Nihlus jolted awake as his omni-tool beeped. He turned off the alarm and slowly stood up, his body sore and stiff from the abuse he was putting it through. He had managed to get away from Samara by jumping into the car of the train he was currently on. Sounds simple, even cliché, but it hadn't gone nearly so smoothly. And saying he jumped into the train car was only wording to help ease the bruising his ego took from the ass kicking Samara gave him. No, in reality he hadn't jumped on, he had gotten flung, hard, into the side of the moving train. Though it was his ability and skill that allowed him to hang on and hack the door to get inside, allowing him to ride it to safety.
He limped over to one of the many crates the cargo car was full of and sat down on it. "Alright," he murmured "let's see what's broken." His omni-tool whirled to life, giving him its processing screen. After a brief wait it finished its diagnostics and the screen changed to show him the results. Of note he had minimum internal bleeding, two fractured ribs, and the tendons in his right knee cap were torn. Overall the damage were things that he could push through it. "Just painful, not life threatening."
He shut off his omni-tool, got up from the crate, and slide open the door to the train car. Outside it was dark, probably a few hours before dawn, and the land was covered in forest. He could see a town a few miles away from the track and, marking where it was in relation to the stars, jumped off the train, rolling on impact and ending crouched on his feet. With a final glance at the passing train he took off into the jungle at a brisk pace, heading towards the town through the forest.
It took him at least an hour of on and off jogging to reach the town. The sun was still down, but the sky was starting to lighten. For the most part the town still sleeping and Nihlus was able to find a convenient store while avoiding people with mild difficulty. Hacking the electronic lock on the backdoor was child's play and he slide inside unseen. Inside he quickly grabbed a backpack off the shelves and filled it packs of dextro food, things that would keep. On his way out of town he paused, staring at something in the distance. His mandibles twitched and a devious look gleamed in his eyes. He knew how he was going to get off the planet.
He gave himself two weeks to pull it off, anymore and it would be shameful. That meant he had to survive the justicar for two weeks. The easier way to do that was to keep ahead of her. He knew how to track in the woods well enough to know how to not be tracked, at least not easily, and he knew of traps that he could set to help slow her down. The problem there, though, was that this wasn't an isolated area, he couldn't lay any traps that would have a chance to harm any innocents, but he would work with that.
xXx
It took time to track down the train's destination and path. It was a task that required talking to people and working through the proper channels. Samara had underestimated her foe. First he managed to crash his transit in an ideal location for it to be swept away unnoticed, and now he had used her strength to his advantage to board the train. She let out a quiet sigh of frustration as the terminal in front of her located the information. With it retrieved she carefully stepped over the knocked out asari, out from behind the train dispatcher's counter, and back outside to the train yard's maze of tracks. She hated that she had to knock the dispatcher out, but the woman had refused to let her have the information. Her code demanded the turian's blood, no matter who got in the way. From there it was easy enough to hijack a train engine, only having to incapacitate half a dozen asari who tried to stop her, and start down the path Nihlus' train had went. He did have a several hour head start, though, which irritated her, but she had spent the last few decades tracking a much harder prey.
For the next two days she went along the train's path, thoroughly searching and questioning people in the area for the turian at each town the train stopped at, but at every one there wasn't a trace. Annoyed, she started back along the path in a transit, this time widening her search to include towns the train merely went near. On the third day she got lucky. A police report at one of the small towns was about a convenient store being broken into a few days before. The only thing that was taken was a backpack and canned dextro food. It was a thin lead, but all her others so far had panned out. She further questioned the people in town about any sightings of a turian, there weren't many on this planet.
"Turian? Actually, now that you mention it a few of the security guards mentioned seeing one hanging around the water power plant," an asari citizen informed her, looking thoughtful and slightly worried. "Is he dangerous?"
"Yes," Samara said simple before calmly walking away and heading towards the dam she could see in the distance.
She was worried that she was following a false lead, having walked several miles with definite signs. The few signs that might have been her quarry were too faint and old to confirm if it was him. Finally she found a boot print in the mud that had two distinct toes. She knelt down to inspect it. It was fairly new, only a few hours old. With a pleasure that did not reach her features she took off in the direction the print went, following other similar ones and other signs that he had been through there. Then she came barreling into a clearing and saw a humanoid slip through the trees on the other side. She bolted after it, catching up a few yards into the trees and enveloped it with a biotic field. Her brow creased as she stared, confused, at a security mech wearing black and red turian armored boots.
"Oh hey, there you are," the mech spoke in Nihlus' voice, the head turning around towards her. "And here I thought I went through all these precautions for nothing."
Samara gritted her teeth as she clenched her raised hand into a fist, crushing the mech into a ball of twisted metal.
This man was because a real nuisance. She spent the next week tracking him through the dense forest and every time she got close he managed to pull off an escape. If it wasn't for the fact it was costing him each time she would have been completely consumed by the rage it filled her with every time she heard him laugh as he slipped away. He was a genius with tech, and, while being in the forest reduced what he was capable of, it did not prevent him from being resourceful. He had used him boots to send the mech through the jungle, leaving obvious tracks with their heavy metal, when she had first arrived. It had been a brilliant tactic to trick her into revealing when she had caught up.
He also no longer hand his helmet, which she found tied up into a tree at a popular crossroad of game trails as a security cam. Not only that, it also sent out a bright flash of light when she removed it that had left her stunned and seeing spots for hours after.
He had also used what she assumed was a majority of circuitry from his suit of armor to rig up over a dozen other traps that either incapacitated her, allowing him to increase the distance between them; or drummed up distractions that she had to go deal with, the largest one being a forest fire. That one had also confused her as after she had put it out she discovered that there had been a burned barrier encircling the patch of undergrowth that had been lit, meaning that the fire would have not have gotten out of hand even if she had ignored it. The turian was a curious one and she was starting to have second thoughts about pursuing him, but the code was clear and it demanded she kept going.
xXx
Nihlus' omni-tool beeped softly, stirring the man from his sleep. He groaned and pulled himself out of the crevice of rock he had squeezed into for his brief, unfulfilling bout of sleep. The justicar was getting more and more persistent. During the brief period it took her to find him he had set up a couple security measures against her, traps and surveillance mainly, and when he wasn't working on those he was putting together his end game plan. Since she caught up he had been running too much to make much progress. If he wasn't able to end this soon he would lose their dance.
Cautiously he slunk down to the pond nearby. He splashed his face with water, trying to trick his body into thinking it was rested. The effects were minimalistic, he decided as he looked down at his bare hands, his gauntlets, as well as his helmet, boots, shoulders, and chest piece, had been sacrificed in his trap making. It left him in just his armored pants and the mesh of his under-armor. He shivered as a cool morning breeze drifted over him. He hated the cold. He hated the forest. And he hated the nutrient paste he pulled out of the small bag on his back.
After breakfast he set off from the pond and started making his way towards the reservoir in the distance.
The day had gone fairly smooth to start out with. He walked along through the trees, making an effort to step on patches of grass and rocks to lessen any tracks, creating the strings of code for his program in his head and then transferring it to his omni-tool in batches during his breaks for rest and to relieve himself. His pace hadn't been fast, but he had expected Samara to be further and he was sore and tired.
Now he stood in front of the Justicar, her calm demeanor hiding the blood price he knew she craved.
"Are all justicar this persistently straight forward?" he asked. "In all this time you've spent chasing me you could have just checked out Shepard's claim, would have saved us all a lot of pain." He put his hands on his lower back and stretched the muscles so they cracked, making his point.
Samara didn't respond in words. She moved her hand to her hip and pulled a pistol from its holster.
Nihlus watched the weapon lift and the barrel pointing at him. "The world is not black and white like your code thinks," he growled, his light and humorous demeanor gone, leaving a dead expression on his face and ice in his voice.
Samara gave him an equally cold stare, her mind processing the behaviors of this man behind the blank mask she wore. He was intelligent, quick thinking, passionate, and at his core he was cold. She could see that it was a fact that he hid from those around him. He'd smile and make jokes, but it was all just the surface. Underneath the facade he just wanted to be alone, and few in any would ever pierce beyond that. He reminded her of… she closed her eyes and sighed. No, she didn't need to think about that, it was just a distraction from her duty.
Nihlus watched her carefully. She looked tired, he thought. Not like a lack of sleep, or even from their fight. The tired he saw in her eyes was one he had seen in the face of turians who had served several military terms. She was tired of fighting a long, never ending battle that spanned years. It was a look that his father had many days during his youth. It was a look that made Nihlus to resistant to joining the military. It was a look he feared one day he'd have. Slowly, Samara closed her eyes, as if she was clearing something from her mind.
In the split second she wasted Nihlus made his move. He ran at her, grabbing the wrist that held the gun, lifting it up so that when she pulled the trigger out of reflex it went off harmlessly over his shoulder. Not removing his grip on her arm he spun inward towards her so that his back was against her, and slammed his elbow hard into her stomach. The asari was muscular and he resisted a wince her toned stomach made contact with his bare elbow. Any discomfort was replace with a sick pleasure from the gasp that forced it's way past her lips. In the same swift movement he moved his elbow away from her stomach, bringing it to the lower part of her gun arm. With both hands in place he slammed her arm down over his shoulder, wrenching the elbow back in the opposite direction than it was supposed to go.
As the arm slammed into his shoulder it shimmered in a biotic blue glow, helping absorb the blow. It prevented Nihlus from breaking her arm, but she still let out a small cry and dropped the gun to the ground. She jerked her arm away from him. He let it go, kicking the gun far away from them as he turned to face her.
She backed away from him, opening and closing her right hand to make sure everything was working and to work the pain out of the muscles. As she did so, she tried to back up from Nihlus to give her the advantage of space to use her biotics. Nihlus was smart though and refused to give her the distance. Staying close wasn't his normal fighting style and preferred to use the longer reach of his species to his advantage. That being said, he had spared enough with Shepard to know how to mimic her style, even if he wasn't as flexible.
For every step back that she took he took two towards, moving so close that they had to watch their feet to avoid tripping on each other. Unable to get a good shot to use her biotics, they both put up their arms to guard themselves and started landing furry of blows, each trying and failing to get past each other's defenses.
Samara went to back up enough to lift her leg for a kick, but Nihlus saw the movement and took advantage of it, ducking and flinging his leg out so that it slammed into the one leg she still had on the ground. She spun, catching herself on her hands and quickly scrambled to her feet to continue the fight. With surprise Nihlus was gone, no trace of him in sight. She panted as she looked around the cluster of trees around her, searching for any sign of movement that could give away where the man had gone, but there was nothing. She cursed in asari under her breath and leaned against a tree, rubbing her sore arm.
xXx
She gasped air back into her lungs, black blotches impairing her vision. She felt herself be placed on fabric, and then a door closed with the familiar sound of an airtight seal activating. She groaned and pulled herself up. Through the vehicle's driver side window, she saw Nihlus being lifted by a shiny blue mass effect field, pulled away from the vehicle as it lifted off the ground and towards the building's exit.
"No," she tried to protest, soundless at first, and then with increasing volume as the air returned to her. She jerked on the door's handles, trying to get it to open, punching the glass when it wouldn't budge. The glass took the abuse without even cracking. "No," she screamed, going to the spot inside her mind where the itch of her biotics laid. She called upon all the power she could and slammed her fist against the glass with everything she had. In horror she watched the blue sheen around her dissipate before she even made contact with the window. "Damn it," she cried, gathering her biotics again. They were several miles off the ground now, cresting over the tops of the last skyscrapers. She could feel the blood trickle down her nose and past her lips. In the back of her mouth the taste of iron and bile rose up. 'Not now,' she thought, pushing away the pain and discomfort to grasp at the biotic abilities. Her body spasmed in a violent jerk and she screamed with no sound passing through her lips, head forced upward. Everything went white, every nerve in her body burned as their sensitivity went haywire. In waves she got sensory information from different parts of her body, cascading over her. It was too much and she fell back onto the seat, her mind shutting down everything it could in defense against the pain. Somewhere in the chaotic sea she was aware of her under armor soaking between her legs. Did she pee herself? She wondered, but could not move to check.
Back on the ship Joker was sitting back in the pilot chair, scanning the monitors in front of him for any signal from the land party. They were supposed to be back yesterday and he was worried. The planet's orbital defenses had been hostile to them since shortly after the initial drop off. Joker had gotten them to safety hiding in the orbit of a nearby planet's moon with minimal damage. The ship would need repair, but she was still capable.
And then he saw it, a small blip on the scanners, broadcasting out a coded signal to them. As the ship received and decoded the message it read one simple word "Joker." He stared at it and then back to the scanner. The blip was slowing down as it got further and further from the planet, behind it several more blips appeared, heading straight towards the first one.
"Shit," he said, pulling the ship out of the orbit. "Hang on everyone," he called over the com and sped towards the blip. As he got close enough to get a visual he saw a shipping transit floating dead in space, with a dozen small asari fighters flying to it. He grunted as he forced the ship to go faster, increasing engine throttle as much as he dared. As he got close he lowered the front facing hanger door. Several of the fighter ships turned from their target and started towards him, shooting at him with their mounted guns. "You guys picked the wrong pilot." Joker spat as he slammed his fingers against the correct keys, redirecting the kinetic barrier to the front of the ship. The nose of the ship slammed into one of the fighters, sending it twirling back towards the planet, as the shipping transit crashed into the side of the hanger door, before tumbling into the cargo bay. He tried to shut the hanger door as he spun them away from the fighters and towards the mass effect relay, but it was jammed from the damage. "Uh, Kolyat? Do you know what happens if we jump through a relay with our hanger door open?" he asked over the com.
"No," he heard Kolyat scream back from the main part of the ship, clear by his voice that he was very busy hanging on to something.
"Right… Wanna find out?" he asked, speeding towards the massive piece of technology.
"No," Kolyat screamed back again.
Down below Kaidan had managed to make his way to the shipping transit that laid on its side in their cargo bay. He yanked off one of the cylinder anchoring devices off the wall and slammed one end on the ground by the transit. With a twist it activated forming a mass effect bubble over the transit to hold it in place in front of him. "Joker, can't you hold this thing steady?" he pleaded with a shout, nearly knocked off his feet as the ship gave a violent jerk.
"You are more than welcome to try to do better avoiding all the bullets coming at us," Joker snapped back, then paused "actually, no, stay away from my ship's controls."
Kaidan looked out the hanger door and saw the mass effect relay quickly approaching. "Joker, the hanger door is open!" he shouted, his heart pounding at the thought of what a jump in an open ship could do to them.
"The door is jammed and we don't have another choice but to make the jump." Joker called back, his voice unnervingly calm. "Just… hold on."
Kaidan moved back towards the stairs and sat down on the bottom few steps, wrapping his arms tightly around the railing.
The mass relay, which always spun slowly, started to speed up, receiving the information from their ship. They ran along its length and it shot out a tendril of blue energy, surrounding them. It felt weird, like when he had taken the red sand in the fighting pits. The energy that filled the air made his hair stand up on end and he could taste it on his tongue. As the ship lurched forward it jerked sharply to the side from a final blaster shot. The sensation of the exposed jump made his stomach churn and his ears to pop painfully.
And then it was over. In front of them was a massive ice field, a few small shards deflecting harmlessly against the mass effect barrier at the edge of the cargo bay.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"I…" Joker paused "I don't know… We were supposed to go to the Citadel, but something went wrong in the jump…" he paused again and Kaidan guessed he was trying to work out the situation. "Ok I got the nav system back up… we are out in the 'Far Rim.'"
"How far are we from the Citadel?" Kaidan asked.
"Far," was all Joker said. "And I don't think we can make another jump without doing some repairs. I'm going to find a place to set her down. How are the others?"
Kaidan pulled himself up and deactivated the anchor. When the mass effect disappeared, he climbed up to the passenger side door to the cab. Inside he saw Shepard curled in a loose ball on the opposite window. He pulled the door open and called up the stairs. "Kolyat, come help me with them."
As he lowered himself into the sideways cab he saw the kid coming down the steps. He crouched by Shepard, checking her vitals, making note of the blood that poured out of her nose, mouth, and ears. "She is alive, but… I think she pushed herself too far again." he said, doing his best to lift her. Shepard was fairly thin, but she and her heavy armor was all deadweight. "Help me pull her out." he called to Kolyat.
The alien reached down and together they managed to pull Shepard out, very ungracefully and enough effort to make Kaidan's forehead bead with sweat. As they set her down it finally occurred to him that Nihlus hadn't been in the cab, and neither had any of the humans they had gone to rescue. He panted his way to the back of the shipping container and tried to open the loading door. It held fast, probably damaged in its rough landing. He cursed as he went over to Nihlus' worktable, shifting through all the little bits of technology until he found the pronged device as big as his hand that he had seen Nihlus hack through systems before. He took it back to the shipping transit and stuck the pronged end into the locking mechanism. Immediately his omni-tool flared to life, scrolling past walls of coding. "Uh…" Kaidan said, confused. He was never that good at hacking. He searched briefly and found a button at the bottom of the scrolling text that said auto. He clicked it and his omni-tool let out an audible whirling sound as it worked to keep up with the program. A minute passed and then the loading door jerked a bit, slowly working itself half open before it died out again. He had to give romantic rival credit, the man was a genius at this stuff. Inside, crouched among the scattered crates, where three humans.
"Chakwas, Adams, Presly, it's great to see you guys," he said with a smile. "Come on out, we'll tend to any wounds you have. That was quite a landing."
Slowly the traumatized humans crawled out of the shipping transit and looked around the ship, stepping away from where Kolyat stood looking at them. Chakwas looked away and down at Shepard first. "Is she…" she asked, fearful at how motionless the woman was.
"I think her implant is acting up again, we'll need to check it." Kaidan said, looking at Chakwas' confused expression. "Shepard was captured by a mad man for a couple weeks… He… he put this thing on her spinal cord, it allows her to tap into her biotic abilities, but it doesn't always work right." He went over to Shepard as he talked and started hitting the locks on her armor, pulling it from her when it came free. He stripped her down to her tight black under armor and then rolled her onto her stomach. Before he even lifted her shirt, he knew it was bad. He could see where sections of the fabric were burned and could smell burnt flesh. The others smelled it too and Chakwas moved to his side immediately. He glanced at her and together they carefully pulled up the back of Shepard's shirt. Chakwas stared at the sight is disbelieve. Along Shepard's spine was a collection of scarred flesh. It was raised up compared to what it should have been, indicating that something of substantial size ran the length underneath, and at regular intervals a metal protrusion emerged from her skin, a clear vile with a swirling blue substance in it.
"This… how can she not be terrified of them?" she asked. She thought they had it bad, but this… Shepard had been cut open, multiple times, operated on, mutated.
"She still has night terrors and panic attacks," Kaidan said quietly, taking stock of the burns on her spine created by the implant. He touched his hand to her back and felt how unnaturally hot it still was. "We need to shut it down." He moved to grab her under her arms. Kolyat, Adams, help me get her up to the med-bay, we'll put her into a medically induced coma and shut it down until we can get back to the Citadel.
"She could have brain damage, we shouldn't put her deeper into a coma until we know she is alright." Chakwas protested.
"I know, but if we are turning off her implant it is kinder for her to not be awake, it will feel like all her nerves have been stripped and are on fire," Kaidan argued as Adams and Kolyat both took a leg. Adams didn't look thrilled to be beside an alien, but he knew it was needed for Shepard's sake so he didn't argue.
They carried her up the stairs to the main part of the ship and into the small med-bay behind the kitchen. They put her down on a bed and immediately went to work. Kolyat grabbed an IV bag from a drawer and started setting it up. Kaidan rolled Shepard onto her side and cut up the back of her shirt, fully exposing the implant. Then he took a long needle like probe that had a knob of technology on the end. Following the procedure that Mordin had taught both him and Nihlus, he pushed the needle into Shepard's flesh, just above the last protrusion at the base of her neck. It went in several inches before the device beeped and Kaidan had access.
"So where is Nihlus?" he asked as he worked. He had noticed the man wasn't there before, but Nihlus would have wanted Shepard attended to before he was a concern.
The three new humans recounted the events of the past twenty-four hours with what detail they could remember. Kaidan frowned as he hit the kill switch on Shepard's implant and pulled the needle back out.
"Yeah, that sounds like Nihlus," he sighed. "He'd take on the world—galaxy – if he thought it'd keep Shepard safe."
"Why," Presly scoffed. "We are just pets to them."
Kaidan glanced at Shepard and remembered how she wanted to keep her relationship with Nihlus a secret and ease people into it. "They have become close, Joker has competition for his best friend slot," he said. "And Nihlus is protective of his friends."
"Are you not his friend too?" Adams asked.
Kaidan paused, "We don't get along all that much, I respect him, but we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. It's not the same kind of friendship that he and Shepard have." He looked at Kolyat's progress, making sure the IV was connected and providing a steady stream of drugs to Shepard. With that confirmed he moved over and pulled three palm sized boxes out of a draw. "Your omni-tools," he said, setting them down on the counter and holding out his hand for the first volunteer. All three were hesitant, but then Adams stepped forward and held out his right arm. Kaidan rolled back his sleeve and then opened the one of the boxes. Inside was a plastic container holding an alcohol swab and a metal disc the size of a quarter. First Kaidan pulled out the swab and wiped down the underside of Adam's forearm. Then, finding the nerve and making sure it wasn't in the way of a major vein in the manor Mordin showed him, he took the disc and slid it vertically into Adam's arm, all the way down to the nerve. The man howled in pain, trying to jerk away from Kaidan's strong grip. And then the pain subsided, the inch-long cut beading with blood, but never actually bled. "It's filled with med-gel, I'm not sure how it all works, but it'll work to attach itself to your nerve and integrate itself with you on a mental level."
Chakwas came up and examined the cut that barely even beaded with blood. "Amazing," she marveled at how the wound was already clotting and she thought she could even see the skin starting to mesh back together. "If this medical marvel is a hat trick to them we are severely out classed in technology."
"Oh you have no idea," Kaidan said, holding out his hand for Chakwas's arm. She gave it to him willingly. "Wait till you see the engine room, Adams, you'll fall in love," he said, rolling up Chakwas's sleeve, going through the same process as he had with Adams, and implanted the Omni-tool. Chakwas jerked, clenching her teeth, but remained quiet. Kaidan picked up the last one and turned to Presly.
The man backed away from him, his arms tight behind his back. "I don't want one of their machines inside of me," he growled, his deathly glare going between him and Kolyat.
Chakwas put her arm on Kaidan's shoulder. "Shepard did say he didn't have to if he didn't want to." She pulled him away and added, "He… had it the hardest and it has made it hard for him to accept the concept that any alien could be good."
Kaidan nodded and put the last omni-tool back in its case. "That's okay, Presly. It's here if you want to get it later," he said and then moved to stand behind the teenager alien who was off to the side. "This is Kolyat, by the way. He and Joker were being held captive together and in return for all his held Nihlus has become his guardian," he said, clasping his hands on Kolyat's shoulders. The boy looked down and the red skin on his neck turned dark. "He is a good kid and in a few hours when your omni-tools finish syncing up you will be able to understand him and all the other alien species."
The three new humans stood quiet for a long moment before Chakwas spoke up. "It is nice to meet you, Kolyat. If you don't mind me asking, what is your species called?"
In a voice deeper than they would have expected from a teenager and with a reptilian rumble Kolyat said slowly "Drrrrrrrrellllll."
Adams jumped, "Is it working already?"
"No, just somethings are the same across languages, like names and things we don't have names for," Kaidan explained. He chuckled, "Some of the aliens sound really weird without the translator… Did you near Nihlus talk?"
They nodded.
"It sounds almost bird like to me… And you won't meet him before the Omni-tools take effect but the doctor we have been using, Mordin, is a salarian, and their speak is so fast it's hard to tell if there are any actual words." Then a silence overtook them, the three new humans just trying to adjust to everything around them. It made Kaidan sad to see the effects their imprisonment had on them and he couldn't help but reflect on how he had first acted, hostile without reason, aggression towards those who didn't deserve it. He made a note to apologize to both Shepard and Nihlus for the unjust of it. With a sigh he drew himself out of the self-reflection and let Kolyat go. "Why don't you go make everyone some dinner, Kolyat? I am going to go check on Joker, he has been too quiet, and then I'll come help."
Kolyat nodded and gestured for the three to follow him over to the kitchen area that was out of the medical bay and shared a wall.
Kaidan moved past them and headed up towards the cockpit. "Joker?" he asked confused as he saw the door to the cockpit, that was normally open, was shut. With a suspicious frown he tapped the green lock in the middle. The door slide open and the difference was immediate and made him startle for a moment. Alarms blared, ever screen that surrounded the pilot's chare was blinking an angry red.
"What's wrong?" Kaidan shouted over the alarms, shutting the door behind himself and sealing off the noise from the rest of the ship.
"What isn't wrong," Joker replied back as he furiously hit buttons on the screen. "That jump messed us up… I don't know what they hit us with when we went through, but it… I don't know what happened, but it's like the energy of the shot went with us and the mass effect field trapped it against us, and just… Everything is angry, not one of our systems didn't take damage." He pushed the angry screens aside and looked out at the space in front of them. It was a field of floating icebergs. It reminded Kaidan of the asteroid belt from home, only bright whites and blues reflecting the rays of a far-off sun. Joker growled, as the ship gave a rumble, "I am going to have to set her down."
"Where?" Kaidan asked "On an ice-cube?"
"Yes," Joker responded, no hint of humor in his voice. He maneuvered the ship to a large clump of ice, carefully bring himself down to an indent in the ice. With a slight jolt the ship made contact and he ordered the clamps to grab ahold of the ice to keep them in place. Once he was sure they wouldn't float off he got out of his chair, groaning as his bones complained. His disease had slowly been getting worse without the medicine he took to keep it in check, a medicine that none of them knew how to replicate.
"Let me help you," Kaidan tried, but Joker beat him off.
"I have my leg braces, I'll be fine," he protested, grumbling in both pain and frustration as he made his way down the pilot desk and through the main part of the ship, heading towards the engine room.
"Jeff," Chakwas breathed when she saw him. She went up and hugged him, earning a barely audible whimper of protest from the cripple. "Sorry," she said quickly and let him go. "Have you been taking your medicine?"
"Wasn't exactly something I grabbed as our ship was under fire." he admitted and limped past her towards his goal.
Chakwas stared after him, "And you haven't been able to get anymore?"
Joker threw his hands up in the air, but didn't turn around or stop hobbling his way through the living quarters. "Oh yes, because pills that I don't know their exact chemical makeup are so easily replicated. It's not like they have a storehouse of medicine for human diseases."
Kaidan followed a good pace behind Joker and stopped by Chakwas. "Adams, why don't you go with him, he is going to check on the ship's systems," he suggested.
Excited at the prospect of seeing the inner workers of an alien ship, Adams jumped up from the chair he was sitting in and trotted after him.
Joker gave him a look. "I don't need a babysitter," he grumbled.
"I am a mechanic, Jeff," Adams protested. "I can help you with the engines."
"The alien engines, Shepard knows more about them, go get her."
Adams paused and Joker stopped walking. "She overdid it again, didn't she." It wasn't a question. With a long sigh he opened the door to the engine room. "Well then come on, the quicker we get the ship running again the quicker we can get her some medical help."
The engine room was amazing, yet oddly similar. Adams busied himself by going from system to system, familiarizing himself with the ship's intricate workings. "It's weird…" he commented to Joker when he made a full circuit and moving back to the console Joker was working on, trying to address how to start fixing the collection of problems. To Adams the screen was gibberish, and he assumed that the Omni-tool would fix that once it was done syncing up.
"Oddly like our ship designs?" Joker asked, not looking away from the scrolling screen of runes.
"Yeah… How did you…"
"Shepard brought it to my attention. She has a theory that our government found something that they aren't telling us," Joker explained as he moved from the screen over to a pipe, turning a value and moving back as a jet of steam jutted from it. "These ships are based on an ancient civilization that isn't around anymore, Protanian or something. Supposedly the civilization was very wide spread, wouldn't be too farfetched to think they were in our solar system and left something behind."
Adams nodded, "Come to think of it there was that big Mars landing that was all over the news a few years back, and then it switched to some celebrity break up."
Joker moved to a circuit board, after a thorough look over he put his hand on one that was charred and black. With a jerk he pulled the cord free with a large spark. The lights overhead flickered and then shut off. "That's not good," Joker breathed and started trying to figure out how to fix it with Adams aiding however he could.
Roughly twenty minutes later a banging knock rapped on the door. "Joker, what is going on?" Kaidan's voice called, muffled through the metal.
"Technical difficulties, we blew some circuits, trying to reroute the power now, but I'm no Scottie," Joker called back. Adams snickered at the Star Trek reference, it was old for Joker, but Shepard was his best friend and she always loved the classics.
There was a pause before Kaidan responded. "Well you're gonna wanna get it back up before either of you have to use the restroom, the door won't open."
Joker and Adams' faces drooped slightly as they realized that they were stuck. "W-will do," Joker crocked back.
Kaidan moved away from the door, making his way back into the eating area where Chakwas, Presly, and Kolyat were eating quietly. He felt uneasy, he wanted desperately to help their situation in some way, but he wasn't sure what he could do. The three others looked up at him, reading the concern in his body language. In gazing down at them he finally began to understand what Shepard meant when she told him he was a follower, and she needed a leader. Nihlus was MIA, Shepard was in a coma, and the rest of the group was made up of a teenager, a cripple, and three humans fresh out of a yearlong captivity. He was going to have to lead the group. He looked down at his hands, seeing them trembling slightly. The others didn't see and he clench them into fists to make it less noticeable. He could do this.
A/N: I promise that I haven't just been MIA, I have actually been working on this for the past semester when I've had free time. It has taken awhile though because the chapter has been difficult to portray correctly and I am coming into the end bit of my BA. Thank you all for staying with me and I promise that this story is not and will not die, I have the plot written out through the sequel and it's personally one of the favorite things I have ever come up with. Love you all!