Unbroken

A Mass Effect story

Summary: Shepard's been tasked with retrieving a sold slave from a Turian slave ship. Shepard hardly has the disposition of a slave and Garrus has no idea how to command his commander.

Shepard sat in the conference room surrounded by her team mates. Every day they were getting closer to stopping the collectors. Every day she was tormented by the visions of more colonists disappearing. She wasn't the glass half empty kind of person but it was getting increasingly difficult to wait. She had just recently recruited Samara and helped put down her daughter. Her nerves were still rattled from the experience. So she hung back from the mission briefing until she heard Jack.

"Guess you're need a make-believe slave too, huh?" Jack smirked. "I just came out of one collar. There's no way you're putting anything around my neck. Unless we're playing sex games. Are we playing sex games Shepard?"

They'd been asked by Aria to locate a certain Asari medic that had gone missing. It was suspected she'd fallen into slaver hands and a possible location had just been uploaded to the Normandy. Sarah Shepard was still nursing a headache and she really only wanted to be out there to put some bad people down. Hopefully it would take the taste of Morinth away for good.

She had little patience for Jack's blunt teasing, but she'd been taught to be calm. To be the diplomat. The voice of reason. It didn't help that it had landed her in this suicidal one way mission to save the universe. So she tried not to be embarrassed by Jack's barb which was obviously meant to make her uncomfortable. "No Jack. We definitely are not."

"I think Jacob will make the perfect candidate," Jack cackled, her eyes dancing with mirth and malice.

The chocolate skinned man bristled as he put his hands on the table and glared at the convict. "Just because I'm black doesn't mean…"

"Guys please," Garrus began, but Jack had already taken the conversation back as leaned back in her seat, looking down at the bitten nails nonchalantly.

"Oh it's not because you're black." Jacob blinked and Jack's smile was feral as she met his eyes. "It's coz, you're a pussy."

His hand smacked against the table top as he came out of his chair. "That's it! Miranda, you hold her down. I'll kick her skinny ass."

"Bring it on cheerleaders!" Jack leapt onto the conference table.

A chair lifted and flew between the two would-be brawlers and smashed into the opposite wall.

The room went silent.

Jacob's eyes were like saucers and Jack looked less feral and more respectful.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Shepard blinked innocently, the blue hue of her biotics still tinging her skin. "Did my posturing get in the way of your forgetting I am still in charge here?"

"You nearly took my head off Shepard," Jacob fell into his chair, eyes still impossibly wide. Miranda was doing her best to hold the hand conspicuously over her mouth while Jack carefully climbed down and sprawled in her seat.

"Excuse me while I exhibit little patience after having my brain scrubbed by an ardat yakshi." She rose from her seat and pulled up a 3D map of omega's factory district. "I do appreciate all your input guys. But, Samara," she met her resident Asari teammate's calm eyes, "I could clap you in the proverbial irons and you'd still only look like a Justicar. Miranda?" She smirked at her second in command. "You don't have a subservient bone in that body. And yes Mordin, our would-be slave will need to be – what did you call us humans – oh yes! Pliable, adaptable and bendy."

"Flexible."

"Same thing," she waved off her Salarian Scientist. "So that leaves me short on one handler to make the deal with the slave trader and one infiltrator to work us a way out."

Garrus frowned at his commander, a slow painful clench in his gut. "You're volunteering yourself to be the cargo? Shepard, bendy or not. You're going in with one gun on your six and a gang of slavers armed to the teeth."

"Then be my six Garrus." Shepard met his eyes resolutely. "You're worth at least three guns in a firefight."

The Turian's manibles fluttered. The compliment went over his head. His mind was swimming with all the things that could go wrong. He wasn't happy with her plan to lure Morinth out alone and he was more than a little unhappy to let her walk into a slavers ship, big enough to house an army. But his lovely commander was short on self-preservation more than patience. She saw an opportunity to help and she leapt in without a thought. He was worried her paragon nature would lead her into darker corners on Omega. "Obviously, I'm going." He snorted. "Like I'd trust Cerberus to watch your six."

"We're right here, you know." Miranda frowned at him, her eyes cutting.

"That leaves just one position. Thane?"

The sniper only inclined his head. "My scope is yours Siha."

Commander Shepard offered him a smile and rose. "Great. Now the most important thing. Anyone have a dress that's not made of leather?"

To be continued