Hello there,
If you enjoy my stories, you can read up to 15 chapters in advance per story on my Patreon page / patreon.com/Samael61.
If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
Normandy
En Route to Omega
The first Cerberus crew member he met after Jacob and Miranda was Yeoman Kelly Chambers, assigned as his administrative assistant.
Which meant a spy, of course.
He had to give it to the Illusive Man. Chambers was the perfect choice because her innocence and love for all living things were genuine, which gave her a naive appearance.
Joker, on the other hand, was ecstatic about having another Normandy to pilot.
"Can you believe this, Commander? It's my baby, better than new. It fits me like a glove." Joker said as he turned his seat around. "And leather seats! The military may set the hardware standard, but on a first-gen frigate they could care less if the seats breathe. Civilian sector comfort by design."
"Reproduction is not intended to be perfect, Mr. Moreau. Seamless improvements were made." EDI popped up to inform the pilot, and Joker rolled his eyes.
"And there's the downside. I liked the Normandy when she was beautiful and quiet. Now she's got this thing I don't want to talk about. It's like ship cancer." Joker said it with such hatred. Shepard wondered if the AI had done something to incur it, or maybe his pilot didn't like having anyone else in the cockpit.
Shepard grinned. It was fun to see someone get under Joker's skin like that. "Feel free to leave, Joker; it's not like we are with the Alliance."
"Hell no. The last two years sucked, and I'll take what I can get. Even if an AI is spying on us, no way they'll invest this much just to screw us over. It'll be better than the old days."
"Can't be worse than being stuck in a freezer for two years."
"That's the attitude."
Their conversation continued, with Shepard asking Joker's thoughts on their new crew and EDI, while also questioning the AI in depth.
Jacob was the dictionary definition of a good guy, responsible and happy to do the right thing, while Miranda had a cold, tough exterior to keep people out.
From Jacob's accounts, the two had met when they stopped a Batarian terror attack on the Citadel.
Fucking Batarians.
The mess sergeant of the Normandy, Gardner, had requested high-end ingredients to cook better meals than what could be achieved with military rations.
Shepard had also made it known how much he valued hygiene.
Another face he was happy to see was Doctor Chakwas.
"Commander Shepard. We all feared the worst when Normandy crumbled with you flung to space, but as expected, even the cold grip of vacuum cannot kill you." Chakwas greeted Shepard, finally having laid eyes on him.
"Good to see you too, Doctor. How are you doing?"
"Better now that you're back. I must say, reading the report on how you survived, it was pure genius."
"Thanks, doc."
Chakwas had a more stern stance on Cerberus, saying she wasn't working for the organization but for Shepard himself.
It was good to have her back.
His engineers, Daniels and Donnelly, were interesting people, with Donnelly being a more laid-back person who didn't hang up on rank and structure, while Daniels was the opposite.
They ended up working with Cerberus after Donnelly made some people very displeased by defending Shepard publicly. The Illusive Man had made them an offer after that, and the duo ended up in Normandy.
Shepard also listened to their troubles and promised to look for the coupling they wanted.
—
Shepard rolled his eyes as he read the e-mails sent to him by Anderson and Admiral Hackett.
Not only did the Alliance not bother to collect Normandy's remains, but Anderson also wrote on how things had changed after his disappearance.
Wonderful.
—
Omega
The first thing to greet the team as they docked on the evil counterpart of the Citadel, or rather, the less gilded and more honest version of it, was a Salarian who looked to be high on something, only to be chased off by a Batarian.
"Blasted scavengers. Welcome to Omega… Shepard." The Batarian said his name as if Shepard's identity was some great secret.
"How surprising you know me." Shepard replied with sarcasm, and the Batarian rolled all four of his eyes.
"Aria is curious as to what a dead Spectre is doing on her station. She wants to see you at your earliest convenience."
"Sure, why not?"
—
Life was full of irony.
For example, Shepard had staved off death by putting himself in stasis, and now he was walking to Afterlife.
Aria's club.
Walking through the nightclub where everyone let their worries fade between the drinks, the eardrum-shattering music, and drugs, Shepard steadily walked up to where the Queen of Omega was standing up to look down on her subjects.
"That's far enough." Aria warned, and her guards were alerted.
Shepard blinked at the guards pointing weapons at him and his crew. "Tell them to put those down before I kill everyone here."
"Shit, he's the real one." The Batarian scanning him spoke, and the guards were suddenly nervous. They looked at Aria for orders and holstered their weapons when she nodded.
"We can't be too careful with a dead Spectre. It could have been anyone wearing your face."
Wasn't that a dreadful thought, someone with his face going around the galaxy? "Your diligence is noted. So what do you want?" Shepard took a seat across from Aria.
"I am wondering what brought the most dangerous person in the galaxy to my station." Considering years ago the Alliance almost started an assault on Omega, with Shepard as the spearhead.
Fortunately for Aria, he wasn't here for that. "Heard a friend of mine is here, and I also need to find Doctor Solus."
"The Salarian doctor? Last I heard he was trying to help plague victims in the quarantine zone." Aria smiled. "I always liked Mordin. He's as likely to heal you as he is to shoot you."
So he needed to get to the quarantine zone.
"As for Garrus Vakarian, half of Omega is after him for his laser weapon and the bounty on his head. The local merc groups are recruiting anyone with a gun to take him down."
Pissing off mercs sounded right up Garrus' alley.
"Noted. I'll try to leave your station as quickly as possible."
"Appreciated." Aria nodded, and Shepard left the booth.
—
Dr. Solus would have to wait while Shepard went to see what kind of trouble Garrus landed himself in.
Putting his helmet on, Shepard approached the Blue Suns mercs recruiter, who guided them inside a room.
"Who's next?" The Batarian asked, lifting his head from the computer for a moment.
"You three look like you could do some damage. Looking for a fight?" He asked, still typing away.
"Absolutely." Shepard replied.
"The standard fee is 500 credits each. You get paid when the job's done. If you die, your friends don't collect your share. You'll need your own weapons and armor." The Batarian raised his eyes from the computer to take a good look at Shepard and his team. "Looks like you got that covered."
"And no, this does not make you a member of the Blue Suns, Eclipse, or the Blood Pack. You are a freelancer. Period. Any questions?" Batarian finished, and from the way he looked and talked, Shepard guessed a lot of idiots asked the question he just answered.
"No, we are ready to go."
"Just head over to the transport depot outside the club. One of our boys will take you from there." Shepard nodded, ready to go and find Garrus, only for a dumbass kid to enter the room, looking to sign up.
Shepard was stuck between letting natural selection do its job and stopping the teenager from doing something stupid.
His good nature won in the end, and Shepard broke the kid's gun to stop him from joining the mercs.
—
"We're on the mission." Shepard told the Blue Suns driver leaning on the shuttle.
"I hope you're ready. Archangel's been annihilating you freelancers." The Batarian warned them, and Shepard smiled inside his helmet.
Good for Garrus.
"Archangel?" He did read the new nickname Garrus had picked, but the reason behind it wasn't in the dossier.
The Batarian snarled. "Yeah, some humans started calling Vakarian that, and it stuck. Now it has spread to everyone else."
"Let's go then."
—
The Blue Suns driver flew the team to where the mercs had set up a base right across from where Garrus had holed up with his team.
But something was very wrong.
The entire base was covered in explosion marks and remains of corpses, with limbs and other fleshy bits everywhere.
"What the?!" The driver got out, observing the area with frightened eyes.
Most of the walls were covered in blood, painting a canvas of a massacre, and there were no living mercs in sight.
From the corner ahead, something, a Krogan, came crawling out, and just in time, a tall figure turned the corner as well, firing a single shot.
Shepard bent his head to the side, and the laser bolt went through the window of the shuttle.
"Archangel?! You three, do something!" The Batarian shouted, scrambling to pull out his weapon, but it slipped from his trembling hands.
Shepard rolled his eyes inside the helmet and shot the merc through the head with a single laser bolt.
"That's no way to greet your friend, Garrus." Shepard took his helmet off, with Garrus following.
Garrus shrugged, grasping Shepard's arm for the bro hug. "Sorry about that; just wanted to make sure it was you."
"With a laser bolt?" Even Shepard had not thought to greet a friend like that.
"Please, who else but you could have avoided that?"
Shepard grinned. "Nice to see you too, buddy, but what the hell happened here?" It looked like the basement of a horror movie villain.
"Oh, nothing. I just took your words about infiltration and explosives to heart." Garrus said so innocently, you would think he didn't just wipe out three of the most successful gangs from Omega.
"Damn good job."
"Ah, before I forget." Garrus walked up to the Krogan who had propped himself on a wall and raised the laser rifle.
"Any last words, Garm?"
Garm just growled, and Garrus shrugged, putting a hole through the Krogan's head and killing the leader of the Blood Pack.
"Come out, guys."
Twelve people surrounded them in an instant, having appeared out of corners and from behind crates, and one even dropped out of the ventilation shaft.
—
Having gotten tired of the Council's bullshit following Shepard's death, Garrus had decided to strike out on his own and moved to Omega with a team to enforce their own version of justice in this hole of crime.
Eventually their operations against the mercs got to the point where the Blue Suns, the Eclipse, and the Blood Pack banded together to kill him and his team.
Deciding against an all-out battle to avoid casualties, Garrus had drawn the mercs to the Kima District, which led them to believe the Archangel was on the back foot.
Taking a page from Shepard's book, Garrus sneaked out of the base and disguised himself as a freelancer to infiltrate the mercs and set up anti-personnel explosives all over the base.
With one push of a button, the battle was over.
"What about you, Shepard? Where have you been? Unless you crawled your way out of the afterlife?" Garrus asked, and knowing Shepard, he might have actually fought his way back to life, just out of sheer spite.
Shepard chuckled and explained his situation right down to how he ended up with Cerberus.
"Figures you wouldn't die. Sorry we couldn't find you ourselves." Garrus apologized, his head hung low. He had gone to search for Shepard but ultimately came up empty.
"It's fine; there's nothing you could have done about it." Even Cerberus had discovered him by sheer luck.
"So what brings you to Omega?" Where Shepard went, so did action, though hopefully his friend was here for a less violent purpose.
It would be a shame if Omega got destroyed right after Garrus and his team cleared out the gangs.
"I am after the Collectors, and I came here to see if you were up to it."
Garrus patted Shepard on the shoulder. "Of course I am; just let me set these guys up, and we'll be ready to go."
Shepard smiled.
At least things were looking good now.