Chapter 07

Shepard

She'd recognise that sound anywhere: the 155mm mass accelerator cannon on an M35 MAKO Infantry Fighting Vehicle. They'd had one back on the Normandy that saw a lot of use during her short command—much to the terror of the crew. The colonists must've invested in one as a precaution for just this sort of situation; too bad it hadn't done them any good. A single MAKO could body slam a Geth Armature and, apparently, survive transit through a Mass Relay; she wouldn't be surprised if it was the only part of the Normandy still in one piece. The whole situation had just gone ass up, and survival meant neutralising that MAKO as soon as possible, and those slavers would be no match against them without it.

Shepard's senses slowly returned, and she peaked over the barricade. The Batarian was stood exactly where he had been a second ago without a care in the world, polishing his sidearm with the care of a master craftsman locked away in the solitude of his workshop. As infuriating as the sight was, Shepard knew her advantage wasn't totally sunk, for the Batarian was supremely confident, and therefore possessed many blind spots ripe for exploiting.

"VOLYOV," Shepard shouted, before modulating her voice. "Volyov, do you have eyes on the MAKO?"

"Yes, Ma'am," came the reply buried amongst ringing church bells. "About three hundred meters east of us with…four visible guards, all lightly armed."

She loaded a concussive shot. "What are the odds that you'll be able to take it in one piece?"

"If you had all of us in a coordinated effort, I'd guarantee it."

"Okay, do it. We'll keep them busy out here."

"Now you're fuckin' talkin'! Yes, Ma'am."

She turned to Rasa, who was recovering her senses at a steady pace. "How are you doing?"

"Hanging in there. What about you?"

"Getting there."

"Where the fuck was overwatch with that tank?"

"Go easy on him; I wouldn't be surprised if they kept it indoors until right before they fired. It's the smart move."

"A smart Batarian," Rasa scoffed. "Guess there's a first time for everything."

Shepard opened a channel to the shuttle. "Overwatch, have you got a fix on the MAKO?"

"Locking in, Commander."

"It's off limits. Repeat: it's off limits. We want it taken in one piece."

"Aye, Ma'am."

"I need you to make a pass over the town hall and get a read on how many hostiles are in the buildings surrounding the square."

"Incoming."

It might've been her imagination, but Shepard swore she could hear the familiar thrum of the Kodiak's engines on the wind as it passed overhead, taking in the area over the full EM spectrum to see what otherwise might be hidden. The large hole that had previously been the governor's office balcony allowed Shepard to see toy-sized Kodiak circling overhead.

"I've got twenty-four hostiles in total," the pilot said. "Four around the MAKO, two inside, three in the square, two behind the fountain, and thirteen in the surrounding buildings."

"Good work. Pass the intel about the MAKO on to Volyov."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Suggestions?" Shepard asked Rasa.

"Not a suggestion, but I'm really wishing we had one of those new UT-47A's they're gearing up to roll out."

"UT-47A's?"

"They're identical to the standard Kodiak in design with the addition of slightly heavier armour and dual mounted cannons on the forward thrusters."

"We need to get ourselves some of those."

"That we do." Rasa surveyed the area ahead of them. "In terms of actual, helpful suggestions? I'm coming up short."

Shepard gripped her Avenger. "Here goes."

She popped out of cover, and sent the concussive round hurling towards the trio of slavers, watching it impact the Krogan and explode, knocking the Batarian and Turian over. As they hopped back to their feet, she dumped the majority of a clip into the Batarian, shredding through his shields before he could get out of the way, and emptying it into his armour. They tore into his breastplate, but ran dry before killing him. The trio of slaves scrambled for cover while firing wildly back. The slavers in the surrounding buildings opened fire, and just like that Shepard and Rasa were crouched under a heavy shower of dust and debris.

Shepard kept waiting for the chance to pop out of cover to return fire, but the barrage of mass accelerated shrapnel never waned. The walls around them were chewed up, and the barricade grated away. The pair held for as long as they could, but when the first round dinged off their shields, they retreated back inside the town hall. The windows exploded inwards, curtains shredded, the décor and furniture battered to kindling.

The gunfire did eventually ease up and trickle to a stop.

"Surrender, Human!" The Batarian shouted. "Let us capture you alive, and I'm sure the Shadow Broker will treat you well. Or maybe you'd prefer the Collectors? Or maybe we just keep you for ourselves and get our revenge for Haliat!"

Shepard popped round the side of a window, and squeezed off a handful of tightly grouped shots: the first two flicked dust from the lip of the fountain into the Batarians eyes, and the following three sank themselves into his already dinged breastplate. The gunfire restarted. She had no desire to be dehumanised any more than she already was, and the thought of being locked in shackles as the personal plaything of a veritable selection of psychopaths and pirates send a shiver up her spine.

"We're totally pinned down here," Rasa shouted over the echoing firearms. "I'm guessing that means we're doing a good job holding their attention. They're remarkably undisciplined—even for pirates."

It was that moment that something occurred to Shepard. "What are we going to do with the prisoners?" she asked. "We don't have enough room in the shuttle, and we can't just let them go, and we can't tie them up and leave them, because we both know the Alliance won't be passing through here anytime soon."

"Is this really the best time for that?"

"We're not going anywhere, and it's something we'll have to deal with eventually."

Rasa sighed. "They're aliens and slavers," she replied. "The galaxy won't miss them."

"I hope I didn't just hear you suggesting we execute prisoners?"

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting! Why should we let disgusting scum like that live? So they can go on their way and do this all over again somewhere else? It's our duty as Humans to defend the species from monsters—"

"Rasa!" Shepard snapped. "We're not executing them, and I'll kindly ask that you keep that Xenophobic crap locked up!" She glared back at her. "We're better than Cerberus, remember."

Rasa wrangled a confrontational retort, and instead suggested, "why don't we use their ships? We can load them up, and drop them off at the nearest Council races outpost. Do our part as concerned citizens, if that's what you insist."

"That's more like it—"

A second thunderclap, and a massive chunk of the town centre vomited onto the street below. Unlike the first shot, however, this one was so far off that it entirely failed as a deterrent, and instead came off as a straight-up poorly aimed shot. Shepard and Rasa popped their heads out to see what was happening a second later when the gunfire continued to ring out despite being aimed away from them. The MAKO had rolled into the square from the road parallel to the one they'd entered from, and was parked up absorbing the cacophony of weapons fire that had no hope of doing much more than scratching the paint. The Batarian leader gestured wildly to the others in his gang, imploring them to stand down. Those in his immediate area ceased, and those farther out tapered off, like a clapping crowd fading out.

Soldiers disembarked, and proceeded to bulldoze through the enemy lines, disarming and restraining them. Shepard stood from cover, and made her way down to the square, where the Batarian and his two cronies has tossed their guns away, and stood with his chin tilted defiantly skyward.

"It doesn't matter how many of us you kill, of how much territory you"—he grimaced as if tasting battery acid—"Humans steal from us; we will not yield."

"Who's the we?" Shepard asked. "If you mean the Batarian government on Khar'shan; I, nor any other Human, have plans to take any of your territory. If you mean the pirates and slavers; I'll gladly take everything you have."

The Batarian spat on her armour. "Haliat was a hero who stood up to your tyranny," he growled. "Balak is a martyr! One day, we'll drive your kind from the—"

A Carnifex Hand Cannon swung in from out of frame and caved in the Batarians nose, whipping his head back and splashing blood all over his face. "That'll be enough from you," Rasa chided. "Count yourself lucky to be alive."

That earned her a look from Shepard. It wasn't unexpected that an ex-Cerberus operative who'd deserted to somehow form an even more extreme group than the Human supremacist terrorist organisation she'd previously worked at, but Shepard hadn't expected Rasa to openly advocate for executing prisoners. She chastised herself for the naïve oversight. She may not be the original Shepard, but her memories were all real, and she was unlikely to forget Cerberus's experiments with the Rachni, or what they'd done on Akuze, any time soon.

"Hey, Commander!" Volyov hung from the MAKO's hatch, grinning like a child on Christmas. "They've not let me operate a MAKO in years! Fuck, yeah! Can I go fuck up those two aliens ships on the pad?"

"Negative!" Shepard answered sternly. "We're gonna need them. I want you instead to go over every inch of that MAKO and ensure everything's working correctly, and to ensure there are no nasty surprises waiting for us."

He fired off a loose salute. "On it, ma'am."

"Oh, and send a couple of your team over."

Volyov ducked back inside the APC, and a couple of soldiers trotted over.

"Get everyone's names, any personal details you can determine, and the access codes for the ships if possible," she told them.

They nodded acknowledgement, and went to work. Shepard turned to Rasa and gave her a tired smile as the adrenaline worked its way out of her system. The whole operation had brought life back to her body, and reminded her of chasing Saren across the galaxy with her ragtag group of outcasts and misfits. Seeing the MAKO parked across the square flooded her system with happy memories of bouncing across alien worlds with her friends to dislodge some Geth outpost, or deal with troublesome pirates, or go digging for ancient artifacts. She grinned up at the sky, no doubt seeming like a crazy person to Rasa, as she remembered the first time she'd encountered a Prothean pyramid; sitting on the peak with her friends perched either side, the MAKO abandoned on its roof halfway up the side, and watching the Chasca sunset.

That brief spike of dopamine was diluted by the reality of what she was. Those days were gone, and weren't coming back.

"We're keeping the MAKO," she told Rasa. "Who knows when something like this will come in handy, and getting it for free is a nice bonus."

Rasa returned a sceptical look. "Are you sure that's wise?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

She fidgeted with one of the armour pieces on her arm, avoiding eye contact. "Your driving is rather, uh…notorious."

The dagger of truth struck straight to Shepard's heart. "Those rumours are highly exaggerated," she said defensively. "Wrex was worse."

"Wrex is a six hundred pound Krogan the MAKO wasn't designed to accommodate; what's your excuse?"

"What's that?" Her fingers came up to her ear. "Imminent failure of the shuttles drive core? You'd better land and look it over; touch down in the square."

"What's that, ma'am?" the pilot replied. "There's nothing wrong with the—"

"Land. Now."

"A-Aye, aye, ma'am."

"Looks like an emergency." Shepard shrugged to Rasa. "I should go."

And she slipped away to meet the descending shuttle as it touched down at the opposite end of the square to the MAKO.

Shepard ducked under the opening hatch and slipped into the cockpit, where the pilot—a young man barely out of high school—ran through the post-flight shutdown. She clapped a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Excellent job there. What's your name?"

"Serviceman—well, former, I guess—Third Class Enrico Morales." He twisted in his chair, looking up at Shepard as one might their deity of choice. "You're my hero—if you don't mind me saying! I enlisted straight out of high school because of you, and they told me I had an aptitude for flying small craft: fighters and shuttles. I watched your Spectre induction ceremony live on the feeds during a stopover at the Citadel!" His eyes widened with his boyish smile. "I ended up leaving the Alliance right after the Battle of the Citadel. Fuck the Council for brushing you off to the side. Y'know, it seems like Cerberus are the only ones willing to do anything about the Reapers—at least, until we came along." He finally took a breath. "Ma'am."

"For someone so young, you did a great job."

"Thank you, ma'am. Cerberus really helped cultivate my talent."

"Hopefully, we can do you one better."

"I guarantee it!"

"All right, I want you to co-ordinate with Volyov to work out who's flying in what ship with which prisoners, and how the hell we're going to get the MAKO back to the Alexander."

"You can count on me, ma'am!" And he fired of an overly formal, and entirely unnecessary, salute. "I'll get it done!"

Morales hurried through the last leg of the shutdown, and squeezed out of his chair, past Shepard and set off at a trot across the square. She stepped up to the edge of the hatch to take in the full extent of the mission: the two soldiers were roughing up the prisoners in turn to extract information, more swarmed the MAKO to give it the rundown for traps or defects, Rasa hovered around where Shepard had left her entirely absorbed by her omni-tool. They'd suffered no casualties today, and Shepard found something to be happy about in that, but it was a small victory compared to the five thousand colonists that where still missing, five previous colonies abducted, and many more after if no-one stopped it.

Shepard despised the helplessness, but Rasa was right, they were in no position to mount any sort of effective rescue. For now, they had to build a new power base, and all the logistical pitfalls that came with it. There was no better place to start than the name. A good, strong name could do a lot of heavy lifting. Anything based in mythology or literature went out the window first—co-opting symbolic imagery was the mark of a pretentious ass trying to sound deep. Then there were the big three mercenary companies in the galaxy: the Blue Suns, Blood Pack, and Eclipse. Something short and punchy, with just a little meaning behind it to drive the point home would work, but the question was if she wanted to be associated with mercenaries. Without a pool of resources to draw on, they would have to take on mercenary work to build up some funds and a reputation.

Shepard had been so caught up in her contemplations that she hadn't noticed Rasa approaching. "Shepard," she said, "one of the pirates cracked and told us that one of their ships has sufficient cargo space to transport the MAKO; they were planning on taking it themselves before we showed up."

"Can the remaining ship fit all the pirates with room to breathe?" Shepard asked. "The last thing we want is a mutiny and hostage situation."

"I'm confident it can be done."

"All right, we'll have a skeleton crew take the MAKO straight back to Arcturus, while we go with the prisoners to the nearest Council world. We'll drop the ship in orbit with a sabotaged reactor and set it to put out a distress signal. We'll retrieve everyone in the shuttle and fly off before anyone knows we were there."

"You're far more lenient than I would've been."

"Oh, I know that. I'm aware working for Cerberus encourages a certain…attitude, but the whole point of this thing is that we're better than them."

"Cerberus has nothing to do with my attitude. The common people of Earth are getting churned up by this constant need to race headlong into being subservient to the other races." Rasa's eyes glazed over as she stared off into the middle distance. "Those conditions create ugly people, and those ugly people go on to create more ugly people. I'm ugly, Shepard, and I sure as shit didn't want to be."

She pushed past a dumbfounded Shepard to retrieve something from the rear storage compartment, and returned to her position coordinating the mission without giving Shepard even a cursory glance. The early days of intergalactic travel had been a bit of a crap-shoot. Ever since John Grissom, Alec Ryder, and their team had transited through the Mass Relay for the first time, Human expansion had been chaotic and messy. The First Contact War was always the event people pointed to when the subject of reckless, unfiltered exploration came up, but there were a million smaller stories playing out all the time. How many would've been saved if first contact with the Turians had been handled with more delicacy? How many would be saved if everyone just took a breath and slowed down for a moment to establish proper worker rights and procedures?

Rasa's blatant xenophobia irked Shepard, and she hoped to change her business partners tune someday, but she felt for Rasa. Shepard had lived a life of relative privilege in the well-funded Alliance military, on the cutting edge of technology and exploration, everything provided, never having to want for anything. That didn't mean it was easy; of course not. The job of a marine was stressful, dangerous, and straining in a physical and mental capacity. She had her fair share of trauma and more than a few visits to therapy because of it. Rasa needed a friend. Was it as good, or even a substitute for, therapy? No. But suffering alone needlessly exacerbated the problem. Shepard refused to let any member of her crew dangle over a cliff with no help in sight.

A/N: I hope the editing on this chapter wasn't too rough. I was extremely busy for the first half of the month, then my mental health shit the bed, then my mental health shit the bed and I got hit by a bad fever, so I wasn't sure I'd be able to, or even wanted to, release it. If I hadn't written this months ago to build up a few buffer chapters, I might've had to skip this month—because I sure didn't get any more Mass Effect related stuff written. Hopefully, things get better from here and, as usual, thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read my story.

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