Thank you for reading!
Shepard was still on the call with the asari councilor when Garrus and James reached the CIC, so he left James and Traynor to debate chess versus mixed martial arts as being the best mental training exercise. He was fairly sure neither of them was going to come out the victor in that argument.
EDI swiveled her chair around to face Garrus as he entered the cockpit. "Garrus, is Shepard ... 'all right'?"
"She will be," he said, with an assurance he didn't really feel.
"I see." He had the sensation that EDI could see his bravado for what it was. "I could ask her a question about human behavior, to give her something else to think about."
Garrus shook her head. "Not helpful."
"Humor, then? I know a joke about penguins."
"Not that, either, I don't think, EDI."
"A lively rendition of 'La Marseillaise'?"
Not being quite sure what that was, Garrus was hard put to know what to answer. "I think we're going to have to let Shepard work through this on her own, EDI. But I appreciate your willingness to think outside the box."
She nodded thoughtfully. "Shepard has always found a way to cope before."
"She's never lost so badly before."
"Yeah, I guess the asari are wishing they had fewer dancers and more commandos right about now," Joker said bitterly.
"In case you hadn't noticed, we just lost a few million more people," Garrus told him. "Angry as I am at the asari for dragging their feet and hiding things from us until it was too late, I don't think this is the time."
Joker reached up to the screen in front of him, scrolling through the display until he found the map he was looking for. He tapped on a dot in the middle of the map. "You see this? Tiptree. Little colony out in the ass-end of nowhere. My dad lives there. So does my sister." He swallowed hard, his jaw clenching. "Reapers rolled in about two weeks ago. So you can assume I'm generally aware that there's a war on."
"I'm sorry, Joker."
"Yeah. Me, too. Liara found reports of refugees landing on some nearby salarian colonies. She didn't have names, but she said it was mostly children. Gunny—Hilary, my sister—is only fifteen. So now I get to be the asshole hoping that maybe only my dad died. If you can use the word 'hope' in a case like that."
There was a silence in the cockpit. EDI watched Joker and Garrus looked out across the stars, knowing just what Joker felt like. He had imagined it so many times, his father dead and his sister rescued, his sister dead and his father rescued, both of them dead … but he had never been able to bring himself to hope that they might both escape. "Right now, I'd take any kind of hope I could get," he said, hearing his subharmonics rasp with the force of his emotion.
"Ah, god, Garrus, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."
"I know you weren't. But seriously, if you get it, then why the jokes?"
"It's what I do. And I figured I'd try them out on you before I moved on to Shepard."
"You think Shepard's in any shape to be joked with?"
"I know she's not! According to EDI, the metabolic scans of Shepard's armor say she's under more stress now than she was during the Skyllian Blitz. Like, more than Elysium, where it was pretty much her versus ten thousand batarians who were trying to kill her. And the last time I had a briefing with Anderson, he told me to take care of her. The guy leading the resistance on Earth is more worried about her than he is about himself. And I'm supposed to help!"
Garrus understood that emotion all too well. How many times had he lain awake next to Shepard worrying that another loss, another setback, another detour, would be the one that broke her? "She's going to be all right," he said now, but his words sounded hollow even to himself. "She always has been before."
"The hell she has! She's like half robot at this point." He glanced at the copilot's seat. "Sorry, EDI."
"No offense taken."
Joker looked back up at Garrus. "If she breaks, it's my fault."
"Your fault?"
"When the Collectors blew up the first Normandy, she died because I wouldn't leave. Because she had to come back for me."
"She did that because she cares about you. And because she's a good captain. You know Shepard as well as I do, Joker. She would have been the last one off the ship no matter who it was. In some misguided sense of honor, she might have stayed and gone down with it anyway." Garrus looked down at his old friend intensely. "No one blames you. Not her, not me—not anyone."
From behind him, he heard the familiar, well-beloved voice. "I couldn't leave the best pilot in the galaxy behind, now, could I?" Shepard stepped up next to Garrus. There were fresh tracks of tears on her face, but she was calm, her brown eyes were clear, and there was even a little smile on her face.
"I … suppose that wouldn't have looked good on your record," Joker conceded. "Shepard, you okay?"
"No. But we have work to do. I'll have time enough to sort through what happened today later." She looked up at Garrus. "Join me in the War Room? I think James might bust something if he has to wait any longer."
"At your service."
EDI had followed them out of the cockpit, and Liara and Kaidan were waiting with James and Traynor. The group of them moved through the checkpoint into the War Room. Shepard faced them all. "We lost today. I'm so mad and heart-sick I could—" She caught Liara's eye, reaching out to squeeze her friend's arm. "But I won't, because there's no time for that. James thinks we should track Cerberus down and kick them in the balls, and I'm disposed to agree. Anyone know where they're hiding?"
Blank looks all around. EDI turned and looked pointedly at Traynor, who shook her head violently, but the robot's gaze remained firmly on her face. Traynor sighed. "All right. There is something." She flushed as every pair of eyes in the room turned to stare at her. "I was able to track Kai Leng's shuttle through the relay and extrapolate its destination. But the signal disappeared, somewhere in the Iera system."
"Naturally," Shepard muttered.
"It's not just gone, though. It's being actively blocked. Something is interfering with all signal activity in that region of space. Someone doesn't want anyone knowing what's going on there."
"Commander, the Iera system is home to Sanctuary and little else," EDI said.
"Sanctuary?" Garrus frowned. "Isn't that supposed to be a safe haven for war refugees? Maybe that's why they're blocking the signal, so the Reapers can't find them?"
Shepard frowned. "You think this is worth checking out, Traynor? EDI?"
Traynor stood up straight, standing behind her numbers. "Yes, Commander, I do."
"If Specialist Traynor hadn't examined the data so astutely, the interference would have been undetectable."
"Nice work, Traynor," Kaidan said.
"Agreed. You've given us a shot—now let's make sure we don't waste it. EDI, set a course for Sanctuary."
"Right away, Commander."
"The rest of you, get ready. I'll be damned if Cerberus takes me by surprise again," Shepard said grimly.
