Chapter Text
“Hold on to your butts, this is going to get rough!”
Joker’s voice rang through the intercom in the CIC, an audible cherry on top of the chaos currently unfolding that Shepard knew was echoing through every floor of the SR2. The strain in his voice was palpable, the forced humor not enough to cover up the stress of the moment. Emphasizing his point, the SR2 was rocked again, and it was all Jane could do to stay on her feet as miscellaneous items were thrown across the room from desks and control equipment, the people who had occupied the various command centers moments ago scrambling amongst the debris to find their ways to the emergency jump seats and strap themselves in. Those who were less steady on their feet were unceremoniously tossed to the floor like ragdolls, completely at the mercy of the gravity of the ship and the loss of the stabilizers. Jane grabbed Kelly Chambers’ hand and pulled her to her feet, wincing as she spotted the fresh bruise now blossoming across her forehead. The ship lurched and Kelly clung to her for support, Shepard gritting her teeth and clinging to the railing around the CIC map to keep them both upright as they rode the rough wave. The moment the ship righted, Shepard all but threw Kelly toward the closest free jump seat and continued making her way to the cockpit. The damage to the ship from the initial attack had knocked out the ship’s stabilizing mechanism, so its occupants were subject to every bump and sway as they made their escape. Somewhere to her right she heard a loud crash followed by the dulcet sounds of an irate salarian scientist. She could only hope that whatever had fallen wouldn’t melt through the floor and cause yet another crisis for her to fix after this one was over.
Now gripping the wall, Shepard clutched the grooves in the paneling like makeshift fingerholds until her knuckles were white as the ship was jostled once again. Alarms were blaring and emergency lights had flickered on, illuminating the walkway with an ominous red glow. Shepard was unwillingly thrown into a memory of a similar situation from a couple of years prior on a different, but similar ship.
Fire. Alarms. Screams. Bodies littering the floor. Her compatriots. Her subordinates. Her friends. No time to check pulses. No time to offer them the burials they deserved. Have to get to Joker. Can’t lose Joker. A gaping chasm into outer space torn through the command center. Gotta get to Joker. Can’t let Joker die, too. Gotta—
“Shepard, the calibrations for this thing are fucked, there’s not much more I can do down here and with every jolt the little I’ve been able to fix are fucked all over again,” Garrus’s familiar multi-layered thrumming voice in her ear jolted her out of the unwelcome flashback. “Awaiting your orders, Commander,” he continued, slipping into the formality that had been steadily eroding between the two of them, belying his stress. Jane squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, willing away the panic the flashback had risen before replying.
“How much damage to the hull? Are we at risk of depressurization?”
“I can answer that one,” Tali responded in her cheerfully matter-of-fact voice. “Hull damage from the attack so far is remarkably minimal. There are minor leaks, and everyone who is able is working to patch them as we speak. Every strike seems to be precisely targeted. The engines, the shield generators, the stabilizers, the long-distance communication relay devices, all have been targeted with varying degrees of success so far. Whatever damage to the ship is due almost entirely to Joker’s maneuvering taking their shots off course, and whatever asteroids he’s unable to dodge while doing so.”
“I resent that,” Joker cut in, this time his voice coming through the open comms in her ear instead of overhead.
“They’re trying to incapacitate us,” Shepard replied, ignoring Joker as she continued her half-walk, half-climb toward him. Garrus hummed disapprovingly. “They’ve already successfully taken out our shields and our stabilizers, and they’ve damaged our guns enough that we can’t return fire. They’re not trying to blow us out of the air, they’re trying to render us completely helpless, likely so they can board. I don’t think these are the same ones from before. You two—and whoever else is listening—strap in and brace for evasive maneuvering. Keep your guns on you and ready in case Joker and EDI are unsuccessful and we’re boarded.”
A small chorus of familiar voices and various forms of “understood, Commander,” echoed in her hear as she launched herself the remaining few feet toward Joker’s chair. Gripping the back of it, she noted the sheen of sweat on his forehead, just visible under the brim of his cap. “Talk to me, Joker,” Shepard said, trying to keep her voice steady as her eyes scanned the screens and radar in front of the pilot. Joker had attempted to take cover in an asteroid belt that was proving much more unmanageable than anticipated.
EDI’s AI hologram popped up to Joker’s left in her familiar spot. “The issue, Commander Shepard, is that what Mr. Moreau and I had initially thought to be an asteroid field is actually a debris field of a planet that inexplicably exploded sometime in the recent past.” Shepard’s eyebrows raised slightly, not taking her eyes off the screen. The radar was going crazy, blips indicating the asteroids and space debris were appearing and disappearing, and seemed to be spinning wildly, all while one blip was conspicuously remaining on their tail. Joker and EDI’s masterful maneuvering of the SR2 wasn’t enough to shake them, and they seemed to be fielding the debris equally expertly.
“Exploded? What does that mean, exactly? What could possibly make a planet explode?” Shepard asked.
“No fucking clue,” Joker said through gritted teeth. “And even if it does know, it probably can’t tell us,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the Cerberus hologram. “But it's like an asteroid belt on steroids and as unpredictable as a crazy ex-girlfriend with a penchant for Molotov cocktails.” He jerked the controls hard to the right, and Shepard briefly caught sight of a massive chunk of space rock that had appeared from seemingly nowhere as she lost her balance and nearly crashed to the floor again. Joker threw her a terse apology before continuing, “I’m dodging whatever they’re shooting at us as well as giant hunks of exploded planet—although at least it seems their need to dodge the space rocks has kept them from being able to shoot at us again in the last few minutes. I can shake them, I know it.”
“Are we anywhere near a Mass Relay?” Shepard asked. “Can we burn some eezo and relay out of here?”
“The closest Mass Relay is on the other side of this debris field, Commander, and would require Mr. Moreau to backtrack and take us toward our enemy to reach,” EDI supplied.
“I’m doing my best, Commander, but I—oh, fuck!”
Shepard was thrown to the floor, and for a moment every sound was a distant echo as her head bounced off the wall. She inwardly cursed her habit of dressing down when aboard the ship, wishing for the protection a helmet would have provided and swallowing hard to keep the sandwich she had half-finished before all of this began from rising back up her esophagus. Not twenty minutes ago she had been lounging on the bench in the Main Battery, eating lunch with Garrus and laughing with him about something-or-other when the first strike hit the shield generators. The second strike had come immediately after, knocking out the stabilizers and flinging the ship into a brief spin before Joker regained control of it. Jane, Garrus, and their remaining lunches were in a heap on the floor, Garrus’s arms reflexively and protectively wrapped around Shepard. Whatever awkward fluster of the sudden, unexpected physical closeness between the two of them for the first time since the infamous “reach and flexibility” conversation a couple of weeks ago, however, was quickly drowned out by Joker’s panicked “Commander, we’re under attack,” on their comms. They’d instantly shifted into seriousness, Garrus helping Shepard to her feet before lunging toward the weapons controls as Shepard ran toward the elevator.
“What the FUCK just happened?” As if summoned, Garrus’s frantic voice came through the comms, all sense of obligatory propriety forgotten.
“Joker!” Shepard called hoarsely from the floor, “what is going on?” The alarms in the cockpit were now a cacophony, the screens all flashing so alarmingly it was all Shepard could do to keep herself rooted in the present moment and not let herself slip back into the memory from before.
“I don’t know, Commander! I’m struggling to maintain control, we’re being pulled by something!”
“Is it the collectors?”
“No, I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is pulled us into the side of an asteroid I was trying to dodge! We’re caught in the gravitational pull of something, but I can’t see what!”
“Mr. Moreau, you’re bleeding—”
“Not NOW, EDI!”
“Joker, what—”
“Commander Shepard, suggest you take a look out of the window instead of the radar screen. Believe you will find the answer to your question,” Mordin interjected. Shepard and Joker’s heads snapped to the window to their left.
“Shepard, what the fuck is that?” Joker choked out, not bothering to hide the fear in his voice.
“That, I believe, Mr. Moreau, is a wormhole, and likely what is responsible for the destroyed planet whose debris field we are attempting to maneuver through,” replied EDI.
“Those exist?!” cried Shepard in disbelief.
“Oh, they exist,” the anxious, elderly salarian replied. “Incredibly volatile and unpredictable, worse than Joker’s ex-girlfriend. Rare. Very rare. Have not been able to be studied extensively.”
The ship lurched as Joker fought with the controls against the gravitational pull of the massive swirling vortex that seemed to both emit light and suck it in. Shepard could see the veins in his arms as he strained to maintain some form of control, trying desperately to keep the ship from ricocheting off of the chunks of planet that were spinning haphazardly toward the strange abyssal structure that was getting closer by the second.
“Mordin, why isn’t it showing up on the radar?” Shepard asked.
“Isn’t made of matter,” Mordin replied simply. “Formless. Isn’t a thing so much as a phenomena. Not like, say, black hole. Yet, gravitational pull unquestionably apparent. Strange. Would love to study it.” The ship jerked violently. “Though, perhaps not like this.”
“What happens if that thing pulls us into it?” Garrus asked.
“Not sure,” came the reply. “Exploded the planet. Perhaps explode the ship? Pull all matter into noodle-like strings? Pull us in and spit us out somewhere new? Sometime new? Very few wormholes ever discovered. Fewer studied. Almost no data. No one who goes in has ever come back out.”
The collective silence on the comms was deafening. Mordin cleared his throat, “uh, would prefer not to go in if at all possible.”
“Working on it, Mordin,” Joker gritted in reply. “EDI, I need your help, I’m losing control!”
“I’m trying, Mr. Moreau, but the technology of the ship does not seem to be a strong enough match against the wormhole’s formidable gravitational pull!” Shepard didn’t think she’d ever heard EDI sound so desperate before.
“Maybe we can use the pull in our favor!” piped Tali. “Use it like a whirlpool and drift against it! Like a slingshot!”
“Tali, I could kiss you,” said Joker. “I won’t, obviously, because you’ll probably die or whatever, but the sentiment is there.” Tali’s quiet flustered sputtering went ignored as Joker spoke through the ship’s intercom, “If you haven’t been knocked unconscious yet and don’t want to be, hold onto something and try not to puke.”
Shepard clutched the side of the chair, opting to stay on the floor. She wrapped her sweatpants-clad left leg around the base of the chair to try and keep herself from sliding across the floor. If they made it out of this, she was never wearing anything less than her full suit at all times ever again. The inertia of the ship’s rotation first had Shepard sliding closer to the chair, and she gripped it with all her might. Her fingers ached as the rotation had her body trying to slide away from the chair and across the floor. She was vaguely aware of the string of curses being muttered in her ear through the open comms by her crewmates as she was sure they, too, were fighting against being flung across the room yet again. Jane could just barely see out of the window from the angle she was being forced into on the floor as the ship banked hard, Joker both trying to fight the pull from the wormhole and lean into it strategically.
“Ha, I think I’ve got it!” Joker exclaimed excitedly. The pull lessened just slightly as the inertia of the SR2 stopped working against the wormhole and instead started working with it. Shepard groaned and looked up, only to catch sight of something outside the window that the hubbub of the wormhole’s discovery had briefly driven from their minds. As if summoned by Joker’s premature celebration, the collector ship came into view. Before she could gather the breath to shout a warning, there was a bright flash. Every light went out, every alarm went silent, and the ship plunged into total darkness and complete chaos. The sudden darkness was suffocating, and Jane couldn’t stop herself from letting go of the chair and throwing her hands to her throat in a wild panic. She barely had a moment to register that she could, in fact, breathe, when the ship hit hard against something that sent it careening. Her body jerked away from the pilot’s chair but was abruptly stopped by the leg she still had wrapped around the base, which snapped with a sickening crack that echoed in the oppressively quiet cockpit.
“Oh shit, Commander, was that you or me?” She heard Joker gasp through his own pain. Shepard had broken bones before, had been injured in numerous ways more times than she could remember, but it never hurt any less. She gasped before biting down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood and tears welled in her eyes, willing herself not to scream, but she couldn’t stop the strangled, gasping sound of intense pain that exited her mouth.
“Shepard?” Garrus’s concerned voice came through the comms. Shepard was too busy biting back her pain to respond. “Jane?” Garrus’s voice was laced with desperation for her to respond. Trying to fight back the bile in her throat, she opened her mouth just enough to whisper as strained, “Garrus, I’m—”
Her leg now limp and useless, she had no purchase to stop herself when the ship ricocheted again. Just before her head hit the wall, she registered the sight of swirling, colorful light, and everything went black.