If It Meant Living: Mass Effect 1

5: Liara

Shepard sat in the dark, the small desk lamp the only source of light.  The Normandy was hers.  Fortunately or not so much, depending on one's perspective, so likely was the fate of the galaxy.

The adrenaline rush of becoming the first human Spectre and of overnight becoming the Captain of the most advanced warship in the Alliance fleet had long since worn off.  Now the hard work began.  That was fine – she didn’t actually mind hard work so long as it was in pursuit of a tangible goal.  She stared again at the long-range scans of Therum, studying the unmistakable markings of sentient activity.  Tomorrow morning they would drop the Mako near those markings.

She had a number of leads to pursue – rumors of Geth activity here, colonies dropping out of contact there.  But simply killing more Geth wasn't the quick path to Saren and the Conduit.  She needed leverage.  Human leverage, for lack of a better term.  As a result their first stop was the daughter of Matriarch Benezia, the apparent right hand of Saren.

She sighed, wondered how life had gotten so damn complicated and then remembered that she had asked for it, fought for it and worked for it her entire life.  She turned off the light to get some sleep.

She dreamed of blood and death and the ruin of the galaxy.

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The Mako flew over the top of the hill.  She giggled in delight.  The dark thoughts from the night before were quickly forgotten in favor of the visceral fun  of driving her new little tank.  Williams stared out the tiny window and tried very hard not to appear awe-struck at the strange, red, alien world.  Alenko did not stare out the tiny window and worked very hard at not appearing like he was about to be sick.

Garrus and Wrex were back on the ship, likely sulking.  Too bad.  Her logic was impeccable.  She needed Alenko to keep her alive and to pick all the locks.  Neither Garrus nor Wrex could offer both those skills in a single package.  But since she then had two biotics, she needed a big gun.  And while the two testosterone-filled aliens – were male aliens actually filled with testosterone or something altogether different? – would be loath to admit it, Ashley simply had the biggest guns.  The Mako only held three passengers, so that was that.

Besides, she liked Ashley’s company.  The young woman was perhaps a bit provincial and definitely ignorant of many of the complexities of the finer species of the galaxy, but she always said exactly what she thought, usually with aplomb, and approached most encounters with zeal and a bit of a devil-may-care attitude.  That was something Shepard appreciated to no end.  She liked Alenko’s company too.  That was a different matter.  One which she was not going to discuss.  Nope.  No way.  No sirree.  Not on a bet.

As she struggled to obey her declaration a Geth dropship buzzed the Mako and dropped its cargo just over the ridge.  Oh thank god.

Until a week ago, no one had seen a Geth in over two hundred years – now they were falling out of the sky like flies.  This surely couldn’t be good for the health of the galaxy.  On the other hand they were fun to kill.  Consisting of nothing but logic circuits, they were predictable.  Given a static playfield they would move exactly the same way in exactly the same order every single time – the logical way.  She was going to enjoy playing with them.

One hard-fought hour and an astonishing number of Geth crawlers (she didn’t know what the hell else to call the four-legged variety) later, they reached the bulls eye on the map, an underground Prothean ruin.  Shepard wasn’t optimistic; with the number of Geth here it was exceedingly likely that Dr. Tsoni was either dead or working with Saren.  Of course if she was working with Saren, that would create its own advantages.