The room was filled with the sound of music and fresh food as an almost nude quarrian woman danced in the middle of the room in front of a throne. The quarrian woman had soft but scarred purple skin and a well-toned muscular structure. She was once a warrior, but no longer. Now she was a concubine to the man sitting on a throne made out of a T-rex skull. Beside him sat two concubines dressed in similar attire to the quarrian.
All three of them wore a brown and yellow loincloth while their legs and arms were decorated with jewellery. While some of it was gold, most of it was beads, bones and teeth. The gold was mostly used for the bells of the stuff that they wore which chimed when they moved or danced.
The man, Lord Astroth Arkid, smiled as his asari concubine moved and tilted a glass of wine into his mouth. He drank from the red liquid with a smile on his face letting the flavoured beverage slide down his throat. After a moment the asari pulled back and smiled.
"Does master like the wine?" she asked in a sweet tone.
"Indeed. Such a fine drink," he said as he leaned in and kissed the blue woman on the lips.
The two stayed like that for a moment before the music stopped forcing his attention to turn to the man entering the main chamber. The quarrian had stopped dancing and moved over to the musicians, sitting down and waiting to get back to dancing. Arkid growled at the loss of his festivities and sat straighter as a Scorpion Knight walked in.
Other than the spear he held, he was disarmed and moved to the middle of the room. He then saluted by bringing his arm over his chest before getting down to one knee and bowing his head.
"My Lord Arkid, I bring news from the outside world," the knight said.
Arkid nodded and turned to his human concubine. "Get my advisors," he said.
The woman nodded and left. It wasn't long before four people entered the room. They sat on chairs set at diagonal angles to the throne. Two on each said. A krogan, asari human and turrian took their seats and looked towards the knight in front of them. They all gave a nod to Arkid, who nodded back and then looked towards the knight.
"Speak knight, what news do you bring?" he asked.
"My lord, we have confirmed the presence of Wavers. I also met with your lost concubine," he said earning a pleased look from Arkid.
"Shepard? Do you have her?" as the Lord spoke the korgan's eyes narrowed at the name before he looked towards the knight.
"I'm sorry my lord, but my unit was decimated. I am the only one left," he said. While his tone was neutral, there was a break in his voice. "We were getting a group of Wavers. However, Shepard cut us off and took out seven of us before a Giganotosaurus took two more of us out. She seemed to be defending them,"
"Did you get a look at the Wavers?" the krogan asked earning a look from the Lord and other advisors.
The knight looked up before looking down. "I'm afraid I did not. They were hiding inside one of the resource towers. But I did get a look at three people who were riding a cart. All women, a long raven-haired woman, a tanned dark-haired woman and a blad tattooed woman. I saw no one else,"
The krogan grunted in acknowledgement and waved his hand to continue. The knight looked to the Lord who nodded.
"There is not much else my lord," he said bowing his head. "However, given the amount of Wavers who have arrived, we should expect an increase in cult and bandit activity,"
The Lord nodded. "I agree, if that is all, you may go,"
"Yes, my lord," the knight said before turning and leaving.
Once he left Arkid turned to the krogan. "Drargon, what was that about the Wavers?"
The other advisors turned to the Treasurer Master who fell silent for a moment before he looked up. "Are you aware of Shepard's history?"
Arkid frowned and shook his head. "I am aware that you came after Shepard, but I have little interest outside of Ark. Why?"
Drargon nodded. "Shepard was a hero back when. Still venerated when she was assumed dead. She saved the Galaxy from a race called the Reapers,"
"I heard about them," the Asari said. "From people at Rok. But a lot of people seemed to think that what she was spouting was fake,"
"I thought that too," Drargon nodded. "But I doubt it. Humans are many things, but liars? While they may lie and hide a lot from us, but to deceive the rest of the races I doubt. I also had friends who examined the corpse of the Reaper, despite what the officials may say, it wasn't geth-tech, that's for certain," he let that hang in there for a moment before continuing. "But Shepard didn't save the Galaxy alone. She had a ship, a team and a crew. If the Wavers at the Resource tower were her crew, then it explains why she's protecting them,"
"I sense a but coming," the turrian said.
"The 'but' is that I do not recognise the descriptions. One is possible, but the other two… the long raven-haired woman and the bald tattooed woman I do not recognise. From what I remember she had a team of 6. However, one of them, a human male, died. The only woman she had was a human, a quarrian and asari. The dark-haired woman on the cart may have been one of the members, but… without seeing the details I cannot say,"
"Why do you ask anyway?" Arkid asked.
"If she has her crew, then I think you can forget about getting her," saying that just caused Arkid's expression to darken. "We may not know why we are here, but her crew have been known to change things. For better, and worse. Shepard alone is tough to beat, but with a Clan backing her, she may be impossible to take if not kill,"
"I do pray that you are joking, for your health," Arkid said, his eyes narrowed before standing with his two concubines. "The mood has been dampened here, I'll take my leave," he then left with his concubines with the quarrian soon joining him.
Once he was gone the Asari looked at him. "How do you know any of that?"
"Stories, but some may be exaggerated," as he said that he stood. "But we should be wary of taking on Shepard, alone or not," he then walked out of the main chamber.
The other advisors looked at one another before getting up and leaving themselves.
OOOOO
Sunlight began to seep into the house where Shepard and her crew stayed. However, many of the rooms were doubled up as Sonja didn't expect many to come. According to her, it was going to take a while to get an extension sorted, but shouldn't take more than a couple of days to sort out.
With the light peering in, Jack opened one of her eyes. She was sleepy, but her wakefulness was fully alert as soon as the light hit her. Slowly, she slid out of her sleeping bag while keeping an eye on her roommate Ashley. The marine was fully asleep not seeming to pay attention to her surroundings. But then again, after the meal, they all had last night a wave of tiredness swept over them. According to Sonja, it was called 'Waver fatigue'.
This a condition that happens to new arrivals as their bodies need to readjust to changes in their bodies. The reason it didn't happen immediately or while they were out, was that it took about 12 hours to kick in. It was one of the main reasons why Wavers die in the first 24 hours.
Jack slowly moved as she stood and picked up a sack, she had prepared the night before. It had food and spare clothing as well as a couple of knives she swiped from the kitchen. She moved to the door but stopped as Ashley turned moaning as she did so.
"Yeah, that's right honey just there…" a perverted smile appeared on her face but Jack just frowned. "Ah sooo slimy… ah yes just right there… ah yes use me as your seedbed my beautiful tentacles,"
"Pervert," she muttered as she opened the door and left.
Slowly and carefully, she made her way downstairs and out of the house. As she reached the dirt outside the building, she turned and gave the place a middle finger.
"Fuck all of you to hell," she said before turning and heading for the gate.
She reached about halfway along before stopping as the gate opened up allowing Shepard to walk through. Behind her was the biggest log Jack had ever seen. The commander pulled it into the main compound with a satisfied sigh. She dropped the rope and looked up to see Jack staring back at her.
"Well, I wasn't expecting anyone else to be up," Sonja said as she bent forwards and back cracking her limbs.
"Y… yeah…" Jack muttered as she looked at the soldier up and down.
Sonja had been talking about her past on Ark the previous night, retelling stories about some battles and incidents she took part in. But by halfway through the second story people started to get Waver Fatigue and left for bed. Jack was the last to go to bed and the first to wake. She had listened to three of Shepard's stories before Jack needed to head to bed. But the amount of combat Sonja had been through seemed unreal. But now, Jack was second-guessing herself.
Shepard wasn't wearing the armour she did last night, instead, she wore a short sleeveless top that exposed her midriff and a pair of knee-length shorts. While it wasn't good for protection, it did show off both her very muscular frame and her scars. Jack thought that the Commander was exaggerating or at least embellishing the stories, but it was clear she wasn't. Scars, bites and the odd stitchwork covered Sonja's body making her look like a patchwork of dull and faded skin.
It looked like she had been through hell and back more times than she could count while stopping for souvenirs. Jack shook her head before hardening her look.
"I'm leaving," she declared.
"Oh, is that right?" Sonja's expression also hardened. "After what happened yesterday?"
"That was because you took me by surprise," Jack countered dropping her bag. "I would have killed you if I had the chance,"
"I doubt it," Shepard chuckled. "If you think scorpion riding knights and dinos are the worst thing, allow me to disabuse you of that notion because those are the basics of what you face out there,"
"What do you mean?" Jack asked trying not to break her hardened expression.
"Knights and dinos are common. Some are easier to deal with than others, but it's the ones that aren't common you have to deal with. They won't kill you immediately. Titanomyrmas, giant ants, are the perfect examples of this. They don't care if you are still alive, they will grab you and drag you to their hive to feast on your body. Insect swarms have also been known to use bodies as habitats for their colonies. And those are the dinos. There are groups of people, humans, turrians, asari, krogan, quarrians and so on, who will rape you, skin you then turn that skin into leather, then impale you from ass to mouth before roasting you alive over a fire. And that's if you're lucky," she paused for a moment letting the words sink in.
Outwardly, Jack didn't look phased. Inwardly she was terrified. She had seen some disgusting things in the past, thanks to Cerberus, but if what Sonja was saying was true, then leaving now would be the worst idea. Jack didn't move her head, but her eyes glanced at the house behind her before looking back at the Commander. The amazon had folded her arms and her stare was piercing Jack's soul. She shrank under it, but her determination was just steeled by what Sonja had said.
"I can survive on my own," she then spat.
"Can you?" Sonja asked amused at the declaration. "Have you seen my library? It took me months to read all of that, build my house, and weapons and train. You just got here, you won't survive two weeks,"
"You did," Jack countered. "You survived for a month before you managed to find anyone,"
"Indeed, I did, but that's because I was lucky," the Commander explained. "There was a war going on at the time. And the area I was in didn't a lot of aggressive dinos. The only aggressive one was that damned T-rex. The only problem I had was finding shelter. You are lucky that you stumbled onto my compound. If you hadn't those Scorpion Knights would have captured you and sold you off as slaves. If not fight Arkid to a fight. Trust me, that's a can of worms you do not want to open,"
"You aren't going to stop me," Jack then growled.
"Tell you what…" Sonja said as she undid her tool belt. "Beat me. If you can win in a fight against me, I'll let you go. If I beat you, you stay," she then threw the belt to one side.
"Fine," was all Jack said before she charged in fast.
Jack, being a biotic, had focused her body on speed rather than power. So, she moved quickly, almost in a blink of an eye at the Commander. Sonja, being a soldier, had trained her body for power and defence. But since she came to Ark, she had retained her body to have the perfect balance of power, defence and speed. This helped when Jack arrived in front of her, as she slammed her knee into Jack's gut sending her sprawling back.
The criminal recovered quickly shooting the commander an angered look. Sonja ignored it as she flexed her limbs and cracked her neck, loosening herself for combat. That just pissed Jack even more as she charged in with a wild haymaker aiming for Shepard's head. But the commander just dogged the punch and the follow-up attack with ease. She then grabbed Jack by the collar and slammed her head against hers.
The criminal backed up grabbing her head before Sonja punched her in the gut and followed it up with a kick. Jack backed up a bit but didn't manage to recover as Sonja grabbed her by the collar and threw her over her shoulder. The impact caused the air to rush out of Jack's lungs forcing her to stay down.
"You are too damn predictable," Sonja said as she walked past Jack and towards the house picking up the criminal's bag on the way. "You fight like all other former biotics here. Like you still have them,"
"If I did, I would have kicked your ass," Jack spat as she turned onto her belly and spat out a gobbet of blood.
"Probably," the commander shrugged as she placed the bag on the terrace and sat down looking at the criminal. "But even then, you wouldn't survive a day out there,"
"And how do you know that?" she asked as she stood.
"Your fighting style and strength," Shepard said earning a fierce look from Jack but paid it no mind. "You are strong, but not strong enough. You used that strength to augment your biotics. Which is ok, there's nothing wrong with that in the normal world. But here, without your biotics, you have nothing to back your strength up with," as she talked, she reached into the bag and pulled out an apple. "Your anger is also a big flaw," she took a bite of the green apple as Jack fumed.
"My anger? Do you know what I've been through?" the criminal yelled.
"Yeah, I do," Sonja replied as she took another bite. "You were an experiment in order to see how much biotic potential a human can hold. By breaking down mental barriers, emotions and more to make more room for biotic power. However, given the fact that you were in prison says otherwise. Your fighting style, anger and more prove that fact. It also shows you aren't ready to go out there alone,"
"Cherp cherp," a voice next to her said.
Sonja turned to see Jacko next hero her looking up at the apple in her hand. Smiling she handed the apple to the small animal and stroked it as it ate.
"If you go out there now, as you are, you might make it as a cannibal, or bandit. But is that really life?" the commander asked. "As a cannibal, you'd only be useful until you cannot hunt. At which point you'd be eaten yourself. Bandit may be better, but that would only last until you get caught, at which point you would be hanged, or eaten by a dinosaur. Or you'd be living your life as a gladiatorial or sex slave. As I said before if you are lucky. If you stay with us, you have a better chance of survival. You can live a better life with us. But if you chose to leave," she stood and indicated to the gate. "You can leave. I'm not going to stop you. But think about what I said. Do you really want to end up in a cage again?"
With that, the commander walked into the building leaving Jack standing in the middle of the compound. She turned to look at the gate, her freedom and a new life waiting for her. But Sonja had poisoned that idea. If every… no everything she said was true. She wasn't good at reading people, but that tone, that body language, that stare… all of those told her what she needed to know. That the commander was telling the truth. The fight was only meant to prove that point.
She looked down at her tattooed hands before clenching them. She would get stronger, even if it was to teach the Amazon a lesson. Looking up, she sighed and walked back into the building.
It was about an hour later when the rest of the crew woke up and began to congregate in the kitchen and the terrace. Sonja, now dressed in leather clothing, served up rice, bacon and vegetables.
"We've got a long day today, so eat what you can," Sonja said as she grabbed some more.
"We're going to Rok today, right?" Miranda asked as she took a bite.
"Yep," the commander nodded as she took a bite of her food. "There are two main reasons for that, the first is to get you guys' registered. The second is to sell part of my stock,"
"Why do we need to get registered?" Mordin asked. "Population control? No too ineffective? Monitoring? No, impractical,"
"It's more about monitoring who's here," Sonja smiled. "And before you ask, no it's not like dystopian fantasy where everyone is registered for some dark purpose. A few thousand years ago, when people found out that people were coming in in waves, there was an effort to find out why. So the registration was made to check, age, sex, skills and so on to see if there's any indication as to what we are doing here," she took a bite out of her food. "The most common, and prevalent hypothesis is that we are here to prepare for something. This is based on the skills of the Wavers. There hasn't been a wave that's solely been a single skill. But something like essential skills that are missing,"
"Hmmm, does sound like a reasonable explanation," Mordin agreed. "Maybe due to the Reapers, use us as a Noah's Ark, in human terms, to prepare for a repopulation of the galaxy,"
"That's the main idea," Sonja agreed. "But there are two problems. First, if we are here to repopulate the galaxy, why are there things like dinosaurs here? Why not just have us in cryo? Second, why limit our technology? If we are to repopulate, why are we stuck with 1930's level tech? There is an idea that it's meant to weed out the weak, but if that's the case, why not pick out the stronger ones and put us in cryo?"
Mordin nodded as he listened to the points. "Yes, yes very good points. Makes no sense, even in terms of krogan,"
"Hey," Wrex shot.
"No offence intended. Know that krogan would love trial, but even krogan know that trials aren't always practical," the salarian defended.
"Yeah," Wrex nodded not entirely convinced but continued to eat.
"So, they are aware of the Reapers?" Miranda asked.
"They didn't until two years ago when I came," Sonja shrugged. "When I arrived at the Archive, I explained what happened, what I found out. The Archivists were both surprised and not surprised about it. Like I said the widely accepted theory is the Noah's Ark theory. But as I also pointed out it has problems. While the Reapers added more support to the theory, the problems still persist. It's proposed that the Noah's Ark theory is correct, but there is an unknown reason that accounts for the problems presented,"
"But I'm guessing that's not widely accepted?" Liara asked just looking at her food.
"More or less," Sonja nodded. "This debate has been going on for literally thousands of years. In that time, people have found all kinds of holes in all possibilities. Some are obvious, others less so. The worst part is that they have little to no evidence to back their theories on. Just people, what they do and how they ended up here. There's nothing clear about what this place is, or why we are here," as she said that she finished her food and stood cracking her neck. "Ok, we need to make a move if we are to make it to Rok before 6. When your finished pack a week's worth of clothing and meet me out here. I'll get the cart and boxes ready,"
The others nodded as the Amazon moved over to the barn. As soon as she was out of earshot Liara looked up with a wistful expression. "She's changed. I don't think…" she trailed looking at her food.
Ashley smiled and patted Liara's back. "She's still in there. But there is a hard exterior about here,"
"Probably this place," Wrex muttered. "No offence but humans are weak. A place like this changes you, and not always for the better. I've seen it on Thuchaka plenty of times. I will say that most humans are adaptable. But not all the time,"
"It depends on the person," Zaeed agreed. "Shepard is strong, and probably adapted to this place better than the rest of us,"
The others just nodded and continued eating.
OOOOO 4 hours later, on the road to Rok City.
It took an hour and a half before the crew, and Shepard were on the move. Mostly because she needed to stock the automatic feeders and give a quick lesson to the crew about the weapons they were given. Then it was a matter of teaching Ashley how to handle raptors in the second cart. Something she wasn't impressed with, or liked. But the marine sucked it up and got the basics. After that, the crew got on the two carts full of supplies and headed to Rok City.
The City itself was 20 miles away through a forest and rugged terrain. But due to their weight thanks to the crew and supplies, it was slow going. The only thing that they had to tangle with was some local animals, but that was about it. As they rode Sonja took out her compass and map. While reading physical maps was still mandatory in the Alliance military, due to advanced tech and mapping programs made map reading skills obsolete.
So, she had to relearn those skills over a period of months during a war she got caught up in. Sonja looked up and then back at the map and compass.
"The exit is just up ahead," she said as she put the items away. "Keep your eyes open,"
"Got it," nearly everyone said.
"Why?" Liara asked. "What are you expecting?"
"Anything and everything," Sonja said. "Rok city is a major trading hub, so it gets targeted by a lot of groups. So, we are likely to see transport ships and dactyl riders,"
That got a few looks, but the crew fell silent. About 20 minutes later they exited the forest overlooking vast green fields which took the crew's breath away as they saw it. While the green fields were expensive and pretty, it was the dinosaurs that caught everyone off. Mostly herbivores, the fields weren't completely covered, but there was enough to take the breath away.
Knowing that dinosaurs existed didn't change their reaction to the grandeur of it all.
"Welcome to Jurassic Park," Sonja joked as she smiled at the looks of her crew.
"Holy…" Joker muttered but was cut off by a shadow covering them forcing him to look up. "What the fuck?" he yelled.
The others looked up and their eyes widened at the sight above them, other than the commander. Above them, a brown-coloured airship flew past them heading in the same direction they were. It was suspended by a large oval-shaped balloon with a metal section underneath. While they couldn't make out any details, given that it was high above them, they could make out what seemed to be canvassed wings and a set of three propellers on each side. Once the shock wore off, they all turned to Shepard who just smiled.
"It's a trading airship," she explained. "Planes are too needy in terms of materials, so groups use airships for travel. While we do have planes, they aren't too widely used. Airships are cheap, easy to produce and require less advanced materials like computers to operate,"
"You mean you have computers?" Jacob asked.
"Yes, but they are quite rare due to how resources intensive they are. So only the high military command, scientists and archives can use them. They are one of the technological exceptions," the Commander explained. "Hell, they are so damn hard to get resources for that military outright forbids targeting structures holding computers or destroying them,"
The group was silent as they digested that bit of information before moving on. Back normal world, where computers were an everyday fact of life, they took them for granted. While they just got here, it began to dawn on the crew that they would need to live without computers. Even Samara, who didn't use technology that much, knew that she would have a hard time adjusting.
It wasn't long until the crew finally got a look at Rok city. It was still a couple of miles away, but they could see a lot of it. The city itself was more of an island city with a bridge connecting them to the mainland. It was designed in a large circle with a central tower in the middle. Around it was shopping, residential, industrial and military structures. The entrance opened up into a main square with stalls waiting for people to come and browse. A dock was set at the far end of the city where the water was the deepest to allow for ships to dock.
There was also a section of the city dedicated to an airship field with four towers standing high in the air with several airships docked at each of them. But one thing that caught some of the crew's eyes was in the western part of the city were several larger buildings that appeared to be mansions. But overall, there was little special about it aside from the fact it looked like a cross between a medical city with the stonework and an industrial city thanks to the chimneys. The combination seemed like it came out of a novel, but given what they had seen so far, it was par for the course.
As they continued, they saw a short line of people waiting to get into the city. A lot of them were getting in quickly, but some people were being stopped and having something like their IDs being checked. With a sigh, Shepard looked to her crew and nodded to herself.
"Guys before we get in, I need to tell you something," All ears, if not eyes, were on her in a second. "I already said that when I got here there was a war going on right?" she got a series of nods at that before she continued. "Well, I got dragged up in said war and sort of became a well…" she trailed off as a pterodactyl called out forcing her and the crew to stop.
It landed in front of them, with two more circling overhead. The man riding it climbed off and walked towards them while taking a rebreather helmet off. Unlike the Scorpion knights Sonja had faced the day before, the only armour this man wore was a pair of gauntlets and grieves. Other than that, he wore a brown bomber jacket and blue trousers. It was reminiscent of World War 1 and 2 pilots. Given that he was riding a flying dinosaur that wasn't a surprise.
"Greetings and welcome to…" he paused as he looked at Sonja. As soon as he eyed the amazon he stood at attention and saluted. "Lady Shepard, I'm sorry I wasn't expecting you,"
"Lady…" Miranda began.
"Shepard?" Liara finished and Sonja just blushed.
"I wasn't planning on coming, but as you can see, I have a few Wavers here to get registered. So I decided to sell some of my merchandise as well," she explained.
"Very good, I'll let the gate guards know," he was about to turn before Sonja called out.
"Wait, what are you doing this far from the city?" she asked.
The rider looked at her with a frown. "Didn't you hear?" the commander shook her head. "A group of bandits attacked about two days ago. We're unsure of their allegiance, so we're stepping up patrols,"
Sonja nodded at that. "We were attacked by Scorpion knights from the Iron Sting Clan yesterday. My area is still within our territorial borders so they may be probing defences,"
The rider nodded and considered what she said. "Maybe the two are in league with each other. Thank you, I'll report it to the Area Captain. He'll decide what to do,"
"Sounds good, have a good patrol," Sonja saluted.
The rider saluted back before getting on his dino and taking off.
"What was that about?" Garrus asked after a moment.
"I'm not sure," Shepard said before shaking her head. "Ether way we need to get to the city. Let's keep moving,"
OOOOO
TIM growled in annoyance as he read the report. The Normandy was found in pieces with bodies floating around. But as he read through the report that growl turned into a frown. There were dead bodies, but they were part of the main crew. The people who operated the main systems were found, frozen thanks to the vacuum of space with cuts, burses and blast wounds, but the main team, Miranda, Joker and a few others… were nowhere to be found.
He stroked his chin as he read further, but there was nothing to indicate where their bodies went. Taking a puff on his cigarette, he tapped his comm.
"Salvage what you can, look for the IFF we need to go to the Collector base," he said.
"Yes sir," came a crisp reply.
"Well, at least one good thing came from this expedition," he smiled.