Chapter Text
"Here's to Robbo, he's true blue. He's a piss pot through and through! He's a bastard, so they say! He tried to go to heaven but he went the other way he went down, down, down, down, ay!"
Shepard laughs at the cheers of her crew, the drinking song she'd taught them having been sung at few crewmen tonight. They were nestled in a safe corner of the galaxy, safe enough from the Turians that they could unwind, barest hints of a skeleton crew keeping the Mockingbird going. Tomorrow they'd make a (probably suicide) attempt at sneaking through the Mass Relay to launch a surprise attack on a Turian ship attempting to make a drop on Demeter. The information had put wind in their hypothetical sails, though the higher-ups refused to pass down how they got it. It was rare they got the drop on the dinosaurs, but damn it if Samira Shepard wasn't going to try.
"Here's a question for ya-" Roberts slams his empty bottle down on the table, pulling a new one from the crate on the floor. "-whaddoya reckon, ten bucks says I'm right, but I think that churians lay eggs."
A groan echoes around the room, and Shepard chuckles, taking a sip of her beer. She's been working on the same one for the past three hours. As Commander, she needed to keep a clear head in the unlikely even something happened.
"No, hear me out, oi!" Roberts continues as Llewellyn flicks a beer cap at his head. "Female Turians ain't got breasts. Mammals do."
"Roberts, I didn't know you majored in xenobiology." There are teasing laughs all around at Shepard's words. It's one of the reasons this crew does so well-their C.O. isn't afraid to mingle with them and treat them as friends and comrades Instead of lording over them in her superiority. "Cats don't have breasts, either. Sure, the females have nipples, but they're mammals. What's to say Turians don't fall under the same biology? It'd be a hell of a lot easier not having to strap 'em down."
"Commander, with all due respect, you've got a great pair o'knockers and it's a shame you gotta hide 'em." Michaels croons to Shepard's left, twirling a strand of hair around her finger and fluttering her lashes, leaning on the two back legs of her chair. Drunk as she is, it just ends up being hilarious and they all fall about themselves in laughter.
"C'est la vie, Michaels. If there weren't regs, in another life, all that jazz." Shepard toes Michaels' chair with the tip of her boot, smirking when the sergeant flails and grabs the table to right herself.
Whatever Michaels is about to say in response is lost in the sound of a klaxon and the flashing of red lights. Shepard's stomach drops through the floor as her heart climbs into her throat. They were under attack and ninety percent of her crew was sprawled drunk.
"Traynor, sit rep." Bottle forgotten as Shepard activates her omni-tool, hailing the communications manager of the skeleton crew.
"Short range EMP, took out most of our systems, including propulsion thrusters. Firing up a work around now, but ladar shows an approaching Turian vessel." The Specialist sounds deceptively calm, but Shepard's spent enough time with her to know that deceptively calm means internally panicked.
"Is it the vessel we were meant to be taking out tomorrow?" Shepard's running through scenarios, trying to determine how best to get her crew out alive.
"Unknown, Commander. Which course of action should we take?" Her drunken crew is trying to scramble themselves together, but she knows it's no use. With a steady curse of expletives, she turns to them.
"Get yourselves to the escape pods. None of you are in any condition to be fighting if we're boarded nor operate any of the battery weapons or systems. You'll wait there until I either give the all clear to come out or tell you to launch. Understood?"
She's met with a rumble of slurred yes ma'am's and roger that's as they file out the door.
"Traynor, anyone on skeleton familiar with the battery?" She leaves the lift for her incapacitated comrades, taking the maintenance ladders between decks instead.
"Jenkins, ma'am." Traynor replies after a moment, just as Shepard heaves herself out of the hatch.
"Good, send him to the battery and tell him to wait for my command. Who's our standby pilot?"
"Cortez, but he went down to the medbay with a stomach bug two hours ago." Traynor's flicking through the files as Shepard comes up behind her, frowning. "Awad is our next option but her test scores ranked better for transportation than aggressive encounters."
"Never mind that, I'll get in the pilot's seat, get the drive systems online." Shepard had slowly sipped a little more than a quarter of her beer over three hours. She really hoped it wouldn't impede her reaction time as she settled into the pilot's seat, logging on and switching off the autopilot. "You got internal communications back up?"
"Just about-- yes, it's up. You're live, Commander."
"This is Commander Shepard. We're currently in the trajectory of a Turian frigate that doesn't seem to be slowing, and it's unlikely they're coming 'round for tea." Shepard starts, one hand keeping the ship level, the other scrolling through a list of downed systems with a frown. "Everyone who was drinking tonight, anyone in the medbay or non-combat essential, I want you in an escape pod until either I give the all clear or tell you to launch. If I see even one person with a blood alcohol level above 0.00 handling a weapon or equipment, you're all getting grounded when we next dock. Jenkins, you better be in the Battery by now. Adams, work with Traynor to try and get our propulsions and FTL online so we can hightail out of here-let me know the minute it's back up. Shepard out."
This was going to be a long night.
Or perhaps a relatively short one, considering that it took all of twenty minutes for the shit to hit the fan. Shepard swears as she just narrowly ducks an exploding panel, clamping shut the last seals on her armour and slipping on her breather helmet as she shouts over the evacuation alarms at the frozen lieutenant, staring in fear at the cracks racing the hull. The frigate's weapons had cut through the Mockingbird's defenses like a warm knife through butter, and she'd given it all of ten precious minutes trying to salvage them before swearing a streak that'd make the Devil himself blush, slamming the evac alarms.
She and Traynor are the last ones on deck, the last ones into the pod. It's the only one left, the others already through the Mass Relay and on their pre-programmed path to Earth. Just one to go, Shepard, you can do it. Not one casualty so far.
"In, Traynor, move it!" Shepard pushes the specialist in first, following herself a moment later and slamming a fist on the airlock.
"Malfunction detected. Unable to launch."
The V.I.'s programmed pleasant voice sounds like a gong in her helmet, and Shepard swears, on her feet and out of the pod to rapidly tap at the console outside.
"Donnelly, how do I fix this?" She calls to the engineer. Drunk he may be, but he was surprisingly quick to move to the panel and, squinting in concentration, scanning through the information.
"It's a simple hotwiring job, Commander." He shouts over the explosions around them, Scottish brogue only slightly slurred. The explosions would be silent balls of fury once the pod left the mass effect field but as long as they remained attached to the Mockingbird, they'd be loud and dangerous. Donnelly hesitates, and Shepard is about to snap that they don't have time and the frigate is closing in, before speaking. "It has to be done from out here, but as soon as it's done the doors will snap shut."
Meaning no time for whoever's outside to make a quick leap in and escape. Shepard allows herself a brief moment to close her eyes, lips moving in a silent Hail Mary, before shoving Donnelly back into the pod, fingers pulling off the panel. "Talk me through it, Donnelly, what am I looking for?"
A captain will go down with her ship. Commander. Whatever. In a heartbeat, she has the two wires she needs and it feels like a lifetime before she looks up. Traynor is watching her with wet eyes, but Shepard can't muster up a smile. She's going to die, but they're going to live. That's all that matters.
"Commander is there anyone waiting for you?" Traynor asks in a rush, leaning forward against her belt as though ready to jump out. Shepard lets a dry laugh drop from her lips.
"You've read my file, Traynor, you know the answer to that."
"There will be now." The conviction is almost believable, and Shepard indulges her with a nod, taking a deep breath and crossing the wires.
The airlock snaps shut and the pod unlatches, blasting towards the mass relay.
Shepard realizes a second too late that the airlock doors for the pod had shut, but not the Mockingbird’s, and all at once she's surrounded by staggering silence, her own ragged breathing, and endless stars as she’s sucked out with the sudden depressurization. There's a Turian frigate looming silently in the corner of her vision, but she closes her eyes, pretending she's back in anti-grav training for the N7.
It must be a good five minutes before she’s aware she’s stuck on a piece of debris. She can’t bring herself to care enough to open her eyes, at least, not until another piece knocks the first. It frees her, and she rolls her closed eyes to the silence. Not even her death could be problem free.
Its then she becomes aware of the quiet hissing. Her hands fly to the back of her head-- fuck fuck fuck that's her oxygen tube, it must’ve been yanked out when she was dislodged, breathing is getting harder and she's trying not to panic but she can't get her hose to reattach, each gasping breath more painful than the last. Before her last breath, she thinks she sees a blue figure in the corner of her blackening vision.