Chapter 1: Ghost
Kima District, Omega Station, Sahrabarik, Omega Nebula. Events of Homeworlds 3 and Dossier: Archangel. Published 4/13/22, rewritten entirely 8/30/22, last updated 9/16/22.
DISCLAIMER: revisions to published chapters happen constantly in this fic. For the most polished version, always check AO3.
Smog, smoke, and ash curled across a dead end road in Kima District. Corpses littered the avenue from sidewalk to street. As another merc fell over the body of the buddy he'd been trying to evac, the ex-commander once known as Archangel flushed his sink.
It was a hell of a day to die.
His bones ached as he dragged his rifle into position, breathed and fired. A block away, an enemy combatant's faceplate shattered and splattered the concrete.
"How are your thermal clips?"
He ejected his sink, tracked its fall into the debris. Tried to keep his subtones casual when he answered, but his mouth was too dry and his larynx too tense.
"You know how it is. Could always use a couple more."
Heavy ordnance had pounded the avenue earlier, gouged out the terrain till he'd forced the mechs to retreat for repairs. Bullets hammered the guardrail now, grinding it down, slicing overhead and smacking the ceiling. Plaster sifted down, dust on the dust of the fallen at his back.
He didn't look. A look invited memory, and memory was a mistake. He might be a poor excuse for a soldier, but as long as they stayed locked in the vault, the objective stayed clear. And he'd report for duty until he was out of commission for good.
He squeezed the trigger. Another one down.
The approach was a warzone. Enemy combatants kept mustering, kept deploying. It was an incontestable waste of men and resources, a victory assured by superior numbers and deferred by weak leadership.
This was the intermission. For now, they were disorderly, dispersed on the field, and soon to be dead.
He fired. A hostile fell. He fired some more. More hostiles fell.
He dropped into cover and shunted sinks mechanically into the breech.
Rearm. Regroup, he thought to the mercs. Stop jumping that breastwork for half a minute.
A half-minute—that was all. Time to patch new wounds, flex stiffening fingers, drink his dwindling supply of water. Thoughts of survival had dematerialized hours ago, killed by pragmatism and something more deep-seated, a basic truth: the CO went down with his men.
He set up again. Forced down the fatigue, pushed back against sleeplessness. Dad was present, a shield against the admission of weakness, a reminder of what he must do and who he ought to have been. No quarter, no retreat. Discipline and service, honor and virtue. He was a soldier, a citizen of the Hierarchy, and the son of Castis Vakarian. He had a mandate to finish what he started and no, he damn well couldn't lie down.
He squeezed the trigger, pulled the bolt, and squeezed again, muscle memory taking hold where attention faltered.
He'd always expected he'd remember life before C-Sec at the end. Solana, Mom, Dad. Before everything had gone to hell. But even now and two years dead, the commander was here too. The quiet days between missions, tinkering with the Mako on the SR1. The MSV Fedele, Saleon down the barrel of a gun and Shepard, talking him down. Ilos.
She'd been like Dad, in a way. Principled. Unflinching. Rejecting the possibility of a no-win scenario. He pulled the trigger and felt a bullet lacerate his arm, ripping a track through flesh.
—Shields were down. His fucking shields were down, and what was he, fresh out of damn basic?
He ducked and cranked the bolt. Another spent clip rolled free, fetched up against the boot of the tech specialist who'd been Monteague.
"And so he dies anyway. What was the point of that?"
"You can't predict how people react, Garrus. But you can control how you respond."
He knew he was here because of her. He'd left C-Sec to join her. Returned because she pushed him, hitting home when his father never had. He'd watched when the flag was draped over her empty coffin. Watched when the Council turned tail, dismissed the Reaper menace. He'd watched till the one disillusioned day he could watch no more, and then he'd watched himself quit, turning his back on the ones who'd turned their backs on her.
His father spoke again. It was only right that he'd be on the comm. There at the beginning, there at the end. Willing him accountable for all his damn mistakes. "No matter how bad things are falling apart around you, as long as you have at least one bullet left, you can still get the job done. Understand?"
"Understood, sir." He shifted his shoulders back to readiness and straightened his finger along the trigger.
Another platoon of mercs was scrambling over the breastwork. Outsourced labor. No company colors. Freelancers, contracted and deployed for no other reason than to soak up fire and waste his clips.
It rankled that the strategy would work. He hoped like hell that the company leaders would try the avenue. Tarak, Jaroth, Garm. Something was owed before it was all over.
The enemy were advancing, scattershot, no tactical positioning whatsoever.
One less. And two. And three. Sinks hit the floor.
Dad's voice was a constant in his ear, bracing by the fact of its presence.
"How many targets are there on the field?"
"Not many. Not yet."
"Then reload."
To obey was instinct. He checked his ordnance pack.
Touched seams.
He froze. Breathed, and reached for his ammo belt.
His bandolier.
The box at his feet, the other box at his feet, every box at his feet. Scoured to the corners and empty.
He returned to the guardrail automatically. Couched the stock against his shoulder, molded his palm to the grip. Grimed with dirt. Tacky with blood. Rounds were drumming the concrete around him, the scent of smashed cordite spiking the air. Hostiles were shouting below, words without form or meaning.
A thought penetrated the glacial stillness in his mind.
End of the line.
He knew without counting that there were seven clips in the breech. Seven clips—seven shots. Seven kills, then he could sign off for good.
It was more difficult than it should've been, to say it. He flexed his mandibles and spoke, cutting over the channel. "Can't. This is it."
He looked down the scope. Figures were scurrying around the laser dot, magnifications in miniature. "Thanks, Dad. For everything." He fired through the sudden silence over the comm.
Scratch one. Six clips.
"Listen, son." His father's subtones were steady, pitched midrange, controlled—the same they'd been every day of Garrus's life. "You finish up what you have to do there, and then you come on home to Palaven. We have a lot to sort out."
A final lesson. He nodded once, tersely, against the lens. "I have to go now, sir. Don't worry about me—I'll make it home when I can. The." His throat was tight. It shouldn't have been tight. This was the damn job and he'd done it to himself. "The odds just got a lot better."
Last wave. He realized that Dad was still on the line, waiting with him—a fleeting remark by the sliver of his brain exempt from numbers, the numbers he ran to deal death and the number of clips counting down to his.
They clambered over the breastwork singly, in pairs, in teams. It didn't matter. They were all marks and ignominious ones. Amateurs. Moving towards the wrong cover, looking in the wrong directions, stepping in the wrong places.
He should have saved a grenade. Formulated a plan to go out in a way befitting a marine and a Vakarian. Typical.
He squeezed the trigger. Five clips. The enemy scattered around the body, ran for cover. Bought themselves and him a little more time.
Three enemy combatants vaulting the breastwork. Humans, kitted out in military grade ceramic with firearms to match. The female on point was already signaling her team.
She was using Alliance hand-and-arm signs: double time, radio silence, hold fire. Advancing at a practiced clip, rifle to her shoulder, her squad keeping pace and formation on her flank. Her muzzle swept the field with intention, clocked freelancers' positions and his own as she closed the distance between them.
Command material. If she rallied other men to her, he'd have even more of a situation on his hands. The threat assessment was clear. He disregarded the freelancers as they milled and turned his sights on her.
He wondered briefly why she hadn't ordered her team into cover—she was clearly ex-military, would know full well that driving dead ahead down a field this long was suicide—and killed the thought. He'd take what he could get.
Garrus settled into the scope. Vertical angle, 62.2 degrees. Ambient air density, 0.068 grams per liter. Spin drift, 43 millimeters.
She slowed fractionally, free and clear in his sights, and her team slowed with her. From this vantage she was a faceless target in a helm.
He exhaled. The world narrowed to the stillness of her body, the symmetry of the crosshairs, the steadiness of his finger on the trigger.
Then she looked up, and eyes he hadn't seen for two years swept through his scope as she signed 'allied forces,' and he saw the N7 designation on her cuirass.
His rifle jerked and slipped off the ledge. His shoulders slammed against the guardrail, yanking him into cover.
"Garrus, eyes forward. I don't hear you shooting. Unless you're absent a rifle and your life, you keep pulling the trigger."
The CO glanced over the platform. Saren sprawled on the grass below, blood seeping from the hole in his head. No vitals. No movement.
He was breathing too hard, too fast. "I thought I just saw—"
Her face was hidden by her helmet, her voice expressionless when she turned away.
"Make sure he's dead."
Shepard.
Dad's voice cut through memory and delusion. "Focus up, son. There are hostiles on the field. Your work's not over."
—It couldn't be. It wasn't.
He steadied his rate of breath. Returned to his post. Combat stress reaction. He'd seen her because he'd been thinking of her. Because he hadn't slept, eaten, or left this perch in 48 hours and never would. That was all.
One of the freelancers had turned bold, traversing the open ground forward of his base. He fired. Ticked down the length of his life to four clips. The others had bunkered down, absent a leader to goad them out and absent the nerve to try his aim.
His reticle returned to her—threat, question, and problem. She was directing her people to cover at the freelancers' rear. Positioning indicated intent to order them forward, keep him occupied while she and her team broke for the entrance.
It was the smart tactical decision on her end. And it was the right call on his to stop letting her maneuver on his field. She wasn't the commander. Wasn't Shepard.
He locked on, straightened his finger along the trigger. This was the sound choice. It was. No one came back from the dead. No allies to be found here.
Except she moved like a veteran, and she'd seen him mow down multiple combatants, and she was still standing in the open, brazenly putting her helm in his sights and her life in his hands.
Maybe he hadn't hallucinated that hand-and-arm sign along with his dead CO's face.
Test of intention. If they were friendlies, they wouldn't return fire when attacked. If they were hostiles, they would.
He swapped in a concussive round. Set instinct against the logic that no reinforcements were incoming because no one was alive to know he needed them; need for certainty against the training that told him not to waste specialized ammo.
He squeezed the trigger. Her shields flared and sparked out as it hit.
She glanced up at his position. Signed 'allied forces' again and 'hold fire,' slower, following Alliance cues with Hierarchy ones this time.
Shepard's eyes.
She looked down the avenue again and picked up her pace. "Shields're down," he heard her report. "On my mark, proceed as discussed."
Shepard's voice.
He took cover. Flushed his clip, relief at odds with disbelief. An assist was an assist. But the circumstances were unexpected. The Shepard he'd known would never have taken a contract to execute a man. Even as a Spectre she'd toed the line, requiring her people to do the same.
—He needed to compartmentalize. Focus up. He had allies on the field, somehow, a gun in his hands. The commander would choose her moment, and until then, he just had to stay the hell alive.
He set sights on a freelancer just forward of Shepard's position. Recommitted to the numbers, the reticle. He breathed; his finger straightened.
A shotgun cracked and his mark's head burst.
His eyes snapped to Shepard. She was charging through her team's support fire, shooting left-right, the mercs in panic as she closed. They swarmed forward in full rout, driven towards his base, towards—ah.
Her tech flung an EMP, detonating the ill-concealed charges his demolitions specialist had set around the entrance before she'd fallen. The explosion rocked the building. Mercs were screaming, burning alive.
Garrus flicked his mandible. It was the first grin he'd cracked in days. "Dad, I think I have to call you later," he said. "I have allied forces incoming after all."
The sincerity carried. There was a shift in Castis's subtones to match when he answered. "Make it out alive, son."
"Yes, sir."
The line went dead.
Reserves were deploying, climbing over the breastwork. If Shepard's team aimed to rally here with him, mission objectives had been redrawn. They'd cover his six and he'd hold the rear.
He fumbled open his assault rifle with fingers gone stiff. Rehomed clips to his Mantis, and repeated the drill with his sidearm. They'd been the last resort against capture, the final bullet reserved for him. But unless Shepard was far less competent than he remembered, he could dispense with the contingencies.
Methodically he fired, flushed sinks, and fired again, eyes on his targets, ears on the battle slowly encroaching on his position. Shepard wouldn't let the enemy roll him up. That was a certainty like not much else in the damn galaxy. But when her tech penetrated the lock and the soldering failed and the door cycled open, he still snatched a visual, verified intent on reflex. The siege had shot his nerves to hell, dusted whatever trust he had in a good thing.
He settled back into his scope, willing himself to steadiness. There was one more mark on the avenue, posted up in cover but restless. Agitated. About to rabbit.
"Archangel?" Shepard asked.
Garrus held up a finger.
The freelancer's helm breached cover, snapped back as he pulled the trigger. His body thudded down. And for a second, two seconds, three, his ears rang with the impossible silence, a vacuum absent gunfire or ordnance or the boots of enemy combatants racing down the road.
—Clear. Fucking clear. No targets on the field; allies delivered from beyond the grave by airdrop, divine intervention, or both.
He toggled the safety and unfolded. Levered himself up on his rifle, knees and back in full protest against their first real change in position in days. Gave up halfway across the room, and settled onto the munitions crates he'd emptied hours ago before he could embarrass himself by falling over.
He didn't know how she was here. Didn't know who'd sent her or why or what the hell she was doing on Omega. But she was back among the living, and that was goddamn enough.
"Shepard." He unsealed his helm and set it aside. "I thought you were dead."