Chapter 7: The Lazarus Base
Oh this place the creature liked. It had been here before but it had been expelled. The Spectre who was afraid of the dark, the dark not within not from without, was a strong one. Her mind was a ghostly-wavering city—no a space station, a great battleship.
When the creature first came to the mind it expected resistance, there was always resistance and it always overcame it. It had with the Protheans, The Old Growth; it had wormed into their beings. It was the essence of the Cipher. But The Spectre welcomed it only to arrest it and imprison it. There had been no parole.
Trying to conform The Spectre's mind to its way of thinking, to bend it to its will, had not worked. There was some disquiet to that, but there was always a way. If the Game could not be won one way then victory must be taken another way. The Spectre had devised the very path to take. Change the rules.
The countenance of its features contorted to a face this one loathed. Ambassador Donnel Udina. It changed the comfort of the ship, from home to that of a cold and impersonal office. Here it would take the battle and the Spectre's strength.
"Your tiresome refrain 'the Reapers are coming' grows wearisome. It makes you sound like a character in a child story clucking about the sky falling down. You've lost your objectivity and reason. There is no proof the Reapers are coming. Even if Saren's flagship was one of them, it was awoken by a fluke. The others are dormant and locked behind Dark Space with no way here now that the Citadel is cut off from them," Ambassador Udina haughtily challenged.
"They are real and they will destroy us all if we do not stand united. I will continue to warn, continue to make a stand, to make this 'tiresome refrain.' To ignore the obvious is to become like lemmings running to your doom!' the Spectre faced her accuser with steadfast resolve.
"Face the truth Spectre." Her appellant was Councilor Sparatus and he stood beside Udina. "Those beacons scrambled your mind and the influence of the Protheans has addled your judgment. That ship bore an uncanny resemblance to geth bayships. Saren used what he gleaned from the beacons to influence the geth. He became their prophet because he knew how to exploit the weakness, hopes and minds of others."
"Sovereign might even have been an AI rather than a VI, but that doesn't mean it was a creature from fifty millennia ago. And if we are to believe the words of that woman of yours, the Reapers are far older. Do you know how ludicrous this sounds?"
"Ludicrous? You dare accuse me of such? You have eyes to see but you are blind. Ears to hear but you do not listen. You have voices that should shout out and warn but you make yourselves mute!" Shepard became desperate, "You're like the three monkeys: Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. But the evil will come, they will blacken the skies of every world and lay it to ruin. Unless we prepare!"
"Your reason has left you, even as it has left Saren. You are to be pitied really; it isn't your fault that the beacons scrambled your mind. Cerberus, not you, will be the savior of humanity, and we in turn will save the galaxy as it should have been saved when you had the choice. Instead you chose to save the Council, and set that dog of war upon the seat that rightly belonged to me as its human representative!" The Illusive Man's words slithered across his lips like poison.
Having Cipher induced nightmares and memories, it turned out, felt an awful lot like dread. On that bizarre level where the Spectre spent more time than was strictly healthy these days, that was comforting. She'd had lots of practice dealing with dread.
She felt gentle azure hands press against the base of her spine. "What's the matter? Cannot sleep?" Liara's soft voice had the effect of a warm blanket on a cold winter's night.
"Nightmares," Sam held her head in her hands, her tone held notes of exhaustion. "It had a different flavor than the others. But familiar."
"Was it the one you call the Waking Dark?" the young archaeologist caught a handful of questions amongst the throng. "Did you arrest it like before?"
"Didn't figure out what it was until it was over." Sam looked over her shoulder to her naked wife lying comfortably in the nest of duvet. "Maybe they're right; maybe I really am going mad." She referred to the Council, more specifically to Sparatus' comment about her being mentally unstable.
"That is not your real fear," there was a knowing tone in the other woman's voice.
The raven locks shook. No, that wasn't her real fear. It didn't even rate amongst the top ten concerns. Being mad barely made the top hundred list. Hell, half her ideas wouldn't work if there wasn't a little craziness in the old noggin.
The hand that rested against her back slid up to her shoulder and pulled her gently back down to their bed. The Spectre complied with the gentle guidance; she lay her head down on her love's breast and melted when her Angel Eyes stroked her hair.
"Indoctrination?" Liara kissed the caramel skinned forehead. "Through all our Joinings, through the Bond, I would have felt it, I would know."
"But the Bond connects us so fully would you truly know? What if it contaminated you too?"
"You only spoke to Sovereign's avatar," Liara tried to reassure her bondmate. "Not to the thing itself."
But Samantha wouldn't be placated. "What if that was enough to start the process? Hell, maybe Sparatus' accusations are right and it's the Prothean's tech that hit me?" This time she voiced her fear. "The damned things gave me CS, Li. What if they really screwed with me? It started with Eden Prime. You wouldn't know any different, you didn't know me before that thing hit me."
"But I knew you after."
"You didn't touch my mind until after I gained the Cipher, by then I was already screwed up. Remember how our first meld drained you." Sam tilted her head up so she could see Liara's face. "How many melds left you like that?"
"None."
"See." Sam put a hand on the fingers stroking her to stop them, she propped herself up on her elbow.
"No, I do not. Before you I have only I melded with my mother and one other, Samantha. Those were nurturing melds between mother and daughter. Mother…" Liara's eyes blinked several times with the sudden burning of tears. Oh how she missed her mother. She even missed the arguments and the lasting twenty-five year silence because, at the end of the day, Liara knew her mother was still there. Now…now the Matriarch of the T'Soni bloodline had rejoined the Great Flow of Life, her body returned to Mother Ocean and her soul the Great Void.
Soft ruby lips touched lilac, pulling the asari back from the moment of remorse. "Mother always initiated the melds. An asari mother is her daughter's first teacher; her mind is always the first to touch her daughter's. It begins in the womb."
"And what about the other?"
"Shiala, my mentor when I was a youngling and ever a friend of the family. You, my love, were the first non-asari I melded with. It left me weary because your mind did not have the same discipline as an asari mind. And the images…" Liara sat up and took Samantha's face between her hands. "You have nothing to worry about."
The tumultuous tremor in the bond told another story.
"What if I'm a sleeper agent? We just don't know it, then the Reapers throw some kind of switch, and bam, I become the next Saren! I become this 'Waking Dark.'" Sam pulled her bondmate's hands away from her face and stood up and away from the bed.
Cerulean light from the fish tank gave an unearthly glow to her skin as she stood by it. "I have to keep it contained, seal it away." Sam fixed her gaze upon the fish swimming mindlessly to and fro, feeling a little like the aquatic pets as she swam through nightmare-to-nightmare. "Hell, we've been hearing about different effects surrounding how indoctrination works on various different levels for different people," she sighed heavily. "Some hear whispers," she tapped her ear then her head, "some see visions, some just feel urges to do stuff, or follow the 'ideas' that appear in their minds and slowly devour their willpower, as it did with your mother and Shiala and even Rana Thanoptis."
The last name spoken made the Spectre wince. Back on Virmire, Shepard's gut had told her to stop the scientist permanently, and so she had. If Matriarch Benezia couldn't break away fully from indoctrination and Shiala's mental conditioning was converted, what hope was there for the maiden? And so, almost reluctantly, Shepard had ended the asari scientist's life. Now it was far too late for doubt and second-guessing herself, such a thing a Commander, a Spectre, could ill afford.
"And think about it, some of my ideas are really out there." Sam threw her hands into the air to exaggerate her point. "People have seen visions, Liara, what are my nightmares if not something…from the Reapers or the Protheans? I even call them visions."
"Samantha…"
"Either there is something there," she tapped her forehead at the last word, "maybe something or someone left over from the Cipher or the Vinculum or both! Or I've gone completely loopy because of the touch of CS. Chakwas can't even test for indoctrination because of the physiological damage left behind from the CS. It'll mess up any clean readings on my neuro-pathways she can get. On top of that, I already have odd synaptic patterns as it is because of the Prothean tech. It's either one of those two or I'm schizophrenic, take your pick; none of them seem all that great."
"You're not schizophrenic, of this I know for certain, Melethril. The mind of one who suffers such mental illness is so chaotic it is more than difficult to establish a mental link. Even during the moments of full lucidity it is a challenge."
"Like the ardat-yakshi.?" Sam asked to her reflection as she pressed her hand to the glass of the aquarium.
'No mind can touch theirs' Liara whispered mordantly through the bound as softly as if she were in a mausoleum 'and live.'
For a moment a long silence befell the two, there were sounds of bed cloths being tossed aside, a body moving, the only sight was a reflection in the glass. 'Protheans touched your mind, scarred it as the Husk-Saren did to your body. You still feel the pain of his attack; I think you will for a long time, my love. You will feel the pain of the Prothean's attack on your mind. A part of me is guilty for what happened.'
"How can you say that?" Sam met Liara's gaze in their reflections.
"I was so caught up in uncovering the history of the Protheans; in unveiling their secrets, their religion, their politics, their lives, that I blinded myself to everything else. Even you. If they had anything, anything at all we could use against Reapers, I wanted to know it. I had the audacity to think I could be the one to give you something, anything. Hope. I was so utterly convinced of it.
"When the idea of using the Vinculum was offered I…I pushed you into it, Samantha. You know that. Please do not deny it. My desires were so deep, how could you do anything else but follow the convictions? I knew the Vinculum would work for you, it had to. You had the Cipher." Liara pressed her naked body close to her bondmate's. The skin-to-skin contact pooled their warmth together as well as their souls. 'Vigil took advantage of my weakness and your connection. Samantha you are not indoctrinated, you are a victim of great mental abuse, a survivor of CS. It left its mark on you.' Liara held on tightly, fearing Samantha was but a wisp of thought and dream. 'Do not let it destroy you, Melethril.'
Emotions could be foolish and fickle things, debilitating if allowed. It wasn't going to be allowed, N7-Spectre Sam could ill afford to be brought low, not now. The psychological malfeasance of her dreams, of their crippling nature, had to be stripped down to their barest elements to where they became benign.
"My mother used to tell me to 'heed no nightly noises, Little Wing, dark dreams are simply thus and have no power to harm you.' Those words gave me great comfort."
"Mom told me something similar. Told me everything was going to be alright. Bad dreams can't touch me in real life; they were only jumbled up thoughts left over from things that were bothering me. Her solution was simple: solving the things bothering me means no bad dreams."
"You believed her." Liara smiled against the bare shoulder her face was pressed against.
Sam shook her head. "It wasn't real life I was worried about, the dream realm haunted me, kept me awake when all I wanted to do was sleep. When she said stuff like that I knew everything wasn't going to be okay. It was just something adults say to placate kids. I knew it even when I was one."
"You had terrible nightmares as a child?"
The Spectre shrugged, "Probably no more than any other kid. No, my issues were the migraines because of the biotics. My childhood night terrors came from that."
Liara nodded, recalling the visions they had seen being transmitted via the holographic interface of the Prothean Vinculum. Shepard was one of the first L3s. She recalled that Samantha hadn't been implanted until much later than what was typical for a human. The asari placed a warm kiss on her bondmate's neck.
"Samantha, I will not allow you to become lost in your nightmares," Liara vowed. "I will not allow you to become lost."
"You're going to chase the boogie-man away for me?" quipped the Spectre.
"All the way back to dark space if I must, Melethril." Liara kissed Samantha hard. "As my sire might say: 'No one messes with my girl.'"
This at least got a smile, however faint, from Sam. "That must be from Aethyta. I can't imagine Sha'ira ever saying something like that."
Liara nodded and pressed her body even closer to her bondmate. The young asari maiden didn't want to admit how worried she was concerning the indoctrination theory. Samantha had gained the Cipher from Shiala who had been indoctrinated not only by Sovereign, but had been in thrall to the Thorian. What if…what if something else had also transferred during the knowledge bond? Traces of indoctrination from both aliens could have very likely been passed along, like a virus. Those traces in combination with the gestalt and interfacing with Prothean tech might have been the true cause of Samantha's brush with Cyan Syndrome.
"We will find a way to still these nightmares, Samantha," Liara said. "Even if Dr. Chakwas cannot scan for indoctrination markers, Dr. T'Shyn can help. She's on board for that very reason; to study our link and the changes in us. Maybe if you meld with her she can touch the damaged areas - if there are any."
Sam paused to consider this. Dr. Kiang T'Shyn had been the one to treat her Cyan Syndrome and install the new L5x implant. While she was still on board why not utilize her talents?
"And there is also Dr. Solus," Liara continued. "I know he wrote dissertations and several journals on the effects of mind control and Reaper indoctrination."
"Bringing him into the consultation couldn't hurt," Sam agreed.
Hell, he might even be able to develop a new scanning device that would work on her rather unique brain chemistry. Of course, if he was going to do that then he might as well get on with more practical sciences, like finding that bloody butterfly whose flapping wings cause all those storms the galaxy had been having lately and getting it to stop.
Shepard pushed away thoughts of her own predicament in favor of another issue just as troubling and just was weighty: how to get Miranda Lawson to agree to surrender the ship Cerberus had built. Had the Council Spectre been of a more renegade mind like Saren, the answer was blatantly obvious: use Oriana. But this was not an option the former Alliance officer wanted to even entertain let alone implement. She had used the young girl quite enough already, doing so again was abhorrent. There were, after all, limits to how far into the shadows Shepard was willing to step.
At the very least, contemplating how to get Lawson's co-operation was a welcome distraction over her inner struggle about the 'Waking Dark.' Let this thing gorge itself on hyperbole, Spectre Sam blithely groused as she began her morning rituals.
Who we are has always been defined by what we do. It was a galactic truth. What had to be done now was to secure a very valuable resource from a secret Cerberus base. That was the easy part. The hard one was to convince Lawson to give it up.
MEMEMEMEMEMEME
"We need to talk," Shepard said, walking into the brig. "I need information." There was no card table or chair or MRE meals that generally preceded the interrogations. "You will divulge all I need," she was blunt and went directly to the point. She was there by the dreadful algebra of necessity, which has no mercy, and when necessity presses in extremis, that's when a Spectre becomes the most dangerous.
"If I were in a mood to divulgeatory mood, what then am I to be divulging?" Lawson asked, feeling brave enough to be a little glib with the Commander.
"The location of the ship you first tempted me with." Shepard stood rigid. "And you're not going to say you can't do that, Operative Lawson." Her mind spun so quickly Lawson should have heard the gears turning.
The playful mood seeped directly out of the Cerberus agent as a ship expelling its ballast; a shiver ran through Lawson's spine. There was only one other that conveyed such power of inner conviction. Almost like a lightning rod transmitting a mighty burst of electricity, there was an undeniable power around Commander Shepard, just like the power that orbited The Illusive Man.
"I mean to go deep into the Terminus Systems, I am going to investigate the disappearances of our colonies and I will stop the Collectors. I can't do that with a fleet from the Council or the Alliance, but I can use other resources. And let me make one thing perfectly and abundantly clear: I am not joining Cerberus. I will not take orders from your TIMmy. And I will not comply with any Cerberus ordinances, regulations or the experiments your people so enjoy delivering to aliens in your butcher shops. As a matter of course, if and when I hear of such places, I mean to stop them. I will not allow Cerberus personnel on the ship with the exception of yourself. You will have no command authority; you are here as an observer and perhaps I'll allow you to serve as a consultant.
"You will, however, be free from the brig and given quarters once we've taken the vessel. If you contact TIMmy without my consent I will personally put a bullet in your head and space your corpse. Understand? If I deem it necessary you will join my squad when we engage the Collectors. Any data collected on the enemy or sites we investigate will not be passed to Cerberus without my prior authorization. Again, do you understand?"
"That data could be a…." if she said 'valuable assets to the Organization's science division,' it would be a monumental error of judgment.
The glare set in Shepard's blue eyes shouted: 'I said no. Don't even try me on this.'
"The Illusive Man will not agree to these terms, despite the fact I understand your ultimatums."
"Then it's a good thing we're not asking his permission," the Spectre remarked.
"You said fleet," Miranda said. "Do you mean to use both the Normandy and the Cerberus SR-2 vessel to confront the Collectors?"
"I mean to use whatever is at my disposal, Lawson. The less you know the less you can tell your boss when you finally do rat us out." The Spectre's voice could have greased axles.
Miranda didn't even deny the accusation; there was no point to doing so. Hell, if their positions were reversed Shepard would do the same. She would find any way possible to get vital intel to the Alliance even if it cost her her life. Miranda didn't even have the audacity to ask what would occur if she didn't comply with the request. This mission to stop the Collectors was far more vital than any personal vendetta or agenda.
There was, however, a rather positive side note in Lawson's favor. All data would be correlated through the SR-2's main computer core and that core just happened to be a shackled AI. EDI, the phonetic pronunciation for Enhanced Defense Intelligence, was a Quantum Blue Box type AI that functioned as the electronic warfare defense for the SR-2. Because of the potential danger of a rogue AI, it had been given behavioral blocks so that it could not interface with the ship's systems. EDI served as the Illusive Man's eyes and ears on the ship, monitoring the many listening devices on board and sending regular reports to him.
Once the ship was in Shepard's possession, The Illusive Man would no doubt restrict access to some of EDI's files and capabilities for security reasons. It wouldn't be near good enough for the Commander, but she would have to live with it if she wanted the SR-2. Even if pressed, EDI could only provide basic but sketchy information on Cerberus, about its task oriented structure into cells, but could not provide more details on the cells' operations. Even if Shepard ordered Tali to tear the AI core apart, EDI would shut down and blow its own hard drive just like a geth CPU. In essence it would commit cybernetic suicide.
It was the Cerberus philosophy programmed into all agents be they AIs or human - better death than the enemy gain vital knowledge of Cerberus operations. And if feasible, take out as many enemy insurgents as possible along the way.
Hopefully such actions would not be necessary if Miranda could portray a more positive spin on Cerberus' motivations concerning the Collectors. The Spectre and Cerberus were on the same side sharing the same objective... at least in this endeavor they were.
Perhaps this was the perfect window of opportunity that just landed in Miranda's lap. She had been ordered to recruit Shepard no matter what it took, if it took the ship then so be it. The Illusive Man could not argue the details nor motives taken to achieve that goal.
"Getting into the base will not be easy. The Illusive Man will have ordered my pass codes void. Any attempt to use them will raise an alarm."
"I'm counting on that. You see, I want TIMmy to know I'm stealing his ship and I want him to know why. If he is earnest in wanting to stop the Reapers and the Collectors then he won't raise too much of a fuss in how I go about using his resources." Shepard leaned into the bars of the cell so she could stare Lawson directly in the eyes - blue to blue. "Isn't that what he wants? Me to join the jolly gang of human elitists, oppress all other races and claim utter dominance of the galaxy for all humankind?" Shepard smiled balefully. "He can either fall in line or get the hell out of my way."
"I can hazard a guess that the same goes for me."
At first it might appear Shepard had nothing to add, and yet she drew in a breath. "I'm glad we found an understanding, Miranda. Question is, how will you answer?"
"There isn't much of a choice of an alternative if I want the Collectors stopped is there? I'll give you the nav-point to the Lazarus base."
"Lazarus base?" Shepard quirked an eyebrow at this particular tidbit of information, it opened a whole new door of uncomfortable questions. Lawson would be so reluctant to answer she'd probably make a mental retreat if pressed. Very deliberately the Spectre said "What is this, where you resurrect your dead?"
Miranda scratched the spot under her collarbone. As predicted the Cerberus agent was reluctant to comment further, even to deny the semi-accusation being issued. After a breath the disinclined woman said, "The Normandy was resurrected."
Lawson waited for the inevitable fallout.
Shepard opened her mouth. Then Shepard closed her mouth, trapping the words: Why am I not surprised you people violated even this? And how in the hell did TIMmy even get the plans for my ship?! She worked hard to fix her face into a stare of cold blankness and very deliberately the Commander hissed, "The coordinates."
Hesitating now would unravel the carefully knitted thin lines of trust that were beginning to be spun betwixt the two. Not hesitating however, didn't mean there wasn't some reluctance when the nav-point was given.
"You will be wanting details of the base next," the operative said, watching the stalwart Spectre looming before her.
"I might have said how very perceptive of you, but that would be redundant as that is the obvious step," Shepard said, here she smiled beneficently. "Must I also remind you that the less opposition we face going in the better off it will be for you. May I also remind you your little sister is still on board this ship, I'm sure you wish to keep her as safe as possible." There was a bit of surreptitious conviction to her voice.
Planting the discordant thought in Miranda's mind was purposely done and settled in the elder woman's mind like reinforced concrete. The Illusive Man's protégé wasn't entirely certain at this point that she hadn't been labeled traitor by the people she worked for and thus a free target. This meant that even if she actually managed to escape the ever watchful eyes of the asari guards, whole squads of marines who had no love for anyone with sworn allegiance to Cerberus and a very vengeful Prothean expert, with Oriana in tow, the alternative wasn't exactly safe. The irony was that her little sister was far safer in the custody of humanity's first Spectre than she was with Cerberus. Add to that fact that Oriana would never forgive Miranda for turning her over to the organization that (thanks to Shepard) the girl felt made Beelzebub seem like a soppy wet kindergarten teacher.
There was nothing for it; Lawson would have to comply with Shepard's request, it was a quantum inevitability. The Commander would never jeopardize the life of Oriana, but that didn't mean she'd stop Lawson from bringing harm to the girl and the Spectre wasn't afraid to broadcast that fact. Even subtly. 'Sabotage the mission and you will probably kill the girl. Up to you.'
The wages of sin was death but so was the salary of virtue, metaphorically speaking it all came down to who signed the paycheck. Bereft of alternative options, Lawson surrendered all she believed relevant of the base. It was quite a lot considering she was supposed to be the Lazarus Project Leader. She related all security measures, personnel that would present any sort of opposition and those that were less than opposition but were still an obstacle. The blueprint was a fairly basic one common of all other cookie-cutter space stations; after all, why reinvent the wheel when you could hijack the patent? The Lazarus base had an inordinately large med-bay, no need to divulge what was going on within. It wasn't relevant, Lawson inexplicably argued with herself. Shepard's only concern should be the ship: the SR-2, the shade of the true Normandy. Once Shepard saw what was truly going on at the Lazarus base, the SR-2 would be demoted to a tertiary thought if not lower.
There was a small part of the operative that gave a reluctant thought as to what would happen if Shepard decided that, after she had the SR-2, she was going to destroy the station. Maybe that was for the better. Let the project die in an explosion, let the secrets that were crafted there erupt in flames. The true object of the Lazarus Objective was, for better or worse, right at Miranda's fingertips. Yes. Yes it was for the best that the secrets that were crafted there die there. Maybe if they were gone they wouldn't hauntingly come back and bite someone in the ass like a great many Cerberus projects had a nasty habit of doing.
The small things, the small objectives, had a way of being done and slipping through the cracks and succeeding. Slipping a spy in here or there was easy. Collecting data without being seen took skill but wasn't overly complex. Assassinations real and character also easy, political sabotage and lampooning were also objectives that had a high success rate as well. But the larger projects-the more complex and clandestine, despite the best efforts of humanity's sharpest (and amenable) minds that swore allegiance to Cerberus, had alarming statistics of going horribly wrong. There weren't many that walked away when things went that way. The very odds of Lazarus turning sour were remarkably high.
Miranda wasn't good at playing with the odds, but on the other hand, she wasn't especially good at playing against them either. That was… begrudgingly, Shepard's specialty. The Spectre could play the long or short odds and win. It was very annoying because Shepard was very good at letting you know about it and she was surreptitiously coy about it as well. It was like breathing; it was just done. No one consciously thought about and thus, it wasn't a moment to moment concern or thought until you couldn't do it anymore and then it became an all consuming thought that made you forget everything else entirely.
For Shepard, beating the odds was breathing—end of story. Miranda wasn't good at odds but she was good with people, well... manipulating them that is. Or rather she was very good at manipulating events that orbited people. It was why she was put in charge of the Lazarus Project in the first place and why, underneath it all, she was expected by the Illusive Man to insure that the events that created the Caesar-card happened.
The greatest challenge facing Lawson now was, with no hand to bet upon, how could she put the Caesar-card into play? The raven haired woman had to reevaluate everything and that meant going against the odds…
She scratched at the spot beneath her collarbone.
MEMEMEMEMEMEME
The holographic blueprint of the Lazarus base loomed before a gathering of Normandy's flagship ground team, Captain Kirrahe and the ship's CAG, LT. Russan Normandy's Captain of the Air Group. And, standing next to the Spectre with many eyes glaring at her, Miranda Lawson.
She said absolutely nothing, she didn't shy away, didn't shrink, but stood firm and steady and silent. Very silent.
"In order for this to succeed we need to strike in multiple-" Commander Shepard started, but was immediately interrupted by a petulant voice of protest.
"Why is she here?" the question issued out of the mouth of Lt. Ashley Williams. "We can't trust her!"
Blue eyes narrowed as they pinpointed the younger woman with a sniper's precision. "I trust her information enough to go through with the plan. I trust it, Lieutenant, as much as I trust you to be the keeper of all three of your sisters," answered Shepard sharply.
Ash felt the words in her head like little cubes of ice, and on the very, very edge there had been judgment. She was wise enough to pull away, very far away from the topic as she realized just what hung in the balance for the Lawson woman. Whatever happened to the Normandy inevitably happened to Oriana. There wasn't anyone within the Normandy crew who would raise a hand against Oriana, but zealous Cerberus agents didn't know about this concession and would not hesitate to fire upon the warship given half a chance. If Lawson wanted her little sister to survive, it was, in few words, in her best interest to give very accurate information about the base, the personnel and the target in question, namely the SR-2.
There was a miniature stare down between Spectre and Lieutenant that lasted only a heartbeat and a half before the younger woman quickly looked away. It was a heartbeat too long and Ash knew there would be hell to pay later. The silence was the uncomfortable kind that hung about the air like great weight or a massive saber-toothed beast that was starving and was only waiting for the right moment to pounce. Williams berated herself, she knew better than to question her superior officer in front of others.
The young marine prided herself on the fact she was military, it was in her blood and she told everyone this. But how often did Williams tread on regulations, especially with Shepard? The Commander never shouted at her people, never grew too sharp; instead she grew cold, and to those closest to her, she grew silent. The silence that shouted out: 'I am very disappointed in you.' and if she was very angry with you, you never left the ship when the flagship team hit dirt. Kaiden hardly, if ever, left the ship after an uncomfortable confrontation between him, Liara and Shepard just after their mission to Feros.
Shepard was a firm believer in giving second chances and she also was a firm believer in trusting her own gamble. She was an expert at playing the odds; she was good at it because she knew how to read people. What she wasn't good at was letting her anger seep away from her when her gambles, that had way of becoming orders, were constantly questioned. It sat there in her soul on a cold boil. This might be considered an oxymoron, but it was like grabbing onto a bit of frozen metal_- it was so cold it burned the flesh. That was Spectre Samantha Shepard's wrath: it was a cold so frozen that it burned.
Williams couldn't help the niggling little fear creeping into her mind that she had suddenly got herself grounded to the Normandy.
Shepard turned her attention away from Williams back to the holographic display. "CAG," she addressed Russan, "I want your squad ready and assembled. As soon as we approach you will disembark dark and on a cold start." She held up her hand to stop the inevitable 'but' from being issued out of the turian's mouth. "The Normandy will be running on stealth but the fighters don't have this advantage. Start those drives and the enemy will know you're there immediately, but if they read you as space debris you will be ignored. You will be able to drift close enough to the base without being seen.
"The Normandy will engage the defenses gaining their attention. Once they fire up the base's GARDIAN and deploy their own defensive net of fighters, you will then light up and strike here," she pointed to an area behind the k-barrier lines of the enemy base. "Take out AA towers and disable the power generators. The Normandy and one squadron of the weareth'bol will take out any enemy craft and insure our escape.
"Four shuttles will disembark, three cold starts like the fighters, the other a decoy. Once the dogfight begins, the three shuttles will land here, here and here." Three very different locations were pointed at: the base's shuttle bay, command tower and the last was what looked like the residential area. "Captain Kirrahe, I want you to lead team Hammer Head, it will consist of the other members of the STG. I want you to engage the enemy at the command tower and do what you guys do best: start causing trouble for the enemy, infiltrate and take all information you can from their computer banks then blow the place.
"The second unit will be team Mako. They will strike the enemy at the heart of the residential area. Williams, I want you to take lead with a heavy gun strike force. Garrus go with her. Hit them hard and fast Lieutenant. Make them bleed. The last team will be Kodiak which I will head with the asari commandos along with Liara, Tali and Lawson. Kodiak will hit the SR-2's dock and secure the package.
"Each team will also have a unit of weareth'bol." All heads turned, this seemed to be an extraordinary amount of combatants to send in until each mind recalled that the ghostly 'person' they saw when the weareth'bol appeared consisted of thousands of micro-lifeforms that were literally the size of dust motes in sunbeams. "They will take out any mechs, remote turrets and Atlases Cerberus will use in conjunction with Tali and the STG's efforts to hack their systems. Just to be on the on the safe side, stay out of the green 'mist' when it appears. They will be given orders to strike only non-organics but…" Shepard almost shrugged, "They might confuse hardsuits for mechs if in a frenzy, which is why they will take point in each team. Best to stay clear of them in any event."
The tiny mechanoid lifeforms were on par with the Citadel keepers in as much as the ambiguity of their origin: who built them was still an unknown. Their sole function was to destroy the machine-devils. Presumably this meant Reapers and their abominations. However, they were willing to destroy ships and mechs as well. They might have been the perfect weapon to use against the Geth but Shepard was unwilling to tell the sentient machines to commit genocide outside of destroying the Reapers.
"If the Illusive Man is on base," and here Shepard paused, "shoot to kill. Spectre authority. Do not even try to take him alive. I'll deal with the inevitable fallout with the Council."
Miranda was almost but not quite surprised at the order. There was a part of her that half-expected the Spectre to order his capture. A greater part of her knew that if kept alive, the Illusive Man was still very dangerous. In his own place the Illusive Man wanted the Council assassinated; if he could somehow arrange a coup against the Citadel, he'd do it. No doubt he'd send in his best assassin, that wiry little fucker Kai Lang, to carry it out.
Killing The Illusive Man was the best and most logical solution. Cut the head off the snake, as it were, and hope that two more didn't grow back in its place.
There was an unspoken question bubbling up in many of the gathered as they all looked to Lawson: 'what if she tries to warn him or help him?' An answer to the unvoiced query was in the look of the ship's captain: 'she wouldn't dare, not with Oriana on board.'
"You have your orders, get geared up and move out," Shepard ordered confidently. As the war room was being cleared the Spectre spoke in a hushed voice. "Garrus, see to it Lawson is armored in Alliance colors. We don't want her to be mistaken for an enemy," the words hung heavy in the air as the dark haired commander turned her attention to her flagship's 2IC. "Williams, remain," her voice was now a low, growled whisper.
The younger woman snapped to attention, not daring to open her mouth to even apologize for speaking out of turn.
"You played that as exactly as I knew you would," Shepard began. There was upward twist of her lips that could have been a snarky smirk, a sneer or a mischievous smile. It was very difficult to discern one from the other. Perhaps because of all the things the Commander could have said, Ash hadn't expected that. "If you are to a have a full command of your own, Ash, you're going to have to stop being so utterly and damned predictable."
Confusion became a permanent fixture upon the younger woman's continence. "Ma'am?"
"I can play you like a harp," the Spectre went on. She came to stand close to the other marine and leaned in so they were practically nose to nose. "I knew the question of Lawson being trusted was on everyone's mind and I knew you were going to voice it. If I had put five credits down I would have walked away with ten."
"You…what?" Ash was profoundly befuddled. She was expecting to get berated for questioning orders in front of the others, not a lecture on how she should change her demeanor. She hadn't expected to be played as she was. Used!
"Oh, the question had to be asked, I had to be seen defending Lawson and no one, not even Liara, would have blurted that question like a belligerent shotgun like you would. Oh, Wrex might have, but he isn't here. I can count on you to be a number of things. Loyal to the uniform, boastful about how being military is in your blood, mistrusting of anyone not Alliance or a Williams and a dislike for nonhumans save for those who bled with us: namely Liara, Tali, Wrex and Garrus. And I can always count on you to question my more risky decisions. You did with the rachni Queen, saving the Council during the battle on the Citadel, and putting faith in our allies.
"That's fine if you want to just be an Alliance marine, there are a lot of Alliance officers who are just as short-sighted. But if you want to be something more, Ash, something like being humanity's second Spectre. You're going to have to be a little more flexible and a lot less predictable."
Williams stared, the breath was halted in her lungs and she was so utterly speechless her brain froze.
Sam cocked her head to the side and folded her arms over her breasts. "Dismissed, Lieutenant."
Dumbly, only one word formed out of the young marine, "Ma'am." She turned a 180 military style and left the war room feeling, well... she didn't know what she was feeling to tell the truth. She was still feeling lost and perplexed when she hit the ship's stores and began getting her kit together.
Then it hit her like the preverbal ton of bricks. Humanity's second Spectre! Was Shepard placing her name forward? Surely the Alliance was looking for a second candidate, but Williams had no idea, no clue, that she might have been one of them. Was this what Shepard had been grooming her for?
The eldest Williams daughter always assumed that Commander Shepard—her skipper, was grooming her for the command track. It never occurred to her that Shepard had other ambitions in mind. Spectre! Her, Ashley Madeline Williams, who once believed she wasn't good enough for the Alliance, for anything or anyone, the second human Spectre? Hell, she thought she'd tap out at Chief, she never expected to become a Lieutenant, let alone a candidate for Spectre. But the commander had helped her achieve so much, including self worth. Now… now this!
Spectre. The word hung in a cloud of euphoria. "That's a strange smile for someone that got chewed out," Garrus said, coming up to the Lieutenant. He was already wearing his weapons pack and in full armor. "Thinking the Commander didn't bite your head off."
Williams shook her head. "No, not really." The smile remained. "Though did sort of shake her finger at me and told me not to be so predictable. But um... no … no heads bitten off."
The former C-Sec officer gave Ash a curious look. "You know I'm with you on this one, Williams, I don't think we can trust Lawson. Even if her sister is on board you can bank money on that Cerberus bitch trying something."
"I know. But we have to trust Shepard," Williams answered. "She's got something planned. I think she has this all played out and we're just going through the motions like pieces on a chess board."
"Yeah, but are we pawns or knights?" Garrus asked his mandibles twitching.
"Oh, we're power pieces alright, but I don't know right now if that is any better than the sneaky little unnoticed pawn." The marine began putting on her armor. She raised one foot and put it on a bench before the locker and started strapping on her boots.
"Hum," there was a dry laugh from the turian. "Good point. We've gone through some crazy plans with the Commander, why not another one?"
"Yep."
"I do have one question. Do you think she actually plans it all out ahead of time or just makes it up as she goes along?"
Williams paused buckling up her boot. "You know," she frowned, "I have no idea. Maybe this is what she means about being flexible."
There was a strange little cough, almost one of embarrassment, coming from Garrus that caught Ash's attention. "What?" she asked.
"Eer... nothing just um…my mind went somewhere else for a second."
"Right," another frown. Sometimes she didn't get turians at all. By this time the Alliance officer's companion wasn't looking at her, but at a perky little quarian strolling toward them. Ash could have sworn she heard Garrus say something about testing flexibility, but it was so mumbled it was difficult to tell what he said. But she could read body language and what she was reading now caused a blush to creep up on her tanned face. It wasn't made public, but everyone on the flagship team knew that Garrus and Tali were now an item. She clapped the man on the back to draw his gaze to her. "See you on the shuttle in five, Garrus."
"Five. Right, okay." He was back to watching his lover's approach, or rather, his eyes were on the very shapely swagger of lovely quarian hips.
Williams passed the younger woman and smirked. "Don't worry about your guy, Tali, I'll see to it he ducks any missiles."
"Yeah he better remember," Normandy's chief engineer scolded firmly in what could only be a lover's reproach.
Out of the comer of her eye, Williams saw Garrus reach out and tenderly caress the folds in Tali's hood before he leaned his head against the curved surface of her helmet. Ash couldn't hear what was being said, but she could guess that endearments and reassurances passed from one set of lips to another. It was the closest the new lovers could get to a kiss without being in a clean room. A part of her felt bad for that, such things she had taken for granted were almost forbidden to Tali and Garrus, simple touches of a kiss, to feel the flesh of another's warm skin pressed yours…and so many other moments of tenderness were robbed from them.
…a dislike for nonhumans save for those who bled with us.
The words spoken by her hero haunted Ash. She had always thought herself not as prejudiced as those Terra Firma jackals or that cunt Stevenson whose betrayal led to death of the Skipper's daughter. But…there was something, it lingered in the hindbrain like a bad rash: only Alliance humans could be trusted.
Williams firmly believed that the bigotry of Cerberus went too far and she had no qualms killing any of them, even Lawson, despite the fact Sam seemed to have a bit of trust in the perfectly formed woman. But Lawson was a chess piece just as everyone else on the Normandy was. And if that was true - what things, what events and what conversations, had Shepard so expertly manipulated to make that Cerberus bitch do her bidding just as Ash had in the war room?
I can play you like a harp.
More words lingered in a mockingly sagacious whisper in the human's mind.
You're going to have to be a little more flexible and a lot less predictable.
Ash shook herself. She couldn't think like the Skipper. Her mind didn't twist the way the older woman's did. Trying to navigate Sam Shepard's mind was a bit like being a tiny ant sliding down a corkscrew caught up in a cyclone. Just when you thought you grasped the flow of her way of thinking, the mind of the Spectre careened in a whole new direction. It went this way and that, bending and twisting until you were so utterly lost the only hope you had to sort it all out was to wait until she came along and guided you out.
Esoteric thinking is a distraction just before a mission, surely the Commander knows this? So why did she deliberately plant those little seeds in my mind? She wants me to do something. I know it.
But she wants me to come to the idea on my own, draw on my conclusions. Okay. Right, so something is going to happen soon and I have to be flexible in thought and what I believe in to go along with it. Or…or is she counting on me to be what I am? A marine born in the blood and loyal to the Alliance and …uncompromising?
AUH!
Dark brown eyes lit up as realization, or the inception of an idea, hit the Alliance officer like a ten ton tank. She's going undercover! She's going to make the Illusive Man think she's joining up with them to stop the Collectors. That has to be it!
Ash waited by the shuttle that was designated to Team Mako, her eyes drawn as if pulled by magnets to the powerful figure striding in the blue and white armor bearing the winged Spectre insignia. Williams' mind was flooded with a mixture of emotions from awe to wonder to irritation. Shepard was definitely playing at something.
Did she just wink at me? And what's with that smirk? I feel like a god damned mouse before a very large alley cat. I'm being played; I know it and she made sure I knew it too!
Come on, Ash, think. Even if she's going undercover she woulda' let you know. Unless...unless she has orders not to say anything but she wants me to know. Is that it? Is it something from Anderson? The Brass? Or the Council?
Nevermind, you have a mission to do. Just shut your pie-hole, Williams, and do it.
MEMEMEMEMEMEME
Operative Jacob Taylor couldn't sleep.
He kept hearing the awful screams of the poor quarian boy every time he closed his eyes. And every time he closed his eyes he saw the mutilations that the interrogator had left on the kid: the eyelids that had been cut away, the fingernails that had been ripped off by pliers, the broken hands and the lacerations.
Taylor hadn't been in the room when it was being done, in truth he had lied to himself and the boy that nothing bad was going to happen to him if Veetor complied and answered all the questions. It was all lies of course, but the kid Veetor was so out of his mind with fear from the 'monsters' that came and harvested all settlers of Freedom's Progress, he hadn't realized that a greater monster loomed in the shadows. Taylor tried to sound reassuring to the panicked young man, tried to be a friend. He thought it was going to be the whole good cop bad cop gig, not the bloody Spanish Inquisition.
It was days like that that Taylor wished he was back with the Alliance corsairs. Cerberus was doing good things, they were getting things done, that was why the former marine joined up with them. That and the fact that the Alliance and the fracking Council had hushed up that whole thing with the batarians. But what happened to that kid…yeah, that made accepting the paycheck at the end of the month hard.
Jacob was a little surprised when he first saw what the quarian looked like under the hood. The vagabond space-gypsies looked so human! Yes, there were notable differences, but they looked even more human than the asari did.
Veetor's flesh was a pale lilac with jet black hair that was cut short, he had upraised eyebrows and thin black tigers stripes that when up past the bridge of his nose into his hairline. There were also banded stripes around his neck. Quarian ears were smaller than human's and were lower down on the face closer to the jawbone. The kid's almond shaped sliver eyes were so large, so child-like and so filled with fear, the very look of them branded the image inside of Taylor's mind.
I'm sorry kid, he thought. You didn't deserve that. Lang is such a bastard…
Large, dark-skinned hands rubbed over a broad face as the hulking muscle bound form of the Cerberus agent tried to rub the nightmare from his thoughts. It wasn't working. And on top of that he felt a biotic-induced migraine coming on. He could feel the pounding inside his head growling louder. Hell, he could almost feel the floors boom with the pain ebbing ever closer.
"Fucking great," he muttered to himself as there was no one else in his quarters. The privilege of being a high-ranked operative was that he didn't have to share bunk space. Granted, his quarters were not nearly the size of Miranda Lawson's, but he wasn't The Man's personal pet either.
To be fair, Lawson got where she was on the merits of her skill and talents, not because of what was between her legs, like that dick Wilson claimed. And she was a good woman…a loyalist through and through. And she definitely deserved a better man than the large soldier that was Jacob Taylor. He knew it. So did she, which was why their fling was just that and nothing solid and definitely nothing more. It had lasted only a few weeks before Lawson grew tired of him. And yeah, to be honest with himself, he was drawn to powerful, dominant women, just so long as they weren't too powerful or too dominant. But smart was good too…when it came down to it, he did want to be the man of the house after all.
Jacob tossed the tangled mass of blankets and sheets aside and he climbed out of his rack. His thoughts were all over the place. Bad dreams and migraines did that to him, sent his mind into a jumbled mess of rambling thoughts that bled from one topic into another like the reflection of colors from a stained glass window upon a painting hung on a facing wall.
God, if that pounding would just stop.
Great, now there were klaxons blaring.
Klaxons?! What the hell?
Less than five minutes and the man was geared up and rushing the door. There were no immediate sounds of battle coming from the corridor, but it was certainly surging far ahead of him.
"Command! Taylor here. What the hell is going on?"
*…..pfstt…. Alliance sold…pstsits….STG helping…..they're going for Lazarus. Wilson saw….Spectre….pfttss….* before the transmission cut there was a terrible high pitched male scream and gunfire.
"Alliance? STG? A Spectre? Shit. Oh shit, oh shit…." Taylor's heart slammed into his breastbone. Alliance and Spectre together, that could only mean one thing to the former corsair_-_ Shepard was here. "Oh fuck."
He forced himself to remember Shepard wasn't Athena; she wasn't the goddess of war and wisdom. She was human - well, mostly human, just like him. But she was a Spectre and a biotic and she had a deep vendetta against Cerberus. She was a mamma bear with a murdered cub. And she wasn't the only mamma bear; Dr Liara T'Soni was not a woman who allowed a debt to go unpaid. To the asari's mind, Cerberus owed blood. And a lot of it.
"FUCK!" Taylor shouted out as stuck out at the bulkhead at his side with a black gauntleted fist.
All around him now were the sounds of battle; various halls had fire alarms screeching in cacophony with the warning klaxon. The corridor he was rushing in was already littered with the shells of deactivated, nearly pulverized LOKI mechs. He looked at the shell of one of them, it didn't look burned by gunfire. It was as if someone had poured vats of highly corrosive acid on it and simply allowed the droid to melt.
He tried to cycle through the comm-channels on his radio, but so far he was getting only static on the ones he'd tried. Those STG frackers moved fast. God-damned caffeinated, bug-eyed chipmunks.
There was pop and a crackle coming from his helmet. Someone else was trying to use the hardsuit's inner comm-links. Good idea, Taylor wished he thought of it. *Is anyone listening? Oh god…oh god…*
It was Wilson, the damned misogynic head medical doctor of the facility. The little weasel oozed the stench of double-dealing, however, or rather in-spite of that, he was very good at what he did which was why The Man recruited him. And why Taylor had orders to put a bullet in the damned ferret's bald head if he so much as breathed the idea of selling out to anyone else.
"Taylor here," Jacob responded, still making his way as stealthily as he could manage to where the sounds of battle were loudest. "SitRep." He slipped into a small alcove of a janitorial closet.
*It's goddamned Shepard with her freak squad!* Wilson confirmed Taylor's fears. *I don't know how many infiltrated the base. A lot. The skull-faces and space-sluts teamed up with those Alliance bastards. And they got some sort of super-weapon. Chemical. A gas of some kind. I don't know, it's green; you see it, stay the hell the way from it. It destroyed all the mechs near medical. Took out an Atlas like it was fucking cardboard. The damn thing is nothing but scrap metal. Fried the poor fucker piloting it in his own armor!*
Taylor could make out the distinct tthhat-tthatt of automatic gunfire. It sounded hollow and tinny as if Wilson was bunkered up in some sort of storage container. Which was probably more true than not, the weasel was, if anything, a damned coward.
"That must be what hit the downed mechs I've seen. What the hell kind of weapon is that?" Taylor wondered aloud. And why didn't Cerberus know about it? Who developed it? Shepard's people or something she picked up?
*You're asking me?*
The high-pitched sound of heavy pistol fire drew the agent's attention away from Wilson's predicament. The slimy rat seemed safe enough holed up where he was. "Stay where you are, I'll try and get to you. Keep radio silence until I give the word, they could trace our transmissions and jam it as well."
It was of course SOP of any infiltration team to cut radio transmissions of their target. But that wasn't the reason he wanted radio silence, the truth of the matter was Taylor simply didn't want to listen to the bastard whine anymore. He entered D-Wing's giant courtyard in a vain attempt to assess the situation. If fortune was with him some of his security people would be close. He'd have to martial them in if he had any chance to survive the attack.
The station had approximately forty hands, but the majority were scientists and support staff: only a handful had real military experiences. The math was simple; the Spectre was going to win this battle. She had three vessels docking, a fighter squadron and the Normandy. The invaders would use high-powered lasers to carve a seam in the station's hull, then apply concentrated explosives to blow open holes so each team could board.
There was a small chance, just one…if he could only get to the SR-2. Given the Spectre's reputation, he had less than a minute before the station was swarming with Shepard's people.
MEMEMEMEMEMEME
The shuttle had gone in with weapons live: the over-and-under plasma cannons mounted on her side were fully active. The LZ was going to be hot, especially when they were making their own. For a micro-second, pulsing red-orange lines connected the shuttle to the space station's observation lounge. Even the blast-proofing of the shutters that slid down over the structurally unsound windows did not detour the access of the shuttle's path. All they needed to make were micro-fractures and the weareth'bol would do the rest. Their ability to break metallic components to base elements very quickly would make breaching the structure all that much easier and faster.
The shimmering-jade, organic nano-mites spiraled into Lazarus base and began to feast like the hungry mechanical bugs that they were. It was like watching time-lapse photography of rust eating away at a tin can the way they destroyed the space station's hull. The hole was now large enough for the shuttle to dock. Team Mako flew straight into the gaping hole with the door already open and ready for the dozen soldiers to deploy.
The stations first responders were LOKI droids but the weareth'bol made swift work of destroying them. As ordered, the team stayed back as the pale jade mist crawled its way through the corridors. They were, after all, created to destroy the machine devils, not organics.
Behind the mechs stormed a six member unit of a security detail, they were now four meters behind. Both sides opened fire immediately, Williams's team dropped into crouches to create smaller targets. They had the Cerberus agents outnumber two-to-one; their k-barriers hadn't lasted long against the better equipped and better trained.
Keeping their weapons at the ready, team Mako advanced around the corner and pressed themselves against the steel walls. As soon they spotted the enemy they laid down suppressing fire, working in concert at different heights, some standing and some crouching low, pinning the enemy against the far wall with a storm of bullets so they couldn't shoot back.
One of the agents wasn't pressed tightly enough against his cover-wall as rounds peppered their positions. He screamed as high velocity rounds tore through one man's kinetic barriers and shredded his combat suit, severing limbs in less than a second. Blood gushed from his wounds; his body slumped against the floor. Before the Cerberus troops could recover, Williams ordered a volley of grenades and rockets into their shelter.
At once there was a mass explosion and the world was filled with cloying smoke and the cries of the dead, both organic and mechanical.
Williams ordered the team to advance because she knew there wasn't much time before the STG strike team hit life support and then the artificial gravity. Not that it mattered; the hardsuits had their own life support systems and maglock boots, and of course each team had their own gravity locks devices. Cerberus troops wearing their own hardsuits would have the same advantage, but the rest of the base's personnel wouldn't, and none of them had the GLs.
The floor beneath Ash trembled with an impact tremor. "Look alive! We got a stompy! Three-o'clock."
Coming around the corner was an Atlas, or stompy - the nickname given by grunts for an Atlas. The heavy mechanized suits did for war what the ROSEs did for construction and heavy freight lifting. It swiveled on its gyroscopic waist and opened fire with heavy turrets.
"Scatter!" Ash bellowed.
Dodging behind partitions - really just the exposed steel ribs of the station and its bulkheads, Team Mako scurried like a disturbed ant-nest for any available cover. The Alliance spared no expense when it came to protecting its soldiers: their body armor was top of the line and their k-barriers were the latest military prototype which had been enhanced by the Prothean finds. But it still wasn't enough to withstand a direct hit from close range with heavy weapons. And all the fancy equipment wouldn't stop a rocket from an Atlas, and their cover wasn't going to last long either.
"Ragnos, hit that damn thing with your rocket launcher," Williams snapped the order.
"On it, LT!" the marine shouted back over the din of fire. The man moved to obey. He had already launched holy hell on the Cerberus assholes with his baby. It left him with only two shots in the magazine, but it would be so worth it just to see the stompy blow into a thousand pieces.
If you are to a have a full command of your own, Ash, you're going to have to stop being so utterly and damned predictable
"BELAY that!" Williams ordered so suddenly and so sharply that the sergeant almost pulled the trigger on the heavy weapon. She thinks I'm too predictable, ehe? Then how about these apples? She switched out her Gorgon assault rifle, one of the heaviest armaments Ash was carrying, for her M-98 Widow anti-material assault rifle—one of the deadliest and most accurate sniper rifles that was especially effective against armor, but also against shields and biotic barriers. No offence to Shepard or any other biotic, but Ashley loved using it against those damn 'sparkle-fingers'. She wasn't prejudiced against biotics, but sometimes the 'spell-flingers' pissed her off with all their cyan flash. Nothing wrong with good old-fashioned soldiering and carrying a big fucking boom-stick.
"Bass, you and me, we're taking out the canopy," the lieutenant addressed the only other sniper on the team that was good as she was. Operations-Chief Mira Bass actually won the gold for Intergalactic Olympics before she enlisted about six years back.
"The canopy, ma'am?" A fair question after all, taking the Atlas out with a rocket launcher would have been easier.
"You heard me, Chief. The canopy then the pilot. I'm hijacking that mother-fucker."
There was a chorus of cheers from the rest of her squad.
"God-damn you're pulling a Shepard!" yelped Corporeal Ian Carr, grinning behind his helmet. "Whoo-hoo!" To his mind, and every other marine on Team Mako, if any officer of the flagship team pulled a Shepard it was bound to work. They had that much faith in the Spectre's crazy plans.
Ash just wanted to prove how flexible she could be. Being told by her Skipper she could be played like a harp hurt like hell. Williams hated thinking Sam believed her weak in any sort of way.
I'll show her who's so god-dammed predictable.
MEMEMEMEMEMEME
The familiar stomping clank of an approaching Atlas echoed its way toward his location. He couldn't help but feel a flood of overwhelming relief flood through him. Finally some real back up.
Kircang!- Kircang! - Kircang!
Jacob gave up his relatively safe harbor behind a makeshift barricade he had ducked behind to avoid the green gaseous cloud drifting through his base. He had witnessed first hand what it had done to several mechs, including the heavies. He had no intention of coming in contact with it.
The operative was down to one thermal clip, but at least he was juiced up enough with his biotics to try and make it to one of the escape pods. Jacob knew he would never make it to the shuttle bay of the SR-2, not with all the opposition in his way. The best course was to get into a pod. The presence of the Atlas just made the odds more favorable.
That was until the stompy swiveled around and begin to fire at him.