The CIC was a flurry of activity. Everywhere, turians suited in full combat armour were frantically scrambling about, whispering instructions into the ears of crew manning important-looking pieces of equipment. An old turian captain stood above it all, overseeing the scene of deliberate, controlled chaos. Behind him, another turian appeared, placing one hand on the captain's shoulder to get his attention.

"Vakarian, what do you have for me?"

"I went down to engineering, and they tell me they've got the calibrations set up, sir. We should show up as a cargo ship, maybe even a civilian yacht on their instruments, so long as they're not looking too closely."

"We'll just pray they're not looking too closely, then. Good work."

"Thank you, sir," Vakarian said, as he took his seat next to the captain on their elevated command platform.

"Don't worry, Vakarian," the captain said. Vakarian turned to face the old turian.

"Awful hard not to worry when you're this deep in enemy territory, surrounded by a hostile fleet galactically renowned for excessive brutality. Mother of all bad ideas, isn't it, sir?"

"Nothing to be afraid of. Be glad, Vakarian. We'll go down in the books for this one. The first Citadel Council ship in Union space since the end of the War!" The captain laughed. "It'll put those damn barefaced politicians to rest about the need to repeal the Treaty of Farixen. Bullshit! If we did that, it'd be a goddamned disaster! Can you imagine those slimy salarian bastards with a fleet our size? I've been telling them for years now, the humans aren't in a position to defend their own borders, let alone launch another invasion of our territory. One to four, Vakarian. That's how many of ours died in the War compared to theirs. The Union—"

A silent explosion rocked the ship, and several turians on the floor of the CIC were sent tumbling to one side of the room, dazed, but still moving.

"Sir? Looks like the Union is defending their borders," Vakarian said, bracing himself for another impact.

"Vakarian!" the captain snapped, sounding magnitudes more serious than he had several seconds earlier. "Status report!"

"Just some external damage, sir," Vakarian stated, reading from the terminal in front of him. "No casualties. Attacker seems to be a Union cruiser. The Alliance database says that it's a Novosibirsk-class. An older ship, so we shouldn't have a problem outrunning it. I'm getting some residual radiation readings from the explosion site, though. Nothing near dangerous levels, though. Hold on…"

"Vakarian, get engineering over the intercom, and tell them to go to full burn!" the captain barked.

"Yes, sir," Vakarian said, entering a command into the intercom, before speaking. "Engineering, get us on full burn."

"Damned space pyjaks are using nukes," the captain growled. "If we don't get out of here quick, they'll fry the ship's electronics and board us."

"Gunners!" the captain hollered. "Tear these squishy bastards a new asshole!"

"Sir, isn't the ship hardened against EMP blasts?" Vakarian asked.

"EMP, yes. Gigaton nuclear weapons, no such luck. ETA on the engines?"

"About two minutes, sir."

"We don't have two minutes."

"Sir, I'd put on a slinky dress and do a dance for you if it meant we could get the ship back to full speed faster, but—"

Another explosion was felt, but this time, it was accompanied by the sound of failing electronics. Suddenly, the ship fell silent, the faint hum of the engines replaced by deathly silence.

"Spirits be damned!" the captain cursed in the darkness. "Men, get your rifles and barricade the airlocks!"

"What's going to happen, sir?" Vakarian asked, standing up to get to the shipboard armoury.

"We'll be boarded," the captain announced plainly.

"Captain, it's an Avian ship. Size equivalent to one of our frigates. Heat signature's been tampered with, so it looks more like a cargo ship, but visuals don't lie. "

"Just one?"

"Seems like it."

"Odd. Patrols tend to operate in packs. Maybe it wasn't a patrol after all. Kim, tell the helm to get a bit closer, into missile range. I want this craft disabled, and the crew captured. Nothing too high-profile. We don't want bits of wreckage to be floating around, it'd raise too many questions."

"Will do, sir," the executive officer said, walking away.

Captain Jiang took his cap off, and wiped his brow with a towel, before returning it to his pocket. For some odd reason, commanding always made him sweat more than anything else did. He attributed it to an old paranoia of his that he had gotten fighting the First Contact War. Whenever a patrol was going too quietly, too smoothly, there was almost always a trap on the other end, just waiting to be sprung.

"Officer?" he called to one of the men loitering on the CIC deck, who was wearing the colours of the Naval Infantry. "Tell your men to get suited up and into the shuttles." The officer gave a salute, and exited the CIC.

"Ten."

"Nine."

"Eight."

"Seven."

"Six."

"Five –"

The countdown was interrupted by a loud hacking cough.

"You alright there, buddy?" the pilot asked, flipping several switches and double checking his flight settings.

"Fine," the helmeted marine replied weakly. "Caught something on Omega." A couple of sniggers could be heard to that line.

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

The engines rumbled to life, and the shuttle passengers, roughly thirty of them packed shoulder to shoulder, shifted slightly from the inertia of the craft taking flight.

"All systems go," the pilot noted casually. "ETA forty minutes. I hope you boys brought some cards."

Shepard turned his head, looking around himself. To his left sat Ivanov, and to his right, an older gentleman, who seemed to be nearing the end of his five year mandatory service, if the patchwork of scars on his face were any indication of that sort of thing. He sighed, and put his helmet on, which sealed to his suit with a light hiss.

"This your first time?" the marine next to him asked, nudging his side with an elbow.

"Yeah," Shepard replied.

"I can tell," he said. "You brought too much shit. What the hell are you bringing your bandoleer with you for? Gonna show the Avians a fireworks display?"

"Regs say to bring extra ammunition for prolonged firefights."

"The regs? Written by some dumb asshole who never did a real life boarding, I'll bet," the marine said dismissively. "Gimme that."

He reached over, and ripped the bandoleer off of Shepard's chest. He handed him a pair of jungle-taped magazines, which Shepard accepted cautiously, and put the bandoleer underneath his seat.

"If you're lucky, you might get off a handful of shots before the aliens blow your brains out. The ammo'd only weigh you down if you're alive after the first five minutes, not like these goddamned lead-lined suits don't do that enough."

"Thanks," Shepard said unenthusiastically.

"Christ, Jun, way to scare the FNGs," laughed a marine from across the shuttle. "Don't worry about Jun, he's just paranoid like that."

"It's not paranoia," Jun grumbled. "The last greenhorn got shot once and he lit up like firecrackers. Pop, pop, pop, goddamn ammo going off like its Chinese New Year, shit. Could barely even ID the bastard after, had to scrape bits of him off the shuttle floor to send back home to his parents." Out the corner of his eye, Shepard could see Ivanov carefully detaching his own bandoleer.

Shepard leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes. He checked the time. They were getting closer to the destination. At ten minutes before arrival, the light-hearted chatter which had enveloped the interior of the shuttle had largely died off, and the marines sat in silent anticipation. At five minutes, Shepard turned his head, and saw Ivanov, head bowed in prayer, muttering something in Russian.

"Okay boys, this is it," the pilot announced finally, as the shuttle clicked into place with the Avian spacecraft's airlock door. "Get yourselves ready."

Shepard unbuckled himself, following suit after the rest of the group, and checked his rifle.

"Jun, take the front," the lieutenant in charge said. The man obliged, walking up next to the shuttle door. He pulled out a grenade, and prepared to throw it.

"Opening doors in three, two, one," the pilot said loudly. Shepard raised his weapon, and pointed it at the wide sliding door, as did twenty-nine other rifles.

With a groan, the door opened, a slight sliver. Just as it did, a shot whizzed by Shepard's helmet. It hit behind him, making a deep crevice in the metal roof of the shuttle. Jun threw the grenade, which went off with a subdued thud. The gap between the shuttle doors widened, revealing the makeshift barricades which the defenders had erected. Seeing that the shuttle had been made open to fire, a hail of supersonic pellets came flying the direction of the marines. In front of him, a pile of fallen soldiers had materialized within a matter of seconds, and the controlled silence not moments before had devolved into a chaotic mess of screams of agony and the discharge of firearms. Panicked, Shepard aimed wildly, squeezing the trigger of his rifle, which had luckily aligned itself with a hostile. A stream of hot lead erupted forth, and the alien's shields shimmered before faltering. The enemy gave a flanging shout of pain as the bullets tore through armour, and into flesh. After what seemed to be an eternity, but had actually been more like thirty seconds, the gunfire finally died down, and an unearthly calm, pierced by the cries of the wounded for help, filled the air.

"Move forward and get behind the barricades!" the lieutenant shouted, making a wild dash for the makeshift cover in the airlock. Jun followed suit, lobbing a grenade blindly, which bounced off of the wall of the airlock and into the connecting corridor. The few survivors of the boarding huddled around the lieutenant, rifles readied and eyes scanning for any remaining Avian soldiers.

"Jun, head count!" the lieutenant bellowed. Shepard was beginning to wonder if the lieutenant had endured hearing damage of some sort during the brief engagement. He looked around at the other survivors of the boarding. Ivanov, luckily, had made it out safely, though his helmet was notched quite deeply on one side – he had dodged death, but only barely. Out of the thirty men aboard the shuttle as it docked, only eight of them had made it out unscathed – behind him, he could see an increasingly delirious Petrovsky being tended to by Chen.

"Eight, sir," Jun said.

"Not bad," the lieutenant noted loudly. Not bad? Shepard shuddered to think of what a bad boarding looked like. "Tell the pilot he can return to the Vladivostok."

"Will do," Jun said, lumbering over to the bulletproof pane of glass which separated the pilot's cockpit from the rest of the shuttle.

"You!" the lieutenant called out. Chen turned around. "Stay with the wounded. They'll need looking after."

Chen nodded silently, and returned to his task.

"The rest of us are going to be meeting up with the other three of the boarding teams on this half of the ship," the lieutenant screamed. "After we've met up with the others, we'll fight our way to the CIC, and meet up with the boarding teams who landed on the other half of the ship. Simple pincer maneuver. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" the remaining seven marines replied in unison. Behind them, the shuttle detached itself from the airlock, which sealed its own doors.

"No turning back now, boys," the lieutenant shouted, readying his rifle. "Remember the Fourteenth's motto?"

"No glory for the merciful, sir!" the marines shouted in reply.