he wouldn't find anything. Shepard didn't miss.

"Good shot, Dangerfield," the Commander was saying over the comm as the sniper revealed herself from behind a tree a good hundred metres away. "Get moving, we need to get out of here."

"Aye aye, ma'am," came the response, and the distant figure broke into a run toward them.

As Nathan got to his feet, Shepard met his eyes for a moment, expression unreadable, before her eyes hardened once more. "Bring the body," she ordered.

He blinked. "The body? Why—"

"That thing had to have been behind us the whole time for it to get the drop on you like that," she explained, although she didn't sound too happy about having to do so. Her mood had turned decidedly sour over the course of this mission. "Not to mention that it was able to hold onto a marine half again its size and easily twice its weight. I want to know what… it… is."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied reluctantly, leaning over to hoist the body up and onto his shoulders.

Shepard found herself avoiding Nathan's eyes as they hurriedly boarded the shuttle and took off, Jarvis burning the thrusters hard as she raced the Cerberus shuttles to the safety of the mass relay. Watching as Nathan was held down with a sword to his neck had been frightening, very frightening. If that sword had slipped just slightly… she suppressed a grimace.

Seeing that hadn't been pleasant but what had been worse was how she had felt as she pointed her gun at him. She had stared directly down the barrel at a man she cared for a great deal, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would shoot him if it meant getting away from Cerberus with a living Prothean.

She hadn't lied earlier when she had told him she was prepared to send him to his death if it was necessary, that she had already done so once. But this had felt different. More… personal. If she was to pull the trigger, he wouldn't be dying as an indirect result of an order she gave, but because she had killed him. Herself. She shuddered.

Nathan was watching her, brow creased in thought. He probably knew exactly what she was thinking; he seemed to have a sixth sense for that. She wondered if he had been as affected by the situation as she had.

She turned away, ducking into the cockpit instead of trying to think of something to say to him about it. "How are we doing?" she asked Jarvis, who seemed just as casual and laidback as always despite the Cerberus shuttles on their tail and the cannon fire streaking past the viewscreen.

"It'll be a close one, but we'll make it," Jarvis replied confidently.

Shepard nodded, clapping a hand on her shoulder. "Good work. Any word from Captain Thuy?"

"Nothing, ma'am."

They hadn't been scheduled to rendezvous for a few hours yet, so that wasn't surprising. "Send him a message when we get close enough to a comm buoy. Let him know we've had to take a detour and give him our new location."

Jarvis glanced up at her. "Where will our new location be?"

"The latest reports show little to no Reaper activity in the Horse Head Nebula. Head there for now, we can hide our heat signature in the relay's mass effect fields until Thuy picks us up."

"Got it."

Shepard remained in the cockpit long enough to make sure they made it through the mass relay clean and there weren't any nasty surprises on the other side, then returned to the main passenger section. On the way out she passed Ngandu, who took her previous spot at Jarvis' side.

Dr Felishaw looked up as she entered, his hands fidgeting restlessly with the safety harness keeping him securely strapped to his seat. He was the only one who had bothered with it; clearly he wasn't entirely comfortable with space travel. "Commander?" he spoke up hesitantly, sombre voice filled with all the questions he no doubt wanted to ask and all the reassurances he probably needed to hear.

She took a seat across from him, next to Sporritt. "We got away, Doctor. We're going to wait in the shadow of Pax's mass relay in the Horse Head Nebula until Captain Thuy returns to pick us up. We'll be returning to the Citadel after that."

The rotund man breathed a sigh of relief at the mention of the Citadel. "Oh thank god. My team will be going there too." He paused, peering up at her. "I've never experienced something so… life-threatening before. I suppose you must be accustomed to it."

Shepard smiled wryly, leaning back in her jump seat. "You could say that."

He leaned forward over his bulk. "Commander, I don't know if I'll get another chance to say this so I want to say it now. Thank you."

She smiled but shook her head. "You're welcome, but Cerberus probably wouldn't have gone to Eden Prime at all if it wasn't for the attention we drew to it."

"No," Felishaw countered, "not for saving my life – though I do thank you profusely for that! I want to thank you for everything you're doing to defeat the Reapers. I can't imagine the kind of pressure you're under. I just want to make sure you know how grateful I am that you're doing what you're doing. I don't think I made that clear when we met. Even if… even if the Reapers end up winning. Just the fact that someone is trying despite how hopeless it seems… It means everything."

Shepard stared at him, touched by the sincerity in his voice, and momentarily lost for words. She found herself instinctively looking to Nathan despite the dubious looks he had been casting in her direction since the mission began. He had a strange little smile on his face as he watched her. It made her feel a little self-conscious. He noticed her hesitation, though, and spoke up himself. "They won't win," he said firmly. She found a smile blossoming on her face at the conviction in his voice. The faith he had in her was… nice.

Speaking of winning, the living Prothean they had found down on Eden Prime would go a long way toward ensuring they had a fighting chance at doing just that. They would be floating out here near the mass relay for a while; it was time to see what Javik could tell them.

He stared back at her, four reptilian eyes blinking slowly, guardedly. She tried to imagine what it must be like for him, having been woken up from a fifty-thousand year stasis only to find he was the last surviving member of his species. She wasn't sure she would be handling it quite so stoically. "Commander Javik," she began. "I understand you must be feeling disoriented—"

"Do not coddle me, Commander," he interrupted. "My feelings are irrelevant." The way he said the word 'feelings' left Shepard with no doubt about his disdain for any focus she might put on them. "The only thing that matters is the goal. The Reapers must be defeated."

"All right," she replied slowly, shifting to face him more squarely, armour scraping lightly against the metal of the jump-seat as she moved. "I need as much information as you can give me. Any successful tactics the Protheans employed, any details you can provide about Reaper forces. But most importantly, I need information on the Crucible. We're building it on little more than faith, really." She shook her head ruefully at the absurdity and sheer desperation of that. "If you know anything about what it does or what the Catalyst is, I need to know."

Javik frowned impatiently. "'Crucible'?" he repeated.

Of course, how could he know what that name referred to? It had been named 'Crucible' by this cycle's inhabitants, not his. She brought up her omnitool and projected a display of the plans they had found on Mars.

He studied them silently for a while, and she watched as comprehension dawned. "Ah. I was a warrior, not a scientist," Javik told her, more thoughtful than confrontational this time. "But I was a very highly ranked warrior. I was assigned the honour of leading the new Prothean Empire after my brethren and I were awoken from cryostasis." Shepard raised her eyebrows at that, but Javik's tone was completely matter-of-fact, any sense of pride in the rank noticeably absent. "I was briefed on this project – the Hammer of the Empire is what we called it – before I was assigned to the Resurgence Effort. The Hammer is designed to take advantage of the technology the Reapers provided, and with it ensure their destruction."

Shepard frowned, lowering her omnitool. There was a lot she wanted to question, but she had to focus on the more important things. "Take advantage of Reaper technology? How does it do that?"

"I presume you found out the hard way that the Citadel is a larger and more powerful mass relay when it facilitated the Reapers' arrival—"

"Actually Commander Shepard prevented that," Dangerfield piped up. All eyes turned to her, and she seemed to shrink a little in her seat. "Well, she did…"

Javik cocked his head in interest as he returned his gaze to Shepard. "That is… impressive," he admitted grudgingly. "How did the Reapers arrive, then?"

"The hard way," Shepard said firmly before Dangerfield could interrupt and rehash the still-painful memory of the decision she had made over Aratoht. "What does the Citadel have to do with the Crucible?"

"The Citadel is what you call the Catalyst."

What? Shepard blinked, sucking in a surprised breath. The Citadel was the key? Again? When she thought about it, it was obvious, and had her furiously berating her own obliviousness.

Javik continued, unaware. "As a mass relay, it has the ability to generate and focus mass effect fields of immense size. It is also, of course, connected to the relay network. Our scientists were able to repurpose that energy to enable the Crucible to send out thousands of QEC pulses via the relay network, using the central power core of each Reaper as an end-point."

The shuttle was deathly silent as Javik spoke. Shepard found herself holding her breath as his words began to register. It was Nathan who spoke up. "How does a QEC pulse kill a Reaper?" he murmured.

"The code held within each pulse forces certain normally-benign functions to activate. To be specific, the abundance of Reaper technology available to study enabled us to design a method to turn a Reaper's mass effect fields against it, resulting in its implosion and complete destruction."

"A kill-switch," Sporritt breathed.

Shepard bit the inside of her lip as her mind worked a mile a minute to process this new information. It all sounded way too good to be true, which left her with one important question. "If you had this capability, why were you defeated?" she asked quietly.

Javik seemed to deflate slightly. She wondered if he was suddenly reminded of his situation: the last remaining member of his species after all his brethren had been killed. All his friends, his family. Everything he knew had been destroyed. "The Reapers are… well-practised in achieving their genocidal goal. They were prepared for attacks of this nature and well-armoured against them. We fired the Crucible… and it failed."

The silence on the shuttle was sharp and brittle. "Shit," Nathan swore quietly. Sporritt kicked a bulkhead in frustration and Dangerfield almost looked as though she was about to cry.

Shepard sat back, frowning. The Crucible had failed, which would seem to indicate that all their efforts at building it had been wasted. She knew she should be reacting in the same way, but something inside of her rebelled. She wasn't sure what it was, some sort of innate fighting spirit maybe, or even just pure stubbornness, but she refused to believe it was all over. "Well-armoured how?" she pressed, ignoring the despondency surrounding her.

Javik watched her intently, and in him she recognised that same stubbornness. He understood his situation very well, but it wouldn't stop him from following through on his promise to be more than the last voice of his people. He would stop at nothing to defeat the Reapers, once and for all. "We do not know," he admitted.

Nathan was now watching her curiously. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

She stared back at him for a moment. "We're not done," she finally said, and hearing the conviction spoken aloud in her own voice only reinforced her determination. "We need to find out what this 'armour' is and work out how to take it down. If we can do that, the Crucible will work."

"We can beat them," Dr Felishaw, who had been listening silently, spoke up. He sounded surprised by his own voice.

Shepard nodded firmly. "We can beat them."