Memories of Bysorrn: Whom Shepards Guard
The Shepard family has been stationed on the turian-controlled planet of Bysorrn with several other Systems Alliance families as part of an interspecies exchange program in the year 2164. It is the hope of the Alliance that assistance with local law enforcement and rescue operations there will increase humanity's appeal to the Council in its bid for an embassy on the Citadel. This hope is about to be put to its first test…
It was a new experience for Cadrina Shepard as she settled into her assigned house at Palturma Beach. In the past, she alternated with her parents Hannah and Dylan as each was rotated in and out of active duty. Their schedules were now arranged such that they would both be back home by evening as if they were working a nine-to-six job. They could spend more time than ever with their daughter and with each other. For the first time in their lives, Cadrina and her parents could live almost as if they were an ordinary family.
Cadrina headed down to the beach one afternoon with her friend Steven, who belonged to a vid game designer extranet site she was also a member of. He and his family were glad to see her, they were uneasy about living in the midst of a multitude of non-humans, finding it strange that even they indulged in pastimes they believed were exclusive to humans. Turians, salarians and asari were out dressed for the beach, either swimming, walking along the pinkish sand or stretched out on blankets to take in the sun. Seated on their own blanket with parasol deployed and refreshments laid out, Cadrina pointed out to Steven and his family a couple of quarians setting out on a hovercraft, possibly to go diving and investigate the elaborate coral reefs that were one of the main attractions in the area. She then saw a familiar face walking along the shore. It was a tall, bearded man wearing a white shirt and shorts with a black Systems Alliance logo on the right sleeve.
"HEY, DAD!" Cadrina called out to him and waved. Dylan took notice and waved back to his daughter.
"He's working – leave him alone!" chided Steven as Cadrina stood up.
"I'll only be a minute…" Cadrina turned to face Steven's parents. "Mr. and Mrs. Hanol?"
"We'll be right here," said Steven's father.
"'kay – thanks!" Cadrina bounced slightly as she answered.
She turned in her father's direction and was about to head out when Steven teased
"You are such a Daddy's Girl!"
Cadrina stuck out her tongue at Steven and then ran off to join her father.
"You know, you could show me a little more affection yourself," Steven's mother commented. "I don't get much time with you, either."
"Dad, who is this woman?" Steven joked.
His mother responded by grabbing her son and playfully wrestling him down on to the blanket. Steven protested loudly. "I was kidding! I was kidding, Mom! Stop!"
Dylan stood in place and waited for his daughter to run up to him. "Hey, Cady!" he said as his daughter gave him a quick hug. "Enjoying yourself out here?"
"Yeah – it's a little weird, though" answered Cadrina "But it's a good weird! The turians keep saying they're not like us, but they love the beach as much as we do!" Remembering that her father was still on duty, she began to start back towards Steven's spot on the beach. "Just wanted to say hello…"
Dylan took her hand. "You can stick around a minute. I just need to keep my eyes peeled for trouble."
Dylan resumed walking, Cadrina following beside him. He looked out to the purplish blue sea dotted with non-human swimmers, boaters and skimmers. "Yep, I haven't met anyone yet who didn't like splashing around in the water… aside from Captain Madison's dog!"
"I thought you were gonna be on patrol by boat," Cadrina commented as she scanned the shoreline with her father.
"They decided to start me out as a lifeguard. Get to know the people, get them used to having humans around – makes sense."
As he finished his statement, Cadrina saw that indeed they were being noticed by beachgoers, but not all the attention was positive. A few turians turned or shook their heads in disapproval. It had been a few years since the Relay 314 Incident. Humans and turians since then had been at peace, but an uneasy one. Cadrina could not help but be a little concerned.
"Everyone just needs a little time," said Dylan, continuing to monitor the shoreline.
A little further along the way, an asari was looking out to the ocean with binoculars. She was several months pregnant and was wearing a translucent white robe over her swimsuit. Dylan slowly closed in on her with his daughter in tow. The asari put down her binoculars and noticed his lifeguard's attire.
"My husband, the aspiring sailor," she said, her head nodding in the direction of the tides.
Dylan faced the ocean and unclipped his own binoculars from his belt. He zoomed in on a small white rowboat with a salarian and an asari child on board. The salarian was paddling awkwardly to shore against increasingly choppy waters; the young asari, who had the appearance of a human five year old, was trying to steady herself in her seat.
"It's getting a little rough out there," Dylan commented.
"He –says- he can handle it." The asari woman raised a hand to the right side of her head. "Dear, I have an officer with me now. I'm going to have him call for a pickup."
She stood silently as she heard her husband, the salarian's reply. She looked through her binoculars again.
"Well, I can see you're doing a fabulous job making your way back! Just admit you're not the nautical genius you claim to b – OH, GODDESS!"
Dylan quickly looked through his binoculars again. A freak wave had come up suddenly and overturned the boat, toppling father and child into the water. Dylan activated his comset earpiece as he started towards the water.
"This is Shepard at Zone 3! I have two down past the boundary – I need a craft dispatched to coordinates X307, Y58!"
As Dylan swam out to where the boat went down, passerby began to gather near the panicked asari and Cadrina. They could just make out two figures in distress off in the distance. The salarian had his child in one arm but had difficulty staying afloat. Dylan stopped momentarily to flag down a turian civilian on a jet craft for an assist only to be passed by and then continued to swim further. The homing beacon on his omni-tool was activated. There wasn't much time left; the salarian and his daughter were starting to succumb. Even if Dylan could reach them, he could not save them both without some type of craft this far out. The nearest one coming to his aid was still minutes away. Dylan then heard what sounded like drafts of air growing louder as he swam. Alternating air blasts growing closer. He looked up to see a blond girl hovering in the air wearing a dark blue bathing suit kneeling down to hand him a black strap with a handle on its end.
"Grab on!" shouted Cadrina from her Skyboard - she had run back to retrieve it when she came to the same realizations her father did. For an instant Dylan wanted to scold her for putting her life at risk. But he remembered the present crisis and relented, also realizing that he was partially to blame for raising her to be mindful of others and to always help when she could. He grabbed the handle from her and held on tightly as she engaged the board's fans. Cadrina quickly sped towards the salarian, careful to stay above the waves that threatened to wash into her board and tapping furiously on her own omni-tool. The salarian was going under just as Cadrina and Dylan arrived. She knelt down and extended a strap from the other end of her Skyboard and held on as she jumped into the water to help her father. Together they managed to secure the victims: Dylan held the salarian, the asari child was with Cadrina. Now they needed to get back to shore quickly if there was any hope of reviving them.
Cadrina made sure that her father was ready and then pulled down on her strap until her face was just by her omni-tool on her left forearm. She tapped on it with her chin, lighting up the device. "GO!" she shouted and her Skyboard roared to life, dragging her and her father along at its highest speed. Swimmers cleared out of their path as they approached land. Dylan and Cadrina tensed and strained with the weight of their charges. Upon hitting the beach, the Skyboard powered off and ditched into the sand. Spectators gathered as Dylan and Cadrina dragged and laid the victims down further inland out of the water's reach. The asari mother fell to her knees by her husband and daughter, crying and praying that they were not lost to her, hoping that the two human strangers could do something to bring them back.
Dylan attended numerous training sessions on cross-species medicine during his last posting at a general hospital on the planet Ergiel. Cadrina had begged her father if she could accompany him to some of these sessions on her days off from classes, wanting both to spend more time with him and to try to follow his example as a rescue technician. After some deliberation, he convinced the hospital staff to allow her to take the final seminar with him on manual resuscitation techniques, citing that human children were sometimes encouraged to learn basic first aid which included learning such maneuvers. The other students found it unusual to have someone over half their age in their class but with the encouragement and patient tutelage of the instructor, father and daughter passed and received certification.
Dylan tilted the salarian's head back to open his airway, feeling for breath but finding none. The salarian's chest was not moving. Dylan used the fingers of one hand to seal up the wide nostrils and used his other to purse the salarian's lips. He then formed a tight seal around them with his own lips and blew forcefully into the salarian's mouth twice. Afterwards, Dylan felt along the midpoint of the salarian's right shoulder and neck. "No pulse," he muttered. He placed his hands over the salarian's chest and began pushing in and upward on his breastplate, as was prescribed for salarian physiology.
As Dylan worked, Cadrina had performed similar actions on the asari child. She felt along the child's neck and found a spot that throbbed faintly. "She's still got a pulse!" she declared.
"Careful, she's smaller than you," Dylan reminded her and continued applying compressions to the salarian's chest.
Cadrina pushed down repeatedly on the young asari's chest, careful not to use excessive force as her father advised. She then held the asari child's head in her hands, pinching the nose shut and opening the mouth. Cadrina blew into her mouth with a half breath, turning her face to one side to feel for an exhale. No breath, not even any movement in the chest. Cadrina repeated her last actions. Still, there was no response.
Dylan's efforts finally managed to bring the salarian around. He coughed, shuddered and slowly opened his eyes. The crowd about him sighed with some relief. His wife reached over to him as he managed to speak.
"Uhhgh… Oja-rali…Oja…" Regaining consciousness, he suddenly remembered the boat overturning. "OJA!" he cried out and struggled to get on his feet only to be restrained by Dylan.
"Easy there," he consoled.
The salarian's head darted about in a panic. "Where's Oja?"
He looked to his left and saw his daughter lying prone and motionless on the sand, a human girl hunched over her. He stretched an arm out to his daughter.
"No - what is she doing to her?"
His wife held him as Dylan talked him down. "It's okay, it's all right. She's helping her to breathe…"
Cadrina was on her fifth round of rescue breathing and chest compressions. She could feel everyone's eyes on her as she tried to revive Oja. Outwardly, Cadrina was centered and composed, but inside she was growing despondent. She wondered if she was doing anything wrong. Was she applying too little pressure? Were her breaths too weak? What if she couldn't save the girl? What would her father think of her? What would the girl's parents think of her? A voice grew louder in Cadrina's mind, pleading with the asari to wake up.
Please breathe, please breathe, please breathe, please breathe…
Cadrina blew into the girl's mouth again. Please breathe!
Oja suddenly coughed up water. Cadrina jerked her head away, spitting out the bit that got into her mouth and then helped the asari clear out bits from her mouth.
"That's it - breathe!" Cadrina encouraged as she held Oja. "Breathe!"
Oja turned and spit up more water, coughing violently. She sobbed groggily "…daddee…"
"Oja!" cried her mother. The crowd cheered and applauded as the salarian's family shuffled over to lift up and hold their daughter. Oja hugged her father, coughing, sobbing but out of danger. The asari mother embraced them both, kissing them and offering a muted prayer of gratitude.
Dylan was still kneeling in the sand, relived that the family was alive and well. He looked across to his daughter. Cadrina was still dripping wet with a hand on her chest and was looking down away from everyone at the sand, quivering as she breathed. Dylan remained in his spot and just stared at Cadrina. He had no words. He didn't know if he wanted to burst into tears or shout out for joy with the pride he felt for his little girl.
Medical techs soon arrived to attend to the two families. They were all given blankets to dry off and get warm and were escorted to separate medivac vehicles to be brought in to the nearest hospital for evaluation and treatment. The crowd began to disperse as the vehicles spun up and glided away. Steven jogged over to Cadrina's Skyboard and fished it out of its ditch. He did his best to shake out the sand, but it did not look like it would take flight again anytime soon. His family caught up to him and watched the medivacs disappear behind the hills. He cradled his friend's board, shook his head and gave a knowing smirk.
Daddy's little girl, he thought.
Dylan and Cadrina sat together in their compartment, swaying as the medivac steered towards the hospital. Besides the cold of the waters, the techs attending them were concerned that they may have picked up bacteria or viruses. They had only been planetside a little more than a week and their initial inoculations may not have fully immunized them as of yet. This thought was the furthest thing from father and daughter as they looked on each other with profound admiration. Dylan had saved yet another life. Cadrina had just saved her first. She cupped her father's knee in her hand.
"Good job, Dad…" she breathed.
Dylan placed his hand over hers and smiled. "Right back at ya, partner…"
At the hospital that evening, the doctors determined that no permanent harm was done but wanted to keep the families overnight for observation. Hannah Shepard stopped in to check on her family. She was still wearing her police uniform and vest and had brought in a change of clothes for them. She was directed to a room where she found Dylan and Cadrina seated on a mattress dressed in hospital gowns.
"How are my two heroes?" she asked as she hugged them each in turn.
"Drying off and taking meds," answered Dylan "But we're fine."
"How much more of that stuff do we have to drink, Dad?" Cadrina grimaced as she asked her father "It smelled like puke!"
"Two more doses, honey. We're not acclimatized to the planet just yet."
Hannah placed a hand on Cadrina's shoulder. "Cmon, you're a tough kid! You can handle it!" she added.
Dylan leaned over to Cadrina "…at least it's not as bad as your mom's cooking…"
She and her father snickered while Hannah grabbed a nearby pillow and swatted at them.
"My cooking is… not … that …bad…. Dyl!" she panted as she swung at her husband and daughter, still laughing as they blocked her strikes. A turian nurse then appeared at the door, interrupting their play.
"Dylan and Cadrina Shepard?" she asked. Dylan nodded in acknowledgement.
"The Nocris patients have been asking to see you," she said. She placed a hand behind her head and sighed, "Especially the little one!"
The Shepard family went over to the Nocris' room to see how Oja and her father were doing. The salarian was confined to his bed but his daughter was bounding about. Introductions were made all around. The salarian identified himself as Ialvid and presented his wife Eleya, who palmed Dylan and Cadrina's faces and professed her eternal thanks for rescuing her family. Oja hugged and kissed her two rescuers profusely, who were a bit surprised at her strength. Hannah sat Oja up on the side of Ialvid's bed, cooing and pinching her, taken in by Oja's spotted cheeks.
Cadrina shrugged at Oja "Sorry – Mom's a bit of a freckle freak!"
"She's quite a bundle, Ialvid!" commented Dylan.
"Phew, you have no clue," Ialvid exhaled. He cast down his eyes "…I apologize for my behavior earlier…"
Dylan waved off his apology "No offense taken."
Ialvid continued "I know that your brief time here hasn't exactly gone… smoothly, what with everyone being suspicious of humans and all. I would like to rectify that."
"You and your family are welcome in our home anytime, Dylan Shepard" added Eleya.
Hannah walked over to her husband and draped her arm around him.
"You're certainly welcome in ours" said Dylan as his wife settled by his side. "You can come over for din- to talk or watch some vids –OR- go for a swim in our pool."
Dylan rubbed his shoulder after Hannah had punched it and assumed her former friendly expression to the Nocris family. She could not believe that even under these circumstances, Dylan could still call into question her culinary abilities.
"Oja can definitely stop by," said Hannah "We have some experience with energetic daughters ourselves!"
As everyone basked in the glow of newfound friendships, they became aware of a debate taking place at the foot of Ialvid's bed. They turned to look and listen in as Oja and Cadrina tried to come to an understanding.
Oja pointed at Cadrina with an accusing finger. "Admit it! You were kissing me!"
"No," explained Cadrina "I was just giving you air. I was trying to help you breathe again."
Oja remained unconvinced. "Your lips touched my lips – that's kissing!"
"Okay, if you wanna get technical about it…" Cadrina conceded partially. "It wasss sort of a kiss, but it was to save your life…"
Oja was still for a moment. Then her eyes brightened as she gasped and clasped her hands together. The parents leaned in a bit and waited on Oja to speak. Cadrina was too caught up in defending herself to notice the audience.
"Like in the fairy story Daddy read me! It was about a princess who was in a deeeep sleep… and then her true love came to wake her up with a kiss!"
Cadrina felt both amused and uneasy about where Oja's line of reasoning was going.
"That means…" Oja suddenly lunged at Cadrina, giving her a bear hug and pressing her lips against her cheek.
"YOU'RE MY GIRLFRIENNNND!" she announced joyfully as she held on to Cadrina. Both families laughed heartily as they saw Oja seated on Cadrina's lap. Cadrina looked sheepish as she weakly patted the asari girl's head. Oja snuggled in her savior's arms. Cadrina struggled for something else to say, but then surrendered to the moment.
You're lucky you're cute, she thought to herself.
END
Author's Notes and Thoughts:
- According to the Mass Effect codex, the turian military not only handles defense of the colonies but also rescue services and law enforcement. No doubt the exchange personnel serving time with humans would find the separation of these essential services between civilians and soldiers inefficient and cumbersome.
- In imaging these stories as episodes in an anime, for the opening credits you'd see a montage of Cadrina and her family out and about on Palturma Beach, ending with them on a hilltop picnic. The song playing in the background would be an abbreviated version of the Postal Service's Such Great Heights. The end credits would be a rear view of the adult Cadrina Shepard seated on a couch with Liara T'Soni and their child in the middle looking at holos of Cadrina's time on Bysorrn. The song playing would be Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone.