Spectre's Base

Kass brought her ship into a holding pattern around the 3-Heron dockyard and pulled up her scopes while she waited, zooming in on the collapsed section. It was small, a thin scar less than ten metres across. Something had slipped through Central-1's grid and impacted on the side of the station in a million-to-one, unforeseeable accident. According to the report, all four of the workers the station had in there at the time were killed instantly.

"2171-SD, come in please." This was a new voice - human, not synthesised, officious and, based on his decision to use her shuttle code and not her name, busy and rude. 

"Go for 2171-SD," she replied, after an unnecessarily long pause. 

"We weren't expecting you so soon," he said. 

"Safin-Daniels ensures immediate response to high-priority clients like the Central Network," January rattled off, quoting verbatim from the pamphlet Central Network's upper management would have been given thirty years ago when they took out their insurance. It was a very reliable pamphlet.

"Well, yes but… It's just that we haven't cleared the site yet," he said, starting to sound a bit apologetic. "Search and Rescue only finished an hour ago and there are still dead bodies down there." He whispered the words like he was afraid of them, and January wondered where it was on the station he lived that he hadn't seen a corpse before.

"The fresher the better," January muttered before hitting the comms switch again. "That's not a problem, Central-1. If you could clear me for a berth and have someone direct me, that would be great."

There was a pause before the amber light on her HUD turned green and she could guide the ship out of the holding pattern and into the docking hub, letting the autopilot take over for the tricky landing manouevre while she buttoned up her jumpsuit and checked her hair in the dull reflective surface of the metal wall. 

The man who met her at the last junction before the sealed off maintenance section looked exactly how she expected after hearing his voice on the radio: short and sweaty in an expensive suit and uncomfortable expression. His name was Salder, and he was anxious for her to finish as soon as possible. Apart from the pop-up pressure seal that divided the wrecked portion of the room, Supply and Utility Maintenance access hatch 73 looked just like any other - a functional, bare metal structure welded to the next functional, bare metal structure in a long chain that allowed entrance to the warren of tunnels that riddled the station. They looked exactly like the SUM hatches on Central-5, where January had been last month, and Luna-7, where she had found explosives residue that exposed the Cassarn Syndicate's insurance fraud. The first thing she noticed were the three body bags.

"Where's the fourth?" she asked. "The report said four men died, I only see three."

Salder pointed to the unzipped empty body bag. "Perhaps you'd better take a look."

January frowned, but did what he said and lifted the flap of the black bag. "Ah," she said, about the severed leg sitting there. 

"That's all they managed to find," Salder said. He was resolutely looking the other way, and January thought about kicking him with the severed leg for a second. She put the thought, however tempting, out of her mind and looked at the sealed section. It was a pretty open-and-shut case. As much as she'd like to ruin more of Salder's day, it was a textbook act-of-God meteor incident. She was getting back to her feet when she heard a soft crackling sound. She paused, and it stopped for a moment, and then came back.

"If you'd care to - "

" Shush ," January hissed, waving a hand at Salder until he closed his mouth. 

There it was again: crackle, silence, crackle, silence.

"You hear that?" she asked.

"No?" Salder said, looking at her dumbly. January shushed him again and followed the sound, stepping as softly as she could on the rubberised floor so she didn't drown it out.

"There!" 

The sound was spilling from an almost-closed zip on one of the body bags, and January knelt to open it properly. The man inside was, of course, stone dead, but his radio wasn't. She grabbed it from the hook on his belt and clicked down the push-to-talk.

"Hello?" 

The crackle changed in intensity, and if she listened carefully she could make out what could be a voice. The radio was damaged, probably by the crushing force of the metal walls slamming together that had killed its owner, but maybe one of the others still worked. The first body she checked had lost his radio along with most of his right side, but the second one was intact. It had been switched off, presumably by the SAR crew, but as soon as she turned it on she heard him: the missing three quarters of the man who was supposed to be dead.

"Do you copy?" he asked. January could tell his voice was hoarse even through the tinny radio speaker.

"I read you," she said. "Where are you?"

"Not really sure," he said. "Last I remember I was near the airlock, but I think the crash threw me around a bit and I was unconscious for… I guess a while."

January checked her watch. He had been trapped for seven hours, which was more than enough time for him to bleed to death from his injuries, but other than his scratchy voice he didn't even sound hurt.

"Are you… injured?" she asked, looking over at his severed leg. 

"My leg hurts."

"The left one?" January asked.

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Call it intuition," January said. There must be something pressing up against the remains of his leg, stemming the bleeding enough for him to stay alive. Salder looked a little green. "My name's Kass," she said.

"Bennett," he said. That was Bennett Anto, the maintenance co-ordinator. "Did any of my guys make it out? I've been trying to contact them since I woke up, but you answered so I guess…"

"Sorry," January offered. Bennett didn't reply for a moment.

"I can't move, Kass." His voice sounded different now. Choked. Afraid.

"That's alright, Bennett," she said, as reassuringly as she could. "We'll send someone in to cut you out. 

"I don't think you will," he said. "There's something I haven't told you."

"What's that?" 

"There's a support strut that sheared in the crash. Every couple of seconds it shifts a few centimetres. I probably only have about a minute and a half left before it hits me."

"Shit," January breathed. She knew the specifications: each support strut weighed half a ton and was made of galvanised steel. 

"Yeah."

"You can't move?"

"No. The best I've got is deciding which side of my head it goes through."

There was no time to send a crew in, especially when they didn't know where he was. Likewise, there was no way to stop the strut. If they could place a shaped charge in the right place, they might be able to redirect it - except they didn't have the time. There was nothing they could do except stand there and wait. Salder turned to leave, but January grabbed his arm.

"Don't you dare," she said. He swallowed. All the colour drained out of his face, but he nodded.

"I'm sorry, Bennett," January said. "I don't think there's anything we can do."

"I know," he said. "I've known since I saw it start moving. 'I will see my fate, and I will greet it, and I will not be afraid.'"

January paused and frowned. "What is that?" she asked Salder. "Is that scripture?"

He nodded. "Neo-Latin Revivalist," he said. "There's a whole mess of them down a couple levels."

January clicked the push-to-talk button again. "I respect that," she said, a little weakly. Religion and the faithful always made her a little uneasy. In her world, a life was forfeit so easily: an acetylene torch left on, a loose wire, industrial sabotage, a locked door left open, poor pressure seal maintenance… the list of sad and empty ways to die was endless. To find meaning in any of it felt so forced and unnatural to her.

"Just one problem," Bennett said. "I'm still shit-scared."

"Easier said than done, right?"

"I guess," he said. "I thought I could accept this in silence, you know? Be a stoic." His voice was getting strained, and he was speaking faster. January guessed the steel strut had moved again and gritted her teeth. "I only picked up the radio to say goodbye to my guys, but… well, you know. I think I'd be a screaming wreck right now if I was still alone."

January didn't know what to say to that. She glanced over at Salder, sweating uselessly next to her. She thought about handing the radio over to him but the idea of hearing someone from the executive class telling a doomed man he was thankful for his service made her feel a bit sick. 

"I'm sorry they couldn't save you," she said, in the end.

"That's alright. Just one of those things." 

There was a long pause. Salder wiped the sweat from his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. January tried desperately to think of something reassuring to say in the last few seconds of a fellow human being's life and came up empty.

"Okay," Bennett said, his voice tight with fear. "Next time it moves, I'm gone. So, I guess I'll sign off now."

"No," January said quickly. He needed someone with him, she was sure of that. "Leave it transmitting. I'll be here for… for the end."

There was silence for a moment, and then the radio crackled as Bennett held down the push-to-talk. 

"Thanks," he murmurred. 

January said nothing, and waited. 

It took four seconds. There was a brief scrape of metal on metal, and then silence as Bennett's lifeless finger slipped from the button. It was over. 

"It's open," came a familiar voice from inside. Shepard was too tired to place it, but as soon as the door opened her face split into a wide grin.

"Doctor Chakwas!" 

"Hello, Commander," the doctor said. She was far too professional to give Shepard the hug she so sorely needed, but her wry smile was good enough for now. 

"What are you doing here? I never thought you'd work for Cerberus," Shepard asked.

Chakwas' expression turned hard. "I don't work for Cerberus, I work for you. I took a leave of absence from the Alliance to volunteer for Sirta."

Shepard looked at her properly - unlike the other personnel, Chakwas was wearing a red medical jumpsuit emblazoned with the Sirta Foundation icon. She nodded. "That's good. At least someone here isn't on the payroll."

Chakwas activated her omni-tool and started scanning Shepard with a warm orange beam that prickled slightly against her skin. "You don't trust them?" she asked.

"What are you doing?" Shepard asked, instead of answering. 

"I'm scanning your implants for rejection," Chakwas replied, frowning at the readout on her wrist. "And I don't like what I see, Commander."

"I'm fine," Shepard said, standing up straight and clasping her hands behind her back in case any of the crew happened to look through the window. Chakwas noticed, like Shepard knew she would. Put on a face, the world is watching.

"Rejection sensitivity will present as scarring," Chakwas said. "Which will hurt."

Shepard nodded. It already did, but she didn't need to say that out loud for Cerberus' bugs to hear. 

"Other than that, you're the picture of health. You should get some rest though."

Shepard snorted. "Your scans told you I'm sleepy ?" 

Chakwas smiled. "No, your eyes told me that. I imagine Cerberus has had you running around shooting things, against my medical recommendations?"

Shepard shrugged. "It's what they need me for," she said, failing to keep the bitterness out of her voice. 

"No, they need you to lead , Commander," Chakwas insisted, and switched off her omni-tool with a sigh. "Would it help if I ordered you to go to bed?"

Shepard grinned. "You're a civilian doctor now, remember? I can ignore your advice all I like." 

It was a front, and Chakwas knew it. Shepard needed to present a front for all the spyware and prying eyes on the other side of the glass: Commander Shepard, icon of humanity, indomitable, unkillable, steadfast in the face of any obstacle. Nobody could see how much her left leg hurt her, or the shooting pain that came from turning her head to the left, or the thrumming ache that had been pulsing behind her eye since she woke up on Lazarus Station. 

"As a favour, then?" Chakwas offered, and Shepard nodded. She could accept that. 

"If you insist," she said, and tried not to sound too grateful. She was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. 

"I'll have EDI wake you when we reach Omega," Chakwas said, and Shepard thanked her on her way out. 

There was a camera in the elevator, and it made Shepard wonder if Lawson had bugged her quarters too. Cerberus wasn't big on privacy, so it wouldn't surprise her, but she hoped she'd at least get to sleep alone. There had to be somewhere she could let the mask drop. 

A discreet omni-tool scan as she entered the obnoxiously large living space revealed spy devices embedded in the clock, wardrobe interface, and the water monitor of the ridiculous fish tank. According to the scan, they were only recording sound, but she didn't trust a commercial VI to be accurate with military tech so she kept up her facade all the way to the ensuite bathroom. Thankfully, the scan was silent there. There could be bugs functioning outside of the detection range, but she no longer cared. 

Her limbs had never felt so heavy. She had been unconscious or worse for two years, but it felt more like she'd spent that time on a treadmill with a Widow sniper rifle strapped to her back. Her leg was in agony, but even that was dulled by the base need to collapse and sleep . There was something she had to do first though. Now that she'd allowed herself to feel the pain, limping to the sink was slow, and every step sent a sharp stab that jolted up from her knee to the base of her spine. Shepard let it slow her down for once.

The face that looked back at her in the mirror was her own, but not quite. She'd only seen herself in windows and brushed metal walls, but this confirmed what she already expected. Stitching her body back together had left her scarred, but she could handle that: it  was a small price to pay to cheat death, after all. Her old scars, though, the scars that she bore with a soldier's pride - they were all gone, wiped away by a facial reconstruction that was either based on an out of date image or, worse, corrected flaws. Shepard's fingers played slowly over the unnaturally clean skin where they used to be and felt tears come to her eyes. 

Her leg gave way. It had been threatening to go since Freedom's Progress, and she was relieved it had at least happened in private. Shepard stumbled backwards until her back was against the wall behind her and slid down, stretching her injured leg out in front of her. Her head lolled back into the corner and Commander Shepard cried. Her chest heaved and her breath came in sharp gasps - each one hurt as the implants holding her ribcage together complained. She was a half-broken half-machine with one purpose that she didn't feel like she could fulfill. All she wanted to do was sleep for a hundred hours. According to the clock in the other room, she had three. 

Eventually, the tears dried up. She seriously considered staying where she was and sleeping on the bathroom floor, but for the sake of both the monitoring devices and her aching body she knew she had to get to bed. Getting back to her feet was hard and painful work, but she managed it. Shepard wiped her eyes, forced her back to straighten, and ignored how much walking confidently out of the bathroom hurt. It wasn't far to the bed, and her vision was already narrowing until all she could see was the crisp white covers and an impossibly fluffy pillow. At least comfort was something Cerberus valued more than the Alliance. 

Shepard barely made it. She had to crawl onto the bed rather than walk all the way to the side, but that was natural enough - and crawling didn't hurt her leg nearly as much. As soon as her head met the pillow she felt the tension evaporate from her limbs and she let out a soft mumble as an impossible weight lifted from her shoulders. Now all she had to do was manage three hours without sleep-talking about how much it hurt. 

Shepard's eyes drifted closed.

"Commander Shepard?" the soft, flat voice of the ship's AI said. Shepard opened her eyes again.

"EDI?" she said. 

"We are arriving at Omega."

Shepard's heart sank into the shoes she was still wearing. The clock told her those precious three hours had been and gone, and she felt exactly the same. 

Sitting up took more effort than fighting Saren.

Ahsoka was probably already awake, so she didn't bother moving quietly when she left in full armour, carrying both blasters and lightsaber. Shin and her bandits hadn't appeared for weeks now, but they were still out there - along with wild Howlers and probably countless other predator species - and it paid to travel prepared. Sabine hopped down from the idling T6 into the Noti camp below it, and made her way to the edge, aiming for the tree line in the distance. Her plan was to walk until it started raining, and then look for a place that matched her vision, but she was still wary: their slow pursuit of Baylan Skoll had skirted around the trees so far, and from what she had managed to decode of the Noti language, they feared the forests as much as the ancient Nightsister ruins. 'The domain of betrayal', if her translation was right. Still, the Noti were pacifists, and Sabine had weapons and armour that far outstripped anything the locals had access to. 

The rain started and the pull got stronger. Ahsoka had told her so often to surrender to the Force when she felt it, but Sabine still found herself trying to resist it: trying to guide herself to a destination she would never find without the help of the Force. It was the Mandalorian in her, determined to make her own way, and while she still hadn't decided the path she wanted her life to take, right now she needed Jedi instincts to find whatever was out there. Something about the pull had changed now - it felt urgent. Desperate, even. Something in the dark between the trees was calling out to her like a distress call. Sabine paused, shut her eyes and took a deep breath, and waited until she could stop second-guessing herself and follow her instincts. When she opened them again, she was already walking.

When she next glanced up from the ground, placing her feet to avoid a series of knotted roots, what she saw in front of her lined up so immediately with the image from her dream that Sabine almost fell over in surprise. At the exact same moment, the tug at her guts disappeared like a cut cord, and she was left standing alone and unsure in the darkness and the rain. Outside the forest, the sun would have risen by now, but under the canopy there was barely enough light to see. 

"Hello?" she called, but received no answer. The trees absorbed her voice before the echo could get very far. She doubted anyone would hear her over the rain.

Sabine tried to place her trust in the Force and took a few steps forwards, but when her gut instinct insisted she was going the wrong way, she couldn't help turning back. And there, slumped against a rock between two trees, was Shin Hati. Her hair was starting to grow out and she had pinned it back behind her head, and her clothes and armour had been adapted and added to with bandit equipment, but it was definitely her. 

Caution dictated she draw a weapon and approach slowly- after all, Shin was a deadly assailant who had spent their entire time on Peridea trying to kill her. It could be a trap. Sabine dimly recognised that after she had started running towards her, and by the time she had crashed to her knees in the mud by Shin's still form all of her weapons were still clipped to her belt. 

"Shin?" she demanded, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking. "Shin, wake up!" 

Why did she care? Why was there a roiling, sinking sensation, like a battleship going down, churning through her guts? Why was Shin not moving? Her hair was plastered to her face, which looked even paler than usual, and when Sabine lifted her eyelids she found her eyes rolled back into her head. Her pulse was thready and unstable, but it was there. She wasn't dead, but she was dying. 

Sabine glanced down, and saw that Shin Hati had been stabbed. 

This wasn't the neat, perfectly circular mark of a lightsaber blade - like the one Shin had given her when they first met - this was a messy, jagged incision that left blood and severed skin behind rather than a perfectly cauterised scar. A lightsaber, even in the hands of whatever Shin and Baylan were, was a Jedi weapon first and foremost, and killing was a last resort. This had to have been a bandit weapon. 

A soft cough turned Sabine's attention back to Shin's face, where she saw the briefest flicker of her eyelids. Her throat worked to swallow, and Sabine tried to shake her again.

"Wake up, blast it!" she growled, but Shin remained silent. "Karabast," she muttered, reaching into her armour pouch for a bacta spray and unclipped the cover from the nozzle. "Don't blame me when you're not ready for this," she said, and pressed the tip against the wound in her stomach.

Shin's eyes shot open and she screamed as the bacta started to knit severed veins back together and stem the bleeding. The sound wrenched at Sabine's heart as much as it did her ears, and she gripped Shin's shoulder with her free hand to try and soothe her.

"I know, I know," she said, concentrating on running the device all the way around the rough edges of the wound. "It stings, I know." 

Sabine had been unfortunate enough to learn a lot of battlefield medicine during the war, and she knew when someone wasn't going to make it without a full bacta immersion. She didn't know if there was a full-scale tank on the T6, but the alternative was that Shin Hati would die out here, from a wound inflicted by her own allies. 'The domain of betrayal' wasn't a myth after all. 

"I have to get you to the ship," Sabine said, trying to sound reassuring and not let on that she wasn't sure that would save her either. The helmet made her sound insincere so she took it off with one hand, scrabbling for a bacta patch with the other. There was no way it would heal Shin's slashed organs or repair her internal bleeding, but it might seal the initial flesh wound enough for Sabine to carry her. She wished she had brought Mirshko the Howler with her, but there was no point thinking about it now.

"Sabine?" Shin's voice was a thin whine that Sabine barely heard over the rain.

"It's me," she said, lifting the tattered remains of Shin's bloodstained robe to press the patch to her skin. The wound was so big the strip barely covered it, but at least the infusion had stopped the more severe bleeding. "You can murder me once I save your life, okay?"

"Took… lightsaber," Shin managed. Her eyes opened for a moment, and a lump rose in Sabine's throat as she saw how bloodshot they were. A second later they closed again, and Sabine worried she had been too late.

"Shin?!" she shouted, and the other woman stirred very slightly. 

"It's a trap," she said. "They're… they're coming."

"Damn you, Sara," Vetra cursed as she brought the nose of the shuttle about. "VN-212, coming in for a landing," she said, and considered warning them that she was armed. If it was a trap though, she wanted them thinking she didn't suspect anything. There was a prickle in the back of her scalp the whole time the shuttle descended that insisted she should just leave, and that this was a bad idea, and that her contacts were already dead, and that she was walking into a trap. Vetra ignored all of her suspicions. There was one small angaran transport, which could seat - at most - four potential attackers, and she was more than capable of putting down four targets. The insulation on the transport's hull made it impossible to scan for lifeforms inside, but there was nothing in a ten mile radius around the rendezvous point. At that range, the only weapon that even had a chance of hitting her was a kett sniper rifle, and her shields would hold long enough to get back to the shuttle. Unless they're a really good shot, she thought to herself, but pushed the thought out of her mind as the shuttle settled neatly on the snow. 

Vetra buckled her helmet on and hit the door release, and even through the layers of hardsuit insulation she felt the sting of the freezing air. It hit the filters on her suit hard and she could taste the ice in it when she breated in, but it still beat the stale recycled air of the Nexus. It wasn't snowing at least, but it was getting dark as the sun set behind her. The late evening would give her an advantage: she was approaching the transport out of the sun, and the light bouncing off the snow would make her harder to target. 

The total silence was loud in Vetra's ears. The only thing her suit microphone was picking up was the crunch of her boots on the snow and the rattling of her breath inside the helmet. The shuttle idling behind her on reserve power barely registered, and a quick scan with her omni-tool revealed the transport ahead of her was powered down and cold, like it had been sitting there for hours. She paused. The temperature guage on her HUD read -52.2 degrees centigrade, and unless angaran hardsuits were significantly superior to their Nexus equivalants, all she would find inside would be four frozen angara, huddled together around a long-extinguished heat lamp. She didn't need to see that.

Vetra turned around, and managed one step back towards the shuttle when the transport detonated. The force was staggering and the sonic shock blew out her helmet speakers for a moment, leaving her ears ringing as she tumbled into the snow. She forced herself back to her feet as fast as she could, yanking her rifle out of the magnetic socket so fast she nearly caught her fingers in the release mechanism. Neither the targeting computer in her HUD or built into the gun could find a threat, but she dropped to one knee and waited for her shields to buckle under fire anyway.

The transport had to have been rigged. Crates of explosives in the crew compartment. Only Vetra had turned away before it blew up, which meant it wasn't on a proximity trigger and that someone was watching. She got to her feet. There was no point hanging around here waiting for the kett or the Roekarr or Outlaws to pop their ugly heads out of the snow, and she wasn't letting them take the supplies they had set up this ambush for. Vetra started back towards the shuttle, keeping her rifle steady in her shoulder as she scanned around for the would-be thieves. 

And then her omni-tool pinged to warn her of an incoming explosive payload. A big one. Someone had launched a Spirits-damned missile at her shuttle, and there was no way she could get in and power it up in time to evade it. 

"Fuck you," Vetra cursed, and then started running. Her shuttle exploded with three or four times the force of the transport, and even though she'd had a head start this time it still launched her off her feet and tossed her into a snowdrift like a ragdoll. Her hardsuit complained about the hard landing, but nothing broke, and Vetra rolled onto her back and clawed powdered snow off the visor of her helmet. The wreckage of the shuttle burned hot enough to raise the temperature to a more survivable level, but all of the long range comms equipment had been inside. Along with the supplies. Whoever was out there watching had just destroyed the only valuables for hundreds of miles rather than let her back onboard. Vetra understood a scorched earth response, but if they had been banking on their bomb killing her with no backup plan they clearly weren't good at thievery. Maybe when she hunted them down she'd teach them a thing or two before she gave them to Kesh and Kandros to deal with. 

Her HUD told her the missile wasn't a nuclear or a resonant warp warhead, so it was safe to approach the shuttle. She wondered, as she watched the flames start to flicker out, why nobody was shooting at her - and then realised with an appropriately cold flood of dread that she was stranded in punishingly freezling temperatures with no hope of rescue. Eventually the Nexus would send a team out to look for her, but by the time she was missed… Bile rose in her throat and she forced it back down. Sara would insist on coming. Whoever had trapped her here would ambush her too. Dimly, Vetra noticed an alert pulsing on her HUD that told her she was hyperventilating. She ignored it and surrendered to the panic until her legs started to wobble and she had to choose between sitting down and falling. Vetra dropped to her knees first, and then leaned forwards until she was curled into a ball with her visor pressed into the snow until she couldn't see the wreck of the shuttle, and turned off her HUD so she couldn't see the insistent low temperature warning. Her brain pounded in her skull. What would Ryder do without her? Or Drack? What would Syd - don't think about Syd. Even at the head-swimming height of panic, Vetra refused. Instead, she forced herself to think about breathing. It was too fast now, and shallow and ragged. Air came into her lungs in gulps, but she needed more. 

In. Out. 

Again. Slower. 

In. Out. 

In.

Out. 

Finally, the panic abated. Vetra's limbs were stiff and cold, but she made them unfurl and slowly straightened her back until she was sitting up again, feeling drained and shaky, but stable enough to stand. Between getting to her feet and picking up her rifle, she ran through all the procedures from the Initiative cold weather survival manual and confirmed none of them could help her out here. No shelter she could build from the wreckage or from compacting the snow would keep out the cold, especially when the wind picked up or a blizzard set in. All she could do now was try and stop the rescue team flying into a trap, and the only chance she had at that was to walk as far as she could and hope the tracking chip in her armour had enough power to ping the Tempest when it came in range. Her odds weren't good. She started to walk.

The cold was brutal. As night set in the temperature dropped even further, registering 62 degrees below freezing before Vetra turned off the system to save power. After half an hour, she couldn't feel her fingers. The medigel dispensors would prevent frostbite setting in, but wouldn't keep her warm - that was down to the life support system, which circulated heated gel through conduits under the armour plate and was quickly running out of power. It was hard work, stripping her rifle while walking, but she needed the extra power cell. She'd carried it for years, but when parts slipped through her aching, nerve-less fingers she let them fall into the snow and stay there. 

By the time Vetra had walked what she estimated to be about ten miles, she didn't feel anything any more. It wasn't just her fingers and feet now, the numbness extended up her arms and legs and into one shoulder. She wasn't even sure she was still holding her rifle, but she didn't bother looking to find out. It was a useless lump of polymer and metal now, not even long enough to lean on for support when her legs started to give out and she dropped into the snow. Four times, now, she thought to herself. Ryder would call her clumsy as she helped her back to her feet and slapped a heat pack onto the back of her neck. Vetra wanted to wish she was there with her, but that would mean subjecting her to these temperatures and right now she wouldn't do that to the kett.

The kett.

Why blow up the shuttle with all of those supplies inside when they were so valuable to the Resistance? She rolled over onto her back in the snow, and watched something dark and ugly carve through Voeld's aurora as it circled overhead. Liam had shown them all a vid once, where big black birds hovered over a corpse in the desert. 

Because the supplies weren't what they were after. They were after her. 

Idly, she wondered if it was her, Vetra Nyx, the kett had laid the trap for, or if they just needed more Miky Way subjects. Even with the Archon dead, they knew there were more exaltation facilities that Apex hadn't found. The kett shuttle came into view properly now, shiny bug-green hull reflecting the light of the aurora overhead as it settled down. 

Vetra hadn't been with Ryder when she rescued the Moshae, over a year ago, but she had seen the footage from her helmet cam, and it scared her so much that even death in the snow seemed preferable now. But her legs would no longer obey her. She could crawl, but she wouldn't get far. Her gun was long gone. 

"Record," Vetra croaked. She hadn't realised just how dry her throat was until she tried to speak, but she had to say it again before the VI understood her. She could hear footsteps approaching in the snow, less than fifty paces away. Setting her jaw, she unlatched the helmet clasps with fingers that wouldn't even bend any more and struggled to get the thing off her head. The cold lashed at her like a living thing with talons, and she could feel her watering eyes blurring as her unshed tears froze in place. 

Twenty paces.

Vetra hoped it was dark enough that the approaching kett soldiers wouldn't be able to make out what she was doing as she scraped at the snow with her elbow and then forced the helmet into the gap, trying to tilt it so the camera would be able to pick up the shuttle as it left. 

"Damn you, Sara," Vetra cursed as she brought the nose of the shuttle about. "VN-212, coming in for a landing," she said, and considered warning them that she was armed. If it was a trap though, she wanted them thinking she didn't suspect anything. There was a prickle in the back of her scalp the whole time the shuttle descended that insisted she should just leave, and that this was a bad idea, and that her contacts were already dead, and that she was walking into a trap. Vetra ignored all of her suspicions. There was one small angaran transport, which could seat - at most - four potential attackers, and she was more than capable of putting down four targets. The insulation on the transport's hull made it impossible to scan for lifeforms inside, but there was nothing in a ten mile radius around the rendezvous point. At that range, the only weapon that even had a chance of hitting her was a kett sniper rifle, and her shields would hold long enough to get back to the shuttle. Unless they're a really good shot, she thought to herself, but pushed the thought out of her mind as the shuttle settled neatly on the snow. 

Vetra buckled her helmet on and hit the door release, and even through the layers of hardsuit insulation she felt the sting of the freezing air. It hit the filters on her suit hard and she could taste the ice in it when she breated in, but it still beat the stale recycled air of the Nexus. It wasn't snowing at least, but it was getting dark as the sun set behind her. The late evening would give her an advantage: she was approaching the transport out of the sun, and the light bouncing off the snow would make her harder to target. 

The total silence was loud in Vetra's ears. The only thing her suit microphone was picking up was the crunch of her boots on the snow and the rattling of her breath inside the helmet. The shuttle idling behind her on reserve power barely registered, and a quick scan with her omni-tool revealed the transport ahead of her was powered down and cold, like it had been sitting there for hours. She paused. The temperature guage on her HUD read -52.2 degrees centigrade, and unless angaran hardsuits were significantly superior to their Nexus equivalants, all she would find inside would be four frozen angara, huddled together around a long-extinguished heat lamp. She didn't need to see that.

Vetra turned around, and managed one step back towards the shuttle when the transport detonated. The force was staggering and the sonic shock blew out her helmet speakers for a moment, leaving her ears ringing as she tumbled into the snow. She forced herself back to her feet as fast as she could, yanking her rifle out of the magnetic socket so fast she nearly caught her fingers in the release mechanism. Neither the targeting computer in her HUD or built into the gun could find a threat, but she dropped to one knee and waited for her shields to buckle under fire anyway.

The transport had to have been rigged. Crates of explosives in the crew compartment. Only Vetra had turned away before it blew up, which meant it wasn't on a proximity trigger and that someone was watching. She got to her feet. There was no point hanging around here waiting for the kett or the Roekarr or Outlaws to pop their ugly heads out of the snow, and she wasn't letting them take the supplies they had set up this ambush for. Vetra started back towards the shuttle, keeping her rifle steady in her shoulder as she scanned around for the would-be thieves. 

And then her omni-tool pinged to warn her of an incoming explosive payload. A big one. Someone had launched a Spirits-damned missile at her shuttle, and there was no way she could get in and power it up in time to evade it. 

"Fuck you," Vetra cursed, and then started running. Her shuttle exploded with three or four times the force of the transport, and even though she'd had a head start this time it still launched her off her feet and tossed her into a snowdrift like a ragdoll. Her hardsuit complained about the hard landing, but nothing broke, and Vetra rolled onto her back and clawed powdered snow off the visor of her helmet. The wreckage of the shuttle burned hot enough to raise the temperature to a more survivable level, but all of the long range comms equipment had been inside. Along with the supplies. Whoever was out there watching had just destroyed the only valuables for hundreds of miles rather than let her back onboard. Vetra understood a scorched earth response, but if they had been banking on their bomb killing her with no backup plan they clearly weren't good at thievery. Maybe when she hunted them down she'd teach them a thing or two before she gave them to Kesh and Kandros to deal with. 

Her HUD told her the missile wasn't a nuclear or a resonant warp warhead, so it was safe to approach the shuttle. She wondered, as she watched the flames start to flicker out, why nobody was shooting at her - and then realised with an appropriately cold flood of dread that she was stranded in punishingly freezling temperatures with no hope of rescue. Eventually the Nexus would send a team out to look for her, but by the time she was missed… Bile rose in her throat and she forced it back down. Sara would insist on coming. Whoever had trapped her here would ambush her too. Dimly, Vetra noticed an alert pulsing on her HUD that told her she was hyperventilating. She ignored it and surrendered to the panic until her legs started to wobble and she had to choose between sitting down and falling. Vetra dropped to her knees first, and then leaned forwards until she was curled into a ball with her visor pressed into the snow until she couldn't see the wreck of the shuttle, and turned off her HUD so she couldn't see the insistent low temperature warning. Her brain pounded in her skull. What would Ryder do without her? Or Drack? What would Syd - don't think about Syd. Even at the head-swimming height of panic, Vetra refused. Instead, she forced herself to think about breathing. It was too fast now, and shallow and ragged. Air came into her lungs in gulps, but she needed more. 

In. Out. 

Again. Slower. 

In. Out. 

In.

Out. 

Finally, the panic abated. Vetra's limbs were stiff and cold, but she made them unfurl and slowly straightened her back until she was sitting up again, feeling drained and shaky, but stable enough to stand. Between getting to her feet and picking up her rifle, she ran through all the procedures from the Initiative cold weather survival manual and confirmed none of them could help her out here. No shelter she could build from the wreckage or from compacting the snow would keep out the cold, especially when the wind picked up or a blizzard set in. All she could do now was try and stop the rescue team flying into a trap, and the only chance she had at that was to walk as far as she could and hope the tracking chip in her armour had enough power to ping the Tempest when it came in range. Her odds weren't good. She started to walk.

The cold was brutal. As night set in the temperature dropped even further, registering 62 degrees below freezing before Vetra turned off the system to save power. After half an hour, she couldn't feel her fingers. The medigel dispensors would prevent frostbite setting in, but wouldn't keep her warm - that was down to the life support system, which circulated heated gel through conduits under the armour plate and was quickly running out of power. It was hard work, stripping her rifle while walking, but she needed the extra power cell. She'd carried it for years, but when parts slipped through her aching, nerve-less fingers she let them fall into the snow and stay there. 

By the time Vetra had walked what she estimated to be about ten miles, she didn't feel anything any more. It wasn't just her fingers and feet now, the numbness extended up her arms and legs and into one shoulder. She wasn't even sure she was still holding her rifle, but she didn't bother looking to find out. It was a useless lump of polymer and metal now, not even long enough to lean on for support when her legs started to give out and she dropped into the snow. Four times, now, she thought to herself. Ryder would call her clumsy as she helped her back to her feet and slapped a heat pack onto the back of her neck. Vetra wanted to wish she was there with her, but that would mean subjecting her to these temperatures and right now she wouldn't do that to the kett.

The kett.

Why blow up the shuttle with all of those supplies inside when they were so valuable to the Resistance? She rolled over onto her back in the snow, and watched something dark and ugly carve through Voeld's aurora as it circled overhead. Liam had shown them all a vid once, where big black birds hovered over a corpse in the desert. 

Because the supplies weren't what they were after. They were after her. 

Idly, she wondered if it was her, Vetra Nyx, the kett had laid the trap for, or if they just needed more Miky Way subjects. Even with the Archon dead, they knew there were more exaltation facilities that Apex hadn't found. The kett shuttle came into view properly now, shiny bug-green hull reflecting the light of the aurora overhead as it settled down. 

Vetra hadn't been with Ryder when she rescued the Moshae, over a year ago, but she had seen the footage from her helmet cam, and it scared her so much that even death in the snow seemed preferable now. But her legs would no longer obey her. She could crawl, but she wouldn't get far. Her gun was long gone. 

"Record," Vetra croaked. She hadn't realised just how dry her throat was until she tried to speak, but she had to say it again before the VI understood her. She could hear footsteps approaching in the snow, less than fifty paces away. Setting her jaw, she unlatched the helmet clasps with fingers that wouldn't even bend any more and struggled to get the thing off her head. The cold lashed at her like a living thing with talons, and she could feel her watering eyes blurring as her unshed tears froze in place. 

Twenty paces.

Vetra hoped it was dark enough that the approaching kett soldiers wouldn't be able to make out what she was doing as she scraped at the snow with her elbow and then forced the helmet into the gap, trying to tilt it so the camera would be able to pick up the shuttle as it left.