Summary: Feros sets things in a new perspective for Shepard. The colony, the corporation, the geth, and the discovery of an ancient life form on the former Prothean world leave Shepard scrambling. Following ExoGeni's trail to the Maroon Sea, just pushes her a little farther.
a/n: Chyrstis & LadyAmesIndy, again my thanks for your time and assistance.
15 Hellish Horticulture
/1/
On the approach to Feros, no contact could be made. An automated landing beacon was the only signal the Normandy could pick up on the planet and guided the stealthed Alliance vessel to the port. They knew anyone that looked up would see them coming, but at least they had a chance at not setting off the other visitors too soon. Initial scans detected Geth drop ships, which served to heighten everyone's awareness. Anxiety increased exponentially across the board, when Shepard's shore party was unexpectedly greeted by a shifty little man with cryptic directions to seek out Fai Dan, the colony's leader, near a downed freighter.
A warm geth welcome interrupted Shepard's attempt to interrogate the human. The ambush set them on edge, despite knowing geth were on the ground, none of her team expected them to have advanced to that point. Once the docking area was cleared, the commander stood at the retaining wall and looked at the ship. "Joker. Pressly. Depressurize the seal to the dock."
"What?" Joker barked.
"Pardon?" Pressly added, mirroring the surprise of the pilot.
"There were geth on the dock. If they have infiltrated this far, I would rather not have them on my ship, if we can avoid it. Keep the connection, but I want the Normandy able to cut and run at a moment's notice if the need arises. And put extra security on the bridge and in the bay, just in case."
There was no response. Shepard noticed the concern in the faces of her ground team as well.
"Normandy, are you still receiving?"
There was another pause. "Five-by-five, Commander," Pressly stated tightly. "We're on it."
Once the trio entered the settlement, Nyx Shepard began second guessing herself. The shape of Zhu's Hope and the vastness of the geth presence on the planet set her teeth on edge. The time it had taken to learn about this place, then the ordered stop in the Hades Gamma Cluster delayed their arrival on the former prothean world by longer than the commander would have preferred. The state of Feros disturbed her and a feeling of guilt burrowed deep in the pit of her stomach.
The team made their way through the area where the colony retreated to after the early attacks made by the geth, the population there seemed a shadow of its reported size. There could not be more than a few dozen colonists remaining of the seventy or more listed on the roles that Saren possessed. The commander also took note of the manner in which everyone seemed to hold back on speaking with them, instead directing them in a manner similar to the man who greeted the ship.
When they finally located the colony's professed leader, Fai Dan, thinks just got stranger and hairier. Another squad of geth interrupted the tense meeting with the overly calm man and an understandably less so female. Shepard, Wrex, and Alenko held them off, eventually pushing them back. The team followed the synthetics incursion path and found themselves pinned in some oddly curving room with open air access that the drop ships made prime use of to deliver reinforcements right on top of the Spectre and her squad.
"If we can't get that ship drawn off, this is going to be a very long day," Shepard called as she ducked back behind her cover. A rocket made contact with the other side of her barricade. "Well, at least the Protheans built to last," she muttered to herself.
Wrex chuckled ominously at her from his own cover a few feet ahead of her. "Yeah, it was nice of them to leave you some place to cower behind."
She was firing again, allowing him an opening to move up, which he took despite toying with her. She pulled an unshielded trooper into the air close enough to the battlemaster for him to shred the synthetic with a shotgun blast.
"Now, that's what I'm talking about, Shepard."
"It's like fishing," Kaidan injected as he brought down another platform's shields. "She reels 'em in and you net it."
Shepard laughed at the insinuation that was virtually lost on the krogan. "Three o'clock, L-T," she warned, warping a target trying to flank the other marine. The unbalanced geth was an easy target for the sentinel's sharp aim.
They all looked overhead when the engines started to whine. "Looks like we were too much for them," Wrex said with a satisfied sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a growl. He took down another geth platform with his shotgun, yelling at it. "Momma left you here all alone with me. Poor baby."
They cleared out the remaining stragglers, and checked the room. Shepard saw, or thought she saw, movement from one platform and dropped one shot from her shotgun into its flashlight head, then gave it a little kick to dare it to twitch again. "Son of a bitch," she muttered at it, as much as at the situation. She leaned against the remnants of a pillar and looked around shaking her head.
Kaidan keyed off his mic as he walked over to her. "What is it?" his eyes were sweeping the room as if he might have missed something.
She tapped her wrist. "Nothing. Just wish we'd gotten here sooner."
"It wouldn't have mattered, Shepard. The colonists said the geth have been here for quite some time."
"Yeah, but why?"
He holstered his pistol and rested his hands on his hips, eyes sweeping over the geth platform at her feet as if it might sit up and tell them. "Your guess is as good as mine. But I have a sneaking suspicion the geth aren't the only thing we have to worry about."
"I know," she said holstering her weapon. The commander crouched down and studied the geth on the ground between them. "None of the intel I got on this planet from the Alliance or from Saren's files tells me anything useful or pertinent. Even these people. They should know something. And I think they do. But they aren't helping us at all. There is something really out of whack here, besides Saren and his synthetic cronies."
His eyes were on her, but only for a moment as she looked up at him. "So, you noticed it, too?" He shifted uncomfortably. "Something here feels really off, Commander."
"We gonna kill something or sit here jabbering?" Wrex called from the doorway.
Nyx nodded at the krogan, tossing aside the little piece of geth armor she had been inspecting. Looking at the lieutenant as she stood, she replied to his insinuation. "You're right. And we need to figure it out most ricky ticki. Preferably before it bites us in the ass. Let's move!" The last two words resounded off the walls as she tapped her radio back open.
Their resumed movement elicited a gleeful grin and chuckle from Wrex who chambered another round into his shotgun. There were several things that Shepard had come to appreciate about her krogan crewmate, but the thing she loved, was the laugh-the mischievously playful sound that was mixed with just enough sinister to make just about anyone unnerved. If you were on his side, the distress was minuscule and rather served to as stimulating motivation; it might even make one a little giddy. If you were the one in his sights, however, she was sure the sound had made more than a few people cringe or worse.
Moving through the lower tunnels, Shepard's team made relatively short work of the geth encamped there as well. The appearance of a man who had been part of the colony and clearly displayed some interesting signs of psychosis or something akin to it, set them all a little on edge. Wrex displayed his typical reaction, suggesting they just shoot the guy, but Nyx disagreed. He was just another sign of what kept Shepard on edge.
Clearing of the tunnels allowed the team a chance to address the dire situation that Fai Dan described the colonists to be in, though strangely he would only consider solutions that allowed his people to remain where they were. The threesome located and restarted the water pumps, cleared out a threatening alpha varren, and even found a power cell that fit the specs Alenko got from an engineer at Zhu's Hope for a generator that was failing. Despite the growing anxiety Shepard felt, she could not help but be pleased that their excursion managed to help improve the colonists situation in the meantime, since the leader refused to allow evacuation of the people there.
/2/
Ever since Trebin, Williams caught hell for the armor change, but there had been no chance to switch it out as yet, much to the lieutenant's chagrin. Alenko had never really been conscious of quite how armor fit before and by the time they reached Feros he was again reminded of just how form fitting it could be on everyone, especially Shepard. Regardless he still considered the make of the Ursa set completely wrong for the battlefield, even if it was little more than a selfish observation. The coloring, the trim, the shape all gave the utilitarian items a sex appeal he never could have guessed they could have, and quickly found himself wishing they did not have. He knew it was not entirely the armor that distracted the hell out of him. Even from the back, especially from the back, he thought. Even as he reverted to the tactic he had chosen on Trebin and stared at the ceiling, trying to avert his eyes, he could still see it- the seams that just followed all the right curves and served to remind him that Shepard was not just a soldier but also a well-built, attractive woman beneath the guns, armor, and menacing capacity for destruction.
He swallowed at the lump in his throat, shaking his head trying to wipe the image from his mind, but it had not worked yet. He shifted, uncomfortable with his continued distraction, then suddenly decided to try another route. "What do you think is going on here, Commander? I mean you offer to get his people out of the line of fire and Fai Dan declines with some talk about opportunity for growth. And then there's the rest of them. 'I can't talk about that… Talk to Fai Dan. He's our leader.' It's off, right?"
"That's putting it lightly, Lieutenant." She said as she sped across the skyway at an almost sickening pace. Wrex was chortling as he fired at geth, and would growl lightly when Shepard rammed the ones he missed with the vehicle. "Any ideas?"
"I don't know, but I don't like this. We're walking blind into something big. I can feel it," Alenko deduced.
"Damn, did you see that Juggernaut fly? Nice hit, Shepard. Thousand credits say you can't do it again." Wrex grinned as he fired at the distant synthetic platforms.
Kaidan laughed. "I'll take that action."
"No faith. I'm gonna enjoy taking your money, boys." Shepard replied as she gunned the engine.
Their bet carried onto the Normandy and Joker roared victoriously over the radio as the commander repeated the maneuver and sent another massive geth platform launching over the Mako and to its skidding death.
"Damnit, Joker." Williams replied with a scowl.
"Hey, I have great faith in Shepard's ability to drive badly. Her ramming things with the Mako is an inevitable fact of life."
"Joker, you do remember that I have a new pistol that could still use some breaking in?" Shepard reminded
He stammered for a moment not realizing his line had still been open. "But you wouldn't shoot a man on crutches would you?"
She grinned at her companions in the Mako. "I've never seen you on crutches, Moreau."
"Hell yeah, Commander. You get him," Williams cheered from the Normandy's co-pilot's seat.
"This from the person that dressed me like I was going to Chora's Den for a job interview," the commander quipped.
"Who's laughing now?" Joker chimed.
"Cut the chatter," Alenko said authoritatively. "I'm picking something up. There must be more people out here."
"More colonists? Or ExoGeni's people? Or someone else?" Shepard asked, immediately regaining her command persona.
"Can't tell. It's rough at best, but it doesn't seem military," the lieutenant observed.
"Does it really matter?" Wrex interjected. "The geth are the priority."
Shepard cast a sidelong glance at him. "They might know something," she said first, hoping to appeal to his better nature. But intelligence did not really seem to be a high priority for the krogan. Then she disclosed her own reason. "They might need help." She turned her gaze back toward the skyway as Wrex silently picked off a group of geth blocking another gate.
/3/
Standing under the spray, Shepard closed her eyes and let the water just pour over her. The hot water seemed to be the only thing that eased the throbbing in her head.
Feros. Nothing prepared her for anything they came across there. ExoGeni experimenting on colonists and exposing them to unknown life forms, geth crawling all over the area, then there was the Thorian. Shepard did not know what it was, but there was no way she could, in good conscience, not destroy something that was infecting people's minds, enslaving. It might not have that effect on every species, but it had enthralled the people of Zhu's Hope and placed them in great risk. That was enough for her.
The look in Fai Dan's eyes, the struggle for control over his own mind, his own body. It stayed with her, even once they were back on the ship. Shepard had shot a lot of people in her career, and a fair amount of them had been in one-on-one standoff situations. More than a few times, she had witnessed people take their own lives. Despite that, the look in that man's eyes, from the first stumbling steps he took, or was forced to take, toward her to the point when his pistol pressed to his temple, the mix of terror and resolve she saw there were the likes of which she doubted she would ever see again. The struggle in his voice and the way he fought his own body. Nyx had felt herself startle again in the shower, just remembering the shot.
Then there was the asari, Shiala, an acolyte of Benezia traded for something she called the cipher. Hell, Shepard still was not even sure what it was, even though it was in her head. The commando said this cipher was the key to understanding the disjointed images of the Eden Prime Beacon, which Saren also needed to locate the conduit. The commander could not help but wonder if the turian had better luck with the brain touching thing than the human experienced.
Though it was not really a surprise to the commander, Shiala also told the squad of Saren's knowledge of Shepard's mission. The officer assumed he knew she was after him. However, it was a little surprising to learn that Arterius knew that she was aware of the conduit. Learning that he was doing everything possible to stop her was actually something the human expected.
The entire mission on Feros felt a little surreal. Concluding it with Shiala's submitting herself to the Spectre's judgment without a fight. Her offer to stay and assist the colony seemed commendable, and the commander took the asari at her word. Then there was that damn meld.
Shepard closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cool metal wall as the hot water rolled down her back. It was all still too clear in her head.
Shiala stepped toward the marine and took one of Shepard's hands. Quickly and deftly the asari removed the gauntlet and clasped their hands tightly. The asari placed her other hand on the side of Shepard's neck, just below her ear. The tone of her voice even and calm, she locked eyes with the commander. "Let go of your physical shell. Reach out and grasp the threads that bind us, one to another. Every action sends ripples across the galaxy. Every idea must touch another mind to live. Each emotion must mark another's spirit. We are all connected. Every living being united in a single, glorious existence. Open yourself to the universe..." Shiala closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment. "Embrace eternity," she added as her head rose and her eyes reopened, now completely black.
The sparking jolt had taken Nyx by surprise. Even the memory of it made Shepard dizzy enough to lean more fully against the wall as the quick swirling wave of nausea threatened again. Rolling her forehead back and forth again the cool surface, she watched streams of water pour from the ends of her hair. The little speech the asari gave sounded like something from one of her philosophy classes, everything is connected, everything touches something else; like the butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a tsunami.
The first melding with Liara had not affected the officer, practically at all. Perhaps it has more to do with the cipher, she thought as she felt her pulse seem to tighten her skull with every beat of her heart. Admittedly the melding on Feros itself had not been particularly painful, per se, it was not a comfortable sensation having something shoehorned into her brain. But when Shiala released Nyx, the officer had felt a little lightheaded and dizzy afterward.
Recalling the concern of the krogan and the lieutenant made her cringe; Shepard knew neither of them thought her choice was all that sound. Again it came down to a quick field weighing of the risk versus the payoff, and Shepard needed to know what Saren knew. In some ways, the officer was more than aware that her judgment was being tainted by desperation on this mission, part of her was hoping to regain some semblance of balance now that they had an idea where he was headed.
The Normandy remained in orbit around Feros, awaiting the arrival of Alliance relief vessels. The commander had no intention of leaving Zhu's Hope to the whims of ExoGeni or the geth, so they stayed in the area and shared as much of their supplies with the colonists as they could. Command, to say the least, was displeased with what Shepard had gleaned. The Council were peeved with the fate of the Thorian, which the turian counselor assumed was due to its threatening a human colony. Guess he missed the part in the report about the enthralled salarian. Given it was only one member of that species, but that was not the point.
Shepard doubted anyone could study it without becoming its thrall. The Thorian's mind control was not limited to humans, which made it a danger to multiple species, which is how she had worded it in her official reports. The Alliance agreed though grieved the chance to study samples. But the Council concerned themselves with her destruction of an ancient species heretofore unknown to them.
"Politics," she groaned and cut off the water.
/4/
Williams walked toward the commander's quarters and was surprised when the door opened unprompted. Then she saw her CO. "Shepard!" she called and rushed over. When she rounded the table the commander was looking up at her, kind of. The blonde leaned up and turned her face toward the other marine but Nyx's eyes were still closed
Shepard held a single finger to her lips, "Shh," she replied softly.
Ashley crouched down near the officer as Nyx relaxed again. "You doing all right there, Skipper?"
"Yep," Shepard muttered after a long pause. "Just needed a moment."
"On the floor?"
Shepard nodded slowly.
Williams watched her carefully as they spoke. "Why the floor?"
"The hum," Shepard said very quietly.
"Come again."
"The drive core. It hums. When I lay on the floor, I can feel it in my skull." Her eyes were still closed, but she lolled her head toward the chief. "And don't look at me like I'm crazy, Ash."
"I wasn't, ma'am," she replied with a smile, knowing that the thought had crossed her mind.
"Mmhmm." Shepard turned her face back to the ceiling. "I would be, so I know you are." Nyx was silent for a few breaths. "Why'd you come by, Chief?"
"Nothing important," Ashley replied. "We can talk some other time. You know. When you're not … humming."
The commander smirked and chuckled weakly. "Thanks, Chief."
Williams shook her head as she walked across the crew deck to the elevator. She had no idea what her CO was doing on the floor, but then she was neither a biotic nor had she been mind probed by two asari in the last twenty hours to put all the pieces that beacon shoved into her brain in some order. Suddenly, thinking about it that way, Williams thought there was a high likelihood she might be laying on the floor too, or, more likely, bashing her forehead into it.
Ashley tore down and cleaned the weapons the team took planet-side. Each member had already done it, but she usually did it a second time; though she left Wrex's shotgun alone. You could touch any other piece of his gear to adjust, repair, or mod it, but the one time anyone moved to do anything to that Hurricane Wrex got real quiet and extra grumbly. Williams was almost certain his eyes had even managed to go a darker more ominous shade of red, but that could just have been her imagination.
After she finished that chore she noticed her terminal blinking. The smile bloomed unbidden with the warm thought of home and her sisters. She could not help but giggle as they each jostled one another for screen time. It was almost as bad as trying to get a space on the couch for movie night. Someone always wound up pouting on the floor with popcorn in their hair, she remembered, the thought of it making her feel light and untroubled for a moment.
"Got a minute Chief?" Shepard asked quietly over her shoulder.
"Sure thing," Ashley replied with a start. Before she could turn and pause the video mail, one of her sisters made an off-the-cuff comment about lieutenant Alenko that caused Williams to blush profusely. The chief turned quickly and stopped the video before they might say anything else that could make her want to crawl under the table.
Shepard did not say anything initially, nor could the chief get a bead on her.
"Sorry about that, sometimes they run on at the mouth."
"No. Not at all. So… The lieutenant, huh?" Shepard asked with a sly smile.
Ashley shrugged it off and informed the commander that, according to the rumor mill Alenko already had his heart beset by someone. Williams was taken aback by the look that darkened the CO's eyes. Is she disappointed? No. Surely she has to know. She has to see it.
"Umm. What'd you come to see me about earlier?" Shepard asked, groping for a topic change.
Ashley had gone to see Nyx to see how she was faring with the brain poking. But somehow Gunnery Chief Williams found herself talking to the commander about her sisters and growing up in a house full of girls. The officer took it all in stride, actually seeming interested in the stories about the craziness. It was one of the things that surprised Ash most. Shepard actually knew her people, even the ones outside of the squad.
Williams watched Shepard make her way toward Wrex and wondered about the question about Alenko. Shepard sees everything, even with her eyes closed. The thought brought a chuckle into her throat. She has to see that the L-T is totally into her. Williams had noticed his attention and interest. Hell, she had even noticed a few unguarded looks that Shepard cast on Alenko, though that was a little less obvious. The commander seemed to be a little better at masking things than the lieutenant, which Williams chalked up to her field work and her experience dealing with aliens and line officers.
Then she thought for a moment about the newest rumors circulating the ship, about the commander and Dr. T'Soni. Maybe her attention is just too focused on everything else to notice. Williams certainly hated to give any weight to the next thought that popped up because she knew full well that Shepard was not oblivious.
/5/
The Normandy transferred a wealth of supplies, namely food and medical rations, over to the Zhu's Hope colony on Feros, which housed both the colonists and the survivors of the geth attack on the ExoGeni headquarters there. She had remained docked there in case the geth returned. Shepard also wanted to ensure that the Alliance reached those people first; Nyx was not willing to chance the corporation swooping in and cleaning up the site.
There was no stemming the tide of incoming requests either, it seemed. It made the commander wonder if her old team was still as busy as they had been before she left, or if the requests that kept her hopping for the previous two years just took a different route and came to her new squad instead. Regardless, the commander could not be more pleased with the man who stepped into her temporary station as executive officer. He handled the requests with an efficiency Nyx admired. Beyond that, the pair had moved beyond the need for daily briefings; Pressly merely kept a shared itinerary of sorts up-to-date.
According to executive officer, he and Liara designed it while Tali'Zorah programmed it for them. Shepard had to admit the handiness of being able to pull up the briefings and intelligence reports on any of the prioritized items on a whim was a nice touch. He added to it as needed and shifted things with ease to address the ship's needs as well as Fleet's demands. There was also the added bonus of seeing him working quite so well with all of the crew.
Trotting down the stairs from the bridge, her plan was clear. The ship's priority switched after Feros. The facility there pointed her toward the Maroon Sea with the sneaking suspicion that ExoGeni was possibly playing out a similar experiment on another group of colonists. It did not dawn on her precisely how much time she had spent locked away with reports and briefings after Feros until she let her eyes wonder the crew deck on the way back to her quarters.
Kaidan stood near the door of medical talking to Garrus, when his attention turned her way her breathing felt suddenly shallow. She continued her retreat with renewed inspiration, as that little voice reprimanded her reaction. Her interior voice had been getting even more scathing of late for allowing herself to let down her guard around him. It kept reminding her about those oaths and responsibilities she took on when she put on the uniform, and there was a part of her that wanted to completely ignore it. But she couldn't, especially now, or so she reminded herself all too often.
Her pace quickened, but she was not destined to make an escape into her cabin. While part of her reclusive behavior could be blamed on the mission, it was not the only reason she pulled back into herself and tucked away with books and work. Nyx stopped trusting herself a little, knowing she was closing in on crossing a very delicate line when it came to the staff lieutenant. Rather than face suspicion for stepping back from one particular member of the crew, she withdrew entirely, then the reason would not be him. There were even a handful of moments where she had almost convinced herself of that possibility.
"Commander!" Kaidan's footfalls followed his voice as he crossed the deck at a trot. "You looked a little peaked after the cipher thing and the meld with Liara the other day. You feeling okay?"
"Little headache. But then guess that's what I get for letting people poke around in my brain," she replied, hoping she sounded convincingly aloof.
"Did the cipher help?"
She looked away shaking her head. "I have no idea really. It still all seems a jumble of nothing certain. Just the same images of darkness and death in a new order. While it seems less random, a part of me hoped it might make the nightmares a little less vibrant."
He nodded knowingly. "No joy?"
"Not a drop," she replied, leaning her shoulder against the wall. "Guess it is just one more to add to the mix, you know?"
"Don't we all. I'm pretty sure the Thorian will pop up in mine in the future."
"Oh, don't remind me," she laughed gruffly with a wince.
Kaidan leaned against the edge of the structural wall, arms folded over his chest, wearing a distracting smile that made her wish she had sprinted for her quarters.
"That was certainly something else."
He looked at her for a long moment; Shepard, certain he sought a reply of some kind, chose not to make one.
"Have they been bad of late? The nightmares?" he asked quite casually, though his voice lowered a few steps.
"Depends."
"On?"
"I wish I knew. Some nights are fine. Others … Well, on those nights I probably couldn't sleep if I was drugged. The beacon hasn't really made it any better or worse."
With that admission she noticed the change in his face as he nodded. "Guess that's something that comes with the territory," he said more softly.
"It does seem to be a common affliction."
"Shepard!" Ashley's voice caused them both straighten, which prompted the commander to feel a little guilty.
"Yeah, Chief."
"X-O, has something for you."
"Excuse me, Lieutenant."
"Ma'am," he replied with a nod.
Shepard noticed the little trace of a smile on Williams' face as she passed the soldier. It made the commander cringe. In that instant the decision seemed completely apparent, she needed to quell whatever was happening in her head. Nyx was being too open and free with Alenko even though that was never the intention, it started like it did with any other crew member then the conversation just seemed to find its own way elsewhere. Even though she made a concerted effort to talk to all of her squad, all of the crew-get to know them, ensure they were acclimating well-she knew that her personal interest skewed things with the staff lieutenant. It gave conversations with Alenko a different bent and she allowed them to take a more personal direction.
Beyond just acting foolishly, her misstep now seemed wholly obvious to others, if Shepard read Williams' reaction correctly. Her reputation was not her concern. She could battle her way out from just about any personal take on her, and had. Wearing the uniform, earning her N7 tab, none of it mattered really when people saw her. So being labeled a flirt made little difference in her own outlook, but it was unfair of her to place him in that type of position.
Shepard was concerned that what had started as just getting to know her crewmen was taking on something else with Alenko, at least for her. She had a good crew; her squad gelled nicely and worked well together. She preferred not to put any of them at risk or lose any of them if it was in her power to do so. And if she continued along this line, Nyx felt more than certain command would step in.
By the time she reached the cockpit, Shepard finally resolved just to try and lock it down. You're a marine, you can do this, she told herself as Pressly leaned over Joker's shoulder.
"You gentlemen have something for me?" the commander asked in way of greeting.
"Emergency transmission forwarded through Command from a freighter in the vicinity. Generic, automated, no response. It's another ExoGeni facility, Commander," Pressly revealed the last detail rather stoically.
"Get us there, yesterday, Joker." Shepard set her hand on the XO's shoulder and guided him down the bridge. "Where? And what do we know?"
"Vostok System in the Maroon Sea. Not much. Alliance has no details on this place."
Shepard stopped cold. "You mean to tell me Intel has nothing on this?"
"Nothing they are giving us, ma'am."
"Son of a-." Shepard bit her tongue, remembering she was not in the field but on the bridge. With her hands pressed tightly on her hips, her mind raced. "All right. What do we know about ExoGeni?"
"Next to nothing. Interstellar company that specializes in planetary colonization and exploration. They mostly make their profit through resource rights."
"What was it that researcher on Feros said? The company's genius at repurposing everything?"
Pressly shrugged at her. "We can check their extranet site?"
The commander stared at him for a moment and when he smiled slightly, she completely lost it. When the initial shock of it was over, she nodded and agreed, "Hell yeah. I guess if that's what we've got let's do it. We can also see if there isn't some way to compel a little forthcoming out of these people."
/6/
Joker was lurking when the whispering started. There were a handful of men and women on the boat that could start the rumor mill turning and Alenko was among the prime candidates, but then so were Shepard and most of the rest of the combat squad she pieced together. When the staff lieutenant exited the medbay a few minutes later the conglomeration of enlisted females hushed and several watched him pour a cup of coffee and walk past them without any acknowledgement at all. Then the hissing of hushed tones began again.
The pilot went overlooked by them, as he did by most on the vessel. He couldn't help but chuckle at the latest set of rumors swirling about the biotic with the sweet caramel eyes, amazing hair, and an ass you could bounce a quarter off of, according to the consensus. When the topic turned toward, the types of evaluations they would personally like to put his friend through, Joker stood, scraping his chair loudly across the deck and walked off. The two yeoman that Moreau recognized from the bridge blushed furiously when he glanced over at them.
Rounding the corner, he shook his head. He tapped the console and slipped into the observation area with a laugh. "I thought this was Shepard's hideout?" Joker asked, looking around the quiet space. He could see why they both liked it. Quiet, dark, nice view, and almost no one ever seemed to remember it was there.
"With promotion, came an office. So I guess you could say I confiscated it." Kaidan's laugh was strained and the tightness in his face suggested the officer might not be hiding out just to avoid the type of display Joker just witnessed.
"Just tell me you're not sitting in her sulking about the newest rumors going around right now?" The pilot slid into the chair opposite his friend.
"What rumors?" Kaidan asked. He did not look pleased.
Joker's grin was wide and held a playful malevolence. "You really want to know?"
"Probably not, but tell me anyway."
"It seems that some of the crew think you are an azure connoisseur."
"I don't even want to know what that is, do I?" Kaidan replied, rubbing at his forehead.
Joker howled. "No. You really don't. But I'm sure you can guess if you thought hard about it."
Alenko winced.
"Suffice to say the crew seems to think you are quite… active. I mean first it was Williams, but she left you for Garrus. Then Tali-not even gonna touch the logistics on that one. And now the archaeologist. You're about to run out of eligible women, Alenko. But, damn, the stamina you must have."
Kaidan looked embarrassed and even more uncomfortable. "Why the hell would they think that? I barely talk to the woman."
"There is all that time you spend in medical. And after that heated little discussion in the Mako that boiled over into the cargo hold, you and the good doctor have tongues a-waggin'," Joker advised with a sly glance.
Kaidan just shook his head. "People really need to find better things to do with their time."
"Not much else to do on a cruising ship in your downtime, other than watch people. You know that as well as I do. You're just irked because you happen to be one of the ones people are ogling."
The staff lieutenant just stared at his hands disinterestedly.
"I think it's the hair. That has to be it. No other real reason all the females would be so attentive."
"Excuse me." The biotic glanced back up at Moreau.
"Either that or it's the eyes. Maybe the ass."
"Joker."
Jeff laughed and grinned. "Man, lighten up. I don't think you're putting the moves on Williams, Tali, or the asari."
"Thank you," Kaidan agreed, leaning forward.
"I'm fairly certain your interests lie a little closer to home. So, my money's on Shepard."
The sharp look did not go unnoticed, but Joker chose ignore it. He leaned forward, offering his explanation while his friend stared daggers at him.
"See, for the life of me, I could not figure out why she still got under your skin. Then there was that armor. Goddamn, armor is not supposed to look like that." Joker shook his head in appreciation of the memory, shaking his finger at Alenko.
"No. No, it is not," Alenko agreed with a wily little grin of his own.
"Yeah, and it broke your cool austere exterior there, man."
The return of the sharp glance made Moreau laugh while confirming his suspicions.
"I can't believe I didn't see it earlier," Joker chided. "I must be slipping."
"Joker," Kaidan cautioned.
"Come on, you know me. I'm all about discretion."
Kaidan's glare was a mixture of darkness and lightning.
"When it counts," the flight lieutenant added, leaning back in his chair smoothly.
The pilot knew his friend would likely prefer that rumor not start back up, true or not. Though it had not really died down all that much, rather it had fallen out of rotation in favor of a few more interesting ones about the commander. According to scuttlebutt, she was almost as busy as Alenko, but the rumors were no longer about the two of them undressing one another with their minds, though that one still cropped up once and a while.
"Just keep it to yourself." Alenko looked out the window. "Not that it matters anyway," he mumbled.
There it is. Joker knew, if it was true, Alenko would eventually spill. Joker knew his friend liked to play things close to the cuff. He was not big on grand gestures or putting things out there, at all, let alone too soon. But eventually Kaidan always told Jeff what was going on, though usually such revelations were piecemeal and incremental.
"I don't know. Could be worth a look."
Kaidan leaned forward and rested his forehead in his hands. "Yeah, maybe. But is a look worth my career. I lost my spot once for …"-the lieutenant looked up at the pilot-"for something that … well, for nothing. Am I willing to put my career on the line? Just to take a look?"
The pilot had no answer, and he knew Alenko did not either. Joker adjusted his hat and leaned his elbows on the table, pressing his steepled fingertips to his lips. "Guess that's the million credit question. What's it worth?"
The two of them considered the question in silence for a while. Before Joker lowered his hands and cocked an eyebrow at the biotic. "So, what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing to do. Regs are clear cut," Kaidan relented.
"For an officer, yeah. For a Spectre-"
"Shepard's Alliance," Alenko opined. "Doesn't matter what else. That comes first."
Alenko almost sounded disappointed, with a quick glance at his face, Joker was certain Kaidan was.
"Damnit," the staff lieutenant muttered as he stood. "I just can't get it out of my head."
"What?"
The eyes that made most of the females on the ship swoon were turned sharply on the pilot for a long moment. Jeff knew Alenko was trying to decide if he was going to tell Moreau anything more. And Joker was not surprised, when his friend merely said, "Nothing," and turned back to the window.
Jeff pushed himself away from the table and stood. "Well, I better get up top before Pressly sends out a search party. You know where to find me if you change your mind."
"Yep."
His knee was feeling a little tight and he hobbled just a little more than usual. As he climbed the stairs, the pilot considered the conversation with his friend. It did not go quite how he expected. Joker merely intended to make his friend laugh at the foolishness that seemed to permeate downtime on a cruising ship. The last thing he expected was to actually touch on something.
Hell. Maybe Kaidan should just take the chance.
A part of him thought Alenko needed to step up and take a shot in the dark at least once. Like most guys in the service, they both dated recreationally, usually when they were on leave or the rare shore assignment. But neither of them had been distracted by anyone of interest in too long to really admit out loud, Joker realized when he considered it. A little more than a year back, Joker had let himself get all wrapped up in this Alliance nurse with a weak spot for him, but the pity made it run cold fast. For Alenko, it had been three years since he received an ultimatum and chose his career over the little girl from Tokyo with white-picket-fence dreams.
/7/
The commander stalked across the bay and placed the weapons onto the table with a little more force than usual. Tali and Garrus followed her, doing the same, but much more gingerly. The team habitually viewed the missions through their squad mates armor systems, so they all knew what had happened on Nodacrux.
Marching to the elevator, alone Shepard made her way to the bridge. A quick and quiet chat with Pressly and the commanding officer of the Normandy was on the move again. Her footsteps were a little clumsier than usual, a little more noticeable as she approached the cockpit, but she took a small measure of comfort in the sound of movement.
"Joker," she began, eyes scanning the panels in front of the pilot. "Need you to put us back on course for Chasca."
"Aye aye."
The response he gave her said a lot about the receptiveness of her crew. Usually the Normandy's pilot was the comic relief, the quick witted, sharp tongued man with the quip in his pocket. He was also smart enough to know when Shepard would let that sort of thing slide and when the commander would pull rank. This definitely felt like one of those moments when he could wind up with a size eight boot on his throat. Petite as she might be, no one on the Normandy was stupid enough to taunt their resident caged lion when she was stalking.
"More ExoGeni?" he asked in a carefully measured tone.
"Yep."
"Still nothing more than the official public information on them?"
Shepard knew what he was trying to do. She rather appreciated the consideration, but this was not the moment. There was a sense of the overwhelming surrounding her. The visions still felt unclear and jumbled, but that did not stop them from plaguing her. Ilos, wherever the hell that was, seemed like some mythological Neverland with a dark streak tainted by the destruction and death that clung to her mind. They still did not even know what the conduit was or what it might be, or even why Saren was so hell-bent on finding it.
Then adding in things like, Feros and ExoGeni and some of the other atrocities her team had happened across it seemed that the galaxy decided to suddenly veer off on her. She knew pirates and raiders, she had even come across experiments gone astray, and people with abnormal takes how to serve your fellow sentient beings. But this… This seemed out of proportion to the usual sorts of missions she led, this was a different level of disturbing.
"No. And not surprisingly, they aren't responding to my personal requests either. I doubted they would hand over anything willingly, even if requested by a Spectre. But it is not like I have the time or the desire to kick in the front door and ruffle their feathers in person."
"Hell, if you did that I might have to dub some of the armor cam footage and post it on the extranet."
"And I might just let you," Shepard replied.
Joker's smile suggested she might not be wearing quite as dour an expression as she thought she was. "Can't the Council intervene? Send some bean counters over there to dig up what you need?"
"They could."
He read her tone. The pilot leaned back, sinking against his chair just a little. The both understood the undertone of it. The Council could get the information I need. They could send C-Sec officers into the offices to enforce a Spectre's request. But they won't. Because it's me. Because it's Saren. She did not know which of them was the biggest hang up-the defrocked former golden turian of the Council or the gung ho pint-sized human that jumped down his throat. In the end, none of that mattered.
The intercom ended her reverie. "Commander, I've got Hackett on the comm link for you."
It surprised her that the XO had been able to make that connection quite so quickly. It meant the admiral was either waiting for her report, or the commander happened to be lucky. She neither cared nor speculated which got her nearly instant access to the head of Fifth Fleet.
"Thanks, Pressly. Let me know when we hit the Matano system, Joker."
"Get some rest, Shepard," Joker replied to her poor salutation.
She made no response other than her retreating footsteps. From the reports they found on Feros, she had a sinking feeling about just what was waiting for them a system away, and it was not a trip planet side that she was looking forward to.
When she entered the comm room, Nyx went straight to the panel and keyed it up. "Good morning, Admiral."
"Little early for that Shepard."
She glanced at her wrist, shaking her head slightly; there was something about space that always made her lose track of the cycle. It had been years since Shepard ran anything akin to a shift; she had been there whenever the call came in for so long that time just slipped past her every now and again. "Sorry about that. It's been an interesting afternoon. That beacon in Vostok was an ExoGeni facility. They were experimenting on the people that signed on as colonists, sir."
Shepard tried to quell the acid in her tone, but she could still hear it. Hackett groaned; she knew that particular groan. Her report to the Alliance on Feros, like her draft to the Council, suggested investigation into the company's activities and associations. But her response from the Alliance mirrored that of the Council, there was not enough evidence to support such treatment of an interstellar company with a spotless reputation until now. While the commander waved her Spectre flag at the corporation and pushed hard to have the Citadel back her requests, she had been much less adamant with the Alliance. Spectre or not, chain of command still held on that side of the fence, there she could only make suggestions and inferences.
"What did you find?"
"The head of the research project. When I tried to take her into custody, she and the security opened fire on my team. My team came out all right. But we returned fire. Pulled everything we could off the systems, but they had wiped them pretty clean, sir. Seems to be ExoGeni's standard operating procedure whenever something goes awry."
"Why were they using a generic distress signal?"
Shepard's hands tightened behind her back. "Supposed to be a signal to their higher ups. Let them know something was wrong without going into the details. But their boss either didn't get the message or ignored it. Either way, Dr. Ross tried to buy us off. Then it went south."
"What did they have down there?"
"From the looks of it, they brought in spores from the Thorian we came across on Feros. Exposed the colonists, they were trying to domesticate the thralls. Turn them into… I don't know what they were aiming for. And if this facility is any indication, then I'm certain we'll find much of the same on Chasca. These people are playing with things they need not toy with. They are exposing colonists to dangerous alien life forms and using them for experimentation without consent."
Shepard bit her lip for a second then threw caution to the wind. "I need to know the location of their facilities," she damanded. "I need to know what planets they have sent teams to. We can't just stand here-"
"Commander."
Straightening, Nyx looked past the projected image of the head of Fifth Fleet. Honestly surprised, he let her get that far in her little diatribe, she now stood silently awaiting his response. There was no reprimand, she and Hackett worked well together. They had a history. He was a little freer with her and she with him, than most flag officers. Shepard always chalked that up to his field experience, and the fact that he had worked his way up the ranks from the bottom, literally. Mustangs always gave Shepard a longer leash, she noticed over the years.
"You're right. I just don't know what good it will do. I'll make some calls."
"Just a heads up, sir. I already asked them to play nice, officially, as a representative of the Council. So they might be a little wary."
Hackett nodded. "Noted. But I wasn't planning on calling them. Good work, Shepard."
"Thank you, sir."
It felt nice to have someone back her up. The commander's sensation of being on the outside of things again had resurfaced with the Council's responses after Feros. The Alliance was jumping her crew all over the known galaxy, while she chased Saren in a race to parts unknown, or at least long forgotten. The little reminder that there were people she could count on beyond her squad and her crew was something Shepard did not realize she needed until she got it. It would not make what was coming any easier, but there was comfort in the knowledge that she was not out there all on her own.
i Most Ricky Tick: military term/slang for immediately, linked commonly to Marines. Had a friend, retired US Marine, who always said it.