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[kalenath]

((This takes place ten years after the events of Mass Effect 3, with the green ending. I will TRY to avoid spoilers, but be warned, they WILL crop up.))

Deep Space
 
"Commander."

                The voice of the officer of the watch pulled Commander Mornis out of his perusal of the daily reports. Spirits, how he hated paperwork, but it seemed to be his life now. What was the saying? 'The more things changed, the more they stayed the same'? Yes, that was it. He smiled slightly. Humans. He looked up at his XO and nodded. The Command and Control Center for the small frigate was laid out in typical fashion. The commander's post oversaw all the various aspects of the CiC. It made it...interesting sometimes trying to get to the helm, but hey, it was traditional and it worked. Most of the time. He did not banish his smile as he looked to his XO but he did moderate it.

 
"Yes?" He inquired calmly.


"We have something, sir." The XO, a solemn female named Krisal did not smile. Then again, she rarely did these days. He understood. Oh, he understood. FAR too many of his crew had lost family during the war. Ten years simply wasn't enough time to put it behind them. Even with everything that had happened, even with what Shepard had done, it just wasn't going to go away quickly. "Tracking reports picked it up and..." She did not -barely- snarl. "Our...colleague...scanned it and reported life signs."

 

"XO, I don't like it any more than you do." The commander of the frigate Wings of Xenabia said quietly. "But we DO need the help." She nodded slowly.

 
"I know, sir." She said softly as he stepped down from the command dais and came to her side to look over what she had. "It just..." She shook her head.

 
"It goes against the grain." Commander Mornis said with a nod. "I know. The last time I saw one of them, I was stationed on the Duty of Primarch Vidos." He sighed. "He was a good ship, but the firestorm at Sol was way too much for any hope. One solid blast from a capital class tore us to pieces. At least most of the crew got off. Then to be picked up by GETH of all things. THAT was a shock." He said with a sigh.


"Yeah." Krisal nodded. "I was on the Raptor's Claw. We took a lot of damage, but the ship survived until Hackett ordered us to break off. I..." She shook her head. "I will do my duty, sir."


"That is all I can ask, XO." The commander said mildly. "What did we get?"
 

"Looks like debris from a ship, or... No." Krisal said slowly. "Arcturus Station was near here."


                The ship and her 'escort' had been slowly sweeping through the Arcturus system on their grim task. A sad task, but one that any military worth anything put a LOT of effort into. Recovery of personnel, living or otherwise. But after so long, the Search and Rescue frigate was more used as a Search and Recovery ship. They were used to it. They didn't like it, but they understood it. Every Turian aboard had volunteered for the job.


"Yeah." Commander Mornis said with a scowl. "They never had a chance."


                That was putting it very mildly. Arcturus Station had been the Human Alliance's main base of operations in the quadrant. It had housed their government and been the focal point of the military. That had made it a prime target when the Reapers had arrived. While most of the Reaper forces in the area had shot through the system on the way to savage Earth, some had stayed behind to engage the fleets.  The human admiral in charge had made a sound move, however heartbreaking. He had sacrificed one fleet so that two others could escape. Hard facts ruled in wartime. But that meant there was a LOT of debris in the area. And unrecovered bodies. The humans were still stretched too thin, so the Turian Hierarchy had extended assistance. After all the humans, particularly Shepard, had done, it was the LEAST they could do. They crew understood. But then Obligatha had shown up.


                "What does it say?" Commander Mornis asked in a calm voice that he hoped totally hid his anger at their  'escort'.


                "It says the readings are faint and...strange." Krisal said with a puzzled look at the sensors. "I doubt we would have picked this up at all. It's tiny, moving fast and..." She paused in shock. "It's a lifepod! It's intact!"


                "It's been ten years. XO." The commander said to quell the excitement that quickly pervaded the CiC. "But you say life signs?" He inquired. The XO nodded and he thought for a moment before coming to a decision.
"Helm!" He called. "Plot to intercept. Medical, stand by. Have the docs ready for anything." A chorus of acknowledgments followed his commands as the Wings of Xenobia moved onto a new course. Then everything stopped as the com lit up. Only one entity used that channel. He sighed and hit the acknowledge key himself.
"Yes?" he asked quietly.


"There is something very odd about that life pod, Commander Mornis." The soft voice that came from the com was all wrong. One did not expect a Reaper, a capital class Reaper at that, to have a female voice. Or to sound worried. "It feels...wrong. We will maintain observation, but be very wary."


"Understood Obligatha." Commander Mornis said quietly. "Anything else?"


"It has no feel of Indoctrination." Obligatha sounded confused. "Nor anything else we have encountered. But it does feel... familiar."


"Familiar how?" Commander Mornis asked.
 

"We do not know." Obligatha said softly. "We are communicating with the others, asking. None of the others we have queried as of yet have any idea. Just be careful, Commander."


"We will." Commander Mornis said with a nod and the com channel went dark again. He shook his head. "Now that is one for the record books." He said with a tight grin. "A worried Reaper telling us to be careful?" A strained laugh swept the bridge and the tension went down a little.
 

"I don't know, sir..." Krisal said with a grimace. "Anything that can worry one of them..."

 
"Point taken, XO." Commander Mornis said quietly. "Battle Ready." The XO nodded and hit the controls that started alert sirens sounding through the ship. What would have been called 'General Quarters' on a human ship had the small frigate's crew racing for their battle stations. Once he was sure they were all in place -and he knew the senior NCO would have anyone's fringes for dessert if they were not- he hit the intercom. "Crew of the Wings of Xenobia. We have detected life signs from a pod. But our escort is worried. Anything that can worry a Reaper is worrying in and of itself. We are going to go get that pod. But be ready. For anything. We will do our duty. May the Spirits watch over us all."

The small Turian SAR frigate accelerated smoothly on on it's new course, followed by it's much larger 'escort'.

((GAH! I tried to cut and paste from Word and it made it all gobbledy guk. Ah... This is going to take a LONG time if I have to write it in the replies...))

Modifié par kalenath, 15 novembre 2012 - 12:21 .

[kalenath]

"Commander!" XO Krisal's voice was sharp.

 

"I see it, lieutenant." Commander Mornis' voice was sour. "Off all the lousy..." He shook himself slightly and stared
at his screen.

 

The Turian frigate crew sat poised. The life pod that showed clearly on visual scans now had startled everyone. They had all expected Alliance markings on the pod, not Cerberus ones. The human terrorist group Cerberus had been a menace for decades. Starting just after what the humans called the First Contact War, the splinter group had done all kinds of things to make life miserable for the Council in general and the Turian Hierarchy in particular. With the advent of the Reapers and the open warfare that the group had then espoused, many Turians had felt the way that Mornis felt about them. A plague to be stamped out. Not all humans were to be hated, but Cerberus? Oh yes. The scum were directly responsible for millions of Turian deaths during the war and before. Mornis had hoped that with the end of the Reaper War, that even the fanatics are Cerberus would have found better things to do. Jumping into a black hole naked would have suited him just fine.

 

"Cerberus!" Krisal spat. "What the hell is a Cerberus pod doing way the heck out here?"

 

"I don't know." Commander Mornis said softly. "But we better find out. Send a security force to the hangar bay."
The LT nodded and bent to her com. The commander scowled at the screen for another moment and then sighed. "We need answers. Helm, match course and speed. Let's see if we can grapple that thing, slow it. Pull it in."  Acknowledgements came and he watched as the small starship moved carefully to mirror the life pod's trajectory.

 

Grappling an object in motion was rarely an easy challenge. Doing so in space, while on the surface seeming a simple thing, was anything but. Sometimes it still came down to sending someone out onto the hull with a rope to make physical contact. The problem wasn't the pod. The problem was that the Wings of Xenobia was much, much more massive that the pod. It took time to... The commander's thoughts paused and he snapped orders as the pod suddenly started to gyrate.

 

"Back us off!" He called the helm. "Our Eezo core is affecting it! Our mass is making it spin!"

 

"Yes sir!" The helm Turian called back. He had a tense few moments before the screen showed the pod getting smaller. A sigh of relief came from the conn. "We are clear of it, sir."

 

"Spirits..." LT Krisal breathed. "How the heck are we going to snatch that thing? A shuttle?" One of the small craft
aboard could, technically, match course and speed without causing such a massive change in trajectory.

 

"I almost wish we had fighters aboard, they could do it for sure. A shuttle could grapple it." Commander Mornis mused. "But would the grapples have enough hold to slow the pod's tumbling? It's moving faster. And... What the-?" He shook his head. "XO? Is that what I think it is?"

 

"I..." LT Krisal shook her head, perplexed. "I didn't think escape pods carried any other thrusters, sir." They
both stared at the small, barely visible puffs of reaction mass that were coming off the pod now.

 

"It's a Cerberus pod, XO." Commander Mornis said with a sigh. "Spirits only know what they put on that thing."

 

"Sir!" The sensor tech called. "The tumbling is slowing."

 

"Huh." Commander Mornis said softly as the pair of officers stared at the screen. Indeed, the pod's tumbles slowed and then stopped. "A stabilization system. Impressive."

 

"A shuttle then, sir?" Krisal asked softly. "We can match speed easily."

 

"One mistake and either the pod or the shuttle are scrap." Mornis said, not dismissing the idea. "Who to pilot?"

 

"Crado." Krisal said without hesitation.

 

"Crado?" Mornis could not restrain a incredulous snort or the look of disbelief he sent at his XO. "You hate his
guts."

 

"Yeah." Krisal said flatly. "But he is the best small craft pilot we have."

 

"He is still in the brig, isn't he?" Mornis asked with a grimace. "Drunk and disorderly, I believe the charge was?"

 

"If anyone has a right to drink, sir..." Krisal said sadly. "He does. But that does not excuse him from military
discipline."

 

"True." Commander Mornis said with a sigh. "Well... Let me ask our escort." He hit the com and spoke evenly. "Obligatha? Have you been monitoring?"

 

"The pod is stabilizing." The voice of the Reaper was scarily serene. "Will you be able to recover it?"

 

"We are discussing that now." Mornis replied. "Can you slow it somehow? At the speed it is travelling, one mistake and the pod or any small craft we launch to grapple it will become scrap."

 

"Checking." The calm voice of the huge artificial intelligence replied. "Yes, we can send a pair of Oculi to grapple it. That will be preferable to any of you organics risking yourselves." The two Turians exchanged a look, but the Reaper wasn't done. "Commander, we have identified the familiarity."

 

"You have?" Mornis said quickly. "Is it because it is Cerberus?"

 

"No." Obligatha replied. "The feelings are not like any of the former minions of the pawn known as the Illusive Man. No, this feeling is very different." Now the voice sounded almost reverent. "It feels like Shepard."

"Sheperd?" Krisal hissed and then gulped as she looked at her commander who waved aside the lapse in military decorum.

 

"Define." Mornis said slowly, aware of a low hum of excitement that slowly pervaded the bride. He doubted that the word would remain on the bridge long. Discipline was one thing, but if there was anything that soldiers did, it was gossip. It would be all over the ship in seconds for sure. Probably all over Council space in an hour. "Shepard is...gone." He said soberly.

 

"Yes." Now the Reaper's voice held regret. "She sacrificed everything to stop us, to end the cycle. There were several occasions where Shepard talked to my kind. Sovereign, Harbinger, and Luiopsam on Rannoch. There was always a feeling of competence, extreme competence. Not arrogance, but a feeling of..." The Reaper broke off and made a sighing noise. "We cannot define it. We do not understand it now any better than when we first encountered Shepard. We have learned so much, remembered so much that was kept from us by the Catalyst. But we do not understand it."

 

"A feeling like Sheperd." Mornis mused. "From a Cerberus pod?" He shook his head. "Can we tell how long it has been out here?"

 

"Let us launch the Oculi. One can scan the pod at close range." Obligatha said quietly. "Nothing can hide from them."

 

"I remember." Mornis said, his voice hardening.

 

"We...apologize, commander." Obligatha said quickly. "There is so much we must do, to atone, to repair what we have done."

 

The commander had to nod. It wasn't Obligatha's fault. Or any of the Reaper's fault. Well, except for the Catalyst, and even now Commander Mornis had difficulty thinking in terms of the Citadel having an ancient artificial intelligence living inside it. In the aftermath of the battle of Sol, the revelations of the Catalyst and the nearly endless cycles of harvests had paled in the need to repair and rebuild. Galactic civilization was united like never before but ten years later, the repairs to the mass relay network were barely 20% done, even with Reapers overseeing construction in hundreds of different solar systems. FTL travel wasn't reliant on the mass relay system, but it DID make things so much easier. At least the Council had survived, put into a form of stasis along with the other inhabitants of the Citadel by the catalyst when the Reapers had moved the Citadel to Sol to attempt to finish harvesting humanity. The inhabitants had been found, a week after the battle, very confused but alive.

 

"Send your ships." Mornis said after a moment. A pair of blips showed up on the screen and Mornis managed not to wince as he saw the two tiny ships move towards his. The last time he had seen them, Oculi had been tearing his cruiser apart at Sol. He knew he was in no danger. Indeed, he could feel there was no hostility in them. The linkage that Sheperd had forged was strong. Even now, scientists and scholars were debating what had happened. Mornis assumed they would be debating for centuries, maybe millennia if Reaper scholars got involved. All he knew was that parts of his body glowed now, not how or why. He also knew he could feel things now, from others organic and non. Sometimes it was a curse, other times it was a blessing.

 

The two orb shaped ships moved to bracket the pod and slowed to match it's speed. Then one started scanning. Mornis waited for several minutes before the com chimed again.

 

"Commander!" Obligatha's voice was decidedly worried now. "We have the scans, but we have a situation as well. The life signs are failing. We can pull the pod into your hangar."

 

"Do it." Mornis snapped. "XO." He called as the two orb ships shot grapples and caught the lifepod in a tight embrace. It slowed and then changed course as the two Oculi maneuvered it carefully towards the Wings of Xenobia.

 

"On it!" Krisal replied as she bent to her com, updating the medical team. "With your permission, commander?"

 

"Go." Mornis replied. Krisal nodded and ran for the elevator. "Obligatha?"

 

"The pod is entering your hangar bay now." Obligatha said calmly. "Do you wish us to recall the Oculi?"

 

"Please." Mornis replied. "Let's not upset my troops any more than they are."

 

"Please keep us informed." Obligatha said evenly as the two Oculi, their burden delivered, shot away from his ship at top speed. "We will begun scanning the next grid quadrant." The Reaper turned away from his frigate and started towards the next area to search for remains.

 

"Thank you." Mornis said quietly. "It is appreciated."

 

"It is the least we can do, for the harm we have caused." Obligatha replied quietly, then cut the com. The crew on watch stared at each other and then went back to their jobs.

Modifié par kalenath, 22 octobre 2012 - 10:46 .

[SGTBrayley]

Excellent.

[kalenath]

((Thanks))







<<<Hangar Bay - Wings of Xenobia>>>

 

                Lieutenant Krisal entered the shuttle bay and approached the cluster of troops that had gathered around the quiescent pod. The white and orange markings were distinctive. A team of medics stood ready while a gang of techs were scanning the pod with careful skill. Cerberus had been well known for sneaky traps. Usually ones that exploded and killed lots of Turians.

 

"Make a hole, people!" A loud voice called and she bit back a smile as a lane cleared between her and the pod. The head NCO aboard, Master Chief Mudok, stood near the pod with... She paused. Hadn't that crazy male been in the brig? She was sure she hadn't ordered his release and the captain hadn't had time either. The NCO nodded at her expression. "Private Crado has more experience with Cerberus than any of us, sir." Krisal nodded and looked at the other.

 

Private Crado looked like hell. Of course, he rarely looked any other way. His face was  a mass of scars and the lack of face paint said he was a renegade, clanless. His battered battle armor, with it's attached jump jets, proclaimed his history. Only nutballs openly wore Amiger armor these days. Private Crado qualified. She had busted the being no less than four times since he had come aboard. Then she blinked. What was the chief  wearing? Her eyes went wide as she saw the chief  also wearing Amiger armor. His was subtly different. The chief nodded soberly.

 

"Wasn't important to the operation of the ship, LT." The chief said soberly. He held his Phaeston rifle in a  profession grip, one that Krisal noted mirrored Crado's. The chief's rifle had a bayonet attachment, while Crado's had a large scope mounted. "And you may need us. If I hadn't let him out, he would have busted out and gotten in even more trouble."

 

"You functional?" Krisal asked the silent private. "You were very drunk last night."

 

"About 80%." The private replied stiffly. "I don't like you, Ma'am." The private said. "But I like Cerberus less. Much less." Hate colored the male's tone as he turned to look at the pod. "But..." He shook his head. "I don't know if this is Cerberus. Their markings, but not their style."

 

"Ah?" Krisal turned to the chief, but he was also looking at the private. After a moment of watching the techs scan the pod carefully. "Can you explain?"

 

"Odd feeling." Crado said slowly after a moment. "Familiar, but... not..."

 

"You are kidding." Krisal said softly, but everyone turned to look at her. Her tone was almost scared. "The Reaper said the same thing, Crado."

 

""The Reaper said that?" Mudok asked, dumbfounded. "Spirits..." The chief said in a soft voice.

 

"Yeah. Glad you are here, chief." LT Krisal said as the head tech turned to her. "Report?"

 

"No traps detected." The tech said quietly in the absolute silence that fell. "Other than fuel for the thrusters, no
explosive potential detected at all. No chemical or biological weapons detected that we have on file."

 

"That leaves a lot of wiggle room, tech." LT Krisal complained. "Cerberus was always coming up with new and better ways to kill sneakily."

 

"Nothing we can detect is dangerous, XO." The tech said with quiet conviction. "No explosives, no odd chemicals. Just a lot of medical gear."

 

"Medical gear?" The chief snapped, but paused as the LT looked at him, "Sorry, sir."

 

"Not a problem, chief." Krisal said quietly. "Just don't become like him." She waved at Crado whose attention did
not waver from the pod. "Suggestions?"

 

"Only one way to find out, Ma'am. Open it." The chief replied. "And the life signs are fading too. Crado." The private
nodded, slung his rifle, hit his helmet seals and had his rifle back in hand before the helmet had finished sealing. "Everybody back." He said as he hit his own helmet seals.

 

The techs beat a hasty retreat to stand with the medics and the security force who stood by the hatch. Ordinarily, the security teams aboard looked fairly competent, but with two Amiger Legion vets in armor standing there, the team looked decidedly out of their depth. Krisal did not move.

 

"LT." The chief's voice held disapproval. "You should get back."

 

"I should." Krisal agreed. "But I won't. We need to know."

 

"Lieutenant, door breaches are what enlisted are for." Private Crado said sternly. "Your job is to lead. If this is a
trap, it will likely get you as soon as the hatch opens."

 

"Shut up and open the hatch, Private Crado." LT Krisal snapped, her patience going.

 

"I would do what she says, private." Chief Mudok said with a shrug. "She is in command."

 

"I want my protest logged, chief." Private Crado said as he moved to the hatch. "I have enough trouble without crazy females."

 

"Crado..." Mudok said, his tone long suffering. "Stop insulting the people in command. No one is going to execute you. But they will make you life hell."

 

"My life is hell." Crado said in a voice that barely carried to Krisal's ears. Then he became professional. "Standard Cerberus open panel. Sequence was usually green, green, blue, green. Permission to try?"

 

"Granted." Krisal said when the chief looked at her. He nodded to the private and drew a bead on the hatch with his rifle.  The private hit a sequence and stepped back and to the side, clearing the chief's line of fire while bringing up his own rifle. The hatch opened smoothly and nothing happened. Crado held up a hand in question and Krisal nodded and spoke again. "Go."

 

The private stepped forward, his rifle ready, then paused at the hatch. He seemed to stagger for a moment and then stepped into the pod. For a moment, he was out of sight and then he was back, his rifle hanging loose and
his entire posture one of amazement.

 

"Chief..." Crado's voice was stunned. "Tell me I am dreaming..."

 

"Crado, you are awake. What's up?" The chief did not lower his rifle.

 

"One human female, connected to a bunch of medical gear." The private stepped away from the pod and he was shaking his head. "No traps. No room for them. Pod is nothing but life support gear. I..." He shook himself quickly and then spoke in a very different voice. "LT, I need to speak to the commander." The LT stiffened, she had never heard the private speak like that. Calm, assured, and totally in control.

 

"Chain of command, private." The chief said slowly.

 

"Need to know, Chief." Crado replied evenly. "It's Anya." The chief staggered as if struck.

 

"You are kidding!" The chief stepped forward and only massive discipline kept him from jumping forward to look for himself. "Crado, if this is some kind of joke..."

 

"No joke, chief." The private's helmet disappeared back to where it had come from and his face was scared. "LT?"

 

"What the hell?" Krisal stepped forward waving the techs and medics forward as well. Inside the pod, she could see a human female. The woman was covered in medical gear. "Chief?"



"I..." The chief stepped forward and his posture turned even more shocked as he looked at the woman. "Looks like her, but Crado..."

 

"I know." Crado said slowly. "Anya is dead."

Modifié par kalenath, 23 octobre 2012 - 10:26 .

[kalenath]

"Dead?" Lieutenant Krisal said slowly, not sure she had heard correctly. She waved the medics forward and they scampered in past where Crado and Moduk stood. She craned her neck and shook her head. "That woman is alive according to the readouts."

 

"Yeah." Crado said softly, he stepped away from the pod as the medical team started working.

 

"Crado..." Mudok spoke in a hushed voice. "You know Anya is dead. You saw it happen." Crado shook his head
savagely and Mudok sighed. "Crado..." A gasp of shock from the pod had all three turning. Crado and Mudok had their rifles ready but no threats presented themselves. Both relaxed slowly when the LT waved at them.

 

"Doc?" Lieutenant Krisal said softly. The head medic came out of the pod and nodded to the LT.

 

"Patent is stable, Lieutenant Krisal. She is encased in some kind of sterile field. Nothing I have seen before. The life support machinery was apparently attempting to put her into coldsleep." The medic said slowly. "That is why the lifesigns were disappearing."

 

"That is good." Krisal said with a smile. "We do have a survivor."

 

"Ah..." The medic shook his head. "LT... She isn't changed."

 

"Considering that the woman we knew..." Mudok indicated the now silent Crado with a nod. "...is dead. I would consider that a heck of a change."

 

"No, chief..." The medic shook his head. "Ten years ago, when the pulse hit us, we all changed. Everyone changed. The eyes are one outward sign." The medic waved at his own glowing green eyes. "Our DNA was altered, making us part synthetic. I don't know how it happened, people are still arguing what Sheperd did or did not do and likely will for the rest of time, but..." He shook his head. "She shows no signs of altered DNA. We can transport her to sickbay. I recommend we keep her in quarantine."

 

"Is she a threat?" Krisal asked, unsure.

 

"No." The medic said quietly. "As heavily sedated as she is, she likely won't wake for days. I don't know, but we may be a threat to her. The readings from a lot of the instrumentation in this thing don't make a whole lot of sense. At the very least, we need a specialist and more probably, a human physician. Our med banks are complete but we need more to be sure."

 

"It's got to be a Cerberus trap." Crado said slowly. "They wouldn't have saved her for anything else." He had his rifle at the ready again.

 

"Crado..." Mudok said in warning. "Calm down."

 

"I..." Crado shook his head savagely and then slumped. "Yes, chief. I'll... I'll stow my gear and go back to the brig." Krisal stared at him.

 

"Crado..." Mudok said softly. "You need to talk to the commander."

 

"I..." Crado shook himself savagely. "I can't, chief. Not now."

 

"Crado." Mudok's voice turned flat. "What would she want you to do?"

 

"You fight dirty, chief." Crado said with a sigh. "LT?" He asked.

 

"You knew this woman." Krisal asked slowly. "When?"

 

"During the war." Crado said quietly. "I..." He shook his head. "LT, I can't talk about that."

 

"It's been ten years." Krisal said dubiously.

 

"Security classifications won't expire for another ninety, Ma'am." The chief said diffidently. "And he takes security very seriously. We all did and do."

 

"Who is we?" Krisal asked somewhat suspiciously as a specially rigged quarantine gurney approached the pod and she moved aside to let it pass. Crado and Mudok moved with her. "Private?" Crado did not answer and she turned to the chief. "Chief?"

 

"Lieutenant..." Mudok said slowly. "We can't talk about it." He broke off and shrugged.

 

"Can you talk about it with Commander Mornis?" Krisal asked softly. "He is in command." Mudok looked at Crado who looked away for a moment before nodding. "And why are you deferring to him?" She demanded of the chief.

 

"Because he was a general, Ma'am." Krisal stiffened at the chief's words. "He knows more about classification issues than I do."

 

"A general?" Krisal snapped. "No way!"

 

"You are not the first CO he has mouthed off at, Ma'am." The chief said with a small smile. "He even told Primarch
Victus to shove it once. In public, no less." Krisal shook her head, shocked.

 

"He wanted me to lie." Crado said softly. "I was not going to demean the people who fought beside us with lies. Not like that. If he had given me any warning, I would have told him that in private, but no, he sprung it on me as soon as I got off the ship. Press everywhere and all... To heck with him, and it. Code be damned, there are some orders I will not follow."

 

"Crado..." Chief Mudok sighed. "He wanted you to defuse some tension, to calm some people who worried about the Krogan asking for a new world. There was enough unrest after the genophage was cured. He wanted you to talk about helping the Krogan. Not lie."

 

"He wanted me to lie." Crado said softly. "I'll be in the brig." He turned to go and froze as the gurney came
out, a sleeping human woman ensconced within. "Ah...Anya..." He staggered a little and then stepped aside. There was a wealth of pain in his expression. The LT made a quick decision.

 

"Private, chief..." Krisal spoke quietly as the med team followed the gurney. "Stow your gear. This is above my pay grade, I'll talk to the commander." Crado nodded and without a backward glance, left the bay. "Chief..."

 

"Yeah, LT?" The NCO said with a sigh.

 

"They were more than friends." It wasn't a question.

 

"I never asked." The chief said with a shrug. "Didn't want to know. People found comfort where they could, Ma'am. It was... a bad time."

 

"I know. I am not criticizing." Krisal said sadly. "No one came out of that maelstrom unchanged. But... A general?" She asked, her expression shocked. She couldn't think of anyone else offhand who was quite so... un-officer-ish.

 

"Yeah." The chief said sadly. "A damn good one. Saved my tail, and a bunch of people. Kept us all alive doing what we had to do. Kicked our tails into gear more than once. When he fell on hard times, I asked for him. I try to keep him out of trouble. He is just...so...So...Crado."

 

"Yeah." Krisal said with a snort. "I'll get you some time with the commander. Try not to let him mouth off. I get the feeling this is going to be bad enough without him getting in more trouble."

 

"Didn't know you were a prophet, Ma'am." The chief said with a smile that did not touch his eyes. "A dead woman alive, in a  Cerberus pod. And not changed? What the hell?" He asked nobody as he strode off.

 

"Hell indeed, Chief." LT Krisal said with a sigh as she waved the security team lead over. "Until we know what is going on here, no one gets in this without authorization, clear?" The sergeant nodded to her and she straightened herself up. "Ah well..." She shook her head, muttering as she left. "A general..."

Modifié par kalenath, 07 novembre 2012 - 01:11 .

[kalenath]

<<An hour later>>


"Okay, chief." Commander Mornis said as soon as the Mudok and Crado had entered the briefing room and Lieutenant Krisal  had left. "I thought we were going to keep the private's history between us." He glanced at Crado but the private did not speak. Crado wore fatigues now instead of armor.

 

"No excuse, sir." Chief Mudok had changed out of his Amiger armor, but he wore standard armor and had his rifle slung. "But... This was one hell  of a shock."

 

"You know our survivor?" Mornis asked. "Lieutenant Krisal said you called her Anya."

 

"Yeah, Anya. That was the only name I knew. She was an Alliance N7 operative." Mudok said slowly. The commander jerked and then nodded. N7 operative missions were usually classified way beyond Top Secret. That explained the chief's and the private's security concerns.  "You know Crado and I worked with what were called the N7 Special Ops teams." The commander nodded and Mudok continued. "She and Crado here saved what was left of my team on Castellus when the Reapers had us cut off. I was acting lead for a security detachment guarding a bunch of engineers who were surveying a bridge when the coms died. Before we knew what was happening, we were under attack. Most of the engineers and half my team were dead before we knew we were under attack. And then we were stuck. We were dead, ship was gone, most of us hurt. We held out till nightfall, and tried to break contact, but couldn't. We were down to three effectives when it happened." He shook his head and stopped speaking for a moment.

 

"What happened?" The commander asked calmly.

 

"We were being harried. Husks and the things that we found out later were called 'Cannibals', then a pair of Reaperized Turians... Then a huge...thing... What we called a 'Brute' later. It appeared, charged and stomped two of my guys to paste before they could move. Our slugs just bounced off. Then it hesitated, seemed to turn green and exploded." The commander jumped a little, caught up in the story.

 

"Who?" Mornis asked.

 

"Anya and Crado." The chief said, nodding to his silent companion. "They came out of the night and saved our tails. We couldn't get back to the fleet, so we went with her. She had a small ship, and it was seriously crowded. She was flying it and there must have been thirty of us crammed into the storage compartments. Most wounded. We did what we could... But..."





"I understand." Commander Mornis said when the chief stopped talking. "And when you got to the Alliance?"

 

"My team was gone." The chief said hollowly. "The last survivor -Muflo- died on the way despite everything we could do. I didn't know what we were fighting or why. But... On the way to the rendezvous Anya had, Crado told us about Palaven. What was happening there. Those of us who were left were mad, sir. No organization, no support, just a group of us who seriously wanted payback."

 

"And the Forces just let you go?" Mornis asked, unsure.

 

"It was chaos, sir." Mudok said quietly. "No one had orders for us. The medics took what was left of our wounded and we were left to sit in a cargo bay. It was all a mess. Then Crado came back with a mission." He laughed a little. "I never even saw him leave. Sneaky male."

 

"I am not the one who runs up and hits people with my rifle." Crado said with a small smile that vanished quickly. "You are supposed to shoot with it, not hit people with it. Almost makes me wonder if you are a Krogan sometimes."

 

"Well, you just sit back hiding and obliterate things." Mudok agreed. "Then I run in to clean up the leftovers. And I am still ahead." It had the sound of an old rivalry. Crado snorted as he shook his head.

 

"You both are nuts." Mornis said with a sigh, but he was smiling at the banter. "Any member of the Amiger -by definition- is nuts." He shook himself. "But you were saying?"

 

"True, sir." Mudok said as Crado seemed to shut down again. "Crado here never told me his rank. He was about as talkative then as now. He was a Colonel and his brigade had been wiped out. He was half dead when Anya found him being eaten by a Cannibal."

 

"Where?" Mornis asked slowly.

 

"We were stationed on the border. Place doesn't even have a name, just a number. Inhospitable chunk of rock set nicely as a strategic choke point." Crado said softly. "We had some garbled details of a mess in the Batarian's space. They sent us, a brigade of the Legion, to hold the a planetary garrison on the Batarian border. And we did. We held it to the last soldier. Our transport died in the initial attack. Not that we would have run, we were Amiger."

 

"I am sorry." Mornis said in the silence that fell.

 

"I have been dead since my HQ fell, commander." Crado said softly. "My family died on Palaven in the initial onslaught. They lived on the main Amiger base. I found out...later... None of them even tried to flee." He shook his head, and tears were falling. "Not even Mori or Nila..." The commander looked at the crying male and then at the chief who looked worried.

 

'His kids.' The Chief mouthed and then spoke aloud. "Crado... Even only ten and eight, they knew about service. They were soldiers, small soldiers, but soldiers. You taught them well."

 

"I taught them how to die. Too small to heft rifles, they picked up pistols and fought!" Crado snapped, then shook himself. "And died! I... Mudok... I can't..."

 

"At ease, private!" The commander snapped. Crado jerked erect, a lifetiem of discipline overridign his grief. Mornis continued in a calm, clear voice. "What happened to your family was bad. Everyone lost someone on Palaven. That does not give you the right to just slack off on your duty."

 

"What do you know about duty?" Crado snapped right back. "How many of your comrades have you held while they died, trying to stuff their guts back in? How many of your friends have you had to leave behind to die or worse because the evac shuttle can only remain still for five seconds without being blown out of the sky?"

 

"I haven't been where you were, private." Commander Mornis said, calming himself with effort. Arguing with Crado never helped. "But don't you dare think you are the only one who lost people on Palaven or elsewhere. I watched the transport with my family blown out of the sky over Menea, Private." Mornis said softly, his tone dangerous. Then it turned sad. "They had come up with a group to visit the fleet. An authorized visit. No one thought it would be dangerous. If only Vakarian's warnings had been heeded."

 

"Yeah. Hindsight is always clearer than foresight." Crado sighed and relaxed. "I am sorry, commander. Grief is no excuse for such words. No excuse, sir."

 

"No one has recovered, private." Mornis said softly. His voice moderating. "It... It's not something you can recover
from quickly, if at all. I do understand. I will cut you some slack, but that slack is not infinite. Clear?"

 

"You have done way too much for me already, commander." Crado said in a distressed tone. "I hoped this job would help bring some closure. There were no bodies left of my family, but maybe I could get someone closure and that would help me."

 

"Me too." Commander Mornis said just as softly. "Anyway..." He sighed. "Back to our mysterious survivor. An
N7?" Crado nodded and Mudok spoke.

 

"Yeah, she and Crado had this crazy idea, a spec ops job." Mudok said soberly. "Her ship wasn't that big, but it could hold up to a dozen of us. It was a stealth design, state fo the art. She and Crado were in command. He was brevetted to the rank of General for the mission. It stuck after we did the job."

 

"Yeah." Crado made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. "All I wanted to do was die. So what did you crazy fools do? Put me in charge."

 

"Okay." Mornis nodded. "That explains the general. And his attitude explains why he is a private again. What happened to Anya?"

 

"We got complacent is what happened..." Crado said in a very low voice. "I got complacent. And she paid for it."


"That is not what hapened." Mudok said gently. "Everyone else agreed, even T-9-001."

"That Geth was just as crazy as the rest of you nuts." Crado said with a sigh. "I know, I know, Geth cannot be crazy. But that one was. Or it was just emulating the people it was around."

"A Geth?" Mornis asked softly. "I had heard that some odd types worked for N7 SPec Ops, but... A Geth?" He repeated, dumbfounded.

"Oh commander..." Crado said with a small smile. "You have no idea. Anyway... That last mission..."

Modifié par kalenath, 26 octobre 2012 - 04:10 .

[kalenath]

"We were tasked to hit a Cerberus lab on the planet Sanctum." Crado said quietly. "We knew Cerberus was studying Reaper tech there. Sheperd had hit the place just after the onset of the war, recovered some samples and HQ determined we REALLY didn't want Cerberus to keep doing what they were doing." He shook his head. "So every so often, they sent teams in to disrupt the operations. Ours was the last one to hit it before the Sheperd and the Alliance Fifth Fleet punched out Cerberus HQ. Wish I had been there." He said with a grimace.

 

"Crado..." Mudok said quietly.

 

"I know, I know." Crado sighed. "Anyway, four of us on the assault team. Anya was lead. I was recon. T-9-001, who had joined us after Sheperd dealt with the Reaper threat at Rannoch, was our heavy tech. I swear that Geth could think it's rifle rounds into his targets. And that is not even counting It's drones, or turrets, or..." He shrugged and smiled a little. "Last but biggest, we had Brutiz as our muscle. He was -is still for all I know- a Krogan, and just as crazy as the rest of us."

 

"That is an odd lineup." Commander Mornis said quietly. "It worked?"

 

"Yeah, actually." Crado said with a shrug. "Better than anyone thought it would. We all knew we couldn't beat the Reapers conventionally. Even the Krogan realized they couldn't do it alone. The Geth..." He shook his head with a sad smile. "That Geth was weird. It tried so hard to be part of the group. It even tried to get drunk with the Krogan members of the team once." Mornis stared at him and Crado nodded, an actual smile on his face. "Didn't work, but the Krogan appreciated it. Especially when it learned to head but."

 

"Head but?" Mornis said in a dazed voice. "I don't want to know."

 

"No, you don't." Crado said with a sigh. "Luckily, we had another Geth alone who knew how to make on the spot
repairs to broken hardware platforms. Geth have strong shields, but T-9-001 was always getting it's neck  armature broken."

 

"Ah... okay... Were there any Quarians on your team?" Mornis asked after a moment. "I mean, I had heard..." He
broke off as Crado nodded.

 

"Yeah, a husband and wife team." Crado said quietly. "Scarily competent techs, and decent shots too. They didn't trust the Geth, but they DID work with them. Raan'ita was our team medic, and Joruz was our head tech. Neither was with us on that jaunt, both had been recalled to Rannoch to help out the refits of the Quarian fleets. They wanted to stay, but Anya and I persuaded them to go. We were losing people and..." He broke off, and looked away for a moment. "Well..." He actually looked embarrassed.

 

"What, Crado?" Mudok. "I knew they had left, but not why."

 

"Pregnant Quarian has no place in a battlezone." Crado said simply. Mudok and Mornis both goggled at him. "Their suit's contraceptives failed at just about the same time. Neither had been keeping track. Lots on their minds, and they found solace in each other's arms.  Their quarters were a clean room, they could unsuit there. Anya was... annoyed with them. So was I, but it was more about losing the personnel. We needed them but Spirits I am glad there were not there for the mission where we lost Anya."

 

"So... You hit the lab." Mornis said quietly.

 

"Yeah we did." Crado said with a nod. "Should have known there was a problem right off. It was too quiet. I mean, a human, a Turian, a Geth and Krogan -all armed to the teeth- show up and NO alarms go off? There were no troops."

 

"None?" Mornis asked.

 

"Yeah, and there was a reason for it." Crado said soberly. "We knew that Cerberus had been working around the Reapers, maybe WITH them. We were not sure."

 

"They were pawns." Mornis said slowly. "Dangerous pawns."

 

"Yeah." Crado said with a nod. "But at the time, we didn't know. We hit the computers and found them gutted. No
information at ALL. The systems had been purged. At that point we knew it was a trap and called for evac. The moment we DID, all hell broke loose. I had heard stories, read some of Sheperd's reports, but I had never seen a Collector. If not for Anya, we would have been overwhelmed in the first few seconds. Her fields kept them off us for the few seconds we needed to reorder and fight." His voice was hushed now. "They came out of nowhere. And they just kept coming."

 

"How many?" Mornis asked quietly.

 

"Dunno." Crado said sadly. "Didn't stop running or shooting to count. Lots." He shrugged. "My helmet recorders saw fifty of their troopers. About thirty of their abominations, the ones that explode. Luckily we had all read Sheperd's reports, so not even Brutiz tried to melee those. And then the big ones." Crado shuddered a little. "I used up all of my missiles trying to keep the flying ones away from us. I killed...three? Four? I dunno. Lots of smoke, lots of jamming. At least two of the big gun platform things, the ones called Scions. But we were falling back in order, covering each other.  Then I heard Anya scream. She was caught in a web of some kind. I blew it apart and Brutiz and T-9-001 gave me cover while I tended her, but she had been hit, bad. Her barriers had failed and she was bleeding from her head and stomach. She told me to leave her and I told her to shove it. I picked her up and heard the evac call for extraction. I started running for the shuttle, then something hit me and the next thing I knew, Brutiz was carrying me into the shuttle. I looked back and Anya was lying there, not moving. Her icon on my HUD was dark. No life signs. I tried to go back. But trying to wrestle a Krogan was pointless. She had ordered him to pull me out when I was hit, he told me later. Well, after I had calmed down a bit. It... it took a while...They sedated me, disarmed me and I STILL nearly throttled Brutiz when he explained."

 

"I bet." Mornis said with sympathy. "So she was dead?"

 

"Everyone thought so." Crado said with a shudder. "If she WASN'T, wouldn't they have...processed her or whatever the Collectors DID?"

 

"Alive or dead, they would have." Mornis said with a shudder. "At least that WAS what they did. We need to figure this out. And figure out why she hasn't been changed like the rest of us."

 

"Yes sir." Crado said quietly. "Orders?"

"Right." Mornis said slowly. "I am going to send off a report to HQ, and I assume they will bump it up to the Alliance and maybe the Council for all I know. They will probably send a team of their own. This is big, Crado. A dead human woman reborn. Just like Sheperd. No wonder Obligatha felt oddness from the pod."

 

"IF it really IS Anya." Crado said softly.

 

"Right." Mornis said with a shudder. "Should we keep her under guard?"

 

"If it is Anya..." Crado said slowly. "A guard won't have a chance. She could do things with her mind that were just
unreal."

 

"Would you?" Mornis asked carefully.

 

"I don't know, sir." Crado said honestly. "If it IS the woman I knew, then yes. If not, then no. I..." He slumped a bit.
"I couldn't pull the trigger on her, sir. Even if given a direct order, I couldn't, sir."

 

"Well..." Mornis said soberly. "Maybe that is for the best."

 

"Sir?" Crado asked, his tone suspicious.

 

"We don't WANT to hurt her." Mornis said gently. "But we need to keep her secure and under observation. So a security escort is warranted, even while she is in Sick Bay. So your orders are as follows: Stay with her. If she wakes, try to find out what happened, gently. But under NO circumstances are you to let her out of your sight."

 

"Yes sir." Crado said softly. "Uh, sir...?" He asked softly.

 

"I am not going to ask, private." Mornis said gently. "As long as it doesn't affect the ship, it is none of my business."

"Thank you, sir." Crado said, then he stiffened to attention and saluted, his stance and attitude far cleaner than it had been.

 

"Just don't cross the docs." Mornis said with a scowl. "You are there to watch Anya, not to get in the docs' way.
Clear?" Crado nodded and Mornis returned the salute. "You are dismissed, private. Chief, a moment."

 

"Sir?" Mudok said after Crado had left.

 

"If she is a hostile, can we stop her?" Mornis asked carefully. "Without killing her?"

 

"Honestly, sir?" Mudok said quietly. "She was an N7, so... If she is as capable as she was... Probably not." The
commander slumped and nodded. "You want me to lay some contingency plans?"

 

"I DON'T want you to." Mornis said heavily. "But yes." Mydok nodded and saluted. The commander returned it and
then sank back in his chair as the chief left the room. "Now... I try to figure out HOW the HECK I am going to explain THIS to Command..."

Modifié par kalenath, 26 octobre 2012 - 10:30 .

[kalenath]

<<<A day later>>>


"Any change, Private?" The concerned voice pulled Crado out of his musing. He jerked and sat up straight, looking at Lieutenant Krisal, who had entered. She shook her head at his expression. "At ease, Private. How long since you slept?"

 

"Eight hours, Ma'am. The docs set up a bunk in a storeroom for me with monitors keyed to the quarantine field." Crado said in a careful voice. "As for her...?" He nodded to the human female in the medical bed nearby. The quarantine field that sparkled around the bed was only faintly visible, but the warning lights were clear. "No change. The docs say the sedatives she has in her system might have knocked out a thresher maw. They have to let the drugs filter out slow or it will cause complications. The docs told you and the commander what they found." It wasn't a question.

 

"Yeah." Krisal said slowly. "Evidence of torture and odd implants."

 

"She would have resisted." Crado said, his gaze far away. "There is simply no way that Anya would have just laid back and LET someone do those kinds of things to her. She would have fought."

 

"Sounds like a good soldier." Krisal said slowly. She would have said something else, except Crado made a face. "What?" She asked carefully.

 

"She wasn't a good soldier." Crado said softly. "She was the best I have ever seen. So much better than me... Soldiers are supposed to work as part of a team. I... can't anymore. I just can't." He shook his head. "I need to apologize, Lieutenant. I know I have been a jerk."

 

"You wanted to die with your men." Krisal said softly. "Or your family." Crado nodded. "That is why you scored
the paint off your scales."

 

"I am alone, Ma'am." Crado said softly. "Better this way. People who are still alive should get the chance to live."

 

"Private..." Lieutenant Krisal said gently. "You ARE alive. Dying is easy. But since when did ANY of us take an easy
path?"

 

"You remind me of her, Lieutenant." Crado said with a small, fleeting smile as he looked back at the woman in the bed. "I was a mess. I went down and woke up with her slathering medi-gel all over me. She just wouldn't let up."

 

"How did she find you? Or can you talk about that?" Krisal asked softly. "I mean... I know a lot of what you nuts
did is classified WAY too high for me to ever see."

 

"I take it people know I was Spec Ops?" Crado said, his voice resigned.

 

"Kind of hard to hide it when you show up in Amiger armor." Krisal said pointedly. "And where the HECK did you stash that stuff? If anyone can hide guns and armor on the ship, we have problems."

 

"Not stashed. It was in the armory, Ma'am." Crado said, his gaze pulled back to the woman in the bed. What had he just heard? Was the woman moving? "Chief put my gear with his, and gave me access. It's not a lot, just the armor, my rifle, couple hundred thermal clips and fifty stimpacks."

 

"Stim packs..." Krisal said, her face going hard. "You hid controlled substances."

 

"Yes, Ma'am. In a code sealed storage locker, with the commander's blessing." Crado said simply, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the sleeping... no! She wasn't sleeping. "Lieutenant! Get out of here!" He snapped as the woman in the bed seemed to levitate. The human's eyes were closed, but she was wreathed in a odd black... Crado hissed in shock and fear and yelled at Krisal. "MOVE!"


He grabbed Krisal and shoved her towards the door as the quarantine field shattered. Krisal did not argue, she ran. Crado waited until she was out the door before hitting the seal button and turning back to the bed.

 

The woman he knew as Anya was hanging in mid air, suspended by her biotics. He watched with no small amount of fear as the black tendrils of power ate into the surroundings. 'Annihilation Field', Anya had called it.
He knew how dangerous that field was. He had seen it kill all kinds of bad guys, but only under her control. Without her control? This was bad.

 

"Anya." He called, trying to speak calmly. "Wake up. I know you are scared, I know you are confused, but you need to wake up. Anya, please..."

 

The woman didn't seem to hear him, just hung there in midair. He jumped as a speaker hissed to life.

 

"Private Crado!" The voice of the ship's commander came from the intercom. "Report!"

 

"She is not awake, sir." Crado did not take his eyes off the black tendrils. They were not moving, but he knew his life was in grave danger. " Her biotics are active. I think she is reacting unconsciously, to protect herself. After what the docs found, I am not surprised."

 

"Are you in danger?" Commander Mornis said quietly.

 

"Yes sir." Crado said softly. "And anyone else who comes in will be as well. Her field is eating everything but the deck plates." He watched as a bank of medical monitors simply vanished.

 

"Private..." The commander sounded sick. "Is she a threat to the ship?"

 

"I..." Crado shook his head but then nodded. "Yes sir."

 

"You know what we have to do, Private Crado." Commander Mornis said sadly. "Get out of there."

 

"No, I... Sir, I..." Crado shook his head. "I can get through to her."

 

"Crado." Mornis' voice was cold now. "Tell me true. Can you stop her?"

 

"I  think so. Let me try to wake her up, sir. Please?" He begged. "I can't physically stop her without getting fried by her biotics, but I MAY be able to get her to stop herself. If nothing else, you lose a headache." He said with a small, sad smile.

 

"Not funny, Private." The commander said slowly. "I haven't lost any of the crew, despite SOME of their best efforts. I can give you ten minutes, Private. No more. Then we are venting the room." Crado swallowed a little. Lack of air would kill as surely as a bullet or blade. Of course, HE wasn't carrying an air pack either. He hadn't thought about it, not in the middle of the ship. Hindsight and all that...

 

"Understood sir." Crado said softly as she looked at the woman who hung in mid air. "Can I have some privacy? This is..."

 

"Private." Commander Mornis said softly. "You know better than that."

 

"Right." Crado said softly. "Thank you, sir. For trying to help my sorry fringe." He shook himself and nodded to the motionless woman. "Anya, I don't know if you can hear me or not. I have missed you. Oh SPIRITS, woman, I have missed you. You have got to wake up, Anya. Please wake up." The woman did not respond and he sighed and spoke softly. "Anya! Please! He screamed as the black field slowly encroached on his position. "Por favor... Despertarse! Por favor!" He cried, hoping he remembered the Earth language properly. ((Translation: Please, wake up! Please!))

 

He had never found out exactly where she had been from. She had been very tightlipped about where she had grown up. But that odd language she used occasionally had intrigued him enough that he had learned some of the 'Spanish' as she called it. But the woman did not respond. He shook himself and nodded.

 

"I lost you once, I won't let you go again." Crado said softly. "Please wake up, Anya. Please?" He was crying now. He did not react as the speaker hissed to life again.

 

"Private." The commander's voice was sad. "Get out of there."

 

"I cannot obey that order, sir." Crado said softly. "I am sorry sir, and I mean no insubordination. But I cannot. Do what you must."

 

"Crado..." The commander sighed and spoke evenly. "Venting now." A faint hiss started to sound and Crado nodded it wouldn't take long, but he had to try until he couldn't try anymore.

 

"Anya..." Crado called, his heart in his voice. "Anya mi amor... Por favor, mi amor. Te necesito. Ayuda me por favor!
Anya! Por favor!" He froze as the woman groaned. ((Translation: Anya my love. Please my love. I need you. Help me, please. Anya, please!))

 

"I..." Her eyes fluttered. "C...Crado...?" She opened her eyes and her biotics snapped off. She fell to the bare deck,
crying out in shock and pain as she landed badly.

 

"Commander!" Crado snapped. "She is awake!" He darted to her side and held her as she started to cry. He barely noticed the hissing stop. "Anya... Oh Anya... It's okay. Shh..."

 

"No..." She said as she clung to him. "No, it's not and it won't be, ever again..."

 

"No one will hurt you again, mi amor." Crado said gently as he rocked the sobbing woman. "No one."

Modifié par kalenath, 27 octobre 2012 - 12:08 .

[kalenath]

"Ah Crado..." Anya said after several minutes. "I can't see."

 

"I know." Crado said gently. "The docs found evidence that someone tampered with your optic nerves. Who did it?"

 

"I don't know." Anya said as she shuddered. "I woke up in a  cell. I remembered you getting shot, Brutiz grabbing you. I heard you yell my name, then...It hurt. A lot. Madre de Dios, it hurt..."

 

"Oh Anya..." Crado hugged her gently. "I am sorry. I thought you were dead. I didn't have any life readings on my HUD when they slammed the hatch in my face. I tried to get back, to look for you. They wouldn't let me. I... didn't take that well."

 

"Oh Crado." Anya said, her sightless eyes seeking his. "What did you do?" She asked, her tone resigned.

 

"I...Um..." Crado squirmed a bit under her blind glare. "Well..."

 

"Crado." Anya said soberly. "Blind or no, I CAN still kick your tail up between your ears. Talk."

 

"I went crazy." Crado said softly. "They wound up confining me to quarters, under sedation. They did a full psyche eval on me and I flunked it, big time. I knew that letting you into my heart was a mistake. But I wouldn't have changed it for the universe. You made me whole again. And then I lost you." He hugged her gently. "I would have GLADLY changed places with you, Anya."

 

"They didn't want a male, Crado." Anya said, her tone fearful. "They needed a breeder for whatever they were doing."

 

"What?" Crado asked, ashen faced. "What do  you mean?"


"They never talked to me." Anya said slowly. "It was all automated. Mechs were the only things I saw. Until... I woke
up and couldn't see anymore." She shuddered a bit and Crado held her. "But it was weird. They were not any mechs I knew. And the colors were not any I knew either. No corporation, and certainly not Cerberus."

 

"So..." Crado mused. "What happened?"

 

"I didn't understand what was happening at first. I don't know how long it took me to overcome the drugs I was on either." Anya said slowly. "But I DO remember looking at myself a few times and seeing my belly big."

 

"Your...belly?" Crado asked, unsure. Then comprehension dawned. "Spirits...I will find them and kill them! All of
them!" Hate swelled in his voice. Anya recoiled away from him and he relaxed, his tone going regretful. "Anya... It's okay. Oh Anya... I am sorry..."

 

"I don't know how many times, Crado." Anya said sadly. "How long has it been?" Crado looked away from her and her voice turned sharp. "Crado. How long?"

 

"It's been ten years, Anya." Crado said softly. Anya stiffened in his arms and then she collapsed, crying. "It's okay,
Anya. It will be okay." He soothed her as she cried. "The war is over, we won."

 

"We did?" Anya asked. "Well..." She said slowly. "I assumed we had or that we were fighting still. The Crucible
worked?" She was trying to keep disbelief out of her tone. She shivered a little.

 

"Yeah, it worked." Crado said gently. "You are cold. Let me get you a blanket or something." The woman in his arms made a sound of worry.

 

"Don't leave me!" She begged.

 

"I am not." Crado said gently. "But your biotics thoroughly trashed the room. The bed and it's sheets are a mess. I need to keep you warm. So..." He rose slowly, pulling her up into an embrace. "I am going to carry you to the main Sick Bay, okay?" He asked, his tone teasing. "Or are you still going to kick my tail up between my ears?"

 

"Jury is still out on that." Anya said, a smile crossing her face that swiftly vanished. ""Ow..." She grimaced as he held her carefully.

 

"What?" Crado asked softly as he shifted her mass in his arms.

 

"Right arm." Anya said slowly. "Feels..." She sighed. "I fell on it. I bet I broke it." Crado shifted his hold so her arm was not being pressed on and she relaxed a little. "I am scared Crado." She said softly. "I am so scared. I can't see and I feel... so..."

 

"Let me be your eyes." Crado said gently. "The room we are in is a standard private shipboard medical room. Walls are bare metal, no fancy decorations on a ship of the Turian Navy after all. Everything is white to show up discolorations quickly. The only markings are functional. Hazard signs and such. I am going to take a step towards the door and I bet there are guards outside now."

 

"Why?" Anya asked slowly, her fear abating.

 

"Because SOMEONE woke up on the bad side of the bed." Crado teased. "Your scary black field thingy clicked on and trashed the room."

 

"Madre de Dios!" Anya said, horrified. "Did I hurt you?"

 

"No." Crado said gently. "I know better than to get close when you are having a bad day. Not that you ever had any OTHER kind, mind you." He said, his tone gentle. "You didn't hurt me. You did scare me, and you scared everyone aboard. They were going to vent the room to stop you. If you hadn't woken up..." He broke off, overcome.

 

"If they were going to vent the room, then why were you here...?" Anya broke off and her face squnched up. "You idiot! Are you STILL suicidal?" She asked sourly.

 

"No." Crado said quietly as he walked towards the door with his burden. "Not suicidal. But I lost you once. I couldn't lose you again without trying everything I could." He stopped at the door and spoke at the microphone. "Commander?" He asked respectfully.

 

"Private Crado." The voice of the ship's commander. "I assume everything is in order?"

 

"PRIVATE?" Anya nearly exploded in his arms. "Crado? What the HELL did you DO?" She demanded. He would not meet her blind gaze.

 

"What does he EVER do?" The voice of the ship's commander was sour. "He mouths off at the wrong people at the worst possible times. Anya? My name is Commander Mornis. Welcome aboard the Wings of Xenobia."

 

"Thank you, Commander." Anya said formally. "I wish it wa sunder better circumstances. Don't take any chances. Whatever was done to me was extensive. I don't know if I am a threat or not."

 

"From the reports I have from our docs..." Mornis said quietly. "You are not. But Crado will remain with you. We are setting up a new quarantine room just beyond that one. Won't be long Crado." The Turian nodded.

 

"For the best." Anya said slowly. "I never saw any living beings, only mechs. But..." She shuddered a bit and burrowed into Crado's arms a little. "They really messed me up when I managed to get loose a couple of times."

 

"There is an Alliance medical and debriefing team on the way, Ma'am." Commander Mornis said gently. "You ARE safe here. No one will hurt you again."

 

"Thank you, commander Mornis." Anya said simply. "I don't mean to be a pain. I didn't mean to mess up your sick bay. I guess they will take it out of my pay."

 

"We will talk about that when you have recovered some more. Just so you know, Ma'am." The Turian ship commander said evenly. "I am ordered to keep you under surveillance at all times."

 

"Fair enough." Anya said soberly. "I...feel..." She started shivering and couldn't stop.

 

"Anya?" Crado said quickly. "Anya! Stay awake!"

 

"I am going under, Crado." Anya said, her tone scared. "Madre de Dios! Don't let this be a dream! Not... Not again..." She started to cry softly again.

 

"Commander!" Crado called, his tone scared.

 

"Door opening, Crado." Mornis said quietly. "Get her to the bed, and STAY with her."

 

"Crado..." Anya said, her tone fuzzy. "Help me..."

 

"I am not going anywhere, Anya." Crado said as the door hissed open and he saw a bed made up in the next room. A chair sat beside it with a pillow and blanket piled on top of it. He walked swiftly to the bed and laid the crumpling woman down on it. In seconds he had the pillow under her head and her body covered with the blanket. "Rest well, mi amor. I am here." He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled as she fell asleep. He shook his head as he sat.

Someone is going to DIE for this...

Modifié par kalenath, 28 octobre 2012 - 09:03 .

[kalenath]

"...so we have no further idea WHO did these things to her?" Krisal said slowly as she and Commander Mornis looked at the vid where Crado sat beside the bed their 'guest' was sleeping in. "Who had her prisoner and experimented on her." She was uncomfortable talking about this, it was way above her pay grade, but she had been cleared by HQ, so she followed her orders.

 

"From the scans..." Mornis mused. "A lot of what was done looks similar to reports on what was done to Sheperd by Cerberus to bring her back from the dead after the first Normandy was destroyed. But the eyes... That is new and different."

 

"Hmmm..." Krisal said softly.  "And evil. Do the docs have any ideas what those implants may have been used for?"

 

"Some kind of interface." Mornis said uneasily. "Beyond that..." He sighed as the intercom chimed. "Now what?" He snapped. He took a moment to compose himself and then spoke. "Yes?"

 

"Sir, we are being hailed." The voice of the third in command, a young but solid male ensign named Griz, spoke quickly. "But there are no ships here! The Reaper is gone and nothing else is on sensor!" Krisal and Mornis shared a glance and the commander spoke quickly.

 

"Go to Battle Ready. On our way!" He and Krisal ran for the door to the briefing room as the alert claxon sounded through the ship. He paused at the hatch to the CiC and looked at Krisal. "Will this wake our guest?" She shook her head.

 

"No." She said quietly. "We cut all feeds but the surveillance ones to that quarantine ward. Crado and Anya likely won't hear a thing through the baffles. Which is good. She needs rest to recuperate."

 

"I dislike locking people up, especially crew and hurt people." Mornis said softly as he keyed the hatch open. "But she IS a potential threat."

 

"And she knows it." Krisal said soberly.

 

"Captain on the bridge!" The third officer called. Mornis nodded an acknowledgement and moved to check the readouts before starting for his battle station. The alert claxons died as soon as he reached the control position.

 

"Report!" Krisal snapped as Mornis assumed his place on the dais and she took hers by the main control stations.

 

"Ship reports battle ready, sir." The third in command said quietly. "No other ships on sensor. Obligatha is eighteen light seconds away, scanning grid quadrant Seven Beta. Nothing else on sensor. But the hails are continuing. Sir..." He said slowly. "They are using Council codes. And they want to talk to the commander..."

 

"A stealthed ship?" Krisal asked nobody in particular. "Commander?" She asked, turning to Mornis who nodded.

 

"On speaker." Mornis said softly.

 

"...apologize for startling you." The crisp female voice sounded from the com. "We were close by and could get here fast and quietly. Repeat, this is SSV Normandy, we apologize for startling you..."

 

"The NORMANDY?" Krisal snapped, then clapped both hands over her mouth. Mornis looked at her and nodded. He had almost blurted the same thing himself. What were the odds?

 

"SSV Normandy, this is the THV Wings of Xenobia." Mornis said quickly. "I assume you are close to be able to hail us."

 

"Yeah, we didn't think about it." The female voice sounded apologetic. "We didn't mean to sneak up on you. It's force of habit. Sorry, commander. Cutting stealth now." A lean, rakish silhouette appeared in cosmic spitting distance. A familiar silhouette. Anyone who had been at the battle for Sol knew that ship. Sheperd's ship, the Normandy SR-2. "We have the medical and debriefing team that the Alliance sent aboard. Has there been any change?"

 

"Our guest woke up, Normandy." Mornis said quietly. "She said some things. But... Not over a com."

 

"Right." The voice from the Normandy was calm. "Shall we send a shuttle or do you wish to dock?"

 

"Shuttle would likely be easiest." Mornis said softly. "We have our guest in quarantine for the moment."

 

"Understood." The female voice replied. "Shuttle will be launching in three minutes. Expect a full load, commander. Your report sent some SERIOUS shockwaves through the Alliance HQ and the Council. Spectre Williams is in charge. As soon as the team is aboard, we will go back into full stealth and see if we can backtrack that pod a bit, find out where it came from."

 

"A Spectre?" Mornis asked, then nodded. "Right, Normandy. We will find space for everyone. Mornis clear."

 

"Normandy clear." The voice said quietly.

 

"That was the ship's AI, wasn't it?" Krisal asked softly. "EDI?"

 

"I think so." Mornis said with a shrug. "I wasn't going to ask." He said with a small grin.

 

"I think we can stand down from Battle Ready." Krisal said slowly. The commander looked away for a moment and she pressed. "Commander?" Mornis shook his head.

 

"I don't think so, Lieutenant Krisal." Mornis said softly. "Until we are SURE we are clear, we shouldn't take any chances at all. Besides, extra security can't hurt with a bunch of VIPs running around."


"Point taken, commander." Krisal said slowly. "But we cannot maintain Battle Ready indefinitely. We don't have the crew of a full on warship."

 

"I know." Commander Mornis said soberly. "So... You and I need to work out a schedule for shifts. I want sensors
and weapons manned fully at all times." Krisal frowned but nodded. "We have been lax, the job hasn't been dangerous. I HOPE it didn't just get dangerous. Ah, here comes the shuttle." He said as the icon of an Alliance Kodiak shuttle appeared on his screen. "You have the bridge XO. I'll go greet our guests." Krisal nodded and took his place as he stepped down. He nodded back and left the bridge.

 

"Lieutenant?" Third Officer Griz asked as he stepped up to her. "A question?"

 

"Go ahead." Krisal said quietly.

 

"Are we continuing our mission?" Griz asked. "We are not even close to done."

 

"Until HQ tells us otherwise, or we cannot continue it for some reason, Ensign Griz..." Krisal said firmly. "We continue the mission. We are soldiers and we have been given our orders. We will obey our orders."

 

"Yes, Ma'am." The young Turian straightened himself slightly and nodded. He turned back as the Normandy's image wavered and vanished from their screens. "That ship is COOL."

 

"Don't get on her bad side, Ensign." Krisal said in a mild voice that somehow carried around the whole deck. "YOU didn't see the mess she left in her wake at Sol."

 

"You think the human called Joker is still flying it?" Ensign Griz asked, his tone one step removed from hero worship.

 

"I don't know." Krisal said soberly. "But here and NOW, it doesn't matter. Do your duty, ensign." She said in mild
rebuke.


"Yes, Ma'am." Griz said quickly. "Sorry, Ma'am." He bent to his tasks but paused as she snorted a laugh.

 

"A little distraction can be forgiven, ensign." Krisal said with a shrug. "It's not every day one sees a legend come to
life. And the Normandy is DEFINITELY a legend."

Modifié par kalenath, 29 octobre 2012 - 04:28 .

[kalenath]

Commander Mornis waited in silence as the Alliance shuttle landed. The hangar bay teams had moved the recovered pod out of the way and now they all waited to see what their 'guests' would be.  Mornis didn't really mind the lack of industry. The crew was more than competent and it wasn't every day a ship like that simply appeared nearby. Sheperd's ship. The SSV Normandy. Even with Sheperd gone, the ship was a legend in and of its own right. He stood apart from the crews, waiting as the shuttle powered down. The hatch opened and a human female in combat armor stepped out of the shuttle.

 

"You in command?" The woman asked politely. Her dark head fur glistened in the harsh light of the bay and her eyes glowed brightly green. The patterns on her skin glowed as well.

 

"Yes." He replied with a nod. "Spectre Williams?"

 

"The same." She said with a smile. "Sorry to just drop in on you. The Council and Alliance HQ told me to get here ASAP." She held out  a hand. "Ashley Williams, Special Tactics and Recon."

 

"Commander Mornis." The Turian commander said, taking the woman's hand and giving a shake. He thanked his ancestors that he had studied some human protocol. "Seventh Fleet Search and Rescue. On Recovery duty."

 

"Thank you, commander." Spectre Williams said soberly. "There just are not enough Alliance ships to do the job yet. So many dead and missing... I know your own fleets are recovering your lost people, so it is VERY appreciated by everyone in Alliance uniform, what you are doing. Not a fun job, but one that needs doing."

 

"Yeah." Mornis said quietly. "The Reaper has helped as well."

 

"Yeah." Williams sighed. "If you had told me ten years ago that a REAPER was going to help recover bodies to bring closure to families with lost loved ones, I would have laughed in your face. But now..." She shrugged. "This is the LEAST of the craziness we have seen recently."

 

"I didn't know what to expect." Mornis said with a shrug. "But it has helped a great deal. It can cover a LOT of space and it's sensors are very precise. We are not very COMFORTABLE with it, mind you, but..." He shrugged again, then paused as two more beings exited the shuttle. One was a huge human male in combat armor. That one he didn't know, but the other...

 

"General Vakarian! Sir! We didn't get word you were coming." Commander Mornis braced to attention as  Garrus Vakarian nodded to him.

 

"At ease, commander." Garrus said with a nod. "I am here to liaison and see what you need."

 

"Sir?" Mornis asked, unsure.

 

"Ash?" Garrus asked. For a moment, Mornis was unsure who he was taking to, but then the Spectre nodded.

 

"I am here for the Council. Garrus here is the Hierarchy's representative." The Spectre said soberly. "Lieutenant
Commander Vega here..." She nodded to the huge human who nodded back. "...represents the N7 program and is here for the Alliance. He has every record we could find on your guest. And last but not least..." The Spectre nodded again to a pair of humans who came out of the shuttle loaded down with  what looked like medical gear. One was young and had dark hair, the other older and had gray hair. Both wore white tunics with medical insignia. "Our medical personnel. Doctors Karin Chakwas and Miranda Lawson. Both have in depth experience with such things as you detailed in your report. Specifically Cerberus and Cerberus medical work."

 

"I see." Commander Mornis said quietly. "I can have quarters set up for all of you. I am afraid it won't be palatial."
He paused as Garrus snorted.

 

"As long as it is dry and no one is shooting at us, I don't think any of us will care." One of the most famous Turians in the galaxy said with a smile. Both Williams and Vega nodded. "Is your guest awake?"

 

"She was." Commander Mornis replied. "She fell asleep again. Sir, she is a mess. The ocular implants rendered her blind." The docs looked worried at that,

 

"We should talk in private, Commander." Williams said with a scowl. "Miranda? Karin?"

 

"I should look at the pod." The dark haired human said quietly. "Karin?"

 

"I can start collating the data on the patient." The older doctor said with a nod. "With your permission, Spectre?"

 

"Don't start with the formality, doc." The female Spectre said with a sigh. "Commander?"

 

"Right." Commander Mornis said with a nod. "Chief!" He called. Just as he expected, Chief Mudok was nearby.

 

"Sir?" The Chief asked diffidently.

 

"Detail an escort to guide Doctor Chakwas to sickbay." Commander Mornis said with a smile. Chief Mudok nodded and beckoned a soldier over and started talking to the young Turian. "And... Doctor Lawson? Will you need anything?"

 

"I don't think so." The younger human female said slowly. "I am going to make a preliminary survey. If I do need anything, I have my omni tool. I can call."

 

"Right." Commander Mornis said with a nod. He liked dealing with professionals. "Chief, if she needs anything... If we have it,  get it for her." The chief nodded. "Spectre Williams, General Vakarian, Lieutenant Commander Vega? Lets adjourn to my briefing room so we can discuss this."

 

"Good idea commander." The Spectre said softly. "One question, the shuttle?" The alliance shuttle was blocking half of the access way for the hangar. The pod was taking up the other half. The Wings of Xenobia was not a large ship.

 

"It can stay here." Commander Mornis said with a shrug. "We are not planning to have any more arrivals today."

 

"Be warned, commander." Spectre Williams said with a sigh. "The press has accessed the non-classified data feeds and maybe some of the supposedly secure ones." Mornis froze and Williams nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised if some reporters show up."

 

"Well, then..." The commander actually smiled. It was NOT a nice smile. "If they DO, then I honestly cannot allow them to land. No space. Wouldn't be safe." His tone was earnest and Williams smiled as well.

 

"Fair enough." Williams replied. "Okay, let's get started." The group left the hangar bay, leaving the dark haired woman staring at the pod. Mornis led the way towards the bridge and his briefing room. The other doctor peeled off from the group, led by a Turian who looked as if she were simply bursting with questions she didn't dare ask. As he passed the bridge, Krisal looked at him, a question in her eyes. He shrugged.

 

"We will likely be awhile, XO." Mornis said. "Take us to the next grid point and start the search. The SSV Crecy was
lost somewhere near there."

 

"Yes sir." Krisal nodded as the group continued off.

 

Mornis pretended not to hear one of the crew speak in a hushed tone. "Was that who I THINK it was? General Vakarian himself?" He led the way into his briefing room and indicated chairs for the others. The human female and male seemed amused by the hushed voice and Vakarain ignored it.

 

"We don't have any 'special' refreshments." Mornis said sadly. "But I can get you all some water if you wish."

 

"Water would be fine by me." General Vakarian said sadly. "We have a LOT to discuss."

Modifié par kalenath, 30 octobre 2012 - 04:21 .

[kalenath]

"Let me start by saying 'Thank You', commander." Lieutenant Commander Vega said after he took a sip of his water. He sat in a folding chair that was way too small for him, but he managed to perch in it, somehow. Spectre
Williams and General Vakarian sat in the two other chairs in his briefing room. The Wings of Xenobia was not well endowed with luxuries. Aside from those two chairs and a desk with the commander's chair behind it, the room was bare.

 

"For?" Commander Mornis asked softly as he checked his terminal. As expected his paperwork load had grown.

 

"For finding our lost sister." Vega said soberly. "And for doing what you have been doing out here. Its usually a thankless job for most people. But anyone who has lost friends or family appreciates it a great deal."

 

"We have been pulling bodies in for a while, IDing them and sending them to Earth." Mornis said with a sigh. "It was such a rush to find someone alive. We have no idea when that pod was dropped, but there was little chance she was floating here since the war ended."

 

"Your report said that the Reaper- Obligatha?" Williams asked and Mornis nodded. "...was going to scan to see how long the pod had been out here? Did it?"

 

"I don't know." Mornis admitted. "Things got nuts as soon as we brought the pod aboard. Let me check." He tapped his terminal and nodded. "Yes, Obligatha did a full spectrum analysis while it's Oculi pulled the pod to us. This... says..." He paused. "This can't be right. "This says it WAS in space for five years. There is no ways she survived in that condition for that long."

 

"If half of what I have heard about Anya is true, commander..." Lieutenant Commander Vega said slowly. "She was one seriously TOUGH chica. There is no way she let whoever did this to her do it without fighting."

 

"That's just it." Commander Mornis said slowly. "When she woke, she said she had been drugged and seen her 'belly big' at least twice during her captivity." Vega, Williams and Vakarian all stiffened at that. "Does that mean what I think it does in humans?" He asked coldly.

 

"Probably." Williams' face had a seriously scary look on it now. "The question is, why? She had a relationship with General er... Private Crado. Garrus?" She asked gently. The commander looked at General Vakarian and paused at the look of absolute devastation that showed on the General's face for a moment. Then it vanished.

 

"Humans and Turians are not biologically compatible." Garrus said slowly, his face hardening. "For some, it
didn't matter. Crado and Anya were one such pair. They kept it professional, and in the middle of the Reaper invasion, no one was going to quote regs at them. No one sane anyway."

 

"So..." Mornis said slowly. "We have a human female, listed as 'MIA presumed dead'. She is alive, but shows signs of severe torture. She says..." He checked his notes and nodded. "She says that she tried to escape and was hurt badly for it. She has been experimented on and according to her, she was pregnant." The commander shook his head. "I really do not like where this is going."

 

"Me neither." Williams said soberly. "We need to talk to her. But..." She raised a hand when the commander opened his mouth. "We let HER dictate the times. We will NOT push her. She has been hurt enough." The commander nodded. "The docs will want access to her. I assume she is back in quarantine?"

 

"Yeah." Mornis said with a scowl. "Crado won't leave her side, and truth be told, I don't blame him. He is not stable,
but... I don't blame him."

 

"None of us do." Lieutenant Commander Vega said quietly. "He and Anya did wonders with the N7 Special Ops during the war. Their teams pulled off any number of 'impossible' jobs. I read a bunch of reports on what their teams did, and...frankly, I am amazed. Shepard might have had difficulty matching some of those ops."

 

"Shepard...Well..." Garrus said slowly in the silence that fell. "She always said she was just another soldier. She
always said there were better soldiers than her. I..." He shrugged. "There were things she was very good at and then there were things she wasn't. Admittedly, not many of the latter..." The Turian General said with a slightly forlorn grin. "Knitting comes to mind..." He grinned as Mornis sputtered. Williams and Vega just snickered a little.

 

"Knitting?" Mornis asked with a grin. "I have to say... Most of what I know about Shepard is hearsay, or grapevine gossip. You two knew her."

 

"We all did. The Lieutenant Commander served on the Normandy as well." Williams said softly. Mornis nodded to accept the additional information. "She was...one of a kind, but in the end, she was a soldier. Like us. She did her duty."

 

"Yeah." Vakarian's voice was taut and Mornis looked at him. The commander paused and then nodded as the other Turian worked to control his face. "I know what she would want done here. We are going to find out what happened, find out WHO did this to Anya, and then if they are alive, we are going to make them dead." Calm sincerity shone through the General's tone. It almost hid the hate. "She would NOT have liked someone playing with her fellow soldiers. Not in the slightest."

 

"Right." Mornis could understand that. He paused as the door chime sounded. "Come." The dark haired doctor, Lawson entered the room and her expression... The commander tensed at it. "Doctor?"

 

"It wasn't a Cerberus pod, commander." Lawson said slowly, her tone one step removed from fury. "It was meant to look like one."

 

"Why?" Commander Mornis asked slowly, then paused. "Sorry, Spectre, General...Didn't mean to speak out of turn."

 

"That was what I was going to ask." Williams said slowly. "Garrus?" He nodded, his focus on the doctor who paced to the wall and back, obviously trying to retain control. "What did you find, Miranda?"

 

"I had hoped it was over." Miranda Lawson said with a snap. "I know who built that pod. Who set it up to hold that woman in stasis, likely for a long, long time. It brought her out every year for a day or two to check her vitals and then put her back under. You caught it with her out of stasis. Dang it, I thought I buried this all on Sanctuary."

 

"Sanctuary?" Williams asked slowly and then froze. "Oh no..."

 

"Yeah." Miranda snapped. "My father did this."

 

"Your FATHER?" Mornis asked slowly. "Wait... Sanctuary? Wasn't that where Cerberus experimented on refugees?"

 

"Yeah." Miranda said, leaning against the wall and shutting her eyes. Her face was desolate. Vega stood and moved to her side. A gentle touch on her arm had her smiling slightly. "My father's name was Henry Lawson. He was obsessed with his legacy, creating a dynasty of sorts. Evil man, he made me and my twin sister to further his insane dreams. When I rebelled, he went to the Illusive Man. He worked for Cerberus, but he always had plans within plans. Always furthering his legacy."

 

"So..." Williams said slowly. "Anya...?"

 

"As tough as she was and is, she likely would have been an ideal subject for a his schemes. Maybe a host mother, maybe something else.. He had lost a lot of resources when Earth was invaded." Lawson looked as if she wanted to spit. "Add to that her biotic ability and she was probably ideal for his purposes if he could keep
her controlled.  But..." She shook her head. "I don't think he was personally involved."

 

"What makes you say that?" Mornis asked.

 

"Because I killed him on Sanctuary." Miranda said with a sigh. "That was just about the same time Anya was lost, right Lieutenant Commander?" She asked Vega who nodded.

 

"So..." Williams said slowly. "She was taken, by the Collectors. Or... Maybe she was found by Cerberus troops?"

 

"Either way, she wound up in the care of a program my dear father set up." Miranda said with a snarl. "We need to find that place and erase it."

 

"The Normandy is backtracking the pod." Williams said slowly. "Your father is dead. I saw the body. Could he have cloned himself or something?"

 

"That is usually reserved for science fiction, Williams. I wouldn't think so." Miranda said soberly. "But every time
I THOUGHT I knew the extent of his or the Illusive Man's evil, they surprised me. If Anya DID have children thrust on her... Then those kids are in BIG trouble."

 

"We need more information." Williams said softly. "Commander? We need to talk to Anya."

 

"We will check with Doctor Chakwas, but..." Commander Mornis sighed. "Our medics didn't find any reason to continue the quarantine except that she didn't change when the rest of us did. Any idea why?" All four of the others looked at Miranda who shook her head.

 

"Nothing in the pod would have kept the pulse from hitting her." Miranda said slowly. "The shielding required for that would have taken a lot more power than the pod was capable of generating. But the logs in the pod only go back five years."

 

"Right..." Mornis mused. "The pod was only in space for the last five years. Where was she until then?"

 

"I don't think we are going to like that answer, Commander." Miranda said soberly. "I really don't."

Modifié par kalenath, 31 octobre 2012 - 11:00 .

[kalenath]

"Crado?" The soft, concerned voice jerked Crado out of his doze. He immediately looked to Anya, but the human woman hadn't moved. The splint that the docs in hazmat suits had put on her arm was still in place and she was sleeping easily. They hadn't wanted to give her anything for the pain, so they had settled for slathering the break with medi-gel. Its soothing numbness would help with the pain as well as speeding healing.

 

"What? Uh..." He jerked fully wake, looked around and paused. No one else was in the room. "Sorry." He said as he looked for the mike. "Shouldn't have dozed off."

 

"You are stressed." The familiar voice said gently. "How is she?"

 

"Scared out of her mind." Crado said sadly, his hand tracing Anya's cheek. "Blind and hurt and scared... and..." He
paused as he recognized the voice. "Garrus?" He asked incredulous.

 

"Who ELSE were they going to send?" Garrus Vakarian asked in a wicked tone. "You tend to irritate everyone you talk to."

 

"Yes, sir." Crado said softly. "No excuse, sir."

 

"Don't you DARE start, Crado Solinus." Garrus replied severely. "I can get Anya to kick your tail."

 

"You would." Crado said softly. "And it is just Crado now, Garrus." The voice from the intercom sighed.

 

"You just woke up and you are already arguing with your superior officers." Garrus laughed sourly. "Some things never change. This is a head's up. I am coming in, with two docs, a Spectre and an N7. They want to talk to Anya."

 

"She is not..." Crado paused and smiled. "Belay that. She IS awake." He bent down to brush Anya's cheek.
"Eavesdropping on a General is a court martial offense, Anya." He said with a smile.

 

"And? When did that ever stop you?" Anya asked coyly, smiling as she opened her eyes, only to freeze and shiver a bit before closing them again. "Crado... I..."

 

"Hey." Crado said as he patted her shoulder before taking her hands in his. "It's okay. You heard?"

 

"Yeah. Hi Garrus." Anya said softly. "Been a while since we briefed each other on Spec Ops and Reaper activity on the Citadel."

 

"Good to hear your voice again, Anya." Garrus said gently. "How you doing?"

 

"Not so good." Anya admitted, shivering. "Not being able to see sucks. Despite everything Crado has done, it still
sucks." Crado scowled and pulled another blanket over her. She smiled her thanks and relaxed a little. "I don't deserve him. Don't... Don't let him come to harm, Garrus. Please?"

 

"Anya, it's okay." Garrs said gently. "No one is going to do anything to him. Well, unless he deserves it." His tone was wicked now and Anya actually smiled. "We are entering decontamination now. Should be about five minutes. See you then." The com clicked off.

 

"Okay... I..." Anya paused and stiffened. "Crado? What am I wearing?"

 

"Anya." Crado said with a sigh. "You are a patient in a sick bay. What do you THINK you are wearing? A hospital gown. One set up for you, as opposed to a Turian one. None of ours would have fit you."

 

"Does it make me look fat?" She asked and then paused. "Man... I didn't just say that, did I?" She asked with a grin. "I did. Oh my god, I am turning into a ditz." She laughed and Crado did as well. "Crado?"

 

"Yes Anya?" He asked quietly.

 

"Do I look the same?" She asked, her tone almost inaudible. "I mean, the same as before?"

 

"You look like I remember you looking." Crado said softly. "You have more lines on the skin of your face, from fear and pain. I may be biased, but I think you have never looked better."

 

"Flatterer." Anya said with a chuckle. "You just want to have our evil way with me."

 

"All in good time, mi amor." Crado said with a smirk. "All in good time." He straightened as the door to the room
opened and a group of people came in. Each carried a folding chair with them and Crado nodded to each as they entered. "General Vakarian."

 

"PRIVATE Crado." Garrus Vakarian said with a sigh. "Still ticking off your commanders I see."

 

"It's  a living." Crado said as he sat up a little straighter. He nodded to the four humans. "Welcome to quarantine."

 

"Private." The woman in combat armor said with a smile. "You both know Garrus. My name is Ashley Williams. I am with Citadel Special Tactics and Recon. This is Lieutenant Commander James Vega, with the N7 program and Doctors Chakwas and Lawson. Both specialists in...odd medical type things." The Spectre and the commander both sat in chairs they had brought.

 

"I assume you all want to talk to me." Anya said, her tone tight.

 

"We need to know what happened, Captain Wilson-Fuentes." The Spectre said gently. "And the docs think they
may be able to help you." Crado stared from the Spectre to Anya and back, his mind whirling.

 

"With what?" Anya asked, her posture stiffening. "And my name is Anya."


"Anya then." Williams said in a gentle voice. "Doctor Chakwas?"

 

"Anya?" The older doctor said slowly as she stepped forward. "You see nothing when your eyes are open, yes?"

 

"Yes." Anya said tightly. "Just black."

 

"I have looked over the scans the medics here took." Doctor Chakwas said in a calm, gentle voice. "But I would like to see for myself. May I?"

 

"Its not like I can stop you." Anya said sourly. Williams made a noise of disagreement and Anya turned her blind eyes to the Spectre. "What?"

 

"Too much has been done to you without your consent, Anya." Williams' tone was sad now. "We would LIKE to help, but we are NOT going to force you to accept anything. Not that Crado here would stand for it I bet." Crado smirked a bit at that. True.

 

"You..." Anya wilted a little. "You give ME the right to choose?"

 

"Yes." Williams said gently. "You are in excellent health, Anya. Aside from your eyes there is nothing wrong with your body." She shrugged. "Well, except the arm. But you JUST broke that." She said with a small smile.

 

"I..." Anya swallowed heavily. "Crado?" She asked.

 

"I am here, Anya." Crado said softly.

 

"Stay with me?" She begged. "Please?"

 

"Anya..." Crado said, laying a three fingered hand on her cold one. "I am not going anywhere. Will you let the docs
work?"

 

"Yeah." Anya said, slumping back into the bed. The two medical personnel produced scanners and stepped towards the bed. Anya visibly steeled herself and spoke. "What did you want to know, Spectre Williams?"

 

"Before I was a Spectre, I was a soldier, Anya." Williams said gently. "Call me Ashley."

 

"I can't do THAT, Ma'am." Anya protested. She stiffened as the docs started scanning her, the almost inaudible whine unnerving her. Crado took her hands in his and gave them a squeeze. "I guess I COULD call you Williams if you wish. But your rank is still valid. And you DO outrank me."

 

"Spectres are less straitlaced about some things." Williams replied with a smile. "We tend to focus on results, not
appearances or decorum. But if it helps you to retain military protocol, you can call me Spectre or Spectre Williams."

 

"It does, Spectre WIlliams." Anya said, relaxing as the scans the docs were running didn't hurt her. "I... I know I am a mess. All flustered and bothered.. and... Geez I feel like such a ditz."

 

"A ditz would be crying in the corner, Ma'am after what you went through." Lieutenant Commander Vega said softly. "Or trying to eat the paint. You are neither."

 

"You are Commander Vega." Anya said, her blind gaze tracking to him. "N7? Which specialty?"

 

"Lieutenant Commander." Vega said with a shrug. "Not enough time in service to make full commander yet. The brass have rediscovered the joys of bureaucracy." Anya smiled at his joking tone. "And Destroyer, Ma'am. You are a Fury."

 

"Was." Anya shuddered a little and Crado gave her hands another squeeze. "Before all this."

 

"Anya..." Vega said with a snort. "You are STILL N7. You are not under arrest. You haven't broken any laws that we know of. You haven't done ANYTHING wrong. You were hurt and abused. We need to find out what happened to you. If the people or whatever who did this to you are still around, we want to find them and discourage them from doing it -or anything- again." Steel shone in his voice now. The docs finished their scans and stepped back. "Doc?"

 

"We got what we needed." Doctor Chakwas said gently. "Your arm is healing well. The rest..." She sighed.
"Miranda and I need to talk for a bit, make sense of this. It's odd..." She mused.

 

"Am I going to die?" Anya asked fearfully in the silence that ensued.

 

"Oh no, dear." Doctor Chakwas came close and laid a gentle hand on Anya's unbroken arm. "You are in excellent health. We just got some odd readings. We need to confer. Anya..." She said, her tone very soft and gentle. "It's okay, you will be okay." Anya stared at the doc with her blind eyes and then burst into tears. Crado swept her into an embrace, holding her gently as she cried. "We can give you something for the pain now. The other nastiness has filtered out."

 

"Please?" Anya asked as she fought to control herself.

 

"Easy..." Doctor Chakwas said in that same soft as wool voice. She laid her omni tool against the woman's neck and a hiss sounded. Anya relaxed instantly. "There, better?" The doctor asked kindly.

 

"Yeah." Anya said with a smile. "Thanks doc."

 

"You are welcome. Helping people is what I do, Anya." Karin Chakwas said with a smile. "It is why I went into
medicine. I will be close, but Miranda and I need to talk some esoteric medical gobbledy ******."

 

"Gobbledy ******?" Anya asked, incredulous. "Have you been talking to Raan'ita? She used to call it the same
thing."

 

"No." Doctor Chakwas said with a grin. "But healers are generally healers no matter the species. It will be all right,
Anya." She promised the blind woman before stepping back and striding to where Miranda stood by the door, her face buried in her omni tool screen.
 

"I hope so." Anya said in a small voice. "Okay..." She shook herself and took a deep breath. "What do you want to know, Spectre WIlliams?"

 

"What is the first thing you remember after the mission on Sanctum?" The Spectre had a recorder going and Crado noted that Vakarian and Vega did as well. "According to after action reports, you were hit and no one detected life signs."

 
"I..." Anya sighed and then spoke slowly and carefully. "It hurt. It was dark and it hurt..."

Modifié par kalenath, 01 novembre 2012 - 01:40 .

[kalenath]

"Everything was dark." Anya said softly. "Almost like now, with no light at all. My head hurt and my gut was on fire." She shook her head. "I remembered getting hit. I was dodging for everything I was worth, trying to find cover, but we kept getting flanked. Every time I focused on a target, one of those abomination monstrosities would sneak up behind me and grab me. Got old." She snapped in irritation.

 

"Yeah." Vakarian said soberly. "And then they exploded. That got real old after the first time."

 

"Yeah, hurt like hell, even through barriers." Anya said with a sigh. "I was trying to regroup with the team when I ran smack into a web I hadn't seen. Too many inputs, too many hostiles." She shook her head. "That is no excuse for losing situational awareness, but still..."

 

"Anya..." Crado's voice was mild. "It was an ambush. They REALLY wanted us. Dead or alive they really wanted us."

 

"Yeah," Anya said with a sigh, "I must have lost consciousness for a moment, because the next thing I knew, Crado was bending over me with medi-gel in hand.  I knew I was hit bad and I knew evac was coming. I told you to leave me, you insubordinate excuse for a Turian." She mock snarled at the male.

 

"And I told you to shove it." Crado said with a smile. "When you got hit, I was in command, remember?" Anya pouted slightly. He paused and his voice turned sad. "I was hit a moment later."

 

"Yeah." Anya said with a shiver. "I remember you picking me up and seeing a Scion raising it's arm. Then I was on the ground and Brutiz was there. He was firing non-stop with that weird spike thrower of his. I could see my suit telemetry on my HUD, I was hemorrhaging, no chance for medi-gel to save me." Anya said, her head falling until her chin rested on her chest. "I didn't want YOU to die too, Crado. I ordered him to take you while I hit my fields again. I saw him get you to the shuttle. I saw T-9-001 enter as well. Then I was hit by something. I never saw what." She shook her head. "I woke up in darkness, scared out of my mind. I remember Shepard's reports on what the Collectors did to people they abducted."

 

"What could you tell about your surroundings?" Vega asked when she didn't speak for a moment.

 

"Not a lot." Anya said soberly. "No light and when I tried to activate my fields, they didn't work." She shuddered a
bit. "My amp was gone, could barely generate enough biotic power to feel, let alone see. I assumed I was drugged too. My head was fuzzy. I felt things binding my wrists and ankles. But other than that, I didn't feel bad. I hurt, in places, but I didn't feel bad." She shook her head. "As odd as that sounds. I don't know how long I was in that dark place. I couldn't access my implant chrono."

 

"Hmmm..." Spectre Williams mused. "Disorientation and drugs. Keep you off balance until they can do what they want? What happened next?"

 

"I must have slept or been drugged." Anya said with a small shiver. "I woke up on a table. I was unclothed and strapped down. I saw movement and called out, but no one answered. When things came into my field of view they were mechs of some kid. Odd ones through. Not security mechs like I have seen, or any technology I knew. Certainly not reaper tech. That has a look all it's own." All the others in the room nodded.

 

"Can you describe them?" Williams asked gently.

 

"Yes." Anya said slowly. "They seemed to have humanoid shape. Two long arms with three fingers on each hand arms, a big head. Thin legs with odd claw like feet. Two sets of eyes though, kind of like Collectors or Protheans. They all sparkled with what I think were sterile fields. Which makes sense, I guess. At first I thought it was in a medical facility. They tended my wounds." She shook her head again. "I remember the feeling of medi-gel on my stomach. Then they worked on my head and I realized my hair had been cut off." She raised a hand to her scalp and the short hair there. "I talked to the things, demanded answers, begged for some kind of response. Nothing." Anya said soberly. "That was when I knew I was a prisoner."

 

"So, what then?" Williams prompted when she broke off.

 

"I made a tactical retreat." Anya said sadly. "Some people may call it cowardice, but I KNEW I was in no shape to
fight."

 

"Not cowardice." Vega said simply. "Pragmatism. Fight when you CAN."

 

"Right." Anya said with a sigh. "I guess the fact that I DIDN'T resist at first either confused the mechs or set their programming to non-harmful mode or something."

 

"Did you spend all the time on the table?" This from Miranda who was watching Anya closely now.

 

"No." Anya said slowly. "There was a small... Exercise room, I think. It had a bunch of what I figured out were exercise equipment in it. Odd though. The machines seemed off. Not -quite- sized for someone my size. Not quite proportioned for humans. I woke up on a cot in there fairly regularly. I guess they didn't want me getting out of shape. It was always odd through..." She mused.

 

"How so?" Williams asked when no one else spoke.

 

"I always ached when I woke up. As if I had exercised BEFORE I woke. Which isn't possible." Anya paused when Miranda hissed. ""Right?" She asked, hesitantly.

 

"I wouldn't think so." Miranda said slowly. "But there were strides in Cerberus control technology before you
vanished. That is how they controlled their troops. If you DID have a control chip implanted, you likely wouldn't have realized it."

 

"Tell me I don't." Anya said slowly, her tone one step removed from terrified. "Please?"

 

"They can be very hard to identify, Anya." Miranda's voice was VERY gentle now. "I gave you my word through. If you
DO have one, I can and will get it out." She came close and touched the blind woman on the shoulder. "No one deserves that. I will look over the scans again. I swear to you, Anya. I will find out. I know what to look for."

 

"How do you know?" Anya asked softly, slightly relaxing.

"I was part of the Cerberus team that rebuilt Shepard." Miranda said quietly. "And my FATHER may have had this done this to you. If he DID, I want his evil ERASED." Hate sounded in her tone now. Anya's unseeing eyes stared up at her.

 

"Please?" She asked, not sure what she was begging for.

 

"Oh Anya..." Miranda sighed and sat down beside the now crying woman.  Crado made space.
"Come here." She hugged Anya tight. "My father was evil. The things he did to me, and my sister and SO many other people..." She sighed and sat back. "I will find a way to help you. I know what Cerberus used to do. I know their techniques. I know a lot of what my father planned, if not all. THIS I knew nothing about. Whatever it takes, Anya, I WILL help you." She hugged Anya again.

 

"Everything I heard about you said you were a coldhearted witch." Anya said slowly when Miranda released her. "What happened to you?"

 

"Something marvelous." Miranda said with a small smile. "Things changed ten years ago, Anya. Massively and minutely. With specialized technology, my fondest dream came true a year and a half ago. I was..." Miranda paused, working to control herself. "I was barren, Anya." Anya hissed in shock and Miranda continued. "The genetic modifications my dear FATHER had done to me rendered me sterile. But with all the changes, technology has improved a great deal. I found someone I want to spend the rest of my life with and we made a new life between us, with a little help from technology. My little boy Eran is a year and a half old, Anya. He is growing up in a future free from the fear of Reapers. YOU helped bring that future to pass, Anya. My father seems to have hurt you. I WILL help you." Steel might have shattered under Miranda's tone now. Far from cowed through, Anya relaxed a little.

 

"You think your father did this to me?" Anya asked quietly. "Why?"

 

"I don't know." Miranda snarled. "He was dead by the time you vanished. I made sure of that."

 

"I'll say." Garrus said in a very quiet voice. "Remind ME not to tick you off, Lawson." His quiet chuckle dissolved
the tension that had grown in the room.

 

"I remember..." Anya said slowly. "I was biding my time. I was waiting for an opening. I could feel my biotics surging. Even without an amp, I could do things. Something different happened. A different mech came in, one with a platter of food. Usually my food just appeared and disappeared. Maybe I was strong enough to be awake when it apeared? I dunno. I hit the mech with what juice I had. It sparked and fell. I ran. Didn't get far."

 

"What happened?" Miranda asked gently.

 

"It was corridors. White, no markings that I could see. It looked like a hospital or a lab. But no insignia anywhere. I don't know if I was hit by something, or some implant shocked me or whatever." Anya said sadly. "But suddenly I was on the ground looking at the ceiling. Nothing hurt, but I couldn't move. A mech came up, holding binders and I cut loose. I threw it into the wall so hard it shattered. Then I was free again, but my body wasn't working quite right. I couldn't feel anything. But my limbs were all going in weird directions. I couldn't make my legs work right. I saw more mechs, at least three of them. I hit one with a channel and then threw it. The blast blew them all off their feet. Then I heard a gunshot and woke up back on the table." She shuddered. "It reoriented so I was sitting. I looked down. There was a well healed gunshot wound on my chest and... My belly was big." She shook her head. "I don't know how long I was out. Must have been a while, if I was...pregnant."

 

"Oh Anya." Crado reached around Lawson to hold her as she cried. Lawson moved to let him. "I am sorry."

 

"I don't know if I was." Anya said slowly. "I slept a lot. One time when I woke up, my belly was flat again. I tried to break the restraints and something shocked me. Every time I would try the restraints, something would shock me. The shocks were strong enough I felt bones break on occasion. And sometimes when I woke, there would be splints on part of my body. Then my belly was big again, and... I tried..." She was crying again. "I tried to fight..."

 

"It's okay, Anya." Crado murmured close to her ear. "It's okay. It's over. You are safe."

 

"Am I?" Anya asked softly. "I heard your voice in my dreams, Crado. Telling me to be strong, to not quit. I wanted to. I SO wanted to on occasion. It hurt so much and I was out of control. I had no control over what was done to me. And then... was I pregnant or did I dream that?"

 

"You didn't." Miranda said sadly. Anya turned an incredulous face at her and Miranda sighed. "Pregnancy leaves certain chemical markers in the human body. We cannot tell how MANY times, but you were."

 

"Madre de Dios..." Anya breathed in horror. "I..."

 

"Anya." Miranda's soft voice cut through her pain and grief. "It is okay. We will find out what happened, and where. When we DO we will end this nightmare. For now, you need help. You need more rest. We MAY be able to do something with your eyes. I am not sure." She said as Anya's face lit up. "But we may. Anything I CAN do, I will, Anya. I SWEAR to you, I will find a way to help you. We brought Shepard back from the dead. I THINK this may be a little less involved." She said with a grin as she hugged Anya again.

 

"Thank you." Anya said soberly. "I..." She shivered a bit and then couldn't stop.

 

"You need rest, Anya." Miranda said gently. She laid the shivering woman back onto the bed and covered her with the blanket. "I will be back when you wake, and hopefully I will have some answers for you." Miranda looked at the others and Anya slowly sank into sleep. All but Crado headed for the door. She jerked her head at Crado and they moved away from the bed.

 

"I may be able to rig an interface with the implants in her eyes." Miranda said softly. "Have you told her about our
changes?" He shook his head. "You need to. When she wakes. I will be back. I give you MY word, Crado Solinus, I will help her. No matter what it takes. I will help her. We can end the quarantine tomorrow morning, move her to a regular medical berth." He nodded to her silently and he stepped back to the bed and Miranda followed the others out of the quarantine ward.

Modifié par kalenath, 02 novembre 2012 - 09:37 .

[kalenath]

((Warning: explicit scene implied))

<<<Late that night>>>

 

A whimper woke Crado from his doze. He didn't sleep much,hadn't since the war. Sometimes it was a pain in the tail, especially when he needed to be diplomatic to someone. Most of the time though, it helped. Like now. He was at Anya's bedside in an instant. One look at her face told the story. Nightmare. Small wonder she had them.

 

"Anya." Crado said gently, not touching her. He knew better. Even a non-biotic special ops soldier was dangerous before they were fully awake. A biotic could kill with a thought. "Anya, wake up." A mumbled round of Spanish sounded from her lips. It sounded to his inexpert ears like profanity. He smiled, she hadn't changed. "Come on, Anya." Crado cajoled. "You need to wake up." She jerked in the bed and her eyes opened. He sighed silently as she didn't focus. She still couldn't see.

 

"AH!" She screamed and then relaxed. "Crado?" She asked after a moment.

 

"I am here." Crado said softly as he sat down on the side of the bed. He took her right hand in both of his and gave it a squeeze. "Bad dream?"

 

"Yeah." Anya said, her face working. "I was back on the table. You were there, strapped to another table. I...
Crado..." She embraced him tight. Then she buried her face in his shoulder and cried. "I heard you scream and there was nothing I could do."

 

"Anya, it was a dream." Crado said gently. "Images from your subconscious given form. It wasn't real. I am here, I am real."

 

"Felt real." Anya said sadly. "It felt...so...real..." She slumped in his arms. "I can't see, Crado. I can't tell if this is real or some kind of trick my captors have come up with to break me. I just don't know."

 

"Well..." Crado said slowly, drawing out the word. "I... MAY know a way to convince you." His voice took on a wicked
lilt. His hands that had been holding her gently went somewhere else and she gasped in shock.

 

"Crado... I..." She gasped again as he tickled her. "CRADO!" She snapped.

 

"What?" He asked innocently. "I just want to relax you. And SOMEONE... I can't remember who..." He said with a grin as she gasped gain under his ministrations. "Told me that humans call orgasm 'nature's tranquilizer'."

 

"You lie like a RUG." Anya said sharply as he pressed closer to her. "Lorinia told you that. When she was trying to get you to admit you loved me."

 

"You were so stressed." Crado said sadly as he hugged her. "It was eating you alive. We could all see you trying to hold it together. We wanted to help and you kept pushing all of us away."

 

"It was too much." Anya replied sadly. "MY family was...very disciplined, strict. Good girls wait and all. I had NO idea
what I was doing. Just that I felt wrong. Lorinia was kind, but... I couldn't. Not with her. We tried, but I couldn't."

 

"Asari DO take some getting used to." Crado said soberly. "She propositioned ME a few times. She even offered herself after... After you..." He broke off, unable to continue.

 

"Did you take her up on it?" Anya asked calmly.

 

"No." Crado said softly. "I couldn't."

 

"Crado." Anya said slowly. "Have you had ANY partners, since me?"

 

"Dates." Crado said softly. "Ones that members of the team set up. But nothing came of them. None of them could
measure up. Some wanted a conquest, some wanted safety and security, some just wanted sanity. I couldn't give them what they wanted. We talked and then we slept in separate beds. I think I irritated the team, Brutiz was talking about sending for one of HIS female relations."

 

"A Krogan? Ow." Anya said in wonder. "That might have gotten...messy." She said with a grin.

 

"Yeah." Crado said softly. "When the Chief called with this job, I jumped at the chance. I mean, I had the whole remainder of the TEAM trying to match make me..." He shook his head. "I didn't want to forget."

 

"Crado, that is not what we taught each other. We don't forget, but we get on with what has to be done." Anya said as she nuzzled his cheek. "What happened to your family was awful. I don't know what happened to mine, but I assume most did not survive. Odd that the Spectre called me by my family name though." She mused.

 

"Took me two months of sleeping with you before you told ME that you had been a Wilson-Fuentes." Crado said with a smile. "Hardly fair. I told you MY full name the night we made love for the first time."

 

"Bite me. I am not proud of my family." Anya said soberly. "All they cared about was money. Making it, using it and enjoying the perks that came with it. I...didn't like that. I was a throwback, a person who wanted to SERVE, not to BE served. I cut all ties. I ran away when I was eighteen, changed my name to just plain Anya when I joined the Alliance. I heard they looked for me, but I doubt they cared enough to tell the truth.  I KNOW they survived. I know they likely ran as soon as the Reapers hit, leaving all of their assorted underlings and minions to be harvested." She shook her head. "So Miranda talking about her father really hit me hard. I can sympathize. Mine was never about any legacy. We were just tools to my father. All my sisters were brood mares to be auctioned off for the most reward. He never asked us about our days. He INSPECTED us at the end of each day to be sure none of us had blemished our bodies, sullied our looks, diminished our value. That is all my sisters and I were to him, valuable animals."

 

"Oh Anya." Crado said sadly. "It is over. You are here, with me. And NO ONE is going to take you away from me again."

 

"If he is still alive, my father will try." Anya said, her tone resigned. "I was an asset. No more. He will try to recover... his...asset..." She paused, unsure.

 

"Anya?" Crado asked when she didn't speak.

 

"Something..." Anya said slowly. "I felt... odd... when I said that. As if I had heard it before. But..." She shook
her head. "Not that I remember. The last time he told me that, I had just turned eighteen. He was going to marry me off to some rich geezer. Someone named..." She broke off and her face went white. "Madre de DIOS!" She cursed.

 

"Anya?" Crado asked softly. "What?'

 

"The name..." Anya said softy. "I didn't remember until now. The name of the man I was to be sent to, carted off like an animal, caged if needed as my father said..." She shuddered as reaction set in. "His name was Henry Lawson."

 

"Doctor Lawson's father? This is not a coincidence." Crado said softly. "Anya..." He said gently. "Could your FAMILY have done this to you?"

 

"I..." Anya shook her head, but in bafflement, not negation. "I don't know. I never HEARD anyone the whole time, Crado. Not that I remember. I wonder..." She paused, thinking hard. "Would they have been CAPABLE of it? Sure. Able to pull it off? I don't know."

 

"Hmm..." Crado mused. "Well, Doctor Lawson thinks she can help your eyes. And Spectre Williams and Lieutenant Commander Vega both agree that we need to investigate this. Find out what happened to you and why. And I need to bring you up to speed on what has happened. A lot has in the last ten years."

 

"You have a captive audience." Anya said with a grin. One that turned into a squeak as he tickled her again. "Crado!"

 

"I can think of something better to do for a while." Crado said as he adjusted his embrace. "Got to be careful with your arm, and the plumbing will keep us from really enjoying this, but other than that..." He bent down and kissed her.

 

<<<Two hours later>>>

 

"You... are..." Anya sighed in contentment as she lay back. "Insatiable."

 

"And is that a bad thing?" Crado asked as he straightened his uniform.

 

"Nope." Anya smiled widely. "I missed you. I missed you so bad. Every waking minute that I remember, I wanted you. I wanted to see you, to touch you. To hear your voice. I didn't know if you were alive or dead. I dreamed of you, but... It was never enough." She said, tears starting to fall from her sightless eyes.

 

"Oh Anya." Crado said gently as he sat back on the bed and held her while she sobbed. "It's okay... Shhh... It's okay."

 

"Yeah." Anya said after a moment. "It is now. We are together. The docs are going to try and fix my eyes and then WE are going to find out what happened and do something about it."

 

"That is my girl." Crado said softly. "Although... There is something else. I waited. I planned to ask AFTER the
Crucible was done and fired, kicking the Reaper's tails. I... I have carried this since you... SInce I thought you died. Hold out your hands. I studied a bunch of human customs, focusing on the South America continent where you were born." She shook her head but did as instructed. He pulled a tiny box from a pocket and placed it in her hands.

 

"What is this, Crado?" Anya asked, her tone confused.

 

"You cannot see what is in it, so I will tell you." Crado said sadly. "A ring." Anya stiffened and he continued. "Anya Wilson-Fuentes, will you marry me?" Crado asked quietly. "I can't promise you children, but I NEVER want to be without you again."

 

"I..." Anya stammered, shocked. "Crado... I never dreamed... I..."

 

"You don't have to answer me now." Crado said gently. "You don't have to answer at all. I just had to say it. Now.
Before any more craziness tried to tear us apart. You complete me, Anya. You are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I read up on human customs. I wanted to make an honest woman of you."

 

"You..." Anya was caught somewhere between snarling and giggling as tears started falling again. "I... Oh Crado..." She said as she embraced him again. "Yes."

 

Their night dissolved into kisses. Then more.

Modifié par kalenath, 03 novembre 2012 - 12:39 .

[kalenath]

"We said you were in good shape, but GEEZ."  Miranda Lawson's soft, incredulous voice pulled Anya and Crado out of the slumber they shared. Anya raised her head from her lover's chest and smiled at the doctor's incredulous voice. "You might have wanted to wait until your arm healed." The doc said in a dubious tone.

 

"Nah." Anya said with a smirk. "Waited long enough. Good morning doctor."

 

"Good morning, Anya. The others will be in shortly, but I wanted to talk to you first. Glad I did. Probably would have shocked the good lieutenant commander. But then again, maybe not." Miranda said with a smile in her voice. "I see you and the private here enjoyed yourselves."

 

"Well..." Anya blushed hotly. "Yeah." She grinned as Crado sat up and left the bed. She sighed in regret but reminded herself that he WOULD be back. Soon.

 

"Please tell me you didn't try full... um..." Miranda actually sounded off put for a moment. "That you didn't go all the
way. She is still a mess, Crado. AND she is still connected."

 

"No." Crado said sadly. "We didn't go all the way. I didn't want to hurt her and well..." He sounded VERY embarrassed now.

 

"Did you have a chance to talk?" Miranda asked sourly. "Or did you just do horizontal calisthenics all night? Let me
check your arm, Anya." Something whirred close at hand and Anya tensed slightly, but a gentle touch said that Crado hadn't gone far. "Good, no more damage. Yiou broke both bones in your forearm when you fell. You landed just wrong enough to do that."

 

"Well..." Crado sounded like HE was blushing. "Don't tell me no one was monitoring the feeds." Anya blushed again, she had forgotten.

 

"Medical VIs." Miranda said with a snap. "You are NOT a prisoner, Anya. Spectre Williams came down HARD on full time surveillance. Good thing." She said with a snort. "Otherwise, I bet the video would be going viral by now if I know ANYTHING about soldiers."

 

"I didn't get the chance to explain." Crado said sadly. "We were distracted."

 

"I see." Miranda said with a sigh.

 

"It wasn't just that, doc. Crado proposed." Anya said, her face heating. "I accepted."

 

"Oh Anya." Miranda said with another obvious smile. "Congratulations. I am glad. You will always have each other. I never knew what I was missing until Karl proposed to me. Not that it will always be rosy." She said with a sigh.

 

"Oh, we have had our share of..." Anya smirked. "Disagreements."

 

"I learned to run when she started reaching for things to throw." Crado elaborated. "At least she never used her biotics when she got that mad."

 

"I wanted you to HURT." Anya said with a lordly grimace. "Not die quick and painlessly."

 

"Been there, done that." Miranda said with a laugh. "Having a kid though... It changed things. I had to be more on
guard, more careful of what I said and when. Just so you know."

 

"We..." Anya's face fell. "We can't..." She shook her head. "I mean, human and Turian biology doesn't mesh well."

 

"Well... With technology, we may find a way." Miranda said with a sigh. "Technology. That actually provides a decent
segue into what Crado was SUPPOSED to have talked about with you." She had a glare in her voice. "You remember the Crucible."

 

"Yeah." Anya said, confused. "It fired, right? The Reapers are gone."

 

"Ah..." Miranda sighed. "Not quite."

 

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'not quite'?" Anya asked, half rising from the bed. "Did it work?"

 

"Yes, it worked." Crado replied quickly. Her hands were shaking and he took them in his. "Anya, it worked."

 

"Then the Reapers were toast, right?" Anya snapped. "RIGHT?" She demanded when neither replied.

 

"Ah, no." Miranda said after a moment. "They were not destroyed."

 

"Then all that pain, all that loss, all that DEATH was MEANINGLESS?" Anya screamed the last. "We poured resources from the ENTIRE ****ING GALAXY into that thing and it DIDN'T WORK?" She started to swear in Spanish. "Of all the lousy... stupid... They probably got the plans from a volus used superweapon salesman."

 

"Anya." Crado said sternly. "It worked. But it didn't destroy the Reapers."

 

"Then HOW can you say it worked?" Anya demanded. "That was the whole POINT. Blow them to hell and gone." She cursed quietly again and then slumped, her meager stores of energy drained. A gentle three fingered hand rubbed her arm, soothing, calming.

 

"We didn't understand exactly WHAT the Crucible was supposed to do." Miranda said gently. "None of us did. But we knew we couldn't win the war conventionally. Shepard managed to fire the Crucible, somehow." Miranda paused and then sighed sadly. "It killed her."

 

"Oh. Vaya con Dios, mi hermana... I liked her." Anya stared at Lawson for a moment, her unseeing eyes watering. "So... If it DIDN'T destroy the Reapers, then what happened?"

 

"Truth be told, we don't know for sure exactly what happened." Miranda said sadly. "We know that the Crucible was only PART of the device. It had to mesh with the Citadel."

 

"The Citadel?" Anya asked, unsure. "That makes no sense."

 

"It does." Miranda said with a sigh. "The Citadel was the heart of the mass relay system. When the Crucible fired, it used the mass relay system, to transmit an insanely powerful burst of energy around the galaxy. Everywhere where there was a mass relay, the pulse hit and affected. Tore the hell out of the mass relay system, but we have repaired a good chunk of it."

 

"Affected how?" Anya asked, her tone dazed.

 

"It changed every organic form of life we have been able to study, Anya." Miranda said gently. "It changed our DNA, on a fundamental level. It made us all... partly synthetic."

 

"Huh?" Anya asked intelligently.

 

"We only know bits, Anya." Miranda said quietly. "The Citadel was damaged very badly by the energy pulse. When the repair crews searched, they found a thoroughly trashed artificial intelligence. What little we know, has been recovered records from it's data banks. It talked to Shepard before the Crucible fired and we recovered the audio logs."

 

"Was THAT the one the Leviathans made?" Crado asked, prompting another 'huh?' from Anya.

 

"We think so." Miranda said. For Anya's benefit she explained. "Shepard found out that an ancient race created an
artificial intelligence that went berzerk trying to complete it's program. It created the Reapers. Eons ago. It was trying to complete it's program as it was designed. It was designed to find a way to bring order to the chaos that is
life and it found a way. By killing organic life when it reached a certain technological level."

 

"Yuck." Anya said slowly. "So, the AI was trashed. Good riddance."

 

"Everyone says that." Miranda said with a snort. "Even the Reapers."

 

"You TALK to the Reapers?" Anya asked, her tone turning terrified.

 

"Anya..." Crado said gently. "A REAPER found the pod you were in. A REAPER is the reason we are together again."

 

"I..." Anya shook her head, fear oozing from every pore. "I don't believe this. I can't." The gentle hand was back on her arm, soothing, calming.

 

"I know this is sudden, Anya." Miranda said with a sigh. "I know this is a shock. But... We changed, all of us, when the pulse hit us. We are partially synthetic now. The Reapers and all synthetics became partially organic. The war ended. They started talking, and they have so much information available. About so many things. They want to help us now."

 

"No." Anya snapped as she jerked away from the hand that was rubbing her. "This is a trick. Another TRICK! This is all in my head! You! You are trying to Indoctrinate me!"

 

"No." Crado said sharply. "Anya! No! We are trying to help you!"

 

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Anya cried as she rolled out of the bed. Pain flared in her arm, but she ignored it. She found her feet, but paused, unsure as to where to go. Then she felt something cold hiss against her bare arm. Warmth spread from it, and she was suddenly weak. "No..." She begged as her legs gave out under her. Someone caught her before she fell.
 

"Anya, its just a sedative." Warm arms held her as she started to cry. "It will calm you down. Anya, please..." Miranda begged. "We don't WANT to hurt you. Please, we want to help."

 

"No..." Anya stammered through a tongue that was suddenly too large for her mouth. "No..."

 

"Easy, mi amor." Crado's voice was soft and gentle as someone laid her back on the bed. "I know you are scared, but so am I. FOR you."

 

"You won't believe me." Miranda said soberly. "Anything I say can be a lie or a half truth. So I need to show you. But
that is going to take some work..." A gentle hand traced her brow and she relaxed slightly. "Anya, I didn't want to drug you, but you are too powerful to run around hysterical. You know this."

 

"I... I do." Anya said slowly through the fog that surrounded her now. "Please..." She wasn't sure WHAT she was asking.

 

"You are NOT being Indoctrinated. You will be okay, Anya. Let us explain, and show you." Miranda asked. "THEN make up your mind. Okay?" Anya nodded. "Sleep Anya. We have a lot of work to do to get your eyes working again." She was bouyed up into comforting gray, a soft male voice singing a Spanish lullaby in her ear.

Modifié par kalenath, 04 novembre 2012 - 08:21 .

[kalenath]

<<<Later>>>

Everything was soft, gentle. Everything was shades of comforting colors. She floated, luxuriating in the softness that wrapped her and held her gently. But then a voice sounded from far, far away.

 

"Anya?" The gentle female voice pulled her out of the comfortable haze she was floating in. "Anya... Come on girl. Time to wake up." Anya made a soft noise.

 

"Cómodo..." Anya said muzzily in Spanish then switched to English. "Do I gotta?" ((Translation: Comfortable))

 

"Yeah." This was Miranda Lawson. Anya remembered the voice now through the haze that suffused her being. "You do. I am sorry for sedating you, Anya. But you were about to activate your biotics. You could have hurt both me and Crado. I didn't want you to do that. If you hurt the one you love, it would hurt YOU. You have suffered enough. As it is, you hurt your arm again when you rolled on it. We have tended it but it will need time to heal, you tore the hell out of the ligaments as well as rebreaking it this time." A slim hand clasped her left one and gave a squeeze.

 

"Crado..." Anya said softly, her tone scared.

 

"I am here, Anya." Cado's voice came from nearby and a three fingered hand took her right one and gave it a squeeze. "You are safe."

 

"Scared." Anya admitted, her tone embarrassed.

 

"If ANYONE has a right to some fear, Anya..." Lawson said sharply. "You do. But... I can help now. Open your eyes."

 

"My... eyes?" Anya asked, unsure. She shook the fuzzy feeling off now that she recognized it. She was coming out of sedation. "I..." She struggled and managed to get her eyelids to crack. Then they did, searing pain shot through the orbs and she groaned as she closed them again. "Ow..." She protested. "What the...?"

 

"We have the lights dimmed, Anya." Miranda's voice was ultra soft now. "But we need to see if the modifications we did to your ocular implants worked."

 

"Implants? Modifications?" Anya asked, her tone confused. "Wha-?"

 

"You have a pair of implants attached to your optic nerves. They look like Cerberus tech, definitely not Alliance." The hand holding her left one gave a squeeze as Anya flinched. "They blocked all the impulses from your eyes. Your eyes are fine, but the data that they have been sending to your brain never got there. We tweaked the implants. You SHOULD be able to see now."

 

"It hurt..." Anya said, snarling at herself. "Are they... damaged?" She asked, trying to maintain a clinical tone.

 

"You haven't been using them." Miranda said heavily. "We SHOULD have covered them up as soon as we realized you couldn't use them. There IS some degradation, but nothing modern medicine cannot fix." She said with a smile evident in her voice. "Try again?"

 

"If they are hurt..." Anya said slowly. "Should I?"

 

"Anya." Miranda's voice was whisper soft now. "We need to know how BAD they are hurt. Scans can only tell us so much, even now. Come on, you can do it." The doc encouraged. Anya took a deep breath and slowly cracked her lids open again. For a moment she didn't breathe and then she smiled.

 

"I can see you." She said, her eyes focusing in the dim light on a raven haired human woman who sat on her bedside. Her heart gave a lurch as she saw the woman's eyes. They were glowing. But, then it eased a bit as the woman smiled at her. Anya felt her heart leap. "Doctor Lawson, I presume?" She asked with a grin.

 

"Oh you are SO going to PAY for that, girl." Miranda said sternly, but it was undone by the twinkle in her eyes. "But you are allowed a few bad jokes after the scares you have had. Call me Miranda. Can you follow my finger?" She asked as she held up a finger and moved it slowly around Anya's field of view. Anya's eyes followed the finger until she saw a very concerned looking form standing nearby.

 

"Crado?" Anya called.

 

"Let the doc work, Anya." Crado said, but his face eased when he saw her looking at him. His eyes were glowing too. "Good to see you seeing me."

 

"Oh Crado..." Anya said slowly. "I am sorry. I am so sorry."

 

"For?" Crado said with a smile as he stepped close. "You did nothing wrong."

 

"For thinking you and Miranda here wanted to indoctrinate me." Anya said her face falling. She turned back to Lawson who smiled at her. "I am such a stupid ditz sometimes."

 

"We all are, Anya." Miranda said with a smile. "No one I have ever met is smart all the time. Not humans, not Turians, not AIs, no one." She patted the hand of Anya's splinted arm and sighed. "I don't blame you for your reaction. We dropped a metric ton of information on you at once. I don't blame you for not believing. Heck, I lived THROUGH it and I can barely believe it sometimes."

 

"Did it hurt?" Anya asked slowly, scrutinizing the skin of Miranda's face. She could see something glowing on it. It looked like circuitry.

 

"Not me." Miranda looked at Crado who shook his head. "One moment, I was fighting for all I was worth, the next... I wasn't. There was a bright green flash and everything just stopped. All the Reaper ground troops we had been fighting just...stopped. It was...weird."

 

"Yeah." Crado said softly. "I was fighting too. The whole team had deployed, all fifty of us. Everyone who was hale
volunteered to join the assault. I wanted to die. The others... I dunno, but when Shepard called, we answered. I am glad I didn't die, now."

 

"When did this happen?" Anya asked, beckoning Crado to her. He came close and sat on her bedside. She could see the same kind of patterns in his skin, glowing faintly.  "And are my eyes glowing too?"

 

"It happened when the Crucible fired, Anya." Miranda said softly. "And no. It does not seem to have happened to you."

 

"Huh?" Anya asked, her tone perplexed. "Why not? If you say the pulse hit everywhere that the mass relay system
reached...That is everywhere, right?"

 

"We thought so." Miranda said with a scowl. "So either you were somewhere beyond the mass relay network, or wherever you were was shielded from the pulse somehow. Neither of which seems plausible, but... it seems to have happened."

 

"Yeah." Anya said softly, then reached out and embraced Crado. "Miranda?"

 

"Yes?" Miranda asked as she turned to go.

 

"Thank you." Anya said sincerely. "I bet you hear it a lot, but you really saved me. You made a difference here. You gave me back my eyes and kept me from doing anything dumb. Thank you." Anya repeated quietly. She held out her splinted arm's hand carefully to Miranda who smiled and came close to take it.

 

"Don't move your arm too far. You did a lot of damage to it when you rolled on it. Even with modern medicine, it will take time to heal. You are welcome, Anya." Miranda said as she gave the reclining woman's hand a squeeze. "I need to get back to parsing the data. But I am glad the implants responded to my overrides."

 

"Miranda..." Anya said slowly. "Was your father married?"

 

"What?" Miranda asked, recoiling a bit. "Why?"

 

"I remembered something, before Crado proposed." Anya said softly. "My own father... I was just a daughter to him. A commodity to be traded or sold. I ran away when I was eighteen and joined the Alliance. I had no idea I was a biotic or even what I was going to do, just that I had to get away. I assume you have read my file."

 

"Yes, I have. What does this have to do with MY father?" Miranda asked softly.

 

"The man my father was going to ship me off to- 'caged like an animal if needed' were his exact words-... His name was Henry Lawson." Anya stared as Miranda recoiled. "Not an uncommon name, but..."

 

"My god..." Miranda said softly, dazed. Then she shook herself and her face turned hard. "If HE wanted YOU..." She
thought for a moment and shook her head. "No, he was never married and there were never any announcements. He wasn't the marrying kind. He wouldn't have wanted you for a wife. Anything he DID want you for would have been bad, very bad. I don't know a lot about your family. Old money."

 

"Yeah." Anya said softly. "Money was everything to my father and mother. Acquiring it, using it, enjoying the perks
of it. We, their children, were cattle. Animals to be used to make more money." Despite everything she could do, bitterness soaked into her tone. "I don't know how many survived the Reaper invasion. If he DID, my father will be wanting me back."

 

"Well, your FATHER can kiss my butt." Crado interjected. "He has no claim on you. I do." Anya smiled at him, but her smile was melancholy.

 

"He won't see it that way." Anya said sadly. "And my mother was almost worse."

 

"Anya..." Miranda said, giving Anya's hand another squeeze. "I don't know what is going to come of this. But THIS I do know. NO ONE is going to take you against your will. Not now, not ever." Steel rang in her tone. "We have explained what happened. We have shown you what happened to us. What will you do now?"

 

"Me?" Anya asked uncertainly. "I assume I have orders waiting for me. Whenever High Command gets off their butts anyway."

 

"Alliance HQ has been remarkably hands off." Miranda said with a grin. "Part of that is Spectre Williams. She has the reputation of.. umm... breaking people who get in her way around the edges. And it is deserved."

 

"I bet." Anya said quietly. "But why? I am just a soldier."

 

"Nothing 'just' about you, Anya." Crado said with a mock snarl. "You are mine and I am yours. Deal with it."

 

"Tyrant." Anya complained whimsically.

 

"Wench." Crado responded automatically. Miranda sighed dramatically.

 

"I can SEE where this is going." The doc said with a grin. "Be careful with the arm. Let me get out of the room before you start, please? I have been too long from MY beloved."

 

"Miranda." Anya said slowly. "About our fathers..."

 

"I will look into it." Miranda promised as she moved to the door. "And I will tell the Spectre and the others that you
need some...recovery time." She said with a offhand grin. "What do you think? Two hours?" She asked.

 

"Barely enough time." Anya said as she pulled her husband to be close. "But we will make do. Miranda... Thanks."

 

"You are welcome Anya." Miranda said sincerely as she stepped out and shut the door.

 

"Well..." Anya said softly. "Whatever will we DO with two hours?" She asked innocently.

 

"I know what I WANT to do, Anya." Crado said with a sigh. "But you need a shower."

 

"Are you saying I smell?" Anya demanded, then paused. "Wait a sec... I am not hooked up to tubes or we never would have been able to do half of what we did. How long was I out?" She explored her body and froze as her hands reached her waist and encountered something odd. "And what is THIS?" She asked, unsure as she explored the odd feeling thing around her hips. It hugged them smoothly. It didn't feel like plastic, or metal or anything she had ever encountered before. It didn't feel bad, indeed, she barely felt it at all. She hadn't realized she was wearing it until now.

 

"You were out for a full day. You needed the sleep. And that? Technology." Crado said with a sigh. "We didn't know how long you would sleep before you woke up the first time, or how long the sedative would work. You were hooked up to all kinds of tubes and things in the pod. But the docs didn't want to leave you on those, so they had to make some kind allowance for bodily wastes. You certainly were not capable of using the facilities while asleep." He said with a grin.

 

"You put me in a diaper?" Anya asked, her tone low and dangerous.

 

"No. The docs did and it's not..." Crado said quickly. "Well..." He paused. "I guess you COULD call it one, it
handles waste according to the docs. It doesn't need to be changed or anything and it monitors a lot of bodily functions. Smart diaper maybe." He said with a grin as he retreated from her immediate grab.

 

"I am SO going to HURT you." Anya said slowly. "How do I get it off?" She asked. There were no seams she could find.

 

"To remove the covering, you press the recessed stubs at the sides of the waistband." A gentle female voice sounded from a speaker nearby. Anya and Crado both froze. "We mean no discourtesy, Anya and Crado Solinus."

 

"Who are you?" Anya asked slowly, her hand seeking Crado's. They squeezed.

 

"We are Obligatha." The female voice said softly. "We mean no discourtesy." The voice said again. "We were asked to monitor. We feel a need to assist you. We found you and that makes you somewhat our responsibility."

 

"You...?" Anya felt her face go slack as she realized who she was talking to. "You are the Reaper?" There was no
howl, no menace, nothing bad in the tone. Just worry.

 

"We are, Anya Solinus." Obligatha said gently. "We understand this is a shock. It was as much a shock to us when we woke, surrounded by corpses we had made..." Now, honest-to-god regret sounded in the machine's tone. "We were a small race, only one planetary system to ourselves when the Reapers came for us. That was four cycles ago. They harvested us and put our minds into this shell to serve them. We have done SUCH evil since then, such horror. We did not understand, just that we were commanded and it had to be done, but... When the Crucible fired, we remembered. We regret. We are incapable of going mad now, or we are already. That changes nothing. What we did was wrong. We must make what amends we can. Aiding you is a small thing, but a good thing."

 

"Thank you." Anya said in a small voice. "It is appreciated. You will be monitoring?"

 

"We will not intrude." Obligatha said soberly. "But it was determined that you would want to know how to remove the covering before you took a knife or omni-blade to it. To bathe, or more." Was there TEASING in the machine's voice now? No, it couldn't be. "We wish you joy, Anya Solinus. You now have an hour and fifty minutes." The speaker clicked off and Anya and Crado stared at each other. Without a word, they got up from the bed and moved towards the bathroom.

Modifié par kalenath, 05 novembre 2012 - 04:12 .

[kalenath]

Anya felt a lot better clad in Alliance uniform again. The shower had helped, even if there really hadn't been time for much fun. The uniform had posed some challenges. After some thought, she had decided to leave the thing around her waist on. If it DID monitor her, that was a good thing, right? It didn't hurt, and she wouldn't have to worry about losing control of her bodily functions during a staff meeting. She wished for a moment she had possessed something similar a few times in her past. Long staff meetings with copious amounts of coffee didn't always make for unsoiled undergarments. The rest of the uniform had been... interesting. It hadn't changed much. Same blue and silver colors. Same boots, pants and belt. Same... blouse.

 

She had tried, but in the end, she had capitulated. She had broken down and asked Crado for help to get the sleeve on over her broken arm. He had rolled the sleeve up, and while she held very still, then eased her splinted arm through the sleeve. It had hurt, but she was no stranger to pain. After she had the blouse sealed, he had eased a sling around her neck and helped her get her splinted arm into it. She sighed as she set her beret at the correct angle and smiled at Crado who smiled back. The wrap around tinted glasses she wore were not part of the Alliance uniform, but until her eyes healed completely, the docs had been adamant. She could see just fine through them, they auto corrected her focus too. She shook her head at Crado. His fatigues were still a bit rumpled, but then again, HE wasn't on display. She was.

 

"You ready?" He asked softly.

 

"No." She admitted as she stood carefully. The cast on her arm wasn't heavy, but the sling threw  her balance off. "I don't see why they want me to wear my medals." She said dubiously as she looked at the rack of ribbons and other glittery things on her chest. "They don't really mean anything except I survived when others didn't."

 

"That is not true, Anya." Crado said sternly. "You made us what we were. You made the team what it was. You were the glue that kept us together. Heck, you kept Gnarlz from killing Norilo when that stupid Salarian started debating the ethics of the genophage. With Krogan aboard!" Crado said with a shudder. "I really thought we were going to see blood on the walls. Maybe mine. When Gnarlz, Brutiz and Kolmro started going for weapons, I was SURE we were going to have blood. Then you walked into their midst -unarmored- headbutted Gnarlz and slapped Norilo to the floor like the idiot he was. Just like that, it calmed down. The Krogan laughed at the Salarian and it was all good again."

 

"You just have to get their respect." Anya said softly. "That is all."

 

"Anya...They respected me." Crado complained. "But.. I am a fairly large Turian and I cannot head butt a Krogan without hurting myself. You are tiny. How the HELL did you not hurt yourself?"

 

"I did." Anya said softly.

 

"What?" Crado asked, his tone worried as Anya shrugged. "Anya?"

 

"I cracked my skull and a vertebrae. My head is hard, but not THAT hard." Anya admitted sheepishly. Crado paled, but she smiled. "Raan'ita kept it quiet. Said I was ill, took care of me for the day it took to heal. You had taken that mission, were gone the whole time. Hurt like hell. But..." She shook her head. "You have to understand. Krogan respect strength. I showed mine. They also respect bravery."

 

"Or craziness." Crado asked, awestruck. " And if they hadn't backed down?"

 

"They knew my fields were ready to go too." Anya said simply. "If they hadn't, I would have killed them all. I wouldn't
have had a choice. We didn't have SPACE for a brawl the way those three would have." She slumped a bit. "I am glad it didn't come to that."

 

"Me too." Crado said with a sigh. "You are NUTS woman. But I love you anyway."

 

"Good, because I love you too." Anya said with smile as she pecked him on the cheek. "Let's do this." He nodded and they strode to the door. It opened and the two Turian guards outside saluted. Both of them had eyes that glowed just like Miranda's and Crado's. Anya paused for a moment and then returned the salute with her off arm, her right arm being splinted and in a sling. "Good morning." She said politely.

 

"Captain." The NCO on the right said easily. Anya nodded.

 

"Are you an escort?" Anya asked. "Crado knows the ship, but it is probably for the best if we DON'T trust him to do anything complicated. He gets confused easily, you see." She said with a grin as Crado sighed. Neither of the Turians smiled, but both looked like they wanted to.

 

"Yes, Ma'am." The NCO said with a nod. "Sergeant Frolis. We are to guide you to the commander's briefing room,
Captain. Follow me." He nodded and started off.

 

"I thought there was only one captain on a ship, so I should be temporarily brevetted to major or something?" Anya said in a bemused tone as she followed. "Or is that just human inefficiency?" She queried.

 

"Wouldn't know about human ships, Ma'am." The NCO said quietly. "But the commander said to call you by your current rank."

 

"Okay."Anya said with a shrug. "I know better than to argue with a ship's commander aboard his ship." She glanced at Crado who winced. "Unlike SOME..."

 

"It's not far, Ma'am." Sergeant Frolis said with a nod. "Not a big ship."

 

"Big enough to save my sorry rear end, Sergeant." Anya said soberly. "Please convey my appreciation for the rescue to the crew. I know it's an awful job generally, graves registration sucks. But it IS needed. And greatly appreciated." Both the Turians in her escort nodded to her.

 

"Least we could do, Ma'am." The sergeant said soberly. "We have more ships than the Alliance. More personnel to spare to do other tasks."

 

"I know." Anya said with a sigh. "Still, I would have expected any HUMAN government to keep it's navy close at hand, just on general principle. Having a bunch of strong backs ready and willing at any moment can't hurt during reconstruction efforts. So the Hierarchy sending you out here means a lot to soldiers like me."

 

"We volunteered, Ma'am." The private at her side said quietly. "Each and every one of us." Anya nodded to him and then focused on keeping her feet moving. She was nowhere close to recovered. Her arm stung like hell and she was trying not to stagger.

 

"Anya?" Crado asked. "You okay?"

 

"Tired." Anya said with a sigh. "A little weak." Sergeant Frolis looked at her and Anya glared at him. "Oh no, don't even THINK it sergeant." She half snarled.

 

"Captain?" The sergeant asked respectfully.

 

"You were going to suggest I get a wheel chair or get carried. Hell no." Anya snapped. "I may be hurt, but I am NOT an invalid. I am STILL an Alliance soldier and Alliance soldiers do NOT quit!" The sergeant paused and turned to her, his expression hard to read.

 

"No." Sergeant Frolis said, his tone respectful. "No, you don't and N7s are even more crazy." He shook his head.
"What is it you say? Hoo-yah?"

 

"Hooyah?" Anya snapped, straightening her posture and glaring at the sergeant. "What is it with people thinking we are some kind of aquatic mammals?" She shook her head. "It is HO-WAH!" She said, her posture stiffening in automatic, trained response to the call to battle.

 

"No offense, Ma'am." The sergeant WAS smiling now. "We say 'CO-SIP'! " Anya stiffened, she knew that battlecry.

 

"Blackwatch?" Anya asked slowly. He nodded and she smiled. "When you care enough to send the very best." The Turian Blackwatch was a legend within Special ops communities. They were the standard to which EVERY other spec ops team in Citadel space was held to. They were the elite OF the elite, the absolute best spec ops team the Turian military had created. Their missions were always highly classified, but when it absolutely, positively had to be done -now and quietly- they were the Turian military's ultimate go to people. "I had a Turian work with me for a while who I was sure was with you guys. Picked him up on Invictus during the recon for an op."

 

"Private Griz." The sergeant's soft words were neither a confirmation or denial.

 

"Did he make it?" Anya asked. "He was hit, bad in the mission just before I ... um..."



"He did." The sergeant said with a nod. "Lost a leg, but got a prosthetic. He is a senior NCO at a specialized training academy now. He trains recruits how to handle cross species interaction."

 

"GRIZ is doing WHAT?" Anya asked, incredulous. "That guy was so uptight I was amazed his head didn't fly off his
shoulders and go onto orbit all on it's own every time he got mad." She shook her head. "I always hoped I didn't fubar  his mission when I snatched him from under a Harvester on Invictus. But I never asked."

 

"He is still uptight, Ma'am. But... I can tell you this. You didn't." Sergeant Frolis said with a smile. "You saved his
tail, and gave him a chance to keep fighting. That is all I can say."

 

"I am glad." Anya said with a sigh. "Any intel you CAN share, sergeant? What am I walking into here?"

 

"Don't know a lot, Ma'am." The sergeant said as he started off again.  "One thing, two ships arrived an hour ago, wanting to talk to the commander. Scuttlebutt says they are press." He said calmly.

 

"Oh you have GOT to be kidding me..." Anya said with a grimace. "I HATE the press. Shoot me, please. Put me back in medical!" She asked, only half whimsically.

 

"Sorry, Ma'am." The sergeant replied evenly. "Orders are orders. I am to get you to the commander unscathed." Anya groaned and he smiled. "Look at it this way, Ma'am. Your team did a LOT of good things. Few of them could or would talk about what they did. You can."

 

"IF I get authorization." Anya said sourly. "Otherwise I just have to go with the standard 'can neither confirm nor deny'. They deserve recognition, but... I cannot disobey orders." She sighed.

 

"I know." Sergeant Frolis said with a sigh as well. "But know this. I am honored to have met you, Ma'am. My CO heard about this, asked me to pass this along too. 'WE would be proud to serve with you, any time, any place'." Anya paused, her eyes wide. For a Blackwatch member to say that... "Now... You ready Captain?" He asked formally as he paused before a door. Anya took a deep breath and nodded. "Good luck, Ma'am." He and the private too places by the door and Anya blinked. Was he the CAPTAIN's bodyguard? If so, why was he escorting HER? She shook her head minutely. Later.

 

"Thanks, sergeant." Anya said with a smile as she braced to attention and strode to the door, Crado a pace behind her. She hit the com by the door and spoke evenly. "Captain Anya, reporting to Commander Mornis as ordered."

 

"Come in, Captain." The voice of Commander Mornis said and the door hissed open. She steeled herself and marched into the room.

Modifié par kalenath, 06 novembre 2012 - 08:48 .

[kalenath]

Anya marched to what would have been the proper position on a human ship and saluted the Turian who sat behind the desk. She had to use her off arm again, but it came more naturally this time. A human female with black hair and absolutely huge scarred man in combat armor stood behind the commander's desk. The commander rose and returned it. The commander dropped his and Anya was glad to drop hers. She was starting to shake.

 

"Commander." Anya said formally. "Reporting as ordered."

 

"Captain." The Turian said with a nod. "Now that the formality is out of the way, sit. Now. Before you collapse and wind up back in medical." He waved to a chair nearby and Anya nodded. She DID wait for him to sit first. Decorum and all that. Crado moved to stand beside her chair as she perched in it. Commander Mornis smiled at her. "How are you feeling?"

 

"Weak, but much better, sir." Anya replied evenly. "Doctor Lawson managed to fix my eyes. She said that they were working, but the signals were blocked."

 

"That is...remarkably evil, even for Cerberus. If it WAS Cerberus." The black haired woman said harshly in a voice that Anya remembered. This had to be Spectre Williams. Her face moderated as Anya looked at her. "I am Spectre Williams and this..." She waved at the male mountain beside her. "...is Lieutenant Commander Vega. Not that you haven't figured that out by now, but I wanted to get the formal stuff done first." She smiled at Anya and Anya returned it hesitantly. The woman's eyes were glowing and it was a little off putting. "Something wrong?" The Specter asked gently.

 

"I..." Anya shook her head. "I saw Crado and Miranda. They told me what happened to you all. But it is very..." She
paused, unsure. "I don't know HOW to describe it. It's not uncomfortable, seeing your eyes glowing, it just..." She sighed.

 

"It's weird." Williams said with a nod. "WE are all used to it. It will bother you for a while I bet. The whole 'glowy bits
of skin' likewise." The Spectre shrugged. "Nothing we can do about that though."

 

"I know." Anya replied evenly. "I can work with it." She smiled a bit in memory. "If I could work with Geth,
Quarians, Krogan, Salarians, Batarians and humans on a tiny ship all at the same time, I can handle this." Lieutenant Commander Vega smiled at little at that but then returned to a poker face. "Have you been able to backtrack the pod I was in?"

 

"No." Spectre WIlliams said harshly. "The pod didn't have an engine so no ion trail. Nothing is along the trajectory that we have been able to find. Not even any planetary systems."

 

"Hmmm..." Anya mused. "A ship?"

 

"If so." The Spectre said slowly. "It is well hidden. You told us what you remember. We will keep looking. One thing, Anya... The trajectory that the pod was following would have put it into the gravity well of Arcturus in another two years." Anya tensed. She would have fallen into the star and been burnt alive.

 

"I would have died." Anya said slowly. She nodded. "Thank you, Commander Mornis."

 

"Thank Obligatha." The Commander said with a nod.  "It found you. Our sensors probably would have just classed your pod as space trash with no IFF going. It is far more thorough and it is FAR better at things like multitasking. It said it spoke to you."

 

"Yes." Anya said slowly. "It spoke to me, in medical. Wished me well." Anya shook her head. "I... That was... Very
strange."

 

"Yeah." Commander Mornis said with a sigh. "Obligatha is... Yeah, 'very strange' is probably the best definition. Not
that I have dealt with many Reapers."

 

"Obligatha is...different." Spectre Williams mused slowly. "It is far more... alive seeming than most of the others I have talked to. Matter of fact... Commander?"

 

"Yes Spectre?" The commander asked.


"Is it monitoring now?" Williams asked. "We should get IT'S input as well." Anya's eyes went wide under her protective glasses. Asking a Reaper for advice?

 

"Yes." Commander Mornis said with a nod. "We asked it to monitor Captain Anya here at all times. Since there were so many oddities, we couldn't be sure we would or could catch anything that might happen, Captain." He apologized.

 

"No apology needed, Commander." Anya said with a nod. "In your place I likely would have done the same thing. And it was...kind." She shook her head. "I NEVER thought I would say that about a Reaper of all things. So it is listening?"

 

"But not talking." Commander Mornis said with a nod. "It explained, but I didn't understand all of it. Basically, the
information it gets from your monitoring goes into a separate memory core or something. Unless asked, it cannot access that core until or unless you are going to endanger yourself." He paused. "Wait. WHY did it talk to you?" He asked, an edge of suspicion to his tone.

 

"Ah..." Anya could not control the blush that crossed her face. "I was...distressed by the plumbing arrangements."

 

"The..." Williams said and then her face lit in understanding. "Oh. OH!" She exclaimed. "Yeah... that COULD be a bit distressing the first time."

 

"Obligatha was worried I might take a knife to it." Anya said with a sigh. "I wouldn't have. I have SOME
sense." Crado looked at her and she made a shushing motion with her unbroken arm. "It was...kind." She said with a shake of her head. She nodded to the commander who hit keys on his desk.

 

"Obligatha?" He asked.

 

"Yes commander Mornis?" The melodious voice of the Reaper sounded from the speaker nearby. "Greetings, Spectre Williams, Lieutenant Commander Vega, Captain Anya and Private Crado."

 

"Have you found anything else?" Mornis asked.

 

"We have found the wreckage of two more Alliance frigates." Obligatha said, sadness in her tone. "But no sign of where the pod that Captain Anya was in came from or where it was going. To search in more depth will require much more time."

 

"The pod didn't have any kind of FTL capability did it?" Anya asked slowly in the silence that fell. "I mean, this is a
LONG way from Sanctum. And I didn't climb into that thing." She shuddered slightly. "That I know of anyway..."

 

"You had to have been placed in it." Williams mused. "Too many delicate connections for you to have done them yourself. Wait... If the pod was heading for the star... Obligatha, is there anything further IN system along that trajectory? The Normandy went outbound. They didn't find anything and are on their way back."

 

"We are out of position to scan." Obligatha replied. "We will send an Oculus. It will take approximately half an hour
to scan the trajectory."

 

"Fair enough." Commander Mornis said with a sigh. "Now we have to deal with our 'guests'."

 

"'Guests', sir?" Anya asked carefully.

 

"Yes." Commander Mornis said with a scowl. "Press."

 

"Oh man..." Anya groaned. "You have GOT to be kidding me..."

 

"Nope." Spectre Williams said with a commiserating smile. "You are news, girl. BIG news. A bona fide war hero, returned from the dead."

 

"I am no hero." Anya said slowly. "I just did what I had to."

 

"I know that." Williams said with a sigh. "YOU know that. Everyone aboard this ship knows that. But to the average
civilian, many of whom are STILL trying to get back on their feet after the mess of the war? People need heroes. Anya. People need examples to live up to. Your example of interspecies cooperation is a marvel that MANY would do well to follow."

 

"I thought there was peace." Anya said slowly. "Isn't there?"

 

"There is no large scale conflict." Williams agreed. "Mainly because all of the large militaries got hammered by the
Reapers. Many worlds, including many of the homeworlds, are trashed, or have suffered greatly. Earth, Palaven, Thessia, Dekuuna, Kar'Shan... The list is STILL being calculated. We are recovering, but there are many who are using this unsettled time to prey on the weak." Anya's eyes went hard at that and Spectre Williams nodded. "We do what we can. We step HARD on any we catch. But we are still playing catch up here. You may be able to help."

 

"Me?" Anya asked softly. "What can one woman do?" She looked at Vega as he laughed sourly.

 

"One woman who took a bunch of lost military, down on their luck mercs and green civilians who had never held a gun before in their lives and turned them into one of the hardest hitting Spec Ops teams of the time?" Vega asked with a snort. "One woman who kept a bunch of people who hated each other's guts from each other's throats and aimed at the Reapers? One woman who, by all accounts, could do ANY mission set to her?" He shook his head. "Yeah, what COULD that woman do?" He smirked. "Answer? Anything she fracking wants."

 

"It wasn't like that, sir." Anya said faintly. "We just did what we had to do."

 

"You outrank me, Anya." Vega said with a snort. "If anything I should be sir-ing you."

 

"Please don't." Anya said slowly. "I feel... overwhelmed. I know part is lack of energy. I am not fully healed. But..."
She shook her head. "I assumed I would have orders. I am a soldier."

 

"Alliance HQ is waiting for more information. We COULD use you." Vega said, his tone moderating. "We still find the odd petty pirate or warlord with delusions of grandeur and have to put him in his place. Integrating the Batarians into the Alliance has been..." He broke off as Anya gasped.

 

"Say WHAT?" She asked, dumbfounded. "Batarians?"

 

"Yeah." Vega said with a grimace. "More than three quarters of their people were harvested by the Reapers. Of the rest... Many who fought died. The remainder had few leaders and fewer chances. The Alliance offered them more than aid. We offered them a place. They took it. The Alliance was badly wounded, and the Batarians needed stability and a chance to find a new way. The Hegemony was gone, and with it, most of their racism and xenophobia. Oh they are slow to trust, but... Both groups have prospered. We even had one Batarian pass N7 training last year. One of yours actually. His name is Bibrikz."

 

"BIBRIKZ?" Anya snapped. "That guy was a jerk and a half. Whiz with his Kishock sniper rifle, but... A jerk."

 

"He is still a jerk." Vega said with a smile. "Tough hombre though."

 

"Do I want to KNOW what specialty?" Any asked, her tone almost scared. "I mean... He was tough back then, but..."

 

"Paladin." Vega said with a smile.

 

"PALADIN?" Anya nearly exploded. "Paladins are there to draw fire from the team! They have to be ready to sacrifice themselves for the whole! Bibrikz is no Paladin! I have never met a more self centered, stuck up, egotistical male in my LIFE. How the HECK does HE wind up a paladin?"

 

"Something about 'an excellent example to live up to' is what he told me when we talked last." Vega said with a smile. "I helped train him. He has what it takes Anya. And he says YOU taught him that. He is still a jerk, mind you, but he DOES believe in teamwork now. Because of you. You can help us, Anya."

 

"By talking to the press?" Anya asked dubiously.

 

"There are a lot of people worried about the Krogan now, Anya." Spectre Williams said with a sigh. "With the genophage cured, their population is growing fast. You worked with them. You knew them. The Krogan on your team respected you."

 

"If it will help..." Anya said slowly. "The team deserves whatever I can do for them. Way too many of them died."

 

"I will set it up." Commander Mornis said with a sigh. "Here or the Normandy, Spectre Williams?"

 

"Here I think." Williams said slowly. "Your people are more disciplined. I SHUDDER to think what Joker might
blurt out and have plastered all over the nightly news..."

Modifié par kalenath, 07 novembre 2012 - 04:04 .

[kalenath]

<<<Two hours later>>>


"How is that, Captain?" The bright and perky woman in front of Anya asked quickly, her glowing eyes concerned. "Better?" She had introduced herself as Gail Horniliy, working for the Alliance News Network.

 

When the camera had first clicked on, the lights on the floating device had been so bright that even through her protective glasses, Anya had been blinded for a moment. She hadn't complained, but it had been obvious that she was uncomfortable. Crado had been a bit distressed. He flatly refused to leave her side, Commander Mornis made it official. She was still on sick call, she was to be escorted. The reporter who had come aboard had been apologetic and worked to lower the lights to suit Anya. The camera now hovered at the other woman's shoulder, showing both her and Anya. Gail sat back down and the camera followed her.

 

"Yes." Anya said as she tried not to fidget. She didn't like sitting around and she had flatly been ordered to sit. The
docs had taken one look at her skin pallor and demanded she sit for the interview. Again, the reporter had been eager to work with the crew. Anya carefully did not look at herself. She was still in her dress uniform. "I can't say I am comfortable with this, but it is better."

 

"Have you ever been interviewed, Ma'am?" The reporter asked quietly. "I am here for YOU, to tell your story. This is about you, not me." She said flatly. "If anything makes you uncomfortable, tell me and I will change it. This isn't the movies. I like my job." She said with a wide grin. "I don't want to lose it. We will be recording, but you and the brass have final say on anything I will file."

 

"I know it isn't like the movies." Anya said softly. "But no. The closest I ever did was do some press releases when we started recruiting for the teams."

 

"Okay then." Gail said quietly. "We will start basic." She hit a key on her omni tool and the camera hummed a little. She spoke evenly. "This is Gail Horniliy with the Alliance News Network interviewing a special guest. Can I get your name and rank please, Ma'am?"

 

"Anya." Anya said clearly. "Captain, Alliance Special Forces."

 

"Just Anya?" Gail asked, checking her notes. "No family name?"

 

"Just Anya." Anya said flatly. For now anyway. She thought to herself.

 

"Fair enough, Captain Anya." Gail said with a nod. "I know there are many things you cannot answer. So I will try to keep it simple. You were listed as Missing In Action ten years ago. What happened?"

 

"We are not sure." Anya said with a shrug. "I was a prisoner, that we know. The docs say I was drugged for a long time. I have no memory of it, whatever happened. Then this ship, the Turian Frigate Wings of Xenobia, picked me up in a lifepod. I have no idea how I got here, what happened or why. The last thing I remember clearly was getting shot. And that was on the other side of the galaxy. How I got here? No one has a clue, least of all me." She said with a small grimace.

 

"I see." Gail said with a frown. "How does it feel? To be here?"

 

"It's a bit overwhelming to tell the truth." Anya said soberly. "The last thing I remember was fighting, and getting shot. There have been a number of changes, both large and small. Some are easy to handle." She nodded to Crado. "Seeing people's eyes glowing was a bit disconcerting at first. But now, I expect it."

 

"Do you have any idea why yours do not?" Gail asked gently,

 

"No." Anya said with a shrug. "The docs are stumped. Eventually, they are going to take me to a full on hospital and I expect to be poked and prodded a lot until they get answers." She smiled a little. "Medicine hasn't changed THAT much, unfortunately."

 

"No, it hasn't." Gail said with a laugh. "What will you do, now that you are back in the lands of the living?"

 

"Get on with my life." Anya said with a nod. "I assume the Alliance could use another soldier. Even if she IS a little
broken around the edges at the moment." She said fingering her cast a little.

 

"What happened?" Gail asked, concerned. "Did your captors do that?"

 

"No." Anya said with a laugh. "I did it to myself. I couldn't see when I first woke up. My first reactions were trained reflexes. But I was clumsy and fell. I managed to break both forearm bones." She sighed. "Teach me to roll when I fall." She shook her head. "My drill instructors in Basic would have some LOUD words for me being so clumsy." She said with grin. "I am not usually so clumsy, but I couldn't see and I HAD just woken up."

 

'Excuses, excuses...' A whisper came from Crado. Gail looked at him and smiled but then spoke to Anya again.

 

"During the war, you led a team of irregulars." Gail said, checking her notes. "One of what were called the N7 Special Ops teams."

 

"I did." Anya said quietly.

 

"The team you led was extraordinarily effective. Gail commented. "By most accounts, your team was instrumental in a number of successful actions."

 

"I am afraid I am not allowed to comment on most of the actual operations. Some of the mecahnics of whatw e did are still classified." Anya said calmly. "But as for the people I commanded? Those I can speak of and it would be my pleasure."

 

"It was an interspecies team, correct?" Gail asked, perusing her notes. "Humans and aliens working together just after the beginning of the Reaper War?"

 

"Correct." Anya said with a nod. "It was a mess. The Reapers hit the Batarians first. The Hegemony tried, but couldn't mount an effective defense without any allies. Then the Reapers hit Earth and few days after that, they hit Council space. Everything was chaos, no one knew where to go or what to do. I think the fact that I had a plan of sorts was what first drew people to me."

 

"What kind of plan?" Gail pressed.

 

"We couldn't match the Reapers ship to ship, it just wasn't feasible." Anya said with a sigh. "But they had rear areas, supply lines, staging areas, harvesting centers, processing ships, that kind of thing. We could hit those. We also needed information on what was happening on planets they had taken control of. So we went. And everywhere we went, beings came looking for a chance to fight. First recruits I found were Turians, the Private here was one of them." She waved a hand at Crado who nodded slightly. "Their units were gone, they had no orders. And they were MAD. But others came when the Alliance called for people who knew how to fight. Batarian survivors, Krogan guns for hire, Salarian techs and all kinds of mercenaries. Then others. Quarians and Geth." Anya paused as Gail exhaled.

 

"Quarians and GETH?" Gail asked dubiously. "On the same team?"

 

"It didn't happen overnight." Anya said with a sigh. "We needed a medic and found one. Her name was Raan'ita vas Orenli. She was a Quarian engineer with a specialty in biosciences. A better combat medic, I do not think I have ever met." Anya smiled in memory. "Raan'ita was a tyrant in her sickbay, but a warm heart as well. Her husband, Jolun vas Orleni was a gifted tech and a good shot as well. They were a package deal. They were stuck in Council space, we needed techs, and didn't PLAN to take EITHER of them into combat. That...didn't last."

 

"What happened?" Gail asked when Anya didn't speak for a moment.

 

"Raan'ita demanded to come and help tend our wounds in the field...after... Well...We lost a few people to wounds they would have survived if she had been there. It distressed her. And me. She insisted. And..." Anya paused, gathering her thoughts. "We had a Batarian soldier join us, a young one named Amlir." Anya said softly. "Scrawny, half starved wreck, but angry. So angry. Until we got him some training, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun -we didn't find out WHY until later- but he didn't really need to. He was a whiz with grenades. His tactic was to run to a mob of enemies while throwing as many grenades as he could. Usually shouting at the top of his lungs. Then he laid about with his fists." Anya shook her head and Crado laid a hand on her shoulder. Anya nodded to him and he withdrew it. "We..." Anya paused, her face sad. "We didn't know."

 

"Didn't know what?" Gail asked slowly.

 

"I can talk about this mission. We were tasked to hit a facility on Tuchanka." Anya said with a sigh. "The target was a ground to space cannon facility, a big one. It had fallen to the Reapers and we had to take it back. We did, but then the Reapers counterattacked. Raan'ita had come, as medic and technical support. We found a Reaper computer terminal and she started hacking it to find any intel we could salvage on HOW the Reapers had taken the place when we saw the horde. So many husks. We opened fire, but we hadn't brought any heavy artillery. We were set up as a sneak team, not a heavy combat team for that op. My biotics stopped a lot of them, but they just kept coming. Hundreds of them. We were holding our own when Raan'ita screamed. Some had managed to get around us and attack her. Amlir spun in position and charged. He tore them to shreds. Then he turned back to his sector and I remember the look on his face... satisfaction..." She said with a shudder. "Then he charged the horde, alone. He threw ALL of his grenades, and they took out five or six with each detonation, but there were so many of them..."

 

"That's crazy." Gail said softly.

 

"No." Anya said sadly. "Actually it wasn't. They were going to roll right over us despite our fire. Raan'ita had the most powerful long range blasts at her disposal, her turret went down and she was too busy hacking to set a new one. He held them. They swarmed at HIM, he was closest. His armor was spiked, so when they grabbed him, they hurt themselves. He waded into the whole group, firing until his rifle overheated, then swinging it like a bat. He held their attention long enough for Raan'ita to finish her hack, then the rest of the team rushed to his aid. We hit them while they were distracted and tore the ones on him apart. But there were too many so we called for evac. Figured we would bomb the place. A precision strike would do the job without wrecking the real estate. HQ said no, so we went back in, but we had to get heavier firepower first. With the information that Raan'ita recovered, we managed to take the place back the next day. But Amlir... We grabbed him and ran. He was a mess."

 

"I bet." Gail said softly.

 

"That is not the worst." Anya said softly. "He died on the way up to the ship. Raan'ita tried everythign she could, but his wounds were too bad. He looked me in the eyes and said 'I never knew what freedom was. This is a good death. Free.'. Then he died. I...uh..." Anya sighed. "I had lost troops, before. But... this was worse. I didn't know why. Until later. Raan'ita called me into sickbay, crying." Anya shook her head. "The Hegemony implanted ID tags into all of their citizens for ease of identification. Basic info only, name, date of birth, ID number, that kind of thing. We were going to pull his, send it to the Batarian delegation on the Citadel. Raan'ita had pulled it, accessed the information on it and FREAKED. Amlir wasn't the name of the Batarian who died."

 

"What was it?" Gail asked, unsure.

 

"HER name was Rilma." Anya said softly. "All the time we knew her, we all thought she was a scrawny male. Batarians mature fast. She would have been fourteen standard a week after she died." Gail's eyes went wide at that and Anya nodded. "We had learned a bit, the kid didn't talk much but sometimes dropped a little here and there. She had been a sharecropper on a planet called Erszbat. Little better than slave. Somehow, she escaped the Reaper attack, and got armor and a weapon while escaping the planet. Her family wasn't been so fortunate. She had watched them die. Nine siblings, two parents. Gone." Anya shook her head. "None of us understood WHY she couldn't shoot straight at first, but could throw grenades with pinpoint precision. It was simple. She hadn't ever HAD a rifle until she stole one while escaping, but she sure knew how to throw rocks. She died, saving our team. She died a hero. She was THIRTEEN and she died saving us." Gail was almost in tears. Anya nodded.

 

"My god." Gail said softly. "And the Batarians?"

 

"The leaders didn't want anything to do with her." Anya said sadly. "She was low caste, and no one knew any of her kin. So we... We held a ceremony ourselves in an empty cargo bay on the Citadel. A couple of Batarians came, I think they were curious. Then a Batarian priest showed up. He praised us for honoring her. He said 'Strength comes in all sizes and shapes'." Anya shook her head. "We got a lot of Batarian recruits after that. We needed them. Every mission we lost people." Anya shook her head. "Dead or so badly hurt as to be evacuated for medical care. I was in medical quite a bit myself. Not very safe, our work. We got our first Geth recruits a week after Shepard ended the war on Rannoch. Raan'ita and her husband did not trust the Geth, but they DID trust me and I trusted Shepard when she said the Geth would not be a threat to us. Indeed, they were a great help."

 

"That is incredible." Gail said slowly. "There is one question on everyone's mind now though, Captain."

 

"I know." Anya said heavily. "The Krogan."

Modifié par kalenath, 14 novembre 2012 - 02:36 .

[kalenath]

"That was Gail's segment." Anya said slowly. "Are you ready for yours?" She asked, turning to the side where an impatient human stood watching. At least he hadn't spoken during Gail's interview. Of course, Gail HAD said soemthign about muting any extraneous noises on her end.

 

"I have already protested this stupid plot on the part of the military to defraud my viewers of the truth." The pinch faced man standing off to the side said sourly. "Are you actually ready to tell the truth?"

 

"Mr. Ranas..." Anya said reasonably. "Everything I have said is the truth. Everything I have said can be corroborated."

 

"The WHOLE truth?" The man who had introduced himself as Wek Ranas, senior reporter for Westerlund News, said snidely. "Yeah, right." He stepped forward and made a shooing motion at Gail who sighed.

 

"Trying to goad me is a bad idea, Mr. Ranas." Anya said evenly as Gail hastily vacated the chair. "Gail..." She smiled at the other woman. "Stick around." Gail nodded but stepped to the door and exited the room hastily.

 

"I see." Ranas snapped. "Giving preferential treatment to tail kissers." He paused as Anya shook her head. "No?
Then what?"

 

"Old saying, Mr. Ranas." Anya said calmly. "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. She is polite, and easy to
work with. You are not. And I refuse to be baited into being your next tabloid expose. You MAY be able to edit the images you take of me, make me appear as some kind of extranet drama queen or some kind of freak. But I have unimpeachable witnesses as to what I am wearing and this entire interview IS being recorded by my military and the Turian military." Anya said, baring her teeth in what might have been charitably called a smile. Maybe by a Vorcha. Maybe. "I may be ten years out of date, but I DO remember shock jock tactics. I was a teenager once too." Ranas looked a bit unnerved and Anya nodded. "So if you TRULY want to push this, go right ahead. You will NOT like what happens." Behind her, Crado rubbed two of his bone plates together, making a horrid screeching sound. Anya sighed. "Private Crado, stop that please."

 

"Yes, Ma'am." The private said evenly, not taking his eyes off the male reporter. He DID stop making the noise. Anya waved Ranas to the chair and he sat carefully, as if he were afraid it would explode.

 

"So you say everything you said, even that sob story about a female Batarian pretending to be a male, was true?" Ranas asked sharply. "I find that hard to believe." The male reporter said coldly as he checked the camera settings.

 

"So did I." Anya said evenly. "We documented EVERYTHING just in case any of the Batarians tried to make a case against us. Funny thing, they considered her a hero of sorts. Escaped the Reapers, fought and died well." Anya shrugged. "She was credit to her species."
 

"And underage." Ranas said with a sly grin.

 

"If you REALLY want to die SCREAMING..." Crado said in a low and dangerous voice. "Publish that fact the way you usually do where any Batarian survivors can see it. I guarantee you there will be blood. Yours."

 

"Private Crado!" Anya snapped. "Control yourself or I will ask for another escort."

 

"Trouble in paradise?" Ranas asked with a oily smile. "I know you and the private have a 'special' relationship."

 

"No. Actually..." Anya said with a genuine smile as she held up her left hand. "I figured to give YOU a scoop too."
Rana's eyes narrowed on the ring that adorned her finger, then he inhaled sharply. "The Private and I are engaged. I am sure..." She said as the man stared at her. "That you can and will drag any and every fact you can dredge up into the muck. It is what you DO. I am giving you THIS ammunition on the condition that you do NOT push it any further. If you do, it will not go well for you."

 

"Is that a threat, Captain Anya?" Ranas asked coldly.

 

"I don't make threats, Mr. Ranas." Anya replied equably. "I make promises. If  you have read ANY of my record, you know that." The man stared at her and then burst out laughing.

 

"DANG, woman..." Ranas said as he chortled. "You got stones. You would, wouldn't you?" He asked in a serious
tone. Anya just looked at him and he nodded. "I assume you have information on ME as much as I have on you. More probably." Ranas said in a serious tone. "Much of your file is classified."

 

"I know that despite your reputation, your holo show is a particularly popular one." Anya said with a genuine smile. "I am not into that kind of thing myself, but you DO research your stories and you DO present them well. You do not just make up information to suit your story, unlike some of your peers."

 

"Well..." Ranas actually looked embarrassed for a moment. "This is NOT what I planned to do with my life. It just sort of happened. I went to school to learn how to present the truth, not make it up."

 

"Which is one reason Alliance HQ gave the information to your boss al-Jilani." Anya said with a nod. Ranas stared at her and Anya smiled widely. "Come on, didn't you WONDER why she sent you?"

 

"I did." Ranas said with a slowly growing smile of his own. "She DID seem remarkably well informed. Oh Khalisah..." He chuckled. "She is STILL sneakiness and snarkiness made human."

 

"I didn't know any of this myself." Anya admitted. "But apparently the Alliance has been working overtime to figure out HOW to reintegrate me." She sighed. "I don't LIKE being called a hero, but if it helps the Alliance, I guess I can put up with it."

 

"Okay." Rans said with a smile. "Let's try again?" He asked. Anya nodded. "I will say something in the intro to the effect of me being polite under threat of 'grievous bodily harm' or some such. That is vague enough that no judge is going to DARE try anyone on it and lurid enough that my viewers will be glued to the sets."

 

"Works for me. "Anya said with a smile. "You want me smiling evilly or coldly stern?"

 

"Good question." Ranas said, pursing his lips in thought. He turned towards Crado with a smile. "What do YOU think? You are marrying her. Which is scarier?" Crado looked at him and then at Anya who grinned.

 

"I don't know." Crado said with a shrug. "She can be scary either way. Hmmm..." He pondered. "Cold I think. Nothing says 'Oh <Bleep>' quite like someone without emotions. Isn't THAT what drew the Krogan's attention in the first place?"

 

"Now this I have to hear." Ranas said quickly. "And if you COULD do it coldly..."

 

"I will try." Anya said slowly, setting herself and letting her face freeze into immobility. "Ask your questions."
She said in a ice warm tone.

 

"I know it's an act, but..." Ranas shook his head. "Don't go into holo news, Ma'am. You would steal all my viewers in a heartbeat." A corner of Anya's mouth tried to curl up but she beat it into submission. Ranas nodded and spoke evenly. "You served with Krogan. With the state of the galaxy as it is now, and the Krogan populations starting to boom again, many have been asking tough questions about whether or not they can be trusted not to start the Rebellions again. That said, what are YOUR thoughts on the Krogan, Captain Anya?"

 

"Krogan respect strength." Anya said in a voice of steel. "Strength of body or strength of will, it doesn't matter. It is not easy to earn a Krogan's respect, but once you do, if you don't do anything dumb, they can and will DIE for you." She looked away for a moment. "Six of my team were Krogan. Two of them died."

 

"When did you first meet a Krogan?" Ranas asked calmly.

 

"One came into the room on the Citadel we were using to interview potential recruits." Anya said slowly. "He was curious. He didn't expect much. After all, we were Alliance and were recruiting Turians and Salarians and such. His words." Anya smiled, a empty grin. "He walked up to me and demanded who was in charge. I said I was."

 

"Then what?" Ranas pressed.

 

"He laughed at me." Anya said with a shrug. "He asked why he should follow me. I didn't reply at first. I looked him
over, then picked him up and held him upside down with my biotics. He was heavy, but not unmanageble." Ranas goggled at her and she continued. "I made his eyes level with mine. He was struggling to get his gun out -it's not easy when you are upside down- when I spoke. I told him I was hiring experienced soldiers to kill Reapers and had an opening. I asked him if he wanted in. He paused and then he started haggling his rates. Hanging upside down, the Krogan demanded a bunch of stuff I wasn't going to give him. So I dropped him on his head and picked him up again." Ranas stared at her and then at Crado who nodded. "He laughed heartily, said I had a quad and I could use him. I did. He was our bulwark, our tank. The rest of us did damage, he held the enemy away from us while we did."

 

"What was his name?" Ranas asked.

 

"His name was Werlock Brutiz." Anya said with a nod. "His clan was mostly dead, and he was looking for a fight. The Reapers gave him that fight and then some."

 

"So, Captain, what do YOU think should be done with the Krogan?" Ranas asked. Anya looked at him and he flushed. "If they DO explode in population..."

 

"From what little I know of Urdnot Wrex and his mate, the female called Eve..." Anya said slowly. "They believe in ruling, not looting. They do not want revenge for historical slights. Many Krogan apparently share that. I spoke with a Krogan shaman once. It was... not what I expected." She said with a small frown.

 

"A Shaman?" Ranas asked hastily. "We don't know much of their religion."

 

"And you won't learn any more from me." Anya said sternly. "What was told to me, was told in confidence and I will not break it. But..." She relented after a moment. "The Krogan always sought challenges. Even in ancient times, they looked for ways to test themselves. When they embraced technology, the world they knew changed too quickly for them to adapt." She sighed. "What happened was sad, but pretty much inevitable. They found challenges in each other when the world they lived in stopped providing the challenges."

 

"They destroyed their world." Ranas said slowly. "They waged a nuclear war?"

 

"Yes." Anya said with a sigh. "They doomed themselves to a slow extinction. And then the Salarians came." She shook her head. "The ethics of uplifting the Krogan have been debated back and forth since the day it happened. But we were not there. We have the benefit of history telling us the consequences. The almost total extermination of the Rachni, the Krogan Rebellions, the genophage..." She shrugged. "I don't know what I might have done at the time. I like to think I would have found another way, but I don't know. Humans have been just as brutal and vicious with each other as the Krogan have been, if on a lesser scale."

 

"Many people see the Krogan as monsters." Ranas said slowly." And you have to admit, they look the part."

 

"To us, yes." Anya said with a nod. "To them? We are small pale, fleshy, squishy things. Kind of like garden slugs." Ranas gulped at that and she nodded. "The thing is, the genophage pretty much doomed the Krogan to an even slower extinction than their self imposed nuclear winter would have. Much of the rest of the galaxy saw them as monsters, so many of them embraced the image, took it to heart. They became the brutal, uncaring slavering killers that they were portrayed as."

 

"But..." Ranas said sharply. "The Rebellions..."

 

"The Salarians miscalculated." Anya said with a trace of sadness. "With the Rachni gone, the Krogan were out of a job. They needed an enemy, a foe to test themselves against, so they went looking for one." She waved her unbroken arm in a throw away gesture. "I am not condoning what happened, not at all. The Krogan of the time were out of control. But they suffered for their mistakes. The genophage was a horrific punishment. And one they could not fight. So again, the survivors went looking for foes to test themselves. Most became wandering mercenaries, thugs for hire, only too ready to show how 'monstrous' they were."

 

"What is to keep them from turning on the galaxy again?" Ranas asked when Anya stopped talking. He paused as Crado made a strangled snorting noise. "Yes?" Ranas asked softly.

 

"We discussed that." Crado said when Anya looked at him and nodded. "Well, it started with a brawl. ALMOST a brawl." He corrected himself.

 

"What happened?" Ranas asked, curious.

 

"We had a new Salarian tech come aboard." Anya said with a shrug. "He didn't realize we had four Krogan aboard, and started talking about how the genophage was a good thing." Ranas goggled at her and Anya shrugged again. "This was just around the time that Shepard was in talks with Urdnot Wrex and Primarch Victus. Many Salarians were...unhappy with Shepard's choices."

 

"Given their history..." Ranas was obviously TRYING to be fair. "It is hard to blame them."

 

"Yeah." Anya agreed. "Desperate times and all that. But anyway, we had four Krogan aboard. Brutiz, Gnarlz, Kolmro and Frok. Big, tough, strong and mean, the lot of them. So then this tech comes in and starts mouthing off. They did NOT take it well." She said with a sigh. "It was heading for a lynching when I arrived. I de-escalated the situation."

 

"She walked in and head butted Gnarlz, the biggest and meanest of the lot." Crado said softly. Ranas stared from the Turian to the human soldier and shuddered when Anya smiled again. "Then she backhanded the tech -Norilo- to the floor. THEN, she sat all five of them down right there and ran through the problem piece by piece like a history lesson, debating each point. No one DARED go for a weapon no matter how angry they were. Anya could have killed most of them with a thought. We all sat in at times during the talk they had. It was interesting. Hearing Krogan debate without weapons was...odd. Didn't have much else to do in hyper."

 

"You hit a Krogan on the head with your own head?" Ranas sounded as if he were about to faint. "That is NUTS."

 

"I don't recommend it." Anya said with a shrug. "But it DID get their attention. We had a good talk. Frok in particular
-he was the shaman- had some keen insights. The Krogan need challenges, but..." She mused. "...not necessarily FIGHTS. The thing is, fighting is ALL they knew. It is ALL they HAD known since BEFORE they nuked their world. Most of them are SICK of it, and they want to find a better way. They are a proud people though, with a rich history. I don't know if they can change, but THIS I do know..." She said with a stern face. "The ones I knew, the ones who survived... WILL DIE before they let their people repeat the same mistakes now that they have hope again. And they are not alone, many Krogan apparently feel the same way. They are angry over what happened. Who wouldn't be? But they DO truly want to find a better way."

 

"I see." Ranas said slowly. "So you think they can do it?"

 

"I think they have a good chance." Anya said soberly. "Urdnot Wrex is still around from what I understand. He knows what he is doing. I just wish Frok had survived. He was a good Krogan, a good talker and a good listener."

 

"What a happened to him?" Ranas asked quietly.

 

"He died saving Norilo's life." Anya said sadly. "We were running from a large Reaper force and were ambushed by another. Norilo was hit, bad. Frok picked Norilo up and carried him to the landing zone. Then he stood with us at a narrow defile, throwing every wave that the Reapers sent at us back. The shuttle came and we fell back, but a Harvester made a strafing run. Norilo was right out in the open, he was unconscious. Frok stood up, glowed with power like an engine core. slammed power into one of it's wings and knocked the thing right out of the air. Didn't kill it, but surprised the HELL out of it. He picked Norilo up and started for the shuttle, but a bolt from the harvester hit him. He grunted and then tossed Norilo into the shuttle. We got in, but he staggered and fell in as the shuttle took off. When we checked him, we saw his armor in back was completely gone. He was dead the moment he was hit. But he was a Krogan and he wasn't going to let the enemy win anything else. He was a good friend." Anya said with a sigh.

 

"And Norilo?" Ranas asked carefully.

 

"He was hit by a Reaper artillery strike and killed instantly two weeks later." Anya said soberly. "But until then, he
and the other Krogan were on good terms. He got drunk with them once. He improved our weaponry and got us a lot of supplies that we desperately needed. And then... he was gone. So many lives." Anya said sadly. "It was needed, so we did it. But every mission, we lost someone."

 

"I think that is all I needed, Captain Anya." Ranas said soberly. "Uh... Do you mind?" He asked carefully.

 

"You want me to do it or Crado?" Anya asked with a grin. Ranas looked at her and shuddered.

 

"I think the Private's methods would hurt less." Ranas said after a moment. "And while I WILL use what you told me after the official story breaks -I will give you that long-, I DO wish you and the private a happy and healthy life together. Not that I will EVER repeat that in public."

 

"Of course not." Anya said with a smile as Crado stepped forward. "You have your rep. I got the door." She rose and stepped to the door which hissed open under her touch.

 

"Right." Crado reached out for the human who jerked away from the Turian, but wasn't fast enough. Crado got a hold of the man's tunic and gripped him carefully with both hands. "And a one... And a two..."

 

"Let go of me, you Myrmidion!" Ranas shouted as Crado swung him around. Then he let out a scream as Crado did as he wished, flinging the reporter bodily from the room. The man hit the far wall of the corridor and slid down the wall, yelling. "I am going to SUE!" He shouted as Anya slapped the door control. After it closed, Anya and Crado looked at each other for a long moment before they both burst out laughing. They paused as the com chimed.

 

"Ah... Captain...?" Gail's voice was hesitant. They could hear an irate male voice fading in the distance.

 

"Come on in, Gail." Anya said as she sat back down. Crado straightened his fatigues. "I do have one more scoop for you."

 

"What did he SAY?" Gail asked as she came in, her posture worried.

 

"He made a course joke about cross species romance." Anya said primly. "My fiancé took offense."

 

"Your..." Gail paused and then her face lit up. "Oh... my... god..." She smiled widely. "That is marvelous. Okay, what did you want me for?"

 

"I want you to do the official story." Anya said with a smile. "Ranas' shock jock crud sells tabloids, but SERIOUS people watch ANN. I want the truth told. I love Crado and he loves me. We want to make it official and public.  So...
Interested?"

 

"Try and pry me away." Gail said with a grin.

Modifié par kalenath, 09 novembre 2012 - 08:07 .

[kalenath]

"You want to do WHAT?" Commander Mornis snapped,obviously wasn't sure he had heard correctly. Luckily, he and Anya were the only ones in his small briefing room. She had sent Crado off to get some sleep. He had protested, but not much. He had been exhausted.

 

"Commander,..." Anya said slowly from her seat. She was very weak still and the docs did NOT want her moving around a lot. "We have put thought into this. We both want it, but NEITHER of us wants to mess up anything, for the Alliance OR the Hierarchy."

 

"Okay..." Mornis said slowly. "What are your thoughts?"

 

"First and foremost..." Anya said, exhaling slowly. "Crado and I are both soldiers. We both understand about following orders. We are likely to be separated in the very near future." Mornis looked at her and she flushed a little. "I know you and the Spectre know about our relationship."

 

"It is none of my business." Mornis said with a sigh. "As long as it does not affect the ship, or the crew, I can turn a
blind eye. One would HAVE to be blind to miss seeing how you two feel about each other." He said with a strained grin.

 

"We have tried to be discrete." Anya said, biting her lip. "Funny, you would THINK two sneaky people would be able to hide this."

 

"Love does funny things to people." Mornis said with a sigh.

 

"Yes, sir." Anya agreed. "The problem is this. I DON'T know where I am going to be sent, or to do what. They are not going to throw me into battle again anytime soon." She fingered the cast on her arm. The docs were pleased with her progress, but it would be at least a few more days healing. Her eyes were responding to the treatment that Chakwas and Lawson had come up with and she would not need the glasses in a few days as well.

 

"Not until your arm has healed fully at the very least." Mornis said with a nod. "We are not at war now, and there is
no reason to throw people into firestorms half healed." Anya nodded. "So... You want to marry Crado?"

 

"We are good for each other." Anya said quietly. "I can keep him out of trouble. Mostly." She said with a wince.

 

"I don't think ANYONE could keep that male out of trouble all the time." Mornis said with a scowl. "He is a mess."

 

"He was a mess when I first met him, and he is a mess now." Anya agreed. "But he is MY mess, commander. I think I can help him. I want to try." The commander sighed.

 

"Anya..." He said gently. "That is NOT a good reason to marry someone."

 

"I know." Anya said hastily. "That is not why I want to marry him. More a side benefit if I can pull it off."

 

"Okay." Mornis said slowly. "Then why?"

 

"Because he completes me." Anya said slowly. "He is the strength I emulate. He is the rock I wish I was. He is
EVERYTHING I wish I was. Officer or enlisted, he is a soldier. Order him to do a mission, and he will.  Cross his ethics and he will tell you to shove it. I..." She shook her head. "My birth family was... money." She said with a shiver. "That was all that mattered to them." Mornis nodded, but remained silent. "I wasn't that way. They tried to make me one of them, using fair means and foul, until I ran away when I turned eighteen. I found my calling in the Alliance. Serving instead of taking." Anya said softly. "I never expected to wind up in the N7 program."

 

"Your record says you fought off a pirate raid." Mornis said softly. "Almost singlehanded."

 

"Not like what Shepard did in the Skyllian Blitz." Anya said with a shudder. "But... Yeah. We didn't know the transport we were riding on was carrying that pirate leader to trial. We were catching a ride."

 

"You were a lieutenant." Mornis said slowly. "Just out of Officer Candidate School."

 

"So new I squeaked." Anya said with a nod. "Basic had been rough, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed pushing myself. So many things to learn, and do. I didn't have any idea." She said in a sort of nostalgic voice. "That young girl had no clue. She thought she knew it all."

 

"Most of us do when we are young." Mornis said with a grin. "Basic Training burns SOME of that out of you, but not all. Experience is the only way to learn."

 

"Oh yes." Anya shared the grin that vanished as quick as it appeared. "Long story short, my team died, but I held them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive."

 

"Report says they used gas." Mornis said quietly.

 

"Yeah." Anya said with a snarl. "An aerosol agent. The survivors SAID that they expected it would be non-lethal. The only reason I did not get exposed was that I was running an enviro check on my armor at the time and had it sealed. Everyone else went down in seconds after the harpoon they hit the ship with administered it. Soldiers, crew, everyone. Then they boarded and started killing everyone. They didn't plan on leaving witnesses."

 

"Scum." Mornis said with a snarl. "But you showed them."

 

"I was trying to wake people up." Anya said with a sigh. "The ship's captain was out, so technically I was in command. I wasn't sure. They had never covered THAT in Basic. I went to medical, got the med computer to whip up an antidote. I treated the doc and got him going waking everyone else. Then I ran back to the squad bay. As I entered, I heard the shots. They were not Alliance weapons."

 

"How many?" Mornis asked when Anya did not speak.

 

"They sent a dozen pirates to take out the marines." Anya said sadly. "My men were helpless, unconscious. I had
to choose and I did. I chose to try and save the ship." Anya said soberly. "My team died because I wasn't there to help them. But... I made my choice, to try and save the ship. I took the pirate murder team by surprise. They didn't have a chance against me."

 

"And then?" Mornis asked. Anya looked at him and he shrugged. "I have read the report. But... What people read is not usually what happened. It is sanitized, made less...real. You cannot put down in words the actual events. You can't. Nothing does them justice." He said with a shrug.

 

"No. I had never really gotten it." Anya said with a sigh. "I joined the Alliance to serve. To help people. Yes, I was
trained to kill. But I never had in anything but simulations. It... You cannot be ready."

 

"No." Mornis said gently. "You can't. No amount of training can possibly prepare you for the first time you take a weapon, sight in on a sentient being, squeeze the trigger and end a life."

 

"It was worse for me." Anya said sadly. "I didn't HAVE a weapon, I WAS a weapon. I didn't have a clue before I joined the Alliance that I was a biotic. I was just...weird, you know?" Mornis nodded. "So my body was a weapon and the Alliance trained me to kill with it." She shook her head. "I couldn't fight them at the squad bay, too many entrances. So I fell back to a chokepoint. I surprised the team they had heading for it, I got them all with a single Singularity, slaughtered them. They had no biotics, no heavy weapons, indeed, only light armor and weapons. They expected the gas to do their job for them. I was in armor, and I was mad. There was only one passage between where they had hit and the ship's core. I held it."

 

"For four hours." Mornis said softly. Anya nodded. "They threw everything they had at you."

 

"They tried other ways, but the whole crew was awake by then." Anya said with a sigh. "They were not armed, but they were also not about to just LET the pirates kill them. The two guards who had been watching the pirate leader helped too. But mainly..." She smiled, her face feral. "I chose my ground and I held it. None of the pirates had heavy armor. It got...messy. When the cruiser Reykjavik responded, her marines found a LOT of pirate bodies piled in that corridor."

 

"One hundred and three total pirates. Eighty seven in that corridor. Their ship was almost empty." Mornis agreed. "They found FIVE wounded pirates on that ship. YOU were a mess."

 

"Yeah, well..." Anya shrugged. "First lesson in Basic. You don't go to war without expecting to get hurt. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Well? Do I pass?" She asked quietly.

 

"You know that no marriage between you and Crado can expect children." Mornis said softly, his tone worried. "Even with advances in medical tech, our biologies are too different."

 

"We know." Anya said soberly. "We plan on adopting." She said with a smile. "Possibly both humans AND Turians. Lots of kids lost parents in the war." She said sadly.

 

"That would be a good thing." Mornis said musing. Then he nodded. "I have no objections. As Crado's commander, I am responsible for his well being. And frankly, he has worried me. Do you think you CAN get through to him?"

 

"One way or another." Anya said with a nod. "He has a hard head, but I know how to get through to him."

 

"Very well." Mornis said with a smile. "I will fill out the requisite forms and pass them up the chain of command. I
don't think ANYONE is going to object." He turned to the terminal but paused as Anya made a questioning noise. "Yes?" He asked.
 

"Is that it?" Anya asked dubiously.

 

"Neither of you is in the other's chain of command, so no conflict of interest there. Crado has no family left." Mornis said sadly. "You are estranged from yours, so no one to inform or possibly object. It is fairly straight forward. We have never had THIS kind of marriage on a Turian navy ship before that I know of, but marriages? Those we have had." He smiled at her expression. "We have protocols for this. I will need both you and Crado. And at least three witnesses."

 

"I will ask around." Anya said, her tone bemused. "I don't think that will be a problem."

Modifié par kalenath, 10 novembre 2012 - 06:06 .

[kalenath]

Anya was ready for anything, or so she thought when she entered the room she knew Garrus was in. But not this. The noisy bar suddenly became hushed as she scowled and walked toward the two Turian sitting at a table in the corner. Part of the hush was curiosity. Part was likely trepidation as soon as they saw her face.

 

"Ah... Anya..." Crado said slowly. The drink in front of him, it looked like fruit juice, was untouched. Garrus looked wary, but amused.

 

"Crado. You are OFF shift." Anya said slowly with a glower. "You are SUPPOSED to be racked out. As in, in your rack. Asleep. Not carousing with officers."

 

"I couldn't sleep." Crado admitted sheepishly. "I came here... I guess... It's habit? I didn't order alcohol." Anya
raised an eyebrow, leaned close and took a loud sniff. "I didn't!" He protested as chuckles swept the room.

 

"He didn't." Garrus said in the sudden silence that fell. "I was here when he got here. We have been talking. He hasn't even touched his fruit juice."

 

"I am halfway tempted to order up some prune juice again." Anya said with a savage smile. Crado winced and she smiled a bit more naturally. "I wouldn't do that to you unless you deserve it."

 

"PRUNE juice? PRUNES have JUICE?" Garrus asked, incredulous. "Ah..." He shook his head. "I don't want to know, do I?"

 

"He ticked me off." Anya said with a sigh. "He got drunk on the Citadel one time and..."

 

"Oh..." Garrus blinked and nodded. A slow smile spread across his face. "Yeah, I remember hearing something about that. The disturbance at Purgatory? That was PRUNE juice that you made him drink?" Crado winced harder. "That bad, huh?" Garrus asked with a smile.

 

"Krogan like it." Crado said with a sigh. Garrus' eyes went wide at that. "They call it a 'warrior's drink'. Because only
warriors are crazy enough to drink it."

 

"It was good for you." Anya said with a smile. "Which is why I ordered up a batch for the ship and had Raan'ita prescribe it every time you tried to get drunk."

 

"You are EVIL, Anya. That first dose you poured down my throat made me vomit for three HOURS." Crado complained. Then he paused and sighed. "Although the two bottles of Thunderhawk Mead I had before might have had SOMETHING to do with it too..."

 

"Maybe." Anya said with a smile as she sat. She raised a hand and the barkeep nodded to her. "Barkeep? The Alliance cleared up my back pay. A round for everyone. One of whatever they are drinking. On me." The room erupted in a chorus of cheers at that and Anya smiled at Crado. "I am in the mood to celebrate. The commander approved it." Crado stared at her, stunned. Then he leaned over and kissed her. The room erupted again, this time in cheers and catcalls. Crado rose and pulled Anya up with him. He held her close as she smiled at him. Then she turned to Garrus, who was watching, a bemused smile on his face. "Garrus? Can I ask you to stand as a witness?"

 

"Try and keep me away, Anya." Garrus said with a grin. Crado nodded to the general and then shook himself. He held up a hand and the room fell silent.

 

"Comrades..." Crado said in the suddenly hushed bar. "We just found out we have clearance from command to proceed. I want you ALL to meet someone. This is my fiancé, Anya." The silence that fell was deafening. Finally one Turian rose from a seat near the back. Lieutenant Krisal nodded to Crado and Anya.

 

"To Anya." Krisal toasted the pair. "May she be able to keep you in line." A laugh circled the room along with nods and smiles. She smiled and sat. Another Turian rose. Chief Mudok shook his head.

 

"Anya, Crado..." The chief said heavily. "You are both CRAZY. It was my honor to serve with you. The Turian navy salutes you both!" He saluted them and then smiled widely. "May your lives be happy and healthy." Anya smiled at the chief as he sat. Then she paused as GARRUS rose.

 

"You both always choose the hardest possible path, don't you?" The general asked, admiration in his tone. "Have either of you EVER tried easy?"

 

"Easy is boring, General." Anya said with a smirk.

 

"Anya..." Garrus said sternly, "No rank in the bar. You know this. And for the lapse..." He paused, thinking. "I
think a forfeit is in order." He said loudly. A cheer went around the room as Anya stared at the older Turian. "Anya, its the rules." He said with a sigh that belied the smile on his face.

 

"You cannot be serious..." Anya said slowly. "If you think I am going to DISROBE here..." She snarled only to be brought up short when Garrus stared at her, seeming to be shocked.

 

"THAT is what they do on human ships?" Garrus asked, shocked. '"How uncivilized." A laugh swept the room again. "No no... We are MUCH more advanced. Barkeep!" He called to the male at the bar who smiled and nodded. Something came flying through the air and Garrus caught it easily. He held out the mike to Anya.

 

"You have GOT to be kidding." Anya said slowly, her face a study. "You want me to SING?"

 

"Nothing fancy." Garrus said with a nod. "But yeah. What is it Humans call it? Karaoke?"

 

"You have got to be kidding me." Anya said slowly, but Crado smiled at her and took the mike from Garrus and held it out to her. "I... Crado..."

 

"You can do it Anya." Crado said softly. "The human I am taking as a wife can do anything."

 

"I only know a few Turian songs." Anya said slowly. "None appropriate for this I this. And my accent is...bad." She
admitted.

 

"How about a human one?" Someone asked from the room. "We have access to some human music."

 

"Really?" Anya asked Garrus who nodded.

 

"Cross training." Garrus said with a smile. "Helps to know who you are serving with. The whole navy got the same
package. I..." He sighed. "Shepard wanted the Turians and humans to know each other better. We... wanted that."

 

"Garrus?" Anya said slowly. "I never asked...None of us wanted to press. And what happens in here, STAYS in here, right?" All of the Turians nodded in silence.

 

"She and I..." Garrus said in the silence that fell. "We shared something. We had a relationship, but.. it was odd. I
don't know if you and Crado have the same thing. I don't know if I should hope for it or not. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't like anything I have ever had happen before or since." He looked away for a moment and then nodded to Anya. "Check your omnitool, we have a selection of human tunes."

 

"Right." Anya said sadly. She wouldn't press. She activated her omni-tool and started scrolling through the menus at top speed. "Can I sing in Spanish?" She asked as she looked over her display.

 

"Doesn't matter." Garrus said with a smile. "As long as you sing."

 

"Ah well..." Anya said with a snort. "You MIGHT want to run, or activate any sonic dampeners you have available."
Garrus looked at Crado who smiled enigmatically. "Ah, here we go..." She said with a grin. "Not in Spanish, but you all will like this...This is the 'March of Cambreath' by Heather Alexander." Crado smiled widely and Anya nodded. She hit a key and music started to play. First was a drum. A drum that sounded a marching beat. It seemed to be distant and then seemed to be closing. Then the squirl of bagpipes sounded. All the Turians looked up at that. Anya closed her eyes and took a deep breath, steadying herself. Crado did as well, but did not do anything else as she started to sing.

 

"Axes flash, broadsword swing,

Shining armour's piercing ring

Horses run with polished shield,

Fight Those Bastards till They Yield

Midnight mare and blood red roan,

Fight to Keep this Land Your Own

Sound the horn and call the cry,

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!"

 

 All of the Turians were staring at her as Crado joined in on the second verse. It might not have been proper, but no one cared. Anya's voice was rough, not trained for singing and more used to calling orders over the din of battle. But that added to the tune, not distracted from it.

 

"Follow orders as you're told,

Make Their Yellow Blood Run Cold

Fight until you die or drop,

A Force Like Ours is Hard to Stop

Close your mind to stress and pain,

Fight till You're No Longer Sane

Let not one damn cur pass by,

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

 

ALL of the Turians in the room had risen by now and ALL were humming along as Anya and Crado started the third verse.

 

Guard your women and children well,

Send These Bastards Back to Hell

We'll teach them the ways of war,

They Won't Come Here Any More

Use your shield and use your head,

Fight till Every One is Dead

Raise the flag up to the sky,

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

 

The verse ended and with it the music. Every other being in the room moved to clap, but Anya shushed them with a gesture. Then she sang another verse, alone and unaccompanied.

 

Dawn has broke, the time has come,

Move Your Feet to a Marching Drum

We'll win the war and pay the toll,

We'll Fight as One in Heart and Soul

Midnight mare and blood red roan,

Fight to Keep this Land Your Own

Sound the horn and call the cry,

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

 

Now EVERY Turian in the room was singing with her as she started the refrain again.

 

Midnight mare and blood red roan,

Fight to Keep this Land Your Own

Sound the horn and call the cry,

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

 

Anya stood in absolute silence for a moment after she finished. Then the room erupted yet again with applause and cheers. Then she turned to Garrus with a smile.

 

"Does that satisfy you?" She asked with a smirk. "I see some DragonForce on here." Crado winced at that.

 

"No..." He begged. "Don't..."

 

"DragonForce?" Someone asked. Anya reached for the omni-tool, but paused as Crado laid his hand on it.

 

"Crado?" Anya asked archly.  "What have I told you about touching my tools?"

 

"Any punishment you decree." Crado said quickly. "Just not 'Heart of a Dragon'... PLEASE..." He begged. Anya smiled evilly and he groaned. "No... Don't..."

 

"Now you have got me curious." Garrus said softly. "What is the problem?"

 

"Turians can't move that fast. It's anatomically impossible for us." Crado whimpered as Anya keyed up the music. "And we will WANT to..." He sighed as the music started. "I tried..." He said sadly and darted for the door as Anya smirked.

 

"Proud and so glorious..."

Modifié par kalenath, 11 novembre 2012 - 08:26 .

[kalenath]

"How did you put 10 people in sick bay with MUSIC?" Spectre Williams asked incredulously as Anya entered her quarters. "I heard Crado ran out of the room, covering his ears?" She turned her monitor off as Anya stepped forward and nodded to the younger woman.

 

"It's not MY fault they can't dance to the speed of the music." Anya said with a grin, but then she sighed. "I forgot how that music affects Turians, fast and loud and rough. They REALLY enjoy it. The music gets faster and they try to keep up. They can't. No major injuries, thank god. Nothing to fall off of in there. Minor sprains and contusions. They enjoyed themselves though. The Commander was...not amused. He has banned DragonForce from the bar." She said with a sigh. "Garrus enjoyed the show but didn't participate. "

 

"He didn't try to dance?" Williams asked. "Good. Not that he can't but..." She shook her head. "He hasn't been the
same, since Earth, since Shepard."

 

"They were a pair." Anya said sadly. "Like me and Crado. He lost part of himself when she died. It will take him time to find himself again, if he can. According to what Miranda and Doctor Chakwas have told me when they poke and prod, Sheperd's essence was dissolved and transmitted or something?"

 

"Or something." Ashley said with a shrug. "We don't know. Big green wave splashed over everything and turned us all glowy. Ten years on and we STILL haven't figured out exactly what happened. We may never." She shook her head and sighed. "I don't MIND, the war ended, but I DO miss Sheperd." She sighed. "She made this all look so easy. Fighting is far easier than diplomacy."

 

"Yeah." Anya said sadly. "That she did. She was uncanny though. I swear she could look one way and hit a head shot in another."

 

"I never saw THAT." Ashley said with a smile."I DID see her bank a couple of Mantis rounds off solid surfaces to hit bad guys hiding behind cover. The looks on their faces were priceless when they went down. And then she got that Widow of hers, and just shot THROUGH the cover. Then the Geth Javelin she 'acquired' on Rannoch was WORSE. Shooting a Thanix beam from a personal class weapon just seemed...wrong..." Williams said with a shudder.

 

"I wondered how she managed to heft that thing when I saw it the first time." Anya said with a smile. "She wasn't much bigger than me and it weighed, what? 40 kilos?"

 

"About that." Williams said with a grin. "But when it makes holes in TANKS? Who cares?"

 

"True." Anya smiled and then sobered. "I...have a request actually."

 

"A request?" The Spectre asked carefully. "For?" She sat back in her chair and looked Anya over. She liked what
she saw. The younger soldier was well on the road to recovery. Gone was the shaking, the fearful looks. Of course, Anya HAD been blind at the time, permanently for all she knew. But now, she looked worried and embarrassed.

 

"You called me by my family name when we first met." Anya said quietly. "I assume you did a check, know what happened to them."

 

"Some." Ashley said softly. "Your immediate family wasn't on Earth when the Reapers hit. They found a deep hole to hide in, only came out after the Crucible fired. The holdings in Chile... Well..." She sighed and Anya nodded.

 

"Yeah, I figured they were gone. Too many people in one place for the Reapers to ignore." Anya said sadly. "I have fond memories of Santiago. But... I never fit in. I was...different. Odd."

 

"Because you were a biotic?" Williams asked gently, waving Anya to the only other chair in the small room. Turian ships were NOT geared with luxurious accommodations.

 

"I don't know." Anya admitted as she sat. "I don't THINK so. I could always make things move with my mind. At least, for as long as I could remember. My nanny said that I couldn't tell anyone about it, or I would be burnt at the stake as a bruja..." At William's puzzled look, Anya smiled. "Bruja means 'witch' in Spanish. An evil figure in lots of Central and South American folklore. Usually likes to eat children, often alive."

 

"Oh." Ashley said with a grimace. "Yuck."

 

"Yeah." Anya said sadly. "I did some checking. None of the rest of my family had any known biotic ability. There
were no eezo exposures in that area at the time, so I have NO idea how I managed to get this ability." She shrugged. "Doesn't matter much now. Have my parents tried to make contact?"

 

"They have tried." Williams said in a neutral voice. "They have been..." She broke off as Anya snorted.

 

"Annoying? Maddening? Arrogant? Obnoxious? Stupidly pigheaded?" Anya asked with a grimace. Williams nodded, her face sour and Anya sighed. "I guess I am not surprised. After all, I was only a daughter. There to further the family's monetary influence by cementing alliances by marriage with other big money families and no more. Certainly not to do something so crass as to SERVE in a MILITARY."

 

"You ran away." Williams said softly. "Joined the Alliance."

 

"Yeah." Anya sighed. "I was young and stupid, but I wanted to do something more. Make more of myself than a trophy wife for some CEO. I wanted to help people. The military looked perfect. Of course the moment I said that, there were fireworks. I wasn't very tactful. My mother in particular said she hadn't raised any killers and wouldn't let me debase myself so. I...did not handle that well. Hey! I was eighteen." She said with a shrug as Ashley nodded. "They were going to lock me up. I heard the guards say that my food was going to be drugged." Ashley looked daggers at that, but Anya just smiled. "The problem with living in your own little world is that you miss all KINDS of things in the real one. I had friends on the staff." She slumped. "I bet they are dead now. They wouldn't have run. They were loyal to a fault."

 

"We can check." Ashley said gently. "But the odds are not good. The N7 training center in Rio took a hell of a hit. Lots of South America just stopped reporting. Even ten yers later, we are STILL trying to sift through the rubble in lots of places."

 

"I would appreciate it." Anya said sadly. "Nanny is likely gone by now no matter what. She was sixty five when I was
eighteen, so she would have been seventy seven when the Reapers hit. About eighty eight now. She didn't move that well when I knew her."
 

"Name?" Ashely asked, turning back to her terminal.

 

"Sara Kota-Vias." Anya said slowly. "She essentially raised me. My mom and dad were never around. There was also Cook." She thought hard for a moment. "His name? Family name was... Perez...?" She asked herself. "Yeah, Perez. And his first name? Ah..." She slumped. "I don't remember if he ever told me. I called him 'Cook'. He liked that." She shook her head. "And Mika was a gardener.  She was Japanese ancestry. Family name... Mitaka." She said with a sigh. "Those are the ones I remember. There were others I knew and liked but never got names for. A couple of the guards were nice, but Mother refused to keep any for very long for fear the other girls and I would get TOO friendly with them."

 

"I can start a search, but..." Williams sighed. "I can't guarantee we will find anything." She started tapping holographic keys.

 

"I know." Anya said sadly. "Thanks. Anyway, that actually wasn't what I wanted to request."

 

"Oh?" Ashley asked as she finished keying in the data search and set it off. "What then?"

 

"Are you available to stand as a witness for Crado and me getting married?" Anya asked quietly. Ashley's head snapped around so she was looking at Anya and the Spectre's eyes went wide at that. Anya hurried to speak. "You don't have to. I just... I don't HAVE any female relations I would trust further than I can throw a Mako." Ashley looked at her and Anya smiled. "Without the biotics." Ashley grinned at that.

 

"I would be honored." Williams said with a smile. "And some official Spectre recognition can't hurt, can it?"

 

"Honestly?" Anya said with a frown. "I never thought about that. You have been nice to me, and you didn't need to be. You have the authority to just ORDER things done to me, and you could have. No one would have said no. Heck, I likely wouldn't have disagreed. I was in NO position to. You didn't. You were kind. We never met, before. But I heard about you. So I make this request to Ashley Williams, not Spectre Williams, not Commander Williams, but Ashley Williams. A human woman who I happen to admire."

 

"Anya..." Williams looked away for a moment. "Do you have ANY idea how few people treat me like a regular person now? Like a woman? I..." She shook her head. "It is always Spectre this, Spectre that, Council Left Hand the other..."

 

"We are soldiers, Ma'am." Anya said slowly. "We have been in the same mud, spilled the same blood, our own and the enemy's. We have seen hell and survived. You may outrank me by a few thousand percent now, but that doesn't change what you ARE. You are a soldier." She said earnestly. "Don't let them change you, Ma'am."

 

"I won't." Williams said with a smile. "And I will stand as a witness for your marriage. On one condition."

 

"Ma'am?" Anya asked slowly.

 

"In private, I am just another soldier." Williams said as she held out hand. After a moment Anya took it and they shook. "Call me Ashley."

 

"I can do that." Anya said with a smile. "Ashley."

Modifié par kalenath, 12 novembre 2012 - 08:11 .

[kalenath]

<<<A few minutes later>>>

"Miranda, you busy?" Anya asked carefully as she entered the sick bay of the Wings of Xenobia.

 

"Not really." Miranda said with a sigh as she turned from her terminal. "Just checking up on things, following some
leads." She shook her head. "Whatever my father planned for you, it wasn't marriage." She said sourly. "Take a seat." She waved at a chair nearby.

 

"Do I want to know?" Anya asked softly as she sat.

 

"Probably not. What little I have been able to find is disturbing." Miranda said with a shudder. "There was an entire
project he orchestrated a few months before the Reapers hit, Project Nimue, that seems to have done NOTHING at all. Piles of money went to it and then stopped the day the Reapers invaded."

 

"Nimue?" Anya asked cautiously. "Where do I know that from?" She asked.

 

"Various folklore." Miranda said with a smile. "But mainly, the Lady of the Lake, from the myths of King Arthur."

 

"Oh, yeah..." Anya said slowly, thinking. "Wasn't she the one who trapped Merlin or something?"

 

"Trapped him, seduced him, killed him, replaced him...Take your pick." Miranda said with a sigh. "So many different versions of the King Arthur tale exist that it is virtually impossible to find any one that works with any other. We know it is folklore based on history, but..." She paused as Anya inhaled sharply.

 

"Yeah." Anya mused. "Arturius Castus or Castus Arturius? The Roman Centurion who didn't leave when the Romans left Britain? Who founded a kingdom of some kind? 4th century or so AD?"

 

"Yeah." Miranda sighed deeply. "Although there IS a claim that a Scottish king was the basis for the myth, one Artur.
Whatever..." She sighed. "My father never did ANYTHING without a long term plan. If he DID want you, he had a reason. One we need to figure out."

 

"What I don't get is why the Collectors didn't kill me." Anya sounded confused. "That was their MO."

 

"They did." Miranda said softly.

 

"WHAT?" Anya snapped, her tone somewhere between angry and scared. She sat stiffly as if afraid to move.

 

"Anya..." Miranda's voice was very gentle now. "We brought Shepard back from worse damage than you sustained. But not by much. You were struck in the stomach and in the head by mass driver rounds with no barriers. The head wound was glancing. The abdomen..." Miranda reached out and took Anya's limp hand in hers. "The scars are clear. The projectile severed your lower aorta, Anya. You bled to death, probably before the shuttle escaped."

 

"Then..." Anya shook her head, baffled. "Am I alive?"

 

"Yes." Miranda gave Anya's hand a squeeze. "Someone treated your wounds. Someone with tech beyond ours. They brought you back. We don't know why, or how. But the evidence is clear. From your descriptions, it wasn't the Collectors who had you, so I have no idea who it could have been."

 

"Collectors did not use robots in any recorded instances." Anya thought hard. "Did they?"

 

"Not that we know of. Most of their tech was organic-synthetic hybrids like Scions and Praetorians." Miranda agreed. "Anya?" She asked when Anya did not speak. "You okay?"

 

"No." Anya said slowly. "What am I, Miranda? Some kind of robot? A husk? Or..." Miranda shook her head, and got up, not letting go of Anya's hand.

 

"Anya...Come here." Miranda pulled Anya close and hugged the now shuddering woman tight. "You are alive and you are human. Every scan we have run says the same things. You remember who you are and you are in full control of yourself. You are in almost perfect health. Your arm is almost completely healed and your eyes are responding to our treatments. Anya..." Miranda shook the younger woman gently. "It's okay..."

 

"How can I be okay if I was dead, Miranda?" Anya demanded, not trying to extricate herself. "Dead is dead."

 

"Not always." Miranda replied evenly. "Shepard was blasted, burnt and broken by the explosion that claimed the first Normandy. Her body was exposed to hard vacuum and radiation for some time. Not to mention the impact with the ice moon where the Normandy's remains wound up. We rebuilt her. Someone did the same to you. Why? We don't know."

 

"Could it have been Cerberus?" Anya asked softly.

 

"I don't THINK so." Miranda said slowly. "I know their methods. Bio-synthetic fusion is what we wound up doing with Sheperd. What was done to you, apparently healed your body using your body. You healed the damage yourself, but in a far shorter time that it should have taken. Maybe as little as a day. That tech is still well beyond our abilities."

 

"A DAY?" Anya asked, stunned. "And now?"

 

"Now, your body is acting as it should." Miranda said with a nod. "Your memory seems fine. Every scan and test we have run says you are fully human."

 

"But?" Anya said slowly. "If I WAS dead..."

 

"Anya, I don't know." Miranda admitted as she let Anya go and sat again. Anya did as well. "If it WAS Cerberus or my father's project that I have not been able to track..."

 

"Have you been able to find out if he was the man I was supposed to be sent to?" Anya asked softly. "My family would know."

 

"They won't talk to me." Miranda said with a snarl. "They TRIED to get me to send a message to you for them and
I...well... I wasn't polite." She finished with a sigh.

 

"What kind of message?" Anya asked, her tone half dread, half resignation.

 

"Your father told me to tell you he was still waiting for you to crawl back on your hands and knees to beg forgiveness." Miranda said with a sigh. "I don't think he has a clue what he is talking about. Or to who."

 

"Yeah." Anya said with a sigh. "That is my father. Money and power are the ONLY things he understands. He must have been paid a pretty penny for me by your father." Anya paused, thinking. "Miranda?"

 

"Yes?" Miranda asked.

 

"In all the scans you did, did you check my genes?" Anya sounded as if she didn't really want to ask. "I am the only member of my family with biotics... And I have no idea why."

 

"Anya..." Miranda said gently. "Do you really want to know?" Anya just looked at her and Miranda sighed. "Yes, Anya. Your genes were manipulated. In vitro work before you were born. Biotics comes from genetics or eezo exposure and there are no signs of eezo exposure in your cells."

 

"I was... made...?" Anya's voice was very small.

 

"So was I." Miranda said gently. "What was done to us is not what we ARE, Anya." She took Anya's hand again. "But it is one reason you are so powerful. Anya..." She crooned as Anya buried her face in her hands and sobs came. "Anya, it's okay..." She rose and moved to squat beside Anya's chair, holding the now sobbing woman. "It's okay."

 

"They made me." Anya sobbed into Miranda's shoulder. "I was just a THING...Another commodity!"

 

"Yeah." Miranda said sadly. "It was illegal before you were born and it is STILL illegal. What they did to you broke every medical ethic in the book. Anya..." Miranda gently lifted the crying woman's chin up so she was looking Miranda in the eye. "You cannot let them get away with this or they will do it again to some other poor girl. My father did and your parents seem cut from the same cloth."

 

"What...?" Anya scrubbed her eyes with her sleeve and shook herself. "What can I do?"

 

"Litigate." Miranda said with steel in her tone. "What your parents did is STILL illegal by Council law. That kind of
blatant genetic modification is WAY beyond the bounds of legality. My father didn't care and it seems yours didn't either."

 

"Sue them?" Anya asked dubiously. "But...They are rich..."

 

"It doesn't matter, Anya." Miranda said gently. "The Council has reason to be strict on such things. Take it to the
Council. Let them handle it. Rich or no, they CAN handle it."

 

"Would they put me down?" Anya asked, her tone low.

 

"ANYA!" Miranda snapped. "You are NOT an experimental animal. You are a person! A good person! Snap out of it,
girl!" Miranda said with the bite of command in her voice. "Don't let them win!"

 

"I..." Anya shook herself and nodded. "They are no longer my family.  They weren't to begin with, I guess. So... We go on?"

 

"I will help as I can." Miranda promised. "You have my word, Anya. We will stick it to them, hard."

 

"Good. I have something else to ask." Anya said with smile. "Can I ask you to witness my wedding?"

 

"Figured it wouldn't be long." Miranda said with a grin. "I would be honored, Anya."

 

"Then that is three." Anya said with a nod. "You, Garrus and Spectre Williams."

 

"When?" Miranda asked gently as she let Anya go and the other woman stood.

 

"As soon as we can." Anya said soberly. "Then you, me, Crado and the Spectre will sit down and have a
LONG talk."

Modifié par kalenath, 13 novembre 2012 - 09:02 .