by Cole Price
Boom – boom – boomboomboom!
Red fireballs erupted along the ledge in front of us. A squad of cannibals, led by a brute, emerged from their deployment shells and charged. We responded with a hail of gunfire and biotic effects. Shepard ended the engagement by flash-charging the brute. Already weakened, it pitched backward and fell off the ledge entirely.
“Ann, are you still there?”
“Barely, Commander. Hopkins is wounded bad. Are you close?”
“Moving as fast as we can. I don’t think we’re more than a few moments away. Hang in there!”
Then a passing harvester fired on a support pylon, just a few meters ahead of us. It began to buckle.
“Shepard, that platform’s coming down!” I shouted.
Shepard and Ashley backpedaled frantically, just in time to avoid being crushed by tons of falling metal and ceramic.
“Around!” he shouted. “Go around!”
“No, no! Boyles, stay down!” Dr. Bryson’s voice paused for a moment. “Oh God . . .”
“Ann, what’s happening? You okay?”
“Kirkwood and Boyles tried to make a run for it. The Reapers got them.”
“Keep your head down. We’re almost there!”
We continued to advance. There seemed to be more Reapers: cannibals, marauders, yet another pair of ravagers firing out of cover. Shepard directed our movements like a technician doing fine work with his tools, keeping us under cover, firing at the enemy, always on the advance.
One more climb, a quick sprint across the roof of a damaged prefab module, then down a ladder. The access point for the elevator appeared just in front of us.
For the first time in many minutes, I had a chance to look out across the planet’s sky, all the way to the distant horizon.
“Merciful Goddess,” I breathed.
The sky was alive with harvesters. I had seen five or six on the shuttle flight in. Now I saw at least twenty circling around out there. Our shuttle soared in the distance, desperately dog-fighting with three of the Reaper platforms.
Shepard made a call on the Alliance channel. “Cortez. You still out there?”
“Things are a little more exciting than I usually prefer, Commander. At least the shuttle is more maneuverable than one of these things, and I have guns too.”
“We’ve almost reached Dr. Bryson. Can you extract us?”
“We don’t have much choice, Commander. We’re only likely to get one shot at it if we try.”
“Roger that. I’ll be in touch.”
We hurried aboard the elevator, at any moment expecting a squadron of harvesters to notice our presence and blast us into oblivion. Perhaps Cortez provided enough of a distraction. We reached the top alive, and made our way into the command module where we had seen Dr. Bryson a half hour before.
We found the scientist curled up in a corner, still holding the hand of a dead man. She raised hollow eyes and a tear-streaked face to us as we appeared.
“He tried to run,” she said in a small voice. “I told him not to, but he wanted to help the others. Are they all gone?”
Shepard knelt to look closely at her. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t think any of your people made it. I need you to come with me.”
She took a deep, shaky breath, and seemed to regain control over herself. “Oh, God. Yes, of course. You’re Commander Shepard?”
“Yes. You’ve probably heard of Dr. Liara T’Soni. My other associates: Commander Ashley Williams, Garrus Vakarian, and Javik.”
Dr. Bryson peered around at all of us, gave me a small nod of recognition, stared at Javik.
He clearly recognized the look. “Yes. I am a Prothean.”
“How . . . Never mind. We can talk about it later.”
“Good idea.” Shepard gestured for us to set out back across the cliff face, toward the nearest landing platform. Ashley and Garrus led the way, Javik and me following, then Shepard with a gentle hand on Ann’s elbow to encourage her.
We moved along another ledge, flitting from cover to cover, somehow escaping the harvesters’ notice.
“I was at another dig site when they attacked,” said Ann as we waited for an opportunity to move on. “I got back as quickly as I could, but . . . What’s happening?”
“We hoped you could tell us that,” said Shepard. He pointed to another set of petroglyphs, larger than before but with a similar subject, carved into the cliff not far from our position. “Is that Leviathan?”
“Yes.” Ann’s voice became stronger as she took refuge in dry scientific data. “Yes, we think so. These carvings go back as far as forty thousand years before the present. Look at the way the little figures cower. It’s as if they’re under its power.”
“It looks like a Reaper.”
“The shape is right. The colors are strange, but we don’t know anything about the natives’ artistic conventions. Maybe they felt compelled to add color when they created this representation. It might be a Reaper, but if so it’s acting alone. Not like any of the Reapers we’ve seen before.”
“Sovereign acted alone,” Shepard pointed out. “We think it stayed behind between cycles, to monitor the progress of organic civilizations and trigger the next cycle at the right point.”
“Maybe. There’s something else. Something we found. An artifact, not like any Reaper technology we’ve ever seen.”
“An artifact. Like a big sphere of rock crystal?”
Ann nodded. “Yes. Incredible. It’s just ahead of us.”
Shepard made a gesture to start us moving once more. I tried to stay close to him and to Dr. Bryson.
“It may sound strange, but I’m certain this artifact affects people, their behavior.” Ann shrugged. “We only found it a few days ago, and left it in situ to preserve the context. I’ve had almost no chance to study it.”
Shepard nodded. “That’s not strange at all. Some of your other teams found similar artifacts elsewhere.”
“I did learn something about the energy it generates and transmits . . .”
“Get down!” hissed Ashley, from her position on point.
We all took cover, and tried to see what was ahead of us.
I saw the landing platform, teeming with Reaper creatures on patrol. Behind it, on a ledge carved into the cliff face, three marauders clustered around another of the crystal spheres. They had clearly pulled it out of its matrix in the rock face. The sphere glowed brightly, far more than any of the artifacts we had seen thus far. One of the marauders engaged it with a biotic or energetic effect, a halo of static discharge snapping between the artifact and the once-turian’s body.
“What are they doing?” whispered Ashley, as she crouched behind cover.
“They’ve activated it somehow,” said Ann. “I never managed . . .”
I think I was the only one of us watching her face at just that moment. I saw when her expression went completely blank, as if her mind simply shut down all at once. She stepped out from her position of concealment, almost out into the open, advancing slowly on the Reapers.
“Doctor?” Shepard managed to grab her arm, stop her advance.
“They’ve learned too well,” said Ann’s body, but it was not her voice. “The darkness must not be breached!”
“Shepard!” I called in warning.
He realized what was happening. “Garrus! Take that thing out!”
Garrus half-rose out of his cover, brought his Mantis to bear, fired once.
The artifact exploded, throwing all three of the marauders off their feet.
Ann collapsed, but only for a moment. She rose to her hands and knees, shaking her head in confusion.
“You okay?” Shepard activated his suit comm. “Cortez, we have Ann Bryson! We need immediate extraction!”
“Solid copy. On my way.”
Shepard turned to Ann, who was shakily getting to her feet once more. “You see that shuttle, you run. Don’t look back!”
“Yes. Okay.”
Then Shepard led us out to b
attle. The landing platform had to be cleared if Ann – unarmed, unarmored, and completely without combat experience – was to have any chance to reach the shuttle. Ashley, Javik, and I took positions under cover and applied pressure from the side. Meanwhile, Shepard and Garrus worked their way around to the right, moving up onto a raised platform along the back of the landing area.
Only then did we discover that Ann’s people had recently unloaded a shipment of high explosives, just before the Reaper attack. Crates of the material still sat scattered about the landing area.
I saw this and had just a moment to gape in horror. Then a harvester descended from above, firing at anything that moved.
The result was impressive.
A chain reaction of explosions swept across the platform, with a roar like the voice of an angry deity. The blasts simply shredded most of the Reaper troops caught in the open. Those few who survived staggered away, stunned and confused.
Ashley glanced around her, taking stock. Javik and I had managed to drop behind cover just in time. We felt just as stunned as the Reaper troops, but had taken no serious injury. Ann had been a few meters behind us, and was likewise unhurt.
“Shepard?” called Ashley.
Silence, for a heart-stopping moment. Then his voice came over the comm. “Still here. Garrus is hurt but alive. Damn, that was close. Take out that harvester!”
“Aye-aye.” She turned to the rest of us. “You heard the man.”
All of us concentrated our attacks on the giant beast, catching it in a cross-fire once Shepard joined in from his position. It swept its monstrous head from side to side, firing its energy cannon, but we usually found it easy to see where it would attack next. We wore it down, blasting away bits of its carapace to expose the flesh and mechanisms beneath. Finally it began to buckle . . .
“Get down!” shouted Ashley.
The thing exploded, like a small nuclear device going off a few meters away. The blast blinded me, and threw me off my feet. My head collided with some hard object, and I saw stars.
When I came to, I found that Ashley and Javik had picked me up, one of them under each of my arms as they half-dragged me along. Just ahead, I saw Ann Bryson leap from the edge of the platform onto our shuttle.
I put up a small fight, enough to convince my friends to put me down. I found myself strong enough to stand on my own feet, at least for a few moments. “Where’s Shepard?”
“Here.” He and Garrus loomed up behind me, leaning on each other like a pair of drunkards, but moving along at a staggering run. “Go!” he ordered.
I turned to the shuttle. Ashley had to help me clamber aboard.
Chapter 28 : Breaching the Darkness
15 May 2186, Interstellar Space
I found Dr. Bryson in the bottom of the ship, the crawlspace under Engineering where Jack had once lurked. I heard her before I saw her, the muffled sounds of weeping leading me back into the red-lit shadows.
I walked across the deck to the old hidey-hole, and sat down on a pallet next to a huddled shape. Ann had tucked herself up into a ball, arms around her knees and her head bowed. She raised reddened eyes to peer at me in the dim light.
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Dr. T’Soni.”
“I was concerned for you,” I said quietly. “Are you well?”
“Yes.” She sighed and shook her head. “No. I don’t know.”
“It has been a terrible day.”
She said nothing, only buried her face in her knees once more. I sighed and shifted on the pallet, put one arm around her shoulders, and held her close as she struggled.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a few minutes. “It’s just . . . this is hard.”
“I understand.”
“To lose my whole team. Everyone who went to Namakli with me is dead, and it’s my fault.”
“It’s the Reapers’ fault, not yours,” I told her firmly.
“I led everyone there. I didn’t get them out in time.”
We sat in silence for a long time.
“I had a day like this once,” I told her at last.
She blinked at me. “What happened?”
“You’ve heard of a human colony named Ferris Fields?”
“I think so. Wasn’t it a casualty during the Collector attacks last year?”
“Yes. I went there with a team, the day the Collectors came. We hoped to gather intelligence about them, something to help us fight back. We were succeeding. The Collectors hadn’t seen us. Then we had a chance to rescue someone, a single human, away from the main settlement when the attack began. I decided to make the attempt, despite the obvious danger.” I sighed, not wanting to remember what followed. “The Collectors nearly killed me. They did kill two members of my team. Including my best friend’s bondmate.”
“That’s terrible.”
“She forgave me. Somehow.” My arm tightened around her shoulders. “Believe me, it does get better, no matter how impossible that may seem at the time.”
“I know.” She sighed, snuffling slightly with the tears. “Still. It was terrible, listening while the Reapers killed them one by one, not able to do anything. Knowing they would eventually find me too.”
“We found you first.” I shifted, resting my cheek on top of her head. “Ann, no matter how dark things seem, there’s still hope. Shepard and I need you to help us find Leviathan.”
“I’m not sure how much help I can be.” She stirred, raised a hand to scrub at her cheeks. “My father is dead, Alex Garneau is dead, and the whole task force is shattered. We can’t even be sure what Leviathan is, much less where it might be hiding.”
“What about the artifacts? Those are a new development.”
“True. I’ll have to give that some thought on the way back to the Citadel.” Ann took a deep breath, resting her head on my shoulder. “It’s hard to think right now. On top of everything else, to lose my father . . .”
“I’m sorry. I admired Garret greatly.”
“He talked about you more than once. Told stories about his time on Thessia with you.”
“Were the two of you close?”
She snorted. “Not really. He took good care of my mother and me, always saw to our welfare, but he always reserved his passion for his work. Sometimes I think I became a paleontologist just so my father would notice my existence more often.”
I made a noncommittal sound.
“I know, that sounds harsh. I suppose it wasn’t really that bad. He wasn’t cruel or malicious. He was just so committed to his work. Obsessed, even, and it made him very distant. He almost didn’t make it to my graduation because he was out on a dig again. Showed up at the last minute, still in his field gear.”
“He loved science,” I agreed. “The search for truth, for clear understanding. He had a burning need to bring that understanding to the rest of the galaxy.”
“Yes.” Her voice changed, and when I glanced down at her face I could see a faint smile. “He could be so full of stories, almost ready to burst. Stories about history, civilizations of the past. I always loved that about him. I suppose that’s really why I followed in his footsteps, signed up to help with the task force.”
I waited in silence.
“God. I still can’t believe he’s just gone.”
“We’ll find what took him from us,” I promised.
“We have to. I need to know what’s on the other end of those artifacts. What he died for.”
I sat with her for a while longer, in silence. Then a thought came to me. “Ann, here’s another thing to think about. You remember my story about Ferris Fields?”
She nodded.
“I mentioned that we went out to rescue one human, and paid a steep price as a result. What I didn’t tell you is that we succeeded with the rescue, despite everything else that went wrong. You’ve met the one we managed to save. Lieutenant Cortez, the shuttle pilot.”
“Steven?” Ann smiled faintly. “At least something good came out of it. He’s a remarkable ma
n.”
“That he is,” I agreed. “One of the bravest humans I’ve ever met. We couldn’t have saved you today without him. So you see, one can never tell from which direction hope will arrive. So long as we live, Ann, we have to keep trying.”
“You’re right.” She sat up, emerging from my embrace to take a deep breath and prepare to stand. “Thank you, Liara.”
* * *
Normandy seemed a quiet ship, on the way back to the Citadel.
Shepard spent hours consulting with the Alliance and the Council, planning the next stages of the war against Cerberus and the Reapers. Samantha and I took the opportunity to overhaul the integration of our intelligence feeds with the Shadow Broker’s systems. Engineer Adams and his team did a high-level diagnostic of the ship’s systems, locating a number of potential maintenance and repair issues. Ashley and James drilled the Marines on the staging deck.
At first, Ann Bryson wandered about the ship like her own ghost, occasionally consulting with me or with EDI, otherwise keeping to herself. She tried to pursue her own research. She tried to contact the remaining fragments of Task Force Aurora. None of this was of much use, unless it served to distract her from all the things she had lost in the past few weeks.
Then, after the first day, she began to spend many hours on the staging deck. Much to my surprise, she struck up a friendship with Steven Cortez and James Vega.
On reflection I could understand the attraction to Cortez. The two of them were very similar in intelligence and temperament, and given Steven’s sexual preferences he would pose no threat of further emotional distress.
On the other hand, she seemed to have very little in common with Vega. I watched James carefully when I first became aware that he was spending so much time with her. I worried that he might be putting undue pressure on her, or that he might be considering a betrayal of his relationship with Treeya Nuwani.
I soon saw that I need not have been concerned. He patiently listened to her, asked pertinent questions to draw her out, told her jokes of execrable quality, escorted her to meals in the crew mess, and showed not the slightest sign of sexual interest. His physical presence, big and powerful and very reassuring, seemed to do her good. I finally remembered that for all his bulk and rough history, James had a gentle soul and a great deal of compassion. His attention would do Ann Bryson nothing but good.
