Author's Notes: Welcome to my sparkling brand-new fanfic, one of two, featuring... me! I finally bit the bullet and decided to go for the obligatory self-insert that seems to be so popular in the Mass Effect fandom. Featuring action, drama, and a pretty large divergence from canon – hence the title.
I've actually been thinking about this for a while, and I came up with two very different ideas, one of them following the canon – the usual "follow along the games plot" type, only with a few twists of my own – and another being this one, where things start way earlier than in the games, and I plan to have a lot of changes instead.
So, given that I couldn't make up my mind, I decided to do both, because why the heck not? It may or may not have something to do with my ego being so big that it needs more than one fic to contain it.
Anyway, if starting on Mindoir, 2170 is your thing, keep reading! If you're thinking more "I want to just follow the game", please check my other self-insert: "My Effect: Convergence". I will be updating both, together with 49,993 – my refusal ending fic.
I know, way too much on the plate. Well, it may be for the best, I find that breaking between fics helps a lot with writer's block and getting fresh ideas in.
One of the things you may notice in this fic is a number of references to what is, in my humble opinion, the best Mass Effect fanwork on this site: "Cause and Effect", and its sequels, "Mass Effect: Newton's First Law" and "Mass Effect: Newton's Second Law", by Raven Studios. You'll easily find them if you search the site, or check my list of favourites. They have, again in my humble opinion, the best characterization work I've read on FFnet.
So yeah, there'll be references to it during this fic. I strongly recommend you check them out.
With all that out of the way, let's get this show on the road!
And if by any chance you feel like supporting me, you can do so here:
tinyurl (period) com (slash) y2q9cop6
Have you ever been to New Zealand? It has a well deserved reputation for being very pretty, and full of unspoiled nature. Of course, that's a bit of a stretch, because most of the countryside is fenced in – and covered in sheep. That's not something they tell you in the tourist guides.
For me it wasn't about pretty sights. I came here without two pennies to rub together, having managed to score a grant to study agricultural engineering and, more important, start over by myself. Really far away from everything. And slowly, I was putting a life together here.
Though I admit, the countryside was quite nice.
It was the third day of my hike. A mere nine miles going through Mackinnon Pass to get to the lodge, going up a thousand feet before coming down again. And it was just awesome. I hadn't seen a soul since I took off – not surprising, given the season – and the views from up there were nothing short of spectacular. Want to get away from absolutely anything and everything? Do the Milford Track walk.
At the end of the day I had arrived at the bottom, and the views had disappeared behind a dense screen of trees. It wouldn't be long before I got to the lodge. Assuming I could find it, that is, because the track was surprisingly bad there – and it had nothing to do with my dreadful sense of direction; nuh-huh, not at all. I wondered whether I had taken a bad turn somewhere (again), tracks in this country are always well marked...
My answer was waiting for me past the last edge of the forest. I had definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere, because it was all farmland in front of me. That's not so unusual in New Zealand, but as far as I knew, there were no farms in the Milford Sound.
"Well, crap," I muttered. "Where the hell am I?"
Reseating the backpack on my shoulders, I walked off to look for something I could recognize. If nothing else, someone had to own that farm; if they lived nearby I could ask them. That was going to be embarrassing. For a moment I contemplated putting my bush knife back inside my backpack, instead of having it sheathed off my belt, but decided not to. I looked enough like a hiking tourist, and not a highway robber of some sort.
A deafening roar stopped me on my tracks. I looked up, and saw... I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Freaking spaceships. I couldn't even count them, there were dozens, maybe a hundred of them. Big and small.
A smallish ship whirred down not far from me, and five people jumped out. They were fully armored, carrying very recognizable guns. Two of them saw me, and I saw their faces too.
Batarians. Shit, that explains it.
I'm dreaming.
A lucid dream. Sweet, Mass Effect themed lucid dream. I forced myself to relax, old habit I managed to train over the years. Having lucid dreams is not very difficult, there are a few tricks that one can practice to learn how to control them. The most important thing is how to let the dream happen, knowing it's a dream and without waking up.
I pulled my sleeve back to look at my watch. Huh, I could see the time just fine, and the hands were moving normally. That was odd. Very lucid dream, then.
The two batarians were running at me now, pointing their guns at me and saying something I couldn't understand. Not the first time that happened in a dream, I've had lucid dreams in German. I don't freaking speak German, but there you go. It probably wasn't actual German (I mean, duh!).
"Bassi yu tekk!" one of the batarians shouted, pointing his shotgun at my face. "Bassi yu tekk!"
With the ease of well practiced dreamery (because I like making up words), I grabbed the shotgun barrel to push it aside, pulled my knife out, and lunged at the batarian's neck, all in one quick, smooth move. I thought he looked pretty surprised when I buried the blade up his unprotected throat.
The other batarian yelled something, could have been words, could have been him clearing his throat, and turned his shotgun at me. The gun didn't make as much sound as one would expect from a real shotgun, but the splatter of yellow blood from the twitching, dying batarian was a lot more expected. What I didn't expect was the flare of pain in my left arm.
Despite myself, I felt a rush of fear and adrenalin in me. I dropped to the side together with the dying batarian, and the second shot missed me completely.
I now had a shotgun myself – and I know how to use them, for hunting at least. It felt strange in my hands, as things usually do in dreams, but it worked just fine when I aimed it at the batarian and pressed the trigger. There was a flare of blue light all around him, and he didn't go down, so I pumped the gun again and shot a second time. That one did hit. Then a third, a fourth, I kept going until the shotgun stopped working, only giving me a hissing sound.
The batarian was very dead. Of course he was, it was my dream.
I looked at my arm, and saw some blood soaking through to my orange Portal 2 track jacket. And it fucking hurt.
"Okay, time to wake up," I said out loud.
…
I didn't. I looked at my hands and started counting my fingers. Ten of them, five each hand. I could count them forward and backwards. I thought about how I got there, and could trace back the entire day's worth of hiking. I could remember preparing my pack the day before in the lodge. I could remember the German couple in there (there are always German tourists in New Zealand; always), they were doing the Milford Track the other way around, and the guy – Jan, I remembered his name was Jan – actually carried his guitar with him. Of all things. We spent a couple of hours playing and singing, it was a pretty good night. He lend me his guitar as well, so I played a few tunes. I could remember everything in perfect detail.
There was a sinking, cold feeling in my gut. These are all the things one usually can't do in a dream. Counting your fingers, remembering how you got somewhere, looking at the time... Those are the things that help you realize you're dreaming.
I wasn't dreaming. Or it was a very, very deep nightmare. Maybe I had an accident and was in a coma, and that's why I couldn't wake up.
Maybe fucking batarians were real and were raiding New Zealand. Of all places.
I rushed back to the forest before any other batarians could see me, and took my backpack off. I had a first aid kit in there, but I didn't know how to treat a freaking gunshot wound. Given what my shotgun had done to the batarian – and I was still carrying the shotgun, it was mine, if I was going to have to fight batarians – it was probably just a glancing shot.
I took my jacket off and looked at my arm. A tiny bullet had gone clean through, clipping my left triceps. I pulled gauzes and tape out of my first aid kit, and tried to staunch the bleeding with them. It wasn't a pretty fix, but I didn't have time to figure out how to do this properly. Last thing I needed was a shotgun to the face, just in case this really wasn't a dream.
Once it was all set, I put my jacket and backpack back on, and grabbed the shotgun. Ships were still passing overhead, so I was glad for the trees covering me.
What the hell do I do now?
I could run back into the bush, and keep my head down. Not an ideal proposition, but better than standing out there like an idiot. I peered at the farm out through the trees at the edge of the forest. There was a house, not far from where I was. Slightly strange looking, but probably a cheap prefab of some sort, with two sheds next to it. I didn't remember seeing the house there, so I hoped it was another sign that this was, after all, a dream. Things appearing out of nowhere is typical of dreams.
The other batarians had made for the house, but I was too far to see what was happening. It probably wasn't pretty.
I'm not a hero. In fact, the only reason I wasn't feeling sick after killing the two batarians was that I was still trying to convince myself this was a bad dream. And the reason why I had managed to take two armed slavers by surprise was precisely that belief that this was all a dream. But for all of that, I still took off running towards the house, only stopping on the way to pick my knife up.
The sight of the dead batarian, the smell of alien blood, and my pulling the knife out of the dead alien's throat did manage to make me quite queasy. I wiped the blade on the grass before sheathing it, and picked up the other batarian's shotgun. Two better than one. I jammed it horizontally over my lower back, between the backpack and my back and, shotgun in hand, resumed my run.
It didn't take long to get there, maybe two minutes tops. When I was within spitting distance to the front door, a woman came out of it, running and screaming. I saw long, dark red hair and a blood-stained dress, and that was all I could take before a batarian got to the door and shot her from behind.
The shotgun blast tore through the woman like she was made out of jello, and she fell to the ground in a splatter of flesh and blood. I would have been shocked to death if I had simply been there watching the scene unfold, but as it was, I was on a high of adrenalin and running, and instead I just stopped long enough to point my shotgun and shoot at the batarian.
His kinetic barrier stopped my shot, but I kept shooting anyway. He ducked into cover behind the door, so I changed target and shot at the wall instead, the mass effect accelerated rounds tearing through the thin construction with ease. Once the shotgun overheated, I dropped it unceremoniously, pulled the second one, and kept shooting.
The batarian probably hadn't been expecting that, because he came out of cover as soon as the telltale hissing sound of the overheated weapon could be heard. I got him straight in the gut, and as he fell back, I rushed in, still firing wildly.
Several rounds and an overheat later, he was dead. I was panting heavily, breathing through clenched teeth, and I couldn't tear my eyes off the body. I was feeling sick. Again. I had to step out to throw up, trying desperately to finish quickly before the other batarians came.
Some things cannot be rushed. Throwing up is one of them. My legs felt so weak that I probably looked like a newborn baby giraffe when I stepped back in, shotgun held high with trembling hands. I heard more shots, a boy shouting "daddy!", and then another shot silencing the shout.
I let out a string of profanity, and recklessly chased after the sound. I found a batarian standing in the kitchen, two bodies on the ground around him. This one I didn't catch by surprise, and he got into cover as soon as I appeared, shooting at me and forcing me to scramble behind the doorframe with the speed of desperation. I felt a tug as I dove, and realized the shot had clipped my backpack, and by the looks of it, gone through my sleeping bag.
Too freaking close.
The batarian didn't make a sound at first, and neither did I. After a couple of seconds, he spoke.
"Bassi yu! Orik bassi yu!" he shouted. I didn't have a clue what he was saying, but I could guess something like "give yourself up so I can shoot you, or become a slave for the rest of your life serving your glorious masters, you worm!"
Hey, maybe I can speak batarian after all.
Shotgun ready, I did a quick peek around the corner, shooting wildly, and had to get back in when a shot clipped the wall mere inches from my face.
Yeah, he was a better shot than I was. Nevermind the fact that this was my first ever firefight, at least with real guns and my life on the line. But one thing the batarian didn't have was anger. I was absolutely furious at that point. Scared, sick, surprised, shocked, it all came down to me being angry at those assholes. Maybe that was what the dream was about, the batarians standing in for things and people I hated.
"Well, I better do something about it," I muttered. I looked around, saw the dead batarian not far from me, and a silly idea came to mind.
Have you ever tried moving a dead body? They're heavy. Apparently, the best way to do it is to cut them into six pieces, then feed them to pigs. I didn't have any pigs, or any desire to cut the dead batarian into six pieces, but I did have enough strength and practice to know how to lift a heavy object – they call them deadlifts for a reason – and thanks to the batarian's armor, enough of a grip to actually lift him. Walking to the door was a bit more difficult, but in the end I managed, holding the batarian up by the waist, leaning back so the center of gravity didn't topple me. Then, when I was by the door, I let him go.
He toppled forward and into the view of the doorframe, and sure enough, the batarian inside was shooting before he even knew what it was. I heard some kind of batarian curse, and that was my cue to lean in at a crouch, and start unloading myself.
I had more success than he did. I saw his shields flare, and after his first shot back, which mercifully just grazed my shoulder, his shotgun hissed and overheated. I saw him look down and curse again, dropping the shotgun as my own gun made short work of his shields, and reach for a sidearm...
Without even thinking, I jumped out of my cover and rushed him. In my mad dash, and with him otherwise preoccupied, I caught him square in the face with the butt of my shotgun. He stumbled back, and I hit him again. And again. He went down. I held the shotgun like it was a club, and kept hitting him on the face over and over, until he stopped twitching, and finished by turning the gun around and blowing his face at point blank range.
He didn't move again.
I looked away quickly, feeling that sinking queasiness in my gut that told me my body was about to remind me I had done something sickening, but what I saw was a lot worse. A kid, eight, maybe ten years old, laying dead on the ground with a hole in the middle of his chest. His unblinking eyes were staring at the ceiling, and there was blood. So much blood...
My shotgun dropped from my trembling hands, all their strength lost.
"This can't be happening. This is a dream... Just a dream..." I muttered, over and over.
I was fixated enough on the child that I failed to see movement out of the corner of my eye for several seconds. When I did, I saw a man laying on the ground too. A human. Just as badly injured as the kid, but he was still alive. Barely.
Rushing to his side, I knelt down, and looked at his wounds. I am no doctor, but it looked as if it was a miracle he was still alive. He was gasping for breath, and failing to get any air in. Probably because of the hole on the right side of his chest. There was blood everywhere.
He looked scared, looked at me with wide open eyes. And I didn't know what to do.
A scream, a distant scream, caught my attention. Female voice, not far. The man's eyes opened even wider in surprise, and he started struggling to speak. He couldn't manage. He looked at me, looked in the direction of the door, then looked at me again. Pleading.
Go save her.
"I'll save her," I said, already standing up to grab my gun. The last thing I saw was what I thought was a grateful look from the man, face frozen in death with that expression on it.
I rushed out of the house, and stopped at the door, trying to find where the scream had come from. Unless they had had more reinforcements, there was only one batarian left.
"Let me go!"
There. One of the sheds. I rushed with completely reckless disregard for my safety, and entered the small building to see a young woman on the ground, struggling with the batarian that was trying to pin her down. He had something in his hand I didn't recognize, but later came to understand was a slaver shock collar. I didn't care.
I rushed him, he turned at the sound of my boots thumping on the ground, and I had the pleasure of seeing his surprised face before the girl clocked him on the head with a pipe. He was stunned enough that it was easy even for me to kick him in the face, put my gun in his mouth when he fell back, and kill him with a single pull of the trigger.
"What... what's going on?" the girl said, looking at the grisly scene. She was breathing quickly, with short, shallow breaths.
"Batarian raid," I replied simply, surprised at how easily the words had come to me. I looked at her, she was probably about fifteen or sixteen, and had dark red hair and green eyes. "Are you hurt?"
"N... no, I... Oh god, no, mom! Dad!" She stood up. "Jimmy!".
She was about to rush out when I grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her mad dash.
"Let go!" she shouted, trying to twist free of my grasp.
"They're gone," I said in a low voice.
"They're not! Let me go!" she insisted. When I didn't, she threw a punch at me, weak, but by luck or intent, well aimed to hit my injured arm.
I yelped in pain and let her go, and she immediately started running. "Don't go!" I shouted. "They're dead! We have to go!"
Cursing mentally, I gave chase, and nearly ran into her as I stepped out. She was rooted to the ground, hands over her mouth and looking at the scene in front of her. Her mother was laying dead on the ground, where the batarian had shot her from behind.
I heard a roar of engines, and saw another dropship doing a low approach, starting to land not far from us.
"We have to go!" I yelled, and grabbed her wrist again.
"No! I won't leave them!" the girl shouted back.
"Your father told me to help you!" I spat back, and pulled her along as I started running towards the forest. "It was the last thing he did, so I'm going to fucking do it!"
I had said it, but it didn't sink until much later that it was true. It was the dying wish of a man that I go protect his daughter. I had never even imagined I'd be in that situation, but it was a serious mindfuck.
Meanwhile, the batarians had seen us, and I could hear the ping of bullets hitting the ground around us. We were much too far for them to hit us, I thought, so I wasn't too worried. All I could think of was to drag this unwilling girl away from danger.
My thoughts of safety were shattered when, with a yelp of pain, the girl stumbled and fell to the ground, face first into the hardened earth. I turned to see blood coming out of her leg, and when she looked up, a deep cut across her left eyebrow. Without much ceremony I practically pulled her to her feet, threw her over my shoulder on a fireman's carry, and resumed my run towards the forest, much slower this time.
My legs were on fire, and my breath ragged and burning by the time we got to the trees. It wasn't exactly safe, the batarians would surely catch us, moreso if they decided to just use their ship and come gun us down, but the trees at least would give us some cover.
After we put some trees behind us, I took a glance back, and dared stop long enough to put the girl down and look at her leg.
Again, the small sliver of metal from the mass effect accelerated round had gone clean though. I took my backpack off, dug for the first aid kit, and did the best I could to stop the blood with gauzes and bandages. Between that and my arm, I was pretty much out of kit. Hopefully it would be enough. The wound on my shoulder had turned out to be just a small graze, so that one didn't worry me at all. I had enough to clean and plaster the cut on the girl's eyebrow, it had bled rather spectacularly, but it wasn't too bad.
"Jimmy..." I heard the girl mutter, chocking a small sob.
"Hey, hey," I said, trying to sound reassuring. I had no idea what to say in a situation like this, to be perfectly honest, but I had to say something. "We're going to make it. Okay? You'll be fine." Yeah, right, fine after having all her family murdered. "What's your name? I'm Roy. Roy Morgan."
"A-Aliana," the girl said. My blood froze, I knew exactly one person called Aliana, and she was a fictional character, a character I created in a videogame. Surely it couldn't be. "Aliana Shepard."
Shit. Shit. SHIT!
I was probably gaping at her, and obviously making her very uncomfortable, because after a couple of seconds, she looked away, rubbing her hands awkwardly.
Aliana Shepard. I'm in freaking Mindoir, it's the year 2170, and this is the Mass Effect universe. And no matter how much I'd like to believe it, it is not a dream.
"O-Okay Aliana, let's go. We shouldn't stay here."
She tried to stand up, but her leg wouldn't carry her weight. So once again it was up to me to carry her, her hip on my shoulder as I did the fireman's carry once more. It was hard, and a good thing she was small and thin, because my knees were killing me. We went on for what I thought were hours, neither of us saying a word, listening to the sound of ships passing overhead, and the distant report of futuristic weapons.
Aliana Shepard. Future commander of the Systems Alliance, N7, and all around badass. She looked a lot like a frail, scared girl at the moment. The thought of everything that was going to happen to her came to mind, one horrifying event after another, ending in the destruction of the Reapers and, very likely, the death of billions. All on her shoulders.
For a moment, I entertained the thought that this may be some sort of magical forest. If I walked back long enough, I may end up in New Zealand once more, early twenty-first century. That'd be perfect. Not just because I really didn't want to be in the Mass Effect universe just a few years before it all turned to custard, but because nice, safe New Zealand may be the better place for Shepard to spend her life. Screw the Reapers. Anderson can find someone else to take the beacon home. Alenko and Williams eventually became Spectres, I'm sure they'd be able to manage. And as far as the Galaxy went, all they needed was someone to press the Crucible trigger. Her dad had asked me to take care of her.
But that aside, I couldn't take another step.
I set Shepard down as gently as I could, and fell heavily on the ground, breathing desperately and wiping sweat off my face. My knees were killing me. And we hadn't seen a single batarian.
"We should be okay for now. It's getting dark, and I don't think they're following us," I said.
Shepard gathered herself, legs up to her chest and arms wrapped around her knees, and nodded absently.
I took my backpack off, or what was left of it, and pulled the canteen out. I didn't have much water left, so I only took one big mouthful before passing it to Shepard. She looked at it absently for a couple of seconds, then uncurled herself to take it and drink a little. Like I had done, she didn't drink much.
"Are you hungry?" I offered, digging one of my meal bars out of the bag. She took it without a word, looking at the packaging curiously for a while.
I unwrapped my own bar without much ceremony, and bit right in. I was freaking starving. I had set off for a nice, short hike with a bit of a climb, and had instead spent all afternoon running around, half the time carrying a wounded, young version of Shepard, and the other half ducking it out with batarians.
Dammit, I better wake up soon, because this is the worst dream I've ever had.
I laid my back to the nearby tree trunk, and took another bite. It had to be a dream. How else would I end up in the Mass Effect universe? Besides, I've read enough fics to know how it works. Someone must have put me here, for some reason, whether a twisted or a noble one. There had been no dramatic dream, no sudden glowing apparition, no person or alien coming to me and knowing an awful lot about myself for no reason.
Night came to Mindoir rather quickly, and soon we were in total darkness. No moon to give a bit of light, it would hopefully kept us hidden from batarian eyes. Still, I had to avoid falling asleep. Tired as I was, it would have been a terrible idea.
In the stillness of the night, a muffled sound nearby easily caught my attention. Mindior didn't seem to have much nocturnal life, or the fighting had kept it quiet, but there were just a few chirps of insects to disrupt the silence. So, Shepard's muffled sobs were pretty easy to hear.
Very carefully, I reached out slowly, until my hand met her back. She gave a startled cry of surprise.
"Hey, hey, it's me. It's okay. It's me, I'm here."
I felt her stir, feel out with her hand until she found my arm, and follow until she found the rest of me. Without saying anything, she jumped at me, burying her face on my shoulder, sobbing quietly. Putting my arms around her, I let her unload, trying to say something reassuring.
"It's okay. Everything's going to be fine."
I'm not sure when she stopped crying and simply fell asleep, but after a while she was finally resting easily, her head on my shoulder, and breathing slowly. Probably for the best. My plan was to let her sleep it off that night, and hopefully the Alliance marines would be here in the morning. I couldn't quite remember how it went in-game, I knew that when the marines arrived they couldn't save the majority of the colony, but I wasn't sure whether it was because they were too late, or there were too many batarians.
I didn't let my mind wander off too far. I knew myself, and letting my mind wander when tired had always been a sure way for me to fall asleep. Useful skill when I needed to sleep, say, before an exam, but not the best thing when sleep might have meant missing a batarian coming to blow my head off.
Instead, I spent most of the night listening. Actively listening to the sounds the forest was making, and trying to discern what was making the noise. Fighting sleep whenever something sounded like a footstep, or I imagined may sound like a footstep in a bid for adrenalin to give me a waking jolt.
So, when I heard a heavy rustling sound right before dusk, I imagined it had to be a boot scraping the floor of the forest. When several more followed, I was already reaching for my shotgun. I couldn't see a thing, but the sounds were too many, and too close, for it to be anything else.
"Shepard," I said to the sleeping girl resting her head on my shoulder. Then I cursed at myself. This wasn't Commander Shepard, badass extraordinaire and kicker of Reaper butt. This was a young sixteen year old girl who had just seen her family get murdered. I shouldn't put anything else on her shoulders. I was the one with the gun. "Aliana, wake up," I whispered, shaking her gently.
She opened her eyes lazily, trying to take in her surroundings in her haze. When her brain finally clicked into gear, she bolted upright away from me.
"Shhh, quiet," I said, not managing to hide the worry in my voice. I primed my shotgun, and took position behind the trunk of the tree, trying to keep it between me and the noises. They seemed to have subdued, I could only hear a couple of rustles.
My mind didn't really kick into gear until Shepard gave a shrill cry. Lights appeared out of nowhere, pointing at us, and a humanoid figure had grabbed Shepard. Another one was right on top of me, and before I knew what was happening, he had taken the shotgun off my hands.
"LET GO!" Shepard shouted.
The yell spurred me into action like nothing else. I jumped out of my crouch and charged right at the batarian holding Shepard. To my surprise, he looked as if he was expecting it, and meet my charge easily, redirecting my momentum and throwing me to the ground. On my way down I managed to grab his armor, and he accompanied me, with a muttered "fuck" I didn't quite process at the time. I wasn't even thinking, I was acting on pure desperate instinct. I tried to punch him in the face, which considering he was wearing a full face helmet, was not the greatest idea. There was a loud snap and a sharp jolt of pain, letting me know one of my fingers had broken, but I punched again. More batarians came, pinning me down hard, and Shepard was still screaming for them to let her go.
"Stop!" one of the batarians shouted, and for the first time, it clicked that he was speaking English. One of the lights turned to him, and as he took off his helmet I realized they were not batarians. They were humans. "We're with the Alliance, kids. You're safe!"
Shepard stopped shouting, fixing her eyes on the marine. He was a tall, broad shouldered fellow, dark haired with a military buzz cut, a square jawed weathered face, and that was all I could really see under the dim light.
"You've got guts kid, I'll give you that," the marine I tried to fight told me. Everyone let go of me, and he offered me a hand.
I took it, but the relief I was feeling was so intense I almost didn't manage to stand up. He steadied me for a couple of seconds, and then gave me a friendly thump on the shoulder. The marine holding Shepard let her go too, and as soon as he did, she rushed to my side, using me as a shield between her and the marines.
Fine with me, as long as she didn't run away. The unhelmeted man came to me and offered his hand.
"Lieutenant Zabaleta, SSV Einstein. Are you kids okay? Is there anyone else with you?"
"Roy Morgan," I said, and offered my own, trembling and undamaged hand. He gave me a firm, reassuring handshake. "And I... I don't know if anyone else made it."
"Who's that?" he said, gesturing at Shepard with his chin. "Your sister?"
"Aliana Shepard," I replied, looking at her over my shoulder. "No relation, I'm afraid."
"What happened?"
"Batarians, sir." I couldn't help but stand a bit straighter, trying not to look as weak as I knew I was probably coming across. "A ship dropped five of them on her farm. It... it wasn't pretty. We ran."
"I understand. There wasn't anything you could do," he said reassuringly. He nodded at me and turned to the others to give some orders, but his words stayed with me. There wasn't anything I could do. Truth is, there was. While Shepard's father and brother were being shot, I was leisurely standing outside the house, throwing up. If I hadn't... If I had been less of a wuss, I could have gotten there and shot the fucking batarian in the face while her father was trying to protect his son.
I could have saved them. But I didn't.
Goddammit, what a failure.
"Come on," one of the marines said, taking me out of my thoughts. Being in full armor and helmet, I couldn't tell them apart. This one was a man. Another one was standing next to him. "We'll get you back to base. Are you hurt?"
"She is," I said, pointing at Shepard. With a bit of coaxing, she let go of me, and let the other marine look at her leg.
"What about you?"
"Just scratches," I said, picking my backpack up with my free arm and slinging one strap over my shoulder. Dammit, my hand hurt. I looked at it, but in the low light I couldn't see anything outwardly wrong. My two broken fingers weren't bent out of shape or anything, they just hurt. I could deal with that, I had had broken bones before.
It wasn't long before Shepard was patched up, although we did wait for a while to let the medi-gel set. Soon, Shepard and I were following the marine through the forest, while the second one brought up the rear. The rest continued their patrol. Shepard was still clutching my arm, and since it was my left arm, it hurt like crazy, but I couldn't bring myself to ask her to let me go. I tried to wordlessly disengage her a couple of times, and all I got was her grip tightening on my wound. She probably needed the support, given the way she was visibly limping, so we made very slow progress.
"What's been happening? Is the colony okay?" I asked in a low voice, after we had been walking for a while.
"No. Batarians are gone, but..." he didn't finish the sentence, and I didn't press him any further. Dammit, I shouldn't have asked. I knew it was a slaughter. Shepard didn't need to hear that.
Her grip tightened up on my arm, and I hissed in pain under my breath. Yeah, she had heard it.
It didn't take long to get to the Alliance base, and we got there at the crack of dawn. There was enough light now that I could take a look around and see something. It was a very simple affair, a perimeter dug up around a couple of armored dropships, with several large tents built in between them. There were plenty of marines around, and the activity was damn near frantic. I noticed several soldiers looking at us as we walked by, and two of them actually came to ask about people, trying to find out if we knew whether acquaintances or family had survived the attack.
I saw hope and apprehension in their eyes. Telling them I didn't know was just gut-wrenching. Not just because of them, but also due to the realization of what exactly had happened here. How many people lived in Mindoir? In this colony? Is a colony technically one town, or the whole planet? Were other places on the planet hit too?
Trying to tell myself it was all just a dream didn't help. It was just too real. However it had happened, I was on Mindoir, and people were dying by the hundreds.
"You okay?" the marine in front of me said, and immediately shook his head. "Stupid question. Sorry." He pointed over his shoulder at the open tent, where a field hospital had been set up. "Let the docs take a look at you two."
The hospital had about two dozen stretchers, set in four rows, and with only a few marines on them. It looked empty. So very empty. Like they had been expecting to treat a large number of people, but hadn't found anyone. All they had found was death. I couldn't get the image of the Shepard household out of my head. The dead people, the empty hospital uselessly waiting for them to arrive...
"Okay," I said, barely finishing the single word I managed to choke out.
"Hey, you did good," the marine said, putting his gloved hand on my shoulder. With the other one, he lifted his helmet's visor, and I had a look at the man's face for the first time. A pair of clear blue eyes looked at me from under a pair of bushy blonde eyebrows, and his thick-lipped mouth was curled in something akin to a pained half-smile. He had an ugly scar across his thick, bulbous nose, and a weathered look about him that made it seem like he had seen far too much combat for anyone's good. "You got out of there alive," he glanced at Shepard, "both of you. You didn't just roll over and die. I'm proud of you."
I don't know what did it. The man's words, or that piercing, blue-eyed look he was giving me, but I felt a small glimmer of hope inside of me. Yeah, the reason I had fended off the batarians was that they didn't expect me to fight them at all – otherwise they'd have probably killed me with little effort, judging by how easily the Alliance marine had overpowered me. In fact, four of the five had been taken by complete surprise. Sloppy. They had expected me to just roll over and die. Take whatever slavery they offered. I couldn't take that.
While all that was going through my head, the man never stopped looking at me in the eye, never let go of my shoulder.
"T-thank you sir," I finally managed to whisper.
"It's Richard. Richard Jameson."
"Roy Morgan," I replied.
"I know, you told us before." This time he made a more genuine smile, and gave me a light thump on the shoulder. "Take it easy now, the cavalry's here."
He looked at Shepard, and I realized she, too, was very intently looking at Jameson. She still didn't say anything, which was really worrying me. I had no idea what to do to help her, I remembered Commander Shepard as an indestructible, unstoppable force. I always thought Mindoir had been where the commander had grabbed the galaxy by the balls and given them a good twist, if one chose the colonist background that is. But she looked like my arm was the only thing stopping her from falling apart.
"Come on, let's go inside. I bet they can fix your leg in no time. Does it still hurt?" Stupid question, given the way she was limping, but there it was. I got no answer, not even a look.
I sighed and led her inside, where a very helpful nurse took us to a corner with free stretchers. Even before I had sit down, there was a doctor with us already, and together we managed to convince Shepard to let go of my arm and sit down on the stretcher.
"Woah!" the doctor said.
Almost immediately I felt my legs give, and would have ended up faceplanting the floor if the doctor and the nurse hadn't grabbed me. My backpack hit the floor, and some of its contents spilled out. For all my talk about holding Shepard up, I was the one who almost dropped when we split.
"Come on, have a seat, tell me where it hurts," the doctor said, obviously trying for a bit of lightweight humor.
"I'm fine," I lied. "Take care of her. She got shot through the leg, and-"
"Yes, we're taking care of her too. Now lay down and tell me what hurts," the doctor insisted, more forcefully this time. On the stretcher next to me, Shepard was sitting down with her arms over her chest, crossed as if to give herself a hug. All she was missing was to be rocking backwards and forwards. At least she was nodding and shaking her head to the nurse's questions.
With a sigh, I put my head down on the soft surface. "I got shot through the arm, grazed my shoulder, and I think I broke two fingers," I said. The doctor had an omni-tool out, and was already scanning me. I closed my eyes and let him work; it felt like it had been an age since I last managed to catch some sleep.
"Well, that's actually not so bad. Should have you up and running in no time," the doctor said. "I'm going to numb your hand and do some bone weave." I felt a jab in my hand, which quite frankly, didn't hurt particularly bad. He had stopped talking, so I opened my eyes to look at him. He was examining my patchwork job on my arm with some interest. "You had all this and didn't have medi-gel?" he said, pointing at my discarded backpack. What was left of the first aid kit had spilled out too.
"Uh..."
"Well, next time I recommend you pack some."
"Sure thing doc," I said, trying not to give anything away. I wondered if my gear would look as out of place as a whalebone umbrella would in the twenty-first century.
He reached out and poked at my hand. "You feel this?"
"Not at all," I sighed, and dropped heavily on the pillow again.
"Great. Go ahead and get some sleep, I'll be done by the time you wake up."
He didn't have to tell me twice. Even through I was still carrying all the excitement of the day, I closed my eyes and was out like a candle in a hurricane.