Deep Space: An Epic Sci-Fi Romance

by Joan Jett

  I leaped to my feet and prepared to hurl a bolt of telekinetic force at the Cerberus woman. Already she moved with incredible speed, faster even than Shepard at a full sprint, heading for the lift. Her two guards pointed their rifles at me and fired on full automatic.

  I hastily erected a barrier and continued my movement, spinning and throwing myself to the ground again behind the observation platform’s railing. Garrus reached out a hand to pull me to safety, cursing as the last remnant of my biotic corona gave him a static shock.

  Suddenly the chatter of gunfire down on the lab floor faltered. I risked a glance, just in time to see a snarl of claws and tentacles tear one of the Cerberus troopers in half. I couldn’t find the other trooper anywhere. The woman in white had also vanished, making her escape at the expense of her guards’ lives.

  Two rachni had discovered the other ramp, scuttling up it with frightening speed.

  “Shepard!” shouted Ash, pointing.

  “I see them. Time to go, people!”

  We reversed our path onto the observation platform, all stealth forgotten, running as fast as we could for the maintenance shaft. We raced the rachni to see who could reach the exit point first.

  The rachni lost, but not by much.

  Tali scrambled into the open access panel, all fear of heights forgotten as she fled the oncoming monsters. Ash and Garrus flung themselves inside immediately behind her, in case she encountered Cerberus at the top of the shaft.

  Wrex had his shotgun out, blasting away at the rachni approaching from both directions. “Go on. I can hold them, and you still don’t want me above anyone else in that shaft.”

  Shepard gave me a hot stare. I took the hint and ran for the ladder, terror lending me speed, Shepard only a few steps behind me.

  I climbed as fast as I could. Below, I heard Wrex grunting as he retreated into the narrow space at the bottom. Suddenly he growled, a sound of pain and rage, and his shotgun blasted again in the confined space.

  “Wrex!”

  “Never mind,” shouted the krogan. “One of the bastards punched right through the partition and got me in the side. Nothing serious.”

  A krogan’s idea of nothing serious would probably kill me outright.

  Wrex fired again, the sound somehow more hollow. I realized that he was already on the ladder, firing his shotgun one-handed at the rachni as they crowded in beneath us. How he was climbing the ladder one-handed was beyond me.

  Suddenly I also heard gunfire above us, up where Tali and Ash had probably reached the top. It didn’t last long. Ash called, “Commander, a few Cerberus just hit us, armed only with pistols. We’ve discouraged them from coming down our corridor for now.”

  I had almost reached the top when we heard another voice over the loudspeakers, female human with a lilting accent. I wondered if the voice belonged to the white-clad woman we had seen. “This is Operative Lawson. Cadmus Station has been fatally compromised. Jericho Protocol is now in effect. I repeat, Jericho Protocol is now in effect. Proceed to evacuation stations at once.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” shouted Wrex from below.

  “I think we had better find our own evacuation stations,” agreed Shepard.

  I climbed out of the shaft, Shepard and Wrex not far behind me. I helped Shepard to his feet. Wrex emerged on his own, a great rent in his armor leaking orange blood, although the injury didn’t seem to be slowing him very much.

  I struggled to catch my breath. “Shepard, I have to ask. Jericho?”

  “A famous ancient city on Earth. According to legend it was captured by its enemies after their god blasted the city walls down.”

  My eyes widened.

  He nodded grimly and led us at double-time down the corridor toward the Emergency Surface Access room, calling the ship as he went. “Normandy, we need immediate extraction. Come in hot, suppress any ground fire, do not land more troops.”

  “Roger that,” came Joker’s voice. “The sky is alive with shuttles, Commander, all leaving in a big hurry. Want we should take any of them down?”

  “Negative, Joker, we don’t have time. Just meet us on the surface for extraction ASAP.”

  All of us hurried down the corridor, through the airlock, out onto the surface. We cast aside stealth and ran across the open ground. The rain had intensified since we went underground, reducing visibility, hissing as it struck the ground around us. I looked around, hoping to see the Cerberus shuttles as they fled, but I could not find them in the sky.

  I suddenly thought of Wrex, a gap in his armor, toxic air in his lungs, acidic rain seeping through to the wound in his side. I stopped and turned, but I soon saw I had nothing to worry about. The krogan kept the pace as he brought up the rear, his legs still pumping like some ancient engine.

  “Liara! Keep moving!”

  Then Normandy swept in, firing its forward cannons to destroy the rocket turrets atop the structure behind us.

  Suddenly I felt an enormous shockwave, the ground beneath us moving sharply, knocking almost all of us off our feet. I heard a roar, rocks tumbling and grinding, the sound deafening even inside my helmet. Behind us the Cerberus structure rippled, broke in half, and began to collapse in on itself.

  Wrex reached down and seized me by one arm, pulling me to my feet with tremendous strength. “Come on! You may be willing to die here, but I don’t want to be stuck explaining it to Shepard afterward!”

  “Goddess knows we can’t have that!” I shouted. With the krogan’s support, I broke once more into a staggering run.

  Normandy hovered before us. Wrex and I leaped for the boarding ramp. I collapsed onto the floor of the staging bay, barely aware when the ramp closed and our ship surged into the sky.

  Chapter 23 : The Hound's Master

  19 April 2183, Cerberus Outpost/Nepheron

  Normandy came in low, ejecting the Mako and then soaring off into the sky. Shepard surged power through the mass-effect core and pushed the thrusters to their limit, bringing us to a soft landing despite the short distance we had to fall. It helped that Nepheron had low density, the surface gravity unusually light for the planet’s size.

  “Why can’t we ever land anywhere nice?” complained Garrus from his seat in the back. “Somewhere warm and sunny, good air, lots of green foliage, maybe a decent restaurant on our way to the gunfight.”

  “All the pleasant planets have law-abiding citizens living on them,” said Shepard. “Cerberus seems to prefer hiding out on the crappy ones.”

  Garrus had reason to grumble. Nepheron seemed only marginally more pleasant than our last stop. Admittedly its atmosphere was simply unbreathable, not actively malevolent like that of Binthu. If any of us lost suit integrity, we would have plenty of time to enjoy the beautiful geology around us before expiring.

  I found the surroundings lovely, if stark. A young planet, still retaining most of its original heat, Nepheron suffered considerable tectonic instability. On every side we saw the sweeping lines of mountain ranges. Volcanoes dotted the surface; gases, dust, and molten rock broke through the thin crust, scattering multicolored ejecta across the ground like abstract paintings. Even the sky blazed with glory, all the dust and ash in the air scattering the midday sunlight in a wash of yellows, oranges, and reds.

  We sought another Cerberus installation, its location garnered from intelligence data Tali had mined from the Cadmus Station networks. A smaller facility this time, but possibly more important to Cerberus: a data hub managing terrorist communications across a large portion of the galaxy. We estimated its destruction would deal Cerberus a severe setback, and in the meantime we could hope to recover even more useful intelligence about them.

  “Active radar in use up ahead,” I reported. “We’ll almost certainly be detected the moment we clear that ridge-line.”

  “All right, there’s no sense in playing this subtle,” said Shepard. “I’ll roll us over the ridge and then circle the installation clockwise at high speed. Kaidan, this is your show.”


  “Aye-aye,” said Kaidan, cracking his knuckles and putting a few final touches on the configuration of his weapons board.

  “Hull-up in three . . . two . . . one . . . now.”

  The Mako took the ridge-line at high speed, soaring into the air as the ground fell away beneath our wheels. Shepard pulsed the thrusters as well, keeping us in the air for a long moment, the vehicle slowly tipping forward so that our weapons came to bear on the Cerberus installation ahead of and below us.

  “Rockets!” I snapped. “Not from turrets. Infantry troops employing rocket launchers.”

  “Turning,” said Shepard, just before the Mako struck the ground with a jolt. The moment the wheels gained traction, our vehicle leaped to the left and accelerated. Two rockets flew through the space where we had just been, detonating behind us.

  “Snipers at three o’clock and five o’clock. We’re taking fire. Kinetic barriers at sixty percent.”

  The coaxial gun hammered. I could see Cerberus troopers flying backward, riddled with heavy slugs. Then Kaidan fired the main gun with an explosive round, scoring a perfect hit in the middle of an enemy fireteam.

  Shepard swerved to pass to the left of a large rock outcropping, breaking line-of-sight for the Cerberus forces. As soon as we cleared the obstruction, Kaidan fired the main gun again. Boom.

  “Sniper nest at nine o’clock!” I shouted, surprised at a new laser designator appearing to our left, on the side opposite the installation.

  “Turning sharp right. Traverse,” ordered Shepard.

  “Roger that,” said Kaidan.

  The servomotors controlling the turret whined over our heads as Kaidan quickly whipped the main gun through a hundred-twenty-degree traverse. He elevated the gun a few degrees and slammed his fist on the firing button. Boom.

  “Sniper nest eliminated,” I said. “Kinetic barriers at forty percent and falling.”

  I saw three Cerberus troopers pop up almost directly in front of us, knew the turret currently pointed almost directly backward, and wondered how Shepard was going to solve this problem.

  I needn’t have worried. Shepard accelerated, pushing the Mako’s engine to full, and turned to head directly for the troopers. Two of them abandoned any attempt at aiming at us and dove to either side. The third leveled a rocket launcher . . . about two seconds too late. Even inside the vehicle, we all heard the thump as the Mako slammed into him, sending his shattered corpse flying.

  A sharp turn to the right, and Kaidan could bring the coaxial gun to bear on the last two Cerberus troopers.

  “All targets down,” I reported. “Kinetic barriers at twelve percent . . . you lunatics.”

  “No editorial comments,” said Shepard, but he had a malicious grin on his face.

  We emerged from the Mako and cycled through an external airlock.

  This facility didn’t look much like Cadmus Station. It was rougher and less finished, more like the pre-fab habitats we had encountered on other worlds. We did see the Cerberus logo again, painted on every available flat surface.

  We emerged cautiously into the main work area, finding it densely broken up by partitions, cubicles, machinery, and stacked crates. Almost at once, two squads of Cerberus personnel engaged us. Shepard quickly saw that the dense cover would hamper us if we crowded together. Instead he divided us into two-person teams and sent us hunting. It made the battle hard to follow. I only saw tiny pieces of the fight as I stayed close to Kaidan.

  Shepard and Garrus crouched behind partitions where they could get the best field of view, their sniper rifles at the ready, waiting for Cerberus personnel to show themselves. I heard one or the other of them firing every ten to fifteen seconds, picking off Cerberus troopers and boasting over the radio about their running total of hits.

  Tali and Wrex worked together to flank Cerberus and flush them out of hiding. They both moved with considerable stealth, and Tali had a superb sense of direction. They would take an indirect route through the maze, invariably coming up behind one or two Cerberus troopers with a barrage of shotgun fire. If that didn’t kill the Cerberus soldiers at once, they would often become so distracted that they forgot to stay behind cover with respect to Shepard and Garrus. Either way, they died quickly.

  Kaidan and I applied our biotic talents. With Tali setting up ambushes elsewhere, we had no quick way to take down Cerberus shields. We couldn’t get a fast biotic lock on the soldiers themselves. On the other hand, we could work with all the obstacles on the battlefield. Working in tandem, the two of us had immense telekinetic strength. We knocked down five or six partitions at a time, or abruptly shifted even very heavy pieces of machinery. With such feats we could pull the cover away from Cerberus troops, or put down obstacles to block their path when they tried to maneuver. My new talent for singularities also helped.

  It was a slow, methodical fight. We were mostly concerned to ensure the Cerberus forces didn’t get behind any of our teams to accomplish their own ambush. They tried; none of their attempts succeeded. Before long we whittled their numeric advantage down to nothing. Then we had the advantage, and Shepard called for a general charge on the last Cerberus position.

  The last defender still standing tried an unusual ploy: throwing two flash-bang grenades into our path, then turning and running toward a door in the back of the room. We dove for cover to avoid the effect of the grenades. As soon as they discharged, Shepard sprinted after the Cerberus trooper, the rest of us just behind him.

  A hatch slammed down, Shepard nearly running into it at full speed, the control panel turning red.

  “Damn it. Tali, get this hatch open now!”

  “What’s wrong, Shepard?” I asked.

  “How much do you want to bet there’s a purge-everything process and our friend is running to set it off before we can reach him?”

  I nodded in understanding.

  Tali worked even more quickly than usual. We waited less than ten seconds before the hatch opened once more. Shepard leaped through the moment he could. I followed right behind him.

  Darkness flooded the next room, broken only by banks of glowing haptic interfaces and video displays. We saw the last Cerberus soldier standing over a console, cursing under his breath as he typed in a command sequence.

  I interrupted him with a biotic pull, strong enough to strain his joints as I yanked him away from the console. He screamed in frustration and tried to bring a sidearm to bear on us. Tali’s shotgun barked once. He fell like a rag doll as I released him.

  Shepard issued quiet orders. Garrus and Wrex went to search the rest of the facility for anything useful: technology, equipment, evidence that could help us locate more Cerberus agents. Tali and I got to work on the communications hub, downloading any data spared by the purge. Shepard and Kaidan began to place explosives, preparing to destroy the hub as soon as we finished.

  The purge had apparently randomized great swaths of the available storage, but we still found a great deal of uncorrupted data. Our findings would give Alliance intelligence analysts plenty of work.

  Within a few minutes, however, something interrupted our task.

  “Commander Shepard,” said a strange voice.

  We all turned, startled.

  A very high-quality hologram now occupied one dark corner of the room. A male human sat at his ease in a comfortable chair, smoking a cigarette. I didn’t recognize him at the time, but even in that first encounter he made a strong impression on me: mature, self-confident to the point of arrogance, in very good physical condition, wearing a fashionable and expensive business suit. His eyes commanded attention, glowing with blue-white light as if they had cybernetic implants in the irises.

  A circle of light appeared on the floor in front of this phantom, an input station for holographic presentation. Shepard stepped forward and took a stance inside the circle, waiting while the machines did a surface scan.

  “Who are you?” he demanded finally.

  “Call me the Illusive Man.”

  “That doesn�
��t tell me anything.”

  “All right . . . I am Cerberus.”

  “You’re in charge of all of this?”

  The Illusive Man made a gesture of ironic acknowledgement with one hand, his cigarette leaving a ghostly trail of smoke in the air. “You’ve cost me a great deal of money over the past few days. The facilities on Binthu were quite valuable, to say nothing of the communications hub you’re doubtless about to destroy.”

  “I sincerely hope they’re irreplaceable.”

  “Hardly, although your actions have presented an inconvenience. Before you go any further, I want to take this opportunity to speak to you.”

  Shepard folded his arms and tilted his head back. “I’m not sure what we have to say to one another.”

  “More than you might think.” The Illusive Man stubbed out the remains of his cigarette, then steepled his fingers in front of his face. “The single goal of Cerberus is to strengthen humanity, so we can stand on our own in the galaxy. We shouldn’t be dependent on anyone else. We shouldn’t be required to submit to interference from anyone else. Cerberus will support anything that strengthens humanity’s position. So we approve of you.”

  “The terrorist group approves of me. I think I’ve been insulted.”

  “That’s a short-sighted view. Cerberus has had to take direct action on occasion, but our death toll has been trivial compared to the threats faced by humanity. How many humans died in the First Contact War? Or let’s strike closer to home: how many humans died on Mindoir, on Elysium, on Eden Prime? You were there, Commander, you’ve suffered your own share of pain and loss at the hands of aliens. If Cerberus can prevent even one such attack on humanity, we’ve served our purpose . . . and that’s the same battle you’ve sworn to fight, Commander.”

  “I’ve sworn to defend the Alliance and the lives of its citizens, but always subject to my chain of command, civilian political leadership, and the rule of law. You don’t appear to recognize any of those constraints.”