The crew was already jumping off before the ship even touched ground. Five seconds into landing, anyone still able was gone, madly sprinting toward the Normandy to get what they needed and to leave this shitty place.
Tali stood up and out of her seat and followed John out.
"Where you going?" Tali asked as she jogged right behind him.
"New guns... And maybe a protein bar."
"Okay. I need to get my spare guns out of my locker and some other things... meet you in your room?"
"Okay."
They both run across the Normandy's long neck with several others, down the stairs, and separate at the service tunnel that lead to the cargo hold a floor below.
John quickly went over to his room, wet a towel with a bottle of water, and wiped his face down. Then he opened the safe inside his closet and started filling his chest rig with grenades and heat sinks before holstering both a rifle and pistol.
Just as he was checking over his supplies, Tali stepped into his room with a pack in her hands.
"Hey."
"Hey yourself. How's the crew holding up?"
"Working as fast as possible." She said, setting it down on his table.
"Good. What's in there?"
"My spare shotgun. Thermal bandolier. And the rest of my food." She listed while looking over what was inside the bag. She left out 'our Medals' because she didn't feel it appropriate. Seeing his deck of cards sitting on the table, she pocketed it in view of John.
She shrugged. "Hey, we might get bored. We're gonna be in space for a while."
He smiled at her. "Come on. Let's go. We need to get back to the ship."
Just as John was about to turn to the door and head out, she stopped him with a hand.
"John, wait."
He stopped and turned back around to face her.
Her mouth opened slightly, but no words came. So she dipped her head to look at the floor before giving him a quiet sigh. "I'm— I'm sorry."
He frowned and his brows furrowed darkly. "For what?"
"...For everything you have to shoulder." She said without ever meeting his gaze. "I don't know how you do it."
"What are you talking about?"
"What am I talking about? This whole mess. Everything. We couldn't save everyone. And we're still stranded here."
He took in a deep breath, gave her a contemplative look, and put his hands on both her shoulders with nothing but concern on his face.
"We'll manage. All of us. I'm not doing this alone. How many times do I have to tell you that."
"Until we're out of this terrible mess." She said with a forlorn sigh, "After everything that's happened? It's just becoming too much to handle."
John felt his eyes grow wet. Tali's tears weren't far behind.
"And we still aren't out of this yet, John..." She reminded with a sad whisper before gripping both his hands into hers, "I just... wanted to tell you that if things don't go as planned and we all die here... That I didn't go with regrets." She faced him with a stare full of nothing but soft love, "There isn't anywhere I'd rather be."
He stared and let the silence do the talking for him.
"And I mean that." She added as her grip got stronger around his hands, "After this...? I'm not going back to the Flotilla. I'm staying with you."
John felt his heart stop and fingertips grow cold. He couldn't believe she just said that. He never wanted to admit to her openly that he wanted her to stay... but to hear her say it? To hear her say she wanted to be with him after all this? Despite her duty as a pilgrim? He couldn't even really begin to describe how much that really meant to him.
It felt beyond selfish to think that way, and a small part of him felt guilty for that. But he had to remind himself that either way, she'd be helping her people by helping him stop the reapers.
As great as it was, right now, all he needed to know and care about at this very moment, is that somehow, her heart had made a choice.
And he was more than willing to stick with it.
"...Home is where the heart is." He said quietly, "Right?"
She laughed slightly and nodded to him as a tear welled in her eye. "Yes, John. Exactly."
He rose her hand up to kiss and gave her a warm smile. "Come on."
He led her back out from his room and looked over to see many of the crew already ransacking Chakwas' medical supplies. Amidst the small crowd of people darting every which way, the doctor stood herself pointing to anything that looked valuable enough to take.
They both climb the stairs, walk down the Normandy's neck, and go outside.
Blue team, still outside and now properly equipped with proper gear, moved back and forth between the collector shuttle and the supplies laying around to get it all aboard.
"Let's move!" John said to hurry everyone along as he stepped up the ship himself, "You have two minutes!"
Marcus set a box away and nodded to them both.
"How's it looking, Grieco?" John asked as he stepped into the cabin to take stock of what they had so far.
"Good sir. Enough room for all this and the crew. Might be a little tight, but we'll make it work. Had to take the wounded back outside over there to reorganize and make room."
"Okay. Good." He took a breath and leaned into one of the windows to stare up at the sky.
What he saw made his face suddenly drain of blood.
"Oh god."
"What?"
John immediately turned around and pushed Tali with her bag out of the ship, "GET OUT! Run! Move!"
As John leapt out of the ship himself, Marcus stared dumbfounded at Shepard before looking up himself to see what was going on.
He too felt his face drain of blood.
Nothing did that quite like a missile heading directly toward you would.
Marcus dove out of the ship and caught up right behind both Tali and John.
"Fuck!"
As the three dove into the closest foxhole they could find, they watched, much to their horror, their only way of escape disappear behind an explosion of fire and smoke.
Tali stared on in disbelief at the charred wreckage with her bag still in her hands.
"No..."
They were so close to getting off this planet.
So goddamn close.
John coughed from the soot in the air and put a hand on her so he could face her. "Tali... shit— You okay?"
She swallowed the gritty feeling of hopelessness in her gut before looking up at the sky to the wing of collector ships flying in formation. Her heart started pounding.
"I'm fine!" She said before pointing at the fighter craft coming around to take another pass, "But they're coming back around!"
"Then come on!" John screamed as he jumped out of their foxhole, "Follow me!"
Numbly, Tali got to her feet and followed him with Marcus right behind until they stopped by a flat crate.
13 UNITS █ M70A7 131kg
O.T.S-AA:SAM [M.A.N.P.A.D.S.]
NO. 67 PACKED ¼ | AIIN:98204674/ASN:6920-98-204-9674
Tali read on the box when John threw off the top.
He pulled out one of the handheld SAMs and handed it to Tali.
"Take them out of the sky."
He handed one to Marcus too before grabbing one for himself.
Several of the crew standing around got the gist of what was going on and grabbed for rockets themselves.
"Orders sir!"
"Don't wait for my signal!" John yelled out to everyone as they spread out to take positions, "Just lock and fire! Lock and fire!"
Thirteen men and women take aim at the wing of collector ships looping back around to face them with their guns.
As Tali set her reticle up and aligned the ship of her choosing within the sight picture she was allowed, she pressed the trigger and released her twenty pound payload.
Twelve anti-air missiles follow hers shortly after. They soar through the air and close their distance to the enemy before coming into contact and making all six collector craft explode into giant balls of fire.
In a rain of shrapnel and smoke, they pass over the Normandy and crash to the ground into giant plumes of ash and dust.
Ordinarily, people would've cheered such a victory.
But no one had a reason to cheer anymore.
Because all they'd done now was prolong the inevitable. And that's the only thing they'd be doing now for however much longer they'd be alive here.
Many of the crew listlessly stare at their only way of escaping this planet as if fate had denied them their last chance to live.
Their last run of hope was gone now.
Set ablaze and burning.
Their fate was sealed here.
John threw his spent launcher onto the floor and knelt down close to the ground to breathe. "God... damnit."
Tali knelt down beside him, put a hand along his cheek, and smiled sadly. "Hey... it's okay."
John said nothing.
"...Look at me."
He willed himself to face her.
"It's okay." She repeated slowly to him, "...We did our best."
He felt for her hand and felt a tear well in his eye.
He'd failed everyone. And more importantly, he'd failed Tali.
"I'm sorry, Tals." He murmured before looking off into nothingness, "Guess our best wasn't good enough."
They could start to hear more craft approaching.
They both listened to the sound and John took in a breath before standing back up.
"...If we're going to die here... Then we're going to give them hell until we do."
Tali stood herself too and nodded to him.
"Everyone!" John shouted as he turned to unclasp another box full of portable SAMs, "Get ready!"
He started passing out weapons to the crew and they took them eagerly.
When he passed out the last of them, he shouldered one himself and felt his jaw drop as soon as he saw Alliance interceptors fly just over the crest of a mountain.
Anyone outside the Normandy who saw went slack jawed at the sight and continued to stare in total disbelief as the group of fighters started circling around them.
"Holy shit—...It's the Alliance." Stacker said with a glossy look in his eyes, "...Jesus Christ."
Having caught up to the fact the Alliance was here, some of the marines and crew started cheering while jumping wildly with their flailing arms and shouts of joy to the Alliance fighters.
Others slumped over and sat down to rest. Some hugged. One of them even pulled out a flask to take a drink.
As John ingested what he was seeing, he set down his rocket before slipping Tali's out of her grasp and embracing her.
"I'm ready to leave this place. What about you, Tali?"
"Yeah." She said before wrapping her arm tightly around his neck, "I am."
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Harbinger was... displeased.
Time was short.
Unbelievably so.
Regardless of the Normandy's unintended intervention of his tests, Harbinger had gotten what they needed.
Mildly so.
Harbinger ordered upon his workforce to trial their last test and work to delay the planet's inevitable downfall of dark matter corruption. The ground would shake. The mountains would fall. And the oceans would boil. And at the apex of its struggle, the planet would cease to be.
The coming moments would provide little to answer. Even less to know.
This cycle had not been like any of the last. Never before had a harvest been delayed. A forecast of what was to come was now absent. Predictability gone entirely.
And if Harbinger could not work to prevent total corruption of the galaxy he was responsible for, then life here would face doom much like the rest of the universe.
Time was short.
So unbelievably short.
ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ
ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ
"Nimble-4 actual to SSV Denmark, over." Flight lieutenant Gonzalez called through the radio.
"We read you 4-actual, go for message, over."
"We got a visual on Normandy... she's beat up pretty bad. Like, really bad, over."
"Copy 4. Our fighters are currently engaging the enemy... but it looks like they're converging from the north to your current position. I would advise some urgency in your mission, over."
"Will comply, Denmark, out." Gonzales felt himself start to worry as he made final approach to the Normandy's crash site, "Eigh! All of you, get prepped! We need to make this quick!"
The four marines in the back nodded to their pilot. "We're ready."
As they landed, the doors opened and the four marines jumped out and greeted the Normandy's captain as he approached.
Lieutenant Audrey Forest, the commanding officer of the evac team, went up to Commander Shepard and the quarian next to him before saluting.
"Sir. Lieutenant Forest with the 3rd fleet, Task Force Charlie-1, part of the 103rd stationed on the SSV Denmark. We're here to get you out of here."
"Music to my ears, lieutenant." John answered before saluting the woman himself, "Good to see you found us. Get me up to speed."
"Yes sir." Audrey nodded before telling her marines to start helping anyone nearby board the shuttle, "We've got several wings engaging the enemy as we speak. SSV Denmark's just above atmo with the SSV Basra on the other side of the planet checking for baddies. But right now, we need to get you and your crew off world. The enemy's already converging the entirety of their forces this way."
John ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. Let's get the wounded aboard and go already."
"Aye sir." Audrey said before trudging off to start helping the wounded on.
"Let's go, people! Let's go! We don't have time to waste!" John shouted.
Tali jumped aboard with her pack, put it to the side, and turned around to see Garrus with a marine carrying Liara on a stretcher into the ship.
"How's she looking, Garrus?"
"Bad." He mumbled as he kept his gaze on Liara, "But she'll make it."
As Garrus and the marine set Liara down carefully onto the floor, Tali nodded. "Where's Wrex?"
"Coming out of the Normandy now with the rest of the crew." Garrus answered.
"Let's go people! We should've left already! Move!" John shouted as he ushered the last of the wounded aboard.
The ground started shaking.
At first, when Tali felt the tremors in her feet and ankles, she coughed it up to imagination from all the stress she'd been dealing with these past couple days.
But then it started getting stronger and Tali had to admit it wasn't something she could ignore.
"John...? Do you—?"
Everyone started looking around them with flabbergasted looks on all their faces.
"Holy shit," John mumbled as he caught his balance, "is that— is this an earthquake?"
The mountain just off in the distance started crumbling.
"Shit!" Wallace panicked before jumping aboard, "Get the hell on man! Or we're all gonna die!"
The quakes grew even more ferocious. Giant rocks from the hills nearby started tumbling down.
In a frenzy, the crew jumped and climbed aboard the ship as if their lives depended on it, all while shouting and screaming.
"That everyone?"
"Yes!" Pressly yelled, "Go!"
John gave Audrey the green light and she slammed the door shut behind them.
"Flyflyfly!"
Just as the ship took off, the mountain closest to them exploded with a burst of lava.
"Would you look at that." Wrex grumbled as he looked through his little port window, "We were right next to a volcano."
Gonzalez distanced themselves away from the Normandy and Wrex continued to watch, rather sadly, as the lava flowed like a red river down toward what was once their home.
"Pilot, give us a visual of the Normandy." John asked with slight dread, "Port side."
A video winked into existence and the crew watched the Normandy disappear under a consuming sea of lava. The mountain ranges continued to fall and collapse and the vast plains of the land waved like a storming ocean.
There was silence in the cabin.
The ship that had taken them across the galaxy was gone. The very ship that stopped Saren and Sovereign's ploy to doom the galaxy was forevermore, gone.
Every item.
Every belonging.
Everything.
Gone.
"...I— I think we've seen enough." John murmured with a frail sigh. The feed cut and everyone was left staring at a small blank screen for a long while.
John nodded stiffly at the idea of finally losing the Normandy and closed his eyes. "Pressly. Another head count if you would please."
"Already done, sir. We haven't lost anyone else."
"How many have we lost then? In total?"
"Twenty five souls, Commander. Since this started."
Twenty five people? Normandy only had a crew of sixty seven. That left only forty two. A third of what made the Normandy dead.
John crossed his arms and bit his lip to stop himself from feeling any more despair than what was already necessary. It didn't do well to lose it in front of your crew. No matter how much you wanted to.
"Any ideas for why Ullipses looks more like an ocean than land now?" John asked to try and distract himself.
"Shepard, if it were anyone's guess, I'd be pinning it on the falling ghost rocks." Garrus offered.
Everyone glanced between each other to see if anyone else had an idea.
So far, it looked like Garrus won out.
"...This nightmare needs to end." Ash murmured.