AN: So, I couldn't just leave it alone. I wanted to explore how they'd find their way after such a terrible encounter, and what could possibly prompt it. This chapter sheds a bit of light on both their motivations, if indirectly. Check the bottom of the page for some definitions if there's a term you don't recognise. I've also rewritten the first chapter in places, hopefully improving it a bit, so that might be worth a look.

Also, all credit is given to Amber Penglass for Shepard's knowledge of explosives. I can't deny I was influenced by her story 'Sound the Clarion' as I was writing this. It's quite easily my current favourite Garrus/Shepard story, and you should go read it. After you read this, of course.


Attn: Synthetic Insights Ltd., Acquisition Dept.

To Whom it May Concern,

We regret to inform you that Commander Shepard is no longer selling salvaged geth technology, due to recenji90 -

There was a string of lights across her haptic board as she stumbled forward into her workstation.

"Shit, sorry Traynor! Sorry." She felt an arm on her elbow pulling her square again. The navigator who had jostled her was in his downtime civvies, looking apologetic and already backing away with outstretched hands.

"Oh! Not to worry. Where are you off to in such a hurry?" She was surprised to see him 'above ground' several hours before the 0600 shift began. He was throwing looks over his shoulder towards the bridge, walking backwards around the CIC.

"Uh, well, hah!" he laughed nervously, jerking a thumb towards the bow. "Joker just pinged me... you didn't get the message?"

Traynor lifted her arm and tapped a key. "Nope. Something going on?"

"Well," he chortled, eyes darting. He ran a hand back and forth over his Alliance-issue bristles. "I think it might be need-to-know."

Traynor's brows drew together, but her smile was friendly. "I see. Keeping the new girl out of the fun again?"

"Nah, nah, it's just a boring - " his hand turned in a wheel, making the universal 'what's the word I need' movement, "- spec check. Uh, sub-orbital nav gear. Yeah, sucks but gotta do 'em, you know? Orders are orders." More nervous laughter. "Uh, anyway, I should be going."

"Ah." The word 'orders' snagged on a reminder in Traynor's internal to-do, and she tabbed out of her email to check the list of daily sent messages. "Did I forward your department the 2-14 from Alenko's terminal today? About destroying the... footage? I meant to tag it onto the shipwide about press coverage on the Commander's sick leave."

"Yeah, we got it fine. So really, I gotta get these reports to Joker, so..." His voice had raised a little. Traynor noticed he had one hand shoved deep in a trouser pocket, clamped into a fist.

"Of course," she said lightly. "See you in the mess -"

She was interrupted by the soft beep of the lift. The door swished open, revealing a half dozen enlisted squashed together inside the small cab. They were whispering among themselves, shooting her restless looks and half-smiles as they filed out and moved as a pack towards the bridge.

"Never seen so many people keen to deliver their reports in person," she said with a smile. She got no response except a few tight nods.

As they moved off, they revealed the final occupants to be Dr. T'Soni, Tali'Zorah and Vega. The two women had linked arms and bent their heads together, murmuring quietly. The doctor inclined her head gracefully to Traynor as they passed.

The specialist was nothing if not good at pulling patterns out of data. All the people on the way to Joker's little 'spec check' rendezvous had been SR-1 alumni. There was a sting she did her best to ignore as she turned back to her half-written email, noting that the navigator had already fled when her back was turned. Oh well. She knew she wasn't going to be invited to every party.

A heavy, bronze arm fell over her shoulder, and for the second time in five minutes, Traynor stumbled into the lip of the CIC. She looked up, surprised. Vega wasn't looking at her, instead gazing into the middle distance. There was a sallow cast to his face that suggested he wasn't sleeping.

"Come on, Widget. You should see this too," he said, pulling her forward.


"Okay," Joker's neck craned to see around the knot of people. "Okay, we're all here." With a few keystrokes, the oxy-lock shield shimmered into view and darkened, screening the cockpit from the rest of the bridge. The room was now lit only by the orange glow of the interfaces and the faint blue drag ghosting over the hull outside the windows.

"And we all understand the rules, yeah?" He swivelled his chair, pointing to all the cockpit's new occupants in a sweeping semi-circle. "We watch it, EDI fries it, it never goes outside this room." He made a vague boxy shape with his hands. "Sacred space, guys. Which means if I see any updates on your GalaxNet page, Pearson, I'll let your smokes and your Kaleena Berrydew series test our next relay hop." The navigator she'd encountered earlier shifted his weight and coughed.

Traynor clasped her hands together in a tight ball, unsure whether she should make her excuses and leave. She still didn't know what this was all about, and it suddenly seemed like she was intruding. Maybe this wasn't a party she wanted to attend after all. Only Vega's arm kept her in place for the time being.

Joker caught her shuffling and swivelled his chair again, which right now seemed more of a throne from which the king of his domain was addressing his subjects.

"Chill, Traynor. You're cool. But this can't get back to the butter bars, alright? No chickening out later and getting us smoked." She nodded, hands coming down to her sides in an attempt to appear natural. This was sounding more and more like her uni dorm after someone scored a bag of Khar'shan herbal off the batarian student.

"Can't Shepard check the logs to see who accessed the file? That would be rather incriminating," Liara piped up.

There was a soft, metallic whir as the gauss servos in EDI's legs fired. She stood up and faced the assembled, hands folding neatly behind her back.

"No. That was the condition of my participation in Jeff's scheme." She spoke from her new platform rather than the ship's speakers, the facial movements accompanied by barely audible clicks as the fine motor mechanisms engaged. It was still a little unnerving. "The video files have been lifted from the physical server by Navigator Pearson. They are now the only copies in existence. It cannot be traced back through me."

Her voice was smooth as usual, but Traynor thought she detected a hint of coolness in place of the more 'humanized' emotes she chose to inject in her speech these days. EDI was clearly not pleased with recent events. "I told Jeff I would not be an accessory in his decision to disobey Major Alenko's order to immediately destroy the files."

Joker picked his head up from where he was fiddling under the helm. "C'mon EDI, not all of us are hooked up to the shuttle cams around the clock. And some of us had our asses stuck on the bridge instead of in ringside seats." Joker flashed Vega a grin, which was only mildly returned. "Think of it as a heartwarming interest in the troubles of our Commander," he continued with a handwave.

The AI turned her face away from him. If it was possible for a robot to looked miffed, Traynor was seeing it. Joker clucked his tongue and ducked back under the dash.

"I just hope you're right, EDI. We can't let this get loose beyond the ship," Tali interjected, sounding worried. "I mean, I am curious, but if it got into the main channels... I'd never forgive myself."

"Don't worry, Admiral Zorah. I have taken every precaution to ensure this information is protected from wideband communications. Jeff is temporarily disconnecting his station's physical link to my network, just to be safe."

"Oh, good idea," Tali conceded. "And please don't call me that," she added in a murmur. EDI inclined her head slightly.

Traynor took advantage of the darkness to glance over the faces beside her. Knotty brows, folded arms, chewed lips. She wasn't a handpicked analyst for nothing, but it would take a particularly dim vorcha not to figure out what they were really here to see. There were some acidic pin-pricks in her stomach at the thought of what might happen if Chakwas or Alenko caught them here. The thought of the look of disappointment on the face of the careworn British medic filled her with dread. She'd been something like her de facto mentor over the last few months, helping the raw and frightened speccie ease into a new life of high pressure and chaos. Traynor thought that look would be by far the greater punishment over anything Shepard could dish out for insubordination. It was obvious the rest of the crew present were also aware of everything they were risking.

"Hey, Joker." One of the gunnery engineers was poking the helmsman in the shoulder. "Get a move on. Some of us don't get two hour breaks," she said tensely.

"Yeah, yeah. Settle down, would you? SECNAV isn't gonna come busting in here and shoot our hands off the cookie jar," Joker retorted, yanking on a stubborn cable.

The engineer grimaced. "You're a hell of a guy, you know that? A real goddamn stress reliever."

"Do my best," he mumbled into the nest of wiring. He pulled at a fibre optic running under his seat, until it disconnected with a pop. "Alright, done."

He sat back up and began typing command lines into his interface. A holo screen popped up to the left of the pilot chair. "Let's watch us some vids. You gonna commentate, Vega?"

The arm that had been squeezing her shoulder was suddenly removed. Traynor watched as the typically easygoing, extroverted marine folded his arms and leaned against the bulkhead. There was a closed, blank expression on his face that was barely visible in the orange glow.

"No way esé. This shit speaks for itself," he replied quietly.

"Suit yourself, man." The screen flickered to life with a low-res image of the Kodiak shuttle's interior, and everyone except EDI and Vega leaned forward.

Small text in the bottom left of the picture stated 'DEKUUNA - 36:02 LOCAL 17:02 SHIPBOARD'. One door of the shuttle was opened, and Traynor could just distinguish the waving, straw-coloured grasses of the elcor homeworld through the heavy pixellation.

Suddenly, there was a series of crackling booms which had Joker scrambling for the volume. On screen, the other door of the shuttle was flung open with a clang and the top half detached to be thrown back into the body of the vehicle. Kneeling to use the opened flap as a tripod for his Black Widow Mark IV was a familiar turian figure. Wisps of acrid, bluish smoke rose from the muzzle of the gun.

"Forgot how loud that thing was," Joker mumbled.

There was a pause in the huge, echoing shots as the shooter rolled his neck to reset his deadeye before continuing to fire. They couldn't see the his intended targets, but with each shot he moved smoothly with the recoil, already adjusting aim before the gun had finished its kick, and fired again. A heat sink was ejected and a new one inserted without him lifting his head from the scope or a break in the rhythm. His movements were tightly precise, flowing into the next until it was difficult to tell where one action ended or began. In fifteen seconds he'd pulled nine shots out of the enormous cannon and Traynor would put good cred on each of them being a kill.

Someone let out a low whistle. "Damn. That dino is good," one of the bridge staff commented.

"You should see him when he's actually trying," Liara said with a touch of pride.

Tali smothered a giggle behind a hand. "Lucky he didn't know he'd have an audience eventually. He'd have tried it blindfolded, or with a hand behind his back."

Liara sighed. "Probably. Him and Shepard are bad enough just when they're trying to outdo each other, let alone for a crowd."

"But it's always so fun to watch them!" Tali replied with spirit. "Remember Feros? Driving across that bridge filled with geth?"

"I remember them making me drive that infernal machine so they could hold some childish competition shooting out of the windows. My definition of 'fun' somewhat differs," Liara grumbled.

"What happened?" Vega spoke up, still sounding unusually withdrawn.

Tali laughed. "They made me the scorekeeper. Both of them kept trying to make me sabotage the other's tally, trying to bribe me between shots." She paused. "I think Shepard promised me an Alliance medal at one point."

"So, where's Cortez? You'd think he'd be out there showboating too if the shuttle was dirtside," the gunny who'd prodded Joker earlier said, bringing their attention back to the screen.

"Ah," Liara spoke up again, her tone considerably sobered. "He was escorting Major Alenko and I back from our afternoon with the Grissom Academy transport. They'd just been reassigned to the Crucible biotics division and happened to be on a nearby flightpath. I... I requested it on a whim really, I thought the children would appreciate speaking to biotics with field experience. Shepard consented of course, but I almost wish she hadn't." Traynor could hear the painful regret in her voice. "It meant there were no biotics aboard when they were most particularly needed."

"Javik was here, wasn't he?" Traynor asked.

"Let me rephrase; no biotics aboard who would have cared enough to intervene," Liara responded tightly.

Tali looped a comforting arm over Liara's shoulder. "You can't wallow in guilt for not being in two places at once. No one could have known what would happen."

"And trust me, I don't know if biotics would have made any difference when the shit really hit the fan," Vega added grimly. "Those two were loco el grando. Big crazy."

Joker leaned back in his seat to look at Vega upside down. "Hey, speaking of, where were you while Garrus was having his little birthday party here?"

Vega regarded the screen for a few moments. He leaned forward and tapped a spot on the horizon. Squinting, Traynor could just make out a blurry clump of trees where his finger had landed. "There. With Shepard."


Dekuuna, Two Days Prior

The headache was killing her. She wondered how bad it was for Vega. His circulation had to be affected by the gravity too, but she doubted he was feeling it as severely as she was, considering how tired she'd been even before they'd touched down on a world that felt like it was trying to suck her through the planet's crust. She was fighting like hell just to keep her mind on the job. It kept wandering off on ambling trails from exhaustion, and it was getting harder to pull it back. Just holding her gun in position, something as familiar to her muscles as walking, was starting to feel like a strain. She hoped he hadn't noticed. As they trekked deeper into an artificial tunnel Vega had discovered, she tried to remember the last time she'd gotten a full eight hours of sleep.

A vision of something small and pale darting through trees flashed through her mind. She immediately walled off the thought and tried to focus on something else.

"How deep did they say this goes?" she asked her companion, her hand briefly trailing over the drill marks on the narrow walls of the passage. It felt like sandstone under her fingertips. Above her head, relief carvings of elcors tilling fields and dedicating harvests were revealed in bursts by her panning flashlight.

"About fifty metres. Hell of a place to put a cache, out in the sticks and deep underground. Can't see shit in here," Vega grumbled.

"I'd say that's the perfect place to put it," Shepard responded, flicking on the torch in her omnitool and adding its light to the ones above their guns.

"Not if I'm an elcor. I'm getting cramps from this place even at human size," he said, following suit on his own omni.

"I don't know about 'human size'," she said absently, watching her torch beam skitter over hidey holes in the walls filled with what looked like nosegays of grass seeds and wildflowers. They seemed artfully arranged, almost ritualistic. She wondered if they were icons of elcor spiritual protection. If they were, she hoped they worked.

There was nothing in the distance except more of the same winding tunnel. The primitive LEDs embedded in the rock above them all lay dark. They had already doubled back a few times, the passage acting like a flight of stairs in a multistorey building. The incline was steep, and her calves were burning from the effort. She fervently hoped it wasn't much farther.

"Keep your eyes peeled for entrances to adjoining tunnels. Last thing we need is a patrol coming up on our asses down here," she said. Vega grunted his assent.

She brought her omnitool up to her face, squinting in the low light. "Signal ping strength is huge. We gotta be close."

They rounded another corner, and Shepard thankfully noted that the floor had finally levelled off. They swept their vectors as usual despite no signs of life. As they made their last pass, something metallic glinted out of the gloom. They both froze.

"You caught that?" Shepard said under her breath.

"Yeah," he whispered, his rifle coming up to his shoulder.

"Alright. Stick to the walls, go in quiet."

They began to edge down the tunnel, torches giving them frustratingly little illumination of whatever lay further ahead. Tiny reflective flashes teased them, but she couldn't figure out the bigger picture they formed. Her boots slipped a little as she inched forward.

Glancing down, she saw the fine grey dust had turned a bluish black in sections, dotted sporadically as though from a leaking spoor. She stirred it with a foot, watching it coalesce into mud. Husk fluid.

"Uta madre... I think it's a cavern." Vega breathed. She looked back up. He'd advanced about ten metres ahead to a cave mouth, and she jogged up to his side.

The claustrophobic tunnel suddenly opened out into a space as long as the Normandy from nose to thruster and as high as three grown men standing on each others shoulders. Crystalline deposits glittered in specks from every surface. It seemed naturally formed, stalactite and stalagmite formations throwing shadows as their torches trailed over them. A distant trickling told her that a stream fed into the cave somewhere they couldn't see. In the centre of the space, carved stone elcors stood on plinths, big as elephants and covered in tribal dress. Flowers and plants had been painstakingly chiseled into life at their feet, their delicate faces turned upwards in an eternal bloom. By their sides, bundles of mechanical parts lay wrapped in waterproof sheeting scattered among larger versions of the bouquets they'd seen before. Shepard recognised the contents of a few as componentry belonging to the cannons elcor warriors wore on their backs into battle, and she guessed that up until very recently, this had not been a military stash.

"It's beautiful," Vega remarked, tone reverent. "Like a temple or something." She nodded, slowly pulling her flashlight's beam across the faces of the giant aliens. As she grazed the end of the gauntlet formed by the two rows of statues, she saw what seemed to be an unadorned altar.

And atop it sat something that definitely did not belong in a place of worship.

"What in sweet hell is that?" Vega whispered.

"Not an elcor weapon, that's for damn sure," Shepard said. "Start checking for husks in those corners."

They parted with a nod. Shepard lifted her gun and methodically swept the ceiling with her torch, remembering the fondness of the husks she'd seen on the derelict Reaper for ambushing them from overhead.

After confirming they were safe from at least one unpleasant surprise, she advanced on the alien device. Her eyes still instinctively darted left and right for hostiles. If this was a Reaper machine, it was unnerving how empty this place was. It should have been crawling with indoctrinated.

"No tangos, Commander," Vega called from elsewhere in the cave. His voice echoed off the high ceiling. "I'm thinking we would have seen something by now."

"They should have heard us coming a mile off," she called back. "But I don't like it. Sweep again, check for hidden corridors. I'm gonna check out this thing on the floor."

It was gunmetal grey and shaped vaguely like a tripod with an antenna, coming up about waist height on Shepard. At the base of the contraption was a string of lights that lit up in sequence. Shepard watched them cycle through to blank before glancing down at her omnitool to confirm her suspicions. When all the lights were lit, the ping strength on the mysterious signal peaked.

"Bingo," she murmured. She began sliding her hands along the side of the device, looking for a control panel of some description. She wasn't hopeful, considering it had most likely been designed by Reapers. Which made her very surprised when a small panel clicked open, revealing a group of buttons clearly meant for creatures with digits.

She didn't pause to consider that mystery for long, however. "EDI, you read me all the way down here?"

"Your signal is weak, Commander. I will attempt to compensate."

"I'm sending you a visual." Shepard snapped a holo and uploaded it to the Normandy server.

"Scanning. Unclassified synthetic device. Consistent with previously archived Reaper engineering."

"Can you interface with it?"

"Your omnitool's wireless parameters prevent me from accessing its internal processes. You will have to link me directly."

Shepard felt a tightening in her gut. "I'd rather not do that, EDI. We don't know if this thing would plug you straight into the mind of a Reaper."

"I will wall off all of my critical functioning. The Normandy will be unharmed, I assure you."

There was a crackle as a second voice interjected. "Uh, can I just add that sticking our AI into anything made by a Reaper is probably a bad idea?" Joker said. Shepard heard the concern in his voice, and she knew it wasn't for the Normandy's critical functioning.

"I will be fine, Jeff. Please continue, Shepard."

"If you're sure, EDI. I'm pulling you out at first sign of trouble." Using an all-purpose tool she kept on the underside of her Viper, she prised off the faceplate on the button panel. A thick ribbon of wiring greeted her. It was disturbing how familiar it all looked. The mechanisms were clearly alien, but all the basic tenets were in common with human engineering. She cut the sheathing from a wire running to what appeared to be the device's CPU and pulled a thin fibre optic cable from a spool under her omnitool.

She took a short, steadying breath. "Alright, connecting EDI now. Get ready," she told her audience.

Shepard touched the naked end of her wire to the guts of the machine.

"Disconnect me, Shepard. Disconnect me! Quickly!" EDI's voice was garbled and shot through with a high pitch tone. An electric discharge shot up her arm with a force that knocked her to the floor. Shepard wrenched the cable out and flung it away like it was a snake that had jumped to life in her hand.

"EDI! What the hell happened?" Shepard shouted. She heard Vega running up to her side. There was nothing but dead static over her comms, and she looked down. Her omnitool was glitching out with nonsensical patterns and machine tones. She slammed the button for a hard reset.

She scrambled to her feet. "Get Joker on the line, now!"

Vega's jaw was tight as he touched his ear. "Joker, what's going on up there?"

"I don't know! Something's wrong, she's - "

"Joker? Joker!" Vega dialed an adjustment into his receiving signal, shaking his head when he was rewarded with silence.

The twenty seconds Shepard had to wait until her own omni was back online were agonising. She dragged Vega back away from the machine like she'd just found a ticking bomb inside. When her radio had finally rebooted, she punched in a priority satellite signal code to open a direct line to the speakers in the Normandy's bridge.

"Talk to me, Joker." She began pacing.

"Okay, she's- I think it's over. She just started freaking out and making these weird sounds. I told you this was a bad idea! C'mon, EDI, please say something."

"I am... still here." The AI's voice was still garbled.

Shepard let out a breath. "What the hell just happened to you?" she said, the question made a little sharp by tension.

"Something... strange. A dump of information so vast that I couldn't process it." The AI sounded curious about the situation. "Please wait while my systems come back online and I will analyse the signal source."

"An infodump? So it was a Reaper?" Shepard asked.

"No, I don't think so. Please wait."

"Hurry, EDI." Shepard glanced around the silent cavern. Empty for now, but who knew what the hell they'd just alerted. Vega seemed to have the same bad feeling, the muzzle of his rifle bouncing from left to right as he checked the corners of the room.

"Analysis concluded. I would advise an immediate departure from Dekuuna."

Shepard stopped pacing. "What?"

"That data pulse is not just emitting a scrambler for local shipboard computers. In fact, I believe that is simply an unintended byproduct." EDI's voice was as maddeningly calm as ever.

A thin tendril of fear blossomed in her stomach. "EDI, be specific!" she snapped.

"It is transmitting an extremely accurate targeting signal into space. Any ships with the necessary equipment could use that signal to launch precision strikes from orbit." EDI paused. "It is a bullseye."

Shepard swallowed. "So you're saying that Reapers could use this to raze the planet without even touching down? What's the range on this thing?"

"Approximately... correction, precisely; the edge of this sun's orbital system."

Vega swore loudly. Shepard's eyes were already casting over the bundles lying on the floor near the feet of the elcor deities. "Just to be certain, I'm assuming this thing doesn't have an 'off' state?" Shepard asked as she kneeled and began loosening the ties on the neck of a waterproof bag.

"No," EDI replied. "You may also wish to take precautions for the machine's anti-tampering redundancy. I believe the shockwave generated would render any organics in a twenty metre range unconscious."

"Lovely, just lovely," Shepard mumbled to herself as she began pulling on a tangle of cabling, trying to find anything shaken loose that could be useful. The elcor military's inventory discipline left a lot to be desired.

"Shepard, heads up!" Vega called suddenly. She looked up and saw him aiming the Scimitar at the device. She reached up and preemptively covered her ears as he pulled the trigger, but the sound of his shots in the enclosed space still left a residual hum bouncing around her skull.

The 'bullseye' seemed unfazed by the almost pointblank attack. It hadn't so much as rocked backwards.

"Looks like bullets aren't gonna cut it on a Reaper hull," she said, lowering her hands.

"What?" he shouted, pointing to an ear. Shepard rolled her eyes.

"Start looking around," she said with a raised voice. "We want detonators, fuses, and anything that could explode. None of our gear will take that thing out."

He seemed to get the message and jogged off with a salute. When she was sure he was out of sight, she closed her eyes and passed a hand over her forehead. Her frontal lobe was throbbing in time to her heartbeat, becoming a deafening roar through which all clear thought had to fight to be heard.

The boy ran through the red forest, just out of reach. Always out of reach. Shady figures oscillated in the darkness.

Her eyes snapped open. Focus, marine.

She began ripping the supply bags apart with impunity, searching for anything that could be readily stripped or reassembled. A few sundry items spilled onto the floor; dried herbs, a sack of small gears, something that appeared to be a non-electronic compass. Nothing that would explode.

The scent of the herbs wafted to her nose, released from the cloth enclosure. Her eyes and mouth began to water from the strength of their fumes. She picked up the bundle and sniffed. Vinegar. One of the unopened buds on the stem popped when she squeezed it, releasing acidic fluid.

There was a burst of static on her comm. "Shepard, we've got visual on some descending ships about five clicks out. Elcors say they aren't theirs," Garrus said, his voice patchy and distorted.

She calibrated the frequency on the comm line before responding. "Insignias?"

"Too far to tell," he said after a moment. "They're down behind a treeline now. They seemed to be controlling their descent just fine, no interference from the signal." He sounded unnaturally calm, almost casual. It was the same voice he used when he was trying to convince her the bullet he just took 'wasn't as bad as it looked'.

"EDI, access the satellites in orbit over Dekuuna, tell me what those ships are," Shepard said briskly.

"Accessing feeds... oh."

Sometimes Shepard could swear EDI enjoyed suspense. "What is it?" she barked, anxiety fraying her patience.

"I believe those ships are indoctrinated transports," EDI replied.

Her stomach came up into her throat. Garrus was defending a few hundred civilians with nothing but a ragtag group of militia for support. "How many? How long before they reach the settlement?"

"Three standard cargo ships. They appear to be repurposed Hornet transports. They will reach the elcor village in about ten Earth-standard minutes. If Joker brings us closer, I may be able to access their navigational systems -"

"No," Shepard interrupted. "Do not enter the signal zone, you hear me?"

"Then I recommend immediate evac. I will keep you updated, Shepard."

Shepard opened a different line on her comm. "Garrus, you hear all that?"

"I'll keep my eyes on the horizon." She'd had enough contact with turians over the years to pick up the subtonal inflection of stress, even if he sounded as calm as ever on the surface. "Just hurry and blow that thing to hell."

Shepard was all too happy to oblige. But before she could move onto the next group of supplies, she heard Vega's shout.

"Shepard!" A heavy metallic thud rang through the cavern, like he'd kicked something with the toe of his armoured boot. "Hear that? I think I found the good stuff, boss."

She turned towards the sound and spotted his broad back through a set of tall stalagmites. Jogging over, she pushed him aside and peered through.

She was greeted by a welcome sight. A raised pallet, scattered with universal heat sinks, elcor MREs and rolls of pre-gelled bandages as thick as her torso. And nestled in the middle like two huge emu eggs, a pair of mortar shells.

For the briefest moment in time, she was sitting in the chair in front of her mother's desk, her legs swinging in empty air as pictures of alien weaponry slid over the screen placed in her lap.

And what is the elcor military famous for?

Elcors? Do they even have a military? I thought they were too big and slow.

Everyone's got a military, little lamb. Don't let someone's appearance trick you into thinking they're so different from us.

"Those are D-438 shells," she answered, returning to the present. "The elcor use them in ground based turrets, usually as anti-aircraft ordinance."

Vega reached down and hefted one into a hand. "Yeah, but can we set them to blow somehow?"

Shepard reached out and took the shell from him. It was amazingly heavy, and her wrist bowed involuntarily. Her other hand came up to grip the base in support. She lifted it closer to her ear and tilted it forwards, then backwards. A sound like sand shifting in a paperweight was just audible, and she nodded in satisfaction.

"They should be filled with a salarian-designed saltpetre compound, or something close to it. Highly explosive."

"Damn," Vega whistled. "Those big bastards are nastier than I thought."

Shepard turned it over, calculating rapidly. If she soaked a thin cable in the vinegar from the grass, she could rig up a rudimentary fuse that could be snaked through a hole in the side of the shell casing. If they placed the mortars correctly, they could shape a charge onto the underside of the transmitter. There was enough material here to put a serious dent in the floor, but how would they trigger it without blowing themselves up as well? They had no remote detonator, and the cabling she'd discovered wouldn't run the length of the tunnel. Exploding that much saltpetre at close range would almost certainly cause a cave-in of the soft sandstone.

"Garrus, ask the elcor if they ever stashed a detonator with a long range in here, something they'd use for mining."

"Hold on," he replied. Shepard heard the squeal of a dying husk in the background before his comm shut off. When he returned after a few moments, the squeal was further away. "He says the mining equipment is in an underground cache near the quarry, which is about five Dekunna kilometres away. About fifty Citadel clicks."

"Dammit!" She put her hands on her hips. A trickle of sweat was beginning to creep down her temple. "Not enough time!"

"Wait, why do you need a detonator? Doesn't Vega have any ammo left?" Garrus said. And suddenly the lightbulb in Shepard's brain to switched on. One of the handy functions of their milspec incendiary ammo was that the blocks could be reprogrammed to melt through their casing, exploding the thermite tar over the ground. It was useful for setting up basic ambushes in the field. Or for acting as a pilot light to the bigger bomb.

"You're a genius, Vakarian." Shepard counted herself lucky for the umpteenth time that she had people to think for her when she couldn't do it alone.

"It's a blessing and a curse. We've got a fresh wave incoming, over and out."

Shepard waved James over from where he was carefully setting the shells down closer to the tripod. "Give me your shotgun. You still got incendiary rounds in there, right?"

He unholstered the gun and handed it over. "Only a few. What you need it for?"

She kneeled and began to rapidly dissemble the gun. "On the base of the block there should be a det code. It'll let me trigger those D-438's from a distance."

Vega looked from the shells to the gun and back again. Finally, he seemed to put the pieces together. "Oh, that's sweet as sugar. We're gonna bury this place good."

Shepard grinned up at him. "Damn straight, marine. Now lay those shells on their sides directly under the bullseye. We need it to get the brunt. I don't know how much of a beating that thing can take, but I'm betting it's a lot."

As Vega started arranging the huge mortars, she released the last catch on the chamber and the ammo block slipped free. Turning it over, sure enough, there was an eight digit code stamped on the bottom. Setting it aside, she began to reassemble the gun. She caught a glance at the clock on her omnitool as she worked. About five minutes more to rig the explosion and get the refugee ships in the sky at her reckoning. The tight knot in her stomach loosened slightly. She could see the end of the day again; that moment in the field when she knew a plan would come together and all her team would be sleeping on the Normandy come nightfall.

Vega sat back on his haunches, task complete. "Alright, what now?"

Shepard picked up the newly recreated shotgun and the ammo block. She placed the former back into its owner's hands, considerably lighter with one of its ammo chambers empty.

"Now, you make for the surface. I'll be right behind you."

His brow furrowed. "Shouldn't we go together?"

Shepard rubbed a hand over her chin. "I need to you make sure we haven't got a surprise party waiting for us up top. Once that trigger goes in, I don't want anything coming down to pull it out. And I haven't got the thighs for all that close range work." That earned a laugh.

"I'll make sure we're secure."

"Radio in when you're breathing fresh air." She watched his torchlight fade back out into the tunnel. He didn't need to know there was a chance the saltpetre could explode when she started drilling in the side of the shells. No sense in them both getting killed.

She touched her earpiece. "Garrus, tell the elcor to get aboard their ships and get ready to dust off. This signal should be down in the next five minutes."

"That was a nice thing you did for Vega," Garrus said with slightest hint of a tease in his voice. Her comm line had been open the whole time, she realised.

Shepard rolled her eyes but didn't take his obvious bait. "Yeah, well. He's a good kid. Doesn't remember much from his explosive materials class, thank god."

"I don't seem to remember getting any free passes from a potentially limb endangering situation. Are you pining for those strangely overstuffed muscles? Come on, you can tell me."

Shepard scoffed as she quickly stripped the casing from some wires. "No free passes? Every time I made sure you weren't put on cleaning detail with Wrex is probably a time you owe me your life."

"So you're avoiding the question? Very interesting."

Shepard paused squeezing out the buds of the vinegar grass on the naked wire. "Look, I know two tasks at once will overtax you, so just shoot."

His line cut off with a peal of chuckles.

She shook her head. Despite having a husk army no doubt advancing on his position, he was still trying to make her laugh. She rubbed off the beads of sweat forming on her brow, leaving streaks of dust in their wake. He just couldn't help himself, she supposed. Had she ever told him how much she appreciated that habit? God, she was so tired. She couldn't remember. Then again, there are a lot of things you haven't told him -

Her reverie was interrupted by the rat-tat-tat of assault rifle fire. She guessed Vega had found a few stragglers, drawn in like mindless moths to the pulse of the beacon. Time to move up the schedule.

Gingerly, she knelt down beside the device and thumbed on the small power drill in her field tool. She held her breath as the metal casing of the D-438 began to curl into shavings, praying not to see a spark. The resistance gave way with a jolt as she pierced the shell wall. Her eyes immediately began to sting from the fumes of the potent chemicals inside.

"Shepard... any chance on an ETA?" The stress had definitely crept further into Garrus' voice, and all traces of humour had vanished. "I've got long range visual on a large group heading our way. I think we've got a Banshee on the ground."

She brushed away the metallic dust forming on the shell as she drilled, obscuring her aim. "Three minutes. Just hold on." After the second hole was finished, she rapidly threaded the makeshift fuselage inside both canisters. It took more energy than she cared to admit to keep her fine motor movements sharp, thanks to the tremors that began running down her arms. She carefully wrapped each wire around the ammo block set near one of the device's struts.

"Shepard! I might need an assist up here!" Vega's radio transmission was accompanied by another round of echoing gunfire, coming from somewhere higher in the tunnel.

"On my way. Hold tight." She gave the setup one last glance before turning and running out down the tunnel, pulling her Carnifex off her hip. A brief thought she spared for the beautiful religious iconography she'd just rigged to destroy. She wondered if it was an appropriate moment to appeal to a higher power, if she'd been the type. Finding herself in a life or death situation and knowing she was the only one who could get herself out of it was nothing outside her day job description. It was always when one of her team was out there that felt the roll of chance keenly. A stray bullet, a mistimed execution was all it took. Or, like now, pinned down and minutes from being swarmed. She wasn't as familiar with this feeling. And it wasn't one she wanted to get accustomed to. The list of people Shepard couldn't afford to lose was a short one, but Garrus was on it.

She found Vega close to the surface, sandwiched against a wall and leaning out to fire around a corner of the tunnel. She could hear the screeches of husks as they shuffled almost single file into his crosshairs. Together, they made swift work of the last few, and made a break for the exit over their twitching bodies. Shepard wondered how badly the beacon interfered with whatever little intelligence they had left, and hoped it was enough to turn the tide in their favour if for some reason they had to fight their way back to the shuttle.

They emerged back into the daylight, and saw that the galeforce winds had pushed the cloudbank that had threatened them all day right over their heads. Shepard felt the first few droplets hit the back of her skull like ball bearings.

"Aw shit, not rain. Let's get the hell out of here, Commander." Vega lifted his forearm to shield his face. "I'll watch for husks, just set that thing to blow."

Shepard flattened herself under a partial overhang for some shelter, and squinted down at her omni screen. "Alright. Garrus, Joker, stand by for signal drop."

She lifted a finger to tap in the number.

And paused.

She murmured something indistinct. Almost simultaneously, three male voices asked her to repeat herself. Vega was quickly reoccupied by the appearance of a husk on top of the ridge they'd descended, and he began to fire in short bursts above their heads. The rain was starting to come down in earnest now, making the delicate golden grass wobble around their knees.

"I said, I didn't memorise the det code."

Vega stopped firing to stare at her, the shock naked on his face. Shepard couldn't look at him.

She looked down at her omnitool instead, willing the simple string of digits to materialise. But they wouldn't come. Her head was buzzing and ringing with white noise, and no matter how desperately she searched in the molasses, there were no numbers.

She stepped forward and looked up at the sky, feeling the fat raindrops make indentations on the skin of her face. She didn't know how to react, what to say. If there was one thing she'd always been able to depend on even more than she depended on her rifle, it was her wits. People called her a good leader, but she'd never done anything but trust her own abilities. They'd never let her down like this before, and suddenly her confidence, once an unshakable object, was slipping through her fingers like a handful of sand.

Garrus made a strange sound, the sigh of someone who had been denying the inevitable but expected it anyway.

Like he knew she would crack one day. Like it was just a matter of time.

In the background of his comms, she heard the droning voices of the militia soliders issuing commands. Their shouts were interrupted by the terrible sound of elcor screams, something close to cattle in severe distress. Shepard knew the husks had arrived. They should have been safely off the ground by now. They were about to die because of her failure.

Garrus was about to die because of her failure.

A Hornet transport could hold about thirty bodies at capacity. Times that by three, and they had perhaps a minute before they were swarmed. The ruthless calculus of war was a turn of phrase with so many horrifying applications.

One minute. Not enough time to run down, reset the charge, and get back to the surface.

But maybe just enough time to put a bullet through the whole damn thing.

"Vega! Hold your position! I'm going back in!" Shepard unholstered the Viper from her shoulder, ducked her head against the rain and sprinted into the black, yawning maw of the tunnel for the second time.

"Commander! Wait -" Several fresh husks appeared from behind the ridge and Vega groaned in frustration, dropping to his knee to fire.

A sick, burning feeling was circulating in her veins. The pale figure in the forest turned to her and began to laugh. She upped the pace, breath coming in harsh pants, strands of wet hair sticking in her eyes. She'd just endangered the lives of her crew and countless civilians. That was nothing new, but before, she'd always had a good reason. Calculated risks, optimal rewards.

She'd never put lives at risk through sheer ineptitude before. She barely knew the meaning of the word.

"Shepard, what the hell are you doing!" Garrus shouted down her ear.

"No time," she gasped, rounding a corner at a sprint, her torchlight careening wildly. "I'll just shoot the charge."

"Are you crazy! You'll be too close!" he replied with harsh urgency.

"You've got seconds before you're overrun," she responded inbetween pants. "I have to destroy this thing now."

"What? You can't risk yourself like that!" In his background, Shepard could hear an overlapping chorus of low, fearful moaning. "You can still get back to the surface to detonate. We've still got time! Dammit Vega, stop her!" His voice was cracking with a kind of furious desperation. Twice, three times she heard the Black Widow fire.

"Fall back to the shuttle! I'm putting those ships in the air!" she shouted. A stitch opened up along her ribcage as she half-slid, half-ran down the incline.

"Shepa – get those people back into the ships and lock the doors! North and east! - Shepard, don't do this!"

She rounded the final corner. She could see the telltale glint of the machine through the gloom of the cavern ahead, taunting and unchanged. That gunmetal tripod was now the symbol of all the fears that had simmering below the surface for months. Something for which before today, she'd had no name. She was awash with anger just at the sight of it.

She swung her Viper up to her shoulder and took aim through the doorway to the cavern. The prone mortars were big as melons in her scope.

"Die, you son of a bitch," she murmured, and pulled the trigger.


'butter bar' - slang used by enlisted personnel for officers

'getting smoked' - being called out for punishment, usually in front of other crewmembers

SECNAV - naval military police

MRE - Meals Ready to Eat (used by military in the field)

Señora de Guadalupe - a hispanic term for the Virgin Mary

Ese - hispanic term similar to 'bro' or 'mate'

Sometimes, like every other writer ever, I have a hard time coming to the keyboard and putting down the story I've got in my head. Every review is a burst of fresh energy that makes it that much easier to write. Cheers to each and every one of you guys who puts down those few words of encouragement. Next chapter will be a good one if you're a Garrus/Shep fan, I promise.