Chapter 3
"I don't like this, Commander," said Miranda.
After going over some final details, Hackett had bid him farewell, and Shepard had called his GCE to the briefing room. They were standing around the table, with Miranda and Garrus on his left and right, respectively. Shepard looked around him, trying to gauge the reactions of his team. Some, like Legion and Samara, were impassive or indifferent. They would follow him, regardless of personal feelings or opinions. Others, like Grunt and Zaeed, were eager for a good fight, no matter the venue or opposition. It was the third group, the skeptics, that worried him, especially since their reasons for not wanting to go to Terra Nova weren't entirely invalid.
"We're less than a week from hitting the Collector Base," Miranda continued. "We've already taken more than enough risks assembling the team."
"Miranda, you heard what Shepard said," said Jacob. "We've got a batarian staging ground on a human planet that could be setting up for an all-out assault on Arcturus. You telling me you don't want to stop this?"
"Of course not," Miranda countered without missing a beat. "What I'm saying is that Admiral Hackett himself told Shepard that they already have marines – marines who are specifically qualified for this type of operation – to go in and do their jobs without our help."
"Many factors at play here," added Mordin. "Could be simple. Go in, get intel, get out. But always potential for unaccounted or unlikely possibilities. Any casualties at this point could severely impact GCE's effectiveness. However, understand Hackett's need for us. May have to get messy, get dirty. Sees value in our combat ability. Also personally eager to see demonstration and refinement of collective team's capabilities."
More voices came up, some rising in volume and intensity. Shepard closed his eyes and sighed internally. He knew there would be dissent to his decision, but that didn't mean it stung any less to bear witness to it. There was a small voice in his head that was already berating him.
You see this? This is who you've gathered – a rag tag band of terrorists, criminals, deviants, and enemies of humanity. This is your team? Is this even a team?
…
"What happened to being humanity's sword and shield, cheerleader?" Jack sneered. "Some fucking principles you have."
"The Collectors and Reapers are a greater threat than any batarian raid," Miranda shot back, tone cold as ice. Whether she believed Jack was making a legitimate criticism or was just trying to rile her up was anyone's guess.
"Commander, have you considered that this may be a trap?" asked Thane. "It is no secret that the Alliance is searching for you, actively or otherwise. They may be luring us into a–"
"Admiral Hackett's not like that," interrupted Garrus. "He's seen Shepard in action against Saren and he sees what we're doing to stop the Collectors now."
"Perhaps this isn't up to Admiral Hackett," said Samara. "He may have been ordered by his superiors to send Shepard the initial message."
"Shepard?" asked Tali tentatively.
"Shepard, listen to me."
"It's not right for us to just sit back and–"
"Shepard, we can't risk it. Our team's–"
"Shepard–"
"Shepard?"
"Shepard!"
"Shepard!"
"Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the SSV Normandy, designation FFS-001."
"Shepard…please…"
Shepard's hand clenched.
He breathed slowly as, one by one, those in the room grew silent, awaiting a response from him.
"Commander?" said Miranda.
Breathe in…one…two…three…four…
He would have one chance to get them on his side – not physically, as they were all committed to him one way or another, but emotionally.
Breathe out…one…two…three…four…
He had to play this carefully.
Okay…ready.
"Tell me, Lawson," he started, "how old were you in 2170?"
Miranda blinked in confusion, but answered nonetheless, her prodigal mind easily making the basic calculation.
"Twenty years, Commander."
"And you, Taylor?"
"Thirteen, sir," Jacob answered after a short pause.
"Krios?"
"I believe I was roughly…twenty-five Earth years old."
"Tali, Zaeed, Samara."
He was no longer just asking.
"I wasn't even a teenager back then."
"Heh, I was just hitting my forties."
"Nine hundred and seventeen, Shepard."
Shepard nodded at each of their answers.
"I was sixteen," he said. "Some of you might not remember where you were or what you did at that age…but I do."
The first to understand his implication was Samara, a flash of recognition running through her serene gaze, wise and burdened with centuries of her own doubts and hardships that she suppressed under a Zen-like blanket of conviction.
"Mindoir."
The rest of the GCE followed suite, Miranda being one the next to address him after seeing it.
"Commander…" her tone was firm but held an element of restraint. Regardless of the rapport they'd built with each other, this was a topic that she knew she had to tread lightly around. Just as Shepard respected her plight under her father, even she was willing to add a touch of empathy to her usual stoic professionalism. "We understand that you suffered greatly at the hands of the batarians. But this doesn't have to be your fight."
"I was sixteen," Shepard repeated, pretending not to notice the small huff of frustration from his Executive Officer. "I was walking home from school. Final period had been science and I'd botched an experiment trying to measure the planet's gravitational acceleration with a pendulum. There was a sandpit near the pathway where a couple of kids, maybe three or four years old, and their mother were playing. They had a red shovel and a blue bucket and were trying to make a hill with a moat."
He put his hands behind his back and took a few paces left, leaving him to stare blankly at a wall.
"When the colony's alarm sounded, I just stood there for a bit. It didn't quite register in my mind that we were under attack. The mother had already grabbed her kids and was shouting at me to follow her to the nearest shelter. By the time I'd snapped out of it, I could already hear the engines of approaching shuttles."
He let out a small sigh.
"Everything after that became fuzzy. There were gunshots, screams, heat, wind, blood, cuffs, pleading…laughter…and running. For as long as I could, I ran…I ran through the streets, into the bushes, back onto pavement, with no idea where the hell I was going. I just ran on…and on…and on."
He turned back to face his GCE. Their receptions to his account were more or less as expected. Everyone here was a veteran. They'd all seen their share of horrors, both on and off the battlefield. For some, it motivated them to keep fighting, so that they may put an end to whatever was causing the galaxy so much grief. For others, it fuelled their bloodlust, and the need to become re-immersed in the whirlwind of rage that they had baptised their souls in. And for the unlucky and kind of heart, it wore away at their conscience, day by day, fight by fight. One day, it would be too much, and they would break. But not today.
To all of them, the story of a doomed colony kid was, while tragic, by no means the worst thing they had seen. That was fine by him. He didn't need their sympathy, only their understanding.
The jump through the Omega 4 Relay would be, to all their knowledge, the last triumphant act of defiance in a long string of preparations to bring an end to the Collectors and forestall the Reapers' arrival by just that little bit longer. With that in mind, he'd been more than willing to hear his team's every wish, every concern, and seen them resolved to the best of his ability. But now, it was Shepard's turn to get his own deliverance.
"I was hit by a stray round, somewhere in my gut. It might have been the batarians or the colony's militia, I never found out. I was told later that it had missed the aorta and had lodged itself in my intestines. Lucky for me, it plugged the hole it had created – stopped me from bleeding out."
His hands twitched without prompting from him, itching to pat himself on the scar that had marked the end of his time on Mindoir.
"I fell, but kept trying to run. When I couldn't get up, I crawled. There was an explosion nearby and the shockwave knocked me out cold. The batarians left me for dead. When the Alliance arrived, they found me buried under a mound of rubble and had to dig me out. I lost everything that day and all I could do was run. It didn't matter that I was only sixteen."
This wasn't the first time he'd told this story. He'd seen the psychologists and psychiatrists the Alliance had referred him to when he'd first enlisted. He hadn't tried to hide his past, banking on the notion that proving his honesty would outweigh whatever concerns they would identify with his psyche, and for that one instance, the gambit had paid off. But this was the first time he was telling his crew.
"When I was twenty-two, my battalion was on leave on Earth when the Skyllian Blitz happened. We boarded the first transports to Elysium that MARFORCOM (Marine Forces Command) could send our way. By the time we got to the Petra Nebula, it was already over."
His reunion with Kaidan on Horizon had hurt. They'd both said some things they regretted. One of Kaiden's sharpest barbs had been something he'd been trying to tell himself from the day he'd been revived.
"I'm an Alliance soldier. Always will be."
If only you knew, Alenko.
He allowed a bit of steel to enter his voice.
"Now, Hackett has asked me to stop what's shaping up to be another raid. Another Elysium. Another Mindoir."
Again, Shepard had already made up his mind. He just needed his crew to understand that, just this once, this was about him. Was it weakness? Yes. As their leader, it was his job to keep a clear head and think logically about their approach. But he couldn't. Not this time. Contrary to what Miranda had said, this was his fight. It was his fight to make peace with the trauma that still lurked in the shadows that only he could see. He trusted his team leaders to do their part once they hit the relay. But could he trust himself, when in the back of his mind, there was another threat that he could have stopped, but chose not to?
No.
"You're concerned about this being a trap," he said, directing his gaze to a certain few faces, "and I can't in good conscience tell you it won't be. What I can tell you is that, no matter what the Alliance thinks of me, I trust Hackett. When the Council tried shut me down, he and Anderson were there. When Sovereign was tearing apart the Citadel, he was ready to jump through the fire to bring it down. I have faith in him, completely and utterly that he will not bring me in to the Alliance – not until the Collectors are dead."
He did a quick once-over of the room.
Jacob's face was solemn, reminiscent of a similar time, long ago when he'd still had that idealistic spark that had pushed him and so many others to enlist in the first place. Even if for a moment, Shepard could see that spark flare up again. He would follow.
Tali had tilted her head back slightly, her violet eyes telling him what he already knew – that even with her all her doubts and fears, she would follow his lead with absolute trust.
Zaeed was paid to serve under his command and was just as invested in spilling batarian blood as anyone who had seen the atrocities they could commit. He would follow.
Mordin was willing to see the mission from Hackett's perspective. His own mind had been racing, playing back the briefing Shepard had told them about. He understood the risks, but also saw the opportunities and justifications that he'd eventually determined to be sufficient enough to warrant said risks. He would follow.
Garrus wouldn't need convincing – he was already onboard with Shepard's decision – but he still needed the affirmation. This would be his chance to prove himself worthy of the trust Shepard had placed in him, and the chance to drive the demons that followed him from his time on Omega out of his head and leave him completely focused for the final jump. He would follow.
The others – Jack, Samara, Legion, Grunt and Thane – had all pledged themselves to him through in their own ways and under different circumstances. They would follow.
Then he made sure to look at Miranda specifically. Her skepticism, pragmatic and grounded as always, would be the greatest obstacle to the mission. If he couldn't sway her, it could cause havoc in the GCE's cohesion. He recalled the fight to relocate Orianna from Illium, how he had assisted her in ensuring her sister's safety. How afterwards, she had shown the first true cracks in her demeanour. This was the Miranda he was appealing to. Just as he had faith in Hackett–
"Now, I'm asking you to have faith in me."