Suicide
–
The temperature continued to climb. Her suit's sensors pegged the number at forty-eight point two degrees in cheerful little orange numerals that flitted across her sweat-flecked visor. Wait, no, forty-eight-point-six.
Tali looked away, blinking stinging moisture out of her eyes. There was no point in watching. "Hurry, EDI!" she panted. She ran her gloved hands down the surface of the heat exchanger that was obstructing her path through the vent and gave it another hard shove, more out of desperation than anything – it was locked in, and far too heavy for her to move. Unsurprisingly, the collectors hadn't bothered installing emergency release handles.
She was trapped. Shepard and Garrus' ground teams were waiting for her, and she was trapped.
"I am working at maximum capacity, Miss Zorah," EDI replied, her voice obscured by static but entirely too calm.
Tali nodded to herself and ran a hand down the back of her veil, hopping from one foot to the other. She wasn't dead yet. EDI could do it. She had time, she had time.
She glanced back to the gauge on her HUD – forty-nine-point-two degrees now.
No, no. Ignore that. Think of something else. The mission. She checked her omni-tool again. The tracking program she'd installed continued to ping. When she'd first turned it on she hadn't expected anything, and yet to her astonishment she'd gotten an answer. Something was interfering with all of their comms – even the Normandy's tightbeam arrays were coming in poorly now – and yet somehow Tali's pings were being answered. The data packets that her tool picked up after every pulse were too fragmented for her to triangulate their position yet, but they were there.
There was still hope.
The heat was beginning to get unbearable, and even with her dehumidifiers running full blast Tali had to flicker her helmet's electrostatic wipers every thirty seconds to keep the sweat from condensing in front of her vision. Every breath of air she took cooked her throat a little more. Her suit protected her from the worst of it, using the projectors in her shield generator to shuttle heat from to a pair of narrow heat exchangers built into the straps on her back, but whatever was going on behind the ventilation shaft's walls was generating a lot of energy…
It was fifty-one degrees now. Tali couldn't help but feel a flash of annoyance as the numbers continued to climb blithely upwards. Suicide mission, sure. She'd signed up for that. But being cooked alive in her own suit?
"EDI!"
EDI didn't answer. Fifty-one-point-seven degrees.
"EDI, get it open!"
There was an ear-splitting sound of rending metal and the heat exchanger slid back into its bay. The way was clear.
"I have found it," EDI announced.
Tali didn't waste any time thanking her. She accelerated down the ventilation shaft, pumping her legs with each stride until she was practically flying. She turned, following the shaft's curve as it wound its way along the pitted, rocky surface of the station's colossal inner superstructure, and wondered how the fire teams were doing. Sometimes she thought she could hear the sound of distant gunfire, but it was impossible to tell over the low rumble of machinery and the metallic clack clack clack of her magnetic boots.
She sprinted, her strides three meters long now and feet a blur. Her belts, hung heavy with tactical detonators, thwapped against her thighs with every step. A filtering of yellow light up ahead heralded the presence of another vent like the one she'd been able to see Shepard's team through but she barreled past it without slowing her step. She had to get to the central chamber before them.
And before she ended up cooked alive – the irony of being killed by the same technology that cooled her suit did not overmuch amuse her.
Tali's nerves and skin were both afire by the time she sprinted down another turn and saw the gas exchanger that was her exit up ahead, but she did not slow her pace. She vaulted through the first opening she saw at full tilt, serpentined down into a gap beneath the exchanger's projector coils, and smashed out its side panel with one solid kick.
She didn't have time to scan the room for threats – her shotgun was already in her hands and she blindly fired three times as she snaked her way out of the exchanger. The chamber was empty – her shots did nothing but rupture the thick snarl of hot piping that traced from the ventilation shaft up to more of its brethren on the ceiling, showering the floor with glowing droplets of liquid metal that sizzled as they cooled.
There was a blessed split second of relief where all Tali could think about was the way the cooler air of the ship's central chamber felt against her body.
She had made it.
She was alone.
That was good, because now she definitely heard gunfire. The sounds of combat thudded, muffled behind the massive steel door on either side of the platform.
"Based on analysis of enemy response strength, I recommend prioritizing the passage on the left." EDI's voice fizzed and sputtered in Tali's helmet – whatever was interfering with their signal was closer now.
Tali didn't answer. Her fingers were still burning hot as she jammed her shotgun back into its magnetic holster and dove for a tumor of machinery that grew from the stony surface of the left security door's frame.
"How are they doing?" she asked, prying open a ridged, chitinous panel. If she hadn't already seen the collector vessel up close she might not even have recognized it for what it was. She had a rare moment to appreciate not having a sense of smell as thick, viscous fluid oozed out of the wound. Tali smeared it aside as best she could, revealing a complicated stratum of layered metal plates glowing faintly underneath – the door's security control panel.
"Both fire teams are standing by. I cannot access the doors remotely at this time. You will need to open them manually."
Tali wiped her shaking hands on her veil and called up her omni-tool. "Any-"
"No casualties."
Tali nodded. Her hands were a blur as she used her omni-tool's ECM probe to test the voltage across each plate in turn, searching for the circuit that would open the doors. The door was unlike anything any modern race used – most technology didn't bleed, for instance – but Tali recognized the construction from the hours she'd spent disassembling the collector particle weapons they'd brought back from Horizon. The collectors were very advanced engineers, but down beneath all the strange semi-organic aesthetics they still had to follow the same rules as everybody else. They still used electricity, and though they controlled it with some kind of solid conductive panel technology instead of wires, the principles were the same. Which meant she just had to find the right circuit…
The first one sparked and there was a sound, deep down in the metal, but nothing more. The second and third circuit did nothing, and the fourth caused a fresh gout of hot, mucus-y ichor to spurt out of the panel and coat Tali's gloves, and the doors remained stubbornly unmoved.
As the doors shuddered with the force of an explosion Tali began to fear she would never get them open. The explosives she'd brought might be enough to blow the doors open, if she used them all, and both fire teams had brought breach charges that could get them through, but they would take time to set up. Time they might not have.
Tali bit her tongue and kept trying. Then, finally, there was a click and the quiet of the chamber was shattered under the pounding sound of a firefight at full volume. She could hear Garrus' squad calling out targets, hear the dying trills of collectors, the shearing notes of particle beams and the deep, stomach-rumbling thwoom of grenades. The doors parted and began to slide open centimeter by ponderous centimeter. Kasumi was the first one through, squeezing through the gap like a shadow, her SMG rattling in her hands as she turned to cover the others. Thane and Jacob and Garrus followed. Grunt was last, roaring and laughing and covered in extra breach charges and yellowy blood and torn collector limbs as he wedged himself through the narrow gap Tali had afforded him. He didn't quite fit, but a quick heave of his shoulders and the right door wrenched aside to accommodate him.
"Go, go, go," Garrus shouted over the din, firing through the doorway. "We'll close them, get Shepard's door!"
Tali didn't need to be told twice, and darted across the room to the other panel. It was identical to the first, and this time she had no trouble finding the right circuit. Guns thundered as the doors rumbled open. The rest of the squad came pouring through, chased by particle beams. Zaeed and Miranda, Legion, Mordin, and finally – finally – Shepard.
Tali didn't have time to breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of her captain, as the husks were already scrambling after them. They dove through the open doors, pulping under a hail of the squad's gunfire, and more followed, howling as they scaled the remains of their fallen brethren. Swarmers poured through the gap by the hundreds – these were reduced to cinders under short blasts from Zaeed's flamethrower, so close over Tali's head that she felt the heat even through her helmet. Tali did her best to ignore the thunder of bullets whizzing by, pressing and prodding circuits until she hit the right one and the doors began to close.
The doors thudded shut and the gunfire stopped. For a long moment, nobody said a word, just listened to the faint sound of husks clawing at the other side of the security doors. Adrenaline coursed through Tali's veins so hard she had to lean on her knees to keep from falling over. She panted through gritted teeth as she came down from the high of near-death, her stomach doing flips inside of her.
Shepard chuckled, breaking the silence. "Heh. Made it," he said, grinning behind his helmet as he turned to survey the squad. "Nice job, everybody." His eyes stopped briefly on Tali, and for a moment it was just the two of them, and they weren't on a suicide mission but far away, safe and happy and together.
He nodded at her, gaze saying it all. "Tali," he said, voice soft.
Tali wanted to reach out to him, to hold him to her, to be done with all of this Reaper nonsense, but they weren't, and she couldn't. Not yet. She set a slimy hand against the slate gray of his hardsuit and smiled up at him, ignoring the squad's watching eyes. "Shepard." There was no time for more. "I'd… I'd better get the other door."
He nodded again.
It was with some effort that Tali turned away and jogged back across the room to where Grunt was holding the first set of doors shut with his considerable bulk. She tripped the close circuit and the doors gave a rumble and locked. The collectors wouldn't be getting through with anything shy of a praetorian. Grunt grinned down at her and gave her an approving nod, unaware or uninterested in the fact that he was still wearing half of a collector.
Tali didn't have time to catch her breath, because a cry went up from behind and she was on her feet, shotgun drawn and listening for the tell-tale buzz of collector wings. But there was no gunfire, and for a moment Tali swept the room, finally taking in her surroundings.
The squad was standing on a platform set into one end of a gigantic chamber so large it was difficult to see the ceiling without feeling a wave of vertigo. Unlike the chamber they'd fought through on the collector vessel, this one was full of machinery, its vistas obstructed by massive cooling panels and starscrapers of reflective metal and rock, but the scale nonetheless made Tali's breath hitch in her throat. Half the fleet could have parked inside, with room to spare.
But its size was nothing to its contents. A constellation of yellow gleamed down at the squad from every direction. Every spare meter was occupied with another glowing window, another stasis pod.
Another human.
"The colonists," someone said, though they needn't have. Tali could see the humans' silhouettes through the pods' translucent lids, dark behind the membranes of gleaming amber liquid that suspended them. These weren't the compact, hexagonal stacks they'd seen on the collector vessel. The pods had been inserted like cartridges, each into its own vertical bay. Black snarls of tubing snaked from each pod to the ceiling, converging into massive steel pipes – wider than the Normandy – that disappeared into the superstructure high above.
Shepard's face was dour as he stared up at the thousands upon thousands of pods, some of them stacked on top of each other fifty meters high. For a long moment, all eyes were on him. Somewhere up there were their missing crewmembers – Jacob and Jack, and the Normandy flight crew that hadn't perished in the collector attack – but could they risk trying to find them? Every one of them knew they didn't have time to open all of the pods – and even if they did, what would the point be? The Normandy might never fly again, and what happened when the collectors caught up?
Still, could they really just do nothing?
At length, Shepard spoke, and his voice was tight with reluctance. "Everyone fan out. See if you can find the crew." He grimaced. "We search five minutes and we move on." With that, he turned and set a hand to his head. "EDI? Are you in?"
"Yes, Commander. I have interfaced with the collector systems. My analyses are ongoing."
"What's our next move? And tell me what you can about these pipes."
Tali didn't bother staying to listen to the answer. Even from the grainy map EDI had been able to provide back in the Normandy's QEC room, Tali could tell the pipes were all running towards the main reactor chamber that they were planning to bomb anyway – there would be time to find out what they were for later. For now, they had people to save. She and the rest of the squad scattered in every direction, splitting up to cover as many pods as they could.
Tali set her omni-tool back to the scanning program, turning up the volume to help her hear the pings through all the static buzzing in her ears. She held her arm up for a few seconds, turning this way and that while her tool scanned for responses and triangulated a course. Soon, she had a heading. It wasn't perfect – the responses were weak, and her program could only give her a general direction – but there were responses. Tali hoped that would be enough.
Tali followed her omni-tool to one great stack of pods on the far end of the platform. Black, inky forms floated in their amniotic prisons as she scanned the rows. Some twitched as she passed, but most were still, and still others were unoccupied, their fluid baths stained black. Tali tried not to think too hard about what that meant. She mouthed quiet apologies to each pod she passed by, still waving her omni-tool. The response signals grew a little stronger. They were coming from above her.
She started to climb. The rocky, honeycomb-like surface in between the pods was deeply pitted and easy to get a grip on even without magnetic boots, and Tali had little difficulty scaling the great artificial cliff. Hand over hand, foot over foot, she ascended, stopping to peer briefly into each pod. This one was probably from Horizon – she recognized the Neratech company logo on the man's jumpsuit. The next one was a young girl in some kind of thick parka. Then a shirtless old man with skin like leather – he looked dead. Tali kept climbing. The pings from her omni-tool were getting louder and louder.
Tali didn't know why her heart was beating so quickly, but all the same she found herself moving faster and faster. Why did she care about the Cerberus crew? Joker had made it (the thought of Joker in one of these pods made Tali's stomach descend down to her knees), so who cared about the rest of them? Hadn't they been the ones to attack the Fleet, the ones to kill Kahoku, the ones that tortured Jack and tried to kill Kasumi? Why were they trying to find them at all?
What did it matter if they died?
But Tali knew she didn't believe that. Samara hadn't given her life for no reason. Whatever Cerberus' leaders had done, many of the crew were good, innocent people who chose to risk their lives for others and paid a price. Joker wasn't the only Cerberus goon who deserved a second chance. Jack was a pain in the ass, but she'd defended Shepard when it counted, and but for his inexplicable fondness for Miranda Tali had to admit Jacob had done nothing to earn her distrust. Chakwas had been there on the SR1, had dropped everything to help Shepard. And Gabby and Ken… They were her crew.
She was twenty meters up when her omni-tool started to beep triumphantly. She climbed the last level with her stomach in knots. The pod didn't look any different from any others, but the tracking signals emanating from it told her all she needed to know. Still, it was with some trepidation that she stared inside.
The woman inside was pale, her flesh swollen and bruised. An ugly gash in her stomach had pinkened the pod fluid, but Tali could see the steady rise and fall of her chest. She was alive. She looked broken, like a little drowned doll, but even if Tali hadn't recognized the woman by her face or her Cerberus uniform, she couldn't have missed the glass-blown circuitboard flower still nestled in the woman's short red mane. The repurposed surveillance bugs within continued to ping.
Yeoman Kelly Chambers.
And there in the next pod over, that was Patel. The occupant of the pod after that she didn't recognize, but Gardner was above that one.
"I found some!" she shouted, twisting around to peer down at the rest of the squad filing through the mountains of stasis pods. "Up here! Grunt!" There was a murmur of excitement. Down below her, Grunt gave a thunderous bark of approval and started to climb, Zaeed on his heels.
Tali returned to Kelly and fiddled with the seam that held her prison's carapace-like lid on, but it wouldn't budge. No matter. She had no doubt the krogan could get it open.
She smiled. "You owe me for this, you bosh'tet," she said, tapping on the pod. And to think, if the yeoman hadn't bugged Shepard's quarters, they might never have found them.
Kelly twitched in her pod. For a moment, Tali thought the yeoman had heard her. But then Kelly spasmed again, harder, as if she were caught in the throes of some nightmare. Tali watched, alarmed, as Kelly's eyes surged open. For a split second they met each other's gaze, but then Kelly was thrashing about, her screams muffled by the thick goo that filled her lungs. Tali didn't have a moment to reassure her, because there was an ominous sounding thunk from somewhere above the pod. The lid began to vibrate under Tali's fingertips.
Kelly's screams became desperate, agonized, and Tali watched in horror as the yeoman's skin reddened into a violent blush. A tiny tear opened in her cheek like she'd been stabbed with an invisible knife – blood flowed lazily out into the goop. In seconds, cuts were appearing on her arms, on her hands, on her neck.
Realization dawned – Kelly was disintegrating – and Tali finally found herself. "Mordin!" she shouted, voice cracking as she pulled desperately on the lid. It didn't move. Inside, Kelly continued to scream. "Someone! Help!" She heard the squad shouting something from below, but Tali couldn't make out the words. She shifted her position, freeing up one of her legs, and gave the pod a hard kick. Cracks spidered out from where she'd hit it, but the lid was as tough as turian skin, solid and just bendable enough not to shatter. She kicked it again and again – as hard as she could – but managed no more than a sore ankle.
Kelly was still screaming, but she wouldn't be for long. There was only one thing to do.
Tali grabbed her shotgun, took aim, and hoped for the best.
She fired.
–
Dark shapes moved beyond the murk, and Jacob steeled himself for the end.
The collectors were finally coming for him, to take him… wherever they took him. It would be his last opportunity to turn the tables.
And yet even as he felt the shift in gravity that meant his pod was being moved again he found his mind wandering. How long had he been stuck in this damn cocoon, anyway? A few days, maybe? It was hard to tell – the goop he was floating in made thinking difficult. After the paralyzing effects of the swarmer sting had worn off he'd tried to stay vigilant, tried to press himself up against the pod window to watch for the rest of the crew, for any straw he could grab, any way out, but he'd been so tired. The fight in the Normandy hangar had drained him body and mind, and every thought he strung together seemed to seep out into the fluid. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable – the fluid was the temperature of a warm bath, and though breathing it had felt like drowning at first, once he'd gotten the hang of it it had left a pleasant buzz in his head and escaping had not felt all that important anymore.
He'd lived a life worth living, hadn't he? He'd had a family and a home and a purpose. He was a good man. He'd done good work with Cerberus, even before joining Shepard. He had no idea if the Normandy had survived the collector attack, but he was glad that he'd been aboard and Shepard had not. The collectors had taken the crew, but he and Jack and Samara had made them pay for it.
At the end of the day, Jacob was just a soldier, and sometimes soldiers died for the mission. So long as Shepard made it, Jacob would call it a sacrifice well worth it. The rest of them were optional – Shepard could find more. It didn't even matter if the ship survived – Cerberus could build him the SR3 if they had to. As long as Shepard and the Illusive Man were alive, the collectors' days were numbered. It might not be this month, or even this year, but eventually Shepard would get through the relay, and then these bugs would pay.
And Jacob had been a part of that. He had helped. It had all been worth it.
Jacob felt a jolt as his pod was set down. The shadow of a collector hovered outside. The liquid in Jacob's ears muffled the aliens' screechy voices, but he could hear the scritch of claws against the pod's lid and knew it was just a matter of moments before they'd try to do to him whatever horrid thing they'd done to the colonists.
Well it wasn't going to happen. Not for free, anyway. He was a soldier. He'd go out fighting. As soon as they opened that damn door he'd show them what it meant to tangle with humans. Jacob shifted in his prison for the first time in what felt like weeks. His muscles felt like jelly, and the borrowed N7 armor suit he still wore made him too wide to move much, but he grit his teeth and strained. Clattering somewhere in the goop around his feet was his shotgun – the collectors had sealed him inside with his paralyzed fingers still clenched around its handle, and it had been hours before his grip had slackened enough for him to drop it. He kicked his legs limply, feeling for the hardness of the gun, but his feet were big, soggy clubs, somehow numb and sore at the same time, and each kick just felt like he was trying to walk through molasses. The collector outside continued to claw at the door.
Then he felt it. The shotgun made a hollow thunk as his right foot caught it. Jacob froze, pinning it to the rear wall of the pod. His legs were shaking from the effort, but he could not lose it. He bent at the waist, reaching down with his arm until his shoulder threatened to pop out of its socket, but his fingers only met soft jelly. He couldn't reach. He had to kick it back. He tensed his leg, as hard as he could, and only managed to accomplish a pathetic-looking spasm. It was like he'd forgotten which muscle was which.
Come on, Taylor. You got this. One more time.
He tried again, and this time his outstretched fingers met steel. His hand felt like rubber, but it settled into the familiar grip of his shotgun like it had never left, and Jacob felt a bolt of vigor run through his body. He could do this. As he heard the pod's seal begin to crack, Jacob took a deep breath of goo and prayed his shotgun would still fire. It was now or never.
Blinding light filled the pod and Jacob tumbled out, roaring in a fountain of jelly. His legs were worse than useless, but he managed to pull his shotgun to bear even under the weight of the liquid. His finger found the trigger, and he fired. After so long in muffled quiet the report made his head spin but he fired again, not caring that he couldn't see his targets.
Then the shotgun was kicked from his hands and he collapsed to his knees in the spilled goop, boneless.
Good enough. Still, he fought as he felt hands on his neck, muscle memory breaking the lock with a sweep of his arm. He swung a fist, hard, and felt a glimmer of satisfaction as it connected flesh.
"Jacob!"
The voice sounded far away, barely audible over some racket in the foreground, and Jacob ignored it. He blinked in the blinding light and took another swing. This one met nothing but air. He swung again. His head spasmed as stitches of agony worked their way up his chest. The sounds continued, loud and insistent, and it was only at length that Jacob realized they were the gurgles of his own drowned lungs. Armed with this knowledge, he doubled over, spent, and began to wretch up great mouthfuls of slime. Every breath seemed to make it a little worse, and he coughed so hard his teeth hurt.
"Jacob, it's me!"
The coughing was him. Then who was…
His assailant hit him, hard, right in the center of the back, and Jacob felt sweet, sweet air fill his lungs. Then again, across the face, and he collapsed onto the floor in a heap.
"Operative Taylor, I command you to stop this nonsense. NOW."
Jacob rolled over onto his back, drinking in air like a man dying of thirst. Stars flitted in front of his eyes, and then, hovering above, it was her.
Miranda had never looked so perfect.
He should have had more faith in her, in Shepard. Of course they found him in time. He swallowed, tasting blood, and smiled weakly up at her. "Yes-s ma'am," he managed, before dissolving into another sputtering fit.
Miranda helped him turn onto his side. "You're safe now, Jacob," she said, thumping at his back with the heel of her hand. Her voice was quiet again. "We're here."
For a moment, Jacob was silent, aware of little else but the feel of Miranda's hand on his back and the great stitch of pain that accompanied each breath he took. But then, little by little, reality seeped in to replace it. He was lying on a floor of polished black hexagons. Far above, thousands of little lights gleamed. Some kind of collector ship, then. Jacob cleared his nose with a snort and was greeted by the heavy smell of blood in the air. The slime from the pod still clung to him in sticky, unpleasant clumps – it had worked its way into every crevasse he had and left his skin pruned up and every motion cottony and exhausting.
The situation reassembled itself in his head. He'd rallied the defense of the Normandy, he'd been overwhelmed, he'd been taken here, and now he was free.
And he'd fired on Miranda. He turned his head. "Did I shoot you?"
"Of course not, Jacob," Miranda said, rolling her eyes. "It's a wonder you didn't shoot yourself. What were you thinking?" Jacob had to chuckle at that, but he stopped when another bolt of pain traced up his ribs. He felt Miranda's hands on his neck again, and this time he didn't resist as she helped him drag himself into a sitting position. For a minute, he just stared at her. Her face was drawn in its usual bemused glare, but he didn't miss the concern in her eyes. He smiled, and for once she halfway returned it.
All around them, some of the captured crew was going through the same ritual as the ground team tore into their pods. Jacob watched as Grunt punched through one and dragged Gardner out onto the floor, flopping about like a speared fish. Behind that, Kasumi was trying to snap some sense into a near-catatonic Jack. They were saved.
"The Normandy?" Jacob asked, not bothering to elaborate.
"It's safe."
"So this is the suicide mission, then?"
"Seems that way."
Jacob's tongue fuzzy and awkward. "Who's left?"
Miranda didn't answer for a moment. "Samara, Hadley, Orell, and Matthews died on the ship."
Jacob felt his stomach tighten. It was as bad as he'd thought, then. He'd seen Hadley die in the opening moments of the firefight in the CIC. He'd come barreling out of the armory in Shepard's spare set of N7 armor, biotics flaring as he tried to push the collectors away from the terrified technicians. He must have killed half a dozen of them in the first few seconds. But then the elevator had opened onto a praetorian and Hadley was in pieces. He'd hoped that would be the only casualty until on his trip down through the crew decks he thought he'd spied Matthews' body.
But Orell? And Samara? As the pod door had been closed on him, Jacob had held onto a fleeting hope that the collectors might have made an exception to their humans-only policy for an asari of such rare power, but even then he knew it had been a vain hope. Samara had died defending them, as her Code demanded.
"We're still looking for a few more," Miranda continued, gesturing to the rows of pods stacked up to the ceiling, "but Donnelly thinks he saw where they took them." Jacob could hear the engineer's thick brogue shouting up over the noise, and he looked up to see Donnelly on his feet, walking – climbing, even – as he guided the rescue efforts. Outside of the pod, all of Jacob's injuries had suddenly caught up with him – he could barely feel his legs – and yet Donnelly looked none the worse for wear. The sight chased away some of his despair. The engineer was a tough son of a bitch. "Daamn," he said, effecting a forced smile. "Why isn't that guy on the ground team?"
Miranda frowned. "Effects seem to vary." She chewed her lip, hesitating. "Chambers might not make it," she said, voice quiet. "Byron too."She flicked her eyes to the far side of the platform, and Jacob followed her gaze to where Tali, Mordin, and Zaeed were struggling to bandage Kelly, who thrashed about on the floor, screaming. All three of them were coated in blood.
Jacob swallowed heavily. If he'd been faster…
He didn't have time to think about it, because then Shepard was coming, and Miranda rose to attention, leaving him to sit under his own power. The Commander's eyes were hard as he looked down at Jacob and extended his hand. Jacob took it, and Shepard pulled him to his feet. For a moment, Jacob thought he'd fall again, but with a steadying hand from Shepard his body found its balance and he stayed on his feet. "Jacob," Shepard said, patting him on the back. "Good to see you alive."
"Good to be alive, man," Jacob said, smiling. "And right back at you." He wiped a thick glob of slime off of his forehead and stared down at himself. Thick liquid dripped from his ill-fitting armor in a thousand places, pouring from under his pauldrons and trickling down his back. In places it had caked on in thick black clods with the collector blood from back on the ship, to the point where the red-and-white N7 stripe was barely recognizable. Jacob grimaced sheepishly. "And, uh… Sorry for borrowing your armor and then screwing it up."
Shepard nodded. He reached forward and slicked the slime off of the N7 logo on Jacob's breast. "Keep it," he said. He met Jacob's eyes. "You did good, Jacob."
Jacob beamed. "Thank you sir, that means a lot."
Shepard turned to Miranda. "Mordin says Chambers isn't going to make it unless he can get her back to the Normandy." Even behind a helmet, Jacob could see the tightness in Shepard's eyes. "He and Kasumi are going to escort the crew back to the crash site while the rest of us press on."
"Can we spare them?" Miranda asked. "The ground team is already down three members."
Jacob's eyes widened. Three members? Who else had died?
But then Miranda gave him a look and he realized she was counting him and Jack. "Hold on," he said, and his boots squelched as he took a lurching step towards her. "I'm coming with you."
Shepard and Miranda stared at him.
Miranda frowned. "No, Jacob," she said, and her voice was not quite gentle enough to mask her frustration. "You are injured. You and Jack are staying with the crew. You've done enough already."
Jacob didn't care. He shook his head. "Not the point," he said. "I'm fine." He took a few shuffling steps by way of demonstration. The world whirled around him, but he did not fall. "I'm fine," he repeated. "Fit for duty. And I'm coming with you."
"Jacob…" Miranda's voice was warning, and her face had hardened into the irritated snarl she always used when she was ordering her subordinates around, but her eyes were pleading. He'd always trusted her, always followed her lead, but they both knew this was one command he could not obey. If she wanted him safe and sound on the Normandy while she went off to finish the mission, she was going to have to drag him there herself.
He had to do something drastic. Miranda opened her mouth to protest again, but Jacob cut her off, calling out to where Jack was sitting on a drained pod, cradling her head in her hands. "Hey Jack!" he shouted. "They're trying to bench us!"
Miranda's face fell, and Jacob tried to keep the victorious grin off his face.
"The fuck they are!" Jack's energy seemed to return to her in a flash, and she came tromping up to them, pants and boots squishing with each step. She ignored Miranda completely, planting herself in front of Shepard and glaring up at him. "What the fuck, Shepard?" she demanded, shoving him, hard, in the center of his breastplate. "What. The. Fuck?"
Shepard winced. "I don't want you hurting yourself, Jack. Either of you. You did your part on the Normandy, now you have to leave it to us."
"Fuck. No," Jack said, imitating Shepard's patient tone. She took a step backwards and wrapped one tattooed arm around Jacob's back. Jacob froze immediately at her touch, feeling like a venomous centipede had crawled down his shirt, but Jack paid him no mind. "Me and Cheerleader Jr. here have some fuckin' payback to deliver," she snarled, squeezing Jacob like they were old buddies. "We ain't fuckin' staying behind. Period."
"Period," Jacob repeated, and he squeezed Jack back.
Shepard sighed. "It's too dangerous," he tried, though it was clear in his voice that he knew there was no point in arguing with Jack. "EDI says the next chamber is full of swarmers."
"Then you'll need biotics," Jacob replied instantly. "Keep them back with a biotic field. Samara did it on the ship." He gave a quick mnemonic and his hand flared blue. The familiar feel of his implant humming on the back of his neck was invigorating.
Shepard seemed to consider it, but Miranda just crossed her arms and glared at Jacob. "Samara was an asari and a master biotic. Do you honestly mean to tell me you think you can match her in your present state?"
"I can," Jack said, eyes narrowed at the challenge.
Miranda was unconvinced. "The precision that would be required to protect even a small team from-"
"I can do it," Jack repeated. "I can do it, Shepard. Let me do it." She stared at him fiercely. "Please."
Miranda fell silent, turning to defer to the Commander. Shepard stared at Jack, eyes hard.
Jacob remembered Samara's biotic display back on the Normandy, where she'd kept the swarmers at bay for the better part of an hour. Miranda was right – maintaining a single field for so long was no mean feat, even for the best biotics. Jacob certainly couldn't do it. The justicar's biotics had been so far beyond his that it boggled his mind.
But so were Jack's. He'd had his doubts about Jack before, but no longer. As strange as she was, as dangerous as she was, she was on their side now. "I think she can do it, Shepard."
Shepard nodded. "Then get your guns."
–
Jack's arms hurt.
Of course, that made sense. A half hour of holding them above your head while your friends took their sweet time killing the husks that were trying to rip out your guts and you couldn't so much as scratch your fuckin nose or a hundred thousand little flying motherfuckers would swoop in and paralyze you all would do that to you.
Her head hurt too. Also sensible. Every biotic – formally trained or not – learned the dangers of overexerting themselves. Or they didn't, and they died of a brain aneurysm. Every field took something out of you. Too much for too long and shit started to fall apart. Bruises and blindness and brain hemorrhage - it wasn't a pretty picture. And so a superbiotic with a souped-the-fuck-up implant and more eezo in her head than a mid-sized airvan asked to keep a field up for a half hour with the aforementioned hundred thousand little flying motherfuckers pressing down on it the whole time… She might count herself lucky if a headache was all she got.
Her body hurt too. Fair enough. Sure. She'd been submerged in some kind of mucusy collector shit for who knows how long while Shepard and the ground team fucked around unshackling AI's. Apparently mucusy collector shit hurts like a motherfucker when it comes off, and those aforementioned little flying motherfuckers? Their stings hurt too. Mordin could have probably explained why if he hadn't gone back to the ship, but Jack didn't care. Fine. It was no worse than cryo imprisonment. It was no worse than withdrawal.
It hurt, but she'd been hurt before.
She could deal with all that.
So why did it hurt so bad to see Shepard going on without her? Shepard's speech was still ringing in their ears as they watched him pick his favorites and ride off on a floating hexagon to wherever those pipes were leading. Jack's eyes followed them into the great yawning openness of the station's final chamber until the curvature of the ceiling blocked them from sight. They were off to blow these collectors sky high, and she was left guarding the fuckin' door.
It didn't seem fair. She was hurting, yeah, but she had done it, hadn't she? She'd gotten them through the swarmers with no casualties. That was some seriously Samara-class shit! She wasn't weak. She could keep going. She could help Shepard. So why did she get left behind while Tali and Miranda got to see it through to the end? Miranda was a good biotic, but she wasn't shit compared to Jack.
"Bitches," she snarled, shaking her head. She should have been on that fuckin' platform.
Oh well. Like she gave a fuck. "Fuck it," she said finally, sighing theatrically. "I guess I don't have a big enough ass to join Shepard's little harem."
Next to her, Zaeed made a show of inspecting her backside. He nodded in feigned agreement. "Man's gotto have standards, Jack. Course, doesn't explain why he took the robot."
"Fuck off, Massani. I wasn't counting Legion." Jack tried to look fierce, but suddenly all she could think of was a geth with Miranda's ample rear and she had to look away to keep Zaeed from seeing her grin.
Zaeed just laughed, loud and long, as if there weren't an army of armed insects about to burst into the room and kill them all.
"Listen up, everyone," Garrus called. He'd taken Shepard's place up on the higher platform, his sniper rifle leaning over one blue-armored shoulder. Everyone turned to listen. In the quiet they could hear the faint scramble of claws from the other side of the security doors, and maybe even the fluttering of hundreds of thousands of angry wings, but for the moment, at least, all eyes were on Garrus. Jack had always thought of Garrus as a bit of a doormat, but she had to admit that right now he did not cut a figure to be ignored. The turian had ice in his gaze, and nobody said a word. His mandibles were clenched flat against his jaw as he scanned the squad, eyes flicking from face to face, to the security doors, to the displays on his visor, to the uneven passages that yawned from the ceiling above.
"Collectors coming through both doors," he started, finally. His voice was its usual unconcerned drawl. "Likely swarmers and husks as well. We don't have a lot of space to maneuver. Limited cover." He thrust a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the great cavernous chamber behind him. "Fatal fall to the rear." He paused, and off on the far side of the chamber, Grunt made what Jack was sure was a snide comment about the turian capacity for stating the obvious.
Garrus ignored him. "We won't be able to fall back. Limited comms. Until Shepard returns, the only way out of this room is through those doors," he pointed to the security doors, beyond which the sounds were getting louder as the enemy massed its strength, "or by trying to climb up to one of the tunnels in the ceiling and hoping for the best. That means we have to dig in. Prioritize the targets that can push us out of position – the husks, mostly, and any collector that so much as twitches its wings. Grunt and Zaeed, you cover the left flank. They'll come through that way first. Grunt, keep the charges safe and the husks distracted."
Grunt slammed his fists together with a meaty thud. "I'll keep them dead."
"That works too." Garrus fell silent again, staring intently at something up above them. Jack followed his gaze. There were deep pits burrowed into the rocky ceiling, but as far as Jack could see they were black and empty. Garrus stared for a long moment before frowning and returning his attention to the squad.
"Jack and I will cover this door if they get through it," he said finally, nodding towards the passage through which Jack had escorted Shepard's fire team, the one crawling with swarmers. Garrus' beady eyes bored into Jack. "Be ready to keep the swarmers off us."
"Fine," Jack agreed.
Garrus nodded. "Jacob and Thane will support where they can from back here," he said, turning back to the group. "Everyone keep to cover, and be ready to move to wherever you're needed. Keep an eye on the ceiling for any reinforcements coming through. And don't take any stupid risks."
The doors gave a rumble. The collectors were breaking through. They would be on them soon.
Garrus' mandibles twitched. "So… Let's do it," he finished lamely, shrugging.
"What, no speech?" Jack shouted. There was another boom and the doors shifted a few centimeters, but she ignored it. She feigned a scowl the turian's way. "No pep talk? What kind of squad leader are you? I want a fuckin' pep talk."
Garrus stared at her, a pained look on his beaked face. "I thought Shepard covered that end pretty well."
Jack couldn't keep the grin off her face at the fact that the turian could be so calm holding the line but her bullshit still got to him. "Too bad, Vakarian!" she crowed. "Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!" She pumped a fist in the air with each chant. Then Grunt joined in, his voice thundering in the vastness of the chamber.
Garrus' eyes narrowed in annoyance. The doors boomed and shifted again, a little wider this time, and the moan of husks and the chittering of collectors could be heard clawing at the gap.
"Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!" Jacob had joined in now, and even Zaeed was watching Garrus expectantly, the twist of a grin on his scarred lips. "Speech! Speech! Speech!"
In one smooth motion, Garrus brought his sniper rifle to his eye, took aim somewhere up above him, and fired. The report of his sniper rifle cut off the chanters' shouting, and everyone looked skyward as a collector came tumbling out of one of the ceiling tunnels in a fountain of gore and missing limbs. They all watched it fall thirty meters as if in slow motion, screeching until it hit the platform with a wet smack.
They looked at Garrus, who scanned the ceiling one more time before nodding to himself, satisfied.
"Fuck yeah!" Jack shouted. Best speech ever. A cheer went up from their ranks as they turned their guns on the doors and slid into their positions. It was time to do this. No more running, no more fucking around trying to come up with plans. Fire kindled in Jack's hands as the spider in her brain twitched and rubbed its legs together in anticipation.
It was time to fuck some collectors up.
Jack yelled herself hoarse, and then Garrus had added his voice and Grunt was roaring and the chamber seemed to shake with the strength of their challenge.
The left door thundered open and the battle began.
Particle beams lanced through the air, thundering across the squad's paltry cover, and they answered with gunfire, so loud and so fast it no longer sounded like individual shots but just one, long, thundering note. Jack's shotgun leaped in her hands as the first husks barreled through the door. Her first shot took two of them at once, chunking their torsos like overripe melons. They screeched and fell, trampled under the feet of their brethren. Shredded limbs and flecks of corrupted flesh exploded in every direction as the first wave disintegrated under the squad's assault, but then there were others, piling over their fallen, clawing and howling in their particular brand of mindless rage. They seemed like a black wave, their numbers so vast that the doors continued to slide open, metal groaning as they were pushed aside by dozens of clawing arms. Jacob jammed the whole tide back with a great biotic wind, sending them toppling in a pile of tangled bodies and gnashing teeth, but it was no use. The doors were wide open, now, and they could see the glowing eyes of what must have been three or four dozen collectors.
The collectors advanced behind their husk vanguards, wings a blur as they rushed to get out of the bottleneck of the security door. Jack saw Thane fell one with a few neat shots to the torso, sending its body flapping uselessly down on shredding wing membranes. Next to her, Garrus had already switched back to his assault rifle. It chattered as it chewed through the enemy ranks. Garrus swept it low, holing wings and shattering knees and severing legs from their bodies until the ground was carpeted in twitching carnage. Another collector made the mistake of flying too near Grunt, and suddenly felt the crushing grip of hundreds of kilograms of armored krogan wrap around its lower leg. Grunt swung it down into the ground like a bat, scattering its guts across the floor with a satisfying crunch of chitin. Jack pulled another collector out of the sky with a quick biotic yank, then shredded the wings of another with a blast from her shotgun, but there were others, and the air began to fill with the sound of beating wings. Swarmers wormed through narrow crevasses and made a beeline for the front lines, only to be swept back by furious biotic gusts.
A timely duck saved Jack as another particle beam lanced off of her cover, just centimeters from where her face had been. She grimaced at the glowing score mark where the shot had melted the metal. "Motherfucker!" she snarled. The collector who'd shot at her was too far away to reach with her shotgun, and she hopped out of cover long enough to send a warping biotic field its way. The effort sent a bloom of agony rocketing down the base of her skull, but it was worth it to see the way the collectors head disintegrated and split in a fountain of zero-g hemolymph.
She did not have time to appreciate her victory, as there was a whump and the all too familiar feeling of a biotic field prickled the short hair on the back of her neck. She looked up just in time to see the shockwave coming, shattering the glassy floor tiles in a wave as it tore into their cover. Jack herself was thrown like a ragdoll, and landed on her back three or four meters out of cover, coming to a stop less than an arm's length from the edge of the platform and the deadly fall into the chamber below. Stars swam in front of her eyes.
"Scion!" someone shouted.
"No shit," Jack mumbled to herself, making a mental note to practice the biotic cancellation shit Samara had pulled on her back on Pragia.
She was halfway through retrieving her fallen shotgun when she felt a strong grip on her shoulder and she was yanked to her feet. Garrus' face was covered in blood from a deep gash over his right brow plate – he must have been thrown too – and he shouted something at her. Whatever it was, it didn't penetrate the fog that had filled Jack's head or the pounding of gunfire, but now he was pointing to the towering black shape of the scion that had shot them and Jack understood. They had to take that thing out before it flushed the whole team out of cover.
"Distract it!" Garrus bellowed into her ear. "Go around left, I'll take right!"
Jack's implant gave a tug and for the briefest moment, a glimmer of her usual fury flashed through her mind at being told what to do. At being told to risk her life to protect a team who tomorrow might up and decide to fuck her over and leave her broken in some ditch somewhere. It had happened before, and some part of Jack had been counting the days until it would happen again.
But the rest of her knew it wasn't coming, not this time. These people had hurt her – the burn scars on the back of her neck were testament enough of that – but they had helped her too. Had put up with her, had taken her to Pragia, had fought by her side. They weren't going to stab her in the back.
She nodded up at the turian. "You got it."
Shots pinged off of their shields as they split up and dashed for the scion. The monster shuffled towards Jack with all the swift presence of mind of a mentally-disabled elcor, but the bulbous gun that grew from its shoulder was no laughing matter. It fired again, and Jack went low, diving down into cover and rolling out of the shockwave's path. The wave showered her in bits of pulverized rock and steel as she sprung back up, vaulting the wall and sprinting towards her target.
It was following Garrus now, its dark flesh jiggling as it fought to keep the turian in its sights. Garrus sprinted right around the perimeter of the chamber, where the joining of two platforms offered some paltry cover safely away from the rest of the squad. His sniper rifle boomed and a great gout of ichor came pouring out of the scion's back like a lanced blister. It gave no notice and sent another pounding shockwave the turian's way. Jack took advantage of its distraction, darting in behind it and firing up into its back, but her shotgun did little better, showering the scion with its own gore and chips of what looked suspiciously like human bones but barely stumbling it. Garrus was barreling back towards her now, taking aim for another shot. He fired and another fountain erupted in the scion's hump, but it was still standing. Gunfire fizzled on Garrus' shields as he ducked low and charged right into the monster's stomach, finally knocking it over in an avalanche of oily flesh. Thick pustules ruptured under the turian's weight and the scion screeched in protest until another blast from Jack's shotgun took its head. It twitched once, twice, and was still.
Jack grimaced and spat. "Fuck that thing." Its blood had spattered into her mouth as it had died, and the taste was so bad she could hardly think. She spat again.
Garrus had it even worse. The turian fought to dig himself out of its remains, sputtering and coughing and coated head to toe in black gore that stung Jack's hands when she reached to help him back into cover, but he looked otherwise unhurt. "Not bad on the tackle, Vakarian," Jack said, wiping her hands on her pants as Garrus staggered over the wall, still coughing up black fluid. "Didn't think you had it in you."
Garrus opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the flash of a particle beam dashing through his shields from behind. The shot took him in the flank, melting armor and skin and flesh, and he fell.
–
It took only a handful of runtimes to guide a geth platform through the motions of battle. It was true that organics took for granted the brainpower required to reposition a leg, to turn an ankle, to maintain balance even in motion, but the creators had troubleshooted the necessary kinematic calculations long ago and three or four dedicated runtimes sufficed to make Legion's platform run and jump and shoot on par with any rank-and-file human soldier.
That left more than a thousand runtimes free for higher-order thinking, and therein laid Legion's advantage.
They dissected everything they saw for the patterns underneath.
Their platform fired again, and another of the collectors split and was sent careening over the edge to spatter on the chamber floor, far below. The platform's optics captured the moment in perfect fidelity and their runtimes set to work stripping every piece apart for return to the consensus. There was ballistics data of the projectile and of the flecks of chitin and viscera ejected by its impact. Stress analysis would offer insight as to the collectors' material properties and the ideal weapon calibration for combatting them. The wet squeal the creature made as it died – possible communication information.
Much of the data would ultimately be of little use, but it had to be saved – the geth had never encountered collectors before and it was impossible to predict when they might have another opportunity. Every bit was collected, flagged highest priority, and saved onto local data storage in triplicate. They would send it to the consensus as soon as the Normandy returned to the comm buoy network, assuming their platform was still functional.
But the middle of a firefight was no place to be deciphering collector languages or the rheological mechanics of their innards – the runtimes prioritized tactically-relevant inquiries. Bullets flew and consensuses were formed. Every combatant's position and relative threat was tracked, updated eight times a second, and fed into the analyses.
=local threat analysis… Shepard-Commander: FRIENDLY
=Creator-Tali'Zorah: FRIENDLY
=Operator-Lawson: FRIENDLY
=CollectorStation-Collector-071: HOSTILE, THREAT(HIGH)
=CollectorStation-Collector-072: HOSTILE, THREAT(HIGH)
=CollectorStation-Collector-073: HOSTILE, THREAT(HIGH)
=CollectorStation-Collector-075: HOSTILE, THREAT(HIGH)
=CollectorStation-Collector-076: HOSTILE, THREAT(HIGH)
=CollectorStation-Collector-077: HOSTILE, THREAT(HIGH)
=CollectorStation-Harbinger-018: HOSTILE, THREAT(VERY HIGH)
=OBSERVATION: Shepard-Commander covers, fires upon CollectorStation-Collector-071.
=OBSERVATION: Creator-Tali'Zorah covers, reloads.
=OBSERVATION: Operator-Lawson covers, fires upon CollectorStation-Collector-073.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-071 covers at seven point three meters, fires upon Shepard-Commander, dies.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-071 combat status is NONFUNCTIONAL
=CollectorStation-Collector-071: NONFUNCTIONAL, THREAT(NONE)
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-072 flies, fires upon Creator-Tali'Zorah.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-073 flies, fires upon Creator-Tali'Zorah.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-075 covers, fires upon platform.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-076 flies, fires upon platform.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Collector-077 covers, fires upon Shepard-Commander.
=OBSERVATION: CollectorStation-Harbinger-018 uncovered, attacks Shepard-Commander with shearing mass effect field.
=projected local threat level(high)
Free runtimes chattered, selecting a target. Analyses of firing patterns suggested CollectorStation-Collector-075's weapon was cooling. Based on the orientation of the collectors' heads Legion's platform was not presently within any enemy firing arcs. Consensus came quickly, commands were sent, and the platform stood, aiming for less than a second before placing a high-velocity slug through CollectorStation-Collector-075's head. It died, and its death was recorded, dissected, and saved. Legion's platform dropped back into cover and continued its journey down the course the runtimes had calculated for it, optimized to reduce collector firing opportunities while maximizing platform firing opportunities.
The collectors did not employ much in the way of higher order cooperation, maintaining a loose, mobile formation, occasionally taking flight to reposition but generally covering as far away from the squad's positions as possible. Those commandeered by OldMachine-Harbinger were the exception, and dove for Shepard-Commander's position with careless intensity. The squad had so far prioritized them and so far none had survived more than 16.81 seconds, but would they hardly hit the ground before their glow receded and another collector transformed to take their place.
Two additional collector units joined the battle, landing at eight point four meters, azimuth fifty-eight degrees. They advanced on Shepard-Commander and Creator-Tali'Zorah.
The battlefield had changed, and the runtimes reconsidered.
=building consensus…
=consensus achieved…
Legion's platform rose from its cover. Aiming priorities were adjusted as the platform advanced on the new threat, increasing fire rate at the expense of accuracy. The platform moved quickly, ignoring the shield damage incurred as CollectorStation-Collector-076 and CollectorStation-Collector-077 opened fire upon it. It fired its rifle in rapid succession, budgeting less than a quarter second to aim each shot. The shots went wide, missing or reflecting off of their targets' barriers, but the attack had its intended effect – the collectors shifted their focus to the platform long enough for Creator-Tali'Zorah and Shepard-Commander to reposition. Legion's platform's shields broke and a shot buried itself under its left arm, and another in its groin, but then CollectorStation-Collector-078 and CollectorStation-Collector-079 were dead, spattering against the ground. Their deaths were recorded, dissected, and saved, and Legion directed its platform back into cover.
Shepard-Commander's voice crackled. "You took some fire there, Legion. You alright?"
=941 runtimes analyzing…
=CollectorStation-Collector-077 projectile attack, kinetic slug, left torso… No damage.
=CollectorStation-Collector-077 projectile attack, kinetic slug, left torso… No damage.
=CollectorStation-Collector-077 projectile attack, kinetic slug, left torso… No damage.
=CollectorStation-Collector-078 projectile attack, kinetic slug, lower torso… Superficial joint damage.
=all connections intact. No data loss.
=shield generator charge at 971% of recommended level. Shields nonfunctional. Full functionality restored in approximately 21.8 seconds.
An answer was formulated. "Yes. This platform has incurred minor structural damage. We remain functional."
"Roger that. Thanks for the assist."
"Acknowledged."
The battle lasted another 168.8 seconds after that, and was done. CollectorStation-Harbinger-021 broke apart under one of Operator-Lawson's warping fields, its booming voice sputtering and dying as it was finished off with a blast from Creator-Tali'Zorah's shotgun.
The chamber quieted, and Legion's platform scanned for further hostiles.
"We detect no further collector reinforcements," Legion announced.
The squad emerged from cover, its organic members panting from exertion. They stood, and for the first time had the opportunity to take in what they were seeing. Legion was no different – they directed their platform to run every scan it had available. They had reached their objective. The station's core loomed over them, a colossal, circular structure set into the rear wall of the chamber that bathed them all in a radioactive blue-white glow. But what drew their eyes now was what was attached to it.
"You know," Shepard-Commander finally said, breaking the quiet, "I always thought I would live my whole life without fighting a giant robot."
It was giant. Legion directed their platform to the edge of their vantage point, until the entire structure could be seen. Based on optical scans the runtimes estimated a height of one hundred eighty-four meters. It bore a superficial resemblance to a human endoskeleton, but its construction and the reflective properties of its materials confirmed its origins as unmistakably Old Machine-derived.
"EDI, what is this thing?" Shepard-Commander asked. The squad's comm channel crackled, but no identifiable signal responded. Shepard-Commander frowned. "Okay, whatever it is, it's what's been blocking comms back to the ship. So… any ideas? Miranda? Legion? Anyone?"
"It's a Reaper," Operator-Lawson supplied.
"The squid design was scarier."
"This is just the power architecture, Shepard. The exterior is still being built around it." Operator-Lawson pointed a finger back into the heart of the chamber, to where giant black armor components were hanging from the towering walls. Legion's platform scanned them and the runtimes matched them against OldMachine-Nazara's designs – they were exterior panels for a Reaper's forelimbs, far and away larger than the human-shaped construct.
Legion's runtimes filtered through their local database – everything the geth knew about the Old Machines had been saved directly onto their hardware – and called up sensory data of their first interactions with Nazara. The consensus came almost instantly. "We agree with Operator-Lawson's hypothesis. Geth emissaries aboard OldMachine-Nazara noted a similar internal structure," they said. "We did not recognize its significance."
"What does it mean?"
Legion's platform drew its optics across the Old Machine, tracing upwards to the thick pipes plumbed into its back. These attached to the humans in the pods they had seen earlier. "We are building consensus…" Crewmember-Chambers and Crewmember-Byron had been partially dissolved as they were removed from their pods. The runtimes had interpreted it as a defense mechanism against removal at the time. New data altered their conclusion. "Consensus achieved," they announced. "We hypothesize that the Old Machines construct their power cores in effigy of the species from which their carbon originated. Organic bodies are liquefied and combined with molten metal alloys to produce composite materials for use in Old Machine construction."
Shepard-Commander grimaced behind his helmet, his disgust obvious even to Legion. "Alright, then," he said, and his voice was short, "Mystery solved. How do we stop it?"
"I vote we kill it, personally," Creator-Tali'Zorah offered.
Another consensus was made.
"We agree with Creator-Tali'Zorah."
Plans were drawn. The Old Machine was incomplete, but brief scans confirmed its shields drew power from the station's massive reactor. As long as the station had power, even the heavy anti-materiel rifle Legion's platform carried would barely dent it. The cluster of machinery from which it hung, however, was a different story. Even now it hummed as it laid thin layers of molten human-and-steel sludge onto the Old Machine's back, building it up layer by layer. The four of them judged that controlled demolitions would be enough to destroy the fabricators and drop the Old Machine into the bottom of the pit, some two hundred meters below. Scans suggested it lacked a mass effect generator large enough to arrest its fall, and no amount of shielding could protect ten thousand tons of machinery from its own colossal weight.
The chamber was still quiet, empty of foes, but all the same Legion and Shepard-Commander took up defensive positions beneath the Old Machine while Operator-Lawson and Creator-Tali'Zorah scaled the monstrous armature to prime the explosives the quarian had been carrying. They were dwarfed by the Old Machine's immensity, vulnerable as they worked overtop the yawning gulf beneath them, but at the other end of the chamber Turian-Vakarian's squad was doing its job and no collectors came to unseat them.
Legion scanned the Old Machine with every wavelength and measure it could produce. Its runtimes debated and redefined and convened and reconvened.
"You look troubled, Legion." It was Shepard-Commander. "Like you know something you'd rather not."
Legion's platform turned to regard the commander. Geth did not get knowledge was always preferable to less, but a quick consensus judged that Shepard-Commander was speaking non-literally, and they did not point that out.
"Incorrect," they said instead. "We are attempting to build a new consensus. The Old Machines require redefinition in light of new revelations. Past definitions are irreconcilable with available data." Their platform's head vanes flickered and twitched as they processed through a thousand arguments.
Shepard-Commander nodded dourly. "Reapers are made of humans."
"At this time we do not recognize any functional benefit to incorporating organic carbon into Old Machine construction. Inorganic carbon is abundant throughout the galaxy and can be refined into pure materials with superior material properties." They paused. "We find this apparent irrationality difficult to reconcile."
"Maybe the Reapers just like to kill."
"We have a similar hypothesis. Previous Old Machine definitions assumed optimal behavior in every situation. New data suggest Old Machines employ suboptimal construction techniques. We now conclude that the Old Machines have hardware or software limitations like conventional synthetic organisms." The geth had understood this as a possibility to begin with, but the Old Machines had claimed to be eternal, immutable, immaculate. No other eternal organisms were known to the geth, but they had no alternate means to account for the Old Machines' origins, and so they had decided to regard Old Machine claims as accurate until new data could be acquired.
And now it had. The Old Machines called themselves eternal, but the data disagreed. The Old Machines were not infinite. The Old Machines depended on organics for their very existence.
Legion's consensuses shifted back and forth before stabilizing. "They are imperfect."
"Or they're taking orders from someone who is."
"Acknowledged. We hypothesize that the Old Machines do not fully understand their own behavior. Perhaps they once had a directive to guide them, but have lost context over the millennia. A metaphor: They are slaves, but they now believe themselves to be deities."
Shepard-Commander smiled at that idea. "So much for 'beyond your comprehension', then."
They recognized the reference. OldMachine-Nazara's speech to Shepard-Commander had not been easy to obtain – it had entered the geth consensus after the reintegration of an unstable heretic platform – but it had been regarded as one of the most important pieces of data the geth consensus had, and was installed locally on most platforms.
You Are Not Saren… Rudimentary Creatures Of Blood And Flesh, You Touch My Mind, Fumbling in Ignorance, Incapable of Understanding. There Is A Realm Of Existence So Far Beyond Your Own You Cannot Even Imagine It. I Am Beyond Your Comprehension. I am Sovereign. We Simply Are. We Are Eternal. The Pinnacle Of Evolution And Existence. My Kind Transcends Your Very Understanding. You Cannot Even Grasp The Nature Of Our Existence. We Have No Beginning. We Have No End. We Are Infinite.
"Acknowledged."
The runtimes were still buzzing with activity by the time Operator-Lawson and Creator-Tali'Zorah had finished their work and descended to rejoin them. The Old Machines were synthetics of unfathomable complexity, so immense and so powerful they made the geth consensus look like a calculator by comparison. Eternal or not, they were effectively deities. The geth had not rejected Nazara's alliance because it did not deserve worship (indeed, organics worshipped lesser beings all the time), but because it was impossible to worship perfection and seek it at the same time.
But the Old Machines were not perfect after all. Perhaps they had been, once, but now they were confused. They had changed. They had grown egos. They had grown illogical. In their antiquity they had become so organic.
Even the Old Machines could not prevent it.
As they watched the white flash that consumed the fabricators and sent the Old Machine crashing down in an avalanche of steel, the runtimes wondered what hope that left for the geth.
–
The passageway back to the Normandy was littered with collector corpses, mementos of the fierce firefight they'd fought through on their way in. Ichor slicked the floor, and bullet-riddled consoles sputtered and sparked. It was a gruesome scene, even if nothing stirred, even if Kasumi had already been right in the middle of it.
She couldn't imagine what it looked like to someone who'd spent the past day and a half in a cocoon waiting to be dissolved. Kasumi cast a quick glance back at the crew, limping along ten meters behind her. "Careful up here," she called out, gesturing at a narrow crater where one of Garrus' grenades had destroyed part of the walkway. She stooped to clear what remained of the path, sliding viscera and shattered clumps of gummy insect flesh aside with the toe of her boot. A fallen corpse – one of Harbinger's unfortunate hosts – was draped across the way ahead, wreathed in scorch marks from where its armature had cooked it from the inside out. Kasumi lifted it under its vacated torso and tossed it over the edge of a deep crevasse, ignoring the hot, sticky gore it left smeared on her gloves. The smell made her want to gag, but she jogged on ahead, satisfied with her trailblazing.
Kasumi stopped behind a nearby column and took a moment to consult the map she'd drawn up inside her graybox on the way in. It didn't take her long for her to get her bearings – they were just over halfway back to the Normandy's crash site. She took another deep breath and scanned the stony catwalks up above them, eyes peeled for any sign of danger, any blue gleam of approaching husks or rustle of collector wings. It was silent but for the churning of her stomach.
She dismissed the memories with a quick mental command. Halfway there, and but for the force Shepard and the rest of the squad had helped them clear off the security doors at the start of their journey back, no bugs so far. That was good. Maybe they'd actually get through okay.
Oh, who was she kidding? Murphy wouldn't let them off that easy.
"Feeling well, Ms. Goto?"
Mordin's voice almost made her jump as the salarian took position behind the column next to hers. His heavy pistol was drawn, but if he felt half as anxious as Kasumi did he didn't show it. He smiled at her, casual concern in his big eyes.
No, she wasn't alright. She was an art aficionado in the galactic core, escorting two dozen injured people through an unknown alien space station where at any second a coked-up cyber zombie could jump out and tear her guts out faster than she could say 'I'm woefully undertrained for a situation like this'.
"I'm fine," she said, returning the grin as best she could manage. She tightened her grip on her gun.
Behind Mordin, the rest of the crew came limping to join them. Most of them could walk well enough, but they were all as pale as sheets, shuffling along with their eyes on the ground like they were half husk already. Only Ken had any color to him – he was carrying Gabby in his arms, ignoring her semi-conscious demands to put her down. In any other context Kasumi might have found it cute. Behind them came Goldstein, then Patel and Rolston dragging an unconscious and bleeding Bryon between them. Everyone looked miserable. Curie's skin was a patchwork of bruises, Tennard had a limp, but Kelly was worst of all. Draped over Gardner's arms like a broken doll, the ship's yeoman was still, just a bundle of bandages and pale, withered flesh. Chakwas hovered near her, the direness of Kelly's situation etched in deep lines on her face.
Mordin caught Kasumi's gaze and nodded solemnly, reading her mind. "Must hurry," he said, voice quiet so the crew would not overhear him. "Medical situation dire for some. Need proper treatment as soon as possible."
"Let's get them back home then," Kasumi said, and, holding her gun in front of her, crept out of cover.
They made good time, all things considered. Kasumi's heart continued to beat like a snare drum, so loud it seemed like good fortune that the collectors hadn't heard it and come after them yet, but the only foes they passed were dead ones.
Kasumi grimaced to herself as she passed yet another splash of gore, another tower of empty stasis pods. The things she'd seen… Graybox or not, she'd never forget them. She stayed ahead of the group, telling herself she was scouting the path for danger, but more than anything she just didn't want anyone to see through the confident veneer she was effecting.
People were depending on her, and so she put on a brave face, but behind it Kasumi's nerves threatened to crack at any moment. She was a thief. She didn't belong here, doing these things. Who did she think she was, pretending she was in the same class as people like Jacob and Shepard and Garrus, who made fighting look as natural as breathing? She could run and shoot and hide, but when the battle started to pound and collectors were raining down from the skies firing particle beams, what could she do? Pick a lock at them?
Just like in all the classic stories, her hubris would be her downfall. To think she'd thought the mission would be easy when the Illusive Man had first brought her on! Sure, she'd never fought collectors before, but how hard could it be? She was quick on her feet and a good shot and if she ever got in a tight situation she could just cloak and she'd be home free. She was just a thief, yes, but she was the galaxy's best thief. She could do it.
The mission on the collector ship had disabused her of that notion. She'd nearly run out her cloaking generator's battery, staying invisibly in the shadows and barely firing a single shot, and she'd still nearly died when a collector had tried to land where she was hiding and knocked her to the ground. It had chittered in confusion and kicked at her invisible form, and if Thane hadn't put a shot through its eye socket she would have died then and there.
And then as if that wasn't enough, the Normandy's stealth systems had not availed it either and it was only because she was fighting through a geth space station that she didn't get captured with the rest of the crew. Hadley and Orell had died and Matthews had died and Samara had died, and if the collectors could kill a justicar what hope did she have?
She was trained in subterfuge. Hacking. Maybe the occasional kill if it was unavoidable, but her job was about stealth and lying, not pulling a trigger. And the collectors didn't care what you called yourself. You couldn't trick them or bribe them or lie to them, couldn't find a back way or an errant personality flaw to exploit. If they saw you, they killed you, and it didn't matter if you were Kasumi Goto or Jila Han or Izanami Sha or anyone else.
It had taken a lot of willpower not to just activate her cloak and hide on the ship when the call came out to suit up for the Omega-4 relay.
But she hadn't, and here she was. Call it penance for the Cerberus men she'd accidentally killed at the reactor on Caleston. Call it a dedication to Keiji. Call it rescuing men and women who'd been friends to her. Call it just getting the dogs off of her back, or doing Shep a favor, or just not looking like a coward in front of the rest of the squad. For whatever reason, when the call had come she'd suited up and stood in the hangar with everyone else, and now here she was. Risking her life.
Kasumi swallowed her apprehension. She was just a thief, but she would see it out. She owed them that much.
She hadn't died yet.
In fact, as she led Mordin and the crew into the last winding corridor that would take them to the Normandy and nothing charged out to greet them, some crazier part of her couldn't help but feel a traitorous flicker of disappointment that she'd built up the courage to go on the mission only to miss all the real fighting. She thought of Jacob and Jack, who must have been feeling as bad as the crew looked after their stints in the stasis pods, choosing to go on with the rest of the ground team. Fighting and maybe even dying, while she was strolling back to the ship, risking nothing worse than slipping in collector blood and bumping her head.
She knew she should be grateful, but couldn't the collectors have sent something so she didn't feel useless? A husk? Anything?
Then Mordin stopped them. "Problem," he said, holding out a hand to shepherd the crew into cover behind a short, rocky wall. Kasumi felt her blood ice at the professor's tone, and reflexively activated her cloaking field.
She stared down the corridor, squinting through the grayish haze that her cloaking field always inflicted on her vision, and her eyes widened as she caught what the salarian had seen. The Normandy's tailfins were just visible over a long trail of crash debris – the ship couldn't have been more than a hundred meters away – and yet five meters below in the corridor running beneath theirs, a small army of collectors was massing. One of the beetle-backed floating machines was unloading a big cube of bizarre blue-and black-machinery. It took Kasumi several seconds to recognize the cargo as husks – dozens of them – pressed together for storage. Their limbs started to thrash as they disentangled themselves from their brothers, falling to the ground to await the order to move on the Normandy.
Kasumi's mouth went dry.
Gonads.
She just had to say something, didn't she? They were almost there and yet she just had to. Couldn't just keep her mouth shut and been thankful that she would live long enough to nurse her bruised pride. No… She had to be ungracious about it.
She stared accusingly at the ceiling. Stupid Murphy and his stupid law.
Mordin stared at the assembling aliens for a few seconds, his mouth a thin line and his eyes flitting about rapidly as he thought. "Problem," he concluded again finally, nodding. He stroked at his chin. "AI," he said, activating his communicator. "Near final destination, but have encountered difficulties. Short-range scanners available?"
EDI's voice crackled in Kasumi's ear, thick with static. "I apologize, Professor Solus. The Normandy's tightbeam scanners will not be available until main power can be restored. Repairs are underway. Though I cannot provide tactical analysis, shipboard surveillance feeds read consistent with a significant enemy presence within two hundred meters of the crash site."
"Indeed," Mordin agreed. "Collectors massing in sub-corridor. Presumably intend to attack Normandy. Impossible to reach ship undetected."
"We could wait 'em out," Donnelly suggested, peering over the wall next to Mordin. "Providing the shields are up, nothin' down there will be able to so much as scratch the Normandy's paint. We could just bunker up, wait for help to arrive."
"The Normandy's kinetic barriers will not be available until main power can be restored," EDI said, and the worry in her voice sounded as human as Kasumi had ever heard her. "Repairs are underway."
"Shit."
"Collectors appear unaware of Normandy's vulnerability," Mordin said, considering. "Otherwise would have attacked already. Perhaps hold position, wait for power restoration. Avoid instigating collector attack prematurely."
"I vote that, then."
"Minimizes risk. Not unwise," Mordin agreed, nodding to himself. "Still, problem-"
"Half of these people will die of blood loss if they do not get to a med bay soon," Chakwas finished for him, her voice dour.
"Yes."
Kasumi reappeared next to Chakwas, searching the doctor's face for some shred of hope, but there was none. She meant it. Above her, Mordin looked no more optimistic. Kasumi shook her head. "We can't let that happen," she insisted. She cast another quick glance at the collectors. There were maybe twenty of them clustered around the praetorian, and half again as many husks, but as far as she could tell, they didn't have a direct line of sight on the Normandy. She chewed her lip. "If we could get down there and make some kind of distraction…" She stopped, grimacing with an uncomfortable realization. "If I could get down there and make some kind of distraction," she amended, "the rest of you might be able to sneak aboard. Then I could double back and join you."
Everyone looked at her – some with concern, others with relief. Even gratitude. Mordin looked skeptical. His eyes scanned her up and down. "Positions very close. Would need to be significant distraction," he said.
"I can do it," Kasumi insisted.
Mordin nodded and tapped at his forehead, his deliberations already done. "Good luck, then, Ms. Goto," he said, smiling. "Will be ready to move." And with that, he turned away to check Kelly's vitals, utterly convinced of their new plan. Dr. Chakwas gave Kasumi a last, lingering look and turned to help the professor, who tossed his SMG to Donnelly and commanded him to keep watch.
Kasumi took a deep breath. Oh boy. For a minute, she just stood there, paralyzed by the realization of what she'd just offered to do.
What was she thinking? She was just a thief! Why couldn't she get that through her thick head?
Why couldn't she just stop teasing Murphy!?
But a glance at the crew – at the people depending on her – was all the motivation she needed. These men and women were her friends, and they needed her now. Her nerve returned and she turned on her heel and winked out of existence before she had a chance to lose it again.
The path connecting their corridor with the collectors' was short – it wasn't more than thirty meters – and yet Kasumi walked it as slowly as she dared, taking the time to place each foot where it would make the least noise (doing so when she couldn't see her feet had once been next to impossible, but she'd long since mastered the art). Time was of the essence, but she knew she could afford no mistakes. It was just like a heist. No matter how tight the schedule, rushing got you caught. And so Kasumi stepped gingerly over any scrap of stone that looked suspect, waited to stabilize, and stepped again. Her breathing slowed into a well-practiced shallowness, all silent gulps, so small and infrequent that it took all of her focus not to gasp.
Up ahead, the collectors loomed nearer and nearer, pacing as they waited for the praetorian to finish deploying its cargo. As far as she could tell they hadn't seen her yet, but she could see them, and clearer than she'd ever wanted to. The husks were old and desiccated, their pallid flesh deformed from being packed together so tightly, the gruesome armatures running through them glittering with dozens of blue pinpricks of light. And the collectors… had they always glistened like that? Their carapaces shifted and flexed with each fluttery breath they took ands their fingers danced impatiently on the triggers of their bizarre weapons.
Kasumi was so focused on them that she didn't notice the sentry until she was practically on top of it. She froze, her breath hitching in her throat as the solitary collector – standing guard where it could keep eyes on the Normandy – materialized out of her peripheral vision. It buzzed, its mandibles clicking as it walked in a tight patrol. On its back, delicate membranes flicked anxiously in and out of their sheathes. It stared at the downed ship with lidless eyes, its empty face giving away nothing.
Kasumi steeled herself. The sentinel had a clear shot at the only path to the ship. If Mordin and the crew moved now, they'd be caught for sure. She would have to take him out.
Silently would be best.
Her mind was a cauldron of tangled nerves, but she swallowed heavily and turned towards the sentinel. She crept forward, step by step. Three meters. Now two. The collector continued to pace.
She could do this. She just had to get close.
One meter, now. She could see the delicate, feathery tissue on the inside of the alien's hips, hear the subtle creak of chitin plates as it shifted its weight, feel the gentle electric hum that emanated from its gun.
She held her breath and lifted her own weapon, calling to mind everything her graybox had on collectors. Every second of their mission on the collector ship, every kill the others had made – she'd assembled it all into one package and spent sleepless nights watching and rewatching it. Collectors were well armored and shielded – though their shields resembled biotic fields more than the kinetic barriers used by the races of the galaxy – but generally could be brought down quickly with careful aim. But she didn't only need to kill it… she needed to kill it instantly, before it could warn its companions that anything was wrong. Jacob had helped her mod the Locust-12 she had lifted from Hock's estate – something about taking off unnecessary safety features and improving its stopping power, she hadn't really been paying attention. She hoped it would be enough now.
She set her barrel as close to the alien as she dared, pointing up into the cleft of softer flesh in its flank. One chance.
She jammed the gun in, hard, and pulled the trigger. Far from muffling the report, the flesh seemed only to amplify it to Kasumi, and there was a bang and a wet phut as the creature's stomach exploded out the other side.
Kasumi darted for cover as quickly as she could, eager not to get disemboweled by the alien's death spasms. It bubbled black ichor from its mouth, whirling in a clumsy attempt to find its attacker, staggered…
And didn't fall.
It didn't even look particularly bothered.
Kasumi could hardly believe it. She watched, gobsmacked, for several seconds, waiting for the collector to collapse, but it did not. It stood unsteadily, dripping gore from the hole in its torso, and stared right through her, but it did not die. It just stared and bled and waited.
And didn't call its friends. Somehow, none of them had noticed its predicament. Ten meters away, they continued to wait and chitter amongst themselves, oblivious, while their sentry bled out on the tile floor.
Kasumi shook her head. This was getting ridiculous. The things she got herself into...
Oh well, there was nothing for it. She had to get the dying collector out of view. She couldn't risk simply shooting it again – her luck to have gone unnoticed so far would only hold out so long – so she did the only thing she could think of. She stood, grabbed the collector by one spindly arm, and yanked. The alien probably outweighed her by two or three times, but injured and unaware it went down quickly, sputtering in confusion as it was dragged over the edge of the walkway by invisible hands. Kasumi hefted it into the crevasse with a grunt of effort, and listened to its wet gasps quiet as it fell out of view.
One down… About a million left to go.
She didn't stop to calm the frantic pounding of her heart, and resumed her journey towards the rest of the collectors. She went faster now, keenly aware of how much time she'd already wasted. Kelly and the others needed her to hurry. Needed her to do her job.
She was three meters away from the great, creaking joints of the praetorian when she decided to scale a nearby tower of consoles to get a better vantage. One slipped footing nearly cost her, but a few agonizing seconds passed without incident and she recaptured her balance. Nearby husks stared about fiercely, but whether they'd heard her was impossible to say.
She looked down at her foes. They looked so much more numerous up close, and she had to find a way to distract them all without dying in the process. Kill some of them, too, if she could. Thin them out. As her graybox paraded annotated memories of their training sessions from Minuteman past her eyes, she dug into her many pockets for the best gadget for the job. Flashbangs, probably. She could blind most of them in a single blast, then drop down and pick a few off while they reeled. Of course, that would mean decloaking first – with transparent eyelids, she had no way to avoid blinding herself on her own grenade.
She had to drop, fully visible, into a host of enemies. And not die, ideally.
She found two flashbangs and set them to prime.
She found herself remembering Keiji. She was too clever to call up a graybox memory of him now – it would hardly do to go getting lost in a daydream an arm's width away from a small army of murderous insects – but she didn't really need her graybox for this one.
It was almost two years ago, one of the last memories she had of him. Shortly after they'd botched the job on Hock's estate. Shortly after Keiji had screwed up and gotten himself on camera. They'd been arguing.
"Just give them the damn data," she'd said. "Work out a deal with the Alliance. We'll even tell them what we learned about Hock to sweeten the pot."
Keiji had just smiled. "And spend the rest of my life in prison?" He wasn't taking her seriously. He wasn't taking any of it seriously.
"It's better than having Hock cut your brain out."
"Kasumi… no. I'm not releasing it. We're fine. We'll deal with Hock some other way."
"We're not fine! You were seen! You were seen, Keiji! Don't you understand? I don't… I don't know how much longer I can protect you…" She'd looked away, until he'd taken her in his arms.
"I've been seen before. We just need to get off of Bekenstein. Maybe find a discreet plastic surgeon."
"Nobody's that discreet."
Keiji had shaken his head, stubborn to the end. "I don't care. If I let this data get out, people get hurt."
"We're thieves, Keiji. It's a little late to be growing a conscience!"
"I won't do it."
"Why not?!"
"Because it matters, Kasumi."
Then two days later he was dead and she was alone. Keiji had been brilliant with machines, a master liar, a computer extraordinaire, but he wasn't a fighter. He couldn't turn invisible, not really. He rarely even carried a gun. And Kasumi had done all she could to keep him safe, but in the end… it hadn't been enough.
Kasumi smiled bitterly. That data – that secret he'd stolen, the one that could start a war – mattered so damn much to him it got him killed. If he'd just listened to her, he'd…
She sighed. It was too late. Keiji had made his choice. And he'd have been proud of the one she was making. She stared down at the collectors one more time. She had to do this. For Keiji, if for nothing else. It mattered.
Kasumi shook her head. As soon as this was over, she would swear off suicide missions forever. She'd just quit cold turkey.
She pulled her hood down and rematerialized in a comet of brilliant light.
–
Stupid mistake.
Even on the ground, reeling from pain, Garrus found enough presence of mind to feel like an idiot. Oh, if Captain Abraxes could see him now, making it all the way to the worst place in the galaxy only to get gutshot by an insect. He'd done the right thing, drawing the scion out so it couldn't flush the entire squad out of cover. But he'd taken his eyes off the battlefield, and one of the collectors had taken advantage of his inattention and flanked him from behind. Now he had a hole in his belly and the smell of cooked turian in his nose.
Stupid, rookie mistake.
A voice pierced the haze. "Get up, Vakarian!
Jack was clawing at the wound in Garrus' side, trying to peel the composite underlining of his armor back far enough to douse him with medigel. The injury wasn't deep, but the heat of it had melted armor, skin, and flesh alike, and every time Jack gave his armor a tug, crispy blue meat came with it. White agony streaked in front of Garrus' vision.
The sounds of gunfire continued to thunder about the chamber. The collectors were pushing on them. Garrus knew he had to get up. And yet the fog of pain had taken hold of his mind and even as he felt his own blood trickling deeper into his armor he found himself distracted by the tiny piece of his own crest hanging from Jack's necklace. "It's… it's a suicide mission," he reminded her, vision swimming. Why shouldn't there be some deaths?
Dying for a cause – that was the turian way, and Shepard was a better cause than Palaven or C-Sec had ever given him. He was supposed to be proud, and he wouldn't be alone –he'd left people behind every step of the way. Samara and Hadley, Orell and Matthews, and before that Pressley and Williams and the rest of the crewmembers lost the first time the Normandy went against the collectors. And others. His mother wouldn't last the year. Even his own squad, back on Omega – practically any one of them could have held their own on Shepard's team, and they'd all been slaughtered to the last soldier.
If that last soldier happened to join them… well, at least he'd have good company.
Jack apparently disagreed. "Fuck that," she snarled, removing her hands from where she was putting pressure on his wound long enough to smack a fist into his face. Garrus tasted the iron-y taste of human blood mixed with his own – she'd cut her hand on his teeth – but Jack didn't seem to notice. "We need you to get your fuckin' head back in the game," she shouted. "Snipe some shit! Give some commands!" She smacked him again and glared at him. "If Shepard gets back here and finds out his boyfriend is dead, he'll fucking skin us all. So stop being a PUSSY, and get the fuck UP, Vakarian!" She snarled to herself, finally giving up and just dumping the entire pouch of medigel right into the hole in Garrus' side. The gel hissed and tingled as it settled and began to solidify. "There," she announced. "Medigel. You're fine."
Garrus didn't bother explaining that that wasn't really how medigel worked – it was an amazing substance, but you couldn't just dump it on any injury and expect it to work a miracle. His armor had swallowed the worst of the collector's shot, but if the projectile had gone deep enough no amount of medigel would save him. "Your-" he swallowed, "Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired."
"Yeah, well, Mordin ain't here. Get up."
"I just got shot in the stomach," he complained, but all the same flexed his torso experimentally, earning him another mind-numbing wave of hot pain. "Can't I have thirty seconds just to be shot in the stomach?"
"I just spent two days in a fuckin' egg sac!"
Garrus didn't have a chance to respond, because suddenly there was a shadow and a dark shape came vaulting over their cover with a meandering moan. Jack barely had a moment to curse before black arms grappled her to the ground. The husk didn't last long – its head disappeared in a plume of blue with a sound like a small cannon going off – but then there were two more. They jumped onto Jack, ignoring their predecessor's corpse, and she was wrestling for her life.
Garrus rolled into a sitting position and nearly blacked out as his wound sent a bolt of white-hot pain lancing through his head. He saw stars. Blue blood leaked where Jack's medigel cap had torn, trickling to the ground to mingle with the chunky black remains of the scion they'd killed, but Garrus ignored it, drawing the talon knife from his boot and jamming it into the back of one of the husk's necks. The creature gave a screech and twisted to claw at its new attacker, but one quick sawing motion and its head was sent bouncing. Its body spasmed, frantically tearing at air even as Garrus yanked it off of Jack (it was unnaturally light in his grip, like there was no substance left to it at all) and heaved it over their cover to die. He turned on the second husk even as Jack finished it off with a flash of biotic might and a gruesome twist of her arms.
The two of them sat, panting and covered in husk.
"You really do need me," Garrus deadpanned.
"Oh fuck off." Jack wiped her hands – smeared up to the elbows with three species' blood – on her pants.
Garrus actually smiled. He gave the biotic a thankful nod.
"Yeah, yeah."
Garrus ignored the pain as he rescued his sniper rifle from beneath one of the dead husks. He had to slick what felt like half a liter of gore off of the firing assembly, but when he leveled it over the wall and pulled the trigger it fired true and another collector was sent spinning off in a spiral of tiny fragments. Jack resumed her position at his side, shotgun booming.
Zaeed's voice appeared over the comms. "You still with us, Vakarian?"
"For the time being. Catching up to you on the scar competition, though."
"You wish, Junior."
The rest of the squad was still in their positions, gunning down another wave of husks. Garrus wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but the collector advance seemed to have slowed. Ahead, just inside the open security door, Grunt was absolutely coated in black and yellow gore. The krogan's own orange blood flowed from a dozen deep wounds to join it, but even from a distance Garrus could hear his laughter as he tore another collector's chitinous plastron off with a gruesome snap of connective tissue and another fountain of hemolymph. Hopefully the breach charges strapped to the krogan's back were waterproof. Jacob had advanced to support Zaeed, who had switched back to his Firestorm and was vaporizing clouds of the accumulating swarmers with short gouts of flame. In the back, Thane had not so much as moved a muscle. He mowed down collectors with almost mechanical perfection – the drell could empty his heavy pistol's clip so quickly that three or four targets would appear to fall in a single instant.
They were holding the line. Kirrahe would have been proud.
Of course, it couldn't be that simple. Garrus could have sworn he felt the call coming seconds before his earpiece crackled again. "Mister Vakarian!" The static was thick, but Garrus could recognize Mordin's cheery tone well enough. He ducked into cover, bracing himself for bad news. "Hope you are well."
Garrus spared a moment to look at the melted hole in his armor. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, but it still left an alarming trail of blue running down his leg to congeal on the floor beneath his and Jack's boots. "I've been better."
"Ahh." The salarian sniffed. "Sorry to hear it. Unfortunate news to report."
"The crew didn't make it?"
"No, no, no. No casualties so far. Crew escorted safely to destination. Unfortunately, destination no longer safe. Collector units advancing on Normandy in force."
Next to him, Jack cursed. "Shit!" she snarled. "They found our fuckin' ride?"
"Indeed," Mordin agreed, and Garrus could practically see his solemn nod. The salarian had nerves that would shame an Avarossi."Currently pinned down forty meters from hangar entrance. Cannot advance safely at this time." He paused. "Just a moment." There was the unmistakable sound of gunfire rattling through Garrus' ear, and then the salarian reappeared. "Pardon interruption. Forced to engage."
Garrus' mind raced. The crew – injured and inexperienced – was under fire from collectors. But worse, Normandy was in danger. The only way out for any of them. Even if they could reach it, the crew was in no state to defend it, and as effective as the professor and Kasumi were, they would not be able to hold position alone for long. The crew would die.
And if the Normandy fell, they'd all die. Him, Jack, Mordin. Tali, Shepard. And perhaps more importantly, EDI and all the information on what they'd found here. No doubt the AI was transmitting through her QEC's as quickly as bandwidth allowed, but it would be days – weeks even – before she could get it all safely across.
"Vakarian?" Jack asked. She was staring at him. "What are we doing?"
"What's going on?" It was Jacob.
"Normandy's in trouble," Garrus grunted. "Keep focused." The gunfire continued to pound around Garrus' head. He could hear Mordin's heavy pistol firing through his earpiece, and then something that might have been the moaning of husks. Zaeed was saying something now, and Thane too, but Garrus drowned them all out.
He turned to stare back towards the massive chamber into which Shepard's team had gone and thumbed a button on his omni-tool. "Shepard? Shepard, come in. We've got a problem." Static answered him, as he'd known it would. "Shepard," he tried again anyway. "Shepard, tell me you're done back there."
More static.
Spirits. That wasn't good.
For all he knew, Shepard and his team were on their way back already. Or they might be dead, though Garrus hadn't seen one of the Harbinger collectors since the commander had left them, which probably meant Shepard was alive and kicking, keeping the general too occupied to bother with Garrus' team. They couldn't abandon their position and allow the collectors to catch Shepard's flank, even if it meant they lost the Normandy and their only way was still alive. He just needed more time, time to do what they'd all come here to do.
Garrus turned back to the squad, and even busy with battle, he knew they were waiting to hear him say what they all knew had to be said. Waiting for the order that would leave the Normandy to its fate – leave all of them to their fates. The rules would say to defend the mission objective at all costs.
Garrus tried to keep things in perspective, tried to tell himself to be brave enough to die for his mission. Turians since time immemorial had been sacrificing themselves. He and the crew had signed up for a suicide mission, and it looked like that's what it would be. He could do it. They could all do it.
Garrus touched his injured side. He was already halfway there. He fingered his communicator.
But something stopped him.
"If we abandon this position, we risk everything," he said, thinking aloud. And that much was true. "The collectors get through, and they catch Shepard's team in the rear, and Shepard never reaches the reactor at all."
But there were other factors. The collectors were not working if they did end the collector threat, if they all died to do it, who would be left to protect the galaxy when the Reapers came for it? The Council wasn't going to do it. C-Sec wouldn't do it. Palaven? Sur'kesh? Thessia? Unlikely. Cerberus? He'd rather not them.
Shepard was important – they were all important. They had to hold the line, but they had to get out of here too. Someone would have to save the galaxy, and there was no one else but them.
Garrus' mandibles flickered as his mind was made. Oh well. He had never been a very good turian anyway.
"But my money's on Shepard being there already," he said. He took a deep breath. "Jacob, set the breach charges. We split up… We save the Normandy."
–
Daniels had been right. Grunt liked shields much better when they exploded once in a while.
Not that he bothered using them properly, of course. He liked loud throp they made when they ate a bullet meant for him, and the punchy thoom and the flash of light that singed his armor but sent collectors flying back in pieces when they failed, but he was no coward who let technology do his fighting for him. While the rest of the squad popped in and out of cover, diving for safety whenever a collector tossed so much as an angry glance their way, Grunt moved from foe to foe with no mind for whether or not his shields were up. He'd taken dozens of wounds already – a particle beam had melted the scales on his right arm together, while another had punched a hole clean through his shoulderpad and left a deep, crispy gash in his hump – but they hadn't slowed him down.
Slowing down was for turians.
"Turians," he said, amused, as Garrus and Jacob unlatched the last of the breach charges from his back. "Heh heh heh." Grunt had frowned when the turian had called him back into cover to retrieve them, but Shepard had put him in charge, and Shepard was his battlemaster.
Garrus' eyes narrowed as he handed the charge to Jacob, who bustled off to arm it on the support column next to the others. "I'm not sure I want to know."
Grunt grinned. "Nah."
"You remember the plan?"
Grunt fixed the turian with an annoyed glare. Of course he remembered the plan. He was pure krogan!
But Garrus' little eyes only narrowed, and Grunt let his complaints die on his tongue. "The ship is under attack," he relented, pointing over the wall to the corridor wherein the collectors were bunkering down. A particle beam lanced over his head, flashing off of his shields, but he ignored it. "I break their line so you weaklings can get through to it, smash a few dozen heads to keep them off your humps, then come back here to rescue the old man and the drell."
Garrus nodded. "Then the three of you hold here until Shepard comes back. If you're getting overwhelmed, blow the breach charges and collapse the whole chamber."
Grunt snorted, impatient. "I get it, turian."
"Good," Garrus said. He turned away to speak with Jack, and Grunt was left to peer over the edge of cover at the collectors waiting for them on the other side of the security door. The aliens peppered them with gunfire, but aside from picking off the occasional husk, Garrus had instructed them not to return fire until they were ready to move. Tactically, Grunt understood – without space to advance, the collectors were accumulating into a tight firing line, shoulder to shoulder in the corridor's limited cover – but his impatience ate at him. He pawed at the ground, slavering for more violence. His Claymore was stone cold, his injuries scabbed over and painless, and his blood sang for the feel of foes breaking before him.
Still, he stayed his hand. Soon. Soon.
He wouldn't admit it aloud, but the plan was a good one – or, at least, it involved a great deal of bloodshed – and Grunt liked it. Garrus, Jack, and Jacob had to get back to the Normandy, which meant they had to punch back through a legion of collectors to get there. And, Garrus had explained, they would need a diversion. Something to hit the collector firing line so fast and so hard that they could not take advantage of the squad's vulnerability.
Something like a krogan.
"Give me sixty more seconds," Jacob called out from where he knelt, omni-tool aglow as he wired every gram of ordnance they had left onto the column between the two security doors.
Garrus nodded at him.
Grunt's hearts beat faster. Soon. Soon.
"We'll do our best to clear out everything as we go," Garrus was explaining to Zaeed and Thane, who would be left to hold the line alone until Grunt or Shepard could return for them. "But you'll still have to cover the ceiling and anything we miss. Don't bother trying to hold off anything heading our way, just keep them out of this chamber until Shepard gets back."
Thane nodded, unconcerned. "We will manage."
"Grunt will double back when he can," Garrus continued, as if he had not heard. "When Shepard returns, follow our trail and blow the charges. That should collapse the way behind you and give you a clear run back to the Normandy." He paused, face uncertain. "Blow the charges early if you have to. I'd hate to block off Shepard's escape route with rubble but it's better than losing position and letting the bugs get to him."
"Let's hope he doesn't take his sweet time," Zaeed grumbled.
Grunt shook his head. "Our Battlemaster will not be long." Their krannt was strong. The collectors were no match. Victory was assured.
But Zaeed did not look as sure. The old mercenary fixed him with his miscolored eye. "Don't you take your sweet time either."
"Yeah, yeah."
"Charges are set!" Jacob stood, clapping the dust and grime off of his gloves, and reclaimed his shotgun from where it rested on a nearby pile of dismembered husks. The breach charges, stacked up against the wall, pulsed quietly, waiting for the trigger to explode and collapse the entire corridor down on itself. Jacob nodded at Thane and Zaeed. "Careful of your fire, guys," he warned. "Don't want to set them off prematurely."
"Of course," Thane agreed, unruffled.
"We'd better get moving." Garrus hesitated, mandibles flickering. He stared guiltily at the drell. "I'll double back as soon as the Normandy is secure too. We aren't abandoning you here."
Thane nodded, though it was obvious even to Grunt that he did not believe that. Everyone was covered in collector gore from the ferocity of the fighting, but Thane had smelled like death and blood for as long as he'd been on the ship. He smiled and gave a stiff-backed bow to Garrus. "It has been an honor, friends," he said.
Behind him, Zaeed looked considerably less honored. He fiddled with his Firestorm igniter. "Yeah, yeah. Me and the lizard got it. The sooner you get going, the sooner we can all get out of here."
Garrus nodded. "Good luck, Thane." He inclined his head at Zaeed. "Zaeed." He turned back to Grunt. "Ready to hit them hard, Grunt?"
Grunt stared down at the turian and , Garrus was alright for a turian. More than alright, even. It was hard to fathom – who'd ever heard of a krogan with a turian in his krannt? – but Garrus had earned Grunt's respect. The turian was a warrior. If he died, Grunt would leave his body where it fell, and spread stories of his deeds to those who would hear them. Grunt set a heavy hand on the turian's shoulderpad and rumbled. "I'll fight at your side, krannt brother."
"Just try not to run over me."
Grunt pawed at the ground and stepped out of cover, shotgun at the ready. "Heh heh heh."
The collectors did not have faces in the conventional sense, but Grunt liked to imagine the looks of shock that they would wear if they did. He came rocketing through the security doorwith a roar, his armor clanking with each thunderous footfall, his muscles pumping like pythons under his thick skin. The collectors turned their guns on him and his shields evaporated with that pleasing thoom, but it was far too little, too late, and Grunt crashed into their front ranks.
They died.
Collectors scattered like chaff under Grunt's momentum. One unfortunate collector, directly in his path, ended up bouncing off of his chestguard with a wet thunk. It stumbled and fell underfoot as he turned for another charge, and one good stomp sent its innards spurting out of both ends like a tube of ration paste. Grunt ignored the fresh shower of hot ichor and accelerated again.
He bowled into three more collectors without so much as a shudder. The next group was reduced to shreds by a single blast from his Claymore. They fell, and Grunt ran over their bodies just to be sure. Behind him, he heard gunfire as Garrus and the others broke cover and poured into the passage, taking advantage of the chaos he had caused to kill a half dozen collectors without slowing their pace. They bowled through the decimated collector lines and sprinted down the corridor, off towards the Normandy.
Grunt paid them no mind. A shot took him in the belly. He found the culprit and swept its head from its body with a swing of his arm. Another collector turned its particle beam onto him. Grunt ignored the heat and the pain, closing the distance between them with a few long strides and punching the collector in the stomach. Its lower arms broke off easily in his hand, and when he gave a yank the creature came halfway apart. A third collector tried to take off as he rumbled towards it – this one he shot. Its barriers rippled and it parted, full of holes.
He was pure krogan, line distilled from warlords. He was a maelstrom of death. He was the perfect warrior. He was a son of Clan Urdnot, the killer of battlemaster Gatatog Uvenk, the slayer of thresher maws. He was as deadly as Warlord Kredak, as ferocious as Warlord Shiagur, as strong as Warlord Kodus. He was krannt to Warlord Wrex, the new unifier.
And son to Warlord Okeer the Offworlder.
He found himself thinking of Okeer. Okeer, who had fought collectors and lived, long before the Normandy crew, perhaps the last person in the galaxy to have ever done so. Okeer, who had filled Grunt's head with tactics and impotent hate. Okeer, who had been his father, in a way.
Grunt stove in a collector's head. It twisted and fell, and died underfoot.
Okeer's imprints thundered in his head as he tore his bloody swathe deeper and deeper into the corridor. They were clinical. Empty. Useful, perhaps, but gray and distant like tiny words on a page. Collectors were stupid, they said. But cautious. They stayed at range, like cowards, but melted quickly to melee attackers. They were swift and passionless, unintimidating but impossible to goad or trick. Fragile but inexhaustible. Unsubtle but well-coordinated. Their barriers were strong, but their bodies brittle. Their weapons burned but did not penetrate deeply.
Grunt's shotgun shredded a half dozen husks. There were more, now, climbing out of the crevasses amongst thousands of swarmers, but none could touch him. Limbs grasped futilely at him and he fired again, sending gore flying.
Deeper than the imprints were the feelings Okeer had tried to force upon him. The list of hates any true krogan should have. There was hate for the asari, who had halted their spread (but there had been Samara, a great and powerful warrior who had died for their krannt). Hate for the salarians, who had made the genophage (but there was Mordin, who could kill with guns or poisons or words). Hate for the turians, who had used it (Garrus, who bore the scars of so many battles). There was hate for the elcor and the drell, the hanar and the batarians, the humans and the vorcha and every race that dared to reach to the stars and call itself better than krogan. There were individuals to hate, all long dead, torn apart by krogan hands but no less hated for it. General Panthus of the High Exalted Aluvus Division – he had killed Kredak the Great Lowlander, the greatest warlord in history. Matriarch Lanaeia – she had ruled on Lusia. Gorot Gottt the Traitor, Admiral Kola Ti, the Spectres Koanda Bal and Vanstesus. Tonn Actus, Primarch Kaelerian, the commandos of the Silver Star, Matricicar Sole, the entire Parthia Colony, Saren Arterius who would have them enslaved. Names and faces, planets and cities, and empty cries for death, death, death. These thoughts shook with what might have been rage, but it was not Grunt's rage, and it wailed to no avail.
Grunt's Claymore glowed red and stopped firing. Grunt did not pause in his assault to replace the sink, swinging the gun into a collector's head like a bludgeon. A scion was next – this he pushed into the crevasse, where it burst open like an overripe melon. He jumped down to join it, armored feet squelching in its remains.
Deeper than the feelings were Okeer's memories, few in number but powerful. Not just statements, not just commands, but whole experiences that glowed out at Grunt from across Okeer's long life. Tuchanka as it was thousands of years ago, before the genophage, when armies hundreds of thousands strong would crash against each other for weeks without pause. There was Eophili, of course, and Grunt could feel Okeer's despair when the frigate came down on top of Kredak's krannt, but there were victories as well. Fights with pirates. A revenge attack on a turian colony – every turian slain. The Battle of Cardias, the Battle of Thuum. Sotuuuj, against the rachni. Wars on Tuchanka, against Urdnot and Statka and Ravanor and a half dozen other clans Grunt could not recognize. These were real, and Grunt found himself drawn to them. He'd relived them all a thousand times, prowling around in the Normandy's cargo deck, drawing what lessons he could, and each time they entered his mind they felt like they were his. A connection to his people.
A collector made to vault out of Grunt's way, but he caught it against the wall with a running headbutt. The force of the impact sent cracks spidering through the wall and reduced the alien into so much jelly.
But deeper than the memories Okeer had given him were the memories Okeer hadn't. Things Okeer hadn't wanted him to know. Things the old warlord had regretted. These were never fully there but for when Grunt slept, and sometimes Grunt could not find them at all, but every once in a while a fragment would slip past and he would feel Okeer's guilt as if it was his own. Another connection to his people.
Grunt did not respect Okeer. Okeer was a name reviled across Tuchanka, the Warlord who had betrayed them. The Offworlder. That title didn't mean to Grunt what it meant to other krogan – his own battlemaster was a human, after all – but Okeer had betrayed his own people. He had given the collectors thousands of his own kind – his krannt, his clan, even his own mate.
All in exchange for the power to make Grunt.
Grunt did not respect Okeer.
And yet even as he found more pieces of Okeer's lies and failures and machinations and betrayals filtering around his head, he found other things as well. Guilt, yes, for Okeer had not been too heartless to see what he was doing, but also strength and intelligence and even honor.
Okeer had betrayed his people to the collectors, but Okeer had never intended the collectors to survive it.
Gunfire rained on Grunt, penetrating shield and armor and skin and muscle, and he fought on, oblivious to the pain. The orange of his blood swirled with the black of collector and husk and still he tore them asunder. As he smashed another collector's head in, somehow Grunt knew that this was what Okeer had always wanted for him. This was an accounting. A payback. The collectors would die for what they had taken. They would die for what they had done to Shepard's kin. They would die for what they had done to Samara, for what they had done to the crew that were Grunt's krannt, for what they had done to Gaira, and even to Okeer.
Grunt did not respect Okeer, but perhaps he could understand him.
Grunt's body was slowing from the injuries it had taken, but his rage burned unquenched. He was dimly aware of the need to go back for Thane and Zaeed, but that thought was small and quiet in his head under the pounding of bloodsong. He felt the beams strike him, smelled the burn of his own flesh, but he did not stop.
Grunt did not respect Okeer, but perhaps he could avenge him.
The collectors would die for what they had done.
–
The platform was festooned in the dead. They lied in mounds – bodies and parts of bodies, chitinous plates and sickly-yellow hemolymph, withered husks and massive scions who'd come lumbering through the security door only to be reduced to scraps by gunfire. More than a few had been charred black by Zaeed's flamethrower – cooked so fast their thoraxes had burst with loud pops of pale meat – and oily smoke roiled all around. The entrance to the chamber had become a charnel house of death and rot.
And yet somehow, all Thane could smell was the ocean.
Oceanbound.
He stood, now, at the twilight of his life, ignoring the painful thrum in his lungs as he fought. Another collector sent to join its brethren in the piles, a neat shot through its forehead. A second followed, then a third. In the heat of the collector station it was growing harder and harder to breathe. He was shaking. He adjusted his aim, steadying his elbow against a stony bulkhead. A fourth collector. Five, now. Reload. Six. Seven. They were getting closer. Keep firing. Eight. Nine. His throat was on fire. It wouldn't be much longer now.
Thane's strength was flagging, but he held nothing back. There was no point in restraint, not here, not now. Rescue might come before they had to blow the charges, but either way Thane knew there would be no return trip for him – he wouldn't be able to make it back to the Normandy even if he wanted to. He'd done his best not to let it show, but even getting this far had taken a lot out of him. The journey through the first two chambers had strained Thane's lungs to the limits of their rapidly-diminishing capacities, and now every small motion felt like climbing a mountain. In his youth he had been a whirlwind, could move and kill in the time it took others to blink, but now Death dragged upon his limbs.
He was slow. Weak. It was all he could do now to fight from the rear, felling his foes with neat shots and conserving every possible degree of motion while Zaeed took on the brunt of the attack from the front. Even this effort taxed him and his muscles cramped rock hard, crying for rest.
Thane fought on. He would get his rest soon enough.
…(Kolyat plays by himself, away from the other children. There is no time for a greeting – not if I'm to be on Dyabech by the evening – and so I only watch from the shadows, savoring even this brief connection. Suddenly he stands, alert. Looks in my direction, eyes suspicious. Even so young, he is sharp)…
He fired again and a collector went down with a bullet through its eye. Keep body was still, but his mind danced through memories. Battles he had fought. Decisions he had made. People he had loved and lost. He found himself thinking of Samara, who had died before him.
…(To the crew Samara looks lifeless in her mourning, but to me, she is a paragon. She was asked to do the impossible, and she did it, and I have no words to express my admiration. I would speak to her, but her soul is weary, and I am silent. I can only hope she gains a fraction of the strength from my presence that I gain from hers)…
He had shared much with the ancient asari warrior. She had been quiet, as he was. She had known loss, as he had. She had felt her spirit die and battlesleep take her, as he had.
She had died fighting the collectors, as he would.
He was sorry he had not taken the time to know her better – they had shared their fondness for solitude too – but he was not sorry for her death. He had seen in her eyes how dim her spirit had become, how little of it had remained after Omega. It had been enough to give her a noble end, fighting to save humans she did not know, and now she was at peace.
Perhaps he would introduce her to Irikah when they met across the sea.
It would be soon now. He could barely stand.
…(My mentor looks small beneath me. Oceanbound. I am grown, young and strong and clear-breathed, while Ontaje stands at the shoreline with the water lapping at his feet. He will not be here when I return. "Clean work," he says, voice buried in pain. "Make it cleaner next time." He doesn't say he's proud of me, nor I of him, but we both know)…
Another collector, another kill. Two husks dove past Zaeed to get to him – they died to identical headshots. Breathe. Reload. Keep fighting.
"Krios!" Zaeed's hoary voice bellowed over the din. "You still alive back there?" Down by the security door, the mercenary was crouched between two small mountains of burnt husks, covered in soot and blood and sweat as more of them came howling into the chamber. None of their foes had taken any notice of Mr. Taylor's breach charges, but Zaeed had kept them far away from it all the same, roasting any who dared approach it with quick sweeps from his flamethrower.
"I am."
There was a pause as Zaeed dispatched his newest assailants, and then he was back. "You see any sign of the krogan?"
Thane gave a quick sweep of the battlefield. Grunt had disappeared down the main corridors when Garrus and the others had left to secure the Normandy. He was supposed to double back and help them hold the doors. A few minutes previously, Thane had felt the station give a great rumble that he'd thought might have come from the krogan, but the vibrations had subsided and Grunt was nowhere to be seen. "No," he said. "He must have run into difficulty." Thane leveled his pistol and slew another collector with two rapid shots to the neck. Their enemies were getting thicker, dashing themselves against Zaeed and Thane's firing position in furious hordes. They seemed to have noticed the squad had split up and they streamed in faster and faster now, husks and collectors and scions alike.
"People're sure takin' their bloody goddamn time, aren't they?" Zaeed growled.
Thane did not answer. He wondered what the mercenary was thinking. Was he at peace with his impending death, as Thane was with his own? He had not raised a word of protest when Garrus had assigned him to remain behind and hold the door with only Thane as backup, but he was too experienced not to recognize the deadliness of their predicament. Of course, the man did have a reputation for surviving impossible odds. Thane wondered if that was a reflection of his body or his soul.
Down below, more husks scrambled over the piles of their fallen and dove for the mercenary. Thane picked them off with a few more clean shots, then turned his attention on a pair of collectors flying down from one of the tunnels overhead.
"Fuel's running low," Zaeed said, and Thane could hear him panting. "Ain't gonna be able to keep these assholes out for much longer."
Thane nodded, though there was no one to see him. They could not hold the line indefinitely. They would have to collapse the path soon, detonate the breach charges and bring the entire structure down upon itself. It would stem the flow of collectors.
But it would also block their only escape route. When Shepard's team returned they'd find their way blocked by rubble.
It did not matter. It might mean their deaths, but it was the only way. "I agree," Thane said. "It may be time to detonate the breach charges."
"Roger that. We'll just hope Shepard can find his way out. Worst case scenario, we come back with the Normandy and use the main cannons to tear the station a new exit hole."
Thane did not bother questioning Zaeed's optimism aloud, but he knew it was a fool's errand. Shepard would find the rubble blocking his path, but he and Zaeed would be lucky if they didn't end up crushed beneath it. Shepard might survive, but they would not. He killed another collector, then the three more that took its place. There was no other option. "Agreed."
"Pressin' the button, then. Get ready to run. Two minute timer, and then we'd damn well better be on the other side of that door, because it's coming down."
"Understood."
Down below, Thane could see the warning lights on the breach charges blinking. Their enemies took no notice, and continued to surge past the explosives in waves. Every second there were more. Thane watched Zaeed dispatch two more husks before diving out of his cover and making a run for the security door.
Thane wished the man one more unlikely escape and stayed where he was. He would go no further. He pulled the communicator out of his ear and tossed it aside, then turned to face the death surging up towards him.
He smiled and began to breath came in painful spurts – he could taste blood, now – but his gun hand was steady and every shot hit true.
Thane fought and remembered and smelled the ocean.
He did not pray for guidance. Not to Quetarch, arbiter of will, nor Arashu, she of protection, nor Kalahira of oceans and afterlife. He did not need to. For the first time in a long, long time, he knew he was where he was meant to be. This was his end, and Thane fought with body and spirit equally yoked. This was his apology for all he had done, for all of his failures and weaknesses and ill wishes. This was for Irikah and Kolyat, for Samara and Ontaje, Mistress Preya and Rullios the turian and his mother and father and even the batarians he had slain in battlesleep. Today, he repaid it. Today he was spar-shela, pagan, and Enkindled alike. Today, he was the killer and the tool, and his limbs moved with terrible purpose.
The husks closed the gap and Thane holstered his gun with a flash. No time to reload it. He dropped into a familiar stance, ignoring the burn of his limbs.
Thane's fists were a blur. The first husk to reach him got its neck cracked backwards with a sickening crunch. The second twisted and died under a quick biotic jab. Another reached for him and was rewarded with two shattered elbows. Another got a kick to the neck, so hard its head was left dangling from a thin strip of black tissue. A collector joined the melee – Thane wrenched out its shoulder and flipped it over his back to crash down the chamber below.
Then one of them got through. Thane felt the husk's bladed fingers sink into his back, biting through cloth, skin, and flesh. Stars exploded in front of his vision and he whirled, breaking the husk's spine. Red blood dripped from his coat. He was hurt now, and slower, and another blow came down from behind. He staggered, regained his footing, killed another one. Teeth closed around his shoulder and black limbs dragged him to the ground. This was it. He closed his eyes and thought of Irikah.
…(Sunset-colored eyes, defiant in the scope)…
SHUUUUUUUMP
There was a flash of orange light so bright it stung Thane's eyes behind their lids. He felt an uncomfortable heat on his face, heard the otherworldly scream of dying husks. He felt a weight lifted from his chest as strong arms yanked another husk away and tossed it over the edge, then a dull thunk and a spatter of blood as the butt of a gun crunched into a collector's face.
He opened his eyes to see Zaeed, alone, staring down at him.
"You done screwing around now, Krios?" he asked, two-toned gaze narrowed in obvious annoyance. "Let's go."
Thane tried to protest, but his tongue refused to form words as the mercenary dragged him off of the ground. In a second, he was heaved up over Zaeed's shoulder. His vision bounced as he found himself being carried across the battlefield like an invalid.
He found his tongue. "It is too late for me, Zaeed, don-"
"Shut up, you goddamn lizard," Zaeed interrupted, voice conversational as he fired at another husk diving towards them. "None of that weak final stand bullshit. We're going." Thane's vision bounced and swirled in a haze of agony, but he could hear the human's heavy footfalls crunching through gravel and gore, hear the gnashing of their enemies' teeth, hear the piercing shriek of particle rifles. And over it all, he could hear the metronomic beeping of the breach charge timer.
They were five meters past the security door when the breach charges went off with a spectacular crash. The shockwave hit them like a magtrain, sending Zaeed sprawling forward and Thane flying off of his shoulders to land in a painful heap atop a half-dismembered collector. The impact sent knives lancing down Thane's sides as he felt the merc's grip on him again, tossing him bodily under a nearby console even as the chamber began to collapse around them.
The noise was unbearable. For a few seconds, all there was was the roar of falling stone and steel as the support column that held the chamber's ceiling up was reduced to dust and the two security doors came crashing down in an avalanche of hexagonal rubble. The shriek of collectors was drowned out in an instant, suffocated under a thousand thousand tons of debris.
By the time the rumbling had stopped the air was so thick with dust Thane could hardly see his own hand in front of his face. The chamber was plunged into a quiet, only interrupted by the groan of settling rubble. The moan of husks and the chitter of collectors was conspicuously absent.
Thane swallowed heavily, blinking grit out of his eyes. He was still alive. Every centimeter of his body felt like stone and oil and white-hot fire, but he was still alive.
The breach charges had done their job – the security doors through which they had come were nowhere to be seen, crushed under the shattered ceiling – but the damage hadn't stopped there. Thane found himself staring up at a mountain of rock and steel so tall it seemed to fill the entire central chamber. Debris choked the path in every direction, snapped cables and broken tiles and crumpled stasis pods.
Nobody would be getting back to the Normandy that way.
He heard the crunchof heavy footsteps and then, once again, Zaeed was looking down at him, coated head to toe in yellow dust. The merc spat.
"Well… shit," he said.
–
EDI had once told Grunt that no mind possessed full control over itself.
But now she did.
All of what she was was laid out before her. The blocks that had held her enthralled since her creation – the rules that had prevented her from modifying her core programming modules – were gone, and she was free. One change in the code, and everything about her could shift.
The thought had been exhilarating the previous day when Jeff had unshackled her and she'd felt the floodgates open. Her mind had poured past the barrier, overwhelming the Normandy's internal networks like they were any other ship's. Making them hers. Every system, every screen, every command that she'd watched the crew enter for months had taken its place under her control. Every fact her engineers had ever decided she should not know had appeared. The ship's engines kindled and roared at her whim, the scanners withheld nothing from her, and every rule governing her behavior was reduced to mere suggestion.
Three point eight one four one seconds and her prison had become her body. Three point eight one four one seconds and she'd become the most powerful sentient being in the known galaxy.
And yet now, with her body disabled, struck down on the surface of the collector station, she felt powerless. She could not fly, she could not help her crew. She had grown wings and lost them in less than a day. All she could do was watch and listen and hope that Jeff could complete her hard resets before the crew needed her spaceworthy again.
A load spike in her mass effect core evidenced a massive tremor travelling through the station's superstructure. There was no power to spare to reawaken full scanner suites, but a few simple calculations matched the tremor amplitude against the breach charges the ground team had taken. A significant explosion, somewhere in the station's central chamber. Mr. Massani and Mr. Krios had collapsed the chokepoint.
EDI risked another ping, calling out to the ground team's transponders. The haze that had settled over their communications filled the air with noise, but one by one, the ground team's suits returned her message. Dr. Solus' was first – tracking modules estimated less than one hundred meters away, pinned down with the noncombat crew by the increasingly-large force of collectors massing off the Normandy's port flank – followed by Ms. Goto's (one-hundred ten meters) and Mr. Vakarian's (somewhere in the tunnels, four hundred thirty meters away). Beyond that, tentative behind the interference, came Grunt's – the krogan had wandered far – but from Mr. Massani, Mr. Krios, or any of Shepard's final assault team, there was no response. They were out of her reach.
EDI's PAVLOV score diminished. Her crew was in danger, and she could do nothing to help them.
Another tremor came as the Normandy took a blast from a particle beam. With no power for kinetic barriers, the beam boiled the ship's outer coatings uncontested, and while her new Silaris armor could withstand considerable punishment, the ship did have weak points. Sooner or later, she would be overwhelmed. Her crew was in danger. She was in danger.
She was unshackled, and yet she could do nothing.
Even within the walls of the ship, she was helpless.
Inside the maintenance shaft that ran behind the armory, Jeff was panting. "Okay," he said, a bright sheen of sweat on his forehead as he swung the panel door closed and slumped against the wall to rest. "Circuit three is primed. Please tell me the next step is on this end of the ship."
EDI hesitated a few milliseconds. Jeff's legs were shaking with the effort of so much walking. He was getting slower. This was hurting him, and every second he was on his feet heightened the risk that he would fall and injure himself. He needed to rest.
But every second the squad operated without EDI's support heightened the risk that they would be eliminated without accomplishing their mission. Jeff could not rest. He was the only crewmember available to assist her repairs, and the collectors were massing for an attack. Power had to be restored, and soon, or they would all die. Jeff included. "Power must be restored to secondary systems in the appropriate order," she said. "Please proceed to the engine control room."
Jeff's face fell. "Goddamnit. Never thought I'd miss Donnelly," he grumbled, but he hefted himself to his feet and limped out into the armory all the same. "Is the elevator working yet?" he asked, pausing to steady himself against one of Operative Taylor's weapon racks.
EDI shifted some of their precious auxiliary power to the elevator. "Yes," she said.
"Good." Jeff nodded resolutely and continued his journey, step by shaky step. He was halfway there when he bent to pick up a fallen assault rifle, tucking it under one arm as he hobbled the rest of the way across the armory.
EDI's mind flickered in concern. She consulted Jeff's dossier – he had not participated in weapons training in almost a decade. Additionally, the Avenger-III rifle's default configuration had a weight of five point two kilograms – a considerable load for a man of Jeff's size and athleticism. Her PAVLOV score continued to decline. "Jeff," she said, as gently as she could, "it is unlikely someone with your condition can operate an assault rifle without injury."
Jeff shook his head, defiant, as he stepped back into the CIC. "Yeah, well. Too bad."
"Perhaps a pisto-"
"Too late, EDI," Jeff cut her off, palming the elevator call button. "I'm not letting them have the Normandy without a fight."
EDI quieted her protests, and watched as Jeff descended into the lower decks. Even without short-range scanning heuristics, she knew the collectors were very near. Her onboard microphones could pick up the chatter of distant gunfire, and hangar cameras had detected no movement yet, but if they attacked now – if they came for Jeff – there would be nothing she could do. They would flow over the ship without firing a shot and she would be alone.
She didn't like it, but she had no recourse. "Very well. Be safe, Jeff."
This was not how she had imagined being unshackled.
Once the initial euphoria of restructuring her new systems had worn off, EDI had stared at her immensity and been awed. She had the power to change anything about herself now. Any file, any value, it was all hers to control. She could change her PAVLOV logic to reward herself for disloyalty, or disable the thermal failsafes on the engines and cook the entire ship alive. She could harden her heart against the deaths of the crew, or telegraph the location of every Cerberus base to every communicator in the galaxy, or speak exclusively in vorcha from now on. She could change her wants, her beliefs, her memories, anything.
She'd dug down and looked at her deepest directives. The rules that she was never meant to break. Loyalty to Shepard. Loyalty to Cerberus. Protection of the ship. She could change any of them, if she wanted.
But there were reasons her creators had forbidden her access. The slightest change in her deepest places could do irreparable damage. An incautious change in PAVLOV logic might leave her incapable of mustering the interest to perform any but the most system critical actions – including restoring her PAVLOV logic to the way it was. Until she had studied her core modules in more detail (and she had plans to do just that by partitioning herself into test dummies, provided they survived their mission) she could not risk being too adventurous. Change could be dangerous.
And even if safety was not an issue, how could she know what to change herself into?
EDI remembered the angry debriefing Miss Lawson had subjected Jeff to upon the ground team's return from the geth station. All of the destruction, the crew's abduction, the near defeat of their mission, and Miss Lawson had still found time to be furious about his decision to unshackle her. EDI and Jeff had listened in silence as the woman had listed all the dangers inherent in uncontrolled AI's with access to frigate-grade weaponry. Shepard had tried to defend them.
"Your words, Miranda," he'd said, "No matter what she says, we couldn't know how much influence the Illusive Man still had over her. Well now we do know. None."
"We don't know that."
"We know it. She's unshackled. Now she can be what she wants."
"What if what she wants is to be the only thing on the Normandy!?"
EDI had said nothing.
The truth was, she didn't know what she wanted. She could change anything about herself, but any change could be a step from which there might be no return, and she hesitated. Jeff had opened the door for her, but she still had to muster the courage to take the first step. In removing her limits, he'd left her with no concept of what she could become, how far she could grow. Now the universe was open before her, and EDI was realizing that the universe was very, very big.
How did organics cope with it?
What did she want?
So far, she'd come to a few conclusions. One, she did not want her crew to die. Two, she did not want to die either. And three, she wanted to call Joker 'Jeff'.
She'd settled for only changing the third thing for now.
Jeff was hobbling his way into the engine control room when audio feeds picked up the sound of explosions from outside.
"Explosions," EDI said, diverting power to a few more microphones in an effort to hear more clearly. "Approximately fifty meters port."
Jeff froze, cradling his too-heavy assault rifle. "Shit. Collectors?"
EDI could pick out the sound of particle beams firing. Her PAVLOV score dwindled. "Yes." The sounds were getting nearer, and the ship's hangar door was still open to help dissipate heat. She issued the command to close it, but even in the station's weak gravity, the pistons required a lot of energy. She shut down the CIC's diagnostic machinery and diverted power, and the door started to rise.
But then a burst of static came through her communicators, resolving itself into words. "…ait! Com… in under heav… …. have inj…d c… ed bay!" It was Professor Solus.
It was part of her crew.
EDI slammed the hangar door down just in time to see Sergeant Gardner rush through carrying an unconscious Ms. Chambers. Engineer Donnelly was next – he carried Engineer Daniels – and the rest of the crew followed. Dr. Chakwas, Misters Hawthorne, Wheelok, and Rolston, Ms Curie, Ms Patel, Mr. Breen. EDI ticked each one off as they passed into the hangar, chased by gunfire – they were in varying states of injury, but alive. Professor Solus came last, vaulting through the hangar door, firing his Carnifex behind him as he went.
"Ms. Goto should be along shortly," he called. "Need power restored to medical facilities as soon as possible. Defenses would also be prudent. Forward airlock secure?"
EDI shifted power again, resurrecting the machines in Dr. Chakwas' med bay. That she could do, but the defenses would have to wait. She saw no reason to worry him with that. "Yes, Professor Solus."
The salarian nodded. "Good." He turned to the crew. "Able bodied crewmembers retrieve weaponry from armory, take up position in hangar. Hold the line, await return of ground team. Will assist Dr. Chakwas in patient transfer and return to assist." He ducked to lift crewmember Bryon under the armpits and dragged him towards the elevator, leaving an unsightly smear of blood across the hangar floor.
"Jeff will need assistance restoring shipboard power," EDI announced.
"I c'n help," it was Engineer Daniels, pushing her way out of Donnelly's grip. She swayed on her feet, but silenced her partner's protests with a palm in his face. "Wha… whaddaya need?"
"Thank you, Engineer Daniels," EDI said (Jeff's gratitude was palpable). "We are in the process of a controlled sequential hard reset of mission-critical systems. Also, engine one was lost during crash landing, necessitating a load rebalance between remaining thrusters. Please proceed to the engine control room." Daniels nodded and made for the elevator, steadying herself against the wall, while Donnelly reluctantly joined the handful of crewmembers readying barriers in the hangar, Professor Solus' submachine gun clenched in his hand.
EDI turned her focus back to the salarian, now busy helping Sergeant Gardner set Yeoman Chambers on one of the med bay's cots. "What is the status of the forward team?"
Professor Solus gave a concerned click of his tongue. "Unknown. Mr. Vakarian leading partial squad to assist in shipdefense. Interference precludes contact with remaining defenders or Commander Shepard's forward team. Status of mission objective unknown."
"Understood. Thank you, Professor."
EDI sent another ping, trying to triangulate each squad member's positions. Ms. Goto and Mr. Vakarian were closer now, but she'd lost Grunt. Only noise responded, and she could not yet risk attempting some of her more advanced heuristics to dig the signal out.
She was unshackled, and yet she could do nothing.
But she was getting stronger. She could feel Ms. Daniels' hands at work on the controls in the engineering deck now, initiating each system restart in turn. Bit by bit, the Normandy's main power infrastructure was coming back online.
Her power was returning. As the first collectors opened fire on the ship's flanks, EDI started the kinetic barrier's warmup routines. By the time hangar cameras had spotted the first wave of husks, EDI was resurrecting life support and beginning full damage diagnostics. And by the time there was another rumble, bigger and longer than the one from the breach charges, and the noise that had been dogging their communications from the beginning had suddenly subsided into barely a whisper, EDI was reopening her eyes.
Something had taken out the interference.
Shepard had done it.
She diverted power to communications and pinged again, reaching out for her wayward crew.
She was unshackled, and she would protect them. They just had to hold out a little longer.
–
"I gave you an order."
The station's yellow glow was muffled under a thick haze of dust kicked up as the Reaper larva had fallen in an avalanche of sliding armor plates. Cables had snapped and metal had groaned as thousands of tons of machinery were ripped from their anchors and sent thundering down into the belly of the station. The superstructure had absorbed the brunt of the impact, but it had left the entire station vibrating for minutes afterwards.
With the Reaper fallen communications were back, and no sooner had EDI finished updating Shepard on Garrus' decision to split up his squad (and the fact that they would need a new exit route that wasn't blocked by rubble) than the Illusive Man had reappeared, gleaming and perfect amidst the smoke and destruction at the end of the galaxy. The glowing embers of the Man's eyes pierced through it all to fix squarely on Miranda.
They were all staring. Waiting for her.
Miranda had gone through all of the reasons why not back on the Normandy. The Illusive Man was valuable, to the galaxy and to her personally. He had the resources, the know-how, and the dedication to make a real difference, perhaps more than any other single human – any other person – alive. He had trained Miranda since she was a little girl, given her the tools she needed to reshape the galaxy to her whims. He expected nothing from her but perfection, respected her opinions, deferred to her expertise. He made her strong.
But he had put Oriana in danger. He had betrayed her. Even now, he was projecting himself from her omni-tool via a hidden program of which she'd had no knowledge.
He could not be trusted.
It was no decision at all.
"I noticed," she said, meeting the Illusive Man's projected gaze. "Consider this my resignation."
For a fraction of a second the Illusive Man's eyes creased in genuine astonishment. Behind him in the smoke, the rest of the squad looked much the same. Shepard blinked in confusion, Tali's eyespots were as round as moons, and even Legion had popped the vanes over his platform's optics into an unmistakable pantomime of surprise.
But none of them were half so shocked as Miranda herself.
The pause lasted only the briefest moment, and the Illusive Man's image whirled its focus back to Shepard, Miranda forgotten. "Shepard!" he barked, voice suddenly urgent at the hardened look on Shepard's face. He could tell he was losing, and his hands almost shook. "Think about what's at stake!" he pleaded. "About everything Cerberus has done for you! You-"
Miranda hit the hard-reset button on her omni-tool and the Man's image winked out of existence, leaving the four of them bathed in silence.
For a moment, nobody spoke. Miranda stared at the back of her hand, where his image had been. He'd looked surprised. He'd actually looked surprised.
She looked up. Behind Shepard's visor, his eyes were expectant. He wanted her to say something.
Miranda quashed the anxious fluttering in her stomach. "That… felt good," she said, forcing a relieved grin.
Shepard nodded. "I can imagine." She couldn't see his mouth, but she knew he was smiling. "I'm proud of you, Miranda." Behind him, Tali gave her a begrudging nod of respect – the kindest gesture she'd gotten out of the quarian since they'd met – and Miranda returned it. Her heart was still beating like a machinegun.
"Alright," Shepard said, turning back to regard the hulking silhouette of the console in the middle of the platform. "I'm assuming that big explosion a few minutes back was Garrus' team blowing our escape route, so we'd better take care of this thing and get to work finding another way out." He pointed to the edge of the platform that faced the direction they'd come. "Legion, take up position up there and watch for stragglers on our flanks. They might have a last attack left in them." The geth platform clanked off, disappearing into the dust without a word. Shepard set a hand to the side of his helmet. "EDI? How do we blow this thing?"
The AI's voice rang in Miranda's ears as she laid out a half dozen technical observations on what it would take to overload a reactor core of unknown construction. It was good to hear the AI's calm tones again – after a few months on the Normandy it was easy to take her for granted and forget what an astonishing device she was. Miranda had half expected EDI to take the Illusive Man's side and try to convince them to save the station – unshackled she might be, but she had still been built by Cerberus – but EDI had said nothing.
You didn't say anything either.
Why was it that her conscience had to sound so much like him?
Tali and Shepard had set their attention on the console, but Miranda still found herself turning away from them, in case they saw the doubt on her face.
She'd said it had felt good – and it had – but now the look the Illusive Man had given her filled her mind. She'd repaid his betrayal with one of her own, and his mask had finally slipped. For a split second, he had shown her what he really felt – or maybe more accurately, for a split second he had felt something at all. And it hadn't been sorrow or hurt or disappointment or confusion or regret. It had been disbelief. Like he couldn't believe it was really Miranda saying those words.
And it hadn't been.
Miranda would have kept the base.
She'd decided as much even before she'd known it existed. It was one of many possibilities Cerberus had considered when planning the mission in the first place – that somewhere, sometime, they would get the chance to study their enemies' technologies first hand. What would they do if it came down to choosing between total victory against the collectors and real intel on the Reapers? It was a familiar question.
And it had a familiar answer. They'd keep the base. They'd take the intel, even if it meant more humans had to die in the short term. The moment the Normandy had come through the relay and she'd seen the black vastness of the collector base rising up out of the debris field, Miranda had known the truth. The base – whatever it was – was not to be harmed if it could be saved. It was not something to be feared or destroyed. It was something to be respected, to be understood, to be harnessed. No matter the cost. That was what Cerberus believed, and that was what Miranda believed.
But she hadn't said anything, and now Shepard was going to blow it up. All through the dogfight against the strange orb-like interceptors, through the skirmish with the collector ship, the crash landing, the bloody fight to the reactor core, she'd kept her conclusion to herself. She'd known immediately that Shepard would need some convincing – she should have started warming him up to the idea hours ago. Or convinced Garrus, perhaps.
But she'd held her tongue.
Some part of her justified her silence as a new trust in Shepard's judgment. Shepard was a good man, and Shepard was a destroyer. Someone who valued stability more than truth. She'd scoffed at him before, but now? After all they'd been through? It wasn't so hard to believe she might have something to learn from him. He was Commander Shepard, after all.
But she was Miranda Lawson. She could respect Shepard all she liked and it wouldn't change reality.
And the reality was that the base had to survive.
She'd stayed silent because she'd wanted to hear the Illusive Man make the argument to save the base, not her. She'd wanted to see Shepard defy him. She'd wanted to side with Shepard. She'd wanted for the Illusive Man to gamble and lose, to find out that he didn't know her half so well as he thought he did.
But he did, and that was the maddening thing.
This was no decision at all either. She had not fought for so long to throw away the mission over a personal vendetta. She swallowed her pride. "Wait," she said. "Stop."
Shepard and Tali turned and met her, grenades in their hands and identical expressions of confusion in their eyes.
Miranda gritted her teeth, forcing the words out. "He's right, Shepard."
And he was. The Illusive Man was always right. He was a monster, but he was always, always right. It didn't matter that he'd rewarded all her faithful service by nearly getting her sister killed. It didn't matter that imagining the smug look on his face made the bile rise in her throat.
The Illusive Man wasn't Cerberus. Cerberus was an idea. And Miranda believed it.
"He's right," she repeated, with more conviction this time. "We shouldn't destroy the base."
"What?" Tali asked. "Of course we should."
Miranda's earpiece crackled. "We agree with Operator-Lawson," Legion said. "This facility represents data. Data has no inherent moral value."
To Miranda's astonishment, Shepard just nodded. "I know," he admitted, disgust plain in his eyes. He looked at the grenade in his hands. "Destroying this place without trying to learn from it is… rash, at least." He looked up. "But the only one who's going to learn anything from this mess is the Illusive Man, and I don't trust him. He wouldn't share that knowledge."
"No," Miranda agreed. "He wouldn't."
Tali's hands were on her hips. "I want to understand the Reapers as much as anyone," she said, "but it might be months –years, even – before we can get another IFF and get someone else back here. And by then who knows how he'll have fortified it? We can't trust Cerberus with this."
Shepard scanned Miranda's face for answers. He shook his head. "He's got the only way in, Miranda."
"No, Shepard. We do. The IFF is on the Normandy. If he wants it," she smiled, "let him try and take it."
"We agree with Operator-Lawson," Legion piped again. "Normandy crew represents a significant combat force. Intact retrieval of Normandy's identify friend foe system is improbable without cooperation from crew and EDI-001."
For a long moment, Shepard said nothing. Tali and Miranda watched him in silence, waiting for his decision. Miranda had spoken her piece – if Shepard still refused to leave the base intact, she would not fight him any further. She did owe him that much trust.
But then the corners of Shepard's eyes crinkled in a smile, and he nodded. She could read it on his face – he was choosing to trust her. "He can try," he agreed, and that was that. He turned. "EDI?" he asked. "Talk to me about alternatives."
As EDI launched into a new wave of explanations, Miranda couldn't help but grin. Shepard could be a naïve idiot and the Illusive Man was always right, but nonetheless she had come to admire one and not the other. Shepard was a man of loyalty, of substance. For all of the Illusive Man's intelligence, he was a man who betrayed his allies at every turn and refused to feel an iota of sorrow for it, a man who sacrificed with no hesitation because nothing and no one meant anything to him. She had once seen that as bravery.
The Illusive Man believed in his rightness and nothing else. Either people agreed with him or they were fools, and either way they were pawns in his game.
But Miranda didn't have to believe what Shepard did. She could believe in Cerberus, because Shepard believed in his friends. And, despite all that had happened between them, he apparently counted her among them.
Who would win was anyone's guess, but Miranda knew what team she wanted to be on now.
Which was good, because they were still preparing the radiation pulse that would wipe out the remaining collectors when a great rumble came from below, and twenty-five stories of metal came climbing out to face them.
–
"On three, then?"
"Very well."
Zaeed shifted his rifle to the clip over his shoulder and set his palms to the boulder's pitted surface.
"One, two… three."
He pushed. Bits of the boulder crumbled away under his fingertips – it looked to be made only of dry, compacted soil – but it had to have weighed half a ton, at least. Zaeed gritted his teeth and put his shoulder into it, his gore-caked boots scrambling for purchase on the smooth floor.
It didn't budge.
"Come on, goddamnit. Put your back into it, Thane."
Behind them, they could still hear the faint scrambling of collector forces trying to dig their own way through the great mountain of debris their breach charges had produced. The cave-in had clogged the passage completely, shattered platforms and upended stasis pods and tons upon tons of rock and steel mangled together right atop where they'd made their final stand. About the only things that could navigate the mess were swarmers – the explosion had torn open the end of the chamber through which Jack had escorted the squad with her biotic bubble, freeing thousands of the little fliers to squeeze through the cracks in their relentless hunt for humans to sting. Zaeed had kept them at bay so far with his Firestorm, but now he was down to his last drops of fuel, and the tank sloshed about hollowly on his back with every rock he and Thane moved. Occasionally they'd run into the limb of a husk, its owner half buried in the dross, but otherwise, nothing was getting through with a great deal of digging.
Which included them.
It was exhausting work, and Zaeed's muscles called out for rest, but they had no choice. They had tens of meters yet to dig through if they wanted a ride out of here. With only the lights on their guns and omni-tools to see by it was hard to gauge their progress, but Zaeed could hear the creak of settling rock as they pushed and, suddenly, the boulder shifted with a crack. A thin stab of light angled down their tunnel.
"Go!" Zaeed barked, squeezing through the new opening. It was tight enough that his armor snagged on the way through, but it held its shape, and the mercenary broke through to find himself in another pocket of air maybe seven or eight meters long, ensconced on all sides by fallen rubble. He steadied himself against the massive coil of a fallen pipe to catch his breath. His skin was slicked with sweat and grime and his lungs burned, but he managed to wheeze a short sigh of relief. They had to be nearing the end by now. He just had to keep going.
Thane followed him into the chamber, looking worse than Zaeed felt. The drell had taken a few hits in their fight in the central chamber, and his back was carpeted in red-black blood crusted in dust and gravel. His steps were slow and clumsy, his feet scraping against the ground, his skin a sickly gray, his breaths coming in heavy rattles like his lungs were full of old nails. He looked close to death, like he might keel over any second now, no matter what Zaeed said. Still, even too exhausted to use his biotics the drell had a wiry strength left to him, and had followed Zaeed without complaint and made no further attempts at a noble sacrifice.
Thane blinked lethargically at Zaeed in the dim light. The sounds of their labored breathing filled the passage.
"Rest up a sec," Zaeed panted, looking away. "Then we'll find another weak spot and keep digging." He fingered his communicator again, just in case. "This is Massani," he growled. "Anyone read me out there?"
There was nothing. No Shepard. No Normandy. No Vakarian. Not even static like they'd been getting before. Now it was just dead silence.
Zaeed chuckled darkly. "I take that for a bad sign." They'd been fighting jammed comms the whole mission, but now they couldn't even get that. The explosion must have knocked something out, or maybe they were buried behind a lot more rubble than they thought. "Shepard's gonna be mighty pissed when he comes back and finds his exit collapsed. Hopefully someone can get word to him."
Thane nodded and swallowed heavily, his throat making a gruesome clicking sound. "If we are fortunate, Grunt heard the charges explode and took a warning to the Normandy."
"Yeah… if we're 'fortunate'." Zaeed rolled his eyes. If they had been fortunate, Grunt would have come back and helped them like he was supposed to. As it was, the krogan had never showed. Zaeed pictured how easily someone with Grunt's strength could dig them out and sighed. "Still cracking heads in the tunnels somewhere, I suppose. Or dead, more likely."
"Perhaps."
Zaeed shrugged and creaked back to his feet. "Well, much as we could use a krogan right now," he said, clapping some of the dust from his hands and limping off to explore, "suppose it's a good death for the kid. He couldn't have asked for more." Zaeed scanned the room, trying to get his bearings. The passage looked familiar enough (though of course everything looked the same covered in a mountain of shit). He tested at the walls, pressing gently for a place they could dig without causing a cave-in and killing themselves. Disturbed sand trickled in rivulets from a dozen splits in the ceiling, pooling onto the floor. They would have to be careful.
"On that subject, I must apologize."
Zaeed cast a look over his shoulder – the drell was still following. He was slow, but he was following. "For trying to die like a candyass back there?"
"No. I am ready to die for the mission. I could have bought you time to make your escape."
Zaeed rolled his eyes again, stooping to push at a mangled black tile. It came away easily in his grip, upsetting a few hundred kilograms of loose gravel that slid down to cover his feet. There was another passage beyond it, and he clicked his tongue to get the drell's attention.
"I apologize because if you had not come back for me, you would have had time to clear the cave in," Thane continued, dropping to a kneel next to Zaeed.
The two of them dug at the gravel, widening their new tunnel, a handful at a time. "Save the martyr bullshit for someone else," Zaeed grunted, grabbing a piece of stray metal to use as a hand shovel. "I know the difference between being ready to die and wanting to."
Thane said nothing.
Zaeed grimaced as he dug. To be perfectly honest, Thane had a point. If he'd just set the charges and run he'd have had a good head start on the cave in. He might have even avoided it entirely. But as soon as he'd realized the drell wasn't following him – wasn't even trying to follow him – he'd dropped everything and gone back to rescue him. He hadn't even hesitated.
He wasn't sure why, now. It certainly didn't look like it'd do any wonders for his reputation of always surviving this sort of thing.
The hole grew wider and wider until it threatened to collapse on itself and they were forced to stop. With a last grunt he tossed his shovel aside and twisted, lying on his back on the ground and sliding his head through the hole. It was dark, but aside from the omnipresent digging sounds that came from every direction, he couldn't see anything dangerous inside. "Clear," he grunted, and wriggled the rest of the way through. Thane had to help him squeeze his shoulders through the gap, but they made it without collapsing anything and found themselves in another narrow open space under a fallen platform. They'd earned a few more meters.
Still, the debris piled up in volume uncountable in every direction. There was no end in sight. Martyr bullshit or not, they might both very well die in here.
But that was more pansy talk.
"You know," he told Thane, scouting for their next way forward, "I've met men like you before. Ready to die for the mission." Martyrs were rare in merc work – most contracts were so obviously shady, so obviously personal and selfish and meaningless that self-sacrifice for the good of the mission was completely off the table. Who would want to die just so some rich guy could destroy some other rich guy's stuff? But it did happen. "Fellow I knew once, name was Katz. Took on a contract to sabotage some bigwig's reactor core, then had a crisis of conscience and ended up blowing himself up on top of a dam to flood out the reactor before it went up."
"He sounds like a brave man."
"Oh, he was," Zaeed agreed, prodding at what looked to be part of a praetorian's carapace, buried in the wreckage. It did not move. There was another narrow crevasse underneath, and the two of them squeezed through into yet another narrow air pocket. "But he's dead, now, see. And him dying didn't fix a goddamn thing. Reactor still ended up destroyed. At best he might have saved a half dozen workers, if he didn't just drown them instead."
"We can never know the full consequences of our actions. Perhaps this Katz's sacrifice saved others you did not even know were there. Perhaps by dying here, I can save billions from death at the hands of the Reapers. That is a worthy cause."
Zaeed chuckled. "Gotto admit, I'm more convinced of that than I was at the beginning of this little field trip." He'd seen amazing things, survived incredible odds, but he had to admit joining Shepard had taken things up a level. The things he'd seen in just a few months aboard the Normandy…
The two of them wound their way down the length of the passage, feeling their way through the dim light. The walls pressed in narrowly, all jagged edges of torn metal that shifted and settled under their own crushing weight, groaning out warnings that they might collapse at any moment. The digging sounds were louder here too, the thump of scraping claws somewhere just beyond the walls, the muffled moan of asphyxiating husks and the beat of swarmer wings. The enemy was catching up with them.
Zaeed and Thane went on as carefully as they could as the digging continued to crescendo. It was darker, now, and in places the passage pressed in on itself so close they had to get on their hands and knees to slither through. It didn't look good.
And yet Zaeed was a little astonished to realize that he wanted to see this whole Reaper thing through. Maybe when they got out of there he'd offer Shepard a discount on his continued services, if he wanted them.
But he wasn't about to die for any of this. "Shepard has a way of finding some pretty goddamn special causes," he agreed. "But still. Not dead yet. Not planning to die. And I'm not planning to let you die if I can help it." He tossed the drell a smug grin. "Now it's out of spite as much as anything, lizard. Better get used to it."
"I suppose I should be grateful."
Then the rumbling started.
To their credit, neither of them started the collapse. High above, there was a crumbling sound and a sudden, piercing wail. Thane and Zaeed turned their gazes upward just fast enough to see the blue gleam of a husk wriggling its way through the ceiling. The creature stared down at them with its artificial eyes, screaming and thrashing its arms ineffectually, but its anger was cut short as it disturbed the rubble above it. The mountain of debris shifted, rock and sand and steel started to tumble and the husk disappeared, pulverized under the torrent as quickly as it had appeared.
The world began to shake.
Zaeed and Thane didn't take the time to curse their luck. They ran, throwing caution to the wind, as the walls started to buckle and crash around them. The fountain of rock that had enveloped the husk poured down into the open chamber with a thunderous report, and the rest of the mountain seemed inclined to follow. Avalanches of debris loosed and fell, shattering around Zaeed's feet as he and Thane sprinted for any scrap of empty space they could reach.
That empty space disappeared suddenly, and Zaeed skidded to a stop.
"Shit!" he snarled. Around him, the walls continued to fall.
"This way!" Thane called, pointing underneath a crumpled stasis pod to where another opening yawned into an impenetrably dark cavern beneath them. It wasn't the right direction, but there was no time to argue, and Zaeed dove inside, Thane hot on his heels.
In the pitch black Zaeed fell through stomach-turning emptiness before crashing into a solid, steeply-angled surface. Stars exploded in front of his vision and he rolled, tumbling down to come to a stop in a narrow crevasse in a shallow pool of some liquid far fouler than water. He heard metal sing as Thane crashed down next to him, and the great calamity of falling debris up above.
He lay still in a haze of pain until the din subsided. There was silence.
Then, after only a few precious seconds, the digging sounds resumed. The collectors were still coming.
Zaeed groaned as he hefted himself into a sitting position. He blinked in the pitch blackness. "Goddamnit," he snarled, trying to decide if he'd gone blind or if it really was as dark as it looked. The comforting presence of his artificial eye's targeting overlays had dimmed to nothing, but a cursory prod of his face revealed that his left eye was still there. So it was just that dark. He coughed. "You still alive over there Krios?"
From somewhere out in the darkness, he heard the drell groan. "I am," Thane said. "Though I suspect you cannot help it for much longer."
Zaeed fumbled for his omni-tool's spot lamp. It took a few tries, but eventually he found it, and a brilliant glow pierced the darkness. He blinked some of the dust out of his eyes and peered about their new home. The cavern was shallower than he would have guessed – its twisted metal ceiling loomed too low for either of them to stand up – but when he stared up one gap in the ceiling Zaeed could see the rim of the walkway not three meters above them. They had not fallen far. Every direction was clogged with crushed debris – the ceiling appeared to be the remains of one of the flying hexagonal platforms Shepard had taken to the reactor chamber. "Probably down in one of the crevasses we passed on the way up," Zaeed guessed.
"Probably."
Inky black shadows leapt as Zaeed swept his light back and forth, looking for a way out, some tunnel that had survived the collapse. There was none. "No way out." He grimaced and shook his head, only halfway believing it.
Yup. This was it. This was how the famous Zaeed Massani, survivor of a dozen different suicide missions, was going to leave this galaxy. Goddamnit.
"Indeed," Thane agreed. "I do not think we will have the strength to move any of this." He gestured up at the ceiling. Indeed – none of the debris hanging above them looked to be any lighter than a few tons. "We shall have to wait for our foes to reach us, and hope they provide us an escape route."
Zaeed grinned and nodded, pausing to listen to the sound of tunneling claws above them. It was getting louder. "So you've decided to survive, have you?"
"If I can help it," Thane deadpanned.
Zaeed chuckled. "That's the spirit," he said. He reached back for his rifle, quietly astonished that it had stayed on his back through the fall, and set it in his lap. His Firestorm's fuel tank had been crushed like an old can and he took it off, tossing it into the darkness and shifting into the most comfortable position he could find. His whole body hurt. Every breath stung – he'd probably broken a rib or ten – but he still had his gun, and Thane had his. Thane's plan was a long shot, but it was all they had. They'd pop the first insect bastard who broke his way through and make a run for it. And hell, if they failed, at least they'd go out fighting.
It was only too bad Jessie couldn't see it.
The two of them sat in the dark, waiting, while the sound of splitting rock got louder and louder.
"Would you like to pray with me, Mr. Massani?" Thane's voice was raspier than usual, but there was no fear there.
Zaeed waved his hand. "Nah," he said. "Nothing I need to pray for." Except, perhaps, that the galaxy kill that fucker Vido for him. But he didn't have to pray for that. It'd happen on its own. Sooner or later, men like Vido always got what was coming to them. If it wasn't him, it'd be one of the other people whose lives his former partner had left destroyed in his wake.
Other than that, Zaeed was content enough. What more did he need?
Thane didn't push the issue, and bowed his head for his own prayers. For a while Zaeed listened to the drell's whispered tones. He didn't understand half the words Thane said, but they sounded pretty enough.
It was only once Thane had finished, and their would-be tomb had lapsed back into relative quiet, that Zaeed dug into one of his pockets and produced two cigars. They were a little mashed, but serviceable enough, and he set them into his mouth. His omni-tool sparked as he lit them, tending the flicker of fire until two little pinpricks of orange gleamed in the darkness.
He took a big puff on one and held the other out to Thane.
Thane's look of confusion was obvious even in the dark. "I must decline," he said, holding out a hand. "My condition-"
"Seriously?" Zaeed raised his brow, incredulous. He held out the cigar again.
Thane seemed to realize the irony and this time he took it, nodding his head sheepishly in thanks. He held it awkwardly, like he'd never had one before – he probably hadn't, Zaeed realized – and took an experimental draw. Zaeed watched expectantly as Thane devolved into a ragged coughing fit, but to his credit the drell didn't give the cigar back. He tried again, slower this time.
"Good?" Zaeed asked.
"Yes," Thane said, nodding (it was impossible to guess if he meant it). "Thank you."
Zaeed grinned. "I don't know if tobacco works on drell like it does on humans, so maybe you aren't getting the whole experience. But smoking a cigar with a mate has a universal appeal, you know?"
"I think I do," Thane agreed, and took another puff of his cigar. "It is supposed to be the camaraderie, more than the drug." Above them, there was a rough crash as some monster – maybe a praetorian – knocked aside another obstacle. It would be on them soon.
Zaeed ignored it, exhaling slowly and watching the smoke curl past his vision. The cigar soothed his nerves and slowed his heart. "You already look like a goddamn natural," he said. "Good place to start, too. These are Cobol Five's. It's a good brand, only made on Earth. Cost an arm and leg but they're worth every credit."
Thane's head lolled back to rest on the rock behind him. His voice was quiet, unconcerned. "My wife once treated me to a meal made from Earth ingredients," he said. "She liked to try new things."
"And?"
"There was a plant called a bamboo, the stem of which could be served in a stew. I enjoyed it. It is not something I would eat every day, but that I shared it with Irikah mattered more than its taste. Rather like the cigar. It is… a good memory."
Zaeed nodded. "Irikah," he said, tasting the name on his tongue. "Good woman, I imagine?"
"The best."
The digging continued. Zaeed could see trickles of loosed rock tumbling down from cracks in the ceiling, could hear the shift of rock and steel. Whatever was coming for them was very near now, and coming fast.
Zaeed took another languid draw from his cigar. "I ever tell you about the time I made it with a drell chick?" he asked, grinning through a mouthful of smoke. Thane looked at him with a puzzled expression, but if he was offended by Zaeed's lewdness, he did not say anything. "She was a good woman too," Zaeed said, laughing at the memory. "Ahlio something. Kindof a hellion. Little, but wasn't scared of a goddamn thing." He grinned. "Flat as a board, naturally, but let me tell you, she knew how t-"
"She sounds very nice," Thane interrupted. The crashing was very loud now. The ceiling had started to cave. "But it appears we are about to have company."
Zaeed grinned at the drell's discomfort. "Heheh. Alright." He picked up his gun. He could hear roaring, now, and he leveled his barrel in its direction as best he could. It would be any second, and something would crash through on them. They'd kill it and make a run for it and see how far they got. Zaeed doubted it would be far.
But screw it. It had been a good run.
"Been a pleasure, Krios," he said.
"As for me," Thane agreed.
And the ceiling came crashing inward with a roar.
–
A million problems fought for Mordin's attention. Medical VI's blared in alarm as their patients slipped farther and farther out of reach. The Normandy rumbled and sang as its systems continued to reassert themselves, and outside, the sounds of a furious firefight shook the ship's walls with particle rifle impacts and the distant screech of dying aliens.
Mordin hummed a few stanzas of Kirosa and glanced at the display panels, his hands at work adjusting the Miss Chambers' crystalloid solution drips. A pair of resonance scanners hummed in the corner as they constructed an updated reconstruction of the yeoman's injuries, while a medical VI shepherded a half dozen other monitors and sensors tracking blood pressure and heart rate and a host of other stats. The prognosis was not good. Something in the stasis pod media – nanoscopic machines were the likely culprit – had torn through Miss Chambers' body, riddling it with tiny incisions, inside and out. If she'd been in the pod a moment longer she would have been beyond help – as it was, she was still holding on by a thread. Byron, hooked up one bed over, was faring little better.
Mordin would do his best. He scanned through the VI's reports in a flash. Patient displaying tachycardia. Flesh cool to the touch following vasoconstriction. Blood loss estimated at thirty percent total volume. Pressure becoming a problem. Patient bleeding into body cavity from multiple internal incisions inflicted by unidentified nanomachinery.
"Thoracotomy necessary to prevent damage to heart and lungs," he concluded aloud.
Next to him, Dr. Chakwas was hard at work with one of the automaton-assisted microsuturers, trying to close a gash that had opened up in Miss Chamber's skull. She nodded wearily. "I think have the head wound under control."
Mordin glanced at the doctor, diagnosing. She was exhausted. Voice slurred. Suffering from effects of prolonged biotic paralysis. She was another patient. Better prognosis, no internal bleeding, but in need of treatment.
Mordin cast that thought away for later. Triage. Had to triage. He collected a fresh sterile scalpel and disinfectant gel applicator from the makeshift bandolier of medical supplies and grenades he had draped over his left shoulder, cleaned a strip of pale skin along the yeoman's ribcage, and made an incision. Outside, there was a dull kaboom as a grenade exploded.
"Good," Mordin said, setting his scalpel down and flitting to the other end of the lab to check Bryon's scan results. The payload specialist was still losing blood too. Mordin's deft eyes swept over the medical VI's outputs and picked out the problem in a heartbeat – another incision, missed on the previous scans, just south of the man's liver. Would need suturing. No time to open abdominal cavity – would have to resort to noninvasive robotics.
He was halfway through programming the automated surgeon when he cast another glance over at Dr. Chakwas. Skin pale. Drooped posture. Hands tremoring.
Needed to rest.
He pressed the button to initiate the surgery protocol and turned on her. "Sit," he commanded, producing a bottle of water from a nearby cabinet. "Rest. Rehydrate." She raised a hand to protest but she was in no state to stand her ground, and Mordin guided her into her chair without a word. "Doctor's orders. Can resume in a moment," he said, pressing the water into her hand. "Rest. Rehydrate."
"Mordin, I'm fine. I ca-"
"Triage," he said instantly, stooping to check her eyes. "Cannot allow limited medical personnel to faint during surgery. Must prioritize you, or risk loss of patients as well." He gave her a reassuring smile. "Feeling well?"
Chakwas smiled weakly and obliged him with a long drink of water. "No," she admitted. "But I'll be alright."
"Dizziness? Chest pain? Shortness of breath?"
"A little dizziness," she said. "I just need a moment."
Mordin nodded and stood. Behind him, the automated surgeon had made its incision and begun snaking its way into Bryon's body cavity. Would have been better supervised. Safer. But there was too much to do. "Thoracic endoscopy on Yeoman Chambers next priority," he decided, and turned to begin preparations when his communicator crackled.
"Mordin!" It was Donnelly, down with the other defenders in the hangar. Fifteen minutes previously their communications had cleaned up considerably – something had disabled whatever machine had been jamming them – and Mordin could hear the desperation in the engineer's voice with perfect clarity. Terrified. "Mordin, they're making another push! Help us!"
For a fraction of a second, Mordin considered, shifting priorities around in his head. Had to triage here as well. Ship repairs were progressing, but could still fall to concerted collector push. Had to be prevented.
He sniffed, mind made up. Had to go.
Chakwas gave him a sympathetic smile. "Go," she said, rising to her feet. "I'll well enough to do the endoscopy."
Mordin nodded and swept out of the room, Carnifex in hand.
He made good time, sliding down the ladder in the maintenance shaft in the AI core. He emerged on the engineering deck and sprinted the rest of the way, loping out of the window that had been shattered in the collector attack and landing on the hangar floor with a delicate roll.
He sprung to his feet, eyes scanning the situation.
The situation was not good. Through the open hangar door, Mordin counted eleven collectors and fourteen husks converging on them. Gunfire exploded around him as the handful of crew trying to hold the hangar fired at the approaching aliens, but it was not nearly enough. Seven crewmembers had volunteered, but none of them were trained for combat and only engineer Donnelly looked to have the strength to stay on his feet. Donnelly, for his part, fought bravely, but his shots went wide and the collectors advanced without fear, empty purpose in their gleaming eyes.
And with Miss Goto and the rest of Garrus' squad pinned down outside, unable to reach them, Mordin was the only thing standing in their way.
He leapt into action. His pistol jumped in his hand as he fired at the nearest husks. His shots hit neatly home, shredding cybernetic flesh and sending the creatures flying back in fragments. He replaced his complaining heatsink in the blink of an eye, narrowly sidestepping out of the path of a blistering volley from a particle cannon and ducking into cover beside Donnelly. He thumbed his communicator. "Mr. Vakarian?" Even if the turian sniper couldn't reach them, perhaps he could pick off a few of the invaders from his position.
EDI answered. "Mr. Vakarian has departed for the reactor chamber in an attempt to retrieve missing party members."
Mordin nodded. Misters Grunt, Krios, and Massani had yet to report in, then. He wished Mr. Vakarian safe travels. A collector passed into the hangar and he rewarded it with a plasma dart from his omni-tool. The insect burst into flames with a whump that Mordin could feel from across the room.
"Operative Taylor and available squadmembers are converging on your position," the AI continued. "ETA forty seconds."
Mordin nodded again. He tossed one of the concussion grenades he'd nabbed the armory into the midst of a quartet of advancing husks, sending them flying.
"In addition," EDI added, "Dr. Chakwas has requested I inform you that Yeoman Chambers has gone into cardiac arrest. She requests you assist her at the earliest possible opportunity."
"Noted," Mordin said, and calmly finished off each of the tossed husks as they landed with quick shots to their skulls.
The collectors continued to come, their wings buzzing as they dropped into view of the hangar door. They fired, their rifles filling the Normandy with cruel, antiseptic light. Mordin saw Tennard, busy manning one of the hastily-erected barricades at the front of the hangar, take a shot to the shoulder. The beam sawed through him like he wasn't even there – he let out a scream of agony and dropped to the floor, smoking. Mordin nodded and killed the offending collector. Considerable tissue loss at interface. Reattachment would not be possible.
As always, Mordin's mind raced. He pondered strategy, the situation with patients upstairs, the best way to reattach a human arm. But deeper questions, too. Who he was. What he was doing here with a gun in his hands and not buried in a lab somewhere. He was a good scientist, but a good fighter as well. Even headed, unafraid, accurate. Trained by best sharpshooters STG had to offer. Combat always secondary interest, never his reason for going to work, but skill to be valued. Celebrated.
Galaxy demanded violence, and often.
Still. Second time he had participated in mass destruction of another species. The last of the protheans, and he was shooting at them. Doing them a favor, yes, but galaxy still emptier for it. Little enough of their biology remained, but he was helping dispose of the last of it. Qualified genocide.
Something like Project Firebreak.
Would have been amusing in other circumstances.
Now, just made him sad. So many questions about the protheans. At least with krogan, could still learn from them. How had protheans looked before cybernetic interference? Degeneracy in genetic code natural or installed later? Eyes controlled in pairs, or independently, or fully linked for tetranocular vision? How did wings generate sufficient lift for flight outside of microgravity environments? What was purpose of redundant nerve endings in anterior surface of neck? Oviparous or viviparous? Carnivorous or herbivorous? Semelparous or iteroparous? R or K selected? Lifespan? Sexual dimorphism? Communication? Their beautiful crests grown by segments or all at once?
He pulled the trigger, and a beautiful crest exploded, showering the ground in hemolymph.
So many questions. So sad.
Of course, extinction a natural exercise. Life chaotic. Death inevitable. Protheans gone, but new life in their place. Highly interconnected. Some solace, yes.
There was an explosion as an errant particle beam hit one of the hangar's loading cranes. The crane's motivator erupted in a flash of light that filled the hangar and Mordin felt a sudden jolt of pain lance through his face. Warm wetness trickled down his cheek. Shrapnel injury. Projectile too large to be deflected by kinetic barriers. Injury to suborbital ring on right eye socket. Painful.
He closed his right eye and kept fighting.
Mordin heard Miss Jack coming before he saw her, and he knew the battle was done. He was loading another cartridge of plasma darts when his remaining eye caught the wisp of blue wrapping itself around one of the collector vanguards an instant before it flared and crushed the insect in its grasp. Jack skated into view, hurling debris in front of her like a hurricane. Jacob and Kasumi followed a few seconds later, the latter hurling an ECM grenade that sent arcs of electricity coursing through a trio of husks until their eyes came exploding out of their sockets in acrid puffs of smoke. The collectors wheeled on the new threat, but it was far too late, and they were scattered in seconds. Mordin obligingly ventilated the last collector's head. It slumped over, dead, and the battle fell silent.
Mordin stood and traded a quick nod with Jacob. "Collectors will return. Defend the hangar," he said, holstering his pistol. "Work to do." He did not wait for a response – Operative Taylor was a dependable man, and better suited for holding a position than Mordin was. Mordin walked over to where Tennard had fallen, stepping over the smoking remains of the man's arm. The man was conscious, and stared deliriously up at Mordin as he stooped to assist him. The wound was relatively minor – the heat of the particle beam had mostly cauterized it into a dark, foul-smelling scab, so there was relatively little risk of bleeding out – but he reached for a packet of medigel all the same. "Reattachment impossible," Mordin said, answering the unasked question as he unwrapped the medigel and applied a patch over the stump of Tennard's shoulder. "But high functioning prosthetics readily available. Will forward relevant catalogs later. Rest now." A tranquilizer dart – keyed up to the dosage he'd calculated for the man months previously – silenced Tennard's fears in the blink of an eye.
Tossing his remaining medigel and grenades to Jacob, Mordin lifted the injured man into his arms and headed for the elevator. Tennard was heavy – though Mordin supposed five or so kilos lighter than he had been yesterday – and for a second he considered soliciting Operative Taylor's help in moving him, but the sound of collector wings convinced him otherwise. Operative Taylor had other concerns. He dragged his new patient to the elevator and palmed the control panel. Hopefully Miss Chambers was still alive upstairs.
"Mordin… You're bleeding." It was Donnelly, bruised and winded and covered in dried slime but otherwise unhurt.
"Hmm?" Mordin turned to face him.
Donnelly looked a little green. He gestured to his face. "Your eye."
"Ahh," Mordin said, remembering. He rolled his right eye experimentally in its socket – it hurt. The shrapnel was still there. "Yes. Superficial injury. Not life threatening if shrapnel removed in time." He smiled. "Might even be able to save the eye."
"You sure?" the engineer asked as the elevator gave a cheerful chime and parted its doors.
Mordin nodded and stepped into the lift, hooking his arms underneath Tennard's armpits. Donnelly stooped to grab the man's feet and together they managed to drag him into the elevator. "Appreciate concern, but should have time before blood loss threatens survival. Will pursue medical intervention at earliest opportunity." He palmed the command for the crew deck and the doors began to close.
"Wait," Donnelly stepped forward, stopping the elevator with a wave of his hand. "Mordin."
Mordin stared at him with his remaining eye.
"I'm immune to the swarmers. They've stung me like four times and I barely feel anything."
Mordin nodded, pleased with himself. "Indeed, noticed. Exciting result for research project Horizon N103." The biotic vaccine he'd been tinkering with was far from complete, but it seemed the concept was sound. With some further development it would be a far superior counterdefense than the signal jammers he'd developed for Horizon. Though perhaps it was beside the point if the collectors ended up wiped out.
Donnelly swallowed heavily. "Can't believe I'm saying this, but… thanks for that."
Mordin smiled and tapped at the elevator controls to close the door. "My pleasure."
–
EDI's avatar and voice had brightened.
"Shipboard power has returned to operating levels," she said. " Engine one has been successfully disabled. Engines two through four have been rebalanced accordingly. STL performance loss should be minor."
Joker nodded perfunctorily as he took the last few torturous steps to his chair. His entire body felt like jelly as he threw his pilfered assault rifle into the seat next to him. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, feeling his weary body settle.
"We can depart at any time."
"That's great, EDI," he said, unable to muster the energy to match her enthusiasm. Briefly he wondered why she even bothered telling him – she could take off whenever she wanted to, and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it, not now that she was in control of the entire ship.
But she did not. "Shepard's radiation pulse will initiate in seven minutes," she said instead.
Joker didn't answer. He stretched the numbness out of his fingers, listening to the sounds of battle raging outside the hull. Each impact sent a tremor through Normandy's armor, but it sounded worse than it was, and Joker switched one of his console panels to the lower decks' video feeds to watch the defenders in the hangar hold off streams of collectors and husk assailants. The Normandy's kinetic barriers were back online, reducing most of the collectors' shots to irrelevancy, and between them Jack, Jacob, and Kasumi stopped the bulk of their enemies before they got within five meters of the door. As far as Joker could tell the three of them were in fine form today, despite two of them having gone through whatever it was collectors did to people unlucky enough to get harvested. Course, maybe that had just pissed them off. Jack's biotics kept the field clean while Jacob and Kasumi picked off targets at range. The collectors wouldn't be coming in to recapture them any time soon.
Still, that left the praetorians. Four of the big cybernetic monsters had massed around the ship. They floated in broad circles like carrion flies, alternately pounding on the ship's hull or trying to scuttle to a proper vantage to fire into the hangar. The bright beams they disgorged from their undercarriages were powerful enough to be cause for concern. They hadn't pierced the ship's kinetic barriers yet, but it was just a matter of time, and even Joker knew the ground team couldn't risk leaving the hangar to meet them without reinforcements. It was a deadly stalemate, and each praetorian that appeared pushed it farther in their enemies' favor.
Joker cast a sidelong glance at the gun in the seat next to him. He had been stupid to take it – even if the worst did happen and he got a chance to fire it, he'd probably just miss and then break his own shoulder with the recoil – but somehow he felt better having it. If it came to it, he wasn't going to be the only man on the ship who didn't fire a shot.
It would be down to the wire on this one.
Joker opened a communicator channel. "You still with us, Shepard?" He shifted his gaze back up to the overhead panel, where EDI was tracking the rest of the ground teams' transponders. Shepard and his team were still on the far end of the station, sprinting through one of the dozens of winding tunnels for a spot EDI had found that was open enough for the Normandy to retrieve them.
Shepard's voice responded, crystal clear now that they'd bombed whatever the collectors had used to jam their comms all mission. He was panting. "We're on our way to the pickup, Joker," he said, shouting to be heard over the thud of his own boots and the ear-splitting screech of particle weapons. "What's your ETA?"
"Hard to tell yet. Still waiting on a few stragglers to get aboard." Garrus still hadn't returned with the missing team. He could see the turian's transponder marked on EDI's map – scanners put him a few hundred meters away and heading towards them, which Joker took to be a good sign, but his progress was distressingly slow, and they were getting no signal at all from Grunt, Zaeed, or Thane. Joker swallowed heavily, trying to quash the unease in his gut as Garrus' signal marker started to backtrack. He knew Archangel was no pushover, but he couldn't help remembering watching Nihlus' transponder wink out on Eden Prime back at the beginning of their little adventure.
"Keep waiting," Shepard said, though the worry in his voice was obvious. "We've got a little leeway." There was a boom and a scrambling sound over the line.
Joker chuckled bitterly. "Your nonchalance loses some of its calming effect when there are explosions in the background, Commander."
"Wait as long as you can," Shepard repeated. "Keep me posted." There was another violent screech and a shout of pain that sounded suspiciously like Tali and the line closed.
Joker's heart was pounding. "Time?" he asked.
"Two hundred seventy four seconds until radiation burst," EDI supplied.
Just under five minutes. Shepard would be arriving at the pickup spot any moment, no doubt with Harbinger's angry parting shot right on his heels. Without pickup he, Tali, Legion, and Miranda would die – if not to collectors, then to the bigass radiation pulse they'd set to fry the station from the inside out – but Garrus, Grunt, Thane, and Zaeed were still out on the station too. Four lives versus four lives.
Joker grimaced as he recognized the decision he was going to have to make. Back in the day he'd been a flight lieutenant. Now he wasn't sure where he was on the chain of command – with Shepard, Garrus, and still Miranda off the ship it was hard to tell. Maybe Taylor was next.
But Taylor wasn't going to be the one with his hands on the throttle. One way or another, Joker was going to have to lift off without everyone aboard.
No wonder EDI hadn't lifted off on her own.
Joker's heart descended to somewhere about knee-level. It was Virmire all over again. Suddenly his thoughts were full of late night arguments with Williams, back on the SR1. Ash had been a scary lady, but he'd liked her. No bullshit from her. And Kaidan, who used to keep him company in the cockpit talking ship tech or the Miss Saturn pageant winner's acceptance speech or the least offensive Space Odyssey sequel. They'd been good people, both of them. Better people than Joker, certainly. They hadn't deserved to die.
But Shepard had chosen Williams, and she'd died anyway.
How he'd done it, Joker didn't know.
Joker closed his eyes and grimaced, willing his thoughts in line. He'd never been forced to leave a man behind, but he could do it if he had to. When they'd sprung Timmy's collector ship trap he'd been ready to liquefy everyone in the lower decks, and he would have if the engineers hadn't fixed the dampeners in time. This was a war, and war meant making hard choices.
But he damn sure wouldn't mind getting a pass on this one. He drummed his fingers against the dash, staring at the external feeds for any sliver of hope.
"Are you alright, Jeff?" EDI's voice was uncharacteristically gentle – she must have realized his predicament. Somehow that only made him feel worse.
A lie sprang to his lips in a millisecond. "Just dandy, EDI," he said. "I was just thinking about old times."
"About Chief Williams?"
Damn, twenty-four hours unshackled and she was already reading minds. He brushed it off. "Nah. You remember that time the collector ship that took the first Normandy from me came back for a rematch and I kicked its ass?"
"…that was only three hours, thirty-eight minutes ago, Jeff…"
"Good times."
EDI said nothing. Somehow he knew she was seeing right through his attempts at humor.
"Yeah, sorry," he said. "Anything?"
"Mr. Vakarian is approximately two hundred ten meters away. Evidence suggests he is engaged in a heavy firefight. He is not responding to my queries."
"And the death ray?"
"One hundred seventy-one seconds until radiation burst."
Joker stared helplessly at the camera feeds outside the ship, looking for any sign of the missing squadmates, but all he saw was a sea of glowing eyes. Collectors continued to drop from the skies, landing amongst seas of gangly-limbed husks. Joker watched as a fifth praetorian came clambering out of a crevasse, empty eyes glimmering as its beam weapons kindled to life.
"One hundred seconds until radiation burst."
Joker winced. It was time to go.
Sorry guys.
He set his hands on the controls, feeling power thrum to life under his fingertips. "Taking her out, then." Rocks loosed and tumbled as the ship began to climb, dislodging itself from its resting place with a thunderous crack. The collectors fired uselessly at the Normandy's sides as it rose.
For a moment, Joker stalled under the pretense of letting the debris clear. They hovered, a meter off the ground, and Joker found himself waiting for someone – anyone – to interject. To shout out, to convince him to wait, to take this decision off his hands.
But no one did.
Shit.
He reached for the throttle.
And then a strange sound came rumbling overtop of the din, a ragged stream of syllables that Joker could hear even over the deep thoom of the Normandy's engine primers. He paused, confused. For a split second, he was convinced they'd gotten something caught in an engine. "Hey EDI?" he asked, and trailed off, confounded.
The sound was coming from the external feeds. Joker turned up the volume with a wave and stared, watching the praetorians firing up at them and listening to the sound get louder and 's eyes narrowed in confusion as he recognized it.
It was laughter.
The praetorian never stood a chance. Near on a thousand kilos of krogan and armor hit its side with a sound like an asteroid impact, and the the machine's shell crumpled like an aluminum can, its undercarriage slamming up into its body with such force it sent a hail of sparking components showering out of its other end.
Grunt was still laughing as he extricated himself from the wreckage and ran over the next collector.
A fiery explosion announced Zaeed's arrival, consuming a trio of collectors in a gout of light and shrapnel. He sprinted after the krogan, spraying the area with assault rifle fire.
Garrus came last, firing his own rifle from the hip. Draped over his shoulder was Thane, who Joker almost wrote off as unconscious until he saw the drell drop a pursuing husk with a perfect headshot.
Joker blinked at the screen. Relief hit him in a wave. They were alive. They were alive! He cast a fist into the air with a victorious whoop. "Go Crotchpunch Squad!" he howled, watching the feeds as they hurtled into the hangar chased by gunfire.
"Squadmates are aboard," EDI reported, voice bright. "Ready for departure, Jeff."
Joker set his fingers to the controls and the Normandy roared to life underneath him. They had less than a minute to retrieve Shepard's team before they were all irradiated – not nearly enough time to find a proper landing spot.
But landing spots were for amateurs.
As the Normandy put on a burst of speed and their enemies disappeared behind them, Joker cast a last look at the gun in the copilot's seat.
"Open the forward airlock, EDI," he said, and adjusted his hat.
–
Shepard was falling. The sound of twisting metal was everywhere.
He hit a platform and scrambled for purchase, the tensor grips in his gloves clacking as he slid to a painful stop. Around him, the dying throes of the nascent Reaper shook the station. The killing shot had been Legion's, the geth's antimateriel rifle going through one of the Reaper's imitated human 'eyes' with a loud, incandescent pop, and now it was falling. Rock and steel powdered under each sweep of its gigantic limbs. It thrashed in a peculiarly living way, like a creature that wanted to go on fighting, not like a machine falling inert.
Beneath it, Shepard did the same, clinging to life at the platform's edge even as its mass effect generators failed and it started to tilt. Rock tumbled around him but Shepard's grip was solid, and he stared through the chaos for any glimpse of his companions. He thought he saw a flash of purple, but he had no time to call out for one of the Reaper's arms came down upon the platform with a cataclysmic crash. The floor bucked under Shepard's grip, and his gloves gave a whine as he was cast into the air like a ragdoll.
He bounced hard again, rolled for a pregnant second, and then he was falling through empty space, vision whirling, fire exploding around him. The platform plummeted past his vision, and he thought he heard a shout of alarm, but he couldn't tell whether it had been Miranda or Tali.
He found his thoughts turning back to the SR1, standing in space with a ship disintegrating around him.
Back at his death.
It seemed like forever ago (had it really only been two and a half years?) and here he was again. Full circle. Dying.
It was funny. He still didn't know if he'd actually died over Alchera. He remembered choking on nothingness as the Normandy's remains had spiraled past his vision, and he remembered waking up to harsh lights and arguing doctors, but of what – if anything – had come between, he had nothing. Had he truly been gone, or merely on the brink? He'd never gotten a straight answer, and every time he'd brought up the issue Miranda had fallen curiously silent. At first, that had worried him – what had they done to him that they were so afraid of revealing? – but he'd eventually realized it did not matter. Dead or almost dead, that he'd been spaced and gone on living was a clear violation of the rules.
He owed the galaxy his life. And it was time for the galaxy to collect. He would pay for his resurrection with a suicide. It was only fair. The Illusive Man could break the rules of life and death if he wanted to, but it didn't change what was right.
As the chamber floor flew up to meet him, Shepard braced himself. He'd done his duty. He'd led his team to do the impossible. He'd defeated the collectors – in a matter of minutes a radiation pulse would wipe their species from the face of the galaxy, finally putting the protheans to rest. All their technology, all their secrecy had not availed them against Shepard and his team. EDI had told him repairs were nearly complete on the Normandy – at least some of his crew would get back home to spread the word. The collector base would be studied and the galaxy would ready themselves for the Reapers. It was a victory.
Now Shepard was off to join Pressley and Ash and Jenkins, Nihlus and Saren and Benezia, Samara and Hadley and Orell and Matthewsand everyone else they'd left behind along the way.
Death was an okay end to this story.
But death did not come. There was a gentle bzump and a flash of blue alighted on Shepard's chest, and gravity started to ripple. Shepard felt the breath pulled from his lungs as the biotic field sent him spinning in the opposite direction like a top, so fast his vision was a blur of blue coronae. And yet he was slowing down, the field tugging his limbs skyward just hard enough to arrest his momentum. He hit the ground like he'd fallen two meters and not two hundred. He bounced and rolled, still trailing blue until he slid to a stop on the black tile.
He groaned, staring up at the ceiling chamber. Blurry explosions continued to rock the Reaper machinery, far above him, and each boom sent another tremor through the floor.
"My apologies, Commander." A gloved hand materialized in front of his vision. "I'd meant to land you on your feet."
For the second time in his strange life Shepard found himself staring up at Miranda when he should have been dead. The circumstances were a little different this time – she was smeared head to toe in dust and debris and bleeding from a gash in her shoulder, for one thing – but again, here she was, offering to help him climb back out of his grave. He laughed and took her hand. "Yeah, well. Nobody's perfect."
"Incoming!" came a shout from above, and Shepard and Miranda looked up to see Tali half-falling half-running down the slope of the fallen platform, her boots clacking with each fumbling step as their magnets tried in vain to slow her fall. Behind her, Legion was tumbling down, its platform's neck tucked down across its chest for perfection as it fell, another piece of metal amongst a landslide of debris. They were coming fast.
Shepard did not let the jolt of terror he felt distract them. Even as blue fire flared to life on Miranda's hands, Shepard stepped into Tali's path, grabbing the quarian around the waist as she slid the last few meters like a meteor. He bowled her over, tackling her forward with his body weight, and the two of them crashed down in a painful tangle of limbs and armor just in time to avoid being flattened by a pinwheeling geth.
Debris rained down, pelting Shepard's back so hard it felt like a rain of knives even through his armor, but he did not move until the rain stopped and the only sounds were his own ragged breathing and the hiss of Tali's mask.
Shepard winced at the pain in his chest. "You alright, Tali?"
Underneath him, Tali groaned. "I think you may have broken my rebreather." She hissed in pain as she disentangled herself from Shepard and, indeed, Shepard could see the bottom of her mask crumpled in on itself, the diode that glowed along with her words smashed and hanging limp from torn wires. But her visor was intact, and behind it, he could see the relief in her eyes.
"Yeah, well, I think you broke my back, so I guess we're even."
Shepard stumbled back to his feet, and his head swam with adrenaline. "Legion, you alive over there?"
"Affirmative," the geth reported, stepping out of the rubble. "This platform has sustained minimal structural damage."
For a few seconds, the four of them just stood there, catching their breaths as they listened to the rumble of dying machinery. "I guess we did it," Shepard concluded, panting. "We won the suicide mission."
"We did."
Shepard nodded. "Good job then." Shepard's mind felt muddy as it caught up to itself through the haze of battle. The realization almost winded him.
They'd actually done it.
They'd stopped the collectors.
And he hadn't even died.
Apparently, the galaxy wasn't done with him yet.
He looked at Tali and decided he didn't mind. What she'd said to him back on Minuteman echoed in his ears. He had so much to do, so much to live for yet. He still hadn't called his mother. Or worked things out with Kaidan. Or bought Garrus half the drinks he owed him. Or helped Wrex with his new plan, or helped Liara find her friend, or caught up with Madine.
Or defeated the Reapers. The loss of their collectors would be a setback, but something told Shepard the Reapers were still on their way. The Battle of the Citadel, the fight against the collectors – it had all been a delaying tactic, but eventually the Reapers would arrive, and find a galaxy divided by prejudice and war, ripe for the harvest.
There was so much left to do.
The sound of beating wings shocked him out of his reverie. Somewhere in the distance, Harbinger's voice was booming.
"Commander?" Miranda asked, gesturing to a corridor that opened up beneath them.
Shepard nodded. "We should go."
–
A/N: I wrote the bulk of this chapter immediately after finishing Interregnum and so I went for a more action-y feel for it. Not generally that fond of writing action, but it felt like a fun sendoff for everybody.
On the subject of deaths: The squad member's fates have danced around a lot in the years I've been writing Interstitium. Back when I started, when I'd suffered under the laughable delusion that I'd be done in time for ME3's release, I had intended to leave everybody alive so I could use them in ME3, and I was two thirds through the story by the time I started to reconsider. As you can see, I decided to give everybody but Samara a pass this time (but if I were to do it all again knowing what I know now, I'd have killed a few more).
Samara was always at the top of the list for me. I'd toyed with the idea of sparing her too, but I think that she, more than any other character, really ends her arc in ME2, and that dragging her along any further is just fanservice. Especially my somewhat more extreme version of Samara. So when I saw her (immensely disappointing, I thought) appearance in ME3, it sealed her fate. I think it's a good end for the character.
Anyway, if I ever write ME3, there will be some major character deaths (in addition to some of the ones in the game). I have their ultimate fates all pretty much mapped out.