Interloper Rewrite: Chapter 15

Blackout


"You ready to go, Deputy?"

I looked up from the open panel I'd been running fresh cabling through at Shepard's quiet query. The Commander stood at ease in full dress uniform, he usually nape length hair tucked up under a rounded naval cap. I switched off the circuit map projection on my Omni-tool and quickly dusted off my hands.

"Commander?" I asked. My initial pang of fright at getting caught doing unsupervised repairs, no matter how simple, quickly dissolved into confusion. The worst of the wounded had already been off loaded to the SSV Valley Forge's much larger medical facilities, and the additional deck crew sent over to assist in repairs after our brush with the Geth cruiser currently doing its best to imitate the system's small asteroid belt had already been sent back across as well. Not that I was considered a member of either of those parties.

"Shuttle for the Forge leaves in five. Feel like sitting in on a staff planning meeting for a platoon strength offensive operation?" Shepard asked with a half-smile. "I imagine it'll be eye-opening. That and I need someone along to take notes."

"Um, Commander, I don't know if I'm exactly dressed for the occasion," I replied, looking down at my hastily patched hardsuit. The dull patches still attested to the light chemical scarring of the Antibaar atmosphere while the nicks and scratches still shone where the Geth drones had scored penetrating hits on my shields.

"I'm a Spectre now, Liddle," Shepard said with that same smile, a hanging sign on a joke shared, "I'm pretty sure I get to set the dress code for my deputy. Advantages of our somewhat fuzzy place in the chain of command. Now come along." And with that and no room for debate, the Commander turned towards the airlock. I had to hurry to catch up. "The badge is a nice touch." She added, eyes remaining forward.

"Oh, thanks," I replied. I felt my cheeks heat, my hand went to the thin sheet of stamped metal that covered the nasty scar in my armor left by an errant chunk of the inner hull. The shiny tin star caught the Normandy's lights. "Garrus' idea, he said people tended to let you by without question if your badge was shiny enough." We passed the CIC and started down the long neck of the frigate. A number of consoles were still unlit from the beating we had taken at the hands of the Geth cruiser. Sections of paneling lay resting against the walls to show the ship's battle scars. "That was a close thing, hey Commander?" I stepped over a snaking nest of temporary wiring.

"Too close," Shepard admitted, proceeding me into the airlock. "I'm glad Joker's such a top-notch pilot, anyone else's hands at the control and we'd be an expanding dust cloud right now." She shared a nod with the chairbound flyer still dutifully at his station. The inner doors closed on the bridge and left us in the antiseptic pocket between the ship and the shuttle ready to whisk us away. "We still don't know how they found us. Our stealth systems should have cloaked us completely. And yet, they had reinforcements ready to go and comms jamming on the ground."

"Is that what that interference was?" I asked. My ears still occasionally rang with the aftereffects of our failed call for pickup.

"That's our best guess." The Alliance officer said as we ducked into the docked shuttle. It was spartan, all brushed steel walls and skeletally-framed canvas chair. It was larger than the Kodiak that I was expecting, but somehow less spacious. The passenger bay was crammed with rows of seating and empty weapon racks. The short passageway to the cockpit stood open, our pilot hunched over her console running last minute checks. She looked up, the shuttle lights glinting off of wide mirrored lenses as she pulled them down to get a better look at us.

"All aboard?" She asked with a touch of a southern drawl. Her eyes alighted on me and an eyebrow lifted to her short-clipped hair. I quickly looked away.

"Just us, Flight Officer," Shepard replied. "Ready when you are." She took the nearest seat and motioned for me to take one across from her. "The ground action more or less wrapped up?"

"More or less," the pilot replied, returning to the instruments. There was a loud clunk as the airlock door sealed and the shuttle was filled with a whine as engines kicked in. I gripped my seat, trying hard not to look like a scared child on an airplane. The shaking of the much smaller shuttle was alien to me after so long on the Normandy's much more stable bulk. With a sudden thrum that made it past the inertial dampeners, we rocketed away from our home in the stars. "I'm glad you and your guys found that drone nest. No way in hell I'd have been able to safely put the platoon down danger close like the Lieutenant originally planned. As it was, we gave them a little strafing before we put down to stir them up and took the rest down from a prepared position."

"Glad to know that that recon actually got to do some good, eh Commander?" I asked. My grip loosened a little as we stopped maneuvering and settled into a straight burn. Without windows, our course remained an abstraction.

"That was you on the ground?" the pilot asked, "well, much obliged."

The flight was short, the task force was currently keeping close formation in orbit of Antibaar. With another whoosh of maneuvering thrusters and a banging and whirring noise, we were once again nestled snugly to a warship. The door slid open to reveal a brightly lit shuttle bay. "Thank you for flying Air Valley Forge. Y'all come back now."


"Commander, while your attempts to scout have been admirable, I think we'll take it from here." Lt. Gorman spoke in clipped tones. The Valley Forge's marine platoon leader stood ramrod straight in front of the plotting table, his hands clasped behind his back. He was older than me, perhaps in his early thirties and had his dark brown hair buzzed short, a hairstyle that gave his gaunt face an almost skeletal look. His smart blue uniform looked freshly pressed. "With all due respect, my marines have trained for these types of missions, and this task force has the firepower…"

"My task force," Captain Everett of the Valley Forge cut in. Despite the terse edge to his voice, the Captain stood at ease relative to the younger marine. His mustachioed face was pinched beneath an outcrop of blond hair. "Still needs good scouting data before we commit to hitting the next three bases. What do you think would have happened if your men had hit the deck when that cruiser dropped out of FTL? In a stand up fight we very well might have lost the orbit."

"Be that as it may, our mission relies on hitting those bases fast. We're a rapid response unit, not mechanized heavy infantry. We can't do that if we have to keep bailing out the Normandy. No offense intended, Commander," The Lieutenant said, his voice still clipped as short as his hair and dripping with boot polish.

"Offense very much taken, Lieutenant," Shepard shot back. Her demeanor was cold and her face spoke of biting back on further, more colorful assertations, "the Normandy fell afoul of chance;" Shepard continued harshly, "without stealth systems, any Geth reinforcements we run into would overrun this task force in minutes."

"Enough," the captain raised his voice, "Lieutenant, I'm not taking my ships in blind. If you want to go in, find a new ride. Commander, is the Normandy ready to go?" The eyes of the various attendees fell on Shepard.

""Yes, Sir. My team is ready to go and the crew has finished repairs to critical systems."

"Good. Once you get back to your ship, the task force will accelerate to the rim of the Hong system and start a cold approach. The Normandy will move ahead and do a full sweep. Then, and only then, will your team go in to hit the outpost, Gorman. Is that clear?"

The Lieutenant nodded tersely, his expression pained. The veneer of clipped professionalism seemed to shift to reveal a man made of tightly wound springs beneath. "Understood, sir," he responded. I got the strong impression that he wasn't used to being told 'no' in a public setting.

Everett made a sweeping motion over the table in the middle of the room and a projection of the Hong system blazed into life above it. The five planets spun on shining red threads around the yellow star. At another motion from the captain, the simulation slowed to show his small task force pop up on the rim.

"We'll be entering here, where our entry point will be occluded from Casbin by the gas giant, Theshaca. While the Normandy moves ahead on Tantalus drive, the rest of us will continue a ballistic approach. It's a slow crawl, but even minutes shaved off our response time if we have to go hot could mean life or death for Shepard's command. As it is, for most of the operation we'll be at least several hours out if you run into trouble within the orbit of Casbin." Another motion and the map zoomed into the second planet in the system, revealing an ugly ball of orange-red broken up by shallow dusty seas.

"Not much to look at, is it?" A marine standing next to me quipped under his breath. I had to agree. The rusty dirtball spun in place, its surface pockmarked with scrawling notations of potential Geth positions and bases. Between them, the Captain and the Lieutenant sketched in broad plans the battle plan, with additions from Shepard and other staffers. Everyone spoke confidently, though something itched at the back of my mind. The feeling that we were missing something.

"Now, with your stealth systems engaged, we won't be able to track you directly, but we will be watching for weapon's fire on the passive sensors," Captain Everett brought up, with the finality of a closing statement, "Mission will commence at 0900. Dismissed.

The room burst into a flurry of activity as the collection of officers all tried to get up at once and gather their assorted notes, crewmen, and hats. Across the room, my eyes caught on those of our shuttle pilot amongst the flight-suited gaggle of her peers. She offered me a cheesy grin and drew an equal response.

"See something you like, Deputy?" Shepard was at my shoulder, her uniform creased somewhat by hours sitting in the briefing chair. I jumped reflexively and felt my cheeks rapidly heat.

"I, uh..." I stammered.

"In the briefing? Was high level operational planning everything you dreamed of when you shipped out with us?" Shepard continued. "I hope you were taking notes."

"Have the whole meeting recorded," I replied, motioning to the still glowing omni-tool on my wrist. "I can get that written up for you if you want."

"See that you do, no shortcuts on my ship," Shepard laughed lightly. She motioned for the rapidly clearing corridor. "I'd hate to think my crew was letting things slip because they were busy making eyes at the Navy's pilots."

I barely avoided choking. "No, no Ma'am. I was one hundred percent focused on the mission briefing."

"Mmm hmm." The two of us continued through the halls to the shuttle bay.


"So, it worked, right?" Garrus asked as the two of us perched amongst the packed cases filling the hold. "I knew it; your Alliance will let just about anyone with a bade through." He laughed to himself. Whatever he was hunched over working on pinged and he swore lightly under his breath.

"It probably had more to do with me walking in behind the first human Spectre." I cocked my head to listen to the next segment of the briefing recording again and tapped out notes. It was like being back at school. A pang of homesickness shot through me. School, I wonder if they had figured out that I was missing by now, how long had it been? If time passed there as it was here, they must have given up looking for my body by now. Or maybe they had found a body. I shivered.

"Normandy to Liddle," Garrus repeated.

"Sorry, got lost in the recording for a second." I shook of the clinging cobwebs of the world I'd left behind for now.

"Oh yes, fascinating stuff. I see you've written 'The' fifteen times. I'm sure that'll get across your points about the landing's projected logistic needs."

Embarrassed, I realized that I had repeated the opening word of my sentence several times. I hurriedly erased it.

"As I was saying," Garrus returned to his original train of thought, "Looks like we're being tapped to go down again. Hopefully this time we don't end up running from drones with no radios again. Well, can't say I blame the Commander. When Shepard asked for the best snipers on the Normandy, I figured I'd just be going down by myself, but I guess Forrest isn't too bad a shot."

"Very funny," I replied halfheartedly. Loath as I was to admit it, but the thoughts of yet another on-foot ground mission so soon after the first coiled my guts. "Hey Garrus, you've got my back, right? If something bad goes down again?"

"Why, you planning a coup?" the Turian asked.

"No, it's just if I have to lead, I want to know someone down there is going to back me up."

"Not nervous are we, Deputy?" a hint of humor slipped into Garrus' voice.

"Garrus, we're sneaking into a Geth base to scout for high value targets for a marine attack. I'm sure you did that kind of thing all the time in C-Sec, but I grew up tending crops. Of course, I'm nervous."

"Ok, ok," the officer put up his hands in mock surrender, "Yes, I've got your back. Although to be honest," he continued slyly, "I wasn't even sure you'd be on the mission, what with that little scratch and all. I was certain you'd be hauled away for bedrest." He chuckled at his own little joke. "But since you're not, here, I have something for you. Garrus turned and tossed something heavy into my arms. It was a blue metal rectangle, rough and worn. Lines were etched in a familiar pattern.

"Ha, you're a real riot. What's this then?"

"I know you're new at this whole, 'soldier' thing, but I was sure you'd recognize a rifle." I looked down at the thing and flipped a catch. It folded out, not into the assault rifles I had been using, but a long rifle with a boxy scope. "That's an Elanus Risk Control Hammer," Garrus filled me in, "Picked it up off a pirate on a ship called the Majesty."

"I know what it is, but why are you handing it off to me." I hefted the weight of the rifle.

"Well, among the Turians, when a boy reaches manhood, he is presented with his first non-practice rifle. I think I remember you mentioning being in your mid-twenties, which makes you a little overdue. Plus, that peashooter of yours isn't exactly suited for covert ops."

"Well, thanks, I guess." I sighted down the length of the hold. The crosshairs drew a figure eight across the wall as my arm wobbled.

"That thing's loaded with dummy ammo if you want to take a few practice shots." Garrus offered. It turned out that I needed more than a few shots. Firing from standing or even kneeling left a lot to be desired.

"Well, perhaps if you braced it first," Garrus ribbed light heartedly. "I've got to say, your militia trainer needs a good talking to. You're lucky I'm coming along."

I was about to respond when Tali came storming past us. Her eyes were narrowed behind her mask, but she otherwise ignored us.

"What's up, Tali?" II asked, but the Quarian brushed me off with a flick of her hand. Garrus and I watched as she continued out of the hold.

"What was that all about?" Garrus asked.

I shrugged. Whatever it was, it would have to wait. Kaidan, Gorski, and Forrest descended in the elevator. The three of them headed in our direction with purpose.

"Thought I'd find you two down here. Mission's pretty much the same, but we're going to have to watch ourselves down here. Council records have Casbin marked as a Sanctuary world. Geth or no, we're going to have to be precise to prevent disturbing the formation of habitable ecosystem."

"So, you're saying we have to watch where we shoot in case we hit some plants?" I asked.

"Council rules," Kaidan said, "Look, I'm not saying you sacrifice yourself so that one day a flower will grow here, just keep it low impact. That means no grenades, and no incinerations."

"And if we run into armatures?" Garrus asked.

"We'll be loading Tungsten cored ammunition, but remember this is a scouting op. If we do our job right, we won't need to fire a shot."

"And what are the chances of that?" Garrus said knowingly.


The trip into the Hong system was mostly quiet. With the separation of the Normandy from the rest of the task force, the activity on the ship picked up in tempo. With the attack on the first outpost, the Geth had stepped up patrols through the system. On the bridge, Joker carefully threaded the Normandy through the net.

"Nice and easy, Joker." Commander Shepard stood at the console overlooking the galaxy map. The projector itself was displaying an image of the system, with Geth Ships shown in red.

"Uh, Commander?" Joker called back, "We're picking up some anomalous signals. Something's bouncing off the old surveillance satellites we put out around Theshaca."

"What kind of anom…" a burst of static screeched over the loud speakers. "Joker? What's going on?"

"Propulsion is offline, Commander." Shepard rushed up towards the bridge. I followed. Crewmen at their stations mashed buttons on their consoles, trying to get something to work. "It's worse than I thought." Joker filled us in as we arrived. "We're transmitting a distress signal."

"Well, shut it off," Shepard ordered.

"That's the thing, I can't shut it off." He turned to face us. "I can't do anything; something's locked me out of the Normandy's systems."

"With that beacon going off, the Geth will be all over us," Shepard said, "Liddle, get down to engineering, tell them to cut the power to the beacon manually."

"Yes, Ma'am." I ran back, but Shepard called after me.

"Hey Liddle, catch!" she tossed me one of the small ear radios. "Joker says internal communications are down." I slipped the radio over my ear and made for the engine room. At the entrance to the elevator, two engineers were attempting to pry open the doors.

"No luck, Deputy, elevator's stuck between floors."

"I need to get down to engineering," I said. The two engineers looked at each other.

"I guess you could try climbing down." One of the engineers said. "We'll get this open and you can make your way down."

"Great." The two plates that made up the door slid apart. Down in the hold, the lights had gone out. "Wish me luck." I activated the light on my Omni-tool and stepped out into empty space. The rails the elevator ran on where slick with oil, but I managed to make my way hand over hand down to the hold. "Anyone down here?" I asked, sweeping the dark room with my light.

"Over here." Garrus turned on his own light. The Turian was standing by the engineering room door. I've been trying to get this thing open; do you know what's going on?"

"I don't know, we picked up some signal, and then the Normandy went nuts." I filled him in. at that moment, the radio chirped.

"Deputy Liddle, did you make it down to engineering?"

"Yes, but the doors are locked down. Garrus and I are going to try and run a bypass." I nodded to Garrus. He activated his Omni-tool and held it over the locking mechanism. The door cracked open.

"Garrus? What's going on?" Tali asked from the other side.

"Sounds like you've got it open, listen, we've got a problem. Joker's found Geth runtimes in the Normandy computer. They completely overpowered our cyberwarfare package and spread through our systems."

"Sounds serious, Commander." Tali and Garrus forced the doors. In the dark of the engineering section, the drive core glowed eerily. The blue light illuminated Engineer Adams standing beside Dubyansky and one of the marines.

"Patch me through to Adams." Shepard ordered. A few words with the engineer and I was sitting in on a meeting with most of the senior members of the crew.

"So here's the situation," Shepard said, "the Geth have managed to infiltrate our computer systems. As far as we know, they have almost full control. Engineer Adams, any progress on the beacon?"

"We had to cut the lines to the external comms. to shut that thing up. My engineers have been completely unable to get back into our computers. We're lucky this virus, I'd guess you'd call it, hasn't vented the ship. The Quarian managed to isolate the exterior hatch controls."

"Commander, I have a suggestion," Tali piped in, "my people have found Geth programs to be almost unhackable, but they aren't invincible."

"What are you suggesting, Tali?" Kaidan asked.

"We starve it, cut the power. Once the circuits are clean, we load from backups."

"Is this possible?" Shepard asked. Adams spoke up.

"In theory, if we cut the power and run out the capacitors, the entire system would effectively reset. We'd be totally dead for a good few minutes though."

"Better dead in the water for minutes than the alternative. How long will it take to set up?"

"I can have it ready immediately." Adams said.

"We've got bigger problems, Commander." Joker said. "Geth drones inbound. Commander, without weapons and barriers, they'll tear us apart."

"Engineer Adams, prepare the shutdown immediately."

"And the drones?" Joker asked.

A long moment of silence filled the radios. Then, an idea struck me.

"Commander, this might sound a little crazy, but hear me out..."


Author's Note:

This chapter really needed some reediting, and I hope you'll agree that it now reads much better now that it's been streamlined.

-Liddle Out