A polite knock at the door registered faintly in Jane's mind, the sound enough to pull her from the depths of sleep to the hazy halfway point to alertness, but not nearly enough to motivate her to get up and investigate. Grumbling, she rolled over and pulled the covers a little tighter around herself, wishing a variety of grisly deaths upon whoever was responsible for the disturbance.
After returning from the mission aboard the freighter, Shepard had made her usual rounds—the hangar to take care of her gear, the CIC for a status update, the comm center to file a mission report with Hackett. By the time she had finally stopped by the medbay to have her head stitched shut, she'd already been aboard for a couple of hours. The mission had, by all measures, been a success; the turians got their ship fixed, the Alliance got their pat on the back, and Shepard got to resume her hunt for Saren. As far as she was concerned, picking up a few cuts and bruises along the way was just the cost of doing business.
Chakwas, who somewhat disagreed with her point of view, had been none too pleased to find out she'd been roaming the ship with an untreated head wound and hadn't been shy about say as much. After Nick had put in a few dissolvable stitches, the doctor had sternly instructed the commander to return to her quarters to rest, threatening to use her authority as medical officer to relieve her of duty for the next twenty-four hours if she dared do otherwise. Fortunately, the N7 didn't much fight left in her by that point, and was more than happy to get some rest.
There was another knock at the door, more persistent and slightly louder than the last, forcing Jane to concede that the intruder probably wasn't going away on their own. There would, however, be consequences. Nobody had any business disturbing her at the ungodly hour of—she stole a glance at her wrist, groggy eyes struggling to focus on her omni-tool's display long enough to read the time—oh four thirty-one.
Unprofessional as it may've been, Shepard felt a distinct spike of irritation. Somebody had better have a damned good explanation for this.
Reluctantly, she kicked away the covers and swung her feet out of bed, making a sound halfway between a grumble and a whine when they met the cold floor. Rubbing at her eyes, she slowly shuffled towards the door, careful to avoid running into anything in her dark quarters.
Admittedly, she hadn't been sleeping well since Eden Prime, but now that she was officially running the ship—without a proper executive officer no less—there simply weren't enough hours in the day. Reports from the Council about Saren, reports from the Alliance about the geth, reports from the galley about the eight pounds of freeze-dried brisket that had mysteriously vanished. It was nearly impossible to handle the endless cycle of information and intelligence while simultaneously leading the ground team managing affairs aboard the ship.
When she did get the chance for some shut-eye, she'd been having bizarre dreams that woke her in the dead of night. They weren't of Akuze either, she knew those well by now.
Crossing her small room and reaching the door, she slammed the heel of her palm loudly into the controls.
"What." Jane ground out through clenched teeth, her tone so low and piercingly icy it seemed like her breathe should be visible. Standing in the middle of the doorway with her shoulders squared and bags beneath her eyes, the commander knew she must be quite a sight, but her demeanor made it clear there'd be hell to pay if someone had disturbed her for something trivial—pajamas be damned.
Nickeli took a quick half-step back from the entrance to her quarters, surprise painted on his face. From the way his jaw flapped noiselessly for a long moment, it was as if the word had hit the corpsman in the chest and knocked the wind out of him. "Uh..."
At his nonanswer, the commander inhaled sharply as her scowl somehow grew even tighter, a clear signal that worse things were imminent. There had better have been some kind of ongoing emergency—geth had boarded the ship, or Wrex was throwing members of the crew into the drive core for entertainment, something that demanded her immediate attention—because otherwise she was about to create one.
"Was waking you, as requested, ma'am!" Vandas managed quickly, the medic looking uncharacteristically panicked. By now, he'd retreated just about as far from the door as he could without hitting the wall behind him. "We're about half an hour out from Therum."
Jane blinked.
Shit. Now she remembered.
He quickly thrust the mug of coffee he was holding into Shepard's hands—whether he'd been bringing it to her or was simply surrendering his own cup to the ravenous creature he'd discovered in the executive officer's quarters, she wasn't sure.
She accepted all the same, bringing it to her lips and quickly downing half the mug. While she didn't prefer hers black, it did little to change the fact it was still a damn good cup of brew. If scuttlebutt was to be believed, Anderson had pulled some strings back on Arcturus to get the Normandy supplied with something a little better than standard issue rations, and it had certainly been worth whatever favors he'd called in. All the bullshit that came with being posted aboard a ship—living out of a cleaning closet, the strict rationing on hot water for showers—she could put up with it all; the coffee made up for it.
Marginally more awake than she'd been a few moments ago, Shepard realized the young marine actually looked visibly uncomfortable, trying to determinedly to maintain eye contact with his commanding officer, but simultaneously unable to meet her gaze. His expression was no longer quite so panicked, but he was inexplicably turning red in the face.
She frowned, confused by the medic's behavior. Admittedly, Jane was keenly aware of the fact that freshly roused she could be... unpleasant—rolling out of her berth, she generally ranged anywhere from unintelligible grumbling to groggy belligerence—but even her snappish greeting didn't really explain his behavior.
For now, it didn't matter—she was barely capable of holding a conversation at the moment, much less of guessing what was bothering the medic.
Once they were in orbit over Therum, it would be another hour or two before they could head groundside while the Normandy gathered intelligence and deployed a tactical satellite. If Shepard was quick, she had time to grab a shower and stop by the mess before collecting her briefing packet from the intelligence team and the getting the away team assembled.
"Get ready to go groundside." Jane mumbled, scrubbing at her eyes with her free hand. "Tell Alenko too, if you see him."
"Aye aye." Nick answered instantly, and he was already out of sight by the time Shepard opened her eyes, the officer realized with some surprise that she hadn't actually dismissed the usually studious enlisted man.
Jane shivered, gripping the warm coffee mug a little tighter and cursing the perpetual chill aboard the Normandy and its frigid, metal decks. Happening to glance down at her freezing feet, the redhead caught sight of her bare legs, and there came the sudden realization that she'd answered the door in what she'd worn to bed; nothing but a snug, sleeveless black undershirt and a pair of panties.
Outstanding—now Chakwas would get a report that the ship's commanding officer was walking around in her underpants, and Jane's morning would be complete.
With a low groan, Shepard shot a look the in the direction Nickeli vanished to before retreating back into her quarters in search of a pants, equal parts embarrassed and annoyed as she mashed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
Next time they were in port, Shepard was requisitioning an espresso machine.
…
While—tragically—there wasn't a drop of espresso to be found aboard the Normandy, Jane was more than willing to compensate by consuming regular coffee in alarming quantities.
So, with her hair still damp and well into her third cup, Shepard stepped out of the elevator looking and feeling much more like her usual self than when she'd staggered out of her quarters to the showers. Fortunately, the Normandy was still relatively peaceful at that hour. While the ship operated on a three-watch system, the "overnight" watches were by far the quietest. Tali had remarked to Jane that the ship felt like it was missing half its crew, and while she knew for a fact the Normandy had its full complement, there were times when she found herself walking the decks in the wee hours of the ship's "night," and couldn't help but agree.
So, Shepard was understandably surprised when she emerged to find Brice in the midst of a vocal debate with the ship's resident detective, their voices carrying through the otherwise quiet hangar.
"Listen, Vakarian, maybe it's different with turian equipment, but you can't just go mucking around with the projectile headspace because you think it'll improve muzzle velocity. This stuff is precision engineering!"
"Precision engineering?" Garrus laughed from atop the Mako, leaning back against the turret. One of service panels was flipped open and judging by the assortment of tools spread out within reach, it seemed the sharpshooter had been at work for some time. "This hardware would barely pass for a garbage hauler on Palaven! Besides, if we can put a hole that's a little bigger in the next colossus we run into, it's worth the extra maintenance on the driver assembly."
"I'm not worried about extra maintenance, I'm worried about you blowing off the front half of the turret." The sergeant pointed out dryly.
"I was a qualified armorer, you know."
"Playing nice, you two?" Shepard called, amused.
"Just a disagreement between professionals, ma'am." Brice answered with a smirk. As if to confirm this, Garrus gave a friendly wave, still holding a spanner.
Shepard could only roll her eyes with a sigh as she headed for her locker, reminding herself for the umpteenth time that the Normandy had an excellent crew and that she was privileged to lead them. Maybe she'd have to get it written on a poster to hand in her quarters.
Both statements were completely true, of course, but for a crew of less than ninety, it took an almost disproportionate amount of effort to keep them out of trouble. Nothing serious fortunately, but the fallout of pranks and scuttlebutt, the occasional accident, and all the other complications associated with living and working in a tiny bubble of oxygen and gravity surrounded on all sides by the vacuum of space meant that even when Jane wasn't groundside, she was constantly busy.
The Normandy genuinely was a tiny ship to be acting independently. Usually, light frigates operated as a part of larger formations, usually led by a cruiser that had more amenities and open space aboard than the cramped, comparatively spartan conditions aboard smaller ships.
Out here alone, there were only so many faces to see and people to talk to, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time, and without dedicated facilities for officers, members of the crew were bunking, showering, and eat shoulder to shoulder with the people they reported to, day in and day out. In some cases, the situation aboard could inflame personal disputes, but typically such familiarity tended to wear away the necessarily aloof relationship officers had with their subordinates, forging close, personal bonds instead.
It wasn't a bad thing per se, but it was another factor that complicated her job as a leader, forcing her to maintain the delicate balance being someone her crew liked and respected, whilst simultaneously ensuring they feared her wrath enough to behave.
"Did you need something, Commander?"
Jane started, snapping out of her daydreaming to find Nick regarding her with a slightly perplexed looked, realizing she'd been staring off into space in the direction of the workbench he occupied. Judging by the neat piles of trauma dressings and other medical supplies spread across its surface and the datapad in his hand, she'd disturbed him in the middle of packing his medical kit for the mission ahead.
"Uh, no. Was just thinking." Jane murmured, downing another gulp of coffee to chase away the linger feeling of exhaustion. Though, since she was here, she probably owed the medic apologize for earlier, and didn't see any sense in putting it off. "Listen, about—"
"The stitches," Nick interrupted, changing the subject with all the desperation of someone throwing a railroad switch as a train barreled down on them. The look of barely-hidden mortification he'd worn outside her quarters also made a brief return. "They'll dissolve in a few days, just don't let them get too wet in the shower. If they come loose or you pop a stitch, just stop by the medbay."
Despite the urge to laugh at the young man's obvious embarrassment, Jane accepted the out he'd offered, tacitly agreeing that what happened outside her quarters would remain between them. With a knowing smile, she nodded. "Will do. Briefing's in a couple minutes."
The corpsman sounded relieved as he returned to his work, affirming he'd be ready.
Heading for her locker, the commander shrugged mentally, concluding that that probably settled the matter reasonably well. She hadn't apologized, but since Vandas seemed to be determined to avoid bringing it up, perhaps that was for the best.
Mading a quick check of the workbench where she'd spread out the pieces of the armor to dry after a bit of touch-up work, she almost didn't notice something out of place.
"Alright, very funny." Jane called to no one in particular, holding up her helmet to inspect it in the light. While it had been sitting out, someone had taken a grease pencil and written 'WEAR ME' across the visor in large letters, further accented by a pair of small adhesive bandages stuck to the side in the shape of an 'x,' approximating where she'd been hit with the bottle.
"Hey, don't look at me." Vandas interjected with a shrug, though he didn't attempt to hide his amusement.
The commander just shook her head with a huff. The medic was probably telling the truth, since it looked like a woman's handwriting, but that didn't exactly narrow down her list of suspects much. In the midst of searching for something to clean it off with, she turned at the sound of approach footfalls to find that Garrus had finished working on the Mako.
She displayed the helmet to the detective, smirking. "I'd like to report a crime."
"Should I start collecting handwriting samples?" Garrus asked drolly, taking it from her grasp and spending a few moments looking it over. Peeling off the bandages and producing a rag to quickly wipe off the visor, he tossed it back to her.
Locating a large, flat cargo crate that some members of the crew had commandeered for use as a card table, Jane pulled over a squat case of hand grenades to use as a stool, the sound of the crate scrapping across the metal deck garnering a few looks.
Sweeping the assortment of worn playing cards and extra parts they'd been using as chips to one side, Shepard produced a datapad and pulled up the briefing packet for Therum as the team gathered around. After verifying her credentials and waiting until it had finished downloading from the ship's secure network, the commander opened the mission briefing the Normandy's intelligence team had assembled, a hologram of the Alliance Navy logo appearing from the tablet's projector as the file loaded.
The rest of the team had gradually ambled over, Nickeli setting aside his medical pack and Alenko appearing with a partially eaten piece of toast in one hand. Brice leaned against a nearby crate, towering over everyone present save for Garrus, and Shepard realized she'd neither seen nor heard him make his way over, the gunner always having possessed a talent for passing beneath notice whenever he liked, despite his size. While the sergeant certainly didn't sneak around, there were times it felt like it, simply because it didn't seem normal that someone so large moved so quietly.
"Our objective is to locate Doctor Liara T'soni. She's an asari archeologist with extensive knowledge of the Protheans, and Matriarch Benezia's daughter." The holographic image of a smiling asari maiden appeared, with sapphire eyes that stared back at the camera and a mottle of dark freckles that stretched across the bridge of her nose. She wore a loose, robe-like garment and white sash, making Shepard wonder if it were a photo from some sort of ceremony or graduation.
The display changed to a high-altitude image of an isolated industrial facility taken earlier that morning by one of the Normandy's tactical satellites, the boxy outlines of structures visible with a few dark piles around the site that were annotated as piles of unprocessed ore. "Customs in Nova Yekaterinburg has her arriving almost three weeks ago, with a given destination of the Hardite Exploratory Mine. A month ago, they dug their way into some Prothean ruins, and we think that's what brought her out here."
"We'll be deploying in the Mako. Weather planetside is expected to stay clear, but the region sees intermittent sandstorms and volcanic activity. The surface temperature hovers around fifty-five and it has a breathable atmosphere, but the site is in the immediate vicinity of an active shield volcano. That means full hardsuits at all times while outdoors."
"Alenko, Garrus, and Vandas, the four of us will be heading groundside. We're looking at somewhere between thirty and forty miners, and while we're well within our authority to drop by unannounced, Brice will be standing by with a QRF in case we hit trouble. Any questions?"
Nick raised a hand. "Do we know if Doctor T'soni is traveling alone? And what's our course of action if she decides she doesn't want to come with us?"
From Jane's tone, it was clear the doctor's companions and consent were very much secondary to the mission. "We haven't heard anything about any kind of entourage, but she will be coming with us."
"Understood."
Shepard glanced around the team. "Anything else? No? Alright, we hit our drop point in twenty, get yourselves geared up."
...
Once the team had finally piled in with all of their equipment, Nick found that the interior of the Mako actually reminded him a bit of the other armored vehicles he'd been inside. After struggling to climb in wearing full kit without making an idiot of himself—something made more difficult by the compacted stretcher slung across his back in an oblong bag—he'd been surprised to find that was reasonably spacious inside, the walls bristling with secured equipment and instrument panels.
While the medic was quietly marveling, Shepard and the rest of the team were working their way through their pre-mission checks.
"Powerplant?"
"Check."
"Barriers?"
"Check."
"Comms?"
"Uhh..."
"What color is the indicator on that panel right there?"
"Oh. It's green." Nick answered.
"Awesome." Shepard grinned, turning her attention back to the drivers controls and keying the radio. "Normandy, systems check complete. We are standing by for the green light."
Perplexingly, the commander had insisted the medic sit at the vehicle's communication console, situating him to the immediate left of Shepard's spot in the driver's seat. Given that he'd been explicitly instructed not to touch anything, he really wasn't sure if he currently had a purpose beyond sitting there and watching the lights flash on the holographic panel.
Lieutenant Alenko had actually been suspiciously eager to give up his usual spot, asking knowingly if this would be Nickeli's first time deploying in the Mako and sporting a wide grin as he moved to one of the jump seats towards the rear when the corpsman answered that it was.
Taken together, Vandas had the unsettling certainty that he was being set up for something—he just didn't know what, as of yet.
In front of them, the Normandy's bay door opened to a chorus of shrieking alarms and whirling orange hazard lights, a growing maw that opened to reveal Therum's auburn sky on the other side of a mass effect barrier. According to the briefing, the planet was technically habitable, but a sunny paradise it certainly wasn't.
"So, first time?" Garrus chirped as he settled into the gunnery station, a fond note in his voice. "Yeah, I remember my first drop. Training run on Palaven—we were off by a full grid square and landed in marshland, sank a transport up to the driver's hatch in the mud. Good times."
Nick nodded along to the detective's story absently, still inspecting his surroundings... for... wait a second, had he said drop?
Before he had any opportunity to ask for clarification, the Mako lurched forward, rumbling off the end of the ramp and into the waiting sky, and the medic's mind suddenly went black. He was simply incapable of comprehending what was happening.
The notion of driving an armored vehicle out of an airborne spaceship was so thoroughly divorced from every precept of reality Nick possessed, that his mind seemed to eject the idea from his head, taking any semblance of coherent thought with it.
As a result, the only reaction the corpsman could muster was a loud, strangled sound as he stared wide-eyed, as if someone had grabbed him by the throat in the middle of saying a particularly difficult to pronounce word.
Weightlessness set in as the Mako fell clear of the Normandy, the ship reduced to a silver glimmer as it raised its nose and returned to orbit. Aside from the thrum of the engine and the intermittent buffeting of the wind, the entire experience was almost troublingly casual; aside from the occasional smirk when she glanced over at Nick, Shepard looked to be enjoying herself, and the medic would've sworn he could hear Garrus humming. It was as if the entire ordeal was little more than some sort of bizarre elevator ride to them.
After a few more seconds of freefall, the vehicle shook and decelerated as the retrorockets kicked in, dampening their impact from disastrous to merely bone rattling. The Mako bounced slightly before finally settling in the midst of the enormous cloud of red dust it had kicked up.
When things finally stopped shaking, spinning, and plummeting, Vandas sunk limply down into his seat, trying to process everything he'd just experienced and trying failingly collect himself. He had the distinct feeling this would be one of those ordeals that would seem awesome in retrospect, but at the moment he'd just settle for setting his boots back on solid ground and keeping them there.
The medic felt a balled fist thump against his pauldron and turned to find Shepard looking at him, appearing entirely too satisfied with herself. Smirking and with her gaze still fixed on Nick, she spoke. "Welcome to sunny Therum, gentlemen."
…
The Mako cut a swift path across the crimson dunes, jolting occasionally when it struck an outcrop of rock hidden beneath the sand. Traversing a particularly steep slope with the assistance of a generous boost from the vehicle's thrusted, it finally jerked to a halt atop a small plateau, earning a sigh of relief shared between all of its occupants save the driver.
"Mining outpost's in sight." Shepard announced cheerfully, indicating a distant structure several kilometers away, the dark rectangular shape standing in contrast to the smooth dunes and jagged outcrops that lined the horizon. Her hand moved to the radio. "Hardite site control, this is Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy, do you copy?" She waited a moment for a reply but heard nothing. "Hardite control, please respond."
Once again, the only answer from the other end was dead air. "Garrus?"
"Looks quiet, Commander." Garrus reported from the gunner's seat. "I don't see any movement, and the machinery I can see is cold on IR." There was a note of worry in the turian's voice. "Most large sites like this have extensive automated security networks to watch for pirates—somebody should definitely be wondering what we're doing here."
"Comm channels are quiet." Nick added, glancing up from his console. Kadian had been tutoring the medic during the journey, at least in so far as the terrain and Shepard's driving had allowed, and while Vandas wasn't about to put the lieutenant out of a job, he now knew enough to make himself useful. "We're still reading a steady feed from the tac satellite, so if there's a failure, it's on their end."
Jane made a thoughtful noise, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel for a long few moments. Finally, she determinedly put the fighting vehicle back into gear. "We're going in."
…
"Ow! Shit, that hurt." Kaidan hissed, recoiling from the nest of electrical wires alongside the door. Setting down the multi-tool he'd been using beside his gloves, he made a quick inspection of his right hand, having apparently found a live wire in the bunch.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw Garrus slowly shake his head as he watched the biotic work on the door. Leaning in, he murmured something Nick that she couldn't make out, but she saw the medic's shoulders bob as he chuckled inside his helmet.
"Alenko?" Shepard inquired after a moment. "Are we gettin' somewhere here?"
Despite the rough terrain and a few complaints from her passengers, the team had swiftly reached the valley where the site was located no worse for wear—even if Jane had underestimated that last drop and had been going a little bit faster than she'd thought.
At the mine, they'd found that the place was exactly as abandoned as it looked from afar. The facility's outer yard was littered with parked mining equipment coated in a layer of the pervasive red dust that dominated the planet's surface. The mine had lost power, but everywhere they had looked they'd found signs of a sudden departure by the workers; tools set down atop workbenches and never picked up, loads still dangling from hoists.
In one of the larger outbuildings, they'd tracked a distant voice through the dark maze of machinery only to find a portable radio humming an eerie tune to the empty workshop around it. Vandas had flipped it off and they'd continued their search, but Jane could've sworn she kept hearing snippets of the same song that went away whenever she stopped and listened for it.
When the outbuildings didn't yield any answers, they'd moved on to the site's main structure, but Garrus had been proven right about security when they found themselves confronted by an enormous set of blast doors just beyond the main airlock.
Since Shepard hadn't been as eager as the sharpshooter to blow the door without knowing what was on the other side, Alenko had gone to work, but getting the hulking doors open without power had proven difficult.
"Yeah, I think I've finally got it." Alenko announced uncertainly, entering a final command into his omni-tool.
The door sluggishly obeyed, its motors and hydraulics groaning and protesting the tiny trickle of power supplied by the lieutenant's omni-tool. Both halves parted just enough to reveal the inky blackness on the other side before grinding to a halt, the beam of Jane's weapon light shining through the narrow gap and illuminating the empty corridor on the other side.
Garrus and Nick stowed their weapons and stepped forward, each grabbing one of the doors and, with some effort, pulling them open until they were open just wide enough for the team to squeeze through.
Alenko was the first through, drawing his pistol and squeezing sideways through the narrow gap. On the far side, the beam from his helmet lamp did a rapid sweep of the area. "Clear."
Vandas and Garrus quickly followed him through, though the turian promptly got himself stuck when the oversized collar of his armor proved too wide. He had initially insisted he didn't need any help, but after a bit of undignified flailing the detective had sheepishly accepted assistance, and together the team managed to force the doors open wide enough for Shepard to shove him through from behind.
Garrus had mumbled his thanks, but had been uncharacteristically quiet as they moved on, and if Shepard didn't know better, she would've sworn he was pouting.
The team made their way through the facility cautiously with Shepard taking point. Moving through the halls at a measured pace with their lights sweeping down the length of each hallway and across each open doorway as they passed, even amidst the unsettling atmosphere of the abandoned mining outpost, Jane found it easy to fall into the practiced rhythm honed by countless hours spent drilling aboard ships and in shoot houses.
Long corridor; advance with rifle up, cover far doorways. Junction ahead; half step off the wall, rifle down, pivot right, rifle up.
Her team still lacked the effortless synchronization that came with familiarity, something Jane realized she'd grown accustomed to while assigned to a strike team and found herself missing more and more.
While not clumsy or uncoordinated by any means, the differences in experience and training philosophies were apparent to any experienced eye, the commander's included.
Garrus was obviously well-trained, but he was getting accustomed to working with humans; the detective was still working out his stride to avoid outpacing his smaller squadmates, occasionally bumping into Kadian when he forgot to short-step.
For his part, Alenko seemed to be trying to remember his training on the fly, always half a second behind and constantly glancing at Vandas to discern where he should be covering.
Nick seemed to be doing fine for the most part, but his lingering unfamiliarity cropped up at times, the marine occasionally catching the muzzle of his rifle against a door frame or pausing the adjust the way his helmet sat on his head.
Ahead, Jane spotted a door marked Central Office, leading the team closer to investigate.
Pressing her back against the wall, Shepard silently edged up to the door, pushing to see if the override had kicked in after the power failed. She felt Nickeli's gloved hand fall on her shoulder, the medic ready to follow her in the instant she entered. When it didn't budge, she glanced to Alenko, indicating the locked door with a jerk of the head. Her voice, barely more than a whisper, still seemed thunderous in the tomblike silence of the plant. "Kaidan."
The biotic nodded, sliding silently passed her to stand in the center of the corridor. Stowing his rifle on his back, she heard him take a deep breath as he squared his feet to the entryway.
A purple glow appeared in his clenched fists and thrusting his open palms outward sent a wave of dark energy surging from his fingertips. The door's frame buckled inward under the force to a cacophony of rending metal and groaning hydraulics, jumping out of its frame and crashing into the room.
Shepard rushed through the open door, Nickeli hardly a step behind her. Storming in with rifles raised, the beams of their tactical lights flashed across empty chairs and scattered piles of paper hardcopy as they swept the small office space, finding it still and dark. A fine layer of red dust had settled on top of the desks and filing cabinets, their incursion throwing up a haze that danced
"Clear." Shepard announced, echoed by Vandas a moment later as the rest of the team stepped in from the hall.
A lone computer workstation sitting atop one of the desks seemed to pique Garrus' interest, the turian quickly making his way over and activating his omni-tool.
Jane took the opportunity to pop the seals on her helmet, taking a moment to wipe away the thick beads of sweat rolling down her face before clipping it to her belt. The air in the room was still and stifling, but it was still more bearable than the confines of her helmet or the dry, unrelenting heat of the wastes outside.
While Garrus worked on cracking the terminal, the rest of the squad cautiously investigated the rest of the office, carefully opening drawers and leafing through hardcopy. From the corner, Shepard startled the room with a triumphant whoop, proudly displaying the credit chit she'd found, to the others' audible exasperation.
It took only a few minutes for the team to go through the entirety of the small office, and they gradually drifted back to the terminal where Garrus worked just in time to hear it give a friendly chime.
With a few more keystrokes, the detective found what they were looking for. "There are a few notes here about the miners uncovering the Prothean ruins, and I've got a log entry for a Doctor Liara T'Soni checking into the site and entering the mine, dated almost a week ago. The last entry is three days after that—an evacuation order, with no mention of our asari."
"You think she's still down there?" Alenko asked no one in particular, a frown forming.
Shepard's expression was grim as she pulled her helmet back on. "Seems like it. We need to get down into that mine."
"We'll have to restore power." Garrus noted. "The main elevator isn't too far from here, but I'm not seeing any other way in."
Or out.
The concern went unspoken, but the look the sharpshooter shot the commander said enough. In military context, anything with only a single access point had bad news written all over it. Since Jane's team couldn't exactly dig their own way into the mine, they didn't have any other options.
"Can you get the power back on?"
The turian's pointed digits tapped quickly at the holographic keyboard before he shook his head a moment later. "Not from here, but I know where we can."
With that, the group quickly set out. Shepard led once again with Garrus close behind, the commander pausing at each intersection to allow the turian to direct her. At some point, Kadian stepped forward, and Jane let him lead the way, the team following a few steps behind the amber glow of his omni-tool as he ran his scanner along the wall.
Eventually, he disappeared around a corner and Jane nearly collided with him when she rounded it to find he'd come to an immediate halt on the other side.
Mounted on the wall directly in front of the biotic was a tall, grey electrical cabinet that had obviously endured some serious abuse in the recent past. The front panel was marred with large, circular craters where the metal had crumpled inward and scanning the area with her flashlight, Shepard spotted a sledgehammer discarded on the floor nearby, its composite handle cracked near the head.
Alenko gave a low whistle, using his omni-tool to scan the damaged breaker box, its orange glow casting an eerie light in the shadowy facility.
"What do you think? Sabotage?" Shepard asked quietly.
"Maybe," He answered with a noncommittal shrug, carefully studying the wiring diagram that was slowly being drawn on his tool's holographic display. "Whoever did it was in a hurry, though."
"What makes you say that?"
Glancing up at the breaker box, Kaidan stepped forward and, with some effort, forced the dented from panel off. Pulling the disconnect switch, he began attacking the rows of circuit breakers with a container of omni-gel. "Because, this whole facility relies on a thermal exchange system that pulls heat from the mine to keep conditions down there livable and drive the site's powerplant. They could've used it to cause a lot more damage than just cutting the power with a couple of smashed fuses."
The lieutenant flipped the disconnect switch with a distinct clack, suddenly bathing the room in light as the power returned. The rest of the plant came alive around them, awakening with a chorus of beeping terminals and the muted hum and rumble of machinery and conveyors.
"Good work." Shepard said approvingly. "Let's get into that mine."