"It's good to see you again, Lieutenant Commander," Major Coats said.
"Likewise," Val replied with a nod. She remembered Coats from London. She could only hope he didn't have any further acquaintance with her than that, so that her neutral response would seem appropriate.
Coats looked older and wearier than Val remembered: the close-cropped hair was a little gray around the edges, his face paler and more drawn. Was it the strain of the last few months taking its toll? She couldn't be sure. She'd gotten a message to report to his office only about an hour after her medical clearance. That was fast by Alliance standards. Val hadn't recognized Coats' aide this time, but she hadn't even sat down before the aide ushered her in. Coats must really want to see her.
"I'm glad you're cleared for duty," he said. "We need some good marines."
Val's lips twitched into a smile. "There have to be a few around here somewhere."
Coats grunted. "There are. Not a lot with your qualifications, though. There were a lot of casualties from Hammer, and a lot of the survivors are still on Earth."
She nodded again, torn between trepidation and excitement. Half of her had been convinced that he wanted her for more training or something — something she wasn't actually experienced in, no matter what her file said. The other half hoped desperately for a combat mission. If it didn't look ridiculous, she would have crossed her fingers for luck. If he actually had a combat mission for her, she might have to give him a hug.
"And at the moment we have a situation," Coats said.
Shepard blinked, and found herself settling, even as her ears came to attention. A situation sounded promising. She knew how to handle situations, a lot more than she knew how to do dinners with her mother and biotics training sessions. They were practically her specialty. "What's the situation? And what do you need me to do, sir?"
"We've had reports of a group of geth on-planet. The geth themselves haven't communicated with us, at all. Our sensors picked up their ship, but they've ignored all hails. We need someone to find out what they're up to."
She considered this. "What's our... diplomatic status with the geth?"
Coats spread his hands. "Uncertain. Shepard — excuse me, the other Shepard — brought them into our coalition. A lot of us had our concerns about that, but it worked out. They helped a lot with the building of the Crucible, sent in ships and troops for the assault on Earth. Ever since then, they've been quiet. Pulled back from Earth space, pulled back almost everywhere, no communications to speak of."
Shepard nodded. "Which begs the question of what they're doing here now."
"Exactly," said Coats. He pushed a datapad across the desk toward her. "Available personnel files there. You can pick your own squad."
She picked up the list and scrolled down. One name caught her eye immediately. "Can I have Vega?" She asked before she'd thought it through. There would be a certain comfort to working with James, since she knew how he operated, but maybe it would be better to start fresh with an entirely new team.
"James Vega? Certainly. Good choice, he had some experience with the geth under John Shepard."
She nodded, hoping she wouldn't regret the decision. "I'll look this over and let you know who else I want," she said. Who she wanted was Garrus, but she doubted he was on the approved roster.
"Send me a ping and I'll see it done. By the way, Lieutenant Commander—"
She looked up. Coats smiled. "There's a promotion pending for you, but with the current state of things, I'm not sure when the paperwork will go through. Congratulations, in any case."
Val bit her lip and nodded, seriously. "Thank you, sir." She should have been promoted after the Battle of the Citadel, but politics had hung it up somehow, and then death and Cerberus and scandal had kept it from happening. There was something strange about getting the rank in this existence that she'd never attained in the other. It would have made her laugh, if it didn't sting.
Shepard went down to the bar that night, head swimming from scanning dossiers between rounds of training sessions. Vega was a strong, skilled close-in fighter, and so was she, plus she supplied biotics. Vega was a decent longer-range shot, too. She liked to fill out her team with a couple of combat techs, ideally including a sniper. There were some good candidates on the list, but all of those people were strangers, nothing more than names in a file. She was out of the habit of fighting without people she knew at her back.
She didn't even really know James Vega any more, Val reminded herself as she collected her beer and sat down. Him, Garrus, some random Alliance marines — it was all the same thing really. They were all as good as strangers, and if she couldn't lead a combat team of strangers, she should just resign her commission right now.
"Hey, Goldie!"
Val squeezed her eyes shut and sighed loudly. "I told you not to call me that, James."
"I'm still workin' on it," he said. "Come on, take a load off."
Garrus was sharing Vega's table, and tipped his glass toward Val in a salute as she took her seat. "Commander."
"You could call me that," she pointed out to James.
"Off-duty? That's no fun. But." James tilted his chair back and grinned. "I hear you and me got a mission tomorrow, huh?"
She took a long drink, hoping she hadn't made a mistake. "Remember, in the field you report to me."
Garrus chuckled. James said easily, "Sure, sure. No problem. Gonna give me a little clue what this op's about?" He rocked his chair back and forth on its back legs, grinning like the a kid.
Val took another drink and raised an eyebrow. "What, you can't wait until a morning briefing?"
He shrugged. "Your call, boss. Just curious."
"Boss," she said, amused. "I like the sound of that."
Garrus laughed outright and kicked James' chair, forcing him to drop it to all four legs. Val found herself smiling, feeling more expansive and relaxed. Maybe this would work out after all. "Got some geth in the neighborhood. The brass wants us to go see what they're up to."
"Huh." James pursed his lips. "Geth, huh? Seen my share of flashlight-heads."
"I figured," she said.
Garrus chuckled. "You only think you've seen your share, Jimmy."
"Yeah, yeah." James took a drink himself. "Keep talking, Scars."
"Don't mind if I do," Garrus said. "I do believe I personally hold the record for most geth kills on the Normandy, which also means, in the galaxy." He tipped his head with a flare of his mandibles that could only be interpreted as cocky.
"Sure it wasn't Shepard?" James asked. "The uh, the Normandy's Shepard, I mean."
"Shepard had a pretty good count," Garrus said lazily. "But I had the edge."
Their back-and-forth was so familiar that Val felt warm and relaxed. Over Vega's demands for proof, she asked impulsively, "Do you want to come?"
Garrus shot her a look of surprise, brow plates twitching. "You serious, Commander?"
She swallowed a mouthful. Her stomach lurched as she already half regretted the offer, but she wasn't going to back down now. Instead, she gave him a tight smile. "You're the one with experience, aren't you? Follow my orders in the field, and we'll be fine."
Shepard's palms itched as they landed their shuttle and disembarked. She took a deep breath and tried to settle herself. This was only a fact-finding mission to start with, she reminded herself. Might not be any fighting at all. And if there were —
It felt right to have James and Garrus at her back, but at the same time, everything felt wrong, just a little bit off kilter. James and Garrus joked and moved easily with each other, but their strides didn't match hers. They wouldn't fight with the sense of synchronization she was used to. They wouldn't know what to expect from her. She'd have to compensate for that, make sure she communicated clearly. On top of that, this armor wasn't hers; it was a new set that was plain black and didn't sit quite right on her shoulders. The head of the vehicle pool hadn't been too pleased when she showed up with a turian in tow, either. She was probably going to hear it from Coats later. She was supposed to have a larger squad, and a human one. She'd asked Garrus to join her on a whim. This whole thing, really, was her going off half-cocked and reckless.
Her lips spread out in a tight grin. Well, that was just like old times, wasn't it? Walk into unknown situations, talk or fight her way out of them. That was what Commander Shepard did best, wasn't it?
Their coordinates led them to a small hill in the rocky countryside. Colony records indicated a mine present, abandoned during the war. Seeing no sign of a geth ship, Shepard dropped the shuttle on the opposite side of the hill from the entrance, giving the shuttle a bit of cover if they did end up in a firefight. As she made her approach around the hill, in the open, with Garrus and Vega following along behind her, she saw the mine's entrance bulking dark against the hillside. Maybe some kind of natural cave, now buttressed with the prefab construction units that were ubiquitous in colonial space. In front of the entrance lay an assortment of bulky cargo crates.
And the geth. Six mobile platforms, moving cargo crates with their weird, mechanical grace.
"There they are," James muttered.
"Orders, Commander?" Garrus asked.
Shepard flicked her gaze from side to side, taking in the terrain, noting the location of a handful of boulders that could provide a little cover if they needed it. "Let me talk to them," she said. Their orders were not to engage unless the geth fired first. "Be ready just in case."
She waited until she got a pair of "affirmative"s from behind her and stepped forward, holding her hands loose and away from her sides. "Good morning," she called out.
All the geth stopped moving, limbs freezing in position. Their optical sensors wheeled toward her simultaneously. The hairs on the back of Val's neck tingled, and a shiver went down her spine.
"I'm with the Systems Alliance," she said slowly and carefully, taking another slow step forward. "We've tried contacting you, but you haven't answered our hails. Can I ask what you're doing on this colony?"
The geth did not respond. They remained motionless. Val waited in the glare of their optical sensors, trying not to betray her nervousness, but sweat was starting to gather at the back of her neck. She wished like hell that the quarians had given the geth faces. There was no way to tell what they might be thinking. She tried on a tentative smile, not even sure how the expression would read to the geth. Reassurance? Threat? "Do you understand me?" she asked.
Another geth stepped out of the mine to join its fellows. Then two more, and then another. Ten in all, every one of them simply standing there watching her. Val swallowed, feeling the first beads of sweat break out over her neck and forehead. "Okay then," she said slowly. "We're just going to have a look around in the mine, then."
The geth remained still as she took one more cautious step forward, leaving her hands exposed. Then, as one, all ten of them reached for their rifles.
"Take cover!" Val shouted. Her heart pounded, all her muscles tensing. In her peripheral vision, her companions slid into position behind rocks, fast and professional. Val felt a brief surge of satisfaction that they'd followed orders. She didn't move herself, but a twist of her arm pulled dark energy into a barrier around her. The barrier flickered blue as the first couple of shots slammed into it — geth fired fast — but once through the barrier, the shots thudded slowly against her armor, falling harmlessly to the ground.
"Garrus, overload at will, and scan for cloaked units," she called out.
"Understood."
She raised her fist, gathering the barrier and shield energies, and slammed it down, throwing the collected energy into the thickest clump of the geth. They rocked on their feet, staggering under the force of the wave, but not falling. Val called out, "Vega, hit them from the left, Garrus, take right."
Garrus said, "Commander, your shields—"
Before he could finish speaking, Shepard had braced herself and sent herself charging into the center of the cluster. Two of the geth collapsed under the impact. They weren't down for good, though. She'd arrived nearly on top of a third, its rifle pointing toward where she'd been standing. As its hulking form turned toward her, she called up her omni-blade with a flick of her wrist and jammed it into the geth's torso, jerking it upwards to slice through the geth's chassis. Another quick swipe sliced across the exposed circuitry linking the geth's head to its torso. It faltered and collapsed with a shrill whirring noise. In the comm, she could hear James cursing in Spanish, and the rattle of weapons fire from both his position and Garrus'. "Problem, lieutenant?" Val asked, yanking her shotgun off its magnetic catch and fired twice at the next available platform.
"You are loca, Commander!"
"Save the commentary," she snapped. On her right, Garrus' rifle boomed, and a geth fell. On her left, another went down under Vega's fire. This was how she liked a fight to run: herself smashing through the center, while her team handled things at range. Vega and Garrus were picking off the outermost geth so they couldn't flank her team, good. They hadn't needed her to pick targets. Even in the middle of combat, the knowledge that she could trust them to fight smart relaxed her a little.
The two geth she'd collided with were struggling up to their feet. Val dodged away from them and fired a blast at a geth who'd just emerged from the mine. "Garrus, any cloaks?"
"Negative, Commander." There was a crackle and whir of electronics on the right flank. The outer edge of the overload field caught one of the geth she'd downed with her charge, which twitched and then lay still, smelling of ozone. Shepard raised her arm and slammed another energy discharge into the gathered geth, collapsing two more, which warbled as they fell. She grinned in satisfaction and bent her knees, flinging herself into a geth only a couple of yards away. She was braced for the hard impact; the geth wasn't, falling, and she fired a round at its head before it could get up again. She kept moving, tracking the sounds of Garrus's sniper rifle on one side and James's assault rifle on the other, but devoting most of her attention to the knot of geth converging on her. They didn't respond well to biotics, though; she was never in the same place for more than a few seconds, and they couldn't track the trajectory of her charge easily. She slammed into the last one in her immediate vicinity, emptied two shotgun blasts at it, and popped out the heatsink, taking a quick scan around. All of the geth were down, and James and Garrus were easing their way out of cover. Her heart rate started to slow to normal, though she was still breathing hard. Her face felt hot, and satisfaction poured through her. She still had it.
It wasn't time for the victory round of drinks yet, though.
"Check our perimeter," she said, shoving at the nearest geth with her boot.
"Damn, Commander," said James, turning around for a visual inspection. "I never saw anything like that before."
She cocked her head. "What, you've never served with a biotic?"
"Sure, but not like that! Thought biotics was all about floating things around and shit." He wiggled his fingers vaguely.
Garrus said, "Motion detector says we're clear, Commander."
"Good. Live and learn, Vega," she said, and looked around at the felled geth. She grimaced. Several of them were smoking, and nearly all of them were riddled with holes. "The problem with geth is they're difficult to question."
"That's the problem with geth?" James said, coming up beside her. At her look, he added, "Uh, no disrespect, Commander."
Val let out a long breath. There wasn't much chance of figuring out what the geth were up to in this state. She glanced at Garrus. "Any chance you can get anything out of them?"
He dropped into a crouch beside the most intact of the platforms, bringing up his omni-tool to scan it, but almost immediately shook his head. "I'm no AI expert. Deactivation destroys their memory units unless you know what you're doing. Tali might have— but she's not here. I'd barely know where to start."
His subharmonics buzzed a little before he reined them in, and his mandibles were tight to his jaw. Val would have given a lot to have Tali here, herself. She bit the inside of her cheek and prodded the nearest geth with her toe. Better to focus on things she could control. Aloud, she said, "Well, they weren't friendlies, so I think we can assume they were up to something."
"They were on our side during the war though," James said. "Don't know why they'd turn on us now."
"They might have another agenda." Garrus stood.
"They might not be free agents," Val said, scanning the horizon. She didn't see any Reapers.
"You think the Reapers are controlling them?" Garrus asked.
"I don't know." Privately, she thought it was likely, but that didn't answer the question of why, or what the geth were up to. "Let's take a look around. Vega, open up one of those crates for me."
The cargo crates turned out to contain little of interest: nothing more than minerals and metals scavenged from the mine. Val frowned as Vega rummaged through the crate, and then looked at the entrance to the mine. "Guess we'd better check it out."
"You got it, boss," James said, falling in beside her.
"There might be more geth inside," Garrus pointed out.
"Then let's be on our guard," she said.
Shepard had lost count of how many mines she'd had the misfortune of climbing or fighting her way through. More than anyone who wasn't a miner, probably. This one differed slightly by having a natural cave entrance, but inside the pathway was similar to most mines, drilled clean and supported with metal girders to keep the ceiling from collapsing. Knee-level lights activated as they passed, but all three of them turned on their helmet lights as well for more illumination. Other than that, darkness pressed around them. The beams from their helmets seemed thin and lonely, penetrating only a few feet into the enveloping black. The mine was silent, too, the air cool and stagnant. As they descended, Val's skin prickled with the awareness of the weight of the hill above them. She swallowed and kept walking, carefully.
Under the beam of her helmet, she could see the walls were cratered where minerals had been extracted. Colored flags marked sites for future excavation. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as she could tell. The silence swallowed their steps as they descended. At intervals, a side cavern opened off of the descending pathway. There they stopped and investigated more thoroughly, but found nothing besides tools and additional cargo containers, some of them empty, some of them filled with ore just as the ones on the surface had been. There were a few odds and ends of furniture — chairs, tables — but no other signs of human habitation. The geth, of course, didn't need to leave convenient written memos lying around. Shepard sighed.
"Not much here," Garrus observed.
"There's got to be something," she muttered, half to herself. "There's no reason for them to be hiding that they were clearing out a mine."
"How far we goin', here?" James asked. "Mining shafts can go on for miles."
James was right, but Val wasn't ready to be done yet. "A little further," she said, even though she didn't have any real goal in mind. Even so, she hated to turn back without any real information when they'd come this far.
James sighed, but kept walking. Val frowned at his back. Behind her, Garrus said nothing, but she could hear the creak of his armor as he walked.
A few minutes later, they moved into the fourth storage area they'd found so far. "Well, here's a different thing, anyway," James, in the lead, offered.
Val stepped sideways so she could see around the bulky lieutenant. This area seemed to have once been an infirmary: it held a couple of cots, a console, and a large white kit marked with a red cross. Between the two cots, on a small table, sat a silver sphere a little larger than her head. Its surface was dull and smooth, reflecting a distorted image of them and the room.
"Huh," said James. "What the hell is that?" He took a couple of steps toward it while Val frowned. She'd definitely seen something like that before, but where and when?
Her eyes widened as she made the connection. "Wait!" she called, reaching for James' arm. "Don't touch it, Vega."
He stopped with hand extended. "Why not?"
"Because touching unknown objects is not usually the best idea?" she snapped, and eased her way closer, cautiously. Yes. She was pretty sure this was the kind of sphere she'd seen on that mining station at Mahavid, and in Dr. Bryson's lab. The size and the dull sheen both fit, anyway.
It was a Leviathan orb, but what was it doing here?
"Do you know what it is?" Garrus asked.
Val blew out a breath as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. If she admitted she knew what it was, that would raise more questions, wouldn't it? She'd have to explain how she knew, offer some kind of plausible lie.
It took a moment for her to realize that Garrus should have known perfectly well what it was, and she turned to look at him. "Do you?"
He looked back at her, head tilted, and then looked at the sphere. She watched glimmering information scroll across his visor. His brow plates and mandibles twitched, and Garrus shook his head. "Never seen it before."
She stared at him, but he wasn't showing any signs of stress or concealment. Garrus wasn't a great liar; he was better at obfuscating and dodging questions. Now, he just looked back at her with curiosity. Slowly, she breathed out through her nose. She glanced at James, and found him staring at her with equal puzzlement. "What about you, Vega?"
He shrugged. "Nope. What's the big deal?"
She hesitated. A fresh wave of sweat broke out on her forehead. They should have known, shouldn't they? She remembered hunting down the Leviathan, the Reaper-killer. If the other Shepard had done what she had done, why didn't Garrus and James know about it? Had they not been present for those missions? Val licked her lips and said, "Did... did your Shepard ever have contact with a researcher called Bryson?"
"Bryson," said Garrus thoughtfully.
James shook his head. "No, I don't... wait, yeah, there was this guy on the Citadel. Died right after, though."
"That's right," Garrus said. "His research didn't seem to lead anywhere. Just a false trail."
Val swallowed. "Really." She eyed the orb, which lay quietly, looking innocuous. She knew better, though; her heart was already beating faster. With orbs like these, the Leviathan could control organic minds. Could they control geth, as well? "He didn't find out anything about the Leviathan, then?"
"Just some kinda crackpot legend, no?" James said.
"So were the Reapers," Val said. "And the Collectors. Find me an empty crate, will you?" She wasn't sure an ordinary container would shield the orb adequately, but better that than nothing. They couldn't just leave it here.
James left, grumbling a little. Val watched the orb, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Naturally, it did nothing. She felt a little cold, but maybe that was just her imagination. The power of suggestion. Choking cold and the weight of fathoms of water above her.
You do not belong here.
She didn't, did she? Her shoulders stiffened inside her armor that didn't quite fit.
"What do you know about the Leviathan, Commander?" Garrus asked.
Great. Now she had to come up with something. Val bit her lip, racking her brain for a good response. "Supposed to be a race that opposed the Reapers. They could control minds." It seemed most important to name the threat.
"Like indoctrination?" He'd come a few steps closer, and stood with his arms folded, head tilted to the side.
She swallowed down the ache in her throat at the familiar posture. "Something like that."
"Where did you hear that?"
She wavered for a second. "Classified." It was too smooth, too easy, but it was the only thing she could come up with.
"Hm." Garrus' mandibles tightened.
He was probably thinking that they could have used that intel when they were talking to Bryson. "Did you encounter Ann Bryson? Dr. Bryson's daughter?"
"I don't think so," Garrus said. "I never heard Shepard mention her, at any rate."
Maybe Ann Bryson was still out there somewhere, then. Assuming she'd survived the war. When Val had found her, she'd been in a hell of a mess.
Vega came back a few minutes later, hauling an empty crate. They loaded the orb in and carried it out of the mine. James and Garrus didn't ask her any more questions, returning to their banter as they flew their shuttle back to camp. Val slouched in her seat, letting the autopilot do the work. Now she had to figure out how to explain about the orb in her reports.
Did anyone else know about the Leviathan? Could the Alliance reach Ann Bryson, or anyone else who might know how to deal with the orb? Val's memories might be delusions, but she hadn't invented the geth's hostility. Something was definitely wrong here, and the sphere was the only strange thing they'd found in that mine.
She could only hope bringing it in was the right call.