Chapter 09: Grissom Academy

“Joker, how bad is it?”
“Bad. Cerberus is all around the station, they control every docking bay.”
“Any idea how to get in?”
“Commander, I have Kahlee Sanders on the line, she’s a member of the academy’s staff.”
“Good, patch me up EDI.”
“Hello? This is Kahlee Sanders are you…”
“This is Commander Shepard of the Alliance, we caught your distress signal Miss Sanders and are here to help.”
“Thank god! Things are not doing well at all. Cerberus breached the station’s defenses and infiltrated it. As we speak, they are kidnapping students when they are not killing them outright. They are everywhere.”
“Can you think of a way for us to get on the station? Cerberus is in control of all the docking bays.”
“Let me check.” the woman said over the coms going silent for a minute. “You can use the cargo bay, it was left alone.”
“Okay. Joker, you think you can catch their attention?”
“No problem commander.”
“Miss Sanders, we’ll be there soon. Hang on.”
“I will as long as I can, commander.”

EDI cut the communication and went down the bridge towards the Cargo Bay, ordering EDI to tell Ashley, James and Rick to gear up. In less than ten minutes they were all ready to go into combat. She had wondered if Rick was in the right state of mind for it, but he was his usual self. In fact he was even a bit nice towards her in the morning, indicating that maybe their nights together was having a positive effect on him.

Steve flew the kodiak out of the Normandy and maintained a stationary position as Joker went to draw the attention of the many ships encircling the station. Once the way was cleared they landed on the cargo bay and went undetected. Sanders contacted Jane to tell her that Cerberus was trying to get into the server room where she was locked in. Immediately, the team sped up and quickly arrived on the scene. Two grunts were watching a closed door, probably waiting for it to be open while two others were trying the door to the server room. Rick charged the first two and caught them unaware as the rest of the group shredded the other two.

Jane got Kahlee to open the door and, with James and Ashley went inside to meet with the woman. At her sight both redhead and brunette froze. Rick joined them and froze too.

“Is… Is there something wrong?” the woman asked.
“No. Sorry. You just look like someone I know. What’s the situation?” Jane replied, completely weirded out by the woman's appearance.

She was beautiful, with dirty blonde hair reaching her shoulders, a small straight nose and blue eyes so pale they were almost white. She wasn’t the only one as Ashley kept on staring at her, so was Rick but his helmet hid it. James was just confused.

“We’re less than twenty or were… We sent most of the students back home when the news of the reapers invasion reached us. The only ones left are volunteers. Some are prototyping for the alliance, some are biotics.”
“I understand why the students prototyping for the alliance stayed but the biotics? Why?”
“They’ve been trained for military operations. Working as a biotic artillery.”
“Aren’t they too young for joining the rank?”
“From what David said, you enlisted when you were younger than they were.” she replied, placating Jane. Seeing the still frozen Ashley and Rick looking at her, she couldn’t help ask a question. “Is there something on my face?”
“... Your nose.” replied Rick getting out of his swirling thoughts. “Your students are not ready for battle.”
“Black intimidating helmet. Rick Wald, I presume? David talked about you too, especially about what you thought of the instructors of the ascension program. You were not wrong, fortunately, under the commander's recommendation we found an excellent teacher.” Kahlee announced with a smile at Jane.
“So she’s here… Good for her. Good for the alliance too, maybe now their biotics won’t be a joke though a few months of training with her won’t make them ready.” commented the man.
“And bad for Cerberus.” added the redhead before changing the subject. “Anderson and you seemed to know each other well.”
“We… met twenty years ago, during his test to become a spectre. He saved my life that day and we stayed in contact over the years.”
“He stayed on earth to lead the forces. Still alive and still fighting.”
“It’s good to hear that.” the blonde replied in relief.

Done with the small talk, Rick turned around and grabbed Ashley who was still shocked. That pulled her out of her trance.

“Rick! What the hell?! She’s…”
“Not now.” He cut her off curtly and dragged her out, followed by James.

“Commander, is there something I should know?” asked Kahlee.
“Possibly but that will have to wait for us to be on the Normandy.”

That was her last words about the subject she shared before getting instruction from the woman to go and help the students. Joining the rest of her team, they went through every cerberus group in their way, saving as many students as they could. During one of the altercations James unknowingly shot the generator powering the terminal who aired on the speakers several Cerberus’ messages in a loop. That allowed Sanders to take back control of the speakers and speak to the students, warning them that help was on their way and to not get caught alive by Cerberus, no matter what.
They arrived as fast as they could to Orion Hall, the location of the biotics students who were fighting back the enemy supported by an old friend of theirs. Jane and Rick both were pleased to see Jack again, unfortunately they didn’t have time to chat as a new group of Cerberus, with an Atlas came into the hall. The team caught their attention, allowing Jack and her students to retreat to higher ground in a relatively safe room.

“How long before you get it to blow up?” Jane asked from behind her cover.
“Two minutes!” Rick replied writing on his omni-tool.”
“That’s longer than last time!”
“Because I’m not trying to blow it up.”
“What are you doing then?!” James yelled, shooting down a Cerberus Centurion.
“Just hurry up!” Ashley yelled.

The team was caught in a crossfire between the atlas and the grunts, giving some of them the opportunity to go up the stairs and shoot at the students' barriers. Rick went as fast as he could and was done just in time as the grunts kept coming. The Atlas began doing friendly fire, shooting rockets towards the door allowing entrance to its friends, destroying it and blocking the flow of reinforcement. The team, now with an involuntary ally, had room to breathe and started a counter attack. Minus Rick who was still hacking away, they took down everyone in no time.

“Get behind a cover, it’s going to explode!” Rick yelled.

Not needing to be told twice each of his teammates got away and hid waiting for the mech to self-destruct a few seconds later.

“Now, that felt good, having the big guns on our side for once.” James commented.
“I agree, and it gave them a taste for their own medicine.” Ashley supported.
“With their numbers still increasing we needed more fire power, it was the only way for it. The hack took more time than just overloading his eezo core. Plus I had to control it.”
“Well… good call. Do you think you could code a program to make it instantaneously? Cerberus seems to have a lot of those.” Jane asked.
“Probably but the effects will be limited as I don’t see Cerberus not taking measures against it.”

Jane nodded and moved towards the student location where Jack just jumped down from the window and delivered a right hook right onto the redhead’s face. Rick snorted and his sister just sent him a death glare.

“How many times did I tell you to not trust Cerberus, grasshopper? Uh?” the ex-convict shouted.
“Enough times! I’m not with them in case you didn’t notice. And I’m not a grasshopper anymore!”
“That true?” Jack asked in an unimpressed tone to Rick.
“Yeah. She progressed a lot.”
“Damn, right I did!” Jane exclaimed with pride.
“Anyway, I’m glad to see you two.”
“Me too, Jack.”
“Jen.” corrected Rick.
““What?””
“Jack is TIM’s real name. No way I’m calling you that.”
“Of All the names…Why not your usual nickname for me?”
“Plenty of reasons, the main ones are you have hair now, doesn’t work anymore.” He said as he looked at her new hairstyle. “It suits you. There is even a ponytail to pull on.” he joked. “The other reason is because Jen is a diminutive of Jenifer.”
“So?”
“So it’s your real name.”
“What?!”
“How do you know that?” Jane asked, as surprised as Jack.
“It’s a long story for another time and another place.”
“You better not mess with me Dickhead.” the not so bald woman anymore, warned. She doesn’t remember much of her time before Pragia, only bits here and there. Some blurred faces but nothing else. To know that Rick may know who she was sparked her interest and also her worry. She wasn’t sure she was ready to hear what her friend had to say about her.

Rick nodded indicating that he wasn’t and Jane made the introductions between her tattooed friend and the rest of the team.

“I’m glad you got the job.”
“I have to thank you for that. Both for me and my kids. God knows they needed an instructor who knew what they were doing.”
“That bad?”
“Let’s say that Dickhead was right and you could have taught them.”
“Ouch. Are they ready for combat? Sanders said they were trained for it.”

Jack grimaced and hesitantly nodded.

“Ready but they will get themselves killed.” Rick commented.
“Yeah. They have potential, all of them. But… they have no experience. On paper they are better than the average biotic in the alliance which isn’t a surprise after making them go through the training we developed but that’s on paper. The truth is they can handle themselves, protect people with barriers and assist a team but not go to the frontline and fight, they’re not ready for that. Shepard, they need more time, the alliance will look at the paper only, they won’t see their mindset or their real skills. They will send them to their deaths.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Jane promised.

They got a communication from Steeve warning them the Cerberus cruiser was back and that he couldn't stay in his position anymore, leaving the team and the students to find an alternative route of escape. It was Kahlee who came to the rescue by giving them the idea to take one of Cerberus’ shuttle in one of the docking bays. That posed a problem as they had a lot of distance to do and plenty of enemies on the way.

“We don’t have much of a choice. Is there a way for the students to move undetected?” Jane asked.
“No, but they can have some measure of safety if you go through the atrium. There is a long corridor up top and is rarely used. The problem is they would be easy pickings for Cerberus’ forces on the ground.”
“I guess we’ll take care of them from the ground.”
“It would be easier for me if I had access to the station’s camera network. I could guide you after the atrium and find any students still at large.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Cerberus hacked the servers, I got a bit of control back when you shot down that terminal earlier. Perhaps if you find another you could give me access.”

Jane was about to ask the team to search for such a terminal when she saw Rick walking towards a bench on the side of the room. Looking beyond him, she located one.

“Give us a minute, Rick is on it.”

Perhaps just to disprove her, less than a minute later, Sanders had access to the totality of the station’s systems.

“Commander, that’s…”
“I know, he works fast.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t what I was referring to. I have total control of all the systems! I can lock and open any door, trapping Cerberus in rooms and making you a safe path.”
“You also have access to real time video feed, while Cerberus only has loops.” Rick answered as he came back to the group.
“How did you do that?!”
“Cerberus is looking at the feed through their own terminal with a specific ID from what I saw of the terminal I used. If the terminal trying to see the feed has a Cerberus ID it shows the loops.”
“That’s brilliant.”

Jack gathered her students and told them of their plans of actions. Some were not happy about it and it could be seen on their faces but they said nothing and instead followed Jack upstairs to go to the upper level. The Normandy team made their way through on ground level and passed the door leading to the atrium. One Atlas, multiple centurions, engineers and their turrets and some grunt and champions.

“Holy shit!” Ashley exclaimed.
“Think you can hack the mech again?” asked James.
“No, it’s too far, and I’m not charging in with all those assholes around. However, the turrets…” Rick replied and began to hack one turret a dozen feet away.

The chaos among Cerberus was instant and two guardians were killed before they understood what was happening. Ashley used her TR-7 Artemis to headshot one of the engineers who tried to get back control of the turret while being behind some cover from it but sadly not for the brunette. James threw a grenade and took out four of them while Jane and Rick worked in tandem, chaining biotic explosion after biotic explosion on the atlas obliterating its shields then its armor. Its explosion created shrapnel who killed its closest allies.

“You know, it’s faster to destroy it like that than to hack it manually.” commented Jane.
“Well, now we know.” her brother replied.

They went through the second part of the atrium while the students who apparently wanted some hits on Cerberus used their biotics completely discarding any sense of stealth. They got shot at in retaliation but among the enemies who did they were quickly put down. Once the entire area was cleared the team finally took a breather.

“That was intense.” commented Ashley.

Her teammates nodded and went through the next area guided by Sanders. Along the way, they saved another group of students with David Archer among them. Jane had been surprised and glad to see him healthy and even smiled shyly. He had a brief conversation with Rick and left with his friends but not before opening the security room where he hid weapons and mods. They were nothing there as good as what they already had but the addition of a M-96 Mattock to their arsenal was not something they would complain about. After all, the TR models in their possession were quite limited in number for the moment.

Finally, one room away from the dock bay they encountered a Cerberus engineer working on fixing a damaged Atlas. Taking him down quickly, Ashley got on the mech giggling.

“It seems what is said about canons and bitches is true.” Rick noted.
“Yeah! But don’t worry, yours will always be my favorite!” she replied as she moved the mech forward.

Rick rolled his eyes under his helmet but followed her with Jane and James. With a Mech fully in control they held the line pretty well against Cerberus forces and their reinforcements, giving enough time to everything who could make it to get on a shuttle. Minus one stray student who lagged behind but was saved by Jack, everyone departed the station safely.

“I’m surprised we’re still alive. Perhaps… They are ready.” Kahlee confessed.
“They’re not.” refuted Rick.
“Hey! What do you know?!” one of Jack’s students interjected.
“Using your biotics from a safe spot while a team is getting the focus of the enemy doesn’t make you ready. It makes you lucky that none of them had time to look up and make a shot.”
“We’ve been training for this!” declared.
“And you still need more training.”
“Who the heck are you anyway?! The decision isn’t up to you!” the first student spoke up again.
“It seems your students need a reality check, Jen. I’m happy to oblige.”

Jack looked at Shepard with worry in her eyes for a moment then at her nod offered the student a deal they would regret taking.