Shepard didn't just wake up one morning and decide to declare war on Cerberus.
No one except its agents had any idea how so very deeply Cerberus had its tendrils sunk deep into the Alliance. Years later, it would be Anderson who spearheaded the move that would shake some of those tendrils loose in the first major blow against the group. Before that happened, however (in a move no one would realize the irony of until a few years later) Shepard helped him along by delivering a vicious kick to all three of its heads, metaphorically speaking.
There was little doubt that Shepard, once the hunt for Saren was done one way or the other, intended on looking deeper into Cerberus, whether officially or unofficially. She certainly had no intention of just sitting back and allowing the matter of whether or not they had something to do with Akuze to rest. It was simply on the back-burner of her mind.
Even after Toombs, even after what he'd revealed, even after the twisted experiments they'd discovered in several of their depots, she hadn't intended to go after them directly.
It took one distress beacon to do that. And the death of one man.
At a later point, Shepard would- with considerable glee - mention that all the costs the Illusive Man would suffer in that one week could be traced back to a krogan purchasing a couple of bottles of alien liquor.
Drunken shenanigans were a time honored way to cement a friendship; every race knew that one. Being able to hold your liquor earned you respect pretty much anywhere. Ashley in particular was proud of her ability to out-drink any man she'd ever worked with, which was probably why she'd been stupid enough to believe she could take on ryncol. It was a drink made by the krogan that was more infamous than famous since the krogan were pretty much the only ones that could drink it and survive.
Shepard didn't even have Ashley's excuse. She was just curious. To be fair, she managed to stay on her feet after a glass, which was more than could be said for Ash. It was while she was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the storage area (waiting for Ashley to come to) that Wrex, probably impressed she was awake at all while he calmly tossed back shot after shot of the stuff, told Shepard about his father.
You didn't have to be in his presence for very long to see that despite his frustration, Wrex honestly cared about the future of his people. Shepard had been curious about various comments from Wrex that he had, at one point, tried to help the krogan rise a bit above the pit of random, useless violence the war and the genophage had left his people in.
Shepard had made it a point to know the history and basics of the societies of as many races as possible. She'd already known the krogan were a tribal race, hardened by the harsh conditions of their home planet. Before the Krogan Rebellions, they were also amazingly fertile, reproducing at a massive rate, as well as being one of the most physically robust races in the galaxy, which made them ideal at battling the rachni. That was why the salarians had 'uplifted' them, drawing them into galactic society and giving them advanced technology, before sending them against the insect race that had been threatening the entire galaxy at the time. The krogan proved to be the only race able to endure actually going to the rachni worlds and destroying their queens. But their rapidly expanding numbers made them take more and more planets for themselves, ultimately starting the Krogan Rebellions and culminating in the release of the genophage. Wrex and Garrus seemed to have reached at least some level of understanding, mainly out of respect for each other's abilities, but they still went back and forth about that on occasion. Until she'd met Wrex, Shepard had only met a few krogan personally . . . they weren't exactly a friendly race. She hadn't given the Krogan Rebellions much thought- humanity wouldn't even join the galactic community until several centuries later, after all -it was simply a piece of history.
Wrex's frustration and anger toward the other krogan wasn't unfounded. In his opinion, it was the belief they were doomed that was dooming them. Wrex had actually tried to organize the tribe he'd led early in his life to focus more on rebuilding their society. It had surprised Shepard to learn how many of the krogan still wanted war, including Jarrod, Wrex's father. A difference of opinion that big between a father and a son wasn't uncommon anywhere, but in Wrex's society, it could only end one way. Namely, with his best warriors dead and his knife buried in his own father's chest.
If that wasn't enough to turn you into a cynic, what was?
Which was what had brought them here.
"I hope we don't actually meet up with your mother, because she'll probably singularity my ass into oblivion for corrupting you," Shepard muttered, watching a doorway while Liara used biotics to pull open yet another vault.
"We're helping Wrex, that's not corruption."
"Depends on who you ask."
"True enough." Liara frowned as she peered into the vault. "It's not here."
"Tali?" Shepard called across the room.
"Not yet, Shepard, but I have some more heavily armored vaults over here!"
Shepard tapped Liara on the shoulder and motioned her toward the quarian as footsteps echoed beyond the broken doorway. Liara nodded and headed across the room, weaving her way between the lines and lines of display cases. The room looked like a damn museum. Shepard tapped her comm as she sent a warp field at the doorway, listening to the yells and crashes beyond, and earning a proud smile from Liara. Shepard was certainly benefitting from practice with her and Kaidan, and now even Wrex joined them once in a while. Only to show them how it was done, of course. "Kaidan, you guys have any luck?"
Her comm crackled. "Depends, Commander. We didn't find it yet but we found Actus." She heard faint sounds of gunfire over the comm. "He and Wrex are discussing his theft at the moment."
"Aw, poor bastard."
There was a crunch of metal and a cry of pain in the background. Garrus's voice came over the comm, his tone dry. "Yeah, I think his days of stealing from the krogan...or anyone else for that matter...are done. The galaxy will have to mourn the loss."
"You said it, handsome." Shepard glanced up as Ashley came charging through the doorway backwards, shooting through it. "Gotta go, there's some men bothering me." She clicked off and rose, bringing her pistols up.
Ashley ducked behind a display case nearby. She was grinning. "Probably irresponsible of me, but this is so cool. Fighting pirates." Shepard tossed another small warp field as a couple of Tonn Actus's men tried to charge the doorway. The roar of Ashley's shotgun almost made the walls of the enclosed space shake, taking them down in a perfectly timed attack the second the warp field smashed into them. "Boomstick- 2. Pirates- 0."
Shepard chuckled and stood fully upright. She was about to call over to Tali and Liara when something in the display case caught her eye. Tonn Actus was well hated among the krogan for his gathering of krogan artifacts, specifically stuff from the Rebellions, but apparently the turian was a connoisseur of all kinds of historical objects. Shepard hacked the lock on the display case and reached in, plucking up what looked like an ancient pistol. Ash looked over, her eyes wide. Shepard turned the old gun over in her hands carefully. It was expertly preserved, looking like it had just been slipped back into its holster moments ago. "Human, Colt Single Action Army Pistol, 1874," she read from the description card.
"That's right out of the Ancient West," Ash said, wide eyed.
Shepard nodded. She caught movement right at the corner of her eye and threw the bulletproof glass lid up again, ducking down as three more pirates came in. Two of them came at Ashley while a third launched himself over the display case in front of the one Shepard was hiding behind, whipping a pistol up and pointing it at her, grinning. "I know you, chick. The famous Commander Shepard, at my mercy."
Shepard pointed the Colt at him around the case's lid.
His grin only got wider and more arrogant. He leaned forward, daring her to pull the trigger. "Of course, you expect me to believe the glorious Commander Shepard can fire a centuries old pistol."
His movement put his head in range and Shepard flipped the gun over, holding it by the barrel and slamming the heavy butt of it into his unprotected temple with all her strength. His eyes widened in almost comical surprise before rolling back as he collapsed. Ash stepped up and shot him before he hit the ground.
Shepard reflected that if she was to indeed end her life with a save count bigger than her kill count, she was probably going to have to stop battling people with a 'kill first, ask questions later' philosophy. Which was the philosophy of many in the Terminus Systems; a problem, that.
"Commander!" Tali poked her head out of the vault she'd just broken into. "We found it! I think. It's too big to be anything else, I guess..."
Ash kept her eyes on the door and Shepard crossed the room to join Tali and Liara, peering into the vault. She spotted it immediately, displayed in a special case at the back of the vault: an ancient set of krogan armor.
"I can't believe my ancestors actually wore this crap, but at least I have it back," Wrex rumbled. He was studying the armor with an oddly subdued look in his red eyes.
"Good armor fashion is timeless," Shepard said.
Wrex snorted. "I don't see you running around in one of those stupid looking tin cans you humans used to wear in your ancient times."
She grinned. "Well, regardless of fashion...or lack thereof...I'm happy we could help you get it back."
The krogan shot her an amused look. "I might just be starting to like you, Shepard. Come by later, I'll crack open another bottle of ryncol."
"I don't deserve a threat like that, krogan."
She headed for the elevator as Wrex chuckled, moving past Garrus and Howard, who were looking over some of the upgrades Howard had done to the Mako the past couple of days. She might as well do another quick sweep with Tali's search engine and see if they could pick up on Saren's whereabouts and then...
"Commander!"
Shepard swerved from her path to the elevator and hit the intercom. "I'm here, Joker, what's up?"
"Just thought you ought to know we just got a distress call on Edolus. Alliance, looks like a ground team of marines."
"What the hell are they doing on Edolus? There's nothing there but sand and rocks," Wrex wondered aloud.
Shepard frowned. "Shit. How fast can you get us there?"
"It's not too far away. About an hour plus a bit more to navigate through the atmosphere."
"Head there." She looked over at Howard and Garrus, who were both watching her now. "Looks like we're going to give those upgrades a try."
"Just don't let me catch you racing it, young lady," Howard said, pointing at her sternly.
"Now you're just insulting, I'd never let you catch me."
"We've got burning debris up ahead, Commander," Ashley said, pointing.
Shepard squinted through the dust, cursing softly under her breath. Looks like they hadn't been fast enough. Garrus kept the guns trained around them carefully as she moved cautiously toward the burning vehicle, which she was pretty sure was a M29 Grizzly, a smaller cousin of the Mako.
She stopped a few yards away and clicked the comm on her helmet as she climbed out of the Mako, gun drawn, carefully moving toward the site. There was the transmitter sending out the distress signal. She paused, pushing over the body of a marine that was sprawled several feet away from the others, almost like it had been thrown there, feeling the others gather around her. She frowned, looking around. What the hell had happened, she wondered. Wrex was right, there was nothing here. Some of the ground was tossed up all over the place, maybe by the wind, and there were the marine bodies, but no enemy bodies, no sign of a fight and nowhere near enough bodies to be a full contingent.
Shepard moved closer to the site and froze, her veins turning to ice as an acidic stench hit her olfactory sensors, strong even over the smell of burning metal and fuel from the Grizzly. She knew that smell, she remembered it stinging her nostrils every time she had a nightmare about...
Akuze.
Oh, God.
No bodies.
She backed away from the site, her voice hoarse. "Everyone back to the Mako. Now."
"What is it, Commander?" Garrus's voice was sharp with concern.
She barely heard him, a mental picture of the area they'd seen as they were dropping down with the Mako filling her head. Yes, yes...the area had the look of a jagged circle, how the hell had she failed to notice it? She'd studied them obsessively in the vague hope that knowledge would cleanse her fear. "This is a thresher maw nest..."
Wrex let out a string of curses and Ashley gasped. Shepard motioned them back toward the Mako, hurrying, hoping against hope.
She had just reached the vehicle when she felt the ground vibrating beneath her feet, making her heart clench almost painfully in her chest. "Garrus, get the guns up!" She swung into the driver's seat as Wrex and Ashley piled in behind her and Wrex threw the door shut.
Now she could feel the vibrations even in the Mako, making her hands tremble as a rush of terror speared through her. Dammit, facing these things once in your life should be fucking enough...
She glanced over at Garrus at the guns, at Ash and Wrex behind her. Her crew.
Ice cold focus layered itself over the fear, pressing it down. This wasn't happening again. Not ever. Her world narrowed down to the feel of the wheel in her grip, the idling engine of the Mako, and the vibrations that grew more and more violent with every passing second. She focused on those.
You're not getting my crew.
"Commander?" Ash spoke from behind her.
"Wait." Shepard's voice was utterly calm. "When I say fire, hit with everything we've got, Garrus."
"Yes, Commander."
Wait for it...wait for it...she was going on pure gut instinct now, the same instinct that had kicked in that night all those years ago. There's a slight pause and then a hard shake that's almost like an earthquake right before it breaks the surface...
There.
Shepard threw the Mako in reverse and punched it, sending it careening backwards almost at top speed a few seconds before a huge, slithery form erupted from the surface in front of them. "Now, Garrus!"
The turian unloaded the guns on the thresher maw, swaying in front of them, obviously confused by the fact it had failed in its usually foolproof sneak attack. She heard it shriek in pain as the Mako's guns slammed it, knocking it back a bit.
The sound was music to her ears.
She kept going backwards, a bit slower, waiting. The thing recovered quick enough, rearing back, its writhing mouth splaying open. She jerked hard on the wheel and gave it an extra boost of speed, pulling them just out of the way of the creature's acid right in time. But the Thresher Maw was already diving back beneath the surface. She kept the spin going, speeding along the sand toward the raised edge of the nest. If they could get out of it, the Maw wouldn't follow them. "Garrus?"
"I'm on it." The turian's ringing voice was as calm as hers, his entire focus on the readouts.
"Carve off a few chunks for me, turian. Thresher maw steaks are good eating," Wrex growled, sounding like he was having a grand old time.
With every word of the exchange, her fear faded, turned the thresher maw from a nightmare of the past to a dangerous enemy of the present. She focused, watching for the telltale displacement of the ground that would tell her what direction it was coming from. She slammed the Mako to a halt as it charged at them and did the reverse trick again, this time swerving back so they were slightly behind it when it burst from the ground and missed them again, seeming confused all over again.
It's just an animal, the cold voice in her head whispered. A top flight predator but the trouble with having no enemies is you aren't able to adapt yourself. It has a handful of ways to attack and that's it. Use it.
Garrus had already picked up on the pattern. Even as the thresher maw started to turn, he was firing again. Shepard spun the Mako in a fast circle behind it, confusing it further. It twisted, lightning fast, and brought its claws slamming down, missing them by inches, the force of the blow causing the Mako to tip alarmingly for a moment before Shepard got it under control. Garrus swivelled the guns around and fired again, this time catching the thing on the underside of its chin before it could spit again, snapping its head back. At the same time, Wrex lunged forward and threw the door open enough he could lean out, gripping the top of the doorway hard as Shepard took off again, unloading a shot at the base of the thing's throat where it was obviously vulnerable. There was a wet tearing sound as the thresher maw shrieked again, spots on its carapace smoking and chunks of hard flesh and yellowish ichor raining down. Wrex ducked back in to avoid it, slamming the door shut again. By that time, they were driving away from it, and the guns had powered up again. Garrus focused and hit the thing as it started to pull back under the ground again, its pained keening making their ears vibrate. Garrus's shot struck it near the spot Wrex had nailed it and the effect was spectacular. A geyser of yellowish ichor blew upward from the thing, along with a good portion of its head. It let out one more shriek, flailing and twisting in the air, then crashed into the ground behind them, the impact shaking the floor beneath their feet.
"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit..." Shepard dimly realized Ash had been chanting that for the past couple of minutes. She let out a whoop as the thresher maw died. "Holy shit! Good driving, Commander!"
"Good shooting." Shepard grinned over at Garrus and the turian flared his mandibles in their version of a smile.
"Yea, not bad, krogan, though that leaning out of the Mako habit of yours will probably bite you in the ass someday." Ashley sounded almost giddy.
"But until then, it bites enemies on the ass," the krogan said, sounding pleased with himself. Shepard sent him a grin as well, then focused on finding a path out of the nest, taking them back up to higher ground.
"Then Wrex leaned out of the Mako and almost blew half of the damn thing away," Ashley said to a wide eyed audience including Kaidan, Liara, Tali, and a good portion of the crew. There was honest admiration in her voice. Awesome gun-work transcended personality and racial conflicts.
She'd had to repeat the story several times as more and more people came to listen. Shepard stood back, working on her omni-tool with an expression that clearly said 'listen to Ashley and don't bother me'.
"That transmitter wasn't from their vehicle." Shepard looked up as Garrus stepped up beside her, his voice quiet.
"I know..." she murmured back.
"It was sitting there in almost the exact center of the nest, I'm pretty sure. It looked like..."
"It was deliberately placed there. Yeah." Shepard's voice was flat.
"They must have died answering the signal the same way we did. I'm sorry, Commander."
She lifted her head, meeting those steady blue eyes. Neither of them said it out loud, but it was there: Cerberus.
Garrus leaned back against the wall beside her. "Do you know who they served under? We should inform their commander."
"Looking it up now. We didn't get any real information so I have to sort through quite a bit to narrow it down."
Garrus silently held up his omni-tool. Appreciating it, she gave him half of the list and the two of them picked their way through it.
"Think I have it, Commander." The turian leaned over, showing her the information displayed on the holo-screen.
Shepard scanned it, nodding. "Yes...yes, that's it. They were marines. Serving under..." Her eyes came to rest on the name and her face went pale, her eyes going wide. "Oh, no..."
Despite what it might have appeared, there were, in fact, only a few people in the Alliance ranks- usually higher up and administrators -that Shepard held in contempt. As a whole, she was genuinely proud to have served with the people she'd been assigned with. The brave men and women working to pave the way for humanity in this brave new galaxy of theirs they were still almost strangers to. They were the people who she held up as possessing the best aspects of humanity. Anderson was right at the top of that list, obviously. And Admiral Hackett, though she'd never met him face to face. There were also people like Howard, and Pressly, and Joker and Dr. Chakwas.
But there was one man who would always, for Shepard, stand a head above everyone else and that was Rear Admiral Kahoku. Anything good about her as a soldier could be traced back to him. To her, he encompassed everything that was good about the Alliance. He was the man she'd tried her very best to model herself after, the man who had given her a second shot at life. In the first hard years when she'd joined up with the Alliance, when she'd chafed at being put under probation and- spoiled brat that she was -struggled with having to take orders not just from one person but everyone above her, the idea of disappointing him and making him look bad had been enough to make her bite her tongue. She'd let herself get that all important trait beaten into her that Kahoku had known she desperately needed, though she didn't realize it until much later: discipline.
Shepard had shut the door of the comm room for privacy. She sat in one of the chairs, feeling vaguely ill. When she had contacted Anderson for his help in finding the Admiral, he had informed her Kahoku was on the Citadel at that very moment, trying to get an audience with the Council regarding some of his men going missing. His face had gone grim when she'd told him she knew what had happened to them, but he had not asked questions. He had promised to put Kahoku in contact with her as soon as he could track him down.
She closed her eyes, letting out a breath as a quiet chime came from the pedestal. She buttoned her jacket and smoothed her hair back as best she could as she walked up and tapped the button, standing at attention and saluting as the Admiral's image appeared. "Sir."
"Shepard." The Admiral looked tired and much older than the last time she'd seen him, but he managed half a smile for her. "Somehow I knew that turian Spectre would choose you. I knew you'd be up to it. It's been a long time."
"Yes, sir. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances."
Kahoku wasn't a stupid man by any stretch of the imagination. Her contacting him like this, her tone, and what Anderson had told him was enough he knew what was coming. His lips pressed into a thin line. "What happened to my men, Shepard?"
She gave it to him as she knew he would want it to be given: straight and to the point. He listened silently, face expressionless. "The entire unit wouldn't have just stumbled into a thresher maw nest," he said finally.
"No, sir. I believe they were lured in the same way we were. The only conclusion that I can come to is that, given the placement and the way the distress beacon was set, someone deliberately put it there to lure people into the nest." She didn't add her suspicions about Cerberus. She hadn't had time to look into it and she wasn't going to give him anything unless she was absolutely certain it would actually be useful for him.
"And all of a sudden, no one seems to know anything about it and that area is restricted," Kahoku said, his voice so quiet Shepard wondered if he even meant for her to hear. "I've had a bad feeling about this ever since they disappeared..."
His back was straight, his expression composed, but even in the hologram, Shepard could see the grief behind his professional demeanor. There were several in the Admiralty who might have viewed their men as replaceable without much value; Admiral Kahoku was not one of them.
And because of that, neither was Arian Shepard.
Kahoku nodded, finally looking at her again. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Shepard. I would have been waiting until Judgement Day if the bureaucrats had anything to say about it. Now I have to do my part. Their families need to know why they died."
"If you need anything from me, sir, you only have to ask."
Again came that quiet smile. "Not for the moment, Shepard, you've done enough. But I'll let you know when I find something about what happened." He nodded to her as she saluted again, his image fading away.
It was the last time she ever saw him alive.