Chapter 75: Shore Leave
Silence is maddening
Yet quiet is a solace
Safe
Soft
Easily broken
Once they were actually docked, Terra had had enough time to accept the conclusion that she needed a break from the pressures of the war and the toll it was taking on her that had climaxed at Javik's horror story. She had to admit that she was still only human (well, adopted turian as well, but still) and there was only so much she could take. She was so tired of being slung between doubt and dread and grief and rage. Just a little quiet would do her good.
So when she received word that Anderson wanted to talk to her, she didn't hesitate, hurrying straight to the coordinates he'd sent so she could accept the call. She smiled when she saw his face on a vid-COMM. "Anderson."
He smiled back. "Shepard. Good to see you holding up."
"Best I can. Why did you need me to come here again?"
"I want you to have it. Take it off my hands."
Her eyes widened in amazement. "Are…are you serious?"
"I am. Kahlee meant for us to settle down there. Thing is, though, the more I'm on Earth…the less I want to leave. And I want as few loose ends out there as possible. Like I said, you'd be doing me a favor."
She looked around at the two-story apartment. When she saw the piano and the windows looking out at the neon horizon, she realized this place was a perfect fit for her, everything she missed from Mindoir and everything she'd come to want since she lost it. "This…this is too generous. I can't—"
"Don't make me order you, Shepard."
She laughed. "Alright. If you insist. So long as you promise to stay safe down there."
He nodded. "Will do. Same to you. Anderson out."
After he'd hung up, she looked around. She wasn't sure where to start, but she figured it was best to get familiar with the place if this was where she'd be spending her shore leave. She smiled with a plan when her COMM beeped. "I hear you, Garrus."
"Good. What did Anderson want and where did you run off to?"
"Ping my COMM. …you're not gonna believe what just happened."
Garrus came in less than ten minutes later. As it turned out, he didn't believe what just happened. "Seriously? He gave you this?!"
"I know, right?!"
He smirked as he started looking around. He couldn't help but eye the art on the walls skeptically. "I take it you'll be redecorating?"
She scoffed. "I fully intend to. I don't know who made that, but I'm pretty sure I can top it."
"Oh, I'm more than sure. If you can teach me how to do it at all, you can outdo anyone."
She smiled, rolling her eyes.
"Is that a real piano, too?"
"Seems to be. Violet's gonna be ecstatic when she drops by."
He smiled. "It'll be nice to see her that way."
"…yeah." She sighed. "You were right. I think we could all use this."
He moved closer, placing his hands on her waist. "We should make the most of it while we can."
She smirked, wrapping her arms around him in turn. "We should."
They took a moment just to kiss, much more intimately than they'd had a chance in a long time. When they went uninterrupted, they decided to keep going, taking up position on the couch to properly fall into each other. For a moment, they even forgot the horrors of the war that had been plaguing them for what felt like years now. It was peaceful and passionate and pure. Exactly what they'd needed. Even when they had to stop, they stayed wrapped up in each other's arms, finding solace in the quiet embrace.
They were both happy to claim this as the future that awaited them when the war was over.
Terra sighed contentedly, peacefully, as she laid down against him. "I've needed this."
Garrus smiled as he laid his hand on her hip. "We both have."
She nuzzled closer to him. "I'd hate to let go now."
"We're on shore leave. There's nothing saying we have to."
"Time goes on, love."
"That's why you capture it."
She smiled again. "You know me so well."
He laughed. "That I do. Goes both ways, last I checked."
She turned to look him in the eye. "I guess it does."
He was all too susceptible to this, losing himself in her eyes within a second. He was about to lean in to kiss her again when his omni-tool beeped. Against his better judgment, he checked it. "Oh, look at that, Sol picked now to say we should spend some time together again."
Terra groaned. "She couldn't let us have five more minutes?"
Garrus shrugged. "Let's be fair. The repairs to the ship are gonna take at least a few days. I'm sure we can still find some time." He smirked, laying his head affectionately against hers. "And we'll always have the rest of our lives."
She smirked back, returning his gesture. "Hard to argue with that. Alright, go on. Have some brother-sister time. I'll be getting settled in."
"I expect to see some new artwork at least on the way when I get back."
"You won't be disappointed."
After Garrus had left the apartment, Terra set to work, giving herself a brief tour of the place before unloading everything she'd taken from her cabin. She eventually reached the conclusion that, if her intentions were to have a real break and get to know the place she'd be spending it in, she could start by taking a shower in a less military and confined setting and trading in her uniform for some civvies. She felt a lot more relaxed afterwards (not that unwinding with Garrus briefly hadn't already done that…). She was halfway through retying her hair in its standard style when she heard the terminal downstairs ping with a message. Curious, she checked it, finding Joker was asking her to meet at a sushi place to discuss a few things. She headed straight there.
"Hey, commander," Joker smirked when she made her way to his table, "get a load of this place."
She had to admit it was nice. The floor and walls happened to contain an actual fish tank which, like the one in her cabin, was rather soothing to watch. "Impressive."
"And we only had to save the galaxy twice to get a table."
She smirked. "What's this 'we' you're talking about?"
He rolled his eyes. "Ha, ha. Just be glad we're getting a break. Though I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of a bunch of strangers poking through my ship. I mean your ship!"
"Our ship, Joker. And it's best for her and all of us, no matter how much we want to be out there finishing this."
"The sooner it's over, right?" He sighed. "I might need one of those drinks with the little umbrellas."
"I'm the first human Spectre. I'll get you two umbrellas."
"Awesome use of power, boss. Speaking of which, your message said it was important?"
When he said that, all the alarms in her mind went off. "What are you talking about? I'm here 'cause I got a message from you."
He immediately saw the problem. "What? I didn't send anything."
Right on cue, a woman in an Alliance uniform rushed over. "Commander Shepard!" She bumped into someone, dropping her datapad. "Sorry!" She ducked down to grab it. "Commander, this is urgent!"
Joker groaned, shaking his head as the woman ran towards them. "Something tells me that's not the umbrella lady. And we didn't even get to the appetizers!"
Before Terra could retort, the woman was at their table. "Commander Shepard? Staff Analyst Maya Brooks. Alliance—oh, sorry." She saluted. "Alliance intelligence. There are people trying to kill you!"
Terra glanced sideways at Joker.
Joker nodded. "Yeah, I think she's aware of that."
"No!" Brooks asserted, "Not Cerberus and the Reapers, other people! New people! There's…it's…" She sighed, handing over her datapad. "Someone is hacking your accounts. I think they're targeting you."
"Big mistake," Terra sneered.
"Oh, boy!" Joker smirked, "There's the angry face!"
Terra gave the datapad a cursory glance. "Do you know who they are or what they're after?"
"No," Brooks answered, "there's no definitive intel. Last time I guessed without definitive intel, we almost landed troops on a gas giant. Which is bad!"
"Alright, from the top! What do you know?"
It was about then that a squad of mercenaries strode in. "Ladies and gentlemen! Tonight's performance is brought to you by random acts of violence!" They started shooting, sending the civilians scrambling.
Terra reacted fast, knocking over the table and pulling Joker down behind it.
"Man, I love show biz!" the merc in the lead smirked, "Spread out, boys! Find Shepard!"
Terra winced. Definitely after her, then. This wasn't good. She leaned carefully around her cover to survey the situation. It looked like the civilians had all managed to get out, but Brooks was down nearby. "Stay down, we're coming for you!" she called quietly. Then she turned to Joker. "Are you OK?"
He just curled up in pain. "Ow! My pancreas!"
Naturally, that was when one of the mercs caught sight of Brooks and dragged her to the front.
Terra groaned. That was going to make this harder. But she was never alone. She turned to Joker. "Garrus is meeting Solana nearby. Find him, tell him what happened, then find the rest of the crew."
Joker nodded, turning to the side exit and starting to sneak out. "Get Garrus, find the crew. Got it."
Unfortunately, Joker only made it halfway before one of the mercs came close enough to the table to catch sight of him, immediately taking aim on him. Unfortunately for him, he was also close enough for Terra to knock him down and then take him out with a quick thrust of her omni-blade, taking his gun.
Joker instantly turned to glare at her. "You used me as bait?!"
"Just go!"
"But you used me as bait!" Joker snapped as he left. If Terra wasn't mistaken, he left the premises calling out to passersby "See that?! Savior of the Citadel uses brittle bones guy as bait!"
Terra just rolled her eyes and waited for a chance to open fire. None of the mercs seemed to know where she was, so they were spreading out. All she had to do was wait for one to get too close again and two well-timed headshots pierced his shields, armor, and skull. To her surprise, none of the other mercs noticed. She smirked at the pistol. High power and silenced. She was going to have fun with this.
Terra Shepard wasn't exactly known for the stealthy approach, but rolling between cover, having patience before striking, and taking the time to hide the bodies left in her wake did the trick. The mercs never knew what hit them.
She raced over to Brooks, helping her back to her feet once it was clear. "You alright?"
Brooks nodded. "Yes, I think I—" Suddenly, her eyes went wide and she shoved Terra over. The laser sight she'd caught then turned to her shoulder as the offending rifle fired.
Terra reacted on instinct, grabbing the silenced pistol back and firing at the source of the shot. She took down this mercenary in one hit…then noticed too late that his muscles tensing when he died had caused one more shot to go off at the floor by her feet, resulting in a crack in the glass of the fish tank floor. "…uh oh." Before she could move, the floor shattered and she started falling.
Next thing she knew, she'd fallen about 50 stories (or at least it felt like that, it was hard to tell for sure with all the tumbling and impacts and falling objects) and she was sprawled on the floor of a maintenance walkway, drenched in fish water. She groaned as she pulled herself together, convinced herself that nothing was broken so much as bruised, and got moving.
"Commander!" Brooks came over her COMM, "Can you hear me? Are you alright?"
"Yep," Terra moaned, "feeling good…" She shook it off, starting her way down the walk. "What about you? You got hit."
"I know! I used medi-gel. A lot of it. Well, all of it, actually. And now everything's a bit bouncy!"
"…I think you used too much." Slowly recovering from the fall with every step, she hurried down from the maintenance walk to a keeper walkway and started making her way into the Ward markets. Brooks was able to inform her that there was a skycar lot across the way, so she just had to get there without getting shot down by mercs. Should be easy enough, especially with this newfound stealth approach proving to come in handy, but she wasn't taking any chances.
"Oh," Brooks popped in again, "and don't use your COMM. Well, except for me, obviously. It's been hacked. I think that's how they found you."
Oh, and here I thought it was because of the extranet message clearly hacked to set me up. Then again, the hack could be coming in now as a backup for the message not having done the trick. "Who are these guys?"
"I don't know, but they really don't seem to like you."
"…yeah, I'm sensing that." Rolling her eyes, she made her way down from the keeper catwalk and behind a market stall. She was hidden at first, but there was no way for her to jump in and hide bodies without putting herself right in the open, so she just had to rely on timing her shots. This worked for the first two before the mercs got wise and tracked her down. By then, though, she had their numbers down just enough that they were no match for her, even alone and injured.
Though the former was about to be corrected. "Terra!" the voice she loved sounded over her COMM, "Can you hear me?! Are you OK?!"
"I'm fine," she answered, "Might need a little backup, though."
"Then it's lucky for you Archangel is your fiancé. I'm on foot, but I'll be there as fast as I can."
"Excuse me, who is this?" Brooks cut back in, "You're on an unsecured channel and you're putting Commander Shepard in danger!"
"I'm doing what? Who is this?!"
Terra sighed. "Joker mentioned Staff Analyst Brooks, right? That's her. Please everybody play nice, I'm not in any position to play referee right now." Ironically, it was almost immediately after she said this that the next merc squad caught sight of her and opened fire, forcing her to duck down and stick to defense.
"Terra, it's Tali," her COMM turned back on halfway through the skirmish, "We just heard what happened. Are you alright? Can we do anything?"
"I'm fine. Garrus is on the way. You can help by finding Violet. I don't know where she went after we docked and I don't want to risk these guys going after her to get to me."
"Don't worry, I've got her," Solana cut in, "I went straight for her after Garrus ran off. Oh, and, uh, Terra? Did I hear right? Did you fall through a fish tank five minutes ago?"
Terra sighed. "Can we please talk about that part later?"
"Oh, believe me, we will."
"Wait, Terra seriously…?" Tali said, "Why does all the crazy stuff always happen to you?"
"Tali, my friend," Terra shook her head as she fired one last shot and started moving again, keeping low and scrounging thermal clips where she could, "I've been asking myself that for 16 years." She kept moving, cutting through the rest of the markets to a walkway that crossed to the skycar lot's area. Unfortunately, there was a sealed door in her way. "Brooks, I've got a path across, but C-Sec has it locked down."
"Right, because of the…well, lockdown," Brooks concurred, "I can't get through from here."
Terra quickly turned on her omni-tool and accessed the system. "Here, I think I can override it." She still wasn't exactly a tech wiz, but she knew how to access the C-Sec controls and disable them with her Spectre access. The door slid open, bringing her to celebrate her own hacking skills for once in her life. "Yes!"
Then, immediately, every alarm within five miles started going off.
"…crap."
"Terra!" Garrus cut back in, "What's going on?! I heard that from here!"
"Uh, it's all under control?" she "answered" as she stepped out to the walkway. She'd barely poked her head out before a swarm of mercs across the way caught sight of her and opened fire, forcing her to dive down behind a railing.
"'All under control'?!" Tali demanded, "There are alarms going off all over the Wards!"
Terra questioned why so many alarms going off at once still gave away her position at the center of it, but she focused on loading her weapon and taking careful aim on her ambushers. "Thought I'd make things more interesting."
"You always did have a unique way of defining that…"
"Comes with the turian side."
"Commander," EDI cut in, "did you sustain cranial damage in the fall?"
"No, we just need to sit down and have a chat about her methods," Liara sighed, clearly shaking her head.
"Hey, I like it," James smirked, "Keep 'em off balance with your crazy."
"Terra, I swear," Garrus growled, "if this turns into an Omega situation—"
"—then you get to be my knight in shining armor," Terra smirked as she popped out to headshot a sniper, "Don't pretend that doesn't make you happy."
"Right. Do we even know anything about these mercs?"
"They have guns and don't like me."
"Terra, you're not helping."
"Can we please keep this channel clear?!" Brooks finally snapped.
"Hey!" Terra retorted as she tossed back a grenade that had been thrown her way, "They called me!" After the grenade went off, she leaned out of cover to check and found her route clear enough to make a break for it. She quickly raced across the walk and down towards the lot, only having to take cover and open fire on mercenary stragglers three more times.
"Commander," Brooks said, "there's a C-Sec shuttle en route to the skycar lot if you can just get there."
"On my way."
"Good. Brooks over. No, out! Brooks out. Over and out! Brooks! OH—!"
Terra smirked to herself for a few seconds before hurrying into the lot. There were three more mercs inside, shooting at someone. She raced in, weapon at the ready, only for all three mercs to go down, one flying over to collide with the wall next to her entrance.
Garrus stood there, holstering his rifle to shake his head at her. "Honestly, I leave you alone for five minutes…"
She scoffed as she lowered her pistol and stepped closer. "Like you haven't done the same to me."
He restrained the urge to clap back, gesturing to a nearby sealed door. "Landing pad's over there, but it's behind a locked gate."
She nodded. "We better look for a control panel." She walked past him to start looking.
He watched her, admiring the way her lavender top, skirt, and black boots highlighted her figure. "Nice outfit…"
She stopped dead in her tracks to glare at him over her shoulder.
He quickly caught himself. "Control panel! Right."
She rolled her eyes (even as she smirked to herself again) and started looking around. There was no sign of any control panel, but there was a door that led into what looked like a security room. Figuring that was a good place to check, she hit the door.
It didn't open. It sealed itself.
Confused, she checked the window. There was a volus inside, fiddling with the control panel they were looking for. She quickly readied her pistol. "Stand back."
"Hold on!" Garrus came over, pushing her hand down. Ignoring her skeptical look, he rapped his talons on the glass. "Hi there. Could you open this up?"
Amazingly, the volus went along with it, unsealing the gate.
"Much appreciated."
"Please leave!"
Garrus just smirked at Terra.
She looked between him and the volus for a second… "…well, I could've done that!"
He laughed as he led her to the landing pad. "You also could've just stayed in the apartment the bad guys don't know about yet."
"Thin ice, 'Angel." She finally pushed past him and came to the landing pad, ignoring how he was clearly snickering behind her. They were just in time to see the C-Sec shuttle pull in. But she had the feeling something was wrong.
She was really starting to hate how often she was right about things like this. The door opened to reveal a whole squad of mercs aiming heavy weapons at them. She just barely moved fast enough to push Garrus behind cover. Their shields could only take so much, so she started strategizing how best to use her pistol and his rifle to—
"RRRAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Out of nowhere, a certain krogan dove through a window overhead and came crashing down on the shuttle with so much force it was grounded. He jumped down and stormed inside, a whirlwind of charges and head-butts and kicks so hard that all the mercs who weren't rendered dead or unconscious were thrown over the ledge. When it was clear, he stepped out and retrieved the heavy weapon.
Terra leaned out and beamed at the sight of him. "Wrex! What are you doing here?"
"Ah," he waved her off as he tossed her the gun and drew his own, "just butting heads with the Council over krogan expansion. Heard there was some action down here, thought you could use a hand."
Terra smirked as she checked the gun and readied it. "You weren't wrong."
As if she'd summoned it, the ceiling of the lot exploded, allowing a horde of more mercenaries to start dropping in.
"Shepard," Wrex asked even as they dove into the firefight, "we got a way out of here?!"
"Wrex, please!" she called back, "I'm a professional!"
"That's not a 'yes'!"
"It's not a 'no'!"
Garrus gave her a sharp look. "Sometimes, you really drive me crazy!"
"Only 'sometimes,' huh?"
Wrex groaned before turning to head-butt something.
Terra had felt slightly overwhelmed not long ago, but now she felt unstoppable. Her mate and one of her two favorite krogan were behind her and she had a weapon in hand the mercs couldn't withstand. If it didn't seem like the mercs were arriving in one endless swarm, she'd consider this a highlight of her time on the Normandy, mission-wise.
"Commander, you read me?" Joker finally cut in.
"Joker!" Terra responded, "We lost our ride. Where are you?"
"On my way. Picked up Brooks. Figured you'd have a few questions."
"Just hurry, alright?"
"Yeah, this is a great place to fight!" Wrex shouted, "Lots to destroy!" He accented this by firing a shotgun blast at a skycar display and causing an explosion that blew five different mercs off their feet if not burned them to death outright.
"Almost there, commander," Joker said, "Just following the gunfire."
Terra sighed, not even bothering to give Wrex a look for the wanton destruction. "Copy that."
"Sorry we're late. Had to take the scenic route."
"'Scenic route'?!" Brooks' demanding voice came over the line, "We almost crashed four times! Who taught you how to drive?!"
"…and Brooks says 'hi.'"
Terra signaled Garrus and Wrex to fall back on the other landing pad and focus on holding the mercs off, waiting for Joker to come around. Before long, their new ride pulled around and they were racing out of the mercenaries' range. That problem was solved.
Now onto the bigger problem.
"Someone wanna tell me what's going on?!" Wrex demanded as they regrouped in the apartment.
"I don't know," Garrus answered, clearly unnerved at the thought of his mate being under fire by assailants he didn't even recognize, "I've never seen those mercs before."
"I still can't believe you survived all that," Brooks commented, looking at Terra in astonishment, "They had guns. And grenades! And those drone things!"
"Yeah, I noticed," Terra said, "Any word on C-Sec's side of things?"
"No, and I didn't want to risk calling them to find out. It might make whoever we contact a target, too."
"Or they could've had inside help like Cerberus," Garrus agreed, "and that's how they got the shuttle."
Terra groaned. "So much for shore leave."
"Well…I'm sure we can still find some time off."
She gave him a brief smirk before turning to Brooks. "What about you?"
"I got shot!" Brooks all but shouted, "I took a desk job explicitly to not get shot! And then you took out 100 guys with a pistol!"
Terra blinked. "Well…yes, that did happen…"
"Who does that?! I mean, you, obviously, but besides you! …they said the medi-gel might make me jumpy. Do I seem jumpy?"
Garrus merely exchanged looks with Wrex before shrugging as if to say Sometimes humans just make no sense.
Terra elected not to respond at all. "How did you even get mixed up in all this?"
"I monitor data for Alliance intel," Brooks explained, "to prevent fraud and hacking of officer IDs. I wrote a tracking program. It's really neat. I named it Mr. Biscuits, after my cat."
"Brooks…"
"Right. Sorry. Anyway, Mr. Bis—my program detected a breach in your classified files. Soon, everything we had on you was compromised! Personnel files, mission reports—everything."
"Since when does hacking secure networks involve heavy weapon fire?!" Wrex demanded.
"Think what kind of damage they could do if they had the commander's military access codes or even her Spectre codes!"
Wrex didn't have to think for long. "Guess that explains why they want you dead, Shepard. Nothing to stop them until the damage is done."
"They would've found out they were gravely mistaken," Garrus retorted. He turned to Terra. "We might be able to track them, too. Let me see that pistol."
Terra nodded and took out the silenced pistol she'd taken off the mercs, setting it down on a nearby table.
Liara then entered and walked over. "Let me see it. I might be able to help." As she walked over, she turned on her omni-tool. "Glyph?"
The drone in question quickly appeared. "I'll begin collating relevant intel for review, Dr T'Soni."
Liara nodded to Terra. "It's good to see you in one piece. A shame about the sushi place, though. It was a favorite."
Terra sighed. "So I've heard. Where's the rest of the crew?"
"Yeah, what about those slackers?" Joker smirked as he walked in.
Terra rolled her eyes before coming over to greet him. "Been busy?"
"I found some folks who actually like being shot at."
So the door opened and the rest of the squad entered.
"Permission to come aboard?" Tali smirked.
