"Commander, you wanted..." Admiral Hackett started as soon as his call was accepted, trailing off as his brain processed both the fact that she hadn't saluted and the reason why. "Are you alright?"
"Hmm? Oh this! Yes Sir, it's fine. Admiral Ahern's certainly not lost his touch." Just his retirement home. She thought smugly.
In hindsight she would admit that she'd been unnecessarily reckless when running the ground team through the intensive combat scenarios on Pinnacle Station.
Of course the galaxy was far too big to fly around without a destination in mind just on the off chance of running into something important, so she had decided to spend some time at the state of the art training facility while they waited for leads on Saren's location.
It had undoubtedly been hugely beneficial, especially for Tali and Liara who had recently asked if she could join the squad.
There were only so many scenarios they could run in the Normandy's cargo hold after all and Shepard didn't want to rely on on-the-job training in a combat situation.
However it probably would have been wise to take breaks in between the simulations, even if it was just for an hour or two. After all, she made sure her subordinates didn't do more than two run throughs in a row.
Yet every time she beat a scenario she marched straight up to Tech officer Ochren and asked the salarian to load her another one. Turning round and jumping straight back in with some fresh team mates.
Her body was aching, brain buzzing. It reminded her slightly of Hell week at the Villa, although not as intense.
It was strange how you could end up missing something so hated, but it had been a long time since she found a training program capable of pushing her and she was enjoying herself.
Even an N7's body had a breaking point though, and her saluting arm had found its limit.
"I'm currently on light duty but the cast's due off in a couple of hours and Doctor Chakwas is confident I'll be fit for combat by the morning. Modern medicine's a wonderful thing." Her eye's suddenly narrowed. "Whatever you do, do not tell Trish... uh, please... Sir."
"Spectre order?" Normally Hackett wouldn't tolerate such behaviour from a subordinate over military comms, not even from Nikki. However he knew his niece took after her mother and could well imagine the fallout should either of them find out.
Besides, as a spectre Shepard was technically outside the normal chain of command now.
In fact, theoretically, she was now entitled to order him (or anybody else inside Council space) around, providing it was a necessary part of her mission and didn't involve treasonous actions. Despite the politicians pushing for this for years, the Alliance military was still getting its head around how exactly the new relationship was supposed to work.
"Yeah, spectre order." The youngster smiled her thanks at him for providing a way out before becoming fully professional again. "So Admiral, what can I do for you? I'm guessing you didn't call up just to enquire about my health."
"No I didn't. You wanted to know the moment we got any intel on the geth? Well, I'm getting reports of a geth presence in the Armstrong Cluster. Surveillance drones have identified outposts on Maji, Casbin, Antibaar and Rayingri-"
The professionalism slipped with a groan. "You did not just say Antibaar?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Can't you call the Villa? See if they can bring forward the next cold weather training course?"
"Do you have a problem with Antibaar Shepard?"
"You know I have a problem with Antibaar Sir. I lost a toe on Antibaar. Trish threatened to kill me when I got back!"
"Sorry Commander, that's where the geth are."
"Fine, I'll check it out Sir. But if I get frostbite again I'm telling Trish it's your fault."
"I'm going to put this conversation down to the side effects of pain medication and suggest if anything does go wrong that you blame it on the geth, not me."
"That sounds like a much better plan Sir. Ok, forward me everything you've got on the situation and I'll get right on it."
...
Antibaar had just been the start. After reducing the geth there to scrap metal (and warming back up with soup and a shower once onboard the Normandy) they went on a spree across the entire cluster.
There were outposts on at least one planet in every star system just like Hackett said. They even found one base that Alliance intel hadn't known about on Solcrum, a small moon in the Grissom system.
Barely five minutes had passed since the shooting ended. The team waiting for Tali to finish data mining the outpost's terminals as Shepard and Garrus fiddled around curiously with a screwdriver inside the remains of a geth juggernaut, while discussing with Wrex and Liara just why geth would need to store information on terminals when they were practically just walking computers themselves?
Their increasingly outlandish theories were interrupted when Joker's voice came over the comm, informing her Hackett was trying to get in touch once more and she got him to patch the audio through.
"Commander, good work clearing out those outposts. The intelligence you've been recovering is already proving invaluable."
Why do I sense there's a 'but' coming? She wondered warily.
"However, it looks like we were right about them using Armstrong as a staging ground. There's already reports of geth in the Attican Beta, we think they're planning an attack on Feros. I'm diverting elements of the 52nd flotilla to patrol the area but you're closer."
"I'll swing by Sir. Keep an eye on things until the 52nd get there."
"Thank you Commander, I appreciate it. Hackett out."
...
"Hmm, about time I heard from you. Do I even want to know what've you been up to?" Trish queried as she answered the call. They had been out of contact for about a week and a half and it had been even longer since they'd had a chance for either a video or audio call.
"You mean you don't already know? I was going to ask you, you always seem to know where I am and what I'm doing before me." Nikki teased.
"Not this time I'm afraid, I kind of have to rely on news reports or other people posting on the extranet to know what's going on and I've not heard anything all week."
"And I thought my little stalker spy knew everything. Well, if you really want to know... for the last two days I've been on an undisclosed planet sponsored by a large corporation, who must unfortunately remain nameless, who decided to do something bad that I can't talk about. They probably would have continued doing something bad without anyone becoming any the wiser if the geth hadn't shown up on said planet with me in hot pursuit and having to put an end to it. Just trust me when I say fighting geth was the nice part of the mission."
"Sounds exhausting."
"Yeah kind of." The N7 hesitated a moment. The mind controlled slaves, asari clones, weird humanoid creeper things and ancient sentient plant had all been bad enough, but even if she could talk about them they wouldn't be as nerve wracking to explain as what she was about to discuss.
"Something else happened too. I'm not entirely convinced I'm allowed to talk about it, but I'm not willing to hide it from you either. Just... let me explain and answer any questions you've got before you explode about it please?"
That wasn't exactly a promising start to a conversation but Trish nodded, slightly worried.
"Okay."
"You remember back in N-school when I did the advanced SERE training and there was all that stuff about different types of asari meld and how they can share information..."
Trish did. She hadn't been there of course, but Nikki had sat her down when she got back and insisted on a 'full disclosure' conversation about how she'd had to have an asari in her head for work.
It had been a rather awkward discussion and as the N7 continued to babble in a large circle around the topic without ever quite making it to the point, Trish realised where this was going.
"You melded with an asari." Her tone was certain but not harsh, Nikki still almost flinched.
"Yeah... Just a knowledge meld mind you... but yeah."
"Was it with Liara?" Admittedly that time Trish's voice was a fraction sharper, she was pretty sure the archeologist had a crush on her girlfriend, even if she doubted Nikki had noticed. It had never really bothered her before because she trusted the spectre to be loyal. It was a little different to think about said person going inside her partner's head though.
"No, it was one of Matriarch Benezia's acolytes."
That certainly wasn't the answer she'd expected and for a moment the civilian was rendered speechless before recovering enough to enquire:
"Are you sure that's wise? Letting the ally of an enemy inside your head."
"Probably not. It was necessary though babe. I needed... some information she had access to."
"And you couldn't just ask her? Talk it over?"
"Not really. It's... complicated." Shepard silently debated with herself a moment before sighing as she made her decision.
"You remember that beacon the press mentioned on Eden Prime? It put... stuff in my head. Some kind of warning, except I couldn't understand it because it was all in bloody prothean. Shiala had access to a... well everyone else is calling it a cipher. Supposed to help me understand the visions."
"And is it working?" Trish was amazed how calm her voice sounded as she processed her partner's words and situation.
"Not entirely. Bits of it are starting to make sense, but I got the mother of all headaches right now. Shiala reckons it'll take a bit of time to adjust, for the knowledge to sort of settle in and start working, I'm afraid I really don't understand it babe. Anyway, once Liara found out I know not all melds are about sex she started trying to get inside my head too."
Trish involuntarily stiffened. "You let her?"
"No! Not yet anyway."
"Not yet? As in you're planning to?"
"I think I might end up having to. She's the prothean expert, maybe she can make sense of all this mess."
"I thought you said you had the cipher now?"
"Well yeah but..." She trailed off with a sigh. "I'd explain if I could Trish but you know I don't understand the technical stuff. It's like... The beacon stored information right?"
The civilian nodded, she'd worked that much out on her own.
"Imagine that information as like those old fashioned paper books, a whole library full. When the beacon was destroyed that library blew up and the pages got loose and all muddled up in the explosion and a lot of them landed in... lets say a bucket. Like a really, really big bucket that can hold a lot of pages. And they didn't just float gently in they really got squished in to get as many pages as possible inside and... this really wasn't the best metaphor..."
"Your head's the bucket right?" Trish clarified.
"Right. And all the books were written in Prothean, so now I've got the cipher I can read the words but the pages are still all messed up. They're all in the wrong order and some were lost in the explosion and others are from different books completely so I still can't make proper sense of it all."
"And you think Liara can help? Use her prothean expertise to provide a sense of context and reshuffle the pages, or at least provide an index or something."
"I don't know babe, I hope so, but I really don't know. At this point it's got to be worth a try. Doctor Chakwas can supervise if you're worried about the whole meld thing-"
"I trust you Nick." The civilian interrupted. "It's just a little weird thinking about someone else going inside your head."
"You're telling me." The N7 chuckled grimly. "Villa taught me to keep the buggers out and make sure I keep classified intel safe if they do get in. Not roll out the welcome mat and show them what's what."
Trish could hear the faint bitterness in her partner's voice.
"Forget about me a moment sweetheart, are you ok with this?"
"I don't know, it's kinda weird. Not really got many choices though. Saren's already got the cipher and the beacon wasn't destroyed when he interfaced with it so he can probably flick through all the books at his leisure without having to reconstruct them first. I'm ten steps behind at every turn and all I know for sure is the galaxy's screwed if he finds this conduit thing first."
"Then you know what you've got to do. I might not particularly like this sweetie, god knows if there was any other way I'd want you to take it... but, if there isn't... I'm not willing to see the galaxy in flames just because I was too jealous or prudish to let you do what needed to be done."
"You a prude? That'll be the day." The spectre snorted in disbelief, mind briefly drifting to some of the things her partner made her do over the years. "I can't believe I'm seriously considering letting an asari poke about in my brain, it goes against all my training. Still... Suppose it's better than a salarian, they'd be using a scalpel."