There is no atmosphere on Torfan, the moon is too small to support one. Her breath escaped as a half-synthetic gasp as she pulled back under the rocky outcropping they had been using as cover. Her gun was useless, red hot and sizzling, small plumes of steam rising off the superheated metal and she threw it to the side, scooping up the pistol dropped by the nearest marine, face down in the stony earth. He had no objections. The last survivor of the batarian squad crept over, expecting her to be helpless against him. She rolled out of cover, low to the ground, his surprised shot flying too far to the left; she heard it twang ineffectually into the soil a few feet over. She unloaded six shots into his chest. He went down, choking and gasping, strange blood leaking from his new holes. She shot him once more, in the head. He went quiet, restoring the serene lifelessness of the moon. She growled in her chest and holstered her new weapon. Not done yet.
"Jesus FUCK." Corporal Bine sagged out from behind the stone column she had been using for cover. The opposite side was blasted to chunks, pieces of it still crumbling off as she braced her hands against her knees. From various other positions around her, the remnants of her squad appeared, fixing the battlefield with wide eyes. They were not expecting a force of such size so early in their assault. Shepard swore, reaching up to rub her aching nose. It always aches when she is under stress, but her hand bumped the glass of her visor, reminding her where she was, what she was doing. "We can't go into that. There has to be a thousand of them. Our intelligence was off."
"Radio for back up." Shepard ordered. The corporal obeyed without question. Commander Flyn was dead, his brains leaking out the back of his helmet three feet away. Shepard was suddenly the commanding officer of their assault, by right and by simple reality. They would not have followed anyone else, not after that.
"Negative. They can't risk bringing a drop ship down while those defense towers are operational." Bines reported after a bought whispering into the radio and then one composed mostly of heavy swearing. "SHIT!"
"We're not out yet." Shepard replied, steeling herself. "We can fight our way into the place, make a hard push for the control room, then bunker down there in a strategic position and wait until they're in position. There are a hundred marines waiting in orbit, no way can they take us all."
"What if there isn't a strategic position once we get inside?" Rushes asked, his young voice peaking unpleasantly. She sighed, cradling the visor of her helmet in one gloved hands. She always hated Rushes, thought him to be a coward. The tone of his voice did nothing to improve his standing.
"Then I guess we all die, the same as we all die if we wait out here for backup that isn't coming." She rasped, putting her hands on her hips. "We got fucked, my friends, and if we survive this I promise everyone who was instrumental in passing us this bogus intelligence will feel my boot so far up their ass that every time they pick their nose I'll feel it in my little toe. But we're soldiers, not just soldiers but marines. This is what we do, and taking out those towers is our only chance at a way out of this pisshole." She looked around at the solemn faces. Only six. Six marines and a base full of god knew how many angry batarians out for blood.
If she remembered how to pray, she might have done it then. But she did not, so she just nodded to them all and pulled out her gun. They followed suit.
"Right behind you, lieutenant." Corporal Bines said solemnly. They were the last words Shepard ever heard her say.
The fight in went well. They had trained in assault tactics against places like this before, batarians loving their wide corners and narrow doorways. They were riding high on the victory when they burst into the tower command, Rushes and Godfrey blasting away the two engineers as they were propelled suddenly upward by a wave of Bines' powerful biotics. Shepard commanded Forlorn and Hughes to hold the door and made her way to the control panels, tugging off her gloves so her dexterous fingers could move nimbly over the keyboard tapping at it for a few seconds before she swore viciously and kicked the console hard enough to dent it, her reinforced boots smashing steel like it was cardboard.
"What is it?" Godfrey asked, coming up beside her. His piercing blue eyes, the most remarkable thing about his otherwise everyday face, scanned over her shoulder and he swore himself a moment later and stomped across the room, his hand pressed over the visor of his helmet. Shepard leaned forward, continuing to search desperately for some sort of override, some break in their firewalls that would give her a hacking entrance. No such luck. Goddamn the batarians for being so good at their jobs.
"Jesus, what's the matter?" Rushes called, from where he was giving Forlorn and Hughes assistance maintaining their suppressive fire. Bines released blasts of blue fire through gaps in the shooting, eliciting screams from their attackers as raw energy tore them apart. They were going strong, but soon they would have to switch to stims. Whenever that happened the clock really started ticking down, kidney failure and brain aneurisms becoming more and more likely, along with the potential for mistakes and carelessness.
"They knew what we were trying to do. They've locked the systems individually. Someone has to climb up to each tower and disable the guns from there. It shouldn't take very much time, but cover is scarce. We need someone with quick hands and a sniper rifle to even hope for a shot at it." She scanned her available team and pointed at Forlorn.
"You. Through this hatch. Godfrey, you replace Forlorn. Keep them out of this room, no matter what. I'll stay at the mouth of the hatch and try to cover him while he disables the guns." She tossed Godfrey her grenade pouch and he caught it without a word, positioning himself with his assault rifle out. Such a good soldier, she thought. She liked all of them, really. Except Rushes.
As she poked her head out of the hatch, Forlorn's boots pounding above her as he scurried up, she took a moment to scan the area for the first sign of hostiles. She knew where they would be coming from, if they were smart, where they could get a good shot at Forlorn without him being able to position his rifle and shoot back. She also knew where they would be coming from if they were not so smart, and a moment later that door slid open. She laid her arms flat against the steel lip of the hatch, only her head and gun poking up high enough to see and lined her shots with liquid clarity. They started dropping, Forlorn helping from his position straddling the tower console above.
"Leave them to me." She screamed into the radio as a batarian's head exploded in a maelstrom of gore, soaking his companion. As the other alien reeled back, wiping at the gore obscuring his vision she lined up another shot, killing him. There was a lull in the battle, the air suddenly so still it was deafening. She could hear the blood roaring in her ears, down into her chest, the frantic beating of her heart. She glanced up and Forlorn looked like nothing more than a target hovering in space. A moment later and he was on his way back down. Shepard turned as Forlorn hit the ground and took off running to the next tower.
The world was a panicked blur, a blood haze all around her. She took a shot in the shoulder and felt the material suddenly squeeze tight around her to seal off a tear in the suit. She activated her barrier, the blue energy bathing her in iridescent light as she leaned up and killed three batarians that were trying to snipe Forlorn off the second tower as he worked feverishly. She watched the lights go off, hoisting herself further out of the hatch to try and get a better shot at the hostiles still pouring out of the door. They were coming from two directions now and Shepard sent a ball of blue energy flying, knocking a squad backwards into each other as they tried to file through a narrow doorway. Forlorn picked them off with surgical precision before beginning his second descent and Shepard turned again, leaning far to the side. Her arms were getting tired, and a flick of her wrist activated an adrenal stim to compensate. The clock was ticking. There was no going back after the first. She would not be able to fight without them until she had a good ten hours of sleep and at least two recovery days. For the moment though, her resolve sharpened, the world becoming suddenly cleaner, clearer, brutal in its intensity. Her heart rate increased, blasting in her chest so hard she could feel it rock the rest of her body.
"Jesus, how many are there?" She heard Forlorn mutter into his radio as he sprinted along the narrow track to the third and final tower. She laughed, a bark of battle mayhem from human lips. Thought was beyond her now, this was pure chemical and instinct. Still, she kept her head on, like a commanding officer should.
"Not enough. One more to go, soldier, and I'm buying the drinks when we haul ourselves off this rock."
"Aye, aye." He replied, beginning his climb. From below there came an explosion that made Shepard's boots slip on the spokes of the ladder where she had braced herself. Suddenly, Rushe's voice crackled over the radio.
"Godfrey's dead, Shepard! We're keeping them back pretty good now. It's hard for them to get in over... over the bodies." He sounded like he might cry and Shepard, in her red haze, wanted to slap him, scream at him. Godfrey was dead and Rushes was alive, where was the justice in that?
"Hold your position, we're almost done up here." She snapped, throwing her biotics across the compound at the newest emerging batarians. From the way they were coming, cautious and slow, ducking behind cover it was obvious that they were finally figuring out that they could not expect to kill marines as easily as they did colonists in the Blitz. The blast was diluted by the time it reached him, doing little but shove him back into the wall. It was all she needed though, as she leapt from the hatch, punching bullet holes in his armour. He sagged back, unbalancing his friend. Shepard took him out as well before she had to dive behind cover to save her own skin. The hatch had kept her out of sight, made her a tiny, deadly speck on the battle field. Up above, she was vulnerable.
"Lieutenant, they've got a new wave. Bines is dead. We need you down here!" Rushes' voice crackled back over the radio, piercing her battle lust.
"Goddamn it I said hold your position! Forlorn is almost done!" Shepard replied, as bullets exploded against the opposite side of her cover, punching out dents against her back.
"I think you'd better head back in there, lieutenant." For/lorn's voice was the epitome of control, even and level as the final tower went off line. He did not bother trying to get back down, just pulled out his sniper rifle and curled up, trying to make himself the smallest target possible. Beneath him, the batarians started going down one by one. But they were still coming, pouring out of every hole like rats. She shot one that strayed into her sight, trying to get a shot at her while she sought refuge from his fellows. The glass of his helmet exploded and her fell backwards, grasping vainly at the shards and shrieking.
"What? No, just get down here and we'll go in together. We'll have a better chance with both of us anyway." Shepard replied. She leaned around to shoot and noticed blood on her arm. The tear in her suit was not just that it seemed, thick crimson lines soaking the creases and divots of her armour.
"We can't hold another minute lieutenant! They're making a push for the door!" Rushes cried, before his radio suddenly went dead. Shepard swore, turning to the hatch and diving down it, bullets shrieking overhead and she vanished. She pulled the door closed after her; spinning the heavy iron bar that activated the thick clamps and the pressure seal. She could not afford to leave a back door open for the batarians to exploit. Not even to save Forlorn.
Dropping from the ceiling she shot the batarian who had managed to get his foot in the door in the face. Red washed over her vision, tainting the world the color of blood. There was blood everywhere, running down the walls, rushing down the drain installed in the centre of the floor, a turgid river that filled her mind with its reek of copper and bile. She ran forward, flat out, muzzle flashes exploding in the dim light. Men died before her in waves.
Smashing into the wall of batarian attackers probably should have killed her. One of them slammed into her wrist, wrenching it against the wall. The world exploded as stims flooded her system and she roared, grabbing his helmet, under the lip and tearing it off in one motion. He started to choke immediately, grasping at his throat and she stabbed her fingers into his eyeballs, hooking her hand into his face with a grip like a steel vice. He shrieked and sobbed and slapped ineffectually at her wrist as she twisted his body in front of her, letting him soak bullets as he choked to death. When he began to sag, her fingers tearing through the delicate flesh she had used to manipulate him she raised one foot and kicked the corpse in the chest, sending him sailing back a few feet to crash into the man behind him. She shot him and both bodies sagged back into the third as he tried desperately to back pedal down the narrow hall. She shot him to, in the back of the head.
Warp tore apart her next attacker and she emerged into an empty hallway, looking both ways. She glanced behind her to see Rushes and Hughes, both of them looking worse for wear, Hughes limping.
"Back up is coming. They want us to bunker down here and wait for them." Hughes gasped, holding the tear in his armour where blood was beginning to trickle down. He swore hard, as Shepard tapped her radio, trying to contact Forlorn. No answer. She dropped her hand, the heat of rage like frothing in her blood. "We can seal the doors, so they won't be able to touch us. They can't have too many people left, we've killed dozens. More than a hundred."
She whipped around, shaking her head. There was no way she could let this stand. Batarians, thinking they could do whatever they wanted, take whoever they wanted, and then hide behind the pacifism of the Council and the tangled, fractured Alliance judicial systems. Not good enough. The price for what had happened to them, to Forlorn and Godfrey and Bines, was blood.
"No." She said. "Fall in."
They did, and she set a hard pace, chasing their fleeing attackers through their own base.
"Shepard." Councilor Anderson's voice stirred her from memory, which annoyed her more because she had been too engrossed in it to hear him enter the room. She turned in her chair with a smile already half formed on her lips, only to have it die abruptly when she saw who was with him. Udina.
"Councillor." She greeted him with a nod instead. "Udina." She greeted him with a look that could wilt a cactus.
"Shepard, I don't appreciate that look." Udina chimed in immediately, the nest of crow's feet at the corners of his eyes contracting as he squinted at her. She glared right back, feeling something inside her bristle under his scrutiny. They held that look for a long moment, before the councilor cleared his throat loudly and took his seat behind the desk. They broke it only when he did it again, the noticeably artificial noise finally making Shepard's eyes flicker away from her arch rival in the dense web of Citadel politics.
"I'm glad you're here, Shepard. And that your dealings with Cerberus have ended. " Anderson said, withdrawing a bottle from the bottom drawer of his desk, along with a pair of glasses. The number did not go unnoticed by anyone in the room, and Shepard smiled sweetly at the sour old politician as he bristled. It seemed that some things never changed, no matter what. Still always at odds. "I was saving this for a special occasion, earthmade three hundred year old scotch. We could wait until your readmitted into the Alliance and promoted, but now seems as good a time as ever."
Shepard nodded. "Especially since I won't be rejoining the Alliance." She said as he filled the glasses.
That stopped him, his hand wavering so noticeably that he spilled a little. Even Udina had nothing to say, standing stock still on her left with his mouth just slightly open. For a long moment the silence filled the room as she looked between the two of them. She could not have cared less what Udina thought or did, but the look of betrayal in Anderson's eyes cut her to the bone. "I don't know how you could have thought I would."
"What do you mean?" Anderson asked. "You were... you've... you're a SOLDIER, Shepard. You belong in the Alliance. It's..." He paused slightly, as though unsure of how exactly to say exactly what the Alliance meant to her. At one point she would have understood, the Alliance had been her entire life, her calling, her purpose. But dying changed a lot of things, in ways that no one could predict.
"It was my whole life, Anderson, that's the thing. I gave the Alliance the whole of my existence the day I turned sixteen and when I died the first thing they did was use my likeness for their anti-alien politics following the attack, and then smear my name every chance they got after that. They called me delusional, unstable, crazy. They called me CRAZY." She relaxed slightly, sensing that her emotions were ranging to places she did not want them to go. It had not been Anderson's fault, he had always believed her. "Besides, they'd want me to replace my crew with Alliance people. That isn't an option."
"Are those aliens really so valuable?" Udina snarled. "Do you love them enough to turn your back on the rest of humanity for them?"
"I wasn't aware that the Alliance represented all humankind. Especially when you did jack shit to rescue all those colonies that went missing. Remember them, Udina? Tens of thousands of dead? Ring any bells?" She turned away from him, fixing her gaze back on Anderson. "And it's not just the non-humans. The engineers, the flight crew, the fucking janitor, every person on that ship went to hell and back with me. I won't turn my back on them, not for anything."
Anderson sighed heavily, and then filled the other glass anyway. "I was hoping it would be just like old times, Shepard. You out there, fighting the good fight, while I look on in pride. But I guess that's too simple a thing to ask for."
"It's not all bad. I'm still a Spectre, and I'll still be working with the Alliance as much as I can. But I can't be held back, I can't afford to follow rules. The Reapers aren't going to wait for bureaucracy or consensus; I need to get things done my way, at my pace." She took the other glass from him as they both stood. "And you know, I'm always fighting the good fight."
"Here's to that, I suppose." He said, raising his glass in a toast. They clinked glasses and drank, pointedly ignoring their fuming company. As they set down their glasses, the alcohol burning warmly through her stomach Anderson rubbed the back of his neck and looked up.
"Now. About your Spectre status..." He began. Shepard swore immediately, slumping back in the chair. She knew that voice. The tired, frustrated tone he used whenever he was talking about her relationship with the rest of the Council.
"What now? Do they not like my new haircut?" She asked bitterly, crossing her arms across her chest. Anderson laughed briefly and shook his head. "I guess they want me to stop talking about the Reapers then. Even after all the new evidence I brought, all that data from the Collector base. Goddamn, why do I even try?"
"You've got one of them on your side." Anderson supplied helpfully, meaning the salarian councilor. "Even Lurana is less sure that there's not some sort of outside threat you've tapped into. It's the turian. He never wanted you with the Spectre's or us on the Council. This is just a continuation of his pattern."
"But this time his pride could mean the life of every sentient thing in the galaxy, not a nut-shot for the Alliance." Shepard replied, running her fingers through her hair and pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes. "I'm guessing it's because of him that you needed to see me?"
"Indeed. He wants to run a few psychological evaluations on you. Make sure that you're thinking clearly. It will take the wind out of his sails if you pass them all with flying colors, as I know you will." Anderson paused as she looked up, her suddenly tired eyes searching his with only a hint of disbelief.
"You actually want me to take them?" She asked.
"Look at it rationally, Shepard." Udina interrupted. "If you refuse you look even more like the paranoid conspiracy theorist he's making you out to be. If you take them and pass all his claims suddenly become hollow, your legitimacy goes up a notch with all the Councilors. It's a matter of perception at this point. Since you aren't really crazy." He did not sound as convinced of that as Anderson did and she snorted at his tone, rubbing at her gathering tension, feeling her muscles tying themselves into knots at the base of her neck.
"If you ask me to take a psych test, Councillor, I will." She said finally. Anderson nodded.
"I'll tell them you're ready for them." He said, reaching for the communications console on his desk.
Later, as she made her way back to the ship, she could not help but wish she had stolen the rest of that bottle of brandy. Not only had it been delicious, and the best thing about her evening after parting ways with Thane, she could really use the sweet oblivion its amber depths had promised her. She could really use a shower, a hard fuck and a dreamless sleep, all told. Unfortunately, only one of those seemed to be within her grasp.
"Hey Commander." Joker greeted her as she left the airlock, her skin buzzing and itchy from the decontamination ray. He was constantly running system and body diagnostics as the ship was repaired, meticulously going over every available inch to make sure the Normandy was returned to her former perfection by the time they left port. "How was talks with the Council?"
"I wasn't talking to the Council." Shepard shot back, her voice rising just a little bit in her frustration. "I was trying to convince a snaggle-toothed idiot that I'm not ass-over-tea-kettle insane while he stood there constantly denying mountains of evidence to launch personal attacks." She leaned against the wall that separated the cockpit from the long hallway down toward the galaxy map as she spoke, closing her eyes against the glare of the overhead light.
"Ah. Well, that's politics for you. Don't let it get to you, Commander. You're a hero. Again. You saved the galaxy. Again. No one can stop you, if you put your mind to it. Again." He turned his seat back to survey the glowing orange screens and their mountains of complex numbers and three-dimensional diagrams. "Try not to fuck everything up and die this time."
"Thanks for the pep-talk." She replied, pulling herself to her feet again and making her way toward the elevator.
"Go see your boyfriend if you want a pep-talk." Joker tossed the comment over his shoulder in a decidedly flippant manner, but it froze Shepard in her steps. She turned around slowly, her eyes narrowed.
"Care to explain that little comment, Mr. Moreau?" She asked, her voice pitched dangerously low. She normally only spoke like that to people she was about to kill. Joker glanced over his shoulder at her.
"Not with you looking at me like that, Commander." He tried. When her expression only darkened he flinched, holding up two hands defensively. "Alright, alright. It's just crew gossip but people are saying that you and Krios are getting... familiar. And, you know, there was a huge news story today about how Commander Shepard was seen on a date with a drell." He laughed at the astonished look on her face. "Al-Jilani REALLY hates you, Commander. I guess you shouldn't have punched her in the face, that first time."
"She deserved it." Shepard replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
"No arguements here." The pilot replied.
"And Thane isn't my boyfriend or... or anything. We're just friends."
"Whatever you say, Commander." She turned to leave again, her brain boiling with angry thoughts. Bad memories, politics, smear campaigns... it was all so complicated suddenly. They hadn't gone over anything like this in Command School, for all their boasting that they would know everything anyone needed to know once they were done there. Shepard was learning to distrust any organization with a reputation. The Alliance had used her and cast her aside in more ways than one, the Council continued to spit on her and expect her to smile and nod pleasantly in response. Maybe she should have taken Jack's advice and gone pirate while she still had a chance.
Two showers a day was not uncommon for her. Cleanliness was one of the only luxuries she regularly indulged in. As she rubbed sandalwood shampoo into her short curls she thought back to what Joker had said. Ship gossip. She was not unfamiliar with it, having been an XO long enough to know they were the favored subject of conversation whenever they were not around. As the slick foam slid over her various scars, her unnaturally perky breasts and down her long, muscled frame she wondered why this particular rumor annoyed her so much.
Because it was true? Or at least borderline true? She couldn't deny she found Thane attractive, so exotic with his many different shades of skin, his depthless and ever alert black eyes. She trusted him, enough to confide in him and get him to watch her back on the battlefield. Sighing, she turned off the water and stepped out of the stall, facing the lightly misted, full length mirror that hung beside the door. Her own reflection caught her eye, almost making her do a double take. She turned to face her clone, wiping away the steam that obscured the finer details with one hand.
Cerberus had done a decent job of making her appear normal in uniform. Her arms were free of scars and her face might someday be as well, as long as she could keep thinking good thoughts, as the doctor put it. Under the uniform it was a different story. Her body remained a roadmap of pain, the most vivid reminder of her all too recent death.
The lattice of scars that started just under her left armpit and arched down, under the dip of her breast and across the top of her stomach were the most noticeable. Pointed and barbed like winter thorn bushes, they were left by her shattered her ribs wrenching up, through the flesh as she was sucked out of the husk of the dying Normandy 1. Her struggling as she tried to plug the holes in her suit had made things even worse. They descended all the way down to her waist, the last and most vicious ending a finger width away from the divot of her bellybutton. Along her hips there were more scars, these the straight, subtle signs of extensive reconstructive surgery on her hips, broken by debris as she spun through space. There were others, mostly small and inconsequential down her long powerful legs, across her muscular back. They were barely anything, but she knew them all. Remembered the pain of them.
But the worst pain, the worst and most terrifying pain of her life, left no scars. She ran her hands over her chest, feeling the steady expansion and contraction of her lungs under their protective cage of bone, the swell of muscles working in tandem, forcing life-giving oxygen through her body. That had been the worst. Even with her lungs crushed flat in the vacuum, with no air to relieve the agony of her suffocation; her body had tried to breathe. She remembered the feeling of her muscles tearing themselves apart as they tried to force her to draw breath. She remembered her self-destruction, life leaking slowly out of her as stims and medigel pierced her in every direction, trying to save her but just drawing out the pain. When she dropped her hands, coming back to the present, her skin was covered in a fine layer of sweat. She shook her head, shaking the phantom spasms of suffocation out of her body and sighed.
Yeah right. Even if they were not completely different species with hugely varying ideas of what was desirable she could not expect Thane to find her attractive. At least not once she got her clothes off. The pictures she had seen of drell women had never featured anything more scandalous than a kneecap, but the differences were plain enough. Drell women did not have breasts or hair, and their skin was just as intricate and beautifully marked as the men. They had large eyes, all different colors she had learned, not just black. They were also harder, more straight and delicate lines rather than soft hips and curved legs. Thane looked much more like a human male than she looked like a drell female.
Not that it really mattered in the end. She sighed, shaking water from her short hair, and went to get dressed. There on the desk was the real reason it was stupid to even think of things like that. She went to sit down and check her messages, but as usual she just ended up staring at the picture on her desk, her lip finding its way between her teeth where she worried it lightly.
Kaidan. What the fuck was she going to do about Kaidan? His picture remained, but her feelings toward him seemed to slip further and further away. She did not know what she had expected, and the simple blind stupidity of the fact was what hurt more than anything else. She did not know what he could have said that would have made anything right. She hated what he had said, intensely, and she had yet to really forgive him for it. But he really could not have done anything that would have made her happy. Short of leaving his entire family, all his friends, and his life-long career behind to follow her into the suicidal unknown after not seeing her for two years, but if he had done that he would not have been the man she loved. It was not her fault that she had died, it was not her fault that the Alliance would not help her, it was not her fault that she had been forced into working for an organization that disgusted her for a man she did not trust. But none of that had been his fault either. There simply was no right answer.
Just like there was not any way to address the physical ache that was burning within her as her mind wandered back to the night they had spent together before Ilos, wrapped in his warmth, his strength. He had been so tender with her, so gentle, but so passionate at the same time. She had never known sex could be so soft, no hair pulling or screaming or clawing. She had felt herself relax into it for the first time; enjoy it in a way that she never had before. It was the first time she had not faked her climax. Both of them had been real.
Sighing, she stood, feeling a heat building in her core that made her uncomfortable. She put on a combat bra to keep her breasts out of the way and did single-arm pushups until she was so tired she could do nothing but throw herself face down on the bed, on top of the sheets and blankets, mind drawing a blank oblivion that she slipped gratefully into.