"Oh my God--I have no idea where we are but if anyone can hear this, there are some of us still alive down here. The--"
"Captain," the pilot said, turning from her station, "there's something on our scanners, sir."
She was pretty--a petite thing that wore her hair pulled into a high bun--but in a harmless, round way that suggested she was closer to the teenage end of the spectrum than most people on board. She looked at him expectantly, over a shoulder, and the Captain approached, leaned close over her to look out of the cockpit's front window.
He narrowed his eyes. They both listened to the distress beacon's fuzzy plea again, trying to pick up some conversational hint they may have missed. They were both bleary with fatigue, given how early it was, so it was possible that they had glossed over some small but important detail. The message had repeated itself about eighteen times by now, but they kept playing it while she scanned the planet, looking for a good drop point, trying to make some sense of a situation that was a sudden slap of mystery; was that a human voice? Turian? Batarian--perhaps a trap? He couldn't tell.
The Captain turned. "Ensign, have we gotten word back yet from Command with regards to the beacon?"
The Ensign, an older woman of about forty or so, was trying her best to not nod off at her seat. She shook her head. "Not yet, Captain." He couldn't exactly blame her for her yawns; it was just coming up on twenty after three in the morning and the bridge was dark, the ship's navy blue interior giving off a sleepy atmosphere, but he would need her sharp going forward. The Captain drew himself another cup of coffee from the small, chrome-plated dispenser built against the wall of the bridge.
What a damn mess--as soon as the order had gone out from the batarian stronghold of Camala that one of their larger "servant transports" had gone missing and there was a sizable reward offered for its return, Alliance command had yanked the Captain and his crew out of bed and ordered them through the closest mass relay, only to have them drift out here, waiting on some bureaucrat to clear them to go in and do what they'd been woken up for; rescue the hostages, whom were assumed to be human. The military's whole philosophy had been "hurry up and wait" for as long as he'd been enlisted, but this was patently ridiculous, considering how immediate the need for action was. If they didn't grab the hostages, someone else would, and considering the batarian government had offered a handsome reward for the vessel's return, the interested parties would be falling fast and thick at any moment.
"Okay," the Pilot said, "I think I've got--uh... I'm picking up four other ships on our scanners, captain. Three unmarked, and one registered."
"Unmarked means mercenaries," he said, putting a hand on his face. "How did they get here so damned fast?"
At that moment, the craving for a cigarette was acute and severe, but he quickly waved it away, blaming it on stress. He hadn't smoked in years, anyway. He fished a small pill bottle out of his pocket, shook out two of the capsules, and took them down with a swig of his coffee. His head hurt already, and that wasn't a good sign.
The Pilot turned and gave him a sympathetic look, as if preemptively knowing his response to words yet unspoken. "The other ship is a... Cerberus frigate, sir."
The Captain shook his head, not looking at her.
"Check it again. And Moore," he continued, turning back to the Ensign, "just in case, send that frigate an official cease and desist warning. I want them OUT of here by the time we get back."
It was Grunt who'd heard the signal first aboard the Normandy.
He'd woken up in the middle of the night to a deep pang of hunger; his belly rumbled, complaining, though he'd eaten earlier. He got up, trudged to the door of the barren cargo bay he had declared as his territory. He opened the door, stumbling, half-asleep.
The hall was dark, lights pitched dim, with nobody milling about--just the creaks of the ship, the soft whirring of the air purification system, and a single figure departing from the elevator with a plate of something. Food. His stomach rumbled again.
Grunt stalked down the hallway and she turned to watch him, not moving from her place from in front of the elevator. He looked down at her. "Move."
"This is my deck." Jack responded, shoving a biscuit into her mouth and taking a bite. Her next words were muffled, and she made no move to cover her mouth. "I move when I fucking feel like it."
Grunt put a hand on her shoulder and shoved her out of the way. She dropped her plate, then turned back to him and half-snarled, eyes narrowed. "I should take your head off for that."
He recognized it as posturing, and approved, even though she was small and soft.
"Mind to whom you speak," Grunt reached out and hit the "up" button on the elevator's directional panel, "your arms are puny, but would make a fine necklace. Already decorated."
Jack chuffed an unamused laugh. "Funny. Far as I remember, you lost the last match we had," she said, and stalked away, facing him as she walked backwards. "Next time, that filthy Mick won't be there to save you."
That was untrue. Grunt had not lost anything: he was still breathing, watching her form retreat slowly down the hallway, even as she challenged him, pale skin glinting white under the bright lighting. And she definitely enjoyed their bouts, judging by the grimacing smiles and laughter that pealed from her when they sparred. For all her krogan sensibilities, though, she was unlike the imprints of females he'd been given; she'd flatly refused mating rights after their first tussle, and thereafter had grudgingly accepted the intervention of Tali'Zorah and even Jacob, who'd come to investigate one of their messier matches (though to his credit, it DID tear a breach in the floor grating, though the melted wall plates didn't look expensive). At least, she hadn't killed them for their interference.
She was an intriguing creature.
The elevator arrived and Grunt stepped on, once again alone with his complaining belly. He put a hand on it, and peered down; no, not indigestion. Hopefully they'd had some more of those pro-teen bars. Those were delicious.
Then, as the elevator climbed, something pricked Grunt's ears and aroused a part of him keenly invested in the track, the hunt, the part of him that made his blood sing even while it was being shed--a man, a human man, was screaming. Grunt hit the "Emergency Stop" button on the elevator, and bid it to return to the Combat Information Center, where the sounds were loudest.
"Oh my God--I have no idea where we are but if anyone can hear this, there are some of us still alive down here. The--"
Painted in the deep blues and greys of shadows on metal, the Information Center was empty, completely devoid of life, human or otherwise. Grunt sniffed the air; a small, pale arm was draped over the armrest of the pilot's chair, in the distance, ahead of him.
Grunt approached the chair from behind, heavy feet ringing on the metal floor grates, and turned it in a rough swivel to face him.
The pilot was asleep, snoring gently, head leaned back, his hat removed. Surely enough, erected from the panel before him was a spinning, blue, holographic beacon--a distress beacon--that flooded the immediate area with soft lights, filling the premature crags in Joker's sleeping face, his hair spiked up in messy disarray. Grunt made a low sound of aggravation n his throat; he didn't necessarily want to see Moreau dead, but this was much less exciting than what he was expecting.
"Oh my God--I have no idea where we are but if anyone can hear this, there are some of us still alive down here. The--" It garbled, and cut off, at that point. It waited ten seconds, and then repeated.
Grunt went to grab his Joker's shoulder, and then remembered what Shepard had told him about Moreau's weakness; Grunt cared little for breaking such a tiny sliver of a man unless it came in combat, unless it proved something. Dishonorable, even, to break one who came already broken such as this, you could say. Instead, he grabbed the back of Joker's chair, and shook it so hard that the metal anchoring it to the floor creaked.
Joker woke with a start, looked around, and visibly shrunk back from Grunt's looming countenance, crowding back in his seat until his back was pressing an indentation in the leather. Grunt wasn't glaring, but sometimes humans mistook even the most neutral of krogan expressions for grimaces or snarls. It mystified him, really, but didn't come as a surprise--humans always looked shocked and stupid to him, what with those strange white rings around their eyes and mouths that lolled open unless they made a concerted effort to keep them shut.
They locked gazes for a long, few seconds, and Grunt finally nodded his head to the distress beacon in lieu of any sort of oral communication. Joker gulped, and then grabbed the control panel. Grunt released his chair, allowing him to turn away.
"EDI, wake up Shepard," Joker said, "and please tell me this beacon hasn't been on for long."
"Five minutes and thirty seven seconds, Jeff," she replied, "sending a wake-up call now, flagged as urgent."
Grunt considered this. If it was important enough to wake the Battlemaster, she would need to be backed by her clan; they may be preparing for War. A large one, if it required Shepard's presence.
"I'll wake the turian." Grunt said.
"Y-yeah, you do that." Joker replied, and turned from Grunt, who couldn't help but grin as he saw the man's hands shake when he snatched up his head-cap from the floor.
As proud as they were, even humans' instinctive fear of those stronger than they suggested that their bodies knew their place in the natural order of things, even if their mouths denied it.
When the wake-up call sounded, Thane was already awake and alert.
He awoke with a slight start to a rapid-fire beeping from the vicinity of his jacket, slung over the back of a chair some paces in front of his bed. He pulled himself into a lean, on his side, and rubbed his eyes. His teeth were fuzzy, and his mouth tasted sour; had fallen asleep without washing up. He also realized with some belated horror that he'd forgotten to stow the plexi-tablet given to him by Jonathan, which sat on his table beside a box that he didn't recognize. He checked his time piece; three-forty-three a.m. He must have come in out of the rain, and simply fallen asleep as soon as he'd been able to take off his jacket.
It took Thane half a minute or so to find the earbud, after searching through what seemed like all of the pockets in his jacket (and there were a few). He turned the small white capsule in his fingers, checking to see if it had been tampered with. It was habit; they were quite easy to sneak explosives into, especially unguarded.
Satisfied, he turned it speaker-side in, pushed it into his aural canal, and it touched it with a fingertip, starting the relay. The string dangling from the bud, used for easy removal, laid down over his shoulder.
"Yes." His greeting was thick with sleep and slightly disoriented. There was no immediate response on the other end of the line, and he wondered if he'd let it ring so long the person initiating the call had finally given up.
Then, there was a breath in, and a jerky false-start. "A-ah... hey."
Thane would recognize that voice anywhere. It was young, not quite finished with the scratchy, atonal trill that would deepen and refine in adult years: it was his son, Kolyat.
Thane turned to check the small calendar beside his bed. It was a gift from Yeoman Chambers to "help him feel at home"; it had beautiful, full-color pictures of the various oceanic landscapes of Kahje, the Hanar homeworld on which most modern drell typically roosted. It was a sweet gesture, thoughtful, and he'd lacked the grace to deny it politely, so here it hung, useful but out of sorts with the hard, stoic edges and gleaming metal of the life support bay.
There was a small red check mark in the lower right of the box that symbolized tomorrow's date. Tomorrow was to be Thane and Kolyat's scheduled call, not today. As an afterthought, a tiny note that settled below the surface of conscious thought but didn't quite emphasize itself enough to breach that surface, Thane noticed that yesterday's box had a time written on it, an appointment that he'd missed. It was unlike him, but he'd been so tired... he was always tired, these days.
"Is there something the matter?" Thane asked, put out of sorts by the late time, and the unprecedented event of Kolyat initiating one of their dialogs. "Are you hurt?"
"Ah--nah, nah... nothing like that. I just... heard what happened," Kolyat explained, stammering defensively to fill the unexpected silence, stumbling over his words. Thane listened, closely; there was a thick layer of hesitation, distraction, Kolyat's words almost a slur.
Had he been drinking?
"With the Omega-four relay." Kolyat explained, "I know it's late, I just wanted to make sure, you know..."
The Collector station... Thane thought, looking down. Less than a week ago. That's right. It felt like months. They'd not spoken since then; Kolyat had no way to know he was even still alive.
"Of course," Thane replied, "You needn't explain. You are always welcome, any time you wish. It's good to hear your voice." He felt vaguely uncomfortable speaking to Kolyat in this state: any positive ground made could be attributed to alcohol, and any negativity could also be chalked up to alcohol's tendency to reveal the truth. He was at a disadvantage, and had decided to cut the conversation short, when Kolyat swallowed, loud.
"Yeah, I--hey, listen."
Thane listened.
"...You there?"
"Apologies." Thane was distantly aware that speaking on the phone with him was a constant fight against his typical silence; more than once he'd been hung up on, because it was assumed the call had been dropped. "Yes. Continue."
"...uh. Well, did you wanna, maybe... if Shepard will let you go, Bailey's going to let me go tomorrow. Early, you know. He's alright, sometimes."
Thane smiled a touch. It was good to hear that Kolyat and Bailey were getting on alright. "Kind of him. A special occasion?"
"Yeah..." Kolyat paused, expectantly, and when no other words came, he continued with dwindling enthusiasm, until his voice was no more than a mumble. "...it's... my birthday, tomorrow. You know what, forget it. This was a bad idea."
Thane felt a sudden, dry blast of frustration; at himself, at his lazy forgetfulness, and at his tired body for distracting him. But mostly for Kolyat--his son had to put up with so much already, and was giving him a second chance when it would be so much easier to simply cut Thane out of his life, permanently. It felt like Thane repaid him with misstep after misstep, insult after unintended insult.
"I cry your pardon, Kolyat. It's been--"
"Busy. Yeah... I know." Kolyat still sounded wounded, bitter, but was resigned rather than angry. "Been saving the galaxy. Got bigger things to worry about. I got it."
"No." Thane cut in, a trifle sterner than he intended. "A date had slipped my mind, but nothing is more important to me than you are. Do not forget that."
The line was quiet for a long, long time.
"Kolyat."
"Yeah." Kolyat said, finally, and Thane could still hear a touch of simmering resentment in his voice. "If you're not busy, then, we can... I don't know. Have a beer or something." He muttered, tone suggesting that he expected this was a stupid idea from the outset, and his fears had been confirmed.
"I would like that, very much." Thane replied. "I will request the time for tomorrow evening, and we will celebrate." He would have to bring a gift--Thane realized with a mild, flailing sense of helplessness that even if he wanted to buy something, he didn't know what Kolyat liked, was interested in. Nothing at all.
The shuttle of the automated door sounded some steps away, and Thane turned to see Garrus half-leaned in the jamb, a towel draped over his head for reasons unknown. Garrus made a loud, strident noise that was not quite a birdlike chirp and not quite a whistle between two of his front teeth to get Thane's attention.
"Shepard says we've gotta go be heroes in ten minutes. Get dressed, and I'll see you down there."
Thane paused, and Kolyat spoke up first. "We'll talk later, I guess." Then, at length, "Be careful, 'hero'."
He disconnected from the other line, leaving Thane listening to dead-air static.
Shepard was leaned over Joker's shoulder, peering out of the Normandy's front window. If the two officers had been able to see into each other's ships, they most likely would have either laughed or recoiled at the similarities in conversation and body language.
"EDI, do you have a drop point?"
"Negative. Planet Alida's atmospheric water content contains dangerously high levels of mercury, making transmissions and pin-pointing using the Normandy's technology inaccurate."
"Do we need breathing apparatuses when we drop?" Shepard asked, raising an eyebrow, though the gesture meant little-to-nothing to an AI.
"Negative. Short-term exposure yields few ill effects; however, ingestion of the planet's water is strongly discouraged."
It was about this time that Garrus approached Shepard from behind, and Thane bounded in a swift jog to catch up with him at her flank. She stood, and regarded them over her shoulder.
"Did you catch that? Known Blue Sun activity in the area, and a batarian servant transport vehicle en route to Camala was reported MIA five hours ago in this sector."
Thane's expression grew darker by degrees, but he said nothing.
Garrus cocked his head. "Are we assuming there were slaves on board?"
"Seems to be what they're reporting. The batarian government's put out a sizable reward for anyone that can locate the ship and return the contents to them. Twenty million credits, from the reports."
"The contents." Thane repeated, with a skeptical emphasis.
"Regardless of what we think of the situation now," Shepard responded, in order to note that his shift in tone had not gone unnoticed, "the survivors are our priority. The politics can come later."
"...wait. You're gonna turn them in for the bounty?" Joker asked, peering up at her. "That's cold blooded, Commander."
"You know me better than that, Joker. We're going to secure as many as possible, and take them back to Alliance space." Shepard shrugged. "Best we can do. We'll need a transport shuttle called in, possibly."
The unspoken suggestion that she was being optimistic--perhaps overly so--hung in the air, but went without comment.
"Long-range scanners report one small craft identifying itself as an Alliance reconnaissance ship approximately twenty-three minutes from our position." EDI said, suddenly, "It is requesting the Normandy vacate the area, citing Code 876 paragraph C clause two of the Alliance Rules of Engagement."
Thane furrowed his brow. "A... specific request."
"What the hell does that mean, anyway?" Garrus asked, turning to Shepard.
"It means they want us to get the hell out so they can sit in orbit and wait for clearance from Alliance command to go in." Shepard mused, thinking. "They haven't been given permission to respond to the beacon yet. They're trying to threaten us with court-marshall or worse if we don't comply."
"So, in English, they're calling 'dibs'." Garrus chided.
"Essentially, you are correct." EDI agreed, at length.
Thane blinked, all at once mildly impressed and put off.
Shepard didn't respond. "We're going in anyway. I'm not going to sacrifice survivors just so some wet-nosed NCO can grab some chest candy. EDI, tell them to screw themselves and then get us as close to that beacon as you can. We'll cover the ground on foot. Just make sure you don't drop us in the ocean."
"I love the smell of insurmountable odds in the morning," Garrus remarked, taking a deep breath in. "Just like old times."
"Captain," Ensign Moore turned, "the Cerberus frigate has blocked communications. An official message was attached."
The Captain turned. "What's the message?"
"It says 'screw yourselves'."
His face was impassive. He cleared his throat. "The name of that ship is the Normandy, isn't it?"
The Pilot tapped keys, checked her monitor. It was a solid twenty seconds or so before she turned around, as well. He met her gaze, this time.
"...aye aye, sir. I'm also showing a second reticule on Alida's surface. They're looking for a drop point, too."
The Captain swallowed, dark eyes flashing. The only thing worse than the hostages falling into the hands of mercenaries, people who didn't care that they would be selling people back into slavery, was Cerberus. Cerberus who had tested on living human beings; Cerberus who had sent units of Marines up against threshers on Akuze for "science", Cerberus who managed to snap up the corpse of the galaxy's greatest hero and brainwash her.
He was certain that was still the case. If that Cerberus frigate wasn't out of here by the time he was back, he'd order the guns turned on that damned ship, as a matter of loyalty to her. Who she was.
The Captain didn't bark--he was not a barking man. He simply raised his voice a pitch, and said: "Idle, Ronson, suit up. We're going in."
"But--" Moore started to protest, suddenly alert, and he cut her off.
"I'm not waiting for those people to be collected and given to the highest bidder while I'm in command of this ship. If brass wants my pound of flesh for this, they can take it after the hostages are safe. Serena, find us a drop point, and get us in there. Now."
Serena, unused to his sudden shift in tone--from diplomatic and expressive to stern and commanding--was visibly taken aback.
"A-aye aye, Captain Alenko." She replied, and returned to her work.
From orbit, she looked like any other vegetation-heavy planet, all blues and greens and swirling white clouds, but from the surface, Alida was beautiful, like something you may see on a postcard flocked with the words "Wish You Were Here". The drop vessel, a small ship in its own right that Garrus usually guided to the surface of planets with practice and expertise, had landed, cocked slightly, on a wedge of white-sand beach with a graceless crash. They had a minor incident when his maps and GPS systems went out, over the ocean, and he'd had to guide them by sight alone; Thane had sat ramrod straight in his seat, refusing to look down, and was unusually quiet, even for him, for the rest of the ride.
Their current location was sandwiched between a stretching oceanic horizon and a huge forest packed with towering trees, trees so immense that even from this far away, they threw an emerald green tint over parts of the beach. Shepard could see a curtain of vines hanging down between the trunks, obscuring the terrain beyond. Birds sang somewhere far away, and the air was hot, thick with the buzzing of insects and the chittering of life underfoot.
Shepard held up her omni-tool, but no directions and no advice from EDI sprang forth. She tilted her head, then her wrist, eying it distrustfully.
"Must be the mercury," Garrus observed, looking up to the sky, shielding his eyes with a hand, "guess it's knocked out all communications."
"They may have seen us on our descent." Thane pointed out, and Garrus thought on this for a long moment. "We would be wise to seek cover."
"Good idea." Garrus replied. Shepard agreed as well, wordlessly, and they began moving forward, out of the sand and into the waist-height grasses that stood between the beach and the knolls on which the forest sat. "Plus, if we have to fight them through the forest, the lack of visibility gives us an advantage, since we have fewer numbers to conceal."
Shepard stopped for a moment, narrowed her eyes to the forest before her, and slapped Garrus on the chest with the back of her hand. "Is that smoke?"
Garrus looked at her, confused, then gazed off into the distance. He fiddled with the controls on his eyepiece, squinting until she saw he had zoomed it to a satisfactory distance. "...Yeah, that's smoke. Lots of it."
"That's our 'beacon', then," Shepard said, and whatever optimism she'd had coming in seemed to drain from her, into the sand, soaking into it beneath her feet. "Come on, let's move."
They walked, formation a tight triangle with Shepard at the fore, but they encountered no enemies, no survivors, no corpses--no people. The heat was dry and nearly unbearable, and Shepard's suit was doing little to help; Garrus didn't look fazed, and she would hazard to say Thane actually seemed a touch livelier than normal, eyes wide and alert. She'd had to stop them a few times to take a drink of water, before they approached the veil on the outside of the forest.
Even from a range where Shepard couldn't see what was happening, her guts clenched and told her to run away; the smell of sizzling, burnt meat and fuel cut a swath through the gentle scents of plants and nearby seawater. The forest was beautiful and calm, painted in vibrant greens and dappled with brilliant sunlight, but this was a violent smell, one that ran through it like a vein of ugly, alien metal in otherwise gorgeous stone.
They smelled it, too. Garrus shook his head and muttered a cuss. Thane was casing the place, looking around to distract himself.
Haltingly, Shepard reached out and parted the canopy of draping of velveteen vines that dangled before them and obscured the rest of the landscape. She was met by a blast of refracted light so bright that Garrus grunted and she heard Thane utter a sudden sound of pain and stumble back a step. She looked up, looked way up, and felt both her heart and her stomach sink.
Smoke rose in giant plume from the frigate, a towering, creaking monstrosity of smashed metal plating and glass that leaned against a cluster of fallen trees like a drunkard, trying to keep its balance against something equally as unstable. The vessel had carved an unnatural thicket hundreds of feet wide, cleared of foliage and littered with broken, fallen pieces of debris. It sat in a deep trench that had been plowed into the soft earth starting some miles away, she assumed, partially from the girth of the scar it had left in its wake, lined by a shaggy canopy of crushed trees. Half of its hind end was missing, the burnt edges and screen-door gridwork of stripped hull plating glinting in the sun. The smoke was most likely rising from a crater, somewhere far, far away. This wasn't even close to being Ground Zero.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Garrus asked, disbelief in his voice.
"A hull breach. It was shot down." Thane responded.
"Let's look around before we jump to conclusions," Shepard replied, creeping forward through the brush. Twigs snapped underfoot, and Thane gave them a thoughtful frown. "Are we sure there's no engine issues that could have damaged the ship from the inside? Maybe a coupling came loose, or a bad reaction--"
Through the still, chirping air came a sharp zap, and Thane was spun by a thumping blow to his shoulder, stumbling back a heavy step and landing in a graceless kneel. He scrambled a step or two and heaved himself to the left as the shots started flying; Garrus dove to the right, and Shepard fell onto her belly between them, covering her head. She saw Thane flatten his back against a tree trunk and check his shoulder for injuries, but there was no wound. His jacket sizzled, a golden ring of burnt leather and flat, greasy fire spreading over his chest. He stripped his jacket off, threw it onto the forest floor, and stomped the fire out. He'd refused to wear armor for good reason; it severely cut down his reaction time and agility, and though they were near superhuman, those were all Thane had, in a fight. As a result his shields, projected from his omni-tool, were flimsy and could only take one or two shots to the head or torso before they'd fall. Good in Thane's line of work where a single bullet was a mistake that didn't get repeated often; extremely bad in protracted battles.
"We've got hostiles," Garrus said, peering up over the fallen trunk behind which he'd found sanctuary. His blue glass eyepiece beeped and clicked, and a spray of data began scrolling down over it. "Looks like seven or eight, all Blue Suns, all headed this way."
"Any heavies?" Shepard asked, groping her back and grabbing the barrel of her sniper rifle. The weapon unfolded as she removed it, and she released the latch holding the tripod's legs flat before setting it on the ground.
"Two." Garrus replied. "They see us. They're trying to get a bead."
Shepard nodded. "On three, then."
Thane and Garrus glanced at each other over her head, and exchanged a look of recognition. Garrus climbed to a low kneel, cradling his assault rifle against his belly. Thane raised one hand to waist-height, fingers outstretched. His lower arm flared a brilliant azure blue, the energy roiling off of his skin like a plume of flames. He leaned to the side behind the tree, like a man eavesdropping into the distance.
"One..." Shepard leaned her head down, adjusted the zoom on her scope. Faces came into focus.
"Two..." She scanned--there was a single Legionnaire, an officer. He had a mole on his cheek, under his eye. They were moving, coming towards her position. She aimed ahead of him slightly, used the mole as a bullseye. She let herself feel her heart beating against the forest floor, timed her shot between pumps.
On three, his head exploded like an overripe melon, scattering stringy chunks of gore over the heavy on his left. The mercenaries instinctively threw up arms to shield themselves, ducked their heads away, dropped to holding positions behind cover--at the moment, a shaved piece of fallen hull debris to their left. At the same moment, the two men on Shepard's flanks bolted forward, suddenly ignorant or perhaps just disregardful of the safety of cover, thumping along the forest floor like some strange breed of bounding deer, running as fast as their legs would carry them. They hurdled fallen trunks, ducked under errant tree limbs, never losing a beat with each other; Shepard watched them set to work with a satisfied smile before leaning her head down again.
That's my boys. She thought. Get some.
Garrus loped low, covering ground with long strides; Thane was off like a shot, a black whipcrack against the blindingly green backdrop. Truth be told, most were surprised the ease with which Garrus and Thane had hammered out the kinks in their respective fighting styles and adapted to each others' presence; they worked as smoothly as two men who hadn't been trained together could, and then some. Thane showed a real penchant for setting up the perfect shot with biotics or maneuvering, and Garrus--well, Garrus was a master at taking the perfect shot, if he could be so bold. Battle was an art, people said, but Garrus thought of it as more of an arrangement--and while he could tickle the ivories, Thane was turning out to be a hell of a composer.
The smaller man sped out in front of him, rearing back his glowing hand as if to slap an unknown enemy. Three of the Blue Suns were yanked from their positions, thrown high into the air; Thane spun to the side, taking cover behind a nearby tree. Garrus braced his feet and slid, sidelong, aimed his gun high and rattled off a clip's worth of ammunition. The bodies that fell to the ground were riddled with bulletholes, smoking and missing important parts.
Without so much as an exchanged look, the two men traded positions in a well-practiced position swap, Garrus weaving behind Thane to cover to reload and Thane turning to sprawl low in the brush, obscured by its dense foliage. He watched like a predator, hands on the forest floor.
"FALL BACK!" They heard one of the mercenaries yell, all of a sudden their new leader, and the new leader of a unit of three rather than seven. "They've got a biotic! FALL BA--"
A slug from a faroff gun cut short her orders, catching her dead in the center of the helmet, smashing a small spray of broken glass out from its visor like a whiff of glitter. Garrus looked back and could see Shepard crawling on elbows and knees with her rifle cradled against her chest and smoking. He wasn't exactly big on humans, paunchy and rectangular as they were, but there was no stronger aphrodisiac than seeing a woman drop an enemy from hundreds of paces. One shot, one kill. Beautiful.
Garrus turned and zoomed his eyepiece, mandibles twitching in concentration. Thane unholstered his pistol, held it at shoulder height and pointed the barrel towards the sky. He closed his eyes while he waited; Garrus assumed he was listening.
"We've got one heavy and one regular enlisted." Garrus looked down at Thane. "Hundred and twenty feet." The drell opened his eyes, and they shared a meaningful look. "You know what we have to do."
Thane's eyes flashed with grim intensity, and he raised a fist. Garrus joined him; they shook them three times, as if pounding down an imaginary nail with the underside, and Garrus came out with his hand flat, fingers pointed. Thane's hand came down and remained a tightly-balled fist; he observed this and cussed, quietly.
Yes!
"Ha ha," Garrus said, baring a wide grin, and Thane threw himself prone as a missile, whistling and leaving a rude trail of grey smoke, slammed into the other side of Garrus' tree. It shook down a rain of insects upon the hard metal and chitin of Garrus' carapace, the canopy above him and trunk on which he leaned wobbling, suddenly unstable.
"I can become better at rock-paper-scissors," Thane warned him, "you cannot become better at being a coward."
"You're just mad because I always win."
Thane turned wordlessly from him and dashed forward, firing as he went. When Shepard approached from behind, joined him in the cover of his tree and began to talk, Garrus raised a finger to his mouth, ushering her silence. A scream rang out in the distance, and she blinked.
"Shh." Garrus said, zooming in again to catch the action in detail. "This is the good part."
The bridge was silent. With the Captain gone, there was nobody skulking about, peering over shoulders. Serena hadn't been a pilot long--only about six months, in fact--but she was the best in her class, and had been incredibly proud to be selected for this mission. Her family had been proud, too; her mom cried, made her swear she'd be careful. Her dad had simply clapped her on the shoulder, with a stoic smile and misty eyes. An actual honest-to-God pilot... this was so cool.
She'd read the dossiers, too, did her homework; the Captain was moody, sure, prone to the stoic grimness only men who weren't actually grim could attain in stressful situations. Not everybody on board was loyal, yet, either, considering his relative youth, but he was sincere, no bones about that. Plus, he had all the time in the world to earn their loyalty. This was a two-year tour, anyway.
Plus, he was cute. Like... really really cute. She thought he was Italian. Or maybe Iranian... either way, whatever he was, it was fine with her. She'd heard he didn't exactly mind fraternization rules, but that might be pushing it, at least for right now.
"Any word on those orders?" She called over her shoulder, pulling the dual-pronged steering stick to the right, circling for yet another go round. The Iwojima was a beauty of a ship, smooth and delicate, and she cut like a knife through butter, purred. No kickback at all. These drop-and-go missions were by and large just that; let loose the hounds of war and then drift around for an hour or so, making idle chatter with a woman old enough to be your mom.
There really wasn't any reason to worry. Alenko had it handled. He was a war hero, for crying out loud.
"Not you too," Moore replied, slumping forward with her hands on her forehead.
"That's a no, huh?" Serena giggled, "I guess it'll come in its own time."
Something caught her eye, dragged her away from the conversation. Her laughter ended abruptly, and her eyes scanned the holographic tracking panel in tense confusion.
"What's up?" The Ensign asked, slinking away from her station with her coffee in hand. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Maybe I have..." Serena said, trailing off. "One of the unmarked ships just disappeared. There were three, now we've got two."
The Ensign took a sip of coffee. "Maybe they got scared. Bolted. Competition's stiff."
Serena couldn't coax her stomach into unknotting, the prickle on the back of her neck to smooth down. "I don't think--"
It reappeared, but not on her scanner. Out of the picture window before them, it suddenly appeared, melting out of the inky blackness before them over the visible pie-slice of Alida's picturesque horizon; a ship, long and fishlike, gleaming blue and silver.
"Oh, shit!" Moore yelled; Serena looked up, a beat too late, and jerked her controls to the side to try and avoid the column of blazing orange that tore the Iwojima's left flank open, separating its fin from its body in a shattered cloud of debris and fire.
In space, there were multiple ways to die. Most are unpleasant, a good number frightening, but all of them lonely. Only the fortunate few are granted a painless, immediate death; Serena was convinced, as the air was sucked from her lungs and the vacuum of a breached internal pressure system took Moore with it, that she would simply suffocate, perhaps be ripped apart between the feuding forces of her seatbelt and the savage pressure trying to pull her out, into the black.
Then she saw the orange light fire up once again from a undermounted cannon, and her whole world was shades of yellow and red, until she ceased to have a world at all.
The Iwojima, now headless, canted forward and drifted in a lazy, dejected arc towards Alida's atmosphere, before being pulled into it by the unseen hands of gravity.
They stood, looking up at the craft, and Thane felt particularly naked without his jacket. What he wore under it amounted to a leather tank top that buckled together at the stomach, and little insects were buzzing around his head, landing on his shoulders, crawling on his arms.
He liked that jacket. It was his favorite, and they'd burned it. Troublesome.
"She definitely looks blown apart," Garrus said, pacing, tapping the place lips should be with a finger. "The hull curves in, not out, and if an internal explosion had gotten her, it would have melted the grating first, not the plates on the outside. Looks like some kind of carnifex cannon, too, maybe with a pulse booster... the curling's too tight to be anything but."
Garrus was apparently under the impression they knew what he was talking about. Thane was under the impression that Garrus was more astute than he'd given him credit for, and would perhaps have to be more watchful.
He used to be a policeman, Thane thought, and was surprised that C-Sec had managed to recruit someone who had actually known what they were doing--unsurprisingly, they'd lost him as well. Thane didn't consider himself a bad man nor was he naive enough to assume Garrus completely good man, but it was... unusual that they'd come from such violently different ends of the commonly accepted spectrum of intention to meet somewhere in the middle, dabbling in the same shades of gray. What a strange place universe was.
"This doesn't make any sense." Shepard had her helmet off and was mopping her brow with the back of a hand. There was no material to absorb the sweat, so it rolled down the hard casing of her glove. "They got here before we did, meaning either they did the shooting or shot the people that did the shooting, and then came down shortly after."
"But what would Blue Suns do with batarian slaves?" Garrus asked, with a shrug. "Sell them to a broker?"
"Sell them to someone," She agreed, at a loss otherwise.
"Unlikely," Thane interjected, "batarians mark their slaves. Partially to destroy morale, prevent escape attempts. Acquiring a marked batarian slave is tantamount to theft of personal property, something not tolerated in their society. Nobody would buy them but other batarians."
Garrus gave Thane a look that he recognized as assessment. Unasked questions were dancing in his eyes, his thoughtful posture. "And the government has already offered to 'buy' them back. You sound like you... know a bit more about this than we do."
Thane then felt Shepard's eyes on him, briefly. He shrugged, a gesture that was more neutral than he felt. "I've some experience."
Garrus nodded, but didn't seem altogether satisfied. He let it drop regardless.
"Is it standard procedure to offer a reward for a downed batarian slave ship?" Shepard asked, leaning with a hand on her hip. She was ruffling the strange shock of dark hair on her head, trying to shake bugs out of it as they landed. "They could be sitting on the slaves and waiting for a bigger reward."
"It would explain why they're still combing the wreckage." Garrus remarked. "More slaves, more money."
"The batarian government goes to great lengths to conceal its connection to the slave rings." Thane brushed a chittering thing with many eyes off of his shoulder, and swatted at it when it began to buzz around his head. "The institution of slavery is not looked down upon, but criminality in its execution would suggest the galaxy's distaste for it justified."
There was a stretch of quiet, which broke with a deep chuckle.
"Is that a 'no', Master Yoda?" Garrus asked, and Shepard looked at him with a comical start of surprise. He removed the canteen lashed to his hip, buckled down to prevent noise. "What?"
Thane smiled, but didn't laugh. "Forgive me... brevity is not my strong suit. No, I don't remember this happening before."
"Talking's fine by me." Garrus replied, taking a drink from his canteen as he tilted his head to look up at the fallen vessel. His mouth closed around the neck of the bottle and Thane could see his teeth, long and daggerlike, through the gaps in his plating on the side of his mouth; a little water dribbled out and he wiped it away, screwed the cap back on. "Better than being alone with this one outside the Normandy. You practically have to slap her to get her to make any noise."
This time, Thane and Shepard did exchange a look, behind Garrus' back. Shepard's look was a glare, but a playful one, suggesting repercussions might be in order were he to say what they were both thinking.
He didn't. "Silence is golden, as they say." She gave him a thumbs up, apparently satisfied with his discretionary neutrality.
Thane shook his head. What a silly situation.
"Yeah, but sho--ahh--"
Garrus didn't have to point out the object prompting his gape-mouthed reaction; they both looked up when he started stammering, and saw it. In the lower layers of Alida's atmosphere, among the hazy blue slice of sky visible through the everpresent tree canopy, there came a tumbling midday shooting star, plummeting towards the surface of the planet, parting the clouds into whiffs that looked like white smoke. Tiny, circular orange-and-yellow explosions bloomed along the sides of the star, and it spun, nose down, pirouetting towards the ground.
"A vessel?" Thane asked, voice laced with disbelief. He jogged to Garrus' side, and shielded his brow with a hand to get a better look.
"I want a reading on that ship right now," Shepard barked, previous lightheartedness forgotten; Garrus' hand flew to the bridge of his eyepiece, dialing the magnification up. She joined Thane at his side and they all watched, helpless and gawking, as it spun. It left a comet trail of cloudstuff in its wake, surrounded by a halo of what looked like light, but Thane knew was pressure. It wasn't the right pulse to be light.
"It says, I-W-O-J-I-M-A and a number I can't make out." Garrus mumbled, frustrated.
"The SSV Iwojima," Shepard said, voice thin and dreamlike. "An Alliance ship, alright... fuck."
Thane thought for a brief moment on the gravity of this, watching as the frigate tumbled past the treeline and out of sight. Garrus was the first to speak.
"Wait--what if it... is this thing safe? How far are we from the--"
A strangled, broken sound drew his attention to Shepard; he saw her eyes go saucer-wide, and she started, took a step back.
As if in response, in the distance came a great boom, a sound so loud and so deep that the only thing he'd had to compare it to were the explosions of early childhood, bombs and mines from neighboring countries dropped on homes and buildings so close that you only realized you'd survived it after the ringing filled your ears and people started screaming.
The ground shook back and forth, not a tremble but an upheaval. The trees around them creaked with protest, bending at unnatural angles, blocking the sun, shaking leaves and weakened limbs onto them in a rain. Thane's feet dropped wide to try to keep his balance but were quaked out from underneath him, sending him crashing to the forest floor. He heard Garrus yell a cuss after being dropped onto his side.
There was a great splash, the sound of a hundred angry waterfalls, and then a deep rumbling--under his feet, around his head. Thane crawled to a stand and his spine ran cold with a sudden, extended drag of mortal fear. They froze in place, staring at each other with wide eyes, parted lips; the sound persisted, built, soared. It was a great and loud thrashing noise, the angry mother of the hardest rain he had ever felt in his life.
"We need to get away from this thing," Shepard yelled over the mounting noise, reaching down and hauling Garrus to his feet, "both of you, out of here, move!"
The ship before them creaked, the metallic groaning of hundreds of tons of metal canting, leaning to the side, breaking a groove in the soil that held it in place, breaking the spines of trees so thick and old they may as well have been buildings in their own right.
"I said move!!" Shepard hollered, turning and giving Thane a great shove that just about sent him to the ground again. "GO GO GO GO!!"
Garrus took off like a shot before them, ducking through the trees and leaping over a stump, disappearing into the green. Thane followed, running as fast as his feet would carry him, and he heard Shepard at his heel, her boots thumping hard against the soft ground. She was nowhere near as fast as either of them--Garrus had a head start and much longer limbs, and drell like Thane were built for ground speed; their legs were overdeveloped compared to humans, a fact he'd abused many times in the past, while chasing or being chased.
She started falling behind. The sound of her footfalls faded into the brush and Thane looked back, slowed by inches. She saw this and waved him forward fiercely, telling him to go, dammit, go.
It wouldn't be enough to save him. There was a monumental crash, and the fierce, earthshaking din of so much water that it caused another mini-earthquake, knocking him forward, sprawling onto his knees and elbows, drawing blood.
He had only time enough to look back over a shoulder and thinkthat, perhaps, his deeds were considerable enough that he did not need to be sent to the sea--Kalahira herself was coming to take him. Coming to take all of them.
He saw the water swallow Shepard in a frothy wall of white. She threw her arms up as the mercenaries had, the body's instinctive defense mechanism, no matter how outmatched or ineffectual.
The water hit him like a truck, picked him up, took his breath from him, whipped him forward. Thane felt himself slam into a tree, felt the give of bones he didn't know how to identify under the sudden crush of pain and shock, and then everything was black.