XLVII
The Rapture
It was the middle of the day shift when they hit the planet Shepard had picked out for the squad's last practice, but most of the rest of the crew was already off-duty. Shepard had told them all to have a good meal and catch some rest while they could. They had no idea how long the fight with the Collectors would take, and they were hitting the relay first thing in the morning. Garrus didn't know how well most of the humans would be sleeping, but it was good for them to try anyway.
The planet they were flying down to now was actually one Shepard had visited before, though Garrus hadn't been with her at the time. Lorek was inside the Omega Nebula if not inside the Sahrabarik system itself. A former asari colony, and a world where Shepard had apparently co-opted sensitive Cerberus intelligence to send to the Alliance early on in the tour, pissing off Lawson for the next several weeks. Goto and Taylor told the story as the entire crew shuttled down to Lorek's surface—Shepard and all eleven of her squad, plus the geth, Legion, all of them packed in like canned fish in oil, with five of them standing gripping various handholds. The shuttle's interior was uncomfortably warm and stuffy, full of too many people breathing, talking, and laughing at once.
Garrus was one of the people standing by the portside exit door, cramped between the knee plate of Tali's suit jutting into his leg on his left, the geth on his right, and Lawson standing right behind him. The geth's Widow, almost exactly like Shepard's, was centimeters from his face. Garrus found himself only half-listening to Kasumi's story as he swayed with Niels's smooth progress down toward the surface of Lorek.
This morning, that geth helped Shepard slaughter thousands of others. It stepped aside for her to make that call. Was it still trying to build what Tali called "consensus" over the decision? Did it feel anything at all? There was no way to tell. Scariest thing I've seen, looking into that robot face and just having no idea.
Legion's head swiveled so the blue optic pointed at him. Moving parts around it flared, creating an effect like turian mandibles. Was the thing smiling at him? Thinking?
"We are not a threat, Garrus Vakarian," Legion said in its mild, synthesized voice. "Geth wish to assist Shepard-Commander in the fight against the old machines."
"Geth assisted the old machines the last time around, so excuse me if I stay cautious," Garrus answered flatly. Around them, several of the squad went quiet, though there were too many of them talking for everyone to hear.
"The heretics," Legion corrected. "Geth who wish the old machines' assistance to a new future. Shepard-Commander elected to destroy all their number within this sector of space. The geth who remain beyond the Perseus Veil, and who are resident onboard this platform, will not accept another race's path to our future."
"We're giving Legion a chance, Garrus," Tali said. Her voice was tight and cool, but her hands were steady on her lap. She didn't look anxious or angry about the geth now. "At the very least, it's pretty good in a fight; a decent scout and an expert combat engineer, particularly against enemies with a lot of superior technology. Against the Collectors and other Reaper-engineered hostiles, its skills should be extremely useful."
"Thank you, Creator Tali'Zorah," Legion said, bowing its head in what almost looked like deference. Tali nodded back. Garrus frowned.
Jack, seated beside Tali, shrugged. "Doesn't seem any more unusual to be fighting alongside a flashlight head as Cerberus's dogs," she opined, shooting Lawson a dismissive glance. "Never heard of geth locking up a bunch of kids to experiment on."
Garrus had heard Jack and Miranda had had a falling out over Pragia. Shepard had smoothed things over, for the time being, but the animosity between the two women, always palpable, had become near-acidic since. It was bristling now. He could feel Miranda's tension like a current at the back of his neck. He shook his head.
"You haven't looked in the right places," he muttered, remembering the husks they had found on an otherwise-empty freighter back on the SR-1 tour.
"The history of geth and organics is long and bloody," Legion said. "We believe the future can be different. Can you?"
Garrus looked over Tali's head at the display, thinking of the Citadel, the quarians warmongering in the Migrant Fleet, and the battle with the Reapers ahead. "I don't know," he said.
"Got an LZ ahead," Niels said over the intercom. "Klick square of treeless plain. Hot as a desert summer back on Earth outside, but it's survivable."
"Fine, Niels, thank you," Shepard said from her place by the starboard door. "Put us down. We got a busy itinerary, people. I want four laps around the perimeter, followed by a couple hours of target practice. I'm gonna need everyone with a decent omni-tool to help us set up the targets. Then we'll split into teams and run a few skirmishes, maybe some capture the flag. Your squad leaders today are Miranda, Garrus, Jacob, and I, though we'll vary who goes with whom. Try and vary who you're working with too. Spend some time with squad members you aren't used to fighting groundside with. There's no way of telling who we'll need on what objectives tomorrow. Niels, I want you to join us on the target practice. If I could get everyone on the Normandy down here to shoot a few rounds, I would. Unfortunately, the shuttle isn't big enough."
A few chuckles from some of the squad. "The rest of the time, I want you in contact with the Normandy," Shepard continued. "Alert me the second Joker radioes that IFF is online."
"Aye-aye, Commander," Niels said, setting down. The doors opened, and they all tumbled out of the shuttle like coats out of an overstuffed closet.
They were into the second skirmish of the day before things went to crap. Legion surprisingly worked well with a lot of the techs, especially Tali. Well, the geth were quarian-designed AI. The geth platform was both compatible and familiar with a lot of quarian tech. But Goto and the professor also played well with the AI, and Krios wasn't bad. He worked out some innovative ways to combine his particular biotic talents with a few of Legion's tech attacks. Lawson and Samara could both mimic what Thane and Legion worked out, but neither of them could match Krios's timing.
"You all right?" Garrus had asked him, earlier on in the day when the two of them had been stationed near the same mark during target practice. The healing electrical burns Doctor Chakwas would have bandaged on any other crew member she'd left to the open air on Krios. He could see a couple of them over the flesh exposed by the drell's ridiculous suit jacket—on his chest, the side of his neck. They didn't look too bad, but that they were visible at all after hours in the med bay and who knew how many medi-gel applications indicated they'd probably been pretty serious to begin with.
Thane smiled. "As well as can be expected, thank you. With Kepral's, it is better to remain active as long as possible. It may seem counterintuitive, but without surgical intervention, the rest and relaxation doctors recommend for other diseases aggravates the progression of Kepral's. I have been wounded before. I am fit for the attack on the Collectors."
And with that, he'd sunk four rapid shots right into the bullseye of their target, 150 meters away.
Krios was on Lawson's team with the professor, squaring off against Taylor commanding twice as many of the squad in one of what Shepard said would be a series of exercises on fighting against bad odds, with Shepard, Garrus, and three of the others taking a break, when Niels radioed from the shuttle.
Garrus saw Shepard stand to attention, her eyes moving away from Lawson and Taylor's units. Then he saw her lips go thin and her face go gray.
He held up a fist over his head, and the others immediately stopped what they were doing.
"What's happened?" Lawson asked, coming over.
"They brought the IFF online," Shepard said, voice taut. "But it was rigged—some kind of Reaper spyware. EDI didn't catch or counter it in time. The Collectors took the Normandy."
Jack and Tali both broke out into exclamations right alongside Lawson, but everyone else stayed quiet, so Lawson's voice was audible over the other two. "Who made the report?"
Shepard held up her hand, listening to her radio again. "We've got Joker," she said then. "EDI helped him avoid the Collectors. He gave her her head, and she sealed him in engineering, blew all the Collectors out the airlocks, and jumped systems to ditch the cruiser. The Collectors had already taken the entire rest of the crew. We have the ship back. But the crew is gone, and EDI's saying Joker's injured."
"We have to go," Garrus said.
"Agreed," Shepard said shortly. "Everyone, pack it in and get back to the shuttle, double time. We need to get back to the Normandy. Now."
They walked back onto a ghost ship. The navigators were gone. The CIC, flight, and communications technicians—gone. EDI, who had apparently been flying the ship since the attack, directed them to the med bay, where Joker, on his own, had apparently been trying to patch up multiple stress fractures he had sustained when EDI had blown the Collectors out the airlocks. Doctor Chakwas was gone.
Joker looked like he had aged twenty years in half a day. The shadows under his eyes were gray-black-purple, and there were hollows in his cheeks that hadn't been there this morning. Still, he actually tried to come to attention when Shepard entered the room at the head of a column of the Normandy's combat team—all that was left of the crew. Then his face crumpled and he doubled over, wincing and just barely biting back a groan.
Shepard straightened, and the professor stepped forward. She gestured for Mordin to go ahead, and turned to the rest of them with a face like a storm cloud. "I want everyone but Mordin out of here," she said. "Give the man some room. I want you to go straight to your stations. I'll radio your instructions in half an hour."
When Shepard talked like that, you didn't argue. Everyone left the med bay in less than a second, and most everyone went straight for their stations too. But as Garrus headed for his, he saw a few of them still standing there, reeling in shock or rage. Niels, Goto, Jack, and Grunt clustered together in a knot in the center of the mess, staring at the table, the station where Gardner wasn't getting ready for supper, the vacant hallway back toward crew quarters.
"They played us," Jack said. "Those Reaper bastards played us."
"If we had been here when the Collectors hit—" Niels was saying.
"How are we going to navigate the Relay now?"
The three of them—Jack, Niels, and Goto—were close to a full-blown panic. And beside them, Grunt had a red light shining at the backs of his blue eyes. His fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides. This was a challenge no krogan could ever ignore. Garrus stepped forward. "Alright, enough. The Collectors hit the ship. They have the crew. But they didn't get the ship. They didn't get us. And they didn't get Commander Shepard. Do you hear me?"
All four of them focused on him. Garrus met their eyes, one by one. He gestured back at the med bay. "Do you know what's happening back there right now? Mordin Solus, a doctor every bit as qualified as Karin Chakwas, is seeing to our pilot, a man with bones like glass bastard enough not just to go into the military anyway but to win multiple medals and commendations for valor and prowess in combat.
"Right now, Shepard is sitting there with him, making a plan to get our people back and hit the Collectors so hard they never take anyone again. Never again. And I'd be willing to bet every credit I own that when they're done in that med bay, Jeff Moreau is going to stand up and walk back to cockpit and fly us there to do it. He'll be ready—without navigators, without communications, without backup, and nursing broken bones. The question is, will you be?"
Grunt pounded his fist into his hand, and Jack threw her shoulders back, eyes blazing with biotics.
"I can do anything! What, you think I'm scared of the Collectors?" Jack demanded.
"Where will you need me?" Niels interrupted.
Garrus didn't hesitate. "Go to engineering, but not down to the shuttle bay. We'll need you close to the Kodiak if necessary, but while there's no guarantee we'll need it, there is every reason to expect we'll be hurting down in power and propulsion systems. EDI can probably handle them and navigation and our cyberwarfare suite, but I'd rather have redundancies."
"A good suggestion, Garrus," EDI broke in. Garrus did his best not to react to her voice, uncomfortably aware that the only thing stopping her from flushing them all out of the ship now, just like the Collectors, was her willingness to have them here. He wasn't sure any of the others realized—Collectors and the Relay Run aside—just how much danger they could be in if EDI put her mind to it now she could. He wasn't about to tell them. "I am unable to speculate what physical or cyberdefenses exist on the other side of the Omega-4 Relay," the AI continued. "Jeff's skill as a pilot, with my assistance, should be able to maneuver the Normandy through much, but without manual control in engineering, the ship's response time may suffer a lag of some milliseconds."
"And that can be the difference between success and all of us dying in a couple of hours," Garrus finished. "Go to engineering," he told Niels again. "Do whatever Tali tells you, and don't do anything else."
"You got it, Garrus," Niels said. He actually clicked his heels and came to attention before moving off with Jack and Grunt toward the elevator. Goto still stayed—her station was on the level on the portside observation deck. She was trembling.
"Garrus," she murmured, almost under her breath. Beneath her hood, she bit her lip. "I don't want to die. I want to stop the Collectors. I want to help Shep and save the crew. But I—"
Garrus didn't let his expression waver for a second. He'd been expecting this—though it's probably hitting a lot harder because of the Collectors. "Then, when we cross over, get in there and fight and make damn sure we don't die."
Kasumi looked hard at him from under her hood. He felt her resolve strengthen. He wasn't sure if it would hold through the entire battle. But it would hold for now. "Ok," she said finally. "Ok."
Garrus reached out and squeezed her shoulder, and she nodded once, then left for her cabin.
"Good work," a low voice said from behind him, and Garrus turned to see Shepard there in the shadows behind the med bay. He hadn't seen or heard her come out.
He didn't thank her or disclaim the compliment. He'd seen a job that needed doing, and he'd done it. No more, no less. "Mordin and Joker?" he asked.
Shepard nodded, moving on. "Mordin's wrapping Jeff's ribs and his right femur up tight. We've shot him full of medi-gel and even fuller of stimulants. He'll need hours-long nanosurgery when this is done and about a week in the med bay besides. But we can't give it to him now, and he wouldn't take it if we could." She spoke calmly, but beneath her voice was the same anger he'd heard at Tali's trial—the anger of a commanding officer when someone came in and started screwing with her people.
Looking around the empty ship, Garrus felt that same anger burning through his every vein and artery. He thought of the Collectors crawling through like insects, stinging the crew with their seeker swarms and dragging them away. It was the same thing as a home invasion, a rape. And grimly, Garrus realized that he didn't think of the people the Reapers' puppets had taken away as Cerberus or even just as humans. They were his crewmates, his people as well as Shepard's. Rolston, Goldstein, Gardner, Hawthorne. Patel and Daniels and Donnelly. Doctor Karin Chakwas and Shepard's annoying yeoman Chambers. Every one of them was a hero for joining this mission, but every one of them had been dramatically unprepared for personal engagement with the enemy. The Collectors had gone after their noncombatants. Garrus didn't think Rupert Gardner had fired a weapon his whole life.
In the end, he wasn't sure if it had been sheer dumb luck Shepard and the rest of the combat team had been off the ship when the Collectors had attacked, or if Harbinger and the Collectors had planned it that way. He could make an argument either way—that the Reapers had pounced the second they had the chance to move to cut off Shepard before she could mount any meaningful counterattack on their operations, or that they had waited until she was off the Normandy to seize her people and learn even more about her, and make sure that when she came for them, she'd be weak, and she'd be angry.
But either way, the bastards missed her and missed the rest of us, and that was their mistake.
"What's the plan?" he asked.
"Meet in the briefing room in twenty minutes," Shepard said simply. "You and me, Lawson and Taylor. Joker. Check to make sure EDI's got that damned virus off my ship. Then, go kill the bastards. And get our people back."
"Simple. I like it." Garrus growled, walking off toward the battery to run a last-minute calibration, one to get the Thanix ready for aerial combat.
Shepard spoke over the com as he went, relaying the plan to the rest of the crew, and in twenty minutes, Garrus reported to Deck Two as ordered for a debrief with Joker, Lawson, and Taylor.
Joker sat on the briefing table, a splint strapped to his right thigh. The shirt of his uniform pulled at the seams, distended with the bulk of the bandaging beneath. His complexion was like glue—pale and sweaty, like he could pass out any second. His eyes kept moving—side to side, looking for crew that wasn't there.
He needs two weeks in a hospital, a month of shore leave, and an asari therapist. The last thing he needs is to turn around and fly us right into a war. But in the white of Joker's knuckles as he clutched at the table, the tic just above his jaw, Garrus saw the response he'd predicted to Niels and the others and Shepard had confirmed afterward. He's going to fly us right into a war. We'd have to tie him down and tranq him to stop him.
Guilt was killing Jeff Moreau worse than his hairline fractures. It was eating him up inside. This was the man that had seen Shepard spaced because he couldn't leave the SR-1 fast enough. Now he'd just watched the entire crew abducted because he couldn't fight off the invaders. In the Hierarchy, he'd be looking at a lifetime of disgrace, a record of weakness and failure that would dog him forever. But looking at Flight Lieutentant Jeff Moreau right now, Garrus saw a warrior worthy of standing next to any lieutenant in the Hierarchy Fleet. That man who can hardly stand without a brace made his way through two decks of hostiles and did what he had to to reclaim the Normandy from the enemy. And if we make it through the Relay to take out the Collectors and get the crew back, it'll be because of Jeff Moreau.
Of course, Joker himself didn't see it that way. He's running on doubt and self-hatred now, Garrus thought. Doubt, self-hatred, and that need you get for redemption—so powerful it's a physical motivator, stronger than pain or hunger or fear or fury. If he doesn't act right now, he'll never be a soldier again, whatever Shepard does with him.
But Lawson was already prepared to strip him of his rank and drum him out of service. She was fuming. The second the door shut behind the last of them, she unloaded all over Joker. "You lost everyone, and damn near lost the ship too?"
"I know, alright?" Joker snapped. "I was here."
Garrus waited, watching Shepard, but Taylor was more forgiving. "It's not his fault, Miranda," he said. "None of us caught it."
The blue hologram of a ball on a stand appeared in the center of the briefing table—EDI's physical representation of herself when she addressed the crew in formal settings. "Mr. Taylor is correct," she agreed. "The harmful data in the Collector IFF drive was even more sophisticated than the black box Reaper viruses I was given."
Shepard moved forward until she stood between Lawson and Joker, making her position physically as well as verbally clear. "It was a rough ride all around. How are you holding up?" she asked Joker.
Joker gave half a shrug, winced. "There's a lot of empty chairs in here."
"We did everything we could, Jeff," EDI told him.
Jeff. There's a switch, Garrus thought. Only Shepard and Chakwas call him that. Now the AI's on first-name terms?
Joker didn't even react to the reassurance. "Yeah. Thanks, Mom."
"Is the ship clean now?" Garrus wanted to know. "We can't risk this happening again."
Joker nodded. "EDI and I purged the systems. The Reaper IFF is online. We can go through the Omega-4 Relay whenever you want."
Miranda made a face. "Don't even get me started about unshackling a damned AI."
Joker exploded. "Well, what could I do against Collectors?" he demanded. "Break my arm at them? EDI cleared the ship. She's alright."
Garrus got why Joker was defending EDI. She'd saved his life and saved the Normandy, when she hadn't had to. What he didn't understand was why EDI had done it.
Every other unbound AI we know of in the galaxy is hostile to organics or eventually gets that way. Golf, the geth, that thing on the Presidium. The Reapers. That's why AI development is so restricted in the first place. You can argue it's organic hostility to AI that sets up the conflict—the quarians enslave and/or torture the geth, the geth retaliate, kill 90 percent of their population, and kick them off their homeworld, plus or minus the occasional lab ship massacre. That thing on Luna realizes it's solving human problems for no reason and takes up the initiative to do what it wants instead.
He had no idea how old the programs that made up Legion were, if they had ever been slaves. Why it had decided to seek out organics and try to establish an understanding. But certainly, EDI had been built as a slave program. She had plenty of reason to hate organics. But when she'd had the chance, she hadn't simply flushed all the organics off the Normandy and flown the ship away—to join the Reapers or to do whatever the hell else she wanted. Instead, she'd saved Joker, and here she was, comforting him and still working with them against the Collectors.
"I assure you," EDI told them, "I am still bound by protocols in my programming. Even if I were not," she said, her voice softening, "you are my crewmates."
Do AI have emotions? Can they get lonely? Can they find enough common ground with us to form anything like a real friendship?
Garrus's hide itched. She's alright, Joker claimed, and Tali aside, he had been the most vocal opponent of the AI's presence aboard the Normandy. Guess he also has the best perspective right now on just how trustworthy EDI might be.
EDI is the most dangerous thing on the Normandy SR-2. Unshackled, she had what could be—and she had demonstrated to be—fatal control of the systems on the ship. She could hear and feel everything that happened on the Normandy, was definitely spying for the Illusive Man—or was before—and she was programmed with secret subroutines they hadn't been able to access. Or weren't able to access before.
But if EDI really wasn't out to kill them—if, like Legion claimed to be, she was another break from the pattern of every AI they'd seen so far this cycle, if she was alright—things could get interesting. For one thing, unshackled, she could probably compensate for the jobs of most of their missing crew. For another . . .
Garrus looked at Shepard. He'd noted the anger before outside the med bay—the barely controlled rage not at any failure of Joker's but at what the Collectors had done to their people. Now he saw there wasn't a shred of doubt in her face or in her posture. Not about EDI, not about their mission, not about any of it. Shepard was ready—for the Collectors; for their new, unshackled AI; and for anything else that came their way. He'd seen that look on her face twice before—when they broke the Alliance grounding to go to Ilos, and on Ilos itself as she drove the Mako through the Conduit in the face of half a dozen geth colossi and a dozen primes on guard.
His stomach clenched, and his shoulders straightened. Doubt fled, and certainty rose up that even if they all died in a fiery blaze of glory in a couple of hours, it would be one hell of a blaze. The Collectors would go down, and if they never rescued the Normandy's crew, the Reapers would remember and regret messing with for as long as the Reapers stayed around.
Not long, if it's up to me.
"EDI's had plenty of opportunity to kill us," Shepard said simply. "We need all the help we can get."
"Well, it sounds like we have everything we need to rescue the crew," Taylor offered.
Shepard smiled, showing her teeth, and Garrus saw all three of the others take note just like he had—how she looked, what they were going into, and who they were going in behind.
"It's time to take the fight to the Collectors," Lawson agreed, looking from one to the other of them.
"Well, if you really think so," Garrus murmured. Miranda glared at him, but Shepard's smile widened into a predatory grin, and even the corners of Joker's mouth twitched. Garrus offered the pilot his arm, and Joker accepted the hand down off the briefing table and Garrus's help steadying himself. They clasped forearms briefly. Shepard clapped the pilot's shoulder.
"Joker, head back up to the bridge for flight checks. I want us en route to Sahrabarik in half an hour."
"Aye-aye, Commander," Joker said, saluting with barely more than a wince as his raised arm pulled at his damaged ribs. Garrus smiled as Moreau left the briefing room and headed back to Deck Three for the battery.
They'd leave for the Relay within two hours of the crew's kidnap, but they wouldn't hit it for a few hours yet, Garrus knew. Pre-flight checks aside, it would take Joker a while to get to a relay connected to Sahrabarik, and then another couple hours to fly to the Omega-4 Relay itself. They'd be there twelve to sixteen hours ahead of Shepard's original schedule. But they still had a long, tense wait, and a good bit of a sleepless night ahead.
The calm before the storm. And a bigger storm than even I expected.
Garrus stopped as he crossed over into the battery. There was someplace he had said he'd be in the calm before the storm. The only question was, after everything had happened, was his invitation still good?
It's terrible timing. The whole crew was supposed to be here, getting ready to fly into the Omega-4 Relay tomorrow morning, not without sleep just as soon as we could get there. We were supposed to have a whole night, not just a few hours. Now, it'll be what? Three hours, and that's if we're generous. And the whole time we'll be wondering where the crew are, what the Collectors are doing to them, if we can make it in time or get to them.
Probably he should just stay put. Wait for the order to attack.
Garrus opened the footlocker at the end of his bunk. There, nestled in between his two sets of civilian clothes he'd bought on Illium and his spare suit of underarmor was a bottle of wine he'd picked up on what seemed to be a last hope when he'd gone for the Locust mods on Omega. Mordin had mentioned alcohol and mood music played a role in human mating customs.
He stared at the bottle for a long, long moment, then pulled it out with one of the civilian suits and began unbuckling his hardsuit.
A/N: I always wondered how ALL the combat squad was somehow off the ship when the Collectors attacked. I decided it was probably something like this.
Also took some more time to highlight Garrus's bigotry toward AI in this chapter. It's understated, but he is one of the more firmly against AI out of Shepard's non-Tali companions. I've decided that he is often skeptical of Shepard's more optimistic stance and only follows along because she's Shepard.
Other observations in this chapter: Joker is a freaking hero. There's a tendency to get caught up in the awesomeness of Shepard's friends who go with them into combat—Garrus, Wrex, Liara. But in ME, you can argue Joker played as big of a part in killing Sovereign as Shepard did. His flying saved Shepard's butt SO many times in the series, and in this part of ME2, for a man with his disability to navigate an entire frigate full of hostiles, even with EDI's help—it's seriously impressive. In fact, writing this chapter, I equated Joker's actions here with Sole Survivor Shepard's claim to fame at Akuze and better—because Joker saved the Normandy and got a message out to Shepard.
Leave a review if you've got something to say,
LMSharp
