No one, the four people -three women of approximate age, species permitting, and one man nearly the same age as modern human history- closest to her most especially, were remotely surprised when Cassandra locked herself alone in the Captain’s Cabin for a spat of meditation the moment that the Normandy was airborne and winging it’s way towards Terra Nova. After all, she didn’t exactly have the best history with batarians, and batarian ‘partisans’ even less so. The fact that the information on the impending attack had come from enemies, traitors, that they had been in the midst of destroying for their crimes against the Alliance and basic decency could only have made her angrier, and so everyone -even Liara- left her to her privacy.
For Cassandra’s part, she was meditating. But it wasn’t, as everyone assumed, to get a leash on her wrath over the situation at hand. That was already handled. Furious thought she might be, as ready to eradicate Cerberus and the batarian’s behind this plot alike as she was, she had decided to channel that seething energy into far more useful pursuits: delving into the White-Hot Room and working on sifting through and assimilating the knowledge of the Prothean Beacon. A process that had been ongoing, she knew, ever since she had encountered it to begin with, and while Jean -or any of the other former hosts that lived in The Room- hadn’t exactly been giving her daily updates, they hadn’t left her entirely oblivious either. Plus, it was hard to miss when you were waking up periodically knowing things that you hadn’t known when you’d gone to bed.
Better still, her ‘assistants’ had done what they could to focus their deciphering efforts on things of more immediate use. Prothean culture and cuisine was certainly interesting -though also horrifying, the ‘carving the liver out of the still-alive Salarian because the terror and the pain makes it taste better’ was pretty damn monstrous- to be sure, and would definitely prove useful at some point in the future she was sure. But right now, she needed actionable intel about the Reapers from a military perspective.
Intel that she was getting, in detail and in significant volume.
The Protheans had fought the Reapers for centuries before finally falling, and the amount of information that they had collected -and the number of Reapers that they had killed collecting it- was nothing short of incredible. Oh, they’d paid in blood to kill those Reapers, to gather than intelligence, but gather it they had, and now Cassandra knew that the Reapers had very light anti-air defenses, that the drones they used for fighter-analogues were dumb as bricks and not particularly maneuverable, and that the main guns the dreadnaughts and cruisers carried would deal devastating damage to any Citadel warship that they attacked. Even the Ascension-class dreadnaughts of the Asari would be hard-pressed to fight Reapers head on, which was a hell of a problem given that those few warships were the largest and most powerful craft that Citadel races were capable of deploying.
Their ground troops wouldn’t be as dangerous, fortunately, or at least not to a prepared, well-equipped force. They were stupid, lacked strategic or critical thinking skills, and seemed to rely predominantly on simply overwhelming their enemies with their -admittedly vastly superior- numbers. Those numbers would be dangerous, even the most skilled and well-armed force could eventually be overwhelmed, but she knew that husks, for example, could be slaughtered by the dozens by a prepared platoon of Marines.
The problem, of course, was that the Reapers could make more of the damned things practically at will. Cassandra had seen flashes of memory, of Prothean worlds where millions of civilians had been rounded up and processed into combat forms in a matter of weeks. The Reapers wouldn't need to bring an army with them, they'd simply make one out of whoever was available.
That was why the indoctrination the Reapers could wield, the mental corruption and control that they could use to bend people to their will, was so insidious. It wasn't just a means of control; it was a harvesting mechanism. Turn your enemies into your servants, then into your soldiers. Elegant, brilliant even, if utterly horrific.
Beyond that, though, there was something else in the Beacon that the various Hosts of the Phoenix had been working to try and decipher, something that seemed to have been deliberately obfuscated by the Protheans themselves. A plan put in place by the surviving supreme commanders of the Empire, when they finally realized that victory was beyond them, to put a large number of Protheans into stasis. A fail-safe, to reestablish their Empire once the Reapers had withdrawn into dark space once again, a fail safe that would let them build up an Empire even more powerful than the one that had preceded it.
A fail safe that would seem to have failed, but it was still worth pursuing none the less. Even if the soldiers had, themselves, been destroyed or wiped out or never woken up, the technology that the Prothean Empire had wielded at the end of their war with the Reapers was certainly an improvement on what the Citadel races used now. And if they hadn’t, well…the Protheans weren’t numerous enough to take control of the galaxy, especially not if they took further losses fighting the Reapers again.
Cold, even cruel, and practical thinking, but when one was looking down the barrel of galactic extinction, one found oneself considering otherwise-appalling strategies. And, frankly, as much as the Protheans deserved a chance to have their race live again -for the same reasons that she had spared the Rachni Queen-, she didn’t doubt that they would prove problematic and reticent when it came to ‘integration’ with the rest of the galaxy. After all, she reiterated mentally, they had regularly hunted and eaten members of the races that now sat in the Citadel. Not exactly the most sociable behavior, that, and it would be hard for people as adrift in time as these stasis-held-beings to adjust to the fact that their former meals now had dreadnaughts and colony worlds.
At any rate, none of them had been able to discern where, exactly, this lost legacy of the ancients was hidden, and unfortunately -at least in this case- the Protheans had once controlled a truly vast number of worlds. More than the modern Citadel did, as a matter of fact, since the Citadel had stopped exploring after the Rachni War. That was nearly two-thousand years of further settlement, infrastructure creation, resource harvesting, and the like that the Citadel races simply didn’t possess.
It also meant that searching for the location of this ancient failsafe in a haystack the size of a galaxy, while trying to survive long enough to find it. No pressure there, hmm?
A sardonic smile crossed Cassandra's face as she contemplated the enormity of the task, the fact that her thoughts of moments ago didn’t actually grasp, sufficiently, just how large it was. Finding a needle in a haystack was one thing, but at least you knew what a needle looked like. This? This was hunting for something they couldn't even properly visualize, with only fragments of corrupted data to guide them, data she wasn’t even meant to understand to begin with.
The presence of Jean, always foremost of the non-Phoenix entities within her soul, sent a comforting, determined wave of emotion in her direction. The collected minds within The Room would keep working on this, would keep delving deeper into the Beacon and sifting through the knowledge that it held on her behalf. They, like the concept each of them had once wielded, found the Reapers’ ‘cycle’ to be anything but natural, and therefore found it deeply offensive even if their particular racial or cultural moral framework didn’t take much issue with mass genocide.
Most of them did come from races and cultures that took issue with it, fortunately.
A flicker of awareness had her mind returning to her body, and she blinked her eyes rapidly just as the door chimed at her to let her known that someone outside was waiting to speak with her. A wave of her hand had the portal opening as she rose to her feet, and she arched her eyebrow at the nervous-but-determined Ashley standing on the other side.
Things had gotten…interesting between them, to say the least. Liara had been Up To Something ever since she’d arrived on the ship, constantly inviting Tali and Ashley to join them in various activities and commenting on their fine features to Cassie whenever possible, and it had taken Cassie an inordinate amount of time to realize that her lover was trying to pull the other two young women into their little family.
And, from the looks of things, Ashley was well on her way to asking for exactly that.
"Comm…Shepard" Ashley said, standing with that military stiffness that seemed to to be her default, but by now Cassandra knew was an affectation. A shield against vulnerability, one that was already cracking as Ash used her name -even if it was her last name- rather than her rank. "I... wondered if I might have a word?"
Cassandra gestured to the bed, the largest and most comfortable piece of furniture that she had, lips quirking slightly at the pink that immediately stained the brunette’s cheeks. "Of course, Ash. Come in, and get comfortable."
When Ashley hesitated all the same, she rolled her eyes and made a rather more demanding gesture.
"Have a seat, seriously. I don't bite. Not without permission, anyway."
The joke had its intended effect. Ashley's posture loosened slightly as she sat down on the edge of the bed, though she kept a careful distance between them, and her fingers fidgeted with the hem of her uniform shirt.
"I wanted to talk to you about... us," Ashley said finally, the words coming out in a rush. "And Liara. And...and Tali, I guess."
Cassandra felt a flicker of amusement mingled with something warmer, fonder, at Ashley's somewhat-direct approach to what was on her mind. She hadn’t ever struck Cassie as a coward, but she was clearly inexperienced in matters of romance, and courage mixed with shy uncertainty made for quite the interesting combination. Interesting, and most assuredly endearing.
"I'm listening." was all she said aloud, keeping her voice gentle and inviting as she settled beside Ashley, giving her enough space to feel comfortable while still making it clear she was engaged in the conversation…and not so far enough away that Ashley couldn’t close the distance between them if she wanted to.
Ashley drew a deep breath, steeling herself visibly, looking very much the way someone did when they were stepping out onto frozen water and weren’t quite sure just how solid it actually was. "I've been... noticing things. Between us. And I know Liara's been, well, not exactly subtle about trying to include me and Tali in activities with you two."
"She has a way of pursuing what she wants, yes." Cassandra agreed, a small smile playing at her lips as she thought of her asari lover's determined matchmaking. "Though I hope you know she hasn't been doing it without my consent," she added, wanting to reassure her companion as she sensed a flicker of fear and indignation lash through Ashley’s mind. "I was fully aware of what she was doing."
Ashley's brows furrowed slightly. "So you're... okay with it? With what she's been trying to do? She’s not…it’s not some sort of..?”
“If your next thoughts are ‘prank’ or ‘cheating’, you’re quite wrong. Liara would never do that, and even if she would, I would never tolerate it. Which you seem well aware of, even if you’re having trouble believing it. No, Liara’s entirely serious about tempting the two of you into bed with us.” Cassie said bluntly, not inclined to prevaricate or speak delicately given the subject. Frankly, this was a conversation that should have waited until they were done at Terra Nova, but she was willing to bet Ashley had barely managed to have it now, and any delay -especially at Cassie’s command- would kill any chance of the conversation entirely. “And not as occasional play things, guests, fuckbuddies, or any other such euphemism. We don’t do that, she and I, and we’ve never wanted to. We’ve never sought out anyone to join us long-term, either, because we’ve never met anyone that even made the possibility come to mind. Until you two.”
Ashley's eyes widened, her lips parting slightly as she processed Cassandra's words, and the directness that they had been delivered with. A flush crept up her neck, not entirely from embarrassment this time.
"I... didn't expect you to be so straightforward about it, ma’am." she admitted, her voice dropping to something just above a whisper, and Cassandra had to resist the urge to let her expression show just how much she enjoyed being called ma’am in that tone of voice and in these circumstances. Wouldn’t do to scare Ash away before this conversation could happen.
“This isn’t the sort of thing to dance around with, Ash. I’ve never been fond of that for relationships to begin with, think it’s more likely to cause grief than anything else, and certainly not when we’re talking about something as complicated as this promises to be.” She said instead, shaking her head firmly, before smiling faintly at the other woman and gently putting one of her hands on Ashley’s own, squeezing gently. “Besides, I’m pretty fond of you. I certainly wouldn’t toy with your heart.”
Ashley swallowed, her eyes dropping to where Cassandra's hand rested on hers, resisting the urge to lace their fingers together. Just the feeling of their hands pressed together though, innocent as the gesture might be, had a warm tingle rolling down her arm to fill her chest. It was…intimate, in an entirely chaste way, and she felt somewhat emboldened.
"I'm fond of you too, a-and I admit that Liara is beautiful and Tali is cute, and I…might be getting fond of them as well." she mumbled, the words quiet and fumbling but genuine. Then, finding her courage, she looked up and met Cassandra's eyes. "I've never... I mean, I didn't think I would ever... with a woman, let alone multiple women. And two of them being aliens." She laughed nervously, then paled rapidly. “Not that I’m saying you have to, or that I’m assuming I have a right…!”
"You don't need to backpedal, Ash, I’m not angry or offended." Cassandra said, giving Ashley's hand another gentle squeeze, lacing their fingers together a bit and enjoying the small smile and flush that stole across the other young woman’s face. "I’m not going to get angry at you for being honest about being interested. If I wasn’t interested in you, if I wasn’t okay with what Liara was doing, I would have put a stop to it a long time ago.”
"So you're saying..." Ashley trailed off, her gaze searching Cassandra's face with a mixture of hope and uncertainty, excitement and dread.
Cassandra smiled, though it bordered on a smirk, gentle but confident, soft but bold. "I'm saying that if you're interested in exploring something with us –with me, with Liara, with Tali if she's interested too– then we're open to that. No pressure, no expectations. Just... possibility."
The warmth of Ashley's hand in hers felt right, somehow, more right than she would have ever expected a moment like this to feel. Different than Liara, of course, that went without saying. Ashley’s hand a bit larger, stronger, firmer, but those differences didn’t make the touch any less enjoyable. Just equally enjoyable in a different way.
"I don't know what I'm doing, ma’am." Ashley admitted, her voice still low, but now lacking some of the tension and negative emotion that had threaded through it earlier. "I've never... this isn't exactly covered in Alliance training manuals, and I didn’t exactly have people falling all over themselves to romance me in school or during the rest of my career."
“We’ll figure it out, if that’s what you want to do, Ash. Liara and I have known each other for most of our lives, since we were children. We were best friends long before we started sleeping together.” Cassandra reassured, grimacing slightly almost immediately as Ashley’s shoulders drooped slightly and a metaphorical cloud started to coalesce over her head, a cold grey drifting into her heart. “I’m not saying that to hurt you, Ash, or to remind you that you’re…you’re lesser somehow, or won’t be as close or as valued. I promise, I’d care for each of you equally. The reason I brought it up is because it just…happened naturally. When it comes to dating and romance with you, someone I’m still getting to know? I’m just as inexperienced as you are. So don’t worry about being perfect for me from day one, because I can guarantee I won’t be for you.”
Ashley's expression softened, the cloud parting like mist before the morning sun as happy understanding dawned in her eyes. "You really mean that, don't you?"
"I do, one-hundred percent." Cassandra affirmed, her thumb tracing small circles on Ashley's hand. "Relationships aren't competitions. I'm not looking to replace what I have with Liara, she’s not looking to replace me with you. We’re looking to add something new. Something different but equally valuable."
The tension in Ashley's shoulders eased further, and she shifted slightly closer on the bed. "And what about... I mean, how would we...?" She gestured vaguely with her free hand, cheeks flushing darker as she tried to talk about sex without talking about sex, and Cassandra resisted the urge to laugh, knowing it would likely be taken the wrong way.
"That's something we'd figure out together. No rush, no pressure. We can take things at whatever pace feels comfortable." she promised, before dipping a bit more into the edge of command that only Liara had ever gotten to see, her free hand taking Ashley firmly by the chin and making sure their eyes met. “But I don’t want you doing anything because Liara is, or because our mission makes you feel a certain way. I forbid it. I won’t have you hurting yourself, or us, that way. When I say at your pace, I mean at your pace. Am I understood, Ashley?”
Ashley drew a deep breath, her eyes holding Cassandra's gaze with newfound, or perhaps newly applied, resolve. "Yes, ma'am. I understand completely."
"Good." Cassandra released her chin but maintained that intense eye contact. "That being the case, then... is this something you want to explore? With us?"
The question hung between them, delicate yet thick with implication, with potential. Ashley's pulse quickened, the warmth of Cassandra's hand in hers anchoring her to the moment as her mind raced through implications, desires, and yes, fears. Many fears, ones that she’d had before and ones that were new to this very moment, but in the end she was not a woman that had ever allowed fear to dictate her actions.
"I do, ma’am." she finally said, her voice steadier than she expected. "I want to try. I can't promise I'll be... good at it, or that I won't stumble and make an ass out of myself, but I want to see where this goes. If you’re willing to be patient with me."
Cassandra’s lips curled into a warm, genuinely happy smile, and if Ashley had any blood left in her body, it stained her cheeks at how radiant it made her commander look. “Patience is something I can manage. You know how many migraines I had teaching Liara how to properly behave?”
Ashley laughed, the sound a little hoarse but genuine and heartfelt, and when Cassandra leaned in, ever-so-slowly, to rest their foreheads together, she didn’t pull away or protest. The contact was casual, intimate, even simple, but despite how simple it was, it felt to them more eloquent than a dozen words. Cassandra let them exist in that closeness for a long moment, content just to breathe and be, and it wasn’t until Ashley’s hand twitched uncertainly between them that she realized how close they were to a kiss.
She drew back, just enough, letting Ashley have the choice. Letting her make the decision about whether she was ready for this next step.
A moment later, their lips were pressed together. It was gentle, undemanding, this first kiss they shared. Nothing like the hungry affairs of holovids or the violent first collisions that the young experienced in their first fumbling attempts at romance, but for Ashley it was world-shaking. For all it’s tentativeness, it’s softness and chastity, it felt to her like she would have been seeing stars if her eyes weren’t closed. Her other hand, the one not trapped in Cassandra's grip, instinctively came up to touch the other woman's cheek, not cradling or cupping it -somehow, that felt too forward, too dominant- but just brushing against it in a featherlight touch.
When they parted, it was by increments, an inch at a time, like neither of them was quite ready to let go of the moment just yet. Ashley found herself smiling, a genuine, soft, dare it be said feminine smile of happiness.
“That’s my girl…” Cassie murmured, sending pleasure and happy embarrassment spiking through Ashley, before she sighed softly. “We don’t have a lot of time, Ash. When this mission is over, I want you and Liara in here so that all three of us can talk, get more used to one another. But right now, I need you to head down to your station and make sure you’re ready for this mission. Because I swear to God, if you get hurt badly enough to get pulled off of my ship after this, I will personally punish you for it.”
The threat sounded like a joke, but Ashley could feel the truth coiled just underneath, and the implication -for reasons that she couldn’t quite understand at the moment- left her lightheaded and grinning. It was spectacularly improper, being dismissed from her superior’s personal quarters in the aftermath of a kiss instead of a reprimand or a debriefing, but for the first time in a long while, Ashley felt unburdened, even buoyant as she rose from the bed and headed for the door. The two of them didn’t break hand contact until the last possible second, and it lingered with her all the way down the corridor, a phantom warmth in her palm that outlasted any twinge of awkwardness.
For the first time in her life, she felt that life truly was improving for Ashley Williams, and she wasn’t going to let that go.
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“Nemesis, this is Archangel, we have the first torch in sight. Ready to attack on your word.” Garrus’ voice murmured lowly through the comms, the sound of Wrex and Kaiden marking targets for their Mako’s gun a faint sound behind him, and Cassandra gave a fierce expression that could, charitably, be called a smile as she looked through the driver’s scope of her own team’s Mako.
"That’s affirmative, Archangel. We’re in range and ready to make our own move. Set your mission timer for ten minutes and then consider the word given. Nemesis, out.” she responded aloud, her ‘smile’ widening at the names she had chosen for the two divergent teams. Archangel, Garrus’ team consisting of ‘the boys’, was responsible for protecting Terra Nova and it’s people by destroying the torches. So a name that evoked the imagery of a valiant, pure guardian was only appropriate? But her team? Her team was here to deliver retribution, and so it was only appropriate that she name them after the Greek goddess of exactly that. Killing her microphone, she glanced at the three women that shared the APCs interior with her. “Alright, girls, let’s get to it.”
Three confirmations came back and she hit the accelerator, sending the Mako rocketing across the asteroid’s surface. A bumpy ride, uncomfortable even, in spite of the technology that had gone into making sure that that wasn’t the case, but none of them cared. They were too focused on the mission, on it’s implications and the potential consequences. They had a planet to save, after all, and dozens of hostages to save from an unknown number of terrorists. The sort of mission that could make or break an entire life, if it wasn’t for the stakes of their primary mission, but it was that very fact that meant they were more than capable of handling it.
Precisely ten minutes later, they were breaching the front door of their objective, Cassandra sweeping through with her SMGs ready and her senses -physical and psionic alike- sweeping her surroundings with every ounce of focused intensity that she could muster. Her fireteam, her girls -Tali was already hers, she knew, for all that they hadn’t yet had a conversation like she and Ashley had- on her heels, just as ready as she, and God was she proud of them. Tali especially, she’d come so far from the timid-but-brilliant kid she had been when all of this had started.
“…fuck.” Ashley breathed as she took in the carnage on the far side of the threshold. Bodies, both those of the terrorists and those of their victims, were strewn all over the place. It would have been obvious, even without their intel, that the attack had come as surprise for the inhabitants of the research and mining facility. None of the defensive emplacements, barricades, or cover had been activated, and the few armed defenders present had clearly been caught without armor. It was also clear that the batarians hadn’t been particularly discerning with who they killed, and Cassandra growled low in the back of her throat as she spotted a couple of young men who had clearly been executed after the fighting was over.
“Move up, eyes up. Watch for traps and ambushes. They’ll know that someone is killing the torches by now, and even if they don’t know that we’re in here, they’ll expect the boys to attack this location as well.” Cassandra ordered briskly, mouth twisting as she tamped down on the urge to spit on a nearby batarian corpse in disgust. “That, and it’s standard fare for this sort to leave booby-traps behind to kill anyone that might have escaped their initial sweep to make sure they can’t escape or counter-attack.”
Everyone knew that she was speaking from a deep wellspring of personal experience there, and none of them were interested in commenting on it beyond a acknowledgement of the order. AS often as they could banter with their Commander, as often as she was relaxed and casual and friendly with them even in the middle of a mission, they all knew that this wasn’t the time. Not here, not now, not under these circumstances and not against this enemy. The very darkness of her demeanor would have made that clear even if they hadn’t already known it.
Though her demeanor did brighten a bit when they found the security office, and the several people holed up and hiding inside of it. People that had been able to give them no small amount of useful intel, including access to what few remaining security feeds had survived the batarian assault and subsequent destruction of cameras. A rough number of enemies and the composition, which was a hell of a lot more than they had before, and better still it wasn’t a huge number. Only fifty or so, with another sixty spread evenly across the three fusion torches. Taken piecemeal, which they would have to be if the leader -a man called Balak, a name that Cassandra didn’t recognize- wanted to maintain any semblance of proper security and control over the spaces that he’d captured, they’d be easy pickings for her teams. That being said…
“Archangel, Nemesis. Expect twenty hostiles at each fusion torch.” she warned the distant trio. Confident as she was that they could handle that fight -hell, Wrex by himself could handle that many pirates in a straight fight!- there was no reason for her not to warn them.
“Copy that, Nemesis. We’ll take care of them.” Garrus’ voice filtered back promptly, confident and eager in equal measure, but not so much that she felt a chastisement or a gentle reminder was necessary. “Exterior defenses are down, we’re breaching the entrance now. Spirits be with you, Commander.”
“Godspeed, Garrus.”
The wish was a heartfelt one for all the briskness that it was delivered with, and Cassandra took a breath before moving forward again.
It was only five minutes later that they first encountered the enemy, a half-dozen of them that had lasted a handful of seconds before being cut down by a merciless barrage of fire from four women very much disinclined to take prisoners. Something that happened three more times before the enemy seemed to catch on, or at least sufficiently prepare, for what was happening. To their credit, they had both a plan and surprise allies that were unexpected, allies that the survivors the fire team had spoken with hadn’t noticed or been aware of, allies that wouldn’t have shown up on any life-sign scans or standard monitoring efforts.
Those allies also, however, confirmed that Balak was at least peripherally affiliated with the Warmaster, which made him a far more dangerous man than a simple slaver or fanatic. After all, no regular batarian slaver, pirate, or ‘irregular’ could possibly hope to convince geth platforms to take his orders.
Unfortunately for the batarians, Cassandra and her girls had made something of a career out of killing geth at this point, and the lack of proper coordination between the two sides made it even easier to crush the ambush within five minutes of it beginning, leaving twenty batarians and the same number of geth dead and their leader held onto his knees before her by Ashley and Liara.
“So, Charn. That was your name, wasn’t it? Charn?” Cassie mused thoughtfully to herself, looking down at him with a cold contempt that was almost as dismissive as it was disgusted. “You know, Charn…that makes me think of an old series I read as a child. It was written centuries ago, I think. There was a place in it, called Charn. An evil and cruel empire that sought to enslave the world, considering themselves greater than all other life by the very nature of their birth. More and more power was given to increasingly despotic leaders that spent their lives destroying those of others, until one of those leaders eventually became so depraved that she willingly killed every living thing on her world in an effort to keep her throne. Hmm. An interesting thing, I think. Prophetic, perhaps.” she was silent for a moment before shrugging off the brief reverie, if that is what it truly was, before continuing. “So, Charn, why don’t you tell me all about Balak and your plans here?”
“This was just supposed to be a fucking slaving run, a snatch and grab of some scientists and some cunts. Not wiping out an entire planet of you filthy fucks.” he growled out, hissing in discomfort as Ashley pressed his shoulder a bit further, setting it to creaking in it’s socket.
“If you’re looking for mercy, that isn’t the best way to ask for it, you know?” Cassandra drawled, voice like a fingertip on a razor, idly spinning one of her SMGs -with the safety on, of course- by the trigger guard while she looked down at the battered man, eyeing the sluggishly bleeding bullet wounds to his hip and forearm. Even with medigel, they were no where near cured, so… “Or, for that matter, medical assistance. So, you’re a piece of shit slaver that somehow didn’t realize he was getting in over his head. God, how many of you bastards have I killed in my career at this point? Have you fuckers ever considered getting a woman the normal way, or getting a real job?”
“Get the fuck on with it, whore. I know who you are, and I know who your cunts are, Shepard. I’m not going to flip on Balak, and he won’t flip on the Warmaster, so you might as well…” he chuckled, mocking grin on his lips, a grin that was locked into a permeant rictus as Cassandra deftly reasserted a proper grip on her gun, flicked the safety off, and put a bullet through his head before anyone had time to register the series of movements had even begun.
“One wonders why the Warmaster is bothering with someone like this when he’s simultaneously puppeteering Saren and, apparently, the geth. What does this gain him?” Liara asked calmly half a heartbeat later, dropping the arm that she had been holding as she frowned in thoughtful consideration. Perhaps in a another lifetime she would have been shocked to see such a casual act happen right in front of her, a lifetime where she was nothing more than a sheltered academic, but in this one, the summary execution was little different from the things she’d seen on Mindoir and other worlds alike.
“I don’t know, but it has to be something worth diverting resources and attention. Distracting us? Pulling fleet elements out of position?” Cassandra responded, no more sure than her first love was, but positive that there was a reason behind it all the same. She pushed the tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth, irritation manifesting in that small, secret pressure, hating the lack of surety and worried that something worse was on the edge of happening. Still, she wasn’t going to figure it out standing around over a recently-deceased corpse. Shaking her head, she huffed in frustration. “We have to move on and hope we’ll find answers at some point. And hope that Alliance and Citadel Intelligence is keeping an eye on things, like always.”
“That would be a lot more reassuring if Intelligence hadn’t missed this and everything else that has happened over the last few months.” Ashley groused, and Cassie gave a sharp bark of bitterly agreeing laughter in response, flicking a glance at Liara and resisting the urge to ask why Auntie A had missed it too. Ashley might have declared her interest in being their’s, and Cassie believed that she meant it whole-heartedly, but revealing Aethyta’s identity as the Shadow Broker was a secret on an entirely different level. Just like the presence of the Phoenix Force, there were some things that she’d keep to herself for the time being. Well, herself and her Lia, that is.
“Well, you know the old saying, right?” she quipped instead, moving forward, and all four of them chorused together. “Military Intelligence isn’t!”
Somethings were truly universal.
##############################################################################
Balak was a patriot, a hero, a guardian of the batarian people, of the Hegemony. This was a great and incontrovertible truth, something that he had always known would be true, even as a child, and had driven himself to ensure it became true. No matter what the mission, no matter how gruesome or brutal or exhausting the task, he performed it. Slave raids, punitive expeditions, gang-rapes and mass executions, auctions and gladiatorial matches, he’d done them all. For the sake of the Hegemony, to keep it ascendant over the slave races and to ensure that they remained where they belonged underneath his nation, he had forged himself into a champion.
Then, the greatest honor of his life: catching the eye of The Warmaster himself. Perhaps the greatest patriot of the Hegemony, the most loyal and most skillful servant of the Hegemon, the man who was singlehandedly responsible for the greatest scourginges that the slave-races had ever experienced. To say that Balak practically worshipped the ground that he walked upon would not be much of an exaggeration, and he had fallen to his knees in awe when word of Eden Prime had broken on the Extranet.
An entire colony of the upstart humans, those thieves and butchers that stole batarian worlds and killed his people, nearly wiped out without the Alliance and Citadel scum even knowing what had happened until it was practically over! A glorious victory, and he only wished that he could have been a part of it! Alas, he had been given other duties, duties that he hadn’t understood the importance of at the time. Duties that had, however, been the groundwork he needed in order to carry out his current mission: destroying Terra Nova. Not with bombs, not with a bloody purge that could be resisted through force of arms, oh no! No, his master had in his brilliance devised a plan that would make it clear to the humans that the galaxy belonged to the batarians, that resistance was futile and submission to the lash and collar was their fate. A plan that called for crashing an asteroid of titanic proportions into the planet, leaving all who lived on it dead and leaving the planet itself uninhabitable, lost to the humans for all time. A burning emblem in the stars of batarian supremacy, and one that would be impossible to stop.
At least, that was what he had thought, but now he was crouched behind a crate, squeezing off shots as accurately as he could with only one fully functioning arm, the sounds of desperate fighting resounding around him as his surviving brothers and the geth the Warmaster had given him did their level best to kill the demon that was tearing them apart. To think that the Whore of Elysium would be the one sent to attack him, when the Warmaster had been so sure she would be too distracted futility trying to find Saren!
Still, as shocking as that would have been, he was confident at the time that she and the three cunts with her would lose any sort of fight. He had them outnumbered by more than ten-to-one after all, with superior positioning, cover, and the high ground. And one of the geth snipers had put a round straight through the quarian’s gut the moment he had finished explaining to them the fate of they and the planet below!
Unfortunately, the fatal wound to the quarian had triggered something in the Whore. Her eyes had turned a solid white-gold, she’d loosed an utterly ear-rending shriek of rage and fear, a shriek that had pierced and echoed and sounded more like a bird of prey than anything a human throat could produce, and her biotic aura had turned to crimson flames. Then the killing had started, as she had left her human and her asari behind with the quarian and started marching towards him implacably.
His soldiers had thrown everything they had at her, and she hadn’t even noticed. Simply slaughtered them all. Whiplike strands of white-hot flame had lashed out faster than his eyes could see, parting flesh and searing what remained, the screams of those she dismembered punctuated by the sounds the geth made when she immolated them were they stood. One of them had exploded, critically overheated far beyond it’s tolerances in an instant, and it was that geth’s shrapnel that had shredded his left arm and left him half-crippled, forced to resort to a pistol and woozy with pain and bloodloss in an effort to resist her implacable advance.
His only chance now, he knew, was to make a break for the detonator control. If he could set the charges off, everyone on the asteroid -the Whore included- would be dead, and Terra Nova would still be rendered uninhabitable. Not the spectacular, titanic destruction he had dreamed off by driving the unbroken rock into the planet, but they were close enough now that the multitude of large chunks the asteroid would shatter into would be more than sufficient. And, judging by his HUD, he didn’t have long to do it. His allies were almost spent, the Whore was getting closer, and he had one chance to make this work.
He holstered his pistol and palmed the four cylinders on his waist. Smoke grenades, they were called, a gift from the Warmaster. Designed by the Alliance after their war with the turian scum some decades ago, they obscured vision and fouled motion and heat sensors alike. They would buy him the time he needed to reach the detonator, and he couldn’t help but smile grimly as he armed them. There was a certain amusement, sadistic and ironic, to using a human invention against a human soldier so that he could kill a human world.
He thumbed the first canister, flung it low and side-armed toward the staircase where a faint, dread-glow of whatever mutant biotics the Whore possessed already tinted the air. A hissing bloom of corrosive grey engulfed the avenue, acrid and thick, and he coughed, already feeling its bite in his sinuses behind the rebreather seals as he popped the other three and deployed them in a jagged arc. The world narrowed to the sickly, swirling soup and the pulsing red pain in his ruined shoulder, his eyes locking onto the brilliant emerald of the detonator in the distance. A dozen yards, perhaps, but at the moment it could have been a dozen leagues.
He leapt to his feet, fighting through the vertigo and surging towards his objective, his body screaming in protest and his breath coming in sharp, harsh gasps as his boots thundered across blood-and-ash, splattered through molten metal and superheated hydraulic fluids. Every step was agony, every inhalation a struggle, but pain and struggle were his sacred duty. For the sake of the Hegemony, pain and struggle were holy things, divine payment for his people, and today he would lay the ultimate sacrifice upon their altar. He would…
An invisible grip, wrapped around his legs, tripping him up and sending him -shouting in shock- to the ground, and he howled as his ruined arm protested such violent treatment. Then it shrieked louder still, his mouth twisting in disbelief, as his hands scrabbled at the deck in a futile attempt to stop that same invisible grip from dragging him back. Back from the detonators, back from success, and back towards failure and death at the hands of The Whore. He clawed at the deck, the fingers of his gauntlets dancing helplessly, tractionless against the stained metal as he passed his starting point and was rolled onto his back. He managed half a bellow before a foot stomped down on his chest, cracking several ribs and pinning him effortlessly, and he he glared up at that hated face even as he drew his pistol. A single shot rang out, dead-center between those burning, glowing, hateful eyes, only to accomplish nothing whatsoever. Her left hand twitched, and he screamed as he felt his arm -from shoulder to wrist- break in a dozen places.
“Did you think I would let you win? Did you think I would let you get away with hurting Tali?” the Whore hissed, every syllable reverberating and echoing through the air unnaturally, leaning down as her eyes bored into his. He spat in her face, bloody spittle sizzling and evaporating long before it reached her skin, and grinned a bloody grin.
“Your quarian cunt is dead, Whore of Elysium. Pity I didn’t kill the T’soni bitch as well.” he mocked through the pain, the humiliation, the knowledge that he had failed his mission and the hope that he had managed to cripple the Whore with this loss enough to ruin her own mission. Hope that the loss of her quarian would leave her too inconsolable to carry on, a hope that he would not have had until he saw how she had reacted to the wound being inflicted here.
“I won’t let her die. She’s mine, and even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t let you have the satisfaction. Which is why I want you to know the Warmaster is going to fail. Saren is going to fail. I’m going to stop them, kill them both. I’m going to make sure everything you fuckers want to accomplish burns down around your fucking ears.” she ground out, the absolute certainty in her voice shaking his resolve that she was deluding herself, but whether he would have scoffed or mocked her further, not even he had the chance to find out. A hand wrapped around his throat, her eyes seemed to burn all the brighter, seemed to consume him and draw him in, and in their depths he saw everything. Everything he had ever done and seen and thought and felt in his life, and behind it all…behind it all, he saw The Universe. Infinitely deep, infinitely vast, infinitely unknowable, stretching to everywhere and nowhere and all that was in between. An incomprehensible comprehension that was terrifying in its simple complexity.
He would have screamed, had he possessed the will. Had he possessed the strength.
Had he possessed a mind.