AN: 1-Again, this chapter has been split it up into (likely) three parts due to its length. I have a penchant for writing long-ass chapters, it seems.
2-I realized how shoddily written all of the previous chapters were, so I'll rewriting/retconning them, splitting them up into more chapters, and maybe even outright remaking a few (perhaps even this one) so that the characters are more well-written, and that the plot makes more sense and is more narratively cohesive. So if the continuity in this chapter seems odd, this is the reason why.
"Y'know, I wonder what kind of strings Cerberus pulled to get us on Thessia." Leng mumbled with a thoughtful face as he leaned against a wall shoulder-first looking through the armory's windows. Given what I knew, how much did Leng and Lawson know of my actual involvement in the mission? They must have had some idea, but it was likely they didn't know the more intricate details. I'd have to talk to them more after this if I wanted to know.
How come I didn't think of that earlier anyway? They were the closest to me in terms of position, so I should have had a better idea of their character by now. Another mistake to amend then.
Regardless, I shouldn't have been too surprised that Thessia's aerospace security let us through without much of a hitch, if bribery was to be counted as one, even if we were flying a practically unidentified stealth aircraft. I assumed Lawson had done much of the work on that department, given that I had to do so little, even if it was vital.
"Not that many, turns out. As long as you are a little pragmatic with the Turian guards, they'll let just about anyone through." Lawson said whilst next to a weapons-cabinet adjacent to Leng. I noticed that she mentioned the race of the guards, a likely by-product of her deeply-rooted racism. Lawson did good enough of a job of hiding her xenophobia towards our squad, but this was going to a become a bigger problem sooner rather than later, and it needed to be sorted out.
Massani chuckled form the other side of the room, and instinctually I looked at everyone's reaction to the confirmation of his presence before I turned to him. Most were rather indifferent, likely hiding their disdain for him for the sake of the squad's cohesion. The only ones who had an outward expression were Zorah, whose face fell as soon as she turned to him. She had a more exaggerated expression with a visible frown on her face and scowled eyes, whilst the rest of the squad had a more kept emotion. Why didn't Massani notice it though?
Right, not everyone could see through her vizor. Now that I thought about it, that was likely why Zorah tried to make more muted faces at me whenever we conversed. I wondered what she thought of me when I was around given that not only could I see through her vizor, and the slightly more apologetic persona she adopted after our exploit in Omega. Did she still feel responsible for that gunship recovering so fast? I didn't fault her, and told her so, so why did it seem like she was still blaming herself? Was it something intrinsic? I didn't know her that well to make a conclusion in honesty.
That reminded me, I hadn't really gotten to know my squad that well. I put in a mental reminder to talk to all of them after we were done on Thessia in order to know their person more, just like how I did with Leng and Lawson when I first got on the Normandy.
"Yea, don't let this planet's looks fool you. The only difference between a place like this and Omega is that at least the thugs on Omega have the decency to rob you upfront. In Thessia, they'd smile at you whilst you sold your soul away." He said with a certain disdain that went unnoticed by everyone else. We all agreed with him, but reluctantly so, due to the fact that he was the one we were agreeing with.
I found his statement rather odd. I had been informed that he was involved in operations where he gave back escaped slaves, and the general consensus I got from that is that Massani was a rather money-oriented person, if the fact that he was a Batarian merc who accepted work from Cerberus of all things wasn't obvious enough. And considering the fact that he rejected the idea of the Shadow Broker backstabbing Zorah, I was rather curious as to why he cared about the ethics of how another company made money. I put in another mental note.
"Really?" Leng asked as he raised an eyebrow. "Thessia always struck me as a sort of Las Vegas type of ordeal. You go there if you have a lot of money and are prepared to either lose it or make back double. It's a true wildwest in Omega. Everything goes. Here though? At the very least, everyone has some modicum of restraint." He said as he raised his hand and pinched the air to emphasize his point.
"You ought to exercise some of that restraint when we land." Lawson said with her smirk returning to her face. Leng looked back at her with a puzzled expression, shared by nearly everyone in the room, before he scoffed and waved an arm away. "Come on, Miranda, you know that I know my limits. If a gal says no, then I'll respect that decision." He said as he shifted to leaning on the wall with his back and crossed his arms. Lawson didn't look convinced at that answer. I was honestly a bit surprised when I heard this. I thought that Leng was the type who'd be more persistent if he wanted to get something he wanted.
"Besides, Thessia's full of Asari and you know I'm not into them." Leng said nonchalantly. That somehow elicited a couple of reactions from my squad.
"You're not into Asari?" Vakarian repeated the question slowly with such an intonation I'd think that he just saw the most banal in his life.
"Yea," Leng shrugged his shoulders. "Just never found them pretty. Besides, the whole 'oh she's a hundred years old but in actuality she's barely legal' thing never sat right with me. I don't want to get into that moral quandary. And I'd rather not date someone who'd wait me out to get my will's money. Doesn't help that most of them have a stick up their ass." Leng said.
"Not all of them do." I found myself saying. "You can't be going around making statements like that, even if you met some Asari yourself."
Leng chuckled at that. "Commander, when I said that, I was speaking from experience." He said as he put a closed fist to his chest. The fact that he blatantly ignored my last statement didn't go unnoticed by me. "Most Turian, Quarian, and Krogan women I've been with didn't try to adopt some 'holier-than-thou' attitude towards me and, y'know, actually liked me as a person and treated me pretty fairly, instead of waiting for me die and basically using me like a glorified sex toy. Shit, you really think most of them actually date out of love? Why do you think you rarely ever see a Krogan-Asari couple? 'Cause that involves actual commitment." Leng explained.
It was one thing to hear that Leng was a (seemingly) respectful womanizer, but it was another thing to hear that he was a xenophile. Cerberus was, for all intents and purposes, still a reactionary group even if it was directly tied to the Alliance. I can't imagine his cat-chasing went over well with the rest of Cerberus. Something to ask him about for later. Regardless, his reasoning did make sense, but he was still overgeneralizing.
"Doesn't help that they see everyone else around them as inferior." Lawson inputted. "Doesn't matter if you're a Turian, Salarian, or even of their own. They'll always paint you out to be some uncivilized savage. No wonder they treated you the way they did. You're human, and somehow that automatically means that you're an opportunist who wants to squeeze out everything out of them." She said. I noticed a crack in her statement.
She referred to the aliens as 'them', but she didn't try to paint the situation into an 'us-versus-them' ordeal. She was solely addressing Leng. If she did join Cerberus at a young age, then that should have been the first thing she'd have done. Why this small crack in her beliefs then? I wasn't complaining though. It was just one small step to get her away from Cerberus indoctrination.
"You can't judge an entire species based off of a few interactions you had with some of their members." I interjected with a bit more resoluteness in my voice. Lawson and Leng looked at me with vexed faces, probably wondering if that argument was worth it, for a moment. And in that time, Wrex spoke up.
"Wait. You said you 'dated' Krogan women?" Wrex said with a certain tension in his face whislt standing next to Massani. Everyone turned to him and likely wondered what he implied.
"Yea, they're surprisingly chill if you get to know 'em." Leng answered with a slightly calmer voice. A beat of awkward silence passed as Wrex stared Leng down, before Wrex relaxed his face.
"Must have been refugees then." He said. We all leaned forward in intrigue, save for Leng and Legion. The latter stood as still as rocks, and the former seemed seriously surprised.
"How did you know?" He asked quickly as he shifted his head back. Wrex must have noticed our reactions to him as he looked around the room before he mouthed something. I could barely make out what it was with how wide his lips were. Something along the lines of 'Of course they…'
"Back when the Genophage was unleashed upon us, our women had essentially relegated to themselves to be baby-making machines to combat it, but they had to give up nearly everything they had to do this. For a while, it worked. Our birthrates went from being a quarter of what they were, to being only halved." He said and enunciated the last phrase with a bit more energy than usual for him.
"However, something in the Genophage must have been changed, because only five-hundred years later our birthrates plummeted back again. A few clans tried to look for an alternative, but the damage had already been done. The whole practice was institutionalized both legally by the confederation, and socially by damn near everyone. Our women were practically put into a different societal caste, and now a good portion of the men now think they're inherently better than them."
Wrex said with minutely more lividity, but nobody but me picked up on it as they were all seemed invested in what Wrex was sagely explaining. Solus especially so, if the hand on his chin was anything to go by.
"The only real difference is that one has more dirt than the other. Any Krogan woman who doesn't take this role is shunned into oblivion. Some just can't take it, and so they flee on whatever ships that land down on our planet. Be it hiding on them, selling themselves out, or else." He explained with a monotone voice that I found strange. If I were talking about humanity like that, then I certainly wouldn't do it in such a nonchalant manner. Wrex did raise his voice a few times, though. He was conflicted about this, but why and how so? Something to ask him about for later.
Leng eye's widened as he put a hand to his mouth. "Oh shit… That explains a lot actually." He said with a somber emotion that was shared by nearly everyone. Save for Lawson who was busy interacting with her omnitool, and she seemed rather focused on what she was reading on it.
"That sounds extremely horrible. Haven't there been any efforts to find any alternatives? It sounds terrible to have to live like that." Zorah said empathetically as she got off the wall. Her back was facing me, so I couldn't see her face.
Wrex just simply shrugged his shoulders. "The woman think it's necessary, the men think it's necessary, and all of the clan leaders think it's necessary. There's no pushback because nobody wants to resolve something they don't even see as an issue." He replied. Why did he dodge the question like this though? I wanted to know more, but I knew that confronting him directly on this likely wouldn't be a good idea, since he was acting like this in the first place. So I thought of a question that was a bit more subtle.
"Do you think it's necessary?" I asked him. Wrex quickly turned to me with the same apathetic face he was showing this entire time.
"Doesn't matter what I think. We don't have another choice. Not like I can do something about it now, anyway." He said with a slight change in intonation.
I became outright suspicious. He must have been fully aware that he wasn't giving a proper answer, and so I went in.
"Why are you dodging my question?"
Wrex's lips flattened ever so slightly as his eyes barely squinted at me. "Yes, I think it's necessary." He said mechanically. I got off the wall I leaning on and looked at Wrex dead-on.
"You hate this, don't you?" I asked.
"Do you have a better alternative?" He said. I knew he was being sarcastic, but part of me thought that he genuinely wanted an answer. "We don't have a choice, Commander. Not with the Genophage around."
"Have there been efforts to cure the Genophage in the first place?" Legion asked bluntly. Wrex gave them a blank look, and Solus separated his hand from his chin.
"You ask any male Krogan if they want ten-thousand credits or the cure to the Genophage, and they'll pick the money. Everytime." Wrex replied with more gruff in his voice. What was with the sudden change in attitude though?
"What made the Krogan so greedy and selfish as to prevent the chance for a cure?" Legion responded. Everyone's head jumped in place at that. Wrex's eyes went wide, his pupils dilated, and his fists clenched.
But only for a moment as he broke out of that stance and breathed out of his nose. I realized probably the same thing he did. He had laid the groundwork for that discussion, yet he got mad when someone else worked within said groundwork and only just now did he see it. But why did it even happen in the first place then? It was one thing to have his do a one-eighty with his attitude, but it was another thing to be inconsistent about it. I had only seen this type of behaviour in people who blamed themselves for something, yet tried to separate themselves from it. But what had Wrex done? As far as I was aware, he wasn't an exile, traitor, or anything of that sort. I'd have to talk to him about it.
Moving on. This conversation was not going to go over well. With Legion's bluntness and general naivety, combined with Wrex's obviously unresolved issues concerning the Genophage, an argument or even an incident would happen here. My first instinct was to jump in and tell the two to back off each other-
"No. Krogan birthrates before Genophage quadruple of Asari, Turian, and Salarian combined! Cannot be left unchecked if issue of Krogan aggressiveness is not resolved." Solus explained quickly as he walk back-and-forth across the room, refusing to make eye-contact with anybody. I, alongside my squad, was surprised by Solus's apparent interest in this.
"Besides, do you really think that if a cure was found, the Council would let it slide? Who knows what they might do next?" Wrex added on. It was obvious that he was reinforcing what he supposedly believed in, but was Solus supporting the Genophage really the thing that pushed it over the edge on that?
"It is better to attempt such an endeavor rather than not to." Legion posited. Wrex and Solus looked at them like they were an idiot, for lack of a better term. I could tell that now was going to be the breaking point of this conversation; I had to intervene.
"If you two don't want to talk about the Genophage, then we can drop it. Legion, lay off the question for the time being, won't you?" I asked of them.
"Affirmative." Legion replied before they resumed their idle stance. Solus and Wrex shared curious looks at both me and Legion, before they backed away themselves. I mentally let out a deep sighed as I took a look around the room. Zorah and Vakarian looked at me with something of a curiousity, Wrex and Massani sulked in the corners of the room, Solus was packing up his weapons to presumably go back to his work, and Leng just continued to look out through the window like nothing ever happened. Lawson was still on her omnitool.
This squad's dynamics weren't the best, that I knew. In fact, I'd even say they were even hostile at times. Though, that was to be expected when one clumped together a bunch of people together from various backgrounds who didn't know each other beforehand.
That thought brought up a flurry of nostalgia that nearly made me gag before I shut it down.
Regardless, Right now everyone tolerated each other, and whilst that was enough for the moment, it was obvious that we'd keep getting at each other's throat. And that powder keg was going to explode along the road and we'd all suffer for and from it. The best way to solve this issue was to prevent it from happening in the first place.
My first thought was to get cordial with everyone. As far as I was aware, I was the only one who recognized the generally awkward social atmosphere of the ship. If I could get everyone to be familiar with me, then that could ease them somewhat and maybe they'd get to at least talking with each other. Of course, nothing said that all of my squad would be compatible with each other, they obviously had their differences and a good portion of them likely couldn't be set aside. But this would be the first step in to humanizing, for lack of a better term, everyone to each other.
I did notice that this line of thinking was rather narcissistic, but in my experience it had worked somewhat. It certainly did with my last two squa-
"Commander, I've received some interesting news from my contacts regarding our recruits." Lawson said firmly as she snapped to me. I turned to see her with an emotionless and static face. She was focused.
"Good, or bad?" I asked.
"Depends on how you see it." She shrugged. "Apparently, all of our recruits on Thessia are pursuing an Asari oligarch named Nassana. For whatever reason, they've all got it out for her. So much so that Nassana has taken to hiding in her own personal tower and filled it to the brim with Eclipse mercs."
"Shit, what did she do to piss them off?" Leng asked jokingly, but we were all interested in an answer.
"No idea. Though I figure we'll find out soon enough." She answered before she turned to me expectantly. "What's the call, Commander?"
The first thing I realized was that I didn't know enough about the situation at hand. I straightened my posture and paid close attention to Lawson. "What can you tell me about Nassana?" I asked.
"She's another crooked oligarch on Thessia. The only difference between her and the rest of the oligarchs on Thessia is that she's far more vile and she's far more powerful. Whilst most oligarchs would engage in insider trading and embezzlement, Nassana dabbles in everything. Manufacturing drugs, human trafficking, weapons-trading, you name it and she's probably done it." Lawson explained nonchalantly. Whilst that information wasn't critical, it help set the scene.
"Do you have any info on why they're going to after her? I mean, what I'm trying to ask here is why is it happening now?" Vakarian asked.
"We do have a Justicar on her tail." Zorah interjected. "Can't it be for a noble cause?"
"Out of the question. Otherwise they'd have been on her for far earlier. From my experience on Omega, the only reason you'd go looking for a person all of a sudden is if they owe you money and haven't paid up, or that you've found out they're affiliated with someone or something you're looking for. I hazard a guess that it's the latter." He said with a conviction in his voice.
"I say that we withhold any judgement until we get to meet them." Lawson replied speedily before she turned back to me. I noticed that her statement was an easy way to answer both of their questions and prevent a dispute between them. The fact the she was able to do this on a whim must have meant that she got this from experience.
"Commander, do you have anymore questions?" She asked me sincerely. I of course wanted to know more about our recruits, but the dossiers given to me were all that Cerberus knew of them. So no point in that. If I made the decision to go after them on the tower, then I needed to know if they would recognize us or not.
"Do the recruits know that we're after them?"
"Indeed. They did ask for sometime to sort out their personal affairs, but that deadline is today for all of them."
"What if they still have somethings to attend to?" Vakarian asked with what I made out to be concern. As Lawson turned to him, I detected a certain disdain in her face that she then masked with a smile before fully turning to Vakarian.
"If they can't achieve what they want with the allotted time we've given them, then they'll have make do somehow whilst on the Normandy if they still wisht join. And if they still can't, then it's their fault for being incompetent." Lawson replied before she turned back to me. The contempt shown by Zorah who was to my right didn't go unnoticed by me. Vakarian however slogged his head away with downtrodden eyes. I made a mental note of that.
"Moreover, it doesn't seem like that the Eclipse mercs or Nassana herself know of us or that we're coming, so they likely won't shoot us on sight. However, the fact that our three recruits are coming after Nassana will probably mean that we'll got caught in the crossfire if we tried to recruit them now. I suggest we wait it out on the ship until their business is done to minimize casualties." Lawson posited. Her suggestion was valid, and so I decided to entertain it more.
If they failed, then that was a guaranteed three deaths if we didn't come to help. If we did, then that was three deaths plus the chance of someone in my squad dying as well. It was the safer, more convenient, and easier choice to stay on the Normandy.
However, if they succeeded, then not only would it look incredibly awful if they discovered that we were close-by whilst they risked their lives, then that also ran the possibility of one or more of them dying because we refused to help. Hell, all of them could come out alive if we decided to join in. We could flee if it was decided that the situation was untenable, but it'd come off as incredibly selfish to any of the recruits that were left behind. Aiding them did mean risking the deaths of one of my squadmates, and there was a chance that more than three people would have died in doing. Yet…
Was I willing to risk that in order for the three to even have the chance of surviving?
Zorah immediately scoffed at Lawson's idea before taking a step towards her.
"Are you really saying that we should turn down the opportunity to kill such an evil oligarch just because we might die?" Zorah rebutted decisively as she gestured with her arms to further her point. Yeah, there was also that perspective to consider.
Lawson stared into Zorah indifferently. "Be realistic. If Nassana gets taken down, only she will die. The rest of her enterprise will still continue to exist, even if operations are disrupted momentarily. Someone else will take her place who might even worse than her. Even if her entire empire is gone, other oligarchs will just move in to fill the void she used to. In the end nothing changes."
In the end, nothing changes.
In the end, nothing changes.
In the end, nothing changes.
That was fucking vile.
"We're helping them." I said firmly. Everyone turned to me and gave me curious looks, Lawson especially so.
"Commander, are you seriously considering risking everyone's lives here just help three people who might not even need the aid?"
"Miranda-" I clenched my fists to distract myself from the miasma of foulness building up in my stomach. "Let me remind you that we're recruiting the best of the best here, and we have to treat them with the respect they deserve. We're not going to go behind their backs like that."
" 'Behind their backs?' " She repeated. "Commander, we don't owe them anything. They're not even a part of this squad or mission yet. Aiding them will not further it in any sort of way. Hell, we might be even crippled because of the potential causalities that'll cause. We need as many people as alive as possible for this mission; we can't go risking it like this. It's statistically the best option to stay here. And I'm not saying no to more firepower, I'm saying no to a reckless endeavor."
"If you were being attacked by a group of people whilst there was another group nearby, how would you feel if they didn't help you just because they didn't want to risk it?" I replied immediately.
"I'd feel angry at the moment, but I'd understand their decision. We don't know each other, and we've got no obligation towards each other, so they have no need to help me. Besides, the situation isn't as black-and-white as you make it, and you're acting like I can't handle myself." She shrugged as if that was a ridiculous idea. What kind of viewpoint was that? What would it even be called? Pessimistic utilitarianism?- It doesn't matter now. That was not what the argument was about.
"If I implied it, then I take it back. What I'm saying is that these people are the best-of-the-best, so it's unlikely for them to die on this task. But they can absolutely benefit from the help. In other words, how would you feel if those group of people decided to help you?" I replied rather curtly.
"I'd say that I didn't need the help, but I'd certainly be appreciative and owe them. But that doesn't matter if I was going to join them anyway."
"Precisely. If the group you were going to join knew that you were in some trouble, and didn't decide to help you out of their own selfish need, then is that group really worth joining? If we help them out, then their loyalty is ensured, and so you wouldn't need to be concerned with that."
"Its sensible to trade a hypothetical loyalty than lives. At the end of the day, it's their problem, not ours."
"You're acting like this is a suicide mission."
"That's because it essentially is."
"This whole damn operation is a suicide mission. We're a small squad taking on the entirety of the Collectors who have been plaguing the galaxy for decades by ourselves with practically no outside help. Like it or not, we are and will be going up against overwhelming numbers and firepower, and we are going to need to learn how to deal with that sooner rather than later. Take this as an exercise in doing that. At the very least we know what we're getting into." I replied sternly, which caught everyone off guard.
I then looked down at the ground and rubbed my eyes in shame. Where the hell did that tantrum come from? I wasn't speaking to her in her language, of course she was opposed to my idea. I turned my head up back at her to see her with a calmer expression. Good. At least she didn't see me as a juvenile just yet.
"Besides, I'm not abandoning them just because of the chance it'll prove too much for us." I added on.
"Are you really willing to take that risk?" Lawson asked.
"Yes. I'm confident enough in all of your abilities to get us out in one piece." I said to my squad as I turned to their general direction out of instinct. They weren't rapt by what I said, but they were all certainly intrigued, for lack of a better word. I turned to Lawson and pointed to her direction. "If you really want to prove your skill and that you're the perfect human being, now is the time to do it." I added on. I didn't know if using this sort of language came off as manipulative to her, as I just didn't know her that well yet. I already had picked up enough signs telling me to know my squad better.
The room went silent. Lawson looked like she was sizing me up for a moment before she let out a sigh and relaxed her shoulders. "Understood, Commander. I'll rent some cars for us when we arrive. I'll be going now." She said before she walked away calmly and left the room. I let out a sigh and exited the room myself from the other door.
I couldn't help but notice everyone's reaction towards me. They all looked to me with a mix of intrigue and worry. I was sure they understood where I was coming from, though.
