Mass Effect 1

Burnt for Beacons

Chapter 15 - Ontarom

Several booted feet drumming against floor panels announced Shepard's arrival. Her instructions were terse but impossible to hear clearly through the Mako's heavy plating. Only when she stood in front of the open hatch, could Liara and Ashley be sure who she was talking to. Shepard gave her final commands to XO Pressley, before clambering in and closing the door herself.

With eyes carefully expressionless, Shepard clambered through the body of the vehicle to the driver's seat and Ashley could not help but notice new stripes of paint on her right arm. A thick band of red edged with white: the N7 detail.

Clenching her jaw, she looked down at her lap before she felt Liara's gaze hard upon her. She could read the unasked question in the look, but didn't know how to respond, or explain the rage she felt in that moment. Didn't know how to explain to her friend that her other friend was being a complete tool and risking her life in the battlefield just so that she could wear some stupid reminder that she passed a test for elite soldiers and doing it in such an obvious way that any enemy combatants with eyes would know that she was the threat and should be taken down first. Ashley took a breath. She shook her head subtly to let Liara know that she was fine, before all three of them donned their helmets.

Shepard began working through the pre-drop checks. She used her deep voice as she worked through each step.

"Joker, the Mako is standing by."

"Copy Ranger Three, we'll be dropping you down in 30."

Shepard's hands clenched and relaxed before they moved back to the controls. The drop took place without issue and Shepard landed the Mako just as gently as Kaidan ever did, though Ashley couldn't help but notice the tense lines of the commander's shoulders.

Ontarom was a verdant planet, full of green planes and sizable canyons. The only life they found as they made their way southeast from the landing zone was what appeared to be sizeable, but slow-moving beetles. She marked some of them and labelled them as benign for the benefit of the VI scanners before continuing to scan the terrain. It wasn't long before they were in view of the base and Ashley could make out human figures. These proved to be anything but benign.

Shepard parked the Mako even as the mercenaries fired upon them.

"What the hell have we walked into?" Shepard asked no one in particular. Then, spoke so that the people outside could hear: "Hold your fire. We've been sent by the Alliance Fi—"

Before she could finish her pacifying speech, a grenade bounced off the nose of the Mako and exploded on the ground in front of them.

Shepard rolled the vehicle back a little way, but that only seemed to encourage the gang outside, who moved in to surround the tank.

Shepard tried once more: "We have come at the request of the Alliance Fifth Fleet to—" What they had come at the request of the Fifth Fleet to do, the mercenaries outside would never know. A sniper took aim at the Mako's engine casing and Shepard had had enough.

The battle did not last long. The poorly armoured mercs were no match for the marines. Shepard was patient and methodical, only firing once fired upon, but the mercenaries fought as though possessed, refusing to surrender, even down to their last man.

When the grounds were finally silent and Shepard called from them to disembark, it was with a heavy heart that Ashley climbed out and looked upon the waste of human life. It is almost impossible to take a non-lethal shot when firing from a tank, and she did not waste time checking for life signs. When they gathered at the entrance to the base, she felt scratchy and irritable.

"We can't know for sure why these mercenaries are here, but our objectives remain the same. Find Doctor Wayne. Invite him to come with us for protection. We have to assume that these people mean him harm or they would have stopped fighting when hailed. They attack, you respond. He pātai?"

No. Ashley found her eyes drawn back to the red and white stripe on Shepard's armour. No questions.

With a grinding roar, the compound door opened and a huge krogan burst out at them before Ashley could think to answer the commander. He lunged straight towards Liara, perhaps somehow recognising her as asari and believing her biotics posed the greater threat, but Ashley moved in and shot him with her shotgun at point blank range. She wasn't even sure how the weapon had come to be in her hand; she was almost certain she'd been checking her pistol before the door had opened. It slowed him long enough that Shepard and Liara could deal their own damage and before long he was lying cold and still.

"What the hell is going on here?" Ashley asked no one in particular.

They made their way into the front foyer. Noises could be heard coming from rooms beyond as they crept as quietly as their boots would let them. A quick sweep revealed nothing.

Shepard signalled for the two other women to take cover, while she herself opened the corridor hatch.

They were badly outnumbered. Mercenaries shouted their battle cries before firing weapons blindly down the corridor towards them. Shepard was forced to retreat quickly before finding a better position and firing back with trained precision. It was a slow fight. The marines were unwilling to move into the open of the room and the mercs were equally unwilling to rush into their fire. It took a combination of biotics, tech, and good old-fashioned weaponry to subdue to the combatants, and when the marines finally walked into the base proper, they were surprised by the number of bodies. Dozens of civilians, office workers and scientists lay in tangled heaps; many had died hiding beneath their desks. Blood dribbled thickly off surfaces to pool in black puddles on the floor.

"Too late," Shepard muttered, still moving inexorably towards another inner door.

When the door opened, Ashley quickly replaced her large firearm with her pistol. It took longer for her to make sense of the tableau that greeted them.

"Stay back! I've got no grief with you! All I want is this bastard!"

A surviving scientist was being held at gunpoint by a heavily, if cheaply, armoured mercenary. The white-clad scientist was crying out incoherently. Shepard moved into the room, motioning Liara to ready her biotics even as she checked her pistol.

"…Madman. Mr Toombs, you're insane. You need help!" he cried desperately.

Predictably, this only inflamed the situation. In her periphery, Shepard stilled like a rabbit beneath a hawk's shadow.

Ashley looked towards her and so did the man named Toombs. He frowned, his eyes fell on her N7 sleeve.

"Shepard? My god, Shepard. Is that you?"

The commander unfroze and with none of her usual grace, removed her helmet.

"Corporal? But… I saw you die on Akuze." Her last word seemed to echo horribly in that cavernous space.

"They took me, Shepard. The scientists." His voice cracked. He sounded desperate. He sounded unhinged.

The scientist who Ashley suspected was the Doctor Wayne they had come to find, began to shriek his innocence. Shepard and Toombs ignored him completely. The resurrected marine kept his weapon trained firmly on the doctor's head and gave Shepard his story in horrifying detail.

He claimed the thresher maws had been lured to the military encampment by Cerberus scientists. Their intention was not only to study the maws, but to figure out if they could be weaponised and controlled. Apparently, they had had some success using ground vibrations to manipulate the huge worms, but needed to test the control during combat situations. Judging by the casualty rate, the experiment had not been a successful one. Ashley felt bile rise in her throat as Toombs relived the horror of that awful night. And still his outstretched arm holding his pistol didn't waver. She felt tired just looking at it.

"I woke up in a holding cell. The scientists were delighted I had survived," Toombs continued the story beyond anything covered by the Alliance reports. No one knew he had survived nor that he had been taken as a test subject. The captivity he described was awful. Beyond anything Ashley could imagine surviving. "He was there. He knows the truth." He stopped to look at the doctor. They all did. Toombs turned back Shepard. "This man deserves to die. For you, for me, for everyone else in the unit. Are you with me?" This last was a hoarse whisper.

Jesus.

Shepard was quiet and still for a very long time.

Liara, silently removed her own helmet and looked beseechingly at the commander who resolutely refused to make eye contact. Liara's hand reached out to touch Shepard gently on her arm as if she'd be able to feel it, as if it would bring her back to the here and now. Shepard didn't feel it, or at least did not make a move to acknowledge it. Her jaw, Ashley noticed, had clenched but had not unclenched, and her finger had begun to curl around the trigger. When Shepard subtly readied her stance, Ash clipped her pistol to her hip and pivoted to face Shepard, hands open in supplication, her ears roaring with mental static at the horror of what she might be about to attempt to do. Shepard registered her movement. Ashley watched her eyes widen, then soften. All this was the work of a moment, but it happened in slow motion as if they were moving through low gravity without mass effect shields. Shepard breathed out slowly and nodded; time reverted to normal speed.

"You're better than this, Toombs." Shepard said to her old squad mate. "You're not like them."

"Don't tell me who I am! You got away with a few scratches and a scary reputation!" he cried. "The rest of the unit died, and I was tortured for years, Shepard! You can't judge me. You don't have the right!"

Shepard began to raise her voice to match his, "Would our unit want revenge or justice?"

He stood there, breathing quickly and shallowly. Finally, he decided, "Okay. I'm no murderer." At this Ashley could not help but let out a noise of surprise. She had just picked her way through a room full of corpses after all. "Just as long as he goes to trial." Doctor Wayne would not be the only one facing trial, Ashley knew. Not after this.

Shepard settled in to comfort her old friend.

Ashley could barely make out her voice, low and slow: "Those bastards can't hurt you anymore."

The red-light display glowed on Shepard's door as it had for hours and hours and hours.

With her duties done, Ashley went to find the new comms guy. She tracked him to the observation deck where he was sitting with Tucks, just packing up a board game and clearing away empty bottles. Her timing was perfect, Tucks was just leaving.

Jordan Riordan listened attentively as she explained what she wanted, and as she talked, his eyes crinkled with excitement as he worked through the problem. His questions were intelligent and when he outlined the solution and explained the tech and how upgrades typically get packaged across Alliance space, Ashley's excitement grew with his enthusiasm.

"So, it can be done? You're sure?" It seemed too straightforward. Too easy.

"Easier than you'd think." His eyes grew mournful and a frown slowly spread over his brow. "Except one thing."

Ashley waited expectantly, but Riordan continued to frown thoughtfully, his face almost screwed up in concentration. She raised an eyebrow and opened her hands, wordlessly begging him to continue, to get to the part where they could problem-solve their way back to a solution.

"New guy points," he said with theatrical heaviness.

What? "What?"

"I'll miss out on the new guy points. You tell me the Commander's name, well, that information is worth a tonne of new guy points."

Ashley could not hide her confusion. "What the hell are new guy points?"

"When you're the new guy, you need to find ways to be liked; to get noticed. It's like a point system. Buy a round, play the same sport as some other guy, tell good stories, good jokes, or," he paused meaningfully, "dish some dirt on your commanding officer."

Ashley felt the heat in her face rise. Her shoulders tensed and she readied herself to knock him flat on his back.

"Woah, woah, woah." He smiled and put up his hands, soothingly. "You really don't know about the new guy points? That joke should have been worth five at least."

She let out a huff of air. "The new guy would get more points if he can prove he can keep a confidence."

"See! You do know about new guy points." He grinned, and this time Ash returned it. "Trust me, Chief. I've got this. Her secret's safe with me."

And Ashley believed him.

"Points on delivery," she replied, firmly.