With the Citadel out of commission, that meant Huerta Memorial was out of commission as well until measures could be taken to recoup what had been lost when Cerberus had taken over the station. Unfortunately, this included all of Thane's medical records, which had been deleted when Cerberus had repurposed the servers to better fit their use, erasing extraneous information files they had deemed unimportant to their cause and locking out everyone who had been using the servers for anything else in the process. It had been a hard blow, but, as Thane kept reminding Shepard, not a crushing one. His eidetic memory, while only available in short flashes, had managed to retain nearly all of the information he had been given on the state of his condition during his stay at Huerta Memorial. And so, working together with Chakwas, they had managed to put together a comprehensive profile of his medical needs, which Shepard had then brought to Liara in the hopes that she might be able to use her resources to find another medical centre somewhere in the galaxy that would be able to provide the services that Thane required.
"I'm still looking for the first thing you asked me for," Liara had informed her when Shepard handed over the list of requirements, frowning faintly as she looked it over. "This is going to take some time. As good as my resources are, both of these things are highly time-sensitive, and I'm afraid I can't do both in the short period before they become dire—"
"Do this one first," Shepard told her, tapping the digipad she had given her.
"Are you sure?" Liara asked, bringing the digipad anxiously to her chest to look up at Shepard again. "This request is honestly a long shot. Organ replacement is not only a difficult procedure to find a suitable doctor for, but drell so rarely die with their lungs still intact and not ravaged by Kepral's that their organs are nearly impossible to come by—"
"Do this one first," Shepard insisted, nodding firmly as she tucked her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. "Mine can wait."
Liara's frown deepened. "How far along do you intend to carry this before you plan to get rid of it?" she asked, barely hiding the obvious note of worried disapproval in her voice.
Shepard faltered, taken aback by the harsh question, unsure how Liara expected her to answer. Instead, she reached out, tapping the digipad in Liara's hands again. "This one is more important," she told her, unwavering in her decision. "Do this one first."
Liara sighed, realizing she was not going to get anywhere with this conversation, before looking down at the digipad in her hands again and reading the list once more. "I'll do what I can," she promised. "Just know that I don't agree with what you're doing. There are better ways to go about this, you know."
"Probably," Shepard had agreed, noncommittal. And that had been the end of the conversation.
Once back in her quarters, Shepard had somehow managed to zip her undersuit up by herself, using the trick Liara had taught her about sucking in before zipping up. It had still been a bit of a struggle to get the zipper past the small of her back, and as she turned away from her armour closet, she brought her finger to her mouth, sucking on the sore, pink skin where the zipper had dug into the flesh of her finger as she struggled to zip her suit up. Crossing her quarters back towards her desk, Shepard wiped her now-wet finger off on her stiff undersuit before pulling up her desk display and accessing her e-mail.
She had received what had appeared to be a suspiciously innocuous message from Aria T'Loak only a few days earlier, requesting she meet with her back on the Citadel, and, as could have been expected, the meeting had turned out to be less than uneventful. It seemed Aria was intent on taking back Omega, and for that, she needed Shepard's help. Shepard had accepted the mission warily, and was less than surprised when Aria had uploaded a map-like program onto Shepard's omni-tool and then had stopped giving her any more information after that, except to tell her that she would fill Shepard in more once they were actually on Omega. She had also insisted that Shepard not tell anyone else about the mission, for fear that if too many people knew about it, the undertaking might be over before it even had a chance to begin.
Opening the original e-mail from Aria, Shepard read it over again, hoping that she might be able to find some clue she had missed, something, anything to let her know that Aria had at least some semblance of a plan, but, as she had expected, there was nothing of the sort to be found. Closing the screen display, she stood straight again, letting out a grunt of discomfort as her back gave a twinge of protest, before letting out a tired sigh and looking up at the lovingly-arranged display of model ships in the window of her desk. She had never really considered what would happen to the ships once she was no longer in command of the Normandy, once her career came to an end and the ship was passed on to a new commanding officer. It had never really occurred to her before that she would not always be Commander of the Normandy, that there was the very real possibility that she would die facing the Reapers, or, even if she did survive this war with the Reapers, she would not make it to her retirement from the service.
Frowning, Shepard crossed her arms, staring intently at the lines of model ships as if she might find the answer to her impasse written somewhere among them. Even if she did make it to her retirement, she had no idea what she intended to do after that. Everything past the idea of being head of the Normandy and fighting the Reapers was a blank slate, nothing more than white noise at the far back of her mind. As she thought, she found herself running her hand distractedly over the gentle curve of her stomach, her thumb tapping a half-attentive, anxious beat against the thick, stiff material of her undersuit.
"What if I kept you after all?" she mused, barely above a distracted murmur. Then, catching herself, she quickly dropped her hand away from her stomach, letting it fall back to her side in a self-scolding fist. Don't humanize it, she reminded herself. Humanizing it would only make it harder to get rid of in the long run. Right now her feelings on the thing inside of her were parasitic at best, but she knew that if she started accidentally identifying with it, or worse, sympathising with it, she might never be able to go through with her plan to get rid of it when it came down to the final call. Crossing her quarters back to her armour locker, Shepard pulled out the abdominal guard, pressing it flat around her middle and yanking the straps as tight as possible, before pressing down on the comm button beside her locker, perhaps a bit harder than necessary, and waiting for the telltale noise of Joker picking up the connection on the other end.
"Joker?" she told him. "I need you to take me to Omega. And tell Cortez to get the Kodiak ready for a drop-off when we get there. I'm going on this one alone." She paused, considering, before rethinking her decision and pressing the comm button again. "Actually, tell Zaeed to meet me down there, if you would," she informed him. "He knows Omega as well as anyone, and it wouldn't hurt to have another pair of eyes."
"You got it, Commander," Joker answered, affirmative, before hanging up the comm on his end and leaving her alone once more.
The omni-tool map Aria had provided Shepard with directed that she and her team be dropped off at a small, back-alley docking port at what Aria described to be the "back" of Omega. While Shepard could not help but wonder what constituted one side or the other of an effectively round station as the 'back', it still did not take very long for Cortez to find the docking port Aria had been talking about. On the way down to the station's surface, Shepard and Cortez had designated an emergency signal that could be sent from her omni-tool to the Kodiak's controls should she need immediate pickup, and so, secure in the idea that he would come to get her if anything were to go too terribly wrong, Shepard had seen the pilot off with a quick salute of thanks. Then, turning towards the open area, she had pulled her weapon from its maglock, readying herself to come under fire from Cerberus forces.
The dock Aria had directed them to was surprisingly poorly-guarded, which Shepard guessed was probably the reason she had chosen it. Looking around, she spotted a series of locked, reinforced silver boxes stacked up at the edge of the docking area, and what looked like a splatter of fresh, bright orange blood on one of the walls. Since their takeover, Cerberus had apparently allowed the drug trade on Omega to continue, and, as this was one of the major ports for loading and dropping off of product, it seemed they had more or less left it alone for the street gangs to monitor. It was not an entirely ineffective strategy, Shepard figured – gangs involved in the red sand trade disliked uninvited strangers on their turf just as much as Cerberus did, if not more. Sending out troopers to guard the area from unwanted guests when gang members would do just as good a job of keeping people out of Omega, if not better, was more or less pointless.
Hearing a sound coming from behind a stack of boxes, Shepard turned quickly, aiming her weapon, ready to fire at the first sign of movement. "Show yourself!" she insisted, taking a cautious step forward, her weapon trained on the edge of the stack of boxes.
"Calm down, Commander," Aria answered, her voice drawling as she moved out from behind the boxes, unfazed by the weapons still trained on her. "I was just taking care of a little bit of business before you got here." Looking down at her uniform, she frowned, flicking at a spatter of bright-orange blood that matched the blood strewn across the docking bay wall. "Damn," she muttered, trying to brush it off, to no avail. "That's gonna be a bitch to get out." Then, sighing tiredly, she looked up at Shepard again, beckoning for her to come over behind the stack of boxes. "Come on," she said. "Come help me with this. His buddies are gonna be along before too long and I don't want them seeing him and raising the alarm."
Frowning, a little confused, Shepard stashed her weapon again, following Aria over to the stack of boxes, Zaeed following closely behind her. When she reached the boxes, she peered behind them and was surprised to see Aria attempting to drag into cover the bloody corpse of what appeared to be a particularly large krogan mercenary. "Come help me drag this," Aria grunted, bracing herself against her back foot. Shepard and Zaeed rushed over, one taking each opposite arm from Aria's grasp, and they gave a heave, pulling the krogan several inches across the ground. Aria sniffed, wiping the sweat from her upper lip with the back of her wrist as she stepped around the edge of the corpse, overseeing the operation instead.
Before long, Shepard and Zaeed had managed to drag the krogan into the corner of the stack of boxes, and Aria had pulled a folded tarp from where it sat on top of another stack of boxes and draped it over the mercenary, rather unceremoniously. His bulky form could still be made out underneath the makeshift covering, but Shepard figured it would at least buy them a little bit of time until some drug runner's curiosity got the better of him and he made the unfortunate discovery. Flicking at the speck of blood on her jacket half-interestedly again, Aria huffed, still vexed at the slip-up, before turning her attention back to Shepard and Zaeed, all business once more. "I lost nearly all my contacts here when Cerberus took over," she told them, not bothering to thank them for the help they had given. "Most of them were either forced to evacuate, or killed when they refused. Cerberus are a bunch of bullies and cowards."
She paused, and then snorted, giving Shepard a quick once-over. "Of course, I don't have to tell you that," she added, frankly. "You know firsthand what kind of vermin we're dealing with here. Take no prisoners, shoot first ask questions later. Under any other circumstances, I'd be all for that sort of behaviour, but this is Omega we're talking about. My home. Nobody terrorizes Omega and gets away with it."
"Bit of a pisshole to call home," Zaeed commented, looking around at the bleak, blood-splattered dock.
"Yes, but it's my pisshole," Aria returned, turning to look at him, irritated. "And I'm not about to lose it to a group of underhanded, xenophobic Alliance rejects."
"So what's the plan?" Shepard asked, interjecting before the two could argue any further. It seemed to work, as Aria instantly turned her attention away from Zaeed and back towards Shepard.
"Kick them out," she answered, plainly. "I've amassed a fleet of merc ships. They're going to punch through enemy lines and invade. That should provide enough of a distraction to keep Cerberus from paying any attention to a few people on the ground." Snapping her fingers a few times, she indicated towards Shepard's omni-tool hand, making a hurrying, circular motion, and when Shepard pulled it up, she took hold of her wrist, pulling the screen towards her and starting to type into it. "After they're on Omega I expect a full-on ground war," she said, pulling up a program Shepard did not recognize on the screen of the omni-tool. A loading bar appeared, speeding quickly to completion, before a circular waiting symbol started spinning on the screen. "That's why I called you, Shepard. I know I can trust you to do good work when the heat is on. I only accept the best, as you know."
"Right," Shepard agreed, trying not to sound too confused by whatever Aria was doing on her omni-tool. The spinning symbol soon disappeared, replaced instead by what appeared to be a neatly-comprised databank. Aria clicked her tongue pensively as she perused the list of cryptically-named files, before finally seeming to find the one she was looking for and selecting it from the list. With a beep, a personnel file pulled up on the screen, showing a photograph of a grizzled-looking, dark-haired man. "The leader of the Cerberus occupation is General Oleg Petrovsky," she said, letting go of Shepard's wrist to allow her to look at the man in question. "Or so they'd have us believe."
"You don't think he's really in charge?" Shepard asked, frowning down at the picture of the man on her screen.
"Oh, he's the one who ousted me, definitely," Aria answered, propping her hands disapprovingly on her hips. "Tricky, two-faced bastard. He's the Illusive Man's Golden Boy, or so they'd have us believe. A brilliant military strategist…" She scoffed, shaking her head. "The man's a stooge," she said. "I've worked with him before. I know what his quality of work is. And I doubt he was fully responsible for this, if at all. This was far too underhanded and quiet an undertaking for a man to have been in charge. I think he's a patsy. A sacrificial target for whoever's actually in command of the whole operation."
"Who do you think is actually in command?" Shepard asked, collapsing the program to look up at Aria again.
"I don't know," Aria admitted, shrugging. "But whoever it is, I want them dead."
"Fair enough," Shepard answered, folding her arms, interested. "So what's your intel on the occupation?"
"Cerberus' army is massive, and they've got Omega locked tight," Aria told her, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was attempting to creep up on them while they were busy talking. "The information stops there."
"So, you're winging it?" Shepard asked, raising a brow, not entirely comforted by Aria's uninformed bravado.
"Not at all," Aria answered, self-assured. "There are secrets on Omega only I know. Secrets that will provide us a foothold. I can tell you this, though: Cerberus' invasion was precise and ruthless. They'll stop at nothing to win."
"Sounds familiar," Shepard commented, pointedly.
At this, Aria looked up, her blue eyes flashing. "Shepard, I know my reputation," she informed her, frankly. "I know I'm hated. I ruled Omega with an iron fist. But the people were free. Their lives were theirs. I preserved that, but the Illusive Man took all that away and now he is going to pay." Taking a deep breath then, she calmed herself, holding up her hands to show she meant no harm. "When Omega is mine again, I'll give you everything," she told Shepard, her hands returning to rest on her hips again. "I've got ships, mercs, eezo… all yours for the war."
Shepard frowned, not entirely at ease with Aria's promise. "What's the catch?" she asked, wary.
"No catch," Aria assured her, shaking her head. "You just have to help me take down the ones in charge of this takeover. It's as simple as that. You help me and I help you… you get support for your war and I get Omega back."
"Fair enough," Shepard agreed, uncrossing her arms to let them fall back to her sides again. "So… what's the plan?"
"To kill the snake, you need to cut off the head," Aria answered, her tattooed brow knitting together in a determined frown. "We can't take on the entirety of Cerberus on our own… as tempted as I am to try. We need to avoid their goons for the most part until we can get some backup from my people, but we should still try to make our way to the main base of operation. Once we're at the base we just need to figure out a way in, then we kill the bastard in charge, whoever it is." She paused, thoughtful, before scoffing and looking down at the ground, nonplussed. "And if it ends up being Oleg after all, fine," she added. "Either way, that should send the rest of the dickless neophytes hanging around this station running off scared back to their precious Illusive Man."
"It's a solid plan," Shepard told her, before making a face. "Just, maybe a little light on details."
"Details aren't important," Aria returned, waving her off. "Why do you think I called you, instead of literally anybody else I could have called? You've got a reputation, Commander. Don't start going all law-abiding citizen on me now."
"I'm not, I'm just…" Shepard frowned, realizing that arguing was going to get her nowhere, before shrugging and reaching a hand back over her shoulder to rest it on the butt of her gun. "I'm not," she repeated, assuring.
"Good," Aria answered. "Now that that's out of the way…" Pulling her weapon from the holster secured at her hip, she popped the heat sink into place, causing the weapon to whine at the ready. "Let's get this party started," she said.
Even the best-laid plans had ways of going awry. With this in mind, it hardly came as a surprise to Shepard that Aria's plan, with little to no beginning groundwork apart from 'go in, shoot, and hope for the best', had more or less fallen apart in next to no time flat. Within minutes it became apparent that the Cerberus troopers were not going to be as easy to sneak past as they had hoped, and Shepard found herself struggling to keep her weapon from burning a hole through her reinforced gloves as she switched from one heat sink to another, barely giving the weapon time to cool down before she started firing again. Still, as unpolished as the plan had been at the start, Aria's get there or get killed course of action seemed to be working. It was only once they had managed to get past the first large, open area and Shepard and Zaeed had taken cover behind what appeared to be a large, domed electrical hub that Shepard suddenly realized that something was terribly wrong.
"Where's Aria?" Shepard hissed. Zaeed glanced over his shoulder, taking a quick look around the edge of the hub, before turning back to Shepard and shrugging, just as bewildered. Shepard sighed, frustrated, leaning her head back against the cool side of the hub. "Shit," she whispered, gritting her teeth. She guessed it should not have come as so much of a surprise – somewhere between the extremely aggressive nubuild mechs, the plasmalight forcefield, and the seemingly constant attacks by small pockets of hypervigilant Cerberus troopers, something was bound to have gone wrong. She had just hoped it would not be something like this.
"We can't stay here, Shepard," Zaeed reminded her. "We've got to keep moving forward."
"Right, you're right," Shepard agreed, grunting as she pushed herself upwards. "Let's get going. Help me up."
Zaeed grabbed her arm, yanking her unceremoniously the rest of the way to her feet, before turning and peering around the corner of the hub again, checking for any more Cerberus troopers. "Coast is clear," he told her, shortly, before skirting around the edge of the hub and out into the open, his weapon at the ready. Shepard followed behind him, covering his back as they walked, popping the spent heat sink from her gun and pulling a fresh sink from her pouch to replace it. Moving over to one of the fallen troopers, Zaeed rummaged around in the soldier's pack, coming back to Shepard with a handful of fresh sinks, which they split between them. Then, jerking her head towards a nearby alley opening nearby, Shepard led the way out of the open area and into the relative safety of the side alley.
"Bit weird having a ceiling here, isn't it?" Zaeed commented, looking up and making a face. "Especially in an alley. Doesn't seem right. You think Omega, you think open skies. No stars, though. Just buildings and smog."
"It also means no light," Shepard reminded him, twisting the knob on the top of her Marauder to turn on the built-in light. "Stay on your guard. Don't want anything jumping out of the shadows and surprisin—" But before the word could even finish leaving her mouth, something jumped into the beam of light, letting out an inhuman snarl and shriek and slapping the weapon out of her hands. "Zaeed!" Shepard panicked, watching the thin beam of light spin away across the floor, and Zaeed quickly raised his weapon, ready to fire. Unwilling to go down without a fight, Shepard clenched her fist, causing her omni-blade to flare into life, casting a bright, flame-orange glow across their unseen attacker. The vorcha hissed at her, a trickle of spittle spraying from between its long, needle-like teeth as its wide, milky eyes reflected the light of her blade, unblinking.
"You not Cerberus," he growled, puffing himself up to look bigger than he really was. "You intruder!"
"And you're a dead man if you try anything else funny like that," Zaeed growled in return, moving forward to shove his gun up against the vorcha's snub nose. "You think I'm fucking with you? Try it, ugly. Go ahead. Try to raise the alarm. You'll be dead before the first word of warning comes out of your filthy mouth."
"Zaeed," Shepard cautioned him, warningly. Still holding her omni-blade at the ready, she side-stepped warily across the alley, picking up her gun again and only letting the omni-blade blink out once she was proficiently armed. Using the light from her weapon, she scanned the passageway, and was less than surprised to see that there was not just one vorcha, but several, all huddled menacingly against the walls of the alley, watching her, their wide, buggish eyes intent, knowing they could see her just fine in the near-dark even if she could not really see them. "Don't let them get to you," Shepard told Zaeed, putting a hand on his arm but keeping her light trained on the vorcha. "It's not worth wasting the ammo on them. They're just full of hot air."
"Full of nothing!" the vorcha howled, snorting and baring his teeth again.
"Hey," Shepard warned, pointing her gun towards the first vorcha this time. "Don't make me regret pulling him off of you. He's not as nice as I am."
The vorcha hissed again, pulling up its shoulders and starting to take a step forward towards her, when suddenly he found himself whacked, hard, across the side of the head by another vorcha who until then had been standing a little bit away. The vorcha whimpered like a kicked dog, bringing up both hands to cover his now-ringing ear. "That hurt!" he snarled. "What you do that for? I no deserve that!"
"Quiet, Kryl!" the other vorcha snapped, taking another intimidating step towards the first, who whimpered again and cowered another few steps away. Then, turning instead to Shepard and Zaeed, the second vorcha considered the two of them for a moment, before indicating with both clawed hands towards Kryl, who was still clutching his stinging ear, looking like a child who had been wrongfully sent to sit in the corner. "Don't kill," the vorcha implored, its tone almost unnervingly even and civil. "Not picking fight. Just stupid. Don't kill for stupidity."
Shepard paused, taken aback, trying to figure out what about this vorcha seemed for some reason off to her. Then, suddenly, she realized what it was – while this vorcha wore the same sort of cross-strapped belted shoulder-guard as Kryl and any other number of vorcha they had encountered, this one made no effort to cover up what Shepard could now see were two lines of nipples running down her abdomen, four on each side. She guessed that censorship of the organic form did not work the same way with vorcha that it did for humans, as, other than that detail, it was nearly impossible to tell the male and female vorcha apart. The female vorcha was a bit trimmer and a bit shorter than the males they had encountered, but her clothes were the same, and her voice was almost exactly the same as well. The only thing that seemed truly different was that the female appeared to be at leastslightly more intelligent.
Before Shepard could say anything about it, the female vorcha began to approach her, walking in an odd, self-satisfied manner, seeming to almost waddle from foot to foot, her hands clutched conspiratorially in front of her. "You come to buy sand, yes?" the vorcha asked, closing one eye to give Shepard a quick once-over with the other. "That why you here? To buy sand?"
"Sand?" Shepard asked, still a bit dumbfounded by the whole situation. She had never been particularly comfortable around vorcha, but most of them knew to keep their distance from a stranger with a gun. This female, however, seemed not only fully at ease with her, but almost overeager to get right up in her business.
"Red sand," the female vorcha replied eagerly, clarifying. "Selling sand to get money to feed children. Good product. Excellent quality."
"You've got children?" Shepard asked, raising her brows, surprised.
"Six children," the vorcha replied, sucking in through her teeth. The other vorcha in the alleyway let out a low, grumbling snarl at this, some beginning to talk amongst themselves, though Shepard could not make out what they were saying. "All hungry. You come to buy sand?"
"I… no," Shepard answered, shaking her head. "I'm not here to buy sand. I don't—I don't do that. I'm sorry."
The female vorcha frowned, taking in a soft, hissing breath as she looked Shepard up and down again, slower and more deliberately this time. "Fine," she gurgled. "You no buy sand. But I no help you get past Cerberus." At this, she turned, starting to walk away from the two of them, but Shepard quickly held out a hand, stopping her in her tracks.
"Wait," she said. "You said something about getting past Cerberus? What do you know about Cerberus?"
The vorcha paused, considering her, before offering her another smug, needle-toothed grin. "You buy sand," she repeated, self-satisfied. "I tell you how to get past Cerberus."
"Fine," Shepard agreed, pulling up her omni-tool and accessing her banking information. "How much is it for the sand?"
The vorcha sucked her teeth again, thinking. Then, taking a breath, she answered, "Five—no. Ten thousand credits."
"Ten thousand credits?" Shepard repeated, shocked, dropping her hand back to her side and letting her omni-tool flicker out again. "That's ridiculous. You know what I could get with ten thousand credits?"
"Twenty model ships," Zaeed mused, pointedly. "Give or take a discount."
"You no want sand?" the vorcha returned, growling. "Fine. I go. You get past Cerberus on your own."
"No, wait," Shepard stopped her again. She sighed, frustrated, running a hand back through her hair, before letting it drop back to her side again. She knew the vorcha was shamelessly ripping her off on the value of the sand, but she also knew she was hardly in a place to argue prices. Pulling up her omni-tool again, she accessed her banking information, entering the amount to be transferred. Then, holding out her free hand for the vorcha's credit chit, she scanned it across the omni-tool sensor on the back of her first hand, watching as the amount flashed at the bottom of the projected screen and then vanished, her bank statement automatically updating to show the change in balance. Handing back the credit chit, Shepard collapsed her omni-tool, holding out her free hand expectantly towards the vorcha again. Zaeed frowned, looking down at her outstretched hand, and then up at her face, confused.
"You're not actually buying the stuff, are you?" he asked, sounding more than a little taken aback. "You're just paying for the information, yeah?"
"I'm paying premium for the information," Shepard answered, frankly, continuing to hold out her hand expectantly. "I might as well get the product I was promised."
The vorcha did not even seem fazed by her insistent decision, instead popping open the satchel at her hip, digging around in the stiff leather bag for a moment, and pulling out what appeared to be a long, flat paper box. The edges were scuffed and the top appeared to have been pushed in at some point, but otherwise the box seemed to be more or less intact. "Everything you need in there," the vorcha informed her, carefully placing the slightly weather-beaten box in her outstretched hand. "Sand come carefully packaged. Keep contaminants out and product in." Retrieving her hand, Shepard opened the lid of the box, peering curiously inside. Inside the box, as the vorcha had told her, was what appeared to be a small, paper-wrapped and heat-sealed packet, filled with something oddly heavy that made a soft swishing noise when she lifted it. Along with the packet, the box contained a slim silver razor and what looked like a thinner variation on a human drinking straw.
Putting the lid back on the box, Shepard tucked it into the ammo satchel at her hip, instead turning her attention once more towards the vorcha, who was watching her with an unnerving sort of intensity. "Now you said you'd help me get past Cerberus," she reminded her, propping her hands impatiently on her hips. The vorcha nodded, still smiling that wide, unnerving smile of hers, before pointing upward towards the ceiling of the alleyway and making an indicative, circular finger motion.
"Cerberus no monitor ventilation systems," she told Shepard, seeming extremely pleased with her knowledge. "They think, too small to matter. No one with dignity use them. I say, dignity overrated." Then, beckoning for Shepard to follow her, she began to waddle towards a far corner of the alleyway, where a rickety-looking stack of shipping boxes had been shoved unceremoniously up against the wall.
"Come," she told her. "Come with me. I show you way in."
Approaching the ramshackle stack of boxes, the vorcha began to climb over them, making her way to the top of the pile. When she reached the top box, she reached up and began unscrewing two loose, bulky bolts that held a large, square vent in place. Shepard moved over to the stack of boxes, lifting a leg to start to climb up after the vorcha, but found that she could not bend over far enough to pull herself up. The vigilant tightness of her abdominal guard had secured the piece so rigidly against her middle that it made it nearly impossible for her to bend at the waist. Glancing back towards Zaeed, she waved him over, embarrassed, before making a quick, subtle motion upwards. "Help me up," she told him, her voice low. "I can't get up. Give me a lift."
"It's just a bitty box," Zaeed told her, frowning a bit. "What, one little box too much for the fearless Commander Shepard?"
"I'm… I can't… my suit is too tight," Shepard hissed, trying hard to fight back a hot, red blush. "I was in a hurry putting it on, and I accidentally… pulled the thing too rigid… just help me up, will you? And don't you dare mention this to anyone."
"All of my many friends," Zaeed muttered, reassuringly. Grabbing Shepard's elbow with one hand, he braced his other hand under her backside, giving her a starting push. With the first box scaled, Shepard found the rest to be much easier to climb, and before long, she had made her way to the top of the stack as well. The female vorcha peered down at her out of the opening, and when she saw that she was almost to the top, she offered a clawed hand to help her up into the vent shaft, which Shepard gladly accepted. With a hefty grunt, Shepard managed to pull herself up into the vent across from the vorcha, who sat staring at her for a moment, allowing her to catch her breath.
The vent was surprisingly roomy, wide enough for two slim people without armour to fit in the breadth shoulder-to-shoulder, and high enough that two normal-sized people like herself and the vorcha could sit upright and not worry about hitting their heads on the ceiling. Once Shepard had recovered from her climb, the vorcha leaned forward a bit, indicating herself with both gnarled hands. "My name Shreek," she told Shepard, helpfully.
Shepard frowned, wetting her lips as she took another deep breath, absentmindedly brushing her flyaway bangs out of her eyes. "I'm sorry, are you saying Shriek?" she asked, trying not to sound too taken aback by the vorcha's unusual title.
"Shreek," the vorcha corrected. "Shreek, not Shriek. One a noise. One my name. Shreek."
"Shreek," Shepard repeated, nodding, deciding not to say anything about how, despite the vorcha's clarification, the two still sounded exactly the same to her. "Got it. But, Shreek, now that we're here, I have to ask… why are you helping me get past Cerberus? What do you have to gain from it?"
Shreek paused, fidgeting, as if trying to decide how much to say. The light coming upward from the opening in the ventilation shaft threw her mangled features into oddly gentle detail as she looked downward, letting out a low, quiet gurgle. "Used to have… eight children," she finally answered, tellingly. "Enemy of Cerberus a friend of mine."
"I'm… I'm sorry," Shepard told her, unsure of what else there was to say.
"It okay," Shreek replied, shrugging her armoured shoulders. "They good deaths. Died like soldiers. Very brave."
Nodding awkwardly in agreement to her statement, Shepard looked down through the opening in the shaft, to where Zaeed still stood in the alleyway, his gun poised awkwardly at rest against his shoulder. Leaning down as far as she could manage, Shepard held out a hand through the opening, waving it to get his attention. "Zaeed!" she called, trying not to attract too much attention past the merc's. "Come on up. It's not that far a climb. It's easy once you get past the first box or so."
Zaeed considered the offer, staring first at her hand, then at the opening, and then towards the length of the vent. Then, shaking his head, he holstered his hefty rifle in the maglock at his back. "There's no bloody way I'm gonna fit up in there," he grunted, frowning as he propped his tattooed hands on his armoured hips. "Not without banging about like a goddamn moron and alerting every Cerberus trooper from here to the Terminus."
Shepard gave a huff of breath, realizing that he was right, and disconcertedly retrieved her hand before turning to look back at Shreek, who was watching the two of them expectantly. "Any suggestions?" she asked.
Shreek sucked in through her sharp teeth, letting out a soft, gurgling noise as she thought. Then, "Take off clothes," she suggested.
"Take off your clothes," Shepard repeated, turning to look back at Zaeed.
"I'm not taking off my clothes," Zaeed insisted, frowning.
"He says he's not doing it," Shepard relayed back. Shreek made a face, before sighing, disappointed.
"Fine," she said, shortly. "Was worth a try. Tell him he be fine. Just take off knee guards. Vent big and thick. Won't make too much noise."
Shepard faltered, seriously considering asking Shreek if she had really just tried to get Zaeed to strip just to see him do it, but then, deciding against it, Shepard instead turned back towards Zaeed, peering down at him through the opening in the vent shaft. "She says you'll be fine if you just take off your knee-guards," she told him. Then, reaching down her hand again, she offered him a reassuring smirk. "Coming up?" she asked, expectantly.
The longer they crawled through the ventilation shaft, the smaller it seemed to become. Though Shreek seemed to know where she was going, Shepard could not help but feel that it was taking them an unbearably long amount of time to get there. Shaking her now-sweaty bangs out of her eyes, Shepard craned her neck, trying to see past Shreek, and frowned when she could only see what looked to be a long, seemingly endless stretch of vent awaiting them up ahead. "Where are we going, Shreek?" she asked, trying not to sound too impatient but feeling her nerves starting to wear thin. She could feel herself sweating through her undersuit, making each forward motion more excruciating than the last.
"Old clinic," Shreek answered, matter-of-factly. "Well armed. Mechs keep Cerberus at bay for time being. Resistance group taking shelter there. Regrouping. Planning out course of action. Waiting for opportune moment to strike."
"And when is that, exactly?" Shepard asked.
"Not yet," Shreek answered her question, frankly. "But, with luck… soon." Then, turning her head to look back at Shepard over her shoulder, she offered the Commander another wide, toothy grin. "You get to meet my children!" she told her, sounding more enthusiastic now. "They part of resistance. Strapping boys! Stupid, too. But good boys. Youngest my only girl. Also fighting."
"All of your children are part of the resistance?" Shepard asked, frowning, using the momentary pause in movement to catch her breath a bit. "Aren't you afraid they'll be killed?"
At this, Shreek shrugged. "Vorcha killed all the time," she answered frankly, her passive tone almost unsettling. "Might as well die hero." Turning back, Shreek began to crawl again, and Shepard crawled after her, still not completely satisfied with her story.
"Do you have a mate, Shreek?" Shepard asked, morbidly curious. "Someone to help you take care of your children?"
"Several," Shreek told her, unfazed, continuing to crawl through the vent in front of her. "Would get bored otherwise. Though, they no help with brood. Men stupid. Not even know how to hold good conversation." Then, glancing over her shoulder again, she grinned, amused. "Why you ask?" she questioned, giving a short, sharp bark of a laugh. "You want one?"
"No, no," Shepard answered, shaking her head and giving a forced chuckle in return. "I'm good, thanks."
"Suit yourself," Shreek replied, turning back around and continuing to crawl again. "Vorcha lifespan twenty years. Twenty-two if you lucky. Very lucky. Ask me, not worth being tied down to someone boring when life so short. Plus, having offspring with one mate not necessarily mean you stuck with him. For vorcha, pregnancy last less than four months. Very short. If mate no good, can move on quickly, or just get another." Reaching an intersection of channels, she stopped, thoughtful, before turning and continuing down a shaft leading to the right. "Females can have offspring five years old until death," she went on, factually. "Multiple mates common. Multiple children common, too. Sometimes multiples at once. In fact, high rate of multiple births among vorcha."
At this, she glanced back towards Shepard over her shoulder. "You like twins?" she asked. "Triplets?"
"I wouldn't want to have them, myself," Shepard answered, truthfully. "But I like them, sure. Why?"
"My eldest a triplet," Shreek answered, pragmatic, turning back to face the upcoming vent corridor again. "Now he only one of his litter left. Next two were twins. And the next two. Last one single birth. Lucky girl. Spoiled rotten." Suddenly, she stopped, holding out a hand behind her to indicate for Shepard to stop as well. "Quiet!" she hissed. "You hear that?" Crouching low to the floor of the air vent, Shreek pressed her pointed ear to the cold metal, letting out a low, soft hiss as she listened to whatever it was she had heard below. Shepard bit her lip, holding her breath as she waited for Shreek to tell her what was going on below the vent, until finally, the vorcha lifted her head again, letting out a long, low, frustrated gurgling noise.
"Cerberus," she hissed. "Small unit. Two voices, maybe three. They no problem. We keep going."
"How much longer 'til we get to the place you're taking us?" Zaeed asked, losing patience. "I'm sweating my goddamn balls off back here."
"Would not be so hot if you took off clothes," Shreek told him, eliciting only an irked frown from Zaeed.
Stopping in her crawling, Shepard sat back against her heels, allowing Shreek to keep moving up ahead. Then, turning and looking back at Zaeed, she offered him an insufferably wry, knowing smirk. "I think Shreek is sweet on you, Zaeed," she teased him, careful to keep her voice low so as not to be overheard by their vorcha guide.
Zaeed scoffed, unimpressed, leaning an elbow against the side of the vent as he came to a stop behind her. "Shepard, I may be an old man, but I can still bloody well kill you," he warned her, badgered, wiping a thin film of sweat from his brow.
"But what about Zed?" Shepard whispered back, causing Zaeed to give a loud snort of laughter, his dour mood lifting instantly.
"We here!" Shreek called, her voice echoing back to them from the far end of the shaft. Looking up, Shepard gave a sigh of relief before starting towards the end of the vent where Shreek now sat. Reaching the designated exit point, she watched as Shreek banged three times, loudly, on the metal grill. Within seconds, the screws holding the grill in place had come undone, and the grill opened to reveal a large, open room below. Lowering herself down through the opening, Shreek dropped heavily to the floor, before looking back up towards the vent opening and beckoning for Shepard and Zaeed to follow suit. "Come!" she called. "It safe! Come down, meet resistance!"
"Ladies first," Zaeed remarked, jerking his chin pointedly towards the opening.
Bracing herself against the sides of the opening, Shepard cautiously lowered herself down into the room, grunting softly as she hit the ground, thankful that her boots had absorbed most of the shock of her landing. Zaeed was quick to follow, his landing much louder than hers, and no sooner had they regained their footing than he began to attach his knee-guards again, grumbling to himself about what a bloody righteous disadvantage it was that he had had to take them off in the first place. "Cerberus troopers can kiss my ass," he muttered, locking the second knee-guard back into place. "Sneaking by like a scared dog, making me strip down like this… look at this, I'm basically naked." Shaking his head, he slapped each knee-guard with the brunt of his palm, making sure they were locked securely in place, before letting out another dissatisfied grunt.
"Goddamned shameful," he muttered. "Undignified."
"You'll live," Shepard teased him again, causing him to give another grunt of disapproval.
"Commander Shepard."
Shepard looked up quickly, surprised at having been addressed by name, and found herself facing a room of rag-tag alien soldiers, with a familiar, unmarked turian at the head of the group. The turian took a step forward towards her, stashing his weapon in the maglock at his back, before offering her a familiar, greeting jerk of his chin, his mandibles giving a reassured twitch. "It's good to see a familiar face," he told her. "With Cerberus chasing most of our allies off-station, those are getting harder and harder to come by."
"Captain Gavorn," Shepard returned, surprised, giving him her full, undivided attention. "I didn't expect to find you here. Why didn't you leave when Cerberus first invaded?"
"Stubbornness," Gavorn answered, honestly. "Foolhardy stubbornness. And pride. Daniel and I thought we'd be able to fight them off if they tried to come after us." He fell silent, his mandibles twitching uncomfortably as his yellow gaze dropped tellingly to a low spot on the far wall. "They, uh… they didn't like that," he told her, clearing his throat, his voice wavering. "They came and they… shot Daniel in the head. Execution style. Told me to beat it or I'd be next." Lifting his eyes to her face again, he swallowed back a lump in his throat, his mandibles giving another short quiver. "But I'm still here," he told her. "I didn't leave. And now we're fighting back. All of us."
Shepard paused, not entirely sure how to respond to this information. Finally, she asked, "Daniel was your…?"
"My boyfriend," Gavorn clarified, lifting his chin. "My fiancée… technically."
"I'm… I'm sorry to hear that," Shepard told him, delicately, unsure what else there was to say.
"It's not your fault, Commander," Gavorn assured her, shrugging. "To be honest, I wasn't expecting someone of your calibre to take an interest in our cause at all. Omega isn't exactly a huge priority, as far as the grand scheme of the galaxy goes. Some people might take us for a lost cause, even before Cerberus came knocking at our door."
"Then they'd be right," another member of the resistance answered, taking a step forward to stand beside Gavorn. This one was also a turian, but her slim figure and higher-pitched voice made it obvious that she was a female, even if Shepard could not see the face hidden under her heavy black hood. "Omega is a pisshole. We've left it unattended for too long and the rot has permeated through every orifice. If Cerberus hadn't annexed us, somebody else likely would have. Our resources were all wasted fighting one another. We didn't stand a chance when somebody else came looking to invade."
"Commander, this is Nyreen Kandros," Gavorn told Shepard, ignoring the female turian's comment as he indicated towards her with one half-attentive hand. "I assume you two haven't already been acquainted."
"We haven't met, no," Shepard agreed, turning her attention to Nyreen, who was already staring at her intently with her slitted yellow-green eyes.
"Oh, no, we haven't," Nyreen told her, giving her a wry once-over. "But I know all about you. Aria's told me all about the famous Commander Shepard."
"You know Aria?" Shepard asked, raising her brows, interested.
Nyreen paused, thoughtful, before a catty, sardonic grin curled the edges of her mouth tellingly upward. "I might," she answered, drolly.
"So wait," Shepard said, confused. "Are you two…" She faltered, unsure of how to word her question, before making a short, indicative motion connecting Nyreen and Gavorn. "…A thing?" she asked, awkwardly. Gavorn and Nyreen looked surprised, exchanging glances, before Gavorn quickly shook his head.
"Just a team of convenience, Commander," he informed her. "Nothing more. Anyway, I'm pretty sure she's not even into men to begin with."
"Only you, Gavorn," Nyreen joked, causing Gavorn to give a short, uncomfortable laugh.
"Sorry," Shepard apologized, holding up her hands again. "Didn't mean to… y'know, offend."
"Don't worry, Commander," Nyreen answered, looking up at her with a puckish smirk. "I'll tell you if you're being offensive."
"She will, too," Gavorn put in, jerking his head in Nyreen's direction. "She's been doing it to my men all day."
"Well, if your men weren't offensive all the time, they wouldn't need correcting," Nyreen returned, the forced good humour in her voice starting to slowly devolve into venom. "Cause and effect, Gavorn."
"Anyway, Nyreen's been a big name in the underworld here on Omega these past few years," Gavorn went on, returning to the original line of conversation. "Maybe you've heard of the Talons? They were pretty huge around the time period just before the Reaper invasion began."
"Can't say I have, sorry," Shepard answered, truthfully. "But, then again, I was out of commission for about six months leading up to the invasion, so I'm sure I missed a lot."
"I'll say," Nyreen agreed, pointedly.
"Well, that was her major group," Gavorn said, sighing. "I think she was also turian military at one point. Other than that, she ran a vigilante unit or two… went underground for a little bit during the whole Archangel fiasco, but her groups were pretty active for a while after he disappeared."
"Just doing some standard cleaning up," Nyreen answered, shrugging, turning her attention back to Gavorn. "Spirits know your team needed the help. And stop referring to me in the past tense. 'Been' a big name, 'ran' a vigilante group… you'd think I'd died or something." Smirking, she hiked her weapon up against her hip, clicking the cool, full heat sink into place, causing the weapon to whine at the ready. "Not dead yet," she added, assuredly.
Gavorn raised his plated brows, clearing his throat at having been corrected, before turning his attention back to Shepard again, only momentarily fazed. "Clearly, not my first choice in a partner," he told her, trying to make light of the situation. "But beggars, choosers… when Cerberus is knocking at your door you can't exactly stand to be picky. Gotta take whatever help you can get."
"Tell me about it," muttered Nyreen, barely bothering to keep her voice down.
"I could use some help, actually," Shepard commented, capitalizing on the turn of conversation, causing both Gavorn and Nyreen to look at her, attentively. "I actually came here with Aria, but we got separated somehow. I was hoping you could help me find her, or help me get to Cerberus' main base of operations. If nothing else I think we'd be sure to meet up with her there."
"Aria?" Nyreen asked, giving a darkly amused huff of breath at the request. "If I know Aria, she's probably already headed into the tunnels. Those were her big secret. Used them anytime things got too hot to handle. Saved her life more than a couple times… mine, too." Pushing back her hood, Nyreen frowned, thoughtful, before looking up at Shepard again, the self-assured good humour seeming to have left her. "We should probably get down there," she said, sounding suddenly concerned. "Cerberus never discovered those tunnels, but I'm pretty sure something else did. Something Aria doesn't know about. She doesn't know what's waiting for her down there."
"I guess we're about to find out what that is," Shepard answered, pulling her own gun from its maglock and nodding towards the weapon still resting keenly on Nyreen's hip. "Ready to put that gun to good use?"
At this, Nyreen smirked, pulling up her gun and holding it eagerly at the ready. "You have no idea," she replied.