Author's Note: And so, we come to Virmire. I made an effort to put more Shepards aside from Angela, Polarity, Robo, Havok, and Eric in the spotlight. I've been reliably informed by reviews (hint hint) that they're the crowd favorites. Please, reviews are awesome, and I love them, especially with juicy details of what you like about my stories!
They cruised into orbit around Virmire, stealth systems activated. They scanned the planet, quickly identifying Saren's facility, the location of the STG group on the ground, and the spot to disable the anti-air defenses to allow the Normandy to land. The entirety of the Shepards were crowded into the mess, along with Ashley, Kaidan, and the four alien crew. "So, here's the limitation," she said simply. "We have to do a Mako drop. There's thirty-two of us, and the Mako seats five."
"Who's driving?" Lilitu asked quickly.
Angela glared at her, blinking as Zombie's hand raised. "Eeh cnnn drrrrr," she groaned out. Everyone stared at her, prompting another groaned, "Whhaaaaa?"
"Ahem. Right. I'm content to let someone else drive. I'm sick of that stupid tank, anyway." She stared around the room at the various expressions of shock. "Why is everyone so surprised?"
"I thought I was possessive of it," Garrus muttered.
"You are, sweetums," Polarity said, fluttering her eyelashes up at him.
"Oh spirits, don't do that," he groaned, looking nauseous.
"Wait, who's the lucky Shepard who gets to drive?" Ubon demanded, already cueing up her omni-tool.
"Why does it have to be a Shepard?" Tali complained.
"Because we outrank everyone?" Quistis shot back.
"For fuck sake, everyone shut up!" Angela yelled. Before someone else could interrupt, she cued up a program on her omni-tool, letting it pick at random. "Alright, the driver is Gina." She blinked at seeing another engineer in charge. "Pick a nice balanced ground team, and disable the anti-air turrets so we can meet you at the STG stronghold."
Glancing around the room, she pulled Havok, Liara, Talya, and then looked around uncertainly. "Um, I was going to take Waldo," she said.
"I'm right here!" the infiltrator said with annoyance.
"Where?" Gina and Angela said together, looking in the direction of the voice, only to finally spot him when Wrex picked him up by the shoulders. "Oh, there you are. You good to go on the ground mission?" Gina asked.
"Of course. Something tells me you're going to drive away without me at some point," he muttered, mostly to himself, as he joined the rest of the chosen troops.
Angela looked around in satisfaction. "Alright, good. Everyone else, keep yourselves entertained, and that does not mean putting a sock on the door," she growled, glaring at Flora and Jared, both of whom grinned unrepentantly.
As she turned to leave, she couldn't help overhearing Kaidan, complaining to Bradley as he handed over a credit chit, "How did you know?"
"We just hit Z. Would you want to find out what the next streak of Shepards was?" the adept responded, pocketing the credits. Of course, that wasn't really the reason, Angela thought as she went up the stairs, and I'll keep repeating that until I believe it.
Hitting the surface, Gina gunned the engine almost immediately. "By the way, watch out for the ocean shelf," Joker warned them as she raced along the beach, taking some glee at splattering the giant crab-bug things under the wheels.
"Why? Isn't this thing rated for it?" Talya asked.
"It's a two hundred foot drop, and if you don't disable the anti-air first, we can't come get you," the pilot responded before clicking off.
"That's not the kind of bath I want," Havok said quietly. "So, what's up ahead?"
"Geth, apparently," Liara said as the engineer ran over one of those too, and Waldo turned the machine gun on the flying drones. "I cannot wait," she deadpanned.
"There you go, you'll fit in with the Shepard collective in no time," Havok teased her, flexing his claws and his biotics.
"Goddess save me from such a fate," the asari murmured with heartfelt despair.
Then the Mako was screeching to a halt, just crushing one more geth between their vehicle and a closed gate. "Everyone out! Someone keep an eye on Waldo!" Gina ordered, overloading the synthetic just coming down the stairs, delaying it just enough for Havok to gambol right over and rip its arm off. "The controls must be upstairs. Not to mention, loot!"
"I call dibs on the credit chits!" Talya shouted, throwing out an overload as the geth charged out of the rear chamber.
"Aren't we supposed to be pooling resources?" Waldo asked from somewhere nearby as his rifle took the destroyer in the knee, ending its career neatly.
"So what?" Talya retorted, the geth dead as they all rushed to the back room, disabling the guns, opening the gate, and most importantly, looting the conveniently placed equipment lockers. "Don't you wonder why they never use this stuff?"
"Not really," Havok mused. "They have things almost just as good."
"Why do the geth stockpile human, krogan, and," Gina blinked in surprise, looking at one stack of pieces, "quarian armor? Well, that one I can almost understand."
"I have enough trouble attempting to understand my fellow asari, let alone other species or synthetics," Liara said, swapping up cryo ammo for her pistol.
"Even Quistis?" Gina queried playfully, making the asari turn a deeper shade of blue.
"Can we get moving? We have lots of other geth to disassemble for parts!" Talya cried, already moving back towards the Mako.
They descended back to the beach, piling in quickly. Gina blinked in surprise as the seat turned out to be a lap, with something surprisingly firm poking her in the butt cheeks. Turning to glance over her shoulder, she found herself face to face with Waldo. "Find something you like?" he asked blandly.
"I, uh," she started to stammer out.
"Too bad, I'm not giving up my sniper rifle," he said, and she slid off his lap to see the weapon held between his legs, the last few inches of the barrel what she had been pressed against. Scowling at the giggling Talya and chittering Havok, she pointed imperiously at the open gate. Grinning, he gunned the vehicle forward.
They cruised right past an armature, the geth platform clearly scanning around in confusion as it was hit by cannon and machine gun fire, and an overload as Talya leaned out the hatch. "Seriously?" Gina complained, "it's not enough that you make yourself disappear, you can take the whole fucking tank with you?"
"What can I say? It's a gift," he said, right before the colossus shot pitched the vehicle up onto three wheels. "And not always reliable."
"Ah, may I recommend evasive maneuvers?" Havok inquired, thrashing at the cannon release. "Or get us closer, either way!"
In another forty minutes of combat, they had worked their way through the rest of the gate houses, and watched the Normandy swoop down from high orbit to join them at the salarian camp. There was close to two dozen of the special forces left, their leader marching out of a tent as the Normandy settled down and the cargo bay opened.
"Captain Kirrahe, STG." He looked at the rest of the Shepards, and the rest of the ground crew, as they disembarked. "Is this all the reinforcements the Council sent? Promising, but I would have preferred a cruiser or two."
Angela looked at the group, quickly pointed to everyone up through F, and then grinned. "I am Commander Shepard," the six of them said, the effect just enough to cause the salarian equivalent of making the hair on their neck rise. "What's the situation? Your message was indecipherable to the Council, and they sent us to investigate what happened to you."
Kirrahe blinked several times, and then took a much closer look at the group, especially the non-human Shepards. "Is that one dead? And walking around?"
"Iiiiaa ffaaaaann," Zombie moaned.
He just stared for several seconds before Angela snapped her fingers in front of his face to bring him back to reality. "Saren is building an army here," he said without preamble. "He's come up with some way to work around the genophage and is cloning an army of krogan. He has to be stopped before he can finish, but my team has been unable to do more than slow his progress, and I've lost half my men."
"Shepard," Wrex started, before turning to Angela, "you can't let this happen. If he's got a cure for the genophage, it could cure my people."
"I'm not going to risk another krogan rebellion," Kirrahe snarled, unfazed when Wrex turned to glare at him.
"Damnit, Shepard! Do my people really deserve to be wiped out?" Wrex shouted into the crowd.
The voices there were mixed, only a few Shepards remaining silent, as the rest said, "Yes," and "No," with almost equal frequency. The effect of those mixed voices was, if anything, worse than their unified force. The entire beach shook, several of the stones near the edge of the shelf falling over into the depth, and all of the native crab-things within sight spontaneously boiled from within, their shells cracking and exploding. The salarians had all doubled over, clutching the horn-things on their heads, and all the wildlife within hearing range had gone completely silent.
"Ok, people," Angela said slowly, popping her own eardrums, "Let's not do that again. I really hope that didn't travel far enough to let Saren know we're here." Seriously, she turned to the krogan, still blinking away the effects. "Think about it for a minute, Wrex. What happens to your people when Saren loses, and everyone knows he had an army of krogan as well as geth?"
He hesitated, and Lilitu answered for him. "The turians go back and finish what they started. No genophage, just death. Just like the rachni."
Angela, and several others, nodded. "And what happens if we fail, and Saren wins? What happens if he brings back the Reapers?"
He opened his mouth this time, but Victor beat him to it. "The Reapers kill them all anyway. Sure, maybe they kill them last, after they've used the krogan to burn down Earth, Palaven, Thessia, Sur'Kesh – but they all still die."
Wrex stared back and forth around the loose circle of Shepards surrounding him. Then with a roar, he spun away, stalking towards the Mako, punching it hard enough to leave a dent in the armor. "Fine, Shepards, you're right," he grudgingly conceded. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."
"It's a regular shit sandwich," Xander agreed. "So, what's the plan, Stan?" he asked Kirrahe, who just stared at him in confusion.
"He means, what are we doing to stop Saren?" Alenko translated helpfully.
"Our best bet will be to insert a shadow team into the rear of the facility, while the rest of us attack the front as a distraction," Kirrahe said. "The only way guaranteed to destroy the base is to plant a nuclear warhead at the center."
"How many teams are we talking about, here?" Angela asked suspiciously. "Because trust me, the League of Shepards is far more effective as a cohesive unit."
"We're a league now?" Neville asked. "Do we have a cricket team lined up?"
Kirrahe stared at them, obviously evaluating their little effect on Wrex and the initial declaration. "What did you have in mind, then?"
"We do send in a team. Myself, Wrex, Garrus, Tali, Liara, we go in through the back, disable any defenses we can. Robo prepares the bomb on board the Normandy. All of the other Shepards stage a coordinated assault on the front of Saren's facility, while Alenko and Williams assist your STG in keeping their flanks clear." She grinned at his expression. "Oh, no, trust me. If you thought that was impressive, you ain't seen nothing yet."
"Human colloquialisms," the salarian muttered. "I can't wait."