A/N: Sorry for the delay for this chapter. It's review time at work so various meetings have drawn me away.
Thanks to Leonineus for the idea to use the term Jabberwocks. Quotes are from 'Through the Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll.
Past: 15 Years Post War
"Gimme a gun."
Shepard, rifle to her shoulder and aiming along her omni-light toward the steadily growing sound of shrieks, edged back a bit. The cavern was the size of a corridor, which gave them some maneuverability, but not much. If they retreated back to the main room they'd have more space, but it would serve more to the Red Queen's advantage than if they tried to make a bottleneck here and limit their oncoming numbers.
There could be a thousand of them, by the sound. Even with a bottleneck we'll be lucky if we last two minutes.
"Del, gimme a gun," Wilcher repeated weakly. He'd forced himself to his feet, though he half-leaned on the wall still, unsteady on his feet.
"Sorry, Wilcher, I can't risk it," she replied. A sick man who could barely stand steady would be more hindrance than help in a firefight, and she couldn't risk the Red Queen regaining control of him and making him shoot them in the back.
The shrieks and cries were louder now, and beneath them she could hear a quick rustling sound.
Lane had her rifle up as well, her eyes narrowed as she peered down into the dark, body tense in anticipation. Her voice was low as she spoke.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son…the jaws that bite, the claws that catch…"
Del's scowl darkened. As appropriate as the quote was, she was about sick of Lewis Carroll. When she got out of here she was going to find a paper copy of Alice in Wonderland and burn it, just for catharsis.
Wilcher said that the Red Queen took images out of their head. One of Cerberus must have thought of Through the Looking Glass when he first saw her stuck there, and she took hold of the story and imagery, spreading it like a virus among the other thralls.
That triggered a thought. "Tell me that's you talking, Lane, and not the Queen," she said.
"No, sorry, that was me," Lane replied. "I took some literature classes and-"
"I get it, just keep your head here before you lose it."
Another shriek sounded, remarkably close, and Del shifted her omni-light just in time to see a huge pair of reflective eyes lunging toward them.
"Li!"
Liara lit a brilliant blue, lifting a barrier to block the entire corridor ahead of them. The same instant, those eyes recoiled with a frightened sound. Shepard opened fire, shooting through the barrier, and the eyes retreated.
"Keep that up as long as possible, and let's move forward," Del told her. "For whatever reason they're frightened of your biotics but that might change. Even if it doesn't, we have to find a way out of here before you're exhausted."
They started to move forward at a steady pace, and within moments more and more of the Red Queen's 'jabberwocks' appeared in the cast of their lights. All were more or less identical to the Queen, only varying shades of bright primary colors and other very minor characteristics setting any given one aside from the rest. The Queen herself, easily identified because of her missing hand, lead them- hissing and drooling furiously as she edged back, but unwilling to get any closer to Liara's dark energy field.
They hung from the ceiling, from walls, all limbs and jaws and drooling teeth. Del tried to count as they moved forward, but with the shadows and motion it was impossible to determine accurate numbers. Her estimate held them at two or three hundred at least…bad news if that barrier dropped.
Billions of years trapped down here in the dark…how did they survive? The 'glass' might have put the Queen into a semi-stasis and maintained her body, but the rest? What did they eat? Do they even need to eat?
Being as they were likely all partly cybernetic, it was possible they didn't need nutrition and had some other means of maintaining their organic structures. Right now it was academic and downright pointless to be pondering such things. They had to get past them and get out. That was all that was important.
The corridor continued to wind and slope steadily deeper…not exactly the direction in which they wanted to go. They moved steadily but not nearly as fast as Del would have preferred. The jabberwocks stayed well out of the way, moving back as the barrier moved forward, but they also didn't flee. They seemed to be aware that eventually the asari would grow exhausted and the barrier would vanish.
The heat was quickly rising, inching ever upwards for every foot they moved down, until it could be felt despite their hard-suits. Poor Wilcher was pouring with sweat, and seemed almost catatonic as he stumbled along with them.
Del found herself thinking about her kids. Mel and Irie might never even know what happened to their parents. She pictured the pair of them, standing solemn as they received posthumous honors on Liara and Shepard's behalf, and her gut just clenched.
We'll get back to you two, I swear. If I have to tear apart every one of these bastards with my bare hands, your Mama and I are coming back to you.
A short time later, the cavern seemed to level out, no longer descending. Of course, it wasn't going upwards either, and there had been no offshoots. Liara, still holding the barrier strong, was nevertheless starting to feel the strain. Without another biotic among their number- and with the shots that Del pelted toward the swarming Jabberwocks doing sadly little to whittle their numbers-the prospects of escaping without getting overwhelmed were looking grim.
Lane had paused in taking her own shots toward the crowd, and did a quick scan as the floor stopped sloping. "There's a large space ahead," she said. "Another room or cavern. I'm reading an artificial structure in the middle of it. I…it's hard to say for sure but given the lines, it looks like a ship."
"A ship? If it belongs to the jabberwocks, why did they stay here? Why didn't they fly out ages ago when this place was still on the surface?"
Del didn't really expect an answer, of course…there was no way for Lane to know any of that. Still, it seemed odd. If it was a ship, did it belong to someone other than the jabberwocks? Abandoned by the Iovino, perhaps? Or maybe it wasn't a ship, but some other structure like the strange idol that had kept the Queen trapped?
"Are there any communications?" she asked, and sent another rain of shots into the crowd. Two jabberwocks, wounded, withdrew with furious hisses.
"I am getting a flutter now and again. It just flickers for an open channel and then goes silent. There may be cracks or fissures, or even a shaft up ahead that goes to open air, but right here we're still too far down and-"
A rumble broke off her words. At first, Del thought it was another quake, before she realized the ground beneath her boots was actually still. The jabberwocks looked confused a moment before beating a hasty retreat. Only the Red Queen herself seemed reluctant to withdraw, lingering and screeching furiously at her compatriots before shooting Del a glare that could only be defined as venomous.
Shepard glared right back and opened fire, but the Queen was as quick as ever, even sans most of one arm. She chased after her fellows, retreating into the black. The rumble stopped a moment later, their omni-lights illuminating a cloud of dirt as it billowed toward them. Afraid suddenly that the corridor had collapsed ahead, Del felt her jaw tighten.
"C'mon! Move!"
They rushed onward, Liara momentarily letting her biotics die to help preserve them a bit longer. Her strength was clearly sapped but she dogged on as Lane helped the faltering Wilcher.
Less than a hundred yards on, they entered the large space that Lane had picked up with her scan. The size of a stadium, the cavern was natural and dripping with broken stalagmites, some of which had grown around and even through the decaying metal hull of a ship as large as Normandy. Its design was completely alien, a sort of flattened oblong with random flares and sweeps along its flanks. Huge holes had been torn or rusted through its battered hull and there were no signs of power that she could detect.
There was light, but the source of it did not bode well. At the far right of the cavern, hot magma had welled and formed a pool. Black crusts of cooling rock dotted its surface like tiny islands, but there was too much motion from below for it to solidify completely. It was bubbling actively and in a way Del really didn't like, especially given the earlier quakes. The heat in the cavern was incredible, and Shepard could feel sweat sliding down her neck and back. Her HUD was flashing in warning.
All of this was noted on the periphery of her attention. Her true focus was on the battle taking place before her.
The latest rumble hadn't been another quake, but rather the sound of hundreds of rachni drones finally breaking through. The tunnel they had burrowed was on the opposite end of the cavern from the angry magma, and more drones were emerging even as Del's small group ran into the cavern. The jabberwocks and the drones were locked in a vicious fight, tearing each other to pieces with shrieks and frantic screams.
Communications burst into life.
{Liara! Del, for Christ's sake, can you hear me?} Ashley sounded frantic, almost hoarse. {Is anything getting through?}
Directing Liara, Wilcher, and Lane along the wall toward the rachni tunnel, Del hit her ear bud and lifted her rifle.
{Ash! We're here! The rachni just broke through-}
{Thank God, you need to get out of there immediately! The fault like is extremely unstable and according to EDI the pressure is building to uncontrollable levels. We're looking at a massive volcanic eruption any minute now! You gotta get out of there!}
"You heard her! Run!" Del shouted, flinging her arm around Wilcher to help him along while keeping her rifle free.
She caught Liara's look toward the ancient ship as she ran, and knew what was on her wife's mind. To lose that ship and the jabberwocks meant losing a piece of ancient history uncounted millennia old…and possibly any answers as to the Iovino, and the truth behind the Reapers.
Chaos was still boiling around them as the jabberwocks and the rachni clashed in vicious, animalistic fury. Liara sent a biotic flash careening in front of them, helping to clear the way. No matter how engaged or distracted they were, the jabberwocks instantly fled from the path of the dark energy sailing toward them, scrambling to get as far from it as they were able.
Lane ran at Liara's heels, her rifle barking in steady ratchets. As they neared the shaft, the largest form yet emerged through it. Riot had not left her drones to fight alone. Furious, the huge rachni queen waded into the melee, tearing slavering beasts off of her soldiers and flinging more than one across the length of the cavern to land in the welling magma.
Wilcher was limping, weak and slow and desperately starting to falter. Del might not have been back up to the same spec she had been during the Reaper Wars, thanks to her fifteen year retirement, but she was still no weakling. Even so, the huge man was dragging on her, reducing their pace to a fast walk.
"C'mon, big guy," she said, urging him along. "I'm not leaving you down here! Move it!"
A jabberwock came sailing in from nearby, jaws agape. As she turned her rifle on it she released Wilcher, focusing her shot on the thing's maw and erasing most of its head. Driven by momentum, it crashed into her, ichor splashing over her face-plate as its weight stumbled her back. Throwing it away from her she turned back toward Wilcher, hoping he was still on his feet. If he'd collapsed when she'd let go of him, she was not sure she'd get him back upright again.
Instead, she saw his rather enormous fist a breath before it slammed into her face-plate.
Her feet flew out from beneath her as her face-plate actually cracked, the impact probably breaking every bone in Wilcher's hand at the same time. Crashing to the ground her wind immediately barked out of her as nearly four hundred pounds of human man and hard-suit dropped on top of her. Pinned, she tried to heave him off. Through the crack over her face-plate and the smears of ichor, she could see his sickly gray and green face. His squealing laugh and high pitched voice was all the Red Queen.
"Off with her head!"
Then the heated, maddened fever in his eyes snapped off as Lane's bullet took him in the temple, blowing away the Red Queen's control and Wilcher's life in one motion. His body slumped dead weight over her, then was torn away by furious long claws, the Red Queen flinging her lifeless puppet aside as if he weighed nothing.
The moment he was off of her Del rolled, barely missing those same claws as they darted toward her head. Lane fired again, the Queen shrieking and turning toward her, only to wail in abject horror as she was consumed in blue light, lifted off the ground under the power of Liara's biotics.
Shepard got to her feet, wiping a hand over her face-plate, hauling her rifle up as she slapped a hand into Lane's shoulder. "Go!"
There was no time to breathe, let alone mourn. The three of them bolted toward the rachni tunnel, Liara still holding the Red Queen in her biotics. The thing was squealing and struggling as best she could, held all but immobile in the bubble of dark energy. In answer, a dozen jabberwocks darted their way only to be swept aside by Riot. Six more were clinging to the battered rachni queen's carapace, tearing at it viciously. Furiously, she peeled them off as the ground once again began to shake.
Del found herself running as fast as she could into the tunnel, her lungs aching and burning in response to the weight that had been dropped on them only minutes before. The slope of the tunnel was steady, and in the distance, at least a mile off, she could see the faint, promising gleam of sky.
Lane and Liara ran just ahead of her, the asari trailing her Red Queen captive. Glancing back in concern as the shaking grew worse, Del was relieved to see Riot and the surviving rachni fleeing up the tunnel behind them, striking at supports to cause the passage to collapse behind them, slowing or burying the pursuing jabberwocks.
The shaking was getting worse. Ashley was shouting in her ear but her voice was all but lost in the deep, groaning bellow of a planet's crust tearing itself apart. The tunnel around them was clouded with falling dirt and chunks of stone, and even with her malfunctioning HUD she could barely see the women running only feet ahead of her.
Then, one of Riot's appendages wound around her waist, hauling her off the ground. A burst of frantic color filled her mind.
HANG ON!
Able to move much faster than her smaller mammalian friends, Riot reached out and snagged Lane as well, the little redhead struggling a moment in surprise before she realized what had just happened. As Riot took hold of Liara, however, the asari lost her weakening grip on her biotics as she was startled. Freed, the Red Queen fell to the ground…and was crushed a moment later, speared beneath one of the rachni queen's large legs as she rushed past.
Fresh air burst around them as they reached the surface a few miles away from the crack where they'd initially descended. Still, they were far from safe. On the flat, rocky expanse around them, huge geysers of dirt and steam were venting into the air, superheated air and water colliding with the atmosphere and creating billowing, ominous clouds. Everything seemed to be shaking, and Del could literally see ripples as shockwaves tore up rock and stone.
A hundred yards away the Normandy was hovering only a couple of feet off the ground, its cargo bay standing open. Riot picked up even more speed on the flat expanse, and moments later, she leapt into the gaping bay, the few small drones that had escaped on her heels bounding in after her.
Though she had once lived in the cargo bay, she had been very young and far smaller. Now a fully grown queen, she took up a great deal of space and had to hunch slightly to keep from striking the roof. As soon as she'd set Del down, Shepard ran to the edge of the open bay door, looking back as the Normandy lifted out of danger.
The steam plumes had been replaced by lava spouts, some jetting nearly a hundred feet high. The ground continued to chew itself up, slabs of rock the size of houses cracking and dipping and folding until everything had been swallowed into fire and brimstone.
"Gone…all of it," Liara said in a hush, standing at Del's elbow as she took in the site. "The carvings, the idol, the ship…Wilcher…"
Her voice broke on the last word, and silently Del slid an arm around her shoulders, lowering her head.
Present: 217 Years Post War
Wrex's son Solus was a big krogan. Though slightly shorter in height than the older Grunt, Solus was thick and wide, a walking wall of mean intimidation.
To those who did not know him, of course. To those he called family and clan, Solus was affable and easy to humor, irascible and somehow endlessly charming.
He and Grunt had become good friends. As a boy, the younger Solus had looked to Grunt as a mentor, especially after Wrex had passed away. The first krogan born after the genophage had been cured, Urdnot Solus bore the name of the salarian that had given his life to save the people his people had wronged centuries before. Solus bore the name with pride, and if he loved nothing else, he did love a good story.
They had returned to their private quarters after leaving the funeral ceremony. Though repeating coverage and separate memorials were going on all over the galaxy, filling every news feed and live report from here to the edge, no one gathered in the large living space turned on an omni-tool, a vid screen, or even a ticker. The outside, present world was not what concerned them at the moment. Right now, their thoughts were on past glorious deeds and the memory of the real Del Shepard that they all had known and loved.
"…what's a broken limb over your life, and a chance to defeat your enemies?" Solus asked, eyes sparkling. Melara lingered near Liara, a glass of whiskey in her hand as she listened with a smirk. "Shepard wedges her arm in the rocks, right? Then snap! She wails, pretending to writhe in pain, to lure her enemy in. When the rabid varren, smelling blood, closed in for the kill, she drove her knife into its neck and slit it wide open!"
Melara rolled her eyes. "It wasn't a varren, it was her friend Sydney," she said. "And she didn't slit her wide open, she just shot her with a paint gun."
"Bah!" Solus flapped a hand. "I like my version better."
"Bába's deeds hardly need embellishing to make them more interesting, Solus," Irie said. "What of Grunt's favorite story? The one where she takes on a thresher maw on foot?"
"With Mama's help," Mel said, smiling proudly at Liara.
"With Mama's terrified help, is what you mean, dearest," Liara replied with a wistful smile.
"Terrified or not, you still jumped in there…and you saved her life doing it."
"I do not know about that." Liara shook her head. "Knowing Del, if the maw had actually swallowed her, she would only have cut her way out of its belly with her boot knife and remarked on the stench."
Mel stared at her in surprise. Grunt let out a thundering laugh, slapping his knee hard. "Too right!" he grinned.
Listening raptly, Grunt's half-grown boys shook their heads at the laughter. "Tell us one we haven't heard," Shep asked.
Grunt snorted, then pretended to look solemn. "Well, I had never seen Shepard falter at anything, boys," he said seriously. "Maw or varren, husk or banshee, she'd take on an army with her bare fists and light a cigar in their bloody remains. Even so, there was one instance I saw Del Shepard completely freeze in a panic."
"Shepard in a panic?" Solus scoffed, scandalized. "Hardly! I don't think she was capable of panic."
"No, it's true," Grunt insisted. "I saw her freeze completely, unable to move…you saw it too, Blue. You were there. So was lrie…after a fashion."
Liara and her daughter exchanged confused looks. "I…do not remember this, Grunt."
"Bába- freeze?" Melara sounded scandalized. "The woman flung herself in the path of heavy mechs, maws, merc squads and indoctrinated…good Goddess she killed Reapers…sometimes without a ship!"
"I know. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself, but I did. She turned just as white as can be and stammered like a newborn pyjak. For the first time since I'd come out of the tank, Shepard flat out did not know what to do."
Liara paused, then smiled a little. Grunt grinned and nodded at her. "I see you finally remember."
"I do," she replied. "Grunt is correct. It happened when I was pregnant with Irie, shortly after the end of the war. Shepard did, indeed, freeze for a short period of time. It took her several moments before she could find her tongue enough to attempt speech…and she barely succeeded at even that. In fact, she very nearly fainted. I am afraid the entire situation was my fault."
"What?" Mel folded her arms, aghast. "I don't believe it! Really, Mama? What did you do? What happened?"
Liara sat up a little, smoothing her skirt, a faint but unmistakable sparkle of mischief in her eyes. "I simply introduced her to Charles Flatwood."