AN: To the guest reviewer who pointed out that pirogi is a Polish dish: I beg to differ. I know my Russian and I know my pirogi :) The Polish dish called pirogi is actually called vareniki in Russian and that is definitely not what Jo is making there. The Russian pirogi (that's plural from pirog, by the way) are baked pies with filling. That's what she's making.
Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing!
They'd barely gone to sleep when the communicator woke them. EDI was only supposed to use this one in case of emergencies. She had Admiral Hackett on the line and when he demanded that Jo took his call privately, all she could do to ensure privacy was to go to the Kodiak and use the console inside.
She absolutely didn't like what she was hearing. Doctor Amanda Kenson had found some Reaper artefact that proved an imminent Reaper invasion? Jo's insides turned very, very cold. Was this the day? The day?
"As a favour to me I'm asking you to go in alone," Hackett continued and Jo saw red. Alone? As a favour to Hackett? For a few weeks now she'd felt a little easier in her own skin but one phrase from Hackett clamped around her like a straitjacket. Personal favours to Hackett never ended well for her, while the Admiral always weaselled his way out of his personal responsibility. She was always the one crucified for the fallout.
But how could she say no when this day could be the day, when this bit of intel could be crucial in stopping another Reaper invasion? Give the galaxy a little more time? How could she think of personal consequences when it might as well be the only chance to save the galaxy again?
Jo put on her Commander mask. Dealing with Hackett was always a harsh affair. Anderson might be a softer N7 than she was, but damn, Hackett was worth every ounce of hardass reputation the N7s had. Negotiating with him was extremely tough and he always came out the winner. Maybe it was foolish to make an enemy of such a high ranking and capable fellow N7. After all, he was supposed to be her family in arms. But somewhere along the line Jo found that she and Hackett went different ways about doing what was right.
She wondered if her brothers and sisters, the N family she never spoke about, thought she'd lost her way along the line, too. Working with Cerberus after resigning from the Alliance could have warranted a death sentence from them if they'd considered her unworthy. But their intelligence branch was the best she knew, she kept in contact with them even after resigning from the Alliance and they could verify lots of intel nobody else could. She was still alive and not exactly hiding, so perhaps they still had faith in her. Too bad she didn't have that kind of faith in Hackett. Her gut was telling her that he was setting her up once again.
"You said it yourself, Hackett. This is a personal favour to you. Don't forget that. You're fully responsible for whatever happens with the batarians. If they take exception to their prison being infiltrated, the fault will be with you personally. I refuse to be a pawn in your games, so whatever it is you think I can do for you there that no other N7 can, I'll take responsibility for my actions, but you take responsibility for yours."
Joker stood over two packed duffel bags in the living room when she was back. He knew the score.
"Where are we going?"
"Aratoht," she said quietly. He paused in his step:
"That's… batarian space."
"Exactly. I'll brief you on the ship."
"Let's go, then."
"Jeff," Jo caught his elbow before he could walk out of the dark house. "Go to your mum, wake her and say proper goodbye."
"I don't really want to right now."
"I've seen it too many times to allow it. Marines going off to battle, regretting forever that their last words to their loved ones were heated words in a fight. People regret that for the rest of their lives, they get broken over it. Go to her and tell her how much you love her. Tell her that you know how much she loves you. She may not fully be able to appreciate what you do out there with me, how it saves her life and preserves her lifestyle, but she loves you like only a mother can. Go to her and tell her you know that. I won't have you regretting some silly argument if this mission goes bad."
Joker pressed his jaws together, fighting it, but when he looked over Jo's shoulder, she saw in his face that Silvia was already standing there, probably woken by their voices.
"I'll be outside," Jo said and left mother and son to their business. The neighbourhood was quiet and dark at midnight. Jo looked around and found that she was almost sorry to leave. She hoped Kevin got his spot as an intern, hoped Harriett and Kimali grew up fine, hoped that Kat found someone nice. More than anything Jo hoped that Silvia Moreau could keep her life just the way she wanted it forever.
When Joker finally came outside, Silvia came with him, wearing house slippers on bare feet and wrapping a winter jacket over her nightgown. Joker's uneven shoulders seemed less tense than before, so they must have had a good talk.
"Keep him safe," Silvia said and there was no mistaking it: this was not a plea, it was an order.
"With whatever it takes," she promised.
"And keep yourself safe, too."
Again, no mistaking it: Silvia wasn't worried about her, she was worried about her son if Jo died.
"I'll do my best."
Silvia stood by the landing pad and watched as they lifted up and disappeared into the darkness.
Once back on the Normandy, Joker expressed his uneasiness about letting Jo go off alone on a hostile planet.
"That aside, I need techies for the ship to be fully functioning, EDI can't do everything, so as your pilot I'm saying: We're not going to Aratoht unless we have at least a skeleton crew," he gave her his ultimatum.
"I know. I'm sending out messages to the crew. We'll see who responds the quickest."
Garrus replied within minutes, but he was on Palaven and getting him would take about ten days. Gabby and Ken turned out to be nearby and willing to cut their vacation short, and so was Karin Chakwas.
"Damn, when you say 'skeleton crew' you really mean skeleton," Joker muttered under his cap, plotting the route to pick up the three crew members.
"Can you work with that?" Jo asked.
"I can. Question is: how wise is it for you to go to a batarian planet without a team?"
"Very unwise," she nodded. "I'd gladly flip Hackett the bird and take a full team to that prison, but no one is close enough to go and get them, and who knows how long Kenson will survive in the batarian torture camp? We can't risk losing her, not if she has intel about a Reaper device that proves an imminent invasion. Key word: imminent."
Two days later the five of them were in batarian space, the ship cloaked, Jo ready to leave.
"I'll be watching you like a hawk but I'm really not comfortable letting you go there alone," he said to her.
"I feel as uncomfortable about it as you do, believe me," she replied and stepped into the Kodiak.
Joker had the minipad in his chest pocket as he watched her helmet camera feed and the readings from her suit sensors. The prison rescue went surprisingly well but then instead of heading towards the Normandy Jo decided to follow Dr. Kenson to her Project Base to verify the intel about the Reapers. Cold sweat rolled down Joker's spine when he watched Kenson through Jo's camera, as the Doctor said:
"I've got Commander Shepard with me. Tidy up the lab. The Commander needs to confirm the artefact."
This had to be a trap.
"Jo, don't go there. There is too much glee in her voice when she says she's got you," he spoke into Jo's ear. "And what does she mean by tidying up the lab? I don't like this at all."
"Me neither," she said very quietly, but to his endless dismay she didn't change the course.
And then he lost the shuttle. One minute it was there on his screens, the next it disappeared in the asteroid field along with Jo's transmission.
"What the fuck?" His hands flew over the console. "EDI, get the signal back."
"I'm directing all my available processing power to it but the signal seems to be blocked by something inside the asteroid field," EDI answered.
Ken, Gabby and Chakwas, who stood right behind him and watched, wisely chose not to say anything while he worked frantically.
He tried to trace the last known trajectory, tried to catch the signal again, tried every trick he had up his sleeve but after almost two hours of trying he had nothing. The minipad was also no help, it transmitted nothing. It seemed to be waiting for the connection to be re-established, too. What was there in that asteroid field that could jam Mordin's special transmitter that should be working across the galaxy?
Reaper tech.
"I think we have a problem," he turned to his mini-crew of three people. Ken nervously played with his tool belt, Gabby was biting her lip and Chakwas nodded sombrely:
"What do we do next, Jeff? You're the only officer on board now."
"Yeah, thanks for the reminder." He'd never wanted command over the Normandy at this price and under these circumstances.
The minipad in his hand came to live only to produce sounds of energy blasts and Kenson's voice:
"I can't let you start the project, Shepard. I can't let you stop the arrival!"
And then shooting, before silence again.
Air suddenly seemed heavy like led in his lungs as Joker slowly raised his eyes at his companions. His hands shook.
"Well, fuck," Ken exhaled.
"EDI, we need to find them, that project base, that asteroid she was talking about, something!" He turned back to his console again, trying to find anything at all left to try.
"There is nothing I can do, Jeff," EDI said gently. Oh, she could shove her imitation of human sympathy up her shiny silver ducts!
"There's got to be something!"
But there was nothing. What was the point cursing Hackett and his stupid favours? What was the point wishing they had a full crew with Garrus to lead them? They didn't have people to start a search and rescue, and even if they did, they'd have to go into the asteroid field in the Kodiak and search the old-fashioned way: by looking out of the window.
The minipad was silent again. But it had come back to life once and Joker could only hope that it would again. He didn't even know if Jo was alive after that shooting.
"EDI, get me Admiral Hackett on the line," he ordered. It took her about half an hour to get response from Hackett's flagship at the Arcturus station.
"Admiral Hackett is unavailable," an annoying male voice from Orizaba said with infinite boredom.
"No, he isn't. This is Normandy and he will take my call," Joker growled.
"I repeat, Admiral Hackett is unavailable at the moment. You may leave a message and he will get back to you within a week."
"You know what? Go and fuck yourself with that stick up your ass, dispatch. Tell the Admiral right this second that if he doesn't answer my call, his personal affiliation with an Alliance operative performing terrorist acts in batarian space will be public knowledge in exactly six minutes in the entire fucking Council Space. You may run to him now, smartass. Your six minutes have started."
Joker's whole body shook with fury in the three minutes and forty seconds until Hackett appeared on the screen.
"Normandy? Flight Lieutenant Moreau, what have you got for me?"
"What I've got for you?" Joker almost exploded. "Shepard freed your girlfriend from the prison and went to verify the artefact and then disappeared into the asteroid field without a trace. I can't find her for hours. Kenson told her that the Reapers are about to arrive through the Alpha Relay, it's their key to access all relays in the galaxy, and her project was to ram the relay with an asteroid to destroy it, which will probably destroy this whole solar system. The last transmission from them sounded like this." He played the recording with Kenson's traitorous words. "Your girlfriend is indoctrinated, praying for the glory of the Reapers and she's got Shepard, maybe even killed her already. I require assistance for search and rescue immediately."
"I can't help you there, Flight Lieutenant," Hackett said firmly. Joker blew the gasket.
"Are you fucking kidding me? Which part of indoctrinated, Reaper invasion and probably killed Shepard did you not understand?!"
"Watch your tone, Moreau."
"Or what? If insulting the fuck out of you is what it's gonna take to get a couple of Alliance ships over here, then I'm just about to really get started."
"What happened to Shepard's own team?"
"We were on vacation when you asked her for a personal favour and you insisted she went alone. I've got three people with me on board: two technicians and a doctor. We can't locate the signal from her suit and even if we did, there are clearly hostile forces down there and I have no resources to go on search and rescue by myself. You need to send someone over right now."
"I can't send Alliance ships into batarian space, Moreau, no matter what the emergency is."
"But you felt perfectly comfortable sending us here, right?"
"She's survived worse odds, just wait and see, she'll emerge."
Joker closed his eyes and took a deep breath. So, this was how Jo felt all the time being a commanding officer? Running into walls? Beating her forehead bloody against them? Being refused in the most crucial moments? Hearing someone's ridiculous logic? He released the air and owned the cold fury he felt inside.
"Payback's a bitch, Hackett," he spoke eventually. "And so is karma. One of these days a Reaper will descend on your dreadnought and I'll be holding my fingers on my weapons systems. It'll take me just a moment to hesitate to make you history."
"Are you threatening me, Flight Lieutenant?"
"Oh, boo hoo. I've been living and dealing with the toughest N7 in the galaxy for years now. You don't scare me. Just remember my words next time you call us for another personal favour." He disconnected. Why had he even hoped that Hackett or anyone else in the Alliance would help? Alliance always left Jo hanging, alone and facing impossible odds.
It tore him apart that he could do nothing but to follow Hackett's stupid advice. He couldn't leave the system, couldn't go looking for other crew members to form a search party. He couldn't go groundside with a rifle by himself. What else could he do but sit and wait for Jo to get herself out of this mess?
If she was even still alive.
Oh, God, please let her be alive.
He must have zoned out, dreaming of all the ways to make Hackett hurt and worrying about Jo, when the minipad came alive again for a few seconds. There was no shooting, just some environmental noise and the quick burst of biometric readings showed calm breathing, normal blood pressure and pulse.
"Doc!" He shouted for Chakwas. "What can you tell me about her condition based on this?"
Chakwas looked for a few moments at all the data they received and shook her head:
"She's fine, but she's heavily sedated."
"Sedated," another wave of dread mixed with hope. "Of course, they got her on their base, sedated her and now they're waiting for the arrival of the Reapers because those guys want Commander Shepard alive."
He and Chakwas exchanged a glance.
"That means she's out of danger for now," the woman said.
"Up until the Reapers arrive."
"And we have no idea how much time we have. Could be weeks. Could be minutes."
"What would Shepard do?"
"She'd prepare for the worst case scenario," Joker nodded to himself. Minutes until the arrival, then.
"If we have no other options, then I'll just go ahead flying through the asteroid field, scanning the big ones, looking for their base," Joker mused.
"Since they decided not to go ahead with their plan, the asteroid won't move any differently than the others," Gabby said.
"My scanners will be jammed like the communication systems inside that field," EDI informed.
"Well, then I'll do a visual search," he snapped.
"Joker, you'd have to come preeeeetty close to their base to actually see it. Think about it. They see us – they shoot us down," Ken argued.
"Would they even have that kind of weaponry?" Chakwas looked at the techie.
"It's a Reaper artefact and they're indoctrinated. We have to assume the worst, and we are Shepard's only chance," Ken shrugged. "We have to know more before we go in."
"Know more," Joker nodded. "EDI, can you locate what's causing the interference in the field?"
"My scanners don't show anything, though the strength and the coverage of the jamming signal suggest multiple sources."
"Try and locate the nearest source, we'll go have a look at it."
"It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack," Ken said.
"Shepard is the most important needle in the world and I'll find her in any haystack."
EDI could only give him the general direction of where the signal was coming from and Joker set the ship on the course. Ken and Gabby had to go to Engineering soon enough to try and manually compensate for the drift the signal was causing in the systems.
They couldn't see anything physical around them, even though they were merely skirting the edges of the dust field that surrounded the asteroids and nothing was obscuring their vision, but the signal was coming from somewhere close.
Suddenly Joker's screens started flickering and pulsing.
"EDI?"
EDI spoke in a strangely detached voice:
"I detect a network of Reaper devices which are in direct connection to the Alpha relay. They form a jamming field around the asteroids, creating a communicative dead zone inside. This is the location of the nearest device."
A local map appeared on his screen and a flashing light marked the spot.
"EDI, how did you get all that?"
"The Reaper beacons detected the corresponding Reaper hardware in my core and synched with me. They accept me as a friendly unit."
"Holy fuck," Joker breathed out. They had all managed to forget at this point that EDI was made out of parts of Sovereign. Chakwas next to him echoed his thoughts:
"That's not good."
"Show me the entire network, EDI."
The local map grew and showed him about two dozen spots spread across the entire solar system.
"Shit. How come the population of Aratoht is not aware of this?"
"It appears that their synchronisation with the relay keeps them focused on one task only: hide the artefact that Doctor Kenson and her team have found. At the moment it is somewhere inside the dead zone," EDI spoke in the same creepy voice. Joker wondered if she was becoming full Reaper on him all of a sudden, but at least she was being helpful. "The artefact reacts to the proximity of the Reapers and the beacons protect it from being detected. So far all they did was create a tiny blind spot in this solar system, easily overlooked by organics in their research."
"EDI," he asked carefully. "How are you doing?"
"I'm fine, Jeff. Direct input from Reaper technology requires more of my processing power than usual."
"AIs can be indoctrinated, too, EDI. Don't go crazy on me, okay?"
"I'll be careful, Jeff," she said a little softer.
It took him a while to get a visual on the first device. It was so tiny, barely more than a football, that he had to steer the whole ship directly in front of it to find it. EDI was keeping her attention on the network when he shot the device down. At least the network hadn't reacted to the loss of one of their links. Twenty five more of them to go.
"This is going to take hours! They're so tiny, it's like twenty five needles in a solar system sized haystack," Joker popped his knuckles. He'd do whatever it takes to get to Shepard.
The devices were really spread all across the system and it took him and the techies many hours to find them all, combating the damaging jam they were exposed to, all the while keeping an eye on EDI's functions.
Chakwas kept observing the minipad. Now and then a burst of data would break through the jamming signal and the server in the medbay ordered the pieces into a correct timeline. Bit by bit the data was completing itself and Chakwas had been able to tell Joker what exactly had happened to Jo from the moment the com went silent to the moment she'd been captured and sedated, but hours were passing, the work went slow, Jo was still sedated and the Reapers were coming closer and closer. At least they had a vague time frame to work with: when Jo stepped onto the project base, she mentioned the Reapers arriving in two days. With only audio available they couldn't pinpoint anything more specific.
Joker chose to ignore everything except the task at hand. Find the devices and disable them. He couldn't help the hours ticking away, so there was no point devoting his own processing power to that. But he hadn't realised how strong the fear would be. Any minute now the Reaper invasion could begin. How odd that only three days ago he'd argued with his mother and Jo made him reconcile with her in order to have no regrets in a situation like this one. The end of the world was probably seconds away and Joker had to give all he had to concentrate. He had a job to do, a woman to save, a galaxy to rescue. Only when the last device blew apart could he finally lock onto a life signs signal coming from inside the asteroid field. Locating the base was easy now, for they weren't hiding their presence. Indoctrinated people moments before seeing their gods didn't think about such things.
"Jeff," Chakwas ran towards him and pushed the minipad into his hands. Jo was moving around, shooting things or people. Thank all gods she was alive and back in the game. He tried to lock onto her suit signal, but it seemed that the artefact itself had close range jamming abilities and it would still take him about twenty eight minutes to get to the asteroid. He set to work, repeating a call into his mic and just hoping she would hear him. Through the audio feed he could hear her, though, trying to open a com channel to him and failing because the systems on the base were damaged. She cursed.
"I hear you, baby. I'm almost there," he chanted. The asteroid he locked on was on a direct and extremely fast collision course with the mass relay now. Jo must have dealt with the indoctrinated scientists and turned on the thrusters, following Kenson's original plan. The plan that involved destroying the relay and facing the unknown consequences of such an action. Joker chose not to think about it, concentrating on the pick up instead. The VI's warning about the imminent collision from Jo's chip started to annoy him by the time she finally got outside to find an escape shuttle. She still couldn't hear him, but he heard everything she was doing and her conversation with the suddenly appearing Reaper hologram. The Harbinger. Thankfully it took him mere seconds after the holo's disappearance to swoop down and align the airlock with the landing pad. He'd done this before only weeks ago: collect what was his and race for the relay seconds before an explosion. He made it with much more time to spare than the last time.
Jo hadn't come to him when she jumped on board. She ran for the galaxy map, looking closely at what was happening to Aratoht. Joker brought the same image to his screen and saw the spreading circle of…
Nothingness.
When it stopped spreading, there was a pause in the CIC, then he heard Jo fall to her knees and throw up.
"EDI, head for the Arcturus sector," he said while climbing out of his seat. He found her on her hands and knees in front of the galaxy map, still dry-heaving. The magnitude of what just happened started coming to him in waves, too. He sat down on the step before his knees could give in. She calmed down her up-chuck reflex eventually and sat next to him. Chakwas came over, then Ken and Gabby. Joker didn't hear or see them. The spreading circle of emptiness on the galaxy map still ran on repeat through his mind. Chakwas insisted on getting Jo up and dragged her to the med bay for some tests. Joker's heart and mind were empty, just like that spot on the galaxy map.
No one had dared to do this before. Destroy a relay. Well, now they knew what would happen, thanks to the Normandy's crazy crew.
When he finally went down one level, he found the techies sitting nervously at the mess table, while Chakwas took Jo's blood. The Doctor's hands were shaking a little bit. Jo sat on a med bed in her underarmour motionlessly and stared at the wall in silence.
"Jo," he carefully touched her shoulder. She didn't flinch. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she replied without delay. Surprisingly, she was here, in the moment. "And that's the whole problem."
"Physically you're fine, Commander," Chakwas confirmed after looking at the blood test results.
"I got a Reaper vision flash and spent fifty hours sleeping next to that damn artefact," Jo said, still not looking at any of them directly. "I'm surprised you didn't find mini-Reapers floating through my veins, screaming: we're the harbinger of your perfection! You look like crap," she finally declared upon looking at Joker.
"Yeah, I've been at the helm for those fifty hours, hunting Reaper tech across this system."
"Why aren't you falling over with exhaustion?"
"Don't worry about me, I've been trained for that kind of stress." He saw her surprised glance and shrugged a little: "You've got your secrets, I've got mine."
Distraction only worked so far. Her gaze returned to the wall, once more sending her into the place in her mind where she was fine, but Aratoht wasn't.
"Shell shock," Chakwas told him. "Give her some time." The Doc failed to mention that all five of them were shell shocked right now.
"Jeff, the communication channel to Orizaba is open. Admiral Hackett demands mission report," EDI said. Joker looked at Jo and when she didn't react, he let her sit there and went upstairs.
"I hear you're demanding something?" He growled when he finally fell into his chair and Hackett's face appeared before him.
"What the hell happened?"
"Shepard just saved the galaxy. Again. You're welcome."
"Is it true what my communication specialists tell me? The Alpha relay and Aratoht are gone?"
"Yeah."
"Flight Lieutenant, once you transit to Euler, prepare your ship for docking to Orizaba."
"And submit to hostile takeover?" Joker snorted. "If you want to talk to Shepard, you come to me in a shuttle, alone and unarmed. Any aggressive action and you won't even see my tail lights."
"Flight Lieutenant, this is not the time to play cowboy."
"You're not kiddin'. In a matter of minutes my ship will become the most wanted and most viciously hunted vessel in the galaxy and I intend to keep my crew safe as long as I can."
"Your crew?"
"The assigned CO of the Normandy is temporarily unfit for duty. I relieved her of command. You're negotiating with me now and it's my way or no way. Good luck looking for me in those uncharted regions behind inactive relays."
"I see. I'll notify you of my arrival when you enter the Euler system."
It took them most of the day to arrive there. Jo spent all that time sitting in the med bay, looking at the wall. She answered questions but otherwise appeared like a rag doll. Joker had been awake for about three days at that point but the notion of sleep seemed ridiculous under the circumstances.
"Jeff, Admiral Hackett is on his way to meet us," EDI informed him. "A Kodiak class shuttle with two human life forms inside. One of them is piloting."
"Treat him according to hostile boarding protocol and get Ken and Gabby up here."
The shuttle aligned with the airlock, EDI opened the outer hatch, let Hackett step inside and closed the hatch, cutting him off from his shuttle. During decontamination she thoroughly scanned him for weapons. He carried his service pistol and a hunting knife that looked so much like Shepard's that Joker wondered if it was a secret N7 calling card. He, Ken and Gabby stood with rifles trained on the inner hatch. When it opened, Hackett paused.
"Drop the knife and the pistol," Joker said uncompromisingly.
"You're out of line, Flight Lieutenant," Hackett declared, seemingly getting angry.
"Your girlfriend turned out to be an indoctrinated agent for the Reapers and tried to hand my Commander over to her masters. Right about now I don't trust anyone in the galaxy, especially the man who sent us on that mission in the first place. Drop the weapons or die. I'm not in the mood for jokes right now."
Angrier by the minute, Hackett slowly retrieved his pistol and his knife, placing them at his feet. The three of them led him towards the elevator and brought him to the med bay to Jo, keeping their rifles aimed at his chest. Chakwas left the room and Joker closed the door from the outside. Whatever happened now was out of his hands. He didn't think Hackett would harm Jo, but he couldn't be sure that she wouldn't harm Hackett, though.
