Fractures
| Seven Years Ago | Arcturus Station |
"Is this some kind of joke?"
The recruiting officer sitting behind the desk didn't seem amused, though he'd been the one to ask the question. Jeff fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling scruffy and underdressed. Just like he always did when surrounded by turians. His big plan - which had seemed like such a great idea as late as this morning - now seemed anything but. Why didn't I shave, at least? He resisted the urge to scratch the stubble around his cheeks. No point in drawing any more attention to it.
"It's no joke, sir." he insisted, embarrassed at how frail his voice sounded. Painfully aware of how out of place he must seem here, simultaneously too old and too inexperienced.
Turians enlisted in the military at age fifteen; and even though Arcturus was a human station, there were just enough turian families on board to justify the presence of a recruitment centre like this one. He'd passed a handful of young turians waiting idly at the doors on his way in; felt their stares on his back - curious, hostile, pitying … he wasn't sure which would be worse =- as he'd slowly made his way up the short flight of steps to the entrance.
By the time they reached his age, those kids would have been through boot camp, been taught how to fight, how to follow orders, how to react during a crisis as a disciplined and purposeful unit. They'd have been well on the way to becoming full citizens of the Hierarchy; expected to serve in the military; to defend Council space from slavers, pirates and whatever else the rest of the galaxy had in store. They wouldn't expect to be in his shoes, only just out of school and still looking for a first job.
They'd probably be expected to be able to walk up a staircase without having to lean on a stick, too.
The turian officer just looked at him wordlessly for a few minutes, judging him silently, maybe waiting from his nerve to break. Jeff was used to that sort of treatment, though. It barely bothered him … most of the time. He forced himself to sit back, carefully; tried to moderate his breathing. It's not my nerve that's going to break.
After a few minutes the turian had clearly had enough.
"So," he said briskly. "Can you tear down fortified artillery with your mind? Can you float through the air over the battlefield, shielding allies and raining down destruction on the enemy?"
Jeff shook his head wordlessly, though the turian didn't seem to be waiting for an answer.
"The Primarchs have decided that human biotics may join the ranks of the auxiliaries," the officer said flatly. "And biotics alone. Non-biotic humans are not expected to join, and you …"
The turian paused, mandibles flexing slightly. Jeff had the impression he was trying to be tactful. Lots of people do, at first. The thought was somewhat bitter.
"You are not a biotic, and so I ask:" - he steepled his talons, staring at Jeff intently across the desk - "Why are you here?"
"I'm a pilot," Jeff said, voice firmer than before. It was true: just like he'd said on his application papers. The same papers the turian was now staring at suspiciously. He'd passed top of his class in all the training courses he'd been allowed to take; even a couple of extranet-only ones where'd he had to lie about his species just to enroll. He'd spent more hours in the simulator than plenty of fully qualified commercial pilots he knew; had posted faster times than most people had thought possible.
The point was that he was good. He knew it, and anybody who bothered to test him would know it. He just needed a chance to prove it to somebody who mattered. He just needed a chance.
"A pilot."
On the extranet,Jeff had read that turian emotional responses were mostly expressed through subvocal signals; audio cues which no human could expect to pick up and translate in real-time. So he had to be imagining the look of contempt on the officer's face. Didn't he?
"Do you even know the first thing about piloting a spaceship?".the turian asked wearily, dropping the papers back to his desk with a depressing impression of finality.
"I know a lot." Jeff insisted, painfully aware how feeble the response sounded. But it was the simple truth. Did anybody even read my application?
Growing up, his parents had both been engineers, trained on Earth. They'd help design some of the very ships that had brought his family out from Sol, back in the brief period before the Charon relay failed. He'd spent most of his childhood - even after the divorce - around spaceship designs, blueprints, models and images. In hospital beds, at home alone recovering, lying awake and night listening to his parents shouting - he'd shut his eyes, and see the stars.
Whatever happened, all he wanted to do, ever, was fly.
But that wasn't a point he was going to get to make today, he realised. What he wanted didn't seem to matter much. Maybe this had just been a bad idea from the start.
The recruiting officer certainly seemed to think so.
"Can you run an assault course in a Hierarchy-standard combat suit, carrying the full weight of your weapon and your kit?" he asked, staring pointedly at the stick Jeff had left propped up against the side of his chair. "Can you carry your comrades to safety if they're wounded? Can you defend your position if ordered to hold against overwhelming numbers? In short, can you fight?"
They both knew he couldn't, of course. That's what made the whole thing so pointless. But he'd had to try, hadn't he? How else was he going to get into space?
"I know how to fly," he insisted anyway. That was all that mattered. "I just want a-"
The turian had clearly lost his patience. Tact was no longer on the agenda.
""Look, kid," he said heavily, cutting Jeff off mid-sentence. "The Hierarchy has the best pilots in the galaxy. We saved the asari and the salarians from the krogan, and we saved your people from the batarians. If the Hegemony doesn't see sense, we'll beat the batarians all the way back to Harsa System. And we won't need to resort to alien cripples to do it."
Years later, on the rare occasions he could be persuaded to retell this story, Jeff always ended things here.
| Five Years Ago | the Citadel |
"Hey, watch the arm!"
The turian escorting Jeff snorted and shook his head in disbelief. Turians never seemed to appreciate just how fragile some human bodies were. Small wonder when even the average turian was so much taller, stronger and tougher than most humans could hope to be. Particularly more so than Jeff could hope to be.
All of which had bothered Jeff a lot less a couple of hours ago. He was uncomfortably aware of it now, as a disapproving turian officer ushered him into a small, bland room halfway down a short, featureless corridor.
"Look, human," the turian said, wearily - this wasn't the first time Jeff had complained, but it was the first his escort had felt moved to respond -."It's not that much further to go. Why not cheer yourself up by thinking about how lucky you are that the officer you assaulted isn't pressing charges?"
"Isn't pressing charges?" Jeff protested. "He broke my wrist!"
Any reply the C-Sec officer might have made to that was precluded by the arrival of the woman they'd come to see. She was slight of build, with graying hair and curious, thoughtful eyes. Jeff's first thought was that she seemed unusually alert given the early hour.
But that was him thinking like a visitor, not somebody used to the strange ways of the Citadel. Unlike up on the Presiduum, there was no artificial day-night cycle down in the Wards. For her, maybe this was just the middle of another shift. Besides, a doctor - a human doctor - who worked in the far ends of the Wards would have to be ready to deal with the unexpected.
On closer inspection, something about her actually reminded him a bit of his mom, though he couldn't have said exactly why. They didn't look too similar, but she seemed to carry herself in the same way his mom had: quietly confident, interested in the galaxy around her yet unafraid of it..
He didn't want to think about that much, he realised.
"What's going on here, gentlemen?" the woman asked. Her voice was louder than he'd expected; her accent was unfamiliar. Earth, maybe? He guessed she was old enough. You didn't tend to meet many people who were, out here.
"Patient for you, doc." said the turian. "Had a bit too much to drink down at the Archos."
The doctor raised an eyebrow, though she didn't ask for details.
"Thank you, Officer Chellick," she said. "I'll take it from here."
Once the turian from C-Sec had departed, the woman turned her attention back to Jeff.
"Karin Chakwas," she said by was of introduction. "And you are?
"Jeff," he said, "Uh. Jeffrey Moreau."
"And how can I help you today Mr Moreau?" she asked drily, as if the arm he held cradled awkwardly at his side wasn't a clue.
"Broke a bone or two, doc," he said sheepishly. "Fifth metacarpal and scaphoid for sure, maybe some others."
Her expression suggested that she'd be taking any self-diagnosis with a very large pinch of salt.
"Did Officer Chellick give you any treatment before bring you to me?" she asked instead.
"Just some painkillers and some medi-gel," he said. And a stern lecture on the moral and practical merits of respecting the officers of Citadel Security. Let's not forget that.
"Well, let's get that hand scanned then." she said, briskly professional, leading Jeff into a room at the back of the medical clinic and waiting for hm to take a seat beneath a familiar-looking medical scanner.
While the machine whirred into life, Chakwas tapped out some commands on a terminal that rested on what Jeff assumed must be her desk. Checking if he was in the system, he guessed. He wasn't, of course, though he should have been. He'd been living on the station for long enough.
"And what do you do, Mr Moreau?" she asked, eyes appraising him carefully even while she still typed. From the way the screen was flashing in time with the machines, he guessed it was feeding her imaging results directly.
"I'm a-" -pilot, he wanted to finish, but...- "-shipping clerk." At least he got to watch the ships.
The doctor was quiet for a moment or two, intent on the progress of her scans.
"You were right about the bones, I'm afraid," she said. "What did you do: punch a wall?"
"A C-Sec officer, actually." He'd never thrown a punch in anger before - hadn't seemed like the sort of skill he'd need to use.
"Well, speaking as a medical professional, I can't say I'd recommend that." Chakwas said drily. "Especially for somebody with your condition."
He sighed. It always came back to this, didn't it? Vrolik's syndrome, brittle bone disease, or osteogenesis imperfecta if you wanted to be fancy. This was why he'd stayed away from doctors for as long as he could ever since he'd first moved onto the Citadel half a year ago.
"Any family history?"
"We don't think so." he said. Not that his Mom had known much about her birth family, of course. "When I was growing up the doctors suggested it might be environmental; one of those early element zero spills or something."
Figures that all the other kids who got exposed to that stuff would get super-powers and I'd get … this.
"You didn't grow up on the Citadel, did you?"
He shook his head. "My Mom worked on Arcturus station; Dad's a colonist on Tiptree. I only moved out here a year or so ago. Why?"
"Well, Mr Moreau … Jeff?"
It took him a little while to realise that she was asking him whether it was okay to use his first name. That wasn't something he was used to on the Citadel, where being addressed as anything other than 'human' was as polite and friendly as he'd expect. Fortunately she seemed to take his silence as consent.
"I think you'd benefit from some time away from the Citadel," she said, carefully. "This station's rotational gravity isn't like anywhere else you might have lived. And the Protheans who built it didn't have physiologies like ours."
She frowned.
"For most humans, gravity in the Wards is close enough to Earth-normal they'll never notice the difference. But with your condition … well, to be frank, the ongoing stress on your bones could have serious long-term consequences."
"What should I do?" he asked. He'd not noticed anything himself; but then again he'd been pretty intent on avoiding anything to do with doctors or medical treatment for as long as he'd been living on the Wards. Sure, he felt lousy, but - for once in his life - his 'condition' wasn't the reason for that.
"Does your mother still work on Arcturus?" Chakwas asked casually.
"No, she." He paused, struggling with his own reactions. I really shouldn't have had so much to drink last night. He didn't really want to talk about this now, but-
"She was on the Espero," he managed to get out. (She's dead, he managed not to say.)
Just days after the sudden failure of the Charon mass relay, disparate groups of investors and scientists in the colonies had begun working on response plans. Between them, the remaining colonies had just enough resources to build a small fleet of FTL-capable ships, a fleet which could perhaps travel the long way back to Earth. It was a journey that would take years, but for most of the colonists - alone and abandoned in an empty and indifferent galaxy - it seemed like the only course of action left.
All that changed when the batarians invaded; slavers and pirates striking human settlements on Mindoir, Tiptree and Dobravalski. Within days of the batarians the ships of the turian Hierarchy had arrived, flooding through mass relays from the other side of the galaxy. The galaxy was far less empty than anybody had thought, and there were creatures in it that wanted to destroy or enslave what little remained of humanity.
After that, most people forgot about the plans for making the difficult voyage back to Sol. Alliance officials began stressing the need to spend resources 'at home', to focus on rebuilding efforts or to trying to establish trading relationships with more technological advanced aliens like the volus or the elcor. Not everyone thought this way - even on Arcturus, the vote on accepting the turian's offer of Protectorate status had seen many vote against - but support dropped enough that resources had to be cut back; plans streamlined and trimmed down again and again.
Rather than an Alliance-wide initiative, this operation would now be a private affair. A small but determined movement, funded by the generosity of a few big wealthy donors and the small but steady donations of activists and supporters. Supporters like the Moreaus, Jeff's family.
His parents hadn't agreed on much, by the end, but they'd both agreed on this. The movement was humanity's last throw of the dice - a last chance for the remnant of humanity living in Council space to find a path towards something resembling autonomy and independence.
The Espero was one of three FTL-capable ships that the group's efforts had finally produced. The crew represented the best that the colonies could still produce: So many people had applied, in the end, that even after screening out all but the most qualified applicants, the organisers had had to resort to a lottery, winnowing the numbers down even further. His mother was one of the lucky ones: the rest of the family would have to stay behind and wait.
The group's supporters called it the Terra Firma project; Jeff had just thought of it as hope. Hope for a better future for the colonies, hope that - despite the speculation - the people of Earth were still alive, that life back in Sol continued as it had for centuries before he'd been born. Some days - waiting in his tiny apartment on Arcturus, scanning the extranet feed for any hints of news - that hope was all he'd had.
Until a year ago, when everything had gone to shit.
Just when the ships had been supposed to be making contact with Earth, they'd all met with disaster. Jeff had still been on Arcturus back then: sitting up most nights with other Terra Firma supporters and well-wishers, watching the ships' progress on a display board that the technical team had set up outside the command centre. He'd been there the day it happened.
The Xīwàng had been the first to lose contact, her signal cutting out just as the ship was due to begin the controlled approach past Demeter. At first most of the team assembled in the observation room to monitor the project's progress had assumed a simple comms failure, though nobody had been able to offer any suggestions as to what sort of failure could interfere with a quantum entanglement device. The crowd Jeff was with had been agitated, sure, but not truly alarmed.
Not until the exact same thing happened to the Taman,barely an hour later. The Xīwàng's sister ship had taken a different route, bypassing Demeter entirely. A looping route arcing over the galactic plane, avoiding all star systems between the Arcturus Stream and Sol. But just like the first ship - within minutes of the fate that befell the first ship - the Taman's signal had simply vanished from the screens. This time the technical team stayed silent, and the crowd had begun to stir.
The final ship - the ship his mother had been on - had been the only one transmitting when it vanished: The comms specialist had been reciting the usual list - a list of, to Jeff's ears, all-but-meaningless numbers and acronyms - when they'd suddenly trailed off. When they spoke again they'd sounded … not panicked, as such, but confused, certainly. Worried. None of the ships were in direct communication with each other. The Espero didn't know enough to be afraid.
"Arcturus, we're seeing something strange on- ..."
That was the last thing anybody in Council space heard from the Espero.
In those moments, Jeff felt the whole galaxy shrinking down to the size of the room he was in. The weight of the crowd around him, the oppressive emptiness of the blank and silent screens. These were the only things that were real. That was what he remembered, when he woke up in his tiny rooms in the Citadel months later in the middle of the night. The day when all that mattered were three missing lights.
Three small points of light flickering out one by one as the three ships converged on their common destination. An awful hush had fallen on the crowd by that point, broken only by the insistent pings still echoing from now abandoned operating stations.
My mother is on that ship, he'd thought, helplessly. He'd spoken to her only hours before her ship had departed: wished her good luck in a perfunctory, awkward way. Made some dumb joke about piloting the next group of ships himself. Already then his mind had been jumping ahead to his ill-conceived plan to sign up with the Hierarchy auxiliaries as a pilot. They hadn't had a chance to speak since: wouldn't have had until the Espero had reached Earth.
His story wasn't unique, of course. Most of the people watching had family on one or other of the three ships. Or had had family on the three ships. Most of the command team, as well as the watching crowd. One of the technical team had made their way outside to address the crowd, but when he'd tried to speak his voice was so faint that practically nobody could hear him. After a few minutes, the technician stopped even trying: he just stood there, back to the screen, the pain and loss on his face mirroring the emotions of the crowd in front of him.
There was a long period of awful silence, broken only be the persistent, lonely beeps coming from the array of abandoned terminals and work stations.
And that was the end of Terra Firma.
A year ago to the day, now. Which was why he'd been down in that awful little club in the Wards in the first place, drinking until the credits ran out. Why he'd still been drinking when C-Sec turned up, and why he'd thought it was a good idea to take out months of frustration and loneliness and empty rage on the nearest, tallest and most heavily armored turian he could find.
Why he was here now with a broken hand and a bruised ego, while a surprisingly patient doctor waited for him to answer … wait, what?
"Jeff? You said you have family on one of the colonies?"
He had the strong sense that this wasn't the first time she'd asked him the question.
"Uh, yeah," he said, shaking his head "Sorry doc, miles away. Dad moved out to Tiptree with my kid sister a few years ago. Haven't been to visit for a while, I guess." The truth was that they'd not spoken at all; not since the events of that night one year ago. It wasn't rational, and it wasn't fair, but Jeff still hadn't forgiven his Dad for leaving his Mom to die.
"Well, I'd think about paying them a visit soon, Jeff," the doctor said. "Ideally for at least a few months. That will give your bones a better chance to heal. Real gravity, that's what you need."
"I'll think about it, doc," he said.
For about five seconds, he thought to himself as the door slid shut behind him. Maybe he wasn't a pilot, but at least on the Citadel he was surrounded by spacecraft, At least he was in space.
What would he be able to fly on a farming world? Freight transports, planetary cargo shuttles? Tractors? He wasn't in any hurry to find out.
| Three Years Ago | Tiptree |
The sunsets on Tiptree were something special, he had to admit. Two suns will do that for you.
Not that the view made the climb up onto the roof any easier, or any less of a bad idea. And it really was a very bad idea, he reflected, especially with both Hilary and the old man away from the farm.
Still, he'd been meaning to do it for a while, and he'd woken up feeling oddly energised and keen to get things done. Today was going to be one of the good days. He was certainly due one.
Climbing up onto the farmhouse was certainly not the smartest thing he could be doing, but it wasn't the stupidest thing he'd done in the last couple of years either. Not by a long shot. It certainly beat sitting by himself in the attic all day, flitting aimlessly around the extranet or endlessly watching and rewatching footage of star ships in action.
And the view was pretty spectacular.
He'd just about recovered his breath when he realised he wasn't alone after all.
A figure was walking up to front of the house, following the edge of the dirt track that served as the only road towards the spaceport. The new arrival was a middle-aged man Jeff had never seen before, balding and bare-faced but for a neatly trimmed beard. No colony markings, which meant … maybe nothing. Maybe a lot
Strangers out here could be trouble, Jeff knew. Out here, on the outskirts of Tiptree, law enforcement was often more a matter of theory than practice; an unexpected visitor turning up at your doorstep could be a harbinger of attempted robbery or worse. But the man didn't seem to be looking for trouble. His body language was relaxed, his pace unhurried, although the neatly pressed shirt and suit he wore seemed more than a little out of place in the surroundings.
As Jeff watched, the man made his way up to the front door and half-turned as if to look back along the way he'd travelled. Given how he was dressed, Jeff guessed he'd come straight from the spaceport. Long way to walk just to find an empty farm though. The man's two shadows furled out in front of him as he raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare.
"Looking for my Dad?" Jeff called out to him. "Afraid he won't be back for a few hours."
If the visitor was startled, he didn't show it. He raised his head and made eye contact, nodding slightly as he did so.
"It's actually you I was looking for, Jeffrey." the man said.
That seemed difficult to believe. Jeff had been on Tiptree for months and still knew barely anybody on the planet. He'd not been off his Dad's farm in weeks - hell, he'd not been out of his room on more days than he had been. Why would anybody be looking for him?
"Word around here is that you're one hell of a pilot," the man continued. "I was hoping to offer you a job."
A job? he thought. As a pilot? It seemed too good to be true. And yet if there was even a chance this wasn't some sort of con ...
"Hang on a minute," he called down. "I'm coming down but I might take a while."
Jeff's mind raced as he hurried as best he could to the ladder that led down to the second floor of the house. Under his own power, he knew, there was almost no way he'd have been able to climb it - up or down - without seriously risking an injury. But one of the less frequently talked about benefits of humanity's rediscovery of the Prothean mass effect technology was that he didn't have to climb under his own power: mass effect generators running along the length of the ladder effectively reduced the weight of anybody climbing up or down it; making it possible for him to lift or lower himself easily with just his arms.
Well, more easily than I could otherwise, he reflected. Awkwardly shuffling down the ladder still took a few minutes; time enough for him to speculate futilely as to where the visitor might have learned his name or of his interest in being a pilot.
He'd flown the farm's cargo transport up to the spaceport and back a few times, sure. Again, not something his dad really encouraged, and not something that was likely to impress anybody. But that was really it, ever since he'd first moved to the Citadel. He supposed his name might still be sitting in a Hierarchy file somewhere, but - his mind flashed back to the man's lack of face markings - somehow he didn't think this was how the Hierarchy or the Systems Alliance would go about offering him a job.
Once he was down in the house itself, getting down the stairs and opening the front door was almost easy. Almost.
He made sure to grab a stick as he headed out of the door - not just as a walking aid, but as a sop to the nagging doubt in the back of his head that warned that this could all prove to be a big mistake.
"Well, Jeff?" the older man asked, once Jeff had had a few minutes to get his breath back. "I take it that you're interested."
Jeff nodded, hoping that he didn't look as desperate for this to be real as he was starting to realise that he was.
"How did you know I was a pilot?" he asked, Are you a pilot, the doubting voice in his head asked. You want to be a pilot, but you want a lot of things.
"We actually spoke a few months ago," the man said. "Not in person, of course - but we exchanged a few messages on the extranet. You were interested in Terra Firma…"
Oh, right.
Since coming to Tiptree he'd been spending more and more time trying to track down other people who had lost relatives or lost ones during the Terra Firma project. He wasn't sure he could explain why; wasn't sure he could put into words just what it was he was looking for. Closure, maybe: the feeling that there were other people out there who had been through the same things that he had.
It was proving harder to do than he'd expected at first. Lots of people involved simply didn't want to talk about it, which he knew was more than understandable. And beyond that, there were subtle and not-so-subtle signs that this was something that those in power didn't want people discussing too hard. The Systems Alliance clearly viewed the whole thing as an embarrassment; a self-inflicted public relations disaster that had only served to weaken their bargaining position with the Council races. And the actual individuals who had sponsored the construction efforts were ever less keen to remind the galaxy of their involvement.
He'd managed to identify some of the corporations involved - Delta Pavonis, Lawson Holdings, Second Star Living - but each had turned out to be a dead-end; founders dead or vanished or the whole company having ceased trading weeks after the failure of the Terra Firma movement.
His search had taken him across the extranet; trawling through long-abandoned personal pages, strange conspiracy sites and half-hidden, semi-private forums devoted to arcane discussions and debunkings of rumours and speculation about the fate of the three Terra Firma ships. But he'd never thought that anything he'd dug up would have come here to find him.
"You posted a few times on Future Content," the man said, naming a relatively obscure site that Jeff could barely remember browsing. "I have an account there myself, as it happens. We traded messages for a few days. You mentioned you were trained to be a pilot; what your parents did and where you used to work."
Jeff supposed he had done, at that. But he'd been careful not to give his name, or mention anything about where he lived or talk about anything uniquely identifiable like his condition or his actual qualifications.
All that paranoia rubs off you after a while, I guess, he thought. Although obviously he'd not been paranoid enough.
"I did some digging," the man said. "I was interested; especially when I found out you'd tried signing up for the turian forces a few years ago. Before they open their doors to non-biotics."
He raised an eyebrow, curiously.
"Uh, yeah," Jeff said, awkwardly. "Not something either of my parents would have approved of, if they'd known. But they never …" he trailed off. They'd never found out, he'd been going to say. But of course his mom never would find out. And these days, he doubted his dad would care much either way.
"The Hierarchy is recruiting non-biotics now," the man pointed out. "You ever think of applying again?"
Jeff had a sudden vivid memory of the look on the turian recruiting officer's face, the rasp in his voice as he'd casually crushed Jeff's hopes. He shook his head firmly.
"I'm not a kid anymore," he said. "I know better than to trust in the good wishes of friendly aliens."
"Well said," the visitor replied. "As it happens, I have some friends in the market for somebody with your sort of skills. Human friends. I think you understand what I mean."
He supposed that he did, at that.
His efforts to track down other people who had lost relatives to the Terra Firma project had taken him into some odd corners of the extranet. Grey areas, sites hosted on servers out in the depths of the Terminus Systems, where the laws of the Council held no force. Places where you could complain about how the Hierarchy was increasingly involving itself in internal human politics without the fear that somebody was going to denounce you as a terrorist or a batarian sympathiser.
One name going around on the darker places of the extranet these days was Cerberus. A creature out of mythology: a three headed monster that lurked in the underworld and defended its home from outside invasion. A human group that was ready to fight back.
"Your … uh, friends, …" he said. "They couldn't just have sent me an extranet message?"
"My friends are the traditional sort, in some ways," the man said. "Not exactly won over by all this new technology. Meeting face-to-face like this, without any third parties snooping around or listening in - well, it has its advantages."
He half turned back towards the sunset, shielding his eyes against the glare. "You don't get views like this sitting at an extranet terminal, either," he said.
They were both silent then, for a few minutes, staring out across the fields as the last light of the suns washed over the crops.
"You can call me Crispin, by the way," the visitor said, breaking the silence. "Crispin Day."
He paused, just for a fraction of a second, as if waiting for a reaction. Jeff wasn't sure how he was supposed to respond: the name didn't mean anything to him. Luckily the man didn't seem to bothered by Jeff's continuing silence.
"Well, Jeff," he said. "Are you interested?"
Jeff took a deep breath. If this was what he thought it was, it was big. Probably the biggest thing that had happened to him since … well, since the events he spent the last four years trying to move on from, of course.
He remembered how he'd felt in the weeks after the Espero vanished. How angry he'd felt; how helpless. In truth he'd felt that way for most of the last three years: moving from one low-paying dead-end job to another; from Arcturus to the Citadel to Tiptree. Making a series of embarrassing and costly mistakes along the way. But maybe now things would be different.
Maybe this was another decision he'd come to regret. Somehow he didn't think so.
"Hell yeah," he said, reaching out to take the man's hand. "Sign me up."
| One Year Ago | Horizon |
Horizon was supposed to be a sign of what the future held in store for the remnants of humanity in the Attican Traverse. With help from the turian Hierarchy, the Systems Alliance had successfully established a colony in the Shadow Sea that was beginning to form the nucleus of a growing resurgence of scientific understanding and technological development. Horizon was already the financial capital of the Alliance worlds and one day - perhaps sooner rather than later - the planet could surpass even Arturus Station in political importance.
That was the propaganda line, anyway,
The way Jeff say it, Horizon was systematic of everything that had been going wrong for the past twenty years.. A small number of humans squandering resources in the pursuit of the Hierarchy's latest pet projects - and getting obscenely rich in the process, no doubt - while looking down on or ignoring the rest of their species. A world where bankers and lawyers called the shots, and nothing was worth doing unless it made somebody or something a fortune.
He'd never visited before, but already the place was making his skin crawl. He wouldn't be in this bar - wouldn't even be on this planet - if he hadn't got important work to do.
He looked around the room again, impatiently. At this hour, this close to the spaceport, the clientele were a roughly even mixture of tourists and locals. Almost entirely human, though. At least that was something.
The screen at the far end of the bar was showing a live feed of the day's big news. Luckily the volume was down low - Jeff could only make out the occasional few sentences, and that only when there was a lull in the background conversation. He'd heard that the President was supposed to a popular man in this part of the galaxy; he didn't think he'd have guessed that from the lack of reaction to his decision to end his term early.
"... President Williams made the shock announcement last night," the announcer continued, "In a televised address broadcast live across Alliance space. The Systems Parliament is expected-"
Jeff tuned the newsreader's voice out as best he could. He was sitting with his back to the screen for a reason. Learning the news second- or third-hand through the extranet was depressing enough to begin with - listening to the predictable propaganda lines being read out by the official Hierarchy-approved sources was much worse.
He wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that Williams was resigning. No surprise at all that most of the news reports blamed it on Cerberus though. Or that they'd use the excuse to drag up all the old ridiculous rumours about links between Cerberus and the batarians. As if the only reason anybody might object to being bossed about by the birds was wanting to be ruled over by a different type of alien..
He'd been working with Cerberus for a while now, and he'd never seen anything to suggest any sort of link with batarians. His grandparents - his dad's parents - had been living alone on Tiptree when the four eyed aliens first invaded. His grandfather had died fighting them; his grandmother had passed away not long afterwards. And Cerberus was supposed to be working with them? The mere idea was ridiculous. Surely anybody could see that?
He realised he'd been drumming his fingers against the table for some time. Forced himself to stop. Too late to be nervous now, he told himself. He wasn't sure it helped.
"In entertainment news, Francis Kitt has announced plans to..."
Jeff shook his head, trying to will himself calm.
The official Systems Alliance line was that Cerberus's days were numbered; that the web was tightening around the Illusive Man, and that within months he'd be sitting in solitary confinement in a Hierarchy jail. That had been the official line for at least three years though, so he doubted anybody believed it anymore. Not even on Horizon.
Privately Jeff had started to wonder whether the 'Illusive Man' had ever even existed. Wasn't that the simplest explanation as for why none of the security forces had ever been able to find him?
"Excuse me?""
Startled by the unexpected voice, Jeff's inner monologue fell silent. He didn't recognise the young woman who'd approached him; and he was sure he would have remembered her if they'd met before.
She had long dark hair, striking eyes and the sort of combination of pale skin and symmetrical features that hinted at inherited wealth, good luck, good genes or - most likely - all three. A symmetry that was broken only by the three vertical green stripes running down the left side of her face. A local, then.
"This seat taken?" she asked casually, accent confirming the story told by her markings.
Jeff shifted uncomfortably, not sure how to respond. He was supposed to be meeting his latest handler here, whoever he was. All he had to go on was a code name, and a special phrase that his contact would use to introduce themselves. Mr Day - the man who had recruited him on Tiptree two years ago, and had been acting as his handler ever since - had sprung the news on him in person just a few weeks ago.
"Uh, sure," he managed, flushing slightly when his brain picked up on what her actual question had been. "I mean, no, it's not taken. Go ahead."
His new boss could always find his own damn chair, he decided. Served him right for being so damn late.
With a nod, the woman pushed back the chair and slid into it, eyes focusing now on the view screen behind him.
Shit. He'd assumed she'd take the chair and move it to join friends at some other table; the gang of quants sitting over by the bar, maybe, or the gaggle of young medical students working their courage up in front of the karaoke stage. He hadn't realised she was going to sit here - his contact would be looking for somebody sitting alone, with a map of Horizon's subway network spread out on the table just the way he'd left it.. What was he supposed to do now?
As he scanned the room for another empty table, he thought he saw a strange expression pass over the young woman's face - like she'd just seen somebody she recognised but hadn't expected to see here. But when he turned to look for whoever had prompted that, all he could see was the view-screen, looping back onto the entertainment news.
When he turned around the young woman was looking at him, eyebrow raised inquisitively.
"First time on Horizon?" she asked, glancing at the map
"Uh, yeah." he said. "I've only .. I mean, I just got off the ship a few hours ago."
Smooth, Jeff, he thought. Very smooth.
"You should visit the city zoo if you get the chance," she said conversationally, "My sister says that they've got a pair of actual lions. Cloned, of course, but still 100% lion DNA."
Oh, shit. That was the signal he was supposed to have been watching out for. Why had he assumed-
"I, uh." He cleared his throat, mouth suddenly dry. What was the response phrase, anyway?
He actually knew a little bit about the lions - it was something he'd been reading about on the journey from Tiptree; nothing to do but browse the public extranet while the ship made the short journey to Tiptree's nearest mass relay. .
The two lions were a gift to the Systems Alliance from the volus, grown in a tank in a specially designed lab on Irune before being shipped to Horizon two years ago. None of the Earth's dwindling population of wild lions had made it off-planet before the Charon relay went dark, but some enterprising colonists had uploaded a scan of their genome to a data cube before leaving Sol, and that data had in turn made its way on to the galactic extranet.
The two lions were infertile, of course; the volus hadn't wanted to risk releasing a potential plague of wild predators onto the surface of an allied planet. And the human scientists of the Systems Alliance didn't yet have the technology or the knowledge they needed to breed more clones of their own. So the lions of Horizon, perhaps the very last of their species alive in the galaxy, were utterly dependent on the generosity of the Hierarchy and its allies if they were to avoid total extinction. Nobody ever accused a volus diplomat of being subtle, I guess.
The woman was still looking at him, still waiting for a response.
He was suddenly, oppressively aware of the security cameras he'd spotted earlier. It was difficult to shake off the irrational sense that - any minute now - Hierarchy security forces were going to burst in an arrest them on the spot. Ever since the recent war with the batarians, the turian security forces had seemed ever-present. Even on Tiptree he'd started to feel worried. And here ...
Come on, Jeff, he rebuked himself silently. If anybody was going to arrest you for not being able to talk to a pretty woman without stammering, you'd never have made it off Arcturus Station.
"I'm afraid I've never really been much of a cat person" he managed. He was pretty sure that was the counter-sign.
The woman relaxed, almost imperceptibly; Jeff didn't think he'd have spotted it if he hadn't been quite so on edge himself. Not that either of them had said - or would say - anything even potentially incriminating here, of course. This meeting was just a way of making first contact, giving them a chance to put a face to a name. And if they could do so here, as close as they were likely to get to the centre of the Hierarchy's power … well, the satisfaction of that was worth a little tension.
"Melinoë," she introduced herself; the pronunciation a little different than he'd guessed from seeing the word written down before. It wasn't her real name, of course - nobody involved Cerberus would use their real name when talking to another cell member - but it was the only name he'd be getting.
In Jeff's admittedly limited experience, Cerberus pseudonyms tended to come in one of two types: blandly anonymous aliases, like the 'Crispin Day' he'd met two years earlier on Tiptree, and references to mythological figures from Old Earth. He guessed his new boss's alias was an example of the latter, though as usual it went a bit over his head.
Jeff's chosen name didn't fall into either category. It wasn't bland, and it wouldn't mean anything to an expert in old human histories. It meant something to him though.
After all these years, he could still remember the turian recruiting agent's mocking reaction. Is this some kind of joke?
"Call me Joker," he said.
| Days Earlier | Eden Prime |
The wind at the bottom of the cliffs was fiercer than he'd have liked; fiercer than it had been when they first practiced this.. It was nothing he couldn't handle though; nothing that the ship couldn't deal with. He had the easy job, today: it was Mel who was facing all the risks.
Not that he doubted she'd be equal to the challenge. Over the missions they'd worked on since Horizon he'd been struck by just how focused the Cerberus agent was - how singularly dedicated to achieving the
They'd all followed the same pattern, those early missions. He'd be home on Tiptree, or working in the commercial pilot training school that Day had set up for him as a cover, when the request would come in. He'd take a few days off, flying out to some star system or other to help Mel infiltrate or exfiltrate somewhere or other, piloting ships through planetary defences people thought were impregnable, or moving at speeds that people didn't believe were possible.
Hilary, he knew, was convinced he was in some sort of secret relationship - something she'd teased him about once or twice in the early months. The old man was probably worried he was involved in low-level smuggling of some sort or another. Neither of them could know the truth.
The last mission - almost two months ago now, he thought - had been a little out of the ordinary, a little more unnerving than most. He'd ended up flying out on a series of commercial flights, out into some backwater system he'd never visited before. Then he'd taken charge of a small, two-person shuttle and flown out into the dark side of an unremarkable icy moon, where Mel had been been waiting him for on board an otherwise deserted ship. A - from all the signs he could see - very recently deserted ship.
"Pirates," she'd said, preempting his question, "Batarian slavers." Her lips had curled into a half-smile that didn't reach her eyes. "They won't be requiring it anymore."
He'd tried to keep his eyes focused on hers, trying not to think about the abandoned crew quarters they'd been walking through or the emergency air supplies she'd been sitting patiently by when he'd first boarded.. Ignoring the signs of vacuum damage scarring the support beams around the airlocks, trying not to let his imagination fill in the gaps.
There was no sign of the Horizon-colony markings on her face, he'd noticed absently. Unlike it had been on the day their first met, her face was smooth and unmarked. Her accent had changed too, a hard-to-place cultured drawl that he thought hinted at an expensive private education. Neither of them had ever spoken about their families - that would have gone against protocol, after all - but he'd picked up the idea that she had a complicated relationship with hers. Some Horizoners who've been getting rich out of the whole Protectorate racket?
It was pointless to speculate, but more fun than thinking about whoever had last sat in the seat he was occupying now; clutching their throats as the air ran out and … he'd shaken his head, rebuking himself.
They were slavers, Jeff, he'd told himself. You think they didn't have it coming?
They'd made the descent to the drop point in almost perfect silence; slipping between the planet's network of security drones with room to spare. Mel had just nodded to him when they were done, one professional to another. He hadn't asked what Cerberus wanted to keep the ship for. Sometimes all that focus could be more than a little unsettling.
He forced his thoughts back to the present, eyes focusing on the shuttle's flashing displays.
Whoever was in charge of that end of the business had really outdone themselves this time. This ship was incredible. Only a shuttle, sure, but more advanced and better engineered than almost anything else he'd flown for real before. He wondered idly where in the galaxy Cerberus had gotten hold of it. All he knew was that somebody, somehow, had arranged for it to be waiting for them on a private spaceport on the far side of the planet.
He'd flown the ship out of the spaceport himself a few hours ago: flying as low as possible to avoid being picked up by any official observation channel. Not that there was much chance of that: Eden Prime's local government was bitterly opposed to any hint of Hierarchy interference in their local politics. But Mel had insisted, so that was that.
Now the Cerberus agent was up in the caves, facing down a turian Spectre and his biotic human allies. If it was anybody else, he'd be worried. But with Mel - well, he almost felt sorry for the Spectre.
⟨⟨ -no matter how hard you try, you'll never be- ⟩⟩ Joker kept one ear on the comms channel, listening to the Cerberus agent as she faced down
One of the console screens in front of him lit up, green light washing over his face. Activity in the base, below both Mel and the human soldier. Somebody else had triggered the device. That was all part of the plan.
He wasn't the only one to get the signal.
⟨⟨ -go check on your boss, Shepard. ⟩⟩ The emergency extraction light flashed red, as Melinoë's calm voice continued to crackle over the speaker. That was the signal. ⟨⟨ You and I can pick this up later. ⟩⟩
Come on girl, he addressed the ship. Time to show what you can do. Jeff's hands danced across the controls, punching out commands, and the ship ascended up the mountainside, as smoothly and effortlessly as if they were still in deep space.
He didn't even notice when Mel jumped; The ship didn't rock when she caught on to the hatch; if it wasn't for the external sensors he wouldn't have noticed a thing. A few seconds later the screen flashed up an alert noting the shuttle's doors had been opened.
Mel - Melinoë, he reminded himself; he wasn't reckless enough to refer to her by a diminuitive except in the privacy of his own head - was back on board.
A few minutes later the cockpit door dilated and Melinoë walked inside, a thoughtful look on her face..
"So much for the famous Command Shepard," she said lightly, sliding into the co-pilot's seat next to him.
"Wait, that was Shepard?" he said, startled. He'd not been told anything more about this mission than he'd needed to know. A Cerberus team on Eden Prime had gone dark, enemy activity was suspected, and Melinoë would be going in to investigate. But he'd heard of the Butcher. Who hadn't?
"Is she the reason our team out here went missing?" he asked. He'd seen the videos smuggled out of Torfan; he knew what the biotic auxiliaries that worked for the Hierarchy were capable of. If anybody could have taken out the Cerberus monitoring team here on Eden Prime, surely...
… but Melinoë was already shaking her head. "Not according to our latest intelligence - the Spectre brought her along with him, and he only made planetfall after we arrived."
"We trust that intel?" he asked. Strictly speaking, he didn't need to know - sometimes he could press for more, but at other times Mel would be all icy professionalism.
But today she was in an expansive mood.
"Cerberus is interested in the Commander." she said nonchalantly. "We've been keeping track of her for some time. We've actually tried sounding her out a few times now. We do something similar for a lot of people like her; people who could be useful if they could understand what's at stake. But she's not ready. Not yet. So we just have one of our agents keep a close eye on her; to make sure she's not causing the wrong sort of trouble "
She took a seat next to Jeff, in front of the still active console broadcasting diagnostics from the now abandoned science lab.
"In any case," she said, glancing over the readouts. "It looks like the turian took the bait, just as the Illusive Man planned. I'd better send word. Can you find a comm buoy - patch us into the network?""
Jeff nodded, hoping his expression remained calm.
The Illusive Man actually exists?
After all these years, it felt bizarre to have it confirmed so casually. .Assuming that wasn't just more misinformation of course. But he didn't think that it was. Maybe he was kidding himself, but this felt like a deliberate initiation into a deeper level of the organisation than he'd been invited to see before. An extension of trust. Maybe a sign that he'd start to see more of what was really going on.
You can pat yourself on the back later, he reminded himself. Right now you've got a job to do.
They'd need to get out of Eden Prime's orbit, out of the whole system, before they could risk sending a signal. Luckily the shuttle was more than capable of that.
They'd left atmosphere a few minutes ago - pushing up through the ionosphere with barely any effort - and were right on course for Horizon's local mass relay. Jeff risked a glance at the woman next to him, wondering if she was going to let anything more slip today, but she was silently engrossed on the screen in front of her. He knew better than to try to push her.
Jeff cleared his throat when the warning light flashed up in front of him. It was time for the final approach. After all this time, this part still felt special.
"Hitting the relay in 5, 4, 3, 2, …"