"The Hammerhead is not rated for vacuum, water or lava traversal, sustained afterburner usage, or any contact with objects in motion above 3 KPH."
"Number of Alliance Hammerheads in service: 15,000"
The Mass Effect 2 Manual (2010)
Albireo System
"Relay traversal in thirty seconds," Sagan announced as his limber fingers swept across the blade of holographic keyboards both in front and around him. Displays of shipboard schematics and tertiary systems were stacked on top of one another, totem-like. "Stand by."
Gripping the backside of the geth's seat, Garrus leaned forward as he tried to make sense of the impenetrable maze of codified text that scribbled down the screens in a torrential downpour. Behind him, Roahn stood with her arms crossed, foot tapping upon the floor, a locus of pressure right at the top of her stomach keeping her in an agitated state. The quarian had to make a conscious effort to keep her expression—what little of it could be gleaned—relatively focused and not at all in a display of annoyance. There would be time to focus on her personal feelings later.
"Take us in, Sagan," Garrus ordered as he stared straight ahead. "Keep the drift down to a satisfactory margin. We're anticipating some traffic on the other side."
"Acknowledged, captain."
The Menhir gave a subtle burst of speed as it raced towards the looming object that was one of the many mass relays that punctuated the entire galaxy. A core of brimming blue-white energy was being contained by a series of continually rotating rings—parts of the relay that were seemingly moving slowly but were actually travelling at several hundreds of miles per hour. The relay pointed outward into a dark portion of space, shaped like a gun, and the Menhir began a scraping approach as it began to come up lengthwise towards the massive object.
A languid bolt of energy, almost fluid, reached out from the relay's core and touched the Menhir as the ship flew by. Immediately, all of the propulsion systems on board of the ship skyrocketed into hyper-mode as the transferred energy raced into the power wells.
Two seconds later, there was a harsh snap as the Menhir's overcharged thrusters expelled the newly accumulated energy all at once, sending the craft hurtling into a frame of space unguided by Newtonian physics.
Blinding white light hurtled in from the cockpit's skylights, tinged with indigo streaks. The floor of the ship remained stable and calm, a mill pond. Roahn swayed in place, caught up with imagining turbulence, and had to reach out to a nearby counter to steady herself. Garrus kept on staring straight ahead, completely focused, his knees slightly bent.
Roahn started to count the seconds since the Menhir had jolted into relay-space, but she needn't have bothered. In the next moment, the light shift from the immense burst of velocity faded like a candle being snuffed. A blink of the eye once again revealed gentle stars hovering overhead, looking like holes that had been punched into a blanket.
"We have reached out destination," Sagan said in his usual timbre. "Albireo system is in range. Drift has been targeted at 953K. Running soft scans of the immediate area now."
"Well done," Garrus said. "Keep us posted when you find the convoy."
Roahn was barely paying attention to the conversation as she edged closer to the starboard-side viewport. A warm glow diffused from outside the craft, flung in by the two distinctly rounded objects many millions of miles away.
Even though she had been to many places in the galaxy, Roahn had never seen a binary star system before in her life. The Albireo system's two stars were both named, rather originally, Beta Cygni 1 and Beta Cygni 2. Number 1 was the color of the surface of a molten copper lake, while number 2 was the vivid color of an undersea block of ice. What was interesting about this particular system was that both suns were close enough to each other that they were mutually distorting their outer stellar atmospheres. Their gravitational forces were pulling at their close ends, rendering each to be slightly lopsided. Roahn remembered from her studies that this phenomenon was known as a Roche lobe overflow. A knot of solar storms ravaged between the two astronomical bodies, creating a permanent tempest zone denser than a nebula and more dangerous than any hurricane an atmospheric planet could hope to muster.
This did not seem to interest Garrus, who quickly pointed at a section of the tactical map, whereupon the Menhir's scanning pulses had picked up a series of artificial objects near the edge of the binary sun's accretion disc. There were no transmissions in the area to be picked up, and since Albireo was a relatively empty system in terms of populated settlements, Garrus did not hesitate in ordering Sagan to make an unobtrusive approach.
Roahn's breath grew quiet as the Menhir's interior lights slowly flashed a pure white down the hall, the indicator to the crew that the ship was now running in silent mode. The Menhir had all of the stealth capabilities that both Normandy ships had had, so they could theoretically park this ship alongside the bridge of an enemy war frigate and have them be none the wiser unless they had the desire to glance out one of their windows for whatever reason. Despite the advantage, the stealth systems were only effective if the clueless enemy had no idea that the Menhir was even in range—there were certain targeting systems that would be able to hone in on the Menhir even with the systems on, not to mention that the stealth technology was no longer a hidden innovation, meaning that if a certain group had enough funds they could theoretically manufacture their own countermeasures against that technology.
Despite this, the mood in the cockpit was relatively calm. Garrus was taking infrequent glances at the map, ensuring that no one in the area was taking an unkind interest in them. Roahn returned to her position, her previous woes forgotten for the moment, as she waited for the next command with bated, and painful, breath.
As they neared, it became obvious that their arrival, however expedited it had been, had been tardy. LADAR scans were showcasing a somewhat jagged line comprised of what used to be fully functional ships. It would not be too big of a guess to assume that this was the Defender convoy. The remains of it, at least.
However, thermal readouts were showing erratic blooms of heat at odd points upon the hulls of the ships that had comprised this doomed voyage. Their thrusters were dark purple, like a bruise, while pinpricks of orange and yellow dotted the layout like static. This was illustrative of precise turret-fire—the projectiles they fired were so fast they could bore through standard starcraft steel in such a way and at such speed that solid metal would be rendered to paste in less than a second. Garrus and Sagan flipped through the profiles of each of the darkened ships. All had been disabled or outright destroyed. Dead in the water.
They had arrived too late.
Garrus' eyes narrowed as he tried not to think about the number of Defender crewmembers that had gone down with their respective ships. Someone must have screwed up so badly to reveal the location of this convoy—a mole in the Defenders, perhaps? In any case, he tried to put all his anger behind him as the Menhir neared the ship graveyard. He was this ship's captain, it would not do to let his emotions rule his actions. An old friend had taught him that.
"Any survivors?" Garrus asked, though he already knew what the answer was going to be.
"Negative," Sagan said after a few seconds. "Based on the rate of thermal decay on the wreckage, our arrival occurred at least twenty-five standard minutes after the last Defender ship was downed."
"Twenty-five minutes?" Garrus' hands clenched tightly against his sides. "Wanton destruction is not the usual MO for a PMC. They had to have had an ulterior motive to hit this convoy. Robbing them, perhaps? If this was a smash and grab, it would take a lot longer than twenty-five minutes to complete an objective like that. I don't think we're alone here, Sagan. Send out a probe to the other side of the operating area and have it give a ping when it's in position."
The geth acknowledged the order and Roahn watched out the window as a brief contrail of blue light shot from the underside of the Menhir. The ship had a payload of planetary probes that it used to scan for mineral deposits on planets, but the probes had the capability to act as signal amplifiers or even as remote transmitters—a way to throw off enemy detection sensors by creating an aura of invisible noise.
It took a few minutes for Sagan to activate the probe's thrusters, to slow it to a reasonable velocity so that it could begin its duties once it was in position. On the tactical map, Roahn saw a loud burst of radiated rings brim from the other side of the convoy that the Menhir was located—the representation of the flurry of signals the probe had begun to send out in earnest. In an instant, seven red triangular icons popped up on the map, previously hidden from the initial scans as the smorgasbord of pings from the probe lit up every corner of space in every energy frequency imaginable.
"Detecting faint unknown signatures surrounding the wreckage of the convoy," Sagan reported as more diagrams of angular craft filled the screens. "No verified affiliation."
Garrus chuckled as he watched the positions of the enemy craft begin to orient themselves now that they knew that someone was onto them. "And they thought they had some privacy here."
A yellow icon ignited in front of Sagan's optics. "The probe has been fired upon," he said. "We are picking up a missile lock. Detonation in three, two, one. Confirm signal loss."
The representation for the probe had disappeared from the map, the bands of transmission frequencies vanished along with it. The enemy icons still remained, as they could no longer hide from the Menhir now that its pilot knew what to look for.
"We're still undetected, but they're not going to play subtle for very long," Roahn offered. "They know someone's here with them now."
"Agreed," Garrus said. "Best we should get as detailed of a readout on these guys as we can, and report back to the Council with—"
"Captain," Sagan suddenly interjected. "We're now picking up a small vessel coming from the third wrecked Defender ship."
Garrus and Roahn hurried over as the geth started to explode the map in greater detail, zooming into the area of interest. "Think it could be an escape pod?" the turian asked.
"Negative. The contours do not match any profile in any registry for an escape pod. Prepare to receive visual."
Up above, a new screen glimmered into existence and a tightly focused lens honed in on the moving object that traversed between the cracked halves of one of the ships. Through glowing trails of plasma amidst a hailstorm of furiously spinning metal, a lanky and spindly craft gently moved through the detritus, an array of glowing sensors on its circular face burning almost as brightly as the twin suns behind it. A bevy of skeletal arms trailed limply underneath its chassis, two of them clutching what appeared to be a cargo container half the size of a skycar.
"That's a remotely controlled construction drone," Roahn furiously pointed to the screen. "And look, it's holding something."
"Thermal profiles of the unknown interceptors are starting to climb," Sagan reported. "One is moving on an intercept course to the drone. There is a high possibility that the container holds the object in question that necessitated this attack."
"They're preparing to leave," Roahn said. "They used the drone to slice the ship's hold open."
Garrus shook his head. "Then I think it's time we exact a little payback on these guys." He then slapped the button to the ship-wide comm, projecting his voice to every corner of the ship. "All hands, prepare for attack! Get to your assigned stations and be ready to receive orders!"
Klaxons reverberated around every bend, down every corridor, floating into the ears of every crewmember that occupied an atom of space within the ship. From behind her, Roahn could discern the figures of Skye and Korridon hustling towards the cockpit, both wearing rather worried looks.
"What's going on?" Skye breathed as she slowed her gait. "Are we being fired upon?"
"Just wait for a moment," Roahn had to wave the two down, uncertain of what her captain had in mind.
Hovering over the geth's shoulder, Garrus worked at confirming the activation of several onboard systems. "Weapons… online. Targeting… online. We've got scopes, radar… all systems green. Sagan, plot our own intercept course on that drone and prep the tractor beam." He then turned to Roahn and the others standing behind him. He pointed two fingers at the quarian and Skye. "You two, take some of the turret seats. And you…" he then pointed at Korridon but blinked as his brain finally reminded him whom he was looking at. "You. You? What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in engineering?"
"All the techs have to do down there is maintain the performance parameters I've outlined," Korridon defended. "Besides, I have training on shipboard weapons systems."
That threw Garrus for a loop. "Really?"
"Yes… really," Korridon flatly responded, as if that had been a trick question.
"Oh. Okay, then. Take a seat at a station."
The three subordinates clambered into the curvaceous, gel-filled chairs that flanked either side of the passageway that connected the cockpit to the CIC. Roahn lifted her arms for the auto-restraints to loop over her shoulders and waist. A holographic console glimmered around her body, detecting her presence. Roahn's hands now had control over two of the defensive cannons that dotted the topmost portion of the Menhir's hull. Beside her, she could see Skye settle into position and she assumed that Korridon was doing the same as well behind her.
Back at the front, Garrus had pulled over a screen for his own personal use. He took a moment to look over the scope of the battlefield. There were seven enemy ships, all the same make and model. They were slightly smaller than the Menhir, but Garrus knew that meant little seeing as he was outnumbered. The enemy's vessels were made up of sharply angular panels, looking very much like raptors in a dive bomb. Their weapons emplacements had to be embedded within their design—the sensor's scanners could not pick up anything otherwise. No way to tell if they were carrying missiles or ship-to-ship cannons. Even for a craft as adept as the Menhir, walking into this encounter blindly would be suicide.
"Sagan," Garrus stated slowly, "get a line on that drone and prep the GARDIAN laser system. Do not set to automatic. I only want one round between that thing's eyes."
"Roger," Sagan said. "Standing by."
"Activate thrusters."
Roahn glanced towards the front to see the curtain of stars start to spiral into a torrid blur out of the viewports. Her stomach gave a small lurch and she turned back to her screens, which indeed showed that the Menhir was now on a direct line towards the wreckage of the convoy.
And the enemy drone with its spoils of war.
"Let's see how badly we can piss these guys off," Garrus said. "Sagan, activate GARDIAN lasers."
There was a minute pulse through the Menhir as one of the underslung cannons hurtled a bolt of sun-yellow light through the infinite night. Roahn watched through her screens as the laser beam clipped the top of the drone, decapitating it, and sending it spinning aimlessly with the cargo container torn from its limp grip.
"Thrusters to full!" Garrus rapidly commanded. "Get the tractor beam on that container. Let's see if we can pick it up as we fly by."
Even with acceleration dampeners, there was still a lurch through the ship as Sagan pushed the Menhir's engines to their limit in sublight space. The enemy must have been shocked into paralysis, because no one fired as the Menhir spat through the weightless void, punching its way through thin layers of vaporized metal and clouds of atomized eezo cores. Roahn mirrored the feeds from Skye's keel-mounted turrets and beheld a thin gray beam extending from the Menhir like a grasping arm, scooping up kernels of debris in the process, but also collecting the burnt orange rectangular box that floated aimlessly, having been torn from two of its owners in the span of an hour.
Roahn watched as the tractor beam sucked the container upwards and into the outermost hold in the Menhir's cargo bay. She cracked a smile at the same time she heard Sagan confirm a successful retrieval. Snatched from the clutches of a PMC! Oh, how she would have loved to have seen the looks on their faces when they realized that they were being robbed!
En masse, the seven enemy vessels all powered on their engines at the same time. Clearly these guys were not happy about this new development. It would have been rather amusing to witness if Roahn knew this did not herald danger for her and her crew.
"Well, if they were expecting a pushover then I guess they got more than their money's worth," Garrus quipped. To Roahn and the other gunners, he travelled a few steps in their direction. "The ships are on an intercept course for us and we're a fair distance from the relay to make an escape. Looks like we're shooting our way out."
"Fun for the whole family," Skye sighed.
Garrus looked to Roahn for her thoughts, now that time was starting to run out. "It's about time we put this thing through its paces," she said.
The turian cracked a mirthful look and headed back to the cockpit to strap into the copilot's seat. He then ordered Sagan to take the Menhir on a flyby near the Beta Cygni suns. At full burn, the Menhir launched itself towards the stars, chaff and tangled webs of radar chatter strewn behind to throw off the array of torpedoes that had just been launched in its direction. Alarms began to ring all around the interior, but they quickly quieted because the countermeasures Sagan had already deployed had worked in their favor—the torpedoes' trajectory wobbled, became even more unsteady, and timidly limped away in the wrong direction.
Roahn rotated her rearward turret and unleashed a short volley of gauss rounds towards the tightening cluster of enemy frigates. A necklace of violently hot tungsten and depleted uranium spat from both barrels, a dazzling line that separated a section of empty space. On her targeting screen, she saw two of the vessels engage their thrusters to avoid the incoming fire, but at least their pattern of getting into formation had been disrupted. They seemed to be more cautious now that they were going up against a foe that could actually shoot back.
"We are being targeted again," Sagan called out.
"Another round of countermeasures," Garrus ordered. "Once their torpedo fails, rotate 180 degrees but continue current bearing. Prep the Thanix for a round."
"One's breaking off from the main group," Korridon said. "I'll keep him in line."
Roahn shifted her view to watch Korridon's screen. His display was filled with millions of light pinpricks as his own fire blended in amongst the slurry of stars and cosmic anomalies. The young turian's fire succeeded in preventing one of the enemy craft from diverting onto a flanking route. A good eye from the supposedly insubordinate engineer.
She manually locked her line of sight on the targets before the Menhir started its rapid rotation. Her HUD was now popping up with the words "UNKNOWN AFFILIATION" in blocky red type next to each one of the incoming bogeys. They were still too far away to be accurate with her turrets, but that did not matter because Sagan angled the ship just so right before unleashing an accelerated slag of molten metal in a thick beam of the purest cerulean. There was barely any time to register the soft ring of flame that emitted from the direct hit because Sagan quickly took the Menhir back into a series of complex maneuvers that put the ship on seemingly a collision course with one of the suns.
The Menhir's computers plus Sagan's own artificial mind were performing in tandem immaculately. The geth was reacting to the enemy fire with consummate skill and was able to maneuver or deflect incoming gauss or torpedo attacks with quick adjustments that lurched the ship back and forth, forcing the enemy to adjust their targeting constantly.
Beta Cygni 2 loomed into view, a distorted ball of fire the color of the sea. Sagan rotated the Menhir so that the top was skimming thousands of miles over the surface. Might as well have been a dozen meters, for the shields were already starting to strain from the intense heat the sun exuded. Sagan's display showed that they were already at 72% and rapidly falling. The ship raced over the surface, a thick dot that blotted the vile storm that churned within reach. Arms of fire and superheated gas raced upwards, eager to snatch the craft out of the air, but the Menhir spat through the danger effortlessly, trailing its own inferno as it screamed through the dead space where no planet could reside.
As Sagan flew around the circumference of Beta Cygni 2, Roahn immediately spotted on her screen that one of the enemy ships had decided to come around in the opposite direction. It almost looked like they were on a collision course. Swiftly, she positioned her turrets for a rapid salvo and held down the trigger as soon as the crosshairs touched the central portion of the darkened ship.
Spirals of light extended from each side—magnificent bursts of vibrant and deadly metal in a doomed dance. The Menhir shuddered and jumped violently to one side, causing Roahn's shoulder to be jerked into her harness.
Both ships passed within a dozen miles of each other. Had this been in atmosphere, the turbulent ripples would have been fatal at this speed.
"Hits registered!" Sagan alerted.
"Structural damage?" Garrus pressed.
"Negative. Shields continuing to hold at 37%"
"And the other guy?"
Roahn had been so uptight about being hit that she had completely forgotten to look at the results of her volley. She faced her turret screen and blinked as she saw the remains of the interceptor slowly proceed to break apart in the Menhir's wake.
"I… I got him," she stammered, not at all expecting such a result.
"Hell of a shot!" Skye crowed beside her, her grin infectious. Roahn returned the smile (as best as she could), truthfully grateful that she could count on the human to communicate her euphoria without running the risk of being egotistical.
"We're not done yet," Garrus commented grimly. "Still five more to go. Sagan, any more information on these guys?"
The geth did not look over at the turian. "Structural profiles of the interceptors are still not showing on any databases. However, rapid captures of wing serial numbers suggest that their affiliation has a strong percentage of being linked to the PMC Dark Horizon."
"Dark Horizon?" Garrus repeated. "That's the Aeronaut's outfit."
Aleph's personal guard, Roahn realized. She was about to make a dramatic comment, when she felt Skye's fingertips brush the side of her arm, calling her attention over.
"Don't think about it," Skye said, face serious. "Let's just finish this right now."
Her head rotating back forward, Roahn rolled her shoulders and gave a withering sigh. She's right. Now was not the time to be distracted. There was a battle to be won here. With renewed vigor, she straightened her arms, narrowed her gaze, and swung her guns around to get a new angle.
Sagan's console was a mess of layered screens as he continuously opened and closed panel after panel, continually striving to be appraised of the Menhir's performance. "Captain," he said to Garrus, "that last burst damaged our countermeasure hatch. We will need to perform repairs if we are to bring it back online."
Garrus absorbed this news rather tacitly. "We're not exactly near a shipyard, Sagan," he said as he too started to pull up screens of the area. "Pulling over to fix a broken hatch isn't really an option right now."
"Alert!" Sagan then called out. "Two interceptors have moved into position behind us. They have fired on us and have obtained missile locks."
"Talk about timing," Garrus groused. The Menhir's threat system was tracking the frigates as well as the two smaller and much faster objects that were racing to intercept the ship. "Sagan, I'm going to need you to perform defensive maneuvers."
"We request that you clarify." This was the most confused Roahn had ever heard the geth before.
Garrus pushed his own display over to Sagan so the geth could look. In it, he had outlined a course path that, even from where Roahn was sitting, the proposal seemed so outlandish that she was hoping that it was her eyesight that was failing and not her captain's mind.
"What is he doing up there?!" Skye craned her head over.
Slowly, Roahn shook her head. "I hope it's not what I think."
But Sagan was not built to challenge orders, or to even mull on the morality of accepting such orders. Bound by this infernal pact, the geth took the controls of the Menhir, started to execute a sharp teardrop-shaped loop…
…and hurtled the ship straight towards the braided cluster of storms and energy that tied the two suns together.
A zone of intense gravitational forces and light so voracious it signaled a fertile hunger, not an organic sensation that could be quelled, but a natural order to find an equilibrium, an impassive wave of pressure and force. It cared not to the whim of what magnitude an idea could form. The band that tied the suns together was not an anomaly but simply an occurrence. Its concepts were only that of turmoil or peace. Any other factor could not hope to be added to the equation.
And Garrus was sending the Menhir straight into it.
The suns were separated by millions of miles, but at this speed the scale was all distorted. It might as well have been a tiny crevasse cracked into the side of a canyon wall. The blurry orange band looked like clouds, though Roahn knew the intensity of the solar forces being exchanged between the two bodies had enough kinetic energy to crush the Menhir into the size of a canteen if Sagan flew them into the wrong spot.
"Bogeys one and two still in pursuit," Skye muttered as she was starting to shake in her crash harness. "I can't get a lock on these guys. They're too far aft."
"I'll take priority," Korridon said, his eyes locked onto his screen.
The Menhir ignored the trails of dotted gauss fire behind it as it dove headfirst into the maelstrom at suicidal speeds. Lighting arcs erupted from outside, so bright they illuminated the gunner corridor of the ship. The ship lurched this way and that, but the unflappable geth kept the Menhir positioned straight. Heat and streaks of violent gases swept by the hull, rapidly eating up what little shields remained.
But the instrumentation was still up. Had it not been, the ship would have been flying completely blind. Even from here, Roahn could see nothing but a sandy cloud that was the gravitational band out the windows. Her camera feeds were useless. They showed nothing but a vague outline of the hull. Her targeting computer was also shaky—or was that her body? The ship's violent shaking certainly was not doing her concentration any favors.
"Bogeys are in our wake," Korridon reported as the Menhir briefly dipped to avoid a crushing gravity bubble. "Not for long."
The computer was showing that the interceptors were mimicking the Menhir's exact movements through the storm. Perhaps they were not confident in their own abilities to try and forge a path for themselves. Either way, once the Menhir had raised itself slightly, Korridon now had a perfect firing line on their pursuers. With both hands controlling a turret each, the turian swept his line of fire in short arcs, trying to fill the hole made after tearing through the solar clouds. Heavy ferromagnetic rounds ripped through the two craft, neither one breaking path, and their detonations were quickly swallowed up in the turbulence. One of the bogeys spiraled out of control for a brief moment, a wing sheared off, and came into contact with a fatal rondure of violent pulverizing gravity. The craft seemed to hang in space, motionless, before it completely folded in on itself in a microsecond, its entire structure crumpled into the size of a heat sink before its doomed crew could even wonder, "What happened?"
Korridon laughed and scratched a mandible in relief. "Two down."
Roahn had wheeled around in her chair and stared at Korridon in wide-eyed disbelief. "Who would've thought he can use a turret better than a pistol?" she muttered to herself. Certainly not her, that was for damn sure.
Breaking through the tempest, the Menhir calmed as its acceleration dampeners were finally able to overcome the impertinent shoves the suns had been exerting. Streams of plasma and burning gas trailed from the ship's wings before the rapidly dropping temperatures snuffed them out for good.
"Spirits," Garrus sighed, "that worked better than I hoped."
"We will be reengaged in approximately twenty-six seconds, captain," Sagan said. "Three remaining contacts approaching around Beta Cygni 2."
"They're not cutting their losses. They must really want what we snatched from them." Garrus then checked his star chart of the system before pointing out a highlighted section. "Sagan, I'm going to need for you to get a little inventive."
The geth cocked his head—an imitative gesture. "Awaiting instructions."
"There's a world here in the Goldilocks zone. Gallinae. It has an atmosphere and a liquid surface. Do you think that you can FTL jump us to the planet as close as possible before initiating an atmospheric insertion?"
"The Menhir's capabilities can accommodate for this," Sagan said. "I must advise you that such a short jump will not prevent the ship from being tracked."
"I know and I'm not worried about that. I'm just thinking we can keep using the terrain to our advantage. Jump us whenever you can, Sagan. I think they're about to lock onto us."
"Acknowledged," the geth offered immediately before a few taps upon his console sent the Menhir briefly hurtling into a dimension far beyond what light could fathom. Molecules were stretched to their breaking point, though for the people inside the ship this could not be felt. There was no time to take stock of the all-too-brief FTL jump for reality rubber-banded into place outside the windows in a snap, though the stars appeared to wobble in place as if the entirety of the crew had simultaneously experienced a drunken binge.
There was a slight buffeting as the Menhir tilted and pushed its way through Gallinae's atmosphere. The turbulent forces were so much easier to navigate than the hellstorm that had been the Beta Cygni bands—Sagan was not relaying any warnings to Garrus at this time.
Taking a moment to compose herself, Roahn splayed out the targeting feeds on her display. "All three bogeys are continuing pursuit," she called out. She tried to maneuver her turrets around but many red-outlined error warnings began to pop up on her screen. "The suns have damaged the turret's mechanisms. I can't move them!"
"I'm out as well!" Skye groaned.
"Same here," Korridon added.
"Sagan's sending some repair drones out to mitigate the damage," Garrus turned around in his seat. "Don't worry, I have a plan."
The perfunctory pilot navigated the ship through the thin slices that were the stratosphere before spearing the cloud layer without hesitation. A kingfisher in flight, the Menhir began to level out as new topography scans were showing up on the sensors, outlining a spiraling tangle of canyons all surrounded by a large body of water. Garrus directed Sagan to head towards it, confident in his crew's conduct.
The Menhir broke through the thick and pregnant bellies of the clouds and flared out to avoid the path of a nearby mountain. The ethereal glow from the twin suns cast a hallucinatory shine amongst the landscape: jagged islands dotting the horizon surrounded by the endless sea, and in the middle of that expanse, a wide ravine at least three miles wide that looked like a wrathful god had pummeled the very earth, cracking the ocean in two. The canyon stretched on for seemingly an eternity, an oddity amongst the bare and raw world. Water poured in on both sides of the towering walls, producing curtains of waterfalls that draped the sudden crack, but the ocean had to be draining out at the bottom of the canyon for the crevasse was not being filled. Massive but thin clouds of salty spray plumed into the air, etching the formation's path as it shattered the planet's surface.
"Take us down there," Garrus pointed to the canyon.
"Captain," Sagan alerted, "the Menhir's engines will overheat if we spend too much time in an environment saturated with water vapor."
"Then I guess we'll just have to hope that these guys' engines are rated for less. Do it."
Like a stone, the Menhir dropped several miles before the world swallowed it whole. Now below sea level, the ship traced the path of the canyon, almost lazily avoiding the waterfall sides that trailed mist and vapor. Clouds of steam spiraled in erratic vortices behind the ship and the thick clouds below flattened as the thrashing wake of its traversal interrupted its formation.
On unsteady legs, Roahn clambered out of her seat to rejoin Garrus in the cockpit. She held onto the back of Sagan's chair as she watched the edges of the canyon overhead occasionally close in onto the ship claustrophobically. Taking a peek out the window certainly did not help. It did not bring the quarian any assurances to see just rapid embankments of foaming water form the boundaries of the Menhir's flight path. It was as if gravity had been inverted with the vertical levees seeming like they could burst at any moment and drown the ship before a cry could be uttered.
This is crazy.
The sentiment could be shared for the final three pursuers, who had not hesitated in following the Menhir down into the abyss. One interceptor had gotten a little overzealous with his steep approach though, and had to bank suddenly to avoid smashing into one of the sides of the fissure. However, he corrected too late and his rightmost engine was quickly submerged by a column of falling water during his turn, flooding it and causing the temperature to drop just enough that the ignition chamber failed to fire any further. Embarking into a death spiral, the dark craft looped once, twice, before it smashed upon a weathered stone pillar in a fiery explosion, the flames quickly being extinguished from the nearby spray.
Just two more to go.
"A little faith!" Garrus crowed as he noted the detonation on his sensors.
"Yeah… great…" Roahn tried to muster the same enthusiasm but was feeling a bit queasy from the constant rattling.
The canyon suddenly banked into a sharp curve, but Sagan oriented the Menhir that it scraped along the ragged scar, the engines increasing their output to prevent any altitude loss. Warnings from the engine temperature sensors and from the missile lock alerts blended together in a shrill whine, nearly drowning out all sound as Sagan finally levelled the ship out. Pale fire streaked from the Menhir's four engines and cones of heat rippled out in punishing shockwaves behind them.
"We have been fired upon," Sagan reported as one of his panels ignited with a flurry of alarms. A missile had just been flung from one of the interceptors.
Garrus was too absorbed to make a comment on that.
Roahn was fixated on the targeting display and watched in astonishment as the missile struggled to maintain a smooth trajectory through the air. The turbulence from both the waterfalls and the Menhir was heavily altering its ability to close the distance and it soon angled away uselessly and disappeared to create a brief dome of vaporized water upon one of the walls as it exploded.
"We're getting our shields back," Roahn said as she grabbed one of the floating displays over in her direction. "But at this current rate we'll lose our engines in less than a minute. They're getting too hot for these maneuvers, Garrus."
"I understand," the turian said evenly as he clutched the armrests of the copilot's chair. He seemed remarkably calm… or he could have been petrified out of his mind. One or the other. Having no facial muscles made determining turian moods difficult. "We'll stay here until the last possible moment. When we get in the right position, I'll order a break to the—"
"Captain!" Skye suddenly called from back down the corridor.
Garrus craned his head. "What is it?"
"The bogeys are falling back! They're slowing!"
Roahn and Garrus shared a look before they both opened their own view onto Skye's feed. Sure enough, the images from the exterior cameras were showing that not only were the darkened craft both dropping at a rapid pace, they were also slowing quite badly.
"How about that?" Garrus said in a self-satisfied tone. "They've overheated both their engines."
Roahn rapidly took a moment to think. "I don't understand. Those craft are smaller than the Menhir and those engines look to be radically designed for atmosphere. Less mass to propel means less exertion on the engines. How come they died before we did?"
"They were in our wake," Sagan answered Roahn's questions. "The canyon was making the conditions for a long-range missile lock on the Menhir to be impossible. They had to close the distance to obtain a suitable line of sight. The Menhir has been superheating the steam behind us, which drastically increased the air temperature."
"So the air their engines ingested was already scalding hot to begin with," Roahn realized. "They just couldn't cope. I see."
Another glance at the display showed that the angular ships had finally had enough of passing through the air churned up by the Menhir's fire zone, but it was too late for them to correct. Gravity now had them in their clutches. The last two ships tried to rise, but their engines sputtered and quit with pathetic wheezes. Choking on droplet-infused air, they tipped upward to get a last view of the sky and the salvation that waited beyond the invisible boundaries before they accepted the fatefulness of their situation and crashed into the waterfalls on the sides of the canyons. They were pulverized to smithereens and soon the water swallowed up all traces of their existence.
"Where did you learn that trick from?" Roahn asked in astonishment as Sagan finally sent the Menhir climbing to hurtle through the sky until it was back in space, where it belonged.
Garrus shrugged, though his eyes betrayed quite a bit of mirth. "The last pilot I had the pleasure of working with."
The turian leaned forward to gently smooth his gloved fingers over the dashboard. A silent acknowledgement. A moment of pride for the ship that had done everything that had been asked of it and showed no sign of letting its crew down.
The Menhir had earned its stripes.
It took nearly half an hour for everyone on the CIC deck to finally calm down after the festivities from earlier that day. Not altogether surprising, seeing as this had been the first real test of the Menhir's capabilities in a warlike scenario. Garrus and Roahn spent that time with Sagan going over the ship's internal systems, trying to recalibrate everything back to normal cruising conditions as well as fix whatever mechanisms had been damaged during the skirmish to the best of their ability. The geth had sent the ship on course for the closest mass relay, keeping a steady but brisk pace in a hurried effort to leave the system in case any more undesirable forces were casually loitering around.
Once those final checks had been completed, Roahn and Garrus took the elevator down two levels to the engineering deck. Korridon had gone down here right afterward once it had been confirmed that the contents of the container that the ship had stolen prior to the fight had been removed and were placed in one of the smaller side labs on the level (the room formerly known as the Port Cargo area). He and Liara had just begun to perform their analysis on whatever bounty they had whisked away—a natural locus for Roahn's curiosity to latch onto.
Entering the room, Roahn was surprised and just the tiniest bit miffed to see her father already there, but she shrugged that off as she saw what Korridon and Liara were clustered around.
It had been propped up on a miniature crystal bench that itself sat upon a portable table. Various lenses and pronged instruments were levelled in its direction. Holographic spectroscopes, warbling bar charts, and other shifting metrics were dazzling all around the object, performing various readouts out of their newest prize. A halo of purpled light spun around the diameter of the object, betraying faint hexagonal sections of the clear shield that enveloped it.
A sable sphere of polished ebon. Stone-thick, but glossy enough to give away its metallic origins. Asymmetric ridges broke up the surface like mountains, making it appear that the outer crust had melted and hardened several times over—there were many points where it looked like the bumps folded over one another, mimicking tectonic plates. Straight and impassive etched lines had been carved in the face of varying thicknesses. Not a language, but a pattern. One that was impossible to decipher.
Roahn bent down to get a closer look at the obelisk. So, this was what Dark Horizon had been trying to nab from that convoy. All those people had died… for this little thing?
Standing over her, Garrus tilted his head as he too appeared confused at their latest acquisition. "Why is in a shield? Is this thing radioactive?"
"To an extent," Liara said. "It's emitting only non-ionizing radiation. At lower frequencies than radio waves, to be exact. It's quite safe, but I figured it was best to exercise the full extent of caution we could muster."
"So this isn't a mineral that can naturally create this low-frequency radiation, right? Is that a hint that this was manufactured? Is it a machine of some kind?"
"X-ray scans have been inconclusive. It's made out of a dense metal that has similar properties to lead. But what we can say for certain is that this is in no way under any power source. There's no battery generating this level of energy, which, I might add, is quite powerful considering the source, but still harmless to organics."
Garrus leaned forward and gave the nearly invisible shield a thwap with his finger, causing a ripple of static to shockwave around the sphere. "Looks like something that would be in an art installation."
"You're not far off. Yet apparently there are people ready to kill for this," Liara mused. "And I don't think that someone would hire a PMC just to find and add another piece to their sculpture collection. This has a function and we need to find out what it is."
"I think I have an idea," Roahn said as she straightened out and gestured to the sphere. "No… I know what this is." Her prosthetic hand began to shake as her fingers curled, as though she was imagining cupping the object and hefting it in her hand in a theatrical manner, siphoning the power that flowed from it into herself.
The quarian turned, eyes grave. She looked like she had just weathered a marathon through a draining storm. "This is one of the artifacts that Aleph has been searching for. Like the ones he stole on Ratinena, Earth, and Luna. This is what I've caught him doing twice in a row now. He's been scouring the galaxy, looking for these for… for whatever plot he has in mind."
Garrus flicked his eyes back and forth between Roahn and the obelisk. "You're absolutely sure? How can you tell?"
"I saw what he was pulling from one of those vaults. There's also the fact that he's been present for most of these recorded thefts, in which case we have to assume that similar artifacts were stolen. And we just made it out from an engagement with Dark Horizon—you said it yourself, Garrus, that's the Aeronaut's PMC! Aleph's guard! The fact that they were here so blatantly engaging the Defenders is proof that this, right here, is one of the objects that he's seeking. He needs this and we took it before he could get his hands on it!"
"I guess he's going to be unhappy when he learns that he lost it," Liara offered. "Though I can't honestly figure out why he would need so many of these things, if he really has a keen interest in making such a collection." She pulled up a series of microscope and penetrating imaging scans that she had taken prior to Roahn's arrival. A multicolored spectrum of jagged and alien landscapes draped across the room, looking like random pieces of topographical maps of distant worlds and moons. "Aside from the radiation, there's nothing within this object that would hint at it being part of some greater whole. It's not a piece of nuclear fuel, it isn't the primer to an antimatter weapon. It has no visible purpose."
"Yet Aleph wants it," Roahn said. "Isn't that enough for us to care?"
Just then, a soft ping on a nearby console drew Korridon's attention over to it. He copied the screen onto a tablet and perused the contents of the scan that he had just ran. In the span of a few seconds, his face began to pale, his eyes slightly bulged, and his fingers rapidly tapped at keys as he performed secondary calculations, the speed and noise of which was acting as a distraction to everyone in the room.
"Um…" he uttered through a hoarse throat, "…the results of the elemental analysis on the artifact just came through."
"I'm guessing the news isn't great," Garrus muttered as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Korridon's face clearly stated that he was not sure how to frame his next set of words. "It's… it's odd."
"Why?" Roahn raised an eyebrow. "What did you find?"
The young turian took a badly needed swallow. "Okay. So, what our instruments are saying is that the elements that make up that sphere are mostly very dense metals. But it's a strangely limited mix. The analysis shows that an amalgamation of four elements have been all perfectly combined into this singular structure."
"Four elements? So what?" Garrus shrugged. "Is there something strange about that?"
"The elements are all perfectly combined as if they've found an equilibrium. Within this artifact's structure, there does not seem to be an uneven mix of the denoted elements down to the atomic level. That doesn't happen in nature which means this was engineered, like you had previously suggested. Someone built this artifact from the ground up. Molecule by molecule. There was a deliberate attempt to make every atom of this thing arranged in a desired sequence."
Garrus looked like he was about to question Korridon's conclusions again, but Roahn stepped in before that could happen. "What were the elements that you found, Korridon?"
Korridon's jaw opened and closed, briefly exposing his rows of barbed teeth. "It was a 54% proportion of iridium, 26% osmium, 19% mercury, and less than 1% carbon."
"Three of them very dense metals, like you said," Liara murmured.
No one else made a reaction to this news, which amplified Korridon's confusion as he swept his gaze from face to face, finding only blank looks in return.
"What…" he stammered, "…none of you knows what this means?"
Again, no one spoke. Awkward mumblings and half-hearted shrugs were made but no words were uttered.
Korridon stabbed a finger down onto the tablet he held. "The iridium, osmium, and mercury… there was a time where this exact metallic composition, in various forms, was present within our galaxy in large quantities. The percentages in this artifact are the same, the structure is the same, everything is the same!"
"Korridon," Roahn waved a hand to calm the turian down. "What are you saying?"
Whirling a finger to send the obelisk under his accusatory point, the turian was wide-eyed as he held the artifact in his field of vision. "That… thing is made out of the same material as a Reaper, Roahn. Those artifacts… they're all Reaper in origin."
Now everyone was looking at the artifact in a new light, their expressions ranging the gamut from befuddled to outright dread. For all of them knew that, locked within that sphere alone was a heart that bled malevolence and spite, that had been forged from a master as dispassionate as the foe hounding them at this moment. The dim echo of a howl opened in Roahn's ears, for even though she had never laid eyes on the sphere's creator, she had seen in her father's eyes the fear that such creatures had filled him with, that had irreparably damaged him in their onslaught. There was a nameless fear that struck at her, a presence that commanded subservience in the wake of imminent destruction.
A new cycle of terror. The feared following the feared.
"Well…" Garrus was the one to break the silence in the cargo hold, "…shit."
Roahn ran after her father shortly after leaving the Port Cargo room—he had departed swiftly after learning the terrible news of the artifact's origins and had presumably wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Roahn was not having any of that. She had caught sight of him embarking onto the elevator, so she hurriedly clambered up the curving stairs to cut him off as he reached his destination one floor above.
"What the hell could someone want with Reaper relics?" she heard Garrus say to Liara down the way she came. "They're only of interest to historians and crazy cults these days. It's not like anyone can switch them on or be affected by them anymore…"
Shepard appeared to be lost in his thoughts as he exited the lift and was therefore caught off guard when he raised his head and beheld his daughter standing in front of him. Rightfully so, as his last spatial awareness of her had been on a deck below.
"I need to talk to you," Roahn said, trying to keep the venom from poisoning her tone. Shepard silently stood still in the lift before he gave a solitary nod of acceptance and followed her the short walk over to her room, whereupon the quarian proceeded to lock the door behind her.
Roahn splayed her left hand upon the door, leaning on it for support, before she turned to face her father. His expression was mild, rather flat, but there was something in his gray eye that betrayed a somber regretfulness. A drop of sorrow that would not be wiped away, no matter his efforts.
The quarian bit her lip before she began, trying to figure out what mercurial thoughts really existed within her father's head. "Is there anything you want to say first or am I going to have to do all the talking to start?"
The human just closed his eye and gave a somewhat listless shrug. "Something tells me that you want to speak your mind."
"Yeah, I do," Roahn huffed. "But mostly I want to hear you explain yourself. You derailed my stance earlier today by picking this messy rescue mission over the destination that I wanted. We needed to get to Earth as quickly as possible because we just found out about Aleph's affiliation with the Alliance but you elected to have us make a detour all because of one simple transmission?! What the hell were you thinking, dad?"
Shepard grabbed the lone chair from Roahn's desk and haltingly proceeded to sit upon it, a tightness creasing the edges of his mouth as the effort noticeably pained him. He looked up at her, not defiantly, but with the careful and collected confidence that reflected the assurance of his position. "Do you have an issue with today's results at all? We just prevented Aleph from getting his hands on a Reaper artifact. Don't you think that's significant?"
"That isn't the point," Roahn sighed as she hung her head and brought a hand up to the top of her visor in exasperation. "You didn't take my side when you had promised me—at the beginning of our mission—that you would respect my command and not try to overrule me." She stumbled over her words, producing a noise of irritation. "I… I don't know where I should go here."
"If you recall," Shepard scooted forward in his chair as he raised a finger, "I did not specifically take a side in that encounter you're remembering."
"Yes, you did—"
"No, I did not," her father said emphatically. "I never said anything of the sort. I did not take your side or Garrus' back then. I know that the both of you were expecting me to make a suggestion, but contrary to what you may be thinking, I remembered our agreement. And even knowing that, I let Garrus make the choice for himself because he is the captain and he should not need to look to me to confirm every decision he makes."
"He expected you to take his side."
"What he expected from me," Shepard clarified, "was to speak out if I had any bad feelings about the decisions being presented. I had none, so I said nothing. Both choices had their merits and I had no problem with going along with either one."
Roahn's eyes narrowed. "Choosing not to decide is still a choice."
"So I should automatically take your side for everything just because you're my daughter? Is that what you think I'm good for here?"
"No, no," Roahn tried to backtrack. "That's not what I'm—"
"Because not only is that unfair to you, it is unfair to your team. I would just be one extra vote in your favor, granting you more weight for every single choice on this ship. Do you want me to treat you like my child or do you want me to treat you like an adult? I can certainly arrange for one or the other to happen, should you like."
Both father and daughter silently glared at the other. Roahn's eyes behind a glossy barrier. Shepard's singular eye unblinking next to his missing one. The intimation was burning within Roahn's stomach. It was almost as if she took it as an insult. Fiery, she clenched her hands at the same time an electric tickle jolted down her left arm, momentarily flaring out into the shape of her missing limb for a painful second before the sensation faded into oblivion.
Slowly, she raised her prosthesis for emphasis, the whirring of the servos frightfully loud in the small room. "You cannot fathom what Aleph means to me. Do you see what he did?! How he hurt me?! You should be beside yourself with rage from even thinking of him! Aleph is our enemy!"
"Aleph is one man!" Shepard proclaimed as he unexpectedly stood from his chair on rickety legs. "And our responsibility is to the galaxy, to save however many lives that are threatened. This is a responsibility that everyone else abdicated, Roahn. We're here because the hands of the Council and every other government has their hands tied, unable to make a difference. What we're doing is going after the threat that has been more prevalent this whole time: the corporations. Can Aleph's heists compare against the thousands and thousands of bodies the PMCs have stacked up over the years? Would it make sense to chase him all over the galaxy when there are so many lives under threat from these private militaries? Do you really think he represents a greater threat to everyone now, right at this moment? Think, Roahn. Don't just blurt out an answer because of your personal stake."
"P-P-Personal?" The word felt like a slur on Roahn's tongue. "After what I've seen? After figuring out that Aleph is working with these PMCs? That he's stockpiling Reaper artifacts? How could I possibly remain objective knowing what I—"
A harsh gagging sound creaked from Roahn's throat as she stopped herself just short of containing the last few words in her mouth. Despite the dry nature of the room, her voice seemed to carry in the air tauntingly.
Hands shaking, Roahn descended upon the edge of the bed in a daze, speechless at what she had just admitted. She could not even find the justification to lay the blame on anyone but her for speaking the truth. In good conscience, she knew that what she had said was correct.
But that was where the problem lay.
It was the responsibility of those in positions of command to remain objective and free of personal compromises in order to perform their duties effectively. Failing to do so was a strong indicator for those that were unfit to lead. And Roahn had just effectively admitted that she had this problem unprompted in front of her father. Shamefully, she hung her head as she took several trembling breaths, her perceived inferiority making her feeling atomically small in the presence of this man.
Shepard, however, did not speak right away. He offered no disappointment, no reprimanding comment. Instead, he moved over to sit by Roahn at the edge of the bed. Shuffling himself so that his daughter was slightly leaning against him, he lifted an arm and gently wrapped it around her shoulders, letting her rest her head atop his shoulder while he held her body tightly.
In her father's embrace, a sigh of gratitude and surprise slithered from Roahn's lungs in astonishment, powerful enough to make her eyes water. She moved into him, mouth slightly open, as she felt a slight but constant shudder move throughout Shepard.
He's scared, she realized.
"When I was brought back after being spaced," he said as he continued to hold Roahn against him, "there was no one person for me to focus all my anger upon. I could only get lost in my duty, to fight against the Reapers however possible. But you, Roahn… I can't even begin to understand what it is that's tearing you apart. You have been dealt a blow that is far more personal than I've ever faced. In some part, that's why I couldn't say anything in your defense earlier today. I just don't want to lose you to that anger… and if I was responsible for you going down that path, I know that I would never come back from your loss."
Roahn's hand moved to find her father's strong forearm. The shudder that ran through him was more pronounced there. She knew what exactly how he felt—it had been an unfortunate circumstance of his unintentional neglectfulness that had resulted in the death of his wife many years ago, a death that was still eating him alive to this day. The weight of his transgression would haunt him until his remaining days and Roahn knew if there was any more regret to add to his pile, Shepard would be utterly destroyed.
She remembered the day when he had confessed the whole unfortunate truth of Tali's death to her. They had been sitting on a sloping hill with the greenery of Eden Prime sprawling before them. Roahn had watched her the man, dead-eyed, finally succumb to the crushing pressure of admitting his guilt. He had sobbed his eyes out before her, cementing that as the moment where Shepard would forever be just a man to her and not the commander of legend. He carried that pain within him still, for time could not heal all wounds.
Shepard gave Roahn's shoulder a squeeze before continuing. "You may very well be right about Aleph. I can only hope for the inverse, but I know there's a good chance that you're correct. It was just… until today we never had any definitive proof of his intentions. We're still guessing, to be fair. But anyone who's collecting Reaper artifacts is clearly a danger. Someone like that either has no respect for the power those things hold… or they do know, which makes the situation even worse."
"You were frightened by them," Roahn quietly stated. "The Reapers."
"Yes, I was," Shepard gave an imperceptible nod. "The Reapers killed trillions of people in less than the span of a year. They scarred every world as they systematically tried to wipe us out. Until the last moment, they were winning the war. Their victory had been nearly assured ever since they arrived in our galaxy. We were holding on to shreds of hope, trying desperately to reach that light at the end of the tunnel. At times… I didn't even know if we could make it, though I knew that all I could do was try." He looked down at Roahn's attentive eyes behind her visor, very able to visualize her face despite the translucent covering, as a good father should. "I never want you to come to that level of despair. But I also can't cover my eyes to the danger that is waiting for you. These artifacts… the Reapers… nothing good can come of them."
"Is it because of what they represent?" Roahn asked as she slowly brought herself up, her hands now situated upon her thighs. "The power that they once held—indoctrination—or is the sacrilegious idea of being around such evil machines what you fear?"
Shepard's face darkened. He would never be able to forget the slaughter he had faced at the hands of those synthetic monstrosities. The rabid and deep howls they made… the screams of their victims. A dark choir growling and hissing in temptation. They still occupied a place inside his head.
"A bit of both," he admitted. "Being around the remains of those things… to have even the slightest interest in them is enough to bring me disgust. My opinion is that we should have thrown every single piece of Reaper scrap that we found into a black hole, where we threw their corpses years ago."
"We would have been better off had that been the case."
"It's just that… indoctrination," Shepard's brow furrowed furiously as he leaned forward. "That was the one thing that nearly doomed us all. It was perhaps the Reapers' most powerful weapon. The ability to subtly influence the will of others from sheer proximity would be unimaginable in anyone's hands."
Roahn thought for a moment. "But… when you destroyed the Reapers, you permanently removed their ability to indoctrinate along with them. Wasn't that what our scientists found out? That the remains they recovered showed no trace of indoctrination signals or components being active? That weapon is lost now, dad. Indoctrination is no longer possible."
"Then why collect the artifacts at all? What purpose could they possibly serve?"
"I was hoping to have had that question answered by now," Roahn said, though with the wistful trace of a smile.
Shepard, though he could not physically see his daughter's expression, mimicked her by also making a rather dry grin. "We'll know more once we get to Earth. Someone has to have some answers back there."
"Yes…" Roahn distantly nodded as she slowly got back to her feet. "Earth." She placed her hands on her hips and gave a murmuring sigh before pacing a tight corridor between the door and her bed. She turned to look at Shepard. "Dad, about what I said earlier…"
The human simply closed his eye, shook his head, and met Roahn's eye as he too got up from the bed. "It'll stay between us. I know what you were trying to say."
Roahn brought herself in for a hug and her eyelids drooped shut as her father's arms took her in a bear-like embrace. She settled herself into his frame and peeked through half-closed eyelids, her world dripping in muted blurs. Something unfurled within her and the next intake of breath felt like something loosened that had previously been tightened to the point where her circulation had been cut off.
Somewhere, a part of her mind relaxed.
"Thank you."
A/N: As you can probably guess, the whole situation with Aleph is just getting more and more complicated. If you thought this was going to end up as a simple mission for Roahn, safe to say that you're out of luck. The plot continues to thicken and I have plenty more wrenches to throw into the system... so don't get too complacent.
Playlist:
I'll Take That/Between the Suns (Dogfight Pt. I)
"STALKER Theme"
Borislov Slavov
Crysis 3 (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
Waterfall Canyon/Sagan Flies (Dogfight Pt. II)
"Cargo High"
Joel Corelitz
Death Stranding (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
Artifact Theme/Reaper Remnant
"The Apple"
Jed Kurzel
Assassin's Creed (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)