by Cole Price
Then he put his shoulder under my arm again, lifted me to my feet like a sack of meal, and we stumbled out from behind cover. “Come on.”
I blinked. Ahead of us I could see Ashley staggering up a ramp. The staging bay ramp aboard Normandy. Marines stood to either side, laying down covering fire.
“Here,” gasped Shepard. “Take her.”
I felt myself being transferred to someone else’s grasp.
Then it struck me, like a bolt of lightning.
He’s making sure you’re safe, so he can charge off and take the risk.
I began to struggle feebly. “No. No!”
Ashley tried to restrain me. I fear I elbowed her in the face, got free just enough to turn in her grasp.
“Shepard!”
He stood there, still on the ground, still not badly hurt, making no attempt to climb aboard the ship. “You’ve gotta get out of here!”
“I’m all right, Shepard.”
He shook his head, trying to reason with the insane asari. “Don’t argue with me, Liara!”
“You’re not leaving me behind!”
He stopped. Strode closer, so that he could reach out and touch my face with infinite gentleness. For that one instant the pain vanished, the din and confusion of the battle seemed to recede, even Ashley’s grip on me faded away. Nothing existed in the universe except his face.
“No matter what happens, you mean everything to me, Liara. You always will.”
“Shepard, I . . . I am yours.”
He glanced over his shoulder, an instant’s evaluation of the progress of the battle. When he turned back, his face was set in determined lines once more.
“Go!”
He turned and ran back to the final battle, ran for the beam, left Normandy and Ashley and me behind.
The last few Marines climbed back into the ship. The staging bay ramp closed. I felt the deck move beneath my feet, the ship rising into the air. I half-expected a beam from Harbinger to cut us down, but it never happened. Normandy soared into the upper air, climbing for space.
* * *
22 June 2186, Earth Orbital Space V minus 15 minutes
“Liara, we need to get you to the medical bay.” Ashley’s voice sounded gentle but firm.
“No,” I whispered, and then some burst of strength stiffened my spine. “No. Take me to the bridge.”
“Liara . . .”
I pulled away slightly, stared at her. “Are you going to the medical bay?”
“No. I can’t. I’m in command until Shepard comes back.”
“Then neither am I. Not as long as he’s still down there and in danger.”
Ashley stared at me, and for a moment we understood each other perfectly.
“The bridge it is.”
Ashley had to stay in the CIC, but she handed me off to a burly Navy technician, who helped me up the corridor and onto the bridge. I half-collapsed into the co-pilot’s seat, EDI’s usual seat, and then I remembered. I glanced over at Joker, whose eyes widened when he glanced at me. Once more I had to wonder what I looked like.
“Joker. I’m so sorry . . .”
“I am in good condition, Doctor,” said EDI, over the bridge comms.
I blinked.
“Her mobile platform got banged up, sure, but most of her is here in the ship,” said Joker. “If we all get out of this alive, she thinks her platform can be fixed. Or she can have a new one built. She’s got all the schematics for it.”
“Of course,” I breathed. “EDI, give me a simplified tactical plot and a line to the general fleet channels.”
“Right away, Doctor.”
Normandy soared up into the bright sunlight of space.
I heard voices over the comm, and listened for any clue as to events back in London.
I soon heard news. Very bad news.
Major Coats: “God. They’re . . . they’re all gone.”
A female voice I didn’t recognize, perhaps a Marine officer: “Did we get anyone to the beam?”
Coats: “Negative. Our entire force was eliminated.”
Oh no.
Coats: “It’s too much! We need to regroup. Fall back to the buildings . . .”
The female voice: “Hammer’s wiped out. All forces, retreat back to the FOB. Pull back. Pull back!”
I glanced at the tactical plot, saw the Crucible and the Shield fleet as they arrived in near-Earth space. Shield immediately hurled itself into the battle, working with Sword to keep the space around the Crucible and the Citadel free of Reapers. For the moment, they seemed successful.
Then a phalanx of Reapers rose from Earth’s surface. I glanced at the icons, saw that one of them carried a label.
I felt black despair.
Hammer has failed. Nobody will get to the Citadel to open the ward arms. The Crucible is useless.
This is how it begins. Extinction.
Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care. I sat there, my body full of dull sawing pain, indigo blood dripping on the deck beneath me, and let the knowledge sink in.
Shepard is gone.
The rest of us won’t be far behind him.
Then Dr. Chakwas appeared on the bridge, hurrying over to me with her medical instruments and a generous helping of medi-gel. I opened my mouth to bark at her, but she forestalled me. “Commander Williams gave me my marching orders. I won’t insist you come back with me unless your condition is too grave to permit you to stay here.”
I nodded, and went back to listening to the comms. I shut out the doctor’s ministrations, shut out Joker’s increasingly desperate attempts to keep Normandy alive in the battle, and listened.
Thus I heard Admiral Hackett when he spoke, his usually stern voice full of wonder.
“Holy shit,” he said quietly to all the listening fleets. “He did it.”
I looked out the viewport, saw the Citadel catching the sunlight a hundred or so kilometers away, and somehow I knew.
He is not dead. Not yet.
“This is Hackett,” the admiral barked. “We’ve got reports that someone made it to the Citadel. We need to give them time to get those arms open. All fleets, converge on the Crucible. Protect it at all costs.”
A minute passed. Then two.
I could hear reports from the remnants of Hammer down on the ground, fighting desperately as Reaper forces converged from all directions. Major Coats tried to organize another attack on the beam, but it didn’t sound as if he had much luck.
Three minutes.
The allied fleets in space formed an interdiction perimeter around the Citadel and the Crucible. Stood side by side – asari, salarians, turians, humans, quarians, geth, rachni, every race of the Accord – to hold off the darkness for just a few moments longer.
Four minutes.
The flare of explosions in deep space, as ship after ship met her end.
“Neema destroyed,” came Samantha’s voice from the CIC, utterly weary, so unlike her usual warm tones. “Geth Dreadnought One-Seven destroyed.”
Five minutes. Six.
Then it happened. The color of the Citadel’s icon on the tactical plot shifted, from red to blue.
“That’s it! The ward arms are opening!” Hackett’s voice filled with tension, as he saw the opportunity appear for which he had barely let himself hope. “All ships, escort the Crucible to dock. Just a few more seconds!”
Normandy swept close to the Citadel on one pass. I looked out the viewports.
The Citadel looked . . . strange. The ward arms had opened, true, but they had opened much further than I had ever seen before. Instead of stopping in their normal almost-parallel position, they kept moving, the whole station opening up like a flower in springtime.
The Crucible decelerated to its final position, clamped to the Presidium ring, just barely touching the Council Tower from beneath. The ward arms spread to their maximum extent, the whole station forming a great five-pointed star.
Suddenly, the whole assembly looked exactly like a vast communicati
ons device, an antenna designed to transmit a signal across the entire galaxy.
“That’s it. The Crucible is docked!”
I waited.
Nothing happened.
Seven minutes. Eight.
“Irune destroyed. Sheguntai destroyed.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, flinching at the thought of Feron and all his people, wiped out in an instant.
“Shepard,” Hackett called.
“Commander Shepard. Something’s wrong. The Crucible isn’t firing.”
More silence.
“There must be something wrong on your end.”
Then a crackle of static, and a weak voice. “Sir . . . I don’t see how . . .”
Shepard, unmistakably Shepard, but he had been hurt somehow. Hurt badly.
I gasped, staring out the viewport at the combined Crucible and Citadel, while Normandy swept in a great arc around the center of the universe. Nothing changed. I heard nothing but silence.
“Enterprise destroyed. Fujisan destroyed. Destiny Ascension destroyed.”
I glanced down at the tactical plot.
The galaxy’s last fleet stood on the brink of annihilation.
“Signature change!” barked Miranda from the CIC.
“The Crucible is showing a massive energy surge,” said EDI.
“Is that it?” demanded Joker. “Is it finally going to fire?”
Hackett apparently thought so. “All fleets. The Crucible is armed. Disengage and head to the rendezvous point. I repeat, disengage and get the hell out of here.”
I blinked.
Shepard?
I glanced over at Joker. The pilot continued to work his controls, keeping Normandy alive in the midst of a storm of Reaper weapons fire. His face twisted with emotion, some mixture of rage and terrible grief. I knew he didn’t want to leave. Not without Shepard.
Ashley stepped onto the bridge, leaning heavily against the bulkhead, one arm in a makeshift sling, half of her face terribly bruised and swollen. “Joker,” she rasped. “Joker. Listen. We have to go.”
The pilot turned and stared at me.
I stared back.
I considered the possibilities.
We don’t know where Shepard might be, on the Citadel or on the Crucible. We don’t even know if he’s still alive. His armor isn’t answering a transponder query. Almost a minute to reach the Citadel and put down a landing party. Who knows how long to search for him?
We don’t know what the Crucible will do. It’s gathering enough power to scorch a planet to the bedrock. What will it do to us, if we’re right here when it fires?
I had been in this place before, on Virmire, in the Bahak system, watching Shepard as he made the most terrible choices of his career.
I never expected to have to make a choice like that, with his life at stake.
“She’s right, Joker,” I heard myself saying. “There’s no way we’ll be able to find him in time.”
Oh my love. Goodbye.
Joker’s face crumpled in misery. “Damn it,” he spat. Then he hunched over his controls.
Normandy turned, disengaged from the battle, and soared into FTL.
“Now,” I breathed, so low that only Dr. Chakwas could hear me. “Now I’ll go to the medical bay. For all the good that will do.”
She helped me out of EDI’s chair, supported me as we started down the corridor, sagged under my weight as my blood pressure crashed and I nearly pitched over in a dead faint. Then some other crewman took my other arm and they could shuffle me along.
The deck rocked. Again. A third time, hard, enough to knock all three of us off our feet.
“All hands!” Joker shouting in a blind panic, from the bridge. “Brace for impact!”
Normandy howled in a scream of tortured metal, as something smashed into us from behind.
I went flying, down the bridge-access corridor and into the CIC. My head struck something hard.
Chapter 58 : Stranded
23 June 2186, Normandy Emergency Landing Site, Shepard’s World
I awoke in the medical bay, lying on one of the diagnostic beds, feeling much better. At least physically.
I lifted my head and looked around. Chaos ruled the medical bay: cabinets broken open, tools and materials scattered around the floor, the big windows shattered. Every other bed held a human crewman, under treatment for serious injuries. Dr. Chakwas moved about the space, slowly trying to put everything back in order.
All seemed strangely quiet. I couldn’t hear the ship’s engines. The only sounds I heard came from the ventilation system and the medical equipment.
“Karin?” I whispered.
“Liara, you’re awake.” She hurried over, checked my condition on the monitors. “How do you feel?”
“Well enough. What happened? Are we at the rendezvous point?”
“No. Something caught us in FTL and threw us off our heading. Joker and EDI aren’t sure where we are.” The doctor peered into my eyes, took my pulse with deft fingers on my wrist. “We’re in no immediate danger, at least.”
“All right. What’s my condition?”
“Surprisingly good, for someone who came in here yesterday with a concussion, two cracked vertebrae, four broken ribs, a long list of burns, contusions, and lacerations, and severe blood loss. Really, Liara, you simply must stop turning up on my doorstep like that.”
For once, I was in no mood for the doctor’s gentle humor. “Am I functional?” I asked flatly.
“Barely. I’ve corrected most of your injuries, but I want to keep an eye on the cranial trauma, and the quick-heal still needs time to work. Light duty only, please, until further notice. Plenty of bed rest. Come see me every few hours for the time being.”
I accepted her advice, and then went in search of Ashley.
I soon discovered that the rest of Normandy wasn’t in much better shape than the medical bay. The emergency systems provided the sole light for whole compartments. Shattered conduits lay everywhere. Pools of water and sewage stood in odd places, where the life-support system had broken open. Furniture and small pieces of equipment still lay where they had fallen. Everyone I met seemed busy with clean-up and repairs.
I found Ashley in the CIC, working with other crewmen to replace modules in the main tactical control system. She rose when she saw me approach.
“Liara.”
“We appear to be alive,” I observed.
“Yeah. Don’t ask me by what miracle.”
“What’s our status?”
“Joker managed to get us through the mass relay transition and back into normal space, but God alone knows where we came out. We’re grounded on an uncharted planet. Normandy is banged up some, but Adams tells me it’s not as bad as it looks. With some work, we should be flying again soon.”
“Good.” I took a deep breath, and then caught myself with a wince when the old injury in my chest stabbed at me for a moment. “Assuming that’s true, where are we going to go?”
For a moment, she looked very bleak. “To be honest, I don’t know. All comms are down, including the QEC. We’re completely cut off from civilization.”
“Assuming there is any civilization left to be cut off from.”
“There is that.” She sighed deeply. “We get back in the air, back into space. We find a mass relay. We get back to the parts of the galaxy we know. After that, it all depends on what we find.”
For a moment, I felt a strong temptation to simply give up.
Three years I’ve been running, and fighting, and struggling to win against impossible odds. For what? I’ve almost certainly lost Shepard. Who knows how many others whom I love are gone?
I promised him I would keep on living, even if he had to leave me. But it’s hard.
It’s so hard.
“Hey,” said Ashley gently. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
She led me out of the CIC, up toward the bridge. Joker met us, rising from where he had been repairing some of his control system
s. He opened the airlock and stepped out.
Ashley and I followed, out into fresh air, a sunlit blue sky, the scent of green living things on the breeze.
Normandy had come down hard on a long hillside, and I could see signs of that almost-crash on all sides, but somehow the ship itself looked nearly intact. I began to understand the engineer’s optimism.
Then I looked around, and what I saw felt like balm to my heart.
A beautiful world, quite ravishingly so. Green, green, not a sign of habitation anywhere. The sound of running water not far away. Crystal-clear sky. Two moons, barely visible against the sunlight. The light itself shone golden-white, like a perfect summer morning on Thessia or Earth before the Reapers came.
I stood there and simply breathed.
“You say we don’t know where we are?” I asked, after a long time.
“Not really,” said Joker. “Our instruments are all offline. After dark I may come back out and use the Mark One Eyeball to check out the stars. Maybe EDI and I can figure something out, but I wouldn’t bet big money on it.”
I frowned. “Joker, what is the probability that we could make an uncontrolled exit from a mass relay transition, into uncharted space, and have a perfectly habitable world turn up? Close enough for us to reach with a damaged ship?”
He peered at me. “Yeah, you noticed that, did you? As close to zero as makes no difference.”
“Something put us here,” I concluded. “Quite deliberately.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it was a miracle,” Ashley murmured.
I shook my head. “You don’t believe that, any more than I do.”
“I suppose not.” She looked at me, and I could see a bit of the old determination in her battered face. “It doesn’t make any difference to our duty. As long as there might still be a war on out there, we have to find a way back to it.”
Slowly, I nodded in agreement.
“Still.” She looked around, and a small smile appeared on her lips. “This is a pretty place, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It is.”
“We’ll have to keep track of it. I imagine if we win the war, there will be a lot of people looking for a nice unspoiled place like this. A place they can start over, forget the past.”
“We’ll have to give it a name,” I pointed out. “As the one in command of the expedition making the discovery, I believe the privilege falls to you.”