Massive Disaster 5-4 (Patreon)

The room hummed; eezo-based sanitizers a faint, constant rhythm just a razor’s edge from silence as it scrubbed the air and every major surface in the medbay of the SSV Normandy clean.

Noise and filth scrubbed clean and clear, no different than the mass effect baths they’d passed through to get the grime and blood and reddish mud of the damaged Eden outside. Everything about this ship was a distinct noise, a constant pressure up against his brain; not enough to irritate, but enough to feel. 

He clicked his tongue, the low thrum of the frigate’s mass effect core vibrating through the plates of the ship and reminding him exactly why he hated working with anything eezo-related. Too damn noisy. This ship was quieter than most, its own engine barely noisy compared to the few ships he’d been on, but it was only quieter to normal ears.

Zedd leaned back against the wall, cool metal seeping into the bare arms of his black short sleeves. Aviators firmly in his back pocket, his eyes had nothing to do but track the path of a family of dust motes floating near the ventilation intake.

Filter cycle probably running at eighty… eighty-five. He raised an eyebrow. Sloppy.

Inside the glass cage separating one half of the medbay from another, a pale-skinned older woman with dark brown hair in a short bob moved up and down, deft hands and crisp steps making it more than clear she was someone who’d spent more time putting people together than talking to them. …she’s good. His eyes flicked down to her, giving the older lady his full attention; everything from her grey uniform to the yellow patches that read SR-1 on the forearm. Real good.Her training may have been Alliance standard, maybe, but he knew exactly what kind of steady hands this kind of work needed — considering all the guts he’d been elbow deep in — and the old lady had those in spades. Body and mind seemed just as unshakable, too, and Zedd could tell that much given the way her eyes didn’t even once flicker away when she looked at the meat on her table.

The meat in question was an N7.And from what everyone was saying, it was the biggest meat of all (relatively speaking). 

John Shepard.

War Hero of the Alliance himself; the guy looked sculpted to shit and if Zedd didn’t know any better, he would have thought the man was juiced with Rebirth himself. Tall, broad, and hooked up to enough tubes to jumpstart an elcor, he was still breathing after whatever he had gone through. A point in his favor, sure, but the data scrolling across the monitor above his head was a mess of fluctuating cortisol levels and erratic theta waves. Brain’s scrambled eggs. 

“L-least the Alliance’s biggest hero is still in one piece.” Kira half-coughed the first syllable out, blue veins still standing out against her pale skin even a whole hour after the fight. Her posture was loose, shoulders as relaxed as she could make them, but Zedd didn’t need readouts of her new physiology to know when she was playing the tough girl a bit too hard. “Alliance standard ain’t half-bad.”

“I could do better.” He scoffed, the sound loud in the silence as his eyes stayed on the monitor above the war hero. “Gimme my lab… hell, if sweet lil ANGEL were here, I’d have had a full neural map by now. This?” He folded his arms across his chest, dark brown muscles tensing underneath his black t-shirt. “We’re looking at guesswork with expensive toys.”

“Not in one of your labs, Zee,” Nina’s voice was a soft check from his right, the small woman still fiddling with the cuff of the spare undersuit Kai dug up for her, fabric hanging a bit too loose on her wrist. With her blazer lost to the mud and blood of Eden Prime, she somehow looked smaller without it. 

Those shoulderpads were putting in work.

She rolled her eyes as he stared her way. “We’re guests here. Try to remember that.”

“I’m not a guest,” His head lolled back, thumping loud enough against the wall for Nina to shoot him another warning look. “I’m here on business.”

Guest. As if hospitality was the issue on the table. 

No, this wasn’t in any way a friendly visit, not that he was really in the habit of being all that friendly with the Systems Alliance in the first place. The only reason Zedd was here was because the universe had decided to throw a curveball the size of a dreadnought right at his face.

And by curveball, he meant giant-fuckoff-death-beam. More than anything else, he needed to know how and why. 

The Geth were one thing and one thing he’d studied till he understood them, at least to a degree. He’d been messing with AI for four years, honestly. Not at least understanding what had the galaxy so up its own collective asshole that it pushed back on the widespread use of mechs would have been the stupidest fucking thing he could have ever done.

The Geth, though; code, platforms, flashlight heads. Easy enough.

But those things on the ground? The grey, wire-strung meat puppets that screamed like dying animals? The obvious was obvious; those weren’t Geth.

And that didn’t even get into the massive shrimp-dreadnought that shot said giant-fuckoff-death-beam. 

Kira shifted, the synthetic weave of her suit creaking as she folded her arms to match Zedd. “I really don’t see why we’ve got to be here. Marine detail’s been looking at us like we’re scum since we stepped aboard. I don’t like it.”

You sure that’s the problem, Ki? Zedd raised a fist to his mouth, a cough forcing its way out to hide the growing smirk. Now, sure, it could have been that but it could also have been the fact that Kira had pretty much walked away from the N7 track two years ago and never looked back.

Of course, Zedd didn’t say that.

Mostly because the door hissed open before he could.

A face that was at least a little familiar walked in, shoulders tight but heavy like he was carrying the entire colony’s weight on it. Zedd smiled up at the walking recruitment poster for the Alliance as the man turned his way, deep lines of command etched around his eyes and mouth that made the black man look a good bit older than his forty-six years. 

But it was the woman next to him who made him blink.

She was tall—taller than Kira, taller than most women—and built like a cable whip where Nina was built slightly more stout. The room may have been filled with N7s but the redhead was the only one conscious that actually wore the armor, the black and red a second skin as it stood out stark against the white walls. Said red hair was cut in a severe bob that framed a face just as sharp and eyes twice as cold; the piercing blues pointed his way like an icicle. 

Those same eyes slid past Zed, skidding past Nina and Kira both and almost entirely jumping over the shape of Kai lurking in the corner like a shadow. The woman’s piercing blues went straight to the glass where the man on the bed lay, Shepard’s silent form still under the care of the ship’s skilled doctor.

“Mr. Victors.” Anderson’s voice was the same deep and rolling ferrocrete mixer it had been since their first meeting and last holo-call, loud and clear even when the man stopped a good distance away. Hands clasped firmly behind his back, the man clearly couldn’t help those soldier instincts as he stood at attention before nodding Zedd’s way.“Anderson.” Zedd didn’t turn fully, a nod in response all he had to give.

“That’s Captain.” The redhead took a step forward, voice a half-rasp that sounded every bit as smoky and harsh as she looked. “Captain Anderson.”

Zedd finally turned, the movement as slow as his eyes as he let his gaze drag over her, everything from the scuffed all the way up to where her hand hovered near her hip, the woman not touching a weapon but ready to find one.

“...I don’t think I asked you.” It took a mountain of effort not to pull a face with those words, but he had both that and willpower in spades. Still, it wasn’t… infinite. “I know Anderson. Who the fuck even are you?”

Kira flinched, the twitch of a shoulder barely noticeable, but Zedd caught it anyway. Oh, she knows this one. 

Apparently, he was the only one who didn’t as Nina stepped forward, pink and white undersuit squeaking a little as she squeezed his right bicep; a warning in one motion. “Zedd, hun, this is Lieutenant Commander Jane Shepard.”

“Also known as the Butcher of Torfan.”

Ah. Brown eyes blinked slow at Kira’s follow-up, eyebrows rising high. Torfan. 

Now, he didn’t really keep up with the Alliance apart from the shit he sold them under the table and out of the Council’s eyes but he knew the name Shepard and he knew Torfan.

The moon in question where one Alliance soldier had taken the words “no retreat” as more than a recruitment slogan and “no surrender” as words to live down, both for themselves and the enemy. Torfan was pretty much a body count the way the extranet talked about it; heavy Alliance loss but total enemy casualties. 

Slaughtered every Batarian, even the surrendering ones. It was something big enough that it cost him some fans from his old “Engineer of Death”, those guys jumping ship to the new Batarian killer with over one-hundred-and-eighty confirmed kills from one battle.

“...huh.”

A grin spread across Jane Shepard’s face as the single syllable left Zedd’s lips. No matter how big it got, Zedd didn’t miss the way the look on her face didn’t come close to even touching her eyes. 

Those stayed dead.

“They still call me that?” The Commander tilted her head to the side. “I always liked ‘The Torfan Terminator’ a bit more, but… I guess people aren’t that creative.”

Zedd blinked back at her. “So, I’m guessing you’re related?”

“He’s my twin brother, yes,” the commander crossed her arms across her chest to match Zedd’s stance, metal clinking against ceramite. “What about it?”

Zedd smirked. “I see he got the muscle and you got the looks.”

The sigh from Nina came with another squeeze to the arm.

“Heard you were smart, how do you get that backwards?” Jane’s grin widened until it looked sharp enough to draw blood. “He’s the pretty one. I’m the one who breaks things.”

Yeah. I bet you are.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

TIMESKIP ROLLS AND CURRENT ROLLS WILL BE POSTED CHAPTER 5. CHAPTER 5 WILL BE OUT LATER TODAY.I JUST WANTED TO GET BACK INTO THE FLOW OF THINGS WITHOUT IMMEDIATELY BOGGING DOWN STORY WITH SYSTEM