If It Meant Living: Mass Effect 1

6: Thorian

Fai Dan pulled the trigger and blew his brains out.

Shit.  She had worked her ass off not killing the crazy possessed colonists, even violating one of her most basic rules:  Whenever possible, try to kill someone who is shooting at you.  Then their revered leader goes and blows his brains out and ruins the whole thing.

This entire mission had been an unmitigated disaster from the start…. 

***

Following the rescue of Liara from Therum Shepard’s hopes had been high that she was on the right path.  That high quickly faded as it became obvious that Liara was not going to be of much direct assistance with Saren.  Oh, Shepard knew much more about the Protheans now, which wasn't a bad thing in and of itself – she was sure it would come in handy one day.  But Liara hadn't spoken to Benezia in several years and simply didn't know a damn thing about Saren. 

She needed to find Saren and make good on her promise to kill him.  Barring that, she needed to find the Conduit and destroy it.  Barring that, she needed to find a weapon to use against the Reapers.  If all of those plans fell through, she needed to find a quiet place with a view to sit back and watch the destruction of all sentient life. 

She sighed.  Not really.  She would fight no matter what.  The odds never truly mattered in the games of life and death.  She would fight as long as there was the smallest chance of victory.  Of course that wasn't exactly Plan A.  Saren.  Conduit.  Weapon.

The problem was Shepard could see no direct path or action to take on Master Plan A at the moment.

So it was back to the Geth.  In the absence of a direct pathway to her goal, she went back to what had been working – well, what had been productive anyway.  She ran around the galaxy killing Geth.    These days it seemed that was all she did.  It was fun, no doubt about it.  She sighed, again.  She wasn't actually on this mission to have fun.  Mostly. 

Feros was infested with Geth – they had practically set up house here.  So to Feros she had gone.

***

They had been on the ground for all of ten minutes when Shepard had decided that these colonists were – what was that ancient movie Riley had insisted they watch on Halloween?  Invasion of the Body Snatchers?  That was it.  She hadn't known these colonists before… whatever happened to them, but she was fairly certain they had been body snatched and replaced with pod people. 

Putting aside the crazy pod people for the time being, they had killed all the Geth.  Again.

Now she needed to deal with one ancient mind-controlling plant.  At her request, Wrex was checking on the hopefully unconscious colonists.  He didn’t much appreciate the assignment – “I’m not a damn nurse Shepard.”  He had done it anyway; she could hear him grumbling from around the corner. 

She walked up to the crane controls and stared at the bank of buttons, dials and levers in bewilderment.  Shepard was very, very good at a great many things, and bad at only a few.  She was bad at tech.  She sighed.  Kaidan would have this thing moving in 5 seconds flat.  For at least the fifth time today she asked herself why she hadn’t brought him.

She hadn’t brought him because Wrex was going bat-shit stir-crazy sitting in the ship; she was beginning to worry he would shoot a hole in the hull just to get out.  It wasn’t fair to keep him cooped up.  She hadn’t brought him because it was important to get all her crew out and fighting and gaining experience against the enemy; one never knew when they would need it.  Mostly, though, she hadn’t brought him because she was disturbed by his propensity to distract her, and she hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet.