Deep Space: An Epic Sci-Fi Romance

by Joan Jett

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “Shepard, do you recall the intelligence Operative Lawson forwarded to us? Regarding the Collectors? They have a keen interest in biotechnology. Perhaps they supplied both Dr. Saleon and Saren.”

  He nodded slowly. “Maybe . . . but it’s tenuous.”

  “I agree. Perhaps it’s worth an investigation later?”

  “I’ll buy that. For now, take what readings you can and let’s go.”

  * * *

  At the heart of the breeding facility we found a great open bay, again awash with water that poured in from the nearby lagoon and rushed down a long stone sluiceway. At the bottom we saw a wide annular drain surrounding a tower, apparently the intake for a desalination and filtering system. I guessed that this supplied water for the entire facility. Finally we had reached the critical point, the location we had selected for the nuclear device.

  Captain Kirrahe and his surviving men had disabled their own AA tower. They remained there, planning to secure it long enough for us to plant the device and begin evacuation. Ashley survived the fight. She sounded tired but confident when she spoke to all of us on our general channel.

  Normandy swept in from the north and landed at the top of the sluiceway, opening the boarding ramp. Kaidan and his Marines appeared, manhandling the bulky ordnance out of the staging bay and down the long sluiceway. They moved carefully, but also as quickly as they dared. Sovereign approached, less than fifteen minutes away now.

  Finally Kaidan and Bayard lowered the ordnance to sit just above the water near the tower’s base. Most of the Marines returned to the Normandy. Kaidan checked the bomb one last time, then nodded in satisfaction and turned to report to Shepard.

  “Bomb is in position, Commander. We’re all set here . . .”

  “Commander, can you read me?” Ashley’s voice, breaking in on the general channel.

  “The nuke is almost ready,” said Shepard. “Get to the rendezvous point, Williams!”

  “No can do, Commander. We’ve got a new wave of geth, pinning us down on the AA tower. We’re taking heavy casualties. We’ll never make it to the rendezvous point in time.”

  “Joker, get them out of there, now!”

  “Aye-aye, Commander.” Normandy rose into the air, the boarding ramp still hanging open.

  “Negative, it’s too hot! Can’t risk it. We’ll hold them off as long as we . . .” Ashley’s voice was cut off in an electronic squeal of distortion.

  Shepard and Kaidan caught one another’s eyes for a tense moment. Then Kaidan nodded. “It’s okay, Commander. I’ll need a couple more minutes to finish arming the bomb. Go get them and meet me back here.”

  “We’re cutting it close, Kaidan.”

  “We can make it. Go, Commander.”

  Shepard didn’t hesitate any longer. “Shadow team, follow me.”

  We ran.

  A second gallery of cloning equipment ran to the west, shorter than the one we had come through earlier. Again, a few geth and krogan lurked among the equipment, ready to bar our path. Shepard had no patience for them. We simply charged down the gallery, massing our fire on one target after the next, moving too quickly for the enemy to pin us down. One krogan warrior tried to stand between us and the doors to the tower, but Wrex simply body-checked this enemy out of the way, applying his shotgun to make sure the foe stayed down.

  The ride in the lift was an agony of tension. Shepard seemed as agitated as I had ever seen him, actually bouncing on the balls of his feet, running forward the instant the lift doors opened. We followed him out onto the walls of Saren’s compound . . .

  “Damn it all to hell,” he growled.

  A dropship approached from the east, preparing to rain geth platforms down on the central bay, where we had left Kaidan alone to work with the bomb.

  “Normandy, hit that dropship now!”

  Joker tried. Normandy hovered some distance out to sea, preparing for its run up to the AA tower. It turned in the air and fired, striking the geth vessel amidships. Just a moment too late to prevent it from positioning itself above Kaidan’s bay.

  “Commander, there’s geth pouring out all over the bomb site,” reported Kaidan.

  “Can you hold them off?” demanded Shepard.

  “There’s too many. I don’t think I can hold out until you get here.” Kaidan paused. “I’m activating the bomb.”

  “What? Alenko, what are you doing?”

  “I’m just making sure this bomb goes off, no matter what.” Another pause. “It’s done, Commander. Go get Williams and get out of here.”

  Ashley broke in. “Screw that! We can handle ourselves. Go back and get Alenko.”

  What followed couldn’t have taken more than three or four seconds, but that moment felt like an eternity.

  I watched Shepard’s face. I saw him look up at the AA tower, then back toward the central bay. I saw him glance out to sea, where the Normandy still waited to approach and evacuate our people. I saw him calculate angles, distances, times. I saw him weigh the risk and the likely outcomes of each course of action.

  I saw the absolute fury that erupted in his heart when he realized he couldn’t save everyone.

  None of it showed on his face, unless it became a little more forbidding, his eyes a little more steely gray than before. His voice remained completely steady as he announced his decision.

  “Williams. Radio Joker and tell him to meet us on the AA tower.”

  Ashley remained silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice had suddenly lost all of its brazen confidence. “Aye-aye, Commander. I . . .”

  Kaidan broke in. “It’s the right choice, and you know it, Ash.”

  “I’m sorry, Kaidan,” said Shepard quietly. “There just isn’t time.”

  “I understand, Commander. Fortunes of war. I don’t regret a thing.” We could hear Kaidan’s deep intake of breath. “Now go, damn it.”

  Shepard turned and ran. The rest of us followed.

  It took only a minute to reach the roof of the AA tower. As we approached, we heard Ashley and the salarians shouting to one another, the warbling of geth, a torrent of gunfire. The salarian team stood on the edge of annihilation. Then we arrived, spilling out into the middle of the fight. The geth hadn’t expected us, weren’t even looking in our direction as they converged on Kirrahe’s last redoubt. We slammed into them from behind and their formation immediately shattered.

  I saw Kirrahe’s head peek out from cover, a delighted expression on his face . . . and then he looked behind and above us, and delight changed to horror.

  Dark-blue light exploded in our midst. The force of it sent Ash and Garrus flying in opposite directions. Kirrahe fell back into cover.

  I glanced upward and saw a turian soaring over our heads, standing atop some kind of mobile platform. He gestured, and an immense bolt of telekinetic force lashed out to knock Wrex tumbling backward.

  Saren.

  Shepard turned to dash for cover. This seemed like a very good idea to me, so I followed him. An eruption of blue force struck just behind us, nearly knocking us both off our feet.

  Saren leaped from his platform, calling up a flare of biotic power to halo his entire body and control his ten-meter fall to the ground. I stared at him from cover. He looked nothing like any other turian I had ever seen: tall and massive, wearing heavy plates of armor that covered his entire body and integrated directly into his flesh. His right arm was gone, replaced with an elaborate prosthetic limb that looked to be of geth manufacture. His eyes glowed with an unnatural blue light. His face completely lacked paint.

  Shepard leaned out beside me and fired at Saren, once, twice, three times. The renegade turian simply stood there, his shields like diamond, shedding the gunfire in flares of blue light.

  “This has been an impressive diversion, Shepard. My geth were utterly convinced the salarians were the real threat. Of course, it’s all for nothing. I can’t let you disrupt what I’ve accomplished here. You can’t possibly understand what’s reall
y at stake.”

  Shepard ducked back behind our cover, glancing at me in shock. “So make me understand,” he called back. “What could possibly justify what you’ve done?”

  Saren’s voice remained calm and, much to my surprise, very persuasive. “You’ve seen the vision from the beacons. You of all people should understand what the Reapers are capable of. They cannot be stopped. There’s no point in revolt. If we cling to petty ideals and visions of freedom, we will simply die. Every last one of us, like insects in the heart of a star.

  “The Protheans reached heights our civilizations can only dream of. They tried to fight, and the Reapers utterly destroyed them. Trillions dead. But what if they had bowed before the inevitable, found a way to reach a compromise with the Reapers? They might still be alive today. Isn’t submission preferable to the extinction of all life everywhere?”

  “Saren, you’re a fool if you think the Reapers have any interest in letting us live. We’re nothing to them.”

  Saren shook his head sadly, like a father listening to a defiant child. “Now you see why I never brought this to the Council. We organics are driven by emotion instead of logic. We deny the truth even when our very lives are at stake. We will fight even when we know we cannot win. But if we work with the Reapers – if we make ourselves useful to them – think how many lives might be saved!

  “Once I understood this, I became Sovereign’s partner, its agent in the wider galaxy. I was aware of the dangers. I had hoped this facility could protect me.”

  Shepard nodded slowly. “You’re afraid Sovereign is influencing you. You’re afraid it’s controlling your thoughts.”

  “I’ve studied the effects of indoctrination. The more control Sovereign imposes, the less capable the subject becomes. That is my saving grace. Sovereign needs me to find the Conduit. My mind is still my own. I am its ally, not its slave, and that is how I will remain.”

  “It’s happened already!” shouted Shepard. “You’re already indoctrinated and you don’t even know it. You’re already under its power!”

  Saren brandished both fists in defiance, baring his fangs. “No! Sovereign needs me. If I can find the Conduit, I’ve been promised a reprieve from the inevitable. That’s my only hope.”

  “It’s not your only hope. Together we can stop Sovereign. We don’t have to submit to the Reapers. We can find a way to beat them!”

  “I no longer believe that, Shepard. I’ve seen the vision of the beacons. I’ve spoken to Sovereign at length. I’ve done the same research you and your allies have done. The Reapers are too powerful. The only hope of survival is to join them. To submit to them, if need be.”

  Shepard stood, stepped out of our cover to confront Saren directly. “You coward.”

  “What?”

  “You were a Spectre. You were sworn to defend the galaxy. Then you broke that vow to save yourself.”

  “I’m not doing this for myself! Don’t you see? Sovereign will succeed. The Reapers will return. It is inevitable. This is the only way any of us can survive!” Saren shook his head in disgust. “You . . . you would undo my work. You would lead the galaxy into pointless rebellion. You would doom our civilization to complete annihilation. For that you must die!”

  With that, Saren drew a rifle and opened fire, flinging a bolt of biotic force to one side to keep Tali and two salarians from coming to Shepard’s aid.

  He was a juggernaut. Those of us who could fire upon him couldn’t penetrate his shields. He had too much biotic power for Wrex, too much even for me. He strode forward, directly for Shepard.

  Desperate, Shepard flung a high-explosive grenade at short range. The concussion knocked both of us to the ground.

  Before he could rise, Shepard looked up and saw Saren standing over him. Almost contemptuously, the turian kicked Shepard’s assault rifle away. Then he grasped Shepard with both hands, lifting him like a child and carrying him irresistibly backward. In a moment, Saren stood at the edge of the tower’s roof, holding Shepard at arm’s length with one hand at his throat, ready to drop him to his death on the rocks far below.

  I shouted, rising to one knee and calling up every erg of biotic power available to me.

  Suddenly we all heard a loud gonging sound from the central bay, back where Kaidan might still be holding off the geth onslaught. The salarian ship’s drive core, sounding the alarm as it prepared to go into catastrophic overload. The explosion was one minute away.

  Distracted, Saren glanced in that direction for just a moment.

  When he looked back, Shepard’s fist was already driving for his face like a sledgehammer.

  Saren fell, dropping Shepard just on the brink of the abyss.

  I frantically reached out with my biotics and prevented Shepard from falling off the tower. He began to rise to his feet, drawing his heavy pistol.

  Saren looked around, saw us about to recover our ability to fight, and realized time had almost run out. Instead of attacking Shepard once more, he retreated to his flying platform.

  Shepard brought his sidearm to bear just as Saren soared into the air above us. For just a moment, he and the renegade Spectre locked gazes. Then he slowly lowered his weapon, permitting Saren to fly away into the distance.

  Normandy swept in from the sea, hovering close so we could leap from the tower’s edge to the boarding ramp. Shepard shouted orders to all of us to run for the ship. Captain Kirrahe and his surviving men – so few of them, only five – followed close behind.

  Shepard was the last to board, still staring back toward the central bay until the boarding ramp closed.

  Joker’s voice cracked over the ship-wide intercom. “All right, everybody, hang on!”

  Normandy raced up into the depths of space, as nuclear fire erupted behind us.

  Chapter 40 : The Heavens Blaze Forth

  20 May 2183, Hoc System Space

  The staging deck seemed very crowded: Ashley and the rest of the human Marines, Captain Kirrahe and his salarians, the Shadow Team, all of us and our gear crammed into what suddenly felt like a very small space. All of us held on to whatever we could, while Normandy made its high-speed escape. When the shockwave from the nuclear blast caught up with us, the ship shook violently, throwing a few of us to the floor.

  Then the ship’s flight smoothed out, and we knew we had escaped.

  “Joker, where’s Sovereign?” demanded Shepard.

  “Still heading for the planet,” reported the pilot. “Damn, that thing is fast. We got away with less than five minutes to spare, sir.”

  “It’s not pursuing us?”

  “Not at the moment. We should be able to shift to FTL before it can catch up.”

  “Good job, Joker. Patch me through to the all-hands channel.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. You’re on.”

  Shepard’s voice fell into what I had come to think of as his command cadence: slow, measured, confident. “Normandy crew, our mission on Virmire was a success. Saren’s main base of operations has been destroyed, and we may be several steps closer to locating the Conduit. However, I regret to report that Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko has been killed in action. Stand by for further orders.”

  He turned off his helmet radio.

  Chaos erupted on the staging deck.

  “Lieutenant’s dead?”

  “What the hell . . .”

  “No way!”

  The salarians looked around, alarmed at the outbreak of human anger, clustering more closely near Captain Kirrahe.

  “Never should have left him alone with that bomb.”

  “What happened?”

  “Damn geth. Damn aliens.”

  Wrex’s hand went to the stock of his shotgun. I thought he did it only for reassurance. I hoped.

  Shepard caught Ashley’s eye.

  Ashley braced her shoulders and shouted, her voice incredibly loud and piercing. “Atten-SHUN!”

  Silence fell, sudden and absolute. Every human on the staging deck assumed a rigid posture, except for Shepard. Even he
suddenly looked taller and more imposing than usual, glaring at his subordinates on all sides.

  “Lieutenant Alenko gave his life to assure the success of our mission, and to save the lives of everyone on board this ship. You will treat his sacrifice with respect. You will behave with discipline. Is that clear?”

  “AYE-AYE, SIR!”

  “Dismissed!”

  Subdued, the Marines turned and began the work of stowing armor, weapons, and gear. Garrus, Wrex, and Tali followed.

  Shepard walked over to Captain Kirrahe. I followed in his shadow.

  “Captain, I’m very sorry we couldn’t save more of your men,” he said, extending his hand for Kirrahe to grasp.

  “The fortunes of war, Commander,” said the salarian. “I didn’t expect any of my men to escape that place. With your help, not only did a few of us survive, we attained our objectives. It was truly an honor working with you, and with your Lieutenant Alenko. His sacrifice will doubtless earn humanity a great deal of respect among my people.”

  “Kaidan was a fine officer. He understood the risks, but he did what had to be done.”

  “Indeed. Rest assured, my men and I will not forget what you have accomplished here. May we impose upon your hospitality until you reach a civilized port?”

  “Of course. You’re more than welcome. Where shall we billet you?”

  “Here on your staging deck will suffice, Commander. We don’t require luxury.”

  “We’ll do all we can for you, Captain.” Shepard made a shallow bow with his hands behind his back, a salarian gesture of courtesy. “May I say, it was an honor working with you. I’ve never fought beside the STG before. Your men are very impressive.”

  Kirrahe returned Shepard’s bow with a smile. “I told you: we’re tougher than we look. I hope we will have the opportunity to fight together again someday.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  * * *

  I went to change out of my armor and stow my own weapons as well, but I didn’t stay among the Marines for long. Kaidan had been well-liked and deeply respected, and his sudden death made them fierce with grief and anger. Perhaps I had won a certain amount of acceptance among them, but I sensed they had no interest in a non-human presence for the time being.