Running Silent:
Into the Fire
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An alternate ME3. Commander Shepard and her team are on the run from Cerberus and trying to make alliances before it's too late. In a galaxy with no reaper kill switch, how can they hope to defeat something so ancient and powerful? Their last hope is a desperate plan that may cost them everything. Shepard/Garrus, other side pairings.
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Disclaimer: This author in no way profits from the writing of this story. All characters, dialogue, or other referenced material from the Mass Effect trilogy belong to Bioware.
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Shepard strode out of the shuttle into Menae command, her eyes searching for her team. She found them clustered in a prefab with several official-looking turians. Shepard hoped to hell one of them was the primarch because they didn't have time to go hunting.
Garrus looked up as she approached, his mandibles tightening in a way that was not promising. "Shepard, we have a problem."
"More than one, I'd say," she said brusquely, but didn't explain. "Report."
A turian in crimson armor straightened next to Garrus and saluted. "General Corinthus, ma'am. I'm sorry to tell you that Primarch Fedorian is dead. His shuttle was shot down on the way to Menae."
"Shit," she swore, beginning to pace. "Next in line?"
Corinthus shared a look with Garrus. "Also dead," he said quietly. "But we were able to reach Palaven command. The new primarch is General Adrien Victus."
"Do we have a location?" she asked brusquely. "We're short on time." Garrus gave her a questioning look, but she shook her head. Explanations would have to wait.
Corinthus pointed at a spot on the map. "Last contact we had with Victus, he was leading a group out from south base to deal with some reaper activity. However, we haven't been able to reach him for several hours. I'll have one of my men take you to the base. They should be able to point you in the right direction."
"Keep your men here," Shepard snapped. "Just give us the NavPoint."
"One moment," the general said, holding up a finger. He barked an order to the soldier on his left. Shepard's mouth tightened. Every second here was a second wasted.
The soldier came back with another in tow, wearing light armor over his warm taupe plates. Corinthus motioned to the newcomer. "The primarch's assistant," he explained. "Victus will need him."
Shepard's eyes darted back to Corinthus for a moment before focusing on the assistant. Resolute brown eyes stared back at her. After a moment, she motioned for him to follow. "Come on."
As soon as the shuttle doors closed behind them, Garrus rounded on Shepard. "What's going on, Commander? Why are we suddenly in such a hurry?"
She met his gaze resolutely. "Harbinger is on his way."
Every eye in the shuttle was immediately on her.
The assistant was staring in confusion. Garrus and Solana's mandibles fluttered so identically that it would have been comical under other circumstances. Even Zaeed's hardened expression broke for a moment.
"What do we do?" Solana finally asked.
"We hurry," Shepard said grimly. "We get the primarch the hell off this moon before Harbinger arrives."
"Shepard, the base…" Garrus trailed off, looking worried.
"Harbinger doesn't want the base," Shepard said. "It wants the Normandy. It wants me." She ignored the shocked looks around the shuttle.
Shepard's fingers twitched as she waited to reach the south base. She suppressed the urge to pull up the clock on her omni-tool. She suppressed the urge to pace. She suppressed the urge to yell at O'Connor to ask what the hell was taking so long. She had until Harbinger came through the relay to come up with a plan.
She hoped to hell that Miranda, EDI, and Joker were up on the Normandy thinking just as hard.
As soon as the shuttle touched down at the south base, the team was out of their shuttle and barging their way through the camp. A harried Lieutenant pointed them in the right direction, sparing a curious glance for the primarch's assistant. After a few minutes in camp—a few minutes too long, she thought—they tramped out into the barren wastes of Menae.
Most of the march was quiet, interrupted only by occasional skirmishes with stragglers from the reaper horde. They were easily dispatched by the five of them, but Shepard saw the primarch's assistant hesitate.
"How am I supposed to kill them?" the turian finally asked, staring down at a marauder corpse. "My own people?"
Shepard took a few steps towards him. "You got a name, soldier?"
"Adjutant Nomos Lycanthus, ma'am," he said promptly.
Shepard closed the gap, looking him in the eye. "Nomos, listen to me," she said, soft but firm. "Those things are not your people. Your people are the ones who are still left fighting. Every time you hesitate, you could be condemning one of them to death or to be turned into one of these abominations. Understood?"
She watched him carefully as he gazed down at the corpse and back up at her. He gave her a sharp, turian nod. "Yes, ma'am."
They continued their march, stopping only to check their course or to fight a few more stragglers. Once, as Shepard was gazing at her omni-tool map, she caught Solana staring at the burning form of Palaven above them. "Garrus, have you…" She tamped down on wavering subvocals. "Have you heard from Dad yet?"
"Not yet," he said quietly. "But we will, Sol. Dad's tough." His voice was solid, but Shepard knew his worries as well as she knew her own. She pushed ahead with renewed determination. She couldn't save everyone, but, god, she wanted to save someone for him.
Soon, they heard gunfire in the distance. "That must be them," Shepard said. "Come on. Let's give them some support."
They walked right into the firefight, Shepard shouting orders over the din of bullets and explosions. The turians didn't glance twice at the newcomers, too relieved to question their aid. Shepard danced into combat gladly, relieved for an outlet to the tension that had crawled beneath her skin since the reapers had struck the first blow. She raised a glowing fist and slammed a pair of bulbous, ambling cannibals to the ground, turning on her heel to fire upon a marauder that approached from behind. Shepard swore as the shots she fired fizzled away on the creature's shield—an innovation they hadn't had when she'd first fought them at Axion. Her own shield flickered under the marauder's fire. A shot whizzed past her ear, only centimeters from injury.
Not now, she thought.
"I've got you, Commander," Solana cried, and the marauder's shield overloaded. Shepard stretched out a hand and encased it in a blue halo, yanking it off its feet. As it flew forward, she slammed a fist into its unnatural face and laughed out loud. Some days, she lived for the fight.
The reapers troops began to thin out now that help had arrived. But before anyone could call the all-clear, Shepard heard a panic sweep through. She flung away a pair of husks and stopped where she stood, whirling around for the source of the soldiers' fear.
"Brute!" a turian voice cried.
She caught sight of an enormous creature barreling into a cluster of turian soldiers, trampling men in its path. It let out a mechanical cry as it flung away the rest with a strange, half-organic claw. Dead and mangled soldiers lay where live ones had stood only a moment before. Tubes wove in and out of the beast's flesh, bones spiked from its back, and a pair of glowing, cybernetic eyes turned and stared right at her.
It charged.
After a split-second of indecision, Shepard ducked and rolled. She paid for that instant's pause. The creature's knee caught her as she rolled out of its way, smashing into her shoulder and slamming her onto the ground. She cried out in pain, hurrying to right herself with her good arm. A glance found her pistol several meters away, too far to reach before the brute came for her again. A voice was calling her name, but she only had eyes for the beast.
It rounded on her again. She threw a powerful biotic field with her uninjured arm, warping the bone plates that covered its body. It stumbled back a few steps but quickly regained balance, barely acknowledging the stream of gunfire that pelted it.
Her suit's medi-gel dispenser was hard at work, dulling her shoulder's ache from a roar to a murmur. She reached for her SMG. Her shoulder exploded with pain as she fired it, the small kickback too much for her injury. She dropped her arm to her side and raised the other, gathering power for another biotic burst.
The beast charged again. Her burst of dark energy dissipated uselessly as she dove between its legs. Its claws grazed her lower back, digging gouges into her armor. Medi-gel and adrenaline buzzed in her veins too brightly for her to notice whether the claws had broken through the skin. Her focus was laser-sharp on the creature as its momentum carried it past her and onward. She raised herself to her feet and mustered another warp field. It roared as its plates curled and crumbled under her power, and it turned for another charge. She was prepared this time.
With a quick turn she dodged the brute, the claws missing her as she spun behind it and extended the blade of her omni-tool. In a powerful motion she slammed it into the creature's back, her blade cutting deep into its unnatural flesh. She backed away as it stumbled to the ground. It twitched. She feared it would stand again. Before it could make another move, one echoing shot pierced the beast's skull.
Shepard stared down at the corpse and swiped a gauntlet across her forehead, breathing heavily as her adrenaline rush died away and left aches and pains in its wake. She could feel now where the claws had rent the flesh of her back, aching along with her battered shoulder. She took in a deep breath to ease the pain as her team rushed over. Unsurprisingly, Garrus was the first to her side. He fussed over her quietly, checking her injuries.
Shepard straightened and stretched while Garrus finished examining the gouges in her armor. "What was that thing?" she asked, wincing as he carefully rolled her shoulder. "Kyran didn't send a spec for that one."
"It is—was—a krogan," he said grimly, lowering her arm to her side. "We saw one at the base camp earlier. As you probably heard, they've been calling it a brute." Shepard turned her gaze back to it, digesting the new information. What more unpleasant surprises would the reapers bring? She held in a shudder. She was in no hurry to find out.
In her peripheral vision, Shepard saw a figure marching towards them, a turian with gray plates, white markings, and an aura of authority. "That's our man," Garrus confirmed, stepping back to a more professional distance just as the general arrived in front of them.
"Vakarian," he greeted with a sharp nod. "I'm not surprised to see you here." Victus's eyes slid to the human standing next to him. "I am, however, surprised to see you've brought Commander Shepard with you." He nodded to her as well. "General Victus," he introduced himself. "Last I was aware, Commander, you were a fugitive."
"Circumstances have changed," she said. "I've been reinstated as a spectre and am fighting the reapers now."
"On Menae?" He rose a skeptical browplate.
She held his gaze unwaveringly. "I'm on a mission to retrieve galactic leaders for a summit between species."
"Not that I don't appreciate the help," he said carefully, "But that only explains why you're on Menae, not why you're here, assisting my men."
Shepard glanced over to Garrus, who took up the mantle flawlessly. "Primarch Fedorian's shuttle was shot down trying to reach Menae. You're the new primarch."
The flutter of his mandibles betrayed his shock. "I'm… primarch of Palaven? Negotiating for the turian hierarchy?"
"Yes," Shepard said brusquely. "And I need to get you on the Normandy and out of here as quickly as possible."
His gaze turned reproachful. "You expect me to leave my men—my homeworld—to make nice in some boardroom?"
Shepard stood tall, eyes aflame. She was in no mood for this. "If you think this will be won by a ground war, by all means, stay here. If you think you'll save Palaven with some in-air dogfight, I'll give you a lift to the airbase," she said harshly. "But I know better, and so do you. We're going to need the combined ingenuity of every species out there if we're going to survive."
He was silent for a long moment, and then his shoulders sagged. "At least let me say goodbye to my men." She nodded and watched him walk away.
Shepard and Garrus stood waiting in silence, and gazed up at Palaven hanging heavy in the sky.
"Do you see that big blaze of orange?" Garrus asked. "That's where I was born."
Shepard's heart clenched. "We'll get it back," she said, knowing how hollow her words rang.
He sighed and looked away. "It won't be the same."
For a moment, Shepard saw burning crops in her mind's eye. "I know," she said quietly. There was nothing else to say.
She was saved from falling into memory only by EDI's voice on her comm. "Harbinger has passed through the relay, Commander."
"Acknowledged," she replied, already heading for the new primarch. "We're out of time," she told him. "We've got to go."
At Shepard's urging, Victus joined her at the shuttle with his assistant and two more soldiers—bodyguards?—following behind.
"Commander," he addressed her. "Why exactly are we in such a hurry?"
As the shuttle lifted off, she turned to him grimly with her answer. "Harbinger—the one we believe to be leading the reapers—is on his way here."
His anger swelled and filled the air around him. "You seek to take me away from my world when it is about to be attacked by the leader of the reapers?"
Shepard felt more than saw the others shrinking back from his vitriol. Still, the steady presence of Garrus remained just behind her shoulder. She didn't have to look back to feel him there.
"Harbinger isn't interested in Palaven," she said. "He wants the Normandy."
He stared at her, unblinking. "So you bring me aboard the ship that he's hunting?"
"Primarch, I won't allow Harbinger to take Palaven or the Normandy," she said firmly. "You have my word, but you'll have to trust me." Her heart pounded, knowing just how great a request that was.
They locked eyes with each other for a long moment, and he gave her a weary nod. "Do what you must."
…
The quiet, tense mood in the shuttle ended the moment they landed in the cargo hold.
Miranda met Shepard at the door, cool and collected. "The crew has been briefed on our situation," she said, matching Shepard's long strides to the elevator. "What are your orders?"
Shepard paused at the elevator doors, turning to survey the group that had come from the shuttle. "Garrus, I need you monitoring the guns. Solana…" She hefted Cain off her back. "Stow this, then check with Tali in engineering. We'll likely need active repairs." The turian took the heavy weapon and headed immediately to the weapons bench. Shepard's eyes fell upon Victus, holding his piercing gaze. "Miranda," she said, her eyes still locked on the turian's, "get the primarch and his men settled in Starboard Observation. Zaeed, go with them." He nodded, understanding the order she didn't voice. She could allow nothing and no one to interfere when they were in such danger. Shepard quickly took a step back into the open elevator and hit the button before any of the involved parties could make their disagreement known. She sighed, falling back against the elevator wall with a clang of her armor. "And EDI, for god's sake make sure those observation shutters are closed."
When the doors opened, she was Commander Shepard again. She marched through the CIC with a set, fierce expression. Harbinger would not take her ship.
"Joker," she barked, finding the pilot already at work. "Do you understand the plan?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said promptly, but then the worry crept into his voice. "But we have a small problem."
Her arms folded behind her back as she stopped inside the cockpit. "Report."
"From the relay we can only go to two places—the volus home system or the Citadel."
Shepard was silent for a long moment. "EDI," she finally addressed, how long until we enter Harbinger's scanning range?"
"Three minutes and thirteen seconds, Commander."
With another long pause, Shepard turned back to Joker. "Where else does the relay link?" she asked him.
He tore his eyes from the console, looking at her like she was crazy. "Commander, I just told you," he said in confusion. "That's everywhere."
Shepard took a step forward, her fingers wrapping around the pilot's leather headrest as he craned his neck to see her. She held his gaze steadily, despite how hard her heart was pounding. "No, Joker," she said slowly. "Where else?"
Understanding dawned in his eyes. Joker's jaw tightened as he turned back to the control panel. "Three unmapped systems, Commander," he said, low, and he did not look at her again.
Inside Shepard's mind, the strategist warred with the soldier. The last time a human tried to open an unmapped relay, it started a war.
She breathed deeply, feeling the weight of a galaxy on her shoulders, and spoke. "Choose one. I'll bear full responsibility." The silence fell heavy around them.
In that instant, Shepard waited. Waited for her pilot to finally tell her off. Waited for him to say that she'd pushed him too far or asked too much. And she had; she knew she had, and she would ask for more before this was over.
But Joker's voice came out quiet and determined. No waver. No doubt. "If you think that I'm going to let you do that, Commander, you've got another thing coming. I'm behind you. No matter what."
A lump formed in her throat that had nothing to do with fear.
"Twenty seconds, Commander," EDI's voice intruded.
"Acknowledged."
As EDI started the countdown, Shepard heard familiar light footsteps and a felt a hand on her shoulder. She locked eyes with her XO before they both turned to look out into the great darkness ahead of them.
For the first time, Shepard saw Harbinger with her own eyes.
The bogeyman of her dreams was not so different than any other reaper, but the sight of him filled Shepard with a dread she could not explain. She felt him.
"Harbinger's flight course has altered," EDI informed them calmly. "Now on intercept trajectory."
"Speed increased to maximum," Joker said, just as the moment of inertia hit. "Locked onto the relay." Shepard could just see the bright flicker of the relay in the distance.
"Vakarian," she spoke into her comm. "Harbinger is in range. Fire at will."
"Understood, Commander."
A familiar vibration passed through the ship as the Thanix cannon did its job. Shepard knew better than to believe their weapon was capable of disabling or destroying the reaper this way, but she intended to show Harbinger that they could do some damage. "EDI, pull up a visual," she ordered. Harbinger was closer behind them than she'd like as the reaper turned to follow their course, but the plan stood. She had no doubt now that he would follow them through the relay.
And then she saw something that made her mouth go dry. EDI spoke up before Shepard could form the words. "Reaper weapon priming," the AI said, sounding—as Shepard distractedly realized—truly anxious for the first time.
Joker's hands flew across the console. "Brace for evasive maneuvers!"
Shepard and Miranda stumbled to the side as the Normandy made a hard right. They reached for any handhold they could find as the Normandy rocked with a blast.
"Son of a bitch!" Joker cried out.
"Shields at eighty percent," said the AI.
Shepard righted herself, her eyes blazing. "What happened?"
Joker's breathing was ragged. "That fucker's got two beams."
Shepard's fists tightened. "Christ."
"Initiating relay sequence," EDI interjected.
"He's priming again," Miranda said worriedly, staring at the vid-screen.
"Hitting relay in three, two—"
"He's firing!"
"One…"
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