The Reaper War

by Cole Price

  “Then why stab us in the back now?”

  “Just because I broke away from Cerberus doesn’t mean I want to crawl in bed with a bunch of aliens.” She cast a sneer in my direction. “Rather literally, in your case. The Illusive Man compromised himself, and so did you. Then I found another you who hadn’t been seduced yet. So I woke him up.”

  “So he’s your pawn,” said Shepard in disgust.

  I saw it, the flicker in her eyes as she glanced at the construct. Yes. That is how she thinks of him.

  “I’m no one’s pawn, Shepard!” The construct snarled at us. “That’s your mistake, letting others lead you around by the nose. She and I want the same things. We’re allies.”

  Shepard frowned. I knew he saw it too, but he also saw no way to apply pressure to that point of weakness. Not yet.

  “All we really needed was your Spectre code, and we got that in the Wards,” said not-Brooks. “But then you survived the hit and insisted on bringing your damned asari into it, so I had to tie up loose ends.”

  “You killed Khan,” I accused her.

  “With great pleasure. But then your sex-bot just had to go and recover the data, after I did my best to erase it. So here we are, forced to contain the situation. Successfully, I see. You are quite thoroughly contained.”

  “You had Miranda,” observed the construct. “I have her. Mine has more bite.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I smiled slightly, hoping our enemies couldn’t see it.

  They’ve made some good moves, but if this female thinks she can outmaneuver Miranda Lawson, she may be in for a very bad surprise one day.

  “It was fun while it lasted,” not-Brooks simpered.

  The construct turned away, stepping over to a network terminal and activating it.

  “What are you doing?” asked Shepard.

  “Setting things right,” the construct answered, throwing a grin over his shoulder. “You disgust me, Shepard, you truly do. As a Spectre, you’ve saved far more alien lives than you have human. Now here you are, running around, saving krogan and turians and asari. While Earth burns.”

  “As far as I can tell, you haven’t saved anyone.” Shepard shook his head. “You’re going to make a lousy me.”

  “I guess we’ll get to see, won’t we? You know what they can’t duplicate? Biometrics. Handprints, fingerprints, the pattern of veins on the retina. DNA doesn’t control how those get arranged, so you and I aren’t quite identical after all. Which would normally be a problem, anywhere but here.” He turned back to the console. “Computer, update Council records. Subject: Shepard, human Spectre.”

  “Accessing record. Please input new data.”

  The construct worked with the console for a few moments, presenting his hands, bending over to let a laser read his eyes.

  “Biometric identifiers updated. Good day, Commander Shepard.”

  “Now if you’ll excuse us, Normandy needs her captain. So . . . I should go.”

  Shepard scowled.

  “Farewell, Commander,” said not-Brooks. “I guess this is where legends go to die.”

  The floor shifted under our feet. The construct and Brooks vanished as the archive vault slotted itself into its canister, plunging us into darkness. I almost fell, saving myself only by grabbing a nearby shelf and hanging on while the canister rotated into its storage location.

  “That went well,” I murmured once the canister stopped moving.

  Shepard’s voice, out of the darkness. “He said, I should go. Do I really sound like that?”

  I shook my head, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t see. “Shepard. You never say that.”

  He grunted, mollified.

  Ashley complained, “Maybe we should be worrying about, I don’t know, the impregnable vault we’ve been sealed inside forever?”

  “I should go,” said Shepard. “I should go. I should go! No, it just sounds inane no matter how I say it.”

  “There is not likely to be much air in here,” said Vara. “No more than an hour or so.”

  “How about see you around? No, that just makes me sound like a country hick.”

  “Well, you were raised on a farming colony,” I pointed out.

  “Shepard!” Ashley broke in. “We’re in kind of a situation here!”

  “Hmm? Oh, right.” Shepard raised his voice. “Glyph, are you still out there?”

  The drone responded over our comms at once. “Yes, Commander.”

  “Good. Unlock this damned thing and go find the others. No one steals my ship. Not even me.”

  Chapter 37 : Defeat and Victory

  25 May 2186, Lower Kithoi Ward/Citadel

  Shepard and I emerged from the Archives last of all. As he bent down to help me climb the last meter, I heard the low rumble of a single aircar on the approach. It landed a few meters away, the clamshell popped open, and Joker peered out at all of us.

  “I’ve got room for Shepard plus two,” he said. “And figure it out fast, because the other Shepard is stealing my ship!”

  “Whose ship, Joker?” Shepard inquired mildly.

  “All right, fine, it’s our ship, and the other you is stealing it. You mind exercising some of that famous decisiveness?”

  “Ash, Liara, you’re with me. The rest of you get there as fast as you can.” Shepard turned, scanned the rest of our group as they all stared back at him. “What?”

  “I wanted to go,” said Wrex, sounding somehow plaintive.

  “As did I,” said EDI. “It seems I am rarely chosen.”

  “Joker will come back for you. I promise.”

  “Despoina?” asked Vara quietly.

  “The same goes for you and the other acolytes,” I told her. “I’ll be safe enough with Shepard and Ashley. I want some of you to go to Councilor Tevos, and warn her of what is happening. The rest may come as soon as the Normandy crew can find more transportation.”

  She nodded, unhappy but obedient.

  The three of us piled into the aircar with Joker, who immediately closed the clamshell and hurled us into the Citadel’s sky.

  “See, this is why I hate shore leave,” he complained. “I swear, you park the ship for five minutes!”

  Shepard nodded. “I know Liara’s people are heading for the Council, but can you contact Citadel flight control and have them deny the departure request?”

  “Already tried. All the comm lines in the area are jammed. Probably to make it easier for them to steal my ship!”

  “You’re having pronoun trouble again.” Shepard shrugged. “Don’t worry. We’ll stop them.”

  “If we lose Normandy, we can still go to the Council and prove who you are,” I told him.

  “Even with the biometric data overwritten?” Ashley shook her head. “If they do a scan, the real Shepard won’t match any more.”

  “That won’t matter. If we can capture the construct, less than ten minutes’ examination will reveal which one of them has the original Shepard’s memories. Not to mention that C-Sec will be able to reconstruct what happened in the Archives this evening if they have time to investigate.”

  “I hope you’re right, Liara.”

  “All of which will be a lot easier if we can keep the construct from getting away with Normandy.” Shepard leaned forward in his seat, staring out the front windows. “So step on it, Joker.”

  “Consider it stepped on,” said the pilot. The aircar accelerated well past its usual safe speed, red lights flashing on the control panel as the Citadel’s traffic control systems complained.

  Soon we reached the Presidium’s docking ring, rows of ships stretching out before us in Widow’s blue-white light.

  “There!” Ashley called, pointing.

  I breathed a momentary sigh of relief. Normandy still rested in her docking cradle.

  “Warning lights are on,” muttered Joker. “They’re only a few minutes from takeoff.”

  “How close can you get us?” asked Shepard.

  “Not much closer. Citadel syst
ems are already targeting the car. I can put you down right about there.”

  He fitted deed to word, bringing the aircar in to a very hasty landing, on a stage about fifty meters from the ship. The clamshell opened once more, and the three of us leaped out.

  “Get back and pick up the others ASAP,” Shepard ordered. “Maybe see if you can free up a shuttle.”

  “Right,” agreed Joker. “They can’t have gotten far. Unless they called a cab or something.”

  Then he was away, and the three of us hurried toward Normandy.

  At first we found no opposition, and I dared to hope that we might reach the ship without having to fight. No such good luck. The construct had left two squads of Cat-Six mercenaries behind as rear-guard, while he prepared Normandy for departure.

  “Damn it, they’re trying for the ship!”

  “I thought they were all supposed to be dead!”

  It proved a mildly dangerous fight. The landing stages and service platforms seemed broad enough, but only narrow catwalks connected them, and anyone who went over a railing would have a long way to fall. Shepard, Ashley, and I advanced as quickly as possible, moving from cover to cover, trying to clear Cat-Six away from each catwalk before we moved to cross it.

  “The real Shepard is here! Send a warning to the ship!”

  “We can’t. Comms are jammed, remember?”

  “Damn it!”

  Shepard felt reluctant to use a full flash-charge, but he and I still got plenty of use out of our biotics, yanking hard-light shields away from their owners, knocking mercenaries off the platforms. Shepard’s Claymore, set for incendiary rounds, was also horribly effective in those close quarters. All he had to do was catch a mercenary off guard, and a single blast would hurl the foe back several meters, mortally wounded and on fire.

  Fortunately, the mercenaries never quite managed to concentrate their forces against us. Ashley went down once under their gunfire, but she returned to the fight after applying medi-gel. Shepard and I took minor cuts and abrasions, nothing more. After a few minutes, we punched through the last Cat-Six line and reached Normandy’s docking cradle.

  Just in time to see the ship begin trembling in place, its engines roaring as they prepared for maximum power.

  “We have to hurry!” I shouted. “They’re getting ready to take off!”

  Shepard spat in disgust. “When we want to take off, there’s always half an hour of pre-flight checks! They get to just gun the engine and go?”

  “Engineer Adams and his team keep the engines in fine condition. Most of the checks are unnecessary.”

  “Good to know!”

  We hurried up the ramp toward the secondary airlock.

  “I didn’t come this far just to stand on the dock and watch Normandy leave,” Shepard muttered, but it seemed we might well be too late. The engines stepped up once more as he opened the outer doors and led us into the last passageway.

  Samantha Traynor stood there, staring at the inner doors, rigid with confused anger.

  “My God, I don’t even have . . .”

  She turned at the sound of our footsteps.

  “Wait, what?” She stared at Shepard. “You! You were just on Normandy! And you fired me! Dishonorable discharge! For conduct unbecoming! You kicked me off the ship! With barely enough time to grab my toothbrush!”

  Shepard stopped dead, his eyes wide.

  He must never have seen Samantha in full-rant mode before. Normally she’s so deferential.

  I sighed, stepped forward, and seized her. One hand behind her neck, the other along her jaw. Then I kissed her. Quickly, but quite thoroughly.

  It worked. She stared at me with wide brown eyes, utterly silent. Shepard and Ashley stared as well.

  “This is the real Shepard,” I told her firmly. “The one you saw was an impostor, a biological construct created by Cerberus.”

  “Oh.” Blink-blink-blink. “Oh dear.”

  “I can explain more later,” said Shepard, recovering his composure. “For now, we have to get on board and stop him.”

  Just as he reached the inner doors, the control panel flashed red. Lock-down.

  “Damn it.” He turned to Samantha. “Is there anyone left on board who can help us?”

  “No. I was only there to advise the refit crew, because I helped with the retrofits back on Earth. Everyone else is on shore leave, and EDI’s mainframe is offline.”

  “Okay. You know this ship inside and out. Can you get me on board?”

  She thought for a split second, and then nodded, moving to one side of the inner doors. She bent down and began to pull up some of the deck plating. “There’s an emergency exit hatch for evacuations. It should be here.”

  Shepard bent down to examine the hatch, opening his omni-tool for a scan. “Hmm. Manual lock, and it’s designed to be opened only from the other side. Ideas?”

  “A biotic effect could pop the lock,” I suggested, “but it would require extremely fine control. I don’t know if either of us can manage it, if we can’t see the mechanism.”

  We stared at the last obstacle, out of ideas.

  Bzzzzzz . . .

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Samantha stood there. Holding her toothbrush.

  The one that applied tiny mass effect fields to massage her gums and break up plaque.

  25 May 2186, Citadel Traffic-Control Envelope

  “You know, if you’d told me last night that a toothbrush was going to save Normandy, I would have been very skeptical.”

  On board the ship, we crawled along, back from the cockpit toward the CIC. Under the deck.

  We found it a very tight space. I realized I felt considerable distress. Especially when the ship finally detached from its docking clamps, backed away from the Presidium ring, then turned end-for-end to prepare for the run to deep space.

  Goddess. The space isn’t going to collapse on me. Is it?

  “Pretty sure we broke it getting the hatch open,” Shepard continued. “Remind me to reimburse her for that.”

  “Assuming we get the chance,” said Ashley.

  I concentrated on keeping my stomach under control.

  “Liara? You okay?”

  “I’m sorry. Ever since Therum, I haven’t been good with confined spaces.”

  “The Shadow Broker has claustrophobia?” Ashley murmured, throwing me a wicked grin.

  “Yes,” I admitted in a pained whisper.

  “Noted and logged. Anyway, what was that thing with Traynor?” she teased.

  “It was the only way I could think of to break her chain of thought, without engaging in a long argument.”

  “It certainly worked,” said Shepard, creeping forward. “Now quiet. Last thing we need is any of those mercs up top hearing us.”

  We moved forward, all of us careful to make no sound.

  Shepard reached the end of our crawlway, poising himself beside a large control that would swing the deck plating up. He caught our eyes. Ashley and I nodded in tense agreement.

  One, he mouthed silently. Two. Three.

  He activated the control.

  We leaped out into the CIC, in the middle of a Cat-Six squad.

  In any combat situation, surprise is a priceless commodity.

  Ashley broke left, laying down fire from her assault rifle. I broke right, bowling two mercenaries over with a telekinetic surge. Shepard flash-charged down the middle, appearing behind the galaxy map and detonating his barriers in a violent nova-blast.

  They went down like toppled pillars. Before long we had only a single heavy trooper to deal with, who moved from cover to cover and avoided our attacks with unexpected skill. Ashley and I lay down fire and threw biotic feats, holding his attention, but we couldn’t quite get to a useful vantage point.

  The mercenary rose from cover, hammered at us with his rifle. Then he noticed both of us looking behind him.

  He turned.

  The last thing he saw was the bore of Shepard’s shotgun.

  �
�What a mess,” said my bondmate, disgusted.

  “Well then, you shouldn’t have blown his head off,” Ashley suggested.

  “That’s not what I mean. It’s going to take days for us to put all this crap back where it belongs.” He looked around, taking in the crates and bins of miscellaneous equipment scattered everywhere. “Hey, some of this is mine. He’s moving stuff out of my cabin.”

  “Our cabin,” I pointed out. I reached into a bin, past two of his starship models, and pulled out a crumpled and oil-stained confection of white lace. “All right. Now this is personal.”

  “Easy, T’Soni. Where did he go?”

  Ashley scanned the lift controls with her omni-tool. “Looks like he went down to the armory just a few moments ago. Probably figured out we were coming, wanted to get ready for us.”

  We strode into the lift.

  “Are you ready?” I asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” Ashley answered. “You?”

  “I suppose. It’s funny. I was just thinking. The three of us, we couldn’t save the last Normandy.”

  “This guy is not in the same league as the Collectors,” Ashley stated flatly.

  “True.” I gave them both a determined smile. “We’re not going to lose this one.”

  “Damn right we’re not,” said Shepard.

  The lift door opened. We stepped out onto the staging deck.

  No sign of the enemy. Where did they go?

  Shepard moved forward, slowly, his senses at their limit. Ashley and I followed, watching our quarters to either side.

  Movement. A bulky figure stepped out from behind a stack of crates.

  The construct. Looking exactly like Shepard, now that he had a weapon in his hands and a determined expression on his face.

  We fanned out to face the enemy.

  “Well, that’s a little creepy,” said Shepard.

  The construct raised his weapon – a Claymore, twin to Shepard’s own – and fired. We dove for cover and returned fire.

  “You want to stop shooting up my ship?” he shouted.