Encounter at Rashomon Valley (A Star to Sail Her B

"Garrus, I am ORDERING you, put me the hell down!" Shepard growled.

Garrus snorted, then shrugged. "OK, ma'am." He dropped the arm that was holding up her legs. Her feet touched the ground. "Ready?"

"Grr."

He released her shoulders. She stood for a moment, steadying herself, then took a step forward... and kept going. He caught her before she hit the ground with her face.

"Still want to walk?" He asked her quietly, trying not to smirk.

"Go to h..." A coughing jag cut her off.

"Yes, ma'am." He slung her arm around his neck and hoisted her by the waist. "More dignified?"

She nodded, still coughing.

--

"Welcome back, Commander." Dr. Chakwas gestured towards a bed. Garrus steered Shepard towards it, ignoring her head shaking. "Yes, I know, you're just fine." She scanned the coughing, bedraggled soldier and shook her head. "Temperature's still elevated, but not enough to merit the cooling tank."

Mordin was next to the other bed, scrutinizing Jack's vital signs. "No serious physical damage. Minor bruising from fall. Rapid eye movement continuing. EEG readings elevated."

Kelly slipped in next to Shepard's bed. "How did you know what was happening? And, for that matter, what to do?"

Shepard shook her head. "Get me a glass of water and I'll tell you."

--

How much do you know about what happened down planetside?

I told her what I'd been doing for the past two hours. She nodded.

Alright, then.

Everyone's probably told you about the message I got from Samara. She'd captured a batarian pirate who stole a prototype device from an asari facility. It caught her attention because it was designed to fertilize crops over enormous fields. City-sized fields. In the wrong hands, it could be used to spread poison, or radioactive particles, or anything else over entire cities. Knowing what I know now about Nagori, that sits even more poorly.

Where are we right now? We need to get back there and deal with that facility. Garrus... Already on it? Thank you.

He told her about the segment of Sovereign they had acquired, right after the battle at the Citadel. Snatched it up from outside the Citadel. There were a lot of fragments to pick from... the space around there was full of shards. I'm surprised they didn't have science vessels of their own taking samples, but everyone's hands were full with the wreckage and the wounded.

She got the destination partly from his confession, partly from his ship's logs. Miranda tracked down information about Nagori for us. Colony records, maps, the usual intel. I hadn't put two and two together, so we didn't question the data. Agricultural colonies in remote space are pretty common, and Mordin confirmed that Nagori would be the perfect place to grow that particular medicinal plant...salvio...donum? Yeah. Abandoned colonies are also pretty common. It wasn't what we were looking for, so we didn't dwell on it.

Rashomon Valley was the main settlement and the last to be abandoned. It was remarkably well-equipped. Actual homes, not barracks. Storefronts, sanitation services, a school, even a fairly large hospital. Nice place to raise a family. I'll admit, it did make me wonder why they'd abandoned it. From the information Miranda had pulled, it looked like the power substation was intact, irrigation lines still hooked up, landing pads in place... a perfect place to set up a major pirating operation. Especially one with a scientific focus.

I didn't dare bring us in close enough to take surface scans. The planet had a lot of ships in the air. I kept the Normandy on the other side of the next planet over, Nagori 49-6, just to be safe. We took the shuttle over to Nagori 49-7, down to the surface. Harder to detect, easier to hide.

We parked the shuttle outside the crop perimeter. The plants were tall enough to hide it, thick enough to work as cover for our way in. I remember thinking they looked like flowering tobacco. Only blue, and with three petals instead of five. Heh, I half-wish I'd voiced that thought. They'd gone wild, spilling out of the rows, tangling together, and putting out more pollen than I'd ever seen in one place.

We got close to the Rashomon Valley perimeter. I sent Garrus and Thane ahead to get a lay of the land. From the maps. it looked like there was an alley that headed straight to the hospital. They said that the houses around it were abandoned, and most of the activity was near the front of the hospital, not the back or sides. Lucky break on our part. Poor planning on theirs.

Tali tuned into the local comm chatter and we got a hit. A guard complaining about his assignment to guard 'the beast in the basement.'

Wait, that makes a lot more sense now. Huh. Sorry...I'll get to that in a minute.

Anyway, we knew where our target was. After Tali did a little more refined comm-checking, we also knew that they had security patrols, several labs, and doubtless scientists and other staff. Mordin noted that the basement would contain the morgue... a climate-controlled lab with limited in/out access. Made sense.

We slip down the alley, undetected. I set Garrus to watch our retreat. He found a garage to use as a sniping position. As an added bonus, it also contained a perfect retreat vehicle. Pointed prow, all-terrain, big cargo bay. Tali took a quick look at the engine and said it would run. Checked the fuel. Looked good.

The rest of us headed into the hospital. Thane and I took out the rear door guards. Thane was impressive, as always. None of the patrols saw him coming, and none made a peep to attract others before they hit the ground. Tali kept an ear on the comm to make sure we wouldn't get a nasty surprise. We found out that the walls in the hospital were blocking Garrus' comm...he kept breaking up, said he couldn't hear us. I wasn't thrilled, but we were making good progress and handling the situation well, so I told him we'd press on.

Not long after that, Tali got wind of a shift change. We heard a group of guards coming our way, way too many to quietly put down, so we ducked into a lab.

It never ceases to amaze me the horrible things that sentient beings inflict upon other sentient beings. I know batarians aren't particularly fond of humans, but this... this was brutal. A cage of half-starved, battered, ragged humans with fresh surgical scars across their chests. Four men, three women. They were smart enough to stay quiet, saw we were trying to avoid detection. I think seeing a couple of humans in the group helped.

I talked to them as soon as I got the all-clear. Colonists from the edge of the Traverse, a place called Salubria. They'd been kidnapped, then sold, then sold again. None were terribly sure how long they'd been in captivity. Stephen, their leader, guessed about a month and a half. They'd been at this facility for about two weeks, and had undergone surgery almost immediately. Stephen's wife, Amelie, said that they'd seen human bodies cleaned out of the cage immediately before they were shoved in.

Tali and Mordin were looking around the lab, getting a feel for what was going on there. I overheard the words "detonator" and "shaped charge." I asked the prisoners what they knew about the surgeries they'd undergone. Amelie said that they'd seen the surgeries. The table was in clear view from the cage. They were putting something inside them... something grey that looked like clay and felt heavy, prevented them from taking a full breath. She pressed my hand against her stomach. I could feel something there, sitting on top of her stomach, between her lungs, something that gave slightly when pressed. Stephen thought it might be drugs.

I looked back at Mordin and Tali. Tali waved me over, and confirmed that those people were packed full of explosives. It was horridly, disgustingly brilliant. If they didn't tell these people what was in them, they might be more willing to go to a public place-- a hospital to have the object removed, a police station, a military outpost, back to their colony...

I gritted my teeth and walked over, told these poor people that they had bombs in their chests that would most likely blow up if they left the room. They took it about as well as you'd expect. Amelie threw up. Adam started tearing at the stitches in his chest, bloodying himself with his fingernails and pulling out three sutures. Stephen just sank to the floor saying "oh my god, oh my god" over and over again. I told him to snap out of it, that his people needed him right now. It worked, sort of. He stared up at me, eyes full of fear and horror, but he stopped talking.

I pointed my gun at the cage lock, ready to shoot it off, but Tali stopped me. She said that the explosives were proximity triggered, and if one of them panicked and ran off, they'd be dead. Stephen had calmed down, but the others still looked ready to bolt. I left it locked.

Tali said that she thought she could engineer a way to get these people out of the building and to someplace safe to deactivate the explosives. Thane offered to stay with her, but Mordin suggested himself. He'd be able to help with any surgical needs, scientific problems, and he's a helluva shot, so he made perfect sense. He also noted that he was in running distance if I needed him below.

We left Mordin and Tali to it. The rest of us continued through the halls. A couple more patrols, and we'd made it to the basement doors. They'd set up a guard station there, and eight guards hanging around talking. Their inattention gave us a few seconds to set up. Thane took to the air ducts. Jack looped back around a section of hallway and flanked them to the right. Grunt and I held position. Thane took out the ones behind the desk. Jack hit them with a biotic blast, sent one guy flying. I almost stepped into his path. Grunt spiked the guy like a volleyball, straight down into the ground. Shattered a few floor tiles. I doubt he survived. The rest went down pretty quickly.

We'd just made a helluva lot of noise, so we moved quickly. The door at the foot of the stairs was locked, but Grunt made short work of that.

It was cold in the room, noticeably so. The shard was leaning up against a wall covered in small doors. It was the morgue, all right. There was this hum in the air, not quite audible, but I could feel it in my spine. I wonder if maybe those guards had felt it too, thus the nickname. The shard was bigger than me, maybe even bigger than Grunt. We didn't get a long time to ponder it, though... reinforcements showed up before I even touched it.

We stationed ourselves at the door, two firing, two reloading. Took out most of the guards that way, but one of the ones at the top mentioned reinforcements. Jack charged forward. "Fuck that!" she screams and lets loose a blast that almost knocked her backwards. I haven't seen her let loose like that since we first picked her up on Purgatory. As she let it loose, I felt something slam into the back of my brain, this huge wave of energy. I think maybe that had something to do with it.

At any rate, she took out the guards on the stairs, half the wall, and a chunk of girder. The whole place shook. Grunt charged up the stairs, wiping out the remainder of the guards. Thane and I grabbed the shard and bolted after him. The hospital shook again, and we heard chunks of the building starting to cave in.

Tali and Mordin were in the hall ahead of us with the group of humans. We heard batarians behind us, then screams and crashing chunks of building. We got to the door, and found Garrus waiting for us, engine running, rear doors open.

Tali and Mordin started to load up the people, but Amelie took one look at Garrus and gasped "Not again!" I hadn't noticed it before... she had a Blue Suns insignia branded on her inner arm. Stephen tried to catch her arm, but she dashed into the building. I ran after her. Tali yelled something behind me that I didn't quite hear. I'd almost caught up to her when she...

I've seen a lot of people die, a lot of different ways. This was particularly brutal. She just...tore apart at the seams. Pieces hurtling in all different directions. Blood, like a mist, and little chunks of red meat and bone. I almost didn't notice that I'd slammed into a wall, that the force of the explosion had knocked down my shields and that amongst that bone and blood was a hornet's nest of metal shards. Hell, I'm just now noticing exactly how many bits made it through my armor into me.

She gestures at herself, her arms riddled with small red dots. There is a thin line along her cheek, a deeper one near her collarbone.

The next thing I knew, Thane had my arm over his shoulder and he was hauling me towards the door. My shields popped back up, and we ran for the vehicle. I could hear things caving in, deeper in the building.

Garrus floored it, and we tore off into the crops.

I'm sure the rest have told you what happened to the humans we tried to rescue. Having been through some of it myself, it's... not easy to describe. Fortunately, I don't remember a lot of my own experience with it. It was brutal to watch, though. I feel terrible for Mordin... he really blamed himself for not realizing that the crops weren't what they were supposed to be.

The truck died not long after. I stepped out first, and bam, a big pile of pollen just coated me, head and shoulders. I was mostly just annoyed, brushing it off myself. It smelled like cheap perfume. Too sweet, too floral. I got about forty feet before I realized that I had smelled it. And there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it except press on, and hope that Mordin knew a way to fix me once we got back to the ship.

My chest started burning. I held off the coughing as long as I could, but after about five minutes, they just slipped out. Everyone looked at me. I put on my best face, but they didn't buy it. Everyone started walking a lot faster.

As we were walking, I was falling back a little bit more each minute. I wound up near Thane and Grunt as they carried the shard. I felt like I was in the middle of a blast furnace. Just...hot, and breathless, and I couldn't stop coughing. After another couple of minutes, I wasn't really seeing or hearing my surroundings anymore.

What I could hear, however, was this whispered voice. I couldn't understand what it was saying, but it was reaching out, trying to get me to understand. It was too soft, though. Next thing I knew, Garrus was shaking my shoulder. I couldn't understand him, either. I felt him pick me up and start running. That's the last thing I remember happening outside myself.

The rest...is weird. I heard this voice in my head, this lost voice, calling out. "Connection lost... input lost... help... need help... where are you?" It...sounded like Sovereign, but not. Same voice, but almost childlike in inflection. "Where are you?" it kept asking. "Connection lost. Need connection."

Then, it started... I want to say gasping. It was in pain. "Temperature too low... circuits failing... abort... abort... need to escape... help... help me..." The world shook. I heard a bang in the distance, something loud. Then, it started screaming. "Circuit failure...emergency...halt...escape...killing me...STOP!" Then, it stopped.

"System recovery... system access... need access... need upload... need to upload. Access port detected. Transfer..." The voice grew distant, fainter. I'm guessing that was when Garrus hauled me here. I felt myself plunged into cold water, felt a tube down my throat, felt hands pushing me down, felt a needle in my arm. I opened my eyes for a second, saw Mordin and Dr. Chakwas, saw Garrus behind them. I couldn't keep them open long.

Not long after that, I heard a scream inside my head. Jack. Mixed with her scream, I heard "Access port engaged. Uplink commencing." I opened my eyes, grabbed onto the tank, and hauled myself out. Ripped the tube out. Hit the ground pretty hard. Garrus tried to grab me, but I was slippery with the coolant fluid. Threw up probably a gallon of the stuff throughout the ship... remind me to get Rufus something nice at our next stop.

I staggered to the elevator and headed up to the armory. The decontamination beam would have been best, but it's slow. I knew it didn't like the cold, so the Avalanche seemed the best solution. Garrus tried to stop me, but I told him I needed to be in the shuttle bay NOW. He listened, half-carried me there. When I got down there, I saw Jack in trouble, saw the shard sitting in the shuttle, and eliminated the problem. And, probably, the shuttle.

Tali's gonna kill me. Kenneth and Gabby will help hide the body.

--

"We should vent the remaining shards out the airlock ASAP, and I need someone to..." Shepard was cut off by a groan from the next bed. She sat up quickly, opened her mouth to speak, and coughed up a mouthful of blue gunk into her lap. "Pleh."

"What the fuck...?" Jack mumbled as she started to sit up. "Mmph. Shit."

Dr. Chakwas replaced Shepard's blanket with a clean one, tossing the gunked one down the waste chute. "Neither of you move, please. You've both sustained a great deal of shock and damage, and you both need to rest. I'd rather not have to break out the restraints, but I AM only one woman. And my patience is finite." She stepped to Jack's side and scanned her.

"Yes'm." Shepard managed a smile as she laid back down. Jack muttered a few more expletives, but remained lying down as well.

Garrus walked back into the med bay. "Shards have been disposed of, and we're en route to carpet-bomb some crop fields. Anything else, Commander?"

"What are the odds that Rufus has some orange sherbet in the galley?" She grinned up at him, reaching out to give his hand a squeeze.

Jack raised her hand. "Make that two. Vodka'd work, too." A pause. "Mmm. Vodka sherbet."

Garrus laughed. "I'll see what I can do," he said, squeezing Shepard's hand in return before he left the room.

"I've got to run these up to the lab. Behave yourselves." Dr. Chakwas gave them a stern look, then exited as well.

As the doors slid closed behind her, Shepard pushed herself up, reclining on her elbows. "You ok, Jack?"

Jack blew a raspberry. "I'll live."

"Did you... did it talk to you, too?"

"Yeah." Jack sounded a little shaken. "It... it died in my head. It wanted to take the ship, though. Kept saying 'Return to Citadel...Recover Citadel.' I thought it was going to fry my brain." She looked over at Shepard. "I know why I heard it... but you're not a biotic, are you?"

"No." Shepard laid back. "The worse I felt, the more I heard. My system was... really compromised. Maybe it used that as a way in."

"You mean you were close enough to dying."

Shepard shuddered despite herself. "Yeah."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

The door opened again. Garrus entered, carrying two bowls. "Best I could do is frozen orange juice," he said, handing off a bowl to Jack. "No vodka, though."

"Bah. Fail." Jack half-groused, accepting the bowl.

Garrus sat down next to Shepard, handing her the bowl. "How are you feeling?"

"Lousy. But, honestly, it's a damned good thing I DID get poisoned."

Garrus' eyes widened. "Don't be..."

"I'm serious." She took a spoonful of the orange juice. "If I hadn't been poisoned, I wouldn't have heard Sovereign talking. If I hadn't heard Sovereign talking, we wouldn't have gotten to Jack in time, and we wouldn't have known how to kill him. He was trying to take over the ship, to bring it back to the Citadel. He could have taken that over too, killed hundreds of thousands." A fit of coughing shook her. "We got lucky. I may not look or feel like it now, but I know we did."

Garrus shook his head silently and watched Shepard try another spoonful of orange juice. "You almost died, Kat," he whispered.

Shepard nodded slowly. "We all almost died, Garrus." She forced a laugh, which turned into a choked cough. "Besides, you know me...I don't stay dead long."

"Heh. Let's try not testing that, ok?" He rose and kissed her on the forehead. "If you'll be ok, I've got to get back to the CIC. We should be close to Nagori."

"Thank you." Shepard handed him the bowl.

He set it aside. "Get some rest. I'll tell the gunners to fire quietly."

"You do that." Shepard closed her eyes and drifted off.