Boiling Point

The first day was the easiest... in hindsight, anyway. The first thing Shepard and her companions did was examine the thermoregulator. No one among them would claim to be an expert in the technological realm, but they did not need to be in order to understand that there was nothing they could do to restore it. The whole apparatus was slowly melting down from overuse. The unit was not designed for a climate like that on Metgos. The exertion needed to keep the facility's conditions within suitable parameters for life was beyond what the thermoregulator could sustain; and that was before mentioning the pitiful ventilation arrangement. The appliance needed cooling too, and the chamber that housed it was barely insulated against the surrounding planet. Arepor had been right: the thermoregulator was not shot yet, but it would not take much more use for it to get there.

Continuing their investigation, they found shortcomings like this all throughout the base - wiring with insufficient insulation, convoluted emergency escape routes, and dubious water purifiers. The facility was one big deathtrap of shortchange design and negligence.

"Damn, this place almost makes that military-regulation shit on the Normandy seem cushy," Jack remarked.

Their search was dual-purpose. Shepard wanted to look for clues on this place and what the miners had been up to. Arepor's honesty was a refreshing change from the breed of outlaw she was accustomed to, but there was a reason it was such a rare occurrence. Secondly, if they were going to be stuck there a while, then the team preferred to know what they had to work with.

And the answer to that was: not much.

The more standard-shortfalls and safety violations they found, the more Jane pieced together her theory. She got the impression that this was an under-the-table operation sponsored by some crime boss looking for a new enterprise, or some corporation trying to bypass red tape. Whoever was behind this, they did not care much about laws, and they cared even less about those on their payroll.

All things considered, Shepard had been in tighter spots. They had food, water, air, power, and some - admittedly meager - defense against the swelter in their suits. It was not the most dangerous mission quite as much as it was the most oppressive one. A firefight with the geth or a raid on a Cerberus base was scary and deadly, but it only lasted so long. An hour after the action starts one would already be heading back home. On this mission, days passed without the hostile heat relenting. It was conditions like these that sank a soldier's morale in wartime. Even with one's critical needs met, there was a limit to what they could endure.

If exploration was the theme of day one, then denial was the theme of day two. Having thoroughly picked the base over, investigating was no longer a sufficient distraction to keep their minds off the piping air. It felt silly since they were technically still on a mission, but each of the team resorted to whatever pastimes were available to them. Talking and sleeping came easiest, but when those grew old, they looked to other options.

Ashley kept looking for productive tasks to keep busy with. They may have been stuck there, but she did not like the idea of slacking off outside of shore leave or off-duty hours. Eventually she accepted the terms of their confinement, and permitted herself to kill time by messaging her family or viewing whatever vids she could reach through the extranet. Watching a marathon of the first three Blasto films was not a moment she would look back on with any amount of pride.

Jack corresponded with her students at Grissom Academy. She reminded them that her absence was no excuse to fall behind in their practice, and that she planned on delivering a gruesome exam first thing upon her return. Understandably, they were hungry for any details they could get on what she was up to with the legendary Commander Shepard, and questions about whether she was facing any danger followed. The biotic did not miss the opportunity to boastfully belittle the perils they faced; putting on a veneer of indifference to dissuade any worries on the part of her pupils.

At other times she wrote poetry. Once Jane walked in on her in the middle of one work and Jack flinched to hide what she was doing before seeing that it was the commander. Clearly she did not mind Shepard knowing what she was up to, and she surely would not expect Samara to be judgmental of her creativity; so was she afraid of Ashley discovering her interest in poetry? Jane shook her head. If only she knew Ashley better than that. It might even be something they could connect over.

As for Samara, the asari either meditated or held tender calls with her daughter. The few times Shepard inadvertently overheard their talks, she gleaned that Falere was aware of the situation her mother was in and that she was upset to hear about the danger, but confident that Samara and the others would make it out alive.

Jane handled the waiting as fine as anyone else at first. When the second day rolled into the third though, she worried that the strain was beginning to show. Everyone had been hoping that their incarceration would turn out closer to the sixteen-hour end of Legion's estimate. Past the forty-eight hour mark, everyone became more conservative with how they allocated their hopes. They were all smart enough to know that it was not a binary - either sixteen hours or a hundred - but it still felt as though the latter option was somehow more likely than any hour in between.

Calling for updates every few hours, Shepard felt like an impatient child whining to go home. Each time EDI, or Legion, or anyone else answered, it was the same news: no, the storm is not showing any signs of clearing soon. The stress was not exclusive to those on Metgos' surface either. Everyone on the Normandy was worried sick about those planetside, and they felt terrible for their inability to help. There were times when they were tempted to deploy a Mako in the midst of the storm. The long list of hazards made landing the tank irresponsibly risky, but not impossible. The impossible part would be returning to the Normandy intact. Arranging a coordinated high-atmosphere pickup while contending with high winds, debris, and instrument interference? Forget about it. Sending a team down early would only expand the pool of people in need of rescuing.

The fourth day marked the first crack in their resolve. Shepard rose from her fitful sleep and trudged to the common area. The heat could not follow them into their unconsciousness, but it could disrupt it. Between the feeling of being smothered and the discomfort of lying down encased in their suits, it was difficult to get sleep that lasted longer than a few hours at a time. Reaching the core of the base, she found Jack there, lying down on a couch with a fan pointed at her - without her suit.

"What are you doing?" the commander blurted with surprise. This inconsequential display was nearly shocking after the three prior days of tedium.

"Hey, Shep'," the biotic greeted, barely shifting her head to glance at Jane. "Got sick of being sealed up like a quarian and decided to try cooling down the old-fashioned way." She pointed to the fan as if Shepard needed clarification. "So far I'd say it's better letting my skin breathe." Her tone was lazy, somewhere between appeased and tired. She was dressed down to her undershirt and a pair of briefs, both of which were spotted with absorbed sweat.

"Jack, you need to put your suit back on. You're going to overheat like this."

"Am I? Because I feel like I've been overheating for days now, and this is the first time I've gotten any relief." Jack rolled to a prone position to give her back some time in the moving air. "You shouldn't knock until you try it, Commander. I'd invite you to join me, but there's only room for one. I suggest you find a fan for yourself."

Jane shook her head, trusting Jack to pass judgement for herself. "Just be sure to stay hydrated."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Jack reached for her nearby canteen and waved a sarcastic salute at the departing Spectre.

Jane returned to the office she had unofficially claimed as her own and opened up her private message box to occupy herself. She could not help but feel like a bit of an ass after her interaction with Jack. The suits they were provided were supposed to be state-of-the-art pieces of equipment designed to fulfill the numerous demands made of a soldier in the field; and Jack had gone and demonstrated its inferiority to a household appliance. To be fair, cooling was not the primary purpose of the suits, but it was hard to not resent the technological ineptitude.

A while later a knock came from the doorframe and Shepard turned to see Ashley standing there.

"Have you seen Jack's workaround for the temperature problem?" the lieutenant commander asked.

"I have," Jane responded indifferently.

"Have you thought about giving it a try? Taking turns with them?"

"Them?"

"Yeah, Samara found a second fan and they're both out of their suits," Ashley threw a thumb over her shoulder.

The commander tried to rub her brow through her helmet. Why do I bother with protocol? "Maybe later. Keep on eye on them, alright?"

"Sure thing."