The next day, Jade attended the hot wash of yesterday's mission along with the rest of the Normandy's mission specialists.
"Lieutenant Victus told us Cerberus was after a bomb in a ruined city near where his ship went down," Shepard began. "He won't tell me how he knows about this bomb and neither will the primarch. Now, I'm no expert on turian body language –"
Garrus snorted after that statement but refrained from commenting after a frosty glare from the commander.
"But all of this avoidance and 'classified' bullshit smells to high heaven of a cover up. We want this alliance just as much as the turians do, though, so we're going to help pull their bacon out of the fire. Again."
Jade leaned back against the soundproof glass partition that walled off the conference room and continued to listen to the briefing with half an ear as she considered what she knew about the Krogan Rebellions and how this new information fit, silently thanking Specialist Traynor for teaching her how to use the omni-tool Shepard had purchased for her use. She'd been leery at first of the device that seemed to have replaced cell phones, GPS and personal computers with one palm-sized machine.
Makes sense, given the available information, and it's actually kind of an elegant solution, she thought. Not that much different from our suppression flights over Iraq after Desert Storm. Granted those were meant half as a show of force, wouldn't have been as effective if Saddam hadn't known about them. This though, this is an honest to god contingency plan. I knew the Council was freaked out by the rebellions, but shit …
Shepard announced the fire team she wanted with her to take the bomb back from Cerberus ending the briefing. Garrus and EDI left with the commander to gear up and the rest of the team began to file out. Jade hung toward the back, waiting for the others to leave first. Ever since waking up in an oversized test tube she'd had little love of enclosed spaces and the security room could get pretty close if there were more than two people waiting to go through.
Javik caught Jade's elbow as they fell in at the end of the line. Their relationship seemed to have warmed somewhat since their sparring match.
"What is the purpose of having a bomb and not using it?" he grumbled as they waited to pass through the checkpoint. "If the krogan are such a threat then it is better to wipe them out and eliminate the threat."
"Not necessarily," Jade replied waiting for the ping to announce she was free of whatever they were scanning for. "The krogan had just bailed the Council out during the Rachni Wars. As a species, they were heroes. If the Council races had wiped the krogan out, it would have caused trouble with other non-council races."
"Bah!" Javik fidgeted impatiently as the scanner's blue light swept over him. "If a show of power is not enough to quell a rebellion in the weaker races, then perhaps you do not deserve to be a leader."
They made their way to the elevator and Jade punched the button for the Shuttle Bay.
"It was an insurance policy, that's all. You're telling me your people never just beat the races they encountered enough to make their point, but no more?" She let out an inelegant snort. "You may have been the most powerful in your cycle, but I find it very hard to believe that they never played this type of game."
The look he gave her was so full of disgust, Jade nearly lost her composure and cracked up right there in the elevator.
"No, we did not." His voice dripped with scorn. "In my time, the scientists believed in what they called 'the cosmic imperative' the law of evolution. The strong flourish and the weak perish; it is the only force in the galaxy that matters. It informed all of our decisions as a government and a race."
"Uh, huh. So you guys really bought into all of that 'nature red in tooth and claw' bullshit. No room at all in your philosophy for altruism?" She shook her head sadly. "Must've made for a very harsh way of life. No wonder you're so prickly."
They arrived just as Shepard's shuttle passed through the containment field and began its descent to Tuchanka. Jade paused a moment to take in the view of the planet below before the doors rolled themselves shut.
"Yes," He mumbled at her side, watching the brown-orange orb rotate beneath them. "But it was even harsher by the time I was born."
"Well, things work differently this cycle," Jade wandered to the weapons rack and pulled her own weapons and Javik followed suit. "The council races don't lead with force, they rely on each other and the other races to shore up weaknesses. We're stronger as a whole unit than any species is on its own. It's also a delicate balance."
They moved to one of the weapons benches and began to work side by side.
"Besides, total annihilation wasn't necessary," she grunted as she muscled a particularly stubborn assembly off her Mattock. "With the genophage in play, the krogan weren't a threat anymore. But they were still useful as heavy infantry. And a living example."
Javik passed Jade a small bottle he pulled from a hidden pocket.
"Use this as a lubricant; it will make the action smoother." Jade snorted as she accepted the bottle. Then waved at Javik to continue when he gave her a curious look, unable to trust her voice.
He shrugged then pressed on. "In my time such insolence would not be tolerated. We would obliterate entire civilizations before we would allow them to become a threat."
"Well," Jade began. "If I'm understanding what Dt. T'Soni has told me about your cycle, that makes sense. By the time you were born the protheans had already been fighting the Reapers for centuries. That was a zero-sum game. Any infighting only opened the way for the Reapers to turn one, or both factions against each other and, ultimately, against the Prothean Empire as a whole. I guess it all boils down to different wars and different times."
Javik grunted and they worked in silence for a long time, other crew members came and went with various projects. The cargo bay was a popular area for mechanics to disassemble and repair pieces small enough to remove but too large or messy to clean on other decks where space was at a premium. The metallic click of pieces and parts as they were stripped, cleaned, lubricated and reassembled filled the silence.
"You seem to be quite knowledgeable of conflicts that had nothing to do with your time or species." Javik finally said.
"Eh," she shrugged. "All of my information and knowledge is over a century and a half old. And, honestly, I'm about as useful as teats on a boar on this ship. Unless Shepard needs me to put bullets down range, there's nothing for me to do. So I research, I read and I observe. Besides I was always a fan of space operas. It's just now, rather than being science fiction, they're science fact."
She snorted. "Besides, I have to keep myself busy, otherwise I get to thinking, and that's never good."
She flexed her left hand.
Javik seemed about to say something when the klaxon began to sound and the outer doors rattled open to admit the shuttle. Rapidly, the pair reassembled and stowed the last of their weapons.
Cortez set the shuttle down on the deck, soft as a lover's kiss and the silence after the engines died was deafening. Jade felt a shiver of foreboding race down her spine in the instant before the door hissed open. She took one look at Shepard's face and knew.
"Oh shit," She breathed, and Javik shot her a sharp look before fixing his steady gaze on the small woman.
"Things did not go the way the commander had hoped," he rumbled after she and the fire team had passed into the elevator.
Jade shook her head. "Not at all."
"I don't think the bomb detonated," said a young crewman who had been performing maintenance in the bay, some esoteric bit of machinery exploded into its component parts all over the available floor space around him. "I mean, we'd know if a planet buster went off, wouldn't we?"
"Yeah, well, we may have won the day," Jade replied, keeping her eyes on the closed elevator doors. "But not without paying a high price. Anyone who has ever accomplished a mission at the expense of a teammate would know that look on Shepard's face."
Javik shot Jade an assessing look out of the corner of his eye.
"Yes," his voice was low. "They would."