Chapter 18: Shake Hands with the Devil: Part II
1.
Adams and Chakwas were in the engine room, on the Midway, that sleeping ship laying in the middle of a salt-flat on that red red planet Agebinium. So was Brooks. They didn't really think it worth the effort to try and evade her, so given that, the next best option was to let her listen to old friends swap stories in the hopes that she fell asleep.
Unfortunately, the stories these old friends ended up gravitating towards always had the same protagonist: the woman they were there to kill.
"I think that Exogeni rep was just about the only person Shepard actually hated," Adams said, finishing up some reminiscing of Feros, Zhu's Hope, and the whole business with the sentient plant monster. "Everyone else, I think she either saw good in them or pitied them."
"Even Saren," Chakwas said, nodding her head.
"Yeah, imagine reading that in an after-action report. 'Genocidal monster actually one of the victims, see page 308 for details.'"
"I think it's admirable."
"I'm sure it is, and I'm sure I'm just too vindictive to understand. All that being said…I guess I can see how she'd ruffle a few feathers."
Adams looked at Brooks. She blinked once, twice, then realized Adams was expecting her to say something.
"I'm not affiliated with him," Brooks said.
"Leng hates you the least out of anyone stuck on this ship," Adams said. "Just sorta figured it was 'cause you saw eye-to-eye."
"Well, we've clearly the same taste in hairstylists," Brooks said. "But otherwise…I'd say my job here isn't to search my soul and see if I agree with the CO." Brooks scowled. "Apparently my job falls under the Human Resources portfolio."
"Mmm, no offense taken, I guess," Adams said.
"Right, as if you're thrilled with this arrangement."
"Hey, my ego wouldn't mind if you thought babysitting us was important."
Chakwas swiveled in her chair, cupped her chin in her hand. "You have permission to speak freely, however. With all the stories we've been telling, if you have an opinion on the Commander, you're free to share it."
"I guess I won't try to punch you if you say anything mean about her," Adams said.
"You jest, Gregory, but this is partially my point." Chakwas stood up now. "I admit, I'm curious if…I'm curious how we sound to an outsider."
Adams stood up too. "Oh c'mon Karin! You're fifty times smarter then Leng, how the hell did he manage to get inside your—"
"A broken clock and all that."
"Leng's not a broken clock he's…he's a lamp pretending to be a sundial."
"That made no sense," Brooks said.
"I'm an engineer—if I regularly spoke in metaphor somebody'd get their arm caught in something. Sue me if I'm out of practice."
Chakwas moved closer to Adams. "You admitted, Gregory, that you could see how Shepard might ruffle some feathers."
"Yeah in a—in the kind of way people get when someone's clearly better than them. You know, you feel diminished so you…I dunno, you try to look for every possible selfish angle for every action someone like Shepard takes, because otherwise you've gotta admit that the universe creates decent people every once in a while. That's what I meant."
Chakwas stared at Adams, Adams stared at Chakwas. Eventually, Chakwas turned to Brooks.
"Well Chief Brooks? How does that statement sound to someone who's outside the 'Inner Circle'?"
Brooks paused. She had been fiddling with her wrist for most of the conversation, but this question actually made her stop and pay attention.
"God…you're selling a lot of people awfully short, aren't you?" she said eventually.
"Including yourself," Chakwas said. "Don't think I wasn't paying attention to you earlier. Shepard never tried to rank people—she tried to learn from them. And she'd be the last person to claim that made her in any sense 'special.'"
Adams' turn to pause. He ended the silence with a sign. "This's way above my paygrade, doc." He turned to Brooks. "So, what, Leng's got a point then? We're looking at Shepard like she's our saviour?"
Again, Brooks had to put away her wrist and focus. "Being honest? Maybe. But I get the impression our CO cares less about that and more about the fact saviours don't exist."
"And that's what I'm trying to home in on, I think." Adams scratched at his chin. "Yeah, sure, Shepard never thought of herself as special. You probably can't be special if you go around shouting to the world just how special you are—maybe. But at what point do we seriously sit back and consider the possibility that the galaxy hung onto it's…that galactic society's only functioning because of one person? Religious as it sounds…what if that's the truth?"
"Shepard had a team," Chakwas said, "of which you were a part of. And she had friends besides." Chakwas lowered her voice. "And I needn't remind you, Gregory, that Shepard wouldn't have had the chance to be the person she became had a very, very special man decided he simply couldn't be bothered."
Again, Brooks snapped back to full attention. "What? What does…erm, that sounds like a story, pardon my interruption."
Chakwas and Adams exchanged another look.
"Not a happy one," Adams said.
"Shepard was born on Mindoir," Chakwas said. "She was merely sixteen when slavers raided the colony—razed it, I should say. And she faced numerous trials besides that as she grew up, of which she owes a great deal to the kind heart of one David Anderson—not that he was ever one to speak of debts or the sacrifices he endured for her."
"Two decent people," Adams said. "I'm willing to correct my estimates."
"Wait," Brooks said. She was holding her wrist, but her attention was solely on Chakwas and Adams. "Mindoir? As in…as in the poster child for all the depravity a batarian slavery ring can come up with on the fly? That Mindoir?"
"The very same," Chakwas said.
"And so this Torfan incident that her and Leng apparently…sorry, so Shepard's a survivor of batarian slavers and she wasn't the one looking to glass the moon?"
"Hard to comprehend, right?" Adams said.
Brooks paused, was literally crushing her own wrist at this point.
"God," she said eventually. Then, she gulped. "She really was a saint, wasn't she?"
Neither Adams nor Chakwas understood the gulp. Maybe it was just an existential reflex, they figured. Maybe the enormity of Shepard not being a revenge-seeking cyclone of destruction hit her hard, because why wouldn't it? How many perfectly normal people would nonetheless have sick, twisted fantasies about catching a slaver in a dark alley somewhere and doing things to them that would make the universe grow cold?
Well, sure, that all had something to do with Brooks' gulp. Just a little bit.
The big thing, though, was that her wrist held a little device that controlled a literal fly-on-the-wall drone that'd been following Leng and the rest of the marines as they trekked their way across Agebinium. She'd seen Phillipe take a jagged rock straight to her visor, and she'd seen the rear-guard of Team Two get their spine turned to dust by something invisible, save for the after-glow of a biotic punch. Her radio frequency had bee blocked—Leng you fucking bastard—but she could see all three teams were starting to realize that they were two people short.
Chakwas had been finishing her story just as the XO for Team Two took a high-impact round to the head while Two-Lead took a second round to the throat. The only reason nobody was utterly panicking was that everyone outside the ship was N7, and N7's didn't panic.
Shepard was a saint…so what the hell was the thing that was hunting them? Hunting them?
Outside the ship, Leng heard the sound of the rounds that decapitated Team Two's XO and blew out the throat of Two-Lead. Heavy round—heavier than anything the Alliance produced. Hell, sounded like the kind of rifle the geth carried with them.
Leng pulled out his own sniper, the thing he'd turned into an extension of his body ever since Torfan—ever since the universe decided he could live life on his own.
He directed his team to fan out, towards where Team Two had just lost the top of its hierarchy.
And Leng? Leng mounted a rock formation and watched the barrel of his M-97 Viper glow red from the inferno rounds.
2.
Torfan...took a while for Torfan to burn.
Couple more patrols between them and what ended up being the pirate's base, or nest, or whatever the hell they wanted to call it. Didn't so much as scuff the marine's armour—anything less than an ambush and they'd go down like insects.
Leng had entered the forest with a platoon of fifteen, including himself. He was down to thirteen now because half of the rest were too busy consulting the Alliance rulebook and not scanning for targets. They were still doing that. Felt like ten guns were pointed at the back of his head, like he'd been the reason those two marines were dead.
Idiots.
"About ten targets, few heavy weapons. Mostly rifles…looks like one of them got stuck with a pistol. Might be senior to the rest."
His scope was trained on the outskirts of one of those circular underground bases, the kind science teams used on a lot of their mineral hunts. Most of the rest would be inside, so ten external guards meant they were in for a hell of a fight. Even more-so because the platoon looked about ready to shoot him in the back. And those ten that were outside had taken up defensive positions—looked like the one with the pistol was pointing to the forest too, probably trying to work up some support to get a search team out there. Best offensive being a good defense and all that.
"Confirm targets," Leng said, still eyeing his scope.
A hand violently grabbed his shoulder but Leng had leverage and tossed the marine right over his head, spine-first into a tree. He would've stomped on the marine's arm if he didn't think it'd set the base on even higher alert than they already were. He yanked out his pistol and pointed it at the marine's head instead.
The marine struggled; the rest of the platoon's weapons shot up like someone'd attached strings to them. Leng just held the man who'd tried to pull him backwards—no screaming, no motion, nothing to give their position away.
"Let him go sir," one of the marines said.
"Confirm the targets," Leng said.
"You're relieved of command," the marine said again. She inched closer. "Two of us are dead and we just disobeyed two direct orders. Let him go."
"We disobeyed one order—Shepard's not in command here," Leng said. "And if Kyle's too stupid to see what he needs to see, then far as I'm concerned, he's criminally culpable for whatever happens next."
"We have explicit orders. Orders that make sense."
"Repeat that back to me and see if you really believe it." Leng waited; nothing was said, at least not in the few seconds of silence he allowed. "Exactly. And for the record, if I gave two shits about orders, I'd've said something about how assaulting your commanding officer is a punishable offense." Leng let up the pressure on the marine that'd grabbed him. "What I want, is for you to confirm the targets."
The marine hesitated, turned to the other members of the platoon, waited for backup. From near the back someone said: "Ten targets, few heavy weapons. One guy with a pistol."
Leng got up off the marine that he'd been kneeling on. "Get in position, wait for my signal."
The team fanned out. Leng scoped the pirate with the pistol's head. His radio clicked and then the head wasn't in his scope anymore. He switched to another target and added to the blood splatter that'd appeared on the side of the underground base's entrance. Seven more shots, seven more kills. His crosshair just crossed the face of the last pirate when his team decided to contribute.
Took no time at all to get inside. They could've done this in less time than it took the Agincourt to land in the centre of town.
Things got trickier once they entered the underground facility. Not as many pirates as expected, but they had turrets—plenty of them. One of the rocket turrets managed to corner a marine and drop his shields long enough for someone to pop out of cover and obliterate his head. Another marine had his shields dropped from a grenade, then got finished off by a turret that exploded too close to his position. They were getting bogged down in the concourse area near the entrance…so Leng found a motivator. He waited until a flock of turrets floated their way onto the platoon's rear, then called out their positions. Motivation—no way to turn back now. He'd lost another marine in the process, but everyone else was moving forward a lot quicker.
This was the kinda shit commanders had to do sometimes. And like that, they'd pushed out of the concourse and into the series of hallways that split off into god-knows where.
Heavy fire from just about every direction. Door on the left, looked like it led to an adjacent hallway. Good for flanking—probably crawling with pirates, turrets, both.
The door briefly unlocked, opened, spat out a rocket drone that flew off to join the rest of the barricade that'd been forming up ahead. Leng saw into the room briefly. Filled with drones—probably the processing centre for all of them.
He looked around and saw that nobody else had noticed. Leng popped off a few shots, slid under the returning fire, stopped right next to the marine that'd held him at gunpoint up on the surface. He roughly spun her around.
"See that locked door? To the left?"
She looked, nodded.
"Take a team and open it. Try and flank around. We'll cover you."
She hesitated.
"Don't make me pull rank," Leng said.
More hesitation, then she called out and got four volunteers. The rest of the team laid down suppression as she and the volunteers ducked, rolled, crawled their way towards the door. Leng grabbed the marine that he'd flipped upside down and pushed him in the direction of the volunteers.
"Support her—just in case."
The marine got to the door just as one of the tech-savvy volunteers unlocked it. All six of them stood up, drew their weapons, stormed in to get out of the fire from the hallway.
About ten drones booted up and tore into them. The last marine alive—the one that'd told Leng he was relieved of command, the one that'd taken charge—managed to toss a grenade before her torso was perforated by about eight different guns. As she fell, Leng tossed one of his own grenades into the room. The combined explosion wiped out the whole flock.
"Drones are down—PUSH FORWARD."
The four marines that were left pushed—whittled down to three by the end of it. But by the end of it, there were three Alliance marines—four including Leng—still standing, and not a single fucking pirate left alive on this planet. One had tried to surrender and Leng made sure nobody else got a chance to see that for themselves.
Mission fucking accomplished. And to think, if the Alliance had come in force, they probably wouldn't've lost fucking anybody.
Underground bases still, in the 22nd century, fucked with the comms, so none of that was getting relayed to Kyle until they got to the surface. When the survivors did reach the surface, Leng was ready and willing to send off his report—hell, he'd marked the time down to the second just to really emphasize how much time the Alliance'd been fucking wasting.
The buzzing on his wrist beat him to it. Wasn't the comms—wasn't a secure channel. Looked like Kyle wanted to see Leng's face. Or helmet, whatever the fuck.
"FORTRESS ACTUAL—PICK THE FUCK UP ALPHA-NINER, OR WE WILL SEND SOMEONE TO GET YOU!"
The marine survivors were staring. Staring at him with fucking unease. Leng ignored them and answered the omni-tool call.
"Alpha-Niner reads, Actual. Go—" There was gunfire in the background, and besides that Kyle didn't let Leng finish.
"Lieutenant, RETURN TO BASE. We are UNDER ASSAULT and require IMMEDIATE REINFORCEMENTS—OVER!"
Leng swallowed. "Alpha copies. Batarians, sir? We eliminated—"
"We know EXACTLY what you eliminated, Lieutenant. You eliminated one of THREE pirate outposts on the moon, and the other two are currently STORMING THE TOWN. Return to base, protect the civilians, and once everything's under control we WILL—"
Massive explosion. Screaming, someone calling for help.
"RETURN TO BASE, THAT IS AN ORDER!"
The call ended. The survivors looked at Leng.
He turned and started sprinting and didn't think about anything except the glowing objective marker on his visor, the distance counting down the kilometres, the optimal trajectory, the seconds since Kyle's call…
3.
"Shit, Team Two's down."
"Repeat Three-Lead, Team Two's—?"
"They're all dead. We just found Fontes."
"Jesus. Leng, sir, we need—"
"Continue South by South-East. Thirty feet until you hit a plateau. Last known sighting was past there."
"Sir that's Shepard's shuttle. We're just heading to Shepard's shuttle."
"You have overwatch on Shepard's shuttle. Keep your heading."
"For fuck's sake Leng, this isn't one of your lone-wolf 'kill everyone, fuck team-work' missions. We need some actual fucking strateg—"
"Orders are to kill the only other person on this planet. Pretty simple. Keep your heading."
"Shepard's MASSACRING US!"
"You have overwatch—keep your heading. And for everyone else's sake, keep your head too."
"Jesus Fucking Chr—MOVEMENT! Movement left spread out and watch your fucking backs!"
Leng kept his scope trained on Shepard's shuttle for a bit longer, then moved back to Team-Three. There was a perfect vantage spot just halfway between those two points—not far from the plateau. If Shepard was smart, she'd be hiding out there.
Just needed the others to draw her out, then he'd have his shot…
4.
Adams, Chakwas, and Brooks had been sitting in silence for the last little bit, though Brooks was clearly fidgeting and, sorry, that was getting on Adams' nerves. Just a little. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that he couldn't find a decent answer to Karin's questions. Pilling onto everything was the really queasy feeling he had that everything he'd said, everything he'd mentioned about just admitting there was someone better than everyone else out there, probably came with a number of caveats.
Like, for starters, how one of the two unambiguously decent people in the world had switched sides or…or something. And now the whole wide universe was a lot more vulnerable, in more ways than one.
"God…I bet the old crew's really loving this," Adams said into his knees.
Chakwas moved her chair closer to him. "I can't imagine they're taking this lightly."
"Y'know what Anderson was hinting at, right? The team he'd originally sent out?"
"That they were our old companions? Shepard's old companions?"
"Yeah…imagine that."
"It isn't much different from what we're doing now."
"We're not pulling the trigger. Hell, we've got someone watching us making sure we don't pull the trigger."
Chakwas sighed. "I suppose you're right, Gregory. I suppose you're right."
Brooks stopped regarding her wrist. "I'm—sorry are we talking about me?"
"Mmm," Adams said. "Tangentially."
"I'm starting to realize, now, that we've yet to really witness anything that we can take back to Admiral Hackett," Chakwas said. "I'm not entirely sure what he was expecting of us…perhaps we're just expected to double-check the after-action report."
"Make sure Leng didn't hide one of his people's bodies out in the salt-flats somewhere?"
"I doubt he's so thick-headed that he'd sacrifice his own people—particularly on this mission." Chakwas leaned back in her chair. "He has to know the rather formidable task in front of him isn't something he can accomplish on his own."
"I dunno Karin, scuttlebutt's pretty clear that Leng doesn't get commands anymore. And for good reason."
"Christ," Brooks said. Neither Adams nor Chakwas could tell if she was responding to his comment or something else.
"Y'know, on that note, something you said's really been holding my attention." When Adams didn't get a reply from Brooks right away, he snapped his fingers. "Talking to you, Chief Brooks."
"Hmm?" Brooks said. She held her wrist briefly then, when she noticed everyone was staring at her, she let it drop behind her back. "What, sorry?"
"It's just something you said. We were talking about Shepard and Mindoir and you said, 'she wasn't the one that…' something. Something like that. She didn't push to blow the place up. You were pretty surprised to hear that."
"Well…yes," Brooks said. "I apologize but, I really wasn't aware of Shepard's…well I didn't know. I should have, no doubt, but I just assumed she was born on a spaceship like so many officers."
"Right but…well that's not it."
"It isn't?" Brooks was gripping her wrist behind her back. It was noticeable.
"I think I understand what Gregory is hinting at," Chakwas said. "It's in the way you phrased it. All this time, we've been led to believe that what happened after the colony was attacked was tragic miscommunication. You've phrased it differently than that, however."
"Yeah," Adams said, "glad you picked up on that Karin." He raised his brow. "Was Kyle more of a bastard than we've been led to believe?"
"I couldn't tell you," Brooks said. "In that, I just don't know. Another gap of ignorance on my part…as happens from time to time."
"So what about Leng? Did he do more than just get his platoon wiped out?"
"Again I—"
Chakwas stood up. "We don't mean to turn this into an interrogation, but it seems…well the way you phrased it, you seem to be hinting that you know quite a bit of what happened during the Battle of Torfan that we don't know about…and yet you didn't know a fairly public fact about Shepard's background."
"I…" Brooks dropped her wrist. "Sorry, this isn't an interrogation, is it? Certainly could've fooled me."
"What's on your wrist," Adams said.
"My omni-tool? As with most people?"
"Yeah, you know what I'm asking you."
"I'm really afraid that I don't."
"Chief Brooks," Chakwas said, "we thought at first that Leng had some sort of past with you, or he trusted you. But you've referred to him formally, rather than like you've had a past acquaintance; you've made no indication that you could convince him to let you join the rest of the marines; and upon reflection, Leng treated you not much differently from how he treated us. I'm starting to wonder if the precise opposite is true: Leng knows less about you than anyone else on this ship."
"Which raises the question of who the hell you are, and how you got embedded in an operation where nobody's ever heard or seen you before."
Brooks blinked and, despite everything that'd just been lobed her way, both Chakwas and Adams had to admit that she seemed relatively calm. Relatively.
"Hmm, so we've gone from you asking my opinion about your relationship with the Commander, to you demanding my rank, serial number, and deepest, darkest secrets? Is that it?"
Adams and Chakwas looked at each other.
"You've got a point," Adams said, "but our question still stands."
"I'm Alliance, I am N7, and as I told Leng, Admiral Lindholm insisted I be here."
"Lindholm, huh? The Midway's Fifth Fleet."
"This operation is JSOC."
Adams paused. "All right, again a fair point. But…I don't know where I'm going with this."
"I don't know Admiral Lindholm except by reputation," Chakwas said. "But that reputation is fairly clear: she doesn't deal directly with people she doesn't trust."
"The First Fleet is awfully big," Brooks said. "That's a truly excessive number of people she'd have to refuse to engage with, if true."
"Decentralization has its benefits," Adams said. "All right, I think I'm picking up on my thread again: are you here because of us?"
Brooks' face darkened. "I can assure you—both of you—that if I had my choice, I would be out there hu—"
Buzzing filled the room. Then the Midway's pilot.
"Chief Brooks, we've got a situation."
Up went everyone's brows. "Go ahead," Brooks said.
"Something just took out the sentries. Long-rang, they didn't see anything before…we're on red alert and the marine contingent's looking for support."
"Christ," Brooks said. She looked at her wrist, looked at Adams and Chakwas, then looked at the door that led out into the cargo hold.
She pulled out her pistol and activated her eyepiece.
"You two stay here—you have my short-range frequency, so call if you need to."
Then through the door she went.
Adams and Chakwas, again, looked at each other.
"…if we need to?" Adams said.
"Weapons, Gregory," Chakwas said. "We…should probably find some weapons."
5.
Seconds, minutes, hours, years. Torfan was a swirling mass of red that defied the passage of time. It haunted Leng the same way Leng haunted it.
Everything on Torfan that could burn was burning. Even the people. You could smell the corpses, hear the crackling skin. You wouldn't get that smell—that sound—from someone with armour.
Civilians—the pirates must've led with a motor barrage. Too many civilians out in the open, too many of them caught in the initial blasts.
Idiots.
Leng and the four survivors reached the—no, no it was three survivors at that point; somewhere, along the way, they'd lost another—Leng and the three survivors reached the colony just as a Mako surrounded by Bridge Burners fired a high-velocity round into the hills. The town was getting shelled in return. Leng saw a refugee try to dive into a crater but from somewhere in the hills—somewhere behind the rows of red red rock—a sniper's shot rang out and perforated the batarian's lungs. That same Mako turned and blasted the entire area twice while a group of one-oh-third medics raced to the crater. Another officer was directing some of her men to embed themselves with another group of civilians hiding behind a bombed-out prefab house of some kind.
No Hegemony soldiers anywhere. How the hell was that possible? They were already in town—they should be out making their presence felt.
Leng reached the door to Major Kyle's makeshift CIC when Lieutenant Mitchell reached out from a shadow somewhere and yanked him forward, through the door, practically forcing him onto his knees. Kyle dropped whatever he was looking at and yanked Leng back upright. Lotta hands reaching for him—lotta hands begging to lose a finger or ten.
"Your new orders," Kyle said, "are to rendezvous with the rest of your team—at town hall—and make sure the batarians do what they promised. AM I CLEAR? Lieutenant, you have an unconscionable amount to explain, but until we're no longer being shelled I'm trusting that you can't royally fuck this up too. AM. I. CLEAR?"
"What did the batarian's promise?" Leng said.
"That their senior commanders would stay fucking put. A concept that clearly only some people are capable of understanding."
"We eliminated a pirate stronghold, sir."
"YOU COST US A COLONY! If you're looking to be the next General Williams then Christ-Almighty, you're doing a hell of a job!"
"I'm doing what a fucking military is supposed to do," Leng said. "We're not diplomats—we don't spin our wheels with negotiations. Thirty-five less pirates on this rock than before I got here—rest just got flushed out." He leaned closer. "If Shepard wasn't here, pretending to be something she's not, would you even look twice at what I did? Or would you be nominating me for a medal right about now?"
"Jesus Christ Lieutenant," Mitchell said behind him.
Kyle…Kyle looked like he was legitimately thinking of shooting Leng.
Idiot.
"Sir," Mitchell said, "we've gotta focus. We can't leave Shepard out to dry.
Kyle, brow sweating and chest heaving, picked up on something from Leng's face. Kyle might as well have snarled like a dog then.
"That's right Lieutenant. Shepard managed to convince Captain Drom'pavan to stay behind while everyone under Warrant Officer evacuates the moon. And as a sign of goodwill, we're shelling the hills so that nary a Hegemony uniform and pirate shall meet."
"Except when one's hiding underneath the other," Leng said.
"Maybe, Lieutenant. Maybe. But consider something that anyone besides a blood-thirsty butcher should get in a second: we're about to leave with freed slaves and political dissidents, and if everything goes to plan, all we needed was two frigates and a Star of Terra. If everything goes to plan."
"Drom'pavan won't leave it at that," Mitchell said, "but once the Hegemony ground forces are clear and the refugees are under something solid, the Agincourt and the Gallipoli can flush the pirates out. And the refugees will be too heavily guarded and under too much GAURDIAN protection for him to try and take them back."
"He waited too long," Kyle said. "As was intended from the start. So understand, Lieutenant, that your role—from here on out—will be limited to making sure nobody shoots this plan in the back."
"Support Shepard—that's it." Mitchell moved forward. "And this time? Actually follow through on that for Christ's sake."
Idiots.
"We've got the biggest guns we could carry pointed at pirates and war criminals, and we're still playing things like it's a board game?" Leng pushed his face forward, dared Kyle to pull back. "If this's how the Alliance hierarchy works now, then we're all fucked."
"Lieutenant stand dow—"
"I gave you an order, Lieutenant," Kyle said, holding up his hand, silencing Mitchell. "I gave you an order earlier, I'm giving you one now. If you've got no intention of following them, then I can easily waste some other people's time and lock you in a brig. I can have you on the Agincourt in T-minus five minutes, son, where you can watch everything from a computer screen. If you can give me a reason to trust you, let's here it. Now."
Leng leaned in even further.
"I know how the universe works. Sir."
Leng didn't see Kyle's face. He was glancing over at Mitchell, just at the periphery of his vision, waiting for him to make a move.
Kyle made it for him.
"Back up your words, Lieutenant. Go to Shepard, see what she's done. Convince her and everyone around her that she's got it all backwards and by god, you'll have your medal. You understand me, son?"
Mitchell jolted forward. "Sir—"
"No no," Kyle said, holding up his hand. That hand was shaking. "The Lieutenant here knows something we don't. So let him prove it. Clearly—obviously—he can handle Shepard, since she's such a colossal fucking fraud and all."
The time after that was a blur. Leng could remember wanting to slug Kyle right then and there; only reason he could find to hold back was how fucking stupid it'd be. So Leng and the three survivors from his squad worked their way to the town hall, past craters and burned-out buildings and the sound of stamping feet. Shelling the hills must've driven the pirates back under a rock but for god's sake, didn't anybody see? Was Leng seriously the only fucking person with an Alliance uniform that realized how different this whole op could be going?
N7's, half a SOC platoon, all surrounding the top echelon of the batarian officers on this rock—if Shepard knew how to act like a fucking soldier then she'd've shot the four-eyed cockroaches and the Agincourt would've vaporize everything that didn't look human yesterday.
He could see town hall now—he could see the rest of his squad and the batarian SIU's and the N7's just standing there, just fucking watching each other. He'd picked up speed and left the survivors behind and was pushing through the door, gunning for Shepard, ready to make Kyle eat his fucking words. He'd stopped giving a shit. He'd tell Shepard, right to her fucking face, what she should be doing with the weapons the human fucking race trusted her to use.
The goddamn idiot still had her armour off.
"Hey—back it up." It was Vasquez, one of Shepard's people. She was pushing Leng back and jabbing her pointer finger right in his face. "What the fuck are you even doing here?"
"Vasquez," Shepard called.
"Getting rid of him boss, don't worry."
"He's not gonna listen—look at where his hand is."
Leng didn't even realize his hand was on his sidearm.
"Jesus," Vasquez said.
"Leng," Shepard said, moving over. She motioned for the batarians—specifically Drom'pavan—to stay where they were. "Let's take this outside."
"What the hell do you think you'll accomplish here?" Leng said, shoving his finger at Shepard. "We get some slaves and some fucking cockroaches? Big fucking—"
"Watch your mouth, human," Drom'pavan said. It looked like he was going for his sidearm too.
"Cool it—both of you!" Shepard was saying that but Leng could tell, he could tell she was mad now too. All those masks she wore to try and make it seem like she was above it all and what was this? A crack. Leng almost smiled.
"We've got two batarian companies a button's press way from being nobody's fucking problem ever again, and we're not taking it because you think you've got a bleeding heart? What, you think you'll get a promotion at light-speed because of this? It's a stunt and we all know it."
"You better back the fuck down Leng or so help me god—"
"Vasquez," Shepard said, "not helping, all right?"
"He actually believe any of that shit?" Vasquez turned to face Leng. "Or're you just stupid enough to shoot a successful negotiation in the back?"
"This's a fucking sham and everybody—even the cockroaches—are wasting their time."
"Call us that again, human," Drom'pavan, "and I promise you—"
"Captain Drom'pavan, stand down," Shepard stepped in between him and Leng. "He's trying to get a rise out of you."
"Why?"
"I have no goddamn clue," Shepard said.
"Fine," Leng stepped out of Shepard's block so Drom'pavan could see him clear as day. "You can't take it? How many of these slavers even still have a family? Tell me that, Shepard—how many of these people's communities forgot about them and moved on? Who're we really helping here—them? Or just you? You and your rank?"
Rage—real rage. Leng was breaking through, he could fucking tell.
"Anyone who survives this," Shepard said, teeth grinding, "gets every chance in the world to start again, if they have to. There're foundations, Leng—there're support groups. I am not—let me fucking repeat, not—leaving people behind because of something as empty as what you just said."
"You won't," Leng said, "but the Alliance should."
"You don't get to make that call."
"Because I'm not you?"
"Because there's no point in fighting if you don't try to save everyone."
"Soldiers don't fight to save people—they fight to win."
"Only the weak ones do."
Weak? She really just tried to say he was we—
Drom'pavan moved closer to Shepard, and he had a knowing look in his eye. Eyes—whatever. He was flashing it so everyone could see, but Leng was the only one to pick up on it. The look of a predator. The look of someone who heard the word 'weak' and knew—like on fucking instinct—when to pounce.
"A noble human," he said, coming to rest right next to Shepard. "A rare gem. I'm thrilled, Lieutenant Shepard, that it's you calling the shots and not your compatriot here." He reached out his hand…and he shook Shepard's.
"Maybe someday we'll all get lucky, and the Alliance's officers will be more like you rather than him."
The knowing smirk, the glare—
They disappeared from Drom'pavan's face and then the rest of his head followed suit. There was a gun in Leng's hand and there was shouting, and Vasquez took one in the arm and one other N7 went down before the rest of the batarian's in the room were dropped.
More shouting. Hands reached for him and tried to pull his arms back. He fought and they loosened because explosions were coming from down the hall—explosions and screaming and the pattern of Alliance-issue assault rifles.
Then Shepard—back in her armour but sans her helmet—was pushing him forward, pushing him towards the explosions while the other N7's closed in around him. With the shake of his head his brain started to parse the sounds from one another and Shepard was shouting something into her radio about—
"—tress-Actual this is Siren-1, we HAVE A SITUATION I REPEAT: WE HAVE A SITUATION! WE NEED EYES ON BATARIAN LZ IN CASE…"
Shepard was drowned out as they burst through the town hall doors—passed the bodies of his squad and a few humans with red stripes on their arms and many, many more batarian corpses—as a colony that had already seemed stripped to the bone managed to glow and even hotter, angrier, fiery red than before.
You couldn't even tell where the burning buildings stopped and the red red Torfan sky began.
6.
They were all dead. All of them. Three teams of N7's and the only one left was…God he'd done it again, hadn't he? He'd gotten everyone under his command killed in grotesque ways that she could only watch from afar like some sort of demented, peeping tom and…
And no…no that was unfair. Partially unfair. This was Shepard—a Shepard that had very clearly had something done to her—and the chances of anyone successfully stopping her was…but no even discounting that, what was the Alliance thinking? Sending someone who was for all intents and purposed banned from holding command to command a hit squad—a squad that would need to work together like networked A.I.'s in order to succeed—was just…it was lunacy! Were they truly that stupid? Was this their attempt to clean house? Why hadn't she been told of that if that was the ca—
"Chief Brooks? Brooks, hello?"
"Hmm what?" Brooks looked at the marine speaking to her, a Lieutenant of some rank who was in charge of the Midway's on-board detachment. "Sorry, twelve things at once. Mind repeating what our plan is?"
"I…all I said was we'd better hope some of the N7's head back," the marine said.
"That's our plan?"
"Yeah that's…that's…I don't know what else we're supposed to do."
"Oh god…"
"What, you don't think they'll make it back?"
No. No they wouldn't. They were all dead—Shepard had slaughtered them.
"I just hate leaving things to chance," was all Brooks could say. Many faces turned white—more than a few of them were probably having some doubts that hadn't yet surfaced, not before Brooks started talking.
Her wrist vibrated. The other part of the wrist. Something flashed on her eyepiece that only she could read.
She nearly said: Saved by the fucking bell.
"We might need heavy weapons," she said. "Let me check the armoury—keep trying Leng's comm's. With any luck, they're halfway back by now."
"How long're you gonna take?" the marine said.
"The ship's, what, three hundred metres? Maybe four? Ten to twelve minutes, tops." Brooks flashed a smile. "Promise."
Seven minutes later, with Brooks nowhere in sight, the shooting started. After that, the screams.
And very, very shortly after that, there were nothing but screams on the Midway, a Normandy-class stealth vessel parked in the middle of a salt flat on a red, red planet.
7.
Leng's memory after Shepard had pulled him out of the town hall was fuzzy. The rest of Torfan was crystal clear—didn't let himself forget everything he'd learned there, not for anything. Comfort wasn't worth knowing how right you were. But after that? He might as well've turned his eyes and ears and brain off. His feet did the thinking for him, and that led to—
No…no he remembered some things. He hadn't been a complete zombie then. Up on his perch, as he watched through his scope and waited for someone to draw Shepard out—waited for one of the N7's to do their fucking job and let them all finally leave Agebinium—he remembered two things. He remembered that batarian Ordrak—or Odrark, whatever—and he remembered Lindholm.
He'd stuck close to Shepard and watched her try to subdue a squad of SIU batarians. Not kill—subdue. She hit them with a stasis field, shot their guns out from their hands, used a biotic pull on one batarian to slam the whole group into a wall, and then she tried to fucking talk to them. Tell them to call of the attack and head back to their LZ, tell everyone what'd happened in the town hall, spread the word so people could get back to their ships and sort out who owed whom what pound of flesh after the civilians were gone. They didn't listen and Leng let Shepard fight off seven commandoes with her bare hands, if she cared so fucking much about playing hero.
As he walked off he heard groaning, and coming up to a protruding pipe he noticed blood. Lots of blood.
There was Odrark. There were charred bodies all around him. Half his face was missing. So was a leg. So was all the flesh from his left arm.
Explosion? Maybe. From a mortar? Maybe it was underground. Maybe he had a suicide vest and the idiot pushed the wrong button, took his whole family with him.
"My…my eyes. I'm…I'm…"
Leng just stared.
"It…hurts."
Leng bet it did.
Odrark tried to turn, saw the bodies around him. Fresh blood from the wounds in his face mixed with the onslaught of tears.
"P-please…" he said.
Leng held up his pistol.
Odrark, slowly, nodded.
Leng aimed for the centre of his head. Odrark flinched. The shot exploded the top of the batarian's head and took a third eye with it.
Not his fault.
He'd wandered back to the FOB after that and something happened. Something involving Kyle, who gave Leng a look like Leng was the Devil him-fucking-self. Something involving the Bridge Burners that were trying to pull bodies out of nearby buildings. Something that caused Leng to end up in a military hospital was wires sticking out of his arm.
Leng knew Kyle hadn't directly done anything but he also knew that the moment Kyle saw him, the Major snapped. And that was it—after that, someone on a radio mentioned Captain Mikhailovich and he was off to a military hospital.
And that was the first time he'd ever met Admiral Lindholm.
Her face was like a granite gargoyle with the lights off, at least in his memories. She'd reiterated for him that a lot of people—Shepard and David Anderson chief among them—wanted him stripped of his rank and hauled in front of a Tribunal. She told him that a lot of people were working very hard to, not discredit, but alter the record of what happened inside the quote-unquote "town hall." Nothing could be done about his squad and the number of casualties. Very little could be done about how his excursion was a cause of the colony losing 80% of its inhabitants.
Very little…but not nothing.
"Hardly…worth your time," Leng said. His arm was fluctuating between being numb and being on fire.
"So let it be known that you disobeyed your superior officer and undermined an entire military operation?" Lindholm told him.
"Nothing…military about it. Shepard…was operating beyond the pale."
"By brokering a peaceful solution?"
"We're…not…diplomats. Not our…operation. Shepard…was beyond the pale."
Lindholm paused, then—in his memory—her gargoyle stature mutated into just a shadow. A shadow with Admiral's bars and a single streak of light over one solitary eye.
"You are reckless bordering on stupid, Lieutenant Leng. And your ability to discriminate between taking initiative and abandoning your duty as a solider is utterly, utterly atrophied. But…you clearly have no qualms about seeing an enemy dead."
"It's…what…soldiers…do."
"It is what drones and missiles and very large cannons do, Lieutenant. Luckily for you, we need those things."
"I'm…a…soldier."
"You are a gun—a gun that I will happily point where I need it pointed. With your skills, I am sure the both of us can do the Alliance more good than anyone—at least right now—could possibly understand."
Leng couldn't remember what he said there or…no, he didn't say anything. He just stared at the Admiral made out of shadows.
"Oh, do not give me that look Lieutenant. You've got a place here, and I am sure you'll find it perfectly comfortable. But I want you to understand that, from here on out, I'm protecting you."
"Don't…need it."
"And you are welcome to think that. But for all matters military, please, allow me to do the thinking for you."
And that'd been that.
Now, on Agebinium, he was staring through his scope and hoping to find some part of Shepard cross through his scope. Not her head though. No. She needed to be taken alive. Fuck killing her, she needed to be alive. They needed to have a chat. He needed to share with her everything he'd learned since then, everything about how soldiers acted and how people with god-complexes acted and how, out of the two of them—
Explosion, near the Midway.
Team's must be dead.
Fine. She'd make short work of the marine's on board, but so long as someone was left to fly the ship, he'd get her to Alliance command. Lindholm and everyone would get the hero of humanity hog-tied and at their mercy.
After he'd talked with her, of course. After everything that needed to be said, had been said.
8.
Adams and Chakwas could hear the screaming from well down the hallway. They could…God they could hear screams all throughout the ship. It sounded like entire floors were being massacred at the same time—it sounded like there were fifty hostiles onboard instead of…instead of…
They'd found a pair of shotguns and a pistol and had fought over who got the sidearm. Adams wanted Chakwas to have it so Chakwas insisted on taking point; when Adams then said he'd take the pistol on point Chakwas insisted that the person in the back should have a more precise weapon, just in case.
The entire cargo bay falling silent caused them to stop…stop and wait, listen, track the sounds of heavy-set footsteps as they…as they headed for the elevator?
"What's she—"
"Shush!"
"She's going right by us!"
"I can hear that, Gregory, so let's not—"
The screaming started again. God how could they hear the screaming from a floor down?
Eventually, silence again.
Until the elevator's motor started up again.
"Oh god…"
The heavy-set footsteps made their way closer and closer to the engine room. And there was a clattering too—something metallic hitting something else metallic.
Then the engine room doors opened.
There she was. Something…something that looked an awful lot like the late Lieutenant Commander Jane Shepard was standing in the doorway of the Midway's engine room. Her armour was scarred and there was blood on her fists and boots and dangling from her hip was a severed geth head. A bag was strapped to her back.
You could see two red dots through her visor.
"C-Commander?" Adams said.
"Heavens…" Chakwas said.
Shepard started walking towards them. Slowly.
Up went their guns.
Shepard didn't even flinch.
"Commander, please," Chakwas said. "I beg you to sto—stop moving! Stop moving and and…"
"Get behind me doc," Adams said.
"Gregory I'm fine—Commander Shepard please stop moving!"
"GET BEHIND ME KARIN."
"JANE PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT COME ANY CLO—"
There was a bluish, purplish blur. That was all Adams saw. One moment, Karin Chakwas and her shotgun were standing right next to him; the next, she was crumpled on the floor, her shotgun was flung into the bowels of the Midways drive-core, and Shepard was—
The Commander was right there and he could see Christ her eyes were nothing but red light—
A vicious, vicious elbow knocked three teeth and a large chunk of the bones in Adams' nose out of his head. His shotgun skittered across the floor. And through the tears and the ringing in his ears and the pain and fear and the nauseous spinning feeling in his gut he saw Shepard looming over him and it sounded like something something terrible was trying to scratch its way out of her helme…
Oh god it was her VOICE.
"Pilot...prO—GRAM."
"W-what?" Adams said.
Shepard slammed the geth head down next to his arm and pointed at a computer panel just above his head.
"Pilot PRO—gram."
"Y-you…what, you want me to make a program for yo—you want me to make a VI that can fly the ship, that's it? T-that's what you want?"
"Yes."
"W-wh…Shepard I—"
Shepard grabbed his leg and something fuck something twisted something was—
"W-with WHAT? Shepard with what t-the geth head won't have enough programs in it to—"
Shepard reached behind her, into the sack, and pulled out…oh god, it was full of omni-tools. She rea-attached the geth head to her waste and was…she was holding an omni-tool that had…Christ was that bits of a quarian evo-suit?
"I-I don't…" Adams looked at Shepard for as long as he could manage. "Shepard it…I-I can maybe do it but l-listen, just…just listen we should KARIN WAIT—"
Chakwas had slowly tried to get behind Shepard and was pointing her pistol at the head of her friend—her dear, dear friend. And she was just about to say to the Commander to let go of Adams and turn around when he called out and—
Shepard's arm extended and an arc of electricity slammed into Chakwas. Adams stared and saw electricity rip through unshielded skin and as she fell Shepard—no, no no no Shepard fired another blast of electricity, he could smell her skin burning he could SEE her skin burning and Shepard's arm was still up, her omni-tool still glowing, and—
"STOP! Stop it—Shepard I'll do it! I'LL DO IT FOR GOD'S SAKE I—GAH!"
Shepard had grabbed him by the leg, and he'd grabbed the smoldering Chakwas by her throat. She was dragging the both of them towards the elevator.
The doors closed and Adams thought, just for a second, that he saw a figure out in the cargo hold. He screamed for help but, as the doors slammed shut, his voice echoed right back towards him, mocking him, slapping him across the face until he looked at the convulsing Chakwas and the blood-stained boot of one of the only decent people in the universe.
Slowly, as the elevator painfully crept upwards, he craned his neck to look at Shepard.
She was staring at him. Red red beams of light poured out of her visor.
It felt like her glare was eating his skin.
9.
The sentries were dead. The explosion was a rocket going off just a few metres away from the ship.
Weren't any sounds inside the ship, as Leng made his way into the cargo-hold. Just bodies. Bullet holes, broken backs, charred limbs. Two were missing heads. Blood splatter on the wall made it look like they'd been yanked right off.
Even krogan's had trouble pulling off a healthy human's head.
Leng stepped over the bodies and checked the engine room. Smelled like burning flesh…but no sign of Adams or Chakwas. Or Brooks—not even a body. He should've known Shepard would go after them but for what? Did she think it was a rescue? Did she feel like she owed them? Did they beg to go with her?
Shit, did she already leave with them?
The elevator had already been called. Tactically, that'd be a stupid move. Better to crawl through the vents than announce your presence with an elevator. Or the automatic doors leading to the CIC? No, Leng wasn't an idiot.
Through the insides of the ship he went. The smell of death managed to waft its way through the crevices. It made him feel like he was crawling through catacombs.
Nothing on the Quarters deck. Just bodies. Shepard had gone through room by room, hadn't she?
Had she really snapped that much?
No time for doubt. One more floor. And now—now—Leng could hear voices. He could hear Adams.
Adams was saying something about a V.I.? A pilot program? Collaboration, was it? Kill the crew, steal the ship? Didn't feel like you could leave the pilot alive, huh Shepard? Needed one of your Inner Circle to rig it for you?
The smell of burning flesh grew stronger and as the voices got louder—as he heard the voice of Adams more clearly—Leng readied himself and…
…and Adams sounded scared. Scared as all hell.
For the first time in a very, very long time, Leng hesitated…
None of this made all that much sense, but Adams…Adams sounded like he was watching a demon rip the soul right out of his body…
10.
Adams had managed to create a crude program that could pilot a ship—the quarians apparently had a couple programs like that, and the extra processing power from the geth head helped sort out the power fluctuations and complex computations the Midway's computer would have to deal with—but he didn't know how he did it. He didn't know how he didn't collapse the moment it looked like Chakwas stopped breathing.
Shepard was still pointing a gun at Karin's head anyways but there wasn't any sign of life. There were just blisters and burning hair and Christ Shepard I—I—I—
"I-it's d-done, Shepard, all right? I-it's done s-so just…for god's sake Shepard let me check on her—PLEASE! I-if I can…she's not breathing Shepard you have to let me CHECK ON HER!"
Those glowing red eyes didn't move. They burrowed into him like fog lights from hell.
And then those fog lights turned elsewhere. The gun left Karin's head and Shepard started towards the other end of the CIC, just below the steps that led to the cockpit. Adams went straight to Karin and as he turned her over he knew there was too much give in that body, too much give the muscles were too soft and there was moisture, like on a cup of tea after you leave it alone for too long and—
Karin's eyes were open. They were open but there was no light inside them.
All his military training had left him the moment he saw Shepard standing in front of him—every other ounce of bravery and understanding died when the officer that he'd followed through a mutiny, had followed to the mouth of a world-ending cataclysm, electrocuted one of their most trusted friends like she was nothing more than a rocket drone or a husk.
His brain struggled to compute anything, and then there was a slight pressure on the back of his head.
Silently, he tumbled to the floor, the world spinning and his thoughts evaporating.
11.
Leng had out his knife—the one his father had given to him—and he'd taken pity on Adams. A knock on the back of his head put Adams out of his misery. And with Adams drooling on the floor, Leng could turn his mind off and focus on Shepard, only Shepard, not the whirlwind of questions that were trying to claw into his grey matter.
He crept behind Shepard, as quiet as anyone without a dampening field could get. A few quick stabs to Shepard's lower back should leave her paralyzed; knock her out with another blow to the head, quick dose of medigel, and he'd have his chat, eventually. Getting off planet would be a bitch but the Alliance would just have to deal.
He got right behind Shepard—easy as it goes, two slashes and everything would be over unless he blew it unless he miscalculated what if Shepard was just unbeatab—
He saw her eyes first, the red cones of light behind a frosted-over visor. He ended up standing to his full height as he slashed towards her lower back. What the hell happened to her eyes?
Leng didn't see her arm swing around to meet his blade. He didn't feel her arm shatter his own until after the knife embedded itself in the floor and bone fragments tore through his skin. He cried out and then felt a gloved hand grab his jaw. A punch to his gut ruptured something—another broke half the ribs on his left side. Shepard's grip crushed his teeth and jammed the fragments into his jaw and by the time he had his kneecap shattered, he was having trouble feeling anything at all.
He tried to yank his jaw free from Shepard's grasp. He succeeded but felt flesh stretch, snap its seams, pull free and expose the muscles of his face to harsh Agebinium air.
His pain receptors stuttered, sparked, died. Blackness swallowed all but the narrowest cone of light in his vision. He was on the ground and, on instinct, started crawling. Crawling to the elevator.
He knew Shepard was right behind him with part of his face in her hands. He knew she just had to reach out, grab a limb, pull him back and she'd finish the job and the universe was telling him to be careful what he wished for, to be careful to wish that Shepard's mask would come off and show everyone what she truly was, that people would see what he knew he saw on Torfan, that the names would stop, the inquiries, the feeling in his gut, the posters of Shepard, the ridicule, the uncertainty, the hope the dream the wish that Shepard was a monster hiding her evil from everyone else and he was her victim, he was a casualty of her crusade that everybody forgot except the universe, except the universe was telling him he was going to die Shepard was going to kill him and that would be the end it would be blackness and the bleakness of his own thoughts forever it would be—
Adams was screaming something and he had Leng's gun. Bullets were being fired but Leng couldn't tell if they were hitting. He couldn't tell if Adams was really as incoherent as he sounded or if it was just his hearing going haywire. All he knew was he was in the elevator and had pushed the button and as the doors closed, through his rapidly fading vision he saw Shepard swat the gun out of Adams hands, and then the screaming turned—
Leng threw up. The bile stung. The world lurched. The door opened on the cargo bay and he pushed himself forward.
And then things went black.
12.
His mind wandered, in that state between unconscious and wakefulness. He saw the red of Torfan give way to the red of Agebinium. His mind conjured up an image of Shepard's eyes bearing down on both planets, burning them away with her red red light. He saw Ordrak and Kyle; he heard a red, shadowy forest accuse him of losing a colony. A red Star of Terra told him he'd never have to think again. He saw civilians melt under the fire of pirate mortars.
He saw Torfan aflame, bodies strung up on crosses and impaled on pikes. He saw Shepard walk through all of it.
He saw her skin blasted away by fire as a figure in scarred N7 armour and red red eyes gripped her skeleton and shattered it to pieces.
He saw this all happen within an underground pirate base, its walls made out of Alliance marine uniforms.
13.
And then he was on the ground, hearing the roar of an engine take off. He could barely feel anything. The concept of pain had been torn from his body. There was only hollowness.
And Brooks. There was also Brooks.
"—ust took off, yeah. Prep for surgery and tell the Admiral what I just told you. Brooks out."
Brooks looked him.
"Don't try to move," she said. "Just lie still—try to stay calm."
Blackness again. When Leng woke again, he was in a hospital.
Next to him was Lindholm. In the dark room she looked like a shadow with a single eye. As she leaned forward, her face took on the appearance of a granite gargoyle.
She looked him over. Through blurry vision and swimming thoughts, he could still tell that she was staring at his face. The part that'd been torn off by Shepard.
"I am supposed to do the thinking for you," she said eventually. She stood up and her head disappeared into shadows. Just shadows…no red cones of light, nothing to burn him away.
As Admiral Ines Lindholm left the room, she paused, tuned, and said: "I suppose I will have to do the speaking for you as well, no?"
The door closed and Leng was alone with the shadows once more.
Didn't matter how you killed someone; in the end, they were dead and that was all that mattered.
And sometimes the living envied the dead.
Aaaaaaand here's Part II!
I ain't a military strategist or nothin', but I don't think this counts as a successful mission.
So, yeah, I wasn't originally going to include Leng in this story, and then when his name ended up appearing in Chapter 16 I figured he'd probably make his exit rather quickly. Given that he was going to anchor a whole chapter, though, I figured he needed a bit of a personality make-over; and since he was going to be the new Butcher of Torfan I figured the whole battle needed a bit of fleshing out to explain why he and Shepard might not like each other very much (or, at least, why Leng would hate Shepard). Once all that happened it started seeming less likely that he'd die and, once we added Brooks to the mix, things happened.
(Chakwas and Adams were already fated to die - sorry. I couldn't find a way to save them...)
And now here we are, with a lot of rewrites to Torfan's canon and a Leng that's not a part of Cerberus, isn't some Reaperfied space-ninja goober, and isn't likely to piss in Anderson's plants (yet). I uh...hope that's okay with everyone. I know it's AU and all, but I also know that retcons aren't everyone's favorite things in the world (please don't hate me please don't hate me please don't hate me).
Anyways, can't promise when the next update will be, but hopefully it's...actually I'm not gonna say anything because then I'm just setting myself up to be wrong. BUT, all the same, hope everyone enjoyed the chapter(s) and/or Leng getting half his face ripped off.
Tune in next week where he'll tie Garrus to a giant penny and then go on an extended rant about chance or something.