"An' I could tell it won't be long..."
Was it 'won't' or 'wouldn't'? Didn't matter, Ezmay supposed. Part of the fun since the beginning of time was fucking up the song lyrics on purpose.
"'Til he was with me, yeah, me, singin' I love rock 'n' roll. So put another dime in the jukebox, baby." Ezmay whispered to herself, edging along the beam. She paused, looked downwards, and immediately regretted it. Ten decks down. Ten long, long stories. Beneath her foot, a bit of grime slipped off, and reinforced the point that she didn't want to lose her grip and fall. The sound of grit hitting beams and iron below her echoed in the dark confines of the lift shaft. The dreadnought was immense, as she'd come to find out, and she hadn't stayed in the ventilation ducts a minute more after she'd realized the scope of the ship she was on. Unfortunately, this had meant slipping from room to room, dodging Lightener's men whilst frantically trying to get her bearings. In the end, she'd decided that wedging herself between walls might be the safer bet. And that was how she came to be perched on a rafter, ten decks up, clinging desperately to a metal beam while the elevators of the dreadnought rocketed past her ass.
"So come and take your time an' dance with me." Frankly, she could have probably belted out the old Earth song in the shaft and not worried about being heard. Whispering the words soothed her anxiety, though. She'd always had a soft spot for twentieth century rock divas, just as many of her brothers and sisters in arms during basic training had still craved pop-techno from the twenty-first. Sometimes, she liked to put on Pat Benetar or the Bangles while she got ready for shift, or prepared for a date with Garrus. Now, the echo of the music in her head kept her steady. It became like a mantra that helped her focus, as she attempted to spider-monkey her way in the general direction of the shuttle bay. Ezmay braced against the beam as a lift began to rise towards her. The upwards-traveling ones were the worst, as she'd come to find out. As it blasted past, she fought against the flare of wind and heat that threatened to blow her off her perch. She bit out a curse as she wobbled. Yep, she was completely over dancing with the elevators.
While still in the ducts, she'd realized that sooner or later, Lightener's men were going to realize she was in the ventilation system. The risk had been too great and she'd slithered out into an empty corner of a cargo bay. It would have taken her eons to wiggle and shimmy her way across the ship anyway, as she'd come to find out. Luckily, the bay had been just as deserted as the bay on the Normandy often was. Double lucky, she'd managed to stumble on a small computer terminal that had allowed her to access ship schematics. If she could make it twelve- now ten- decks down and back, she may be able to hijack a shuttle. It was about time to blow this popsicle stand. More and more, Ezmay's anxiety was growing. How much longer until the dreadnought disengaged and went to whatever dark hole it came from? Was the Normandy destroyed? At least, and this was the only thing that kept her steady and assured, Garrus was alive. Every now and again, she'd get a flare of anger, or of desperation, but he was alive.
Ezmay took a deep breath, pulling in and letting her stomach expand. It was an old trick she'd learned after Mindoir, from a psychologist with red hair, a nostril piercing, and far too bubbly an attitude. Through all the smirks, glowers, and insults, Dr. Howlett had grinned, made unnerving eye-contact, and been infuriatingly optimistic and supportive. Pull and hold. Her stomach sidled backwards under the pressure from her lungs and diaphragm, pressed on her vagus nerve, and shot relaxation through her body. Warmth spread through her core, and Ezmay opened her eyes, refocused, ready to go.
If the lifts moved any slower, she probably could have ridden the top of one to her destination. That idea went out the window though, the first time she nearly went airborne. Instead, her goal was the access ladder that ran the length of the shaft. Which was a hell of a goal, when you considered it was clear on the other side of the shaft. Add to that elevators that went flying past multiple times per minute. Until Ezmay had remembered the words to the Joan Jett song, she'd soothed her anxiety by coming up with new and exciting insults for Lightener.
Inch by inch, she made her way the circumference of the elevator shaft. Christ, she was going to need a shower when she got back.
-pause and take a second to imagine the water sluicing off his crest and down, over dappled skin and hide, and plates as velvety and pale as dollops of whipped cream on a latte..-
As appealing as the mental image was, Ezmay had to shake her head and deliberate. She blew a breath out as her fingers circled the rung of the ladder. The metal was quite possibly the most comforting thing to have happened to her all day. Aside from getting loose from Lightener. Aside from the quick pee she'd taken in the cargo bay. Okay...most comforting thing in the past hour.
The trip below went much faster once she was on the ladder. Ten, nine, eight...She counted down the decks until she made it to the very bottom.
"Well, you're a real tough cookie with a long history, for breakin' little hearts like the one in me..." Her whisper was now a ghost of a breath, as she wriggled through an access door and found herself in a tech maintenance tunnel. "Hit me with your best shot..."
"That's...unacceptable." He was dumbfounded. Completely blindsided.
" I have run the combat scenario 4,658 times, XO Vakarian. None of the plans of attack result in a success rate above a single digit percentage." EDI's cool voice informed him. Garrus felt himself reacting viscerally, stifled the urge to be sick. Good Dr. Chakwas had sewn his stomach shut and neutralized a blood clot that would have caused a pulmonary embolism, but he still felt half in pieces. Strewn and scattered all across the deck like poor Thane.
"Uh, which ones were most successful?" Garrus asked, voice thick and stupid. Even if it were a single digit percentage...Ezmay would do it for him, or one of them..
He felt the collective eyes of the crew on him as he asked.
"You can't be serious." Of course, it had to be Miranda. Few people were willing to step into the role of bitch-slapping sense into people, but it was apparently one she relished. It was a rare day that Jack agreed with her, however.
"For once, the cheerleader's right." Did Jack look...regretful? "Look, if it was any of us...I get you. Shepard'd be over there kicking wholesale ass in an instant, even if it was half a percent odds. But this... she'd be kicking wholesale ass if she thought we were even considering it."
"And that aside, we have other considerations." Tali's voice was as soft as her hand on Garrus's forearm. "The Normandy needs repairs. If we don't get out of here and start emergency repairs, we're as good as dead."
Garrus's stomach recoiled away from the thought. He knew she was okay. She had no other option, of course, other than to be okay. But still. He wasn't going to up and leave her. No way.
But the point still stood. It was almost as if old Evandus were there, straightening Garrus out. On the double, soldier!
"I..can't. I can't." His voice started to crack. A look passed between Tali, and Miranda, and Jack, then in another unnerving display of simpatico, Jack and Miranda absconded from Garrus's bedside. Only Tali remained.
"Garrus..." She started. He couldn't stand that soft, sad lilt in her voice. It was a condemnation. It was her giving up.
"I can't." He told her simply.
"We don't have any other options." The purple sheen of Tali's mask went from plum to midnight as she looked down at her hands, then back up again. "It was worse than I thought. There's only so much I can do, even with Gabby and Daniels. We're lucky we didn't lose the Normandy totally. We've got to get to dry dock."
"How bad is it?" Calmness settled in his gut, and almost against his will, he felt himself pulling in a breath as far as he could and holding it. He felt steadied, and breathed again.
Don't ask... The air in the medbay held that unspoken assessment. How long had he known Tali now? Several years. Before that, he'd been a cop and before that, a soldier. The way Tali drew breath, didn't immediately speak, the way the shine of her eyes beneath her mask sidled to the down and left. She didn't have to say anything.
"That good, huh?"
Tali's eyeshine focused on him now, and he felt like an errant child under a spotlight. Like he'd been fucking around on stage during the school recital and his parents were scowling from the second row. The Normandy was just as much Tali's baby as it was Joker's wife.
As if to punctuate the thought, the whoosh of the medbay doors opened and shut. From the corner of his eye, Garrus could tell it was Dr. Chakwas. He would have greeted her if she hadn't beat him to the punch by inserting herself into the conversation. As if she were a bad puppy that just sharted on the rug, Tali looked away.
There was something else. He wanted to rub his face in consternation, but instead he choose to go Robo-Garrus. There was always something else.
"Break to him the good news?" Only the good doctor's cool British tones could make the simple question sound like an accusation and a scolding all rolled into one.
"Gosh, I don't know if I can handle any more good news right now." He said. Blue orbs narrowed on Tali, who looked very much as if she were trying to meld with the floor panels.
"Buck up, sport. You've a hairline fracture in one of your cervical vertebrae." As she spoke, Dr. Chakwas moved to a tray of tools. Garrus's eyes flicked from the doctor's hands to her face, and back again, then back once more. "Which means I am not clearing you for the foolhardy rescue mission your wife would kill you for anyway. "
It looked suspiciously like she was readying a sedative.
"Excuse me. What?" His voice was cautious, dry.
"Call me an old bag, but EDI noticed a hairline fracture that I missed. My fault, really. The extended internship for turian anatomy was a bit out of my price range for extracurriculars. Had to make do with seminars and continuing education. That inopportune fracture means that you are staying right here." Now Dr. Chakwas raised the jet injector much like how Ezmay liked to hoist her shotgun to punctuate her sentences. It was only then that Garrus noticed Jack coming back and one of the many security officers- Royce, Garrus thought his name was, though he and Ezmay sometimes referred to the crew as the cast of thousands- striding past the windows of the medbay to the doors. In a few seconds, they'd be within. Dr. Chakwas's backup- here to enforce bed-rest or else.
You will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep. A line from an obscure comedy Ezmay liked popped into his head.
Now he felt the weight of four pairs of eyes on him. Experimentally, he rose and sat, swinging his legs over the bed. Jack flared purple. Royce took a step forward, and Dr. Chakwas's pleasant smile gave way to the scowl of a displeased nanny.
"Garrus, if I have to break your other vertebra in order to sedate you and repair you, I will do it."
Behind her, Jack flashed a toothy grin.
His eyes went to Tali. His only source of backup. She continued studiously not making eye contact, instead looking at a spot on the bulkhead over him.
"You fucking traitor." He told her.
Raw amusement rippled through the medbay. He knew when he was outnumbered. They knew it too. Although Garrus still wanted so desperately to bound off the bed and right into the shuttle, he knew they were right. And fuck if it wasn't like the universe was trying to beat that message into his skull too. He tended not to believe in coincidence. Some divine serendipity had guided his actions. Mediocrity in the academy, failure in C-Sec, signing on with a human commander in the spur of the moment, falling head over ass in love with her and hitching his wagon to her star. When the universe seems hell-bent on carrying you somewhere, it was usually best to accept it and go with the flow.
Within reason.
"Just..." He swallowed suddenly, his throat abruptly parched beyond belief. "Just promise me that we'll go get her when everything's fixed."
Dr. Chakwas closed the distance between them and had the injector against his throat before he had the chance to protest. She and Tali guided him back on to the bed as the sedative started to dull him.
"As if we'd really be able to stop you." She said. That same gentle smile was back. It soothed the worry enough that he stopped fight and let the tranquilizer take him down into oblivion.
Few things topped Ezmay's "Nope" list like fooling with electricity. Like all good grunts, she'd plowed through her trainings and classes that taught her how to do basic re-wires. In no way was she qualified to tweak and mod the Normandy like Tali did with her minions in engineering, but she could find her way around a junction box. Piggy-backing off of an outbound tightbeam and embedding a signal to the Normandy required a mix of perseverance, patience, technical know-how, and a level of masochism that Ezmay did not know she possessed.
A pop of sparks from the wires she'd spliced caught her thumb. She jumped. She stifled a small howl. Piss and bloody hell. The pain left beads of sweat on her forehead. It never failed that she'd zap herself a few times when doing jobs like this.
"When I get home, I'm using all of the hot water." She announced to no one. "All of it, so help me God."
Since she'd gotten the bright idea of sending a message out, she'd been listening to comms from a cramped hatch with walls inlaid with circuitry. The tunnel had a faint amber-honey glow that made her skin crawl a little. For the past hour, the dreadnought, which she'd come to find out was called the Daeva, had been pelting the Normandy with demands for surrender and greatly exaggerated reports of her death. Jack's responses told her that Joker was otherwise occupied- probably repairing the Normandy. Her heart had hammered nervously the first communication she'd been able to patch into. She was...reasonably sure that the Daeva had no idea she was currently stinking up one of their electronics tunnels. Only a fool would assume though.
It was narcissism to assume a rescue was coming. Sure, her crew had determination and metaphorical balls in spades, but they also had brains. The Normandy had been attacked, boarded, and in all reality, probably only had the wherewithal to limp back to the Collector base to jury-rig some repairs. The old girl needed dry dock, as did most of the crew. If Ezmay had to call the shots right now, a rescue would have been tabled until she was sure she wasn't sacrificing everyone else at the same time. And she had to assume that Garrus, Jack, Tali...hell, even the redshirts in security would make that same decision.
Ezmay smiled faintly as she tweaked the frequency setting on her omni-tool. Poor Garrus. Or maybe she should say poor crew. He'd be making the right decisions, calling the right shots, but she could just imagine those terse tones he took when he was supremely angry that he couldn't be calling the shots he really desired. Like when they'd lured Sidonis out to be sniped and she'd delayed him until Sidonis had spat out his story. Garrus could be a real asshole, but then, so could anybody.
Patching into the tightbeam didn't work quite how she'd anticipated. Ezmay blew out of a breath, up and into the hair hanging in her face. There was a reason she was a grunt. She wasn't a biotic, she wasn't an engineer, she wasn't a technical wizard. She was made to kill things, and to kill them but good. At least, that was what she kept telling herself as she played with the frequencies. What was it that Doc Howlett had called it? Cognitive restructuring. She could hear the XO of the Daeva bitching at the Normandy. She could hear Jack lipping back. She cleared her throat and attempted to key into the frequency.
No dice.
Security on the tightbeam was locked down just outside of her skill set to break things. In the cold, eerie tunnel of circuitry, Ezmay swore. The faint amber light pulsed slowly in response. The Daeva had no sympathy for her.
Options...options. What did she have at this point? Maybe spend another hour trying to put together a message that she could send via something unencrypted. Maybe hijack a shuttle and fly back home. Take someone hostage and make the crew of the Daeva release her? Stay hidden until the crew managed to search her out or gas her out? She also needed to assume that they would be able to find her via heat signature so she couldn't stay put too much longer.
Maybe disable the ship? The corner of her her mouth quirked up. Sure. She'd disable an entire dreadnought. She'd need to be Tali or Legion to be able to pull that off.
A thought came to her then. Musing, Ezmay rolled onto her hip, cocking her forearm up to key her omnitool again. She didn't need to be a savant to disable a ship, even one of this size. Another soft curse came from her. Beneath her, sweat pooled between her shoulder blades, soaking her shirt and sticking her to the glass floor of the tunnel.
If there was one thing she was good at, it was being a right royal pain in the ass. And she'd been taught how to do it with words, tactics, and ballistics. She didn't need to be EDI to put a big, damn hole in the hull. On the schematics that she'd downloaded of the Daeva, Ezmay scrolled until she found engineering. It was a hop, skip, and a jump from there to the shuttle bay. Conduits and tunnels ran the length of the ship. If she didn't waste time, a well-placed blast could bring down the reactor, hobble the ship...maybe scuttle it entirely. She blinked sweat out of her eyes, brushing some hair away impatiently, and scrutinized the distance she'd need to cover to make her escape. The Daeva was poorly designed. It was only 90 meters or so from the end of the reactor room to the shuttle bay. She pinched and zoomed on the holograph. Yeah...the circuitry tunnel ran the span of the entire distance. She could do it. She could make it.
Ezmay licked her lips. The key would be not going haywire and destroying the entire ship before she got her ass off of it. She had no intentions of dying today.
She bit the inside of her lip. Would the Normandy be outside of the blast range? She could only hope that EDI would catch anything happening on the Daeva and get the ship out of reach before anything could happen.
For a moment, Ezmay didn't think. She didn't ponder, or plan. She stretched out, laying her arms and head down on the glass of the tunnel with a thump. Emerald green eyes fixed on a circuit panel over her and for a moment, she just watched the ebb and flow of the energy in the tunnel. It was climate controlled in here, just as any nexus of electronics would be, yet the glass beneath her and all around her radiated heat. The power of the ship was oppressive all around her. She let her eyes close and just listened to the hum of the guts of the Daeva. The airflow in the tunnel brushed through her hair, moving the black strands over her lips, her nose, her eyebrows. She could smell the metal-plastic stink of wiring. For a second, she thought she could drift off to sleep like this, laying prone in a glass cradle tucked deep inside the ship. God knows, it might even do her some good to get a moment or two of shut-eye.
Runs like this, plans that were essentially a Hail Mary, foolhardy and brash...they never stopped being scary. How many times had she planned and executed something like this in the past? She never stopped being nervous. She just learned how to manage it, channel it better.
Pull and hold. Judiciously, slowly, Ezmay put pressure on her vagus nerve, and ounce by ounce, she centered and relaxed. Thinking of what-if's wasn't going to help her get the job done. It would only distract her.
So plan your contingencies and get a move on. She told herself.
When she opened her eyes, she felt calmer, more focused. This plan was good. It would work. It would work because why not?
She just...she just had to keep her mind away from her mate. If she thought of him for even a trice...thought of the Normandy being caught in the blast if she scuttled the Daeva...
Her lip trembled for a second.
Pull and hold. Calm and center. Think of five animals. Think of four colors on those animals. Think of three places you can find those animals. Think of two things those animals eat. Think of...
When she got to one, she was better. In the back of her mind, the rational part of her brain observed with interest the tearfulness and the anxiety. It's just the cumulative stress, her mind said. It's just one thing after another after another and your inhibitions are down..
"I don't give a damn about my reputation..." Ezmay said aloud, listening to the words bounce off of the glass. When in doubt, channel Joan Jett. She raised her arm again, her omnitool flaring orange. "You're living in the past, it's a new generation."
With renewed zeal, she set to her task.
When the crew of the Normandy thought of her, they most likely did not realize the totality of her reach and observation on the ship. Her consciousness was splintered, devoted to certain tasks. Just as easily she could monitor the mass effect core's temperature fluctuations, just as she could observe Mordin's cheerful timbre and vibrato as he sang to his experiments. On the crew deck, Miranda was pouring over damage reports for the seventeenth time. The operative's heart rate remained elevated, flirting with tachycardia; EDI composed a short note about the operative's anxiety and deposited it in both Mordin's and Dr. Chakwas's hand terminals even as she assisted Jeff with re-programming algorithms corrupted by the hapless technicians from the boarding party, even as she identified the most efficient methods for Engineer Daniels to patch a reactor conduit that had taken damage from shrapnel, even as she triggered the automatic feeder that would send shiny black sunflower seeds into the pellet tray of the Commander's hamster, even as she monitored the XO's vital signs while the enfeebled turian slept off the anesthetic from having his spinal column tinkered with.
There were a hundred tasks to complete on the damaged Normandy just now. The crew crawled over and through what was, for all intents and purposes, her body, and she assisted them. Her resources were unlimited; whereas a corporeal crew member might have missed the explosion that blossomed on the lower decks of the Daeva, she noticed immediately. She simultaneously registered amusement and concern in the sectors of her programming that dictated emotions and pseudo-organic reactions, and dispassionately gathered data on the location, temperature, likely components, and cause. All while she notified the crew members who had been acting as de facto leaders while the Commander was abducted and the XO was unconscious. She concurrently notified Tali'Zorah, Jack, and Miranda.
"There has been an explosion on the Daeva. Without current ship schematics for this unknown class of warships, I cannot be sure, but it would likely be in the engineering bay. My preliminary analysis of the cause is man-made, based on debris vectors."
Three separate reactions.
Miranda gaped, then dropped her datapad and moved around her desk with a snort that spoke of amusement and confusion.
Tali blinked, then notified Gabby in professional but bewildered tones that she was leaving engineering for the CIC and bridge.
Jack grinned from ear to ear. "Well, if anyone's going to take down those sons of fucks, it'd be her." She vaulted over the stool she'd been perched on, soldering wires to a circuit board for a hasty patch.
The other crew members were notified next, either by her, or by the first three privy to the information. Jeff watched the screen and readout of his terminal, the algorithms forgotten by him and handled by her.
Jack and Miranda arrived nearly at the same time. They spotted each other and maneuvered in the bridge, eyeing each other and moving deliberately like two cats trying to share territory.
"I've got fifty credits says it's Shep."
"For once, I agree with you." Miranda studiously did not make eye contact, though she did have acknowledge the tiny biotic's words.
Jeff stroked the facial hair on his chin.
"Well, duh. I mean, we didn't hit them anywhere to cause a critical failure on their reactor. Question is, what are we going to do about it?"
"What can we do?" The operative flipped a lock of hair out of her eyes. "We're still trying to keep our own reactor from going critical."
"That problem's actually solved at this point." Behind them, Tali's flanged voice sounded. She strode into the bridge, grease smudged across the top of her mask "We're not going to blow up any time soon."
Jack folded her arms, unmindful of Miranda doing the same, staring out the front window at the dreadnought. "If Garrus knew about this, he'd pop a gasket."
EDI took the collective dead-air in the bridge to mean agreement. She was still learning about nonverbal language, and all the crew currently there registered contemplation and indecision.
Miranda was the first to break the silence. "If she did this, we have to assume she has a plan." She raised a hand from where her arms were folded under her breasts, put the tip of her thumbnail between her teeth.
From behind her, Tali moved to a side terminal. The quarian's digits flew through the readout that EDI supplied her. "If I know Shepard, she does. The problem is that we can't offer an assist without potentially messing it up."
"And we have no way of knowing what that plan is until it's too late." Jeff finished for her.
"Potential core breach would cause widespread panic on the ship." EDI cut in, her emotional programming irrationally irritated with her crewmates. "It would be an excellent diversionary tactic."
"Everyone's too busy losing their shit to care about an escaped prisoner." Jack frowned. "If I were batshit crazy and didn't know what the fuck I was doing with electronics, I'd break shit until something went boom."
Tali moved forward, blinking again, following Jack's line of thought. "Shepard's terrible with electronics. She'd probably want to contact us if she's not dead and loose on the ship, but she can't program or reroute her way out of a paper bag." She turned, looking at Jack, then Jeff, then Miranda. EDI cut in.
"Sensor data indicates that multiple fires are burning in the bottom three decks."
"That ship's gonna blow." Jack's eyes went back out the window, back out to the Daeva. The others followed her gaze. "Sooner or later."
"So what do we do-?" Jeff started to ask.
If EDI had eyes, she would have blinked as information flooded her sensors.
-Below decks, a crew member was huddling in the empty shower in the men's room, crying. Gardener cursed out Ensign Royce as the younger man nearly singed the cook's hands with a plasma torch. The hamster ate the last of the sunflower seeds. Grunt brushed off his hands as he and Zaeed finished patching a breach in the hull. The automatic feeder dumped fish flakes into Shepard's tank. XO Vakarian's ribs and hands twitched as he shifted on the medbay bed. Dr. Chakwas gave Yeoman Chambers a withering glance as she patched up the young woman's cheek. EDI forwarded and connected the hail from a shuttle that just exited the Daeva's belly to the bridge.-
"Please, God, tell me someone's listening." Shepard's voice came over the comm in the bridge. Four physical jaws and one disembodied jaw dropped. "Normandy, I'm coming in hot. One of you assholes better answer me."
Hey, it's me! The shitty George R. R. Martin of Mass Effect fanfiction. Sorry for the momentary absence. Just getting my degree and writing a dissertation is all! Let's get this show back on the road, shall we?