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kauriart · 2 months ago

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Paragon, Renegade, Pilot Chapter 4

A NSFW Mass Effect fic | Joker/Kaidan/f!Shepard | Read it on AO3

Fucking Udina can suck a bag of dicks.

All the dicks.

Reaper dicks. Udina can suck Reaper dicks.

He grounded the Normandy. How fucking dare he.

Joker had felt it when they landed on the Citadel, the locking up of the flight controls even as the ship docked. He’d shouted to Shepard and tried to back out of port, but it was already too late. The Normandy had gone dark under his fingertips. A flash of panic, and then an agonizing wave of fury, and by the time Shepard had gotten to the cockpit, Joker was already pacing and bellowing, red-faced with indignation.

There’d been a terse exchange between Shepard and the communications officer who had explained what was happening –– Udina had grounded them on the Council’s orders; they have no interest in continued pursuit of ex-Spectre Saren Arterius.

Shepard disconnects the call with as much disdain as humanly possible. “I don’t like this. No one sets foot off this ship until I say so,” she snaps her fingers. “War room. Now.”

Joker is the last to arrive. Navigator Pressly looks grim, and Kaidan is pacing around the table while Shepard sits, hands carefully folded in front of her. She looks the kind of furious that usually ends in a very high body count .

Joker slides into the chair beside her.

“Udina and the Council won’t risk us going to the Terminus Systems,” Shepard says without preamble. “They’re no longer interested in Saren, or the conduit. They don’t want a war with the Geth.”

“It would be disastrous,” Pressly reminds her. He’s a good navigator. A good executive officer. But he’s an Alliance man down to his bones. Prone to defend the chain of command, not criticize.

Kaidan’s built from the same mold, though he’s more likely to follow the ethics of a thing than the written rules. Shepard too follows her own internal sense of right and wrong, but she’s less stringent in its application than either of the other officers. The rigidity of the line she won’t cross is highly dependent on how much you’ve pissed her off.

Joker has seen her plow straight through it at high speed and leave a swath of destruction in her wake.

“Yes,” Shepard rubs her eyes with her hands, she’s only gotten a few hours of real rest since Virmire. “But the Reapers will be worse. You know they will.”

Pressly frowns. He doesn’t enjoy disagreeing with his commanding officer. “We can’t verify half of what was learned on Virmire.”

“I can,” Shepard taps her head. “I’ve seen how bad it’ll get. I’ve been seeing it for months. I don’t want a war with the Geth. I want one with the Reapers.”

Joker has heard descriptions of Shepard’s visions. Dr Chakwas said the Prothean beacon Shepard touched had implanted them, but Joker had always thought of it as an infection. Something more insidious. More invasive.

When it first happened they’d thought Shepard would die. She was in a coma, unresponsive, and having seizures. That was a bad couple of days. Kaidan had refused to leave her side until she woke up. And when she did she started describing a nightmarish blur of visuals, sounds, sensations, and emotions. Shepard called it a tangled memory someone put in her head — too fragmented to have any real meaning. Blasts of noise, silhouettes against a skyline, pain, hopelessness, rage, desperation.

Not a nightmare. A message.

Stop the Reapers or lose everything.

“What do you want to do, Commander?” Kaidan asks. He’s made a full turn around the table and sits on the other side of Shepard.

She presses her lips together in a thin line. “You do not want to know what I want to do.”

Joker snorts. He imagines it involves guns and morally-grey choices.

“What are our options then?” Kaidan rephrases.

“Not many,” Shepard frowns. “We need a ship to take us to the Mu Relay. The Alliance is out. So is the Council. We could try STG, we saved Major Kirahee and a handful of his men, maybe they could get us out of the system at least, maybe to the Quarians, or someone else who might be willing to risk Terminus space. If not, our slim options get slimmer. Hijack a pirate vessel, hope they can’t figure out who's flying it. Hope that that matters to the Geth. Hope that it doesn’t trigger a conflict.”

“That’s the plan?” Joker gapes. “You want to drive a clunker through the Mu Relay and into Geth-controlled space? The council’s worried about triggering a war, and they won’t let us take the only ship with a stealth drive, the only ship that can make that run without—”

“I want the Normandy, Joker,” Shepard nearly snarls. “But we don’t have it, and we don’t have any time to waste. We need another plan.”

Joker drums his fingers on the table, thinking. “So steal it.”

Navigator Pressly makes a shocked, scoffing noise. “Steal what? The Normandy?”

“I can do it. I’ve done it before,” Joker mutters. "It’s not as hard as it looks. It should be a lot harder, but it's not. They do get real mad at you though. Fair warning.”

Pressly’s face is undergoing an interesting set of color changes, oscillating between red and white. “Your plan is to steal the most advanced warship ever designed from the largest starport in the System’s Alliance?”

“Uh-huh,” Joker says.

Kaidan leans forward. He looks less freaked out than Navigator Pressly, but none of this can sit well with him either. “How?”

Joker drums his fingers on the table again, a quick little beat that mimics some of the feeds he observes during takeoff. “Break into the embassy and hack Udina’s personal terminal. He’s the one who grounded us. He can unground us. You know, non-consensually.”

“Madness,” Navigator Pressly gapes. “Lunacy. We should try to convince Ambassador Udina to reverse his orders. The Council will—”

“No time,” Shepard interrupts. She stands and flips a comm switch on the wall. “Attention Normandy crew,” her voice is perfectly steady, caring across speakers, ship-wide. “We’re stealing our ship back and going off to start a war. We’ll be doing so in direct violation of council orders. Anyone who stays faces court martial and possibly execution. Anyone who disapproves of this course of action has five minutes to leave my ship, with my full blessing.” A pause. “You don’t have to martyr yourself for me.” She flips the comm off again.

The war room falls into silence.

“Well, it sounds way worse when you put it that way,” Joker mutters and settles more firmly in his chair. “But I’m not letting anybody kidnap my baby without me. They’ll mess up the settings on my chair.”

Shepard looks around, but no one in the war room moves an inch.

Navigator Pressly heaves a sigh and rubs at his temples with both hands. “And I was only three months shy of making pension. What a waste.”

“Joker,” Shepard says, the smile on her face going from soft to sharp in a heartbeat. “Let’s go steal your ship back.”

***

Twenty minutes later the Normandy takes off with the entirety of its crew intact. No one leaves, not even Navigator Pressly, though he looks a little sour and bewildered. Through it all he’s managed to maintain his belief that the Council has their best interests at heart, even if his ultimate loyalty is to Shepard.

(Joker’s managed to maintain his belief that the Council sucks.)

(It’s good neither he nor Pressly have let recent events change them.)

Joker flips Udina the bird as he pulls out of the Citadel. Cathartic, but not super effective through the Normandy’s hull and a few miles of spaceport. He activates the stealth drive as soon as he’s able, and despite the fact that there is no active sign of pursuit he doesn’t start to unwind until they’re able to jump to FTL.

Never gonna dock at the Citadel again.

Fool me twice, assholes.

He flies the Normandy further and further away from the nexus of council-controlled space. He has to manually plot the course to the Mu Relay, which is wild. No other relay has that requirement. He’s been pretty deep in the Terminus Systems before, but ships don’t usually fly into dark space on purpose.

“Commander, we’re approaching the relay coordinates now,” Joker pings Shepard on her comm.

The cockpit slides open a few minutes later. Shepard –– already in full armor –– doesn’t slide into the copilot’s chair like she usually does, but stands at Joker’s shoulder, peering out the viewport as the shutters peel back. In FTL there’s nothing to see, just a blur of blue-black, stars churning by so quickly they don’t even register to the human eye. But now that Joker’s slowed to an approach speed they can see everything — the multi-colored swirl of far-off systems; gas pockets refracting light into rainbows; and stars scattered like a handful of glitter against the gloom of space.

They aren’t in visual range of the Mu Relay yet, but they will be in a minute.

Shepard leans closer to the viewport. “Let’s hope Benezia was right.”

Joker snorts, “Let’s hope she wasn’t.”

Thirty seconds later they see it through the viewport, a tiny speck growing into a colossal relay, larger even than the one in the Sol System. It has the same distinctive profile as all other relays, but it looks and feels dead. There’s no comm chatter from incoming and outgoing ships, no flares of light as the relay activates, pushing and pulling ships to new star systems. Stranger still, it’s floating at an odd angle, a remnant of when it was blown off-course centuries ago and lost.

“I’m gonna do a visual pass before we go through,” Joker takes the Normandy on a wide, sweeping loop, pinging engineering as he goes. “Tali, I want your eyes on that thing. Tell me if you see anything that’s gonna get us killed.”

He takes three passes around it, just to be sure. The Mu Relay looks like every other relay he’d flown through but four thousand years of non-functionality does not for a high level of confidence make.

“It looks to be in surprisingly good condition,” Tali says over the intercom at the end of his final circle. “But sometimes the damage is not at surface level. The semiconductors are usually the first things to go, and if they’re shot we will likely burn up very quickly when the relay activates. We might not even realize it’s happening.”

“Uh... thanks, Tali.” Joker has a sudden vision of the Normandy exploding in little blue and red fireballs. “So like… fifty-fifty?”

A pause on the line.

“Sure.” It’s hard to tell through her voice modulator, but the tone of Tali’s voice does not ring with confidence.

Shepard chuckles, the sound more sinister than humorous. “I’ll take those odds.”

Of course, she would.

A little bubble of warmth fills his chest. Shepard is fearless. He doesn’t have the right to be anything less.

“Well, damn. Here goes nothing.” Joker straightens his cap and starts to line the ship up for launch position. “Commander, once we’re through the relay, we’re either already super-dead or we’re flying blind. I won’t know what to expect until we get there. Ilos might be––” Joker clears his throat. “Yeah, we won’t know. You gotta be ready to fight by the time we’re through the relay.”

“I’ll be ready in five,” she assures him. “I just need to grab my gun.”

“Punch Saren in the taint, if you can. From me. I mean, you can shoot him too if you like, but it just seems less classy.”

Shepard smiles, a genuine flash of amusement that gives him butterflies. At least if nothing else, he can make her smile.

“Joker…”

Shepard’s voice shifts abruptly. Soft. A little hesitant. Something about it makes him want to nope right out of there. It sounds like she is trying to find a way to say goodbye, or... something, and he’s having none of that.

“Whatever you are going to say, Shepard, don’t say it. Just— not now, alright?”

She takes a breath, expression quietly displeased, but nods. Her hand slides against Joker’s shoulder, and then away again, whisper-soft.

Joker closes his eyes.

The door to the cockpit slides open and he twists around in his chair so fast he feels a twinge in his back. “Tell me later, okay,” he asks urgently. “Tell me after.”

She stands in the doorway, the light spilling in from behind makes it so he can’t see her face, not even the glint of emerald eyes. “Sure thing.”

***

Just beyond the Mu Relay, Ilos looms.

In five minutes everything has gone to shit. Saren’s troops show up as a sea of red on his feed. A swath of enemies so thick he can’t see the edges of them. They could very well cover the entire planet.

(Maybe the Council had an itty-bitty-bit of a point about the Geth.)

“My God…” Navigator Pressly breathes.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I see it.” Joker triple-checks the stealth mode but knows it won’t do any good if any of the Geth so much as look up. "Fuck.”

“We need to get the Commander planetside as quickly as possible, Lieutenant. I’m spotting Geth Colossus out there. Colossi. Dozens at least.”

Something turns over in Joker’s stomach. A direct hit from a Colossus’ pulse canon will fry the circuitry on Normandy's adaptive shielding, leaving little pockmarks across the surface area of her shields. Little cracks that could open her up and leave her vulnerable to any Geth ground troops with assault rockets and advanced targeting systems.

Joker licks his lips. “Find me a spot, Pressly.”

“There’s nothing.”

“Find it,” Joker can hear one of the flight crew marking enemies in range with the firepower to directly threaten the Normandy. It’s a pretty long list already, and the troops will swarm once they’re spotted and the shooting starts. “Find anything.”

“There’s nothing,” Pressly insists. He’s too seasoned to out-right panic, but his voice is tight and brittle. “The terrain is entirely rubbish!”

Joker pulls up the feed of possible drop zones, scanning through it himself.

Nothing.

Nothing— but…

Joker frowns, zooming in. Flat land. Limited boogies. But not enough clearance for a drop. He’d have to—

“Joker,” Shepard’s voice cuts through on the comm. She, Kaidan, and Liara are already loaded into the mako, but she must be looking at the same feed as him. “Remember what you said about mako drops? Ever get a chance to test your theory?”

“Uh…” The sound is flat and long and Joker hopes he conveys the proper level of what the fuck, Shepard because what. the. fuck. Shepard.

“Joker,” her voice is the kind of deadly serious that would freeze most people on the spot. “You’ve got about twenty meters, max. How confident are you about your theory?”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“How. confident,” she snaps.

“Fuck. Yes, alright! I can do this,” he nods even though she can’t see him. “I can do this, Commander.”

He can’t see her expression, of course, but he can practically hear the shark-toothed sharpness of her grin. “Excellent.”

“Goddamnit, here we go,” he flicks his thumb along the flight controls, changing course for the new drop zone, and increasing the Normandy’s speed.

It’s counterintuitive, that’s why it’s controversial. A standard drop requires no less than a hundred meters of space. Mako’s have powerful shock- absorbers so they don’t rupture their passengers during a drop. High and slow, that’s what they all learned in flight school. Reduce the impact. Make the drop.

Joker argued you could make a drop low and fast. Really low. Slide that fucker planetside like a pancake on a plate. No one would ever let him try it. The Alliance generally frowns on planetside approaches that reach speeds of hurtling.

But he was right.

And he knows he was right.

Still, he’s not super thrilled to try it for the first time with both Shepard and Kaidan (and Liara) inside the mako he’s about to bodyslam into Ilos. But today’s all about balls out, apparently.

He checks their course and increases the Normandy’s descent speed. Alarms start to blare, blinking orange and red, and the autopilot engages briefly before he overrides it, and throttles the stick even more. He can feel the vibrations in his flight seat pick up as Normand’s hull skips through the planet’s atmosphere. “Oh yeah. It’s gonna be a super fun Tuesday.”

The Normandy’s flight support VI isn’t being super helpful. It keeps trying to get him to shift back to regulated drop speeds, so Joker juggles the calculations in his head. He can’t just not-squish Shepard and Kaidan and Liara. He’s got to not-squish them perfectly on target and avoid being seen by the Geth, or the whole thing is screwed.

A bead of sweat runs into his eye, stinging, but he doesn’t have a spare hand to wipe it away. “You’ve got about thirty seconds to back out of this, Shepard,” he shouts over the alarms.

“Just get us down, Joker!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

Joker activates the hanger doors and feels the sudden shift of increased air friction all along the Normandy’s underside. He fights with the stick for a moment, fingertips dancing across the flight panel as he compensates for the fastest fucking approach he’s ever made.

For just a second the Normandy tips too far back and he gets a burst of wind up the open hatch. At this speed, it feels like something’s tried to yank them out of the sky, and he tips the ship forward, overcompensating. It shudders violently, and Joker’s forearms ache as he tries to wrestle the ship back into position.

“Joker! ”

“Fuck fuck fuck.”

There’s a horrifying moment when the Normandy skips off the ground like a pebble off a lake, shields protesting with a flare of blue, and he thinks for a moment that if the ship crashes and they all die, at least he’ll be spared from having to write what is sure to be a clusterfuck of a flight report.

A bead of sweat rolls into Joker’s eye and he blinks it away hastily. His hands fly across the flight panels as he gets control of the ship. “Get ready, Commander! Five seconds!

"Four!

"Three!

"Two!"

Joker punches the hangar bay doors open and feels the little hiccup in the Normandy's handling when the mako drops to Ilos. But there’s no time to watch the outcome. He peels away in a turn so sharp the shields light up from air pressure alone. There are a handful of tense moments as they head for the skies, streaking out of range from a pair of Geth destroyers that patrol adjacent to the landing zone.

Joker hates leaving atmo when Shepard and the strike team are planetside, but sometimes there’s no help for it.

As soon as he's out of range of the Geth, he boosts the comms signal as much as he’s able, but there’s too much interference to pick up anything useful. Just bursts of static fading into a crackling buzz. He tries not to imagine that Shepard and Kaidan are pancake-flat in a mako on Ilos, but he imagines it all the same.

“Please, please. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…”

Even through the noise filters, the static just sounds like static, and every once and a while the buzzing whine of feedback, and nothing more. And then—

“Jo— Joker— you copy?”

“Shepard!” Joker nearly bounces in his flight chair, triumphant. “Thank fuck! Are you all alright?”

“Listen. There’s something happening.” Her voice is too measured, too even, like she’s focused on something beyond the conversation, and trying not to speak too loud.

Joker’s relief evaporates in a moment. “Commander?”

“I don’t… I don’t know what it is.”

He starts to turn the Normandy around, to evac Shepard and the strike team out of there. “I’m coming to get you,” he says seriously.

“No. Don’t, Joker. Sovereign is—"

There’s a burst of gunfire and the sound of biotic detonations; from Kaidan or Liara, he can’t say. It doesn’t go on long as firefights go, but every second of it is awful. He can hear Shepard’s assault rifle firing as fast as she can pull the trigger. She swears breathlessly, and there's a long pause where her gun is silent, either from overheating or something more sinister. Kaidan’s heavy pistol, thudding like a hammer strike. More fizzy biotic noises. And Shepard’s gun starts up again, then slowly falls silent.

“Joker?”

“I’m here.”

Shepard’s breathing hard, sounds like she’s running. “Listen carefully. I need you to head back to the Citadel.”

To the…

"I—" Joker shakes his head sharply, the sting of sweat in his eyes. “Say that again, Commander, I think I just had a stroke.”

“The Citadel, Joker. Raise the alarm. Sovereign is headed there. I don’t… I don’t have all the pieces. But you need to get there and stop it. I have to find the conduit.”

Joker feels a cold spear of ice in his chest. “You want me to leave you behind?”

Stranded.

In dark space.

Behind a relay history has forgotten.

Surrounded by ten thousand Geth.

“No…” Joker breathes. “Nope. I–– I’m not doing this again. Not after Virmire.”

“You’re not abandoning us, Joker. You’re saving the Citadel.”

Right now, right in this moment, Joker gives two shits about the Citadel. Let it burn. He’s not leaving Shepard and Kaidan (and Liara!) alone on Ilos. Fuck no.

“Joker…”

The way she says his name sounds too much like she did standing in the cockpit of the Normandy. And for one brief, terrible moment he wishes he could rewind and hear what she had wanted to say to him.

“Get to the Citadel,” she says. “That’s an order. Go!”

Joker closes his eyes. “Going, Commander."

His hands move over the flight controls, propelling the Normandy away from Ilos, even as it breaks his heart.

No one should be able to say that he has no respect for the chain of command. Not with how he carves out a piece of himself with each unit of airspace he puts between himself and Shepard. By the time he reaches the relay tears are rolling down his cheeks, and there’s nothing but gunfire in his ears.

It’s sacrilegious to wish the crew luck during a mission. But he kisses his fingertips and presses them silently to the flight screen as the relay folds space around them, making everything start to blur. “You got this,” he whispers raggedly to them both. To himself. “You got this.”

But there's only the static of a lost connection humming in his ears.

#my fic #mass effect #joker moreau #joker x kaidan x f!shepard #my smut fic needs more smut #it gets spicier I promise

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