LI
The Other Side of Impossible: Following the Black Rabbit
Garrus was moving before Shepard's order rang out— "Get them out of there! Hurry!"
He saw movement all around him, the Normandy team all attacking the pods. He blocked it out. All that mattered was Rolston and the seals keeping him inside this one, particular death pod. Garrus overloaded the electric system powering it. Rolston began to quiver at the jolt. Garrus blocked it out, smashing the butt of his rifle against the pod seals, breaking the pod away from its cradle. The casing came open. Acrid-smelling liquid rushed out—some kind of acid, maybe. Garrus dodged it, and seized Rolston, moaning and bleeding. Hurled him out onto clean ground and ran to the next pod in the line.
Inside was Daniels, Gabby Daniels from Engineering. Her short brown hair was plastered to her head. Her round, cheerful face was screaming.
"Hold on!" he yelled, without knowing what he was saying. "Just hold on!"
Behind him, Jack and Jacob were cursing. Even Krios was hissing, something that sounded foul. All around were gasping, groaning, sobbing humans. Colonists? The Normandy crew? There wasn't time to look. Garrus ripped Gabby out of her pod and went to a third—but it was too late.
Garrus stopped up short. Through the see-through amber window into the third pod, a gray-haired man in coveralls dissolved, melted into a red-gray-bown solution. Liquified bone, muscle, and organ. The last thing to go was his open, screaming mouth.
Garrus whirled, looking for other pods. Every one he saw was empty. Ripped from its cradle and forcibly emptied, or emptied by design—contents pureed by Collector tech.
As his legs threatened to give way, Garrus swapped his assault gun for his sniper and unfolded it just to lean on it and keep standing. He blinked and swallowed and fought down the nausea, staring up at the soaring, corrugated metal tubes above. The pneumatic pumping sound hissed again. Garrus's guts revolted.
He closed his eyes. That's what the Reapers do. They harvest people, to use them, not just as husks but for . . .
What?
Garrus straightened. Swallowed again. Then he turned and flicked on his vid recorder.
He filmed the empty pods, the scored and bleeding humans on the ground, taken from the brink of extinction. He filmed the tubes still pumping human genetic material overhead, and he made up his mind. We're going to get out of here.
Garrus had stopped treating this mission like a suicide run a few weeks back. Everything he'd done since and in the fight from the Omega-4 Relay had been with the aim to keep as many people alive as possible for as long as he possibly could.
But trying isn't good enough anymore.
Dying here today would be unacceptable. It wouldn't make up for Archangel. The only way to do that was to live. To take everything he knew and Shepard knew and the entire crew here knew back to the rest of the galaxy and stop the Reapers.
But how much of the crew is left?
Garrus focused on the individual faces of the people they'd saved from the Collector pods. There were twenty-four of them. His visor recognized them all. Hawthorne. Patel and Matthews. Goldstein, Esabe. Donnelly and Gardner. He closed his eyes again. There wasn't a single colonist among them. No survivors from Horizon, Freedom's Progress, Ferris Fields. Every one of their people had made it. But if we had gotten here even seconds later . . .
Every one of the crew had lesions—on their faces, on their arms. Chemical burns and minor injuries. Their limbs shook, and their eyes—Garrus caught Daniels's eye and looked away almost immediately. This isn't a victory. How are any of these people supposed to recover from this?
He stooped. Gripped Daniels's arm. Helped her to her feet. Beneath the blood and the remnants of whatever foul liquid the Collectors had submerged her and the others in, her fingers were white as they clutched at his armor. "You came," she was gasping. "You came! All of you came!"
The woman was on the edge of a full-blown panic attack, and she wasn't the only one. Hawthorne was stammering something about Joker at Goto and Samara. Patel was sobbing in Gardner's arms. The mess sergeant's mouth was open. His eyes weren't seeing the station. His fingers curled over Sarah's shoulders, and he held her, but Garrus didn't think the man even knew he was crying too. "Just breathe, Daniels," Garrus told Gabby. He jerked his head at Samara and Taylor, near the edges of the group. "Take up positions on the perimeter," he ordered them. "We don't know how long this chamber is or what else might be in it. We have to be ready for another attack."
"Right," Taylor agreed. He raised his shotgun and jogged away from the center of the group, tagging Grunt, the professor, and Massani as he went. They joined him, taking up guard positions over the crew, facing out into the dark.
"No one gets left behind," Shepard was saying to Chakwas. Chambers was reaching out to her. Shepard hugged both women, one after the other.
"Thank God you got here in time," Kelly said. "A few more seconds and . . ." She was a sick, almost green kind of white. You could see whatever foul liquid she and the others had been suspended in, gleaming on her skin and matting down and darkening her usually bright red hair. "I don't even want to think about it."
Daniels's hands tightened on Garrus again, and she choked back a sob. Garrus tried to smile at her and caught Rolston's eye. Rolston wasn't quite as beat up as Gabby. He nodded and came forward, taking the engineer from Garrus and steering her back toward the body of the rest of the crew, where Ken Donnelly folded an arm around her, as much for his own sake as for hers.
"The colonists were . . . processed," Doctor Chakwas said, looking back at the pods, the cradles, and the corrugated tubes leading away from them, up further into the station. "Those swarms of little robots, they . . . melted their bodies into gray liquid and pumped it through these tubes."
"Why are they doing this?" Shepard murmured, looking up and trying to follow the tubes like Garrus had, up into the dark recesses of the upper station. "What are they doing with our genetic material?"
Karin shook her head. Like the rest of them, she was trembling. "I don't know. I'm just glad you got here before it happened to us."
Lawson stepped forward. She gripped the doctor's shoulder, but looked around at Shepard and the rest of the combat crew. "So are we. But we still have work to do. We've done well so far. Let's hope we can finish the job."
Garrus looked out at Taylor, Grunt, and the others guarding the perimeter. Lawson was right. They were still deep in enemy territory. The thing they needed more than anything else right now was a route to that main control room and a plan to blow the station off the face of the galaxy. Every second wasted was another second the Collectors could regroup, form a line. Press another attack.
Shepard straightened, and a notification on Garrus's visor indicated she'd opened a connection back to the Normandy. "Lieutenant, can you get a fix on our position?" she asked.
Joker's voice came in over a channel playing to every member of the combat team. "Roger that, Commander. All those tubes lead into the main control room right above you. The route is blocked by a security door, but there's another chamber that runs parallel to the one you're in."
Shepard had up her omni-tool, displaying a holo with the station's blueprint and blinking dots that represented their current position. A bright light lit up, showing another nearby maintenance corridor to the parallel chamber in question, a position ahead of the blocked door down their current hall.
But then the route flashed red, and EDI said, "I cannot recommend that. Thermal emissions suggest the chamber is overrun with seeker swarms. Mordin's countermeasure cannot protect you against so many at once."
"We ran into that at the end of the last chamber," Garrus told Shepard. "Samara was able to get them off of us." He glanced over at the justicar. "Would you be able to maintain a consistent field?"
He moved toward the front line, hoisting the Mantis in his arms and peering down the length of the chamber, looking for the entrance to the maintenance corridor on EDI's scans, for any Collectors in the distance. Samara's answer came from behind him. "Yes. I think it may be possible. I wouldn't be able to protect everyone, but we might be able to get a small team through if they stayed close."
Behind him, Lawson shifted. "I could do it too," she said, voice crisp and a little resentful. "In theory, any biotic could handle it. Shepard, who do you want to maintain the field?"
Garrus glanced sharply back at Shepard. Theory didn't always hold up in practice. In theory, any biotic would be capable of the technique the fire team heading ahead to open the door to the main control room would need to make it through. In practice, not a lot of them would be capable of maintaining a large enough field for a long enough time against the kind of resistance they were likely to meet.
Lawson can't do it. Shepard has to know that.
She did, too. She stared Miranda down, jaw tight, and Lawson was the first one to look away. She knows she can't really do it either.
But Shepard has to use her for something.
Lawson was done being sidelined. Part of Garrus respected her for it. Shepard had started using her more in combat, had made her a tacit lieutenant on the ground team these past few weeks for several damn good reasons, and now Lawson wasn't just going to sit back and be happy playing a support role in the mission. She knew she had more to give, and she was going to give it, no matter what anyone thought.
In a way, Lawson's insistence on being more involved might even be more symptomatic of her commitment to Shepard and the mission than of her ego. A soldier, volunteering for everything and then some. Because she wants to help. Because she's proud to serve. Not just ready to do her duty but passionate about it.
Garrus regarded Lawson's set face, the glint in her blue eyes as she looked back at Shepard, strangely defiant. A sudden conviction he was absolutely right clenched in his stomach. I think we've got her. She'd be here even if Cerberus and the Illusive Man hadn't told her to be. And if we've got Miranda . . .
He glanced back at Shepard, and her gray eyes met his for a split second. In them was something like apology, but not the faintest trace of uncertainty. Along the stock of the Mantis, Garrus moved his hand in a single, shorthand version of an Alliance signal. Do it.
Shepard nodded. "I don't want you on the biotic field, Miranda," she said finally. "I want you leading a diversion team heading up this passage. Jack and I will take a smaller team through the seeker swarms."
Garrus's mandibles flared. This time around, Shepard wasn't just going with the safe bet. Moving forward, she was playing this like it was just another training session. Preparing for the war ahead. Keeping Jack and Miranda on separate teams was the least of it.
Samara was the easy choice for the barrier, but Shepard was going with Jack. Both of them had more than enough biotic ability to maintain the barrier, but being the linchpin of the entire infiltration team, the whole mission, moving forward, wouldn't do a whole lot for Samara, while it would do everything for Jack. Change her life and outlook on a level with anything she had faced or done back on Pragia. If she pulled this off, they'd leave this station with two hero-level, military-grade biotics ready to face the Reapers.
By picking Lawson to lead the distraction team, even after the discussion about her leadership back on the Normandy, Shepard was making a statement, both to Lawson herself and to the rest of the team. They didn't just have one secondary lieutenant here, and when they all moved on from this mission, there'd be a few of them equipped to lead units against Reaper forces.
Of course, all that still leaves us with one glaring problem. Lawson was practically glowing, promising to get her team through, but Karin Chakwas saw it. "What about me and the rest of the crew, Shepard?" she asked. "We're in no shape to fight."
The holo still rotating over Shepard's omni-tool flashed as Joker and EDI lit up a new route on the display. "Commander, we have enough systems back online to do a pickup, but we need to land back from your position," Joker said. Garrus saw the airlock he was recommending—outside a narrow passage branching off from the maintenance tunnel Shepard's team would take to open the door to the control center. Not a whole lot bigger than the ventilation shaft—single-worker passage. The crew would have to move up it single file. They'd be relatively safe from enemy fire, but that didn't mean the passage wouldn't have its own defenses. Going out instead of in, though? Maybe . . .
"We can't afford to go back, Shepard," Lawson objected. "Not now."
Shepard shook her head, looking over at the crew, all unarmed, exhausted, and shaking. Most of them wounded and injured. "They'll never make it without help," she said. "Professor, will you escort them?"
Mordin fell back from his position on the perimeter. He was wounded himself but looked fighting fit, and he was nodding. In addition, as a doctor himself, he'd be able to help with the injured crew when they got back to the Normandy.
And with his connections in the STG, he's one of the best options to get the word out to the rest of the galaxy about what happened here.
. . .
Shut up. We're going to get out of here.
"Joker, copy location of landing zone," the professor was saying. "Will meet you there."
"We'll go with you as far as the corridor," Shepard told the salarian. "Teams as follows—with me and Jack: Legion, Tali, and Samara." She pointed down the chamber. "Miranda, you'll take the rest down that way. We'll see you on the other side of the doors."
"Understood," Lawson confirmed, as the crew and the combat team began to break up into their respective groups. Their team was almost the same as last time, Garrus reflected, minus Samara but with the addition of Krios and Goto. But Shepard would have quite a bit more power on her side with Tali and Samara backing her up, and Samara would be able to backstop Jack if she needed it. She's also making Tali work with Legion again, Garrus thought, but he was already moving on from Shepard's team in his mind.
Their side wouldn't have as much biotic power, especially since Taylor would still be recovering from the last chamber, but Lawson would be able to call on a bit more midrange support.
Shepard took one last look around the crew. "We've all got our assignments," she said, without bothering with a speech this time. "Let's move out."
Lawson turned to Garrus, Massani, Grunt, Taylor, Goto, and Krios, who had all broken off from the others to group in the central chamber. "You heard the woman," she said. "Thane, Zaeed—take the right flank. Kasumi, I want you ranging anywhere you're needed in the midfield. Make good use of that cloak of yours. Garrus and I will take the left. He'll have you on thermal imaging at all times. Grunt? Jacob?" She smiled coldly, caught Garrus's eye a moment, and gestured twice toward the front. "Make a hole."
Most everyone who'd been on their team in the last chamber chuckled, but as Taylor moved toward the front, Lawson called after him. "Jacob? Use biotics only as a supplement," she told him. "Thane and I have got your back if you need it, but we're going to try and run this mostly with bullets, understand? Let Shepard's team mess around with the biotics."
Taylor made a face but didn't argue. "Got it, Miranda," he confirmed.
Garrus saw a glimmer of wings ahead in the distance—the Collectors' next wave, probably coming from further up in the station. "Dead ahead," he warned.
"Breaking off from Shepard now," Solus reported over the radio. "Headed back to Normandy. Commander's team pressing forward."
"Good luck," Garrus replied, as the first shrieks from the Collector beams sounded up ahead.
"Looks like we've got their attention back," Lawson remarked.
Garrus shook his head. "Want a bet? If we see Harbinger, even once—"
"You're right," Lawson cut in, flicking off her radio for a moment. "But keep your voice down. If we do our jobs right, we'll make that bastard notice us."
Up ahead and to their right, Grunt roared and charged the enemy, powering up his armor fortification as he went, blazing like a star in the darkness. There was a groaning, shrieking sound off to the side, down beneath the sloping walkway up to the chambers beyond. "Husks!" Miranda called. "Get ready for close combat! Do you think they're the rejects or the chosen ones?" she added to Garrus. "Which humans do you think they process, and which do they turn into husks?"
Garrus hummed. He debated pulling out the Vindicator to deal with the oncoming husks, then decided to leave them to Lawson and Massani on the right and maintain a sniper crossfire with Krios instead. There were still a lot of drones up there, hovering on side platforms, swooping in to land on the walkway. "I'm not sure it matters. Either way, it's an abomination."
"Agreed," Miranda said shortly. A light flickered on his visor as she opened a radio channel to Shepard. "Miranda here," she said. "Team has engaged the enemy, and we're progressing down the corridor. Awaiting your orders, Commander."
Something that sounded like Shepard's voice answered back, but then the channel was consumed in static. For a moment, no one on their team said anything. Goto fired out from a position between Krios and Taylor, a six-shot spread tight into the head of an oncoming husk. Taylor blew out the torso of another with his shotgun, letting it fall as a collection of disembodied gray and rotting limbs to the chamber floor.
"That the seeker swarms and biotic barriers, or has something worse happened?" Kasumi asked, her voice trying to stay light and matter-of-fact, but it was higher pitched and more brittle than usual.
Grunt fired two three-shot bursts from his pistol. His targets caught fire and began to smoke and burn. "What happens if Shepard dies before she can open the door?" he asked bluntly.
"Then we finish the mission," Miranda said sharply. "We have a couple of demolitionists here, and one of us was about as responsible for killing the Reapers at the Battle of the Citadel as Commander Shepard. Just stay focused, and keep moving. Above for more drones!"
None of the others said anything, but ahead, Garrus saw them pull together, their shots into the enemy forces improve. Krios sent an arc of dark energy into the black, and Garrus's visor saw the armor of one of the Collector drones burn away in the field. He sighted down and fired.
"Finally remembered I helped killing Saren and Sovereign, have you?" he asked.
Lawson sniffed. "I never forgot."
Garrus wondered what she imagined they'd use for ordnance to get through the door at the end of the corridor if Shepard didn't make it, or how she imagined they would gain the time and space to use it with the Collectors coming in at them from every angle. He didn't bother asking. Probably, she's thought of those two little problems and just doesn't want the others thinking of them.
He could see the end of the chamber now, the deepening shadows up the hill they were climbing, where the ceiling lowered and a door closed off the threshold to the upper reaches of the station. But between their position and that door were a dozen or more creeping, climbing gray shapes, studded with glowing blue tech. There were fewer drones on platforms to the left and right of the walkway, but the next wave of husks looked . . . impressive. And if they managed to divide up the team . . .
"We need to fall back," Garrus warned. "If those things get around us, we're finished."
"Fall back!" Lawson shouted. "Diamond formation! Thane! Kasumi! With me! I want Grunt on point, Zaeed and Jacob to left and right, and Garrus guarding the rear!"
Jacob, Grunt, and Zaeed all shouted acknowledgment, and the seven of them pressed in toward the center of the walkway, back to back and shoulder to shoulder, holding together against the wave of husks running toward them. In formation, each of them were guarded on at least two sides by the bodies of the others.
"I got you!" Grunt shouted. "Try and keep up!"
They began moving together for the door again. Once they reached it, they would be protected on yet another side from the Collectors, though Garrus could already see reinforcement drones flying in from the rear, just like they'd done in the last chamber. In the distance, he heard the banging of a heavy cannon.
"Oh, God!" Kasumi was saying, as Massani hurled a husk back from the group, firing out disrupter ammo at it in a blaze of blue charge.
"Just keep going!" Garrus yelled. Down the hill, he could see two Collector heavies, holding their plasma cannons out in front of them and moving slowly, relentlessly forward. Behind them, there was something that looked a lot like one of the Collector air support vehicles, twenty pairs of empty husk eyes gleaming through the darkness at them from its gaping bay.
Damn it!
They were at the door to the next chamber. Garrus ranged forward with Massani, Grunt, and Taylor to form a line, while Lawson, Krios, and Goto fell back to fire out between the gaps.
Or that had been the plan. Kasumi was panicking instead, pounding at the door. "The door's sealed," she was saying. "Oh, God, Shepard! Shepard!" She hadn't even opened a radio channel.
Garrus shouldered aside one of the final husks of the wave, ignoring the tech shock from the impact. He fired at it without looking, analyzing firing solutions for all the firepower coming their way up the hill. There was no cover, nothing between them and the oncoming heavy weapons. And none in their team had heavy weapons at all.
"Need a barrier," he said. "Give us something . . ."
"Jacob, Thane," Miranda agreed, pushing out a biotic field to give them some, flimsy protection from fire. They wouldn't be able to hold it for long. "Garrus, Zaeed, I need you to take out that thing. Fast. Grunt, I need you to take the heavies." Her voice was tense but level.
Without even pausing to nod, Grunt charged down the hill toward the Collector heavies. Beside him, Jacob cried out, falling down. His part of the barrier blinked out above them.
Garrus saw the shooter—a drone coming up on their right flank. With the biotics focused solely on the barrier, Grunt down the hill with the heavies, and him and Massani trying like hell to whittle down the CAS vehicle, the drones were closing in.
"Kasumi!" he snapped at Goto. "Pull yourself together and focus! Cover fire! Now! We're dying here!"
"Shepard," Lawson was saying over the radio. "Come in, Shepard. Shepard, do you copy?"
One of the heavies went down below, burning to ash at the end of a krogan shotgun, but it didn't matter. The CAS vehicle was close enough to them to fire now, its broad plasma beam shrieking across the chamber, lighting up the dark. But, with a rush in his gut, Garrus saw a shot of Massani's incendiary ammo catch inside the open bay. He twisted his wrist and aimed a tech explosion right at the center of it, then opened a clip from his assault rifle right into the twenty grinning, blackening husk faces inside.
The thing ignited, burning to ash in the air just as its plasma beam came within a meter of their clustered group. "Zaeed, find us some room," Miranda ordered. "Grunt, when you're finished with that monster husk down there, go help him. We don't have cover. Let's make some.
"Kasumi, Jacob's hurt," she said, in a softer voice. "Use your omni-tool. See if you can get him back in the fight."
"Jacob," Kasumi repeated, her own voice steadying from her position behind Garrus. "Alright. Jacob." And she turned away from the door, crouching beside Krios, who had let his part of the barrier drop and taken over cover fire duties. Lawson held up the barrier alone, but as Grunt came back, a Collector corpse over one shoulder and a husk over the other, and slammed them down in front of the line, she let it fall, giving the krogan a single nod.
"Shepard," Lawson repeated over the radio. "Shepard, come in."
"Garrus," she added, "keep them back, but fall back toward the rest of us here. I may need you and Kasumi to do what you can to get us past this door."
"Understood," Garrus said, moving another fallen husk into line beside Grunt's existing stack, calculating a targeting solution for an incoming drone. He dropped to one knee. Took the shot. Moved back.
"It's fine! I'm fine!" Taylor was snapping. "I'm up. Ready to go."
He was shot, burned through-and-through with a Collector particle beam through the heavy muscle on his left shoulder. Didn't look close to anything crucial. And Collector beams don't leave you bleeding. But he wasn't going to be making use of his biotics any time soon. Maybe not his shotgun either. And it's got to hurt like a son of a bitch.
Garrus shot another Collector, straight through the throat, sending blood and tech spattering through the air.
Behind him, the sounds of Kasumi's Locust joined Miranda's again, punctuated by cracks from Taylor's Carnifex. "I'll strip the barriers," Goto was saying. "Just drop them out of the air after me."
"Running out of heat sinks," Taylor commented.
"Check behind you. Near the door," Krios told him.
"Shepard, do you copy?!" Miranda repeated.
And at last, at last, something more than static crackled over the radio, and Shepard's voice spoke over the fire. "I copy. What's your position?"
Behind him, Goto made a noise between a scream and a sob. "We're at the door," Lawson reported quickly. "They've got us pinned down." Ahead, Garrus saw six, eight Collector drones moving in on platforms to the left and right of the walkway they had come up.
Massani heaved another Collector corpse in front of the door. He and Grunt had built a makeshift barrier out of the bodies of the dead. Rough cover. Easy to get past. But more than they'd had two minutes ago.
"We're coming," Shepard was saying. "Hold on!" And then—to someone else, Tali or Legion, maybe— "Get this door open!"
"Let's light 'em up!" Taylor growled from beside Garrus, nodding at Kasumi. "Hey, Goto. Bet I can get more of 'em before the door closes than you can."
"You—you can't even shoot straight," Kasumi answered. Her wrist flicked, and an incendiary program like Shepard's roared out from her omni-tool at the wall Grunt and Massani had built, setting it alight and making the oncoming husks and drones beginning to charge up the walkway stop and stagger back from the blaze.
And then the door behind them slid open, and Shepard was shouting, not over the radio, but in their ears. "Come on!"
"Get ready to seal the door!" Miranda ordered. She waved her gun at the rest of them for them to precede her into the next chamber.
Goto went first, half-supporting Taylor. Garrus went next, with Krios, still firing back at the Collectors. Massani and Grunt came next, cursing and roaring like they had from their respective first days on the squad.
Garrus fell in between Tali and Shepard, looking back at Miranda as the first enemies began climbing over the flaming corpse wall—husks, aflame themselves. Still coming, screaming mindlessly.
And then Miranda buckled, doubling up over her Locust, a blue flash around her the only evidence of what had happened as her barrier was breached and died.
"Miranda!" Shepard said, plunging forward as the door sealed at last and Lawson crumpled against the frame.
Lawson was clutching at her stomach. Her eyes were creased in pain. "She—it's fine," Garrus said, looking at the infrared on his visor. "Burn but no breach of the armor. No wound. They took her shields down. That's all."
He saw Miranda fight to turn her grimace into some approximation of a grin. It didn't work. Not quite. But she climbed to her feet, one after the other, and pushed the sweaty strings of black hair out of her eyes. "I'm ready for action, Commander."
A/N: I wonder . . . how far can I build the tension without breaking everyone's capacity to bear it? Thirteen chapters left! Leave a review if you've got something to say.
LMS
