"Previously, from what we have gleaned from your social networking habits, Mr. Koenig, it would stand to reason that, while the language you have utilized in the past can be considered boorish, you are within your right as a citizen to express your opinions voluntarily, even though said opinions qualify as being extremely inflammatory in nature. However, precedent dictates that it is not proper for a businessman like you to be making vulgar comments in such a public-facing position. What the citizens expect from a person like you, the CEO of a major corporation, is to remain level-headed and calm, to be an even-minded individual and it worries me that the empirical evidence paints a picture of you being incapable of doing even that."
Sen. McCullough, UNAS
"I know my rights, Senator. As a citizen of Earth, I am entitled to make my opinion known, no matter the forum. If you want to try and stifle me, be my guest, but you're going to have to rewrite the entire Alliance Charter if you want to go after me that way."
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera
"No one needs to rewrite anything, Mr. Koenig. You've given us all the power we need on the dictating front. Especially since we're not entirely done with your posting history quite yet. We've gone back a few months now and it seems, in between your occasional and erratic language, you manage to post, on a more regular basis, snippets unrelated to your line of work that are more provocative and sexual in nature towards various females. Curious, I would have thought that someone like you would have engaged your privacy filters for messages like these. Or were you trying to create a filter of braggadocio so that you could potentially make any of your followers jealous?"
Sen. McCullough, UNAS
"Uh… Senator, can I respectfully request that we not delve—"
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera
"No, you may not request a thing, Mr. Koenig. If I can just read a couple of posts right now—November 8th, 2197: you've included an animated picture of a man in what appears to be some kind of racy undergarment doing pelvic thrusts as part of a message that you've sent to a woman who will be unnamed at this moment. The caption you've included reads as follows: 'You're going to get it tonight!'"
Sen. McCullough, UNAS
"Senator, that was a reference to my friend nailing—err, getting a position after getting through some grueling job interviews. There was nothing inappropriate about that at all!"
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera
"November 16, 2197. Another post sent to this same woman. Only this time, you've included a picture of what appears to be a very detailed sculpture of a phallus on a desk. An extremely detailed sculpture, mind you. The caption this time reads: 'Now you can show your friends exactly what I use to fuck you with!' Mr. Koenig… are you going to try and come up with a flimsy explanation as to why you have a statue of a male organ on your desk that you send out publicly whenever you feel like it?"
Sen. McCullough, UNAS
[TRANSCRIPT RECORDS: PAUSE OF 14 SECONDS LONG NOTED.]
"Oh my dear Lord. Mr. Koenig, please tell me that this particular statue is not a detailed rendering of your body."
Sen. McCullough, UNAS
[MUMBLING—UNINTELLIGIBLE]
Erich Koenig, CEO - Chimera
Germany, European Union
En route to Grafenwöhr Naval Field
Lazily, traffic drifted by the side of the car, almost appearing stagnant at the speeds they were traveling. Walls of trees and metal power lines surrounded the highway on both sides, an endless canyon of green and gray hues. The morning sky had the barest notes of blue, the encroaching clouds thick and heavy with moisture.
Just one more hour to go, Hackett sighed to himself as he checked his chronometer for the umpteenth time while he watched the rest of the traffic flow by.
Again Hackett was crammed into the back of the surprisingly plush service vehicle that had been transporting him around Berlin for the last couple of days. Ample legroom and a soft headrest made for as pleasant of a journey as one could imagine, or at least it was as pleasant as it could be. Hackett found that he tended to suffer from motion sickness if he rode on any vehicle on the ground, which is why he was not utilizing his omni-tool to focus on work, resorted instead to looking out the window to pass the time. He settled into his chair a little bit more, feeling somewhat envious of the comforts and conveniences that were afforded to civilian corporate design firms. Standard military design for anything, even something as basic as a chair, was to emphasize function first and foremost at the lowest cost possible. Hackett's body was used to sitting on uncomfortable surfaces for hours of a time, so he was not feeling particularly antsy while remaining in this car, but he was more or less annoyed with how military logistics had failed him this time around.
Due to some unforeseen mix-up with the dispatch software, there had been no shuttles in the Berlin area to whisk Hackett away to Grafenwöhr, where he would rendezvous with an atmosphere-capable frigate that would reunite with the 7th Main Fleet in orbit overhead. Hackett thought it had sounded ridiculous. How could there not have been any shuttles in Berlin, the capitol no less, to fly him to a base that would have been less than an hour's ride away? Apparently the local police had reserved the remaining pool for some sort of training exercise near the Baltic Sea and there was the fact that there was still a significant shortage of usable military equipment because the war had destroyed the majority of flight-ready transportation that the Alliance could use.
So, seeing as air transportation was out of the question, and the mag-lev lines were too much of a significant security risk, a small convoy of three mundane and subdued-looking BMWs had been cobbled together to give Hackett a ride. As he had no other choice, this was the only option afforded to Hackett. Things could have been a whole lot worse, Hackett considered. Thanks to Germany's infrastructure, specifically in regards to their expansive Autobahn system, Hackett's convoy could cruise at a leisurely 150 miles an hour on the highways, which would make the entire trip only two hours long, pending traffic.
There was no point in griping, Hackett figured. One of the unsaid rules of the military is that gripes always go upward in the chain of command. However, since Hackett's rank happened to be at the roof of what the navy had in its meritocracy, he was unable to relay his gripes to anyone. Hackett was not a spiteful man, so it was not like anyone who was hapless enough to be in auditory range would be subject to much acidity on Hackett's part. The man's mantra of always adopting a confident poise still held firm after all these years.
The miles were eaten away as the BMWs continued to cruise down the highway. Hackett, lost in his repeated reminiscing about his meeting with Larsen, could dimly notice the roughened feel of the road through the thick tires. His hands gripped the armrest ever so subtly tighter—he had always been used to traveling in space versus on the road. Spacefaring always seemed like a much smoother endeavor to him. He was just glad to finally get off this planet. Earth was wonderful, but it quickly got old the longer he spent here.
The captain doesn't have to go down with the ship this time, Admiral.
Larsen. What did that man know that Hackett did not? For years Hackett had prided himself on his knack for having an accurate foresight, but throughout the entire time he had talked with the senator, Hackett had gotten the feeling that Larsen was always just a few steps ahead of him. There was this nebulous aura that surrounded the senator, one that kept his true goals close to the chest.
That damned bill of his. The bid to withdraw all military support. What kind of idiotic display was that? Why this newfound interest in diplomatic regression? Hackett just could not put himself in Larsen's shoes. He stifled a bitter sigh, having the sinking feeling that Larsen's bill had a good chance at becoming the new policy. Everyone in the government was firmly divided among party lines and Larsen's party, like the man had said, was the clear majority. They essentially dictated the direction that humanity was to develop in. The representatives, prime minister, even the councilor were all part of the party's grand design. They would never break from the policy—they were too weak for that.
Hackett was not a politician by trade, there were still some of the subtleties of that sector that he could not quite grasp, but he knew enough to realize that only a miracle could kill Larsen's bill before it became law.
Then the driver said something that Hackett couldn't quite make out.
"What was that?" he asked, trying to make sure his voice projected from the backseat.
"I said we just lost our rear escort," the driver responded, sounding worried.
Hackett, not privy to how his convoy had been directed, gave a slow blink. "What do you mean, lost?"
"Escort 2 just turned off onto the exit back there. Didn't even update his position over the comm."
Hackett turned around his seat just in time to spot a dark blue sedan, much like the one he was riding in, take the off-ramp behind him that led to a surface street underneath the highway. There was now no one covering the rear of the convoy. It was just Hackett's car and the other vehicle in front.
"Just keep going," Hackett told the driver, making a note to follow up on this anomaly later on. "We'll find out later why Escort 2 deviated from the objective."
"Yes sir," the driver said, but didn't sound fully assuaged.
A bit annoyed at the interruption, Hackett settled down into his seat, now too distracted to open up his omni-tool to send out a few messages before he reached the navy base, motion sickness be damned. He resumed looking out the window, hoping for glimpses of little villages that would break up the monotony of purely staring at this thick forest, with trees going on as far as the eye can see, completely encasing the road on all sides. Despite it being the fall, the leaves could not possibly be any greener and only a few trees had barely a sign of them starting to brown for the upcoming snows.
As the convoy headed deeper and deeper into the woods, a diffuse glow began to smother out from where the morning sun was positioned. Hackett looked up out the window and saw that a thick fog was beginning to approach, not yet burned off by the heat of the day. The clouds were coming in low, encasing the trunks of the old trees with seemed like a bulky white goop. At the speed they were travelling, the cars were blanketed in the mist in moments. The automatic headlights had already flickered on by this point, but the spearing fan of illumination they cast barely penetrated more than a couple dozen feet ahead of them. From where they were, the only thing that Hackett could barely make out were the rear headlights of the escort in front.
Hackett was not fazed. He knew that they would burst through the fog in mere minutes, so he simply reclined back into his seat and forced himself to relax. Even now, the mist was thinning, a few scant rays of the sun being allowed to shine through.
Just one more hour, Hackett reminded himself.
A flicker of color then flashed across his irises. Hackett initially dismissed the distraction. A reflection from a passing car, he reasoned. But the flickering still persisted in a rapid-fire strobing of red and blue hues, even managing to penetrate through the dense fog that still encapsulated them.
The driver looked into his review mirror and gave a concerned frown. "Sir?"
"Out with it," Hackett said, still facing forward, but feeling a grave pit open up in his stomach all the same.
"We're… being pulled over?"
Hackett had to do a mental double take to make sure that he had heard his driver right before wheeling around in his seat again. Sure enough, a police cruiser was practically tailgating their car, their flashing lights scraping so furiously through the air that Hackett had to squint his eyes. He could not make out the district of the cruiser, nor could he see the faces of the officers through the tinted glass.
"This is ridiculous," Hackett grimaced. Who had ever heard of local police pulling over an admiral's vehicle? "Were we breaking any speed limits?"
His rank made it possible for anyone under his direct command to supersede any local laws or ordinances, a privilege given to people of similar rank or for extraordinarily important politicians. Hackett was filing away a mental reminder for his people to get to the bottom of this. Dispatch should have called ahead to all the districts and let them know he was passing through. Pulling over his vehicle and causing an unnecessary amount of time to be wasted from a traffic stop—he could get several people fired for this stunt.
He forced himself to take a calming breath.
"There aren't any restrictions on this Autobahn, sir," the driver reminded Hackett. "Nor were we driving erratically."
"Have you tried contacting them? Let them know who we are?"
"Tried that already, sir. They seem to be on a different frequency. No response."
Hackett sulked in his seat and gave a dismissive wave with his hand. "Let's just get this over with. Comply with them for now. Go ahead and pull over."
The driver took a moment to absorb what the admiral had just said before giving a ponderous nod. "As you say, Admiral."
Slowly pulling the wheel to the right, the driver began to lead the car to the shoulder of the highway, but before he could cross the first holographic line, a harsh voice burst from the speaker of the police cruiser behind them.
"Not here. Next exit."
"This is getting weirder and weirder by the minute," the driver muttered to himself but complied with the officers' orders. He then made sure to relay these orders to the escort car ahead of them, letting them know of the situation.
The nearest exit was only a half mile away. Escort 1 dutifully took it, as did Hackett's vehicle. Hackett noticed a small sign that they passed by, a directional sign, that pointed to a town called Cobbelsdorf on the left and Göritz on the right. There were no mile markers denoting how far away each little hamlet was from the highway.
"Take the next right," the officer half-spoke, half-shouted from the cruiser behind Hackett.
The driver continued to comply and now all three vehicles were plunging through the thick fog at a steady and measured pace. The gigantic trees closed in, limiting visibility on all sides. It was hard to tell where the sun was through the canopy of leaves and the layer of clouds. The driver kept taking looks at the cruiser from his rearview display, wondering when the police were going to request all of them to finally pull over. The squad car was still flashing its lights, emitting its squealing siren every once in a while to prod them along in their general direction.
"Turn off here," the officer ordered as a path through the trees on the right burst through the fog.
Hackett immediately suspected that something was amiss, if he did not have that feeling already. The road the cops were asking them to go down was not even paved. It was little more than a track, cut into the woods, completely cut off from the main streets. While the indicated trail was wide enough for there to conceivably be two lanes, this was so far out of the way that Hackett was not having a good feeling about this at all.
"Sir?" the driver asked, echoing Hackett's sentiments.
Unable to find a reason to disobey, Hackett betrayed a tiny shrug. "Do what they say."
Mustering a soft grumble, the driver led the vehicle into the forest, the tires now chewing up the soft and springy ground underneath, spitting out chunks of soil to land amongst the breathy grass. The trees here slashed at the fog, slightly improving visibility, but now everyone had to contend with being boxed in by the forest. Hackett's strategic mind was all over the place, recognizing that they were in a zone with little to no escape routes and that they had the disadvantage of being in an area that they did not recognize. Filled with unease, Hackett dropped his body down slightly as he slid over into the middle seat.
"Stop," the cops barked after about a minute had passed.
The convoy dutifully responded to the command and gently guided their cars to the side of the path. The driver of Hackett's car continued to keep his eyes on the rear display, making a note of where the officers were as he gently applied the electric brake, holding the car in place, but he did not switch off the vehicle's fuel cell. The headlights and rest of the electronics on the two cars continued to silently run, bringing light to this shadowy part of the country.
A few seconds passed in total silence, the chirping of birds and hissing of cicadas the only sounds audible through the thickened glass of the car. No one in either vehicle moved a muscle, lungs aching from slow breaths.
The doors to the police car then swung open and now Hackett definitely knew that something was wrong. The two individuals that stepped out were decked out in full body armor from head to toe, not at all like traditional police garb. Even though the armor was colored green and white—traditional police colors in this country—the patterning was all wrong and the gear was too bulky. The weapons the two men carried were assault rifles, not standard-issue pistols. Way too heavily armed for local police. It was just all wrong.
"Turn off your vehicle," one of the men made a circular motion with his hand as he tentatively stepped forward, keeping his gun aimed at a diagonal angle to the ground.
The driver scowled as he slowly reached his hand around to his side for his service weapon. "That's not right," he said to Hackett. "These guys are too well equipped to be cops."
"That's because they're not cops," Hackett said gravely as he too took his pistol out of his holster, but kept it near his lap, out of sight from the approaching men.
There was a tiny snapping noise as the driver flicked the safety off his weapon. "Sorry, sir. We drove right into it. What are your orders?"
"Turn off your vehicle! Now!" the 'officer' yelled right outside.
Hackett did not answer at first as he was temporarily distracted while looking at the men approach his car from the rear. "Wait until they're five meters away. Then make an immediate U-turn and head back to the highway."
"No fear of getting shot, sir?"
"Well… we'll just have to see if it was worth getting these bulletproof windows from the lowest bidder," Hackett allowed a small smile. Not a grin of slyness and cunning, but of a crazed and peaceful acceptance of the inevitable.
Sometimes, all one can do in certain situations is smile.
The driver slowly reached his hand up, towards the driving display in preparation for their move. Mist fluttered around the ground near the car, twirling about the dead leaves and the stray blades of grass that threatened to poke up from the murk. The armed men continued to approach, weapons at the ready, still partially masked by the fog.
"On my mark," Hackett whispered as he kept his gaze peeled. "Three… two…"
Hell.
There was a prickling feeling at the back of Hackett's neck—an inherent warning to alert him to danger. A sixth sense in action. Slowly, in a dreamlike state, Hackett rotated his neck just in time for twin motes of light to blast him full-on in the face, causing him to be temporarily blinded. He gave an involuntary grunt and threw up a hand to protect him from the glare.
But then the light moved.
The motes morphed and coalesced into two intense driving lights nestled within the chassis of a large object hurtling in their direction. A truck. No… a Mako tank. A deathly quiet pounce reminiscent of a jaguar on the hunt. The approach had been so silent, thanks to its zero-emission drive, that Hackett had not even heard it coming until it was too late.
The same fate befell Escort 1.
Six wheels spun silently over the moistened dirt. Fog and air parted out of the way as six tons of matter barreled through in an instant.
Hackett could only watch in horror as the Mako accelerated, not showing any signs of slowing down, and barreled right into the side of Escort 1. The resulting bang was not as loud as Hackett had figured, but it was still loud enough to startle him. The Mako's armored front made tidy work of Escort 1's vehicle. The side of the sedan crumpled instantly, impacting into the car itself. The bodywork of the sedan was made of aluminum—it stood no chance against a depleted reactive armor. The side windows buckled and shattered, sending glass quietly spinning to the ground. The run-flat tires were smeared off the rims of the car, ripped to ribbons as the Mako pushed Escort 1 several meters off the road.
Off the road… and right into the trunk of an old and gnarled tree.
The sedan crunched as it was sandwiched between the Mako and the tree.
Then the men behind Hackett's car opened fire. The crackling of bullets flying from their guns easily split the quiet air of the forest, and the trees scattered the noise, sending echoes reverberating in all directions. Hackett instinctively threw himself down as the bullets began impacting the vehicle, sending micro-shudders aching all around the bodywork.
The bullets smacking onto the glass sounded like a wild animal was taking frenzied chomps to the car. Hackett looked up to see that the windshield was still holding, but each repeated impact from the guns of the assassins left a tiny spiderwebbed mark upon the glass, cracking it ever so slightly, but not punching all the way through. The police imposters continued to move forward, their rifles barking in short bursts as they made slight fans in their cones of fire. They experimented with new places to shoot upon the car, trying to exploit a weakness of some kind. It was no use, the sedan was bulletproof all around to protect the inhabitant. It would take a long time and a lot of bullets to make even a dent towards the occupants.
The Mako was now in the process of backing up after it had rammed Escort 1 into the tree. The front of the tank looked to be unscathed, while Escort 1 was in dire straits. Hackett could see splatters of blood painting the dashboard of Escort 1's car in addition to the limp forms of the men trapped inside the carcass. Evidentially, Hackett's guards had been killed immediately upon impact, their rib cages ground to powder and their body cavities imploded when the tank had pancaked them.
Soldiers in red and black armor began clambering from the rear of the Mako, bringing their weapons to bear as well. Hackett whirled around front to the driver, who was still sitting in his seat in shock, loudly swearing as he tried to get the car into gear.
"Drive!" Hackett yelled. "Get us out of here!"
"It's no use!" the driver's face turned ashen as he beheld the man he was supposed to protect. "They've hit the engine block!"
The sinking pit in Hackett's stomach just grew deeper. If the engine block had been hit, the hydrogen fuel lines cut, then they were dead in the water. Not to mention with the threat of leaking hydrogen…
A shadow just outside the car fell over Hackett and he had little time to take stock of what was going on until there was no time at all.
Something outside made a fierce motion and a metallic arm as thick as a tree, draped in a silver and black polymer armor, punched through the driver-side window in an instant. The fist that had burst through the thick, bulletproof glass unclenched and its spider-like hand outstretched greedily, reaching into the cabin in an entirely smooth motion. It had been so fast, so fluid, that neither Hackett nor the driver had any time to react. Both of them were shell-shocked and cut up from the flying glass, the dribbling blood down Hackett's face making it hard for him to concentrate.
The metallic fist that reached through the window easily found the driver's neck, and in a split second, the hand swiftly wrapped around the man's throat. The driver managed a single gurgle before there was a whirring of servos and the hand visibly flexed.
The sequence of crackling noises that came from the man's neck shook Hackett down to his core. By the way the man slumped in the grip of the metal beast, Hackett was sure that the driver was dead.
Even though the thing outside had broken the driver's neck in a second, there would be no gentleness with how the body would be handled. The intruder wrenched his body sideways and quickly pulled the man out through the cracked window, shattering the rest of it that had not already been broken. The jagged glass edges that were still in the window frame sliced at the skin of the driver, sending a torrent of blood seeping down the side of the door and staining the seats. Hackett jumped backward in shock, appalled at the sudden and casual violence. His hands fumbled at his pistol, but his digits lost all feeling and he dropped the weapon on the ground.
Hackett was breathless, pondering how someone could punch through a bulletproof window without breaking every bone in their hand, when the same shadow returned and hurled itself at the side of the car in a massive blow. There was a wrenching of steel, a rendering of metal, and the door was soon ripped from its hinges—an enormous jolt that shook the car upon its shock absorbers. The monstrosity casually tossed the door behind it as if it were no lighter than a sheet of paper and slowly approached the doorway, nothing separating it and Hackett any longer.
The metal being reached in once again, precise fingers snapping for purchase, but instead of Hackett's neck, they found the collar of his shirt instead. Hackett tensed himself, expecting to be yanked out and onto the ground, but the arm gave a firm tug instead, reminding Hackett of who was in control, but not asserting complete physical dominance over him. Hackett grasped at the seats of the interior, desperate to forestall his extraction, but that plan had to be abandoned the very instant the metal fist punched him in the chest. Hackett felt something break and a sharp pain erupted in his body. His hands immediately flew to the affected area, coughing and wheezing. His mouth tasted like iron and his vision blurred.
Dazed, the bleeding Hackett was thrust out into the air of the misty woods, his breath fluttering in cloudy spurts as the chill from the shadowy understory fell upon him. He felt himself be pushed against the side of the ruined vehicle, his eyes focusing long enough to give him a clear image of his oppressor.
Dark colored. Tall… two meters, maybe. Entirely armor plated. Cyborg, obviously. Eight red optics. Clear faceplate with… was that a hint of organs beyond the frontal lobe?
Only one candidate matched that sort of description, Hackett knew.
It was only then did he realize that he had misjudged Larsen. He had completely overlooked the depths that the senator would be willing to sink to in order to preserve his vision.
The Legionnaire, remaining silent, splayed out his hand and held it close to Hackett's arm. In the background, the Chimera soldiers were quietly moving in, setting up a perimeter in stark silence. A warm glow from both Hackett's and the Legionnaire's omni-tools flickered and the cyborg gripped Hackett's arm firmly so that he would not wriggle away.
My omni-tool… Hackett thought drunkenly as he recognized the passing of symbols between the two interfaces. He's copying it.
The hack finishing in seconds, a low rumbling noise groaned from the Legionnaire as he finished, so low that Hackett could not tell if it had been involuntary or not. The Legionnaire now stepped away from Hackett, a pistol now in hand, as he beheld the admiral with his constant metal expression.
"Your chance to survive came and went, Admiral," the Legionnaire rumbled, the dissonance of his two-toned voice producing an odd ringing effect on Hackett's ears. "A disappointment. Just like Shepard."
Hackett spluttered another weak cough, blood beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. Shepard… is he alive? "Larsen knew I would not make any other choice. Is he really prepared to go down this road?"
The Legionnaire did not respond but simply lifted his arm, aiming the barrel of the heavy pistol smack-dab at the center of Hackett's body.
"A pity," Hackett sighed, unwavering in the face of his destiny. "One foe replaces another."
"Admiral, I'm surprised," the Legionnaire spoke, the light in his oculi focusing with malicious intent. "You of all people should have realized: there is no end to this cycle."
"Then what are you waiting for?" Hackett asked.
The Legionnaire fired a second later.
Twin booms shook the forest.
A flock of birds fled into the sky, desperate to escape the violence on the forest floor.
The quiet then consumed the noise in seconds, allowing peace to return.
"One more monument for the historians," the Legionnaire uttered, almost reverently, to the slumped body of Admiral Steven Hackett.
The Legionnaire then tossed his pistol, but not before whipping out a device and holding it up closely to the grip of the gun. A purple beam, much like a UV light, blasted from the device and searing marks soon appeared upon the side of the gun. They looked like fingerprints, but they were not etched with the familiar looping pattern that was persistent in all humans. Instead, the marks upon the prints were all thin, vertical lines that swooped down in a "V" pattern. The cyborg made sure that, when he hurled the gun away after tampering with it, that it looked like it had sailed well clear of the position he was situated in right now.
The rest of the Chimera troops were hard at work pouring out the contents of white canisters upon the twin wrecks. A foul smell was emitted from the clear liquid, a smell that the Legionnaire could not detect. The bleach would be instrumental in dissolving away trace amounts of DNA that was present at this site, but if that would not be enough, the firebomb grenades that a trooper was currently placing at strategic points would finish the job.
Another soldier was busy sprinkling some sort of fine residue upon the ground. Invisible to the naked eye, but not for any forensic drone. The foreign substance, comprised of material commonly found on another planet, would divert attention away from the true perpetrators should the upcoming investigation ever get this far. As far as the Legionnaire was concerned, this was just a precaution. Better to be safe than sorry.
"Sterilize it all," the Legionnaire ordered for good measure. "Leave no trace. We're to have no evidence that we were—"
The Legionnaire trailed off as his advanced optical sensors picked up a hint of movement, near the edge of visibility from the wall of mist. Immediately, his hand twitched and the automatic shotgun design swung into place upon his arm, locking upon the bolts there. The cyborg clenched a fist as he walked out into the road, the rest of the Chimera troopers looking on.
A quick scan revealed that a single-motor truck—a civilian vehicle—was parked a little less than a quarter of a mile away, idling at a standstill. Its headlights shone a weak path through the fog, tender wisps cutting into the light. It was still in the center of the road, as apparently the driver had come across this sight and, not knowing what to do, halted in place.
Unfortunate timing on the civilian's part, the Legionnaire mused. Wrong place, wrong time.
The Legionnaire zoomed in onto the driver of the truck and saw a concerned looking human, perhaps sixty or seventy years of age, stare upon the scene with trepidation. The Legionnaire detected that the human's pulse was rapidly quickening now that the man was able to notice that armed soldiers were quite close to his position. Nervous and suspicious at what he had innocently transpired across, the man gingerly lifted his arm down, perhaps to shift the truck into reverse so that he could make an inconspicuous escape.
Pity. Had he taken a different route, things might have turned out different for him.
The Legionnaire would have sighed if he could. He swiftly aimed the long-range shotgun in a well-practiced gesture. He would not hesitate when it came to this. Larsen had already stressed upon him the immediacy and importance of this particular mission. The sensitive nature of this, murdering an admiral, implied that a thoughtful approach had to be applied here.
And such an approach implied no witnesses.
The Legionnaire's first shot, from over a hundred meters away, rocketed straight through the windshield of the truck, completely shattering it. The slug hit the civilian in the shoulder, the shockwaves rippling through his body and blowing his arm completely out of his socket, painting the back of the cabin completely red. The blood loss was immediate and immense. Death was instantaneous.
The cyborg kept firing in methodical bursts, sending slug after slug into the truck's engine block, puncturing the hydrogen reactor, and sending a cascade of sparks flying around the spilled fuel. A fire started in moments, lapping at all the spilt hydrogen in moments, coalescing from erratic flickers into a full-bore mushroom cloud that rose from the earth and seemed to split the heavens in a blue conflagration. Even the dew-sodden leaves on the trees above became alit as the intense heat scorched them from top to bottom.
The truck was now completely engulfed in a rippling fire, sparkling and crackling as the components of the rig either popped or melted. Miffed from the interruption, the Legionnaire stowed away his rifle and made a circular motion with a finger, a signal for everyone to resume their duties.
Less than fifteen minutes later, long after the Chimera troops had departed, the forest was once again set with quiet, with only the calm flickering of flames from the ruined vehicles acting as the lone indication for trouble. The mist continued to engulf the scene in the absence of life, regardless of the fires, impassive to the rage that had been demonstrated upon its borders.
Still crumpled next to the remains of the car, lit by a golden-ruby aura of combusting fuel, the body of Admiral Hackett waited alone.
Above Rannoch
Departure Orbit Lane 4
The Sahara Vilos-2 cruiser sped away from the dusty planet at a tremendous velocity. The spaceship fled the protective arms of Rannoch's gravity in moments, soon finding itself cradled by the cold and lonely expanse of empty space. Shepard did not mind the emptiness all that much. He had spent so much time in his life in space to begin with that he was used to the sight. Hell, he mostly found himself more loath to a natural atmosphere rather than the artificial gravity wells present on ships. If he had an aversion to space to begin with, now would be an odd time for it to crop up.
The cruiser, an arrow-shaped design, had been a purchase that Shepard had made years ago and that had been kept in one of Rannoch's shipyards ever since he had built his house for Tali. He had rarely flown the thing in the past, but Shepard always had the inkling that there would come a time where he would be thankful that he owned a ship like this instead of having to charter one. It was safe to say that the time had come calling and Shepard was grateful that his insight to plan for the worst had not let him down.
The ship was no Normandy by any means, and it could not really be called a luxury yacht, either. Shepard had not bothered to waste his money on a craft that would have too many bells and whistles and would therefore be frivolous. The model he had selected was barebones and did not really exude comfort from every angle, but it was sturdy and reliable, which was all that Shepard was asking of it at this point.
In terms of amenities, this ship had the basics. Two rooms for sleeping, both cramped. One bathroom, also cramped. A kitchen area with a dining table, cramped as well. An office complete with an extranet console, cramped. And a pilot's deck on the upper level, accessible only by a thin aluminum ladder, which was, as expected, cramped.
Shepard did not mind the lack of space. In fact, it was somewhat refreshing. No space wasted on board this boat was a sign that everything had a purpose, that the entire design had been thoughtful and meticulous in its creation. In contrast, he had had a harder time adjusting to his house back on Rannoch, for Tali had been adamant to let every room breathe with the amount of space allocated to the entire foundation. It had been so expansive that it had nearly given him a panic attack for the first few months. In this ship, with its familiar setting, it seemed like everything was back to normal for him.
Finally, some semblance of commonality.
He was in the secondary bedroom right now, watching his daughter sleep upon the thin mattress, curled up in a fetal position. Shepard sat in a chair across from the bed, hunched over as he silently observed Roahn, acting as a silent protector. The poor girl was exhausted from the events of the past day and a half. As soon as she had embarked on board the ship, she had collapsed onto the bed from fatigue. Soft snoring sounds could be clearly heard from her vocabulator and no glow from her eyes pierced her electric blue visor. She had even fallen asleep on the bed without even bothering to cover herself with the bedsheets. Now, Roahn did not make a habit of sleeping under sheets while on Rannoch even, but space was cold and even a quarian's enviro-suit had trouble mitigating a chill like that, especially since the heater on this ship was not particularly great. Shepard had thoughtfully covered Roahn with them as soon as he spotted her beginning to shiver. She seemed to calm down shortly after that as she grew warmer again.
After letting half an hour pass, Shepard decided that Roahn was now in a comfortable enough sleep that he did not need to worry about her so much. He quietly crept out of the room and into the kitchen area, where he had deposited the knapsack that he had been carrying from his house all this way.
The thin package that he had grabbed from his bedroom was the first thing that he saw within the knapsack. After giving the room a careful once-over, Shepard gently lifted the package out and slid it into a nearby drawer before locking it. At least that would be something he would no longer have to be concerned about.
Shepard dug in his hand again and produced two of the injectors filled with the sickly-yellow medicine that he always took in his irregular intervals. He gave a mournful sigh. Two. Just two injectors. That would not be enough to last him a week. He needed this medicine in order to properly function. CBLB502, or Entolimod, was an expensive serum that was not only scarce, but potent. He clutched the injectors with a frustrated grip. Procuring more of this was going to be a problem that he was going to have to tackle later. There were simply bigger fish to fry right about now.
"It's always something," Shepard murmured anyway, wishing that life would throw him a bone every now and then.
Cerberus, the Reapers, and now Chimera. All clamoring for his head as they raced after him in hot pursuit. The relentlessness of his enemies knew no bounds.
That creature. That… Legionnaire. How can I protect my daughter from that thing?
How, indeed. Just the very thought of Shepard having to stand up to the Legionnaire again made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Bullets could not scratch the cyborg, nor could his fists. Nothing that he had to offer with all of his strength seemed like it could make a dent in the Legionnaire. And that was the thing that had been tasked to ruin his life? Were he a less arrogant man he would be completely terrified of the prospect.
But he was Commander Shepard. What could possibly terrify a man like him?
A lot, apparently.
Wrestling with his own conscience, Shepard gave a forlorn glance to the room where he knew Roahn was resting. Somehow, he knew what that fear was like, the kind of terror that ensnares a person in dark ice and turns the legs to lead. The kind of terror that slows the mind and rots away at the organs. A deep, nameless pain.
He had felt that fear only once before. He hoped that he would never feel it again.
It seemed like grave portents were doomed to follow Shepard around anyway. While clambering up the rickety ladder to the pilot's seat up on the second level, Shepard could not help but feel the beckoning call of doom whisper at his ear. Why did all the evils of the galaxy have to choose him as its focus? Why couldn't he be left alone for once?
As he settled into the seat, the stars and wisps of nebulae streaking by the windows, Shepard managed to dispel the lingering cloud of his grim future, now concentrating on a more optimistic outcome: their survival. To keep his daughter safe, he needed a game plan. He knew that the only way to keep himself and Roahn ahead of Chimera was to constantly be on the move, to never linger in one spot for very long. That would be a difficult prospect… if he did not have a ship. But, seeing as he did have one, that was a whole other disaster that he would not have to worry about. Lucky him.
But where to run to next? On paper, the list of destinations seemed innumerable. The Milky Way was a big place. A lot of small corners for someone to hide in. There was definitely an advantage to be had here. One that could easily be exploited.
Yet the galaxy had a sort of predictability that came with it. Developed planets were a natural locus to travel to—most organics had the natural tendency to blend in amongst a crowd, to be a regular face amongst a sea of faces. The line of thinking was that no one would make a blind jump to an undeveloped system. People needed resources such as fuel and food to survive. To deliberately cut themselves off from a supply line, to risk living off natural resources of a foreign world—a huge gamble on its own—was ill-advised and nearly guaranteed to be a wager that would not pay off.
Then again… there was an inherent familiarity in the unknown. So to speak. Shepard had an inkling that his idea of the unknown was vastly different than what other people might think.
An idea came to Shepard at the exact same moment that he brought up the galaxy map display from the center console right next to him. The miniaturized version of the Milky Way booted up in a column of blue light, billions of pixels all congregating into a perfect reproduction of the expanse that made up all he ever had known. A spiral cloud of light, of creation. Compared to the galaxy map that he had back on the Normandy, though, this one was rather pitiful in size. The map here was maybe two feet long in diameter while the one back on his old ship would have spanned an entire conference table. Beggars could not be choosers, so Shepard did not have any complaints to utter as he widened the scope of the galaxy as he began to plan his next course of action.
"Palaven… Thessia… Earth… the Citadel…" Shepard murmured as he cycled through his mental list of possible destinations, but somehow he could not think of a solitary reason why each location would be a good place to hide out. It all went back to his theory of locuses. People could just not stray from the populated worlds. It was a tic that was very hard to drop, even for him.
Unless… he was going about this all wrong.
"No single destination," Shepard breathed as he gazed upon the galaxy map. "But a series."
Yes! A series of places to visit! That would keep the two of them mobile for as long as it took and Shepard realized, there was a grand opportunity to take here.
Why had Roahn been so frustrated with him for all this time? It was because he had been rather tight-lipped about his entire past, something that Shepard had already promised to her that he would gradually rectify. So, Shepard considered as the idea in his mind spread, scattered all around the galaxy were places that had held quite some significance to him, as they had represented points in his life where he had been profoundly affected in some way. If he was going to tell Roahn his entire story, what better way to do it than to take her to these places where his story was defined?
It was so brilliant that Shepard nearly broke out in a grim laugh for his ingenuousness.
Over the course of the next few minutes, Shepard plotted out the tentative course that he was rearing to take with his daughter. He had to base it all on the relative distance between his current location and the coordinates of the other places he was planning to visit while trying to aim for the least amount of fuel consumed between system hops. Doing the math was not hard—the ship's computer did most of the heavy equational lifting—and in the end, Shepard had a nice schedule all planned out for him to take.
Just in time, too. Shepard could see the energetic wafts of blue color start to blink past the nearby asteroid belt. Bright light, more luminescent than any of the stars in the background. The mass relay. The gateway to travelling across the galaxy in an instant.
Mere seconds away from being swallowed up by the mass relay's light, Shepard leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his lap. An impending sight this must have seemed, but it was something that Shepard was hardly fazed by anymore. He could not even begin to count how many times he had taken a relay jump. The thrill of it had vanished from his memory.
But for some reason… this time there was a thrill. A tiny, lingering remnant, but a hint of a sudden and altogether unexpected excitement nonetheless.
There was no time to ponder its meaning as the craft reached the edge of the infliction zone. A watery bolt of energy jutted out from the energy core of the relay and gently touched the ship, sending power hurtling down into its drive systems, shuttling it into overload.
With a soundless gulp, the ship instantaneously exited from the solar system, leaving nothing behind from where matter once existed.
"Roahn… Roahn…"
Somebody was gently shaking her, driving her from her sleep. With an annoyed whine, she tried to ward off the offending hand, wanting desperately to cling to her bed. Her feeble blows upon the arm that was shaking her were harmless—her hand just slid helplessly over the surface without any results.
"Roahn. Wake up."
It was only when she was concentrating hard did she realize that the voice was her father's.
Sleepily, she cracked an eye open, and for a second Roahn was seized with a momentary panic when she did not recognize her surroundings. However, she quickly relaxed when the familiarity came back to her, that she was lying in one of the bedrooms that her father's ship accommodated.
Right… this was her new room now. Before she had fallen asleep here, Roahn barely had any time to take stock of her new digs before exhaustion had overtaken her. All this disorientation should have been expected for her.
Roahn's vision felt blurry, like everything was washing out of place. Roahn so desperately wished that she could just rip off her visor and rub at her eyes to sear away the myopia. Yawning, she sat herself up and swung her legs off the edge of the bed, blinking furiously as Shepard slowly came into focus, standing over her next to where she had been sleeping.
"I'm up, I'm up," Roahn groaned as she tried to stifle another yawn.
"I can see that," Shepard replied with some amusement but jerked a thumb behind him shortly thereafter. "You want some breakfast? There's all kinds of food in the kitchen that I can fix for you."
Ordinarily, Roahn would have taken her dad up on that offer, but she gave her stomach an involuntary pat and no starving grumble erupted from it. It took her a beat to realize that she was not all that hungry, probably a result from all the stress she had to go through the other day. Her digestive system would be back to normal soon, but it was simply playing havoc within her right now thanks to the chemical imbalance she was still undergoing at the moment.
Roahn shook her head, still a little too tired to be talking in complete sentences.
Shepard patted the girl's leg patiently. "Well, when you're ready, come meet me by the exit ramp."
"Wait… dad," Roahn called as her father began to leave. "Where are we?"
"Come see for yourself," Shepard shrugged as he rounded the corner but not before giving Roahn a knowing bump of his eyebrows.
Obviously Roahn knew that her father was deliberately edging her on to make her get out of bed and, damn it, it was working, too! Curiosity spurring her more than she would care to admit, Roahn hopped off the mattress and hustled through the weaving, pipe-laden corridors of the ship before she finally wheeled about where the exit ramp was and tromped her way down the path to where the craft had touched down on solid ground.
Except Roahn's feet did not find ground first.
They found water.
With a splash, Roahn stumbled into water about nine inches deep, almost up to her knees. She had been so preoccupied with following her father outside that she had not even noticed the fact that, when she had been coming down the ramp, that the surface of the "ground" had looked a lot more shimmery and fluid than normal.
Now she knew why.
The water sloshed all around her and Roahn hopped in place for a second as she did a double take. She froze where she was standing, hands automatically raised in exasperation as if to say, "What the hell is going on?" Her legs and feet were cooled from the temperature of the water. It actually felt quite nice. Her enviro-suit was completely waterproof up to a hundred environments, so any leaks were the last thing on her mind. What was on her mind was why her dad had set down in the middle of body of water. Surely there had been at least a speck of dry land on this planet for them to park upon?
"Roahn!" she heard her father calling.
Shepard waved to her upon a sandbank, less than a hundred meters away. Dry land. Roahn mustered her strength and did a slow, awkward walk through the shallow lagoon, trying very hard to keep her balance and to prevent herself from tripping and making a face-plant into the water. As she moved toward her father, Roahn did notice that, unlike the murky and silty waters of Rannoch's oceans, the water of the lagoon here was crystal clear. If she kept still, Roahn could see each magnified detail of her boots down below, partially dug in amongst a soft bed of sand that glimmered and sparkled like glass. A variety of tiny sea creatures crept near her position: echinoderms like starfish and urchins. Bizarre lifeforms trapped in their own little world. Roahn gawked at the beings, finding them fascinating.
Roahn's feet soon found the edge of the sandbank and she began to ascend, water streaming off her body. She shook out her hands, ridding them of the dampness. Droplets of the salty lagoon water spattered the baking hot sand, evaporating in mere seconds.
"Dad…" Roahn panted as she finished stomping her way out of the water before realizing where she was and turning on the spot, taking in her surroundings, "…where… are… we?"
The lagoon they had landed in was not just a simple pond in the middle of nowhere. Rather, as Roahn now found out, they were encased within a small canyon where towers of marble white rock stood tall over them: an atoll. At the top of the rocks were shrubs of hardy green vegetation: long, limber vines that crept down from the vertical faces, and even trees with toughened bark that crept even further to the sun shining overhead. Boulders of black volcanic rock sat embedded in the sand, having crumbled away from the main stone barriers, some taller than Shepard, even. Off in the distance, waves danced over natural breakers that formed a line separating the atoll from the ocean, creating a constant roar that immediately reminded Roahn of home.
"This?" Shepard said after Roahn was finished turning about in wonder. "This, Roahn, is Virmire."
"Virmire?" Roahn repeated as she looked at the footprints she left behind in the soft sand. "We're on another planet? Another system?"
"A long way from home," Shepard sagely nodded. "But that's how things are going to be for us for a while, I fear."
"Because we're being chased," Roahn stated flatly, still too absorbed in taking in the foreignness of the world for emotion to color her words.
"Precisely."
Roahn then rotated in place, the heels of her feet making crunching noises as they ground the sand in deeper. "Why Virmire? Why this place? Why aren't we at some place like the Citadel? Dad… why did we come here?"
Shepard knelt down, placed a hand on Roahn's shoulder to put a stop to her endless questions, and gently pointed off in the distance. "For that."
Roahn followed the trail that Shepard's finger made through the air and easily managed to spot what he was referring to in seconds. A gnarled spire, made out of a gray-purple metallic material, towered above the walls of stone and vegetation a mile or two away, all twisted out of shape. The metal lookout easily stood out against the background, the lone artificial construction in the area, sans their ship. If Roahn peered as closely as she could muster, she could see that the spire looked somewhat blackened, like it had been scorched.
Blackened… from a fire?
"Come," Shepard nudged his daughter before she could ask any more questions. "It's perfectly safe here now."
"Safe?" Roahn stumbled as the two of them waded into the lagoon, now heading towards a shallower path coated with damp sand and toughened green vines. A thin canyon etched into the atoll comprised of the bubbly white pumice rock. "Why wouldn't this place be safe before?"
"Can you figure it out? There are clues all around us to help you answer that."
Confused, the overwhelmed girl looked in all directions, not knowing where to start with her deductions. They kept walking along the path, now coated in shadow from the midday sun as they walked close to a dripping wall that oozed clear water, the volcanic rock at the base shining midnight black. Shepard slowed his pace, watching his daughter as she concentrated very hard and squinted her eyes to keep herself focused. She looked at her father, then on the path, then on the wall, then to the path again—
"Wait," she stated, in a daze, and walked over to the wall on the opposite side of the path. Unlike the surface on her right, this wall was dry as a bone, and the color here looked a bit off. Darker than normal. Maybe that was because…
Roahn took a finger and gingerly traced a line down the wall. A line of soot smudged off where she applied her finger, coating her enviro-suit and smearing the color into the surface. The warmer color of the rock shone beneath the dusty coating, which Roahn determined to be a microscopically thin application of carbon scoring, judging by the density and the size of the particulates that she could see.
"An intense heat caused this," Roahn murmured as she stepped back from the stone pillar, now able to see that the coloring extended all the way to the top of the column. "A… a firefight? No, the coloring's too solid, too uniform. Plasma could cause this… but to such a wide surface? No… a greater source. Something like a… a bomb. Is that it, dad? A bomb?"
"Very good," Shepard faintly smiled, proud of his daughter's logical reasoning. "A bomb was the exactly cause of this discoloration."
"Then why would you mention that this place was safe only now? That is, unless this bomb was a… a… oh."
The reality of the situation seemed to hit Roahn in full force and she suddenly became quiet, sobered up to the realization of the devastation that must have occurred right where she stood.
"A nuclear bomb, Roahn," Shepard said, his bearded face now turning stern. "That's what went off here fifteen years ago. The radiation's worn off by now, that's why it's safe to travel here, but for a time, the place where we stand now was so irradiated that we could not even take a single step here."
"Were…" Roahn hesitated to say it, because she almost had an inkling that the answer she was going to get would be something she would fear, "…were you the one who put the bomb here?"
"I was," Shepard said after a thoughtful beat. "But only to get rid of that."
They had rounded a corner at this point and Roahn could see, past a tangle of bushes, the construct that the twisted tower belonged to, the landmark that she had spotted right at the beginning. Metal and smoothened stone all came together in a complex configuration that looked to Roahn like a large hangar or a base of some kind. There were no windows that she could spot on the facility—it looked like quite a dreadful place.
Also, what Roahn noticed next was that an entire chunk of the facility appeared to be… missing. Like something had blasted out from the middle of the building, tearing large holes into the structure and leaving jagged gaps in the stone walls and metal ceilings. Some of the other towers that Roahn could see appeared to be shorn away, severed from an intense blast. Even parts of the metallic constructs were all distorted and bent, like heat of a thousand degrees had been licking at the sides, causing them to partially melt.
Roahn took a step forward, toeing her boot into the nearby stream, but Shepard held out a hand, preventing her from getting closer.
"While on the outside things are safe," Shepard warned, "I'm betting that the inside is still hazardous to travel. We won't be able to get very far here as there's probably too many pockets of radiation that we'd have to traverse."
"What is this place?"
"That," Shepard said grimly, "is where I started to learn the truth about the Reapers. This was a base used by my first quarry when I became a Spectre: Saren Arterius. I blew up this base because of the danger that it held to the galaxy, to buy everyone time, even if it cost lives in the end."
"Saren," Roahn repeated, recognizing the name. "The rogue Spectre."
Saren Arterius was one of the few blights upon the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance group, and also for the turian race as a whole. Selected by the Council from the most elite ranks of its members, Spectres were an independent wing granted extraordinary authority and diplomatic immunity by the Council, designed to allow the members to focus all their attention on their missions and to disregard any red tape that would follow their exploits otherwise. Saren was one of these elite members that had been granted this authority and had summarily abused it when he decided to betray the Council and ally himself with the Reapers in a foolish bid to preserve his survival. Saren would ultimately commit suicide in the end; when confronted with the evidence that submission towards the Reapers would not forestall his own destruction, Saren decided at a critical moment that he would be a puppet no longer and thus he had decided killed himself. A small redemption for a man of atrocity.
There was a raised metal path off to the right that was partially collapsed. Shepard and Roahn climbed on top of it, following the tracing arc of steel as it curved around the rock and over the lapping waves.
"To understand this place," Shepard continued as he slowed his walk thoughtfully, folding his hand behind his back, "I think that I need to take you back a bit. Before your time, I mean. How much do you know about the Spectres, Roahn?"
"They're the right hand of the Council," she answered dutifully as she eyed the ground where she walked. "They're assigned to preserve galactic stability. Like… you. You were one. You were able to go… wherever you wanted and do whatever you wanted."
"Textbook answer," Shepard smiled. "But reality tends to be a bit more complex than that. The Spectres aren't really all that much of a regulated fighting force. They're beholden to the Council, yes, but in my experience the Council did not seem to be too concerned with how a mission was handled but rather if it was handled. The outcome was the only concern, not the process. I did get some occasional flack for the decisions that I made during my tenure, but they never amounted to anything on what would constitute my record. The impression that I got was that the Council just did not want to know what their Spectres were doing exactly. Perhaps the thinking was that they would become accomplices in the legal sense if one of the Spectres under their purview took things too far and caused an international incident."
"Which is what Saren did," Roahn piped up as she trotted alongside her father, the crumbling wreck of the facility coming into view once again.
"Indeed. Before Saren, discharging a Spectre for gross misconduct was seen as an impossibility. The Council simply gave them too much protection and the very nature of the command structure left them not quite so amenable to casting a Spectre out. I believe that the Council would be left embarrassed if they had to discharge a Spectre from the ranks, a Spectre that they had personally appointed. It would not look good for the councilors if one of their own betrayed their trust."
"But Saren was discharged eventually. The councilors eventually did cast him out, right?"
"Only after they were presented with irrefutable proof that Saren conspired to attack Council-allied worlds. Proof that I never would have gotten had it not been for your mother," Shepard gave Roahn a little nudge at that. "In some weird way, I have to thank Saren for bringing the two of us together, as we would never have met in such unusual circumstances otherwise."
"Only after you gave them the proof, huh?"
Shepard sighed and slowed to a halt before turning, leaving the tangled wreckage of the facility at his back. He dropped to a knee and beheld his daughter with a muted seriousness, his lip twisting into a morose expression through his thickened gray beard.
"Roahn," he said, "our society is not a perfect one. I wish I could tell you that the people responsible for governing us all were driven by morality instead of their own personal objectives. Greed, accountability, fear. No one in a political position is completely infallible to these influences, including the councilors. It's why it took so much wrangling to actually convince the Council to discharge Saren. They would have preferred to ignore the majority of our evidence, circumstantial though it may have been, before taking action against a man that they had vetted and approved. It was a pattern that continued long before I was even in the picture. They tried to cover up Saren's involvement afterward to preserve their integrity and they tried to cover up the evidence of the Reapers as well while I was in my coma. Anything that didn't align with their preferred narrative, they altered. People would rather live in a fantasy than have to face a bleak reality."
"That doesn't sound like a problem that only the Council has," Roahn tilted her head after some thought.
"No, it isn't," Shepard nodded, caught off guard yet again at Roahn's correct inference.
"Your own people… they're trying to do the same thing to you right now."
Shepard spread his arms wide. "When you're not part of the preferred narrative, you get cut out. People like to claim that they're staunch defenders of the 'truth,' Roahn. But this is the lesson I want you to take away today: the truth does not guarantee the complete picture. It can be altered to fit anyone's convenience. It all depends on our perspective and our knowledge. It is our ideals that shape our truth. Take for example, the quarians and the geth. The quarians believed that the geth were actively uprising in armed rebellion against them, desperate to shake free from the bonds of their masters. That, as you know, was a lie. The geth were only fighting back because the quarians had initially provoked them. The 'truth' that the geth were uprising was a carefully distributed fabrication from the quarian admirals to all of the people across the planet in an attempt to unify them against the geth. The citizens bought the lie their government was telling them, and in turn, made it their truth. With little evidence to the contrary, the people believed that the geth were uprising, and the rest, as we say, is history."
Roahn began climbing a moss-covered boulder as they walked and talked, thinking hard as she scaled the mountainous face while Shepard paced below her. The moss gave Roahn traction as she dug her fingers into the leafy surface, rising several feet above ground level with ease. She sat herself down on the boulder while Shepard leaned against it, still standing in the baking hot sand, as they watched the gentle waves billow and smother the breakers in lapping assaults of foam.
"So…" Roahn pointed to the left, indicated the broken ruin of the facility. "What was the truth of that place, dad?"
"That place?" Shepard repeated as he shuffled his weight from one foot to the next on the unsteady surface, blinking the sun out of his eyes. "You could say that that place revealed the full extent of the truth to me."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when your mother and I first came here, the briefing that we had been given from our contacts on the ground was that this site was a breeding facility for krogan clones. We rightfully assumed that Saren was creating an army, one not at all affected by the genophage, in order to boost the number of lackeys at his disposal. Thus, we decided to nuke the site given its inherent danger. An army of genetically modified krogan was not a prospect that the Council was willing to face, a fact that we all agreed upon. But when we infiltrated the facility so that we could place the bomb at a sensitive point, we made a critical discover. Saren was apparently not the leader of this entire operation, but was in fact acting on the orders of a greater master for a goal initially beyond what we could imagine."
"A Reaper," Roahn breathed.
Shepard's fists momentarily clenched as the edges of his vision turned dark. He rubbed at his eyes, chest aching, as he turned away from the facility while Roahn slid down from the boulder next to him, hoping for a closer look.
"Yes," Shepard grimaced. "A Reaper. Sovereign. The first one in the system in 50,000 years. Back then we had little information on what the Reapers actually were, let alone what their goal was. But the revelation that they were the ones pulling the strings on Saren widened our knowledge of the truth drastically. We had been led to believe that it had been Saren's idea all along to oppose the Council in a bid for power, but we could not fathom with our initial knowledge that the Reapers had been behind everything from the very beginning."
Shepard groaned as he bent down to pick up a rock, warmed by the sun. He absentmindedly tossed the stone in his hands a couple of times before he squared up his shoulders and took a single step, flicking his wrist in a wide curve. The rock, spinning in a flat arc, skipped several times upon the water's surface, making musical plinks as it bounced out of sight.
"That's how it is," Shepard said, not noticing Roahn's astonishment towards his feat behind him. "People fight for their distortion of the truth. Nothing's unbiased anymore. Everything needs to have a spin to it. It never ends, and people get hurt because of it."
More wrecks and relics, Roahn noted. But that was how things were with her father, she reasoned. It was all he had ever known for years—being a soldier. The remnants of his exploits lingering in the ground like trophies. This base was his doing, a contribution to the war effort.
But her father seemed to take no pleasure being near to the ruin of the base. Why was that? This was the site of a major victory for him, right? Yet there was no happiness etched into his face. Deep lines of sorrow cragged his features, his blue eyes turning cold. There was something dark and disturbing that this place held for him that Roahn could see was still visibly affecting him.
Perhaps she had already been given part of the answer—Shepard's worldview, his truth, had been so drastically altered here that it had proved to have completely changed the narrative of his assignment. He had thought he had been tasked to pursue a man. Instead, the place was the site of the exact moment that Shepard became in charge of forestalling the greatest invasion upon the galaxy. Most people would crumble with such a load on their shoulders, but not Shepard. He had not faltered. He had withstood. He took all the Reapers had to offer and gave his all right back.
But, Roahn realized, her father had not emerged unscathed. He still carried his wounds, mental and physical, wherever he went. The things he saw, the people he lost, they all added up and ate away at his mind. She could see it in his tormented gaze, in his hands that occasionally shook. He was still dying from his victory, dying because he had sacrificed so much for so many. Whoever he was, no matter what kind of a person he had been, this had been the spot for him where everything had changed, where all the pieces had started to fall into place. Shepard had not known it yet, but the knowledge he had gained on Virmire would be his ultimate salvation as well as his damnation. Cursed to saving the entire galaxy from the information he alone possessed, a role thrust upon him without warning.
If he had been offered the choice instead, would he have taken it?
"There's more," Roahn whispered as she sat down, her back to the roughened boulder, beholding her father patiently but with a laser focus. "There's more… to say. You… you lost someone. Right here. Didn't you?"
Shepard joined Roahn in sitting down, splaying his feet out in the sand, but he did not look at her just yet. "Yes," his said, voice hoarse as he pointed a finger just below the twisted spire off in the distance. "Right there. A fellow marine, one of the best and most loyal people I've ever come across."
"What was his name?"
Shepard stiffly smiled. "Her. Her name was Ashley. Ashley Williams."
Roahn briefly shook her head. The name rang a slight bell for her, but she could not place where she had heard it initially.
"I've… never read about her," she admitted.
"And despite my best efforts, she's remained a mere footnote in the grand scale of things," Shepard gritted his teeth. "The daughter of a general, one of my brightest subordinates, the very person who ensured that this bomb would go off here in order to save the lives of trillions, and still no one can remember her name." He grabbed a fistful of sand bitterly and let it seep through his fingers. "It's… unfair. She died too early. Way too early for it to have any significance to the masses. If she had died when the war had been in full swing, there would be monuments to her dedication back on Earth. Yet she died in a black-ops assault on a backwater planet, doomed to anonymity except from her cohorts. Her sacrifice has been forgotten or lost by the people who matter enough to do something about it. All I could get her was a name plate on a memorial wall. It wasn't enough, Roahn. I didn't do enough."
Shepard hurled the fistful of stinging sand away with a dissatisfied grunt, like he was trying to fling away his torments.
"It sounded…" Roahn started, "…it sounded like you loved this woman a bit."
Now Shepard gave a wry chuckle. "Oh, Ash would give me so much grief if she had heard you say that. No, Roahn, I respected her a hell of a lot, but it was never love. She was just a person that I admired very much, a person who would have had a bright future had things turned out differently."
Shepard suddenly appeared gaunt and feeble as he pondered, taken by extreme emotion. Roahn was nearly alarmed at the sudden change her father exhibited, feeling her breath quicken uncomfortably within her chest.
But the weakness in her father soon evaporated, leaving him looking healthier, but he still carried the solemn gaze that had followed him for all of Roahn's life.
"I've never been good at taking the loss of others," he quietly admitted. "Especially the ones under my command. I always keep on asking myself, 'What could I have done differently?' 'How could I have saved them?' I know I'm not supposed to think this way but… I've never been able to help it. Every single person that I have lost… I just keep on dreaming of a better way. A way to save them."
What Kaidan said… immediately after… Shepard thought. I couldn't tell him how true he was. We left her down here to die.
Shepard's palm opened as he lined it up with the ruined facility. He twisted his fingers into claws, imagining that he had the power to simply take what was left of the entire building and crush it in his hand, finishing what the nuclear bomb had not erased. To grind it to powder, crumple it beyond recognition.
A single building. A person for such a lousy building. The barest pushback against the incoming tidal wave of destruction.
But it had only been one person for the good of the galaxy.
Did I even have to sacrifice one?
This reminiscence was pointless. Ashley was dead, and no power in the galaxy could bring her back to life. He thought this had been a wound that had healed long ago, but now he realized that he had only applied a bandage to a gaping laceration. His unseen wound bled here, filling him with regret, an invisible poison that hastened his self-loathing. Minutely shaking, Shepard fought to get a grip on himself, to force the persona of the Commander to arise and to be the steady rock for Roahn to lean against. He was the only one she had now. He could not be weak when she needed him most.
But, as much as he tried, the Commander would not reveal himself. On this beach, he was still just Shepard. Still human. Frail, vulnerable, and human.
And incomplete. An empty feeling… deep inside him… a space there felt hollow. A vacuum. It had been growing for a long time, eager to feed. Silently, it snarled and gnashed, its roots taking hold. It rendered him in half, tearing his mind in twain. A part solely locked into the past, mocking him in his defeats. A man like him had a lot of regrets and many failures to latch onto. Ashley had just been one of his failures. There were countless others to pull from, he knew.
"Dad?"
Roahn's voice was successful in snapping him from his tortuous spiral of despair. He gave several rapid-fire blinks and looked upon his daughter, the yellow sand now blinding him with its golden color.
"Yes, Roahn?"
"Did mom know Ashley well?"
It was easy to forget that, despite her attachment to her mother, Roahn still had barely an inkling of what Tali truly represented to her husband. Shepard considered the question, his fingers tapping a beat upon his wrist.
"Very much so. When they first met, their relationship was a little tenuous due to their initial biases, but in no time at all, they became fast friends. Ashley once told me she felt like Tali's bigger sister because of the rapport they shared. When Ashley died, Tali was very upset, as were all of us, but she took her loss the hardest. She spent several hours in her bunk after that sorry day, all by herself, trying to get over her friend's death."
Roahn did not notice that she was digging her heels in deeper into the sand as her father spoke. "I wonder why she never told me about Ashley before."
"I suspect it's because she never stopped feeling the pain from the loss. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to forget, Roahn, losing someone you care about is a wound that just might never heal. Tali probably never talked about Ashley because… it upset her too much."
There was something to the way her father said that—the tone of his voice, perhaps—that caused Roahn to raise her head in clarification.
A wound that might never heal.
Shepard had grown silent by now, letting his gaze linger towards the sea, while Roahn's fingers trembled upon empty air.
A truth, she realized, recalling her father's words. The truth does not guarantee the complete picture.
Father's lesson… but altered, distorted… to fit his narrative.
Keelah, he's talking about himself!
Why Shepard had never talked much about his past as a soldier before, Roahn already knew why. But what Roahn did not realize, until today, was why Shepard seemed to be hesitant in talking about Tali, his beloved wife. Now she knew.
Loss. It was the key that bound everything together, the catalyst that revealed the complete picture. Her mother had felt it when she had lost Ashley and Shepard was feeling it now. When Shepard had lost Tali to sickness, he had been so consumed with the grief brought by the loss that he could not bear to think about her. Roahn then realized that Tali had brought her father so much happiness in his life that her absence had practically gutted him, practically tearing his heart from his body. It was his biggest weakness, the one thing that he was not ready to talk about with his own daughter just yet.
Is all of this… just him building up the courage to talk to me about her?
Suppressing a shudder, Roahn felt herself begin to be seized with a despair of her own. The sorrow she had felt when her mother had died, followed by the anger at her father's distant behavior afterward, were all emotions that he must have felt around that time as well. He had been hurting this whole time, just like her, but unlike his daughter, Shepard had let his guilt fester, his shame in unable to talk to his daughter to assuage her grief. It was killing him then just like it was killing him now.
This searing pain. The emptiness in the soul. It lingered in her as well.
Upon the hot sand, Roahn gave an involuntary shiver.
A/N: Now that Shepard and Roahn are finally free from Rannoch, this gives them a whole lot more opportunities to delve into glimpses of Shepard's life, and don't worry, that will include the friends that Shepard has made over the years. We're still not halfway, there's plenty more story to get through.
Hopefully there won't be too much of a gap with the next chapter, as I have to make a short trip to SoCal tomorrow (glad I got this one released today!) In any case, I hope people like the direction so far.
Playlist:
German Ambush: "That's Not a Choo-Choo" by Marco Beltrami from the film Logan
Virmire - Remembering Ashley: "Pure Spirits of the Forest" by James Horner from the film Avatar