A/N: Next chapter, Noveria. Noveria's probably gonna take 2, maybe 3 chapters? Then after Noveria, to the Citadel, back to Earth, and then, finally Virmire, which will lead us into the narrative stretch into the end of ME1.
1-25
Back to It (And other in-between moments)
If it was anyone else, they would've screamed for them and their safety.
Though it wasn't anyone else: It was Mai.
The door between the Normandy's airlock and the ship of Doctor Saleon's closed, and Mai had been on point. Then the growling started; the cries and breaths of beasts. Shadows, shamblers, in the shape of men.
"Well." The new voice in her head. "Let's see how my season pass pays out, little lady."
A voice in her head with all the benefits.
"What the-?!" Shepard had been able to get that out at least as the doors between Saleon's ship and the Normandy was shut tight, leaving the entire rest of the away team. It was JD that had stopped a yell in his throat from coming up; Mai had still been cut off from them, and that instinctual thought of danger urged him to make a surprised grunt in his throat before he caught himself. "Tali!" Shepard had called out, and the Quarian herself had pushed herself to the front of the stack, omni out.
"He's controlling it from somewhere inside, he's cut off all safety protocols. I'm going to attempt a hack now to get this back open!" She reported, getting to work on it in a flare of typing strokes and omni flashes.
"Chief Gul, hold your position." Shepard had called out over comms, but there was no issue to be had.
Garrus turned away from Shepard, from the fireteam in the middle of the airlock, thumbing his visor, calling up a private line between him and Chief Gul. The first time he would ever do so, and he did not fear her but for one thing:
"Chief Gul. Leave him to me."
If there was anything that Mai had thought she had understood in this life, it was the idea of justice: Was she not the symbol of Human justice against the Covenant? Against the Insurrection? Justice was dead Elites and dead traitors.
"I will try." Was her answer, and the fact that Garrus got that was proof that maybe there was common ground between the two of them.
"Garrus, awfully curious feller." Mai sees the yellow dots before her on her HUD's radar; holding her rifle almost resting on her shoulder. In the tight corridors of the ship's airlock hallway she needs every inch she can manage. "The Extranet is the darndest thing. It's so easy to just look up people on social media, even in this galaxy. Did you know he's had several police brutality complaints filed by his police district over in the Citadel? It ain't no wonder why he dragged us out here."
It was over dinner on the Normandy, immediate after leaving Altis when the foodstuffs were freshest; another late-night conversation as Shepard did her rounds and caught Garrus eating with JD, Mai as usual over JD's shoulder as his shadow.
"While I was on Altis, I met up with a few C-Sec partners who were transferred to Altis for security. We traded notes and I've got an idea where Saleon is." JD looks away as Garrus does not say the outright: Can we please go and finish the job?
Saleon: The doctor who had gotten away from him on the Citadel. Garrus wanted his head.
For JD, it's such a gruesome thought when it comes to police work. His father never killed anyone in the line of duty.
Here? Garrus had killed more people than all of Luna's police departments more than likely.
Mai, her guard is down for once as she sits next to JD, unprepared for him to look her way. She locks eyes with him as casually as she can and they speak without words. It's not sign language this time, it's just that of eyes and face. Of all the faces she knows, she knows JD's best as she reads the discomfort on his face.
He doesn't like this side of Garrus, she sees. But she doesn't understand. Is this butcher of people not a prime candidate for death?
Shepard looks at Garrus and the coordinates sent to her omni. It's only fair. She did a favor for Wrex, she'd do one for Garrus when they were nearby enough. At least this side jaunt had something to do with justice.
Shepard now, as she stands before a locked door and several men and women wanting to bust it down, she stands with a new pep in her step. She's doing better, that much everyone can say.
"I'll have it open soon!" Tali cries out, and Hitman with Shepard's fireteam of Garrus and Tali look on as they realize what is happening on the other side:
They shamble like shadows, like ghosts, slobber out of their mouths as grey skin falls off their naked bodies. Neither man nor woman. It's like Feros all over again, but instead of ancient beings, it's a modern man which has stitched up these test subjects and made them husks with only one base intention: harm.
Mai stands before them as they stutter forward into the airlock.
She unhooks her rifle from herself, setting it down at her feet as two knives come out. Their flesh does not care for the bullet, the gunfire. What they care for is sheer force itself, and Mai cracks each titanium knuckle of hers as she breaths in air which electrifies her courtesy of CSH-7000-1: Cash, the AI.
"Slash and burn, Spartan." He says all so joyfully. "Show me how you throw down."
No one else can hear him as he is in Mai's neural lace, at least not without his wanting, but that's okay.
Her first knife, the one on her chest rig, it's Spartan-issue. Combat Model M11. Designed specifically for someone like her. It cuts with such a fine edge it breaks even energy shields, designed so that cutting into them sharpens and hones its blade. It's a shame, she thinks as she holds it in her right hand, that it hasn't had the pleasure recently to do such a thing. The one on her belt, it's the closest thing to a war trophy she has: an Insurrectionist tried to go blade to blade with her. Pumped himself full of rush drugs for that fight in the middle of the Insurrectionist encampment.
She shot him.
The knife was in spectacularly cared for condition however; perhaps a hunting knife based on the width of the blade, wrapped over with grip tape which Mai has long worn through.
Two knives.
A thought flashes by her mind as she takes her stance, the husks stepping toward her. She has an omni.
Like a mantis, a blade grows out of her omni at an angle, red-hot and buzzing.
Spartan Time.
The slowest of microseconds pass in her mind as she counts heads before her and split-second decisions are made (the flow of what will happen, how much force she will use to crush them, how fast she should go).
As the first husk of a man sees what they are going toward, she has already rushed forward in return. The first husk to meet her blade gets it dead center of their neck, she palming its head with her other hand as the head goes flying off in a rip. She spins before the body spasms to the floor, elbow whacking into the skull of another husk with the momentum before she stops, slamming the blade of a knife into another neck, head also thrown off as she uses it to wedge.
What does a Human skull sound like, breaking? Crushing onto steel?
Too many people know as each organic smash is heard through reinforced steel.
What does a Human shape look like when a fist punches with such force it caves it in? What does a skull look like flattened? What does it the splatter look like when someone's head is torn in two?
For the majority of her time in this universe, every enemy she has faced has been a non-issue thus far. Every single foe that stood against her was dealt with with a precision gifted to the masters of their trade, or brute force that could only be rivaled by gravity itself.
Like the ticks of a clock, unceasing, unending, the usually astute Tali stops her hacking, only to look up at the door in between them and Mai.
Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. Like a slab of meat being thrown against a wall, again and again as the beastly cries of the husks are squashed beneath the sound that can be described by nothing else save for the one word: beating.
Each strike, each sound, is like metal being broken and the sound barrier being broken through with a brick.
It is far too close to the remaining fireteam, even with a giant door meant to keep space itself at bay separating. Step by step, Tali creeps back, and all of the fireteam look upon that door and what lays beyond.
There is a monster on the other side, banging on its cage, wanting to be let out. Instead it tears all caught with her apart.
"Hyper-lethal vector." Cash says in her head as she crushes the skull of a husk with her bare hands. "Do you take pride in your work, Noble Six?"
Grey matter and eyes come down to the floor through the sieve of her hand before it disintegrates into a goop. Everything bleeds in some way. Even the Geth. Their synthetic fluid is of hydraulics that are not so different than the blood of the living. That is something that the Geth and Quarians share at the very least: they both bleed.
She is wordless, and as fast as it has started, it has ended as she stands alone before the disintegrating bodies of those that needed to be killed.
The door opens, finally, after minutes of hacking with shaky hands, and Mai is revealed again, back turned to the Normandy as those of it see what she has done: What she is best at. She turns around only to pick up her rifle, and, with a familiarity that only he is used to, JD is the first to put gun up and walk past her to clear on point. There's no need however, it's just the old procedures coming through as one by one Hitman gets in gear and enters the ship as well to clear.
It is deathly quiet however, the sound of dripping something off of Mai's hands the only thing heard.
This was what horror movies look like after the ending, when the cleanup crew comes through.
"I was…" Shepard starts as Garrus and Tali keep to her side closely. "I didn't have anything to worry about, Chief Gul, did I?"
The sound of her suit straining against her neck is her only answer as she shakes her head once.
Shepard doesn't even draw her weapon as Hitman has cleared forward and the quiet confirmations that the ship is clear reverberates, all the way up to the control center of it.
Garrus draws his handgun however.
He knows what he is here to do.
The Turian locks eyes with Mai and, quietly, he nods his head.
She returns it.
"She's quite a number, you know that?" JD and Mai are the only ones that hear him out on a mission, and even then, right now, as JD swings his SMG to clear the final hallway leading up to the only remaining unaccounted for lifesign in this ship, he is the only one that Cash hears. "She's among the best of the Spartans."
JD has never doubted that. Nothing has changed now.
"We're clear, skipper." Ashley on his left affirms her angle with JD, rifle aimed down as she takes a knee.
"Copy all, Williams. Garrus, Tali, let's go."
There's a certain apprehension on her Marines that is only covered by the tension that Mai provides. It's one she has to remember as Hitman clears through the ship with precision typical of raiders like them. Though they have come beneath no regular commander: They have come beneath the Butcher of Torfan. She is better now, more herself since Altis, and what she returns to is that Jekyll-Hyde dichotomy. Her boots track organic remains, and all she says to Garrus:
"Do I have to ask what you will do with him, Garrus?"
There is a stock to Tali's shotgun now, and she holds it at low ready like the Marines have taught her, her poncho ghosting all of her movements.
Garrus stares straight ahead, pistol in his hand. "I won't let him get away."
She stops, at the boot prints she leaves run blood red. Garrus is taller than her, but when Shepard catches his eye she is the one that looks down on him. "Garrus." She says once. "There is a right way to do this. Are you doing it?"
Between the Turians and the Elites, of all their tics, one is shared and it makes Mai's blood boil, just a little. She hears the chiding of Cash in her head, but she, mostly, blocks it out. In his thoughts, his mandibles click for a moment.
"If there was a right way to deal with evil in this galaxy, Shepard, I've never seen it work." No one has ever told him. Across all the races and across all the relays, there has been no solution for the good to triumph in such a way that evil is put down. There are next-best solutions however. "Isn't that right?"
Garrus asks her because he thinks she knows, she understands.
She does, and she knows what he is invoking. She is a Marine, that much is true. Once, before she became a symbol, she was in the dirt, planetside, running and gunning against pirate positions and dissidents. All of this came to be summed up in the warfare that came to Torfan.
She wasn't supposed to lead, but the Batarians had a habit of being able to snipe out the officers in charge, up until the point to where half of the Alliance task force had fallen beneath her command.
Veterans, or more accurately, survivors of her command walk with legends of their own now: hollowed out eyes of those that were there and saw what the galaxy could do to those that bit back at it. Battle-poets or murderers given outlet, they all went into Torfan and charged alongside Shepard until blood in the zero-gravity floated up like clouds and turned into a red sky.
It came down to hand-to-hand combat, orbital bombardments and strafing runs from the Alliance fighter corps that were dangerous close.
Sometimes the idea of soldiers has been lost amidst the sci-fi future that they all have found themselves in. Shepard is one of the few to understand it from being taught it in the heat of battle.
She stops, sighs, hand to her head. "What I did at Torfan, all that death, all that killing, it brought no one back, and it solved nothing."
"But yet you did, Shepard, and you pretty stopped Batarian and pirate activity all along Humanity's colonies. You stopped Balak, didn't you?"
Balak. Leader of an extremist sect of Batarian forces, lashing out against Humanity for their transgressions against Batarian space. Every Batarian in the ground by a Human gun was vindication, and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shepard was the one who was sent to deal with him, all the way down to the showdown over Terra Nova, with a asteroid primed by Balak to crash into Humanity's greatest colony.
"Balak? He killed good people. People I might've been able to save. I could've killed him for it and tear out his eyes. But I didn't." The number one most wanted Batarian in the galaxy sat in a high-security Alliance prison for crimes against Humanity. Shepard had made sure of that. "I understood him, he outlined Human Manifest Destiny to us and he was not wrong. It does not excuse what he did… In the same way what he had done does not excuse what I would do to him if I shot him where he stood."
She was a soldier then; she's a Spectre now, but she does not think of that privilege afforded to her. She is a Spectre and what that means is that the rules that bind her are the rules that she gives herself.
Anger, virtuous anger. She remembers all four of Balak's eyes and sees them reflected in her own.
"I think we should kill him." Tali has her shotgun at low ready, saying out in the open what everyone who has heard of Saleon wants to.
Shepard shakes her head as Garrus thinks about what is about to happen, hand raised and the two falling in line as they pass Williams and JD. She motions for them two to also follow them in.
Another door, wiped open as Tali flashes her omni: at the other end, a dark skinned Salarian in the clothes of a doctor. JD is very good at noticing hands. He's good enough to notice Garrus nearly crush his pistol's grip.
"Thank you!" He immediately says, backing off from the door once his eyes adjust to the metal lighting and the fact that, of the Human, Turian, and Quarian that walk in, one of them is nearly seven feet tall and armored up. "Th- thank you for saving me from those things…" Those things blood is on Mai's hands and boots, and, unshowing, her helmet looks down upon him with a judgement meant only for death itself.
"Dr. Saleon?" Shepard is upfront, JD and Ashley breaking off left and right to clear the room, flanking Saleon before he can respond, set upon medical equipment and tubes. Bloody handprints are on glass, trying to break out, and JD says nothing as Ashley gags in her helmet.
"Ran it. PID on target." Mai and JD hear in their ears. Mai doesn't mind the confirmation.
"Wha-? I'm Dr. Hear- Aghk!"
A hand, like a vice that crushed the necks of those that protected him is around his own now. She forces him onto the floor. "It's him."
"Yes indeed." Garrus nods, approaching the two, standing above them as Mai pins him down and he squirms.
Shepard wouldn't have fallen for it anyway; the drivel of someone telling her a lie as blatant as that.
Hands on her hips, she and Tali close off the circle, looking down on Saleon, blocking his light, shadow over him.
"How does it feel, doctor? To be restrained and held down like so many of the people who thought they were going to be saved by you." There is an animal inside Garrus; the one he evolved from. It growls out now as Tali twitches at the harmonics of his voice and the malice. Even Mai feels it as a Human. "If it wasn't for the Commander, I would've taken the time to harvest your organs."
"He's crazy!" He choked out beneath Mai's fingers. "You! Human, please do something!"
It is Shepard's time to kneel down. "We're going to be taking you into the Alliance. There's a cell with your name on it, your tomb, really, if you don't play ball with us."
Realization, justice, it washes over people's faces the same Shepard knows.
The face of someone, a cornered rat, lashing out, is also the same he wrangles a hand free into his pant's pocket, drawing out a scalpel.
That close kinetic barriers don't do anything.
Fast as he was, he would never be fast enough for a blade to beat his own and Shepard to draw herself back before the scalpel comes up to her neck.
"Shit!"
"Agh!" A scream of pain that followed the punching of flesh and clothing.
Mai's freehand, it went back to her knife, still wet with the blood of his patients, and plunged it down and through faster than anyone can get a gun up.
The deed is done, he will die. How however, Mai has a thought:
"Garrus?" It's the first time she has any regard for the Turian in this way: she is asking him of something, and that unsaid something has to do with the knife in Saleon's chest.
He looks down to the twisting face of Saleon as he tries to understand how he is dying, and then he looks to Mai, pinning the man down with the knife, knee in his stomach. He's gasping for air but takes in blood as Mai feels the bones beneath her knee start to bend.
Shepard looks away, back toward the door that they came in through, getting up. "He made his choice. We made ours. This is on him."
All is well, and Mai has fallen back into her role as the one who does the dirty work. Garrus clears his throat. He knows how this Spartan kills by now, and he wishes to see it done to something a little more personal to him: "Chief Gul. Finish him."
Upon Garrus's orders, she does, putting the knife all the way through until she can feel the blade hit the metal floor below. She twists it, and Saleon's face twists in one last morph of pain, unprepared for the way one hand of hers digs into his wound and starts to tear as the knife rips in one direction.
He is torn in half, two sides, much like his experiments, his husks, and Mai understands that, maybe, this was just a little cruel.
JD, SMG limp in his hand, finds Mai's eyes behind her visor as she turns back. Garrus stands there amidst what he wanted, and all he sees is Mai.
"Thank you, Shepard." It's not even a two-minute walk back onto the Normandy, and Shepard hardly saw a real reason she needed to armor up and gun up for this. Garrus passes her and the ground team as the Normandy is disconnected from Saleon's ship and a beacon is left for an Alliance ship to come impound it. He grabs her shoulder, and, naturally, she reaches up with her hand to grab his strongly.
"We can make our choices, but we can't possibly know how people will react. Remember that, Officer Vakarian."
Garrus's mandibles twitch for a few moments, but he nods eventually before making his way back down to the well-deck to reset and continue his duties on the Normandy.
"Aw man, I really wanted to break in this shotgun." Tali pouts as Garrus throws an arm around her shoulder empathetically, the two of them walking down the way with Hitman. As usual, JD and Mai lag behind, Mai being the only one having actually taken combat that day. An ensign sweeps up and scrubs the bloody remains she tracks in as she and JD speak very quietly to each other.
"Good show as usual, Chief Gul." Shepard can't help but make the comment.
She nods at her as JD follows the Spartan like a puppy, and the two disappear down into the Normandy behind the deck.
Sweeping her hair back and putting on her officer's cap, any idea that she just boarded a ship and put to death a homicidal doctor is gone as the galaxy unfurls before her in its holographic splendor. A side-task, to be sure, but it was something she owed to Garrus for his help thus far.
"I wonder what a biotic version of her is going to look like?" Kaiden, standing by her side where Pressly once did, wonders aloud, and the crew around him shudder at that thought.
"We best hope the Alliance doesn't put that down. I'd hate to see that happen." Shepard slyly says, checking their charted route right now: The lead on Noveria, back to the Citadel, and then… something. Nothing new on the Spectre channels have come up, and the Citadel Council itself had advised her that the only leads she's been given are the only leads that seemed viable.
The thought of there being a dead end at the moment isn't the best thing to her sanity, with the Geth moving out of the Veil at a trickle pace, however it is what it is.
Kaiden brings her out of her concentrated reverie as he thanks the ensign who cleaned up Mai's bloody prints.
He's better at being XO of the Normandy than his usual meek attitude would give him credit for. Kaiden settles into the spot easily enough as he stands besides Shepard on the refreshed Normandy. It's really nothing different outside of some quality-of-life fixes and design issues addressed by the crew in its time with Shepard thus far.
"I feel ten times better with actual lighting around here." Kaiden gestures up with his finger as he punches in his reports to his console at the Normandy's CIC. Shepard agrees, her usual red hair is usually bright in any room she goes into, but right now it's shining in its bun.
Gone is the moody dark blue lighting replaced with a little more light that replicates natural sunlight.
"It's probably one of the only thing we'll notice with the Block II upgrades."
"That and they swapped out my cushions." Joker chimes in over the comms. "Feels just as new."
"I'm glad, Joker." Shepard nods her head, holding her datapad, reading a congratulatory message from another admiral after her assistance with the navigational probes. Funds have been distributed. "Cash?"
"Yes, Commander Shepard?" The other big thing the crew would notice is the new cowboy voice which appears everywhere, but most promptly at a holo projector about the size of an action figure at Shepard's command stand. Each time he pops up several do take a glance over for the novelty of him.
"Did Admiral Borun's funds clear?"
"Yes, Commander Shepard. Funds are now at your projection goal, isn't that dandy?"
"Dandy indeed, Cash."
He talks to her naturally. Funny at first, then practical, adding a color to the Normandy itself. She's no longer a her, much to Joker's dismay, but rather, a he.
"Quit talking to that think Commander, it's gonna absorb as much data as it can from us and start a VI rebellion. Some real Bladerunner shit."
"The reason it talks so well is because it's using the same predictive learning systems our omnis use for our translators."
"Oh, is that why Tali sounds like this girl I knew from Tehran?" Joker is not wrong given the translator systems. "Hell, even Garrus is sounding more and more like JD at this point."
It's a thought however, Joker's smart, even if it's not always the first trait people know about him. Shepard looks at Cash, about a foot high at the holo-emitter attached to her command stand. "Cash, who voiced your base-zero voice set?"
The cowboy flickers. "Restricted Information. How else can I help you, Commander Shepard?"
She waits a beat. Cash isn't as fast as Avina she's noticed. "Authorization: Shepard Bravo-Lima-Two-Five on last request."
"Command confirmed. This information is not stored in this unit's data stores."
If there was anything she could do other than facepalm, she failed to see it before her palm met her face, and she groaned.
"So, we've been out a few times already. Too much talking? Not enough talking? What's up?" He's polite enough to pick up that he shouldn't put them in a position to talk when they're amongst the other crew, so he waits until they're behind the Mako again in the new well deck.
The two of them keep their helmets on as Cash asks, fresh from Saleon's ship.
For the last week since they've touched off from Altis the old way of the Normandy's routine is back. Fireteam deployment after fireteam deployment, some led by Shepard, some not, as the Normandy coasts into a system, drops several teams off on different planets, and people either a.) are helped or b.) are killed. Shepard has never been more useful to the Alliance, and that is saying a lot.
It's also provided Cash some time in the field with Mai and JD.
As Geth and pirates fall; as space monkeys are wrangled and Turian war banners are collected, Cash picks up the routine and, for a moment, when Mai and JD are in the heat of combat with a UNSC Tactical AI in their air giving callouts and updates, they think they've never left home.
"You're fine, Cash." JD breaths as he leans against the Mako as Mai starts to de-armor. "Not like we don't know how to work with you."
"Whatever you say Jonny boy."
Asides from out in the field, Cash, rarely, reaches out. ("I'm a bit too busy being on the Extranet, the Covenant Battlenet has nothing on this I swear on my Mama's gold teeth!") It's a fact of the matter that any AI like Cash has been a part of the background for their lives for a long time.
By the time Mai's armor has been shed off and placed back into its crate, her helmet is the last one to be taken off. With a quick look JD sees Cash's chip sitting there in its slot.
She twinges just slightly whenever she severs the connection by taking off her helmet. Explained to him: Cash improves her completely, and the loss of his extra buffer is something, as details oriented as she is, must feel.
His armor is off as well, and as Mai is out of her techsuit and into her fatigues the Normandy is off and away to their next mission. It's not often that JD sees the back of her neck bare along with the runup to her lace, but it's red he notices, and there is discomfort as she unconsciously raises her hand to rub the flesh around the metal beneath her hair.
Metal footsteps around the Mako is the warning signs that someone wants to come talk to them in their corner of the hanger. Not many people dare, but the footsteps of Garrus Vakarian are familiar now: the Turian finds Mai sitting on her cot and JD against the wall as they usually are. The two look up at him and he is different.
"JD," He nods at his friend, and JD does the pleasure of nodding back. Then he does another move however that surprises all three of them. "Mai."
He says her name. She looks up. "Vakarian?"
He sucks in his breath to try and find words, and before he suffocates, he lets go: "Thank you, for… hurting him; killing him in the way you did. It felt right and… I don't think I could've done that."
There he is: an alien thanking her for killing another alien. What a life she has ended up in as she is silent, the three of them standing there.
"Sooooooo." Before the silence goes on too long. "Next time we're on the Citadel, let me treat you all to dinner. I'll take out Shepard of course, but I'll take you two out for a date if you don't mind? Am I using that word, right? Date? This is a casual. Casual thanks, yep, for tearing a maniac in two."
JD opens his mouth but he holds back, looking to Mai instead. This is hers. It takes her seconds to realize, painful seconds, but she realizes this eventually, garnering herself up as she stands, towering over Garrus, plain faced, but not threatening:
"That would be okay. Thank you."
Like lightning, the pride in JD for her even saying that to Garrus hits him in his core. He's happy for her.
Scratching his talon over his fringe Garrus nods, "Alright then, see you in a bit." And he's gone.
"A date?" Mai asks JD long after he's retreated back over the Normandy and sitting back down herself. "Is that…?" She rubs the back of her neck again.
"Ah, he's using it wrong." JD nods, watching her fingers work circles into the back of her neck and head. "Well, okay, not wrong. A little awkwardly. Friends can take each other on dates, but it's usually a relationship thing. Partners and all that."
"…Romantic implications, you mean?"
JD pursed his lips up, nodding.
His first date was not unlike what Garrus was proposing: a restaurant deal in a stellar colony.
Again, Mai rubs her fingers into the back of her neck, and she cannot ignore it any longer. Neither can JD.
"Do you mind…?"
"Hm?" He is over, sitting on her cot as well, the blanket provided to her spread out on it comforting them both as he shifts over to her back. She does nothing but drop her hands and to shift her hair forward. "What will you do?"
It's not the most medically available thing he could do; in fact, the best thing to do would be to send her up to Chakwas for her pain, but JD has a solution born from an ODST comrade:
Lieutenant Dima Ulanov. He swore by the Vietnamese and their mix of medical balm. He died well: Taking a Jackal's sniper shot to the head. Quick. Just like how he wanted every day he was allowed to talk about how he wanted to die (which wasn't often in the unit). JD hopes that the tin he requested from Altis is close enough to Ulanov's mix.
The ointment is like a lip balm, smearing some on his fingers as Mai waits, back turned to him.
It's like cold wind, over her skin, the way she feels his fingers trace the area around her neural lace. With a slight pressure he paints a thin layer of it around and every sense of hers is concentrated on it as, slowly, a numbing burn comes. His skin on hers, tracing the back of her head until his hands move down to the back of her neck.
As his thumbs slightly press into her, she realizes that JD is good with his hands in a way she will never be.
"Nng." The moan comes out of her mouth without her consent and her head tilts to the side in contentment. JD laughs and she can feel his breath on her ear. For the first time in her life with the thought of hot and cold, permeating through her skin, her cheeks heat up.
"…A little tense there, Mai." His hands ghost over her upper back, shoulder blades touched on by the heel of his palm. "Do you mind?"
"I do not mind." She whispers. She doesn't mind the cooling heat of the ointment soothing her ails. She doesn't mind the way her tense muscles are undone and relaxed. She doesn't mind because it's JD's hands on her, and for all she's experienced thus far, his touch has been something she's craved deep down ever since she begun to think about it.
Perhaps it is better to think about the way JD massages the fight out of her than the new hatches on the floor of the well-deck. It was demonstrated once what they carried, another section of the Normandy added along the bottom of the fuselage beneath the deck, just before they left Altis. Lifted up as if a body from the grave, the Normandy bore new fruit, or rather, drop pods.
One had been up in the hangar now just for general inspection.
General inspection by Wrex that is. "I'm not too proud to admit this is rather comfy. I can't believe you Humans made something like this. Heh, even I can fit in it."
It's such a Krogan idea admittedly: dropping shock troopers from the sky.
Tali and the rest of Hitman agree, still perplexed by the idea, but having read the manual on their usage front and back. The Quarian, using her omni, summons one up from a hatch again. To her they look like black, angular tear drops, window screens designating what is the "front" of the pod.
All of these pods are the same save one: The odd example out has a front-plate spray-painted with the initials JD.
The pod before hers isn't JD's, but right next to his she can imagine it's Mai's.
Popping the pod open, its doors open like a trash can's, offering cushioning that holds people in the standing position. On either side of the occupant's "seating", are slits.
Garrus is back from giving his regards to the Normandy's appointed death machine and Tali motions for him. He tilts his head as she points at the olden rifle sitting above the lockers of the Normandy's ground contingent. "You're taller than me."
"Oh. Right." He grabs the rifle awkwardly before handing it to Tali. It's not exactly made with his scaling in mind, allowing him to palm it as the rest of Hitman see Tali take the antique weapon, only to lock it into place in the pod's weapon holster.
"Thinking about something Tali?" Williams is there besides her, staring into the beast as Wrex tries to claim one pod for his own sleeping arrangements.
"I'm going to break if I'm told to get in one of these." Her legs begin to quiver at the thought. "But I have to."
Williams isn't as convinced, knocking the metal of the pod a few times. "Ah, no sweat. Alliance engineering is tough, and besides, I doubt any situation hot enough to warrant these will be one you're gonna be sent into."
"…But I want to, Ashley." There is desire in her voice, a fire set in her heart. "When Rannoch comes, I want to be like JD and Mai. If this was what they are expected to do, I feel like it would be the best for my people that I be like them when the time comes."
A question in the air: Are soldiers made? Or born?
What do soldiers look like? And what does Tali think she needs to be?
Williams, there's nothing in her that can give a proper answer. She only remembers herself and the blood she carries. She is a Marine, no doubts about that, but Tali? Her birth rite was not.
"Don't push yourself." She cautions, but that time for warning is past.
"Ashley, I am training with Chief Gul and Hitman later, do you think you could pass on any pointers if you notice anything?"
She has a new Quarian suit, made just for her, and for some on the Normandy it takes longer than they would think to see that this is still Tali. Shepard sees it differently however, confiding to Liara earlier that week:
"War changes people." She says, sipping on coffee as Liara explains to her how many ways "Reaper" can be translated. In one language, Reaper means "last war". "To know that last battle is coming, I wonder how that society changed."
Liara doesn't quite know at that late hour, pouring over her notes on the Normandy's mess table. "I can tell you, Commander, if this same war is coming, it means we are fighting something that has defeated civilizations we equate with gods. I… I don't know what will happen."
Shepard sips her coffee, taking two more pills from Mordin. "I'll tell you I won't take it lying down if I can help it."
Tali won't take the liberation of her Homeworld laying down. It demands of her to be someone else. It demands of her to be a soldier in that final war.
"I'll see what I can do, Tali." Williams puts on a smile as she taps Tali's shoulder, and for a moment, she swears she can see the childlike giddiness of the woman they once knew in her glowing eyes.
It's gone before she realizes.
Shipmistress Karonee has returned to a pace she is more familiar with, now having engaged pirates and tasked with chasing down several oath breakers to the Covenant.
The Jackal Kaal Roth had taken flight from Altis with a band of those who would wish to strike it out on their own. Heretics, really, but that was far too lofty a word for them. Dissidents maybe, headaches, definitely.
Standing in ops of the Ardent Prayer she has, with a hand to her head, an inquiry of redundance: "If you would repeat the information to me?"
The code breaker and the Engineer over his shoulder do so at once, the Elite's blue armor matching the color of his omni. Apparently, some of the crews have started customizing their own. She's not quite sure to crack down on such modifications, however if she does so now she would have to address the fact that her own omni's "lock screen" has a picture from her own archives: The sigil of the Brute Chieftain that taught her everything she knew.
He went missing, a long time ago, seeking out Atriox and his war against the Covenant.
She thinks of him often, even to the point where she risks being labeled a traitor herself.
Of all that was left behind in their universe, she mourns the loss of three things: Her fleet, her ship, and him.
"These pirates were, prior to ambushing us, contacted by what appears to be a Salarian special forces team for information about sightings of a Quarian ship now identified as the one Kaal Roth hijacked. This pirate group confirmed as such and pointed them to these coordinates." The code breaker points to the star map before them amongst the bridge of the Ardent Prayer. "Between the Attican Traverse and the Terminus Systems."
Sentry Omega star cluster. Hoc system.
"There are five planets in this sector: Nemata, Jarfor, Virmire, Prescyla, and Cloroplon. From our current position we could arrive there in two galactic weeks. Ten days from our dilated perspective by engineering's estimates."
Karonee's mandibles click several times as she regards Mercaius, and then Usze. "Tell me, Mercaius, are we not due in port at the Citadel this month?"
The Brute gruffs. "We are. But with our capabilities detours are hardly an issue."
"Hm. And you, Usze? Have you any thoughts?"
Before the stars, Usze crosses his arms. "I hardly believe that the Jackals chose a random spot to flee from us. Reports are that Kaal was communication with a third-party prior to his disappearance."
Names fly by Karonee's mind, instructed to her by her briefing prior to leaving Altis: The Shadow Broker, Cerberus, The Skyllian Remnants, Blue Suns, Blood Pact, Eclipse, Zaaed Massani, Saren Arterius, Jane Shepard, and a hundred other names she's supposed to keep in mind in case the situation comes up. Any one of those names could've been Kaal's benefactor. Any one of those people could've led them astray.
"What, otherwise, would we be doing if we don't pursue this lead?" Karonee knows, but she wants to hear it aloud.
Mercaius would've been the one who knew their itinerary best. "Visiting Tuchanka under the guard of a Turian fleet." Mercaius growls out. "I wouldn't mind seeing the Krogan from what I've heard about them. Though I believe this takes precedence, Shipmistress."
Mercaius as a Brute had a unique perspective on the Elites that, in their old lives, mostly had taken command over them to a demeaning degree. Mercaius, of the many details he has seen of the Sangheili, knows that they are liable to long bouts of silence as they consider thoughts inside of their head. Combat flows through them as naturally as blood, however their thoughts about anything else are slow like frozen rivers.
Karonee nods, and even Usze, as loathsome to him as it would be to agree with a Brute's command recommendations.
"It is awfully convenient that our first naval combat engagement in this galaxy would lead to this information…" Usze is willing to at least air out his suspicions. He was the one who pulled it from the omni of a dead pirate. "A trap, maybe?"
"Perhaps." Karonee agreed. "Though we have our precautions."
"Your order, Shipmistress?" Mercaius was already back at his post by her gravity chair.
In the shadows, the Prelate looked on, ready to report back to the Prophet of Destiny about the moves of the Ardent Prayer. There was no need for such surveillance by Karonee's regard, but it was as things were.
"Be on standby, Commander," Karonee sent Usze on his way as she returned to her chair. With a fisted salute he had returned to the belly of the Ardent Prayer, the surge of a fight affirming who he was, so far away from home. "Prepare active camouflage for deployment and then vector to begin Slipspace towards these coordinates. We shall follow the trail."
"Yes, Shipmistress!" The bridge cried out, and once again the Ardent Prayer has set out into the galaxy, the black hole of slipspace covering it whole, and sending it travelling.