Shadows and Dust 033 (Patreon)

“I knew it would be you that would reach me, Shepard.”

Those were the words that met Cassandra’s ears as she and her girls swept into the bizarrely intact -damn near untouched, as a matter of fact- Council Chambers with their weapons at the ready. The fight to get here hadn’t been easy, though it hadn’t been nearly as hard as they had expected it to be, and to Cassandra’s surprise there didn’t appear to be more than a half-dozen men present alongside the Warmaster.

Who, as it happened, looked nothing like she would have expected him to. Not a hulking brute sneering nor some bitter, raving man. In fact, she would call him thoroughly average. Average in height, in bulk, in looks, and even his armor and weapons seemed somewhat drab in comparison to what she’d expected. He looked, in short, entirely unnoteworthy and forgettable, and she imagined that was rather the point of it. The illusion, the casual dismissal out of hand that would follow, and God only knows what kind of disasters would result from that dismissal.

“Well, I have just a little bit of a grudge against you, you understand. And it’s kind of my job to keep you from helping a bunch of robots wipe out the entire fucking galaxy, and I do take my duties pretty seriously. As more than a few of your kind have discovered.” she responded, eyeing his guards as she started trying to plan for when things inevitably got violent. “Unless you plan to tell me that you’re like Saren and are trying to save us all from destruction by enslaving us all?”

“Enslave you all, yes, but not for so noble a reason as that wretched man possessed.” The Warmaster’s mouth curved, something that wasn’t quite a smile, and he spread his hands as if inviting her to admire the elegance of what he was about to say. “Saren sought only to ensure the galaxy survived the harvest, to bargain with gods for the privilege of being spared destruction. Foolish, cowardly, and lacking in vision. Beneath such a man as myself.” He took a single step forward, unhurried, and Cassandra noted the way his guards didn’t move so much as a muscle when he made himself more vulnerable. In fact, they were standing unnaturally still, and she frowned faintly as that knowledge stirred discomfort in herself. “My masters offer something far more valuable than survival. They offer restoration. A return to the natural order of things, before the Council and its pets convinced the galaxy that batarian and asari and turian and human were all somehow equals.”

He didn’t quite spit the final word out, but there was certainly a dark, bitter, hateful edge to it.

“The natural order, huh?” Cassandra repeated, and she felt her lip curl, felt the heat building low in her chest, that familiar simmering fury that came whenever these sorts started ranting about their ‘natural right’ to own other sentient beings and treat them like cattle. “Let me guess. Batarians on top, everyone else on their knees?”

“Precisely so.” The Warmaster inclined his head, as if he was a proud teacher, as if she’d paid him a compliment rather than voiced a condemnation. “My masters require agents to enforce their will in this cycle, Shepard, and they have found the Hegemony... amenable to the role. Willing. Eager, even, once certain matters were explained to us. Once the Citadel falls, once your precious Council races are ground beneath the boot they so richly deserve, there will be a new order raised from the ashes. Batarian primacy, unchallenged at last and for all time. The Leviathan showed us the truth, and now Sovereign will help us achieve it.”

“The galaxy is on the razor’s edge of oblivion, and you still can’t stop wanting to enslave everyone around you. Do you assholes have any other personality traits besides being assholes, or were you hiding in the sewer when God was handing out morals?” Ashley growled out the question that was, frankly, more of a statement than any sort of inquiry.

“Oh, we have morals, to be sure. But we no more apply them to you than you apply them to a beast in the field. Morality is something to be applied between equals, after all, which you most certainly are not. Your purpose in this galaxy is to serve us, and we will remind you of that fact.” he waved her off, quite literally, sounding disgustingly nonchalant. “Every human, asari, quarian, and turian woman that survive decimation will find themselves bound in service to a batarian master, who will use them as he sees fit and discard them at will. Every male will be put to use as laborers, gladiators, or slave-soldiers. Expendable flesh to be spent in whatever way is most beneficial to the Hegemony. The salarians will need to be wiped out, of course. Their women are of no use to us and the possibility that they might design some manner of genophage to use against us is sufficient cause for that.”

Something about the utter, casual certainty in his voice made the fury in Cassandra’s chest feel less like heat and more like ice, the kind that settled deep and made the world turn quiet and slow.

Slaves. Toys. Cattle. He was talking about it the way someone discussed the weather, and the worst part —the absolute worst part— was that she believed every syllable of it. This wasn’t rhetoric for her benefit, some kind of speech to hype up his unmoving soldiers. This was a man describing his actual, sincere, hopeful vision of the future, and he expected her to be awed and frightened by the scope of his ambition.

Instead, all she wanted to do was kill him. Painfully.

So instead of talking further, she decided to do one of the few things that she had sworn -to herself, to Liara, to Jean, to the Force, to God Himself- that she would only do in the most dire of circumstances, if at all. She reached out with her psionics, found the spark of life -twisted, dark, inky and putrid- that sat inside the deepest part of the men standing in front of her…and she snuffed it out. She wrapped her mind around their souls and squeezed, and in an instant they were gone. They all stood there, for a moment, wavering slightly on their feet before their bodies realized they were dead and they crumpled together to the ground.

Cassandra let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and the ice in her chest didn’t thaw so much as crack, jagged edges giving way to something oh so very close to nausea and -self-directed disgust.

“Cassie.” Liara’s voice, soft, careful, from just behind her shoulder. “Are you—”

“I’m fine.” The words came out too fast, too harsh, too cold, and she made herself unclench her jaw before she tried again, softening as much as she could. “I’m, I’m fine. He needed to die and it needed to happen as quickly as possible. I wasn’t going to risk you girls being hurt or killed, and every minute we waste is another minute that people on the station or in the fleets are dying. I just…I really don’t like doing that. I’ve never wanted to do that.”

“You don’t need to apologize for trying to keep us alive, ma’am, or for trying to make this war end a little faster. If you were planning on doing it often, or casually or on some kind of a whim, I’d be worried. But you’re not. You did it for a good reason at the right moment, no different than shooting them.” Ashley reassured her, and Cassandra could accept -logically, at least- that she was right. She’d killed…so very many people, with gun or blade or biotics or even, yes, her psionics. Differently, perhaps, but killed them all the same, and while she had never been apathetic to causing those deaths, she made her peace with their necessity. She’d just…have to figure out how to do the same here.

There was a beat of quiet, the sort that stretched a little too long as she looked down at the crumpled bodies at her feet, and she found herself grateful for -and falling in love with all over again- the women standing at her back. For the fact that none of them flinched from her, none of them looked at her like she’d become something monstrous, evil. God, she could feel their emotions and thoughts all too easily, and she knew that any discomfort any of them might feel wasn’t directed at her, and more negative emotions were absent entirely.

“We don’t have time to dwell on it right now, anyway.” She forced her shoulders to loosen, her stance to unravel a bit, and took the opportunity to look around the massive room a bit. “Tali, get up to the podium, get Vigil’s program running. Ashley, Liara, get yourselves set up in cover, just in case anyone shows up and tries to stop us.”

Tali was already moving before she finished speaking, boots scuffing slightly on the debris-laden floor as she darted toward the podium, her fingers flying across her omni-tool before she’d even come to a full stop. “Interfacing now. Uploading. Vigil’s program is... Keelah, it’s dense. This is going to take a minute, Cassie. Maybe two.”

“Whatever you need, Tali. We’ll watch your back.” Cassandra swept her gaze across the chamber once again, taking note of entrances and exist, of the shattered viewport that used to look out over the Presidium, of the scorch marks marring the once-pristine walls. Whatever fight had happened here before they’d arrived, it hadn’t been small. No bodies, though, which struck her as a bit strange. Could the damage have come from vandalism?

She tapped armored fingers on an armored arm, thoughtful, though her consideration paused for a moment as she saw Liara and Ashley start collecting the weapons from the Warmaster’s guards and moving them over to their chosen spots of cover. Smart. She nodded approvingly. They, like everyone else in her fireteams, had the highest quality equipment money could buy, but extra guns were never a bad thing to have. God only knew if the Warmaster would be having friends show up at some point and for some reason, and depending on how many there were even the best weapons could run the risk of overheating.

Of course, if push came to shove, she could always break her rules a little bit more and destroy them all with a literal thought, but she would really rather not. For now, all she could really do is wait for her Tali to do her work and hope that someone was going to be able to lend a hand to the Citadel fleet.

Someone like, for instance, a certain mother of hers.

Eighth Fleet had been at the forefront of this war, in many ways, since before it had actually begun. It only seemed appropriate to her that they helped end it.

###########################################################################################

Hundreds of light-years away, at the heart of the fleet she now commanded, Hannah Shepard stood on the flag-bridge of the SSV Einstein. She appeared, to every eye looking at her, to be utterly and perfectly composed, and to be fair she was at least half as composed as she looked. This was hardly the first major conflict she been engaged in over the course of her career, after all, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first pitched fleet battle either.

Even if this battle promised to be so much more than anything she’d done before. At least the turians and the batarians had just wanted to enslave them, while the Reapers and their puppets were more interested in wiping them off the face of the galaxy.

And now, she had two messages before her. One, from Hackett, via comms. The other, from her daughter, via the Normandy itself. The Normandy, which did not have her daughter aboard, and was instead in this moment commanded instead by her navigator, Lt. Pressely. A navigator that was, according to her comms girl, trying to reach her.

She accepted the signal.

“Pressley, report.” She kept her voice level as she spoke, professional, though the knot in her stomach hadn’t loosened since the last transmission from Arcturus had gone silent an hour ago.

“Commander sent us to you, ma’am. The last signal we had from her fireteam was that the Conduit is a backdoor into the Citadel. The Warmaster was able to transport his people straight into the station and seize control of its systems. She’s pursuing him now with a program that might let her take control back, but is Sovereign is left to do his work, she won’t be able to maintain that.” he paused for a moment, whether to let those words sink in or to gather the courage to continue, she didn’t know, but continue he did, gamely. “She requests that you take the Eighth Fleet immediately to the Citadel, ma’am, and stresses that ‘this is it’.”

“This is it.” Hannah repeated the words back, quietly, more to herself than to anyone else as she considered the situation that she was now in.

Hackett’s orders sat more or less directly in her face, unambiguous and imperative: proceed to Arcturus, reinforce First and Fifth Fleets, hold the relay corridor at any cost. Simple. Clear. The kind of order that any officer under her command would expect her to follow without hesitation, because their home systems were under threat, because the beating heart and lifeblood of their entire race was at risk and losing them would destroy humanity on a galactic scale for centuries or more. Obeying the commands, the wisdom, of her superiors over the heartfelt request of a simple commander -regardless of whether she was said commander’s mother or not- was what both duty and conventional wisdom would demand.

But Cassie wasn’t just a commander, and she wasn’t just her daughter either. She was more, in that indescribable and unquantifiable way, knowing things that she shouldn’t know and possessing powers that -even after all these years, all these discussions and contemplative moments- that Hannah couldn’t begin to understand. So when Cassandra asked her to do something, when she used a statement so weighted as ‘this is it’?

She was going to pay attention, because she trusted her daughter’s gut and inexplicable knowledge over anything that Alliance Intelligence or the Joint Chiefs could hope to muster.

So really, the only question was: would she obey Hackett and hope for the best, or would she risk it all and do as her daughter asked?

In the end, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t really much of a question at all.

Just…not the way most people would have likely, instinctually assumed.

“Signal to all ships. Sound General Quarters. Prepare for battle. The fleet will proceed to the Serpent nebula and engage the enemy in support of the Citadel Defense Fleet.” she announced firmly, voicing the decision that she had every intention of carrying out. There was a faint stir on the bridge, and her flag lieutenant cleared his throat softly.

“Ma’am, I’m obliged to remind you of Admiral Hackett’s orders.” he said, just as quietly, and she nodded, gracing him with a small half-smile.

“I’m aware of our orders, Lieutenant, I promise you that. And the record will reflect that I and I alone have full responsibility for this decision. But SPECTRE Shepard,” she stressed her daughter’s newest title firmly, deliberately. “Has information that Admiral Hackett does not. And while I’m sure some would doubt my impartiality here,” she was saying this much, at least, as much for the record as she was to reassure her own people. “I think that we can all agree that she has done a fine job of hounding this pack of jackals across the galaxy. So I’m inclined to believe she’s right about that information as well.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Admiral. The SPECTRE’s track record aside, if the Citadel and its defense fleet are destroyed, millions will be dead and the entirety of Council space will be at risk of collapse in the face of further incursions.” her flag captain chimed in from the battle-bridge, the faintest sound of her fingers drumming on the arms of her chair coming ever-so-faintly through on the audio. “Not to mention the fact that capturing the Citadel means that they potentially capture all of the classified information there, like fleet deployments, security challenges, and more. Changing all of that would take time, and they could do incalculable damage with it before we can finish the process.”

“Precisely so. Thank you, Captain.” Hannah let her captain’s assessment settle over the bridge for a moment before she turned back to the comm panel, where she knew that Pressley was waiting for her. “Lieutenant, the Normandy will take command of all frigate-class and smallcraft of the fleet when we arrive. Your crew has the most experience fighting this enemy, and absent further instructions from the flag I expect you to put that experience to good use. I want you to send over what information you can to every ship in the fleet and get ready to jump for the Citadel with us, understood?”

“Understood, Admiral. Sending the fleet our data now.” Pressley’s voice carried a hint of something that might have been relief, might have been fear, and Hannah supposed it was probably both in equal measure. The situation was fraught in more ways than one, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he feared the displeasure of the Navy’s higher-ups for bringing her the information that lead to her ‘rebelliousness’ or ‘insubordination’. Shit flowed downhill just as often as those at the bottom could pass the buck higher up. “Normandy will be ready to jump on your mark.”

“Good. Einstein out.” She cut the channel and let out a slow breath through her nose, straightening the line of her uniform jacket with a small, unconscious tug, before turning to survey the bridge crew around her. Every face she could see was watching her, waiting, and she made herself hold each gaze for the barest moment before moving to the next. They needed to see certainty, confidence and courage, and by God she would give it to them even if her own stomach was a tight, roiling knot beneath her ribs. Keying the fleet-wide comms channel, she addressed her crew and the fleet alike, confident that each captain would pipe her words to their crews in turn. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be the fight of our lives. I can’t guarantee that any of us will get out of it alive. This warship, Sovereign, was powerful enough that it was able to land on the surface of Eden Prime and achieve orbit in a matter of moments. We must assume that it’s guns and barriers are accordingly powerful. Should we engage it, I want every ship operating at the maximum range of its armament and maneuvering as much as possible. Make yourselves as difficult a target as possible, and give it everything you’ve got.”

She paused, as much for herself as for her audience, pride swelling within her at the determination and willingness to follow her into this fight that she could see in every face before her.

“We fight to protect the innocent people at risk, avenge those they;ve already hurt and killed. To protect our families, our star-nation, and to protect the whole of a galaxy that deserves the chance to see tomorrow. Whatever happens, know that it has well and truly been an honor to serve alongside each and every one of you. Godspeed, and good hunting.”

She closed the channel and let the silence fall like a shroud, and for a moment —just a moment— she allowed herself to feel the full weight of what she’d just done. Disobeyed a direct order from High Command. Gambled the Eighth Fleet, dozens of ships and thousands of lives, an entire fighting force that Arcturus and Earth alike might desperately need, on the word of her daughter relayed secondhand through a forty-year-old lieutenant she’d never actually met.

If she was wrong, if Cassie was wrong, the consequences would be more likely measured in the loss of planets, not simply individuals.

But she, and her matriarchs, hadn’t been wrong to trust their daughters before. Quite the contrary, she -they- had proven time and time again that they deserved that trust, such as Cassandra’s knowledge of where and how to find the Shadow Broker. Something that had not only protected their daughters in the moment, but ensured other threats could never again get so close as he had. Never mind the countless thousands of other people that Aethyta’s information and influence had been able to safeguard -or, as the case might be- destroy over the years. No, she was going to trust this moment, this one final effort.

“Begin fleet translation.” she announced, and in the back of her mind she whispered a phrase over two millenia old. One that had, when it was first spoken, defined human history for over a thousand years, and in many ways still had it’s echoes affecting mankind even now.

Alea Iacta Est.

###############################################################################

The Eighth Fleet of the Systems Alliance Navy came through the Serpent Relay in perfect formation and, confident that their allies would be clustered near the Citadel, opened fire on anything within range that hadn’t come through that Relay with them. Volleys of cannon fire, torpedoes, and missiles lanced through the ever-more-crowded void of space as fifty warships launched every small craft they had and vented their fury into the rearmost ships of the combined geth and batarian formation before they even knew that their enemies had received reinforcements. A half-dozen ships staggered out of their formations or were destroyed in their entirety, and the gleaming white-and-blue formation swept deeper into the system.

“Alliance signatures, Matriarch! Transponders…I have them! Carriers Einstein, Hawking, Tereshkova. Dreadnoughts Orizaba and Corcovado! It’s the Eighth Fleet! It’s Shepard!” came the jubilant cry from somewhere amidst the darkened bridge around her, and Matriarch Lidanya -bloodied, partially bandaged, and sore all over from being knocked about her ship as it took hit after hit- didn’t even try to restrain her laugh of relief, buried though it was by the cheering of her surviving subordinates.

It looked like her people might make it out of this after all, because as bloodied as they were, the CDF was still fighting, still clinging to life with bloody fingernails, and this fresh infusion of war-fighters was just what the doctor had ordered. She watched through damaged, static-streaked sensor displays as the Alliance went to work, as the combined geth and batarian fleet tried to split their attention between two groups of enemies. Fighters led the way, followed by frigate wolf-packs and cruiser hunter-killers as the dreadnoughts brought their massive guns to bear and started pounding at the most powerful of the surviving enemy ships.

She wasn’t just going to watch, though, and neither was anyone under her command!

“General signal to fleet! All ships, advance and destroy the enemy! Wipe them out!” she snarled the words, slamming her fist on the nearest hard object -a destroyed console, still stained with the blood of the poor maiden that had been operating it when it had quite literally blown up in her face- to emphasize her point.

The tattered remnants of the CDF, bloodied but unbowed, obeyed without hesitation. Engines flared, and though their formations were staggered and shrunken by the damage they had suffered, though they were trailing atmosphere and many were battling fires and breaches amongst their decks, they attacked one and all. Caught between two forces that now outnumbered them nearly two-to-one, the attackers began to crumble.

The batarians, in particular, seemed confused and ill-lead, certainly compared to their mechanical compatriots. Several ships visibly suffered from indecision on which side to array themselves against, and paid heavily for that indecision as the attacking defenders targeted those poorly-led ships with and tore them to pieces before turning their attention to more temperate prey. And with their allies falling to pieces, literally at times, the geth were finding that their mechanical stoicism wasn’t doing them quite so much good as it had not so very long ago.

It took another half an hour, an eternity to everyone involved, and more than one Council or Alliance ship suffering casualties, to finish moping up the attack. A ragged cheer went up once again across the surviving ships, but there wasn’t any time for anything further. Not with the Citadel still locked down, and not with Sovereign on the other side of those titanic panels in all their defensive glory. How they would get those panels to open, how they would engage and destroy the colossal dreadnought, none of them knew, but they took what time they had to unify their collective fleets, exchange what information and aid that they could, and do emergency damage control.

All the better, because it didn’t take so long after the final enemy ship was sunk for a voice to come over the comms. Shepard the Younger, on the Citadel with the Warmaster and his guards dead, announcing that she had control of the station’s systems once more. She was going to open the arms and redirect all of the admittedly-limited defenses the Citadel onto Sovereign in coordination with their own efforts.

The fleets turned their eyes -and, far more importantly, their collected guns- towards the Citadel, dressed their formations, and settled in to finish this short and bloody war. A moment later, the arms began to open. Slowly, torturously slow, but slow was the last thing Sovereign was as he emerged. It had never before occurred to the gathered naval men and women that a ship could look angry, but look angry he did, tentacle-arms spreading like a grasping hand as crimson lightning crawled over his hull.

No order needed to be given, though they were given all the same, and the assault began. Fighters and bombers and frigates surged forward in a great swarm, led by the Normandy herself, with the cruisers advancing behind them as the dreadnaughts took careful aim and opened fire. It was a magnificent sight, awe-inspiring and thoroughly cinematic, but new stars blossomed and bloomed and faded away as the enemy dreadnaught’s anti-aircraft batteries opened fire and began lashing the attacking defenders. Those same defenders had learned from their first engagement, however, and they’d discovered something important: Sovereign’s point-defence was thin. Good enough for torpedoes, or fighters, but not together, and not in the numbers that were descending upon it.

Unfortunately, it’s barriers were not thin, and it bulled through the opening volleys and cut a salarian frigate in half with a single blast of its main gun. All across the fleets, teeth were gritted, eyes were narrowed, and fists were clenched. Every commander, and every crewman with a view of the ongoing battle, knew that this would be even bloodier than their previous battle.

#############################################################################################

Four throats expelled four simultaneous sighs of relief when Sovereign’s bulk released the Presidium tower -without vaporizing it, which was nice- and turned away entirely to face the oncoming fleet. For the ‘girls group’ of the Normandy’s strike team, there had been a considerable concern that he wouldn’t, though all had equally been hopeful that the Presidium Tower was required to be intact for him to take control of the Citadel itself.

A hope that seemed to have been proven true, as Tali had reported that his, well, undocking had resulted in her making far more progress far more rapidly when it came to restoring the systems that the stations inhabitants and defenders would need to keep themselves alive.

“Now we just have to hope the fleet can actually kill the damn thing, and we can focus on flooding the station with troops.” Ashley muttered, watching the tactical display Tali had thrown up on a nearby console, the crimson icon representing Sovereign crawling steadily further from the station’s silhouette. “Probably easier said than done, huh?”

“Always is, though it can’t be invincible. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have bothered with the batarians and the geth and the Conduit. It would have just blown through the defenses and settled things by itself.” Cassandra agreed, though she frowned faintly to herself as she felt something tingling at the edge of her perception, crawling up and down her spine. Something felt wrong, though she didn’t know what it could possibly be.

Sovereign was engaging the fleet. Tali had full control of the systems now, thanks to his distraction, and was working hard to secure the Citadel’s systems and get them back in the hands of those who should be running them. She could sense that her mother was still alive, her soul burning brightly aboard the distant Einstein. Even the Warmaster and his guards were dead, she could see their corpses from here, and if they had any sort of booby-trap to them, it would have gone off by now…

Movement caught her eye, and she had just enough time to reach out and telekinetically yank all three of her lovers to her side before crimson-edged biotic whips lashed out of the Warmaster’s body and shredded much of the surrounding area. They landed heavily, sprawled across the floor with grunts of surprise and discomfort, but they rolled back to their feet near-instantly, and so were able to join her in staring in horrified fascination and shock as the Warmaster’s body floated up in the air amidst a corona of the same. Flesh peeled off of his body, flaking away like it was burning, to reveal a skeleton that had been turned almost-entirely to metal and cybernetics.

“Oh Goddess, what’s happening…?” Liara breathed, her eyes wide and a look of mingled revulsion and fear taking over her face. An expression and a sentiment that Cassandra couldn’t agree with more if she tried.

The Warmaster —or whatever was puppeting his body now, because Cassandra could sense no soul in that shell— hung suspended nearly a half-dozen feet above the shattered floor, arms spread wide, head tipped back at an angle no living spine should have allowed. What flesh remained sloughed away in ashen flakes, drifting away like some sort of disgusting, macabre snow, and the four women shuddered at the sight of what was left behind.

“I do not know how you killed my servants, what strange methods or means you used to interfere, but I will take the answers from your flesh.” the Warmaster’s jaw moved, but the voice that spilled from it wasn’t that of the batarian. Instead, it was Sovereign’s, and Cassandra could hear the rage boiling beneath every word even as he landed back on the ground and flexed his now claw-like fingers. “You are an aberration, a corruption of the cycle, and you will be removed. For I am Sovereign, and this station is mine!”

“Give it your best shot then, you bastard!” Cassie bit out, SMGs snapping up and spitting fire as her mind raced. Sovereign wasn’t alive, not like the Warmaster and his guards had been. She couldn’t just kill him by stopping his heart or severing his soul from his body, because he didn’t have them. She could try to destroy the body itself, but even in her rage at Tali’s near death, she’d only just managed to melt geth troopers to slag, and she didn’t doubt that the creature she was fighting now was made out of far more durable materials than they had been.

Not to mention the fact that she was starting to feel the strain of constant psionic usage. She’d never had to exert as much power over such a short time frame as she had over the last few hours, and it was beginning to take it’s toll on her.

Jean! I could use a solution that doesn’t involve shooting him a whole lot and hoping for the best! she snarled at the presences in her mind, or at least the most prominent of them, and she felt Jean radiate concern and agreement from within her soul. To her discomfort, however, the woman she had always relied on to have some sort of plan remained silent for nearly two full minutes.

Two minutes that were filled with increasingly desperate attempts to protect the women she loved from the Reaper-Husk, who was bouncing around the Council Chambers like a demonic pinball. If such a thing were to be armed with razor-sharp, six inch claws on its hands and feet, a biotic aura -which shouldn’t be possible, without blood to carry the eezo nodules- and the ability to fire directed energy blasts from it’s mouth.

I…there might be something, but Cassie… she ‘audibly’ hesitated, for perhaps the first time since they had ‘met’. Cassie, if we do this, its going to be the biggest thing you’ve ever done. By far. Its going to put a lot of strain on you. It’s…going to cost you.

Out in the starry expanse beyond the windows, two small stars bloomed, and Cassandra felt a thousand souls snuffed out as two cruisers were sunk with all hands.

I don’t care what it costs me! Do it now! We have to end this! Cassie snapped back, already throwing herself sideways as those wicked, vicious claws swiped through the air that she had been standing in, close enough that she felt the heat of it scorch across her cheek. Ashley’s shotgun boomed somewhere to her left, Liara’s biotics flared a flickering, fracturing blue-white as she threw up a barrier just in time to catch another lance of crimson energy, and Tali was screaming something about the station’s defenses trying to target the Wards. We’re going to lose a lot of people if you don’t give me an answer right now!

Alright. Alright, just…just follow me and hold on to us. Hold on to all of us. This is going to hurt.

She was wrong. It didn’t hurt.

It was agonizing.

##############################################################################

Jean Grey specifically, and the Hosts of the Phoenix Force at large, had faced many threats far beyond anything that the Reapers could bring to bear. Cassandra hadn’t been wrong, after all, when she had lamented that she could easily have eradicated every geth on Eden Prime and tear Sovereign from the sky. She herself, or at least one version of her, had personally destroyed an entire splinter of the Annihilation Wave, without even having to even tap into more than a fraction of the power that The Force could give her. Not to mention the Phalanx, or the Celestials.

But, as strong as Cassandra was now, and as strong as she would be, she still wasn’t at the point where she could sustain that kind of power. Even with Jean filtering what was going to happen next through herself and the fragments of the other hosts within the White Hot Room, even with the Force doing what it, itself, could do to shoulder some of the burden, the strain that would be put on Cassandra’s soul would be immense.

A price that her newest ‘sister’ would be more than happy to pay, of course.

Which is why she was willing to do as Cassandra asked, and why she took the younger woman in hand and guided her through the connection that Sovereign shared with his husk-puppet into the entity’s core. A core that was filled not with a single mind, but tens of millions. The fragments of every single person that had been reduced to their most fundamental components. Unified and yet separate, none of them truly holding any sort of self-awareness, no sentience or sapience, but soaked in emotion.

Fragments of terror. Fragments of grief. Fragments of hatred so old it had calcified into something else entirely, something without heat, without meaning, just structure. The hosts, one and all, followed Cassandra into the ocean of those butchered souls, those people whose lives had been cut short as they were torn to pieces for reasons that none of them had known, nor could understand.

This is what he is, Cassie. What they all are. Jean’s voice came, steady even as Cassandra felt her own mind buckling under the weight of it. What they’ve always been. The graveyards of entire races, imprisoned in metal and forced to be a part of the same things that destroyed them.

If she’d had the capacity to do it, she probably would have thrown up. It was the worst thing she’d ever seen, ever felt, even heard of or imagined.

God help her, but their grief was…so very vast. It had no edges, no beginning, no end. A chorus of screams that had been silenced so long ago that the silence had become its own kind of scream. Cassandra felt herself starting to drown in it all, felt the weight of every stolen life pressing down against the walls of her own mind like water against a hull, and she understood —with horrifying clarity— that this was what waited for every species in this galaxy if the Reapers were not stopped. Not simply death, but something so much worse.

Steady. Steady, Cassie. I’ve got you. We’ve got you.

Other voices joined Jean’s, layered atop one another, buoying her up and helping push back the crushing pressure, and she did the metaphysical equivalent of shaking her head before ‘looking’ at Jean.

What do we do? she ‘whispered’ and Jean ‘smiled’ sadly at her.

The only reason that Reapers are able to function the way that they do is because all of the bound minds work in concert with one another under the commanding mind’s control. It won’t be easy, and you will be hurt, but what we need to do is separate the minds. Sovereign will stop functioning properly and the fleets will be able to destroy him. she responded, as comforting as she is warning.

How? Tearing them out? I…don’t think we can do that. Cassandra looked at the mass of meshed minds, and Jean radiated first denial, then agreement.

No, you’re right. Trying would kill you, as you are right now. the Force’s favorite confirmed. But what we can do is divide them. Put barriers up between them. They don’t have to be thick, and they don’t need to hold for long. Just long enough.

Jean and the host of Hosts helped her as she reached out with their guidance, forming razor-sharp, waffer-thin panes of psionic glass that were placed, ever so carefully, in between each of the Reaper’s eternal victims, his slaves. It cost a piece of her, every time. A small sliver of herself, a small cut on her soul, infinitely flexible and eternally enduring. Capable, for all the strangeness of the thought, of splitting the raging ocean around them into individual pools one person strong.

They did what they could to help her with the pain, to help her mitigate the suffering that came as a result of what she was doing, but…there was a limit to the actions that the dead could take on behalf of the living. There was a limit to how much comfort a ghost could give, no matter how many ghosts there were, and as she cut the mass of stolen life that lay at the core of her enemy into smaller and smaller pieces -as the Husk and Dreadnaught alike began to stagger and falter and fail- she screamed, soul and body alike.

She heard her own name, distantly, and just as distantly -with the part of herself still aware of the physical world- she felt her girls take her weight and hold her as she writhed and howled. But through the pain, as her family laid her down and made sure she was comfortable, as Sovereign became so severely impaired that the Warmaster-Husk collapsed into a rapidly-dissolving puddle of goo and as the attacking fleet saw the weakness of his hull and redoubled their efforts, she couldn’t help but feel triumph.

She felt him dying, as shell and torpedo smashed into his body. She felt him breaking apart, piece by piece, the tortured minds that he’d enslaved falling and going blessedly into the dark as the parts of him that housed them were destroyed.

She heard him roar in rage, one last time. Heard his disbelief, his fury, his confusion and yes, oh yes, his fear that saturated every syllable of his final words.

No! I am Sovereign! Ancient, eternal, beyond comprehension! I will not be killed by you! I am the eons contained by will! You are shadows, shadows and stellar dust given form by chance, nothing more! I...!

Then he was gone. They were all gone, and she could feel herself drifting as she tried to fold her mind -her soul- back into a body that suddenly felt all too small for it. In many ways, it was both harder and more painful than anything that she had ever done -separating the minds of Sovereign included- and the last thing she was aware of as she lost consciousness was the flicking blue-white haze of biotics and the ground bucking beneath her body.

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I had this long, epic battle with gun-fu and dueling biotics planned, but I realized...under these circumstances, Cassie would be willing to break her rules. She wouldn't risk her girls dying, herself dying, and letting Sovereign win. She wouldn't waste time, letting more innocent people and more 'good guys' be killed.
Same thing in regards to the fight with the Sovereign-Husk.
I like to think I came up with a unique way to handle the problem, though!