"Commander, I'm picking up a distress call." Shepard looked up from the e-book Trish had recommended, frowning at Joker's voice. She was officially on the downtime part of her day and while she had no problem being interrupted in an emergency, she knew that if this had been an Alliance ship then the information would have first been relayed to the XO. The XO would then either have simply handled the situation or informed her she was needed.
Miranda was XO. Miranda hadn't been the one to give her the information. This either meant Joker was ignoring the ship's chain of command and hadn't informed Miranda, or he HAD informed her and the Cerberus operative hadn't deigned to take action. Either scenario was a problem but she'd need to know which it was before she could fix it and right now there were more important concerns.
"Forward me the message Joker." She declared, already on the move towards the CIC.
{General distress. Beacon process interrupted. Translation error. Status of system operator is not known.}
She grimaced. That had been entirely unhelpful. If they had stated the ship was going down because of a mechanical failure then she'd know to concentrate on medics in the response team, if they claimed to be under attack then a more combative unit. Fortunately Mordin represented the best of both worlds, as long as his research was at a point it could be left alone for a few hours.
Grunt however probably wouldn't be a good idea for a rescue mission. The young krogan had come far under her tutelage, but being allowed to go on a mission then not getting to fight during it was something she didn't think he was quite ready for just yet.
"EDI can you tell me anything else?"
"I'm picking up four homing beacons from escape pods on the surface, spread out over a 50km radius." She watched as the details popped up on the map, two of the pods were relatively close together and within marching distance of the main crash site. The other two were far flung and cut off from each other by mountainous terrain.
"OK, two teams. I'll take Mordin and Garrus, the shuttle will drop us off as close to this escape pod as possible." She indicated the relevant dot. "We'll sweep for survivors at both pods then proceed on foot to the initial distress beacon. Lawson, you'll lead team two, pick whoever you want."
"I'll take Jacob and Zaeed." Shepard nodded her approval.
"Alright, after dropping us off you'll check out the other two escape pods with the shuttle and then rendezvous with us at the main crash site. Fly low as you can, if you spot any other escape pods then find somewhere to land and check them out."
"But why? If there were any survivors surely they'd have activated the homing beacon."
"What if they're injured? Leg trapped under crushed debris, unable to reach the controls, just sat there knowing that when the pod's power runs out the planet's cold will encroach until they slowly die of hypothermia. Unless of course they starve to death first." Nikki shrugged, lightening her bleak voice to a more neutral tone: "Or the beacon could have got damaged in the crash, it's rare but it happens. Worst case scenario, you lose ten minutes of your life for nothing, I think that's worth even the slim chance of saving another being's life, don't you?"
...
As far as planets went Neith wasn't too hostile. -25°C was cold but with proper protection not terminably so, (no matter what the native Mindoirian thought in the privacy of her own head). The 1.4g surface gravity and 0.7 atm atmospheric pressure was also safe without the need for fully sealed environmental suits, it was merely like walking under water with a heavy rucksack, wrist and ankle weights. Except without the water. Aaand carrying minimum gear.
Shepard still insisted her team wear helmets or breather masks though. While Earth and Neith could both be described as having nitrogen rich atmospheres, the key distinction was the rest of the gases in the mix. Neith did have oxygen, but it only made up around 14% of the atmosphere. Enough that exposure wouldn't kill them straight away, but exhaustion and dizziness would quickly hit with any kind of physical exercise.
In short there were plenty of worse places to crash. Of course the key phrase in all this survival talk was 'proper protection'. Most people would just be wearing normal clothing while working onboard ship and when the evacuation call started blaring there wouldn't be time to do a quick check of the planet's codex and grab a warm coat.
Fortunately most reputable companies included emergency 'mechanical counter-pressure bio-suits' in their escape pods to improve evacuees chance of survival upon crashing on an unknown world. Which was fine as long as you weren't an elcor or hanar in a pod outfitted for asari/humans, or vice versa. There was only so much universal compatibility designers could manage after all.
Shepard's internal thoughts about the crew's chance of survival as they trudged towards the first pod was interrupted by the rapid fire external musings of Professor Solus attempting to work out potential theories about what could have caused the crash, based purely on the scatter pattern of the debris.
However his attention switched when they reached the target and found the bodies. Two humans and an asari in biosuits answered one of the commander's questions about company safety standards, but the frozen red and purple blood around them suggested they wouldn't be answering any others. Then again you didn't need a forensics degree to work out they weren't killed by the crash. Not with the gunshot wounds riddled haphazardly across the torso.
"Spread pattern indicative of submachine gun. Substandard marksmanship. Range, angle, location? Must have had visual of attacker but not on guard. Wasn't expecting assault." Solus hypothesised, his omni-tool out, scanning the ground near the crash as Garrus took up a sentry position and Shepard entered the escape pod.
"There's a biosuit unaccounted for." She informed the others a moment later as she stepped back out, eyes roving the landscape around them for any trace of movement.
"Hmm, possible survivor... Or a potential perpetrator?" She nodded in agreement, as the turian voiced her thoughts.
"Yes! No... Maybe?" The professor's latest rumination caught their attention, Shepard suppressing a chuckle as Garrus rolled his eyes in exaggerated despair. Her friend had spent far too much time around humans it seemed.
"Mordin, we need to move. You find anything?" The salarian held up a hand. On closer inspection she realised he was holding a piece of debris barely an inch squared.
"Material used in construction of various military grade equipment, most likely source: loki or fenris mech."
"Why is it always mechs?" She groaned rhetorically, but Solus answered anyway.
"Not always. Vorcha on Omega, mixed specie organic opposition on Bekenstein. Besides, no guarantee they're responsible. May simply have burnt up in reentry or-" The commander waved him to silence, he took a breath. "Nothing else here. Ready to go."
...
Despite maintaining a fast, steady pace as they navigated towards the second escape pod, they were still several klicks away when they heard the first gunshots. Admittedly the fighting sounded closer than that but it was hard to be sure with a damn mountain in the way.
Not for the first time in her life, Nikki found herself wondering why she wasn't equipped with a jump jet. After all, she had received training on them during N-school. She'd even passed!
Just... but still...
With a sigh she focused on the rockface in front of her, clambering hand over hand with perhaps a little more recklessness than she would have employed if she couldn't hear the sounds of fighting above.
Crawling over the top, she stayed prone, unclipping and extending the sniper rifle from her back as she scoped out the distant battlefield. Garrus mirroring her actions a few seconds later. It looked like they'd found the missing biosuit at least, the asari wearing it crouched behind a rock with a batarian in ERCS Guardian armour, a biotic barrier around them as a group of loki mechs advanced on their position.
"Damn it Mordin, I hate it when you're right." Shepard muttered under her breath.
"That's a lot of hate. Am mostly right." The salarian declared nonplussed as he finally finished scaling the cliff, causing the human to chuckle. Squad banter was always better when it flowed both ways.
They'd already adjusted their weapons to take local gravity into effect before making planetfall, but there were other considerations to take into account and she quickly made a series of minuscule adjustments to her scope in response to the range and wind readings scrolling down one side of her HUD. No doubt Vakarian's visor was giving him the same information in the squiggles turians liked to call an alphabet.
"Garrus you take left, I'll take right." For what felt like the first time since she met him, the professor fell silent as the two snipers concentrated on their shots. Breathing falling into the familiar pattern, the gentle squeeze of the trigger during the long pause between inhale and exhale. The right most mech's head was shot clean off, a split second later one of the mechs slightly further in on the left found itself decapitated, the turian managing to trigger a post mortem explosion that damaged several more mechs around his target.
The robots faltered for a moment, trying to decide which direction to attack and the ERCS guard took the opportunity to pop up from cover, firing his pistol at another. The unarmed asari however stayed down, using her biotics purely for defence. Shepard and Vakarian continued to pick their shots and a turian handful of reloads later, the machines were wiped out.
They waited a few more minutes, scanning their surroundings for any more hostiles before Shepard clambered to her feet, switching to her assault rifle as her and Mordin advanced on the survivors' position, Garrus staying put to cover their approach.
"Commander Shepard, Alli-... Council Spectre." Nikki introduced herself once they were within auditory range, the batarian hesitantly lowered his weapon although the asari maintained her barrier. "We picked up your distress beacon but it wasn't very informative, what happened?"
"We're not sure." The asari started, before running through a rather extensive list of system failures reported in the run up to the crash.
...
"Thirty three!" Garrus crowed triumphantly as they fended off the latest wave of mechs. They had come under regular assault as they made their way to the second crash site, each time taking cover to deal with the threat before moving on.
"Just how many of these things are there?" The commander asked, checking her ammo with a grimace. Normally she could just replenish her stocks from the fallen enemy but the mechs kept blowing up, destroying their supplies in the process. There was a real chance she'd run out of ammunition before she ran out of targets.
"The Corsica was carrying one hundred and eighty three Loki mechs and one YMIR mech." Their rescuees informed them.
"Well at least I took care of the YMIR." Nikki bragged.
"Still only counts as one Shepard." Garrus insisted.
"Pfft, says the turian who keeps stealing my kills. CONTACT!" They scattered behind nearby rocks and debris but the renewed fighting didn't put a stop to the banter.
"It was destroyed in my explosion."
"Which would count if I hadn't already killed it before your explosion."
"Well it's not my fault, if you stuck to headshots like the rest of us I'd know you'd got it."
"I was trying to bypass the post mortem explosion so I'd have time to steal it's ammo but nooo... Mr Hotshot Vakarian has other ideas... Thirty five."
"Typical military bravado, posturing, oneupmanship, chest pounding..." Mordin paused, using his omni-tool to launch a wide area of effect overload into the mechs. He pressed the trigger of his heavy pistol twice in quick succession, two more headless mechs falling uselessly to the ground. He sighed. "... Thirty eight..."
Nikki laughed at the professor's deadpan delivery, even as she threw a grenade to help even the score. She'd known from the fact he was former STG that the scientist could fight, but it was the first time since joining the crew that she'd dragged him out the lab to join her on the ground and it was simply divine how well his skillset meshed with her N7 training.
She'd barely had to issue orders at all, the whole squad seemingly on the same wave length. Even the ERCS guard wasn't being as much of a hindrance as she normally found independent contractors who'd stumbled into her warzone to be. The batarian was a good shot, had asked what she wanted him to do and kept to the plan, not getting in her way and taking out quite a few hostiles of his own.
She couldn't remember the last time she relaxed and enjoyed a mission so much; shooting mechs was proving deeply cathartic. The only thing that could make it better would be if they actually found some more bloody survivors.
Alas they had no success at the second escape pod, laughter paused as they stepped around more broken corpses and started navigating to the final objective. Shepard hoped Lawson's team had more success but she wouldn't hold her breath.
...
"Movement. Twelve o'clock." Nikki quickly took a knee at the turian's words, raising the scope of her rifle to one eye to take a peek at the distant specks.
"They're heading away from us." The faint trace of confusion didn't last long, her companions jumping to the same conclusion as the sharp retort of a predator pistol rang out. "Double time people, let's move!"
Her suit's recycled air burnt cold in her lungs like ice chips after so long on the planet, the 1.4g gravity making every step just a little more strenuous than on Earth. Adrenaline flooded her veins, overriding all other feelings as she concentrated on her objective; the trio of survivors barricaded beside the main crash's distress beacon, the remaining horde of mechs bearing down on them.
As soon as she was within effective weapon's range she found cover and opened fire, the rest of the team following suit. "Fire and manoeuvre. Garrus, Torma, one. Me, Mordin two." She'd made a point of learning the batarian's name rather than simply calling him 'ERCS' over the mission comms, and slowly her mental categorisation of his role in the squad had progressed from 'suppress that section of the battlefield until one of us is free to finish them off' to 'take care of that section'.
They advanced leapfrog fashion amidst the deafening cacophony of war, but weren't quick enough. Shepard saw a human in ERCS armour fall but could do nothing other than grit her teeth and keep on firing.
They were nearly at the barricade by the time the last mech was destroyed. For a moment all she could hear was her own heavy breathing, her ears mistakenly taking the sudden lack of explosions and eery preprogrammed mech phrases as silence, until they adjusted and picked up the cries of the wounded and the howling of the wind.
"Marcus!" Torma's shout as he clambered over debris to his fellow ERCS employee pulled her from her idle survey of the battlefield. Niggling thoughts that had been eating away at the corner of her brain, struggling for attention while she concentrated on the mission, suddenly came crashing to the surface. Marcus... MSV Corsica... En-route to our meeting point. It was too much of a coincidence and she made her way over to where Mordin was attempting to plug leaking chest and stomach wounds.
"Aries." All doubt faded as the older, but still recognisable, face coughed a shaky greeting. Beside him Torma seemed to stiffen. "Was beginning to think I wouldn't see you again. Don't think I'm going to make your little adventure."
"Nonsense. Mordin'll patch you up and you'll be raring to go in no time."
"You're a shit liar Aries." It was a little hard to refute the accusation when Mordin was muttering a rather long diagnostic list under his breath. "Give us a moment?" Marcus gestured meaningfully towards the batarian, Shepard glanced questioningly towards the professor but the salarian merely shook her head.
With that grim prognosis she withdrew to focus on the rest of the survivors that could still be saved. Coordinating with Miranda for a shuttle pick up and trying not to let her paranoid brain linger on whether all this was somehow conducted purely to stop her having a team mate of her choice on the Normandy.
"He called you Aries." Torma's voice was subdued as he approached her. Grief carefully hidden beneath the surface.
"Really? I thought he said Ares." She attempted to concoct a lie on the spot. "Ares was a god of war in ancient human mythology. The brain comes up with strange shit when we're dying."
"I'm from Anhur Commander." The batarian informed her prickly. "We have our own tales of Aries. My Uncle Kerrik in particular was fond of telling them." She looked at him appraisingly but all she could see through his helmet was greenish skin and four calculating brown eyes.
"Marcus told me he wasn't signing back up with ERCS after this tour. He had something else to do. He was going to go with you wasn't he?" Nikki nodded cautiously. "I'll take his place."
"You don't even know what I'm doing kid." She snorted. "Or who I'm working with."
"Doesn't matter. My family owe you a debt. Hell, half of Anhur owes you a debt!"
"Then buy me a cake, we'll call it even." She tried to shrug it off but he shook his head stubbornly.
In fairness the kid was a good shot. He'd fitted well enough into the squad dynamic over the course of the last hour. There was a difference between banding together for survival and the kind of crazy missions she was prone to go on though. He was too young to be dragged through that kind of shit.
Hypocrite. Her brain helpfully insulted her. You took Tali and Liara with you last time and you enlisted on your eighteenth birthday. Hell you spent your nineteenth birthday assaulting a slaver base and thought it was the best present the brass could give you. Wasn't even your first time in combat. Willing to bet today wasn't the kid's first time either.
"Commander, we've got a sandstorm incoming!" She sighed, thankful for the interruption, dimly noticing how Mordin had finished stabilising the wounded and was crouched down examining the remains of a mech with his omni-tool. A handful of datapads in his other hand.
"We'll talk about it in the shuttle." She informed the batarian to buy herself more time. Maybe he'd change his mind when he saw the logo emblazoned on the side. A face flashed through her mind of another snot skinned batarian; volunteering to be taken prisoner, knowing he'd be brutally tortured, just in the hope of rescuing a friend.
Kerrik's nephew huh? Fat chance he's going to change his mind.
...
Author's note: I seem to have tiptoed past the 200 follower mark since my last update so thank you everybody who's followed and I hope you're all still enjoying. Think this is the first time I've actually written Mordin, hopefully I've done the character justice.
Also yeah yeah, I know; there's not supposed to be any survivors from the MSV Corsica side mission. However games are very convenient at having you arrive at just the right time for what they want to happen. I mean, just imagine arriving on Illium two days later than in canon and finding out Samara had fought her way out of police custody after cooperating with them for the single day the code allows. This time the Normandy simply arrived a couple of hours earlier than in the game.