by Joan Jett
“The only way to find out is to make sure we’re all around at the end,” said Shepard. “Liara, link your omni-tool with mine. Help me find the control interface for the ward arms.”
As we worked, I saw the status displays for the mass relay network light up like fireworks. Ships poured through the Theta-5 relay from Alliance space. Then we heard Admiral Hackett’s voice, a clarion call. “Alliance ships, move in. Save the Destiny Ascension.”
We couldn’t see the battle; we only heard a few scraps of the comm traffic from outside the Citadel. I tried to put them out of my mind while I helped Shepard navigate through the Citadel’s controls.
“Ah!” I exclaimed. “There, Shepard.”
He turned to touch the main control panel. A light turned brilliant amber. We all felt a shudder through the immense mass of the Citadel as the ward arms began to open.
“Destiny Ascension, you are all clear,” said Joker. “Proceed to the rear areas at best possible speed.”
Admiral Hackett broke in, his voice sharp with command. “The Citadel is opening. All ships, concentrate fire on Sovereign.”
Above us, out the great window behind where the Council would stand, we could see the brilliant light of Widow and the Serpent Nebula at last. A long moment passed, and then we saw the fast-moving silhouettes of one ship, then a dozen, then a hundred. The Citadel Fleet and the Alliance arrived at last. Their vanguard turned in space, and then they pounced on Sovereign from all sides, like a swarm of stinging insects attacking some enormous thick-hided beast.
We could do nothing more. The combined fleets would defeat Sovereign or they would not.
Shepard walked forward to the very end of the Petitioner’s Stage, looking down into the gardens. Saren looked small and somehow pathetic, lying twisted on the grass amid a scattering of glass shards. “Make sure he’s dead.”
Ash and I went back to the nearest access, climbed down a ladder, jumped down into the garden. At first we walked side by side, but then Ash broke into a half-run, drawing her sidearm and bringing it to bear. Two shots rang out. Ash turned to me, her face pale but completely empty of emotion, and nodded once.
I called Shepard on my helmet radio. “Saren is dead.”
Chapter 47 : Nazara
28 May 2183, Council Chambers/Citadel
The floor trembled, bucked beneath our feet. We all heard a deep rumbling sound, like the thunder of a great cataract. Crimson energy began to arc around the chamber, aimlessly at first, then focusing all its intensity on one spot.
Saren’s corpse.
The energy erupted, a concussion that hurled Ashley and me off our feet.
I heard a loud crack, and saw the Petitioner’s Stage suddenly break loose of its moorings. The forward end of the Stage fell into the garden in another scatter of glass shards, missing Ashley by less than a meter. Shepard fell with it, tumbling and rolling to the floor of the garden.
The crimson light hauled Saren’s corpse upright, guttural howls ripped out of its throat, arms flung wide and back arched. Suddenly I remembered an image of Shepard’s deity, nailed to a dead tree to suffer horrible agony.
A last desperate scream rang out, and then the intense heat simply vaporized what remained of Saren’s flesh. It left behind a skeletal mockery of the turian form, structural elements and circuits glowing in blue, a swirling mass of crimson energy caged among its ribs and struts.
“Saren’s implants can operate on their own!” I gasped.
“What’s running them?” asked Shepard, pushing himself to his feet. “Sovereign?”
“I am Nazara,” said the deep, unnatural voice we had last heard on Virmire. “This station is mine!”
The Saren-thing leaped to the attack.
Goddess, it was fast. Almost before any of us could react, it jumped to cling to the wall, firing a series of plasma bolts at us. These discharges resembled a geth armature’s main weapon, but a hot crimson color and far more powerful. Even one would probably have dealt mortal damage to any of us.
We dove for cover and drew our weapons. Fastest of us all, Shepard brought his assault rifle to bear and hit the thing with a full blast.
Its shields barely flickered. It leaped for him, vicious talons at full extension, and he barely jumped aside. We heard his breath sawing in his lungs as he scrambled to escape.
“Pack tactics!” he rasped. “Treat it like an armature, and watch for those plasma bolts!”
His suggestion proved sound. The three of us immediately began to harass the Saren-thing, remaining mobile and keeping our distance. We felt safe enough in the open, so long as we remained ready to leap aside the moment we saw it preparing a plasma bolt. While it attacked Shepard, he dodged and evaded, while Ash and I attacked it with our firearms and my biotic talents. The moment it turned to face either of us, we retreated and Shepard returned to the attack.
I’ve rarely seen a more intense fight. None of us held back in the slightest. Shepard and Ash hammered away with their assault rifles, riding the edge of heat breakdown, trying to smother the Saren-thing with weapons fire. I flung biotic singularities and warps, powerful ones, again and again, ignoring all my training about cooling down and avoiding neural damage.
The Saren-thing leaped past Shepard, its talons tearing into his armor and leaving a bloody trail behind.
Shepard staggered but refused to go down, pausing only long enough to slap the megi-gel tab on his suit and seal the wound along his ribs.
Ashley shouted and flung a high-explosive grenade at it, forcing it to leap away.
A flight of plasma bolts missed me by less than a meter, the detonation hurling me across the garden even with my most potent barrier in place.
Shepard found himself standing too close to the monster, but instead of retreating he simply smashed at it with his rifle butt, screaming a wordless battle cry the whole time.
Little by little, the thing’s shields began to fail.
Little by little, Sovereign – Nazara – became more desperate.
We refused to die. Refused to let the Reaper’s pawn return to the Citadel’s controls.
“Keep at it!” shouted Shepard. “The more it focuses on us, the less attention it has for the fleet!”
A wild guess, delivered with authority, part of me noticed. Is that one of his command techniques?
A plasma bolt caught Ashley directly. Her shields flared and went down, the bolt throwing her against a wall with terrible force. Yet she remained conscious, her hardsuit administering stimulants. A moment later she bounced up, dazed and badly hurt but still in the fight.
Shepard’s assault rifle broke down, the buildup of heat and an overload charge from the Saren-thing proving too much for it. At once he tossed the weapon aside, switching to his shotgun. He began to press the monster even more closely, risking its talons in order to blast away at it over and over.
I felt a spasm of intense pain, like a blazing spike at the base of my skull. My face set in a rictus of anger and determination, as I threw warp after biotic warp at the foe. Right hand, left hand, right hand again, I refused to relent. Even when I thought I could feel my brain starting to cook.
Ashley rolled desperately across the floor, barely ahead of a chain of plasma bolts. The moment the chain stopped she came to her feet, and began to return fire with barely a pause.
Shepard advanced one relentless step at a time as the Saren-thing scuttled backward, his shotgun firing like a metronome. Crash. Crash.
Suddenly the monster’s shields flickered, flared, and finally went down.
I screamed and threw the best telekinetic pull I could manage at that point. It wasn’t very powerful, just enough to lift Saren’s corpse off the ground and send it spinning in mid-air.
Shepard stepped forward once more, touched a control on the stock of his shotgun, and sent a cloud of white-hot plasma directly into the thing’s midsection. It twisted, crumpled, and fell to the ground like a discarded scrap of cloth. A final surge of crimson energy, and the e
ntire mechanism shattered and crumbled away.
We converged slowly on it from three points of a triangle, breathing hard, hurt and bleeding.
We looked into each other’s eyes.
All of us still lived.
“Come on,” gasped Shepard at last. “Let’s try to get back to the controls.”
Wearily, we returned to the access ladder and climbed up into the Council Chambers again.
“Hey,” said Ash, looking up at the great window. “Where did the Reaper go?”
The window shone with brilliant light. Nazara no longer loomed over the Council Chambers, holding the structure in its tentacles. Instead we could see ships – turian, asari, human – keeping station with the interior of the Citadel, pouring all their weapons fire into something just beyond our field of view.
A massive explosion. A flare of crimson light, as bright as a sun. We saw shattered fragments of some gigantic object, tumbling and flying through space. The allied ships began to retreat.
“My God,” said Shepard. “I think we’ve won.”
Then a piece of Nazara – a tiny sliver, only twenty or thirty meters long and massing hundreds of tons – bore down on us. Within seconds it loomed enormous in the great window.
Shepard stood closer. He could have run. Instead he turned to warn us. “Go!”
Too late. The object smashed through the great window and fell on us, like the hammer of an angry Goddess.
Something struck me down, crushed me to the floor. I had a moment to expect death, and then I felt nothing at all.
* * *
I awoke to darkness, pinned under some massive object. My left leg racked me with agony. I couldn’t feel or move my foot on that side. More pain throbbed in my side, sawing at me every time I tried to take a breath. I could barely move my fingers. I couldn’t call up my biotics. My head felt about to split open. I felt cold, in shock, as if I had lost a great deal of blood.
I didn’t know where Ashley was. I didn’t know where Shepard was.
Shepard had been right under the hammer’s fall. He could not possibly have survived.
Oh Goddess. I hope it was quick for him.
It didn’t appear likely to be quick for me. I knew I was badly hurt, worse than ever before in my life. I lay in darkness, pinned under the corpse of a Reaper, probably dying.
Why does this have to take so long?
I let my consciousness fade out. I suppose I could have fought for life, but at that moment it seemed like too much trouble.
I’m not sure I want to live in a universe that doesn’t have Shepard in it.
A timeless period of vacancy and pain.
Then I became vaguely aware of a voice.
Several voices. Coming closer.
“Mmh,” I groaned, unable to produce words.
“Did you hear that?” A familiar voice. Captain Anderson.
Heavy footsteps. Then the sound of metal grinding against metal, horribly loud and close by.
Light. Blinding light.
I turned my head. Only one of my eyes seemed to be working. I saw a bulky figure standing over me, lifting the object that had been crushing me to the floor, hurling it aside.
Wrex.
“Over here! I found them!” the krogan shouted.
More faces. Captain Anderson, looking concerned. Two Alliance soldiers I didn’t recognize.
Anderson bent close. “Dr. T’Soni. Can you hear me?”
I nodded, even though the motion threatened to split my head open. “Leg hurts. Broken. I think.”
“I need a stretcher over here!” he shouted, and soldiers scrambled to obey.
I blinked and the other eye finally began to function, although I still had trouble focusing. I saw Ashley being helped to her feet. Her face was covered with blood, she favored one leg, but she could move if she leaned on . . . Garrus. Garrus helped her, grave concern written in his face. I wondered if Tali still lived.
“Take it easy, Doctor. It’s over. You’re safe now.” Anderson’s face again, close to mine, tense with concern. “Where’s Shepard? Is he here?”
All I could do was shake my head slightly, and glance in the direction where I had last seen Shepard standing.
The near end of the Petitioner’s Stage was now occupied by a massive broken fragment of Nazara.
Anderson stood and looked there too. I saw the moment he realized what it meant.
Then I saw his face change again, the light come back into his eyes.
I looked. A flicker of movement, little more than a blur as my eyes ran with tears.
Then he stepped up onto the shard of the Reaper. He moved painfully, one arm pressed against his side, favoring one leg, but for a moment he stood tall and proud amid the flickering fires.
Shepard.
He stepped down, wincing as his wounds pained him, and began to walk toward us. His face lit up with a smile.
I struggled to sit up, and then stand despite my broken leg. Anderson helped me, gave me a strong shoulder and an arm around my waist. The tears ran down my cheeks and would not stop.
Everyone stopped to see the miracle.
He stood before me. Reached out to brush the tears from my cheek with one gentle hand. Bent down to kiss me, lightly but with infinite promise.
I closed my eyes. The universe seemed right once more.
* * *
I awoke again, this time in a hospital bed, feeling much better. Most of the pain had gone, replaced by warm comfort, only a dull ache in the back of my head to remind me not to over-exert my biotics. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
I lay in a small private room. Out in the hallway I could see medical personnel working frantically, dealing with casualties of the attack. In my room it seemed very quiet, nothing but a steady chirp from medical monitors to break the silence.
For a moment I rested alone, but then the door opened and Dr. Chakwas entered. “Liara, you’re awake.”
“Only just.” I stirred under the coverlet, realized I wore some sort of hospital gown, still felt little discomfort. “What is the time?”
“Just past twenty-two hundred,” she replied, examining the instruments above my head. “About six hours since Sovereign was destroyed. How are you feeling?”
“Much better than I expected. What is my prognosis, Doctor?”
“Well, you had a broken tibia, four broken and two cracked ribs, a concussion, neural shock from overuse of biotics, a great many bruises and lacerations, first-degree burns, and you had lost quite a lot of blood. Nothing life-threatening if you got treatment in time, which you did. Bless you, Liara, that must have been a ferocious battle.”
“It was. What about Ashley and Shepard?”
“By some miracle, they both arrived in better condition than you. They’ve both been released to the Normandy under my care, and now that you’re awake I would like to transfer you as well. Unless there is an asari facility you would prefer?”
I hesitated. “Tali?”
“Tali will be fine. She’s in a clean-room facility and her condition has been stabilized. We expect her to regain consciousness very soon.”
“Oh, thank the Goddess. Yes, I’m willing to come to Normandy. I imagine the hospitals on the Presidium are overloaded right now.”
She nodded. “On the Presidium, in all of the Wards. Hospital ships have been called up from all the major powers to relieve some of the load. For days to come, the Citadel will be sending casualties as far as Earth for treatment.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad. Here, come see for yourself.”
Dr. Chakwas helped me to rise from the bed, and supported me as I walked to a window looking out on the Presidium. I saw darkness everywhere, smoke and baleful light from a dozen fires, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.
“What a disaster,” I whispered.
“The civilian death toll is in the tens of thousands,” said Dr. Chakwas somberly. “Whole city blocks were smashed by stray weapons fire, or by pieces
of Sovereign raining down after the explosion. A main fleet engagement inside the Citadel itself . . . it’s a miracle things weren’t far worse.”
“You have no idea.” I shuddered, remembering. “Doctor, we got there just in time. A few minutes more, and we would have seen the Citadel relay opening and the Reapers pouring through.”
“You stopped them,” she said softly. “You saved all of us.”
I shook my head and pointed out into the darkness, where the fires were burning. “Not all. I begin to understand why Shepard takes it so hard when his victories have a terrible cost.”
“The secret is to minimize the cost,” said Shepard, “not to mention to make sure you get a victory in the first place. It doesn’t help much, but it’s better than the alternative.”
I turned and saw him just inside the door, leaning against the wall with a gentle smile on his face. He had shed his combat armor and wore Alliance undress blues, a fresh scar on his right forearm the only sign of his wounds.
I still felt too unsteady on my feet to throw myself into his arms, but I did manage three fairly dignified steps that yielded the same result. “Shepard,” I breathed as I felt his arms around me. “I’m ready to go home.”
He raised one skeptical eyebrow. “It might be a while before regular service to Thessia is resumed.”
“Don’t be absurd. You know what I mean.”
“You’re right, I do.” He glanced at Dr. Chakwas. “Is she ready to travel?”
“She should stay off that leg and rest as much as possible for the next few days,” said the doctor, “but yes, she’s mobile enough to return to Normandy.”
“Then let’s go.” He smiled at me, happy but very worn. “I’m afraid we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Chapter 48 : Rewards
1 June 2183, Presidium Ring/Citadel
Technicians had restored the Presidium’s lights, put out all the fires, and begun to recover the fragments of Sovereign. Already one could find places where a large group could assemble and not see much sign of the damage.
We gathered in such a place, a green park, about halfway around the Presidium ring from the Council Tower. The false sky above shone blue, with white clouds. The air almost smelled fresh, with little scent of harsh chemicals or smoke. Dignitaries sat on a temporary stage: all three of the Council, Ambassador Udina, and several members of the Alliance Admiralty and Parliament. The rest of us sat in ranked chairs out on the lawn: asari, salarians, turians, and an unusual number of humans in both military and civilian clothes. One could even see a small group of quarians clustered off to one side, and a lone krogan standing quietly in the back.
