Chapter 06
Rasa
Their shuttle circled the settlement nestled away on the moon of Cyrene a handful of times getting a full and complete layout of the small city below, taking extensive pictures and lidar readings to compile an accurate and up-to-date layout of the colony. Rasa, Shepard, Volyov and his squad were seated in the rear compartment watching the live feed on a monitor by the door. It was impossible to make out many details on the grainy, blue-tinted footage from their current altitude, but everyone felt the eery lack of any movement on the ground.
"That's fuckin' creepy," Volyov remarked. Himself and his team were dressed, once again, in their Cerberus assault armour—a product of necessity. "How the hell can someone snatch five thousand colonists in the middle of the night and not leave any trace? I mean, someone had to have shed a skin flake or something."
Cerberus had sent teams to each of the previously abducted colonies, and they all came back with the same report: all colonists had been stolen away without a trace. Extensive investigatory operations were performed on each one that continued to yield nothing. The Illusive Man—and Rasa, much to her chagrin—theorised that only the Reapers or someone working for them had the capability to pull off an operation so massive, and that terrified Rasa to the core. Sovereign's defeat at the Battle of the Citadel had been a convenient bookend to the issue of the Reapers, but they clearly weren't prepared to respect that evaluation. Knowing their agents in the galaxy possessed such power made Rasa wonder what the true capabilities of the Reapers were. She looked over to Shepard. Did they stand any chance of winning, or was it all a vain struggle against inevitability?
Rasa's stomach flipped as the shuttle began its sharp decent towards the modest collection of landing pads on the northernmost side of the settlement. She'd been so lost in her head that she'd failed to notice everyone reacting to the shuttles occupying two of the pads; based on their design and distinct lack of any identifying marks, she guessed they were slavers or independent scavengers—nothing her chosen team couldn't handle.
Volyov was the first to unbuckle the safety bar, taking his Mattock from its magnetic holster and letting it unfold in his hands. He grabbed one of the railings embedded into the deckhead and made his way over to the larboard-side hatch, with the others of his squad followed. The colony rapidly came up around the shuttle as the pilot executed a pitch perfect combat landing, and the hatch hissed, shoving outwards and lifting up. The vanguard hopped out into a semi-circular perimeter, with Shepard close behind—armed with a standard issue M-8 Avenger and clad in a set of Cerberus assault armour herself—and Rasa behind her, Carnifex Hand Canon raised ahead of her. She felt a stiff buffet of air as the shuttles thrusters kicked in and lifted it back to a safe range where it could provide overwatch without risk of being shot down by handheld AA munitions.
The landscape was still; painfully so. A soft breeze kicked up small vortexes of dust and dirt, rustled a couple of the trees, ran fingers through her hair. Nothing at all appeared to be wrong except the complete lack of any life. Even the two unknown ships could've passed as independent merchants on any normal day of the week. Making their way down towards the customs checkpoint, and eventually into the settlement proper felt like stepping back through time into the ruins of Pripyat in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl. Everything—absolutely everything—had been dropped wherever it was last in use. Handbags, shopping, toys, sports equipment lay scattered across the street; cars sat in neat rows as if they'd stopped where they were, and it took far longer than anyone thought to find two that had crashed.
Rasa knelt by the wrecks to peer inside one of the overturned cars; dried, almost black blood coated the controls as well as several bloody handprints on the door. She followed them onto the grass where the trail stopped. Her search area widened, but found no further traces of the driver. Distant wind whistled between the prefabricated structures.
Rasa caught up with the team as they followed the main road towards the centre of town, and not a single one of them could escape the feeling that they were being watched. Someone lurked in the shadows, they knew that, but the feeling in Rasa's chest cut deep to a place rarely visited since her childhood imagination conjured up unknowable cosmic creatures hiding under her bed, waiting to snatch her at the moment she drifted off. The urge to look over her shoulder landed powerful. It took all her mental fortitude to not let the ambience crack her composure.
Over on their right, movement broke up the still: a door opening and closing around an obstruction. Shepard gestured for Volyov to setup a perimeter while she went inside, and Rasa elected to follow. A spilled open tool box lay in the threshold of what was a workshop of some kind. Rasa activated her pistols flashlight as Shepard did with her rifle. The two beams swept the room. Tools and machinery lay scattered around in various states of use, sticking to the established aesthetic. Some of the larger, fixed machines were still powered on, having been abandoned in the middle of a task. They drifted apart to search different areas; Rasa went through to the office in the back. Glass crunched underfoot. The door had been smashed from the inside and, behind the desk, a bolt gun lay on the floor, minus a bolt. She knelt behind the desk to make a couple of estimations before following an invisible line to beneath one of the benches in the workshop. There a thick, bulbus insect with six legs and copper coloured skin the texture of a scab was skewered by the missing bolt.
"Shepard," she called.
Shepard appeared over her shoulder a second later, and knelt down beside her. "That doesn't look like it's part of the local ecosystem," she said. "Safe to assume it was left behind by whoever did this?"
"Safe." Rasa poked it with a gloved finger, running it over the rough carapace. She pealed it back to reveal transparent, mustard tinted wings coated with an oily, jet black gloop she assumed was its blood. "Let's mark the building and come back for it when we're done."
Shepard unhooked at small device from her armour and magnetically attached it to the understood of the bench, pressing the centre it started blinking. "Let's go."
The clear, crisp blue sky of a winter morning offered no barriers against the local stars overwhelming light, casting hard, dark shadows across every surface that seemed to move unnaturally when Rasa looked away. Her breath expanded into the cold air as puffs of white condensation at snappier intervals, matching the racing in her chest, animal brain pleading with her to turn around and get the fuck out. She held her composure, and forged on. Stalking through an empty settlement was far outside the purview of her usual operations, but the presence of Shepard, Volyov and his team provided some fortification for her nerves.
They made efficient time down the prefab-lined street, and rounded into the town square where the signs of some chaotic even made themselves glaringly obvious: a rover had careened into the side of a building and lodged its nose inside, several muddy footprints and skid marks on the grassy area around the still spurting fountain suggested a stampede, and a few of the buildings were marched by scorching or damage from thermal clips.
A can clattered at the far end of the square—everyone dove for cover; a dog trotted out after the rolling metal cylinder, pawing and gnawing on it to get to the nutrition inside. Rasa blew out a breath. It was evidently clear that the colonists had been trying to get away from something, but in line with the previous abductions, there was no hinting at just what that something was except the strange bug they'd uncovered.
"Fuck me," gasped Volyov. "Fuckin' dog."
"Keep your eyes open," Shepard chided, her voice as steady as a spring stream. "We need to see if we can get to the town hall and download any sensor data that could still exist."
"The computers were completely fried at the other sites," Rasa told her. "There's no reason to assume it's any different here."
"And that's how people miss blatantly obvious details."
That stung, and triggered her instinct to argue back, but she bit her tongue. Shepard was in her element, and fully committed to their partnership. Rasa felt the confidence and commanding presence returning; nothing had been lost in the cloning process, and, arguably, her brand-new body made her better than before, resetting her to a time before myriad workplace injuries accrued over the years. She'd gotten a commitment to their partnership from the commander, so now she could go to work winning her over, mind and soul, to the cause. That would take a little longer owing to Shepard's famous morality, but there were renegade tendencies under the surface she could exploit.
"Our goal is the town hall," Shepard said, earning an appreciative nod from Volyov. "The slavers, pirates, scavengers, whoever are a secondary priority that we won't engage with unless they engage with us." Then into her comm link to the shuttle, "don't worry about the area immediately around us, I want you scanning any potential points-of-interest for people with nefarious intentions."
"Aye, Commander," came the pilots reply.
"Okay, move out."
The town hall wasn't far—in fact, they didn't have to go anywhere at all. The largest and most architecturally creative building in the settlement, it looked down over the square as a symbol of law and order in a lawless land, and was constructed from local materials to give it a design and aesthetic that stuck out amongst the grey, copy-and-paste prefabricated huts comprising the rest of the town.
They arose the stairs to the main entrance, and Shepard gestured for Voylov and his squad to remain outside while she continued inside with Rasa. The vanguard fell away to begin constructing improv barricades and setup a secure perimeter, which included sending a couple of soldiers to secure any backdoors or alternative routes into the building. Rasa and Shepard kept their heads on the swivel and their weapons raised as the ascended to the first floor via the grand staircase in the atrium. They'd dug up the plans for the town hall prior to their arrival from some early blueprints submitted to a construction company ahead of the buildings erection, charting the most efficient path to the governor's office, where, hopefully, his personal safe remained unopened. In every other case, the safe had been discovered and emptied out.
The corridors seemed to stretch out into an unnatural length, ambient sound amplified in the paranoia inducing enclosed spaces. Somewhere, a breeze tugged at discarded papers and branches tapped on several windows, like nails on a wooden desk, creating a disorienting sense of being unable to pinpoint its exact direction. Rasa's breathing filled her ears. She was so used to being surrounded by people and activity, tucked away in the warmth of a perfectly compiled disguise.
Shepard continued ahead, checking rooms as she went, until reaching the doors marked with the recognisable symbol of the emergency stairway. The door was ajar. Shepard took up position on the hinged side, and gestured for Rasa to move in on her command. Rasa nodded. Shepard pressed her palm against the metal surface, counted to three with silent nods, then pushed it open. Rasa's Carnifex entered the stairwell, followed by herself, then Shepard. Nothing; not a whisper. Scattered about the place where briefcases, high-heeled shoes, a couple of coffee mugs—all things people would grab on instinct and quickly realise were only dead weight when they saw the magnitude of the emergency.
They proceeded up two floors, out into a maze of offices, a breakroom, toilets, and a balcony for smokers. Towards the front of the building, behind a hulking pair of double doors, with a massive private balcony, was the governor's office. A spacious room with a large desk in the centre and a couple of couches against each wall for guests. The laptop was upturned on the floor and—
"Fuck!" Rasa leaned in for a closer look, running her hand around the inner wall of the safe, as if there was a remote chance the documents therein were actually just invisible. "That was our best chance. Fuck!"
"Are you sure that's the only place we can find evidence?" Shepard asked.
"Based on Cerberus estimates of a species capable of"—she gestured to their surroundings—"this, the safe is the only remotely safe place on the planet."
"Seems like it was a long-shot from the start."
"Yeah… No offense, but I hope the other Shepard has more luck than we do."
Shepard crossed to her, and gave her shoulder a light squeeze. "Chin up, Rasa," she said. "There are any number of places someone could hide something that would be overlooked. These aliens—whoever they are—aren't omniscient. What about less obvious places? Down the back of the couch, or taped to the bottom of one of the tables, or hidden in a shoe."
"We don't have enough time to conduct a search that detailed, and Cerberus—"
"—teams didn't find anything at the other sites. There's a first time for everything. C'mon, gimme a hand."
Shepard folded her rifle away onto the magnetic holster on her back, and went to work digging through the drawers of the governor's desk, running her fingers along the backs and undersides of the panelling. Rasa watched for a moment—it was plainly obvious how Shepard was able to inspire such loyalty in those who followed her. She was the kind of commander who got her hands dirty and took direct responsibility for her choices; someone who stood up for her crew and never hesitated to provide a friendly ear. A hopefulness bubbled up in her chest. Maybe they would find something? It didn't hurt to look.
Rasa turned to the couch, and tore into it; she dismembered the cushions, ran her fingers along the backs and sides, flipped it over to study the underside, knocked her way along the wooden frame to search for hidden compartments. When the first couch was empty, she repeated the process on the second, then turned to the various end tables and coffee table. A roll of tape lay on the floor, drawing her eyes to the nearby end table. Her hand shot underneath and ran along the—got it! A small data storage module came loose in her hand.
"Here!" Rasa scanned it with her omni-tool, which ran a quick analysis of the device; it was still intact, but the EMP had caused a little damage. "I think we'll be able to see what's on it, but the likelihood of it being whole is another story."
"Let's see it," Shepard said.
It was a short video file: grainy and fritzing with audio that sounded like it had been recorded in a tin can. A middle-aged man of Indian descent sat behind his desk, the handheld camera shaking with fear. "My name is Governor Michael DeSoto, and this is my last message," he declared. "We detected the ship only a couple of hours ago, unlike anything we've ever seen before. It destroyed our satellite network, and blasted right through our defences. It-It descended above the settlement and…" He trailed off as the camera pivoted to see out the window behind him. A giant bug dove at the polycarbonate and crashed into it with a meaty thud, and probed it for a way in. "The ship unleashed swarms of these…bugs—millions of them! Whatever they are, they latch on and freeze you in place, like a wax statue." He then tilted the camera up. Hovering above in the eye of a vortex of clouds was a ship both Rasa and Shepard knew intimately: an oblong asteroid with metal spaceframe jutting out, and the gaping maw of its primary thruster pointed down towards rows of housing.
A series of tiny, pinprick explosions erupted along its hull, and a faded yellow laser carved through multiple streets.
The camera swivelled back to face DeSoto. "It's unlikely that we'll survive this," he continued. "All I can do is hope this information is recovered by people who can prevent this from happening again." The footage cut off.
Shepard had gone deathly pale, sweaty, puffy. Her eyes were wide, unblinking. Her chest plate rose and fell, like a piston on the verge of tearing itself apart. A hand shot out to steady herself against the desk.
Rasa placed a hand on Shepard's back, and did her best to perform small, measured circles on the uneven surface. "Breathe. It's okay, I'm here and the Collector's aren't. We're safe—you're safe. Deep breaths." She led by example, and after a moment, Shepard fell in. "There, there, you're doing great."
Shepard nodded, and put her weight back onto her own legs, visibly relaxing. "Thanks."
"That's the same ship that attacked you two years ago."
"Yeah… Seems they've been busy in the interim."
"They're the Collector's," Rasa explained. "A seemingly harmless, albeit odd, species who suddenly became no longer harmless. They were, now that I think about it, the ones trying to buy you—original you—from the Shadow Broker. They really wanted you out of the way."
"How do we find them?" Shepard asked. "Where's their homeworld?"
"Out beyond the Omega Four Relay somewhere."
"We need to—"
"No."
"No?"
"Nothing goes through that Relay and returns—except the Collector's." Rasa sighed, ran a hand through her head. "As much as I hate to admit it, this might be better left to your other self and Cerberus. You're pegged to be put in command of a new ship with the best team of specialists in the galaxy, and with Cerberus's resources on top, you have an infinitely better chance of putting a stop to these than we do. Charging off on a half-cocked rescue mission with our lack of intel, and in the state we're in, will only end badly."
"I refuse to sit here and do nothing," Shepard said in her most commanding voice. "Humans are being abducted by the colony-load, and it's our duty to do whatever we can to help them."
"We won't do nothing; promise. On our way back, I'll send the video and transponder signal along to the Illusive Man, and maybe he can pass it along to you."
"Why does she get revenge and I don't?" she snapped, shaking with rage, peeling back her altruistic intentions to reveal something selfish. "Those colonists deserve to be rescued, and I'd trust no-one more than myself to do it, but I will not be denied my chance at revenge!"
"You're right to be angry," Rasa agreed, validating Shepard. "They're abducting Humans in unprecedented numbers, and they killed you, tried to buy your remains, and are the reason why you exist. Now you see the need for an organisation that promotes Humanity; the Council won't, and neither will the Alliance, or Cerberus. You are Jane Shepard, and you deserve to have the same closure as your other self." She paused for a moment to let that sink in. "But, for now, we have to recognise our inability to move in our current condition. Cerberus can handle this while we build our strength."
Shepard nodded, forcing herself to calm down. "We'll build up our organisation, and hit the Collector's with everything we've got," she said. "For the colonists, for the protection of Humanity…and as retribution for what they did to me."
"We will." An unsavoury grin tugged at Rasa's lips. "You are a real person, you are a valid person, you are worthy."
"Thank you." Shepard took the time to calm down fully, then said, "we should go."
They barely got back to the staircase when Volyov called in. "Seems our arrival has sparked the interest of the tourists," he reported. "I've got three in sight, and I'm certain there're more in the surrounding buildings, but we're unable to get eyes on."
Rasa and Shepard sprinted the remainder of the way through the town hall, bursting out into the cool air, and taking cover behind the makeshift barricades the other soldiers were crouched behind. Rasa peaked out over the top. Standing in the square was a mean-looking Batarian—pretty standard for Batarians—flanked by a hulking, grinning Krogan on one side and a Turian wielding a sniper rifle on the other. They were all wearing custom armour with no mercenary affiliations. Whoever they were, they ran an independent operation—as Rasa suspected when she'd seen their ships.
"This colony belongs to us," the Batarian shouted, in their signature gravelly voice. "We found it abandoned first, and the salvage is ours to do with as we please! Leave now before we decide that you're more valuable as merchandise."
Rasa gagged at the sight of the four-eyed, vaguely arachnid looking alien. Batarian's were the disgusting rubbish of the galaxy, with only the Vorcha below them. Vermin who ran slavery rings, drug cartels, weapons dealerships, and excelled at being truly despicable in everything they undertook. They'd taken it upon themselves to raid the Human colony of Mindoir and massacred everyone there, emboldening the pirate crews of the Terminus Systems. They rallied behind the infamous pirate leader Elanos Haliat, a Turian, to launch a full scale invasion of Elysium—which would later come to be known as the Skyllian Blitz. And, then again, shortly before Saren's defeat at the Citadel, a Batarian led terrorist group attempted to drop an asteroid on Terra Nova. Letting a Batarian run free was like ignoring a cockroach infestation.
So, annoyingly, Shepard's reply was, "we can talk about this."
"No talk," The Batarian spat. "Leave now, or you forfeit your rights as sentient creatures."
"Surely you can appreciate the need to mourn those lost. Let us collect a record of the colonists, and then we'll leave."
"I appreciate the need to mourn my species; couldn't give two fucks about yours."
This was getting nowhere. Rasa humoured Shepard by letting her continue the futile negotiation, but turned to Volyov and shot off a series of hand signals instructing him to take his team and weed out the hostiles hiding in the surrounding buildings. The soldiers exchanged further hand signals, then scurried off on their mission. Rasa turned back to peak over the barricade.
"Are you really so content to live up to the galaxy's stereotype of a Batarian?" Shepard wondered sincerely. "The only reason a civil agreement can't be reach here is because you won't let it."
"You're right; I'm choosing to block the avenue to peace because, quite frankly Commander Shepard, you're much more valuable as a slave. However, fortunately for you, a thieves honour dictates that I at least give you the option to influence the outcome of this situation."
"How do you know who I am?"
"Are you kidding? You murdered Elanos Haliat! You prevented Balak from dropping an asteroid on your colony! And because that wasn't bad enough, we couldn't fuckin' escape you for a while after the whole thing with Saren and the Geth. Commander Shepard: what a hero! Commander Shepard: First Human Spectre! Oh no, Commander Shepard's Dead! I'll admit: it's weird to see you alive. But I couldn't care less—payday's gonna be astronomical." He laughed mockingly. "I wonder if the Collectors are still looking for you?"
Shepard's jaw tensed. "You're not getting your way. Stand down or we'll put you down."
The Batarian's lips drew back into a shit eating grin, and his fingers came up to his ear while he talked to someone through his comms. A thunderclap echoed through the settlement, debris rained down upon Rasa an Shepard, heat—such intense, overwhelming heat—blasted their exposed skin, a shockwave crushed them to the ground. Rasa dropped her pistol to cup her ringing, bleeding ears. She blinked hard to get her vision to come into focus. Someone…called out to her? Shepard crouched beside her in a similar state of disorientation, and there was no-one else nearby.
"—AKO!" The distant voice warned as it came into clarity like an ice cold slap. "The Batarian has a fuckin' MAKO here!"
A/N: One of the biggest challenges with writing a story like this is trying to decide where the tracks meet. I wanted to do something with the Collectors and having established the first act of the story to be before OG Shepard wakes up at the start of ME2, I could use the abduction of Cyrene as a backdrop. It allows clone Shepard to confront the Collectors without having to bend over backwards explaining why she didn't run into her other self or James. I thought I'd throw in the video footage and bug to build the dread of the Collectors, and sending it to the Illusive Man to tie-in with his "suspicion" that they were behind the abductions.
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