Shepard stood behind Joker's pilot chair, his arms crossed, staring out the window before him. A small, brown-yellow spec was the only thing that could be distinguished from the void beside it. Another colony gone dark. Another world to save. Another monster to stop. This pattern, it was getting repetitive for him.
He held his helmet between his arm and the side of his body. Except for this piece, he was fully suited in head-to-toe of metal, ballistic plating, and shields. Only an assault rifle was strapped to his back. The rest of his equipment was down in the cargo hold. If there would be a serious problem, he would pick it up before he left. No need to walk around with that many weapons for now.
"Any word from the colony yet, Joker?"
"None. Whatever's there, I don't have a good feeling about it."
"Agreed." I've seen this too many times… "My team is on standby for now. Whatever it is, I'll blow them to hell and back," he growled.
"Why back? Seems rather futile."
"Ha. Ha. Ha." Shepard 'laughed' back, mocking the pilot. His laugh lacked any hint of amusement and all the hostility of a pent-up psychopath.
"Sheesh, learn to take a joke." Silence followed for a tense minute or two.
"Why are you called joker?" John asked spontaneously.
"What?" He turned his head over his shoulder as best as he could, looking at the daunting soldier.
"You're a bit deaf, aren't you," Shepard snapped back. He didn't bother to look at Shepard when he spoke; he instead opted to look at the window.
"No, not deaf. Just wasn't sure why you, in particular, would want to know. Getting into personal territory here."
"Curious is all," he sighed. He didn't know why he had bothered asking at all. He had no vested interest in the information and there was no reason he needed to know either. "Never mind." He didn't need to know. He would have to silently observe the people around him to understand, as he had always done, peering quietly from the shadows.
The silent tension was unnerving. Joker continued to pilot the ship, trying to block the presence of the commander. The man had always scared him. Having him up here was more of a chore than anything else, although these were thoughts he'd never express to his face.
Joker tried to radio the colony again; nothing. The spec of yellow gradually grew and grew until it sat before them, taking up almost the entire view from the window.
"Scan it first. I'm not walking in there blind." Not this time, not again. Except there was no guarantee that the search would reveal anything.
The Normandy orbited the planet, its sensory array analyzing the ground below. So much technology he would never understand. Yet he relied on this kind of stuff day-in and day-out. When he was younger and still curious, he had tried to understand but never got more than a rudimentary knowledge. That was okay, it should be left for smarter people, like the scientists and technicians and pilots. He didn't need to know. Sometimes, it was easier to accept something as true rather than understand why it was true.
"Commander…" Joker said slowly.
Shepard did not like the tone.
"Sensor's telling me we got geth down below. And I'm picking up a cruiser."
Shepard groaned. Hope would never follow through. "Can you get me down there?"
"You're kidding, right? I'm the best pilot in the alliance."
"Calm your ego down. You fly the ship. I'm the one who has to fight my way through that mess."
He hated the decontamination cycle. It was like an insult. Combatants were probably waiting outside, ready to kill them, and his team was standing there, waiting for a fucking computer to tell him if they were clean. Fuck it.
"Contamination cycle complete."
He had no idea what to expect, and the fact that the door was slowly opening wasn't helping. But when he could see, there was nothing pretty. Fire and smoke billowed in the distance. He was confident that he could hear screams and explosions, but only faintly, for they were not close. The brownstone walkway was covered in dust. Welcome to my hell.
He'd already told his team to expect the geth, so everyone was on already on edge, but seeing this place in such a dilapidated state made them even more uneasy. Rifle already in hand, he cautiously moved forward, his team following close behind. He turned the corner, only to find a body on the floor. It was human and riddled with bullet holes. Clearly a colonist. Shepard tapped the man with his foot to check for any signs of life, but it only confirmed what he knew to be true: this man was dead as dead can be. He heard whispers and mumbles of "Goddess" and "Jesus;" pretty easy to figure out who had said what.
He carefully tiptoed over the body and continued. There was nothing here he hadn't seen before. He didn't think he could get mad or upset anymore; the fuel for that had long ago burnt. All he had left was fighting. And that wasn't going to be in short supply this mission.
He spotted a geth hopping over a collapsed support column and land on the other side, rifle trained on him. Before he could even pull down on the trigger of his weapon, he saw the machine fly into the air and get tossed over the side of the stone railing. All he knew was that he wasn't responsible. Shepard couldn't help but look over and watch the thing fall through the clouds. Only now did he truly appreciate how high in the air they were. It would be a long, long drop down. It terrified him.
He hated how his team could only advance two at a time due to the narrowness of the dock. This place was a wreck and in need of urgent repair. It was falling apart as is.
An explosion shook the hanger, raining dust down on them. This place might not last very long. He got the Normandy on the comms. "Joker, get the hell out of here. It's not safe to remain docked. I'll contact you when we're finished."
"Copy that. Normandy away," Joker replied. The wind in the hangar began to pick up as the Normandy undocked, turned around, and sped away.
Two other geth appeared, having been alerted by their brethren before it went airborne. Shepard sprayed the passageway with bullets, but the machines only stumbled backward. The geth returned fire, but it was short-lived. The rest of his team unloaded their weapons at the geth, and the machines fell to the ground.
Shepard walked up to their corpses and fired shots into their optics for good measure. He hopped over the column and into the dark and dreary passageway behind the machines. This must be the way to the main colony. "Be careful in these tunnels, could be crawling with geth."
The tunnels were lit only by the dull brown haze from the sky. The darkness wasn't what was scary, it was the monster's you'd find inside. At least he was confident he could kill the geth. His team followed him, some opting to turn on their flashlights.
"Why are the geth even here?" someone spat. It was Tali.
He should have expected it. It was her people who got destroyed by the geth. He couldn't blame the machines, nor did he hate them for it: what they did was self-defense. Although he hated the geth now, and the quarians for having bothered to create them. It was a lesson in unintended consequences. Consequences that he was now mopping up, 300 years ex post facto. Shepard wanted to respond with the only answer he truly believed: that the geth were here to kill people. He'd seen so much violence all for naught. But this was Saren; his violence was surgical, imbued with purpose. "I don't know. But we're going to find out."
The narrow, dark corridor opened into a large area filled with prehab units and mechanical junk. Colonists covered in dirt and blood and sweat looked at him and his team as they filed out of the passageway. Some were on makeshift gurney's, slowly dying. He saw the fear in their eyes and the way they looked at him full of hope, even though they didn't know who he was. He was organic, and that was good enough for them.
"Please, you have to help us, the geth are going to kill everyone!" someone screamed.
"Oh thank god…" whispered another.
Shepard didn't need to hear their pleas to know that they needed help. What he did need to hear was where the geth were. "I need a status rep…" he tried to ask but caught himself mid-question. "Where are the geth?"
"Down that way!" she pointed with her hand. "We're trying to keep them at bay, but there are too many of them!" a colonist cried. He heard defeat in her voice; she was desperate and on the verge of giving up all hope. A child clung to her leg, almost trying to hide behind it. He realized that the kid was trying to hide from him and all the scary-looking aliens next to him. A part of him wanted to tell the kid that everything was going to be alright, that he wouldn't die, and that everything would go back to normal. But that was a promise he knew he could never keep. It wasn't his place to make anyway.
"I'll deal with them," Shepard told her. By then, some of the colonists tentatively began to approach his ragtag team of soldiers. They looked like shit, like they hadn't slept, eat, or drank in way too long. They were civilians in the middle of a warzone.
He turned away from them. Time was of the essence, and every second he wasted looking at them meant the geth would gain the upper hand in the battle. He couldn't help these people by taking care of them or reassuring them. He could only stop the thing that was killing them. They'd have to figure out the rest for themselves.
"Let's go."
He started to run in the direction the woman had pointed him to, rifle in hand. He passed by rehabs and vehicles and random technical equipment. With each step, the sounds of gunfire and combat got louder and louder.
However, something else, something far more dire, caught his attention: colonists, hiding behind a barricade, about to be overrun by geth. In the second he took to comprehend the situation, another colonist lost her life, shot through the head when she had tried to peak and fire.
"Hostiles dead ahead. Don't let them take that barricade!"
One of the greatest fears was having an enemy overrun your position. Yes, they were soldiers, and yes, they knew that they could lose their life at any moment. But there was always comfort and security in having a secure perimeter. Maybe the enemies were out there and still trying to kill you, but for now, you were safe. Yet that safety would be taken away if you allowed the enemy at your doorstep to cross over. Then you would always have to watch your back and expect to be shot at any time. That was the security the colonists were about to lose, and they didn't need to be soldiers to know it. That's why they fought so hard, they fought for the sense of home and were willing to give their lives for the improbable chance of hanging on to it.
The geth had noticed the new arrivals. They were unplanned, but the geths' code told them that their orders were still the same: wipe everyone out. Although they needed a new plan. The majority of them retargeted their weapons on the soldiers; no surprise, they were the greater threat to the completion of their mission. There were a dozen of them versus nine colonists and seven skilled combatants.
Shepard's team ducked and rolled behind cover: various pieces of scattered debris, makeshift metal barricades, crates, rocks and the like would do fine as long as they stopped bullets. The crew of the Normandy weren't stupid enough to charge right up to the barricade; they would be shot dead before they ever got there. At least most of them thought that way.
Shepard had a different plan. He was feeling rash, and his blood boiled with a desire to kill these things. They'd ruined enough colonies and homes already. The commander wasn't certain how late he'd been this time, or how many people had fallen to these machines; it didn't matter because he'd stopped counting long ago. All he knew was who was responsible, and it didn't matter that they couldn't feel pain. He would make their death a misery. He could only hope he could hold his biotics and shields long enough to reach the geth. Twenty meters to go.
He rushed forward at a blazing fast sprint. The geth recalculated their approach and decided to focus their fire on him. He could faintly feel the pings of rounds as his shields absorbed and dissipated their kinetic energy, but he could definitely hear the sound of his suit screaming to him about dangerously low shields. Unfortunately, not even a strong conviction could alter reality. He rolled to the side and behind a sheet of twisted metal.
Although inadvertently, his mad rush had provided for a good distraction for the rest of his team. Garrus and Williams had already decommissioned several units with their sniper rifles. Towards the back of the geth contingent, he thought he saw several units sparking and turn to fire on their allies from behind.
"If you told me I would have joined!" he heard someone scream over the comms.
"Your too fat and slow, Wrex, shut up!"
John couldn't help but snort at the hostile comradery between Garrus and Wrex. Except now wasn't the time to appreciate it. Shepard got up from behind cover as the geth sought to deal with the mutiny within their own ranks. Chaos was the perfect time to strike, and his shields had partially recovered. Shepard ran forward, closing the distance between him and the colonists. When he did reach them, he didn't bother to take cover, instead opting to brazenly hop over the barricade.
He was now face-to-face with the enemy in close quarters. A geth lunged towards him, attempting to cudgel him with its assault rifle. He dodged to his left, narrowly missing the strike; as the geth tried to recover, Shepard fed it led at point-blank.
Shit… The handful of geth left turned on him. He blasted them with a push from his biotics, trying to buy time. Some lost their footing and toppled backward with a loud metal crash. But not the geth prime who had managed to absorb the blast and quickly recover.
Behind him, he heard screaming; he thought it was more people dying. But then the prime's optic exploded in a shower of sparks; the motors in its body tensed up before it stiffened and fell to the ground. The geth on the ground around it seemed to suffer no better a fate, pelted again and again by small arms fire as they tried to get up. He realized the screams were a war cry from the colonists. He wanted to call them dumb and tell them that they shouldn't have risked it. But that would be for later. He trained his rifle on the remaining geth and held down the trigger, spraying them with rounds until they fell to the ground as little more than sparking heaps of metal.
The gunfire subsided, and the echo of shots gradually faded away into the air. John slowly lowered his rifle, listening to the quiet rustle of the winds. Confident that there wouldn't be any more lethal surprises, for now, he turned to face those who had decided to rush behind him: terrified but with conviction. He could see his crew about ten meters behind the barricade, weapons still raised out of caution and advancing towards him. They'd done well.
"The hell was that?" he spat accusingly, as if they'd done something wrong.
A man stepped forward, ready to speak for the others. "We didn't think it was fair to send you out there all by yourself. This is our colony too, and we're prepared to defend it."
He was about to speak when he heard a gun's safety come off. He abruptly turned his head to the sound. "I would advise you to holster your weapon. Your nothing but a guard," he snarled. "Do you have any idea who you're pointing that weapon at?"
"That's the problem: we don't know." She turned back to look at the soldier's team. "And your company is rather odd and heavily armed like you. Forgive me if I have some reservations, but this place has had enough trouble already."
Shepard took his helmet off, revealing an unamused man leveling an intense glare at the group. "How about we all go find some cover before we all get shot to bits?!"
The group instantly recognized his face. If they didn't know him from the Blitz, they definitely knew him as the first human spectre.
"Well, I'll be damned…they sent Commander Shepard?" The guard slowly holstered her gun. "I don't know what to say, sir. I'm sorry."
With his helmet off, he could smell the ash in the air. He thought he could smell burnt flesh too, but only a little. The way these people wrinkled their noses in confusion meant that they faintly smelled something disgusting, but the way they wrinkled their brows meant they didn't know what it was. Shepard decided not to say anything. These people had clearly suffered enough and were barely holding together as is. He wasn't prepared to deal with their complete mental breakdowns.
"It's been like this for almost two weeks now, commander."
Shepard was speaking to the man who had first spoken to him before. His name was Fai Dan, the man who was running this mess of a place. Leaning against one of the walls was the last surviving guard of the colony. They stood under the wreckage of what remained of a partially blown out prefab. Its walls were charred black with soot from a fire, and half the roof was missing. He doubted that the remnants of the thin plastic and metal walls would provide any protection to the people who hid behind them. Yet it somehow still provided comfort to the people it sheltered. It was better than being out in the open, and he had no other option than to agree with that.
"And the alliance never sent anyone to help?"
The man shook his head solemnly. "No, they couldn't have known. These machines have been blocking our transmitter ever since they got here."
During their entire conversation, Fai Dan was jittery, and to be honest, not paying attention. Instead, his eyes darted around the room rapidly, scanning it over and over again. Anytime he heard a small noise, he would turn and stare in that direction like a hawk. John wasn't surprised. The people of this colony had been fighting for their lives for days and even through sleepless nights too. They were probably already over the edge.
The guard decided to speak up. "Besides, we're not even really under their jurisdiction," she shrugged. "We're chartered under the Exo-Geni corporation. They promised to help set up this place."
"Ha!" Shepard snorted. He looked at the guard. "Of course you greedy bastards would try to bring people out here if you made money." His tone darkened. "And now I have to get you out of this mess."
"Your preaching to the choir here. Trust me, I'm not getting paid very handsomely. None of us are. We were prepared to defend against kids writing graffiti on the walls, not these machines! I was a cop before all this, not a soldier." She gulped. "I…we tried our best but… there are too many of them and they're too well equipped."
A brief flurry of gunfire erupted outside. Fai Dan and the guard jumped, the former reaching for the sidearm tucked in his waistband, and the latter pointing her assault rifle at the open door. Shepard didn't hear any further commotion, so he decided to radio in. "What's going on out there? Over."
"Just another batch of geth scout drones. They've been dealt with, but more will be coming soon" replied a raspy voice.
"Copy that, Garrus. Maintain the perimeter but let me know if you need me."
"Got it, boss." His comm clicked off.
Shepard turned back to face the frightened duo. "Nothing serious. It's already been taken care of." He watched them slowly lower their weapons, hands shaking.
"What I wouldn't give to have had you and your team here the day this started," Fai Dan mentioned under his breath.
"And since when did the alliance have aliens on the payroll?"
"Martinez!" shouted Fai Dan. "Commander, I'm sorry for…"
He decided to reply instead of giving Fai Dan the time to apologize. "Believe me, I was never enthused to be working with aliens." He tilted his head to one side, almost as if he were considering something. "I would never have believed myself," he muttered. "But they… have their uses." He turned to face the guard now. "And they don't work for the alliance, they work for me." He finished speaking and tension hung in the air.
They couldn't anticipate or predict Shepard's next move. Even though they didn't consciously know it, they were slowly backing into the wall, inch by inch, and their bodies shrunk as if they were trying to hide from him. "Commander," Fai Dan stuttered.
Shepard realized he was scaring them, and it was probably the last thing they needed right now. There were problems far bigger at play here. He decided to change the subject. "I'm going to need all the information you have. I still barely have any idea what's going on here."
Fai Dan nodded. "The geth started attacking here more than a week ago. At first, they weren't trying to kill us." He paused to collect his thoughts before continuing. "But we heard the stories and the rumors." His voice became hollow, almost like a hoarse whisper, and he struggled to speak. "We tried to call for help but no one ever responded. It was days before we figured out why. We could only hide and prepare as best we could."
The guard, who he now knew was called Martinez, picked up where Fai Dan left off. "One day, they started attacking us out of nowhere. We had expected it, but there wasn't much we could do. I don't know how we've been able to repel them for this long, but we weren't going to last much longer. Every day that passed, we would lose more people, and with them our chance of fighting the geth off." She turned to look at Fai Dan, who was suddenly very preoccupied with the floor. "But if it hadn't been for him, we would have all been dead already."
Shepard forced himself to put on a comforting smile. It hurt like hell having to contort his facial muscles in such a manner. "You guys would've put any alliance company to shame. You did the best you could with what little you had for a situation you could never have expected." He let his words sink in before continuing. "But the cavalry is here, and we'll ensure that all those people hadn't died in vain." His words felt like lies in his mouth as he spoke them. He didn't really mean or care about anything he had just said. He had only spoken to lift their morale long enough so he could get the information he needed. Even then, these weren't his words; they were someone else's from years ago. He could only keep the façade up for so long. His smile slowly wavered and disappeared altogether.
"Thank you, commander, but…we've lost so many friends."
Reaching his limit for soppy shit, he decided to change tracks. "I need to know everything you know about the geth: positions, numbers, armaments."
Shepard was looking at Fai Dan for the answer, but it was Martinez who replied instead. "Our most immediate problem is the geth crawling through the tunnels under this place. The tunnel you came in through was only one in a vast network underneath us. They extend for miles underground."
"What the hell?" Shepard asked in astonishment, "who thought it was a good idea to include that in your colony?"
"It wasn't our idea commander. We never built this place, we found it. Thirty-thousand-year-old prothean skyscrapers, we thought it was the perfect place to set up." Fai Dan swallowed before continuing. "We never thought they'd be used against us, we only wanted some easy shelter. And now that the geth control those tunnels, not only do they try to kill us directly, they've blocked us off from our water and power supply. And we have no food left."
"How bad?"
"We've been rationing, but it won't last more than the next two or three days."
"The alliance would need more time than that to get here," he whispered to himself. He had no fantasy nor desire to fight an army of geth off or flush them out from dark tunnels all by himself. He could wait until he received backup and let these people die of thirst, starvation, or the geth, but was that what he wanted to do? No, I should do better than that. I…I can do better than that. The Normandy probably had enough food to sustain the colony for a short while, depending upon its size. But water? No, not even close. The Normandy depended upon water recyclers to constantly reuse the water they would consume or use for cooking and cleaning. There was no way the Normandy could sustain an entire colony's water consumption. These people would die unless he did something, fast.
"My pilot told me there was a geth cruiser near here too. Any idea where that is?"
Martinez nodded her head grimly. "It's docked at a building south from here."
"But you have a warship too," Fai Dan interrupted in desperation, "can't you fight it off or destroy it."
Shepard let out a short, sharp laugh, almost as if trying to insult Fai Dan's suggestion. "The Normandy is a stealth frigate. It has nowhere near enough firepower to go head-to-head with a cruiser."
"Oh," the man mumbled to himself. Fai Dan's shoulders slumped in defeat, weighed down by the fate of the people he was responsible for.
"Anything else I should know about?"
They considered for a moment before responding. "There's another group of colonists that we lost contact with after all this began-" Fai Dan mentioned.
Martinez cut in before Fai Dan could finish speaking: "Forget it, they're dead by now."
"We have to try. They could still be out there; I'm not going to give up on them, we can't!"
"Great," Shepard enunciated sarcastically, "how many are we talking about here?"
Fai Dan through his hands up in the air before placing them on his head. "I…I don't know. There were a couple dozen, but by now, it's probably less than that."
John drew a deep breath and let it out forcefully through his nose. He knew that if he did nothing and waited, more people would die. A part of him wanted to play it safe; he was okay with dying, but his team? No. Yet it felt wrong to let these people lose everything just like he had. They'd already lost so much, but there might still be something worth saving…if he could figure it out. He had a seven-man team yet there was so much that needed to be done. "And is there a way I can get to them?"
"We have a small truck," Fai Dan offered submissively.
John shrugged. He didn't know what he was expecting, a tank?
His team was gathered in a loose circle. Even though they were supposed to be paying attention, each one of them would occasionally look over their shoulders. Even though it was quiet now, it was still a warzone, and the situation would change at any time.
"Well, we certainly have our mouths full," laughed Wrex after Shepard had concluded explaining the circumstances.
Shepard nodded his head solemnly. "Unfortunately, yes. You're really itching for a fight, aren't you?" Shepard stated with a hint of pessimism.
"Ha! I'm a krogan!"
He looked around at his team, who weren't looking as enthusiastic as the krogan. But they were still determined, and that was all he could expect from them.
"So, what's the plan then, commander?" Liara asked.
"We're splitting up," he replied. Stunned silence followed the remark, so he decided to add "Into three teams," after a moment's pause. No, the decision wasn't made on a whim, but had been made earlier; he thought it better to tell them all the bad news now than save it for later. He called the latter option bullshitting.
"Now we're really going to die. Thanks, Wrex," Garrus quipped.
"You're welcome, kid."
"Kaiden, take Wrex and Williams. You need to clean out the tunnels under this place, or they're going to keep attacking us by surprise."
"Copy that," Kaiden replied.
Garrus started chuckling to himself. "Do you think his fat ass is going to fit down there?"
"Do remember, turian," Wrex spat, "that it was my race that flushed the rachni out of their caves."
Shepard wasn't going to concern himself with this bickering. Maybe he should have, but he was an unconventional person, and that included how he operated. As long as it wasn't an impediment to the mission, he didn't care. And as it turned out, the jousting provided more comedic relief than harm, so it was fine by him.
"I'm going to find some missing colonists. Garrus, Tali," he looked at each one as he spoke their name, "you're with me."
"But then…I'm going by myself?" Liara demanded, exasperated.
"No, no you're not going anywhere. You're staying here. With the colonists." Shepard didn't blame her for her response. She wasn't a soldier, but what made it worse was that she would be alone. Except she wouldn't be alone, not technically. "You're going to protect them in case anything happens while we're gone. And help them however else you can." Shepard was fairly certain that if anything happened, she would have the best chance of living. These people, at least the ones that were left, had served for days already; it was surprising and something he…admired. At least these people had the balls to fight for themselves. They could last a couple more hours, especially now that they had help.
He slowly turned his head to look at his team. "I know that the situation we're in is," he tried to pick the right word, "unfavorable." Fuck it. "And by that I mean we could easily die." He didn't want to look at them anymore; he was leading them to their deaths; so, he looked at the ground instead. "But if we don't do anything, these people will be dead."
"We're right behind you, Shepard."
He looked up at them through narrow eyes. "Then let's get moving." He put on his helmet and watched the HUD display light up in front of him.
Shepard approached a rusted old truck. He could have sworn it was more than several decades old, but he was no mechanic. It reminded him of the trucks he used to see back 'home', although he hated using that word. He saw the telltale marks of bullet holes on its side. Could this thing still operate? He kicked one of the tires, and feeling its stiffness, knew that it wasn't flat. He could only hope that this tire served as an indication for the other three.
"We're supposed to fight geth in that thing?" Garrus asked.
Shepard pulled on the door, but it wouldn't budge. He put his weight into pulling on it, and the door finally came loose while simultaneously sending him tumbling to the floor. "I'll see if Joker can drop the Mako later on, but he can't do it with this roof over our heads," he sighed as he got up.
Garrus looked up and saw the ceiling of stone and metal above them. "Oh."
He hopped into the driver's seat and tried to start the truck with the key the colonists had given him. The key was something he had rarely seen throughout his life; it was a relic from centuries ago, and the fact that it was used to start this truck was a testament to how old this piece of crap was. He inserted the key into the ignition and turned it; the engine coughed and sputtered but refused to start. He tried to start the truck again, and with every tick of the engine's ignition, he felt he was on the verge of success, except it refused to work. He let go of the key, giving this wreck of a truck a second to maybe wake up from its slumber. He then angrily reached for the key again, twisting it strongly, as if strong-arming it would force it to work. The key snapped; in his hand was its head, and stuck in the ignition, was the actual key.
"Fuck…" Shepard sighed. He sat there for a moment, resting his hands on the wheel.
"Do you want me to try to fix the truck?" Tali offered.
"No, I got this." He hated this feeling of being a useless, clumsy wreck. He wanted to be more than that, but every day provided more evidence to the contrary. He was forever unable to handle the delicate things in life properly. Although he was pretty sure he could figure this out; hopefully; otherwise he'd look like a stubborn ass in addition to being an idiot. He removed his gauntlets and set them to rest on the dashboard. He would fix this.
He stepped out of the truck and then rested his knee on the bottom of the doorframe. He tore the cheap plastic off the bottom of the steering column to expose its wiring, and carefully passed the different wires through his fingers, trying to find the right ones. It was almost like muscle memory. He felt confidence in his bones, and then it hit him, he'd done this before…somewhere. Finding the wires he needed, he tore them in half. He almost found himself reaching for a pocketknife, except he remembered that he didn't have one. Deciding the next best option was his fingernails, he started stripping the dirty rubber covering to expose the metal ends.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Garrus leaning over slightly, watching him work. "Be careful with the red ones. They're-"
"I know what they are, Garrus," he spat. It depressed him to know that they thought him dumb enough to electrocute himself; he didn't want their help, not now. He wanted to ask why they didn't trust him to do this right, but he subconsciously knew the answer: he'd never done anything to inspire trust.
He kept the red wires from touching one another as he tied another pair of wires together. He then delicately held the two ends of the red wire between his index and thumb; they belonged to the battery. This was the moment of truth. He touched the two ends of the red wires together, and he was relieved to hear the sound of the ignition clicking again. After a few seconds, the car's engine sputtered to life. It started slow and uneven, but it eventually sped up; he felt satisfaction from hearing the sound of the engine and feeling its vibration through the frame of the car. He stood up, sat back in the driver's seat, and put on his gauntlets. He reached for the door and slammed it closed, slightly jostling the truck.
He felt Garrus' and Tali's eyes on him. He turned to look at them in return. Garrus' jaw and mandibles were slightly ajar, and he thought that Tali's white, glowing eyes, were slightly larger than usual. "What?"
"Nothing, it's just that I never thought that you could, you know, um…" Tali tried to say, but was too meek and afraid of possibly insulting her commander. It didn't matter, though, because Garrus finished the thought for her.
"I thought you were shit with tech? Where'd you learn that?"
"I am shit with tech. Doesn't mean I never picked anything up." He felt insulted, except that he knew their doubt and shock were justified. The second part of Garrus' question made him think for a time. He slowly remembered where he had learned this, the people he'd learned it from, and what he had used it for. It felt like so long ago. Even what knowledge he did have, however incomplete, was still corrupted and impure. "Something I picked up from my childhood," he said shamefully. This admission out loud, even of an incomplete truth, robbed him of any satisfaction he was feeling.
He turned away from them and set his eyes on the road in front of him. His right hand reached down and put the truck's transmission into drive. He tentatively applied pressure on the gas pedal. He could ponder about his past later; for now, there were colonists to save, and more importantly, geth to kill. Killing was fun. And who knows, maybe he could find Saren, put the turian's body into the ground, and take a nice long break.
"You know, I thought Shepard would have wanted to be the one charging through these tunnels and killing geth," Ashley quietly told the group. "Instead, he went to try and find the colonists."
Wrex heard the comment from behind him. He turned halfway to reply to her. "I don't think it matters, human. There are geth crawling everywhere. He will find enough to kill."
Williams shrugged. "I guess you're right." In the near darkness of the tunnel, the krogan's face was hidden; the only thing she could see was glowing red, reptilian eyes. She would be lying if she had said they didn't scare her. It revealed something predatorial in the mercenary if being a krogan wasn't enough. "Let's hope he finds them, though."
Wrex turned around and started to walk forward again. It was almost comical seeing his backside have to squeeze through the dark passageways. "He will find them."
"My omnitool's telling me they're on our right, although they're a couple of hundred meters away," Kaiden chimed in.
"Whatever you say, Lieutenant." Wrex continued to walk until he reached the intersection. He stopped and took time to peer down each dark corridor: nothing, for now. As Kaiden had informed, he turned right and started to trudge in the new direction.
"Although I'm not sure they'll be alive when he does find them," Wrex muttered under his breath. He wasn't under the impression that Shepard went towards the colonists to avoid a fight. Well, anything was possible; he'd lived long enough to know that; but still, highly improbable.
Wrex had never thanked the commander for taking him along. That was okay; he wasn't good at pleasantries and it didn't seem that Shepard would care either way. Regardless, these past few months had been more fun than anything he'd done over the last century. Sure, he spent most of his time on a ship, but was it any different than standing on a street corner or bar entrance? Except on the Normandy, he not only fought but fought for a reason. He was happy to kill either way, but this was different.
He heard a pebble or two drop to the ground. He trained his shotgun in front of him and growled, but nothing appeared. It was a false alarm, just some noise caused by the disturbance of this place. He lowered his weapon and returned to walking. What had been on his mind again? Yes, the reason to fight. Fighting was one thing, but to fight for something good, like stopping Saren and a massive army of geth, felt better. He didn't care about saving people, he'd seen too much over the years to know that everyone would die sooner or later; however, saving them was like an unexpected bonus, and it made him feel like what he did was making a difference. It reminded him of… Tuchanka, when he had tried to unite the krogan clans and make them greater than traveling warrior bands biting the dust. Although this thought turned his positively-ambivalent mood to ash in his mouth. He had to remember how that had turned out. At least for now, Shepard hadn't lied when he said there would be a lot of fighting. And what greater honor could there be but to fight a worthy adversary like Saren? At least this time, if he failed, the whole galaxy would be destroyed instead of just the krogan. But he didn't feel like dying or losing to a blasted turian.
"A group of them are just ahead," Kaiden whispered.
Ahead of him, Wrex could see the tunnel open into a large room. He slowly approached the edge. The machines were just below him, unaware of his presence. He jumped into the air, pointed his shotgun at the machines, and started to fire as he dropped down, disabling one of them. He landed on another unit, crushing it under his weight. The remaining two geth fell to the ground, withering and spasming. "I didn't know you could make them dance Alenko!" he roared in laughter, clearly enjoying the carnage in front of him.
"He's a terrible dancer, actually. I wouldn't recommend him."
He stomped down on the torso of one of the units, steadying it before blasting it with his shotgun. He then aimed at the head of the other machine and decommissioned it as well. He narrowed his eyes and scanned all around him. Everything was quiet. Ashley and Alenko followed him down to the platform below, albeit more delicately. Wrex turned to face them. "And how would you know about that, human?"
"Umm…" she stuttered before coming to her senses. "What do you mean? I was just making a joke!"
"Uh-huh. You can lie to me because I'm dumb, but you can't lie to my nose. I can smell your stench," he taunted. He loved toying with them. Their confusion and fear were fun to watch.
"I don't understand, Wrex. Smell what?"
Wrex started rumbling in laughter as he turned back around to face the rest of the empty room. He could see another dark passage leading out of this place. Time to see what other monsters lay hidden in the dark. "Just pushing your control panel, let's go." Wait, was that the right human expression? Damn it, it doesn't matter.
As he approached the dark hallway that led out of this room, he thought he could hear heavy panting. He instantly switched back to being deathly serious. "Something is in there," he growled. Alenko pointed his flashlight into the hallway, revealing what the mystery was.
"Varen!" Wrex roared as the creature jumped to tackle him. It was certainly one of the largest he'd ever seen. He shot it in midair, but the massive body continued to hurtle towards him, ragged teeth and claws ready to slash and tear. In the split second he had, he could also see its brethren appear in the hallway behind it, snarling. This was going to get ugly, fast, especially if there were a lot of them. He might live, but he didn't want to return the soldiers to Shepard as little more than bloodied sacs of meat and bone.
The varen slammed into him, almost knocking him over. It bit his arm in the process and wracked him with its claws, but Wrex fired his weapon into its abdomen at point-blank. Its guts exploded out its back and onto its pack members. He could tell that they weren't happy.
"Raaaaaghh!" He charged the varen, attempting to meet them head-on. Except he never met them. A wall of blue force slammed all the creatures into the wall. With nothing to collide with, he stumbled to the ground, landing on one knee. He could hear Alenko straining to keep all the creatures at bay.
Ashley fired her shotgun into the pack of animals, and with each shot, she took a step closer until she was just to Wrex's right. By then, the creatures were all dead, nothing beyond a bloody pulp.
"Thank you, human." He would have expected them to turn tail and run. They could have used him as a distraction, tried to climb back up the ledge, and shoot the creatures from safety. Instead, they had chosen to help him. Admirable. He cradled his arm close to his body. Some of the varen's teeth had sunken into the flesh unprotected by his armor plates. His skin might be a tough, leathery hide, but no matter how much he boasted that he was a krogan, he wasn't invincible. He stood up, trying to shake off the injury.
"You need a minute, Wrex?" Alenko asked.
"I'll be fine. It will regenerate. Soon," he spat through gritted teeth. Is that a tooth in my arm? "I'm a krogan, remember?" He tried to pick it out of his flesh, but his fat fingers only seemed to worsen the problem. He would have to take it out later.
Simply, she was frightened. It was just her in her light armor. All she had was a pistol. Well, she had an assault rifle too, but she wasn't too confident in her skills with it. So ya, for all intents and purposes, she had a pistol. And her biotics; those were probably her best weapon. If the geth were to attack now, while Shepard and the others were gone, all that was standing between them and the colonists was her; supposedly. She certainly entertained the possibility that if anything did happen, these colonists would do a better job than she would; they'd held out for this long, what would the addition of one meek asari do?
She sat on the steps of one of the last intact prefab units. Every sound she heard or flash that she saw out of the corner of her eye frightened her; her heart would temporarily calm itself when it turned out it wasn't geth. It was only a matter of time, though, and with each second that passed, the probability of another attack increased. Alone and with time to ponder, Liara now realized something. Shepard did indeed scare her, especially on the Normandy. But down here, in the midst of battle, his presence was a reassurance that they stood a fighting chance no matter the odds. She had taken his presence for granted, and now that he was gone, she desperately wished that he too was on guard with her.
"You really did save us back there."
She looked up and saw the female cop from earlier. Liara got up to greet her, but she insisted that she didn't have to. "Please, you've done enough. I don't wish to burden you further."
She sat down beside her, although she noted the fact that she'd left considerable space between the two of them. She hadn't come here to pester her; well at least not in that way. "Arcelia Martinez. I'm one of the lucky few to be this colony's guard."
"Liara T'Soni. However, I'm assuming you already know I work with Shepard."
"I just wanted to thank you again for all that your team is doing."
"We're happy to help." She replied simply. Liara decided to maybe add some light humor to the conversation. "Although I'm pretty sure your people were the ones to save Shepard back there, not us."
She snorted. "You mean when Commander Shepard jumped over the barricade? How could anyone not follow that man into battle?"
"Yes, he does have a certain quality to him I suppose."
"You should hear the kids talking about him. They thought an angel came down from the sky to save them," she added.
"Angel, huh." The way Martinez was talking was almost antithetical to what she expected. They treated him like a hero; because today he was their hero. "Do you hear a lot about him."
"Oh, all the time. I would be lying if I said otherwise. I mean he's Commander John fucking Shepard. For a lot of us humans, he's what we strive to be. Everyone knows the name: he's a military hero."
She clasped her hands together, unsure of what to say. Liara thought she heard either admiration or something else in that tone, but she wasn't going to focus on that now. She instead decided to ask about something far more interesting. "You seem to hold him in a rather mythical light." Why would anyone want to be like him? A wreck of a man with an equally horrible and dreadful past.
"Sole survivor of Akuze. Saved Elysium during the Skyllian Blitz. Saved Eden Prime. And those are just the big ones on the news that I can remember."
At the mention of Eden Prime, she felt a pang in her gut. Even though she wasn't responsible for her mother's actions, she couldn't deny the slightest bit of guilt. Martinez didn't seem to notice, so she continued.
"As if everything before wasn't enough, he's humanity's first spectre. He's been hunting down the worst out there for god knows how long. And now, he just saved us at our darkest hour." She turned her head towards the sky, almost as if she were thanking one god or another. "That man's done a lot of good. Went through hell and back so we could be safe."
She had words that she wanted to say, but they turned to ashes in her mouth. She couldn't deny all the things Shepard had done to help people. But likewise, she couldn't deny all the things he'd done to hurt them. These people simply didn't know the truth. Out of ignorance of the facts, they treated him as the best that humanity had to offer. They only knew one side. They hadn't been given the pleasure of being inside the commander's fractured mind. She'd studied the human religions before, decades ago. For humans, angels were spiritual beings who brought messages from their gods. "Angel indeed," she replied. She remembered that many of the human religions had a special angel or deity whose only purpose was to take the spirits of the dead. Angel of Death.
"What's he like, you know, when he's not on the battlefield."
Uh oh. She knew the answer because she'd seen the story of his life from his perspective; something she was still trying to forget. There was no honest answer that she could give that would shine positively on the commander. But there was no reason to trash talk him; and besides, even if he deserved to pay for the things he'd done, what he was doing now was too important to ruin. Now and then, it's just better to lie.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Rather normal, believe it or not." She'd had enough of this topic and decided to change the conversation to something that had been eating at her nerves. "I have a question if you don't mind, about the colony."
"Shoot."
"Huh?"
"Means go ahead and ask."
"I was visiting your medical center earlier, and-"
"It's more of a repurposed housing unit. Our actual medical center went up in flames days ago. I'm sorry, continue."
Liara cleared her throat. "As I was saying, I was visiting your medical center earlier. There were a lot of people in there who were, how do I put this gently, not in the right mind."
Martinez sighed. "You mean insane?"
Liara knew that these were civilians, not hardened soldiers. Their experience must have been harrowing, to say the least. They had lost friends and family members. Even Liara was still reminiscing about the death of her mother, something she had been trying to keep out of her thoughts, so she understood how these people must feel after having lost so much more than her. But that didn't explain the gibberish mumblings and nightmarish screams that emanated from that place.
"Bluntly, yes. I don't mean to trivialize what they've been through, but their reaction is unlike anything I have seen and most unusual."
"I'm not going to lie, it's strange. But given what's been happening around here," she spread her arms in reference to their surroundings, "I can't say I'm surprised. It's something we're going to have to sort out after this conflict. If we even live to see that day," she added darkly.
The tunnels extended for miles, yet they were the size of highways. A truly impressive feat for the protheans who had built this place. Something felt odd about driving along this road, forty-thousand years after-the-fact. The people who made these were long dead; would this scene one day become the ruins of all civilization? Probably. Everything dies.
Tali wondered if this scene was what she would find if she ever returned to the quarian homeworld, Rannoch: the ruins of a dead people. And given the decaying state of their ships, indeed they would be dead soon. Every quarian's dream was to one day return to their homeworld, yet that was the problem, it was a dream. Today, she had to admit that she felt a sense of smug irony, an "I told you so" moment. The council had waged a bargain; the other races had refused to help the quarians fight the geth, so the geth drove the quarians to near extinction; in exchange, they would hope that the geth wouldn't turn on the council races. For the next 300 years, it appeared that the council was right. But not today; now they would feel the sting of the geth and their mysterious and powerful allies, the reapers. Tali didn't have all the pieces, but having studied the history of the geth, she didn't think they would stop at attacking fringe human colonies. Sooner or later, they would go for the big prize.
The only thing stopping the geth, for now, where the humans. More specifically, one man. Yes, she along with the other members of the crew were here with him too. However, if he swept it under the rug as the council did, who knows, maybe the geth would have already killed them all by now. The fact that they were even here, fighting the geth, was all because of him. She certainly had no qualms about fighting the geth; every time she shot one to pieces, she felt like she was delivering cosmic justice. Unfortunately, there was a lot of baggage that came with serving on the Normandy. Well, the ship itself was fine, but it's commander? No.
"I'm picking up something on the scanners," Tali mentioned from the back seat. "And besides, we're near the coordinates Fai Dan provided us. I think it may be the colonists."
"Doubtful they could have lived that long. They're dead," he replied.
His utter denial of hope was in spite of the fact that the colonists of Zhu's Hope had managed to survive. Why did he refuse to believe in hope? And he replied so effortlessly, like accepting the fact that dozens of people were massacred was easy.
"Regardless, give me the directions." He removed one of his hands from the steering wheel to crack his neck. "And prepare for geth," he added in a low tone.
"It's a click down this road. Make a left and take the ramp down."
The engine of the truck groaned louder, and the fragile cabin began to shake so much she thought it would fall apart all around them. Shepard was driving the truck even faster than before. This action, in place of his silence, spoke just as much about his intentions. It was the demonstration of his carnal desire for violence.
They neared the ramp, but Shepard wasn't slowing down. "I think we're close," she told him, but instead of slowing down, he pushed the truck even faster. He was slouched in his seat, and only one of his hands was now one the steering wheel. She couldn't even tell if his eyes were on the road, and maybe that was the scariest part.
"Shepard," Garrus tried. "Shepard," he tried again, louder, but John was not responding to his name. He was clearly in a world of his own. "Commander!" he yelled.
A second hand returned to the wheel, and the truck began to rapidly decelerate will entering the turn for the ramp. Tali slid along the seat until she was pushed into the door by inertia. The scariest part was that she could have sworn that, for a brief moment, some of the truck's wheels weren't touching the floor.
The painful screeching of the back wheels was audible as the truck slid in an arc onto the next ramp. When they reached the bottom, a short road was visible, and beyond it, a barricaded room. The vehicle ground to a halt and Shepard jumped out, pointing his assault rifle at the fortification. They heard his voice over the comms, spewing out one simple but harsh order: "Let's get this over with."
Still feeling a bit queasy from the wild ride, she pulled on the handle and pushed the door open. A little bit uneasy on her feet, she stumbled a few steps.
"You alright?" Garrus asked as he too got out.
"I'll be fine," she replied.
They turned to run after Shepard, but he was already halfway to the barricade. He had no intention of waiting for them. He did not want to wait for them, even though if there were geth, he would need them. She opened her omnitool, trying to scan the area for any geth, except she couldn't find any.
"I don't think there are any-"
From behind the barricade, half-a-dozen people popped up, training an assortment of weapons at the charging human.
"HALT!" they screamed.
Shepard's run slowed until he was taking little more than shuffling footsteps.
"Halt, or we will fire!"
These were no geth; they were the colonists that Shepard said were dead. Yet his rifle was still raised at them. In the back of her mind, she was frightened by the possibility that he would fire at the colonists all the same. An invisible but dreadful weight was lifted off her shoulders as Shepard lowered his weapon and eventually stowed it across his back. But he didn't stop walking forward. Instead, he berated the frightened. "Put that shit away before you hurt yourself," he hissed.
Garrus stopped a few feet behind Shepard, and Tali a few feet behind Garrus. They were still uncertain about how this situation would turn out. They could not stand next to him in confidence. This wasn't the first time a similar situation had happened today. Something was agitating him, making him more aggressive and violent than usual. And no one would have the courage to ask.
The colonists turned to look at one another, searching for reassurance about their next action. Seconds went by, and then the weapons of the colonists wavered to the ground. "As long as you're not a geth, I guess you're a welcome sight."
Rancorous laughter emanated from the commander and eerily echoed around the enclosed space. "I'm here to kill the geth," he added in an overly joyous tone. "Commander Shepard, System's Alliance."
