Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.
Author Notes: Another rework of a ME1 side mission, that's all I'll say. Enjoy.
Episode 16: Requiem
To say Shepard was frustrated would be an understatement. Forty-eight hours on Arcturus, and their shuttle was only due to return the next morning, and that was a rush job. She was spending her second evening in the OD, running her investigation. Nihlus was in his room, running his leads. She supposed that by now he had the XO's quarters set up for his clandestine work. Whatever he required went through EDI, and the AI never mentioned details. It was probably tiny print buried in some Citadel Convention.
The Alliance had to follow all of the Council's laws to keep associate membership, including recognizing Spectre authority and allowing for a certain unhindered access. EDI could not report anything Nihlus was doing, no matter what clearance Shepard had as the ship's commanding officer. Just one more layer to the glorious onion that was the complicated power structure they had to navigate.
She was less than proud to say that she now knew more about Armistan Banes than she cared to. He was just too perfect for the job he was hired to do. If she considered the whole body of information as one unit, a single resume for a single position, then she would say his was tailored picture perfect for it. Perhaps she was cynical, but she did not believe in perfect candidates. Everyone always had some thing that did not fit and the employer had to decide what they could live with. To have a perfect resume spoke of a carefully constructed legend, the sort needed to clear Alliance background checks. He ticked all the right boxes to appear as a studious, promising researcher with the passion for the job the Alliance wanted done. He even unashamedly admitted to it being also a career goal, as working for the military would look nice on the resume. That spoke of a certain unapologetic narcissism, as if the Alliance needed him more than he needed them.
Some petty part of her was almost glad that Banes was a mummy in some morgue. If he was not, she might have been tempted to put him there herself. She took her loyalties seriously, and he was a crooked double-dealing traitor. Setting her current datapad down and picked up the now-cold remnants of her tea, and turned to the viewports. A small bit of sugar ensured that the drink remained palatable even at environment temperature.
"Commander," EDI cut in.
"Yes EDI?" she replied.
"Admiral Hackett is on the communicator. It is urgent."
Shepard turned away from the viewport, set her cup back down on the coffee table, and got to her feet. She knew that if Admiral Hackett was calling, they were probably going to punch out in a rush, probably even tonight, a shuttle short.
She stopped in front of the COMCON table and straightened her fatigues, "Put it through, EDI."
"Yes, Commander."
The projector begun to buzz, as soon as the image stabilized Shepard snapped to attention and saluted. "Admiral Hackett, sir."
"At ease, Commander." Hackett said.
Shepard slipped into her parade rest on auto-pilot.
"I know you planned to depart after the Normandy got its repaired shuttle back, but something has come up that would be… problematic to delay."
Shepard could hear a little bit of tension in the admiral's tone. It was rare for Hackett to display any sort of tension, he had seen and done more than enough to be calm and collected at all times. "The Normandy is at your command, sir."
"During the First Contact War we fired a lot of espionage probes deep into Turian space," he went on. "They were built in a hurry and launched before we had an idea of who we were fighting. At the time, no one wanted to risk our technology being analyzed, so each probe was equipped with a twenty kiloton tactical fusion warhead."
Well this was certainly a situation. She knew a little bit about those delightful probes. They performed a rather primitive function, designed to float amidst general space debris like comm buoys, forming a sort of sensor net that identified enemy presence and pinged back in short bursts. However, because they were fired blind, essentially to map Turian space, the majority of them vanished into the void, never to be heard from again.
"An hour ago we received a 'mission complete' burst from one." Hackett added.
Shepard froze. "That's a hell of a delay to call home, sir." The fact that it pinged with a mission complete burst was alarming. If it was deep in Hierarchy space, Shepard knew why the Normandy was being called as well. She had the only ship that could go in without being detected. Unauthorized Alliance excursions into those regions of space could create an incident and expose the probes.
"To say the least, Commander, and therein lies our problem. The Council deems nuclear booby traps irresponsible and reckless. The Alliance will face serious censure if that warhead detonates."
"I understand, Admiral. However, while the Normandy can get there, I have no one on board who can disarm it."
"Getting to the probe will be the difficult part. Disarming the device is relatively easy with the right code. I will forward the relevant information."
Shepard idly wondered what the admiral's definition of 'relatively easy' was, but orders were orders. "It will be done, sir."
"And one more thing, Commander. This is very much an order. You are not to take your outside contractors with you, not even Spectre Kryik. Those probes are top level classified. The Alliance wishes to keep it that way. I will not be able to do much for you if the news gets out."
"Understood, sir." She would have to get a little bit creative to keep Nihlus from catching whiff of this, especially if they were headed into Hierarchy space.
"I wish you luck, Commander. Hackett out."
The projector shut down, and its buzzing died. Shepard stood there, thinking. She had a horrible sinking feeling that she was going to need every bit of luck she could get for this. What had the brass been thinking, strapping nukes to spy probes? Sometimes she wondered if the big-wigs even had the capacity for thought. "EDI, could you issue the crew recalls?" She asked.
"Of course, Commander. Sending notices now."
Shepard sighed, turned, and exited the COMCON. She now had to think of a way to deal with the inevitable questions, if they were leaving Arcturus like bats out of hell, and a shuttle short, Nihlus was going to ask questions.
She just stepped into the OD when she heard a ping on her console, the data Admiral Hackett had sent had filtered through EDI's protocols. Shepard made her way to the terminal and sat down; within seconds she had the data up for perusal.
The Normandy departed Arcturus two hours later. There was no containing the scuttlebutt; everyone knew something was up, though only Joker knew where they were headed, because he had to get them there. With the transit being another night-time jaunt, she spent the evening getting everything ready. Most importantly there was classified material to read over.
It was then that she learned what Admiral Hackett meant by 'relatively easy'. Each probe had its own deactivation code, unique to it. The Alliance had lists of serials and pass codes collated into a single classified book. Admiral Hackett had sent her the whole thing, complete with up-to-date redactions for probes that were either confirmed destroyed, or already retrieved and disarmed. She needed the whole thing because she would have to double check the probe's serial before she even touched it. If anything but the right code was entered into the computer, it would deem it an attempt at tampering, and the nuke would explode.
Shepard was less than amused at the prospect; it would be one hell of a horrible way to go. Quick, and one would assume rather painless, but still a horrible way to go. As far as she was concerned, the Alliance screwed the pooch. She got to clean up the mess because first, she had the only ship that could get in and out quietly, and second, she was one of the dogs. Bad jobs like these were always tossed to the dogs.
With the book on her omni-tool, Shepard thought she was as ready to go as was possible to be right at that moment. The OD's door swished open and she glanced over her shoulder automatically, and was not surprised to see Nihlus.
"What's the situation?" he asked.
"The situation… well, as of right now I have urgent orders to execute."
"I think we all gathered that from the hurried departure," he deadpanned.
Shepard did not comment, some snark was to be expected given the situation.
"This is not about the geth, is it?" he asked after a good moment of silence.
"I wish it was about the geth." She really did, because then she would not be trying to think of a way to polite way to tell Nihlus that she had nothing to tell him. She had no idea why it was proving to be so hard. Had she gotten too used to working with him already? Well, when in doubt, hit blunt. "I'll be honest with you. I am not at liberty to discuss this Alliance matter with you. I respected your rules on Omega; it was just you, me, and Garrus. Respect my rules this time. I can't tell you anything about what's going on."
He hummed thoughtfully, "So, just you, Alenko, Williams, and Jenkins this time?"
"Afraid so." Shepard replied.
He towered over her and Shepard could practically see the gears turning in his head. She was perfectly aware that he did not like to be out of the loop. Right now Nihlus was probably running down his list of excuses, trying to find some quasi-legal loophole to get his way. At the very least he would read into the situation. However, she had orders; nothing he could say would make her go against them. Admiral Hackett rarely issued such limits, but when he did, they were absolute. She wondered why the situation bothered him. She could tell he wanted in on it. Nihlus was no control freak, barring reports. So why was this?
"Alright. I will leave you to it. I have some leads to run on Banes." He turned to go.
Shepard blinked, surprised, "Anything on that?"
He paused in the doorway and spared her one of those mandible-flicking grins of his, his eyes positively full of mischief. "Later, Shepard. I do not want to distract you from your preparations."
The door closed behind him and Shepard shook her head. She supposed she had that coming.
The next morning, the Normandy made orbit around Agebinium, the first planet of the Amazon system in the Voyager Cluster. She had Joker rig the Normandy silent and maintain a stable, though asynchronous orbit. After breakfast Shepard gathered the marines in the OD and locked the door. With EDI scanning to localize the subtle signal pings from the probe, she could conduct a briefing without being interrupted.
"Have a seat people; there is something I have to run down with you." She said as she perched herself in her usual spot at the head of the couch. When the marines found their seating, Shepard launched into the summary of what Admiral Hackett had told her. It took all of five minutes to recap the situation, because there was little to the background. "…our job is to find and disarm it," she finished, leaning into the couch.
Kaidan had leaned forward during the explanation, setting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped before him. "How did the probe end up here?" he wondered. "They were designed to float in space, to say nothing of the fact that the Voyager Cluster is the opposite direction from Turian space."
Shepard hummed; the thought certainly crossed her mind. "I can think of two ways. First, its navigation system could have malfunctioned, so it thinks it's in Turian space. If it got lost in the relay corridors, it is a good thing it ended up out here; Agebinium is not a garden world." There would be no casualties if the probe detonated, but the Council would still come down on the Alliance to locate and disarm the rest.
It would still be a herculean task. Going by her code book, there were at least a hundred of the things still scattered about the galaxy. The best hope was that they all collectively flew into a whole bunch of stars, or ended up trapped in the gravity wells of gas giants, where they could do no harm. But when were they ever that lucky?
"And the other way?" Ashley asked.
"There is a problem with the first theory, how did the probe make atmospheric entry without detonating? The second theory covers that. I think it more likely that someone brought it here," Shepard said bluntly. There was no sugar-coating that fact. "That would mean someone knows about them, and worse how to handle them without triggering their fail-safes."
"Why would someone do it?" Jenkins wondered.
"Why else? Each of those probes is a nuclear weapon. A twenty kiloton warhead is… the bomb they dropped on Nagasaki in the twentieth was of that yield." Kaidan explained.
"Whoever would do that deserves to be shot." Ashley said.
"No argument here."
Jenkins straightened suddenly, as if he had been shocked by a current, "What if the burst the probe sent is a trap?"
"That's certainly a possibility. It just does not make as much sense. There is nothing on this planet worth blowing up and they could not be sure whom the Alliance would send to respond." Shepard said. "Using a nuke for a trap is overkill."
There was another possibility, one that Shepard did not want to voice, one she deemed far more likely and even more terrifying. The probe could have been brought to Agebinium to stage a display. A seller would need proof that the wares were viable as a nuclear weapon. The galaxy had plenty of unsavory sorts who would pay for a nuke that came with a complimentary scapegoat. If a probe was to become a weapon, especially in a terrorist attack, the Alliance would catch a lot of the initial heat, and the real perpetrators would laugh their asses off while covering up their tracks.
She had to operate on the assumption that if someone brought the probe here, they knew how to locate the others. If there was even a slim possibility that someone might sell the probes as weapons, then they were a threat. It was no longer just about the Alliance saving face; there were innocent lives on the line.
Shepard was positive that Admiral Hackett must have thought about it, because it made for a third reason why her involvement was required. She could get in, eliminate the threat at the root, and get out without drawing attention. Shepard was not naïve enough to believe in dialogue with terrorists and arms dealers. It took an absence of empathy and morals to be in those trades. Shepard did not see killing such individuals as murder, not when their deaths guaranteed the safety of hundreds, if not thousands of other people. This was another job for the Poltergeist.
"Regardless of what's going on, our job remains the same. That probe must not detonate." Shepard went on. "I say go ahead and assume there will be some resistance and pack accordingly."
"Another day in the office," Ashley said.
"Indeed. Now as usual, ask questions if you have them."
"Erm, Commander… how do we disarm the probe?" Jenkins wondered.
Shepard smiled and launched into a simplified description of the process. She figured she could give them this much, it would calm some nerves. Nuclear warheads tended to make people uncomfortable; she would be lying if she said she was not a little nervous herself.
They departed a few hours later. Shepard only put a wait order on the job until it would dawn at their destination. Agebinium was an absolute delight. The first planet in its system, it possessed an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and krypton that barely reached one fifth of earth's pressure. To make matters worse, Amazon, the parent star, was an aging red giant. Its diminishing quantities of fusible hydrogen put it into proverbial death throes. As a long-duration intrinsically variable star, it shifted in size and output on a sixteen-year cycle. Currently it was at its nadir, and so Agebinium was a freezer, with night time temperatures plunging to minus eighty. Eight years from now Amazon would puff up, and turn the planet into an irradiated oven.
When the Kodiak made descent, Shepard was up in the cockpit, watching the sensors, as the shuttle flew on VI. During entry she noted that the friction corona barely formed along the shuttle's bottom. Shepard supposed that if a box like the Kodiak barely felt the burn during entry, it could mean the probe might have landed on its own without detonating. Still, it was unlikely.
Their landing churned up a dust cloud of fine, largely un-weathered silicates. She exited the cockpit and glanced at her marines. "Alright, EDI triangulated the probe to be within a square kilometer here. There is something interfering with precise positioning, but it is here. Seal checks and we pop the hatch." She double-checked her helmet seals right along with the marines.
"We're good to go, Skipper." Ashley announced.
"Alright," Shepard reached for the shuttle's pressure control and triggered the recycler to depressurize. In under a minute the side door hissed open and the four of them emerged onto the planet's surface.
It was like stepping into a surreal artwork. A thin atmosphere meant little by way of weather, wind, or even sound. Unfiltered solar radiation had long ago bleached the surface to shades of ghostly grey. With a forty two hour day-cycle, dawn on Agebinium was a slow affair, the aging star rose slowly over the horizon, looking enormous in the sky as its wan light dyed everything it touched a macabre shade of blood red.
The shuttle landed on a plain surrounded by sharp, un-weathered crags of various sizes. There was nothing to turn rough shapes into rolling hills, the terrain shifted from low to high as certainly as Amazon cycled output. She felt the surface crunch underfoot with every step, though she could not hear it. The silence across external microphone only made the wheezing of the air filtration system louder.
Shepard could not help but feel ill at ease. Being here, in the light of a dying star, felt off-putting, even before the added joy of looking for a nuclear bomb which may or may not be a piece of cheese in a trap. The plain was too open, the crags and conditions too ideal for long distance snipers worthy of their name. The eerie silence tempted one to believe nothing could go wrong, but she knew better.
She flicked her wrist and turned on her omni-tool. EDI had given her the frequency of the faint pings the probe emitted. Aside from the quick mission complete burst it sent via comm buoy, the thing buzzed with a static electromagnetic frequency slightly above cosmic background radiation. The signal was intentionally too weak to be tracked at long range, but it was there for the benefits of those who knew the probe was there and only needed to zero in on it.
As she watched the readings, Shepard realized that much of EDI's problems with localization could have been Amazon. She was faring no better, there was just too much background noise for her tracker to lock onto such a faint signal. Shepard sighed; they would have to do the old fashioned way, "Tech is no good. There's too much background radiation. We do this the old fashioned way. I need elevation." Even as little as ten meters would give her an angle to scout the whole plain using her helmet's HUD.
"How about that?" Ashley asked.
Shepard turned, following the line the gunnery chief pointed. Her eyes landed on a large rock formation jutting out of the ground a good two hundred meters away. Jagged or not, she could see a way to clamber up. "That'll definitely do, come on." Shepard turned and led the way at a comfortable clip.
When she stopped at the base of the rock, she looked around, ever wary for a hidden shooter.
"Kaidan, could you sweep for the most common communication frequencies?" she asked.
"Right away," he replied.
Shepard turned to the rock in front of her. With the hazard it posed to her suit, she traced the path she intended to take up. Once she chose it, she grabbed the first hand hold, swung her leg up, and started climbing. Kaidan would tell her if he picked up any comm chatter. It took a few minutes of careful climbing, but once on top she could see across the whole plain.
"There's no comm chatter on any of the common bands," Kaidan announced on her radio. "Unless you count us."
"Good," Shepard replied.
"How's the view, skipper?" Ashley asked.
"Sand, rocks, more sand. No probe in sight." Shepard replied even as she reached for the side of her helmet to work the zoom features of her HUD.
"EDI said one square kilometer, right?"
"Yes." Shepard replied as she fiddled with her HUD and made another turn, eying the peculiar rocks to make sure one of them was not actually a probe nose-first in the sand. As she turned another couple degrees to check another rock formation, her eyes landed on something much more distant. "There's something north by northwest, I'd say five hundred meters?" She tapped at the helmet to increase the zoom further and blinked in surprise. The faint little glimmer that caught her eye was definitely not the probe, but it was not a shiny rock either. The rising sun caught the edges of metal railing leading up to an airlock. "Looks like a structure," she said.
"Could the reason EDI can't lock on to the signal be because it's coming from inside there?" Jenkins offered.
"If it is, that's theory one out the window. The probe didn't grow legs and walk inside." Shepard replied. "It's definitely not out in the open, and EDI never led us wrong before, so… that structure is worth investigating." Shepard spared the airlock one more look. It was probably a trap. There were no vehicles out front, no ore hoppers, no shuttles, no signs of any activity. So if that structure was abandoned, its tight spaces and easily blocked doors were the perfect location to stage an ambush. The whole thing positively reeked of danger. They had absolutely no choice but to walk into that danger. "Alright, we'll scope that place." She turned to the way she clambered up, and kneeled to start her descent.
Shepard made sure to keep an eye on the crags overlooking the airlock as they got close to the structure. Only when she was firmly satisfied that there was no one there did she make approach.
The structure's airlock looked aged. The once brilliant white, red-edged paint had faded, yellowed, and begun to crack off the metal plating. It looked like the structure had been here for a while, possibly even surviving through Amazon's zenith. Shepard led the way to the door with Sin drawn and the others one step behind her, weapons ready.
The airlock opened as soon as its sensors detected a presence, Shepard tapped at her helmet to activate her helmet lamps before she drew Dex and slid in. The airlock's inner door was jammed open with metal bars. Her HUD showed no indication of pressurization or rising oxygen levels, the whole place was vented.
The chamber beyond the airlock was bare rock walls and floors, relatively large, empty, and sparsely lit by battery-powered work lamps. General debris lay scattered on the floor, chunks of glimmering ore, crates of supplies, and even abandoned tools. At the back of the chamber was another doorway, leading deeper into the mountain.
Shepard turned off her additional lamps and turned to her omni-tool scanner. Now that they were inside, the background radiation of Amazon dropped off in intensity, and the spectrum reading showed a clear spike in the probe's ping frequency. "It is definitely here." Shepard announced as she looked up.
"It got to be deeper in," Ashley said.
"I don't like this, at all. The only reason I am picking it up now is because we're inside. This place does not let Amazon's radiation through, meaning it would have kept the ping of the probe confined."
"Well, this structure belonged to a heavy metals mining operation," Kaidan announced.
Shepard looked up, surprised, only to see Kaidan point to one of the boxes left behind, which bore a faded company logo for a mining consortium.
"Makes sense if you think about it. Let the probe call home out in the open, and then take it inside where it cannot receive a remote disarm signal." Ashley said.
"Can they trigger the probe to explode though?" Jenkins asked.
Shepard paused as the thought struck her. Ashley did not know it, but she had pointed out something important, something that spoke of the people who found this probe. "They can't cause it to explode remotely any more than we can disarm it like that." She murmured. "Its transceiver is not connected to its systems like that. It can send its status, sensor logs, and relay bursts from another probe, but it cannot receiver orders!" Whoever found the thing must not understand its finer mechanics.
"Down the rabbit hole we go," Ashley murmured as she clicked the safety off her rifle.
Shepard moved toward the other door, and it opened when she approached. This one led into a narrow tubular passage cut into the rock. "Down the rabbit hole indeed, Gunny," she murmured.
She was the first into the passage, surprised by the fact that it sloped upwards up into the mountain, and not down into its roots. On the other side of it was another door, which also opened with smooth ease, revealing another bare rock chamber, as empty and lit by battery-operated work-lights as the last, but bigger. Here pillars of rock were left in place to support the ceiling. She raised a hand and flicked her fingers in a signal. The marines scattered about the room, rifles at a ready, as they swept the chamber.
Shepard kept an eye on her scanner; the probe's signal was stronger. They were definitely getting close, but it was not in this chamber.
"It's clear, Commander," Kaidan announced.
"There's another doorway back here," Jenkins added.
Shepard moved toward the corporal. He stood there, gun trained on the door. The other two marines converged on them as well, and Shepard once again stepped into its range first. As it opened, they found another narrow passage, again sloping upwards, deeper yet into the mountain. Shepard hummed, it was a rather strange way to build a mine, to go up into the mountain, and not down into its roots. She idly wondered if this was indeed a mine, and not some sort of personnel space. It had been cut into the bare rocks, true enough, but the positioning was rather too weird to be the actual work-faces of a mine.
She stepped past the door and slowly moved up the passage toward the one at the other end. As the panels on the other side of the passage opened, her omni-tool began to ping. Sprawling in front of them was another chamber, the biggest yet. Shepard flicked her fingers, sending the marines to clear the room as she glanced at her omni-tool. "The probe's here!" she announced. She shut the scanner off, no longer needed.
"This side clear," Ashley called.
"My side is clear too," Jenkins echoed.
"The back is clear, and I found the probe." Kaidan added.
Shepard moved deeper into the room and the door closed behind her. There was a large stone pillar in the center of the chamber, which she rounded and stopped. There, in a small patch of cleared space was the probe, lit up by multiple work-lights like an artifact on display, a prize for those who would come this far.
Suddenly there was a deep rumble, Shepard stumbled forward with an unmistakable shockwave. She whirled, stunned. The door they had come through was gone, bent out by the force of an explosion in the narrow passage beyond. Shepard cursed, she had expected armed people down here, and so the thought that someone would trap them in the mine with the probe had not crossed her mind. She ought to have been scanning for explosives as well as the probe's pings.
"We're trapped," Jenkins murmured.
"No need to panic, Corporal. They can't trigger the probe. As for being trapped…" Shepard paused. She did not see any sign of life on the side of the mine they came from, not tracks, not leftover material. The whole thing went up into the mountain, and she doubted this was the actual mine at all. If this had been some sort of habitation space, there had to be more entrances.
"Ugh… Commander, you might want to look at this," Kaidan said.
Shepard turned, alarmed. The lieutenant stood in front of the probe; a small device left next to it was blinking. For a split second she thought it might be a remote transceiver, but she had to remind herself that even if they wanted to install a transceiver, the probe would have deemed it tampering and exploded in their faces. The device's blinks paused and she heard the tell-tale buzzing across her comm as something attempted to synch with their suits.
"I have a feeling we're abut to find out who's responsible for this," She said as she reached up to tap at her suit's comm controls. The box on the ground powered up and cast a reddish holographic projection into the air above the probe. Standing in front of her, though not in the flesh, was turian in full armor, with his helmet on. A turian out there knew about the probes, this did not bode well. Today was just full of unpleasant surprises, Shepard thought to herself as she crossed her arms.
"You can cease your pathetic attempts to intimidate me, human."
"I am Commander Shepard, to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?" Shepard replied blandly. She chose to ignore the jab about intimidation. Frankly, she did not need to intimidate. Once she got out of this cave, she would hunt him down, and let her guns do the talking. Now there were even more reasons not to let anyone get away. Turians who knew about the probes were the epitome of bad news.
"My name is Elanos Haliat." He replied.
No rank, ship, or unit designation. As far as Shepard knew, such designations were kind of a big deal within the Hierarchy. To forgo mentioning one was like not mentioning where one stood in the pecking order. Turians took pride in their ranks and tiers. There was only one explanation for it. Haliat's face-shield was opaque, but she would bet her money him being not from the Hierarchy, not a particularly big threat to the Alliance. All the easier to eliminate then, as fewer people would come asking questions.
"I am surprised that the Alliance sent only four to retrieve one of their errant toys. It would seem they do not understand whom they are dealing with."
"We understand the threat well enough." Shepard replied.
"Do you? Who do you think runs the terminus clans? Thousands of pirates, slavers, criminals of every stripe?"
Shepard tipped her head to the side, "You assume I care."
Haliat laughed, "The strongest leads. The one who kills the most men, seizes the most ships, pillages the most colonies. Seven years ago I was the strongest. I used my influence to assemble a fleet. We would drive your kind out of the Verge."
Shepard froze in place, her eyes narrowed. "You organized the attack on Elysium." She had to force herself to appear calm, when suddenly she was everything but. Elysium! If this bastard had organized that, then he was responsible for many deaths and much misery.
"I was the motivator, the instigator, the one who promised glory and riches for sacking the largest Human colony in the cluster! The one blamed when it failed! Failed because of one human that managed to hold an insignificant… lodging house!"
The storm reared itself in her. His every word made the raid on Elysium sound like some epic quest or something righteous. Every word pushed the dikes of her self-control closer to the breaking point. Shepard had to force herself to take a deep, calming breath before she exploded. This fool did not even know he was facing the same human who held that "insignificant lodging house". He had poor information then and now, with poor leadership skills on top. His plan was doomed not just because he thought a colony attack could cow the Alliance; it was doomed because he had the strategic and tactical wherewithal of a child. The fact that everyone turned on him afterwards did not surprise her at all. Mercenaries, slavers, and pirates were like sharks, they would maul anyone, should the smell of blood hit the water. "So what's your plan now?" she asked.
"Now, now, Commander. That would be spoiling all the fun."
The bastard was enjoying himself. He was stringing her along, mocking her. Oh there would be fun, alright. The second she got out of this place, she would hunt him down.
"Now I must go. I will thank you for the shuttle though." Haliat made a show of bowing before the communicator turned off.
Shepard froze.
"Skipper, the Kodiak's navigation system has the Normandy's last known coordinates!"
Shepard knew that much. Joker held the Normandy in a non-synchronous orbit over Agebinium. Maintaining synchronous orbit was dangerous as it meant staying in the same part of the sky, and thus easier to detect. Yet an asynchronous orbit meant the Normandy passed over their departure coordinates regularly. "They can fake communication errors and turn the Kodiak into a Trojan horse." Shepard replied. "We have to get out of here."
"But how?" Jenkins asked.
"First, we disarm that thing," she pointed at the probe. "Second… now this is an observation, but we climbed to get here, and there was nothing out on our side, but they had to have made tracks when they moved this thing. I'm thinking there has to be a second entry. Look around. They used charges to collapse that tunnel; they could have easily used charges to cover the other entry."
"Got it!" Jenkins wheeled on his feet and scurried off.
Shepard got the distinct impression that he was trying to get away from the probe, even though if it detonated, it would not matter. She supposed she did not blame him. She turned to the device and glared, to think that Haliat used this thing as a lure to get a Trojan horse onto an Alliance warship. She hated the bastard more with each passing moment.
"I'll go help him," Ashley said.
"Is there anything you need, Commander?" Kaidan asked.
"Just some time to work."
"You got it. I'll keep them from bothering you."
Shepard kneeled in front of the probe and inspected the metal plate on its side; the bolts holding it in place were still secured with welded-on wire to prevent loosening. No one had gotten into this hatch since it was sealed. She pulled out her knife and carefully used the serration along its back edge to file through the wires. After that, she unscrewed the bolts by hand, and carefully took off the thick metal plate. Doing so gave her access to a folded computer terminal inside the probe.
She tapped the terminal and it unfolded, a tiny little screen with a matching keyboard. It turned on with a flash of blue, displaying the Alliance logo. Shepard thought that was about as un-subtle as it came, but it really did not matter. Anyone who saw this much was a wrong step away from vaporized by a twenty kiloton warhead. In a way the symbol was a honey pot for their enemies.
Shepard picked up the metal plate she took off, and turned it over. On the other side, burned in with laser, was a series of characters. At first glance these might mean nothing, but they were actually the probe's model number, date of manufacture, and below that the probe's unique serial. The burst the device sent included the serial, as a means of authenticating the signal's origin, but Shepard was not going to type the code matching that serial into the probe until she verified the numbers were where they ought to be.
She fired up her omni-tool and brought up the book of codes Admiral Hackett had sent her. Using the probe's model number, she switched sections to the relevant probes, and from there went down the date of manufacture. The probes were built over the span of three months, and each month's encoding was different. The codes could be of utterly different lengths, depending on those parameters. Now that she was in the right section, she double checked the serial, to make sure that such a probe did in fact exist and all three of its identifying marks were consistent. There it was, and with it a unique disarmament code, a series of nine characters, both numbers and letters. The numbers matched up with the serial the probe had beamed to the Alliance.
She raised one hand to the small keyboard and typed in a command to access the warhead controls. The screen flickered and an input box appeared. No warnings or explanations, the device was about as smart as a rock, but it did its job. Shepard double checked the code in her booklet before she began to type, one character at a time, double-checking each input in case her finger slipped.
With all nine characters put in, she paused to check again. All that remained now was to press the enter key. The code was all the instructions the probe needed. Either the computer would recognize it and disarm, or if it would reject it, interpret the attempt as tampering, and act as if it had full permission to explode.
Shepard glanced at the others. Even without her say-so, the three of them were busy with something on the other side of the chamber. Jenkins was enthusiastically shifting rocks off a small pile, while Ashley and Kaidan worked in somewhat more subdued paces. As Kaidan had said, he took over, guided the others so they would not bother her while she did something more sensitive. She turned back to the probe and double-checked the code again, number by number. There was nothing to it but to press enter. She moved her finger and hit the button.
The input box vanished, the screen flashed and turned white. Then a message appeared, "Code input received." The screen flicked again, a second message appeared "Authorization confirmed", and a few tense moments later a third, reading simply "Warhead disarmed."
Shepard let out a breath she did not even realize she was holding. The screen flicked back to the main portal, awaiting further commands. Shepard touched it again, and the terminal folded up. "It's disarmed," she announced as she got to her feet. Admiral Hackett did say it would be relatively easy. Tense like you would not believe, but relatively easy.
"Come take a look at this, Commander." Ashley replied.
"When you mentioned charges and collapses, I thought of this pile. I saw it when we first came in!" Jenkins said, in between shifting rocks.
Shepard approached the three marines and the pile of rubble they were gathered around. She could see why the pile attracted even Jenkins' attention. The rocks had been piled too perfectly to be caused by a natural collapse. There was also a rut in the ceiling above; it resembled the aftereffect of shaped mining charges.
"Jenkins is finding all the doors today," Kaidan said.
"I was always good at finding the Christmas presents mom and dad hid from me." Jenkins replied.
"That just means you're impatient," Ashley said.
"Maybe a little." Jenkins conceded, sounding every bit sheepish.
Shepard said nothing; just let them work at clearing the rubble. Her mind automatically turned to what she had to do now. She could not let Haliat and his idiots get to the Normandy. Oh she did not believe he could ever take it. He might get on-board, but the shuttle bay would be as far as he went. EDI would sound the intruder alarm instantly. Also Haliat would not expect to face a biotic Krogan who made the shuttle bay his quarters. She also knew for a fact that if something happened, Nihlus and Garrus would not stand idle. There were also the Alliance personnel on board. Her crew was not as hapless as Haliat thought them to be. Although some had long ago left combat roles, all of them had gone through boot camp; all of them knew how to hold a rifle. The shuttle could only take so many people up, even jam-packed. Her crew, small as they were, would be more than enough.
Still, she would prevent such a scenario from ever happening. Her crew should not have to fight. Not if she was a leader worthy of the title. More than that though, she did not want anyone else killing Haliat. He wanted to be the big tough guy in this galaxy, and so he orchestrated Elysium as a show of force. His pathetic attempt at dislodging the Alliance from the Skyllian Verge was all ego. She would show him the price of such hubris.
"Commander, are you alright?" Ashley asked quietly as she set aside another big chunk of debris from the pile.
"Truthfully?" Shepard replied. "No. But I intend to do something about it." She grinned to herself.
Ashley paused, the look she gave Shepard was scrutinizing, though brief. Ashley knew it was not her place to question a superior. If she realized what Shepard fully intended to do, Shepard did not care. She was the highest-ranking officer here, and there were plenty of reasons to put Elanos Haliat into the ground, not just her personal ones.
The pile of rubble shrunk quickly, revealing another door. It was locked, but the encryption was pathetically simple, Shepard tripped an override in seconds, and the door opened. It led into another tunnel, a longer one, but still sloping up. Shepard drew Sin and stepped past the doors. As she walked, she counted the meters. The tunnel made a gradual right-hand bend, ascending all the way.
After what seemed like fifty meters it finally leveled for another ten or so, and a door came into view. This door was unlocked, but it did not open on its own. Shepard stopped and turned, the others were right there behind her. She put her hand to the mechanism and the door opened, and the lot of them got a face-full of Amazon's sunlight.
They came out onto some sort of plateau on the other side of the mountain. There were clear tracks in the un-weathered white surface; a vehicle had come up here a few times. On their right was a clear, narrow, but perfectly viable vehicle path, likewise marred with multiple wheel tracks. "This has to be how they accessed the place." She noted.
"The surface here keeps tracks well; we ought to be able to follow them right to their camp."
Shepard was more interested in the footprints clustered around the biggest patch of overlapping tire-tracks. The vehicle, she assumed a truck of some kind, had stopped there, and men busied around it. There were solid boot prints that could belong to humans, batarians, or even asari, a set of smaller, oblong prints hinted at least one salarian, and amidst them all were two-toed turian prints. There was no way to know how many men Haliat had with him from the prints alone, but it confirmed that he had some loyalists yet.
Satisfied with the prints, Shepard moved to the plateau's cliff edge. A flat valley stretched out beyond, lit blood red by Amazon's light. Shepard thought the setting was too damn appropriate now. Some distance away she spotted glimmers, and so she tapped at her helmed to increase the zoom.
The glimmers came from the roofs of three small pre-fabricated structures arranged in a circle out in the open, a camp. There was a wheeled truck there as well. Everything seemed rather bare-bones. Shepard focused on the truck's tires; they looked narrow enough to have left the tracks on the plateau. She zoomed out a little and scanned the camp for their errant Kodiak. It was there, a good fifty to or sixty meters away from the camp, both side doors raised, the cloud caused by its landing was yet to fully settle down.
She counted the mercenaries milling about the camp, four around their shuttle, and she could see three others in the camp. Their numbers surprised her. Haliat was an absolute fool if he thought he could take an Alliance ship with just seven. Even the Normandy's undersized crew was already nearly three times as big. Seven was also not going to stop her.
"They didn't go far, that's their camp over there. They got our Kodiak too." Shepard announced as she turned off the zoom.
"We can't make approach, there's too much open terrain between here and there." Kaidan said.
Shepard snorted and reached behind her back for Vincent. "Five hundred meters? I've shot over one thousand."
"You're going to kill them from here?" Kaidan asked, surprised.
"It's the only way to do it. You heard Haliat. You know what he wants to do. We might not reach them before they take the Kodiak up, and you said so yourself, lots of open terrain between here and there. It would be suicide to try to cover that on foot."
"The Commander is right, LT. Besides… some, if not all those scumbags were in on killing our people on Elysium. It's the least they deserve." Ashley argued.
Shepard did not need the lieutenant to agree with her. It was not his job to argue with her orders. She would not reprimand him, but she was not going to stop just because he protested. She kneeled and scooped up some of Agebinium's sand and packed it into a mound on which to rest her rifle. On Elysium she had used tightly packed snow, but this would do. Then she reached behind her back and began to pull out thermal clips, lining them up to the right of the mound, where they would be within easy reach. Seven for the expected mercenaries, five more for surprises, and she had one already in the receiver, making it thirteen shots total.
"Stay back from the cliff," she glanced at the others before she slipped into a prone position, Vincent extended and powered up. A tap at her helmet brought up the HUD for atmospheric readings; she already knew what Agebinium's gravity was. When the screen showed her the air pressure, wind speed, and humidity, Shepard had all she needed. She mentally ran the numbers, and then tapped at the small buttons at the side Vincent's scope to zero the lenses for the five hundred meter range before she peered through. The Mantis had its own laser range-finder, so Shepard turned it on the Kodiak, and the number under the crosshairs read five hundred thirteen. Her guesstimate had been almost on the dime.
The first shot would still have to be center of mass, to confirm proper scope alignment. She took a slow, deep breath, let it saturate her lungs, and then exhaled slowly. With another inhale she peered through the scope and her finger slid over the ammo selector. The rifle vibrated ever so slightly as it charged a slug to disrupt shields.
With a higher optical zoom she could see the details of the figures milling around the shuttle. She would know those special helmets anywhere. A batarian's four eyes required a face-shield that went further up onto the forehead, and it was a structural weakness that made killing them that much easier. Even if the bullet would not enter their skull, a breach at 0.17 atm would ensure their death.
She focused on the batarian near the cockpit hatch of the Kodiak. The would-be pilot? Another slow inhale and she aligned the crosshairs with where she knew his heart would be. On the exhale her finger began to tighten on the trigger. As her lungs emptied, the rifle fired. Vincent kicked with the recoil, but the shot was muted, too little atmosphere to transmit the vibrations as a full crack. The batarian hit the Kodiak, and slid down the paneling. She raked the receiver even as she kept watch, a hot thermal clip bounced out, and she reached for another and slid it in.
The batarian's friends gathered around him, but she had her zeroing, the bullet went through the heart, she could see the hole in his armor plates and the faint fizzle of his blood as it boiled in the negligible atmosphere. Shepard inhaled slowly, leveled crosshairs on the head of another, and on her exhale slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked, she raked the receiver and reached for another clip.
"Wow." Jenkins whispered somewhere behind her.
The clip went in and the receiver closed, Shepard inspected the scene. One of the remaining batarians turned and ran back toward the camp. Shepard turned the scope on the fourth. This one chose to take shelter in the shuttle. Too bad they parked the thing with its doors facing her; it was practically a fly-through zone. Slow inhale and she leveled on his heart, as his head was out of the angle due to elevation differences. Slow exhale and squeeze.
Starting with the batarians was easy. She turned her rifle to follow the runner, and then she decided to let him run. She wanted him to raise the alarm or run right to his boss, which would identify where and who Haliat was. She wanted to keep him for last, wanted him to know there was a sniper taking out his men with casual ease; she wanted him to know he sealed his fate when he boasted to her. He had messed with exactly the wrong Alliance soldier. She had enough legal excuses to kill him, get away with it, and sleep well at night.
The batarian reached the outskirts of the camp and ran right past the single salarian who was working on something at the back of one of the structures. The salarian stopped when the batarian ran past; she could imagine him calling to the runner on a radio. She needed her little rat to keep running. A moment later the Salarian moved, turning toward the corner of the structure, toward shelter.
Shepard inhaled slowly. He would move along a reasonably predictable line, and a Mantis fired hypersonic rounds, she only needed to turn the rifle slightly ahead, and time her shot. On the exhale she slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked just as the edge of the salarian's helmet crossed the reticule. The round got there just as his head would have been right in the center. The salarian was dead before he hit the ground. Shepard raked the receiver and reached for clip number five.
Another batarian emerged from the cover of the structure on which the salarian had been working, he had a pair of binoculars in his hands. Shepard could imagine the alarm was spreading. It would not do for her to be spotted now; she leveled her crosshairs on the batarian with the binoculars. He turned, the lenses trained right on her, maybe their eyes would have even locked. Shepard exhaled another breath and as her lungs emptied, squeezed the trigger. The bullet entered the batarian's head, between his upper eyes. She raked the receiver, and reached for another clip. Just like that, five of the seven were down.
Her Philippides reached the end of his marathon and stopped at the door of the largest of the three structures, slammed his hand to the door mechanism and bolted through as soon as the gap was wide enough for him.
Satisfied, Shepard turned to the last of the seven mercenaries that had been outside. It was a turian, and by now he had taken shelter behind some crates, his assault rifle in his hands. He probably knew where she was; probably saw where his friend with the binoculars had been looking before he was shot. She watched him twitch behind the crates, though he kept to the cover, probably aware that he was at a gross range disadvantage. He was her prey now, and knew it.
The door to the largest structure opened, her runner re-appeared with one more batarian and a turian. Shepard lifted her finger off the trigger. Was the turian Haliat? She watched as they scattered to whatever cover was available. This turian ducked back into the doorway. Shepard smiled, "I see Haliat," she announced. "There are three more of his men left. If he intended to take the Normandy with just nine people…" she cut off then. The thought was almost laughable, and she could not afford to laugh. It would spike her heart-rate, throw off her breathing, and impact the stability of her shots.
She saw the other turian peek from his cover. He was crouched, did he think of running across the space to a different shelter? She knew she had to stop him before he went somewhere she could not reach him. Shepard leveled her aim over his face-shield as she inhaled. His rifle shifted, he was going to make a run for it. On her controlled exhale she squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked again, and he fell over; Shepard closed her eyes, raked the receiver, reached for another clip, and slid it in.
About now they had to be realizing just how badly they were outclassed. There was no way to escape. They could not run for the truck without her killing at least one of them. The truck's doors would yield to an armor-piercing round, and it would not be difficult to hit a messy shot into the driver. Sure, they could take cover in the structures, but she had a ship in orbit. If she needed to, if they made her, she could call down an orbital strike. This planet was a wasteland, the Normandy's disruptor torpedoes would rip the camp apart, and she trusted EDI's telemetry and Joker's care for the accuracy needed. The one concern was the Kodiak, but the idiots landed it outside the camp. Fifty to sixty meters ought to be far enough. Still, if the shuttle was damaged, the Normandy could make atmospheric entry. The Admiral would only reprimand her for getting a touch excessive simply as a matter of standard procedure, she knew for a fact that he would see Haliat's death as a win.
She saw Haliat; he was still in the doorway of the structure. His foot stuck out a little, but it was not enough for her to shoot. Instead she turned to the two batarians. With a start Shepard realized one had whipped out a sniper rifle to look for her. But the angle was unfavorable; she had high ground, so he had to raise the rifle on his elbows, exposing him almost entirely. Shepard aligned her crosshairs with his head, lowered her finger to the trigger, and inhaled.
The mercenary's rifle barrel flashed and the dirt just below the cliff' lip exploded as the slug hit. Shepard paused for a heartbeat, holding her breath, an instinctual reaction.
"Did they just fire back?" Kaidan asked.
The batarian was reloading; Shepard exhaled and as her lungs emptied, squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit, and he too fell to the ground. She inhaled slowly. "He missed." His first shot had been to zero, it had to be, but his math was off. If the bullet hit low, his scope angled too high. He probably calculated for gravity and angle incorrectly. Agebinium's point seventy-nine g would not forgive such a mistake at five hundred meters.
"Good God, what's that… seven without missing?" Ashley asked.
Shepard tuned the murmuring out. This was why the best snipers normally worked alone, supreme efficiency of this sort tended to unnerve people.
She tapped her finger on the trigger guard as she watched her remaining targets. One was her little rat, and the other was Haliat himself. How best to make them leave cover? She could try to shoot them through with armor piercing slugs, but a Mantis was not an anti-materiel rifle, would it have enough punch to go through those crates? She did not know what they contained and how it would impact the bullet's trajectory and velocity.
The pre-fabricated structure was probably of the cheaper kind, she saw just one door, not two. So there was no air-lock, and thus no pressurization. Such structures tended to have negligible shielding, mostly against radiation, and it was rarely the same thickness as what was required to maintain a habitable environment. Factor in that Haliat had taken cover near the door, a structural weakness, and no, the wall would probably not stop a Mantis' AP round. Still, it would not do good to reveal she had a rifle with an AP bit just yet. Haliat might duck somewhere she could not see him. It was best he clung to his false sense of security.
She leveled her crosshairs on the little sliver of helmet sticking out from behind a tall stack of crates. The batarian was twitching, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He knew he was cornered like a rat. Suddenly there was clicking on her comm. She reached to the side of her helmet to tap authorization for synch, but paused. She knew what sort of conversation would follow. The comm kept pinging, she tapped the button to close active channels first, disconnecting from the line had with the marines, and then authorized synch with the incoming line.
Almost immediately there was a thrumming rumble in her ears, as if Haliat was breathing down her neck. "Shepard," he hissed.
Shepard smiled. He was livid!
"I have a ship converging on your position as we speak," he rumbled. "I suggest you run."
Shepard smiled wider, "I should huh? Well you see, I don't believe you. I have a ship up there too, and I'm outside your lovely shielded trap. I would have been alerted." She would have told Joker not to take chances and blow Haliat's ship out of the water with the Thanix as well. Furthermore, even if Haliat did have a ship, she doubted it could pose a threat to the Normandy. She doubted they could find the Normandy hiding in stealth. Haliat thought she was a born-yesterday fool.
"Who do you think you are, Shepard?"
Shepard inhaled slowly, her crosshairs still on the hint of batarian helmet. "Hmm… oh, pardon me, I forgot to introduce myself fully. I am Commander Shepard, but I've been called the White Death of Elysium." She saw the batarian stiffen like a pole, a sign of recognition. The link was open that wide? It was a crucial tactical error. Shepard now knew she could mess with his psyche by proxy.
She watched as he turned to the other side of the crates he was using for cover and edged toward the smallest of the camp's structures. Probably thought she was distracted. She watched him move as she applied some pressure to the trigger, the instant his head cleared the safety of the crate, and before he could bolt, Vincent fired. The batarian's face-shield shattered into a million fragments. He reached up to cover the gap, but it was too big and he would never form a full seal. Moments later he fell to the ground, and Shepard looked away, not to watch the tell-tale misting from the opening. She raked the receiver and reached for another thermal clip.
"You are insane." Haliat hissed.
"Your glorious forces killed someone very dear to me." She passed her thumb over the ammo selector, switching to armor-piercing and slipped in the fresh clip. As the receiver slid shut, the rifle gave a little shudder as the slug cutter did its job. She could not help but think about Arthur, about his final moments, his final words as he bled out. She could not reach him, could not help him. All she could do was listen to his final breaths and the howling of the wind. She turned the rifle and leveled it on the hint of leg she could see in the door frame.
"Humans are so petty. No wonder the galaxy sees you as a blight."
"Oh, we're petty?" She could not keep the amusement out of her voice. Her crosshairs rose, following where she thought Haliat's body ought to be. Turians had a rather mathematically proportionate form. If one was unusually tall, their legs and bodies still maintained a certain ratio. Haliat had appeared in full body on the projection. There was nothing off about his proportions, so she assumed he was around the statistical height average of two point one meters. "Then I'll be petty. My people have a saying… revenge is a dish best served cold. Well there's nothing colder than me shooting you from five-hundred-fifty meters out and walking away." Her crosshairs stopped where she thought the base of his spine ought to be. Just on the off chance that he was in fact a little shorter, shooting there would still hit him. She inhaled slowly, held, and exhaled. As her lungs emptied, she slowly squeezed the trigger. The mantis kicked one last time.
She heard what sounded like a gurgle on her comm and tapped at her helmet to close the channel. Her bullet hit on target, and that was all she needed. Only insanity would have her listen to make sure Haliat gasped his last. She raked the receiver, and reached for another clip. The comm pinged again; it had to be the marines. She tapped the synch and sighed, "It is done."
"Nine shots… nine kills. That's…" Kaidan began.
"Impressive. Terrifying too." Ashley finished.
"It's a job." Shepard replied. "A sniper does not dither. If we have a shot, we take it." She rose into a kneeling position and swept up the remaining cold clips back into the pouch over her shoulder. She also scooped up the hot clips, one at a time, and tucked them into the pouch at her lower back, where environmental temperatures would cool them for reuse. The final touch was to level the mound of earth she used as a rifle prop and rough up the rather tell-tale body-print. Once on her feet again Vincent folded in her hands and she tucked it behind her back as well.
She knew that she was ducking behind her training as cover, and though what she said was technically not a lie, it was still dishonest. "Let's go, we have half a kilometer to hike to our shuttle from the base of this cliff and another couple hundred meters of winding track just to get down there."
She could tell they were bothered by what they had just witnessed, but to their credit, no one spoke up. Kaidan and Ashley knew something of her past; maybe they could even see that this was personal. Still, it was not like she killed innocents. Haliat admitted to being in charge of Elysium, he knew about the probe, how to track them. There were half a dozen perfectly legitimate reasons to silence him. If she exercised a personal one, just a little, it did not matter. What was the delightful way Nihlus put it? A change in the order of addition did not alter the sum. As cold as that was, it was no less true. She turned to follow the truck's tire tracks.
The Kodiak touched down on the Normandy an hour later, covered in dust, but none of them were worse for wear. Shepard was last to step out. Ashley was already gathering the weapons for post-op inspection. Shepard made her way to the worktable and laid down the twins, and then Vincent. Her hand hovered over the rifle for a long moment. She had killed the man who planned Elysium. It would be quite a report to write for Admiral Hackett. She would not get reprimanded, but the Admiral would ask whether the old Elysium wounds were gouged anew.
She turned toward the elevator and pressed the call button. The door opened, and she stepped inside, automatically hitting the button for her loft. As the elevator moved, Shepard could not help but pace. When the doors opened on deck one, she was out of the elevator and in her quarters in seconds. There she stopped at the top of the steps to that led to the living space of her quarters. The empty fish tank on her left bubbled on, breaking the silence of her room. She did not buy fish, as that would require maintenance, but she turned up the water oxygenator. Bubbling was better than silence.
Shepard descended the steps and moved toward the sideboard on the right of her quarters. There were two framed photographs there, one of her with her team on the day of their induction into the N7 ranks, taken at arm's length by one of her three teammates as they bunched up messily. The other photograph was much older, taken in 2176. It was of her and a group of friends, taken by a photographer on Elysium. She was in the center of the image, surrounded by old friends.
Her eyes landed on Arthur, who stood at the back of the group, his arms spread over the shoulders of two of the guys, smiling, brown eyes lit with mirth, his black hair mussed up. The guys had tussled over where each would stand for the photograph, but Arthur finally pulled rank and took up position in the back middle. It put her right in front of him.
Shepard sighed, none of them had known that the Blitz would come just three days later, and Arthur would not survive. The group broke up after that; all of them reassigned and re-deployed. Shepard had walked away with a Star of Terra and a whole lot of rage. She had not talked to any of the others in years, and yet the picture was a reminder of those times, back before she became a monster.
"The one responsible is dead," she spoke to him. It was silly to talk to the dead, she did not believe in any sort of afterlife. What more, EDI could hear every word, but Shepard trusted EDI. "Let today be your requiem…" She would not say the words. No one was meant to know. Much precaution allowed them to skirt fraternization rules. Much demanded she carry that secret to her grave.
Today would be a requiem for the White Death as well. With Haliat dead there was no more revenge to seek. She would find her center anew. She would seek to right the injustices of the galaxy, and although she might have to take more lives, she would never allow it to become so personal again.
Author Notes: Yep, this one was heavily based off the ME1 War Hero background exclusive mission. It was somewhat random then, and it ended up reworked into something only a tad less random now. It became quite possibly the darkest episode yet. I also tried to fix the continuity errors in the mission as they were present in the game. And yes, someone asked about this in a review on FFN, but there's the confirmation. Shepard and Arthur were totally a thing. It is one more of her many secrets, concealed beneath the mask of the perfect soldier.
General Notes:
Musical Matters – I often listen to music while writing. The right song can spark a plot, or set the tone/mood for a scene. The whole Arthur/Shepard thing was heavily inspired by Faith Hill's "There You'll Be". It was on the soundtrack for the Pearl Harbor movie, I didn't much care for the movie, but I liked the song. Now, a song that inspired Shepard in general was "The World Is Not Enough" by Garbage, from the soundtrack of one of the James Bond films. There is a difference between realizing you made a mistake, and learning to do it better next time, and apologizing for it. Shepard is not apologizing for ambition. As for this particular episode, I had "Indestructible" by Disturbed on repeat, what I call the theme for the White Death/Poltergeist.
Chapter Notes:
Boiling Temperatures – This is one of those less known things. Liquids need pressure as well as the right temperatures to remain liquid. Lower pressures lower boiling temperatures. Plain water will boil at 71*C (not 100*C) on top of Mt. Everest, and liquid nitrogen, despite being able to freeze anything you put into it, is actually boiling when it is poured into an open container like a bucket or flask. Agebinium has 0.17 atm, far less than even at the top of Everest.