"Liara, above you! Sniper!"
In response to her lover's warning, the asari launched herself to the side just in time to avoid the incoming high velocity bullet. The Nemesis tried to get back into her cover on the upper railing, but before she could, Liara reached out, wrapping the sniper in a stasis field.
"Garrus!", the Shadow Broker yelled before scampering behind the reception desk.
"On it," the turian barked back, planting a round from his Widow between the frozen Nemesis' eyes.
"How much longer on those doors?", Shepard snapped as she exchanged fire with the squad of Cerberus troopers on the opposite side of the entrance hall. "Much as we're all having fun here, it feels to me like they're staging a holding action and I'd rather not leave the rest of the team to deal with my clone by themselves."
"Almost there, commander," Miranda replied tersely, fiddling with a control panel on the other side of the room even as shots whizzed above her head. "They've altered their security protocols since I left Cerberus but I'm trying to compensate."
"Glad to hear it." Shepard tossed a incendiary grenade out from behind the column she was using for cover. It burst in the midst of the troopers and as they scattered and burned, she and Garrus picked off the survivors.
"Got it." The double doors at the back of the room slid open and the team moved deeper into the base, the seemingly-normal entrance hall soon giving way to a twisting maze of poorly-lit, dank corridors that sank deep into the ground of Hendril.
"Not much for décor here, are they?", Garrus quipped as he fired down the hallway at a Centurion crouching behind a steam pipe. "At least with the new Normandy, they were pretending to be on the side of the angels, but this place practically screams 'evil lair.'"
"I think their repeated attacks on civilian populations may have given away the game already," Liara replied, her singularity incapacitating the retreating Cerberus officer.
"Garrus? Liara?" The voice that came from one of the side rooms was so frightened that Shepard didn't recognize it at first. Curious, she turned into the chamber, but at first she saw nothing of interest. There was just a little desk with a terminal atop it and a padded table off to one side of the room.
"Who's there?"
It was a head of red hair that she saw first, peeking out from behind the desk, and following behind it was the shocked face of Kelly Chambers. "Shepard!", the former yeoman yelled, leaping out and throwing her arms around the startled Spectre. "I'm so glad it's you. I thought I was going to die down here for sure."
The rest of the team followed the commander into the room. Liara looked less than pleased to see Shepard's would-be seducer with her arms around the Spectre, Garrus seemed amused at the whole situation, and Miranda was simply staring, her dark eyes wide with surprise.
"Kelly?", the operative asked. "I thought you were… The Illusive Man showed me a video of you being prepared for the Nemesis program."
Kelly released her grip on the commander and repeated her hug with Miranda, a change that seemed to please Liara. "I was," she said, a chagrinned blush starting to spread across her cheeks, "But, I, um, got kicked out. They said I had the worst combat aptitude scores of any of the candidates they had seen. I guess I'm lucky that I suck so much at fighting. The things they were doing to us were pretty bad."
Miranda laughed with relief. She'd been fond of the cute therapist and finding her here, alive, was an unexpected gift. "Well, I'm just glad you're all right."
"More or less. After I washed out, the Illusive Man sent me here to, uh, keep up the soldier's morale." She swallowed hard and Miranda felt a flash of anger as she looked at the table on the other side of the room. Kelly had never been shy about using her body as part of her job, but there should limits. "Some of them could be a little rough with me," Kelly admitted with a shudder and Miranda patted her hair. "Anyway, it's okay now. You came for me."
Liara's voice was all business. "As touching as this is, we are not actually here on a rescue mission. We need to find Shepard's clone along with the prothean data that she stole from us. Can you help with that?"
Kelly nodded. "I bet the clone is with the bulk of the Cerberus forces. They're massing in the machine shop on the lower level. There's no way to get to the server rooms without passing through it and if the data you need is here, that's probably the best place to look. I was supposed to go meet up with the rest of the soldiers, but like I said, I'm not much of a fighter, so I hid here instead."
Shepard gave Kelly a bemused smile. She may have been a tool of the Illusive Man but she was so guileless that it was hard to hold it against her. "Good call. The way behind us should be clear now. Get back to the surface and wait in the shuttle. We'll meet up there when we're done."
The yeoman hurried off and Liara turned to her bondmate frostily. "Just how many Cerberus agents are you planning on keeping on the Normandy?"
The commander shrugged, trying to avoid the sinking feeling that she'd be sleeping alone that night. "Look, I can't leave her here and she's not exactly going to be much use in a fight. When this is over, we'll drop everybody off in Alliance custody."
"Speaking for the Cerberus agents," Miranda said bruskly, "If we're headed into an ambush, I'd appreciate it if you let me have a gun. I know what I've done, but we're all in this together now. Besides, I care about Kelly and you heard what they did to her. Let me help settle this score."
The commander sighed. In for a penny, she supposed, in for a pound. "All right. Grab the Harrier off the Centurion out in the hall and let's get moving."
A few brief skirmishes later, Shepard and her team were massed outside the door to what a posted sign informed them was the machine shop. "So, trap?", Garrus laughed, looking at the metal doors.
"Of course," Shepard replied. "The only question is, is it also a diversion to help the clone escape?" She opened a comm channel to Javik. "Javik, Shepard here. Any movement on your end?"
"None of significance, commander," the prothean's gravelly voice responded. "There have been a few cowards attempting to flee to their shuttles, but there is no sign of your doppelganger."
"All right. Stay sharp." She closed the connection and turned back to her squad. "This is it, then. We go in." She motioned everyone to stand back from the doors and then looked over to Liara. "Open it."
The Shadow Broker took a deep breath and a blue glow surrounded her as she reached out with her biotics, wrenching the metal off of its hinges and tossing the doors aside. The response was immediate and noisy as a blistering hail of fire from a pair of turrets ripped apart the corridor wall. When the burst ended, Garrus peeked out into the previous line of fire, activating an overload pulse that disrupted the turret's shields and Shepard followed up, rolling in a grenade that blew apart the gun batteries along with the Cerberus engineer tending to them.
The commander started to move back behind the doorway but a burst of rifle fire caught her in her shields and from behind one of the metal presses, she could see the rising form of her clone, bare-headed and holding an assault rifle.
"Commander Shepard." The woman's voice carried nothing but cold mockery. "So good of you to come here. I was sorry I had to leave things unfinished between us last time. Still, I did have the look on your little friend's face as I gutted her to tide me over."
"She'll live." Shepard rolled forward, taking shelter behind a workbench as she started to make her way towards the clone. "You won't."
Liara followed her bondmate into the mouth of hell. As the team entered the machine shop, Cerberus troops emerged from a half-dozen hiding places, spraying the entrance with gunfire. The asari threw up her strongest barrier and Miranda joined her. The human wasn't as strong as Liara, but she was skilled enough and though the Shadow Broker's head was throbbing with the exertion, their defenses held long enough for her and the rest of the team to make it behind a series of work benches.
The cover provided little respite. From both sides, Cerberus forces were moving to flank them and Shepard had her hands full with her clone. Liara couldn't focus on her lover just then though, not with the Dragoon leaping out at her. She rolled out of the way of the armored warrior, narrowly avoiding his charged whips as they crashed into the stone floor of the workshop.
Rolling back to her feet, Liara hurled a warp at the Dragoon, putting a crack in his armor and staggering him backwards a couple of steps. She pressed her attack with her submachine gun and the enemy fell, but even as he did, the asari cried out as a spike of pain ripped through her shoulder. Two assault troopers were firing on her and she grabbed one of them in a biotic hold and crushed him against a rack of half-finished guns even as a round from Garrus took care of the other one.
Taking a moment to catch her breath, Liara looked around the dimly lit room, trying to assess their situation. Garrus was off to her right, his armor dented, but Miranda was nowhere to be seen. Liara wasn't thinking about that just then though, her eyes instead drawn to Shepard and her clone. She'd never seen two people move that fast. The two redheaded soldiers were exchanging shots as they ducked and weaved amid the machinery at the back of the large room, their movements such a blur that Liara could barely keep track of which Shepard was hers.
Her eyes were snapped off of the mesmerizing display an instant later. Without warning, Garrus fell, the tell-tell red light on his chest plate indicating his attacker. Refocusing, Liara caught the Nemesis who shot him in a stasis field, but before she could finish off the sniper, she glimpsed the distinctive shimmer of a Phantom tumbling towards her. She swiveled rapidly, but she wasn't fast enough. The ninja's blade lashed out and though Liara fell away from it as best she could, it caught her across the leg, penetrating her barriers and slicing through her pants, leaving a trail of blue blood in its wake.
Ignoring the burning in her leg, the asari fell to the ground, rolling to the left just ahead of the sword impacting against the ground. Liara sprayed a burst at the Phantom, and the submachine gun shots drove her backwards but didn't put her down. The Shadow Broker sprang back to her feet, but even as she did, the ninja was firing a burst of energy at Liara. Too slow to dodge it, she was thrown back to the hard floor as what was left of her barriers dissolved in a bright pain. The asari tried to get up once again, but was too late. The Phantom was almost on her again, its sword aimed at her head. She gritted her teeth, trying to reestablish her defenses, but she doubted they would be enough against the lethal strike.
The blow never fell. Just before the sword reached Liara, the Phantom's body jerked repeatedly and staggered, the ninja's slim form punctured in a dozen places. The indoctrinated biotic toppled to the ground and standing behind her, bleeding from multiple wounds but still holding her glowing Harrier, was Miranda.
Sorry to leave you mid-battle but I thought it was a good stopping point and it's been long enough since I updated this story that I wanted to get the chapter up. Next time, Shepard vs. Shepard, and more. Let me know what you think about Kelly's reappearance and Miranda's save and thanks as always for reading.