The First Mission

Sleep for Shepard was a slow and heavy thing. Like returning to the creeping void outside of existence. It was peaceful in part, but with the added continual bodily heft of having a physical form. She dreamed very little, she suspected on some level she'd gotten all of the dreams out of her system over the course of the last few years spent in the inky black. When she finally did dream, it was a shapeless whirling thing. She saw Miranda's sneering perfect face, a flash of hot red rage and shame associated with it.

She was woken by a blast of cold water, a showerhead set to the "merciless" subcategory of the massage setting. An instant bone chill shuddered through her body as she tried to raise her head. She blinked blearily, trying to wipe her face of the caking of dried... oh god, it was cum, wasn't it?

"Get up, we touch down in ten."

Miranda spoke like a parent waking a hungover child. Shepard groaned, she wasn't hungover, but the memory of last night did make her want to start drinking and not stop until she didn't have to experience human thought.

"Wha-?"

Miranda gave her a nudge with her boot that was only barely shy of a kick.

"I said get up. If I have to drag you out, I will. If you were anybody else, I'd have already shot you for what you did to my shower."

Shepard dragged herself out of the slick basin. The simple shirt and deep-crotched sweatpants she had come over in several hours ago were completely ruined, clinging wetly to her body. She made a halfhearted attempt to pull her pants up around her waist but mostly gave up.

"Where are we going?" She grunted, trying to blink the sleep from her eyes.

"Freedom's Progress."

The craft bumped and jolted as it struggled to push down into the atmosphere. The old Normandy's shuttlecraft, for all of its many faults, had never struggled this hard. It likely wasn't a matter of capability, the craft was furnished fancily and the build seemed to be the best that civilian money could pay for. In all likelihood, it was a phenomenally well-crafted piece of technology. The issue was how Cerberus ran it. They burned the engine at tolerance in environments where half of that was twice what Alliance regs allowed. The Alliance was well unionized; employee mortality, as well as part replacement, came at a high cost. The trick then became to build everything twice as safe and half as exciting as it needed to be. The Cerberus craft would lap the Alliance craft twice over in a race or burn up trying. That was the reality of corporate soldiering.

It translated into everything about working for Cerberus. Alliance uniforms were gender (and, at times, species) neutral. A human female uniform had enough crotch room for a krogan male wearer and a salarian male needed to have enough chest room for an Asari rack. They were boring, unsexy uniforms. Comfortable enough for you to forget you were even wearing one but not so comfortable that you wanted to put one on. In contrast, while Miranda's outfit was far from female standard, it could not have possibly fit anybody but her. Shepard knew from trying a sized replica on. She'd had tons of excess room in the chest and ass while the crotch hugged skintight enough to outline every crease and vein in Shepard's cock. Even the largest male uniforms had been tight around her package, to say nothing of the lack of room for her chest. She'd had to special order a uniform out of her own wallet to get something comfortable, a suit specialized enough that it would take a few days and likely make whoever had to manufacture it roll their eyes in disbelief. For the time being, she was **** to mix and match male bottoms and female tops. And that was just for the underclothes, that was before the nightmare of getting into her combat armor. Her old battle armor had been repaired to the individual thread, though in retrospect, new armor might have fit better.

Mary shifted in her seat, trying to find a position where her armor didn't squeeze or pinch her package. Jacob stared ahead blankly while he fidgeted with his straps, his hands gripping white-knuckled to the seat every time the shuttlecraft gave a particularly sharp drop. Miranda seemed unphased, reading status updates and Cerberus intel aloud to anybody who was listening. She seemed unphased by the turbulence of the ride. Whenever Shepard looked at her for an extended period of time, it was only so long before the cabin would rock or bounce, causing the icy officer's chest to bounce pleasingly. Shepard would dart her eyes away. In part hit with another sharp reminder of just how they had spent last night, in part because it was still weird and a little frightening to look at another woman's body and think of the way it was moving as "pleasing". It wasn't like she had never found another woman attractive, even if just on a level of physical admiration and not sexual desire. The issue was that she was conscious of the fact that the way she felt it now hadn't been there before they'd changed her. It was hard to think of those feelings as her own anymore.

"Are any of my feelings my own?"

The craft settled onto the ground with a rocking bump, shaking each passenger from their personal reverie. There was a quiet exchange of nods between the three and they stepped out onto the paved concrete of the starter colony. It was a place made of starter houses, where the tools were more personalized than the bedrooms. Corporate decorations, non-union amenities. The kind of colony where the mine or the spaceport predated the first settler. A bad place to live, a pointless place to rob.

And, for some reason, it was quiet as a tomb.

"Not like I expected a red carpet, but..." Jacob trailed off.

"You're right." Miranda whispered, as much to herself as anybody. "And no signs of conflict either."

In spite of everything, Shepard felt herself dropping back into the sort of anxious away mission groove that had gotten as natural as breathing while hunting Saren. Of course, to her, it had only been a few days. However, for the rest of the galaxy, it was the first time in two years that "the Shepard groove" had gone into action. Miranda and Jacob naturally fell into place behind her spring-stepped strut. She would advance slowly but confidently, quickly checking corners and blind spots with an almost extrasensory instinct. It was a pleasant return to high-strung normalcy. She felt real again. She remembered what it was like to feel strong for the first time since reawaking, the problems of her new body just another small buzz drowned out by the hunter's instinct. Some security mechs were all the opposition they met, mechs which got rolled like bugs under a bootheel.

The door slid open on four crouched figures, Shepard was so deep in the groove that she had to lower her gun to stop herself from committing an intergalactic incident. The Quarians that she had managed not to shoot seemed to go through a similar internal struggle. They, however, did not lower their weapons. Aside from one of them.

"Prazza, all of you, stand down." Came a voice from one of the vacuum-sealed suits that sounded far less sure than it wanted to. It was a voice that was like coming home to Shepard.

"Tali..." Shepard muttered, unsealing her helmet to show the Quarian her face despite what every safety regulation in the galaxy would have advised.

"...Shepard?" The Quarian squeaked back in disbelief.

Shepard stepped toward the young woman with outstretched arms. Tali did not reciprocate, instead looking Mary up and down seemingly on loop.

"Surprised to see me?"

The Quarian stepped back, motioning her squad to lower their weapons again. "I'm not sure surprised even begins to describe it."

"I know it's been a while but..."

"A while? It's been two years, people can't just... come back."

"Well, I did. It wasn't exactly up to me-"

"Back when we traveled together, what did you get me and why?"

Shepard only had to pause for a second. "Geth data for your pilgrimage. Did it help?"

Tali took shaky steps over toward Shepard before leaning finally into her arms.

"Keelah... it is you." She let herself **** out.

"I hate to interrupt, but we're not here to reconnect over drinks." Miranda said dryly.

Shepard and Tali both shot her glares in seemingly perfect unison. Tali then pushed herself away.

"I suppose we do have a lot to talk about. Like what exactly Cerberus is doing here." Tali spoke, trying to steady her voice and sound commanding.

"And why we shouldn't do the galaxy a favor and open fire." One of her group snarled.

Jacob had holstered his gun but kept a hand resting on it. Miranda kept her gun pointed ahead but also flipped through her omni-tool passively.

"They're with me, for now." Shepard replied, trying to juggle sounding diplomatic with emphasizing how much she also didn't like the situation. If Tali picked up on her emphasis, she didn't show it.

"I know better than to question how you get things done Shepard, but I never saw you in bed with a group of Bosh'tets like Cerberus."

"Believe me, if I'd had a say-"

"We're wasting time here, I don't know what you Quarians want with this place but you're in our way." Miranda interjected again.

"We're looking for a Quarian named Veetor, he was on pilgrimage here when the attack happened."

Miranda lowered her weapon and stepped forward, not dignifying the Quarians by looking up from her datapad. "What was a Quarian doing here? This was a human colony."

"Veetor was antisocial, very nervous in crowds. He liked the idea of helping a small developing colony."

"Or spying on one." Miranda shot back disinterestedly.

"What? What would this colony even have worth stealing? It's a dump!"

Shepard interjected before things could get ugly. "And yet somebody or something attacked it, I'd be inclined to believe Cerberus has something here they want hidden."

Miranda looked up at her. "If we did, that's not something that would concern you or your alien friends."

Tali looked back and forth from Miranda to Shepard in disbelief. "Unbelievable. We're getting talked down to by a corporate lapdog..."

Miranda shot Shepard a dark glare. Shepard caved. "Ignore her, where was Veetor last?"

Tali was outside performing the last rites for her squadmates. Shepard understood what she was going through. They had punched through the last of the colony's defenses, though the relative cakewalk of before had turned bloodier the closer they had gotten to their target. But they had made it, found their man in one physical piece if not fully intact mentally. Now, all there was to do was to wrap up, get the statements, bury the dead. Shepard had let Tali do what needed to be done for her people. Miranda was grilling the target with a dozen questions he couldn't answer, whipped into an almost righteous fury.

Tali came in quietly and sat beside Shepard, leaning against her softly. She sighed when Shepard wrapped an arm around her.

"I don't understand, Shepard."

"It never gets any easier."

"No, not that. Why here? Why now?"

Shepard sighed. "If I knew, I'd tell you."

"You don't understand what it was like, you couldn't. We mourned for you. It wasn't like the gang stayed together and tried their best. Everyone just... left."

"I'm sorry Tali."

"And then you show up after two years like nothing happened, with Cerberus officers in tow?"

"Believe me, I'm the least happy person about it you'll find."

"Then why stay?"

"It's not that simple, they... did things to make sure I would help them."

Tali reeled back in horror. "Wait, what did they do? Tell me, let me help you."

"That's right Shepard, tell her."

Miranda stood behind them with a mixed expression. Her smirk said smug assurance, her eyes and furrowed brow said frustration. Tali shot up out of her seat and stomped toward her.

"You! What did you do to Shepard?"

Miranda looked past her toward Shepard, unintimidated. "Why not let Shepard tell you herself? Either way, we're done here."

"Good riddance, where is Veetor?"

"He's headed toward our shuttlecraft under escort. We're taking him in for questioning."

"You what?! Veetor needs medical help, not an interrogation. He's coming back with us!"

"It's not open for debate."

Tali whipped around back to Shepard. "Mary, please help me with this. By the time Cerberus is done with Veetor, there won't be anything left to treat. You can't let her do this!"

Behind her, Miranda merely looked on with sickly curious humor. Her expression seemed to say "Why do you think this is up for debate?" She quietly opened her omni-tool again, not taking her eyes off of Shepard.

"I'm sorry Tali."

The ride back to the Normandy was dead silent. Shepard quietly steamed in her armor.