"Hold on for a second, I have to do something real fast." Tom said.
"What are you doing?" Shepard asked, but that question was answered when Tom took his helmet off.
"Geez that thing stinks, I don't I would've lasted much longer without having to puke."
"Enough delay, let's keep moving."
The hallway Shepard and Co. entered some students behind some sort of barrier with Cerberus troops attempting to coax them out.
"That's an impressive barrier Octavia, our files say you've been working on shield technology, Cerberus could use you."
"Back off, ass I'm not joining a terrorist group, this shield is cyclonic barrier technology, it'll hold off your guns for hours."
Shepard nodded "Sneak up behind him with your cloak, I'll snipe the guy you don't get." He whispered. Tom did exactly that, he cloaked, snuck up behind on of the Cerberus troopers and stabbed him in the face, the other guy reacted quickly, but not quickly enough as he got a bullet to the face before he could try anything.
"Who are you people? I didn't trust the last group and I have no reason to trust you." Shepard walked out from behind cover.
"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my squad of Alliance Soldiers that are going to get you out of here."
"You guys look legitimate, but I still don't think I can trust you." Octavia said reluctantly.
"It's not about trust, it's about getting everyone out of here safely, I'm not going to put up with this, Tom deactivated the shield."
Tom tapped a few buttons on his Omni-tool and the barrier deactivated safely.
"Nice barrier kid, just try to make it a little more resiliant to hacking attempts next time, Kahlee Sanders needs you guys." Tom complimented.
"Uhh, thanks I guess?"
"Kahlee needs you two, get to the shuttle bay as soon as you can." Both of them ran down the hallway.
"Some of this tech is very advanced, these students are really smart." Tom said as he scanned the device that the students were using.
"Anything useful?"
"The device itself shows some interesting things, but the schematics that have been downloaded onto it are extremely useful, I just don't understand why they put the schematics of the device in it's memory, but I'll take it anyway, it could definitely help us later."
"Good idea, it might be useful later." Shepard said.
"I got it, let's keep moving."
Down two more hallways, and through two more doors and they finally located the shuttle bay, but they also found a Cerberus engineer that was unaware of the squad's presence. His head didn't last long after taking three high velocity sniper rifle rounds to the face.
"Now the bigger question is who gets to ride in this thing?" Garrus asked.
"I'm more handy with a gun then a mech so I don't think I'll take it." Shepard said.
"I can't use my biotics while controlling something else, I'd rather not." Kaiden said.
Garrus looked at Tom, and Tom looked at him.
"I'll flip a coin gentlemen, we have to solve this like civilized people." Shepard said as he pulled a quarter out of his pocket.
"Why do you have a quarter on you? Those things are centuries old!" Tom said, he was surprised there still were coins like that in existence in this day and age.
"It was a family tradition to pass this on, my mom passed this on to me."
"How does this work exactly? I still have no idea how this is going to work." Garrus said.
"Garrus you choose a side, heads or tails and then I flip this coin, the side that's facing up is the side that wins, and the person who chose that side gets control the atlas." Shepard explained patiently.
"That seems fair enough, I choose tails." Garrus said.
"Heads all the way."
Suffice to say, Tom was going to have lots of fun today.
Shredding Cerberus troops with huge guns was funner then Tom would've liked to admit. He didn't enjoy killing people, he only did because he had to. He didn't mark up his kills like it was a high score or brag to his squad mates about how good of a shot he was, he did it all because it was necessary. But seriously though, blasting people away with huge guns was fun.
It was easy to protect the students as they ran to the shuttle bay since the Atlas could take a huge amount of punishment and dish out twice the amount it had taken. And since there were little Centurions on the battlefield most of the Cerberus soldiers weren't coordinated at all, they just threw their bodies into the fray where they were shot immediately or picked off by a sniper.
After a while however Tom realized there was only one student was left, and she was a little late since she was the only person not in the shuttle bay beside himself. The Atlas was taking a lot of health so he decided to abandon it to provide a bit more mobile covering fire.
"Rodriguez! Get over here! I'll cover you!" Tom shouted before spraying an Assault trooper with his Mattock.
The girl managed to make it all the way to Tom without taking a single shot, she ducked behind cover just as her position was peppered with bullets.
"Get behind me, I'll cover you!" Tom shouted before rolling out of cover and making his last stand as he shot several troopers.
As soon as she got safely to the door of the shuttle bay Tom slowly backed up while covering himself. He made it to the entrance of the shuttle bay without losing his shields where he jammed the door to stall Cerberus.
"Tom! Get the hell over here!" Shepard shouted and Tom had no interest in disobeying his orders.
He ran as fast as he could and jumped onto the shuttle just as Cerberus managed to open the door he had jammed.
"We're clear, get us out of here!" Shepard shouted.
They were gone before Cerberus could fire another shot.
"That was too close." Kaiden said quietly.
"Try not to risk your life again Tom, I'm not losing another crew member, not after Virmire." Shepard said the last part of that sentence solemnly, like he was regretting something.
Jack didn't seem to catch onto the mood however as she was talking about something joyful as soon as she entered the passenger part of the Cerberus shuttle after checking in with Kahlee Sanders who was piloting said shuttle.
"You guys kicked ass out there! When we get to the Citadel your all getting inked, my treat." She paused for a second. "What do you guys want? An ascension logo? A biotic fist? Maybe a unicorn for Rodriquez?"
"Screw you ma'm!" Rodriquez said, although her tone was playful.
"Is anyone hurt?" Shepard asked.
"We're all good Shepard, although I'm not surprised you care you pus- hero."
Shepard smirked. "So, you stopped swearing as much huh?"
"We asked Jack to restrain herself when it came to teaching to ensure a healthy teaching environment." Kahlee Sanders said over in the pilot seat.
"So a swear jar huh? I'm pretty sure if we emptied that we'd be able to get another Normandy, and that's from your swearing on the school alone, we're probably be able to buy the rights to a planet with all of your swearing on the Normandy SR-2." Shepard was grinning like a manic now.
Jack looked around. "Cover your ears kids."
"Hey Shepard, fu-
The next paragraph was removed from the story due to excessive swearing from Jack.
...
Now Tom knew why Bioware had cut that scene from the game, there was so much swearing that they probably would've been able to buy another Normandy if Jack actually had a swear jar. Fortunately Jack said that was 'just for fun' since she hadn't swore like that since the last time she was on the Normandy. She needed to get it out of her system.
These were the thoughts going through his mind as he stood for a security scan from the two Privates that were still camping the door, which still made no sense because there was nothing to steal in the war room.
For now he could sit down at a terminal and browse the Extranet for anything cool, maybe he could pirate a few games if he really felt like doing something other then saving the Galaxy, but there was something he had to do first.
To: Commander Shepard
From: Tom Fisher
Hey Shepard if you want to chat with me a bit I'll be in the war room, I've moved there since EDI took the co-pilot seat but you probably already know that, I was wondering if you wanted to talk about Earth since that's been a bit of touchy subject for me and I'd appreciate it if you'd talk to me about it.
...
"Hey Tom, you wanted to to talk?" Shepard asked.
"Yes, just hold that thought for a second...there we go! Okay, can you tell what's happening to Earth? I never got to see it before the reapers hit and I haven't seen any statues reports from anyone anywhere."
Shepard sighed. "I'm not going to lie to you, it wasn't good, they decimated our fleet before getting to Earth and once they got to Earth it was a slaughter, they've probably killed billions of humans by now, Earth is barely holding up any resistance at all."
"After seeing the situation on Palaven I've been wondering how Earth has been doing, it doesn't look good."
"The devastation you see on Palaven? It's double that for Earth, to be honest it makes it hard to think about how we could ever win this war."
"Don't lose hope Shepard, you've defeat Saren and Sovereign, you died and then came back to crush the collectors, if anyone can win this war it's you Shepard, you can't lose faith now."
"Thanks, it's good to know that even when I'm facing hell itself, I've got people like you covering my back."
"You can count on me Shepard, there's no doubt about that."
"Thanks Tom, now I've got diplomats to deal with and I can't talk any longer, and also there's one other thing I have to tell you about."
"What is it?"
"The crew is having a gambling match down in the crew deck, you were invited to join, I just thought I'd pass along the message since I don't gamble unless I'm celebrating something."
"That actually sounds fun, I'll be down stairs then."
...
"Here comes trouble." Garrus said as Tom walked into the lounge.
"Hey guys! I'm here for the gambling match Shepard said you guys had going on."
"About time you got down here, now we're just waiting on Ken, and Chakwas until the game starts, how many credits are you going to start with then?"
"I'd say about 250 credits, is that too high? I feel like that's a bit high."
"Well James here decided to throw in 300 credits, he seems a bit confident." Gabby said.
"Hey, I know I'm going to win, I may as well throw a lot of credits in to get a good payout."
"You seem a bit cocky James, let see if you can walk the walk after talking the talk." Kaiden said.
"I hope I didn't miss anything, I was just ensuring that Mordin had all the equipment he needed." Dr. Chakwas said as she entered the room.
"Well, James here thinks this game is already in the bag, so I have no idea if this some pre-game psychological warefare or something."
...
Well, James WAS winning, until he and Garrus got called for a mission, which took them both out of the game. After that Chakwas took the lead with around 500 credits with Tom in third place at 325 credits, the game ended there because no one wanted to bet anything because Chakwas was winning almost every round and no one would even come close to stopping her.
"I never thought you would have a really good Poker face Chakwas, and you always seem to know when to bet and when to fold." Tom stated.
"It was just a skill I was naturally good at, no one expects me to be good at gambling which is why I usually win, everyone underestimates me, and having a good Poker face helps."
"Well you certainly surprised me, see you later."
Tom decided to get back on his console for one or two hours and then hit the sack since he was somewhat tired and he needed to work off the rest of his energy.
He sat down at his terminal after a long elevator ride up with two other people. He was about to 'work' by browsing the extranet since he had nothing to do but he actually got a call from Kaiden, which was something he was not expecting.
"Oh uh.. Hello Kaiden."
"Hello Tom, how are you doing?"
"Just fine, you already know how our little gambling game went."
He Chuckled "Chakwas packs a punch doesn't she? The only reason I managed to stay in second place after Garrus and James left is because I've played Chakwas before and I was expecting it."
"Welp, anyway is there something you want to talk about? Besides the rubbing in of you finishing in a higher place then me?"
"I was just curious about your past, out of all the people on the Normandy I know, you're the most enigmatic."
"I suppose it's fair enough, I was recruited by Shepard for the suicide mission which isn't actually that dangerous since everyone survived the mission, I was born on Earth, I was an orphan but I worked my way up to having a respectful family, until they all died from some blue suns who decided they were cool I...I still miss them to this day." Faking tears was somewhat hard but Tom knew how to do it, he was a good actor after all.
"I'm sorry if I dug up some bad memories for you to relive, that most have been painful." Kaiden said sympathetically.
"I just need to sleep this off, I'm sorry it's just that memory is super painful, I should go..."
"Okay."
Tom hated this, he hated lying to the crew like this, he hated it, the secrets were tearing apart mentally inside, and it disgusted him, honestly wasn't what he always liked to do but this was a new low, he had to sleep off the guilt because in reality that's what it really was that was hurting. He slept a very guilty man that night cycle.
...
"Tom can you hear me? You need to wake up."
"Ugh, what is it?" The figure came into focus, it was Dr. Chakwas.
"Shepard needs you for a mission he just called you over the intercom."
"Did I really sleep that long?! I'll be right there."
A/N: I hope you've enjoyed this chapter! Unfortunately I will not be able to post a chapter next week as I'm going to be gone for a week, so I hope this chapter can entertain you until then.
Reviews:
BrotherCaptainSheperd: Badass alert class! We've got a potential badass here!
redcollecter: On that we can agree
Dickson: Thanks for the support!