Vancouver | United North American States | Earth
Systems Alliance Military Headquarters | Alliance Intelligence Services
(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)
Shepard rolls the rubber ball that the guard gave her between her fingers, glances at a few points on her cell walls for her implants' AI to mark and calculate, and throws it. Hard.
Seventeen ricochets later, it plops right back into her open hand.
The intercom lights up, and she hears slow clapping.
"I'll be here all week," Shepard jokes, twirling her hand at the camera in her cell like an actress taking a bow. "You know me, I just love being in lockup because fuck only knows what piece of Cerberus tech implanted in me phoned home. Good chow?"
"They say it's chicken, beans and cornbread," the guard tells her over the intercom. "...and they are liars."
"Oof. Think I'll waste away in my cell then, Bob."
"You know damn well you'll be out in the morning. Just need to talk to Counter-Intelligence like always."
"Bob! You're ruining it," Shepard whines, waving a hand at her rumpled fatigues, messy hair and general sweatiness from the mission that triggered the emission. "Got a whole top-dog-bitch lesbian convict vibe going. Been in so long I know the guard rotation by heart. Just need a harmonica."
"Well, if I get any doe-eyed petty officers sent in for stealing from the officer's mess, I'll send them right there for you to straighten out."
He laughs a moment before Shepard does.
"In one sense of straightened out, at least"
"Hang o-"
The camera and intercom both go dark.
(Attention, Zealot Nine. Stand by for mission parameters)
"Oh, hell no."
She bashes her head on the bar of the bunk. Hope that hurt you too, you artificially evil bastard.
(Please rendezvous with Zealot Fourteen for debrief.)
"Oh, fuck no."
The smell of lotus blossoms and rain fills her nose.
(Graybox user identified. Shepard, Elizabeth, Alliance Marine Corps. Citadel Council Medical Exemption 483-B for use of pre-existing illegal implanted technology, specifically artificial intelligence. Stand by. Copying from read-only storage and overriding unauthorized AI engrams...)
"Thanks, Amaterasu."
(You are prettier than the dreadnought I used to be installed in.) The AI teases. (Though the Fuji was less cramped.)
"Bob!" She screams at the camera.
"Shepard, what's wro-oh, weird. We just went to backup power."
"Bob, listen to me. Cerberus is sending another Zealot after me. Someone like me, but dumber, stronger, and way too in love with his sword. He's got more metal in him than I do. He will kill you to get to me with a smile on his face and brag to me when he gets here. Tell ICT to get some heavies here, and then you hide and clear a path to my cell. Please."
"Shepard..."
"This isn't about you being a good soldier. I'm the best the project made. He's probably second. Higher strength, harder skin. But shitty field generators to emulate biotics, rather than the real thing. Bulldozer shit. No flexibility. And I'm faster. He will kill you but I can kill him. Either way, I'll be here in the morning. If the brass wants to put a bullet in someone for breaking regs, then I'm someone."
"I can't even give you a weapon..."
Shepard tosses the rubber ball.
"Decent amount of iron in beans. Pop some chow in the chute and unlock my omni."
"Done, and...done."
"Go, Robert. I got this."
It's dark. Leng likes to kill in the dark. Makes him feel like a badass. Shepard pockets one of the rubber balls that she re-jiggered: Filled with shards of carbon-tipped steel and a canister of liquid helium from the backups in her right-arm omni-tool implant. Bob sent her a spare ball, and extra silverware, and not the plastic kind.
"This is going to hurt. Ammy, assume a low-grade warp sword, telescoping, stamped aluminum blade, single line of refined eezo. Say, one-half-centimeter thick. The biotic..." she snorts. "Unskilled class four. I need to know where I can take that so it won't kill me."
(You really don't care if you get hurt, do you? Displaying...)
She glances at the indicated points.
"Phew. Bicep means I can't fight with that arm. Gut wound...pass. Collarbone on the right side it is."
She rolls her shoulders, turns away from the door and pretends to read the paperback novel she bought off of an asari at a swap meet for antiques.
"Shepard..." Leng purrs. "The guard was kind enough to give me your key."
(Corporal Grave's transponder indicates he is not in the facility. Dead or alive.)
Thanks, Ammy.
His omni-tool chirps and whirs as it tries to hack the lock.
"Bluffing? About kills and keys? Really, Kyle?"
"Kai."
"I'm pretty sure it's Kyle. Or was it Kevin?"
(Shepard, he has new cybernetics. Replacement voicebox and eyes. No noticeable improvement from the prior revisions. Repair.)
"Heard about some fuss on Omega."
"Yeah," he chuckles. "Killed that Aria bitch in her sleep."
Shepard glances at the half-polished wall in the corner.
"That before or after she slit your throat with a lamp?"
"After," he grumbles.
"Uh-huh. See, thing is, I heard about this from an asari source and what I heard is 'Cerberus' best man' sneaking up on a sleeping target-the wrong fucking target-then botching the kill and nearly getting taken out with a bedside lamp before she bounced you off every surface in her bedroom and out the window. Heard about recovery team scraping your hide off the deck a few heartbeats before you di-"
The lock clicks open. He screams.
Shepard calls on her barriers with everything she has. His stabs and swipes at her back and her neck, glancing off, and then metal and atom-shredding fire plunges into her flesh. She's bleeding into her lung. She grabs his sword hand, warps the armor he welded into his skin, and twists the bone underneath. Leng bellows in pain.
She throws him over her shoulder and onto the ground with the leverage she has on his ruined arm. She slams her heel into his ribcage. She hears the human core of her leg bone snap, but the kick hurt him. He wheezes, mouth falling open.
"Bouncy, bouncy, lengy, lengy."
She flings the ball at the ceiling as hard as she can, and just after it bounces off, the rubber snap-freezes.
Kneeling on the floor waiting for the N-teams to secure the lockup after a Cerberus incursion. Is it Thursday already?
"Hands on your head!"
She wiggles a pinky.
"Already done."
"Jesus Christ, Shepard. Why is it when I get called here, it's because you iced some Cerberus cyborg in your cell?"
"You mean it's not because of my feminine wiles, Vega?"
James snorts. He knows she's not buying what he's selling, but they get along.
"The fuck is he?"
"Rattlesnake Team, meet Kai Leng. He's a bit out of it. Ice cream headache. I seem to recall we have a Citadel kill-on-sight order on him. So if the eggheads in Medical and Research were to maybe..."
She puts as much barrier around her fingers as she can manage with one lung pierced, then she slams her fist into his spine at the C5 vertebrae, which gives the most relaxing little crunch and Leng's limbs go still. Keeping one hand on her head, she slides the other up the back of Leng's and peels back the skin-he had plastic skin glued on, the freak-over his graybox and removes the power cell.
"...want to pick apart someone with implants like mine...with at least one of everything in working order, and he maybe doesn't have any legal right not to be stripped for parts..."
"Fuck, girl. You are cold!" Vega laughs. "Spike, get a biotic inhibitor on that asshole! Bear, if he tries to get up, blow an arm off."
"With pleasure," she purrs.
Oh, to be a shot of vodka on her tongue, Shepard wishes. Why must all the hot gay snipers with icy Russian accents be happily married?
She looks at Leng's face in the mirror.
"All work and no play. Gotta take your time, Leng. Relax. Have fun with life. Otherwise, you might get dropped by a shrapnel snowcone."
"-uck...you."
"SSV Leyte Gulf, this is FLEETCOM. We've lost uplink to the Mars Archive facility. You are the nearest vessel. Please report the status of Mars Archive, over."
"FLEETCOM, this is Leyte actual. The facility is destroyed. Barracks and housing are intact. Tramway is cut in half. Archive building is gone. Crater is being filled with sand from the storm. Bits and pieces of Prothean metal sticking out. Might be the top of the archive, might be scrap. Stand by. Our telescopes have..."
"Standing by."
"We are tracking a spot in the sand where the crater is draining. Must be some kind of cave, leading down and west from the rim. Uploading our images."
"Understood. Hold formation."
Thessia | Parnitha System | Athena Nebula
Republic of Armali | City of Armali | The Goddess' District
The temple leaps skyward, her doors thrown wide to beckon the faithful inside and out of the rain. She takes her daughter's hand.
Noa sighs happily.
"Are we running, mommy?" she asks. "Through puddles?"
She smirks and glances down.
"Yes."
Her youngest cackles with glee as they sprint across the Goddess's triangle. An acolyte is waiting inside the door with a blanket.
"Thank you."
"Blessings under the Goddess, matron. And blessings to you, taele. The First Teacher and First Mother welcome you both."
"Is that Athame, mommy?"
The acolyte laughs.
"It is carved in her image, little one. But the Goddess is in us. In all living things, in all love, in all wisdom, and in all mercy."
The floor shakes. A crack races across the floor towards the statue.
Omega | Sahrabarik System | Omega Nebula | 2180
"VI..." Liselle groans. "Lights, ten percent."
She sits up in bed and rubs her neck folds. The fuck happened to me? Meld's never hit like that before.
"You all right?" she asks the maiden beside her. Goddess, it was frighteningly easy to get her into bed when she'd stepped onto the station wearing one of her mother's jackets and her pistol. "Fuck. No more of that dealer's Hallex before sex, huh?"
Liselle chuckles.
"Up and at 'em."
She slaps the bare blue ass next to her.
"Hey. Wakey wakey. Can't stay in the apartment, babe. Secret shit lying around. Queen of Omega."
"Hey."
She palms the dancer's ass again.
Cold.
Liselle looks over. A trail of blood leads from her nose-bad meld, maybe?-and a neat hole in the back of her head matches a red spatter on the far wall.
The dancer must have sat up to do something. She had been so out of it on Hallex and orgasms that she'd never heard the shot. "Sloppy," her mother snarls in her head as clearly as if she were sitting on the bed with her.
"The fuck they shoot her for? Who hires a sniper that's blue-purple colorblind?" she asks herself.
She calls up her omni and scrolls through her mother's notes. Investigators, thugs, killers, fixers, people who fix machines, weaponeers, armorers, toy-makers, mad scientists of every stripe, pirates both reliable and disposable...even a handful of people under 'Guide Justicars' with notes about secret favors they owe Aria that can be exchanged for mercies to the two or three dozen people on this station who aren't fuck-ups and deserve better.
"Fuck. I'll just call Bray."
At least he knows who I really am. She can't say it, anywhere on this station. Only in her mind can she be Liselle, not Aria.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Someone took a crack at me last night. I'm fine. They're an absolute pyjackfuck shot. But my entertainment's dead."
Liselle rubs her aching crests.
"She was a great fuck. Don't dump her in the trash. Leave her near that weirdo on Deck 97 who runs that little graveyard, yeah?"
"On it, boss."
"And scrub and burn this apartment. There's a sightline to the bedroom window from...somewhere."
"Consider it done."
She rolls the dancer onto her back, removes the charm that hung on her wrist and lays it on her belly, and then draws the sheet back up over her.
Liselle stays low as she slides out of bed, throwing a barrier at the bullet-pierced window as she shuffles towards the bathroom. Just in case.
"I look like shit," she tells the mirror.
Her crests sizzle with pain and she reflexively reaches for the crest oil. They aren't dry. Some sort of weeping, blood-and-something film is smeared across them, oozing from cuts that opened in her scales. A thin trickle of blood from her nose suggests the meld fucked her up just as good as it did the dancer.
She drives her fist into the wall beside the mirror and lets the tears come.
Afterlife's beat pounds out, pressing on her skin. Bodies write on poles, on tables, one on the floor with a barrier whip looped around her neck tied to one that's splitting the lips of her azure. The dancer is panting, drooling, shaking...and still rolling her hips to the beat.
Liselle smiles.
That's fucking dedication.
Whispers surround her, as flattering as the looks. The bartender nods. A pair of female turians in black armor with torn-off insignia plates, emblazoned with two red slashes-the Talons, Nyreen's outfit-give her sharp nods and amused flicks of their mandibles. The aura of biotics crackle off them and their gauntlets are thick, with three protrusions facing out, hiding two silenced pistols and an eezo-edged blade with an empty core to pump poison.
She didn't ask for them to show up, but Aria would probably be glad to know that the Talon's alliance with the throne not only held, but that Nyreen had put an ex-Blackwatch team on watch.
Liselle drags her palm along the railing to the VIP balcony. Slick. Shiny. A coating that is unmistakably sexual: The color would best be described as wet-azure purple. Bray nods to her as she passes the first landing and turns the corner. Griff lifts the velvet rope that cordoned off the area while her mother was ruling in absentia.
Liselle flares her biotics, sending a thin wave of energy throughout the cavernous club.
"PEOPLE OF OMEGA! I HAVE RETURNED!"
"Aria! Aria! Aria!"
Tuchanka | Arlakh System | Krogan DMZ
The alpha varren's paws kick up sprays of tainted sand.
The pyjack flees. It never sees the obelisk and runs into it headfirst, snapping its neck.
As her jaws close around an easy kill, the varren's paw scrapes across a mechanism buried beneath the sand.
The sand ripples..hums...cools.
The dunes beneath her glow.
Thessia | Parnitha System | Athena Nebula
Republic of Sonalere | Citadel T'Soni | Cellinis' Peak
Liara mumbles to herself, running through the list of supplies as she walks towards the ship. The markings are for a minor asari shipping company that does business with the Terminus but under her belly, House Guard techs are inspecting weapons emitters, and two massive antimatter missiles are being slotted into one of the 'cargo pods'. Flanking the 'freighter' that Liara had booked passage on are two clearly military vessels; which kind, she's not sure, as they're a type of ship Liara's never seen in the inventories Benezia that forces her to read. Both have long, pointed hulls, the surface is blood red in the early morning light, and black in the shadows underneath, sparkling and faceted as any jewel. One has not only the House Sigil on her hull but also the pictograph for 'primacy' in old Soni.
From the pristine look of their landing pylons, she doubts either has been in service more than a few years.
The flagship, Liara realizes. Mother really is worried.
Archon Shiala stands at a workbench, checking over the huntresses who will be sent to shadow Liara. She smiles and nods to Liara, glances at the Zealot rifle she's inspecting, and folds it back into a single piece with a crisp motion that makes the metal ring. She hands it off to her second, Slaere, who clicks it into her armor. She waves the other three soldiers on her team forward and they lift their packs and file onto the ship.
Benezia waits at the bottom of the ship's ramp, ancient and storied warpsword on her hip-Starless Hope, the blade that slew the last Malari Queen in Thessia's darkest hour-the mask of the Lover of the Unknown tied to her bicep, and a chest at her feet with the sigil of the Chaser of Secrets. She is clearly seconds away from tears.
"I am One of The Thirty," Liara mumbles to herself. "I am one of The Thirty. I am an Officer of The Thirty..."
She doubts it will ever feel real, but muttering to herself like a lunatic before she has to speak to other Officers makes that easier to fake.
Benezia opens her arms. No longer a leader of the asari, no longer strong. Just a mother afraid for her daughter. Liara dives into the embrace, feeling more like three years old than a hundred and three.
"Come back to me, child. Whole. Please."
"I promise."
"You have always made me proud, Little Wing. Remember that."
Unknown Planet | Unknown System | Unknown Cluster
Yelane wakes with a gasp.
"Good," the armored matriarch standing over her chuckles. "You're awake. How do you feel, sister?"
She takes stock of her body. The surgical sheets over her are soft, and smell of chemicals. Her skin is clean, any blood long since wiped off. Strange, that she should have the womb, crown and azure of some monstrosity replacing her own-she notes with relief that the originals are safely in a cryo pod-and she feels no different.
"Well, First Vengeance. Thank you."
Her order-leader smiles and offers her hand.
"Come. See what we work towards."
"My armo-"
"Your armor can wait, order-sister. Come, come with me."
She offers Yelane a robe and keys open the door. The next room is bright and sterile, and past a pane of armored glass, machines move and cut and melt row after row of weapons, armor, combat mechs, and parts for starships. Workers stride up to naked, shivering prisoners and test collars for restraint and enslavement.
"It's remarkable," Yelane murmurs. "The Goddess' own army."
"Together, we can heal Thessia of the decadence and blight brought to it by The Thirty, and return our timid sisters in the other orders to the path."
"As Written in the Code," Yelane intones.
"As Written in the Code."
"Through here."
She follows into the next room. A human and a salarian doctor are standing around three metal-framed, fluid-filled blocks, each with a naked female-human, drell, turian-strapped into it, legs spread and shackled and vital signs on displays next to their bare vulvas. The turian's genital plates are pulled open and held with surgical tape. The only other part of any of them that is free to the air is their face. They moan through their gags, a chorus of fear.
Good, some new part of her says. Pain dances in the back of her head, but only for an instant. This is their place.
The Justicar claps her hand on the shoulder of the human doctor, who trembles. Yelane sees a small stain spread on her trousers.
"Doctor, your work is central to our campaign. Update me, please."
"We have..." she gulps.
"Eighteen cradles ready. They will support the females throughout gestation." She shudders. "Feed, clean, monitor, support their weight, and notify medical staff when they are ready to deliver. The...modifications for access have been made. Artificial lubrication and surgical spreaders are installed."
"I wasn't sure if you wa-wan-wanted their mouths," she mumbles. "So I did that too."
The First Justicar of the Vengeance Order shrugs.
"Excess to the primary purpose, but your piety is appreciated. And I suppose all wars end in revels, do they not? Thank you."
She taps something on the far side of the human's cradle.
"Please, no. Please, don't.. Why are you do-"
Her words trail off into a sigh and then the deep breath of sleep.
"Go on, Yelane. The doctor thinks you can breed all three within the month."
"And I'll have more cradles soon!" she promises. "I...my suppliers are...curious as to some of the parts I ordered. Original models were less inspired, of course. Simply medical devices to support the bones of mothers injured in late-term. Some of the parts of a less clini-GODDESS!"
"Relax," First Vengeance commands her, squeezing her shoulder. "You have done marvelously. No human has truly been of the Goddess before you."
"T-t-thank you, Justicar."
She turns to the salarian.
"Doctor, find more breeders."
"Of course."
He bows and leaves. Curious, Yelane thinks He has a warrior's bearing.
"You have your task, Yelane. Goddess grant you many strong daughters."
Goddess forgive the swing of my blade, that it do more good than evil.
She throws the robe from her shoulders, spreads the lips of her azure, and steps towards the cradle.
I write various things for various sites including AO3, and others (see my profile).
If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, character and trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.
For detailed entries on all, see the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex
graybox - Grayboxes are cybernetic devices implanted in the human brain (or, optionally, outside of the braincase under a layer of 'false bone') that use non-destructive tracing filament to link to nerves. Their original purpose was as memory aids for elders or others suffering brain damage. Subsequent models would add crystal-lattice data storage-essentially unlimited-quantum computers linked to voice or eye-tracking control, and even sensory linkups either in terms of prosthetic eyes, nose or tongue implants or for some individuals, piercings in the eyebrows, noes, and ears and wireless transmission.
redbox - Extensions of grayboxes with AI. The first AI-enabled graybox codenamed "Little Red Ridealong" was marketed as an upgrade via outpatient surgery. While lacking the speed of a data-center sized artificial intelligence, Red was a true AI with self-awareness, self-improvement and self-expression algorithms. With the Systems Alliance now operating under Council law prohibiting the creation of complex AI, new redboxes are no longer being manufactured although under compassion clause revisions to the law, backups can be commissioned by all with existing implants.