Chapter Text
Maggie Shepard stared wistfully out the window of her little prefab office on Eden Prime. It was a beautiful spring day, perfect weather, but she was not allowed to enjoy it, yet. Instead, she was stuck looking over reports and instructions, making sure every goddamn detail was perfect for the arrival of the SSV Normandy.
A human-turian collaboration, the first of its kind, the Normandy was on its shakedown cruise and headed for Eden Prime to pick up a very important artefact Maggie and her team had dug up several weeks ago. An honest to god Prothean beacon. As far as she knew, the last beacon humanity, or anyone, had uncovered had been the one on Mars thirty-odd years ago.
Now that her team had finished their initial study, the Citadel Council had demanded it be brought to them. And they’d sent the bloody Normandy to deliver it.
She’d had mixed emotions about the whole thing since she’d gotten the call.
On one hand, she and the Normandy's pilot, Jeff "Joker" Moreau, had been best friends since they were ten. And her CO, David Anderson was one of her favorite people in the galaxy. Hell, he was practically an uncle to her. On the other hand, she’d have been happy to never see or hear from Anderson’s XO ever again.
No, that wasn’t fair.
Her problem wasn’t with Kaidan Alenko himself. After all, he’d saved her life once. Her real problem was that that day was the worst day of her life, and every time she saw him or his name, she was reminded of it.
She shook herself from her thoughts before she took a nosedive down a rabbithole of tragedy. She had a lot to do to make sure this day went the way it was supposed to, and wallowing in the past wasn’t going to help her get that done. And when she saw him…
A ping on her omni-tool pulled her firmly into the present. The Normandy was twenty minutes out.
Showtime.
But she’d barely pushed her seat back from her desk when a nearby explosion sent Maggie flying across the room.
She picked herself up off the floor and shook her head again, nearly convinced she was having a flashback. It was preferable to the alternative: raiders had ventured into Council space and Eden Prime was under attack.
She slapped herself in the face, the sting of it keeping her focused. She had to get back to her own hut and retrieve her weapons. As much as she wanted to, she knew she couldn’t rely solely on her biotics. If this attack was anything like Elysium, the fight could go on for days.
But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. The Normandy was minutes out, and the colony wasn’t without its own complement of soldiers.
A look out the window showed the coast was clear, for the moment, though she could already see bodies scattered across the courtyard. Whoever had invaded was probably still close by. She’d have to be quick and quiet.
She yelped when someone knocked on the door just as she reached to open it. She withdrew her hand and kept quiet. She knew from experience that raiders often pretended to be victims to gain entrance to locked rooms and buildings.
“Maggie!” a panicked voice called through the door. “For God’s sake! Let me in, Maggie!”
It sounded like her colleague, Dinah Blake, but she couldn’t be sure.
Another knock and Dinah was nearly hysterical. “Maggie! They’re coming! They’re gonna—”
And then she was gone. Maggie could hear Dinah’s screams fading as she was presumably dragged away.
Maggie sank to the ground and hugged her knees to her chest. Maybe it would be better if she just stayed put. She wasn’t a soldier—no one would blame her for not joining in the fight.
Right?
No. Raid or not, she still had a job to do. And that job was more important than ever—she couldn’t let that beacon fall into the wrong hands.
Steeling herself for what lay outside the relative safety of her office, she cracked the door open and glanced around the courtyard. Whoever had dragged Dinah away had clearly decided she’d been alone. Or they were laying in wait.
It didn’t matter. Maggie knew she had to get to her hut, get her weapons and then get to that beacon.
She dodged and weaved around and under several buildings until she reached the comfort of her hut. She couldn’t stay long, but she took several moments to breathe. It wouldn’t help anything if she had a panic attack.
Far sooner than she’d have liked, but probably later than she should have, she retrieved the armor and shotgun her father had given her when she’d taken the Eden Prime assignment. She’d questioned the gifts at the time, but now…
Cautiously, she exited the hut and slowly made her way toward the dig site where her team had uncovered the beacon.
A series of explosions sent her scrambling in the opposite direction of the dig site, back toward the farms.
She still had yet to see a single raider. She’d only seen dead bodies and some strange spikes which she refused to look at any closer than necessary, for fear of what was on them.
Attempting to go back the way she’d come, she hid behind a pillar when she heard clicks and whirring noises coming from nearby. She ventured a glance around the corner and bit back a scream as several large robots with what looked like flashlights for heads walked past her, each dragging a human behind them.
As soon as they’d passed, she ran for a group of boulders and fallen pillars, ducking behind one just as something shattered the rock above her head. She peered over the top of her hiding place and ducked down immediately as a group of drones pinned her down with laserfire.
She ventured a glance as the laserfire ceased momentarily, took aim with her shotgun and blasted one out of the air. The others resumed firing and she ducked back down, wondering how the hell she was going to get out of this one. She only had so much ammo and she wasn’t sure how effective her biotics would be against drones.
Another pause and she fired again, missing one drone but hitting another with a second shot. This one didn’t fall but began firing erratically, nearly taking out one of its fellows as well as most of the pillar Maggie hid behind.
She moved to the fallen pillar to her left, only to have it explode in her face. She lay stunned for several seconds before she got to her feet, sprinted and ducked behind a boulder, slumping down against it to catch her breath.
She looked up the hill in front of her and narrowed her eyes as she saw movement several yards away. Too far for the drones to sense, but coming closer.
After a minute of staring, she realized they were three humans, Alliance soldiers at that. All three wore helmets, but even from a distance she could make out the distinct N7 emblazoned on the chest and helmet of the tallest figure.
Alenko or Anderson. Had to be. There were no N7 soldiers stationed on Eden Prime and the Normandy was the only ship scheduled to be in the area.
A small explosion hit between Maggie and the soldiers, forcing her attention back to the drones. They had moved closer, apparently now aware of the new targets. She didn’t dare move again, for fear they’d turn their attention back to her—at this range, that would be lethal.
A couple of biotic overloads from the N7—it was Alenko then—and some well-placed shots from the other two and the drones were nothing but electric confetti in a couple of minutes.
Still, Maggie didn’t move, even as shrapnel rained down around her.
Alenko seemed to be deep in conversation with one of the other soldiers as they approached her—the third looked almost dazed even with the helmet.
“Dr. Shepard?” Alenko removed his helmet as he crouched in front of her. The others must have done the same but Maggie couldn’t see them. She couldn’t see anything or anyone except him. A thread of panic shot through her and memories rushed back of the first time they’d met, in a nearly identical position, only this time, she wasn’t covered in her husband’s blood, cradling his lifeless body in her arms.
“Dr. Shepard?” A firm hand on her shoulder shook Maggie back to reality. “Dr. Shepard, are you all right?”
She nodded slowly, still feeling somewhat numb as she stared at Alenko. “I’m alive, if that counts for anything. Guess I’m doing better than most of the rest of the colony anyway.”
One of the soldiers, the one who’d looked as though they were in a daze, let out a choked sob. Maggie raised an eyebrow at Alenko.
“Gunnery Chief Jenkins,” he said quietly. “This is his home colony; his parents own one of the farms.”
“Shit.” She batted Alenko away from checking the shrapnel wounds on her arms and crawled over to sit beside Jenkins as he kept watch. “Hey. Richard, right? I’m Maggie. I knew… know your parents. Their bees have the best honey I’ve ever tasted.”
Jenkins seemed to acknowledge her with a faint hum but continued staring out into the distance.
“Do you know what happened, how this started?” Alenko asked as he moved over to continue checking her injuries.
She shook her head. “Not a damn clue. I was in my office, getting ready to head to the spaceport when I got the notification that you were close to landing. Next second, explosions and…” She shivered violently as she remembered the sounds of poor Dinah being dragged away. “At first, I thought it was another pirate raid, like…”
“Yeah.” Alenko took her face in his hands for a moment, murmuring apologies when she hissed as his gloves scraped over fresh wounds. “We received a distress signal and a shaky vid, little more than people running for their lives, but no shots of who or what was attacking. Except a giant ship landing near the spaceport. And we’ve only run into drones so far.”
“Haven’t seen a ship, giant or otherwise today. Did see a few robots just before the drones pinned me down.” Maggie frowned, a vague memory from school, but it didn’t seem possible, from what she remembered. “They looked like… Geth.”
“Geth?” The third soldier, a dark haired woman, scoffed from her place at the other end of the fallen pillar. “Couldn’t have been. They haven’t been seen outside the Perseus Veil in—”
“200 years,” Maggie said irritably. “Yeah, I know. I also know what I saw.”
Alenko glanced between the two of them and shook his head slightly. “Dr. Maggie Shepard, meet Lt. Ashley Williams.”
Maggie nodded curtly, as did Lt. Williams before she turned back to her post.
“Speaking of what you saw,” Alenko said as he retrieved a first aid kit from his pack, “have you seen a turian Spectre around here?”
Maggie shook her head. “No, no turians on Eden Prime. Couple of archaeology-minded asari stop by occasionally, but no other aliens. Dunno I’d know what a Spectre looked like if I saw ‘im anyway.”
“You’d know this one,” Williams said. “Walks like he’s got a whole tree trunk stuck up his ass.”
Alenko looked like he wanted to argue the description but decided against it. “He’s… intense.”
“He’s brilliant!” Everyone turned in surprise at Jenkins’ exclamation, but he’d already returned to gazing intently across the hills.
Maggie shrugged. “Sorry, no turians, intense and Spectre-y, brilliant or otherwise.”
“Damn.” Alenko popped a pack of medi-gel and spread it over several places on Maggie’s face. “Couple of these look bad, but it’s the best I can do ‘til we get you back to the Normandy.”
Before Maggie could argue that she wasn’t getting on his ship, Williams spoke up. “We should get moving soon. I think I see movement up ahead, but I can’t tell from this distance whether they’re friendlies or not.”
“Betting on not,” Maggie muttered as she begrudgingly accepted Alenko’s help in getting to her feet. “Where are we headed?”
“Our top priority is still the beacon,” Alenko said, taking up a position behind her as Jenkins walked beside her and Williams moved in front. “We’ll try to save as many of the colonists as possible but…”
Maggie nodded. “I had a similar thought earlier, which is how I got stuck out here instead of staying in my office.”
“You’d be dead if you stayed in your office,” Williams said over her shoulder as they moved out. “As far as we’ve seen, damn near all the buildings on this side were destroyed.”
“Damn. We should head to the dig site. We were going to move the beacon this morning but not until you got here.”
“No point going there,” Alenko said. “The last we heard from Nihlus, that’s our turian, the dig site was empty. No people, no beacon.”
“Shit. Somebody must have moved it then. Let’s hope it’s at the spaceport. Can’t think of anywhere else they’d take it.”
Conversation ceased for the next few minutes as they came across a group of Geth and what vaguely passed for humans… zombies of some kind. Up another hill and they bore witness to exactly how the “zombies” came to be: humans, still alive, forced onto spikes by the Geth and other zombies.
“There has to be something else at work here,” Alenko said as they moved on to several burnt-out structures. “It can’t just be the Geth.”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked, glad of the conversation to keep from dwelling on the spikes.
“It just seems odd that the Geth would attack, unprovoked, and a human colony. We weren’t part of the galactic community the last time they were seen outside the Veil.”
“So someone must be leading them,” Maggie said. “But who?”
They saw exactly who as they crested the next hill: a heavily-scarred turian, silvery white coloring blending nearly seamlessly with metallic armor, barked orders at a group of Geth before he was whisked out of sight on a flying disc.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb,” Maggie said after they’d fought off the group of Geth, “and say that’s not the turian you’re looking for.”
“Definitely not,” Alenko said. “Nihlus is—”
A shout from Williams drew their attention to the departure platform of the transport station. She stood over the body of a second turian, this one darker in both markings and armor, and decidedly dead. Dark blue blood pooled under him from a sizable gunshot to the back of the head.
Alenko swore under his breath, muttering about how he never should have let Nihlus go off on his own.
“This wasn’t your fault, Commander,” Jenkins said, clearly crestfallen but resolute in his statement.
“He’s right,” Williams added. “Nihlus was gonna do what he wanted, protocol be damned.”
Alenko hummed in response before turning to Maggie. “What’s the fastest way to the spaceport?”
“As long as that other turian bastard hasn’t locked the controls, this tram will take us straight there,” she said, walking to the car waiting at the end of the track. When the car started down the track without a hitch, she let out a small cheer, earning her a laugh from Alenko and Jenkins and an eye roll from Williams. “Now, let’s hope we’re not too late to save that beacon!”
Geth swarmed the track and platform as the tram pulled into the station outside the spaceport. Maggie tried to help fight them off as best she could, but she spent most of the battle dodging bullets and shielding Jenkins.
With the last of the geth dispatched, the group sprinted to the lone dock on the other side of the spaceport. Maggie heaved a sigh of relief as she spotted a familiar pillar across the way—they’d caught up to the beacon at last.
But something was wrong. When they’d dug it up, even when they’d studied it for all those long weeks, it had stayed dormant. But now, it was glowing, humming… almost alive .
While Williams and Jenkins stood watch and Alenko contacted the Normandy, Maggie approached the beacon with a sense of trepidation. For all her archaeological curiosity, she wasn’t stupid. She knew it was dangerous, and more so now that it was activated. As she inched closer, she could feel the energy rolling off it, almost as if it was pulling her toward it.
And then it was. She was caught in some sort of field, trapped at least a foot above the ground, unable to move even a finger. She couldn’t even scream, but from the shouts below her, Alenko and the others had noticed anyway.
After a few seconds, her surroundings faded and she saw images of war, explosions, death; she could hear a message of some sort, but she couldn’t make out what it said. Even without knowing the words, she could still hear the tone. It was a warning to those who came after the Protheans.
Just as suddenly as the images and message had appeared, they faded to darkness, moments before the world seemed to explode in pain and bright lights for several seconds and then it all went dark and Maggie felt nothing.