Hi Mom,
I heard you're back in contact range. Excellent. I have so much to tell you. Oh wait. No I don't. Because it's classified.
Got a favour to ask. I was hoping you'd be able to send me that old N-school training program with those small squad scenarios? I hate the revised version – it's the only one I can find on the officers' extranet cache.
Thanks.
Love,
Your daughter, Commander Camina
Message sent.
Cam,
Good to hear from you. Run was routine. Crew is restless- the return is always harder than setting out. It's going to be a stampede to get off the ship for their shore leave once we dock at Arcturus. I can already tell.
"Old school" vids are attached. You understand you just called your First Contact War vet mother "old", right?
Having trouble with one of your squad? Rumour is you're utilizing some "off-world talents" for the mission.
Love,
Your mother, XO Hannah
Message received.
Mom,
Got it in one. Asari biotic with decent combat skills (especially for a scientist). But she has never actually fought with a team before the Normandy. I found this out the hard way, naturally. Thanks for the vids.
Love,
Your daughter, Commander Camina
Message sent.
Okay, Mom, so what I can't mention in my message to you is that "the asari scientist" almost killed herself yesterday. Liara's biotics are sophisticated – way beyond anything I've got – but she has a long way to go when it comes to working in a team.
I know this is her first time in any kind of active combat situation. But there are far, far too many "firsts" here for such a high-stakes mission. It's my first command. It's Joker's first "real" ship – his words, not mine. It's Vakarian's first time working without oversight, and, frankly, it's making him reckless. His plan to gun Saren down without trial was…well…it was something, alright. And then Tali, of course, who is surprisingly adept when it comes to combat (although maybe I'm biased by our shared admiration for shotguns). I guess Wrex's jaded experience makes for a nice change of pace, given everything else – still don't really know why he's here. Boredom, maybe?
Maybe I could spend more time dealing about my own imposter syndrome if I wasn't dealing with everyone else's.
And, I know he's your boss, but I have such mixed feelings about these pieces of intelligence Admiral Hackett has been feeding me. His tip about the geth outposts was genuinely useful – it could have lead to something about Saren, just bad luck that it didn't. But this mission on Luna on the other hand…from the start, I could tell it was way outside any Council-sanctioned parameters. But it was on Luna. And it involved AI. I've spent so much time dealing with geth and listening to Tali's stories about being in exile from her homeworld. That's not nothing I could walk away from.
I think Hackett knew that, too. I don't like that he handfed me a clean-up job he (or someone in Alliance) needed swept under the rug. I don't think he would have asked me if he did have better options – I'll give him that much – but I worry about the precedent this sets. I'm sure he'll try to manipulate me into other messy jobs too. I'll have to keep closer tabs on that, but, honestly, I'm not sure what my defense can be. The intel is good. There is a serious threat. Lives are at stake. How can I walk away?
Anyhow, the point is, the mission was mess from the start. We found the facility easily enough, but there were three different consoles in three different buildings that had to be shut down manually. The AI quickly recognized us as a threat and powered up an arsenal of turrets. In the second building, I charged into the room too quickly – one of the rocket drones fried my shields in one hit. And then hit me again. I collapsed just inside the doorway, just barely conscious enough to try to lift the nearest turret biotically – with no luck.
Next thing I knew, Liara screamed my name, left her cover, and stood over me, firing her pistol wildly at the turret. We were about twenty seconds into the firefight. The drones have practically no re-load delay – she was spattered with bullets, but she drew up a barrier. Still, I knew another round would finish her. I screamed at her to get back to cover, and she glanced down at me. She almost seemed surprised at the order. I swear, there was something in her eyes I had never seen before. Liara has radiated nothing but warmth and sincerity since I met her. But, for a moment, her gaze was distant. Merciless. And definitely insubordinate. She remained exactly where she was. So I tried to drag myself out from her shadow and back towards the doorway. Everything hurt.
Tali, thankfully, kept her wits about her. She overloaded the nearest drone and sank a couple of shotgun rounds into its metal plating. It whined – and then crashed onto the floor. Liara hauled me up and pulled me back around the corner of the doorway. I hit the medi-gel dispenser and the uglier points of pain along my chest faded with the rush of painkillers and contusion suppressants flooding into my system.
I regained my command and divided up the drones for them. We finished them off – except for one, whose sensors must have been malfunctioning because it remained far back in the room. I moved into the room, but Liara put out a hand to stop me.
"Please, Commander, allow me. You're injured."
My glare apparently translated perfectly into asari – for all her complaints about struggling to read others, Liara certainly received that message loud and clear. I did see a glimmer of the defiance from earlier in her eyes, but she wisely bowed her head and stepped back.
I was able to sneak up on the last drone – a couple of rounds from my shotgun put it down. And then I signaled the all-clear.
The rest of the mission was disturbing. After the first bunker, the AI threw kinetic barriers over the doorways and in front of the consoles. They were completely ineffectively—one or two shotgun blasts took each of the barriers down without issue—but the gesture was so pathetic, so desperate, and all too human. Logically, a VI would never waste energy on a method of defense that proved ineffective. It would have tried one shield and then spent its processing power searching for alternatives. If none could have been found…there would have been nothing else for it to do. But this one kept fighting.
The worst part was at the end. I shut it down and a line of binary started repeating across the screen, just before the last of the power left it.
Tali's shoulders tensed as she read it, so I knew to expect something unpleasant.
"It says…'help'," she offered, hesitantly.
None of us knew what to say about that.
But Liara…Liara was a problem I needed to deal with. I was grateful none of the Alliance crew had come with. Hackett's caginess over the situation told me this mission would be better without Alliance personnel, and I wanted Tali's tech expertise. Remember how you taught me to deal with insubordination? To never label it as such – then you've lost the battle – but to shut it down by turning it into stupidity? I read Liara the riot act once we were back in the Mako. I didn't call it insubordination – she's technically a "consultant" anyhow – but I explained to her in very precise terms how if she couldn't follow orders, she could expect to remain shipside. She is a scientific and intelligence asset – we need her as leverage against her mother and we need her expertise on the Protheans. She needed to remember that was her role – not to provide cover for me.
She listened intently. In our last conversation, she'd accidentally confessed to wanting to "study" me and she'd fallen apart with embarrassment. There was something…endearing…about how awkward it all was. Today, as I ripped into her, she remained remarkably cool. She watched me as if she were studying my rage. I hated it. Or, at least, I think I hated it.
It doesn't matter. She nodded her head in something approaching acceptance—if not quite reaching it—at the end of my tirade.
"But you, Shepard, you're also an asset, are you not? With all you know about the Protheans? I feel you are more valuable than me. It made…sense…to protect you."
The tenderness in her voice as she spoke those last words deflated my rage. I heaved a sigh.
"It's not your call," I said, but not unkindly, I hope. "That's my job. That's why I'm in charge. To weigh the options, to balance acceptable costs. You gave up your cover rather than providing suppressing fire –that wasn't the optimal strategy. Tali could have taken out those drones if you hadn't been worrying about me."
Tali twitched at her name. The poor thing looked like she wanted to be anywhere but stuck in the Mako with the two of us.
"I understand," Liara said solemnly. "I apologize. It has been a long time since I have been part of a combat team. I am used to dealing with pirates and raiders entirely on my own – or, occasionally, I have needed to protect assistants who were much less biotically adept as myself."
Which brings me to the need to run drills using those scenario vids. More practice with team-based tactics is clearly needed. I've already forwarded the vids to her – I'll check on her later to see how she's doing with them. And we'll see if this turns into a problem. That look in her eye…I don't know what to make of that, Mom. It's a side of her I haven't seen before now.
Love,
Your daughter, Commander Camina
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