Mass Effect: Brutal

by Mr. Sketch

This story takes place in the shrouded and ambiguously unmentioned period of time leading up to the events of Mass Effect 1. This hastily thrown together clustering of plot twists and established origin bullshit is done mainly to introduce you to Brutus Howle, the semi-eponymous, unjustly named 'hero' of this story, whatever it is...

PROLOGUE

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SYSTEMS ALLIANCE COLONY OF ALGOLIS, THE SKYLLIAN VERGE

JUNE 19th, 2182

Brutus Howle was on the ground before dawn.

For close to an hour, the two Makos had been rumbling at full speed along the manic undulations of Algolis's volcanic soil, jerking in various directions to avoid massive outcroppings of rock, crags, boulders, and petrified trunks of trees that had long since been burned away. Like the other thirteen marines in his task force, Howle wore charcoal colored fatigues and matte-black armor plating that bulwarked everything vital from his head to his feet, with silver-mirrored visors that obscured their faces from any wandering eyes. Not like there was alot to stare at, considering what the Mako could throw down at a moment's notice.

The M35 Mako was a sleek, highly maneuverable vehicle that bore a layered grey resemblance to its aquatic namesake. With six massive, independently reversible wheels and four coinciding thrusters lying at the upper left and right sides of its angled nose and rear of its underbelly, the Mako was the penultimate ground vehicle for any Alliance force. In place of a fin, the APC featured a large coaxial-mounted cannon that fired heavy polarized tungsten shells faster than the average eye could see, as well as a secondary weapon; a smaller, 155mm mass accelerator cannon mounted next to the barrel. The explosive force and shear velocity behind it was enough to blow through the side of a mountain in less than a day, if one had all the time in the world.

Or something.

Hands were cramped from the cold, and he squeezed them to keep his blood flowing as he flicked his gaze to the mission clock in his heads-up display. The luminous blue numbers hit 00:56:17, just as his vehicle cleared a line of crumbling hills with a muffled roar, leaving behind a rooster tail of dirt and granite as it hung in the air for all of four seconds.

The accompanying vertigo was abruptly ended as the vehicle crashed back onto solid ground, jolting Howle and the other marines forward in their seats with head-swimming force, and Howle made sure to check his harness amidst a quiet string of angry curses.

Too early in the goddamn morning for motion sickness, but hey; he volunteered for this shit right?

He looked up at the view-screen, whose footage was synced with the Mako's prow-mounted camera, giving him and his men their first look at the objective: one of Algolis's struggling industrial settlements; and, somewhere inside the town, a suspected Batarian bomb-shop.

Out here in the Skyllian Verge- the very fringe of the Alliance's colonized star systems- humans shared a protractedly disputed space with the Batarians; the four-eyed, paranoid, and widely disliked race of bipeds who had very blatantly made their intentions- to claim the cluster for themselves- clear during the infamous and aptly named 'Skyllian Blitz' of 2176, less than a decade past.

Just one of many reasons that Howle was here on some rock at the edge of space.

Seemed the bastards were just daring humanity to try for it. But while the aliens' government -the paranoid, ubiquitous, totalitarian Hegemony- openly scorned humans from their homeworld of Khar'Shan; the lesser, non-politically involved minority of the race expressed their hatred of the liberal, equalitarian Alliance by attacking its settlements in organized mobs and militarized cells that definitely weren't being funneled by their government; sabotaging major shipping lanes, disrupting agricultural plants, and even launching coordinated raids against Transformers; the massive, extremely finite number of atmospheric terraforming dregs that the Alliance relied on to refurbish selected worlds to suit human development.

But since Torfan…..

No. He would not think about Torfan.

Since then, the Batarians had gotten lax. The best and worst of them were either dead or in hiding, and the rest- the middle class thugs and the recurring number of ex-convicts conveniently released back into the galaxy- were making a comeback in the name of their predecessors, or some crap like that. He wasn't a damned psychologist.

The Batarians' petty attempts at revenge had gone down in scale, certainly. But their efforts out here had come to even the most basic forms of publicized terrorism. Which meant bombs.

Even before the Mako's operator keyed the 'ready' signal across the marines' HUDs, Howle and his men were already in motion; slapping heated energy clips into weapons and testing out the heat-syncs, yanking charging handles, toggling safety switches on various pieces of equipment; a well-rehearsed symphony of preparatory clicks, hisses, and low whines that went unheard as the Makos hurdled down the backslopes of the hills, before coming to another abrupt, nose-down stop at the edge of town.

Almost as soon as the vehicle stopped, both of its ovular side doors were sliding back, and Howle heard the engine still running as his marines unclipped themselves and leapt onto the frost-covered pumice before breaking into a quiet run.

Howle was the leader of the strike-team's Alpha Squad, and he took point. He knew damn well that a starkly black-clad frame like his would stand out in the pale, pre-dawn light; so he set a brisk pace. After about two minutes he came to a low-lying chain link fence and called for a stop. Damn it was great, getting to run after being cramped into the Mako for four hours straight.

He waved a handful of his marines forward, and the three dark armored figures hurdled the fence and began weaving their way through piles of tires, pallets, and just junk as they advanced through what Howle assumed was the yard of nothing more than a rundown tire shop.

By the time Howle and his team reached the shop's front double-doors, they were winded. If it hadn't been for the marine's sealed helmets, their breath would have billowed in white clouds against the freezing backdrop of Algolis's biosphere. Normally they wouldn't be wearing such a heavy class of armor as the Onyx HCS for rapid airborne strikes like this one. But as his predecessors -the men and women of Rhino Company, 110th Marine Battalion- would tell him; the Batarians loved their traps.

Particularly the kind that left nothing but a few charred stains and an ugly blast mark for the EOD boys to look at. His CO didn't want to take any of those chances with this one.

He sent a short burst of static across the squad's encrypted radio COM channel; an 'in position' signal for Staff-Chief Ashley Williams, who commanded Bravo squad: now positioned by the workshop's back entrance. Howle waited for the two-burst response from Williams before he pushed away from the shop's pitted polycrete wall, lifted a knee up to his armored chest, and smashed his boot into the door just above where the lock would be.

The Alliance Intelligence Office (AIO) had anticipated stiff resistance. But as it turned out, the majority of the aliens weren't armed.

The handful that were carried small snub-nosed projectile weapons that clattered harmlessly off of the marines' armor as they sauntered in like hulking metal crabs, weapons up and scanning. What the marines knew that the intelligence spooks didn't was that the real danger would be the aliens who weren't firing- the ones with free hands that could trigger hidden explosives, blowing the workshop to smithereens. The one Batarian who dared took a three round burst from Howle's suppressed M9 Tempest and flopped back onto a steel worktable, arms outstretched and twitching as its four dark eyes went cold with death. Howle watched his fingers uncurl to reveal a small cylindrical detonator slip out…and roll harmlessly onto the cold floor with an ominous ping.

Major threat neutralized, the marines refocused and let the pistol-wielding 'Baggers' have it.

Howle had learned after some time that it was damned simple to kill members of another species in place of his own. This particular crew belonged to the widespread slaver cell known as the Batarian Alliance-Abolishment Group, (BAAG) more thoughtfully called 'the Baggers' by Alliance personnel. It was almost funny when you thought about the irony in both of those terminologies.

For one, the Batarian Hegemony- who openly condemned the BAAG as a 'rogue cell' of its expeditionary forces- despite the fact that its often strained caste system as a whole relied on the almost indefinite market of slave labor in the Kite's Nest- the Batarians' home star cluster- and the large, vaguely almost entirely lawless Terminus Systems. The Hegemony continually encouraged its isolated citizens to help subjugate and corral members of 'lesser races' for general labor to add to their workforce. This was just one of many, many reasons that the Batarians were practically vilified by Humans, who had been on the receiving end of the aliens' prickly, procrastinating wroth since the former's detachment from the Council- which was due to its refusal to interfere with human colonization of the Skyllian Verge. The Batarians had even gone so far as to completely sever their diplomatic positioning with the Citadel- the gargantuan, five-pronged space station that formed the center of galactic stability, civilization, and politics in the Milky Way.

And for two; the so-called Baggers were quite fond of 'acquiring' their latest charges from their homes and settlements by breaking in and stuffing them in electrically charged mesh-wire sacks. Whether or not they agreed to the arrangement that the slavers presented them was of little importance. Of course, Howle and the marines had other, cruder names for the cell that this current campaign -codenamed: Bloodhound- was designed to crush. And because the Alliance -and Humanity in general- condemned and actively persecuted these actions, Howle was here on some moon, shooting at aliens armed with snub-nosed pistols.

But it all served the same purpose. It was easier to kill someone if you didn't think of them as human. And for someone like Howle, this was a metaphorical and very much applicable boon when it came to engaging alien targets. The other side of the ball-park wasn't so difficult to manage when the opposing team had you beat by an extra set of eyeballs and a naturally occurring stench that reminded him of shit-covered mildew.

A Bagger is an enemy. Something you kill before it kills you. So quit asking questions. The words that he'd had drilled into his head at the N7 program kept repeating as he raised his sub-machine gun. The M9 Tempest was a light firearm; but its super-heated, micro-phasic rounds ripped ugly black holes in his target's sponge yellow clean-suit. The marines dropped the rest; some hitting the ground like lumps of rock, while others danced bloody pirouettes onto the oil-stained floor as the rounds tore through them like nails passing through balsa wood. Within less than fifteen seconds of the marines breaking in, the majority of the aliens lay dead or dying on the cold floor, with a handful of distinctly human figures huddling in the back, near a large pile of used car parts and defunct engine pieces.

"Damnit," he rasped. "I had something for this…" when one of his men- a replacement for one of his usual lot; out of the game thanks to a shot in the sternum- Specialist Ross, gave him a curious glance, before his optical inquiry was cut short by Howle's index finger. I got it.

"Oh yeah….housekeeping," He said as innocently as possible, a sheepish smile cracking his features. That earned him a few good-natured guffaws from a handful of his own men, but the grim faces of Bravo squad, with special emphasis on Williams herself, sobered his otherwise calm veneer. The woman was an adept student of war, after all- which was almost appropriately ironic as well, considering her heritage.

To the perspiring officers in the cramped tactical operations center (TOC) of the Alliance frigate SSV Nautilus, in high orbit above Algolis, it did seem like a perfect takedown- an infrequent victory in a prolonged cat-and-mouse conflict. But Corporal Simone Cole, his engineering specialist, cautioned them in her usual fashion.

"Howle, EDD is online…but it hasn't seen anything yet sir. Might be a snag in play." The Explosive Detection Database was fickle at the best of times.

Howle switched off his COM piece and continued sweeping the air with his wrist-mounted Omni-Tool, the module's specifically designed interface equipment using a portable laser spectrometer to sniff out traces of explosive chemical compounds.

Omni-Tools, in a layman's terms, was the galactic equivalent of a twenty-first century cellphone or mobile computer; but with the ability to holographically project numerous interactive hardware, and do an almost indefinite number of technological tasks from the comfort and convenience of one's wrist. Technology like this was readily available to virtually anyone of any species in any civilized part of Council space, though the one that Howle possessed was customized for frontline military use. A transient hardlight blade could unfold in the blink of an eye in case things got ugly, and the scanning equipment didn't just apply to chemicals, but also to living heat signatures, electronic signals, etc. Easily accessible tech like this was everywhere, from crowded spaceports and cities to the most run-down of rural areas like this one.

Despite the density of the Alliance's coverage, the Bagger bomb-makers had become surprisingly adept at concealing their explosives in ever-changing mixtures of nonvolatile compounds. Each time they hit a target with something his Omni-Tool's onboard computer matrix would regard as no more dangerous than-say, a bag of peanuts- it would analyze the explosive residue and add the new chemical signature to the detection database, which Howle had painstakingly added to his Omni-Tool's setup.

Unfortunately for the marines on the ground, this was an almost indefinite reaction strategy that heavily favored the insurgents, who constantly changed their recipes. Howle could only frown and gesture at Cole as his Omni-Tool continued to emit its muted click, trying to get a lock on what might be a new mix. Or it was just malfunctioning due to the invisible soup of particles in the air from the firefight, however brief it might have been.

The other five marines in Alpha squad were conducting a visual search, checking the workshop's clusters of auto synthesizers and machine tools. So far, nothing had turned up that looked -to the best of their knowledge- like a bomb.

Howle exhaled as he relayed the news to the TOC. "Scanners are blind. Please advise, over."

At the bottom of his chest, he knew what would come next. He'd been fighting against opposition like this long enough to know what things he would do to get actionable intelligence that his officers required. But since he wasn't an idiot, he called it in.

Smart marines didn't do that kind of thing without a direct order.

"Alliance Intelligence believes that the ordinance is still in play," replied his CO, a grizzled rear-admiral named Mikhailovich; who happened to be the captain of the SSV Nautilus, and the commanding officer of the Alliance's 63rd Scout Flotilla. "Take the gloves off, Howle. My authorization."

While Williams and her squad searched the workshop, Howle's brought the three surviving Batarians to their knees in the center of the bloodstained floor. All three had their suits removed and their hands cuffed behind their backs with super-dense nylon, and each of them stared at the floor with angry sets of six eyes apiece.

Crew-Chief Jack Turner, who was Alpha squad's second, lowered the mirror-image façade of his visor and gave Howle a questioning glance. Turner, along with Specialist Abigail Black, Corporal Vale, and Specialist Bishop were veterans of this morbid affair just like he was. All four of whom waited with guns leveled at the back of the Batarians' heads, fingers itching to pull the trigger and end it.

Cole, who was more suited to a desk-jockey's state of affairs, remained at a discrete distance from the scene. Howle gave a subtle twist of his head, and the four marines slid away from the captive aliens until each of them stood in front of one, M8 Avenger rifles trained on the center of their appropriately large foreheads.

As Black, Bishop and Vale took their stances, Turner went to relay his findings with Cole. And Howle went to where the closest Batarian sat, glowering at him with a dozen dark-pupiled eyes.

And without a moment's hesitation, he brought his armored boot down on one of the alien's outstretched calves.

To the Batarian's credit, he waited a full second before crying out; as though he were surprised that the sound of Howle's boot hitting the floor was louder than the near-simultaneous snap of his leg. And then he screamed, long and loud in an atypically deep, trombone-sounding voice. Howle waited patiently for him to take a breath.

"The bombs. Where the fuck are they?" He asked through his helmet's external speakers. A small part of him had guessed -even hoped- that one broken leg would be enough. But if he had anything beneficial to say about Batarians; they were tough bastards. And this one in particular wasn't eager to rat out anybody to a government -and to a larger extent a species- that he despised.

He didn't beg for mercy or toss out any of the usual anti-human semantics or neo-political bullshit. He just sat there, glowering into Howle's visor with his head cocked to the right- even as Howle snapped the prick's other leg.

With nothing holding him upright, the alien toppled to the floor, and Howle heard the sound of teeth snapping -like sticks of chalk against an oil-stained blackboard. Howle knelt, like a fatherly shepherd tending to a member of his flock.

"Next it's your arms…" he said, running a implicative finger along the alien's bicep before palming his cheek and wrenching the bastard's head towards him"….and then I get to start having fun with you."

It was more or less a ruse, sure. But it worked its magic as the upper and lower eyes not swollen or blocked by the floor swiveled in the direction of the half-dozen humans cowering in the corner, making pitiful noises and darting their eyes at every shadow. Howle felt his throat go momentarily dry before clarity kicked in.

"You son of a bitch." Was all he said as he shoved the Batarian's face back into the concrete, quite hard.

"The bombs are on the sl-" he stopped himself from saying slaves. "The bombs are on the captives." The words went over the private channel, and the marines of Bravo squad immediately converged on the huddled civilians. They gently had the terrified prisoners lift up their arms- as they had almost no decent clothing to speak of- and began cautiously probing their shaking, malnourished frames for signs of a lump, or even a sign of recent surgery.

But Howle knew that the bastards on the floor were smarter than that, and taking his victim at his unspoken word, he guessed that the captives were the bombs- that the Baggers had likely mixed their synthetic explosives into the meager nutrient sludge that they fed to their would-be slaves: a devious innovation that Cole soon confirmed and uploaded to the database in the TOC.

A small part of him- tucked away in the little black corner of his head- told him that this was horrible. That seeing the thin, almost skeletal frames of the shivering….things that Bravo squad was hovering around was an unforgivable, inhuman atrocity; worthy of the most terrible and fiery of vengeances. And as he quietly watched his marines as they surveyed the scene, he knew it wasn't a singular thought.

But at least THEY have it, he thought, feeling himself retreat into the inner layer of his soul, trying damn hard not to think about them, even at ten feet away. But as Williams turned and gave him a look, he snapped out of his numbness and re-focused.

Naturally, a literal 'living bomb' wasn't in the detection database. But the Alliance officer who had coordinated the mission couldn't have been more pleased. For once they were a step ahead of the enemy, and it took less than a minute before they got a positive ID. One of dozens of aerial drones patrolling the main highway into Broadus, Algolis's capital city, had caught a whiff of the same compound inside the cramped cargo space of a motley human cargo vehicle that veered into the parking lot of a local restaurant.

Some, if not all of its occupants were bombs waiting to be blown. As the drone- a small disk kept aloft by a single, shrouded rotor- circled high above the hauler, it detected a second trace of the explosive inside the restaurant. The officers in the TOC scrutinized the live feed from the drone's thermal cameras, overlaid it with the data collected by Cole's Omni-Tool, and determined that the trace was coming from a man -a human- seated at the restaurant's crowded food counter, less than ten feet away from the door.

"Marines, get back to your vehicles on the double," ordered Rear-Admiral Mikhailovich over the radio. "You've got a new target."

Howle waved his index finger in a circle, and Williams was already heading out the door with her squad in tow. The young, raw recruit named Ross was outside waiting for them, leaving Howle and his core element alone with the three Batarians. Which reminded him….

"Sir, what about the prisoners?" It was more of a formality, that question, than any actual curiosity. The blood from the Batarian's snapped legs and ruined mouth was beginning to pool darkly around his boots. The next person to speak was the operation's Council liaison -a shady, stoic Turian that Howle had never met in person. Like most Council spooks, the alien preferred to remain as anonymous as possible.

"Is the one who talked still alive?" The Turian asked- his calm, two-toned voice reminding Howle of his own after one to many cigarettes.

"Sadly." He replied.

"Then pack him up, Ops-Chief. Neutralize the rest."

There was no sympathy in the Turian's voice; not for the kneeling Batarians or their marine executioner. Howle clenched his jaw as he pulled out his sidearm, a matte-black M6 Carnifex pistol, and squeezed two rounds into each of the two aliens' chests. The two Batarians fell backwards without a sound and did not move. Bishop and Vale looked away, while Black glared at the bodies with dark, malevolently inclined eyes. Howle leveled his pistol again, and his arm vibrated as he gave both bodies a 'dead-check'; a third follow-up round to the forehead. For good measures, and all that shit.

He didn't blame his men for not enjoying the show. Howle himself couldn't help but stare at the carnage. Tried not to let the white smoke curling up from the barrel of his weapon or the torn yellow fabric of the clean suits imprint too heavily in his head. Last thing he needed was another recurring urge to drink himself stupid when all this was over.

As the big man, Corporal Vale, hefted the lone Bagger over his shoulder and ducked his head as he left the building, Howle motioned the rest of the marines out of the workshop and into the waiting Makos.

Less than ten minutes after they'd dropped in, and the two squads were clipped back into place. Howle would have applauded, if he'd been less abruptly depressed. The APC's thrusters surged, and they streaked in a tight turn and ripped back across the ground, back in the direction they'd come. But this time they rolled for speed, and the pair of them practically glided over the ashen volcanic plains.

Howle overheard the brief debate between the officers in the TOC, as to whether the M-75 Moray inter-atmospheric assault craft on standby should just destroy the hauler if it tried to roll back onto the highway before the marines arrived. The four-way laned road was almost choked with mid-morning commuter traffic. The Moray employed a variety of devastating weapons, including a prototype micro-missile called the HSM-Hornet. Once it locked on to a target's signature- whether it was the small, high velocity round was capable of gutting a fully-armored battle tank from almost any angle. But even an exact hit on the hauler's cab might touch off one of the tires, and the resulting explosion would blast the surrounding area and kill dozens of people in neighboring vehicles.

Howle put in his two cents right about then; far better to flatten it in the spacious, vacant parking lot of the diner, after all. But even then, Mikhailovich was concerned about shrapnel hitting the crowded restaurant and its forty-odd customers. Judging by where the hauler was likely headed- a populous urban center, or even one of the number of maglev tramlines- Howle thought it would simply be better to just do it right here, while the situation was still (more or less) secluded. But of course the officers ruled that out. Hooray for unanimous decisions, right?

Fortunately for them all, the target in question spent the Mako's twenty-minute convergence eating a leisurely breakfast. According to the real-time feed from the drone hovering above the establishment, he was barely finishing his second cup of coffee when the Makos ground to a halt behind an old, abandoned lumber factory building just off the other side of the highway.

The high-angle feed from the drone cast the interior of the restaurant in black and white; with white representing heat and black representing coldness or sterility. The lukewarm condition of the man's tea indicated that he was waiting for a refill, or that he was about to settle his tab and stand to leave. But most important of all, Howle noticed the red hue clinging to his frame like crimson smoke trapped inside of a glass container- an indication that the man was covered in the same explosive residue from the workshop.

So…shit.

He took a guess that the guy had recently been there; probably helped administer the explosive dosages to the human captives waiting in the hauler. Probably drugged out of their senses and bound beyond hope of escape. It was all very dramatic to process.

The Mako slowed to a stop at the height of a crumbling hill, just behind the dusty remains of a defunct, multi-story lumber mill on the opposite side of the highway. Specialist Abigail Black went with him on top of the Mako, being the strike force's only other qualified sniper, and was already unpacking and clicking together his favorite toy.

When they finished putting the various midnight colored pieces together, he had a complete M98 'Black Widow' hyper-acceleration gauss rifle propped against the window pane of the building's highest office. The weapon was a meter-and-a-half long tube of linked magnetic coils, which accelerated small projectiles at speeds unforeseeable by the naked eye. And while this kind of firepower -especially in the prototype stage- was normally classified as an anti-material weapon; designed for eliminating volatile bombs and other 'hands-off' ordinance from a considerable distance, it worked with….particular efficiency against 'soft' living targets as well.

Howle lowered the Widow on its shock-absorbing armature and hugged the weapon to his shoulder.

Immediately, the rifle's targeting system established a wireless link to his helmet's HUD, and thin golden line angled across the live-feed from the drone, indicating the weapon's aiming vector- the path that its 9.72 mm tungsten projectile rounds would travel. He angled the rifle around until the line turned a satisfactory shade of green, allowing that his first shot would pass through the target's chest, among other things. Almost as if the man could feel the round piercing his left pectoral muscle and exiting through his lower right ribcage, he swiped his credit chit against the counter and swiveled on his stool to leave.

Howle watched as Black reached for her right shoulder, and the butt of her M97 Viper, a semi-automatic sniper rifle, came into view before unfolding in her hands as she narrowed her eyes through the scope. Like many of the things that Howle did when Command was watching, this was just a formality; a backup shooter, in case he missed.

Not that he did. And Howle took a weird, cryptic comfort in the fact that Specialist Black didn't miss either. He took a breath, and thumbed the solid-state switch next to the trigger mechanism, and two muted chirps from the Widow indicated that it was fully charged.

"Target acquired' he hissed. "Requesting permission to fire."

In the few seconds it took Mikhailovich to respond, the target sauntered over to the diner's double doors and pushed them open with an almost arrogant causality.

"Permission granted," came Mikhailovich's grim voice. "Fire at will."

Howle refocused and increased his finger pressure on the trigger. He waited for a few heartbeats as the man descended a short flight of steps- until a hash mark on the aiming vector told him that his first shot would angle harmlessly into the parking lot. As the man reached into his coveralls for the keys to the ignition, Howle fired.

The Widow's slug exited its barrel with a muffled crack before drilling through two separate floors of the lumber building with no adverse effect on its trajectory. Traveling at sixteen thousand meters per second, the round whistled over the highway and hit the target at the apex of his sternum, and the man was transformed from a walking body to a flurry of pink and red in less than a millisecond as the round buried itself in a rooster tail of pulverized asphalt.

No sooner was the round on its way then Howle was yanking open the top hatch of the Mako to let first Black and then himself inside. As soon as the hatch closed above him, the Mako was moving at top speed, racing alongside the other beneath the dregs of the highway. While Howle's Mako skidded to a few dozen meters outside of the restaurant's parking lot, Williams' plunged straight for the hauler.

Williams leapt from the Mako's side door before the vehicle even came to a stop, her dark hair whipping pas her face as she fast-walked her squad to the hauler. Bits of pink and white gore covered the driver's side of the cab. Ragged pieces of blue coveralls clung to the sides of its cargo container, and one of the bastard's arms was stuck in the crook of the left rear-view mirror.

"We're secure," Williams said morosely over the COM. He knew she was disappointed that nothing was left; she had more than a few debts and bloodied dog tags to pay to the Baggers.

But Howle checked his 'affirmative' even as it came to his mouth, his eyes glued to the drone's live-feed.

"Alpha squad will cover the extraction of the human IMD's," he said, giving his own men a meaningful eye as they unclipped themselves and hopped out of the Mako. Howle had noticed a persistent red glow near the stool that the target had been sitting at.

"There's a bomb in the restaurant," he said, keeping his voice plain so as not to incite some kind of virulent urgency that could get people killed.

He saw Williams turn, and her squad was already sprinting towards the restaurant. They burst through the double doors, while the diners twisted in their seats and gawked at the heavily armored marines as they emerged from the foyer. One of the waitresses, a robotic torso mounted on a thin rail that ran the length of the interior, held out a menu; an involuntary gesture that earned it a rough shove from Williams as she swept past it. The drone began chittering like an angry locust when she gingerly pulled something from underneath the counter; a purse, satin mesh with a silver chain. A woman's. Because what else could it be?

Before he even processed it, his eyes were flicking to the restrooms, where one of the doors was swinging open. The optical feed wasn't great when it came to color, but he recognized the subtle curving of the back of the skull, and he guessed it would be blue.

An Asari; the politically powerful, blue-skinned, mono-gendered mediators that made up a third of the triumvirate-style Council alongside the martially inclined Turians and the hyperactive, secretive Salarians. One in every tenth of them had biotic capabilities; the ability to manipulate dark energy into fiscal cohesive force. And they were the most widespread and culturally accepted race in the galaxy.

So there was that.

The Asari wore a deep crimson coat that reminded him of a human's corduroy and tight-fitting flex-pants. She was busy flicking water from her freshly washed hands when she saw the hulking forms of Williams and her marines and stopped mid-stride. Her heavily mascaraed eyes instantly darted towards the purse. Her purse.

"On your knees!" Williams bellowed. "Get your fucking hands on your head, now!"

As Williams set the purse back on the counter, the Asari leapt for the nearest table, where a family of five humans had just settled. One of Bravo squad's marines, a man named Werner, was quicker on the draw than the Asari had guessed, and a single round from his M9 Tempest tore through her right bicep just as she hooked her left elbow around the neck of the family's youngest, a little boy who couldn't have been more than eight, and wrenched him out of the chair.

His little feet kicked as his lungs fought for breath that wouldn't come. Before Werner could even flinch, the Asari glared at him with an unknowable hatred and raised her hand, which seemed to pulsate with a morbid violet hue.

And a second later, Corporal Chad Werner seemed to simply come apart. Sudden bursts of dark red appeared at every crease and crack in his armor, and he barely had time to mouth a cry of anguish before he burst like a grenade, splattering the floor, the stools, and Williams herself with dark red blood that stuck where it fell, like hot syrup. In the seconds between then, another violet hue had sprung from the Asari, but this one had expanded into a literal bubble of reflective energy. A domed kinetic shield of pure coalesced energy that rippled and irradiated like the luminescent surface of a still lake.

Fucking aliens.

Williams swore loud enough for the officers in the TOC to hear. Howle knew that if she hadn't been burdened by her armor, she would have dropped the blue bitch before she even blinked. But now the Asari had a hostage, and command of the situation was hers.

"Get back!" She shrieked, "Do you hear me?" With her free, albeit bleeding free hand, she fished inside of her coat and pulled free a small, cylindrical device that was a dead-ringer for the one in the workshop. She waved in in front of the boy's face, menacing her captive audience with his wide eyes centering on the bright red button at its vertex. "Get back or I'll kill them all !"

For the longest moment, no one moved. No one breathed.

And then it happened all at once. The Asari's threat was like pulling an invisible linchpin that kept the diners locked in their seats, and the whole throng of them was surging towards the exits before anyone could say a word. Howle watched the chaos unfold in his HUD, as he propped the Black Widow against the broad barrel of the Mako's turret. More than thirty white shapes billowed past Bravo squad, driving them back and throwing any chance of a clean shot out the window.

"Howle! Take the goddamn shot!" Williams thundered over the COM.

Howle's eyes flicked over to where his own men were unloading the last of the human bombs, and then to the various civilians fleeing the premises; some going for their vehicles while others simply booked it across the asphalt and onto the dried grass beyond.

And then, he checked the live-feed; watched the ghostly image of the boy's father rising from his chair, hands raised to show he was unarmed. Bravo squad's microphones were too muted to hear him as he pleaded for his son's life.

"Turner," he whispered, keeping his words on Alpha's private channel. "Move the prisoners inside the diner."

"S-say again?" But Howle knew Turner had heard him, even if the horror in his voice confirmed that he knew what was up. "Cause it sounded like you said-"

"God…damnit! I know what I fucking said!" He snapped, breathing through his nose as he kept his temper in line. "Move…the prisoners. Now."

He saw Turner slowly nod his head, and with a few hand motions, he and the other marines slowly corralled the malnourished, dead-eyed humans through the side exit of the restaurant. From what Howle could tell, the purse wasn't the problem. And if the bitch already had a working detonator, it could only mean that both she and the man he'd turned into pink confetti earlier were in on the same gig.

Which meant that the detonator would trigger….them. Jesus. Howle watched as the pale forms of the captives shuffle through, heads lowered and eyes downcast. He'd seen post-ops before, and a respectable amount of them had been saved with on-the-spot surgery and months, even years of psychological therapy. But this group….never like this. And he reflected it was better this way, even as his conscience withered away at him about the morbid prospect of willful sacrifice. Less money to waste on the walking dead, he reasoned frantically. Less things to paint in an unnecessary shade of grey.

"We're here. Now what?" Turner inquired, his tone just barely underlined with a suspicion of what was happening.

"Pull back to the Mako and maintain discrepancy," Howle said, making sure to keep it simple. "I've got a plan." And he sure as shit hoped that it would work. All that was left now was….Williams.

"Howle!" She shouted, arriving unbidden into his little scheme. "Nail the bitch, or I will!" Staff-Chief Williams had managed to get within spitting distance of the Asari, whose threats were now so furious they were almost incomprehensible.

"Williams," he said, keeping his voice reverent. "Pull your team out, now."

"WHAT?" She snapped. "We've got her dead to rights Howle. And she has a…the fuck do you mean pull out? She has a kid!" Why the hell would we-"

"The triggers are on the prisoners from the truck." He heard her take a breath to shout something at him, but then trailed off as his words sunk in.

"I could take her out from here but shit, I don't want to hit the kid. And there are still dozens of people out here Ashley," he used her first name to grab her attention. She hated that; just as much as he hated hearing his first name. Outside, people were slowly starting to flock towards the parking lot; whether they were commuters who had come to reclaim their vehicles or just a rabble of curious gawkers, Howle couldn't say. And he couldn't just step outside to scream at them. This was a closed op. Discrepancy was the game here, not theatrics.

Because theatrics got you killed.

"And you screaming at me is not fucking helping, alright?" He snapped back, aware of a single bead of sweat inching down his right temple. "The Asari doesn't know what we have, damnit. So get your team out. Now."

"But the kid-"

"I'm sorry Williams," he said, and for a moment he really was. "But there're too many lives at stake right now to be choosey. It's a sacrifice that we have to make," he finished, keeping his voice as lenient as physically possible, as he noticed a pair of bright yellow police lights approaching, accompanied by the baleful wailing of automated speakers.

He heard Williams let out a deeply insulting string of curses before letting out a short huff- a sound that was half moan, half sigh- and he knew it was over before her voice even brushed his eardrums.

"With all due respect…Brutus," Williams glowered, her voice contemptful, almost hateful. "You can shove it up your ass."

And then she was moving, pacing forward in a furious saunter with her weapon slowly rising to line up the alien, and Howle couldn't make out what she was yelling at the Asari as she inched towards the detonator. Howle vaguely noticed that the majority of Bravo squad was still stuck in place. They knew that if any of them tried to move, the alien would thumb the button and kill them all. But also, he knew they had a lingering respect and an iron-clad camaraderie with their foul-tempered leader. One of them though, Corporal Bolton, had noticed that Howle's men were waiting just behind the far side of the restaurant, and had slowly inched back to meet them through the best bits of the situation.

He was frantically trying to get his teammates attention with hand gestures, but they were fixated on the appropriately attention-grabbing clusterfuck that this had turned into.

He decided to bite the proverbial bullet, and had his squad file out into the parking lot as quickly and quietly as they could, hustling the rampant civilians away from the area. A flicker of movement on the screen snapped his eyes back the diner. Howle sucked in a breath as the boy's father suddenly tensed and lurched forward, hands reaching and desperately grabbing.

And then everything happened at once.

The Asari's violet colored bubble dropped for the briefest of moments as she whirled on the man and they toppled to the floor together, with the boy between them.

He heard the muffled vibrations of Williams' M8 Avenger as the pair wrestled on the floor, and then something boomed inside the restaurant, and then all he saw was white as the live-feed fizzled out and a wall of shock and heat rolled over him, slamming him against the hull of the Mako as he let out a soundless, agonized roar.

The sound whipping through his ears could have been anything. But in his head, it sounded like a scream- loud and long.

PART ONE

---

EDEN PRIME

HOWLE

EARTH, SOL SYSTEM, GREAT LAKE INDUSTRIAL ZONE

August 7th, 2182

When Howle finally woke, he was already home. Chicago, the one-time heart of the American Midwest, was now a conjoined urban sprawl that all but covered the former state of Illinois. The territory was still part of the United States, in a formal sense. Some people who lived in the Zone still considered themselves 'American', at least by vocational standards. Howle counted himself amongst this slowly evaporating throng as well, though only because it felt nice to be able to call solid ground home. But like everyone else on the planet- regardless of ethnicity, faith, or old grudges- they were citizens of the United Nations- a sea change of governance that was all but inevitable once humanity began colonizing new worlds.

It all began with the pivotal moment on Mars, where twenty-first century astronauts uncovered a fifty million year-old site of alien origin on the planet's far side. When extensive research and development adapted the subsequent discovery of the Protheans- the name that the researchers had dug up from the archives- into technology into starships, weapons and countless other technological marvels, humanity was set to spread to the stars and begin the foundations of an interstellar empire in the making.

The military shuttle rattled as another torrent of rain washed over it in a wave, and Howle brought his Omni-Tool up as it passed under the entrance arch of the Great Lakes Spaceport. He read the message confirming his two-week pass; his first extended break from operation BLOODHOUND. And there was a note from Rear-Admiral Mikhailovich detailing the injuries sustained by the marines of his last mission. All but one of Alpha squad had survived with minor injuries- with Ross being the only exception, having been trying to get a nervous couple away from the blast area when the Asari triggered the bombs- though Howle couldn't have guessed what was going through their heads when he gave the order to pull out. Let alone when he told them to leave the prisoners to their grim, almost pointlessly gruesome fate. But Bravo squad was a different story. Five marines killed in action (KIA), with Staff-Chief Williams hanging by a thread in some hospital and Corporal Donald Bolton in a catatonic state of something akin to shock that refused to mend.

Of course the note didn't say jack-shit about civilian casualties. Or the people that the Baggers had turned into hollow, walking bombshells. But Howle remembered the force of the dozen separate blasts- imagined that the people didn't suffer for long as they ceased to exist- that leveled everything within two hundred meters only too well. Him and Black had been conveniently protected by the near-impregnable hull of the Mako APC, and the rest of Alpha squad had simply known to take cover when the first boom shook the ground.

He kept his mind blank on the subject as he boarded a maglev train from the Spaceport to the Zone. Wasn't a big fan of trains, actually. But the destination kept him more or less sane as he dodged glances from the classically decrepit scumbags of Chicago's railways.

It was later, when he stepped off of the train and onto an elevated, rounded platform, that the full blast of a late Chicago summer hit him in a hot and humid wave, snapping his senses back into focus. The sun was beginning its gradual descent into the horizon, and Howle took time to enjoy the last gusts of wind as they hurdled up from Lake Michigan, making the east-west blocks of tumbledown gray-stone apartments howl and the autumn leaves of the sidewalk maples scatter.

Howle was carrying his duffel around like a normal person might carry a handbag, and in addition to the load, he was clad in his best navy blues, dress pants, undershirt, and even his cap.

By the time he arrived at the Porcupine, a small pub tucked away in a corner of the Southside, he was drenched in sweat. He'd anticipated this homecoming well ahead of his release time, and he'd made a purchase at the spaceport; the two bottles of fine bourbon clinking together in his free hand like fine china would probably get him past the door, right?

This and more raced through his mind at super speed as he rapped a fist in quick succession against the worn steel frame of the Porcupine's front entrance. The small horizontal slide peeled open to reveal a pair of unfamiliar blue eyes that narrowed in recognition when he gave them the best, brightest shit-eating grin he could muster.

"Password?" The question came from a woman's mouth, and he knew it had to be either Laerra or-

"You gonna answer me, or what? I ain't got all fuckin day man." Okay, so it wasn't Laerra. It wasn't any voice he recognized, actually. But his gears were grinding as he tried to remember….

"Uhhhh, New England clam chowder." He voiced it as more of a question than a fact.

"Red or white?" Came the response. Shit. Should've known there would be a follow-up. The Southside was a treacherous place, after all.

"Ah, gimme a goddamn break," he groaned, "I could never remember that." He needed to get inside though. His room probably needed a decent flourishing, and all that crap.

"Um….white?" He asked, putting all his disingenuous hope into the word. Something shuddered and clicked behind the door, and he clenched a fist in victory as it heaved open. The woman who greeted him was a stranger, with a tumbled bun of dark hair, a nose piercing, and a tattoo on her long neck that could have been a tribal collage or a nice 'fuck you' written in bold italic. Not that he cared.

"And you are?" He asked, letting her eyes drink up the uniform and the duffel bag before she got mouthy. Instead she just smacked her lips, furiously working a piece of gum in her mouth and giving him a loathsome, judging look. Was she trying to hurt his feelings or something? Was this grade school?

"So…" she finally drawled in an accent that just screamed trailer park, "You've gotta be 'Brutal', huh?"

Howle winced as the old nickname left her lips. This bar had been the closest thing to a 'home away from home' he'd had before joining the military, and in the four years under his belt as a regular patron he'd knocked out more teeth, broken more bones, and been forcibly removed by law enforcement officials than anyone within a five mile radius.

All that his often inebriated compatriots needed to do was slur his first and last name together while trying to give a description to the cops, and the alias 'Brutal' was born. All because some jackass got his panties in a bunch when Wendy Hawkins, a single mother and the head honcho of the dive's waitressing body, refused to take him to the bathroom and 'serve him something else .

After his buddies had peeled his crippled, bloody frame off of the floor and out of the bar, the chair that Howle had very angrily broken over his face had been flung onto the unused stage- and was still where he'd left it before the inevitable flight from the Porcupine had landed him in the drunk tank for the night.

Wendy herself was there to greet him as well, though hers was a more welcoming embrace as she squealed in the same manner as a pre-pubescent schoolgirl and locked her arms around his neck in a vice-like grip that almost had him tapping her wrist like some spandex-wearing wrestler. It was a blossoming flurry of joyful tears, dirty aprons and voluminous breasts. Wendy was a workaholic, had been for the past two decades- including eighteen tumultuous years as a mother to her son, JP- and everybody knew it. But the genuine and utter joy she showed when she did see one of her few friends outside of work was almost too much, even for him. But then, there would always be a place in Wendy's heart for him, and he knew that too.

Her juvenile son Jimmy had tried to enlist with the Alliance Marines within an hour of turning nineteen, and was seconds away from burning his thumbprint onto the dotted line when Howle had caught wind of it. That little fiasco ended almost as soon as it had begun, thank christ. And almost as if the cosmos was proving some invalid, coincidental point, the shuttle that took the rest of the juveniles from that same recruitment office had ruptured an engine at eight hundred feet above the city's skyline, and crashed headlong into a shitty little suburb. All but two of its occupants- both of whom miraculously happened to be the pilots- were killed almost instantly.

As for Howle, well….the recruitment office's MP's were probably still looking for whoever jacked their car and took off with some eager high school dropout. Oh well.

"Brutus goddamn Howle," she said, beaming as she looked him over. "Look at you, all spit-polish and shit!" Howle at least had the dignity to turn a slight shade of crimson as her inane gushing drew the attention of the rest of the bar.

"How's Jimmy?" He asked, genuinely curious.

"He's fine," Wendy said, lolling her eyes. "Just went up to Vancouver with his friends is all. They're celebrating their graduation. So yeah, he's doing good."

Some of the other faces clustering him he recognized, like he'd seem them yesterday. There was Gamble Johnson, who'd served with the Alliance's Pathfinder Corps before a sudden and violent mauling by a Varren had him pegged for the honorable discharge list before he could say 'wait'. There was Carl Huffman, a refined English drunkard whose book-smart son- as it ironically turned out- had only just joined the Alliance Marines, not even a week before Howle had arrived in Earth's orbit. He of course reserved a firm handshake and a hard slap on the back for Jebediah Alerdyce Farnsworth III, otherwise colloquially known as 'Cookie'. The man was a hayseed with a brain that served about as much function as a brick with a copper wire attached to it, but damn if the man couldn't cook anything he got his hands on. Howle knew he was still homeless, but his attire and general upkeep told him that Wendy had been letting him grab a shift here and there as an under-the-table cook.

But his borderline joyous reunion with his numerous ex-alcoholic companions was cut short when he heard someone yell something from behind the bar, and he had to duck as a clear, voluminous bottle of something that looked expensive flew through the air and whistled past the spot where his head would have been if he'd waited a moment longer.

"Aw hell," drawled Cookie as he took a hasty sip of his drink before grabbing his coat. "I guess she knows you're here." And with that, the old man and the vast majority of the thirty-odd people inside began shuffling, swaying, and grumbling their way out of the bar. Howle was only half-glad that they were leaving; they knew when to stay out of it, but a crowd would have probably kept him from getting his ass beat. This was a recurring thought in his head as he slowly made his way to the line of barstools and slid onto the one closest to an 'EMPLOYEES ONLY' sign that hung above a swinging door.

He smelled her before he saw her. Peaches. She always liked the fragrance of peaches- something that came from growing up in the former state of Idaho on a citrus farm with hard-working caregivers that made his hard-working parents look like a bunch of goddamned amateurs.

Not that it had worked out for them either, in the end.

"You don't call!" She roared from behind the door, her voice slightly cracking as the years of habitual smoking caught up with her lungs. Another bottle came careening towards him like a hollowed missile before he jerked his shoulder back and left it to shatter against the hardwood floor.

"You don't say anything to me, or Wendy, or Laerra or even your damn brother, for a year?" She shouted, and Howle bit back a very incriminating retort as she brought Damien into the mix.

His brother was younger than him by a good three years, not that it had stopped him from getting married to her. He grimaced as the surreal thought of his alien sister-in-law being here to lecture him brought back memories of her estranged engagement to his brother, and of how Damien had broken it to the rest of the family. By the by, Howle knew that Damien was happy, and that Laerra herself was a decent enough lady to be around- Asari or not- when the other Howles weren't giving her nasty looks behind her back. Plus, it wasn't every day that your sister-in-law happened to be more than a century older than most old people that you knew. At that moment however, the door swung open- spinning away his thoughts as the Porcupine's owner, landlord, and bartender came bursting through.

Eleanor Zane was possibly the hardest working lady that he knew, and he knew Wendy Hawkins. Born and bred in the all-black slums of Cape Town, South Africa, she was a smuggle-case; parents had managed to book her an illicit passage to North America through an overseas shipping operation, which was becoming more and more common as the less developed areas of Earth began running out of commerce and decent living conditions. Her family was almost five thousand credits in debt by the time she arrived on America's east coast, and she had spent her eminent teenage years as an around-the-clock indentured servant - paying off the expense it took to bring her here.

From age thirteen to twenty she had been cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, and sweeping up countless establishments and earning her petty wages until at last, she was free. By far the youngest woman he'd ever met who had such a colorful list of job experiences, being only eight months shy of his own twenty five years.

"And you have no goddamn idea what I've had to live with after all this bullsh-" When she actually locked eyes with him, it was like watching a cloud pass over a raging sea. And then she was back, screaming obscenities in her unmistakably accent; part Afrikaans and part Zulu- both of which were quickly diminishing dialects, especially considering how far English had come- refusing to diminish no matter how hard she tried. She was a small woman; indeed, a full head shorter than he was, despite the thick, streamlined bushel of light brown hair bouncing on her head, which resulted in the brunt of her angry blows hammering against his chest.

Until the slap that knocked his eyes back inside of his skull reminded him about second-guessing her throwing arm. He drew the line right there. His hand snapped up to iron-grip her wrist as she brought her hand up again, her creamy-brown skin rippling in the neon lighting above the pool tables. She must have seen something in his pale eyes that held her back.

"Don't act…" he relented, giving her a picturesque twinkle of his eyes, "…like you're not happy to see me here, okay Ellie? Today is just….well, it's just not the day." And as his mind traced back to the events of the past few months, he affirmed that it really wasn't.

And just like that, her head was suddenly falling heavily against his chest, and he could feel small pools of warm liquid saturating through his navy blues as her shoulders began to rack up and down. He pulled her to him then, with as much vigor as he dared, and for a while he stood there with his arms around her as she sobbed away a year's worth of grief and worry and loneliness into his uniform. What the hell, it was just a rental.

"You son of a bitch," she said, gazing up at him with a rueful smile and a pair of brilliant hazelnut eyes as she hastily smeared away her tears and pushed away, arms folding as her face set back in a near-permanent scowl that reminded him of how he looked in the mirror, oddly enough. "You son of a bitch."

It was on him before he knew what it was. Suddenly it wasn't Ellie looking at him, but the bleeding Batarian from the tire-shop. And then it was-

"That's quite a compliment." He retorted bitterly, crossing his arms and matching her glare with his own, which was a more unsettling thing than he liked to admit. He was trying to make nice, but Ellie wasn't budging.

"What do you want me to say?" He snapped.

"I don't want you to say anything."

"No?"

"No."

They continued their glowering- Howle's cold blues with Ellie's intense green-hazelnut- until he noticed something in her stare. Something….more.

Every woman offered permission differently. That had been Howle's experience throughout his life, which had seen and left behind more than a few broken hearts and fractured minds. Some were obvious, and some were so mind-splittingly subtle that he was sure he'd missed many opportunities in the past. But Ellie's signals- a deepened gaze, a squared set of shoulders and a lower lip that hovered between pursed and trembling- weren't so much articles of consent as they were a primal demand.

Now.

Howle didn't miss a beat, and he was less than a foot forward before Ellie was pushing off of the bar to meet him. They met a second later in an embrace that sent fire through his veins and a jolt through his groin. Even as their lips interwove like movie stars, their arms fought past eachother for bodily purchase in a way that was both frantically new but still familiar. The year abroad had done little to her mentality when it came to sex.

Just as he began to pull her tight against him, she shoved away and left him with a hammering chest and more than a few other bodily functions that screamed outrage as she hovered. Howle wondered if she had changed her m-

Ellie's top hit the floor without a sound, and in the next moment she was bending over and unlacing her boots. Howle quietly cursed himself for being left in the stalls of a race where winning meant an even tie. His duty cap and fatigue shirt were flying away, just behind his pants and everything below the waist. By the time she'd gotten her second boot off, all he had was his boxers and a pair of socks that perspired with sweat as off as she came at him, wearing nothing but a determined stare.

It was dark out by the time Ellie fell heavily onto his chest as her orgasm-the fourth one that night, at least that Howle had kept track of- ended with her arching her back and huffing away like some dementedly lustful beast before her energy left her in a hushed wave.

For a long while they just laid there, quietly assessing the amalgam of their sweat as the open canopy of his small office offered a luxurious view of the night sky. Ellie's fingers traced the lines of his collarbone, slowly ascending until they brushed across his jaw, where she began probing the beginnings of a stout beard.

"I know, I should shave," he said, though he didn't really mean it. His thoughts lingered in a nightmarish limbo- the explosions, the screaming, one of his men being ripped apart from the inside. Little thoughts in truth, but ones that guaranteed a repeat of the last few sleepless evenings.

And then his attention was focused on Ellie's stomach, which- as he watched it rise and fall- looked to be a little….rounded. Or was the earth-shattering climax he'd just endured messing with his head? It could be one or the other. Always fun things to think about after a good screw. That, and the fact that he still hadn't told her about the thirteen days he had left before he had to go back to the hell that had been created in the wake of the fucking Blitz.

But then her stomach moved, and he was straight as a doornail as he sat up and stared at it, then her, and then back at it again.

"The fuck is that about Ellie?" He didn't bother to hide the rising anger in his tone, which grew hotter as he saw her eyes widen in guilty consolation. She looked down at her belly, almost as though she'd forgotten it was there, and sighed.

"Do you remember the last time you were here?" She asked, reaching over and pulling a pair of cigarettes from the bedside table. She lit them and passed one to him, which he accepted with a long, powerful drag that he released through his nostrils. He liked smoking.

"Yes…." he said, measuring his responses.

"After you pretty much…. kidnapped me before we made it to Vancouver?" She continued, and Howle nodded, remembering it all too well. It was weeks before his shipment out to the Attican Traverse, and she had insisted on staying at the Porcupine to finish off the last bits of tediousness before she 'eloped' with him….or whatever the hell she considered it to be. That kind of work always came after a hard winter. Howle had stormed out angrily. Yet another reason he preferred being on solid ground- as opposed to the limited confines of a ship. You couldn't angrily storm into hard vacuum.

And then he stormed back in the very next day. After a few apologetically slipped bills and hasty words with Wendy, Howle was back out with Ellie on his shoulder, roaring something at him in Zulu. The celebratory vacation had lasted for an entire, uncontrollably wild week until he'd broken the news that he was due for extended service. After that, it was all downhill.

"Yeah. I remember Vancouver," he said ambiguously, not at all liking where this was going. He was acutely aware of what a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal he sounded like. That, and Ellie refusing to meet his gaze.

"Well, um…." she stuttered, and he knew right then she was hiding something. But before she could blurt it out, whatever it was, a sudden cry snapped her head up, and in a flurry of sheets, long brown legs, and hastily pulled up shorts she was bounding out of the room.

In bewilderment, he stumbled after her until she disappeared into a closet-like space. He hastily went back to his old room and shrugged back into a hoodie and cargo pants before turning back into the hall. And slowing abruptly as his heart suddenly stopped beating.

"Not the way I wanted this…" she muttered, "But screw it, right?" He almost laughed as she mockingly quoted him.

Almost.

"Brutus Ebenezer Howle," she said, her tone vaguely reverent and official as she dared to use his ridiculous, hated middle name. Never should have told it to her, damnit. She held up a small bundle, and in his heart Howle knew what it was even before a pair of familiar, pale blue eyes opened and blinked at him. Ah, jesus…..

"I'd like to introduce you to Dominic Howle Zane." She said declaratively, motioning the child forward. "He's yours, by the way." For a solid twenty seconds, Howle just stood there. And then it crossed his mind, like a black streak on a white canvas.

No.

It was a mistake. And then he was pulling back, before he could even stop himself. "That's not possible Ellie." he said, suddenly feeling a very red flush creeping up his neck. "The doctor said….you know what screw the goddamn doctor! You told me that you couldn't-"

"I know, man!" She exclaimed, almost forgetting the half-conscious infant. After a few nurturing coos and shushing, the strange bundle named Dominic quieted. "I flipped when I found out," she said, looking up from the baby's face. "And then I got myself tested, to be sure, you know? And when I got the result, I uh….I panicked."

She panicked. He would have laughed at such a notion a year ago. Ellie was more sure of herself than most women he'd known, which was saying something, considering the ones he'd known in the service. He would have laughed harder if she'd so much as breathed the 'P-Word' around him.

But this…

"Bullshit!" He snapped, and suddenly it was like a floodgate opening. "If you're telling the truth, why the fuck did you wait this long to bring it up?" He saw the color begin draining from her face.

"You think I knew when I came home? You think I fucking needed that? After what I've seen out there? AFTER WHAT I'VE FUCKING DONE?" His fist collided with the nearby wall, and Ellie let out a small grunt as a chunk of drywall was dashed against the floor in a crumpling plume of rubble and fiberglass. The baby was softly whimpering now, but neither of them noticed. Ellie's eyes were now saucers as she stared at him, but the water beginning to line the bottom of her eyelids didn't distract him.

"And then I come home for the first time IN A YEAR!" he continued, not bothering with volume control anymore, "And you come at me with this?" He gestured at the bundle in her arms for good measure.

"B-Bu I didn't even….I m-mean I w-w-wouldn't ever," she bumbled as she took a step back. "Howle…" she actually looked surprised, damn her. "…are you r-really thinking that I…I would d-do that….t-?" She was crying now; her stubbornly stiff lip was devolving into a sob. But then her face went hard, and her eyes lit up with a fire that he knew was coming.

"What in the fuck are you trying to say?" She bellowed back. "That I'm just some stupid alcoholic slut and with a fatherless bastard? Is that it, Brutus?"

"No! But-" He trailed off, but only for a second. "But what the fuck else is it? A goddamn miracle! Right! Because I'm a fucking idiot!"

She just looked at him then. Not even angrily, and that alone was enough to check him. Her mouth opened for the space of a second before closing, and then she just turned- without a word and without another blink- carrying the baby back to where he knew her room would be.

Howle was pissed. And in all mutual self-honesty somewhat torn, despite how stupidly cliché it sounded to him as it crossed his mind; Ellie never fucking cried. Not once before today- not since he'd met her, definitely not since he'd left; not even when he wasn't looking- had she ever broken down like this.

And the eyes on the baby….

"Well….fuck!" He roared, suddenly very aware of how exhausted he was- both physically and mentally. Fucking drained.

He turned and barged through the door to his room. He didn't keep track of how quickly he yanked and pulled his uniform back on. He didn't know what he felt. Betrayal? Agony? Already-present mental instability verging on psychotic breakdown? A rhetorically sardonic part of his mind told him that he wasn't paid enough to deal with these kinds of things.

He was just paid to deal with death. Because that's all he was now, wasn't it? Just an advocate of morality and the finite number of years that someone had before someone like him was putting a round through their brains. Howle was already exiting the room by the time he was tugging his cap back on, and his duffel bag was still lying next to the pool table.

"Howle!" He heard her yell. "You're not leaving me again? Like this?" It was only half a question.

But he didn't have an answer. He didn't have anything to say at that moment, actually. All he had was a big, rusted door in front of him; and if he looked back now, he'd go berserk. And then where would he be? Where would she?

He put it away in his mind as the door to the Porcupine slammed behind him, and the cold Chicago night rushed to meet him with open arms as he trudged into the dark.

HOWLE

EARTH, SOL SYSTEM, GREAT LAKE INDUSTRIAL ZONE

August 9th, 2182

Howle's hands were still shaking, despite the absence of bitingly cold wind blistering his knuckles. There was still blood on his right hand, from where the cop that had stopped him outside of the bar had found himself interacting with the nearest brick wall, face first. He'd live, once he regained consciousness. Howle had made sure to dial the paramedics on an anonymous, out-of-date service array before he'd beaten feet away from the scene.

But his considerable M.O in this area had diminished in his interstellar years of service, and beat cops these days were a dime-a-dozen. His hands shook for another reason entirely though, at the present moment.

He knew. Fuck it. He'd known that she'd been teetering on the edge for some time- that she'd stop waiting up eventually- because nobody was perfect. But then for her to just….

No, he thought, absentmindedly smacking a hand against the inner linings of the info-booth he was standing in, taking a small break from the abrupt downpour that had come up only an hour ago. He pushed the thought away. He was still in logged onto it, and had used his credit chit to make a withdrawl form his recently updated bank account. He reached into his uniform and yanked free the bottle of gin that lay inside, twisting off the cap before tipping the glass skyward as he took a generous swig, wincing slightly as the liquid burned down his throat and left him half wretching, half coughing into the cold air. But he kept it down.

"The Palace," He rasped at the computer. "It still in business?"

"Open daily until four a.m.," chirped the computer's small speaker. "Ladies drink free on weekends and pay no cover. Shall I call a cab service?"

But Howle was already stomping away, the leaves whipping past his face as another gust came up.

He would walk there. While he still could- a thought that quickly went away as he took another drink. The bottle didn't last long, but soon there were many others to replace it. And then one night became two, then three, and then four; all of them filled with clubs and bars and dives, and people ever-ready to take Howle's money. By the time he realized how far he'd gone, Howle was past the border at Wenatchee and all the way in Vancouver, Canada; one of the Earth's most populous and culturally vast cities. And one of the Alliance's most heavily occupied military headquarters. But like every major city, it had its dives too; one of which he soon found himself slouching in, glued to a chair inside of a place called the Palace.

Whether they were from Canada or from Illium, none of the people- or aliens- that he encountered were willing to listen to his increasingly slurred stories about how he'd earned his diminishing paycheck.

The one exception seemed to be a pleasant looking Asari on the low-lit stage, her luminous and seductively blue skin rippling as the motion lights above the stage painted her curved, continuously moving body in an abstract pattern of crimson, emerald, and golden shades. The cobalt beauty was good at pretending to listen to his problems- enough that he almost forgot it was his credit chit tapping against her naval that drew her bright blue eyes and lazy smile closer to him. Before a rough hand fell on his shoulder, and he turned with a half-ready fist.

"Better watch your damn hands, soldier boy," snarled a thick keg of a man, clad in a tight-fitting black t-shirt and slacks that bulged against a substantial gut. His arms were strong, though the deceptive layer of fat covering them almost had Howle laughing. Instead he just shrugged.

"I've paid." The bouncer's hand was still on his shoulder.

"Not to touch, see?" The big man leered, revealing a mismatched row of golden teeth. "This is a class establishment."

Howle knew what he meant. And he also knew what his own intentions were. Sitting here being screwed with by some overweight, mongoloid-looking motherfucker wasn't one of them.

"I've already spent plenty, asshole," he growled. On the stage, the Asari wasn't smiling anymore. The bouncer gave her a jerk of his head, and she began sliding backwards- casual, but there was a sense of rushed exasperation to it.

"Now see," said the bouncer, his grip tightening on Howle's shoulder. "You've upset one of our prize girls. And she ain't one of those outer rim sluts you're used to, soldier boy."

Howle was sick of his hand. Of being called boy. And this- having some fucking civilian insult him and what he'd done? That was it. That was the proverbial straw breaking over his head.

"Fuck off." He growled.

"We gonna have a problem?" Asked the big man.

"All depends on you, Pugsley." Howle retorted, tightening his fist around the rim of a glass on the table.

With his free hand, the bouncer reached for his belt and fished out a thin metal rod. With a flick of a meaty hand, it doubled in length to reveal a pair of electrified tips that crackled and hummed.

"Why don't you and me step outside, soldier boy?"

It was a 'tamer' stun device. He'd seen Alliance interrogators lay into prisoners- namely the more durable alien ones- with the things, and he knew what they could do. And though he seriously doubted that this lummox could swing it the same as an Alliance spook, Howle had no intention of jerking around in a puddle of his own piss on this….class establishment's floor.

"I'm good right here." He said, putting as much finality into the words as he quickly finished the last of his drink.

"Listen, you Alliance motherfu-"

The glass never reached the table. Instead, it shattered against the big man's head as the last few drops trickled down Howle's throat. He was a blur as he seized the bouncer's exposed arm and brought over his shoulder before snapping it downward with an audible crack.

Bits of ragged bone tore through the bouncer's sleeves and droplets of blood spattered the table as he dropped with a high-pitched shriek, which sent the Asari on stage darting away behind a crimson curtain. Howle looked up from the crumpled man- just in time to see two of his similarly dressed and built partners flinging chairs out of the way as they rushed him.

Howle stood to meet them, but was drunker than he'd thought. He swung a haymaker that crunched into the first man's nose and sent another arc of blood flying back towards the stage. As soon as he came up- too quickly- the other bouncer was there, charging in like a bull. The two of them crashed into the opposite wall with Howle on top, cracking his elbows and more than a few good punches into the brute's back. When the bouncer lifted his head, Howle landed a jaw-shattering hook on the lummox that left his knuckle raw and bruised. As the bigger man sunk to the floor.

As he wrung his hand out, he looked up- in time to see a fist coming out of nowhere, and after that it was just stars as his already strained sense of balance left him in a rush of spots and a sickening vertigo as his world went upwards. Then there were more crushing arms enveloping him, dragging him towards the club's front entrance. But before they could get there, one of his captors slipped on the pointlessly long curtains lining the main stage area, and then Howle was up on his feet.

He gave as good as he got before staggering out, cupping a scarred hand against his ribs- two of which he figured were broken. By the time he'd gotten past the main thoroughfare of hookers, drug dealers and drunken old men, blue and white sirens announced the authorities as a pair of cobalt hovercraft deposited five of Vancouver's finest onto the club's doorstep.

An hour later, Howle was stumbling along the somewhat crowded sidewalks, avoiding paranoia and brooding glances as he looked for a quiet place to mentally rot away. He found it underneath the maglev line that had replaced Chicago's old elevated railways, still recognizable after centuries.

After a brief dispute with a handful of young vagrants as to who got to squat where, he settled in the corner of a pillar and pulled a torn garbage bag between himself and the riser. A fitful stupor soon followed.

I'll make you fucking proud. His own words mocked him from the past like the distorted echo of a voice in a deep cave. He'd been nineteen when he first enlisted- when the brass had been oh-so-willing to shake his hand and extend the red carpet into Annapolis.

You had better come back in one piece. Ellie said that, her small hands cupping his face as he kissed her one last time. The nostalgia from that moment had stopped being a comfort at some point, though he couldn't place the exact time and place. It had just become a dragging burden on his mind by Torfan.

Well, he'd tried to stay intact. He'd left Earth ready and willing to do whatever it took. Whatever was necessary to protect Earth and her colonies, and whatever got him farther away from Chicago, the drugs, the violence… and of course, the drink.

He'd done it less and less for a paycheck than for the belief that the Alliance was serving the greater good. But what had protecting the innocent cost him? How many days, weeks, months …even years had he given for their safety? How many hopeful young boys and ambitious young women had he stared at, even as the corpsmen took their bodies away?

And not just his men. Hadn't even occurred to him until just then how many people- jerks, assholes, fathers, mothers, humans, aliens- were in the ground because of this campaign. Or how many that he'd put there himself. Killers. Baggers. Batarians. Asari. Something, something, something enemies….

Where was the pride of service they'd promised? Where was that boy that should have come home? Where was that guaranteed chance of success when he'd needed it? And then there was Annapolis, hanging in front of him like an invisible banner.

It wasn't his voice asking these questions to himself, but Ellie's. And then it was Black's, and then Mikhailovich's. Jumbled and frantic and dark, all of it. Meanwhile, Howle consciously re-lived the restaurant on Algolis- the perfect, magical shot that would have saved a boy that squirmed and choked in slender, blue-skinned arms. The distance that would have been safe for Williams and her team, or even the amount of pressure that a biotic shield could take before dissipating. Any number of medical centers where the doomed human captives could have had surgery; maybe even psychological reparation.

But in his heart he knew there wasn't one, even as solutions to the problem kept making him momentarily hopeful before reality clicked in and told him 'too late'.

Too late, like Torfan. Goddamnit, why does it always go back to Torfan?

Every time it was the same vivid memory of frantically shoving his Omni-Blade into an angry Batarian's stomach before he could bellow a warning to his comrades, who were busy ripping into his marines with heavy rounds as they charged the slavers' fortified, octangular bunker of rock and stone. Torfan had been an abundant tropic world before the Alliance's initial bombing run against the known slaver bunkers in the area. After that, the areas surrounding the isolated, heavily fortified bunkers was composed of dirt and embers- things that meant no cover and an extreme casualty risk factor for the marines being deployed planetside. But Howle had been desperate and angry by then. The Skyllian Blitz had only recently been concluded after scattered conflicts on numerous planets, and everyone in-system was still reeling from the attack on Elysium, humanity's premier colony in the Verge. To hear the Alliance News Network tell it, they were still finding bodies, even after two years of recovery.

The bunker in question had been little more than a means to an end; one of several entrances to what the Alliance personnel had called 'Tremor Base'; a subterranean mining facility in truth, but repurposed enough to serve as a pseudo-military base for the Batarian slavers that occupied it. It'd had enough supplies to last for months, perhaps even years of sustained warfare, and more than enough trapped, desperate pirates to provide manpower.

Compared to Tremor Base, the bunker had been almost…trivial. Not that it had mattered.

Thirty-seven. The number loomed behind his eyelids every time his mind drifted back tot Torfan. Thirty-seven Alliance marines killed in action, with an additional five critically wounded and unable to continue active service. The Batarian's heavy gun emplacement had ripped into the first arrivals, which sent the rest scrambling for cover that simply wasn't there to find.

Meanwhile, Howle and the advance team were pushing into the bunker- the obvious sight of Alliance marines in the open had kept the Batarians occupied as Howle's engineers rigged the bunker's wall to blow.

And Howle had left them there for just that reason. It took him longer than he'd ever admit to realize his own callousness, even if his so-called 'victory' justified any decision he had made, even in the heat of battle. It didn't justify the name that the 103rd Marine Division came up with for him though. After the reinforcements arrived, to find him standing there alone amongst a pile of corpses with alien blood dripping down his blade and hot, frantic breath still entering and exiting his body at an alarming pace.

The Butcher of Torfan. Major Kyle, the cocksucker, had been the first one to say it, after surveying the carnage of the Batarians. He'd come to Howle with the intent of offering condolences, but in the end, it was Howle holding out the proverbial handkerchief. Inconsolable. That was the word that the psychiatric evaluation stamped above his name after reviewing Kyle's after-action report. Too many lost. Too many names under his belt.

A sudden vibration snapped his head up, only to watch the maglev train pass over him with a screeching wail. The bag behind him had blown away in the wind, leaving his back presented to the cold metal of the railway brace. He huddled inside of his uniform.

"I'm sorry," he croaked. In his head, Ellie, Williams, Bravo Team, Black, and even the little boy were there to hear it. But around him, the darkness of another Chicago night enveloped the snow-covered suburb, and his brain soon shut off as the grief took him.

THE SENTINEL

EARTH, SOL SYSTEM, VANCOUVER, CANADA

August 30th, 2182

2nd Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko slammed the door of his car with enough force to rock the hovering vehicle as it settled above the curb. He'd had the girl hooked, ready to enlist. But then her rather liberal girlfriend had gotten wind of it, and then it all fell apart as this assumption led to that, and then it was just melodramatic chaos.

He reflected how close he'd come to flinging the lady out of his office window- or how close the girl's father had come to swinging on him, stopped only by the fact that Kaidan was in uniform. And the fact that he was a biotic.

Ever since Gagarin Station- colloquially known as 'Jump Zero' by him and the other former inhabitants of the place- it had been like this. People getting jumpy if he so much as sneezed the wrong way, or lifted his hands too fast, or something. Still disgusted him how 'off ' people were about human biotics like him. Like he was a different species….because more than ten of them in the Milky Way was apparently just too much to appreciate, or some crap like that. But biotics, particularly human ones, were rare in the galaxy. Having the ability to manipulate actual fiscal energy using electric impulses from the brain, like some old video game.

Or something.

As Kaidan reopened his mental list of prospective recruits- primarily young men like him who'd shown a meager interest in his cold-calls, appointments, and street wavers. His office wasn't easy to find with an untrained eye- a converted strip mall in one of Vancouver's lower dregs- and he knew that recruitment during a 'technical peacetime' was damn near impossible. Not that his CO cared; about Kaidan's thoughts, or his slowly diminishing career in the military, or about the migraines.

The L2 had been more or less quiet today- a small miracle, considering what most of its users had gone through- and Kaidan was infinitely grateful for that much, at least.

Kaidan had a quota of at least six new marines per month. With less than a week left to go, all he'd gotten was some kid from a shitty Southside burb named Huffman. No, Private Huffman now, he thought, checking the back of his car in case one of those juvenile gangs had started tagging military rentals again.

He swore as he read 'BAGGERS OUT' in bold orange, and leveled his hand at the windshield before his body began to vibrate. He was more than used to it by now, that feeling. His bodily system acknowledging a consistently cycling energy source that hummed in his temples and rippled along his fingertips. The graffiti went quickly as the dark energy reverberating from his fingers seared it away, like a precision laser burning away cancerous cells.

The words were only half as funny as his philosophical mind thought them to be- considering how much the Baggers wanted to get in; amongst the throngs of willing or un-willing human victims so that they could spell discord and chaos amongst the Alliance. He ran a hand roughly through his dark hair- a habit that he'd been trying to break since Jump Zero- and sighed. It was an increasingly popular slogan; invented by core-world human liberals who thought that ceding the outer reaches of the Terminus Systems to the Batarians would convince the aggressive species to leave human colonists alone.

Kaidan wasn't a politician. Solely because he despised them, with their pretentious, haughty lifestyles and calculating attitudes; all based around the general ignorance of what it was like for the other ninety-five percent. And while he had serious doubts as to whether the Alliance would ever appease the prickly Hegemony in their efforts to colonize the Skyllian Verge, the facts that he knew remained clear- there was a war on, there were aliens to fight, and there had to be marines to lead the forefront of the Alliance's efforts. The Marines were an all-volunteer force, and he only had a few days to fill his quota before someone with more brass decorations than he could ever hope for took a bite out of his well-chewed ass.

As he turned away from the now unblemished window and strolled towards the recruitment center, he noticed a man slumped against the door frame, with a swollen shiner, facial scarring, a busted lip, and a dangerous look that made Kaidan pause- if he wanted to be pragmatic about it- with a precarious number of empty liquor bottles on the ground that clinked against his slumped boots.

"23451-00074- BH." Kaidan stopped mid-stride and gave the obviously drunken man a chance to correct himself.

"Say again?" He knew an Alliance serial number when he heard it, and he needed to make sure that the uniform and bars that clearly said Alliance Marine Operations-Chief wasn't just one of his infrequent, surgically enabled migraines screwing with him.

"It's valid," croaked the man. "Check it."

While Kaidan wasn't an up jumped frickin shithead about his rank or how he'd earned it, his shoulders did straighten as he came to terms with taking orders from a non-commissioned officer, and a hammered one at that.

"I'm AWOL man…" muttered the chief. "…nine days."

That got Kaidan's attention. He fumbled with his Omni-Tool . "Give me that one more time," he said as he made the chief slowly repeat the numbers, inputting them into his keypad with swift jabs of his index finger.

And then his jaw just about hit the floor when the man's service record appeared moments later.

Sozin, Calypso, Mindoir, Elysium, Algolis. With the name of each of the dozens of planets that scrolled down the list came emboldened names of programs and operations that he hadn't even heard of. BLOODHOUND, TAILWIND, SNIPE-HUNT, GAUNTLET.

He stopped when he saw Torfan, and then quickly skimmed ahead. Everybody in the Alliance liked to talk and gripe about what happened there- what had happened when two platoons of marines charged a heavily fortified gun emplacement, manned by a collective cell of mismatched aliens with more firepower than they knew what to do with. All inside of a hollowed-out, near-impenetrable bunker of rock.

The Butcher of Torfan. Kaidan had never actually heard what happened to the survivors, or if any issues revolving around the Batarians' native star cluster- the Kite's Nest, or simply 'The Nest' as it was dubiously called by Alliance marines- had been resolved in recent times. But Kaidan knew a face when he saw it, and the three long, jagged scars that snaked across his face- beginning just above his left eyebrow and ending just below his right cheekbone- were pretty hard to mistake.

His chest did a small heave as it dawned on him. The Butcher himself. And here I am bitching about my quota.

Attached to the man's file was a priority message from Fleet Command (FLEETCOM), the Navy's headquarters at Arcturus Station, named for the voluminous star Arcturus that it held geosynchronous orbit with. The system's respective star cluster, -the Arcturus Stream- was similarly named.

"If you're AWOL," he said, an idea springing unbidden into his head. "No one seems to mind." He closed the file as Ops-Chief Brutus Howle looked up at him with dangerously pale blue eyes.

"In fact, you're request for a transfer has been…" all it took was the flick of a button and a hasty signature. "…approved." Howle's eyes narrowed. He didn't request a transfer.

Kaidan was already trying to retrace his steps and come up with a convincing backstory of how he'd just conscripted an N7 dropout and war veteran when Howle suddenly nodded his head with an affirming grunt. Kaidan guessed that anything sounded better than being shipped back to the Verge.

Then Howle's eyes darkened again. "Where?"

Kaidan was already thinking of any number of backwater holes and mind-numbingly boring places he could just spit out on the spot. But even as a damn near perfect place came to mind, he realized that he had more than a little research, paperwork, and a sleepless evening waiting for him. So….

"Didn't say."

Howle dipped his head back against the glass. "As long…long as it's quiet."

Kaidan ignored him. Obviously he couldn't be here, amongst the bountiful and liberal of Earth's elite. And anything upwards of the Serpent Nebula-home to the ubiquitous Citadel's triumvirate Council, and the unofficial capital of the galactic community- was out of the question. His brain racked itself as he tried to recall the number of human colonies in one of Sol's closest inhabited star clusters- Exodus.

While the influx of imminent colonists had certainly given the cluster an appropriate name, the people living on its subsequent planets were in no rush to leave. Or to do….well, anything. Most of the planets in the Exodus Cluster were agricultural 'garden worlds'; inhabitable almost from the get-go, and full of rocks, minerals, and soil that- when properly tilled and farmed- became a utopia for thousands of farmers and subsequent families; and by consequence became a veritable breadbasket for the Alliance.

The one farthest from any conceivable threat was also the newest; Eden Prime. The appropriately named Utopia System's most recent addition. He'd heard about it from a sympathetic doctor who'd been treating him and another marine- Chakwas, that was her name- for injuries sustained while activating a biotic brace. Most of the planet's oldest inhabitants would have probably been there when it was first settled. And the remoteness of it-

Kaidan looked up from his thoughts as a grating noise raked across his ears. "Hey!" He snapped. "You can't just sleep here, guy!" But Howle was already snoring.

Americans, he thought contemptuously.

Kaidan grimaced as he studied the man before him; what the brass would give to have a lifer like this on trial for desertion. But even as he thought about it, his arm was gently looping under the marine's shoulder and hefting him into the back seat of the sedan. But Howle was heavier than Kaidan had predicted, and with an angry grunt he was tipping until a bump told him that the marine had hit the car, though his groaning didn't indicate any real damage.

A bark of youthful laughter drew his attention up from his own boots, and he looked up to see a handful of juvenile-looking boys clad in black leather jackets with various pieces of metal sewn into the clothing. At their lead was a short, wiry, sharp-chinned and smirking teenager with brown hair at the vertex of his otherwise shaved head and a short braid that ended in a thick tuft of brown hair. The letters J.P.H were sewn into the collar of his jacket.

"Hey!" Kaidan called, exasperated as he struggled with Howle's unconscious bulk. "Can you fellas gimme a hand?" The five of them quickly looked over in his direction, eyes aglow with disinterested glares and imminent mischief.

"I don't know," said the leader. 'Can you give me a hand?" He stroked the air with a closed fist as his pals had their laugh, and Kaidan was tempted to just drop the little shit right there.

But then one of them pointed and a hushed murmur went through the small ensemble as they directed a vague stare at Howle.

"Is that dude pretty bad?" Asked the lead one. Kaidan just nodded as he propped Howle against the hood.

A mutual decision seemed to reach the group, and as one they grabbed the Ops-Chief and muscled him into the sedan. When they had settled him in the back seat, Kaidan was about to open the driver's door when something tapped against his shoulder, and he turned to see the bright amber eyes of the short leader glaring at him.

"Compensate us for out time, yeah?" He motioned expectantly with his eyes towards his larger, clustered companions.

Fucking Americans, Kaidan thought, digging into his shirt pocket and pulling out a credit chit.

In a flash of golden light the kid's arm transformed, and an Omni-Tool- a Polaris Model, by the look of it- appeared, a blinking light indicating it was ready for a physical transfer.

Kaidan sighed as he slid the chit through a small slot. The kid grinned as he took off the wrist mounted display device that served as the foundation of the Omni-Tool's network and tossed it to the lone girl of the group, who scampered away in the same manner as a stray cat with a freshly caught rodent. Kaidan was still on the Omni-Tool though. The Polaris Mk. IV was technically open to the general populace, albeit with more restraints and firewalls built into it to prevent its users from using it for its original purpose. Which was military-grade decryption, espionage, and things that generally weren't on the average tike's Christmas list. And it stumped him what a street rat like this was doing with it.

"You got a name, kid?" Kaidan asked, genuinely curious.

"James P. Hawkins," beamed the kid, putting as much emphasis as he could on the Hawkins part. "And you are…?"

"Call me Lieutenant Alenko."

"Fine. Whateves." He scuffed the ground as he breathed out, as if an imminent weight was about to leave him.

"Um….you're Alliance, right? I mean, I know he is," he said, giving Howle a sly grin through the glass. " But you guys are everywhere up here, and I wanted to get…just one person's opinion that wasn't my mom's, y'know? And definitely not Brutus's. And I don't want any bullshit when you answer but…is there anything out there besides just space? I mean…is it worth leaving Earth to join up?"

Kaidan's first instinct was to laugh- ask the youngster if he was serious. And ask how he knew that the man in his car was the Butcher himself. But Hawkins' eyes were set and his lower lip was typically stiff in juvenile fashion. And Kaidan did have a quota to fill, as shitty as it sounded- looking at James Hawkins and his rough, almost punk-like exterior.

He'd been there. Kaidan had stepped to the edge of the same precipice the day he left Jump Zero; when the Alliance had extended a special invitation to him, concerning active service as an extra-special lapdog of the military. No regrets plagued him about burning his thumbprint- and his future- onto the dotted line, especially after leaving a place like Gagarin Station behind. It was on his terms, and on his shoulders. And the ten-odd years that had passed between then and now hadn't dissuaded him. So there was that.

"My office is open tomorrow," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Give me a visit before you head back state-side. That sound good to you? Or-"

"Well maybe it does." Hawkins retorted, all arrogance again.

Kaidan got into the car as the teenager suddenly hurried away. As the door shut, he wondered aloud as to whether or not an escaped war hero would merit the same credit as five raw recruits- another habit of growing up as a freak of society; albeit one with the power to lift a car without even touching it, or unintentionally turn on the transient electric fields of a schoolyard's power grid.

Anyways…

His own students, who had hotly debated the ideals behind military service during class, would have yelled at him for his naivety. But at twenty-seven, he was too young to be pulling out the chair for a mothballed old drill sergeant and smiling at uninterested civilians. It was extra salt on the already present wound to his pride that Howle was only a few years younger than he was. Kaidan wasn't going to end up like that. No sir.

But first, he needed to get this guy out of Canada.

"Great Lakes Spaceport," he barked at the sedan's navigation computer. "Quickest route." The GPS's automated system was already plotting a route from Vancouver as Kaidan strapped on his seatbelt and cast a lingering, doubtful glance at the slumbering man behind him, suddenly frowning.

"This isn't right," he said, half to himself, half to the unconscious Howle. The thought was there and gone before he could stop it.

He froze, hands planted on the wheel and foot halfway to the pedal. He remembered the distinctive N7 symbol that highlighted Howle's early life in the military and sighed as he turned to face the light sprinkle of rain pelting against the windshield. Anyone who'd gone to Annapolis and back without going complete Section-8 deserved more than this, he reflected. Anyone who'd done half as much as this soldier had within the last three years deserved more. And Kaidan knew what that life was like; hunting alien terrorists and fighting mercenaries at the ass-end of space.

Why he'd gotten the transfer back to Earth and back under the command of old Oakface himself.

"Disregard previous instruction," he breathed, almost expecting the computer to turn red and begin flashing a giant red light that screamed 'disregarding a direct order is in violation of blah, blah, blah'.

Instead it just reset itself and inquired where he wished to go next.

And then he had it.

EARTH, SOL SYSTEM, VANCOUVER, CANADA

Apartment Complex 619B, Fort Luronce Military Base

August 30th, 2182

Kaidan looked back down the hallway as he hefted the half-conscious Howle against the wall and knocked on the door again, this time with passion- letting whoever was inside know that it was goddamned urgent.

He heard muffled thumping from within before the chain locking the door in place was sliding back behind the wood, and then a pair of dark, piercing eyes framed by an oaken, withered face found his as it creaked open.

"Hrmm….what the….Alenko?" The apartment's lone occupant rubbed his tired eyes as he regarded Howle with a quiet and sobering look, which he then directed at Kaidan, his eyes lolling.

"What's his problem, lieutenant? You finally making friends?" It was only half-serious, and the old man gave a slight grin as Kaidan acquiesced to his point with a half-bitter laugh.

"Only way I know how, sir." He retorted back, and got the satisfaction of seeing his superior smile. And then Kaidan seized his chance- gave him the best, pointlessly sheepish grin that he could; holding Staff Chief Howle up like a prize turkey that he was showing off to his dad. The old man gave him a withering look that then went to Howle, and then back to him. He finished with an angry, beady 'I'll get you one day' squint that was so stereotypically cliché that Kaidan almost laughed. But then the captain muttered something in agreement and waved him through. Kaidan breathed out a heavy sigh of relief, even as a small bead of sweat slowly evaporated on his neck. Wasn't every day he got to shoot shit and take a favor from his old boss.

Captain David Anderson had been up before his arrival; nothing usual there. Even onboard the ship that Kaidan had served with him on, he had been known to quietly pace the various walkways and staircases just a few hours before the crewmen awoke; the naval equivalent of a morning walk.

A small, steaming cup of coffee waited on a small round table next to an armchair that looked older than Anderson was- around his late forties, if Kaidan wasn't mistaken. As he set Howle down on a plain grey futon, he couldn't help but admire the crisp, almost flawlessly clean atmosphere of the apartment, made all the better by a slight breeze drifting in from the small concrete patio on the other end of the abode. Military mind gone fishing or some crap, Kaidan thought to himself as he actually pressed his fingers together to see if there was dust.

But there wasn't, and he uncurled his hands as Anderson reappeared from the square kitchen with another steaming cup, which Kaidan took almost greedily from his hands as he raised it to his nose. It was a nice, organic resonance of chamomile and raspberry cream that went down just as excellently as the sugar that he piled into it. Kaidan always smelled his coffee.

But by then Anderson was sitting with a grim, calmly inquisitive look entering his eyes.

"So," he began, his voice suddenly vibrant. "Why is Brutus goddamned Howle in my living room?" He gestured angrily at the unconscious marine as his statement took hold. "And why are you here with him?"

Kaidan winced inwardly; he hadn't been expecting that first part.

"Sir….I only found him a couple of hours ago. Do you know him?" His eyes flashed towards Howle for the briefest moment. "Cause if you do, and you know he's here, then-"

"Don't say it, Alenko." Anderson groaned, not bothering with 'lieutenant' any longer. "But yes, I know him. And if he's here…then I know exactly what he wants….which has to be getting away from the frontlines. Maybe back to the sticks." Anderson was talking in a way that was indistinguishable from being directed at Kaidan ir at his own internal thought process- a habit of thinking out loud that gave him a subliminal air of honesty and genuine intention that most of his subordinates had learned to appreciate. Kaidan didn't know whether to applaud the bastard or just pout as Anderson continued his quiet musing. If he'd known the old man would figure it out that quickly he might have just gone to the Spaceport anyways, drunkard be damned.

"So that brings it to you, Kaidan. Why bring him here? Why are you asking me about it?"

Kaidan had been waiting for this though. More like a strained hope that it would come up as a question, instead of a demand or something casual that would get knocked aside. Anderson was a walking hall of fame; the numerous decorative medals, plaques, and a particularly well-polished N7 mantle that sat proudly in a corner of the living room were just a few testaments, next to a framed picture of Anderson's adopted, red-haired daughter wearing the same emblem on her chest. The whole thing gave off the impression of a retired war veteran to an untrained eye. But Kaidan knew differently; this whole apartment, much like the majority of Anderson's off-duty life, was simply a place to call his, which was a big deal when you spent months, sometimes years on active duty. But Kaidan was determined to see past the façade, if it even was one.

"Sir, I'm here." He gestured vaguely around him, hoping that it signified the whole of Vancouver's proper. "I've been sitting at that shitty office for….can I even call it an office?" He began slowly, caution suddenly catching him before disappearing in a rush of resolve that dismissed his doubts and anything else that would keep him quiet.

" It's a store front, sir. And I've been sitting there for about...eight months. My only question about is when…well….you know when it happens sir. I just want to know if I'm getting out of Vancouver anytime soon." He resisted the small elation that went through him as the captain nodded; because Anderson did know. Kaidan could see that much as clarification dawned on him, and his fingers formed a tent as he leaned forward, ears pricked and eyes focused.

"It is launching soon," he said, giving Kaidan a familiarly analytical glare.

"Sir?"

But Anderson was standing now, eyes staring at something that wasn't visible. "And I just realized that all I have at my disposal for shakedown is a skeleton crew." He was still looking at Kaidan as he reached over and pressed something on a small device lying on the coffee table. A holographic projection module above the kitchen counter darkened the room, which was suddenly filled with luminous blue light as the bright, holographic image of a sleek, dark blue ship appeared in the middle of the living room. Kaidan couldn't really discern whether or not it was human- if he was being perfectly honest with himself- but it sent him into a jittery stillness that refused to yield.

"So, lieutenant," Anderson said, extending an arm like the chauffeur of the galactic tour bus. Kaidan couldn't stop the bewildered hand that went coursing through his hair as Anderson looked at him expectantly.

"Tell me about this desk job of yours…"