Alliance Headquarters, Vancouver, Earth
In the stuffy conference room, the drone of voices pushed Shepard's concentration to its limit, causing her attention to drift in and out. She'd lost count of the number of presentations she had endured since her arrival on Earth a little over two weeks ago.
She realised early in the process that, along with several other high-ranking Alliance officers, including Admiral Anderson, her presence was for show rather than contributing meaningfully.
Stifling a yawn, she took advantage of a change in topic and speaker to slip out of the room. Further down the corridor, she found a quiet area, stopped, and pulled out her omni-tool to call Liara.
"Hey, hope I'm not disturbing you," she said, Liara's face now visible on the screen above her arm, "did you find what you were looking for?"
During their previous evening's conversation, Liara expressed great excitement about accessing certain data streams concealed within the quantum storage system's oldest sections.
Liara's eyes widened with excitement as her lover exclaimed, "I believe we've found it, Shepard! We're searching for an uncharted node deep within the facility."
"That sounds great, well done," she heard her name being called and looked up to see Anderson walking quickly towards her. "I've gotta go love, speak this evening." She closed the call and focused on the approaching admiral.
"There's something wrong with our listening stations and we're getting nothing from the deep net. I want you in central command with me while we try to sort out what's going on."
"Did you get a straight answer from the contractors about the problems with the software running the net?" She fell in step alongside him and they headed towards an elevator.
"I'm beginning to feel they are running into problems they don't know how to fix and lying about it." they moved into the elevator car and Anderson hit the button for the 50th floor.
"But someone signed it off as fully operational, and we've been using it," he continued as the lift doors opened and they both walked out into an enormous room. Walls covered with screens and data stations three deep.
At the far end, in front of tall windows offering a view across Vancouver, a group of four Admirals who comprised the Alliance Defence Committee, sat at a conference table.
"Everything was fine until thirty minutes ago," Anderson said as they walked towards the dais.
Shepard felt her body tense and breathing quicken, sensing the stress and anxiety in the room.
Admiral Bailey, who looked pale and to Shepard's keen eye had a slight tremor in his hands, spoke.
"We've just lost contact with Arcturus; in fact, we're not getting any data or communication from outside the sol relay."
The woman sitting next to him, who Shepard recognised as Admiral Blanchette, spoke. "Why have we lost contact with our deep space monitoring Anderson? This system has so many redundancies… there's no way they could all fail."
She went cold, a physical shiver through her body as if she'd walked out into a Vancouver winter in a tee shirt.
"It's them…" she heard her voice and wondered if she'd said it out loud. She looked directly at the members of the Defence Committee, her voice louder now, "it's them, the Reapers are coming… now… It's now…"
"But we aren't…" before Blanchette could finish speaking, a shout sounded from one of the main comms stations.
"We've just lost Luna base alpha."
The icy shiver now turned into a chill that wrapped her heart and she stepped away from the group of Admirals, who seemed all to be speaking at the same time.
Raising her arm, she desperately keyed up her omni tool and tried to connect to Liara. Nothing. The connection wouldn't go through. She tried Liselle and again, nothing.
"Do we still have Mars?" She shouted out across the noise in the room.
From somewhere to her right, she heard another shout, "we've lost contact with Antarctic Delta."
The shouts were coming thick and fast now and the vast bank of screens that previously showed comms streams from across the defence network now went blank, one after the other.
"Central Euro has gone dark…"
"We're getting emergency only transmissions from East Asia,"
She stood frozen, her mind racing. The bitter taste of adrenaline in her mouth, thoughts of Liara facing Reapers on Mars, chased round and around her mind for what seemed like an eternity. She heard her name being shouted.
"Shepard, are they really here?"
It was Anderson, now standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. Looking past him, she saw the group of Admirals all waiting for the answer.
"How the hell did they get past our sensor net…" she asked no one in particular.
A shout went up and all eyes turned to the bank of large screens. Live news feeds from a handful of cities, including London, Shanghai, Moscow. The shapes descending from the smoke of burning buildings were unmistakable. A hard fist closed around her gut.
"We're out of time," she said almost softly, then repeated in a shout, "we're out of time, they're here."
"What can we do…" Admiral Bailey looked between her and Anderson.
A fire flooded her mind, burning away her torpor. "We fight… we win… or we die."
She pointed at the screens. "activate the resurgence plan, now… while we still have comms. Get all the ships off the ground… get everything we still have to the rendezvous."
"The Alliance Navy will never run from defending Earth," an admiral she didn't recognise said, and she felt Anderson stiffen next to her.
"We can't beat them…" she shouted, now desperate to get through to them. This moment felt eerily familiar, but she didn't dwell on the feeling.
"This isn't about running away," her fists clenched and a scowl settled on her face, "we can't trick them, outsmart or kill them…"
Before she could finish yelling at them, the building vibrated, and the city skyline beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows caught her attention.
Through the clouds, a huge dark shape floated downwards, its angry red eye already glowing. It seemed to point directly at her.
"Get down… get away from the…" she was running backwards and could do nothing but watch as the Admirals froze in place and stared at the Reaper as it let loose a stream of red energy that blasted directly through the windows.
The force hurled her through the air; then she hit something, perhaps a wall. All the air left her lungs when she slammed into the floor. Dust, darkness, moaning, the smell of burning, then a voice shouting… someone pulling her to her feet.
"Shepard… we have to go… are you hurt?" it was Anderson. As her head cleared and her eyes focussed, she noted a huge gash across the side of his head and his left arm hung oddly at his side.
"I'm okay… I think… we should…" she wanted to stay and help drag people from the rubble, make sure they got help. But she knew her and Anderson's duty lay elsewhere.
"We need to get to the Normandy…" as he spoke, he checked one of the marine guards who had been outside the room, now laying bloodied amongst twisted metal. He threw her a rifle and kept the pistol, pushing it into his belt as they started down the corridor, looking for the emergency exits.
"This is Anderson… who is up on this channel?"
As they ran, she keyed her own comms and tried to connect directly with the Normandy.
"Normandy, this is Shepard, what is your status?" she waited a few seconds, then before she could comm again she heard Joker responding.
"Captain, this is Normandy… it's pretty hot here, and I'd like to get our girl in the air."
"Do it. Get as many personnel on board as you can before you lift off. But don't hang about. I'm with Anderson and we'll try to make our way to the shipyards and pick up a ride." Another part of her mind, the less rational part, was screaming to let Joker pick her up… she had to get to Liara… had to save her… make sure she was safe.
"We can't leave without you, Captain… I can play hide and seek with…"
"No," she cut him off, "get to Mars and pick up Liara," and thought struck her, "why isn't my Exec on this call?"
She began begged the Goddess that Tash was on board and hadn't been off base. So many of her crew and marine teams were on leave or attending briefings off the ship. Again, she had to fight against a tidal wave of need to do something, anything, to get to Liara. An animalistic rage at her inability to bend the situation to her will almost overwhelmed her.
"She's tied up at the moment commander," Joker sounded more tense than she had ever heard him, "one of their small ships dropped a load of those ugly ass thrall things in the middle of the base."
"Get her on board and get out, Joker, that's a direct order." they were running down stairs now along with hundreds of other personnel. Anderson was firing out orders like bullets and she decided in that moment that her place would be next to Anderson, fighting on Earth.
"Edi," she shouted over the noise in the stairwell, "status on our upgrades… are we combat ready?"
"Yes, Shepard, all the work is complete. However, the engineers are still testing and calibrating. If we depart immediately, we will be without seventy per cent of our crew."
That was a blow, but before she could dwell on who might have already been lost, she needed to switch her focus.
"Relay my order to Commander Mikhailovich, and make it clear they are not to be questioned. Get away clean, with as many as you can, get to Mars. Pick up our people and rendezvous with the fleet."
They had reached one of the emergency chute locations still operational. That beat the hell out of running down another forty floors.
"Understood Shepard, I am relaying those orders."
"Shepard out." She had to let the Normandy go. concentrate her mind here. On doing whatever she could with Anderson, to fight back. She would find another way to get to Liara.
Once they hit the street, the true devastation of the attack unfolded. Buildings shattered, downed aircraft and space ships adding to the destruction. People running in all directions. Military personnel looked lost and confused.
"We need to get the resurgence protocol up and running," she looked at Anderson, who was checking out his omni tool.
"All local comms are down. We need to get to the Normandy."
"I sent them off planet," she said, confusion and frustration Waring with the tiny spark of hope that Anderson could make it possible for her to reunite with Liara.
"Good plan, but the Normandy is the nearest resurgence comms centre. And we need the lights back on now, not in a week. Which is how long it's likely to take for us to reach the nearest centre dirt side."
Shepard started organising the Alliance personnel within earshot, giving orders to get weapons and body armour and report to muster stations.
"Can you get the Normandy back," Anderson asked, "I've plotted a route down to the bay which gives enough room for a pickup."
She tried calling up the ship but couldn't connect. There was now deliberate signal jamming and dampening in place. Earth was also losing her satellites and space comm arrays, which meant that even local area networks reliant on Earth net would no longer work.
This was why one of the key elements of the resurgence plan was to use old-fashioned wireless radios, things called walkie talkies and radio relay stations. A form of technology that had to be rebuilt from history with the help of some enthusiasts who collected or built these ancient devices from Earth's pre-digital era.
"I'm jammed," Shepard said as she started off behind Anderson towards the docks.
"We'll grab a ride on anything we can find then," the Admiral shouted warning to the civilians around them as another Reaper fell to Earth a few blocks over and started levelling buildings and blowing up shuttles that got in its way.
Groups of thralls interrupted their progress, which they avoided when possible and fought when necessary. Shepard would rather have ripped each of the abominations to pieces, but they would never win by killing the Reaper foot troops one at a time.
After what felt like hours, they emerged into more open space, looking down to the bay and out across to the Alliance yards on the other side of the water. The air was full of drones and Alliance attack fighters, duelling, leaving trails of smoke behind and flashing beams of defiance in front.
Shepard joined Anderson on top of a pile of rubbish that had earlier been a small apartment block, or an office complex. The smell of burning buildings and vehicles scorched her lungs and left an acrid taste in her mouth.
The Reapers were tearing everything apart, and nothing they could do was going to stop them. Nothing they could do right now. The only real hope for the Galaxy was that Liara and her team had found something in the archive's to even up the odds. And that she wasn't being overrun by Reapers.
The thought of Liara fighting Reaper hordes on Mars rocked her so badly she stumbled and only Anderson catching her arm stopped her from falling down the side of the cliff of rubble.
"We have to get down there now," he said close to her ear.
She nodded and shouted over the general conflagration of noise, "I think we'll just have to scramble down and hope."
Their eyes met, and he nodded.
They both began running and jumping from one foothold to the next down the eighty-foot drop to the harbour below.
Shepard was about two-thirds of the way down when she lost her footing. Her semi-controlled slide turned into a rolling tumble. Feeling every jagged puncture across her body, every contact with the broken building, before coming to a violent stop at the bottom.
The scream of air sucking turbo engines filled her ears, and she felt her body throb with the pressure of its passing low overhead and smashing into one of the tall buildings on the edge of the harbour.
It was probably an apartment block, she thought, homes… where people were living everyday lives… she could remember what that felt like.
A face came into view and she released she was still laying her back where the rubble had dumped her.
"Let's move Shepard, cover nearer the water," Anderson offered his left hand, and she noticed his right arm hanging awkwardly by his side, dripping blood.
What the hell was wrong with her? She had to get her head in the moment, not worried about what was happening on Mars… Mars… Reapers… Liara.
"Shepard", Anderson's shout broke through her inertia and she followed him to the shattered remains of a small building on the edge of the jetties.
She took up a position at the edge of the cover and scanned the area through her scope as she listened to the exchange behind her. Anderson was talking to the small group who were also taking cover. From her quick glance on the way towards them, she noticed three soldiers and a couple of navy pilots.
"Do any of you have working comms?" Anderson asked.
"No Admiral," Shepard guessed that was one of the Navy pilots, "we've been trying to get to that crashed shuttle to see if the radio is still working."
Another voice added, "Every time we try, we either get shot by their ships or a load of those uglies get dropped on the docks."
Anderson's voice was quiet as he asked, "how many have you lost, son?"
"Our entire platoon, sir… we only just made it back to cover from the last run."
Shepard looked over her shoulder to see who had spoken. It was one soldier, a very young looking corporal. Looking at the stunned expressions on all their faces, she noted the edge of fear and exhaustion playing in their eyes.
Goddess, they already feel beaten, and the first day isn't over. Before she could say anything, Anderson spoke again.
"Well, this time we're going to get someone to the shuttle, get comms up and find out where the real fighting is… then we're going to join in," his voice was strong, confident and she could hear the difference his leadership made with the chorus of yes sir's he received.
Looking at the pilot who had spoken and pointed to a smoking wreck, its cockpit ploughed into the side of the jetty, she asked, "that one?"
"Yes, Captain."
Anderson looked at her and she could see in his eyes he was going to go himself.
"I'll go," she said. "your arm is fucked and none of the others are up to it. I'll move faster on my own."
As the last words played across her mind, she smiled at a memory of Turian spectre who had said the same thing a long, long time ago.
She smiled and saw his responding acknowledgement of the memory.
"What with me being a spectre and all that…" she moved out of the scant cover and as quickly as the ripped up and battered terrain would allow worked her way towards the shuttle.
As she got closer, the bodies of Alliance soldiers and sailors littered the approach. Above her, battles still raged, and the sky was full of sound and fury.
Occasionally, a Reaper would make a sound like nothing she had ever heard. The sound made the ground rumble beneath her feet, and a distorted trumpet blast from hell, followed by a crackling, sizzling red beam of destruction.
She only just heard Anderson's shout over the noise that seemed to resonate inside her mind and amplifying the horrors being unleashed around her.
"More of those things dropping Shepard."
Taking a moment to orient herself in cover, she looked back and saw him organising their small group into firing positions. Looking forward, she saw the nearby shuttle with its side peeled open, as if a giant can opener had run amok.
Then she saw them. The abominations of the Reapers used for their ground forces. The research she had brought back from their missions, and what had happened on Eden Prime, had made it possible to identify that they had once been members of species captured or destroyed by the Reapers and converted.
A group of them had dropped just in front of the shuttle, while another group had landed close to Anderson's position.
Checking her weapon, she held it tucked into her shoulder so that she could fire it one handed. Opening her omni blade, she climbed to the top of the pile of debris.
Taking only a split second, she sized up the group, now stumbling and shuffling towards her position. Eight targets of varying sizes, each powerfully armed, as she knew from bitter experience, confronted her.
She leapt as high into the air as her enhanced skeleton would let her and started firing. Heads and what passed for arms, or weapon attachments, blew apart as she rose above them. Landing in their midst, she began slashing and hacking with her omni blade while still firing.
Breathing hard, her muscles burning, she turned in place, looking for another target. She saw a circle of oozing pieces of meat, only the occasional twitch showing they had once been animated.
Sheathing her blade, she completed the last few metres to the shuttle and jumped inside.
It took around an hour to get the comms station up and running. There had been two more waves of Reaper thralls, but Anderson and his team drew them away from Shepard and dealt with them to leave her free to work.
Amid the crackle and static, she picked up fragments of transmissions.
"… please help us, these things are killing my neighbours… keep my children…"
"… low on charges… ammo drop to this… we have civilians, children here…"
"… everyone's dead… the officers, my team, all of them… hiding… please… what am I supposed to do…"
Shepard couldn't think about the pain, the fear, the death all around her. They had to get organised… to find Liara. Pushing that last thought away, she dialled into the emergency secured point-to-point comms that they had set up for just this emergency.
"This is call sign Seagull Gamma, I say again, call sign Seagull Gamma, operation dark hours is a go, I say again operation dark hours is a go, do you copy?"
She switched from transmission to receive and leaned back a little on her heels, waiting for the response. The only sound was a low buzzing.
Outside, Anderson and their ragged team had made it to the shuttle, and he came inside.
"Any response."
"No, not yet. I'll keep transmitting," she turned to him, needing his strength, "what if it's too late, what if all our command centres are already down… if we didn't get the radio network up before…"
He reached over and put his hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes, his voice steady. "Whatever tech fails us, we have our own resilience Shepard. We have leaders like you and Admiral Hackett, so I like our chances."
Before she could respond to him, a burst of static, followed by a faint transmission, sang through the speakers. Although they both strained to listen and she tried to clear up the message, it was too degraded.
"We have incoming," one of the team now defending the perimeter of the shuttle shouted. Anderson stepped to the jagged opening and looked in the direction the soldier was pointing.
Shepard kept working at the radio, now frantically trying to clean up the incoming message. The shuttle and the dock it was resting on began to thrum and rumble as she recognised the sound of an incoming troop transport.
It was not an Alliance vehicle. She moved to stand next to Anderson, and they both watched the Reaper transport fly low overhead and drop what looked like hundreds of their thrall's a mere 100 metres in front of them.
She moved to a firing position next to the ragtag team of soldiers and sailors, knowing this would be her last stand.
Anderson went to check their wounded, who had moved into the carcass of the shuttle. She knew he would leave them with enough grenade to blow them all to hell once their position was overrun.
"Steady, wait for my signal." she worked hard to keep her voice strong and let her training and instinct take over. Only allowing the briefest of moments to send a message of love and regret to her soulmate as the tide of death rolled towards them.
From the corner of her vision out over the water she saw a flash of light, and in the same instant the Reaper transport, which was now rising back into the sky, blew apart. The blast wave flattened the rear ranks of the oncoming horde and deadly debris hit the ground in a ball of fire.
Before she could catch her breath, a sleek, and familiar shape crossed her field of view, laying down a barrage of fire that all but eviscerated the Reaper troops. In the same moment from the comms station behind her, a familiar voice broke through the sound of battle.
"Did someone call for a shuttle ride?" Joker's voice sounded playful, but she knew him well enough to hear the edge of stress.
As she watched the Normandy manoeuvred to place the ship's rear loading ramp, which was open, towards them a few feet above the broken jetty.
"Have you got all our people?" she asked as Anderson made his way towards her. There was a pause before Joker answered and when she heard his reply, she knew why.
"No Captain, we have some, but a lot of the crew were on leave or visiting the Academy on a tour."
"Joker," Anderson spoke and Shepard heard the urgency in his tone, "we have wounded here. We need to get them some help, and we need the resurgence comms net activated… has that been done?"
Another voice came on the comms and she felt herself relax, just a little.
"Admiral, this is Commander Mikhailovich," Tash said calmly. Shepard thanked the universe for having her second-in-command. "Resurgence is not activated yet."
Anderson jumped into the Normandy's hangar as two local defence shuttles flew in and settled on the docks. She watched as med techs and troops jumped out and tended to her ramshackle team.
"You are the best of us," she said as others helped or carried them into the shuttles. They returned her salute, and she wondered for a moment how temporary the relief on their faces would be.
Turning, she saw Anderson coming back down the ramp.
"Our emergency systems are all now active. I need you to pick up our people from Mars and anything they've found to help us fight and get it to the fleet rendezvous. That information will be in your biometric sealed orders."
He drew level with her and continued, "I'm staying here to organise our defences."
"But.. we need you… with us, with the fleet…" she broke off as he laid his hands on her shoulders.
"I'm needed here Shepard, we have no idea who has survived and we need to put in place our military leadership, and find as many civilian leaders as we can." He smiled at her, "you have your orders Captain, now go help save our arses."
He moved away towards the shuttles and she jumped onto the ramp and backed up into the hangar. She kept her eyes on him, watching him through the door of the shuttle. With a final wave, he turned away and the shuttle door closed.
She felt bereft, alone, rudderless.
The two Alliance shuttles rose and before she had another thought, they had disappeared into the smoke.
Turning away as the rear door closed, she spoke into her comms, "get us out of here Joker, let's pick up our people on Mars."
Shepard entered the CIC and felt disoriented as she looked across the stations and didn't see any familiar faces.
They all looked so young, young and afraid. The fear in the CIC was palpable. Whoever these sailors were, they were not battle hardened, or experienced. Possibly the tech team that had been stuck on board when the fighting started.
To her relief, Tash walked down the gangway from the bridge and, as she stood to attention, said, "Captain on deck."
The response from the sailors clustered around the various systems stations was textbook. They all snapped to attention and turned to face her.
Shepard returned her exec's salute. "I see a lot of unfamiliar faces, Commander."
Tash walked towards her while the sailors remained at parade attention. "Well, Captain, we had a class from the Academy on a tour when everything went sideways, so I decided we'd extend their visit a little."
"Good thinking, Exec," indeed it was. With almost two-thirds of their own crew missing, any half trained sailors were better than no crew at all.
She continued, "stand easy people. You may have noticed Earth is in some trouble, and some of you may have wanted to stay and fight. But we need you here, more than you realise at the moment. "
Moving to stand in front of the group, she asked, "So, what were you studying at the Academy?" She could tell from the ensign bars on their uniforms that they were all junior officers and prayed they were a combat class and not all engineers.
No one spoke at first, then a few answered at once, then everyone stopped talking and looked at a tall blonde-haired woman who looked older than the rest.
"We are second year, ma'am. Ship's combat system specialists. We have a mix of skill sets but we'll have to learn on the job. But they are smart and hardworking."
Shepard sized up the woman and realised why the others had deferred to her and why she had given all the information she had been looking for.
"You're a mustang," it was a statement, not a question, "what's your previous experience?"
"Chief petty officer specialist engineering, working on combat systems towards the end of my last tour with the Armageddon."
"Well Ensign…"
"Carter, Ensign first class Carter, ma'am."
"Well Ensign Carter, I am promoting you to full lieutenant and entrusting you with the task of looking after our new team," she observed the rest of the ensigns, who were still standing upright. "this will not be the first duty you envisaged. You will be taking the place of our specialists instead of leading them. But the Normandy needs your best, the Alliance needs your best… Earth needs our very best. And we will not fail. Welcome aboard the Normandy."
She turned away, heard Tash dismiss them, and dull murmurs of conversation replaced the silence.
As Tash caught her up she said, "fucking relieved you're here Tash. Now let's go to my ready room and you can give me a full sitrep."
For twenty minutes, they had shared their experiences from the moment that the Reapers had arrived.
Tash, as Shepard had, immediately tried to connect with Lisselle on Mars with no success.
Then the race to get as many crew back to the ship, get cleared away for take off, while fighting off Reaper thralls on the docks.
"We just had to lock down and lift off with everyone we had on board and whoever was on the dockside with us," Tash said, her eyes a little unfocused as she recalled the events.
"How did we end up with those first year ensigns? I don't think I was listening when I got on board." she asked, trying to work out how many gaps they had in the crew.
"They were on a visit from the Academy," Tash stood and went to the coffee station and began making a drink, "we only have the marines who were on ship duty and around ten per cent of the crew."
Tash sat back down and her shoulders hunched. "Garrus and Skark are stuck with their teams at the Academy," she looked up and her eyes looked bruised, "I couldn't get to them…"
"You did all you could, Tash. You got the ship out, and you saved my arse."
She stood and stretched bones that were tired from running and gunning across half of Vancouver. "I'm going to grab a quick shower and get changed. Keep trying to contact Mars and let's go rescue our people."