"Problem, Joker?"
The pilot, a scowl on his face, was limping from the helm toward the CIC when the voice said his name, and he slowed. Shepard was standing on the promontory of the galaxy map, unfamiliar faces scattered about the CIC with her.
"Hell yeah, there's a problem," Joker said without pause, fixing on her. "EDI hasn't forwarded any of my maintenance reports this morning. It looks like they're upgrading nav software but they shouldn't have to take her offline for that. This is exactly why I wanted to stay on board. Do you know how long it's going to take to reboot her? Who knows what else these fumble-fingered goons have been doing to her!"
"You were receiving maintenance reports from EDI?" Shepard asked, her expression neutral. "Aren't you supposed to be on leave?"
"Well, yeah, but so are you," he said tersely.
"What I do is commander's prerogative," she said. "What you do is obey orders, Joker."
"Fine, fine. As soon as I make sure they haven't started swapping her wires around to rig her to start singing Daisy Bell or something, I'll leave."
Her eyes narrowed at him a little, and she finally straightened and stepped down off the promontory. "The Alliance repair crews know what they're doing, and you are under orders," she said. One of the unfamiliar men cleared his throat a little, almost imperceptibly.
"Yeah, but-"
"Joker," Shepard said sternly, then sighed. "I'll tell you what. Carter here will go with you down to the AI suite and you can reassure yourself that EDI is just fine. After that, you will leave my ship, and if I see your boot leather so much as on my dock before leave is over, I will throw you in the brig. Is that clear?"
"C'mon, Shepard, seriously?"
"Is that clear?"
"Fine. Sure. Thanks."
The man who had cleared his throat nodded and gestured at the lift. Joker started to limp that way as Shepard returned to the promontory. As soon as the lift doors shut he looked at the stranger.
"Sheesh, she breaks one restaurant with her face and turns into Miss Snippy Pants."
"I would exercise a bit more care when you speak to her," Carter said, and Joker snorted.
"Please, it's just Del. I know she seems a little intimidating, especially when you first meet her, but she's really just a push-over. Bit odd she's not more concerned about EDI being offline, she doesn't like it when people mess with her crew. Who are you, anyway?"
"The VI is crew?" Carter asked, ignoring the question. Joker gave a bit of a shrug.
"Well, yeah, kinda," he said. "As far as Shepard has always treated her."
The lift door opened on the crew deck and Joker took a step forward to head off, then jolted to a halt. Another unfamiliar face, a goon who looked like had muscles on his nostrils, was blocking his path, holding a gun up to his face.
"Uh, what the hell is this?"
"Just relax, Joker," Carter said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "This isn't your stop."
The goon stepped into the lift with them and Carter closed the door, selecting the cargo deck.
"I don't know what you guys are doing, but Shepard is going to fuck you up when she finds out," he said.
"I think we'll take our chances," Carter said with some amusement, as the lift door opened again. Goon gave Joker's shoulder an unfriendly shove.
"Move it."
"Hey, watch it!" Joker half stumbled. "I'm moving it! Lay off numb-nuts!"
As they stepped out into the cargo hold, Goon directed Joker toward the door to the small brig, while Carter headed off into the hold itself. As Joker limped toward the brig door, his eyes flickered upward just slightly, a smile threatening to break out on his face.
Goon opened the brig door, nudging him through it. Inside, the security field that contained the small cell was already on, the cell itself occupied. Nan and Chakwas looked up from where they sat, getting to their feet as Goon pointed the weapon at them.
"Company, ladies," he said. Then to Joker, "Don't be a hero. You do anything other than step in there with them and I'll empty their skulls, and then yours."
He powered down the field, allowing Joker to limp inside, before he powered it up again. As soon as he had, he retreated over to the door, holstered his weapon, and went to parade rest.
"Joker-" Helen began, but the pilot was already rounding on her.
"What the hell is going on?" he demanded loudly, his back to the guard. He winked at the women even as he shouted, then gestured to his legs. "I come aboard because EDI is offline and these jackasses-?"
"Are you hurt, Joker?" Helen asked, as Nan returned his wink.
"I don't know, he pushed me at one point. I think my ankle may have given way a little." As she bent toward his feet, he looked at Nan. "What the hell are you two doing in here? Does Shepard know?"
"She's the one who put us in here," Nan said. "I don't know what's happening. She came back to the apartment without Liara or the rest of the crew, and said she had to take us into protective custody, that Mr. Strange had found out about the place and might come after us. She hasn't told us anything else."
"Wait, the rest of the crew is missing?" Joker asked. As he and Nan carried on this conversation, Helen was busy at work. Examining Joker's braces, she quickly noted the additions to it that Tali and Brooks had put together. Removing these, she began to assemble the 'spare' parts together.
Carter headed further into the cargo bay after Bucks had taken the pilot to the brig. The massive doors were open, the ramp extended so that the work crews could move needed equipment and supplies in and out without all trying to funnel through the helm. Three men were in the bay, all Cat6. An Atlas stood idle in the center of the bay. The man working on it straightened and saluted as Carter went past, heading for the ramp.
"Where's the work detail that's supposed to be loading the new engine capacitors?" Carter asked.
"Haley, Shepard's security chief, found something wrong with their inventory manifest," he said. "He's outside with them now trying to clear the error up- ah. Here he comes now."
Sgt. Haley appeared on the ramp and started toward them. Carter held up a hand and joined him. "Sergeant? Is there a problem?"
Haley paused, regarding him. "And you are?"
"Lt. Rick Carter," he said. "Captain Shepard transferred several of us in last night."
Haley's already sour look deepened. "She didn't pass any transfer notifications to me."
"You'll have to ask her about that. She's up in the CIC right now."
"Then I will go and speak with her. In the meantime, we've had four engine capacitors delivered without the proper inspection's paperwork. I've got a whole crew standing idle out on the dock because that incompetent women couldn't sign off on an inspection sheet properly. Come with me, I'll need to make sure the transfers have been signed properly as well- God knows it will be a miracle if she isn't using the lot of them as coasters for her beer."
Carter fell in next to Haley as they headed toward the lift. Unseen behind them, a long tentacle lowered from the cargo bay roof, deftly snagging the man working on the Atlas and whipping him out of view upward before he had a chance to even cry out in surprise.
"It is amazing how many members of her crew talk about her with such disrespect," Carter said. "First that helmsman, and now you."
"Give it time, Lt. Carter," Haley said coldly. Behind them, another Cat6 soldier vanished up into the air in the grip of a tentacle. "The woman is good in battle, I'll give her that. And the aliens she's decided to chum around with practically kiss her boots, but she's very little like you may have heard. She's hotheaded, bullish, lazy, and has no time for anything unless it's blowing something up or playing house in her quarters with that asari."
The third Cat6 man vanished upward, as Haley and Carter stepped up into the lift, the door snapping closed behind them.
As the lift closed, Riot hurried across the roof of the cargo bay toward the brig door. The men she'd snagged were behind her, plastered to the ceiling in swaths of mucus, unconscious. While such mucus was usually only produced and used by the drones in construction, queens as well could produce it. Riot had never had need to, but taking out those men had been kind of fun. The moment she'd lassoed them, she'd sent such a bright riotous blast of color into their minds as to literally knock them unconscious. That particular ability was only held by queens, and it was the reason that Grunt and the others of Aralakh company had named her Riot to begin with. Unlike humans, krogans apparently thought such intense blasts of color were fun, almost imparting a bit of giddy, harmless intoxication to them.
Haley had been right. He'd come up to her earlier that morning as she was helping the repair crews, and in a single touch he'd told her all that was happening and what she needed to do. He'd said that Shepard wanted her to stick to the roof of the cargo hold, because apparently humans had a real problem looking up for danger. Sure enough, not a single person had ever just looked up to see the young queen hovering right over their heads.
As she reached the door of the brig, she dropped back down to the floor. Almost in the same moment, the brig door opened and Joker, Nan, and Helen came out. The makeshift taser that Chakwas had assembled from the extra pieces of his braces was laying on the unconscious Cat6 guard's chest, and Joker had the man's pistol in his hand. Behind him, Nan was carrying the thin tools that had also been secreted in his braces, that had allowed them to short out the security barrier from inside and release them.
"Riot, good job," Joker said as he saw the cargo bay was clear behind her.
"That is a bit disturbing," Chakwas said, looking up and seeing the three unconscious mercs stuck in wads of green slime to the roof of the bay. "Are they injured?"
"Do you really care?" Joker asked her.
"At the moment, I suppose not," she said.
"Ok, Riot, I saw one man at the helm, unarmed. Part of the repair crew, not one of Cat6. He's the only member of the repair crew on board right now. The rest are all Cat6. There are four or five in the CIC proper. That's where Del Two Point No is. When the lift door opened on the crew deck I saw about six around the mess behind Goon here. My guess is we're gonna have another two or three down in engineering. We'll wait here. Go knock down the gates. You know what to do."
Del had the scope of her sniper up against her eye as she watched Haley talking to the repair crew on the dock. When he took his leave of them and headed toward the cargo bay door, he looked in her direction and gave the slightest of nods.
"All right, we're clear. Let's go."
Ashley, Jack, Wrex, Tali, Vega, and Javik closed in on the Normandy dock from all directions, Del and Liara abandoning their watching post three slips over to join them. Wrex, Javik, and Jack headed into the cargo bay as Ash rounded up the confused work crews and started to clear them off the slip. Vega, Tali, Liara, and Del went into the gangway joining to Normandy's helm door, and stepped into the airlock, but did not head immediately aboard.
"Right there, at your feet," Tali said as Shepard scrutinized the floor panels. Giving a nod, Del crouched and lightly rapped on one with her knuckles. A returning rap came a moment later, and then the escape hatch opened.
Designed to allow crew evacuations, the hatch could only be opened from the inside. Del caught hold of the hatch, hefting it all the way open, then took hold of Riot's waving appendage. Her dark eyes fogged a moment as she spoke with the young rachni, then she released it and nodded.
"Riot's cleared out the cargo bay. Nan, Helen, and Joker are fine and will be hitting the infirmary and the AI suite to get EDI back online. Wrex and his team will clear out the crew deck and make sure they can. According to Joker we've got one man at helm, unarmed; repair crew, not one of the mercs. There are about five Cat6 in the CIC including our special bitch, and a couple in engineering. Haley will be up in the CIC as well and should be able to seal off the interior crew doors to isolate any other unknowns. Tali, Vega, your goal is engineering. We'll clear the CIC."
Vega and Tali vanished into the hatch, Del and Liara following a moment later. The crew evacuation tunnel let out into the helm, but it also had another hatch that joined into the maintenance crawlspaces and work-shafts that ran all through the ship. Riot quickly got out of Vega and Tali's way so that they could take the shafts that lead down to engineering, then moved out again to join Del and Liara. Silently, the three of them crept along the length of the ship toward the CIC. One of the exit hatchways was little more than a floor grate, and once there they could see a little into the CIC, and hear a lot better. Del listened closely, then gently reached over and touched Riot's leg. The rachni sent a little, delighted spin of color back in response, then slowly moved off into the dark.
Gesturing, Del signaled to Liara the number of people she believed were in the CIC and where they stood. The asari nodded her understanding, and shifted over to another grate over on the starboard edge of the room. Del stayed where she was, rifle tight in hand, eyes closed as she listened. As she waited.
Then, her omni-tool buzzed on her wrist, and like the dead rising from the very earth, she, Liara, and Riot surged upward into the Normandy's CIC.