Massive Disaster 5-6B (Patreon)

Chapter 6BThe Command Deck of the SSV Normandy hummed the way it always had from the first day she’d stepped onto the ship.It was a specific frequency, a low-level drone her brother had described as “calming” more often than once. And every time he’d said it, all Jane could do was roll her eyes.

Now, those eyes were fixed right on the blue glow from the galaxy map, her back against the console and arms crossed so tight the ceramic almost creaked against her undersuit. 

Terrorist.

The word kept cycling. Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist…

Lieutenant Commander Jane Shepard wasn't looking at the star charts, her eyes not tracking the vectors that plotted their drift through the Serpent. Her gaze was fixed on the man in question, the terrorist currently checking his fingernails as if he wasn’t a new spike in the side of her skull since Eden Prime. I don’t get it.

She really didn’t, and that was nothing but honesty. It’d been a year since she’d actually raised her head at the information, when the reports first hit the extranet. Some random Traverse start-up suddenly revolutionizing galactic comms overnight? That same start-up run by some kid the Alliance had been investigating for possible extremist connections, on top of that? 

It was enough to make her reach for her sidearm, mostly because it made no sense. A company bursting out into galactic relevance in a matter of years, building two different private armies, fielding experimental and illegal technologies and then forming an entire separate arm of human government…It all stank like Cerberus.

And that wasn’t even touching the rumors flitting through the Citadel threads.

An Asari SPECTRE killed in the most surgical manner she’d ever seen, while he was fielding his own N7s as ‘bodyguards’...

It made the skin between her shoulder blades itch.

Zedd Victors leaned over the galaxy map, posture relaxed as his fingers danced over the interface of his omni-tool. Jane raised an eyebrow, watching holo-screens flicker and flash by fast enough it made the Normandy’s systems look like a cheap civilian scut-system.

She knew he had advanced technology, his company pumping out several new and confusing examples of exactly that every quarter. Still…

Doesn’t explain the hands.

They were too fast, for one. Enhanced. 

Obviously. She already knew that much.

But how enhanced? While it was far from the major reason, and definitely not the only one, it was definitely part of what kept her arms locked across her chest instead of around his throat.“Commander Shepard…” He looked up her way, the smile on his face bright and wide, pretending as if he just now noticed she’d been standing there. “Your brother doing fine?”Jane nodded slowly. “He’s doing fine.”

“That’s great.” He bobbed his head back, one eye still on his omni as he continued whatever he was doing without slowing down for even a second. “Hoping to talk some more with him. Barely got a chance to shoot the shit, you get me?”

He wasn't wearing armor.

Victors hadn’t been since Eden Prime. “Not sure what you mean, actually?” Her lips barely moved from the thin line she held them in as she spoke, closed mouth hiding a set of thirty-two teeth grinding against each other. “Mind elaborating for me?”The dark-skinned man towered above her in just a bright blue jacket, the longcoat well-fitted and doing absolutely nothing to hide the kind of muscle that could only come from a lab. “Y’know, me and him, we got a lot in common.” He flashed his own bright-whites her way, smile spreading into a grin that spoke of a man comfortable in his own skin aboard a warship that wasn't his. “We both like killin’ four-eyes.”

Arrogance. Or confidence. 

The line blurred when you were genuinely the deadliest thing in the room.

Jane didn't like not being that. Green eyes narrowed his way, those words and the reference to her brother drilling into her skull the longer she stayed silent. “Your little blue girl seems to know all about me. Ask her and you’ll find I’ve killed my fair share of Batarians.”

The ‘Geth enthusiast’ nodded as he raised his head from his omni-tool, still smiling behind those large silver-lined sunglasses. “Torfan, right? Yeah, I’ve heard about that, trust me. Thing is, though…” He clicked his tongue. “Me and your brother, we’re kinda famous ‘cause we killed Batarians. You’re not ‘cause you executed them, you get me?”

She pushed off the bulkhead, footsteps loud on the deck plating until she stopped just outside the circle of light cast by the map. “Mind repeating that?”

He glanced back down at his omni, grin sliding back into a smirk as he continued whatever work he was doing. “I do, actually.”

… little shit. The anger sat low in her gut, a familiar compression to she burned it for fuel like a vintage groundcar, crude and rough like petrochem. “What are you even doing on the deck anyway? You were provided temporary quarters.”“Just some projections on Geth movements since they fled Eden.” He punctuated the words with a hum, lip twitching. “Seems like the Alliance hasn’t been keeping up on our potential AI overlords.”

"The ship's tac-suite can handle those projections just fine, Victors." The man just hummed again at her attempted dismissal, the sound almost as low a rumble as Captain Anderson. "We don't need your help on something like that."

His fingers didn't stop. "See, you say that and I know you mean it,” He snorted with the words, the sound loud enough she knew it was done for her to hear, “but that suite of yours is… well, it’s shit. It’s shiny shit, but c’mon, it’s not even uniquely dominant against most advanced mil-spec, y’get me?”Jane’s jaw worked silently.“Might as well be running on a decade-old omni, especially considering Alliance-standard predictive algorithms." He looked up again. “No offense, of course.”

The burr in her voice wanted out, her mother’s accent warring against her even as she swallowed it. "It's handled situations a bit more complex than a Terminus warlord playing tourist." 

Not exactly true, considering Eden Prime was really their first major op, but it was enough to get a flicker from the civ. Something in the set of his jaw, maybe, or the way his shoulders shifted under that jacket.

"Maybe I was a lil’ rude..." Maybe. “It’s a good enough system by standard metrics.” He still wasn't looking at her. "But I don’t believe in good enough or standard, Commander.”

Jane's fingers twitched against her bicep, ceramic creaking again as he swiped a hand across the bright blue glow of his omni’s holo-screens.

The screens vanished, Jane’s eyes widening as she looked out onto the galactic map in front of the both of them as it flickered. Techs and officers all around joined her with wide eyes as the orange Alliance overlay dissolved into a sharper denser blue; complex, terrifying projections of potential attack vectors that spiraled out like a virus, connecting nodes the Alliance hadn't even flagged as active.

"What I believe in…” He tapped a cluster of red dots. “Is Victory.”

Jane pulled her gaze away from the map as Normandy techs milled closer, green eyes locking onto the civilian warlord in front of her. Toys. John’s words sounded off in her head again, his slow sure way of speaking bouncing around in her skull. He does have good toys. 

Just because she didn’t trust them (or him), it didn’t mean they couldn’t be useful. “You’re a very busy man for a civilian contractor.” The title was its own insult, a running joke in the Alliance to refer to mercenary bosses, new ones seeming to pop up every month or so since humanity had been introduced to the wider galaxy.

A polite way of saying threat.

"The galaxy is a dangerous place, Commander Shepard," Zedd said. He shrugged, a motion that rippled through the jacket. "Someone’s gotta pick up the slack, and if the Alliance isn’t gonna keep the lights on, I guess it falls to me then. But just know, I have full respect for the Systems Alliance and all it does for humanity.“

She blinked slowly; the lie so damn blatant, so utterly without shame, that it was almost impressive as it hung in the air between them like a challenge. Almost. He wasn't trying to convince anyone listening, more daring her to call him on it.

“And that’s you?”He smiled again. “Yeah, me and any other concerned citizen.”

Jane knew monsters. She looked in the mirror every morning as soon as she got out of bed and saw Torfan staring back. Looking into those blue lenses, she saw exactly the kind of person who could do the same thing she did.

Her lips curved into a thin smile, enough to match his. “Concerned citizen, huh?”

She took a half-step closer, the distance between them now less than striking range. "Because in my experience," her voice dropped an octave, the ghost of an accent she usually strangled surfacing, "citizens don't create fleets and field private armies with gene-modded soldiers."

Zedd tilted his head, those aviators sliding down his nose just a fraction. “That’s the slack I’m talking about, Commander.”

Jane took another step. “...I don’t know how nobody’s shot you yet.”“They’ve tried.”

The commander smirked. “They should try again.”

Before he could reply, before the tension could snap the thin thread of civility holding the deck together, a familiar voice crackled over the ship-wide comm; loud, irreverent, and blissfully unaware of any potential violence. "Attention, all hands. ETA to Citadel is approximately three hours. Try not to break anything expensive before we get there. And by expensive, I mean the ship. I don't care about your egos."