Mass Effect 1

Burnt for Beacons

Chapter 21 - Ilos

Captain Anderson's idea was only slightly better than Shepard's.

He knocked Councillor Udina out with a punch, hacked his computer to release the lockdown, and the crew of the Normandy had screamed their way to the Terminus Systems. He would no doubt face trial and so would they. If they ever made it back.

Shepard was kneeling in the cover of an impossibly ancient statue, fiddling with her tech gear. In her armour, and with her helmet on, it was easy to dismiss her. In the green and grey shadows of the ruins, she was small. Her movements were confident and quick as she adjusted and then readjusted her pack, but nothing truly noteworthy. And yet somehow this woman had inspired the entire crew to defect and turn pirate. Not one person had questioned it or asked to be left ashore. Ashley understood, but would find it hard to explain to an outsider. The commander was just one of those people you wanted to follow. Someone you'd happily commit treason for. Die for.

Liara was stroking something with armoured fingers. It looked like a pillar covered with engravings. The asari was finding it difficult to focus on the combat and Ashley half wished they'd brought Garrus instead. He wouldn't have squeaked indignantly whenever Ashley hurled a grenade a little too close to some old stonework.

Ashley kicked a piece of metal plating sending it skidding through the mossy undergrowth. It had once been the protective outer shell of one of the geth that they'd been fighting. One of the red ones. Watching it bounce over knotted roots, she briefly wondered about geth factories, and why they bothered with painted armour at all; perhaps it was some hangover from their time with the quarians. She groaned, audibly. A little embarrassed that she was finding herself intrigued by the cultural heritage of fucking robots. Robots that had killed her entire squad and were once again trying to kill her and her friends and bring about the extinction of the entire fleshy universe.

"Ash. Scout around. Look for signs of geth. Maybe we can follow them out of this maze."

They were lost. And their scanners were jammed.

"Yes, Ma'am."

Ashley had found Shepard last night. After Virmire, she had needed time and space and Shepard had given it to her; waiting quietly with wide, lonely eyes. But then Ashley had pinned Shepard to a wall and had taken her roughly, poured all her pain and heartache and joy and confusion into that moment and Shepard had breathed, and sighed, and cried out. It was a release. They had slipped to the floor. Then moved to the bed.

A little froggy geth crawled over the face of a hulking statue. She raised her rifle and brought it, and the head of the statue, down with a single shot.

"Ashley, please!" Liara cried out in dismay.

Scrunching her nose and clenching her jaw behind the screen of her helmet, she replied with her head lowered beneath a thumbs up sign. Hopefully the asari would read it as an apology.

"Ashley, please," Shepard had whispered, in the dark of her cabin.

Ashley's head had lowered then, too.

The group picked their way through the leavings of a long dead civilisation until they found a likely looking tunnel, that might have once been a massive road system.

"Do we go on foot or head back to the Mako? It's not too far away from where we are now," Ashley said, frowning down at what they all knew to be extremely unreliable mapping software.

"Mako," Shepard decided. "We have no idea how far away Saren is, and he's had enough of a head start already. When we get there, it might be nice to have some cannons."

Climbing into the M35 Mako was like coming home. She'd once overheard Private Dan Ryckert, complain that the M35 handled like an ambulance with beach balls for wheels, but he'd been killed in action two years ago, so she'd never be able to ask him how he knew what an ambulance was like to drive. She very much agreed with the bit about beach balls though. Especially with Shepard at the wheel. Driving through rivulets of water also seemed to stop the huge tires from finding purchase. Still, there was something reassuring about sitting inside that familiar armoured wagon.

From where she sat, she could see Shepard's gauntlet covered hands relaxed on the controls. Liara was saying something about the walls around them. Cryogenic stasis pods speckled the surface in depressing regularity, all of them shut down, presumably containing the mummified remains of people that had gone to sleep hoping that they would one day wake to fight again. Only days ago, Ashley would have been horrified at the thought of such a quiet death. Her most secret hope had been that she'd die heroically; die in a way that would re-write history for the Williams' family. In this moment, it seemed like a teenager's idle fantasy. Maybe for the first time in her life, she could understand the desire to escape an impossible battle, to go to sleep hoping to wake up into a better world, and the arms of—.

Shepard turned and smiled at her.

"There's something strange up ahead," Liara said.

It looked like a force field.

"Visors down. It looks like a trap." Shepard's voice was deep. It was her serious voice; the voice she used when concentrating.

"I don't think Saren is behind this," Liara said, and it was hard to argue with her. The forces that Saren had left behind had been light. It felt like he didn't care if they followed or not, and this field looked different. Integrated into the Prothean landscape rather than hastily constructed by a moving army.

They climbed out of the Mako and into a tunnel entrance that had opened for them. Shepard looked unconcerned, confidently leading them into the dark, but also not making eye contact with either of them.

The VI that greeted them at the end of a long dark tunnel had glowed like fire. But as it told the story of the Protheans her hope stuttered and died. She saw their inevitable deaths, clearly. Their bodies were burnt for beacons as they'd made every attempt to warn the Council who'd refused to heed their warnings. And now it was too late. The best they could hope for was a pyrrhic victory. The things called Reapers were so much more than ships, they were huge artificial lifeforms hellbent on destroying all organic life to preserve a cycle. They have been doing this for millions of years. They were going to do it again, because the Citadel was a giant mass relay.

"If Saren activates the relay," Shepard said, with surprising calm, "the Reapers can wipe out the Council and the Citadel fleet."

The VI answered Shepard's statements as if they were questions, and answered her questions as if they had all the time in the world. Liara looked as if she wanted to interrupt with a stream of questions of her own, but Ashley shook her head to try to dissuade her. She wanted to be out there fighting, not in here, talking to a computer while the universe ended. She wanted to live, and be alive with Shepard.

"Tell me what to do." Shepard had breathed the words across Ashley's ear and she'd felt her back arch in response, her hands gripping the sheets of Shepard's bed.

"You said you brought me here for a reason. Tell me what to do." The voice Shepard used was unlike her own. Ashley did not know what it meant.

As the story continued, Ashley felt hope bubble up to the surface once more. Prothean scientists had been studying mass relay technology. The VI had woken a tiny number of them from cryostasis after the reapers had completed their most recent universal genocide. They had learned about the backdoor to the Citadel, they'd learned that it was the bug-eyed keepers that were letting them in. And those Protheans survivors had altered the signal.

"This time," the VI explained, "when Sovereign sent the signal to the Citadel, the keepers ignored it. The Reapers are trapped in dark space."

"Saren can use the Conduit to bypass all the Citadel's external defences."

"Correct. And once inside he can transfer control of the station to Sovereign."

Ashley bounced on the balls of her feet. Shepard seemed determined to leech every possible skerrick of information from the VI. Frustrated, she began to stretch her shoulder muscles hoping to give Shepard a visual reminder that time was of the essence. Finally, they turned away from that ancient computer database to run back up the tunnel.

"We aren't going to waste time shooting down these geth," Shepard said. "We're either mowing them down or driving straight past them. I want to know the moment our shields drop below 90 percent."

The conduit glowed menacingly up ahead.

Tree roots distorted the true shape of the place making it seem almost park-like, but she was sure they were driving through a massive drainage system.

Shepard was frantically whipping through different readings even as she steered the Mako to crush the body of a geth fighter that had foolishly stepped into their path.

"Check your armour!" she shouted at them through gritted teeth.

"Shields at 89 percent." Liara's voice was that same mix of high and low notes that she always used, whether describing some architectural wonder, or commenting on the weather, or indicating that they would probably be dead in a few short seconds.

"Liara, it has been an honour," Shepard said, her voice cracking a little.

"You too, Shepard."

The conduit was massive in front of them and Ashley finally realised that Shepard intended to try to fling the Mako through it.

They would hit it any second.

"Ash." Shepard didn't turn her way. She was still concentrating on their trajectory. "I wanted to say: I lov—"