Author's Notes:-

1. Image obtained from public domain section of mass effect wikia: wiki/Category:Public_domain_files

2. Enjoy. :)

3. Please Review. :)

2 weeks after the assault on Earth. August 5, 2186.

The man whose laughter currently filled his head had died on the assault on Earth. "I can handle it," he had announced to the man, at which he had promptly burst out. Today he understood why the man had laughed. Sirens drowned his laughter. "Alliance fleet incoming," the pilot's voice reverberated from all possible speakers. Irritated by the lack of sleep, he quickly headed to the nearest comm phone and shouted, "Turn the bloody siren down!"

Silence. The laughter returned. Oh, don't you be sad. You'll get them out of this mess. The inertial repressors screeched as the ship began to turn away from the Mass Relay. For a moment, Commander Jarvis wondered if he would be flung across his stateroom. Rule 1 of Safe Space Travel: All inanimate objects, small or big, must be attached to the ship, directly or not. His pen holder shook slightly, challenging Jarvis. He'd be in big trouble if the bolts came off. Quickly removing the thoughts of how his entrails would look on the door, he made his way to the bridge.

The bridge was a floor below him, pretty standard for a cruiser like Tesla. What wasn't standard was size of the room. Barring the symbolic galaxy map, any info it provided could be easily accessed from the Commander's terminal, everything else was smaller, making the map feel like the proverbial elephant in the room. None of the officers and sailors stood or saluted him, making him smile. An important lesson he had endowed his crew was the precedence of keeping the ship running over etiquettes.

"Captain," Jarvis said while looking at the info on the screen before him. Most other cruisers would have multiple junior co-pilots(engine, navigation, communication) lining a corridor leading up to the pilot, the Captain. Tesla, its job requiring heavy workforce and ship restructuring, had a small room with two seats (two co-pilots and no Captain) with enough place for eight or nine to stand. Being cut-off from the rest of the ship by a two-inch thick lead door, its surface area needed to be large enough to slow down the downward movement of smoke in case of a fire and easier access to the fire itself without jeopardizing the entire ship.

Captain Fellaini was too busy moving around windows, clicking on them, typing something on them to reply. Jarvis looked at the windows and smiled. He'd done this too when he was a pilot, hiding his game of solitaire. Jarvis let it slide. Fellaini was one of the best pilots in the entire fleet, specially commissioned to this ship owing to its downsized workforce. He'd never compromise the ship for nothing. And this was space, vast unto infinity. There was nothing near them, and nothing human, turian, salarian or, ugh, Reaper-ian would reach them in the time taken to finish a measly game of solitaire. Space's vastness provided ally and foe alike with security even a five feet thick hull couldn't match.

Multiple dots lined the mass relay four light minutes away, that is, the information was four minutes late. It wasn't much of a fleet; two heavy cruisers and a few cruisers. But compared to the one cruiser he commanded, it was more than enough. The fleet was 4 light minutes away, and at the current combined speed, point three light, contact would be achieved in just over thirteen minutes. Of course, the Alliance fleet had seen Jarvis' ship before Jarvis had seen them; they would have more time to adopt a strategy, most likely a message to surrender. "Incoming message," Fellaini, the pilot said on cue. A swipe on the screen later a tall Hispanic man, ranked Commander according to the stripes he wore, appeared on screen.

"Surrender Tesla now. She is the property of the Alliance fleet. If you do so, retired Commander Jarvis, I will spare your crew," the man spoke quickly. The light from the fleet had reached had reached Tesla just moments before Fellaini had sounded the alarms and now the crew of Tesla were just beginning to see how the fleet would counter Tesla's movement. Tesla had already begun emergency turnaround. Jarvis remembered the solitaire game Fellaini was hiding. Was he really playing? Unlikely, but unimportant.

"Well, what now?" asked Fellaini. The Mass Relay was the only way out of here. As Jarvis had expected, the heavy cruiser stayed near the Relay while the three cruisers rushed towards Tesla. Tesla definitely wasn't going to surrender.

"Send a message," Jarvis said. Fellaini opened a connection for Jarvis and signaled him. "Commander," Jarvis started, "we have no intention of surrendering to anybody. Especially to rogues like you." You'd think Fellaini wouldn't spot all the mischievous videoshopping? As technology got better, more and more advanced techniques of videoshopping a fake Commander's suit on a man had emerged. But technology was a double edged sword and Tesla's advanced computer easily spotted the rushed attempts.

The distance between the Tesla and the cruisers had decreased to 3 light minutes. Slowly the velocities of the two sides balanced each other out as Tesla completed its turn and accelerated. Another message from the "Commander." "You are the ones who have illegally taken over that ship. Since Tesla cannot fall into the hands of the enemy under any circumstance, we will start an attack unless we receive your surrender in the next message." Nice try.

Jarvis looked at Fellaini. "How long can we stay away from them without running out of critical supplies?"

"Four days. But if we do not leave this lifeless system within the next twelve hours, we will not have enough fuel to get to a fuel depot, in any system, on our own." The major problem was the 'any system' part. They came here only because this system had been abandoned by the Hegemony. Going to any other system would be going to Alliance territory. Tesla cannot be handed back to the Alliance fleet at any cost. Twelve hours meant he will be forced to turn back towards the Mass Relay in five hours. Five hours... Surrender would mean death. Death for his subordinates, and for him... The laughter returned again.

They had come here expecting support from the Human Front, the "terrorist organization allegedly funded by biotech giant Cerberus." The help wasn't here. Why? This ship would be crucial if Earth was to be won back from the Alliance scums, the bastards who have effectively hijacked the Hegemony into building more ship. "Protection from further alien threat". Playing on the average earthman's fear and hatred on aliens, the Alliance managed to sign a massive deal with ship constructors. Jarvis feared the Alliance itself had been taken over by someone but now was not the time to speculate.

"Incoming message," spoke Fellaini, startled. He double checked the systems before looking over the shoulder to Jarvis, "From there." He was pointing at the second planet. No, not the second planet, the space station orbiting it. No, how could it be? The space station had been abandoned ten years ago, it seemed broken down and lacking many modules. Fellaini spoke, slower, "I did a residual heat check. Nothing." In space, removing heat from a body was almost impossible. To remove heat, most earth-based instruments used the air surrounding it. Space was all vacuüm. This meant that unless special ships that specialized in keeping the engines from overheating were used, the heat would leave the space station very slowly, in a few weeks. No residual heat meant no big machinery was used in the last few weeks. This included the engine used for emergency collision avoidance, the systems running the guidance and the life support... no, no one had used this base in some time.

Yet, there it was, a message. Fellaini was running checks on it and it had cleared it. Authentic military space station SOS message. Quite a few ships had been fooled by Reapers emulating SOS messages. Jarvis didn't want to fall for it. He gulped, "Might as well see it." Couldn't be that bad, could it?

A man lay near the camera, half blown away, still alive. A woman and a man were desperately trying to close the lead service door, the normal one leaking air. Heated arguments broke out and the camera shook violently. Or was it the room, under attack? A second later there was a brilliant flash of light and the console and the people were no more to be seen, the entire compound severed cleanly off by the arm of a Reaper. Before the reaper could let his laser completely destroy the space station, it was attacked from a ship a kilometer away, large enough to be the clearly seen from the gaping hole even with the arms, or tentacles, of the Reapers blocking most of the view. The video ended as abruptly as it started.

"Moge hun zielen rusten in vrede" Fellaini muttered. May their souls rest in peace.There was only one answer and he knew it too.

"Opinion time," Jarvis spoke and smiled grimly. His sister used to laugh when calling for his help. Opinion Time started by his sister used to be fun. They were young and naïve then and all she ever asked him was, "One cookie or two?" Now, every time he called for help, it was a life or death situation. No wonder nobody wanted to grown old. Fellaini sent a private message to the CIO, Chief Intelligence Officer, Olivier Franz (officially XO, NAV & DCA) and Gunnery Officer, Mike "Charlie" Charlton (WEPS, ENG(acting) & OPS). Fellaini stood up and started pacing around, his way of relieving pressure and getting ready for new challenges. Jarvis noticed Fellaini wore the customary captain's outfit, an all-black carbon nanofiber piece. He sported an Afro and a beard, but was neither black nor a dwarf, proving problematic to all those who wished to insult him.

Two minutes later Franz and Charlie arrived together. Franz delivered his usual good afternoon line, "I need more of the central computer's power if my department is to be more efficient! Charlie's department is wasting all the bloody computing power!"

"My name is not Charlie," began Charlie's usual good afternoon line, "and we need the power. You guys don't even do anything worthwhile! Intelligence department, my ass."

"Good afternoon to the both of you," Jarvis spoke in a tone that made it clear to them that he wasn't in the mood for friendly banter. They stopped quarreling and looked at their Commander. Franz spoke first, "I'd say we're screwed."

Charlie snarled, "With intelligence report like that I'm not sure why the Alliance fleet pays him."

Fellaini muttered, "Alliance does not pay us anymore." The room fell into silence. Only the deathly silent hum of the machine carried on, eternally tireless. The Alliance... how the name angered his crew now. What had they done to deserve a life where in two weeks they went from be the saviors of Earth to villainous scums? Franz sighed.

"I'm going to suggest waiting for the Alliance fleet to react. If they decide to pay attention to the space station we will have time to decide on a plan. At the moment our only way out of this hell-hole is guarded by two heavy cruisers. Unless the Human Front show up, we are in no position to do anything."

Charlie sobered up, "Yes, I'd say the same thing too."

"Fellaini?" Jarvis asked.

"What if we agreed to surrender and when they came closer used the Hijacker on them."

The Hijacker. The instrument solely for which Tesla had been refitted. It generated a massive concentrated electric pulse capable for frying any ship's electronic. A weapon so lethal and precise, it demanded a change in the ship's name. The ship had been refitted, after the First Contact War, to make sure any future attacks on Earth, or its colonies, from aliens were contained quickly. Tesla's crew, in their six years of service, managed to make the Hijacker work once, putting out of commission a Reaper.

The Reaper had been using its tentacles after one of the heavy cruisers had destroyed its main laser. The moment the Reaper touched the ship , billions of amperes of current shot through the hull into the Reaper. Tesla systems went offline for a moment and major damage was caused by the tentacle-hull contact. That was early in the war. The ship had been secretly taken away from Earth for emergency repairs. By the time the ship was repaired the war was over. A little later, the crew was escaping the Alliance fleet.

"Two problems," spoke Franz. The ships weren't moving fast enough on the map on the screen, because of its scale, and the world appeared stagnant. "One, we don't know if the thing will work again and since the repairs were rushed we can't be sure Tesla will continue to run after another shot of the Hijacker." This point was good enough to drop the option. But Franz loved humiliating fools.

"Two," Franz carried on, "the Alliance fleet know of the Hijacker. They'll be smart enough to stay the hell away and use kinetic and laser bombardment if we don't surrender. Or they could just ask us to download a little program they'll email us, which will shut down all non-vital, or if they're bored, all systems. The problem here is that the enemy knows us too well. Our capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, everything."

Jarvis though for a moment before deciding, "We'll wait. Hopefully, we'll get out of this mess. If it does get to the point where we have to surrender it'll either be them coming closer for a little shock treatment or us throwing at them everything we got." Jarvis remembered the "We fight or we die" line some reporter said Shepard had spoken. The first time he'd heard that line he couldn't help but laugh. He was in the middle of a firefight when his friend had told him about the reporter and the line and he had laughed, and laughed some more. Shepard speaking such a corny line? He was an officer, not some B-film actor. But as the firefight went on, he realized the great effect such lines had on troops. Victory or Annihilation. No middle ground.

"Well maybe we won't have to surrender," Fellaini said with a smile. Jarvis looked at the screen and let out a laugh. Finally, the Human Front were here. More importantly, they brought firepower.

"Nice to get out of here," Charlie commented. But, not for the first time, Franz' words broke someone's cocoon of hope. "You forget the space station."