Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.
Author Notes: I realize the cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode was evil. But it is resolved now. Please enjoy.
Episode 73: Anglerfish [Part II]
Before Shepard could open her mouth to issue the order, time ran out. A plume of crimson erupted from the Impera's gun, racing across the distance between the two ships.
"Oh hell no!" Joker growled as every single ventral thruster the Normandy possessed erupted simultaneously, all stealth considerations abandoned.
Shepard felt her feet dig into the deck plates due to the inertia, and locked her knees to remain upright as the ship was practically thrown into a vertical slide. The plume shot past its keel, so close that all the cameras below their center line were momentarily blinded out by its radiance. The shot did not last long after that and began to dissipate with a deceptively beautiful display of shimmering embers scattering away into the void.
As their cameras came back into focus Shepard realized that something was not quite right with their own Thanix. The charged shot the Normandy was holding was now scattering glowing particles into space as the ship moved, and by no means should it have been doing that. She turned toward Garrus, and saw that his hands were practically flying over the gun control console, but he was not raising the issue. She chose to shift the issue aside for the moment and looked between Adams and Kaidan, "Someone give me a damage report!"
Adams had his hand at his earpiece, listening to what he was hearing from the below deck even as his eyes darted across the read-outs in front of him. A long second later, he looked up, "None apparent, ma'am."
Shepard exhaled in a rush, to release the mounting pressure in her lungs. Joker had dodged the plume. If he could keep at it, she would shower him with praise until he blushed. Even if that took a while, as Joker was cock-sure of his skills and would be crowing his superiority for days after this.
"Shepard, you need return fire," Saren stated. "This ship's guns are too hot. The constriction field fluctuations could-"
"I will stabilize the field before that happens, do not question my skills!" Garrus snapped, giving the veteran Spectre a positively vicious glare before turning back to his work.
Shepard blinked, now she knew it was bad, if Saren was warning her about it. All the same, she would sooner believe Garrus. He would not have said he could stabilize the field if he could not. Suddenly three more Heretic heat signatures appeared on EDI's tactical projection. The ships hiding amidst the rocks had fired up their heat-producing engines. Suddenly the Normandy was effectively surrounded, and that took precedence over field fluctuations.
"Here come the Heretics!" Kaidan called, doing his job.
Shepard's mind raced. The Impera and three Heretics in their vicinity were an immediate threat, but there were three more ships coming from vicinity of their original position. She had unknowingly ordered her ship into a kettle maneuver. The three ships lagging in the rear acting as the proverbial lid meant to prevent the Normandy's retreat. Add to that they could not retract their Thanix without firing the shot it now held, which would heat the armor closest to it, delaying their disappearance into stealth. It galled her, but she had to admit the truth, she was slightly impressed. Nazara had devised a simple, but highly effective strategy, and acted as a decoy in it.
On screen, the Impera adjusted its position, and then a red glow materialized within its Thanix cannon.
"Shepard-" Saren started.
"Not another word," Shepard replied, raising her hand to her side, cutting him off. "If Nazara wants a fight, it'll get a fight." If running was not an option, then they would just have to fight their way out. Nazara was about to discover that the Normandy was hardly helpless. "Joker-"
"Evasive maneuvers, I know."
"Stealth is definitely out." Shepard added. The Tantalus drive did not offer the precision and responsiveness of conventional heat-producing thrusters.
"Aye," Joker mumbled even as the Normandy's engine pitch changed. Then the thrusters ignited again as the ship began to roll onto its side and away from the Impera. A moment later there was a punch of the main drive, accelerating the Normandy hard. The Impera fired, even as it turned to track the Normandy's roll. Their ventral cameras caught sight of the plume arcing behind them. All the ventral and starboard thrusters erupted at full power, rolling and pushing the ship out of the plume's path. The shift of momentum pinned Shepard's feet to the deck and the Normandy's frame groaned in protest, but then the particle plume passed high over their side.
"Commander, I stabilized the constriction field!" Garrus announced with a triumphant glimmer in his eyes.
Shepard nodded, and turned to her XO, "Kaidan, deploy the point-defenses." They would handle the torpedoes the Heretics might fire.
"Yes, ma'am!" Kaidan replied.
Shepard turned to the tactical display. Their most dangerous enemy was the Impera. Fortunately, the Thanix had some limitations in common with kinetic rounds. Both were linear weapons primarily meant to be used on larger, nigh immobile targets. After that, it was only details. Kinetic rounds were invisible and very fast, but shields could stop them. A Thanix shot was visible and much slower, but shields were useless against it.
"The Impera is pursuing us," Kaidan announced.
Shepard was hardly surprised at that. Nazara was not going to play this game cautiously. It would not have the tactical wherewithal to know not to rush into things headlong.
She glanced at the other ships on the playing table. EDI had identified them through passive imagining analysis. The three vessels were still largely on their aft, but falling behind as they had to maneuver around various asteroids. One was definitely a cruiser, meaning it would be using conventional kinetic weaponry. The other two were frigate-sized.
Now, how to go about this situation? In what order should they attack them? First and foremost Shepard expect the asteroid field to hamper the Heretics considerably. Especially the cruiser, as it was the least maneuverable vessel there. The rocks would play havoc on its lines-of-sight, reducing the effectiveness of its main weapon, and affect its ability to dodge anything. Even the frigates would likely have some trouble with torpedo target lock, firing fewer volleys, and thus would be less likely to overwhelm the Normandy's point-defenses. Just like that her mind was made up. "We'll take the easiest target first. Joker, make at the cruiser! It's a sitting duck!" Shepard ordered.
"Roger!" Joker announced as the Normandy accelerated, ducking under another of the asteroids as it banked to come about on the cruiser's indicator. "I want a nice fireworks show, Vakarian."
"Focus on the flying, or the only firework display will be us." Garrus bit back.
Nihlus snorted back his laugh.
Shepard largely ignored that exchange as she watched their forward-looking cameras. Joker's evasive roll and turn had put a large asteroid between the Normandy and the Impera, blocking its line of sight. Still, that was temporary at best, as the Impera was a frigate.
As Joker levelled them out on the same plane as the cruiser, he established a narrow line of sight on it. Right then the ship was maneuvering around a massive chunk of rock about two hundred thousand kilometers away. That would mean its MAC would be pointed well in the wrong direction to be of any use. That meant making a dash at it was relatively safe.
Before Shepard could voice her approval, Joker too the initiative. With one final angle correction, he opened up the main thrust, accelerating into a distance-closing dash at full combat speed, once again pinning her feet to the deck plates.
Shepard glanced toward the ordnance control station, "Garrus, I want that cruiser destroyed. Maximum power and constriction."
Garrus nodded and turned back to his console with an expression of absolute cold focus.
She glanced back to the video feed, the cruiser looked to be having quite a bit of trouble with the rocks in its vicinity, and according to EDI's calculations, was not moving any faster than it had been a few seconds before. All the same, as the Normandy reached fifty thousand kilometers, the reading suddenly changed. The cruiser's thrusters ignited as it began to come about, veering dangerously close to the rocks, to bring its MAC down to bear on the Normandy.
Joker fired the Normandy's main thrust again, accelerating even more.
Shepard stared at the distance counter as she waited for it to tick down until the Normandy was within ten thousand kilometers, the outer reach of their main gun's standard operational range. As the numbers ticked she had to force herself not to fidget, or worse, chew on her lip. This was the slightly dangerous part, as they were coming in practically head-on, though that had been unavoidable. "Lock on and ready the shot!" She ordered.
"Target is locked." Garrus replied.
Ahead of them the cruiser finished adjusting its angle just as the Normandy crossed ten thousand kilometers separation. Shepard all-but-shouted the order, "Fire!"
Garrus tapped a single key.
Shepard watched as the glowing particles still held the Thanix retreated deeper into the gun's barrels, and there was a breathless moment of nothingness. Then, twin plumes of blue-white energy, bright as the surface of a star, erupted outward, blinding the camera mounted behind the gun.
EDI mutely shifted the video feed to their dorsal cameras.
The twin plumes had merged into a single, wider beam that covered the remaining distance between the two ships in a matter of seconds, hitting the Heretic cruiser's right in the midline, effortlessly cleaving down the ship's length before dissipating in a rain of embers. The wound it left behind was perfectly circular, with superheated to the point of glowing edges all the way down.
A second later there was a bright flash inside, and the Heretic ship seemed to arch its back. Then there was a second, brighter flash, and it just disintegrated, sending chunks of unidentifiable material flying like kinetic rounds in all directions.
"Now those are fireworks!" Joker called as the Normandy banked sharply behind a nearby rock, even as their shields flared, intercepting some of the fastest-moving bits of flying debris.
"I want to see them adapt to that." Garrus stated blandly.
Shepard smiled, but the expression vanished quickly. She could not afford to give them long to celebrate. "We're not done yet, Gentlemen." She turned back to the tactical display. EDI had removed the cruiser's indicator. A quick check of their heading indicator showed that Joker's evasion maneuver had turned them back toward the Impera. Much to her surprise it seemed like Nazara had not followed their dash, displaying a shocking disregard for its allies. However, now it was flying in their general direction. The Heretic frigates were also rushing in off their starboard bow.
Shepard hummed as she drummed her fingers on her console. The Heretics likely were not particularly affected by the loss of the processing power of the runtimes. What would Nazara do now? It knew that the Normandy could dodge its shots. Any other ship captain would have turned to guided weaponry, their torpedoes. Then again, Nazara was not a typical ship's captain, which could make it harder to predict. Was this situation about to devolve into a torpedo lob-fest? That worried her. The Heretics had the opportunity to adapt to Alliance's torpedo patterns, and they had a basic numerical advantage on top. Which target should they pursue next?
"Heat off the starboard bow!" Kaidan called in alarm.
Shepard all but jumped as she turned to the video feed just in time to see the icy asteroid right in front of them light up wine red, quickly brightening to blood crimson. With a jolt she realized that the Nazara had decided to fire right through it. "Joker!" She shouted.
"On it!" Joker called back. The Normandy shuddered as all her dorsal thrusters erupted, throwing the vessel into a belly-first diving squat.
Seemingly a second later a plume of Thanix fire, enveloped in a massive quantity of sublimated asteroid matter, erupted out of the asteroid's face, passing right over their back, blinding their dorsal cameras. Shepard looked up, her heart instantly lodged in her throat. Sound did not transmit in the void, and that was probably a good thing. Shepard did not want to know what a Thanix near-miss would sound like. Something like that would probably haunt her dreams.
The Normandy slipped under the rock, Shepard could tell that Joker was angling for the Impera, seeking retribution. Yet before she could open her mouth to order Garrus to ready the return from their Thanix, Kaidan suddenly turned toward the cockpit, a look of pure panic in his eyes.
"Joker, get us away from the rock! Now!" he shouted.
"Shit!" Joker called back as the Normandy's back-mounted thrusters and main drive kicked again.
Shepard opened her mouth to ask, but the words died in her mouth as she stumbled and had to grab her console from a sudden impact that made the Normandy's very hull resonate. Then a cacophony erupted as dozens of rapid hits, ranging from finger-taps to sledgehammer blows in loudness, raced down the length of the CIC, even as the Normandy accelerated underneath them.
Their external video feed now showed red haze. The rock that the Impera had shot through had disintegrated and the Normandy had not been fast enough to avoid the debris shower. It battered the ship across the back, leaving very obvious dents in their armor. Worse, all ten of their point-defense turrets were knocked badly askew. As the vessel began to rise again, eight turrets began to reset into their ready positions, but the remaining two sputtered and jerked, clearly more damaged.
"Adams, are we breached?" Shepard demanded as she straightened in her station. There were no major breaches, those would have been impossible to miss, but even a minor one could be a problem in the long term.
"Mercifully, no, Commander." Adams replied. "I'm already running a diagnostic on the point-defenses." He added as he adjusted his ear-piece and then turned down to his console.
Shepard inhaled sharply, suffusing her lungs. "Joker, plot an intercept course. Garrus, ready our retort! Nazara had enough fun."
"Oh yes. No one harms the Normandy." Joker grumbled.
Shepard felt the ship roll as Joker adjusted their course, and she allowed herself a second to swallow down her heart. However, before she could exhale, she saw a glowing orb of red materialize amidst the haze, growing larger and brighter by the millisecond. The Impera had been waiting for them! Shepard clasped both hands into fists over the console, "Garrus! Obliterate it!"
The black ship itself began to materialize from the gloom, like a malicious apparition, the crimson glow in its Thanix growing ever-brighter.
"Target locked. Charging!" Garrus called out.
EDI shifted back to their belly cameras just in time to see the guns begin to gather material. Shepard knew that exchanging Thanix shots was essentially a game of chicken with a very deadly outcome for the loser. She clenched her fists hard enough to dig her short nails into her palms. But what other choice did they have?
Then the crimson underneath the Impera's nose flared, manifesting a white center. Shepard looked toward Garrus and barked a single word, "Fire!"
Garrus slammed his finger into the final button and the blue glow within the Normandy's guns disappeared.
A crimson plume erupted from the Impera's gun.
The Normandy's ventral thrusters came to life, pushing the ship up, even as a radiant plume of blue-white erupted from their Thanix. The two beams covered the distance between the vessels and crossed over. The Impera's crimson shot passed beneath their hull, its radiance once again blinding the cameras. EDI swapped to the dorsal ones just in time to catch the Impera blasting its dorsal thrusters hard even as the Normandy's plume passed over its back.
"Damn, it went too high!" Joker cursed.
"I am sorry, Commander, I attempted to compensate," Garrus said.
Shepard did not look away from the video feed. Their beam took a long moment to dissipate and for the additional halation it produced to disappear. The Impera blew its thrusters again, banking and turning to port hard. Then its main drive ignited as it accelerated away.
"Is it running?" Kaidan asked.
Shepard grinned, "Joker, after it!"
Even before the order fully left her mouth, the Normandy blasted off, accelerating hard.
The Impera had now turned its backside turned to them, and it was then that Shepard realized that the glow over its port side was not some trick of refraction. It was coming from a stripe of armor superheated by proximity to the outermost edge of their shot. There might even be a shallow through in the ablative plating! Garrus had come within a hair's breadth of hitting it!
Shepard glanced at her ordnance officer. Garrus was frozen at his console, staring at the image as if not quite believing what he was seeing. Then, he must have felt her gaze as he looked up. She smiled. "You almost compensated enough." Truly, the damage was a heartening sight. As far as she was concerned, it was only a matter of time until Joker and Garrus' combined raw talents synchronized and the Impera's time ran out. "I know you, Garrus. You can get it on the next one."
"Hell yes!" Joker cackled.
Garrus nodded and wordlessly turned back to his console, a look of fresh determination darkening his blue eyes.
Shepard turned back to the main console. The Impera was flying an erratic slalom course which put rocks between itself and the Normandy, but it was not enough to lose the Normandy. All the same, Shepard knew that getting weapon lock on it was going to be a problem. They would have to wait for a thinning in the asteroid belt. She also had to commend Hierarchy construction, as despite such a close brush in with a Thanix, the Impera showed no indication of being affected, and the glow in its armor had faded away. "It had better not be thinking of vanishing back into stealth," Shepard mused.
"It would never lose us if it did." Kaidan said blandly.
"I did not realize it was that much of a coward, then," Saren muttered.
"Assuming that's cowardice. I think it might just be a tactical call, though not a good one. It's not a military AI," Shepard murmured. If this was indeed Nazara's panicking, some fight or flight code kicking into effect, a desperate attempt at preserving its existence, then it was also just more proof of how similar AI and organic beings could be. As she finished she saw it. The asteroids up ahead were thinning. "Garrus, be ready!"
"I am." He replied.
Their forward-looking cameras showed the Thanix adjust its angle, aligning with the forthcoming gap in the rocks that the Impera would undoubtedly have to take in its panicked slalom course.
"You want a roll?" Joker asked.
"I can hit it like this, just keep it steady. I need the Normandy flying straight for as long as possible." Garrus replied.
"You got it. Finish it!"
Shepard smiled, but did not say anything. Garrus and Joker were coordinating without her input. Nazara was in trouble.
Suddenly a red alert flashed on the view-feed.
"Incoming torpedoes!" Kaidan called.
Shepard bit her tongue to stop herself from cussing like a sailor. Not now! Not when the Impera was right there! She glanced at the tactical readout and realized that the Impera had led the Normandy into a thin section for a reason. The Heretic frigates had circled around and had now sped up coming at their aft.
"Commander?" Garrus asked.
Shepard inhaled deeply. There was only one possible response to this. "Well, the Impera does not panic mindlessly. Good to know." She murmured ruefully. "Still, it's damaged. Shift priorities to the Heretics!"
"Shepard! Finish it!" Saren argued.
She whipped her head to the side glared. "And take those torpedoes up the aft? It's not worth it." She would not risk her ship and crew for a pyrrhic victory. Not when the Impera was already damaged and ruffled. It was bound to give them another opening in good time.
By then EDI swapped camera angles again, and now Shepard could see two haloed pin-pricks of light, the two pairs of torpedoes, rushing at them from behind. They were still at quite a distance away, but the Normandy's point-defense turrets already began to rotate to intercept. Except the two on their damaged side, which lagged behind, sputtering and jerky. She glanced at Adams.
The engineer seemed to have anticipated the question, and gave her an apologetic smile. "Those two have damaged actuators, reducing their movement range."
It was hardly the call she would have loved to make, but it was the right call to make. "Joker, no making like a sitting duck!"
"Wasn't planning on it," Joker stated.
Shepard turned to her acting XO. "Kaidan keep an eye on the Impera." An extra set of eyes on the Impera would not hurt. "Garrus! Our Thanix won't be as effective against frigates." Garrus would have an even more of an uphill battle trying to anticipate and compensate for Joker's erratic maneuvers if his targets were nimble, she figured she would spare him the frustration of repeated misses. "We have torpedoes too, let's make good use of them." Garrus would figure out the application of using the latter as a distraction to create an opening for the former.
"I just got an idea. Garrus, be ready with the torpedoes when I bring the Normandy out of this," Joker announced.
Shepard opened her mouth to ask, except Joker was not waiting for permission.
"Here we go!" He called as the forward looking cameras showed the Normandy initiating a roll as it approached a large asteroid off their starboard side.
"Joker!" Shepard called.
"I got this, don't worry!" Joker called back.
A moment later Shepard's gut figuratively lodged in her throat when she realized they were flying so close to the asteroid that the separation between the Normandy's aft masts and its surface seemed to vanish. Then, suddenly, the ship's forward ventral and rear dorsal thrusters fired a split of a second apart.
Shepard's felt her whole body lighten as the ship's rear slid out until the bridge pointed right into the rock. She grabbed onto the edge her console, and a glance around told her that she was not the only one who had done so. Her chief engineer's grip was distinctly white-knuckled. For the first time she wondered, what the hell was Joker thinking? Simulators were one thing, but if he got this wrong the consequences would be dire.
Then the bridge cleared the rock's side, showing nothing but nebular haze ahead. The Normandy fired all its ventral thrusters, arresting the belly-first slide, and suddenly the main drive came online, accelerating the ship in the direction where the nose pointed, still impossibly and recklessly close to the rock. Shepard glanced at the tactical readout. The pursuing torpedoes crossed over with the rock behind them and vanished, a moment later their rearview video feed caught the rock's projecting corner explode outward, sending chunks of material flying in the Normandy's wake.
"The torpedoes are no longer a problem!" Joker crowed.
"Spirits. He is -" Nihlus began, but cut off and shook his head.
Joker was definitely enjoying showing off. While making such a comment would have been perfectly fine normally, Shepard did not want Saren being privy to such things. Suddenly her whole body lightened again as the Normandy fired its forward ventral and the rear dorsal thrusters, making the rear slide again.
The girders overhead groaned as the material fought against the inertia of the tight turn. Then, just as the ship began to turn its nose into the rock again, it cleared its face. Joker applied a final stabilizing burn of the rear ventral thrusters, arresting the outward slide of the aft, and a blast of the main drive, accelerating the ship hard on its new course.
"Heretic frigates, dead ahead!"
Shepard glanced at the tactical display, and her gut lodged in her throat. Sure enough, Joker had pulled off what amounted to a super tight U-turn around the asteroid, rounding on the Heretic frigates. The two ships were just coming into that same opening amidst the rocks that they had intended to use to shoot down the Impera.
"Are you really going to enable your pilot?" Saren asked.
"We're still in one piece, aren't we?" Shepard replied without looking at him. Yes, she was enabling Joker. She could have told him to rein it in, but she would not. Crazy as Joker's flying might appear on paper, he had the skills and talent to execute said flying. She would have to explain things to Admiral Hackett, but that was a bridge to cross when one got it, and not before.
"Torpedoes armed and ready. Moreau, give me line-of-sight for target lock," Garrus stated.
The Normandy turned at the opening between the rocks just as the two Heretic frigates entered it from the other side.
"How's that?" Joker asked.
Garrus' hands flew over his control, but then he suddenly looked up, "Targets locked."
"Fire!" Shepard replied.
Garrus tapped two more keys. The Normandy bucked as twin glowing orbs shot past her hull, followed barely a second later by a second pair. Once clear of the Normandy, both pairs accelerated to maximum speed, but much to Shepard's surprise, they remained quite close to each-other.
Then, Joker put the Normandy into another roll and bank, turning her away from the frigates, only the ship's rear angle cameras remained locked on the torpedoes, tracking their path.
Shepard saw the Heretic frigates begin to come about, their point-defense turrets turned to the oncoming torpedoes and began to fire in pulsing blasts.
Garrus chuckled, low in the back of his throat.
Shepard glanced at him, but did not ask, most of her attention remained riveted to the video feed. Then she noticed it, the torpedoed had abandoned the graceful serpentine arcs typical of an Alliance pattern. Instead they were now moving in circles, like binary stars orbiting their mutual center of mass. This was forcing the heretic point-defense turrets to move endlessly even as they fired.
"Okay, that is clever," Nihlus said.
Saren made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat.
Shepard opened her mouth to ask what had caused Nihlus' bemusement, but then a slow realization seeped into her. While that was no Alliance pattern she could recognize, it seemed awfully too complicated to be a Hierarchy one, who preferred overwhelming numbers launched in old-fashioned volleys. Nihlus was bemused because he had not seen anything like it either.
Suddenly the torpedoes split off, each pair heading for a different ship. The Heretics had not been ready for that, even though their turrets began to pan, they were late to respond, and much too slow to catch up. Seconds later both pairs slammed into their targets and imbedded into their sides. There was a flash of periwinkle as the primary mass effect field charges carried by the torpedoes began to shred everything in their vicinity, digging themselves deeper still.
"Wait for it!" Garrus said, sounding smug.
The periwinkle glows disappeared as the high explosive warheads went off. One Heretic frigate split right at the impact site, its two halves floating apart. The other's whole side was thrown outward and a second later something even deeper within exploded, ripping the vessel into five or six large chunks and throwing countless many more outward as a rain of shrapnel and debris.
Shepard did not bother concealing her smile right then. Garrus had done it! In whatever way he had tweaked their torpedoes, it had been enough to confound the Heretics and allow the torpedoes to reach them.
"Your own creation, Vakarian?" Nihlus asked blandly.
Garrus turned to look toward the head of the CIC, his eyes twinkling. "Yes. I knew about the variability of Alliance torpedo programming, and I had time to come up a few things myself. Just in case."
She knew that Garrus loved to tinker, but this went above and beyond. He knew the Normandy would struggle against the enemy's adaptive nature, so he devised a workaround. "Job well done," She said, without bothering to tamp down just how pleased she was.
"And with style!" Garrus replied the twinkle in his eyes turned from mere amusement to pure joy.
"So what now? Back to our Impera hunt?" Joker asked.
Shepard straightened, momentary triumph forgotten. "Back to the Impera hunt." Garrus had turned the situation, so now they had to keep the momentum going.
The Normandy hummed as their main drive ignited, accelerating the vessel to pursuit speeds.
Shepard shifted her weight and turned toward the tactical readout as she considered their next course of action. Her gaze drifted toward the three Heretic ships that made up the kettle lid. They were around a million kilometers away, still within the asteroid belt, but not close enough to be active combatants. They were also positioned directly between the relay drift zone and Ilos, which could not be an accident. It would make sense if they were there to prevent the Normandy from running for Ilos. Not that Shepard would have considered doing that, as she suspected there were even more Heretics on and over Ilos, it would not do to end up between the two groups of enemies.
The question then became what would they do now that the Normandy had cracked the kettle? Their initial assumption had been that four ships could match the Normandy. In theory, that should have worked, but in practice the Heretics had miscalculated the effect of the asteroid belt. It had not hampered the Normandy nearly as much as it did them. Now, Shepard wondered, would they commit the folly trying at the same tactic again? What were the odds of them being so foolish?
Shepard hummed. The Heretics, like all Geth, functioned by consensus. Right then, all the runtimes in the system would be looking for a solution to their newest problem, the unanticipated ferocity of the Normandy. The Heretics likely would never seriously consider betraying Harbinger and Nazara, but they were not so mindless as to abandon self-preservation. Whatever they came up, would have to include their survival. All the same, they had lost some interlinked runtimes, which would slow them down. Trying to figure out a complicated scheme like this on top? No, time was not on their side. In fact, this only created an opening that Shepard could use.
She turned her attention to the Impera. The frigate was still registering on their sensors, and it was clearly making a beeline toward the kettle lid, its closest source of backup. Its hull breach had likely cooled off already, so what was preventing it from pulling a Houdini? Was it gambling on the Heretics getting it right the second time around? Well, that was certainly a possibility, albeit a foolish one.
EDI had not had the opportunity to identify those ships in detail, but it was safe to assume that at least one would be a cruiser. These would not be the only Heretic ships in the system. Especially if Harbinger was the actual overseer of the operation. The vessel which served as the relay for its proxies would have to be over Ilos, to have the barest minimum of lag to conduct the ground search. Come to think of it, Harbinger would not want Nazara running and bringing the enemy right to it. So the desperation to keep the Normandy in the asteroid belt began make sense.
However, this meant that Nazara's options out here were limited to just fight, or flight. Would it choose the former? After its first close brush-in, it could reasonably expect the Normandy's next shot to hit on target. The Heretics would be its backup, and Shepard could expect an all-out, four-on-one attack. That would make getting a clear shot at the Impera e difficult. Then again, Nazara could already be thinking in purely flight terms, on the same grounds. It would not want to be blown up, and in that case, the Heretics would be nothing more than a distraction.
Shepard crossed her arms and hummed. That was the crus of things right there. Was Nazara looking for reinforcement, or a distraction that would allow it to slip away? In either case, they would have to deal with the Heretics, but how they went about it would yield different outcomes. The logical solution was to attack the Heretics and take them out of the picture as swiftly as possible. That would both prevent the Normandy from being overwhelmed, and potentially stoke any panic buzzing through Nazara's circuitry.
That was, assuming that this running thing was some form of panic and not a dastardly plan on Harbinger's part. So far, this entire thing had the distinct hallmarks of his modus operandi, really. It was also the true leader of the Heretics, and hardly the trusting type. Just how hands-on was it with this scheme? Because if it was indeed hovering in the background, then Nazara's flight would be a feint leading into something else. The problem was, there was no way ascertain what was truly going on.
Right then, the Normandy was flying as fast as Joker was willing to slalom around the asteroids, and judging from the distance indicator, closing in on the Impera. They would still have to wait, though admittedly all of them could probably use a brief breather, even of this sort, to prevent the onset of task saturation and confusion.
"Shepard?" Nihlus asked.
She snapped out of her thoughts and turned to face him as she let her arms drop to her sides.
Nihlus shifted to stand as close to her as physically possible given the geometry of the main console. "What are you thinking?"
"Going over the details, as usual."
"Obviously, but that is not what I meant," Nihlus responded.
Shepard turned back to the front, "Nazzy is definitely making for those three vessels still in the belt. I want identification as soon as we're in range."
"You will have them, ma'am," Kaidan replied.
Now that EDI knew what to do, it was time to cover the rest of the bases. "After that, we'll probably deal with them as we've dealt with the first three. Thanix any cruiser, and Garrus, the frigates should still fall for that binary corkscrew trick." Over Solcrum it took them quite a long time to adapt to textbook standard firing patterns. Something more unconventional ought to take quite a bit longer.
"If not, then I have something else ready," Garrus replied.
"Good." Shepard glanced at Nihlus again. "Adams, how are we on the damage front?"
"Nothing new to report, ma'am. The worst remains the two stunted point-defense turrets. The Normandy will have to return to Arcturus to have repairs done. I would rely on Lieutenant Moreau's flying for the time being, no matter how… eccentric."
"Eccentric… okay, I'll take that," Joker murmured.
Shepard suspected that Adams would have used a different term, were there no outsider witnesses. She knew her chief engineer. "We'll just have to be a little more careful from now on. After all, we don't know how much of this was planned by Nazara, and how much is Harbinger's doing. That's important." Even as she finished she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle.
"You really think they are that different?" Nihlus asked.
Shepard hummed an assent. "They are different where it counts. Compared to Nazara, we do not know where Harbinger came from and what its specialties are. This whole thing has been one unpleasant surprise after another."
"Unpleasant isn't the word I'd use," Kaidan murmured.
"Well, they're only fun when they're mine," Shepard replied.
Kaidan grinned and turned back to his console.
Nihlus actually chuckled behind her back.
Shepard glanced at the tactical readouts, ignoring the prickling at the back of her neck. Saren was not happy, but he was keeping quiet, so odds were he did not have anything to contribute. She would take whatever she could get right then.
The Normandy had reached a quarter of a million kilometers separation from the kettle lid. At this distance, light would travel between the ships in less than a second. The Heretics would know that the Normandy was bearing down on them. Now was the time for Harbinger to make its move, if it was indeed involved.
Here, Shepard frowned. Once again things were going back to that one question she seemingly could never find the opportunity to ask. Just in what type of installation did the Geth find Harbinger? Once again, now was not the time to ask. She did not want Saren to know, and likely Legion would not want an outsider knowing, if they were inclined to tell her anything at all. Javik probably would not know, because such things were typically compartmentalized. That meant, she could only make assumptions. "I'm erring on the side of caution, assuming Harbinger has a non-civilian background," It was better to be overly-cautious, than not cautious enough.
"It has displayed a certain aptitude for better planning than Nazara," Nihlus added.
"Indeed." Saren stated.
"Can what happened on the Citadel be called planning at all?" Garrus asked, looking up from his post.
Shepard heard Saren shift his weight, but he remained quiet. She spared Garrus another grin that Saren would not see. She was not going to draw attention to the matter by commenting, but clearly Garrus had hit Saren where it stung with that one.
The Normandy crossed one hundred seventy five thousand kilometers, and EDI added the markers for the Heretic ships to the tactical display.
"That is the first of the passive telemetry, Commander," Kaidan stated.
Shepard stared at the markers. EDI would be working with the first hints of whatever her sensors could pick up. The Impera was still running in front of them, and the rate of separation decrease between them had slowed down, suggesting that the Impera had sped up. EDI had calculated the time to interception as just under one minute, but the distance to the Heretics suggested that they would be intercepted by them before that. "We don't have the time to catch up to the Impera," she stated. "The Heretics are about to become our most immediate threat."
"I suggest we make that plan quickly," Kaidan added.
Shepard nodded mutely. She knew one thing, attacking four ships with one will have to be a carefully choreographed dance. Attack the targets in the wrong order, and they would have the time to retaliate. The Normandy had already taken damage, and she would really prefer to avoid more.
The distance to the Heretic vessels crossed the hundred thousand kilometers mark, with about forty-five thousand to the Impera. Suddenly, as if flipping some switch, one of the markers on the tactical display changed. EDI updated it with new measurements.
"I knew it," Shepard stated, "a cruiser and two frigates."
"Commander, I think I have an idea of what we can do," Garrus stated.
Shepard looked up and met his gaze across the console.
"The rocks are not as thick here, we will not have much cover," Joker added.
Shepard glanced at the forward-looking cameras and realized that her pilot was right. The asteroids here had grown larger, but less densely packed. They were also rocky rather than icy. This would still offer only limited protection from the Impera, mostly of the sort that it could not shoot through them, but they would not hamper maneuverability.
"All the more reason to hit them hard and fast," Garrus replied with an almost eerie calmness about him. His posture had lost some of its wary tension, replaced with a placid confidence befitting a professional exercising their craft.
"What do you have in mind?" Shepard asked.
"If Moreau bring us in from the right angle, I can fire torpedoes at the smaller vessels, and once they split away, the Thanix at the cruiser."
Shepard blinked. Garrus must have felt pretty confident about his odds of making that work. He would not have suggested it otherwise. Ultimately, did they have a better plan? Certainly not off-hand. "Alright. Do it."
"I will get you that angle," Joker stated.
Garrus turned back to the weapon controls and began to type furiously.
Shepard smiled. She rather liked this idea, if for all the wrong reasons. If it worked, then it would rip away all of Nazara's delusions of safety. It was almost sadistic, but against an enemy that was willing to commit genocide, sadism was excusable. Nazara deserved a healthy dose of its own medicine.
With a plan made, however contingent on luck, Shepard turned back to the tactical display. The Impera was still staying far enough, and moving fast enough that the Normandy had no hope of sniping it out of the metaphorical sky with a pair of torpedoes.
When the Normandy crossed seventy-five thousand kilometers to the Heretic ships, with just forty thousand to the Impera, the mood on the CIC shifted visibly. The relative calm of the waiting game gave way to a determined tension. Even Kaidan shifted his weight from foot to foot and glanced at her before quickly averting his gaze back to the terminal in front of him. The enlisted were even worse off. Shepard could see two of them shifting about, as if their seats were suddenly too hot. She could not entirely avoid some creeping nervousness either, but she could not afford to show it.
Then Shepard saw it. The Heretic vessels had begun to come about, and the indicator of signal strength had spiked up. They were producing more outward heat, which could only mean the use of main engines.
"They have to be moving to cover the Impera's retreat, or help in an attack," Kaidan said.
Shepard nodded briskly. That was the most obvious and only logical conclusion to make. "And knowing how… savvy the Heretics are," she began, but paused. Only Saren would miss that she was not actually complimenting them with that. "They will likely get between us and the Impera. Garrus, are your torpedoes ready?" She asked as she glanced toward the head of the CIC console.
"Yes, Commander." Garrus replied without a moment of hesitation.
"Joker-" Shepard began.
"Way ahead of you, Commander. Have it all figured out."
Shepard knew that right then EDI would be giving Joker the enemy's movements in real time via the navigation console on the bridge. She took a long, deep breath, allowing the air to suffuse her lungs, held it for a long moment, and let it out from her nose. This was it. If things went according to plan here, the Impera would either have to stand up and fight, or run to Ilos, at which point this would turn into old-fashioned stealth submarine warfare.
On the tactical display EDI had a solid passive lock on the Heretic signatures. They were now flying toward the Normandy in formation, with the cruiser in the middle flanked by the two frigates. Shepard suspected that would make everything much easier for Garrus. He wanted the torpedoes to split away, clearing the path for the Normandy to fire her Thanix.
"At the current speeds, we have thirty seconds to combat range," Kaidan stated.
"Torpedoes are programmed and armed, I just need target lock," Garrus announced.
Shepard nodded at him, but then turned to her lieutenant. "Kaidan, keep your eyes on the Impera. It only gets to blindside us once." Shepard stressed. She did not trust herself not to tunnel-vision on the Heretics in the heat of combat again.
"Yes, ma'am," The lieutenant replied without looking away from the readouts EDI was showing him. "The Impera has just crossed over with the Heretics, and its course is… unchanged."
Shepard glanced at the forward view again. That last call might just be unnecessary, but caution was never entirely wasted. The rocks they were flying past right then were all dark, silicates than ices. Nazara would not be able to use its Thanix to punch through a rocky asteroid quite as easily as through an icy one.
As for Nazara, it appeared to have had enough. That said, it was a stealth vessel. It could still vanish from their sensors and try something. How long did they have before its nacelles cooled off enough for it to engage stealth? The Normandy had an outsized power core, when they were not using the stealth drive, that core could readily power the shields, the Thanix, and have plenty left over to maintain hull cooling. They could vanish into stealth readily, but would the Turians have reserved some output for that? Then one had to consider Saren himself. Would he have modified his ship during the time he had it?
"Ten seconds," Kaidan announced.
Shepard suspected that the lieutenant was putting on a show of appearing unbothered, but the act was beginning to slip. He was tense like a drawn bowstring, something she was in the perfection position to notice. Not that she would blame him. Even the steeliest disposition would have a breaking point.
They were now close enough that the long-range forward looking cameras caught the faint glimmer of light reflected off the smooth, insectoid hulls of the oncoming Heretic ships. The cruiser, being the largest point, was clearly distinguishable.
"Combat range."
Almost immediately Shepard saw two pin-pricks of light split away from the frigates, and turn to the Normandy.
"Torpedoes incoming!"
The point-defense turrets mounted across the Normandy's back began to rotate forward on their own, and a few moments later they began firing. The halation of the laser bursts made them appear as solid streaks of crimson amidst a sea of darker red. One of the torpedo pairs exploded off their port bow within five seconds, distant enough that its destruction formed a rosette of blue-tinged light. The second pair continued, unbothered, as it turned to approach off their starboard side, where their two damaged turrets were.
Shepard opened her mouth to tell Joker to apply a slight roll, so that the port turrets could come about and cover that flaw. The order died on her lips as Joker let out an inarticulate curse, and suddenly as the Normandy gave a long, hard blast from all her dorsal thrusters. She felt the rapid inertial shift in her stomach and the girders overhead gave a low-pitched groan as the ship slid below the plane it had been flying on.
"Muzzle flash!" Kaidan announced.
Barely a split second later the Normandy's shields flared and rippled, then a loud thud reverberated through the hull overhead, seemingly coming from the aft of the ship. Shepard froze. Was that sound what she thought it was? She glanced at the forward cameras, only to see that the turrets had ceased firing. What hit them? The kinetic round, or the torpedoes?
"I have target lock!" Garrus added.
Shepard forced herself to shake it off. Now was not the time to freeze up. She flicked her gaze over to Garrus, who was watching her with an eagerness that visibly buzzed through him. "Fire!" she barked.
Garrus tapped two buttons on his console before barking a sharp, "Moreau, correct our angle!"
The Normandy gave a series of rolling shudders as four pairs of torpedoes erupted from their launchers in rapid succession, almost instantly splitting off and streaking away. Two pairs heading for each of the Heretic frigates. The last two pairs had been rigged to move faster than the leading, so they could catch up and lock into that binary dance that had gotten the best of the Heretics before. The smaller ships predictably fired their thrusters to start turning away and bring their point-defenses to bear. However, the cruiser continued at the Normandy, and right then it crossed the ten thousand kilometers separation range.
Shepard whipped her gaze over to Adams. The engineer's body was tensed rigid, and his furrowed brow line was hooding his eyes as he scanned the readouts with single-minded focus. But there were no klaxons or signs of decompression. Finally, Kaidan was not barking urgent warnings from EDI, even though his eyes were on his readouts and he looked no less tense. With no apparent signs of things going disastrously wrong, Shepard allowed herself a deep breath. Whatever had hit them seemed to be just another scratch on their hull.
Then another inertial shift snapped her attention elsewhere. The change of direction pinned her feet to the deck plates as the Normandy emitted a blast from all its ventral thrusters, rising into its previous position. Even as it did, their ventral forward-looking camera caught the Thanix descend, unfold, and a brilliant blue glow begin forming within the stubby barrels, bright enough to flare the camera's lens.
"Vakarian, give them hell!" Joker growled.
Garrus tapped another series of keys, but then looked up, seeking her attention, "Target locked!"
"Fire!" Shepard called back without an instant of hesitation.
Garrus practically stabbed the final key with his finger. The glow within the twin barrels vanished inside, and then erupted outward as a radiant plume of white-blue flame, blinding the camera behind the guns anew. EDI switched cameras without anyone needing to ask.
The cruiser reacted with a full blow of its own ventral thrusters, but being a larger ship, it simply was not designed to make quick course corrections or dance at knife-range with frigates. The plume crossed the distance between the two ships in what felt like a heartbeat, staying narrow and cohesive, and sinking into the cruiser's lower body at a shallow angle. The ship's armor and bulk offered almost no resistance, allowing the beam to burrow deep inside, even as it began to dissipate in a shimmering rain of particles.
When the glow disappeared, it revealed the entry point its entirety, it was perfectly circular, as if punched out by a cookie cutter, but ringed by glowing superheated armor all around. The beam had passed just under the ship's insect-like head, causing its underside to glow as well.
Then, quite suddenly that whole head section separated away from the hull, and the cruiser's thrusters went silent. The two sections, each having its own trajectory, continued to move on the momentum of the vessel's abortive evasive burn, separating entirely. Yet Shepard suspected that the shot had not reached deep enough to cause total destruction.
"Commander! The torpedoes have reached their targets!" Garrus called.
This forced Shepard to look away and to seek out the frigates on the tactical display in front of her. The two markers indicating the smaller ships were both blinking rapidly, EDI's indication of direct hits on both. Before Shepard could open her mouth, a banner flashed under the markers and the blinking became even more rapid.
"Explosive payload detonated," Garrus announced.
The markers blinked once, twice, three times, and then disappeared. There was only one reason why EDI would clear them, the ships had been well and truly destroyed. Then, a long heartbeat later, something else registered to Shepard, a stark lacking of a fourth marker on the tactical display. She inhaled sharply, mostly to bite back her urge to swear, as that would not be productive. "Where's the Impera?" she asked instead, as calmly as she could muster, even though a horrible sinking feeling began to settle into her gut.
Kaidan looked up, "Gone into stealth, ma'am."
"What a weasel, to use its allies as distractions," Joker grumbled.
Shepard hummed, she had suspected that Nazara would go for that particular option. It was well and truly spooked by its close brush with the Normandy's main gun. Not that its destination was any secret. Harbinger would not have allowed it to run off entirely. "Well, it's not like we don't know where it went," she stated blandly.
"Ilos," Nihlus rumbled.
"It better not think that a change of scenery will help," Shepard murmured. That was about as obvious as sunshine on any planet. "But we can't quite follow it yet." By now it was clear that the Heretic cruiser was dead in the water, and that their shot had not penetrated deep enough to reach its power core. Even if she chose to leave them alone, it would take time to restore the vessel to some sense of mobility, and they probably would not dare engage the Normandy again. As such, it was time to appraise their own situation, as that could affect future plans. Shepard turned toward her chief engineer, "Adams, damage report. What was that last jolt?"
"A pair of torpedoes detonating too close to the hull, ma'am," Adams replied. "There was no penetration, but we lost one more point-defense turret on the starboard side and I am registering errors in our communication equipment. Our tight-beam array has been damaged."
"That's putting it mildly," Kaidan stated as he keyed in a few commands into the console in front of him.
An image appeared over the tactical display, a view from one of their dorsal cameras, now panned toward the aft. The camera's clear protective dome had been cracked though it remained functional. The first thing Shepard saw was the damaged turret, or rather, its absence, with only the stubs of its actuated base remaining. After that, her eyes slid further back. The Normandy had two vertical masts at the very back, which contained their tight-beam array. Except now she could only see one. The torpedo blast had sheared the starboard mast almost cleanly off, leaving behind a short jagged stump. The armor stretching underneath the destroyed turret and toward the mast was badly charred, and visibly dented by a single, powerful blow. Though the crater in their armor seemed be shallow, and rather uniform, it had failed to force any single armor plate to curl enough to breach.
"Commander, I wouldn't attempt atmospheric entry like that. We can't be sure the armor will withstand entry," Adams added.
Shepard nodded grimly. It was obvious for all to see that the Normandy had come within a hairs-breadth of a catastrophic torpedo impact, all because two of their point-defense turrets on that side had been damaged. Her ship was going to be out of commission for months, laid up for repairs and the obligatory diagnostics on every panel and centimeter of wiring still in place. Furthermore, she suspected that Skunkworks would want to poke and prod, now that the Normandy had seen real action. Her crew was going to get month of furlough while she got months of unceasing headaches. "Were the stealth systems affected as well?" Shepard asked.
"Fortunately no, ma'am. There were some ruptures in the hull cooling systems underneath the armor, but that is minor damage. Also, I've already disconnected the power supply to the damaged equipment. It will not give us away by producing resistive heat, but the entire tight-beam array is effectively dead."
Shepard nodded, she would have to send her report to the Council via the Arcturus Station equipment. Sparatus would be positively giddy to learn of her suffering.
"Is the ship unable to communicate at all?" Saren asked.
Adams' lips pursed as he turned to look at Shepard rather than reply.
Shepard sighed, "We still have our QEC link to the Alliance Fifth Fleet headquarters, but that's it." She looked around the central console and then toward the enlisted, offering the latter what she hoped was an encouraging smile, and turned back to her command crew. "Suffice to say, no more exchanging fire with Heretics." She would not say it, but it was obvious to her that they had survived two three-on-one engagements due to a mix of both Joker's skill and luck. She did not want to push Joker to the point of making a mistake and all luck ran out eventually. It was time to switch to a subtler methodology.
"Should we finish the cruiser off?" Garrus asked, without any semblance of triumph at his own achievements.
Shepard weighed her options. Firing another Thanix shot would warm their lower hull, delaying how quickly the Normandy could vanish into stealth. But leaving the Heretic vessel behind was not a good idea. That said, the ship was effectively dead in the water, so maybe they did not need to use the Thanix. "Can you thread a pair of torpedoes into the Thanix entry wound?" She asked.
Garrus' shifted his weight from foot to foot, "I can try."
That was good enough for Shepard. "Bring us into position, Lieutenant Moreau," she ordered.
"Yes, ma'am." Joker replied.
Shepard noted how deflated her pilot sounded. She made a mental note to have a little private heart-to-heart with him, likely sooner rather than later. As far as she was concerned, Joker had done some fine flying, and a few banged up plates, turrets, and an antenna after two three-on-one engagements was getting off easy. Joker deserved a medal for managing to pull them through this whole thing and she would not allow him linger on the thoughts that he could have done more, as that thinking was a mind-killer.
There was no kick of momentum this time, the Normandy began to turn with graceful ease and a lack of urgency. Shepard allowed herself to take a deep, pressure-purging breath. It took less than half a minute for the Normandy to come about on the cruiser. Joker positioned them below the ship, so as to stay out of the angle of its mass accelerator cannon, if that was still functional. Yet the Heretic cruiser showed no response or movement. Somehow Shepard did not think that the Heretics would playing possum, so aside from the forward section ripping away, something else had been damaged within it, and that prevented the Heretics from doing anything. Nevertheless, she was not one to give her enemies the type of mercy that would let them walk away from this. They would only use that time to regroup and come back as an even bigger problem.
She glanced toward Garrus. He was typing commands into his console again, programming the torpedoes. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Enemy or not, what must be done, still rankled her sensibilities. Having known Legion for so long, she could not help but see the Geth as living, sentient beings who were now helplessly watching as the firing squad gathered in formation in front of them. She had to remind herself that the Heretics made a choice, this was it, and choices carried consequences.
"Torpedoes programmed, armed, and target locked, Commander," Garrus stated as he looked up from the console.
"On my mark," Shepard replied, answering his grim calmness with her own. If this was going to be an execution, she wanted it done formally. She took another deep breath and held it for a long moment, forcing herself to cast her moral qualms and fondness for the Geth aside. The Heretics were not the Geth, they were the enemy. They had made their bed, and would now lay in it. She exhaled, and uttered a single word, "Fire."
Garrus pressed the key and the Normandy jolted again as another pair of torpedoes erupted from the launchers at the base of their nacelles. They covered the distance between the two ships in a few seconds, flying an arrow-straight trajectory without evasive maneuvers. Shepard watched the ship itself, but it showed no signs of activity, whether in engine or from its point-defenses.
Then the torpedoes slipped into the Thanix entry wound and disappeared from the tactical display. Shepard watched that gap, knowing full well that Garrus had just delivered another impressive feat. It was never easy to make torpedoes hit a specific point on the enemy ship, their evasive maneuvers typically precluded such accuracy. Garrus had done away with them, in order to achieve this feat, and that would only be possible on a truly dead-in-the-water vessel.
Suddenly there was a bright flash within the entry wound.
"Warhead detonation!" Garrus announced.
The Heretic cruiser's main body buckled, and a second later it simply came apart, splitting down the middle and releasing a rain of shrapnel in the process. It was not quite a power core detonation, which would have utterly ripped the vessel to bits, but it was enough. There was no way that the Heretics could hope to do anything when it was torn into three chunks.
"Lieutenant Moreau, to Ilos. Rig for silent running. Once we're there, establish an asynchronous orbit," EDI was going to need that if they were to get any decent passive observations.
"Yes ma'am." Joker replied calmly.
"Kaidan, put us back into yellow alert. I want the crew to maintain combat readiness, but I expect that the operation will now move to the planet's surface. We will also need passive scans of the planet's surface."
"Of course, Commander," Kaidan replied calmly, flashing her a slight grin, and then turned back to his console. Within a few seconds the pulsing red elements on the CIC stopped flashing and the overhead lighting brightened somewhat, creating a slightly more normal atmosphere.
Shepard closed her eyes and it was like the adrenaline washed from her system all at once in response. The nervousness, tension, and the lack of sleep was beginning to catch up to her. She glanced toward Kaidan, and was utterly unsurprised to see that he was watching her. "Lieutenant, I leave the CIC in your capable hands. Notify me as soon as we make orbit." She needed a moment to collect her faculties and take a stim. She was not getting any real sleep any time soon.
"Yes, Commander." Kaidan replied.
Shepard turned away and stepped down from the command console, choosing to ignore Saren's scrutinizing stare in favor of making a beeline toward the OD.
Author Notes: This episode was problematic to write. So many little things to square away, and I have an overall limited experience with this type of combat scene. Then I got sick in October, which knocked me out of the loop for two and a half weeks, and made life back up like a clogged drain. We are three episodes away from the Season three finale, I saved my version of the Ilos arc for it. Answers are coming!
General Notes:
None this time…
Chapter Notes:
None this time…