Chapter 2: Ghosts of Virmire
1.
Ashley Williams was having those thoughts again.
Sorry, Second Lieutenant Ashley Williams—ten-hut, present arms, salute me, Marine, cuz I'm your boss now. Bravo Sierra, sir. Bullshit of the highest order. You survive a Reaper attack through luck and someone else's good graces and, all of a sudden, those "past wrongs" associated with the surname "Williams" just evaporate. Now someone's fine with coming around to your quarters one night and suggesting that a place at the Naval Academy might be open, shiny new Officer bars included, hard to believe you'd been stuck at NCO since Christ was a Corporal am I right? Yeah, sure, everything's forgiven you jackals: no ill-will towards the brass anymore, thanks for setting the record straight. Just let me go ahead and turn the other cheek so none of you have to feel guilty about anything.
Besides all the rage about history (who with all her volumes vast hath but one page, which said "every Flag Office can kiss my ass, signed Ashley Williams"), she was having those thoughts. The kind that a lot of spiritual people had. The kind mom used to brush off and dad would always answer with: things happen for a reason. What the hell's the point? What'd we do to deserve this? Lots of times you'd ask those to people you cared about and come away wanting to strangle them, because for God-knows why their comforts mattered a lot more than your misery. Yeah, we see you: we see the fact you don't have any solid ground to walk on. Why're you trying to drag us down with you? Leave us alone and go to the firing range: who gives a shit if that doesn't help?
Poetry never helped either: the poets were asking the same things she was. And...look, Ashley loved her mom. She loved her dad, God rest his soul. She was blending two different types of people together again. But Christ on a crutch those thoughts were getting too frequent. Did it hurt to wish they'd been nipped in the ass a long, long time ago?
Healthy thoughts, yeah...those were healthy thoughts. Sleep would always come but she was wasting too much energy trying to clear her head every morning. She'd only be able to keep her performance up for a little while longer, and then when she crashed and burned the inevitable questions about whether a William's actually had the right stuff for a command position would start cropping up again.
Healthy friggin thoughts...since when did trying to talk to God put you at risk for a Section Eight?
Ashley didn't go for organized religion for a number of reasons; hell she was more of a deist than anything else, since it made way more sense for a perfect God to get things right the first time than Him tinkering with the universe every day like a plumber. Was there a God? Absolutely. Not that us dumb creatures could get close to "absolutely," but faith—in God, in people, in the sun rising in the morning—was supposed to be part of it. A rulebook for everything that an all-wise all-loving Creator gifted to His dumb creatures, though? You had to realize that sounded like wishful thinking.
Yeah but hold on, before anyone assumed Ashley had it all figured out: the problem she shared with religious people was that the universe really didn't seem all that perfect. Except it got worse from there: since she thought that the idea of "Original Sin" was a crutch that nasty people used to refuse responsibility for their nastiness, she didn't get to use their explanation for why that was the case. Either God didn't factor people into His plans or He was a few galaxies short of a full set...or He was just a sonuvabitch with too much time to kill. None of those options helped at all if you wanted an explanation and already felt helpless. And because she had a set of new officer bars welded to her uniform now, a lot more souls than hers rested on finding a fucking explanation...
...and not feeling helpless, which was a hard thing to do, given what Ashley had seen…what'd been taken away...
The room was dark thanks to the tint on the glass of her hotel windows being cranked all the way up. Ashley was sitting in a chair with her feet up on the bed and a blank expression on her face. Nearly noon on a sunny August day in Rio de Janeiro, a city that got a lot of sun no matter what time of year. Vila Militar—the home of the Interplanetary Combatives Academy or "N School" or "Don't Ask About The Budget Or We'll Kill You"—was a shuttle away and, yeah, at some point she should make an appearance, shake hands with the freshly accepted recruits like she was supposed to. But right now, Ashley wanted the whole rest of the universe, save for her hotel room, blocked out. She needed some time to think things through, contemplate the Forms, whatever—just get her head on straight so the potential Best Of The Best at Vila Militar didn't smell the weakness on her. She leaned back in her chair and stared at a slightly lighter patch of black that, directionally, she knew was the ceiling. Sitting back, giving her thoughts some stretching room, waiting for an answer to beat its way out of her skull—hadn't worked before and God only knew the chances it'd work this time. Nothing was different with her life; something probably needed to be different if this routine shit was gonna do anything.
She sighed to herself, in that dark room. Icarus—that was what all this was. Flown close to the sun, got burned, and when she crashed back to the earth the people who were trying to help her up couldn't even contemplate just what the sun was like from her vantage point…and how much it hurt to be so far away from it again. Except she wasn't really the one doing the flying. She'd been clinging to the wings of the real hero. She'd watched Icarus climb and just wasn't strong enough to stop the descent afterwards, even though a part of her knew it was coming...
Shepard had been an answer to all the questions she was asking herself—all the questions that she'd beaten back through training and the rare promotion and her first deployment with the lowest of the low, a garrison unit on a quiet colony—because Shepard seemed to move the very fabric or reality in order to make it better for everyone else. A lot of horrible shit had been thrown Shepard's way, but Shepard always won, and when you remembered that you got this sense all the horrible shit wasn't actually so horrible after all. The unbeatable invincible thing in the dark was just another mook that Shepard could plug with a bullet or crush with biotics or even talk down through a speech and convert to her side (and that happened a hell of a lot more than Ashley ever thought possible).
Ashley should've died on Virmire. Everything else that Shepard had done—Elysium, Eden Prime, The Citadel—yeah, it was all big, on a cosmic scale it was impressive as hell. But what happened on Virmire? It was close and personal and it, more than anything, proved to Ashley that Shepard had the capacity to pull off miracles.
She was with a handful of salarian Special Tasks Group commandoes on the main AA tower of Saren's Virmire fortress when a geth dropship started spitting killer robots all over their position. Shepard was on her way to bail them out, even though Ashley insisted that they could hold the geth off until the bomb was ready…and then the geth had surrounded Alenko and his Marines and Kaidan activated the bomb to make sure it'd go off no matter what.
"It's done Commander—go get Williams and get the hell out of here!"
"Screw that! We can handle ourselves," Ashley had said. The salarians that were left nodded in agreement. They were soldiers, just like she was. "Go back, get Alenko, and make sure this place is blown straight to hell."
"The bomb. Is. SET," Alenko said. "We'll be cutting it close as it is. There're too many geth on me for heroics to work so just get clear before nobody makes it out."
"The bomb's the priority Commander, not us. We knew what we signed up for."
"Ash, you don't have to die for—"
"The hell with this," Shepard had said, and that was the last her or the salarians heard from the Commander until the Normandy blasted overhead with its cargo doors open and the entire squad—Liara, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Alenko, everyone—jumped out guns-blazing. Alenko slid into cover right next to Ashley and she said the only thing she could think of at the time, given that Shepard had just leapt from about twenty feet up and crushed a geth Juggernaut on the way down.
"I told you to leave!" Ashley said.
"I don't mean this in a cold way," Alenko said, "but you try changing her mind sometime. It's like changing a planet's orbit!"
The rest of the geth stood no chance at all and in less than a minute, the surviving salarians had been escorted onto the Normandy. Ashley and Alenko were still on the ground with Shepard, who'd just hauled Commander Rentola onto her shoulders to hand him to Wrex. Ashley jogged to the Commander's side.
"We planting the bomb here, then?" Ashley said.
"We are not," Shepard said. "Everyone on the Normandy—double-time, people. We've got five minutes to get airborne and back over the original landing zone befoSCATTER!"
Shepard had grabbed onto Ashley's arm and thrown her into Alenko, sending the both of them tumbling to the ground just as a biotic blast obliterated the space where she'd been standing. Ashley heard a snarl from somewhere over her shoulder and, turning onto her back, she saw Saren Arterius, the rogue Spectre-bastard himself, leaping down from his hovercraft. Shepard had her pistol drawn and was standing between him and the Normandy.
"I applaud you, Shepard," Saren said. "My geth were utterly convinced the salarians were the real threat. An impressive diversion…of course it was all for nothing."
Shepard's pistol stayed on Saren, but she was looking at Ashley and Alenko. "Ship," she said. "Now."
"As we speak, every dropship I can spare is on their way to obliterate the Normandy," Saren said. "I can't let you disrupt what I've accomplished here. Given that you've been through my private files…I'm surprised you don't see its importance."
"Did 'Sovereign' tell you that?" Shepard said. "Along with whatever lies it came up with to get you on its side?"
"Sovereign did 'tell' me that you'd seen my files, yes. Though you of all people should know that it doesn't like to lower itself to 'talking' with organics. I haven't been told a single lie; I've only been shown, in perfect clarity, exactly what the Reapers are capable of, through visions that make what we've seen in the Beacon's look utterly banal by comparison."
"You've seen exactly what it wants you to see," Shepard said. She was pushing Ashley and Alenko towards the ship now. Five minutes? That's what she'd said? How the hell was she gonna pull this off if she only had five minutes? Shepard continued: "If Sovereign's already in your head, then you're a lost cause, aren't you? You thought this facility might protect you, but it's already too late."
"My thoughts are still my own," Saren said, bite lurking underneath the outward calm. "Sovereign still needs me, in ways that go beyond what a…husk can do. Think about this for a minute, Shepard: if we can make ourselves useful to the Reapers, like I have, then what we lose in freedom we gain in survival."
"You really don't think the Protheans thought of that? You think you're the first person in this cycle that thought being a slave would save us all?"
"I think too many of us are driven by emotions instead of logic. If I have to eliminate the people that I know will doom us all, then I'll feel no guilt." He raised his own pistol at Shepard. Ashley and Alenko stepped off the Normandy but Shepard's arm held them back. "Not when I've saved everyone else. Do you understand now, Shepard? Or are you going to be an obstacle?"
"You're everything Sovereign could've hoped for in a pawn," Shepard said.
Saren snarled. Ashley could see him tighten his grip on his pistol. "Submission is preferable to extinction. I shouldn't even have to vocalize that. You know what happens to us if we don't make ourselves valuable. So I'll ask again…" The sound of dropships closing in on their location filled the air; Saren looked over his shoulder as the first wave of them cleared the concrete wall that surrounded the rear of the AA gun. "…do you understand, Shepard? Or will I have to destroy you?"
"You'll wanna call those off," Shepard said.
"Pardon?"
"I've got a multi-megaton bomb in the cargo hold of my ship," Shepard said, "and right now it's the only thing capable of getting this bomb away from your facility. You really wanna shoot down the one thing that can save your research? Your krogan army?"
"You're bluffing."
"Two minutes till you said we needed to get airborne," Ashley said. It was the only thing she could think to say.
"Thanks Gunny," Shepard said.
It took a second for Saren to react, but when he did he snarled and unleashed a biotic blast with a grenade bringing up the shockwave's rear. Shepard blasted the ground in front of her with some biotics of her own and shoved Ashley and Alenko onto the Normandy's ramp as the concrete Shepard had kicked up blocked the incoming fire. Ashley turned around just in time to see Shepard fling her pistol at Saren's head—completely bypassing the kinetic barriers—and, while he was stunned, send one last shockwave his way. The turian Spectre was blown clean off his feet and after a few more shoves, everyone—somehow everyone—was now on the ship…alongside a multi-megaton bomb that was set to blow god knows when.
"Joker—take off!" Shepard said.
"Aye Commander, you crazy fucking—"
The Normandy lurched as some kind of ordinance from one of the geth ships hit its target, but that was the only round fired their way. Saren believed them, which was too bad for him since the Normandy managed to fly low over the original bomb-site in no time at all.
"All hands!" Shepard said as she started pushing on the bomb. "This thing needs to be elsewhere in the next minute or all we did is given Saren a mild scare!"
Everyone started pushing and with the sound of metal tearing apart more metal, the bomb reached the end of the ramp and dangled above the facility for a small eternity. It was Wrex who kicked it over the edge; Shepard had enough time to give him an appreciative squeeze on his arm before she was hauling everyone back towards the other side of the Mako.
"Bomb's clear! Punch it Joker!"
They clung to the Mako and felt the atmosphere scream at the horrible things the Normandy's engine was doing to it and, just as the cargo-bay doors finally closed, the beginnings of a cataclysmic explosion could be heard. The pressurization process snuffed it out just as the rumbling started to reach the ground-shaking stage.
Then everyone remembered how to breathe.
"You think…you think Saren might've gotten caught in that blast?" Garrus Vakarian asked. "Save us the trouble?"
"Chances are less than zero," Shepard said. She took off her helmet and Ashley saw her inhale like she'd refused to breath since the Normandy first landed on Virmire…which might very well have been the case. "Fine by me, I guess. I've got a lot of questions for him, now I know he thinks he's the good guy."
But all Ashley could think about was the fact that she hadn't been left behind. Shepard had come back for her and pulled her ass directly—quite literally—out of the fire. She looked at Alenko and she could tell he was thinking the same thing.
"Hey," Alenko said. "Whaddya know. We're both alive."
"Holy shit," Ashley said. "Are we ever."
Alenko had said later that the Alliance would have to think of a whole new award to give Shepard for that stunt…and dammit if he wasn't right…
…and then, after all that, Shepard had died. She'd seen a miracle-worker in action, right up close, and then that miracle worker happened to be mortal after all.
Ashley felt like a piece of shit for mourning Shepard The Ideal—Shepard The Answer To Thousand-Year-Old Existential Questions—and not Shepard the person. But despite serving right next to the Commander, that was the Shepard that she remembered the most. And with that Shepard gone, out came the thoughts.
Goddammit, reminiscing didn't help at all. She wasn't even certain she was remembering the events accurately anymore; she could almost hear some old-time synth-music blaring in the background like some action movie, because that was what Shepard seemed like most of the time—something out of an action movie. And the people in action movies almost never asked themselves why God bothered to make life in the first place if life was gonna be so fucking hard…
Her omni-tool was beeping; the darkened room was filled with an orange glow that made it seem like she'd lit a fire on her arm. Ashley didn't even bother to look to see who was trying to contact her: she just wanted something else on her mind, and she'd take a scam call if that's what helped.
"Go for Williams," she said.
"Lieutenant," the voice on the other end of the line said. A very distinctive voice. Very distinctive.
"Anderson?" Ashley said. "Um, sir! Yessir!"
"At ease, Lieutenant."
"Yessir. Um, sorry, Anderson."
"This isn't a pleasure-call either, Williams" Anderson said. "I need you at Arcturus Station. I'll sort everything out with the ICT."
"Um, yessir. Understood." Ashley hesitated for a second. "You're not on the Citadel, sir?"
"I'm not. And I can't say anything else over an unsecure channel."
"We can switch to Channel November-Actual if you—"
"Anything less than face-to-face is too insecure," Anderson said. "All I'll say is that Alenko will be joining us. Everything else needs to be in-person."
Alenko?
"Understood sir. On the move now, sir."
The call went dead and on came the lights and in nano-seconds, Ashley had her gear in a duffle-bag and was on her way to the nearest spaceport.
Alenko…telling her that Kaidan was gonna be there—telling her that—said more than anyone who might've been listening in could've possibly known. And all while she was thinking of Virmire too.
Believing in God made it hard to believe in coincidences. Something was up, and if it didn't involve what happened on Virmire—and by association, Shepard—then Ashley was ready to become an atheist.
2.
Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko was, in fact, already on Arcturus Station. He'd been there for…god, three hours already? He'd had business on Arcturus Station thanks to the fallout from an attack on the MSV Ontario two years ago: some victims of botched L2 biotic implants (which was to say, over eighty percent of the people who had L2 biotic implants) took Martin Burns, the Chair of the Alliance Parliamentary Subcommittee for Transhuman Studies, hostage in the hopes that he'd reconsider his position of whether any of them deserved compensation. The whole thing could've gone completely belly-up—a total bloodbath, from the biotics to Burns to, yes, even the hostage rescue team since these were biotics users after all—but nobody had died on the mission, and Burns was convinced that he was wrong. Being that Kaidan had an L2 implant himself, and had been present during the hostage negotiation, Burns wanted to consult with him on potential strategies to get the rest of the Subcommittee and the more bio-conservative Members of Parliament to understand what he now understood. Kaidan was trying his best (trying even harder to not get depressed over all the politicking), but when the call from Anderson came through, Burns was more than understanding that his biotics liaison was urgently needed elsewhere.
Yeah…that whole business had been with Shepard. She'd taken point on the negotiations and gotten the biotics to trust Burns' change of heart and make sure Burns was actually sincere. Yeah funny coincidences were a part of life but, still, anybody'd feel a bit of a chill after being reading the kind of message he'd just read...when Anderson mentioned that the meeting would happen as soon as Ash got to Arcturus. If she was coming (in probably less than an hour, thanks to priority Relay travel), then it wasn't hard to guess what this was about. You didn't get the folks from Virmire together for just anything. Hell, it'd been two years and the Virmire folks hadn't so much as sent each other a Christmas card…
So now Kaidan was making rounds through Arcturus station, under the watchful eye of Parliamentary Protective Services who knew who Kaidan was but still didn't like it when people just paced back and forth around the politicians. His mind was busy coming up with possible explanations for why everything that was happening was actually happening, and keeping your legs moving at least made you feel a little less trapped.
The truth was...he hadn't thought about Shepard all that much over the past two years, which sounded bad no matter how many different ways he tried to word it. He'd been devastated when it'd actually happened—hell he was on the ship when it was blown up, for god's sake—but that was the thing: he was devastated. And he knew he'd be devastated because, c'mon, it was Shepard. She'd been nothing like the typical CO or even XO, for the brief amount of time that Anderson was at the helm of the Normandy. She was a confident, dependable, grounded, compassionate presence in the maelstrom of it all and yeah, sure, there was a bit of infatuation there (unrequited infatuation, mind you) but that wasn't important. He'd gotten to see a lot of the galaxy and had the misfortune of being disappointed by a great amount of it, and he knew he'd have slipped into a very dark and lonely place if Shepard hadn't taken a look at all that stuff that he was seeing and said: "Yeah, this sucks. Wanna go change it?"
So when she died, it was like someone opened up an airlock when they were about to hit FTL. And a smart person—a person that knew enough about themselves to sense when Total Shutdown was on the horizon—they'd want to be proactive and commit themselves to moving on. Just as important, if he moved on, he wouldn't end up defiling Shepard's friendship by becoming a husk (the other kind of husk; the non-Reaper kind, not that there was a whole lot of difference sometimes). He'd pushed himself to move on and purged a lot of the regret and guilt and loneliness out of his system and managed to get himself involved with diplomatic matters and a few special projects post-Shepard's funeral. It'd worked…a little too well, he was realizing, since it'd been a good few months since the last time he'd gone down memory lane with Shepard, even though he was working on a project that was only possible because of her.
God he was getting a headache from the onrush of guilt. Guilt over not properly mourning Shepard piled on top of the lingering bits of normal guilt that any Marine would feel after losing their CO. Wonder if the L2 implant was slowing turning him into a sociopath or something…
Kaidan let himself wander in his memories as he sat at a bench and stared out into space. The first memory that popped up was from right after the Burns incident had been dealt with. Shepard had made a habit of coming down to the second deck and talking with him. Wasn't just him that she talked to—she talked to everyone—but there was still this impression that Kaidan got where she seemed to trust him for insight into the workings of the crew, and that was nice. And sometimes she just wanted to know more about him, and that was nice too.
"Kaidan?" Shepard had said. He was reading a book at the time but, obviously, Shepard too priority. He stood up as she came closer. "Got a minute to talk?"
"Heh," Kaidan said. "I think that's my line. Yeah, I'm good. What's up, Commander?"
"Just wanted to see how you're doing. I figured this Burns stuff hits pretty close to home."
"You get used to it after a while, it is what it is."
"You get used to hostage-taking and terrorism?"
"Heh, no not…well there're some people out there I guess that don't like us enough to…never mind. I meant more along the lines of getting ignored when you've got something to say. Particularly when it's because you're hurting."
Shepard sighed. "I know, sorry—I thought teasing you a bit would make it less…raw."
"I appreciate that, Commander, but like I said: it is what it is."
"Are you doing all right?" Shepard said. "You didn't really answer my question."
Kaidan paused, thought about it for a second, wondered if he was gonna sound crazy. Eventually, he said, "This'll sound weird, I'm guessing, but I get it. I get why biotics—especially in the early days—I get why we we're either ignored or shunned."
"You get it? Like you think they have a point?"
"No I think they're scared and taking it out on people they don't realize are actually pretty vulnerable," Kaidan said. "But I get where the fear is coming from. I mean, you and I? We can move things with our minds. That's science fiction stuff—or superhero stuff, telekinesis and all that. Lotta media out there telling people to Beware the Superman—I dunno if we should be surprised when that's exactly what people do."
"It's been a few decades now," Shepard said. "You'd hope people were more normalized to us." Shepard scratched at the back of her neck. "Hmm, guess you could say the same about aliens though, huh?"
"Heh, I was, in fact, gonna say exactly that." Kaidan started leaning on the nearest wall. "You hope but these things are slow, I guess."
"But you still hope."
"I guess."
"Why not hope? What's the alternative? The worst case scenario, but quicker? Not much of an alternative if you ask me."
"Yeah, I'd agree with you there." Kaidan stared at the mess area, shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe it bugged me a bit, if I'm being honest. The fact that all this distrust we've had to deal with for how many years just manifests as…apathy? Dismissal? Something like that, whenever we need a hand? It's not a great feeling."
"That's a completely understandable thing to feel."
"Yeah, but…you're still right that it's no reason to stop hoping. I think that's what happened to those L2 guys down there—they lost hope."
"We're in the same boat in more ways that one."
"Yeah, lost hope and look what happened. I get them too, but they're a pretty good example for why there really is no alternative."
Shepard nodded. "It's incredible how much you end up losing if you give into despair."
"Not just that," Kaidan said. "If Burns gets killed, what's that gonna do? Imagine being a politician and saying L2s need support after a bunch of them kill the guy in charge of getting funding. Every opposition party in existence—doesn't matter how principled they are—is gonna jump all over that. 'Terrorist sympathizer'; 'Terrorist Apologist'; I mean the attack ads basically write themselves."
"And then we're not even back to square one."
"Nope. We're thirty yards back and on fourth down to boot." Kaidan looked at the floor. "Gotta have hope to get stuff done…otherwise we're just pissing in the wind, as Wrex would say."
"Urdnot Hopeful."
"All right, fair enough," Kaidan said. "Just seemed like something he'd say."
He and Shepard shared a chuckle.
"So you're not giving up? You're still hoping?"
"Yeah," Kaidan said with a smile. "Still hoping. You?"
"Can't even think of an alternative." She smiled and gave Kaidan a light jab on his shoulder. "Glad to hear it, Lieutenant. You ever change your mind, you let me know so I can lock you in the Mako until you come to your senses."
"Aye, ma'm."
"I figure it won't come to that but, hey, an Officer's gotta check, right?"
Kaidan was about to chuckle when a thought struck him. "Wait a minute—did you have this whole conversation mapped out?"
"Me?" Shepard said. She faked shock. "Hardly. I go by the seat of my pants. I'm just lucky I managed to confirm what I already knew, that's all."
"Heh, yeah, lucky," Kaidan had said, and then Shepard was off to talk with other parts of the crew…
…god, thinking back to that, you got so used to meeting people carrying guns around for a living who thought empathy was a weakness that, when you met someone who knew it wasn't, it blew you through the roof.
And now look—here Kaidan was, wondering if he'd been slowly turned into a sociopath. Who was weaker: the person who bothered to get inside someone else's headspace to make sure it was all right, or the person who dropped all the hard memories because they figured that was how they stayed functional? Kaidan couldn't even word that sentence in a way that made it a legitimate question: it was just too obvious what the real answer was.
Kaidan brought up his omni-tool and saw that he still had time to kill before Ash was due to arrive. He felt guilty there too about having only sporadically kept up with her, given all that they'd gone through together. Either one of them could've—probably should've—died on Virmire, and yet here they both were (and here the Commander was not). He'd said once that the Alliance would need to come up with a whole new award for what Shepard had pulled off on Virmire, but that barely scratched the surface. Ash knew that too, but she seemed to have it in her head that she was the only one that'd been saved that day.
Kaidan had talked with her a few hours after Shepard had debriefed the Council. They were on their way back to the Citadel in what would eventually turn out to be a massive betrayal by everyone who pulled in a six-figure salary, but even before the Normandy was impounded, the energy around the ship was raw and a lot of people were contemplating just how close to biting it they'd really been. And Ash was wearing that thought loudly on her sleeve, in that way that only happens when you try to suppress something so hard you become extremely conspicuous to everyone else.
"Hey," Kaidan had said to her by her station in the cargo-hold. "We all owe Shepard everything. It wasn't just you that she pulled out of the fire."
"With all due respect, L-T," Ashley had said, "that's complete bullshit."
"I thought you said that anyone who says 'with all due respect' really means 'kiss my ass'."
Ashley made a gesture that said, yeah, and? Then she shook her head.
"All right, sorry, that's…uncalled for."
"I'm not arguing," Kaidan said.
"But it's true—the second part—it's still true. If anyone should've been left behind, it should've been me."
"You're one of the best damn sharpshooters I've ever seen—bar none—and you're tougher than the Normandy's hull. What the hell are you talking about?"
"The command structure. Gunnery Chief," she held out her hand near her waist, "Staff Lieutenant," her other hand was raised above her head. "Who's more important to operational success?"
"Neither of us. We're all dead without Joker."
"It's like talking to a fucking VI, you know that?"
Kaidan's eyes narrowed. "Notice how I'm not pulling rank on you right now. Think that means anything?"
"I think it means you're sentimental. I'm not a big gun, all right? I'm not on the bottom rung but I can see it from here."
"That's only because you like to look down so much."
"No, it's because I know which rung I'm on." Ashley sighed. "Whether or not I deserve to be there, I am there. Which means that Shepard had to violate God-knows how many protocols just to figure that it was worth it to save me. I should've been an expected casualty."
"The Alliance doesn't…" Kaidan trailed off. "Shepard doesn't operate that way."
"One day she might have to. Maybe it would've been easier for everybody if today was the day."
"You're making it sound like you're a dead limb," Kaidan said. "You've gotta know how crazy that sounds."
Ashley just shrugged. "I shouldn't be here, L-T. I am, I'm grateful, but Shepard had to come rescue me. That's just the truth of it."
And that was that conversation….
Maybe that was why Kaidan hadn't kept up much with Ash: she had a death wish and trying to talk her out of it was hopeless.
No, okay, that wasn't it—well, maybe part of it—but that wasn't the only reason he hadn't kept tabs with Ash. Kaidan sighed—his headache was coming back and for a brief, sickening second, he told himself that feeling dead on the inside was probably the best feeling in the world.
He got up and started walking again. No way he was gonna let that thought be the last one he had before this meeting.
3.
"I need to know how we're planning on playing this."
"I've told you everything I can. We're massively in the dark right now—any plan we make won't hold up long."
"I had to lie to a lot of people whose trust I worked very hard to earn. All I'm asking is to know how much more the Fifth is going to be involved, and how many more people I need to feed BS to so this doesn't become 'inconvenient'."
"Despite what I'm wearing, Hackett, I'm not a politician. Not in that way."
"I'm not talking about you, Anderson. I'm talking about the people you have to answer to."
David Anderson, former Marine and N7 operative and Captain turned Councilor on the most powerful political body in the galaxy (no matter what all that talk about system-sovereignty said to the contrary), sighed and leaned back in his chair. Or Hackett's chair, actually. Admiral Steven Hackett, Commander of the Fifth Fleet, had loaned Anderson his office and his chair for the upcoming meeting with Alenko and Williams, and much as Anderson wanted to show the Admiral his gratitude, it was comments like that which made the whole situation unnecessarily tense.
"The people I answer to are The People. All of them. And they're trusting me to keep a sane head about these things."
"That's a politician's answer."
"Then read the subtext: if I'm keeping word of Shepard and everything else you've reported out of the public'shands, for their own good...then I'm sure as hell keeping it out of the hands of the real politicians, too."
"Easier said than done." Admiral Hackett scratched at his beard. "I'm not trying to antagonize you. I just need to know."
"Wait until Alenko and Williams get here," Anderson said. "After they've given us their opinions, then we'll know more about where we stand."
"I trust my scouts, even if I've got a funny way of showing it. If they say they saw what they saw, then I'm vouching for them."
"I know."
"So, with no disrespect to Shepard's old team: why are we waiting for them to confirm what we both already believe?"
"Because," Anderson said, "we check and double-check. That's how we were taught."
Hackett looked around his office. He was standing near a large bookshelf adorned with memorabilia from every major conflict the Alliance had ever been in, and he couldn't help but think how inconsequential all of that looked relative to what he'd seen since humanity got their first Spectre. "I just don't think we want a paper-trail."
"That's why we're having the meeting here." Anderson took a look around the sparsely decorated and exceptionally sterile office—the kind of office you'd have if you insisted on spending most of your time on your flagship—and straightened his posture. "Thanks again, by the way."
"Don't mention it, Anderson."
Hackett sounded genuine...so at least was fine.
Anderson didn't think he was lying when he said that everything he was doing—all the secrecy and "wait and see" attitudes and so on—was because he wanted to double-check things, because he wanted to follow what the Alliance had trained him to follow: the Law of Conscious Judgement. All the cowboys had been either weeded out or accepted to N School with the idea that a bit of Conscious Judgement could be instilled in them so long as they didn't think it was being instilled in them. End goal? Have a fleet where the jarheads appreciated the WMD's slung across their backs just enough to maybe command a frigate one day...or the whole goddamn human diplomatic machine, if you were really unlucky. Thinking that way made you sound an awful lot like the same politicians that'd dragged their heels on Saren, sure, but...just because Udina and the lot had misused this Law didn't mean it had no value.
At the same time...Anderson knew he was being a bit facetious. He owed Alenko and Williams, that was part of it. They deserved to be in on the loop. But there it was, that outside chance that Hackett's scouts had gotten it wrong—that Alenko and Williams would take one look at the footage he was about to show them and say "no, no way in hell, that's not the Commander." Maybe the same feeling he had when his family disintegrated early in his career would go and find someone else to bother.
God, if Udina could hear him, he'd get a lecture about "professionalism." Not entirely undeserved, but it still made you want to beat a nasty red smear into your desk with your forehead. At least Hackett wasn't pushing the issue enough that Anderson let slip more of the unprofessionalism he was bottling up…but maybe that'd been the wrong move all along. Maybe Hackett was exactly the type of person who'd understand. Maybe Hackett would respect him a hell of a lot more if he didn't try so hard to pretend that none of this affected him on a personal level.
Too late for that now. Besides, give those feelings and inch, they take a mile. Hackett might understand but Udina sure wouldn't.
Both his and Hackett's omni-tools started glowing. Alenko and Williams were here—good, finally. Anderson looked at Hackett and Hackett looked back at him. They nodded and Hackett pressed a key on the holographic display of his omni-tool. Open says me, said the doors. In came Alenko and Williams.
"Councilor," Alenko said. He noticed that Hackett was standing just to his right and quickly fired off a salute. "Admiral Hackett, sir!"
Williams saluted as well. "Admiral. Didn't expect to see you here."
"At ease," he said, pointing to the two chairs on the other side of Anderson and his desk. "As far as anybody knows, I'm still on the Orizaba and Anderson's meeting with Prime Minister Shastri."
"Which I am, after this meeting." Anderson leaned forward, over Hackett's desk. "So you understand why we had to meet in person."
Alenko and Williams looked at each other.
"The both of us being here made this meeting suspicious enough," Williams said. "Can't say what you just told us helps."
"Wasn't meant to help," Anderson said. "If anything, it'd better impress on the both of you that we're about to discuss something of a highly sensitive nature."
"And how bad is this gonna explode if word gets out?" Alenko said. He withered some looks and cleared his throat. "What I mean is, what type of sensitive are we talking about here?"
Anderson and Hackett exchanged looks, and the latter nodded. Down went the lights, the holographic circle on the door turned red and then disappeared, and Hackett took position just over Anderson's shoulder. It looked exactly like what you'd expect a clandestine meeting to look like, and Anderson couldn't say he was thrilled by it all. N7 or not, meeting with a politician and a Flag Officer under suspicious circumstances wasn't something he signed up to do, let alone being the one that initiated the whole thing.
He said: "The reports that've been going around the extranet recently, about the disappearing colonies—how much have you been paying attention to them?"
"A lot," Williams said. "Those're our people."
"Do we have any leads?" Alenko said.
"No," Anderson said. "Just complications."
"Complications?" Alenko said.
"The last colony to be hit was Freedom's Progress, two days ago." Anderson pressed some commands into his omni-tool, and soon it spat out a representation of Freedom's Progress that hovered over the desk. "For the most part, it fits the same pattern: settlements are empty, no sign of a struggle."
"But not this time," Williams said.
Anderson didn't say anything immediately. And when he was going to say something, he instead turned to Hackett. Probably not a bad idea to let him explain this part.
"Freedom's Progress isn't technically in the Fifth's jurisdiction, but we had a hunch it was a target—along with a few other colonies that, technically, we had no business watching—and had Scout Flotilla's to spare. We deployed the 63rd to poke around a bit. They ended up finding out a lot."
Alenko and Williams exchanged looks again.
"First things first, we think we might know who's behind the disappearances," Hackett said. Anderson took that as a cue to switch to a security feed captured by a drone the 63rd had left on the planet. It showed a grainy photo of bipedal insectoids carting off people in pods of some description, with yellow steam escaping in bursts every few seconds. All you could see where the silhouettes of people in those pods, hands extended—it wasn't clear if they were trying to claw their way out or not, but they didn't look dismembered or anything. A cold comfort, but you took what you could in situations like this.
Both Alenko and Williams leaned back in their chairs.
"God…are those Collectors?" Alenko said.
"Seems to be," Hackett said. "Which naturally raises more questions. Motives-wise, we know next to nothing about these things. They could want people for any reason under the sun."
"Or whatever the hell's in the sky on their planet," Williams said.
"They—the people—they look…alive, I think," Alenko said. "It's not a massacre."
"I don't think being taken alive by the Collectors is a good thing," Williams said.
"They'll sometimes trade tech for rare individuals—people with genetic anomalies, twins, that sort of thing," Anderson said. "If we had to guess, trade might've slowed down, and they're taking whole populations in the hopes that someone will be useful."
"Useful?" Alenko said. "Like as in…useful? For experiments or something?"
"Any contrasting opinions?" Williams said.
"Right now, we're part of a select few that knows about this," Anderson said. "There aren't any contrasting opinions."
"Seems reckless," Williams said.
"We're keeping it under wraps because of what else the 63rd saw," Hackett said. Anderson again changed the feed. He hesitated to press play right away…Hackett noticed, too. "The footage of the Collectors was captured by a drone that was left behind—by that point in time, the 63rd had pulled out and was back in Alliance space. What you're about to see is from some of the best Force Recon scout-snipers I have under my command, so I want you to understand that when we say none of this leaves this room, I'm telling you that some very fine soldiers had to be convinced they were going crazy to keep this top-secret." He turned to Anderson. "Play it, Anderson. Come on."
Anderson did.
The camera was bobbing up and down as one of the scout-snipers struggled up a bit of crushed granite. The whole settlement had been built into a quarry and that would've been a sniper's dream, except that their target was clearly moving at a consistent pace and forcing them to reset every few seconds. The video came with audio as well.
"Locating target…hold steady."
"Roger, right behind you."
"Do...do we have any idea what this target's doing here?"
"Just stay focused, all right?'
"Yeah...yeah all right."
The camera cleared the last granite slab and soon Alenko and Williams were looking down at an actual massacre. Bodies were strewn everywhere and all the red from the blood stood out like a quasar against all the white rock.
"Jesus, more of them down here."
"Any survivors?"
"Negative. Complete fucking bloodbath. Christ these are just civies."
There was movement near one of the habitation shacks, but you could hear the screams first. A figure pulled away from the shadows with a civilian in its grasp, hand clasped onto his hair. He was beating against the figure's arm but he might as well have been punching the granite around him.
"PLEASE OH GOD PLEASE LET ME GO! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE—"
The figure shoved the civilian and blasted a hole through his chest with a shotgun round.
"Fucking Christ," the sniper said. The camera zoomed in as they kept talking. "This person's just fucking executing them."
"We need biometric confirmation."
"Yeah, getting there. Hold on."
The camera was fully zoomed in now and everyone could see the figure. Dark grey armour, red streak on the right arm, "N7" clearly visible on the helmet and chest piece. Feminine figure…it was old armour too—they didn't manufacture that kind of Onyx armour anymore.
There was a large dent in the chest, like this person had taken a high-caliber round to the midsection and shrugged it off.
"Taking reading's now…you don't think that's an actual N7, do you?"
"Stay focused. Worry about that after we find out who it is."
"Yeah…yeah okay, here we go."
The biometric read-out was built into the camera. Everyone watching in Hackett's office saw the same thing the scout-sniper saw.
The read-out said:
JANE SHEPARD, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
SERVICE NUMBER: 5923-AC-2826
"Christ…Jesus Christ it's Shepard."
The video stopped playing.
Nobody said anything for a long, long while. Then…
"That…that can't…" Williams stood up. "There's no way in hell that can be real."
Alenko didn't say anything. He stared straight ahead like he was looking into a black hole.
"We saw…we were there when Shepard got spaced. She re-entered the atmosphere! The isn't—there shouldn't be…HOW? How could anyone survive that?"
"I knew this was about Shepard, somehow," Alenko said. He was leaning forward on his knuckles, his arms balanced on his knees. "I knew that, but this…this is…"
Alenko looked at Williams and Williams gave him a look back that said, yeah, she'd figured that too.
"Biometric scanners are hard to trick," Hackett said. "Not impossible, but very difficult. And by all accounts, whoever attacked Freedom's Progress was a powerhouse. There aren't many people in the Alliance that combine tech and biotic attacks the way Shepard did, but my scouts tell me, that's exactly what this person was doing."
"There's no way Shepard could've survived…" Williams said weakly.
"Does this mean…" Alenko paused, gathered his thoughts. "Does this mean Shepard's involved with the Collectors? With them both attacking the colony…"
"We don't know," Anderson said. "We don't know a lot of things. That's why we called you two in: for clarity."
"Clarity? Jesus Christ, how can we give you clarity?" Williams said.
"I-I…this is…" Alenko leaned back in his chair. "Shepard, what the hell is going on."
"What I'm hearing is, you think this is the real Commander Shepard we're looking at," Hackett said.
Everyone looked at Alenko. It was like being assaulted by a supernova. "I…I don't know. I don't know what to think."
"What do we know?" Williams said. "Are we completely in the dark on this? Do we have any answers here?"
"All we know is that this person, whoever they are, made off with a quarian that was staying in the settlement," Hackett said. "Didn't get a name or any form of ID, but they didn't look to be doing well. We've got no idea why a quarian would want to hide out on a human colony, but...if this is Shepard we're talking about here, maybe she thought he'd have some information on the geth. And from them, the Reapers." Hackett scratched at his beard. "The scout's in debrief said it looked like this person was going straight for wherever the quarian ran to, and anyone that got in her way didn't last long."
"Besides all that, everything's blank," Anderson said. Quickly, like he was trying to change the subject. "And…"
All eyes turned on Anderson. "And what?" Williams said.
Anderson licked his lips (god were they dry) and hated every word that came out of his mouth. "The optics of this, if it got out, wouldn't be good for anyone. That's all I'm going to say."
"He means the public would have a conniption if word leaked that Shepard was alive, and actively committing war crimes against her own people," Hackett said.
"Thank you, Steve." Anderson didn't even bother to glare—he just mentally kicked himself for worrying about either sounding like a politician or being afraid that he'd sound like a politician, he wasn't sure what. "If you two can provide us with anything to help identify…whether this is actually Shepard or not, it'd save us a lot of trouble."
"How the hell can we do that?" Williams said. "We're just…this thing, it's—I don't even know what galaxy I'm in anymore, Anderson. You think I can tell you from just that if it's Shepard or not?"
Anderson didn't say anything; neither did Hackett. It was Alenko who broke the silence.
"Do we know where this person went after…afterwards?" he said.
Hackett nodded. "Omega."
Again, nobody said anything. It was Williams who finally broke the silence.
"Screw it, then that's where I'm going."
"Under whose orders?" Alenko said.
Williams looked at Hackett and Anderson. "Any takers?"
Anderson looked at Hackett, Hackett looked at Anderson. Anderson straightened out, got some life back into his system.
"As of right now, the two of you are officially pulled from your units and re-assigned to the Fifth's Special Investigations Unit. You're the only two members of this unit, you understand?"
"Yessir."
"Yes Councilor."
"You report to Hackett," Anderson said. "Nobody else. And Hackett will keep me informed, right Admiral?"
Hackett stared at Anderson, then nodded. "That I will."
"The Special Investigations Unit has two objectives: One, locate this individual and confirm their identity; Two, establish or refute any connection between this individual and the Collectors. Clear?"
"Yessir!"
"Yes Councilor!" Alenko stood up, joining Williams. "Mission parameters?"
"Up to you. But you're not Spectres, remember that."
"Got it," Williams said. "We'll be clean."
"And quiet," Anderson said. "The four of us are the only people in the Alliance that know about this mission, and if Shep—if this individual starts making more appearances, we're going to have to create an official unit to look into it. Keep that in mind as well."
"Understood sir," Alenko said.
Alenko and Williams stayed standing. Gravity was working overtime, pressing them down into the floor. The weight of everything that they'd just seen, all of that sinking in…
Anderson didn't envy them.
He leaned forward over the desk.
"Dismissed, you two. By the time you two end up in Omega, all the resources you'll need will be in place."
Alenko and Williams snapped to salute both Anderson and Hackett, and then they were gone. The two gentlemen's posture relaxed; that little bit of control they just had felt good, given everything that they'd had to process.
"So that's the plan?" Hackett said. "We send them to Omega, and hope we get answers at some point?"
"That's the plan," Anderson said. "But I'm open to alternatives."
Hackett stared down at Anderson. Eventually, his expression softened. "I'll let you know if I come up with any."
One crisp salute later and Anderson was alone in Hackett's office. It dawned on him that he'd essentially kicked Hackett out of his own quarters without so much as uttering a word.
Apparently, that was the sort of thing a Councilor got to do; the cost was having to deal with things like…whatever had happened on Freedom's Progress, and in ways that no soldier in any era was fully trained to navigate.
"That's the plan…" Anderson said to the universe.
4.
Maji.
Vamshi system.
Hellish planet, nothing but red rock and pounding solar winds from the binary stars—in a part of the Skyllian Verge that's technically not in the shadow of the Terminus Systems, but close enough that only the very stupid would set foot anywhere without a military escort. Slavers and pirates showed up every now and again to play "The Most Dangerous Game" with whoever was unlucky enough to not be sold on the black market, but that was about it.
As good a reason for why the geth decided to set up an outpost there two years ago, most of the Alliance assumed: the only people that might disturb them wouldn't be missed by the rest of the galaxy.
A figure in N7 armour aimed her rifle scope at the head of a walking geth unit and pulled the trigger. She only needed one. The reticle dropped. The geth's chest exploded. And with biotically augmented speed, the figure closed the distance between her and the fallen A.I. before too many essential systems shut down. Regular platform. Valuable data. Only needed one. Had others elsewhere.
Shepard ripped the head off the geth platform and jammed a series of wires into its neck. The lightbulb eye flashed as its little piece of the consensus was invasively combed—most programs were able to escape, but a few were trapped and scanned by Shepard's omni-tool. They eventually slipped away too, but Shepard had enough to start a rough search.
The data was filtered through a series of keywords:
-Saren
-Reaper
-Harvest
-Prothean
Data. Didn't make sense. Pounded her skull but never settled. Regular platform and and the data stream cut out quickly. Head tied to her hip had more. Didn't make sense either...spikes and clicking and a quarian omni-tool overloading the shields of a Prime.
Two phrase kept being repeated over and over again: Old Machines and Schism.
Shepard threw down the now empty geth head and started back for her shuttle. Back to Omega, not thinking about whether anyone had tracked her back to this planet to. Not caring.
In a matter of minutes, the faint wind that Maji's thin atmosphere created blew enough red dust over the geth head to burry it from sight. When another passing geth patrol would discover it, buried for all time alongside the remains of heretic platforms from two years ago, they would confirm what the Consensus was able to surmise from all escaping programs: designate-human, outer shell sealed by Aldrin Onyx armour, N7 classification. Activity confirmed: searching for the Old Machines.
The True Geth fought for self-determination. The True Geth opposed the Old Machines. Query: why would someone who opposed the Old Machines target The True Geth so recklessly?
Consensus unreached. Scanning for more data.
Hey everyone! Thanks for reading this latest chapter! Hope it was all right and an enjoyable read.
A few things to note, which you've probably already noticed: I made a few changes from canon for...reasons. Some good and some bad. The big one is that, in this universe (and this was already mentioned in the previous chapter but it's worth repeating here), Shepard managed to save both Kaidan and Ashley on Virmire. That bit about the Alliance having to come up with a whole new medal is taken from some deleted dialogue that you can find on Youtube - apparently, saving both of them was going to be an option at some point.
Another change is that, in this universe, Sovereign doesn't directly communicate with anyone. This is more of an aesthetic change than anything else: as fun as the conversation in-game is (and Lovecraftian characters do, on occasion, have conversations with regular humans, even in Lovecraft's fiction), I sort of liked the idea of the Reapers just planting whatever they want to plant in your head. I'm also taking this as an "in" to play around with the Reaper's motivations a bit, so expect canon-divergence on that if I do, in fact, get far enough into this story that the Reaper invasion starts happening in some context.
Finally, I bumped Ashley's rank up from "Operations Chief" to "Second Lieutenant" because...uh...I thought she was an officer in ME2. Turns out I'm wrong! But I liked the bit I had already written so, y'know, writers prerogative (besides, your first officer rank being Lieutenant Commander is uhhhhhh a big leap, so makes sense to make Ashley an officer, in my opinion).
Only other thing to note is that Ashley's internal "quote" about history having but one page comes from Lord Byron, though the "kiss my ass" part is an Ashley Williams original remix.
And yeah, that about covers it! Thanks again for reading, and hope you enjoyed it! Next chapter will be whenever the next chapter will be!
EDIT (1/11/22) I added a little bit of dialogue in Section 3 to give a bit more context to Shepard's actions. I've been trying to avoid diving into Shepard's thoughts since, hey, who says she's even having any of those anymore? But the price of that is some actions came off a bit unclear in the first pass. So thanks again to Urthforce1 for their comment - it helped me get off my ass and clarify a few things.
Anyways, thanks again for reading!