Cause and Effect 34

--Fortitude--

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"That's going to be a tight fit," Gunnery Chief Arbor noted, looking at the damaged airlock. Ten minutes of pounding, shouts of 'Alliance marines', and an attempt by Shepard to hack the shipboard computers had failed. Shepard was shocked, computers usually had a usually back door protocol for such rescues. Whatever was going on inside the wreck, the computer did not work. She should not be surprised, being already surprised that the heap had survived.

"That is tight…" Matheson shook his head.

Shepard stepped up onto the ship, climbing it like a rock wall at a gym. "I can get in." With that she shrugged off her weapon harness, dropping it to the ground, though holding onto her rifle.

"Be careful," Arbor nodded.

Shepard did not respond to this. With a grunt and a lot of wiggling, as though trying to pull on a very tight pair of pants, Shepard worked her way through the gap, praying the whole while she would not get hung up.

Arbor, despite his best efforts not to antagonize the only person small to do this, would have killed himself laughing if she got stuck because she couldn't get her chest through the gap.

Shepard landed in a crouch, squinting into darkness of the corridor for a moment before raising her rifle, taking advantage of the light on it. "Alliance marines! Any survivors?" Her voice echoed eerily. No answer, so she made her way forward, prowling with her ears pricked for any sound of life, the sound of someone struggling to unpin themselves, anything.

The cockpit, Shepard discovered once she got past the airlocked door, was full of dead turians. The power was also dead, which explained why Shepard was unable to hack the shipboard computers. No kinetic barriers, just things locked down because they did not have the necessary power to open. She did not need to look far to discover what had killed them, a slow-leak decompression, and probably the air scorching when they entered the atmosphere. "Chief?" Shepard cued her helmet radio.

"What is it?"

"Power's dead, that's why I couldn't hack the system. The cockpit's full of dead turians, but emergency lockdowns initiated. I'm going to continue the sweep."

"Do that."

Hopefully someone got to the ELSA units, they usually had their own power supplies.

The crew's quarters showed similar damage, though no survivors. Shepard's teeth grit tightly as she made her way towards the mess and medbay, praying someone got to their emergency protocols quickly enough.

The door opened only with a great amount of effort. Relief welled up in Shepard when she heard a terrified scream, and alien babble break out. Even with her translator, it still came out as gibberish.

Moving the light on her rifle around, the beam bounced off the plastic shell of an ELSA containing…

…one turian child. A panicking turian child.

"Hey, hey, little guy," she hoped this one was a guy, it was hard to tell with turians, let alone children, "it's okay. I'm with the Alliance…I'm one of the good guys." She doubted he would understand her. Kids did not usually wear translation devices, not being expected to interface with aliens.

Shepard set the rifle aside. Given the lack of anyone else in the room, she would bet credits the turians on board sealed the child in an ELSA as the fighting broke out, in hopes he would be safe, while the rest were at action stations.

The little turian stopped babbling as Shepard pulled off her helmet. Flabby, scaleless human features might not be reassuring, but at least she did not have four eyes. Setting her helmet on the nearest work surface, Shepard stepped up to the ELSA. "Come on, let's get you out of there, huh?" The child's panic seemed to ease as Shepard spoke, keeping her tone gentle.

She knew, perhaps a little too well, what it was to panic, to have faceless things come melting out of the darkness. Coming for you. "You're a tough little dude…just show me a bit more courage, okay?"

The turian turned his luminous blue eyes up at her, blinking birdlike as he did so.

"Fortitude, yeah?" Turians were big onto the honor-courage thing, or so Shepard understood. "Just hang in there." She did not want him panicking again, once she drew her knife to pop the ELSA and free him from the plastic bubble.

"Fur-ti-tude." The turian mumbled, quaking in the plastic shell as Shepard sunk the heavy blade into the plastic, pulling it along, causing the shell to hiss as air escaped through the rent. After a moment she pulled it apart with her hands, at which point the turian scrambled out of it.

"Mmm-ma?"

The obvious meaning of the mumbled word nearly broke Shepard's heart. "I'm still looking, sweetie. I just happened to get to you first." She hoped this would turn out to be more than little white lie. After all, she had not searched the whole ship yet…if there was one survivor, there might be more… "Let's get you out of here."

"Mmm-ma!"

"Honey, I'll look for her, but this is no place for you. Okay? Come on," she held out her hand to him, wiggling her fingers encouragingly, wondering just how old the child was.

After a few moments, the turian lurched, his little taloned hand closing tightly over Shepard's, scraping her handplates. He offered no resistance when she knelt, attempting to pick him up. He clung to her, like a drowning person to a life buoy, his scaly face scraping her jaw uncomfortably. Patting his back awkwardly, she retrieved her rifles.

She had to double back for her purposely-left helmet, and her knife. They were her excuse for giving the rest of the ship a once-over, to see if anyone had miraculously survived. No one would argue with her searching thoroughly for survivors. However, at some point she would have to accept the only survivor was safe in Alliance custody.

A truth she did not like.