Having a child really takes it out of you. Who knew?
I've been pecking away at this chapter for near-on a year now and frankly I can't stand the sight of it anymore, I just want it done. You may pick up on that. Good thing I'm not getting paid for this!
Also, it might seem here that we're skipping over quite a bit of stuff, and that's because we are. Really, there's not a whole lot that seeing all of the individual side bits would add, as they'd basically just be 'That stuff you remember from ME2, only now there's a laser sometimes and you probably hate how the character is coming across', so instead what I'm trying to do is convey, uh, essence I guess. The idea of how things are going for Shepard.
If you follow?
Whatever, let's get this Shepard bit over with.
Poor Jacob, that was rough.
Honestly, if you'd asked me five years ago where I saw myself in, you know, five years, I would not have said on a planet with brain-rotting fruit, gunning my way through the crazed, reduced-to-tribalism survivors of a crashed spaceship captained by the presumed-killed-but-actually-gone-mad-with-power father of a man who is the member of an organisation that once tried to kill me for disrupting their unethical experiments but has since brought me back from the dead and charged me with putting a stop to an alien race's sinister designs on humanity as part of a greater effort at getting read for the arrival of a fleet of killer space robots dedicated to wiping us all off the face of the galaxy. I would not have said that.
And yet, here I am.
Life's funny like that, I guess.
Anyway, that had happened. That thing with Jacob's father and the fruit and the tribals. Finding out that he'd set himself up as some sort of weirdo cult leader-stroke-god and had a brain-damaged harem guarded by robots. That we'd shot our way through. That was something we'd done. Not the most relaxing day I've had, personally, and while Jacob seems to be holding up alright it's still not something most people would have liked to go through, I wouldn't think. Poor sod.
We left his father there, on that planet, with those people and without his robots. The people weren't very happy with him. It sounded like it didn't go well, but we didn't look back to check.
Certainly drew a line under it.
All part of the continuing efforts of shoring up the squad, filling in those psychological cracks, focusing minds by removing distractions and also grabbing anything we found that looked valuable that happened to be nearby at the time, like boxes of refined iridium that people liked to leave lying around, as an example.
This sort of thing takes up most of my time these days. Running around shooting mercenaries, every so often taking a moment to help out one of the squad with some pressing personal issue - did you know Thane had a son? I do now - or sometimes having to babysit imperialist humans from another universe, just killing time and waiting for the incredibly sketchy man in charge to tell me what the next step in the big plan is so I can get a tiny bit closer to stopping the Collectors.
It's frustrating, but that's just how it is. The Collectors are still out there right now, right this second, still doing whatever it is they're doing (collecting, presumably, though they seem to have gone worryingly quiet of late), and I'm just here killing people and killing time waiting to be told what to do by someone I do not trust. With Saren I was actively tracking him down, with this I'm having to wait.
Such is life. Not a whole lot else I can do short of going through the Omega Four relay early and probably dying horribly somehow, which doesn't appeal. And the squad is improving, which is important, and every box of minerals liberated from some corpse-strewn mercenary compound is another spot of souping up I can give the Normandy or new technical tweak we can make to our gear.
It all helped, and ideally I would like to come back from this collector-busting mission whenever it actually happens. I have things I need to do, things I only really trust to get done if I'm there to do them.
Speaking of things found amidst the corpses of my fallen enemies, though, we did make something of a notable discovery not that long ago: a laser rifle.
We were busting up something the Blue Suns had going - mostly because we just happened to be in the area and because hell, why not - and everything was going pretty standard when, all of a sudden, laser rifle. A bit of shock, I can tell you.
I can also now say from personal experience that being shot with a laser is not fun. I didn't assume it would be fun, but I can now confirm it. The guy who had the thing - some chancer Blue Sun lieutenant - caught me off guard, shot went right through my shields and hit me in the chest. Damn near smacked me flat on my arse. Lucky there's that ablative, energy-absorbing layer as standard on combat hardsuits, eh? My armour held but if I hadn't been bodily reinforced on account of being a very expensive cyborg revenant I can imagine it might have done more than knock the wind out of me.
Not something I'd care to repeat any time soon.
Especially since the one they had wasn't one of the one's that Jarrion had loaned to us, not a proper military one. Looking at it afterwards, after its erstwhile owner was dead, even I could tell immediately that it was lower grade than the ones we'd been given. The finish wasn't as good, didn't have that very nice power-select control and also the powerpack was built-in. This was definitely one of those civilian models that Jarrion had mentioned, the ones he was trading to the human colonies and which were - fairly obviously - being traded on or stolen or lost and generally spreading out into space.
Proof - if it were needed - that these things were already getting out there and already getting into the hands of the wrong sorts of people. Assuming there are the right sorts of people to have laserguns in the first place.
I suppose I'd be the right sort of person to have a lasergun, come to think of it. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I like to think I'm using my futuristic wonder weaponry for good, as opposed to these bastards and whoever else out there is eager to get their grubby mits on them. Those people who want a laser just so they can cause trouble.
There's not a lot to add beyond simple observation of facts. We already knew that the lasers had gone beyond the colonists that Jarrion had traded with - hell, Anderson had already told me as much - but there's a difference between knowing it and actually getting shot. If my ribs weren't augmented they'd probably have the cracks to show the difference. Fucking ouch.
So there's that. Those really are out there now. Who knows what else is going to happen? I can imagine things getting worse before they get better. Or worse before they get even worse. And then worse again, why not. Why should we be so willing to believe the worst is over?
But I still had time to buttress while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for a call from the Illusive Man, and so I pointed the ship at Haestrom, where Tali apparently was.
Tali was one of a handful of people in the galaxy who I actually, legitimately trusted, so ideally I'd have liked her watching my back given what it was I was planning on doing - the collector mission and all that.
Last we heard though ('we' in this instance being us members of Cerberus, with access to knowing things most would probably have to actually towards knowing) she was off on some long-lost quarian colony world, since overrun and infested with geth. It certainly sounded like the Tali place to be.
Even better, it was a long-lost quarian colony world orbiting a sun that fried the surface and made just about everything a hundred times more difficult than it would be otherwise, even without hordes of killer robots coming out the woodwork.
Worse things have happened, though. Me, Grunt, Jacob and Garrus on this one, trying to keep it small and quick. Hop in the shuttle and down we go.
Almost the instant I took my first step out of the shade there came a sizzling and an immediate, loud, annoying beeping from my suit as the shield indicator started dropping, and dropping alarmingly fast at that. I went right back into some shade again. I was also being shot at at the time, which didn't help.
"Why in God's name is the sun overloading my shields? I know radiation is bad but it's hardly shooting at me, is it?!" I shouted over the squad net, not really expecting an answer, mostly just annoyed.
These were kinetic barriers, last I checked.
"It's frying the emitters," came the voice of Garrus, with what almost sounded like authority, almost like he believed it himself. I thought about this as chips of masonry flew up from whatever chunk of rubble I was hunkered behind.
"Sure. I'll buy that," I said. Sounded convincing to me. Radiation is wild. Could probably do that. Was messing up communications so why not?
Now I felt like an idiot.
So that was fun. Getting into firefights with geth is bad enough without also having to remember to stick to the shade so the harsh light of a dying star doesn't cook you from the inside out. If nothing else at least my life isn't dull.
There isn't a whole lot to say about the firefights, honestly. Shooting geth was novel when I first started doing it back before I died, but by now it just sort of feels like going through the motions, if it feels like anything at all. Probably helps that I'm a cyborg death machine backed up by hyper-lethal teammates. Geth may be good, but they're not that good, least not to me and my lads.
We make short work and we cut through them, moving through the ruins in a pretty direct straight line. Bump into some quarians - associates of Tali - and they are having a much rougher time of it than we are. Get cut off by some collapsing masonry before we get a chance to catch up with them and by the time we've faffed around and found enough explosives to blow ourselves a clear path the poor bastards have got themselves wiped out.
Given the wrecked geth littering the room they'd retreated into, the quarians had at least given a good account of themselves, but still. Poor sods.
There was some communications gear in the room, too, and Tali was on the line. Trying to raise her comrades, it transpired, but it was me instead there to deliver the bad news. She was surprised, then sad, then resolved. Made of stern stuff, Tali. One of the many reasons I thought so highly of her.
Also got word from another quarian survivor, too, cutting into our conversation. Some Flotilla marine sergeant or other, Kal'Reegar. He was holding out up ahead from the sound of things, trying to get to Tali same as us. Tali seemed keen on him staying alive and it's always nice to have help, so we said we'd make tracks to link up with him.
And on we went. Tali was up ahead buttoned up somewhere behind a locked door and she wasn't going to be getting any safer the longer we sat around. Geth got a few ways of opening up doors, in my experience, often favouring the direct way.
In short order (and with only a surprisingly light amount of gunfighting) we got into some bigger, secure structure the purpose of which I can only guess at. The room we entered had some armoured shutters and, amazingly, a console that still looked to be in semi-working order. Those ancient quarians build to last, apparently.
"Tali should be just past whatever's the other side of these," Garrus said, doing a quick doublecheck of his omnitool. I nodded. Figured the same myself. Looking around the room I saw that on top of the shutters the door to the next area was also locked, some security protocol or other keeping the placed sealed up. Probably a result of the recent action.
"Right. See if you can get this opened up," I said.
Garrus set about that and, in a trice, found the right button. The shutters raised, and across the way we saw a whole bloody platoon of geth and also, just for variety, a geth colossus, which I'll admit I hadn't expected.
The damn things must have noticed us lifting the lockdown because no sooner had that shutter gone up then up popped the colossus, and no sooner had it popped up it also started firing at us, along with all the others.
"Get down!" I yelled, though really I didn't have to, we were all already throwing ourselves flat. There was a crash and a boom and a shake and some dust drizzled over us from the ceiling but nothing else happened and none of us died, so this wasn't the worst.
I never did like fighting the geth armour on foot. If I was back in the Mako I could just run the thing over a few times, park on it and then get out and shoot it in the face. When I'm on foot my options are kind of limited and my guns are distressingly small.
Wish I'd brought that laser cannon now. I hadn't thought I'd be needing it!
"You know, I'm starting to think we should get our own big robot," I said, risking a peek and very quickly having to duck back down again as pulse rifle rounds started hissing my way, skimming off my barriers and chewing up sun-baked concrete.
Yep, still shooting at us.
"Maybe Jarrion has one he can lend us," said Garrus.
He was joking, but Jarrion probably did have something like that somewhere.
"I'll ask next time I see him. Which'll probably be in two minutes, knowing my luck. Come on, let's deal with this lot and get to Tali."
We took a side-exit from the room, one that was thankfully afforded total cover by the structure and so we didn't have to worry about being shot to ribbons on the way out. We nearly tripped over a quarian who had the same appreciation of the safety presented there and who was hunkering down.
He halfway raised the rocket launcher he was holding towards us before clocking we weren't geth and lowering it again, waving us in by him, where we huddled.
"Commander Shepard," I said, by way of introduction as I came in squatting beside him.
"I guessed. Sergeant Kal'Reegar, we talked on the radio. Still no idea why you're here but now ain't the time to be picky. Tali's inside over there. The Geth killed the rest of my squad, and they're trying to get to her. Best I've been able to do is try and get their attention," he said.
"What we up against here? Apart from the obvious whacking great robot. Numbers?"
Always good to know numbers. Even ballpark is better than no idea at all.
"Near platoon strength, but the colossus is the worst part. It's got repair protocols. Huddles up and fixes itself. Can't get a clear shot when it's down like that. I tried to move in closer and one of the bastards punched a hole clean through my suit," he said, nodding downwards. I looked downwards. He did indeed have a hole punch through him - through his leg, specifically, ine one side and right out the other. Blood around the hole looked fresh, which was unsurprising, but there wasn't any more leaking out, which was good.
"How bad?" I asked.
"Combat seals clamped down to isolate contamination and I'm swimming in antibiotics. The Geth might get me but I'm not going to die from an infection in the middle of a battle. That's just insulting."
I like this guy's attitude.
"Too right. What's the plan with the colossus?"
"Standard protocol with armature-class units is to sabotage their shields and whittle them down, you know, kill it with bug bites. But the repair protocol blows that plan to hell. You try to wear it down it just huddles up and fixes itself. We're going to have to hit it real hard, probably from up close. Means crossing that out there, cutting through the foot units first and not getting cooked or shot. Or more shot, if you're me," he said, waving the rocket launcher around the edge of what we were all hiding behind.
Sounded about as good of a plan as was possible right then.
"I can manage that," I said.
"I'm not moving so well but I can still pull a trigger and I've got a rocket launcher that the sun hasn't fried yet. You and yours move in close. I'll keep the colossus busy, maybe even drop it's shields. With luck, you'll be able to finish it off," he said. Behind my faceplate I frowned.
I understood the desire not to sit around doing nothing but I couldn't help but imagine that one quarian with a rocket launcher wasn't going to be all-that distracting, especially since the distraction would probably end pretty quickly with the quarian in question a smear across the walls.
"Kind of you to offer, but you've done more than enough already. No need to get any more holes punched through you, we'll take it from here," I said, giving a sideways nod to my lads.
"Wasn't asking you permission. My job is to keep Tali safe. This is our best shot," Kal'Reegar said.
At this he lunged up - with obvious effort - and brought that rocket launcher of his to bear, properly this time, and with intent. Given that we were still being shot at while he was trying to do this I could kind of see how this was going to play out. Before he'd made it halfway I was up and hauling him out the way. One of the numerous benefits of being a cyborg is that I'm very good at hauling people out of the way.
Dragging him sideways into more substantial cover (and keenly aware of the air where he would have been standing getting merrily chopped to bits by geth fire) I broke out my most commanderly voice:
"Getting shot to pieces isn't going to be keeping Tali safe. You want to get killed, do it on your own time."
"I'm not going to stand there while you run into enemy fire. They killed my whole squad!"
"Yes, and you can either join them and die for nothing right here and now and I can go get Tali and tell her everyone she arrived with died or else you can hang back and keep an eye out for if they try to come at us from behind," I said, pointing back the way we'd come and the way the geth could very well also come, if we'd missed any on our way over. "Cover our backs, alright?"
He was quiet a second. Always hard to read a quarian but I could tell he was wrangling it.
"Alright, Shepard. We'll do it your way. Hit them for me. Keelah se'lai," he said.
Swear some people just have a death wish. Having died, I can tell you it's really not worth it.
The area ahead of us was broadly split into three routes, broadly speaking. Left, right and middle. Left was low and exposed to the sun, middle was in the middle and exposed to being shot a lot from just about anywhere else and the right had higher elevation. All fine choices.
I sent Garrus and Jacob up right, my thinking being that while up there they could shoot down, which is always a plus. Especially as Garrus had brought along that sniper laser he'd got so fond of. Putting that (and him) somewhere practical was just sensible, really.
That left me and Grunt. We'd go low, leave the middle.
Pulse rifle shots start flying the instant we break cover but we're down and sprinting and moving through enough rubble and bits and pieces of omnipresent concrete (I keep assuming ancient quarians used concrete? Or some equivalent) that we make good distance unscathed. One or two glances off the barriers, but that's what they're there for.
There's a bigger whoosh and a detonation that shakes the ground beneath my feet when the colossus opens up, but I don't stop to see where it hit or how close it came to hitting me. Best not to worry about these things, best to just keep pushing forward times like this. If you haven't been blown to bits take it as a sign to carry on.
One of the invisible ones - hunters, my HUD told me, thanks HUD - came at me, which was a bad idea. They're not all that invisible and I could see it coming and before it got a shot off I'd grabbed the thing and hip-tossed it over the nearest platform edge, down to who-knew-where.
"Get out the way," I said, not breaking stride. I really didn't have time.
Of course, the next one to come at me was a destroyer. Even I have limits, I'm not going to try and wrestle one of those. I came skidding in behind a chunk of building just as the geth started firing on me, no-doubt chewing a nice big chunk out of the chunk.
Grunt had no reservations about this, however, and went barrelling right past me waving around that chainsword he had become so very fond of. I was still taking cover when he did this, and though it went against my better judgement I stood up to give him at least the suggestion of covering fire. I needn't have bothered.
Moment I stood up I got a nice, split-second view of the destroyer switching targets to the massive roaring krogan running at it before a shot from the side caught it on the shoulder and staggered it. A laser shot, no less. Punched a nice, glowing hole right through a guard plate and down into its chest. If it had been anything other than a hulking murder robot that probably would have killed it on the spot.
(As an aside, I did have a passing thought at that moment - which I pushed away as a distraction, but would come back to - that things were really going to start getting interesting when the geth got their hands on some of that Imperial laser technology. They don't get out much, but it really is only a matter of time. So there's that to look forward to.)
I looked in the direction the shot had come from, saw Garrus up on the flank that he and Jacob were taking. He saw me looking and gave me the tiniest of salutes, that sniper laser in his other hand. Class act, Garrus. Almost as good a shot as me, too. Almost.
By the time I looked back to the destroyer Grunt had sawed one of its legs clean off and was merrily carving it open from the groin upward. He was so happy doing this, in fact, that he entirely failed to notice the geth moving in to shoot him, so I shot them before they could - double-tap Mattock shots to the head for the two of them who'd stepped into the sun, sending the others back into cover. That's teamwork, and that was our flank pretty much taken care of.
And to think Miranda said it was a bad idea to let Grunt bring the chainsword on this mission!
Now the colossus.
I may not have brought the laser cannon but I had brought one of the future guns, my favourite of them, in fact, or at least the favourite of the ones I'd tried. The meltagun. I love this gun. Used it a couple of times now. Kind of ridiculous overkill on most targets - I'd never actually left anyone a smoking pair of legs before using it, I hadn't even known you really could - but this wasn't most targets. This was actually perfect. This was the kind of target the gun had apparently been made for.
Had to get a bit closer though. One thing I'd learnt about the meltagun was that it didn't have a whole lot of range. Would still ruin most people's day out to a pretty good distance - if you're not instantly obliterated you're still going to suddenly catch fire or at least get suddenly pan-seared and blinded - but for something big and armoured I imagined closer was better. So I got closer, dodging from cover to cover, shields flickering here and there where I caught the sun or a stray shot, but soon I was within spitting distance.
Of course, by then I'd got the attention of the thing and it was pouring it onto me, meaning I was stuck in cover and Grunt, who was little bit away from me, wasn't in a much better situation.
"You guys up top able to help with this?" I sent to Garrus and Jacob, noticing what I had taken to be a disabled geth crawling on over to me and briefly drawing my Phalanx to make sure it actually was disabled properly this time.
"What are teammates for?" Garrus replied. I rolled my eyes, heard that high-pitched snap-crack of laser fire and also a disconcertingly loud crashing noise. "That should do it, Shepard."
I wasn't going to ask what the crashing was. I popped up, barely had to aim, fired.
Clean shot, right at the centre of mass. Big machine just melted like a chocolate egg someone had taken a blowtorch to, great glowing chunk just where most of its middle used to be. For a second the structure kind of held together then it just collapsed, partly in on itself, mostly just in a heap. Clunk, crunch, pfut. Repair protocol that.
I love this gun.
After that it was just mopping up. Garrus and Jacob had cleared out the top route and stayed up there, picking off any geth they had flanked and keeping the heads down of those who they couldn't just shoot outright. The geth didn't run - not that I expected them to - but they didn't last much longer past this.
We're professionals. More or less. The only reason I'd even broken a sweat was because of the sun.
"Alright Tali you can come out now. We've rendered the area safe in the fashion for which we're known," I said, wandering up to the door the geth had been trying to breach and giving it a rap. This didn't get any response, at least not immediately, but a couple seconds later there came a few loud clunks and some whirring and the door, now unlocked, ground open. And there was Tali, none the worse for wear.
"Fancy meeting you here," I said, giving a wave.
"Thank you Shepard," she said, giving me a little wave back. She sounded more out of breath than I did! Guess that's working under pressure. "If it weren't for you I never would have made it out of this room. This whole mission has been a disaster. I wish I'd joined you back on Freedom's Progress, but I couldn't let anyone else take my place on something this risky."
Risky was putting it mildly. I got where she was coming from, though.
"Worth it, whatever you got?" I asked, gesturing vaguely to the machinery occupying the spot she'd holed herself up in. She thought about this for a second, and when she spoke she didn't sound as if she was brimming with confidence:
"I don't know, Shepard. It wasn't my call. The Admiralty Board believes the information here was worth sacrificing all our lives for. I have to believe they know what's best."
"But what do you think?" I asked.
She didn't think so long for this one.
"A lot of people died here. Some of them were my friends. All of them were good at their jobs. That damn data better be worth it. The price was too high."
There wasn't a lot I could say to that, so I just nodded.
"Glad I could help, all the same. And not to sound callous but once you've delivered that data I've still got a spot on the Normandy for you," I said, thumbing back over my shoulder.
"For the suicide mission?" She asked.
People really do latch onto that part.
"We're trying not to call it that. Official Ceberus vocab guidelines refer to it as a 'high risk assignment'," I said, naturally providing the appropriate air-quotes in the appropriate place.
And while this sounded like another of my super-good jokes I'd honestly seen Cerberus's paperwork on the mission and that was honestly what it had said. Someone had written that. I thought the whole point of having a secret paramilitary terrorist organisation was to avoid things like that? Stupid euphemisms and the like?
"I promised to see this mission through and I did. I can leave with you and send the data to the fleet. And if the admirals have a problem with that, they can go to hell. I just watched the rest of my team die," Tali said, not un-bitterly.
"Maybe not the whole rest of your team, ma'am," Kal'Reegar said, limping in at just the right moment.
"See Kal'Reegar, if you'd got yourself killed you couldn't have delivered that perfectly timed line," I said. Everyone ignored this, Tali just rushing over to check on her friend and everyone else just sandbagging me. Ingrates. I'm wasted on these people.
"Reegar! You made it!"
"Your old captain's as good as you said. Damn colossus never stood a chance," Reegar said, nodding to me.
"You'll make me blush. If you need a ride out of here I'd be more than willing to oblige you," I said, but Reegar shook his head.
"The geth didn't damage our ship. Long as we get out of here before reinforcements show up, we'll be fine," he said.
"Actually I won't be going with you. I'm joining Commander Shepard," said Tali.
Reegar took this in stride. Didn't even blink. Well, I assume he didn't even blink.
"I'll pass the data to the Admiralty Board and let them know what happened. She's all yours now, Shepard. Keep her safe."
I couldn't in all honesty say that I was going to keep her safe given what I was going to be asking her to be a part of, so I just gave the guy a thumbs up. Seemed to work.
Tiny bit awkward back on the return shuttle trip and back on ship, just a tiny bit. Not a huge surprise given that mine and Tali's initial experience of Cerberus had been, you know, us shooting them while they were shooting at us. It's not a good first impression. And that's not even getting into the dubious experiments and shady goings on. We had not started as friends.
Hell, we still weren't friends, we just happened to share common goals for the time being.
That, and I'm really not going to complain if they want to keep throwing money at this problem. Private sector has some perks. Does this count as the private sector?
Anyway, it continued being awkward all the way back into the conference room for the standard post-mission debriefing. There wasn't a whole lot to say, really, at least not for anyone who wasn't Jacob, me or Tali so Garrus and Grunt got to leave early - the rest of us stayed. Me because I'm in charge, Tali because she had just arrived and needed introducing, Jacob because he was the one going to be doing the introducing.
Thus.
"Cerberus saw footage of you in action, Tali'Zorah. We're looking forward to having you on the team. Your engineering expertise will really benefit the mission," Jacob said. Suppose that counts as an introduction. Seemed kind of dry to me, personally, but can't say he's wrong.
"I don't know who you are, but Cerberus threatened the security of the Migrant fleet. Don't make nice," Tali said.
That would leave a sour taste, I'll grant, but I'd still prefer everyone on slightly warmer terms than that. If only for the sake of team cohesion.
"You don't have to like them, Tali, but we are all on the same side this time. For now," I said. She turned to me.
"I assumed that you were undercover, Shepard. Maybe even planning to blow Cerberus up. If that's the case I'll loan you a grenade. Otherwise I'm here for you. Not for them," she said.
I shrugged. Fair play.
"Works for me. I'm mostly just making blatant use of their resources until they turn on me. Check out the ship if you have a minute. They might be sneaky bastards but they really went to town on it, go have a look. Swipe a mug, I have."
Several, in fact. Mostly because I keep taking them to my cabin and forgetting about them, but still.
"I'll get Tali'Zorah the necessary security clearance to access our systems," Jacob said, fiddling with his omnitool. Helpful chap. Very good at letting my unrelenting criticism of his employer just roll off his back. What a good sport!
"Please do. I can't be a part of your team if I don't know how the ship works," she said, only briefly glancing in Jacob's direction before returning her attention to me. "Just remember, Shepard. Cerberus wasn't our friend when we went up against Saren. I'll be in engineering."
Tried not to grit my teeth.
"They're not our friend now. Why does everyone keep telling me this, I know this. But yes, go have fun," I said, waving her off.
I'm honestly getting a little sick of people assuming just because I'm wearing a shirt with a Cerberus logo on it that suddenly I think they're the best thing ever. These are the only clothes I have! I was dead and once I stopped being dead Cerberus provided my wardrobe! I haven't had time to get anything else! It's not my fault!
Mean, I know how it looks from the outside if you hear that suddenly someone has started zipping about in a Cerberus ship with a Cerberus crew doing some clandestine mission of some kind for Cerberus, but you'd think the people who know me would at least give me the benefit of the doubt!
Wasn't I meant to be a decorated war hero or something? First human Spectre? Known for going around and shooting Cerberus?
Urgh. Sooner this is over and sooner the Collectors are done and dusted the better. Can roll on Cerberus, get back to screwing up their schemes like God intended and start working on how to get everyone in the galaxy to make nice so we can all counter the impending killbot invasion.
Never a dull moment.
Speaking of which, Jacob got one last thing in just before Tali was about to go through the door:
"Don't forget to introduce yourself to EDI, the ship's new artificial intelligence."
She didn't say anything to that. Stopped, looked back, and even with the helmet on you could practically feel the heat she was giving off. Fuck me. And then she was off and out the door. I turned to Jacob.
"Come on, man," I said, giving him A Look.
"What?" He asked, blanky as anything.
Playing dumb, eh? I pointed a finger at him. A knowing finger.
"You know what you did. Next time I'm about to go and do something exciting you'll be staying behind to feed my fish," I said.
"You have an automatic feeder, Commander. I saw you buy it," he said. Smartarse.
"I'll turn it off."
"Alright, I'm sorry. That was a cheap shot," he said, holding up his hands. The threat of feeding fish was clearly a potent one.
"Yes it was. Well that's that. Good work down there, you go take a minute, do whatever."
"Commander," he said, nodding. I left. Things to do. Always something to do. Always somewhere new to be and something new to do, someone to shoot, someone to talk to.
And just as I was heading back to the map, Chambers caught me. She didn't even look up!
"The Illusive Man wishes to speak to you in the briefing room, Commander," she said. I slumped, sighed, turned right back around on my heel and moped back to the room I'd just bloody left not five seconds previously. Passed Jacob who cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly.
"Take a guess," I said, re-entering the briefing room - conference room, whatever - and standing as the lights dimmed and the table sunk almost as soon as the door closed behind me.
And there he was, in his chair, smoking. The Illusive Man.
"You rang?"
"Shepard. There's been some developments."
"That's always good to hear. What kind?"
"Confirmed what had previously been speculation. We've restored enough of the collector ship's systems to working order so that we were able to access its computer, and while interpreting what we're finding is uphill work we have already discovered something important."
Presumably if they'd had EDI handy it would have been faster. Well, they seem to be doing fine without her.
"Which you will no-doubt inform me of presently," I said.
He smoked aggressively at me and did not comment on my flippancy. Probably shouldn't prod him too much, he just makes it so easy and at this point it's more of a reflex than anything else. Bad habits of mine. There are many.
"We had theorised that collector vessels possessed some form of IFF device which allows them to traverse the Omega Four relay safely - we now know this to be the case. Unfortunately, the disabled vessel did not have an intact example, the damage was too extensive. Fortunately, we happen to have an intact example already."
"Oh?"
Didn't strike me as the sort of thing you'd just have lying around. The Illusive Man smoked some more and nodded, tapping out ash.
"There is a derelict Reaper in the upper atmosphere of a brown dwarf in the Hawking Eta Cluster - we're sending you the exact coordinates. We have a team there investigating already and they've confirmed that the derelict still has such an IFF device and they have managed to locate it," he said.
I blinked.
"...a derelict Reaper?"
"Yes."
"Just… there? Just around?"
He tapped out some more ash, uncrossed and recrossed his legs.
"Just there. It's damaged and has been damaged for what we assume is a considerable length of time. Despite this, it has mass effect fields keeping it from being pulled deeper into the brown dwarf. This isn't important though. What's important is that it has what you need for your mission to proceed."
There's something quietly terrifying in the idea of a spaceship - a damaged spaceship, no less - still being capable of just sitting in the atmosphere of a planet for however many thousands of years. Or is that just me? Didn't even have the decency to be age-ravaged wreckage, had to stay perfectly frozen in place until someone found it, dead but not too dead. Bloody Reapers.
I dwelt on this for a second.
"Right. Guessing there's a twist coming though?" I asked.
"We lost contact with the team, not long after they reported having acquired the IFF," he said.
Naturally.
"Alright. So going and picking it up might prove interesting?" I asked.
"It would be safe to assume so."
"Alright, alright," I said, stroking my chin, distracted by thoughts of what I'd very shortly be having to do.
The prospect of boarding a Reaper did not fill me with enthusiasm - having seen what happened to those who hung around Reapers for any length of time - but this was what had to happen and it wasn't like I was moving into the place anyway, just in and out. Pretty glad that the Cerberus team managed to do what they needed to before succumbing, poor sods.
Did they know what was going to happen to them when they went there? The Illusive Man must have done. But how else were they going to get this IFF thing? How else are we meant to get through the relay, stop the attacks? These are probably the hard choices that people have to make. What would I have done if I'd been the one in charge?
I was actually quite thankful when the Illusive Man interrupted here and derailed my train of thought. Sometimes I think too much, perhaps, especially about things I can't actually do anything about. Another bad habit. Did say I had many.
"In an unrelated matter, it has come to my attention that you recently took on-board some weapons and equipment from the Rogue Trader," he said. Took me a second to remember that's what Jarrion had said his job title was.
"Heard about that, did you?" I asked.
"I did."
Inevitable, really. Probably found out five minutes before the crates were even aboard and just hadn't had the chance to bring it up to me until now. Just one of those things.
"Your habit of knowing everything everyone else knows and a bit more besides is deeply unsettling. Has anyone mentioned that?" I asked. He just smoked at me, albeit not as aggressively this time.
"It's an occupational hazard for a man in my position," he said.
"Knowing everything or unsettling everyone?"
"Both."
Sounds about right.
"If you're hoping that I'll let you borrow them for a minute I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you as they were given to me and my team personally and in good faith."
Left out the part where Jarrion specifically requested they not be given to the Illusive Man and that Jarrion explicitly didn't trust the Illusive Man, as I felt that might be stepping a little too close to outright antagonising him, and I didn't need to go that far. He probably knew that too, anyway.
"I assumed as much. We had approached him directly but without success. It simply struck me as curious that he would be willing to deal with you personally and not with us. Still, it isn't an issue."
One imagines he will have - or already has - a way of getting what he wants without having to go through the trouble of asking or the bother of anyone finding out about it. Otherwise I can't see why he'd be so relaxed about it.
"So this was mostly just so I know that you know?" I asked.
"More or less."
I shrugged. Not a lot I could do about that.
"Whatever floats your boat. Alright, fine, Reaper IFF. You send the details, we'll go get it. Then it's - well, then it'll be go-time, won't it?"
"Once it's secured and installed then it will just be a case of going through the relay and eliminating whatever it is you find on the other side. Presumably a base. That is of course assuming you feel your team is ready?"
I thought about this for a second.
"More or less," I said.
Could always be more ready, but we're not made of time.
"It is at your discretion, Shepard," he said.
Leeway is always nice, though it does always carry with it the lingering threat that if it all goes wrong it is entirely your fault. But that's being in charge, really. Someone's got to make decisions.
"Right. Well, I'll send a report once we've got the IFF, though no-doubt you'll know about that before we actually get it anyway. Then it's just a case of getting it plugged in and, hell, off to the races, I guess," I said, scratching the back of my head.
"As you say," he said, then disconnecting. This left me on my own in a darkened room, at least until the lights came back up, then I was on my own in a slightly brighter room.
Kind of weird to think the end was in sight like that. Mean, we still had a derelict Reaper to crawl through the guts of, which wasn't going to be the most relaxing of occasions, but still. Once we got the IFF, got it hooked up, what was left? Team was pretty solid right now, Normandy was probably the most cutting-edge ship in space at this point. Basically ready to go, draw a line under it. Deal with the threat of the Collectors.
Felt like I was missing something, or that something was due to go very wrong.
Probably just healthy paranoia.
-LITTLE BIT LATER-
Later, having failed to get to sleep, I was in one of the observation lounges, observing. Or at least observing my drink - moving faster-than-light meant the view wasn't really giving me much. I always thought they closed the shutters at times like this. Hmm. If I made more of a habit of coming down here I'd probably know for sure.
As I'm sitting, I hear the door open behind me. The slight glow I can see briefly reflected in the window tells me who it is.
"Evening, Tali Settling in alright?" I asked, not looking around.
"It's kind of eerie walking around on this ship knowing what happened to the last one," she said, not commenting on my neat trick of guessing it was her and strolling over to come stand just next to the sofa I was sprawled on.
She was right, too.
"You're telling me. I was on it when it happened! Still, Cerberus did alright, don't you think?" I asked, gesturing around the room and, by extension, the ship at large.
"It's very impressive," Tali said, which definitely sounded like grudgingly conceding something you'd rather not to me.
"That it is. Crew treating you alright?"
"They're being polite. I thought maybe they'd stop me accessing the computer systems, but I had full access."
"Well, Jacob did say you would," I pointed out.
"He did, but I didn't know how serious that was. Saying I should go and see the AI…"
That's a first impression that'll take a while to look back on and laugh at.
"Yeah that wasn't his finest moment. Said sorry to me but I'm not really the one who he needed to apologise to. Nice guy most of the time, honest. They're all nice if you give them a chance. Even Jack. You met Jack?"
"The human under the stairs?"
"I like to think of it as the basement of the ship but yeah, her."
"I, uh, saw her when I went to engineering."
"She's nice enough, once you get past, uh, a few things. They're an interesting bunch, but solid. And we are here for a good reason, not just being Cerberus's hatchetmen or whatever anyone else is saying. I wouldn't trust the boss as far as I can throw him and probably the rest of them are still up to no good, but this lot, on this ship?"
I took a sip, just to wet the whistle.
"And even leaving aside bad jokes, EDI - that's, uh, the AI, if you hadn't heard - has been solid as anything so far, really helped us out. I'd trust her. Can understand why you wouldn't, and I can understand your feelings on it more generally, but it is what it is, and we are all on the same side right now, with the same thing we all want," I said.
Ah, back to giving speeches. Perks of being Commander. Does make me think of Jarrion though.
"For now," Tali said.
"Well yes, once we've done what it is we're setting out to do then it's all up in the air, but for now happy families," I said, raising my glass to the spirit of cooperation.
"So...what are you up to?" Tali asked, only now sitting down beside me. I, mid-swallow, made a hand gesture that didn't really signifying anything and was mostly done to play for time while I was swallowing. Who asks someone a question when they're drinking?
"Sitting. Thinking. Nothing much important. Tried to get some sleep but it's just not happening yet. Guess I'm still pretty wound up from all the shooting and getting shot at. You'd have thought I'd be used to that by now, wouldn't you?"
"Don't suppose it's something you ever really get used to."
Interesting angle. Hadn't thought of that.
"Hmm. Or, if you do, you should take it as a bad sign. I don't know. Ah, you been brought up to speed on things with the state of the mission and all that? Where we are right now on progress?" I asked.
Not that there wasn't time to do that if the answer was no, just thought I'd check. Tali nodded.
"Yes. Garrus filled me in."
There was a joke to be made here, I felt, but now wasn't the time.
"Good good. And we're nearly done, if you can believe it. Or at least nearly in a position to get it done. And lucky you, coming in to join in the fun just before the big bit! You missed a couple interesting episodes but the really big one is yet to come, so you've got that to look forward to," I said.
"I hear we're going to a derelict Reaper," she said.
"Yes, that too. It'll be kind of like the old days, come to think of it."
"I don't remember us visiting that many derelict Reapers."
"Meant more in the sense of arriving somewhere where Cerberus has been doing something they probably shouldn't have. Only this time they want us there," I said.
"Oh, if you put it like that…"
"Old times," I said.
Here the conversation sputtered a bit. Partly because I was tired and couldn't think of anything else to say, partly because Tali wasn't saying anything either. Some silence followed, semi-companionable, semi-awkward.
Tali broke it, thankfully.
"Are you alright, Shepard?" She asked, out of nowhere. I'd been staring into space - literally - trying to make something out and so was a little distracted when the question came.
"Hmm? Oh, fine, fine," I said, blinking. "Pretty much entirely fine. As fine as could be expected in the circumstances.I don't want to come across as too mopey, you know, but given what we're doing it can be a little hard sometimes. The mind wanders."
Or at least mine does.
"To what?" She asked. I thought about how best to sum it up, squinting for a moment or two.
"Existential dread? might be overselling it a bit. Just thinking about the road ahead. The Collectors are one thing, that's right in front of us, that's straightforward. Be the best team we can, find out where they come from, stop them. Human colonies are safe, Reaper catspaw gets taken out of action. Boom. That's good. But it's what's behind that which I'm not a fan of. What's after that," I said.
"The Reapers," she said, not a question this time. I nodded.
"Yeah, them. And I try not to think about it too much, like I say, but I did have the, you know, the warnings of a dying race kind of burnt into my brain. Maybe I just have it more vividly than anyone else who knows what's going to happen, but…"
Ah hell, why not cut loose? I had been given carte blanche to vent, and Tali was someone who knew me, knew where I was coming from on this. How often did I get a chance to unload? How often did I take it when it prestend itself?
I set my glass down.
"I could be wrong, Tali, but I'm fairly sure that what's coming is going to be bad. And it's going to be so bad that there's going to be losses, there's going to be compromise. We're going to lose people and places we'd rather not, and we're going to have to make choices we'd rather not make. That's going to happen. We are going to have a rough few years. I know this because, well, I got it burned into my brain by an alien beacon, like I said. It was a jarring experience and not one I'd recommend. Later, I got to talk to a Reaper and then we saw a whole fleet unloading on them and doing nothing, absolutely bloody nothing."
I'd been a bit busy at the time but I had looked up once or twice while fighting my way up that tower in the Citadel and I had seen however many dozens of ships pouring it onto Sovereign and getting nowhere. That wasn't right. You don't sit and tank a fleet's worth of firepower, especially not a point-blank range. It's not right. It shouldn't happen.
Makes me really very uncomfortable thinking about it, honestly. Doesn't bode well for our immediate future.
I shook my head. I continued:
"Sure, once the barriers dropped we took it apart pretty easy, which was nice, but that's a whole other thing how we got them to drop. Bloody Saren. And we got how many of these coming? Hundreds? Thousands? Who knows? All of them knowing how to get in every back door, every relay? Knowing the ins-and-outs of how everything we rely on works and able to do it better? Can brainwash anyone? Turn them into cyborg nightmares? And I say that as a cyborg myself so, you know, maybe that means more?"
Did it mean more? Unlikely. I like to think there's a bit of a difference between a Husk and me. Or between Saren and me. Right?
"So there's that, and that's bad, and now we got a whole other thing besides. Lasers. Imperialistic humans from the future or another galaxy or universe or whatever. Showing up to upset the applecart. Just one of them, sure, but how many of his lasers are out there now? I got shot by one of them! It wasn't fun. So just when we've got one outside-context problem coming in that we need to get people on-side for now we've got this other problem coming inside, getting people scrambling over one another to be the one on top right when we need to be pulling together to fight… ancient death robots from the blackness between galaxies."
Those words do not feel right in my mouth. True as they might be.
"God that does sound mad, doesn't it? Probably should think of some more sensible way of talking about them."
"You should probably get some rest."
"Or when I wake up this'll all turn out to have been a dream and I can get back to shooting pirates or whatever it was I did before all this started happening to me."
I was rambling now. Whatever point I might once have had was long-gone. Time to draw a line. Slapped my hands down onto my thighs, made poor Tali jump.
"It's fine. Not much use whining about it, eh? It's fine, we'll get it done. Risky missions, saving the galaxy. We'll get it all done," I said. Believed it, too. Wasn't going to be fun, but we'd do it. Get everyone to pull together whether they liked it or not. I could be very persuasive when I needed to be, after all.
There was a pause. I was done talking and Tali clearly didn't really know where to go from there. She was quiet for a moment, then:
"And what was that about...humans from another galaxy or the future or-"
No way did I have the energy to go into that. I'd mentioned them once, that was enough for tonight. I cut in:
"I'm not even getting into that, Tali, not right now. I don't have the strength. Just - just go have a look at the lasers downstairs if you want. Ask Garrus, he'll tell you."
"I did, he said to ask you," she said.
"I bet he did…"
However many words in and I'm still not sure what Shepard's character is. Sigh. You'd never guess I was making this up as I went, would you?
I'm not especially good at whizz-bang pew pew action stuff, which begs the question of why I decided to do anything involving ME and 40k given they are about ninety percent pew pew. Oh well.
As ever, I'm sure it's possible to argue until the cows come home on how fictional spaceguns stack up against one another. Narratively-speaking, there'd be little point in having 40k firearms show up in ME if they weren't worth the time using, and objectively speaking I'm a biased fuck. Do like a melta though. Are they the searing heat beams of DoW or the fiery blast from the Space Marine game? Or something else? Yes.
Also, as a vaguely-related aside, one of my favourite ever descriptions of a lasgun injury ( we all have one, I'm sure) comes from the Fire Warrior novelization where a, uh, fire warrior gets shot in the head and dies not because of the bolt directly but rather because the force of the impact broke his neck. No idea why but that detail has stuck with me for decades.
Anyway, thank heavens that's over. Another tottering step forward, for what it's worth.