Author's Note: All the usual disclaimers apply.
I know that the Federation ships did ridiculously well against the enemy (okay, fine, it's obviously the Reapers) in the last chapter. But unlike the other cycles, the Federation never figured out the mass effect relays and so developed along entirely independent lines. They don't use railguns, but energy weapons and they use extremely different shields and engines as well.
Their failure to do so also meant that the Citadel was never more than a curiosity and very definitively not the center of their civilization. Moreover, the Reapers favored tactic of shutting down the relays to prevent forces from massing is completely ineffective. The end result is that the Federation and the Reapers are outside context enemies for each other, relying upon entirely different technologies. However, due to the existence of the Reaper rear-guard destroyed at Star One and the absence of the Conduit team's alterations to the Citadel the Reapers had knowledge of the Federation's technologies and plans, but the reverse is most definitely not true. The Federation is working from historical record and the paranoia of its leadership, nothing more.
I'm also aware that I'm changing the canon way standard (non-relay) FTL works for the Mass Effect 'Verse (and maybe for Blake's 7, though they never explain how that FTL works). The reason for that is because, as written, any sort of fleet engagement is difficult to justify. You could simply appear, fire on the planet before anyone knew you were there and FTL out, completely unengageable. Similarly, it's hard to imagine any large scale fleet engagement taking place, because the instant one side is threatened, it could simply go to FTL, reappear by the winning side's home-world and say 'withdraw or I'll glass the planet'. This version also complies with the ME2 and ME3 maps, where you can only jump out from the outer perimeter of a system.
2176 CE, ElysiumThree compartments were sliced apart by laser fire from one of the pirate ships GARDIAN batteries, but the bulk transport was a big ship and the only raider ship to fire didn't have an angle on the engines, so the ship itself wasn't seriously harmed. Nineteen people were killed, but the rest of the people in those compartments were all right as the ship had remained in the atmosphere so there was none of the decompression which would have killed hundreds if they'd taken that fire in a vacuum.
The pilot's stream of cursing was clearly audible as she raced towards the landing zone Shepard had marked out, slaloming between buildings rather than rise high enough to be targeted by any of the still-grounded enemy ships. None had lifted off to pursue their erstwhile captives, but they might call in a strike from one of the many ships still in orbit, or request support from the ships raiding the outlying settlements and farming villages scattered about Elysium. And there was still the question of the missing Human raider. It was definitely better to be on the ground quickly.
"HOLD ON!" the pilot shrieked as the ground approached far too quickly. With a sudden jerk the Element Zero core lessened their mass significantly as thrusters slowed their descent. Sliding into two buildings not quite large enough to permit passage also slowed their approach. Shepard was used to ship travel being essentially silent except for the sounds of the ship itself, but they were in atmosphere. Everyone could hear the horrible scream of metal on metal as the massive transport widened the distance between two large buildings. For a moment the ship hung, pinned between the two and the pilot drove the mass of the ship back up, forcing it to slide down to the pavement of the road. She wasn't quite fast enough to cancel it before their increased mass drove them into the concrete of the road.
Shepard's fingers let go of the arms of her chair after only about thirty seconds, which put her a good minute ahead of everyone else on the flight deck. Except for the pilot, none of the others had even opened their eyes. Warning lights announced damage to…well, everywhere on the ship, Shepard absorbed it in a moment, then turned back to her other duties. A hand brought up their current location as best her omni-tool could tell with all the satellites downed. "Good work," she said as she undid her harness. "You were within twenty yards of where I pointed."
The pilot nodded, gave Shepard a thumbs up, then bent over and vomited. The N6 would have gone to comfort her and roused the others on the deck, if not for the single click which came over her comms system. The troops she'd left behind were being overrun.
"On your feet boys and girls. It's time to fight. The belly hatch is blocked, so we'll use the side airlocks. Those of us with guns first. Clear the road to the city square and then we'll move the civilians out and refortify," she was yelling as she moved towards the nearest airlock. "Anyone who's not armed stay put, everyone else is with me."
Men and women flowed out from among the crowd, all of them armed, though she saw some were carrying knives or makeshift clubs. "Armed means guns, folks," Shepard yelled without breaking stride.
She dodged an unarmored man holding a pistol trying to get to the airlock, somewhat delayed by a pair of small children hanging onto his legs, trying to stop him. Shepard hurdled them without breaking stride and reached the airlock. The interior airlock door opened easily enough, but the exterior airlock door was jammed with the bottom crumpled against the pavement. Fortunately the door opened vertically, and the top half opened easily. She climbed over the bottom half of the door and out into the open air. Only the ships generally cigar-like shape gave her any space at all as the upper portion of the full was pressed into the buildings on either side, but she could move under the curve of the hull out towards the town center and the sounds of battle. Her troops weren't dead yet.
The people following her balked at the airlock door. She glanced back and saw why. The impact had heated metal of the hull and the concrete of the road to an unbearable degree for an unarmored human. A waved hand and a shouted command sent them searching for another way out while Shepard proceeded alone.
Half a dozen Batarians were scattered around, sprawled on the ground, half buried from the impact of the ship. With some difficulty she resisted the urge to put a round in the groaning, injured enemy, preferring to preserve what surprise remained to her. A ship crash didn't necessarily, or even usually, indicate an invasion by ground forces and the Batarians were in no shape to communicate anything.
The positions her troops had previously held were easily identifiable by the damage those areas had taken. Holes pockmarked the storefronts, windows were shattered, walls destroyed by grenades and heavy weapons and the corpses of pirates who'd tried to overrun fixed positions held by System's Alliance soldiers, by her soldiers. And they were hers, for all that she didn't know any of their names. The order to hold had been hers, as was the responsibility for the consequences, she stepped over the blood-stained remnants of a standard issue Alliance helmet.
She passed another strong point her troops had been forced to abandon. This time the enemy corpses were all Vorcha. Whoever was running the enemy forces had decided to call in shock troops to break through the defenses her troops had once held. Shepard cursed her lack of incendiary rounds. Without them Vorcha were damnably difficult to kill and where you found Vorcha, you would probably find Krogan running them and Krogan were damnably difficult to kill even with incendiary rounds.
Shepard sped up. Vorcha were unlikely to bother with ambushes, or on anything except attacking whoever was in front of them. Finally after what seemed an eternity she reached the last defenses.
Her troops had jammed several vehicles across the road and used them as cover, while sharpshooters in the surrounding buildings picked off anyone with a heavy weapon, or who tried to approach in a vehicle. Or so she guessed given the size of the holes in windshields and bodies sprawled by missile and grenade launchers, flamethrowers. It must have worked for a while, but ugly gaping caverns in the surrounding buildings made it clear that eventually the snipers had been picked off, at a guess by the Krogan, half of whose corpse lay across a massive missile launcher. The Krogan would have taken far more fire than the Vorcha assault troops, enough to stand his ground and blow his harassers away before being eliminated in turn. With the sharpshooters removed, a truck had burst through the barricade. That was all clear to her at a glance, but there was no more gunfire coming from up ahead. She couldn't say when it had stopped, but it was probably a bad sign.
The vehicles' engines were off so they were flush to the ground. If they'd been ground vehicles she could have looked in the gap left by tires to see what was happening on the other side, even crawled under them. As it was, she'd have to do this the hard way. She stuck her head into the gap left by the slaver's assault. Blood and bodies were scattered on the ground, Human and Vorcha for the most part, but her troops had not gone easily. A second Krogan corpse lay atop the body of one of his victims, apparently having been ripped apart by half a dozen shotgun blasts. Shepard ignored all this, for she saw something more important, the remaining two mobile Vorcha holding a feebly struggling soldier in front of the last Krogan standing, and he was standing above the man, a massive Claymore shotgun held easily in one hand.
Shepard did not shout a threat, a warning, or a demand, instead she simply charged at the unshielded Vorcha, sending them flying away. One hit a nearby wall with a bone-breaking crack, the other was impaled on the broken spike that was all that was left of an aircar's door.
But the shielded soldier and Krogan were only staggered. That was enough. Too much, in fact as the Krogan jerked the trigger and the weapon roared, spitting forth a massive array of projectiles which ripped through the Human's shields, armor and flesh alike. The staggering effect of her charge had knocked the Krogan's aim off, so instead of a headshot, the Claymore had essentially ripped the man's right arm off. Dark arterial blood spurted and Shepard met the turning Krogan's bellow of fury with a scream of her own. The injured man would not survive without medigel and with his arm practically ripped off, he couldn't apply it to himself, even if he had any left.
She had to get past the Krogan first, but it shouldn't be too bad, he was staggering and his weapon was overheating, due to the Claymore's massive heat production. The pistol without the high explosive ammunition pressed into the Krogan's throat and fired as fast as she could pull the trigger. She got off enough rounds to overheat the weapon, scorching and accidentally cauterizing many of the holes she'd put in the massive being's throat. He recovered fast enough to drop the overheated Claymore and backhand her, the blow from the seven foot Krogan hit her high in the chest, sending her sprawling backwards and knocking the wind out of her despite her armor. The pistol slipped from a temporarily numb hand.
Despite a complete lack of oxygen in her lungs, she managed to pull her second pistol loose and fire before the Krogan managed to close. The high explosive round hit the shields she'd previously bypassed, knocking the Krogan on his ass as flames scorched skin and wounds, slowing the Krogan's natural regeneration. The explosive force had damaged armor and internal organs alike, but the Krogan's blood rage and redundant organs kept him moving, back onto his feet and rushing towards the, still-downed, vanguard. She dropped the pistol and rolled away, evading a stomp that would have broken ribs and armor alike. Shepard gasped desperately for air, hands rising to a traditional defensive posture, despite her desperate shuddering breaths and the darkness that swirled around the edges of her vision. A massive overhand blow was easy enough to dodge, but it was just to drive her into the path of a follow-up kick that would have shattered her thigh if she hadn't slid out of the way. She grabbed the kicking leg and tried to lift it and force the Krogan onto his back, but his massive weight dragged her down and forward instead, pulling her head into his armored belly.
A blow to her back knocked her flat on the ground and sent bolts of pain up and down her spine. She rolled away four times and snapped back to her feet, ignoring the screaming agony in her muscles. The Krogan didn't bother retrieving any of the discarded weapons, instead he roared and charged again, trying to flatten her against a nearby wall. Despite Shepard's superior speed, she was only a few steps away and there wasn't enough room to get clear, so instead she forced herself to muster a warp and slammed it right into the Krogan's face, not releasing it until her hand was past the man's shielding.
The blood rage was strong in him. Too strong for a little thing like biotics ripping apart his face on an atomic level to cause him to stop, or even scream, but it did slow him down for an instant. Long enough for Shepard to drop and crawl through his legs. He turned slowly as a hand rose to wipe blood out of eyes and the blue biotics of the warp kept eating away at his face, fighting the Krogan's regeneration. She scrambled desperately forward and managed to reach the Claymore shotgun the Krogan had dropped. A glance at the soldier confirmed that the blood had stopped flowing from the gaping wound in his armor. His heart had stopped, he must be dead. The arterial damage had been too severe and he'd bled to death while she'd been fighting the Krogan.
If she remembered correctly, the weapon had enough kickback to break her arm. Fortunately it would be hard to miss with this shotgun, at this range, so she hefted it with her left hand, while her right cradled the barrel. A quick step brought her close enough to the temporarily blinded Krogan to be sure of her aim, even using her non-dominant hand. The single shot she got ripped his hip-joint apart and knocked him to the ground. With the blood rage, he didn't feel the pain, but that didn't mean that he could rise with tendon, bone and muscle alike destroyed.
In turn the recoil shoved the weapon back against her left hand so hard that the armor protecting her forearm broke, fracturing her ulna and jarring the weapon loose from suddenly numb fingers. Shepard stepped away from the Krogan trying to drag itself towards her. An armored foot kicked the overheated weapon further away from the Krogan's question hands as she went to retrieve her own weapons.
The first pistol spat bullets until the Krogan's shield whined and died, then she carefully put a high explosive round into his head, which promptly exploded in a shower of bone and brain matter. "Fuck you," she whispered harshly. The fury her voice contained was mostly a front at this point, concealing growing despair. The damage to her arm was catastrophic, as it would be for any biotic. She'd be lucky if she was able to charge. Without the proper balance, the other biotic abilities were beyond her.
If she chose to use the medigel, it would numb the pain, but it wouldn't heal the disrupted pathways that usually gave her her biotic abilities. That would have to heal naturally. This situation only grew worse. A thought which was confirmed by the sharp crack of gunfire from behind her. She paused long enough to put a round in the head of each of the Vorcha. The fact that they hadn't risen to attack her yet probably meant they were dead, but with Vorcha, it was better safe than sorry.
As she sprinted back the way she'd come she realized that she was beginning to hate these streets. Halfway back she almost shot a civilian, who flinched back from the sight of her, tall and armored, one pistol back on her hip, the other in her, still-good, right hand. "Keep going, the way is clear" she bellowed as the crowd of civilians pouring out of the ship flowed back towards the town center and their fellows.
The shooting was coming from the other side of the transport and it wasn't the deliberate shots of executions, or the constant fire of a massacre, but the intermittent sound of battle. The people she'd left behind had managed to get the belly ramp down about halfway and the civilians were climbing out, being helped down the meter drop by the people who'd preceded them out. Rather than interfere with the evacuation, she ducked down the same path she'd used to leave, grateful that she could see light at the end of the quasi-tunnel. She wasn't claustrophobic, but the space was tight and unpleasant, though the pavement had cooled.
Shepard poked her helmeted head out and glanced around, taking in the situation at a glance. There was an impressively large hole in the back of the bulk transport, clearly ripped open by an equally impressive heavy weapon. Given the movement of other objects, it looked like one of the pirates had a Blackstorm, a black hole gun. Human body parts were scattered around the hole into the ship, but they had not died alone. Tracking the enemy bodies, it seemed clear that the raiders had launched an assault up into the ship as soon as the path was clear.
The assault was repulsed, though she saw at least twice as many unarmored bodies as she did armored ones. The civilians had paid a heavy price for their lack of armor, shields and training, but the numbers had been heavily in their favor. With the attack defeated, they'd moved out of the ship to prevent themselves from being bypassed and scattered into a rough firing line along the road. Most of them at least. More than she'd expected. The bodies further back, shot in the back were the ones who'd broken under fire, tossed their weapons aside, tried to run and been gunned down for it. She couldn't blame them. She didn't blame them. The girl back on Mindoir had blamed those who ran. But First Lieutenant Shepard knew better.
Two dozen of the civilians who hadn't broken were still moving and shooting, facing down five Batarians. The odds weren't too bad, except the Humans couldn't take any fire at all without dying, while the armored and shielded Batarians could take a dozen hits before their shields failed. So they were simply trading shots from behind cover, as both sides waited for reinforcements. Too bad for the raiders, Systems Alliance reinforcements had arrived first.
So she'd need to draw their attention while forcing them into a position where the others could hit them. If she moved up to flank them, they'd have to move out into the line of fire of the civilians. There was a storefront by their firing line. Shepard sprinted forward and dove through the window, only a few rounds hit her shields, doing her no harm at all, unlike diving through the window, which hurt quite a lot when her fractured left arm hit the glass and then the floor.
It took two tries for her to get back up and begin spraying fire on the Batarians with her pistol. When they turned on her, trying to retreat to the building opposite to the one Shepard occupied, they got picked off by the civilians. Only two of them were left standing their own reinforcements arrived.
It would have been bad regardless of who they were, as Shepard was way out in front of her support, which consisted of civilians. Unfortunately for her, their reinforcements consisted of a Batarian vanguard. His two comrades sent enough covering fire at her to keep her pinned down while the vanguard ripped through her unarmored support. Shepard ducked along the wall, heading towards the other side of the building to try to take the Batarians from behind. She did her best to ignore the screams as the men and women she'd asked to fight died horribly against the Batarian biotic soldier, but if she tried to assist them without taking out the other Batarians, she'd be shredded.
The screaming stopped as Shepard ducked out the back of the building* and circled around to flank the Batarians. She glanced around the corner to see the vanguard approaching the spot where she had been hiding. He opened his mouth to warn his fellows when a dozen shots rang from behind him, shattering shields and peppering the surrounding area. Some of the other civilians had come up, grabbing weapons. Though they weren't particularly good shots, a dozen people shooting automatic weapons with auto-aim assist could hit the target enough to break their shields.
*Most buildings in the city were divided into two parts, with one opening up onto the horizontal road to the north, while the other opened up onto the horizontal road to the south. This was one of the few buildings where the wall blocking the two rooms from one another had been removed to create one larger storefront with two entrances. This explained the focus on the roads leading to the town square, though several teams had managed to infiltrate past the barricade early in the combat by blowing their way through the surrounding buildings, but the enemy appeared to have run out of heavy explosives. Mostly. Of course the other reason was that without the roads it was hard to get loot and slaves out in any reasonable time, or amount.
Shepard's shot took the vanguard in his unarmored head, with the other Batarians diving into cover and returning fire at the civilians, taking three of them down before the others scattered into cover. Shepard raced forward, joining the Batarians in their cover as they'd forgotten her in the rush of being fired on. A few rounds bounced off her shields before she made it. A round to the back of the head killed the first Batarian before he even knew she was there. The second turned to face her in time to catch the bullet in the front of his head.
"CEASE FIRE." She yelled.
They didn't, instead continuing to fire desperately at the cover she was hiding behind. Shepard glanced back. No more were coming, yet, but if they did, she was in a very bad position.
"CEASE FUCKING FIRE!" It took three more bellowed commands before they stopped long enough for her to stick her head out and get them to accept that she was not a raider. It was then that half a dozen mortar rounds dropped on the civilian's battle line. Shepard had heard the whine of the rounds and screamed at everyone to take cover, but none of the others had matched her instinct to dive for the ground. They were wiped out to the last.
The car Shepard was hiding behind flipped over, but absorbed most of the impact of the mortars. A snap roll took her under the suddenly flying vehicle. Her body screamed in protest as she forced herself to rise and sprint for the cover of the crashed ship. Its hull would protect her from the mortars the pirates were apparently carrying. Her body proclaimed its need for rest, for food, for time to dump stress and recover, but she was an N-School graduate. She was an N6. Exhaustion was an old friend.
While sprinting she tried to hurdle the body of a large Batarian (well, part of a body, much of it having been ripped apart by a nearby mortar hit), only to trip. An hour ago she would have rolled away gracefully. Now she landed flat on her face, started to push herself up and hissed as bolts of agony raced along her left arm. She rolled over and kicked the torso bad-temperedly. A look down and her ill-humor melted away. It was the Blackstorm. She retrieved the black hole gun and examined it as she moved more cautiously back to the ship.
The weapon had enough power for one more shot. She would just have to make it count.
She heard another barrage of mortar fire coming, a swift glance showed her that there was nothing nearby to hide behind, except the shattered corpses of those who had followed her into battle. So she went for speed, charging up into the ship where she saw what the weapon she now wore strapped to her back had done. A child's hand lay by an old man's head, shattered corpses of those who'd been killed when the pirates broke in and who were killed pushing them back out again. There was horror all around her, but her vision was failing, as was her body, the horror couldn't touch her, not when she was so very far away from her own body.
The impact of the blast wave from the mortars behind her knocked her off her feet and back into her body. This time she remembered not to use her left arm as she got up and glanced around, taking in her surroundings. The cargo bay was at least two stories high, with room for significant amounts of cargo and a catwalk ran along the perimeter at the bay, though it had a large hole in the middle where the Blackstorm had opened up the cargo bay. There was only one way out, personnel access to the rest of the ship. The only way up to the catwalk was a pair of ladders, one on either side of the bay.
"Shit. This is going to suck," she whispered, but it didn't stop her from moving to the ladder and climbing. It hurt like hell with a fractured forearm, but none of the three ways she tried to climb were any better, so instead she simply endured it, the way she had when she'd cracked two ribs early in one of the exercises at the Villa back in N-School. She would complete her mission. The Villa missions had been longer than this, but none had involved such constant combat and unrelenting use of her biotics, especially without sufficient nutrients.
That biotic usage was eating away at her body, consuming it to fuel the impossible things she had done and would continue to do. Climbing a ladder would not usually have made that list, but in her current state, it was pretty close. A staggering pace carried her to the edge of the hole the pirates had blown in the ship. Instinct and training had her seated so she could see out the hole, while keeping almost all of her hidden behind the twisted metal of the makeshift entrance.
A third round of mortar shells fell over the area, shattering cars, body armor and bodies alike, but doing no more than sending a shower of shrapnel against the thick hull of the bulk transport. It would take a lot more fire than that to breach the hull. It would take something like the heavy weapon Shepard awkwardly pulled from her back and cradled in her arms, ignoring the pain coming from her left. She waited.
The Batarians must have called for the mortar barrage before being wiped out. It was a little surprising to see mortars deployed on what was pretending to be a pirate raid though. They weren't a very piratey weapon, as they weren't generally sold to private companies. Of course, neither was the Blackstorm she was carrying. Maybe whoever was running these pirates was simply frustrated with their lack of progress and was pulling out all the stops. She smiled at that, "All this just for little old me? I'm flattered." Then she remembered the bodies that surrounded her, and why it was just for her and the smile vanished to be replaced by a bleak determination.
The fourth barrage contained far fewer rounds. Were they really going to empty their mortars on a single position? So it appeared, for the fifth barrage was unworthy of the title, consisting of a single round which landed atop the bulk transport, making a sound almost like raindrops on the roof back on Mindoir.
The enemy came on in a rush, seeking to overwhelm any survivors while their ears were still ringing from the artillery fire. Shepard's smile returned at the mass of Batarians with a leavening of Humans, Turians, Vorcha and a single Krogan. A single shot would take them out, as soon as they stepped within range, damn the Blackstorm's absurdly short range.
Still, all she'd have to do was wait for them to get closer and this would be easy. And, since the universe loves to prove people wrong, they stopped at the sight of the ship. The Krogan flattened a Batarian who bellowed commands for the rest of the group to advance. A wave sent a trio of Turians forward, they split up, one going towards the entrance to the ship, the other two heading down the make-shift tunnels on either side of the ship. Scouts. The Krogan was no fool, unfortunately.
Shepard ducked down and back, using the catwalk to shield herself. The Turian covered the angles with the practiced grace of an experienced soldier. Only the fact that Shepard was completely out of sight kept her from being seen. She waited in agony until she heard the Turian shout the all clear. Then she peaked around the edge of the catwalk. The Turian shouted a few good natured insults at the mob that was coming up. The responses were profane and anatomically improbable and were met with the Turian's laughter. He spun away with a shouted joke about getting the good loot before the rest of them caught up.
The voices were loud enough, they should be close enough, but she couldn't risk looking out. Instead she waited just a moment, for the Turian to be slightly off-balance as he stepped forward. It was time to charge. She did so. His shields held enough to keep him from being injured, but her charge knocked him forward, sending him sprawling face-first into the deck. Shepard spun even as a handful of the sharper pirates began to fire at her. The Blackstorm in her hands rose and spat its single remaining charge as the black ball flew into them. Several tried to flee, or take cover, but the gravity shift of the forming black hole yanked them back together, compacting the thirty or so raiders into a mass of writhing forms and unbending metal, before exploding in a welter of blood and limbs.
But Shepard saw none of that, having spun back towards the downed Turian, dropping the useless heavy weapon. The Turian rolled over, just in time to take an armored boot to the head as Shepard stomped hard on his unhelmeted head. Shepard was a big woman, with a soldier's gene mods to strengthen and speed her and she was in full and heavy (in weight, it was still classed as medium) body armor. It still took three heavy stomps to break through the Turian's tough skull and natural armor, but by the time the adrenaline that the charge had brought burnt out, the deck was painted with blue blood and purple brain matter.
Shepard stepped away, feet sticky with the dead man's blood. Training and will forced her to the personnel hatch even though all she wanted to do was sit down. Or pass out. The other scouts would have turned back. If she was fast, she could circle around behind them and take them from behind.
She went out the same airlock she'd used before, in too much of a hurry to look first and went over atop the second Turian scout who'd chosen to try to sneak into the ship instead of rushing back towards the explosion. The rifle went sliding away and rather than reach for it, the Turian's clawed hands sank into her throat, squeezing tight, claws sinking in, slowly forcing their way through the lighter flexible armor of her throat. Red blood stained his claw as her hand scrambled for a weapon, the pistol almost leapt into her hand and she fired into the Turian's groin, focusing on the weaker armor of the joints.
The grip on her throat tightened cruelly, cutting off her breath as she kept firing. Finally arterial blood began to spurt just as black spots began to cover her vision. The raider's grip weakened instantly and she was able to push herself to her knees, using the pistol as a brace.
The final scout appeared, blocking the light at the end of the tunnel, a strong figure with a Phaeston assault rifle pointed directly at her, his face was flexing in what her training said was an expression of absolute fury. He was screaming something about his brother, but she couldn't make out the words, not through the certainty of what she had to do.
Charging from a kneeling position was difficult and not terribly effective, as the speed was lower and the hit was lower, unlikely to flatten, especially a shielded Turian in a firing position. Indeed, he didn't even stumble, as her gun fell from nerveless fingers. He did jerk the trigger, rounds spitting over her head as she was suddenly kneeling before the scout. That sound forced her hand to the second pistol, fingers barely working. The butt of the assault rifle hit her across the helmet smacking her back, making her head spin, but her gun continued to rise and fired upward into the Turian, right under the heavy chest armor.
The high explosive round exploded the instant it left the barrel of her gun, destroying it and flinging the two of them apart. Sharp pain sprang across her face. She would have screamed if she'd had the energy. Instead she whimpered, sprawled on the ground. There was no air, she aspirated blood, choking and twisting. It took an embarrassingly long time to realize that whatever had wounded her was blocking her nose. She could still breathe through her mouth, for all that she could taste more than a hint of blood.
Two minutes of breathing and trying to focus and she was able to look around. The gun had taken the brunt of the blast, mostly protecting her right hand. But the gun itself was trashed. It took four tries to force her hand to release the remnants pistol and then it could rise, shaking, to her face feeling for whatever was causing the horrible pain. It found a metal shard imbedded horizontally in her helmet. She ripped it free, the horrifying pain bringing her most of the way back to functional. Blood was flowing down her face, she could taste it and just a hint of smoke was starting to filter into her helmet through the new hole. It took her three tries to pop the seals on her helmet and rip it off.
She curled sideways, eyes watering at the smoke from the explosion, wincing at the mixed taste of Turian and Human blood as she gasped for air, no scent making it through the savage wound in her face and the blood spilling from her nose. Some part of her mind remembered that the dextro-amino nature of Turians made their blood and probably the smoke from their cooking corpses dangerous to Humans. There was nothing to do about that at the moment. The medi-gel wouldn't discharge from her right hand, the dispenser must have been damaged. Her left arm came up slowly, painfully, but the pain vanished as the medi-gel slid from her hand over her face, into her system. Anesthetics burned away the pain and sealed the cut, binding her nose back together and locking it into place, then sliding along the rest of the wound, leaving a jagged line across her face from cheekbone to cheekbone, right over the bridge of her nose. She still couldn't breathe through her nose, but the pain was gone, as were the little aches in her muscles. Exhaustion was an old friend by now, weakness was painful, but hardly new. She could get up. She would get up. She did get up.
Drying blood would block her nose in a moment, she scrambled around for something to blow it on, finally finding a length of cloth. Without looking too closely at where it had come from, she blew her nose and gratefully took a deep breath, then gagged at the overwhelming stench.
The helmet locked back into place. Comms were gone, so were most of the systems and it sure wasn't airtight any longer, but it was better than nothing. After a moment's thought she picked up the shard of metal and glanced at it. Stained with her heart's blood, it was a piece of the Turian's chest armor, blown out by the same round which had blown the slaver nearly in half, as she discovered when she stepped forward into his guts. After an interminable moment, she lifted the metal shard to her helmet and slid it back through the hole in her helmet, stopping well before it could possibly hit flesh. She wouldn't be able to feel that, not with the medi-gel over her skin. The Turian's assault rifle had called to her, still intact despite everything. Say what you will about the Hierarchy, but they made good, sturdy weapons. She only had one really functional hand, which made an assault rifle a bad choice, but she didn't see any pistols. Her previous one had been knocked somewhere in the explosion, or the fight and she was in no condition to look for it.
She could go back to where the civilians were. Even slow as she was, she'd wiped out enough that she would have time to get back to the square before they could pursue her. But then there would be no one standing between the civilians and these slavers. No. Her decision had been made the moment she slid the metal through her faceplate. The climb back into the ship was hard, but no one interrupted her. Finding a spot which looked natural, offered cover and gave her a view of anyone coming down the street was hard, but she did it. Then she sat down to 'rest'. She definitely wasn't pretending to be dead in order to ambush any raiders who came along. That would be wrong, perfidious, arguably war crime, even if the Batarians weren't signatories to the Geneva Convention and would have tortured, raped and enslaved everyone present.
She was simply resting. Perfectly reasonable for an exhausted soldier, even if she looked dead, with shrapnel sticking out of her helmet. A sea of body parts lay beneath her gaze as she waited for more enemies to come. It was…unfortunate that some of the civilians' bodies had probably been vaporized and she didn't know any of their names, or the names of the soldiers who'd died under her command.
For just a moment she wondered if anyone would know her name. Know what she'd done here, the good and the bad, the people she'd sacrificed and saved. It shouldn't matter. It did.
Those thoughts were unproductive. She knew how to push them away, though the drugs in the medi-gel made it more difficult. But she got there in the end, the state of crystal attention where the real world was all that mattered. Shepard was a predator and the world was divided into prey and pack. Except there was nothing.
Then there was one, a Turian in pirate's armor. He was prey. The fact that he moved like prey seemed odd to some part of her brain. A full burst from the Phaeston in the back and he went down. Rising wasn't so bad, this time, not with rest and medi-gel, but dragging the slaver's corpse away was relatively hard. She resumed her post and waited with the patience of the ultimate hunter.
This time the movement was not furtive, or small. A full squad was moving down the street, scouts in the lead, rearguard in place. Formation was Alliance standard, as were the uniforms. Shepard snapped back into her body, ripped the shrapnel out of her helmet though she didn't drop it. Rather than stick her head out in front of troops in a combat situation, she undid her helmet (as its speakers were unfortunately damaged).
Her first attempt to speak failed, her mouth was too dry. She mustered enough saliva to lubricate her throat and bellowed out, "This is Lieutenant Shepard, commanding the marine contingent on the SSV Trafalgar. Identify yourselves."*
*Her IFF was disabled along with most armor systems, so she couldn't be sure.
The squad had scattered into cover the instant she started to speak and a half dozen weapons were pointed in her direction while the rearguard prepared for an ambush. They'd spread out enough that if she'd still had the Blackstorm, whose existence was evidenced by the damage they were walking through, she couldn't have taken them all out in one shot. "You aren't showing up on our IFF, 'Lieutenant.' Come out slowly," one of the figures yelled, probably the commander of the squad.
"I'm coming out. I'm unarmed," Shepard let the Phaeston fall and stepped up and out, slowly in order not to trigger their reflexes and because she was very close to the edge.
She walked towards them slowly and everyone but the soldier who'd spoken fell back from the force of her personality and from concern that she might be a suicide bomber. A hand rubbed the grime off her N6 decal, drawing the eye to the insignia. "There were six frigate sized ships and one other transport like this one at the space-port. Have you locked them down?"
The officer's eye roamed over her gaunt face, filled with too-bright eyes, the blood, guts and brains staining her armor, the crashed ship and the few human bodies which could be seen were all shot in the back (as the bodies of those who'd fought were either vaporized by the Blackstorm, or smashed into paste by the mortar barrage). When all that was combined with the N6 designation, it led to one obvious conclusion. This woman had shattered the enemy invasion all on her own. "I only saw three frigates when we came down, but let me check Lieutenant," he said, all air-quotes gone from voice and mind alike.
His external comms went dead as he reported in and asked about the ships. Shepard did not sit down. Or pass out. Or scratch at the hardening medi-gel across her face. Nor would she fart, or go in search of a bathroom. Her eyes focused and she glanced around. "Any of you got a biotic ration pack? Or any sort of ration pack?"
One of the soldiers, a woman, came forward with a biotic ration pack and offered it to Shepard. She wolfed down the pills and the drink, savoring the slight tingle of the energy drink on her tongue. That made her feel a bit more like herself. Finally the officer spoke again. "Command's got our fleet spreading out to interdict any attempt by the other ships to escape. You're wanted topside. We're securing the city, but there may be stragglers, so I'm sending Jones and Lang to make sure you get there."
"Understood," she gave him a field salute, also known as a nod. Even with the energy from the food burning through body and brain alike, she lacked the will to dodge from cover to cover. Instead she strode down the center of the road as the soldiers dogged her steps.
The marines she'd left behind looked around the carnage and then continued on, only to find more and more carnage. They were especially impressed by the Krogan, obviously killed in close combat. Recordings were made and soldiers began to do one of the things they do best, gossip. By the time she'd reached the spaceport, her escort had started giving her more space and more respect. They began to ask questions about what she'd done and how many raiders she'd done it to. She deflected the questions because she didn't want to talk about it. If she'd known that they would interpret that as heroic modesty rather than exhaustion, she'd have spoken up about the men and women who'd fought beside her, but she didn't.
The shuttle pilot greeted her with an entirely inappropriate salute, which Shepard chose to return rather than discuss. He burbled something about it being an honor, but she was almost asleep on her feet and about thirty seconds after she strapped herself into her seat, she was asleep in the seat.
A medical team met them in the shuttle bay of the SSV Einstein. The carrier was acting as flagship of the relief fleet was sitting well away from the planet its fighters and bombers were now encircling the globe, hanging high above it, waiting for the missing ships to attempt to escape the gravity well. The medical team ran scanners over her body without Shepard rising, though some words faded through to her mind. "Fractured forearm, trauma to the face, trauma to the spine, two fractured ribs, massive dehydration and malnutrition…accessed her medical records, she lost a tenth of her body mass in the last day…get her out of that armor…" there was some slight tugging on her limbs, but no pain, then she felt slight movement. Her eyes opened and saw the ceiling flash by as the eezo powered stretcher moved her through the hallways of the warship easily. "I.V. in, running full out…" she didn't even feel the pinch, that was worrisome, the motion stopped and she lay still, "the admiral wants to talk to her…"
Eyes opened automatically in response to that and without any intervention from her conscious mind, muscles moved to jerk her body to attention. There were three doctors in the room, two of them lunged forward, pressing her back down. They were Human wearing Systems Alliance uniforms, so her instincts did not drive her to attack them, yet.
"Stand down, Lieutenant," the oldest and most senior of the doctor's snapped in a tone which made it clear that she'd come up out of the enlisted ranks and had probably been a senior sergeant at some point. Like any good officer, Shepard reacted to the tone and stopped.
Dark eyes focused and she tried to speak, it came out a croak and the docs who'd piled on her pulled back and lifted a straw to her lips. A deep drink scoured the dust from her throat, "Where—"
"Medbay on the Einstein, in orbit around Elysium," the older doctor answered, in a calming voice which announced that it had done this a thousand times before and everything would be fine.
"Situat—"
"We won."
Tension Shepard hadn't been aware of began to drain out of her shoulders and back.
"How bad was it?"
The doctor shrugged but a voice from the door spoke up. "Civilian casualties in the tens of thousands, but we don't think any were taken off world. Two survivors from the 13th Frontier Company, both in critical condition at Grissom Hospital downside. The rest of the garrison was wiped out in the original orbital bombardment of Fort Grissom. Fleet casualties were light, but the crew of the SSV Tsushima and its marine contingent were almost completely wiped out and the ship had been pounded to scrap, but no other of our ships were lost," Rear Admiral Kahoku said from the hatch.
Shepard's eyes swept over the man, taking in caramel skin, his rank tab and the thin beard along his jawline. She straightened automatically, right hand rising for a parade salute, only to be jerked to a halt by the I.V. "Admiral—"
Her move to rise was stopped by a wave of his hand. "Stay where you are Lieutenant."
"Thank you, sir."
"You did well downside. The way I hear it you stopped the raider advance and launched a one-woman rescue mission at the spaceport. If you hadn't told us about those missing pirate ships, they might have been able to sneak off, and we'd definitely have lost a lot of people into the hands of the slaver scum."
"I didn't do that alone, sir."
"Maybe not, but at the end of the mission, you were the last woman standing, which means the whole tontine of glory is yours, as well as buckets of survivor's guilt."
"Yes, sir," Shepard said slightly bitter.
"And most crucially, it also means you need another mission and it's not going to be going back to the Trafalgar. So, hero, where do you want to be sent next?"
Last time she'd been asked that, she'd just lead her team to the highest passage rate in N-School history. Then she'd told the truth and asked to be sent to Khar'Shan. That comment had dogged her earlier career, as someone in personnel had combined it with her history on Mindoir and come to the conclusion that she was a bigot and should be assigned far away from any aliens. If not for that business with the Asari Starliner, she'd still be assigned to backwaters.
Like the fact that she wanted to stab slavers in the face meant that she would leave some civilians twisting in the breeze because they happened to be blue. With her career back on track she couldn't be flippant, but she'd thought a lot about what she should have said and was ready to answer. "Project Overwatch, sir, I want it."
"Never heard of it, Lieutenant, but I'll put in the request with Arcturus. Now, get some food and get some sleep, we'll want you looking like a hero, not a warmed over corpse before letting the journos loose on you."
Shepard groaned. "Yes, sir."
2176 CE, District 197, Tayseri Ward, CitadelGarrus Vakarian always ate his on-shift meal at the Good Eats Eatery. Not for its food, or its ambience and certainly not for its absolutely false and unnecessarily redundant name. No, he ate there because it was the very worst dive in the very nasty part of Tayseri ward he'd been assigned as his beat when he joined C-Sec's Enforcement Division. When he'd talked his boss out of assigning him to babysitting duty on the Presidium with the rest of the new baby recruits, he should have known that Asari would give him the hardest district around to teach him a lesson. He'd learned quite a lot in the district, but probably not what she was trying to teach him.
On his first day he'd passed by the Eatery when a very distraught Drell was ambushed by a couple of leg-breakers for the local loan shark. After breaking the leg-breakers legs and delivering the Drell to the Investigations division officer who was looking into the loan shark, he'd taken up eating at the Eatery every shift. The first day someone had tried to bludgeon him to death so they could roll him for his armor and gear. After transporting his attacker to the prison hospital, no one else tried to attack him, though he did survive two different poisoning attempts.
After that, the Eatery became the safest place to eat in the District. At least, so long as all you wanted to do was eat. But he was not, in fact here to eat today. He was here to watch other people eat.
Finally he spotted what he was looking for. A wave of his hand and the tired Asari maiden who acted as the server came over, bearing the to-go meal he'd ordered. His omni-tool scanned the meal, to confirm it was unpoisoned. It was. Garrus moved out, transferring the appropriate credits to the Eatery. They offered him free meals, because they were certain he wouldn't take them up on it. And he didn't.
The Turian jumped three feet in the air when Garrus hand came down on his shoulder. He spun, reaching for what would certainly prove to be a weapon, which would force Garrus to arrest him. Since the C-Sec officer didn't want to do that, he caught the man's hand. "Relax," he commanded, voice calm.
"I didn't do it!" The Turian paused and cocked his head. "Whatever 'it' is!"
"I'm sure you didn't. I'm offering a trade. That ration kit you just purchased, for this wonderful meal from the Eatery in there."
"What's the catch?" The meal was at least three times the price of the ration pack, and contained the same number of calories.
"Nothing that you need to worry about." Garrus grinned nastily at the Volus who'd just sold the ration pack.
"Sure," he shrugged and passed it over. Garrus released the meal into the man's hand instantly.
The Volus was shaking slightly, but knew better than to try and run. His usual security was a hefty Human, but she hadn't been paid enough to defend the Volus from Garrus. "Well, well, well," he lifted the ration pack up and ran his omni-tool over it. "What do you know? This is one of the ration packs that was lifted in that warehouse robbery last week."
The warehouse robbery which Investigation Division hadn't cared about because neither the warehouse owner nor the owner of the underlying goods had cared. Garrus hadn't much cared either, but he'd heard about it around the station. Some of the other Enforcement Division folks were joking about thieves so stupid they stole contaminated ration packs. Most of the jokes were to the effect that this was a crime that would solve itself when the thieves sampled their merchandise.
When the dead Quarian had dropped right in front of him while he was on patrol, only Garrus's presence had prevented the locals from looting her corpse before it was even cold. He'd had to use Kolla to get an autopsy done. Everyone avoided her if they could because the Asari was disturbingly interested in corpses, but it meant that she was willing to work on a Quarian's body, just to see one and didn't give him the speech all the other doctors had. If he'd heard one more explanation about how Quarians were fragile and this one must have died from an infection, he might have either screamed or punched someone. So he was stuck with Kolla.
Fortunately, even if she did do things like coo over the shape of the dead woman's jawline, she was also a skilled physician and discovered the Quarian had died because her food had been contaminated. When far from the Migrant Fleet, Quarians generally subsisted on Turian food, blended into a paste then passed through filters to kill any potential diseases. Their suits would also automatically scan for contaminants, which made her death quite surprising, until he remembered the story of the warehouse robbery and the contaminated ration packs which had made it through initial screening, but a final quality check had detected the problem.
His superiors had not cared about a dead Quarian and though there must have been other bodies, he wasn't able to find them. Bodies disappeared in the District, recycled, sold, or used in some even more unsavory manner. So he'd back-traced the woman as best he could. The last place he could find her buying food was a stand outside the Eatery where the owner sold cheap food to those who couldn't afford even the Eatery's cut-rate fare. But when he'd gone looking, they hadn't had anything that looked like a Turian ration pack, or like it might have come out of one. So he kept an eye on the place, hanging around a bit more than usual and finally he'd watched the Volus running the place pull out a ration pack from his stores, rather than the standard boxed food.
"I did not *HSCK* know that, Palaven-Clan."
"Well then, Mal Pofor, you should have no reason not to tell me where you got them."
"I do not *HSCK* rec—"
Garrus dropped a pseudo-friendly hand on the small woman's shoulder, "Before you say anything else, I should point out that the extent to which I'll believe you that you didn't know there was anything wrong with this product," he waved the ration pack around, "which you kept hidden under your stand and only sold to transients who wouldn't be missed, will depend entirely on how much you help me find out where this came from."
"Earth-clan!" Pofor bellowed (or came as close to bellowing as she could manage).
Her guard looked at Garrus and shrugged. "Sorry Mal, you don't pay me enough to get the stuffing kicked out of me by this bruiser."
Garrus interrupted the Volus's shrieking about the perfidious Earth-Clan's dishonorable breach of contract by asking, "Stuffing?"
"English expression. It refers to…you know, I don't know what it refers to."
"Weird," he shrugged slightly and turned back to the Volus. "Anyway, tell me where you got the ration packs, or I'll run you in for manslaughter and attempted manslaughter."
The Volus considered who he was more afraid of and concluded that he was more afraid of the one who was present and gave up the address to a storage facility about a kilometer away.
"Good. Now go down to the station and swear out a statement."
"You never *HSCK* said anything about—"
"I'll be back at the end of my shift to process whatever I find at that address. I'll need a sworn statement explaining how I knew where to go, or whoever I find at this C-Storage facility, might walk.* You wouldn't want that, would you?"
*The mere fact that the person providing the tip didn't provide a statement would not prevent a prosecution from going forward. Garrus just likes to cover his bases. Even though that's an expression he would not have gotten as he had no interest in baseball, a sport which had suffered significantly from the resurgence of football following the recruitment of Krogan to play the game, as they suffered none of the head trauma which had made the game a minor sport for the decades before First Contact. Well, actually, they suffered even more head trauma, it simply didn't have the same lasting effect.
After considering what thieves he'd betrayed to C-Sec would do to him when they got out, the Volus tripped over himself to head down to the station and took his bodyguard, who gave Garrus a wide berth and a respectful nod. The Turian ran a hand over the butt of his assault rifle. In the close quarters of the District, using the sniper rifle was always a bit tricky. He'd trained with pistols, submachine guns and shotguns as well, but for situations which called for more than a single shot he preferred the accuracy of the Phaeston assault rifle.
The walk down to the storage facility was quick and quiet. It was at times like this that he wished he'd been assigned a partner. Unfortunately, his District was significantly understaffed and the captain had taken a look at him and concluded that he was more capable of operating independently than the set of pensioners, walking wounded, incompetents, drunks and drug addicts who were assigned to this, the worst District on the Citadel.
On the other hand, it wasn't like he needed help to deal with a few thieves and the other officers in the Enforcement Division hadn't proven particularly motivated, or impressive. A Krogan got in his way, so drunk he could barely stand and bellowed something about the genophage and dead children. Garrus ignored him, which, of course, provoked the man into launching a powerful uppercut.
Garrus stepped sharply backwards and the drunk Krogan fell onto his ass from the force of his own blow and then fell onto his back under the force of some truly vile Krogan liquors. The C-Sec officer stepped over him without bothering to either arrest him, or protect him from the vultures who were already circling, looking greedily at the unconscious Krogan's omni-tool, clothes and jewelry. After three steps he heard rustling behind him and his conscience made him speak, without turning around and seeing something that would make him act. "If that clumsy fucker is injured in any way, I will have to find out who did that. That's a process no one will enjoy," he let a cruel humor slide into the subharmonics of the bark of laughter he emitted, and the words that followed. "Actually, I would enjoy it, but I'd be alone in that."
Silence greeted that statement and Garrus strode on as if nothing had happened. Playing the incorruptible hard-case wasn't so hard, and if it got a bit lonely, well, that was what off-duty time was for, when he was safely out of Tayseri Ward. His father didn't much approve of the way he was handling things, but since their conversations tended towards platitudes and complaints that Garrus was in Enforcement Division, not the more prestigious Investigations Division, he wasn't inclined to give his father's complaints all that much weight.
Garrus wanted to be Special Response Division, the officers who went in when all the grey had been washed out of a situation, leaving only black and white. Rescue the hostage, defuse the bomb, kill the bank robbers, none of this poor people doing shitty things just to survive nonsense. But this case shouldn't have any of that. Mal Pofor might have been ignorant, or he might not, but the folks who'd stolen tainted food and were selling it to the desperate, they deserved everything that was about to happen to them. He slid into the C-Storage yard without setting off alarms, or asking questions. The receptionist would undoubtedly be under orders to delay him and warn the customers that C-Sec was on the premises and he saw no reason to get the poor Volus at the front desk in trouble by intimidating him into not warning the criminals.
C-Storage wasn't all that big, but it was cheap, which was a pretty neat trick on the tightly packed Citadel. They managed it by building up. Way up. The whole thing looked unsafe to him, especially the elevator he called to take him to the right storage unit, but it had passed its inspections. The elevator creaked and Garrus wondered who'd been bribed to make that happen. The elevator stopped at the right storage unit and Garrus flashed his omni-tool over the lock. It read his credentials and obediently opened, like all locks on the station would for a C-Sec omni-tool.
As the door opened, he drew the assault rifle and announced very, very loudly, "C-Sec, I'm armed and I'm coming in. If you shoot at me, I will arrest you."
There were three of them, standing there, frozen as the door opened, two Turians and an Asari, all were probably armed with the hold-out pistols common among the criminal element on the Citadel, but they didn't have any shields or armor, so the only thing to worry about was the Asari's biotics. For a moment he worried he'd been lied to and he'd just busted into someone's home. People did live in the C-Storage units, if they couldn't live anywhere else.* Then he took his eyes off the desperate people for a moment and looked around the room, anxiety melting into smugness. The Volus had told him the truth and these were not exactly master criminals. He could see the boxed of ration-packs, still in the boxesthey'd been stolen in.
*In fact, in a rather famous incident, twenty two people crashing in a C-Storage unit in another District had died when they'd been locked in by the man renting them the unit as a flophouse as part of an attempt to cover up their presence. He hadn't bothered to tell anyone about it while he was being held for questioning on other charges, or for the week he spent in custody.
"Up against the wall," he ordered.
"What'd we do?" asked one of the Turians with no real hope of weaseling out of responsibility, but figuring it was worth a shot.
As they were moving obediently to the wall, Garrus decided to answer the question. "Let's start with possession of stolen property and we'll work our way up from there, shall we? Hands on the wall."
Their hands rose and the Asari tried bluster, "You can't just bust in here like this!"
"Actually I can. C-Storage has agreed to grant C-Sec access to all units at will.* It was in your lease. You did read your lease, right?"
*This was true, and a result of the above incident and the horrific press which resulted from it, with C-Sec evading responsibility by asserting that the reason for the harm was the amount of time it took to get warrants for each storage unit.
Garrus activated his comms with a jerk of his head. "Station, this is Officer Garrus. I've located stolen property and have three for arrest. Transmitting location now."
"Patrol air-car inbound. They'll be with you in twenty minutes."
"Wonderful," Garrus slid his assault rifle back onto his armor and pulled out the cuffs and approached the criminals. After an imperceptible moment of hesitation, he went to the Asari first. She was by far the most dangerous, but not with her hands cuffed behind her back. As he'd half expected, she spun, biotics flaring to life as she tried to hit him in the chest with a throw. He dodged, caught her arm and directed the blast out of the open door, where it impacted the elevator. The guard-bar proved sturdier than he'd expected. The support structure did not. There was just time to scream a warning as the elevator fell with a shriek of grinding metal.
The other Turians stopped and stared in dismay at the destruction of their escape route and Garrus seized the distraction to use his grip on the Asari's wrist to force her to the ground and cuff her hands behind her back. When the other Turians turned back to fact him, the assault rifle was in his hands. A minute later, they were both cuffed together and Garrus had reported in, again, leaving him free to explore the claustrophobic and barely lit storage unit. The crates were stacked like a maze, giving him a path to walk through. He wondered why. It wasn't like there was anything in here that they needed access too. Why not just fill it back to front?
That was a question that was answered when Garrus almost tripped over a chair into a surprisingly impressive computing and communications setup. He tried to activate it and it requested a password. After a moment's thought, he tried 'password' and was amused to discover that it unlocked the system. Whoever'd set it up was a competent engineer, but their users were incompetent and so the system was vulnerable.
A flash download would let him examine their files while watching over the prisoners. Upon returning he discovered that the idiots had tried to free themselves from their cuffs and had accidentally managed to roll themselves into the door he'd closed before beginning his investigation, for which they should be grateful, as if he hadn't done so, they'd have plunged to their deaths, with the elevator removed.
They were not grateful. Indeed, the Asari was swearing at him in a language his translator didn't recognize, which was unusual, C-Sec paid for the good translator programs.* His concern that it might indicate she was part of some unknown group of super-criminals was eased somewhat as he read through their files. These were not super-criminals.
*He would later discover it was one of the dead languages the Asari had spoken before space travel, which the woman had learned as a child. It wasn't included in the translator program to save space, as it was a dead language.
The trip back to the station was pleasant enough as he waited for the second car so he could avoid having to ride with the criminals. The pleasantness dissipated rapidly when he made it to the station. The other officers were most definitively and tellingly not looking at him. The only one to look at him was the Volus and his bodyguard, though their clear amusement was…worrisome.
"Captain wants to see you," Officer Lishus said, his mandibles flexing in a way which signaled to a fellow Turian that their joint commanding officer was very, very pissed. It was a face the officer made a lot, given his assignment as Captain Kilsh's aide.
The captain's dark blue armor had matched his skin color when he first joined C-Sec, but over his long years of service, the Salarian's skin had weathered to a far lighter blue. Garrus almost tripped over his own feet when he saw the broad grin on the Salarian's face. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd seen the captain smiling and, with the exception of having a dozen of his tiny nephews visit the captain, his smiles had never been good news.
"Officer Garrus, congratulations on your excellent work finding these vicious criminals."
"Thank you sir," Garrus raised a hand and sent the data he'd downloaded from their communications system to the station computer. "There's more. They stole the stuff after being hired by the owner who was trying to offload the stuff since his original client refused payment since the food was contaminated. One of the workers at the warehouse was the middleman."
"How do you know that?" Kilsh asked, jolted off-script by this surprising news.
"They were blackmailing her and so made recordings of her hiring them. And of them blackmailing her, because they're idiots," Garrus concluded, falling back into a perfect parade rest.
The captain's smile broadened. "Even better. You've done so well that I've been able to get approval for a promotion." Garrus flinched, absolutely certain this wasn't going to go well. "There's an opening in the Investigation Division, up in District 3. Congratulations, Officer." He came out from around the desk and extended a hand to Garrus.
"Sir, I—"
"And don't worry about a thing, I'll take care of the damages caused by your unauthorized and unassisted invasion of a C-Storage facility and I'll make absolutely sure that everyone in the station knows that you were right about the death of that suit rat."
Garrus's hands flexed together, claws sliding against his armor. For a moment he was tempted to call the captain's bluff. He hadn't done anything wrong and the C-Sec counsel's office would handle C-Storage and wasn't likely to go along with the captain's desire to see Garrus gone. The more serious threat was to announce to everyone that he'd been right and everyone else had been wrong. It didn't matter that he'd never bring it up, or say I told you so. They'd know that he'd been right and they'd been willing to let a killer go rather than put in the effort to find him.
Being unpopular was fine, being despised would be a problem. And that was just from his comrades-in-arms, there were a few hundred ways that a creative CO could torture him. From the look on Kilsh's face, he knew it and was looking forward to showing the upstart young officer what could be done. No, it was better to go and try again in a new district. The only problem was that he didn't want to be Investigation Division. He wanted to be Special Response Division and they did almost all their recruiting from Enforcement Division. Going from Enforcement Division to Investigation Division wasn't actually a promotion, but it was a prestige bump, going the reverse direction was career suicide, an announcement that you couldn't handle the additional work.
"Sir, I really don't feel I deserve a promotion for just doing my job. If District 3 needs some new blood, I'm happy to move out, but I wouldn't want to blunt anyone's talons by leaping the queue."
"The paperwork's already gone through. I was sure you'd take it. After all," his grin was wide and horribly false, "it's almost a family tradition, isn't it?"
"Without my signature?"
"For a promotion? Personnel accepted a verbal approval."
Garrus's mandibles flared in fury, but fighting this would only look petty. "Thank you, sir," he said, though his voice's subharmonics screamed barely concealed threats of murder.
2176 CE, PragiaThe boy was small. She'd gotten bigger, but so few of her opponents had. It was…annoying. She wanted to learn to kill the Dalmatians,* butchers and monsters alike. They were all larger than her. Therefore, she needed larger enemies in order to practice properly. After the punishment her first escape attempt had brought, she knew her second had to succeed. Her higher brain functions wouldn't survive a second punishment. They'd told her that. She'd just be a VI in a meatsuit. So she would wait and watch and prepare.
*After they'd decided she was special and separated her from the others, they provided various forms of entertainment and interaction in an attempt to keep her sane in what amounted to solitary confinement and under constant torture and threat of torture. The 101 Dalmatians was one of the movies they provided as direct interaction was considered too dangerous. She had hated that movie, wanting the black and white dogs to suffer, just as the white and black clad monsters made her suffer. After her first escape attempt, the psychologist who'd suggested that was removed, as was anything that might distract her.
Usually she would draw out the match in order to enjoy the wonderful warmth which flowed from combat, but this wasn't combat and there was little warmth from butchering a boy half her size as his biotics didn't even phase her barrier. This was pointless and boring. She didn't even consider not killing him. Why would she? He was a traitor, just like the rest of them, ignoring her until it was time to try to kill her, but she did delay, waiting for the shock. The flare of pleasure and warmth the drugs brought when she was in combat hadn't arrived, because this wasn't combat, it was an execution, but she had an idea.
"Attack, Subject Zero," the voice of the head monster commanded over the loudspeaker system.
In a moment he would activate her implant and shock her for not attacking. That was what she was waiting for, and used the moment to focus, not on bringing up her biotics, but on that nameless, faceless voice, which had stolen her name and subjected her to a decade of torture and murder. Hate bubbled under her skin and eyes, rolling along her skin like the biotics would in a moment.
The shock came, but it was subsumed in the warmth brought by the drugs, just a tingle at the back of her tongue, but she flinched like it still hurt and obediently crushed the boy's skull with a single throw. The other children fled the sight. Cowards.
"Subject Zero, it's time for endurance tests. Go down the hall to the main testing area."
Jack obeyed. She didn't smile. They would see that and try to pry the secret of what she had to smile about from her. Soon, soon, they would know.