Mass Effect 1

Burnt for Beacons

Chapter 14 - Kepler Verge

Black coffee sat cooling in a mug next to the commander. The mission had stalled and the Normandy drifted aimlessly through space picking up jobs that the fifth fleet deemed important. Shepard was finding it increasingly difficult to hide her frustration as she scoured mission reports looking for any further hint of the geth, any sign of where the Mu relay might lead, where the conduit might be, or where Saren Arterius might have gone.

She leant over the star map, her elbows resting on the rail and her hands loosely clasped, her expression was blank. It was the second time Ashley had walked through the CIC this shift, and it looked as though Shepard had not moved at all. Ashley watched as Shepard lifted the cup to her lips, and expected to see a look of disgust when she realised how cold her coffee had become, but there was no change in expression, which was, in the end, as becalmed as the Normandy.

Ashley returned her gaze to her work, only partially aware of Shepard communicating with Joker via her omni tool. People drifted in and out of her peripheral vision and Jordan Riordan stopped in front of her to talk about some of her recent requisition requests. The man had recently been assigned to the Normandy after their last stopover at the Citadel. He had a natural charm and seemed to find it easy to make friends. All Ash really knew about him was that he talked a lot in his sleep. Even his sleep-banter sounded friendly. Their conversation finished and she found her attention drifting back to the commander who was standing tall in front of the star map.

"… killing former Alliance scientists. There have been four deaths in the past month."

"I'm happy to look into it, Admiral." Shepard didn't look particularly enthusiastic. Her stony face hadn't changed. "What can you tell me?"

"We found a connection between the scientists and you. They all worked on a classified project several years ago." Admiral Hackett's voice paused here, before continuing in a slightly lower register. "On Akuze."

"Akuze?" Shepard's hand reached for her collar bone before lowering it again quickly with a frown. "I lost my whole unit there. You're saying our scientists were involved?" No one else seemed to be paying attention, but Ashley found herself paralysed by what she was hearing.

"I can't get any information on what they were working on. The project records were sealed. Commander." Another pause. "Shepard." Hackett took a breath as if afraid of what he was about to say. When he spoke again, though, it was with the same carefully moderate tone he always used. "What you do with this is up to you, I just thought you'd want to know. There was one other scientist on the project: Doctor Wayne. I'm transmitting his last known coordinates. Good luck. Fifth fleet out."

Shepard leant forward against the star map rails again. She looked lost in thought. Her omni tool buzzed. She tapped in a few instructions before frowning down at the cheerfully glowing star map.

She turned to sweep down the ramp. "Joker, I need a course set for Ontarom, Kepler Verge."

Within moments she was in her office; the door display lit with a forbidding red circle.

"All I'm saying, Ash, is that if this music is for everyone, then why, even after all these years, is hardly anyone playing it? If you are from a disadvantaged background, you are not going to keep learning the cello, after a certain point, even if you are given the opportunity to take lessons from some random teacher in your backwater colony school." Ashley frowned, listening patiently to Joker's tirade. "This music is still for the elite. And it is almost exclusively played by people from Earth."

His fingers hadn't stopped moving across the haptic control panel in front of him.

They were talking over the top of Nielson's fifth symphony.

"And, when I think about it," Ashley was nodding thoughtfully, "when we think of serious classical composers, we are still talking about men that died hundreds of years ago. I can name male composers that died 500 years ago. I can't name a woman from even 200 years ago. I guess we, as a species, decided early on which creatives we valued and the music perpetually defined itself in that image after that. Musicians who didn't fit that predetermined mould found their creative outlets elsewhere, because they knew they'd never rise through the ranks in classical music." Ashley huffed out a stream of air. "Jesus, that's depressing."

Joker stilled his hands and looked across at her.

"Why do we love it so much then?" he asked, seriously.

She frowned, attempting to find her own reasons.

"Probably," he answered his own question, "because we are the elite."

She looked at his fitted cap, his loosely rolled sleeves and unshaven beard and thought about the grease she had only recently removed from under her fingernails. She chuckled, delighting at the idea that the pair of them might consider themselves elite-anything. But then her eyes kept wandering. Orange lights glowed bright throughout the bridge, as the green and purple gasses of the Kepler Verge spun madly beyond the windows; she thought about their team, their equipment, their ship and their captain. And not for the first time, she wondered if Jeff "Joker" Moreau almost always used humour to mask a deeper truth. She raised her eyebrow and was about to respond when Shepard interrupted, by stomping her way up the causeway behind them.

"What is that?!" Shepard looked genuinely horrified and was actually covering her ears with her hands like a child.

Joker quickly switched the music off. Ashley hadn't thought it was that bad. The snare drums hadn't even started which was the part of that particular piece of music that Ashley always found mildly offensive. They'd been listening to a slow movement, with violins. Sort of calm on the surface but with hidden hints of excitement building underneath.

"You guys like that stuff? Sounded like cats yowling in an alleyway." Shepard was not making a joke. This was her irritated voice. "I've never understood violin music. If you want to listen to something that high pitched why not make yourself useful and take on some Blood Pack vorcha."

This was unfair. Vorcha's voices could not be considered to be high pitched by any metric. Jeff turned his head minutely towards Ashley and shook it slowly and very subtly. She understood the unspoken message. Go easy on her. As if Ashley needed to be told.

Shepard continued, "Have you prepped the gear, Williams?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"It'll be 58°C down there."

This was not a temperature that even the most basic modern armour would struggle with. "It's ready, ma'am."

"Anti-personnel rounds installed?"

"On the pistols, ma'am. Tungsten in the rifles and sledgehammer rounds in the shotguns. I figured there might be merc forces down there and this should cover our bases if we run into trouble." It was hard to tell if Shepard was even listening, but she nodded.

"ETA?" she turned to Jeff.

"Three hours, Commander," he replied gently.

Pale light danced across her stern expression as she stared stonily out of the bow windows. Her jaw muscles flickered twice and then settled. "I should go. Finish preparations." And with that she turned and walked back towards the CIC.

"You ever read the report on Akuze?" Joker asked, once Shepard was safely out of earshot.

"Tried too," Ashley admitted with a shrug. "Everything on her is classified since she became a Spectre."

"Hmmm," Joker nodded, "Sure, but you can get to it easily enough by looking for the generic mission report. On those, the only thing that's been redacted is her name. Pretty stupid. Everyone in Alliance Space knows that she was the only one to survive that mess. It was called Operation Dead Air. An entire settlement, a communication hub, dropped out of contact, so they sent a bunch of marines, most fresh out of boot camp, to investigate."

"Everyone heard about it." Ashley picked up the story. "I was still in training when the news broke. Forty-nine dead and missing, only one marine made it back to the LZ. Footage of her with that fucking N7 stripe on her arm, her armour burnt to shit, barely holding together, medics pouring medi-gel on to a shoulder that looked like ground beef. No helmet, hair slick with sweat and blood. Refusing to look at the camera. Then they showed pictures of the site. Truck wreckages everywhere that had been ripped open or melted, bodies hanging out of them. Then the camera zoomed out so you could see the thresher maws. Three of them dead in the dirt."

"Hell of a thing to survive." Joker looked momentarily unsure. "You look after her down there. I never heard anything about scientists until Hackett's intel came through, and something about it stinks. Read the mission report. It just doesn't feel right. Never has."

"You don't trust Hackett?"

"Eh, I don't trust anyone that makes more than I do, but no, it's something else. The colony knew there were threshers living on the planet, they built well away from any nests which were well marked and documented as hazardous no-go zones."

"So," Ashley finished for him as realisation hit, "why did the threshers attack?"