#now climb a ship barehanded without any legs

[swan2swan]

Ariel: the Strongest Disney Princess

[thunderheadfred]

Red Streak [3.2]

Chapter 03: One of Those Faces [Part 2 of 3. Revised August 2017]

Read the complete fic on AO3 

Albacus Shanxi 2157 CE

Albacus passed the omni-tool hardware from hand to hand, worrying a circle around the projection ring with idle thumbs. He was too tired to be nervous, and too well-trained besides, but he allowed himself to indulge in a momentary feeling of dread as he left the main body of his torini in the square and made his way alone to the industrial quarter.

Hannah Shepard’s supply hub was crammed into a rough, riverside area to the west of the city proper, and it was a desolate mess. The entire block looked as though it had been ramshackle to begin with, and the ambiance had been little improved by the orbital debris that he himself had dropped down from above, smashing half of the structures to rubble. A lopsided, impoverished collection of useful but ugly buildings: metal refineries, lumber mills, and several smaller food processing facilities, all of them gaping and silent now.

General Arterius would never approve of Albacus handing any meager scrap of technology to the humans, even this first-tier Elkoss Combine plaything with no melee capability. The General rarely approved of much, as far as diplomatic approaches was concerned, but Albacus had yet to find anything in this situation that was worth compromising several centuries of inherited ideals. Spending a year in his youth as political aide to an asari Matriarch had taught him a thing or two about the importance of negotiation and compromise. The General could take his ambitious, self-serving warmongering and hang with it.

Their hands had already been bloodied; a soiling so deep it would never be cleansed. It made no difference if the Citadel Council appeared in person and ordered the Tenefalx to exterminate civilians and children. The only reason Albacus would knowingly allow his ship to continue to risking innocent lives was if he himself were dead.

An omni-tool was the easiest way to help a solitary human manage the enormous logistical task of supplying the colony, and there were other benefits that had nothing to do with the possibility of mutinous assault. For one, the rudimentary communications app would allow him to contact her in case of emergency, and emergencies were inevitable. It was hard to say which side was more likely to crack first, but it was certain to happen sooner rather than later. He refused to be responsible for catching Shepard’s child in the crossfire. Overloads, sabotage, even an underpowered shield might help the two of them survive a few extra minutes if the storm broke without warning. He owed her that much after dragging her into this: a chance.

He had no concerns about the human female’s ability to handle the tech; she was surprisingly adaptable. So far, most of the humans seemed to be. The human general - Williams - had adjusted to several galaxy-broad political concepts in the span of minutes, and his willingness to cooperate with the surrender had filled Albacus with shaky respect. It was never easy to relent to a superior enemy force with minimal bloodshed - Albacus understood that all too well from his own forced cooperation with Arterius.

As he approached the depot entrance, he nodded to Obren Ilmek, taking note of the tired ashen patina of the lieutenant’s plates. He would require a relief soon; the torin looked liable to die on his feet if he was forced to stand much longer. Albacus had personally posted his own sub-lieutenant to Shepard’s guard detail - he trusted Ilmek not to mindlessly open fire over a translator glitch. He was a just and reasonable torin with two decades of service on his record, nearly half of those aboard the Tenefalx. Albacus would have trusted him to guard his own blessed matrem, had she still been living.

For now, General Arterius was allowing Albacus his attempt at cooperation. Nonetheless, Albacus had made every attempt to keep Shepard and her child surrounded by his own trusted hands, in case Arterius’ feelings suddenly changed. Albacus knew the Tenefalx crew like the back of his own hand, and was likewise familiar with the sister crews of the Miriton and the Bexitani, but the rest of the shakedown fleet was a mishmash of junior officers fresh out of the recruitment hall, with General Arterius’ own hot-headed brother among them. None of them were ready to be considered real falxi of the Blackwatch, and Albacus would have loved nothing more than to send them all home to their compulsory service colleges. The juniors were far too inexperienced, far too headstrong and eager for blood, to be trusted alone with human prisoners.

Especially not Shepard, he thought. She was unpredictable in her own right.

“All quiet here, Regidonis.” Ilmek reported, shuffling his armor around a stiff neck. “Tulubri is inside. She said the human started working as soon as the sun came up.”

“Has the mother given you any trouble?”

“No, not as long as the child is in her sight.”

“I suppose at this stage, we can count that as progress.”

Albacus shoved open the stiff, un-powered door and stepped into the cavernous darkness beyond.

As his eyes adjusted, he could see Sergeant Tulubri standing at attention, thankfully without a weapon drawn. Ris Tulubri was his best hand-to-hand practitioner; she could disarm a charging krogan just by looking at him. If Shepard started trouble, he knew this was the tarin who could end it swift and clean, without an untimely death on either side.

For a moment, Albacus thought he might be imagining things in the dark, but after a few seconds of squinting, he realized that the shadowy blur near Tulubri’s right side was in fact the human child, and she was holding the sergeant’s hand like it was made of precious salarian spunweb. Not merely holding Tulubri’s hand, she seemed to be studying it, pulling the fingers right down to her tiny face, and as Albacus approached, he saw why. The tarin had removed her glove to show off the long, smooth lines of her talons. Surprisingly intimate for the sergeant - he had never known her to be sentimental before. Then again, he reflected, he had never seen her around a puer, much less an alien one.

“Getting friendly, I see.”

Tulubri gave him a polite nod, then looked down at the little one, her mandibles flickering in an embarrassed grin.

“She’s very curious, and kind of cute, for a monkey. She reminds me of my fratliae, back on the Citadel.”

“Still,” he teased, allowing a welcome bit of warmth into his sub-vocals for once. “Never thought I would see you barehanded and petting a puer.”

“Is it still a puer if it’s a monkey?” she asked, rubbing one talon curiously along the soft and fleshy side of the little human’s face.

“She’s not a monkey,” said a voice. Albacus dimly recognized Shepard’s drawl, though she was calling down from high above him, somewhere near the ceiling. Like some kind of spirit. “She’s a great ape.”

He peered deeper into the shadows and spotted Shepard dangling from a large steel shelf as if she were climbing a tree, apparently doing her utmost to remain true to her family’s distinguished primate origins. When she prised open a sealed bin and then poked her head inside, she wretched. Reeling away from the stench, she barely kept her grip on the scaffold.

“No, it’s all bad. Once we lost the air conditioning it was a fool’s hope anyway. Damn.”

So far, Shepard had been economical with her words in front of him - this felt like her longest sentence so far.

“What do you have left?” He asked, watching Shepard scrambling back down to solid ground.

“Almost nothing.” She said with finality.

He palmed the omni-tool and begged the spirits for a damned reprieve.

Shepard jumped the last few meters to the floor, and when she stood at her full height, Albacus was once again surprised by her stature. She seemed taller by half than the rest of the humans in the colony, with arms and legs almost as long as a full-grown tarin’s. Nor did she seem intimidated by much, with the exception of any threats to her child’s well being.

Whenever she spoke to him, she looked him square in the eyes; something that her own general had been too dwarfed to attempt.

After measuring Albacus’ intentions with another one of her perceptive once-overs, she wiped her hands on an immaculate white cloth that was wound around her torso and sighed.

“The computer has been down since day three of the bombardment,” she said, looking as if she were trying to internally calculate several large figures all at once. “This morning, I’ve been trying to take an inventory of this storehouse, but it’s slow going… damn near impossible.”

“I have something that may help with that,” he said. He held out the small hand attachment of the Elkoss Cipher Mini. “I smuggled you an omni-tool.”

“Is that one of those…” She floated her right hand around her opposite forearm, mimicking the familiar haptic interface.

“It is. I pre-loaded it with all the data we could mine from your storage media; one of my engineers was up all night cobbling this together. A few things were lost or corrupted, but it should be usable for the most part.” He tossed it to her, indicated how to fasten it to her wrist and power it on. “I apologize, but this model does not transform into anything lethal.”

“Figures.” She said, as the omni-tool flared to life on her arm.

As soon as the omni-tool was illuminated, Shepard’s child let go of Tulubri and rushed to her mother’s side with a reverent ooooooh. Shining, bug-like eyes stared into the glowing orange hologram with unabashed wonder.

“Yes, Jane. Definitely ‘oooooh.’”

The child reached out to touch it. Shepard looked to Albacus, her expression rock-hard.

“Is it safe?”

“Completely.”

She prodded it a few more times with a bare fingertip, just to be sure, and then lowered her arm within reach of the little one.

“Ooooooooh” the child said again, squeezing the orange hologram between her many chubby fingers. “Orange!”

“Jane, I need to talk to Captain Regidonis now. It’s important.” She withdrew her arm, but was well prepared to redirect the child’s frustrated whine. “Hey, where’s Lionel? You should show him to Sergeant Tulubri.”

“Okay! Tulu-bee, come find Lionel. It’s important!”

With the child and the deadly hand-to-hand tactician sufficiently distracted, Shepard approached and held out her left arm.

“Show me,” she said.

He slowly walked her through the menus that would pull up the relevant documentation; shipping receipts, inventory records, maps of her suppliers. She caught on quickly.

“There are some viable crops in the southern quadrant, soybeans maybe.” In an unconscious, droning voice, she explained the contents of her ledgers. Endless financial figures and budget estimates whizzed by, which Albacus’ translator could process, but he himself could not. “The corn might be ready in a few weeks, if it’s still standing. I have no idea what sort of yield we could expect, but someone should be assigned to comb the farms, in case there’s anything we can salvage.”

“I can have a junior detail supervise a small group of cooperative human workers - how many do you need?”

“Can’t your men drive a tractor?” She paused to look into his face, and her soft, foreign expression was similar to one he’d witnessed on more than one asari: sarcasm. Was she joking with him? In the middle of a crisis? He blinked.

“Nevermind,” she amended, voice flattening out. “A dozen farmhands should do, if you allow them to use a transport.”

Slowly, clumsily, she pulled up a map, then pointed to several areas of interest.

“I have some storehouses in the north. Dried goods: rice, flour, beans. Some of the apples and root vegetables are probably still edible. Cans and boxes too, we can use all of it. I’ll need a full shipment as soon as possible. Send a convoy. And this time, don’t blow it up.”

“Anything else?”

She stared at the omni-tool and tried swiping through a few screens, but quickly got lost in a sub-menu, unable to find the return command.

“Here, like this.” He reached over her shoulder and tapped her back to the correct area. Despite his proximity, his armor, his visible weaponry, Shepard didn’t flinch, or even blink, when he got too close. Her fortitude continued to impress.

She studied the omni-tool again, frowning. “Looks like… a mess. In the best case, we’ve got enough supplies in remote storage to last a few weeks. We lost too much in the bombardment. Half the farmland is as good as salted now, and we don’t have time to turn it over. If your people are planning to hold this colony for any length of time, additional supplies will have to come from off-world.”

“The General will never allow your ships through his blockade. Aid will come through us or not at all.”

“Do you have spare rations?”

She might have been kidding, but he took the question seriously.

“Unfortunately no. We have different protein structures - our food would be useless to you, possibly deadly - never mind that we barely have enough for ourselves. I might have some levo relief stocks available, but it would be asari, salarian… completely foreign. Chemically sound, but you might have a difficult time convincing your people to take it.”

“If you can get it to me, I can cram it down their throats.”

“Maybe I could--” he cut himself off. It would be a huge risk, trying to slide a message under the General’s watch. Benezia would help, Albacus had no doubt about that, but the General would be a problem. Once an asari Matriarch saw what was going on down here, Arterius’ grandiose theatre of war unearned would be as good as curtained.

“What?” Shepard asked, turning to face him more directly.

He buried the hope for now. See if his restless torini would settle into a work detail. See if some semblance of cohesion could be maintained for more than an hour. Then he could worry about sending smoke signals to Benezia. The Matriarch had taught him that, after all: always walk the longest roads one step at a time.

“Preparations to secure your supplies from the north and south will start within the hour.” he said, willfully refocusing on problems that were immediately solvable. “If you like, I could assign a supervised work detail to help you clear away this mess, maybe restore some power. I understand that since you agreed to assist me, there have been some tensions between you and the other colonists--”

“Nothing fixes tension like sharing a work load.  Yeah. Send them over. I’ll give a few sad sacks something to do. Keep ‘em busy, and show them I’m not feeding you all of humanity’s secrets.”

Firmly, suddenly, she grabbed hold of him, enclosing his gloved palm between her many strong fingers.

“Thank you,” she said. “For taking this on.”

Her hand squeezed his. Once, strong and certain. Then she disappeared into the shadows, calling for the little one named Jane.