Joker looked askance at Shepard as she prowled through his cockpit.

Before Eden Prime he predicted that her presence would mean trouble. And immediately afterward they ran into the single biggest attack on a human colony in history. And now she was going to be around all the time, which meant that he would be around for all the trouble she could possibly get into. That was…troubling. But at least this time he knew the score. Nobody was going to try and bullshit him by claiming business as usual.

Either way, the way she was looking over his shoulder made him uneasy. It was like she was trying to see right through him. His paranoia was acting up.

"Do you need something?" he asked, hoping that Shepard would say 'no' and leave.

"There is something wrong with you," Shepard answered.

"Say what now?"

"My father was a veterinarian. You move like a dying animal. Are you dying?"

Joke resisted the temptation to crack his head against the steering wheel.

"No, I'm not dying. I've got Vrolik's Syndrome."

Shepard didn't answer. Either she expected him to continue, or she'd lost interest in the conversation. He just wasn't prepared to bet on the latter.

"It's a genetic condition. Makes my bones brittle. It doesn't affect my piloting at all, though. I'm the best damn pilot in the Alliance, for whatever that's worth. As long as I'm at the helm of this ship, you've got nothing to worry about. Is that okay with you?"

"Yeah, that's fine. You have your bone thing, I have my brain thing."

"Um…brain thing?" asked Joker. He was getting used to 'Shepard is crazy' rumors, but if she had an actual medical disorder, he would feel bad. And also terrified.

"Yeah, you know how your brain has all those filters to automatically discard irrelevant stimuli so you can focus on the stuff that's actually important? I don't have that. I notice everything all the time. So the feel of the floor under my feet and the wind on my face and the way a panel looks all lit up and the movement of the people behind me and the way my tongue brushes against my teeth and how long it's been since I blinked and a memory of an article I read a year ago are all as important as something someone's saying to me."

"Wow. Sounds rough."

"It's similar to the problems that cause schizophrenia. But different! So instead of going crazy I went awesome."

"And let me guess," continued Joker. "There's a way to fix the problem, but it would stop you from being the best you can be?"

"Yeah, the clinic offered to stick a chip into my head that would let a VI sort the sensations for me. I told them to just give me one that made me smarter."

"Oh. What's that like?" asked Joker, getting seriously interested. "I've been thinking of getting an implant to increase my reaction speed, but I'm afraid it'll tweak me."

"It didn't tweak me," said Shepard, quickly moving her hands in agitation. "They asked me not to tell people I had a chip in case they thought it tweaked me, but no. It doesn't feel any different. I'm still me, only I'm a more intelligent me. I've been meaning to get more chips put into my head, but I've been so busy."

"Right. I take it you'd rather I didn't mention any of this to the others?" asked Joker.

"Do. Or don't. I don't care. They're keeping bigger secrets than mine."

Descending a level, Shepard found herself faced with an unusual scene.

Ashley and Kaidan had a man between them. They were both holding him at gunpoint. Kaidan's head snapped around at Shepard's arrival, while Ashley kept staring at the intruder, whose eyes suddenly filled with hope.

"We have an uninvited guest," said Ashley, lightly prodding him with the barrel of her gun.

"It's not what you think!" wailed the man.

"We found him while we were sweeping the ship for intruders," Kaidan informed her. "What do you want us to do with him?"

"Let him go," Shepard ordered, moving to observe the stowaway. "I know who that is."

Conrad Verner was just the same as he'd been back on the Citadel. Except this time he was dressed in bulky blue-and-gold armor with a huge plasma pistol at his hip. The look didn't really fit him. He looked like someone playing dress up.

"Why are you here?" asked Shepard.

"Well, what you said…it inspired me!" Conrad said. "You said I could be like you, to help protect the galaxy. So I got the gun and the armor and I wanted to come find you and see if you'd take me with you. But I couldn't! You were seen all over the citadel, but by the time I got there you were always gone. So I…snuck aboard your ship. I was going to talk to you before the takeoff, but I fell asleep, and now…well, here we are. I guess I messed up, huh?"

"I'll say. You do realize that you're on a top-secret military ship, in the middle of what could be a top-secret mission for all you know, right?" asked Ashley, glaring.

"What am I going to do with you?" asked Shepard, staring at him.

Conrad swallowed. The question was innocuous, but the tone suggested that she might be wondering whether it would be better to have him arrested for a million years or to just push him out of the airlock.

"Well, you could always drop me off on the next planet you land on and make me take another ship home. But if it's okay with you, I'd rather stay here and help you!"

"Can you use that gun?" asked Shepard, pointing to the oversized blaster.

"I don't know. I've never tried."

"I see. Are you a biotic?"

"No," answered Conrad. Having some idea of the direction the conversation was going to go in, he was now shifting from one foot to another and fidgeting with his hands.

"Are you good at stealth? Are you hacker? Do you know about fixing ships? Can you negotiate really well?"

"Um…no, no, no, and it doesn't look like it," Conrad finished lamely.

"What can you do?"

"Um…I've got a degree in xenotechnology and dark matter integration."

Shepard cocked her head, studying him from a new angle.

"It's not a…theoretical degree, is it?" she asked suspiciously.

"I…don't know what that means."

"Okay," Shepard put a hand on his shoulder. "You can stay."

"So how does this work again?" asked Tali skeptically.

"It's simple. We're going to walk into the seat of the krogan government and offer to do anything they want," explained Shepard.

"I see. And why would we do that?"

"It's basic spycraft. When you need to observe someone, you don't sneak around trying to be invisible, because then if they see you, they'll panic. You pretend to be a janitor or something and then you sweep the floor and if they see you, they just see a janitor."

"And this is…like being a janitor?"

"Well, no. Because I don't look like a janitor. I look like a Courier with a top secret ship and a ragtag adventuring party. So we do something that someone in that situation would do."

"And what is that exactly?" asked Garrus.

"I don't know. Maybe they'll need us to fight other krogan. Maybe they'll need us to make a delivery. I hear there is a named Thresher Maw here somewhere. Maybe they'll ask us to kill it."

"Oh, joy," muttered Garrus.

"Conrad, as punishment for sneaking in, you're on head butt duty," Shepard declared, as the blond man turned around in confusion.

"What do you mean?" he asked, dreading the answer a little.

"If a krogan is being uppity, you need to hit his head with your head to assert dominance. I don't like to do it because my brain is too valuable to risk. I wish I had Jenkins. He'd be good at it."

"Still in a coma," explained Kaidan.

"Sad."

With the Maxson parked alongside several others, less shiny vessels, Shepard's party exited the oblong docking bay to find themselves in the city-forest of First Grove.

Humans and krogan typically got along pretty well. Aside from the obvious similarities in lifestyle and history, the major reason for this was the Harold tree. A plant with a complicated and bizarre backstory, it could grow in any soil, no matter how dry, toxic, or radioactive. Millions of these trees now grew on Tuchanka, slowly restoring life to the once-barren landscape.

The Harold trees weren't conventionally pretty, but they had a kind of brutal beauty to them which Shepard's party couldn't help but notice as they walked the worked stone pathway. Other pathways led off in other directions, to the market, the metallurgy shops, the living complexes. Krogan went in and out of fabricated buildings and then shuffled along, slowly yet briskly, chatting about this and that, reasonably placid conversations only occasionally interrupted by a loud guffaw or a hearty chest pound.

"I wonder if the Primarchs know about this," muttered Garrus, looking at a kakliosaur pulling a cart filled with varren cages.

"I'm sure they do," said Shepard.

"Well, yeah, obviously they know intellectually. But I wonder if they know. How it looks. How it sounds. How it feels. I think if they know, then right now they're either hopeful…or worried."

"Try going for hopeful," Shepard advised. "It feels better."

"Right. I'll be sure to let them know. And where exactly are we going?"

Shepard stayed silent for a couple more seconds as the party finally exited tree cover, looking up at an enormous gleaming pyramid.

"There. We go up there," she explained.

"Even the Citadel Council doesn't make you climb this many steps to show you how important they are," said Garrus, lightly panting.

"Maybe the krogan just like the view," suggested Shepard, turning around.

Now that they were near the top of the pyramid, the view was indeed impressive. First Grove was beneath them, looking like a green octopus. Beyond the forest the trees stopped growing wild and formed a neat checkerboard. It was a classic planting technique meant to prevent soil erosion by creating barriers to wind carrying the soil off as dust and binding it in place with tree roots. Though most of Tuchanka was still an empty wasteland, after several decades of management the area immediately adjacent to the First Grove could now support farms.

Finally at the top, Shepard found herself in a brief argument with the six krogan guarding the door.

"You really should get an appointment next time," pointed out the door guard. "It's not usually a good idea to let random people off the street in to see the king."

"He'll want to see me," Shepard assured him.

"Yeah? Well, you'd better hope so, because if he doesn't, things won't end well for you."

Shepard looked from the krogan to Conrad, then shrugged and let it go as she forged ahead.

The krogan leader, Urdnot Wrex, reclined on a metal throne built to accommodate a krogan's frame, surrounded by several guards. And he looked like he could take them all in a fight and win. Even though his armor looked ancient compared to theirs, his battle-scarred face had an expression of casual power that his guards couldn't hope to match with their most ferocious scowls. Wrex himself didn't scowl. If fact, his expression was closer to a smile as he stared at Shepard and got right to the point.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Shepard. And I'm here to offer you a favor."

"Yeah? What makes you think I need something from you?" asked Wrex, studying her.

"There is always something someone needs from me. They need someone killed or rescued or something found, a device repaired, a project managed, a disease cured. So," Shepard spread her arms in an all-encompassing gesture, "What wish can I grant you today?"

Wrex looked at her for a minute before raising one of his hands and slamming it against an armrest.

"You know something, Shepard? I like you."

Wrex grinned like a shark and motioned Shepard to come closer.

"You know why I like you? Because you're not just offering your help because the Alliance wants to buddy up with me or because there's some secret test you want to do here. I can see it in your eyes. Deep down, you just really want to fight something on Tuchanka."

Shepard nodded sheepishly.

"As it happens, there is something you can do for me, and it has to do with the other reason I like you: you're a human. And humans gave us the greatest possible gift. And no it wasn't the trees, even though the trees are nice. No, what you did for us was much better: you made us look bad."

"Yes. We did," Shepard nodded, as if confirming something patently obvious. One of the guards glared at her. She looked back and gave him a pleasant smile. Wrex guffawed.

"Right? There we were sitting on a nuked planet with wildlife that can eat an army alive and a virus messing everything up for us and suddenly humans come onto the scene, with all the same problems plus being tiny and squishy. But you didn't let that stop you. You got your shit together and rebuilt your civilization. I tried that once before, but it got too hard, so I quit and went back to pissing away my life as a mercenary. After I heard about what the humans did? I took the first ship home and got back to work. Because as long as Earth was recovering and Tuchanka wasn't? The krogan looked bad, and I looked bad."

Wrex got up from his throne, stretching out as he approached Shepard with a conspiratorial look in his eyes.

"And now? You can help me make a few more krogan look bad."

"So, what did the High Mucky-Muck want from you?" asked Ashley.

"Two things," answered Shepard. "Thing one is krogan mercenaries. Many krogan left Tuchanka to sell their strength to the highest bidder, and Wrex wants them back here. So if there's something I can do to persuade or force them to return, I get credits."

"So, hassle the most aggressive, ambitious, or stubborn krogan with no provocation. Got it," Ashley replied sarcastically.

"And thing two is there's a krogan clan he wants me to check up on. He thinks they're making kroglodytes."

"Do I want to know?" asked Ashley.

"Krogan dipped in FEV," explained Kaidan.

"That makes humans big, green, and sterile. What could it possibly do to krogan?"

"Bigger. Greener. Probably more sterile," answered Shepard, checking her omnitool. "Also? Stupid and hyper aggressive. A few stay smart enough to pull a trigger and calm enough not to do it all the time, but most are just like wild animals. If someone's making them, they're either killing most of their subjects or keeping a zoo full of crazy at their base."

"So we get to go fight superkrogan. Are you sure it's too late to go undercover as janitors?" asked Ashley.

"You don't want to do that. Tuchanka has too much dust. Cleaning this place would be much harder than fighting some monsters," Shepard answered sagely.

"Fine. You're the boss. Just…tell me where to point my gun."

"Where are we going?" asked Tali. "Do we fight the kroglodytes first, or look into Benezia's daughter?"

"First the second than the first, I think," answered Shepard. "But first we go see who else want what."

"Excuse me?"

"Come along. You'll see."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Tali complained.

"You're right," Shepard furrowed her brow. "We'll cover more ground if we split up."

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, that's because you have a bad attitude. And so does Ashley. The two of you can be together. Garrus, Kaidan, you're together too. I'm taking Conrad," she put her arm around the blonde-haired man, causing him to flinch. "Ready? Break!"

"Biotic varren," Kaidan looked at the creature inside the tiny cage skeptically.

"Yeah. Look."

The krogan took a long stick and poked the grey-green varren through the bars of the cage. The creature became enveloped by a field of blue as it biotically tore the stick from the krogan's hands and snapped it against the bars.

"Do you realize what this means?" the krogan demanded.

"You can make a mint at the varren fighting ring?" suggested Garrus.

"No. Biotic varren get their own category," the krogan grumbled. "But I meant the larger scheme of things. Much, much larger. Where does a varren find enough eezo to grow up as a biotic?"

"I'm sensing that you already know the answer to that," Garrus stared the krogan down.

"You're damn right I do. Wrex has the volus shipping in eezo from all over the place. Now, maybe the occasional container gets dropped, eezo gets scattered, and we end up with biotic varren. Or maybe someone's dropping the containers on purpose because biotic varren also mean biotic krogan. Wrex already has the farms, the biggest spaceport, the diplomacy, and the closest thing to a real army this planet has. If he had a bunch of extra biotics, his rule would be that much more secure."

"So you think Wrex is spreading eezo around to get a bunch of biotic children?" asked Garrus.

"He wouldn't be the first," muttered Kaidan.

"I'm just saying that Wrex has the means and the motive," explained the krogan. "And if he were doing this, he might think that things would go easier if some people were out of the loop. And I don't plan to be one of them."

"That's right. A thousand pyjaks. Bring me their heads and I'll find a way to reward you."

"You know," Ashley gave Tali a conspiratorial glance, "If you'd rather not spend the next couple days walking through the jungle decapitating monkeys, we don't have to tell Shepard about this particular request."

"What request?" asked Tali, her voice full of modulated innocence.

"We should hang out more," Ashley suggested, beginning to smile.

"You know, I'm standing right here."

The girls turned to the would-be quest giver and gave him a cold look.

"Well, fine then! I'll go kill my own pyjaks."

"What do you want to do?" asked Ashley. "I don't think Shepard will let us back onto the ship unless we bring back something."

"We should find an electronics shop," suggested Tali. "Or maybe a used car lot. If I can just repair something, Shepard will likely accept it. She may even commend us for showing initiative."

Ashley nodded and the girls took off in search of something mechanical to tinker with.

"Is this really okay?" asked Conrad. "The others are out looking for work. Shouldn't we be?"

"Work will find me," Shepard said. "It always does. Besides, this is important too."

Shepard was leading Conrad down a wood-and-rope pathway just below the tree canopy, crossing the busy streets below. There was less activity up on this level, though a few krogan were still seen.

"I try to get to know everyone in my party," Shepard explained. "You're new, so I haven't had a lot of face time with you. Now we fix that."

"Oh. Well, that's…great! I always dreamed of something like this!" Conrad admitted. "Walking on a distant world, gun at my side, talking to…well, to you!"

"So? Talk. Besides me and xenotech, what else do you like?"

"Oh. Well, I always liked adventure stories. I mean, obviously, right?" Conrad smiled nervously. "And space. Not so much the ships or the aliens as all the weird astronomical stuff. The physical phenomena that would be impossible to replicate on Earth because they need a supernova going off next to a black hole to happen. Oh, and also I love kids. For some reason I always seem to get along with them."

"That's nice. I like animals. And history. I did my final paper on the role of brahmin in post-Hoover Dam history of the North California Republic. There is a lot of research on the pre-Hoover Dam period because obviously there is, but most people lose interest after it stops being the industry. But you know, it had a lot of influence in the middle period too, especially in context of land development."

"And you like helping people, right?"

"I really do," Shepard nodded. "I like being good. When I'm being an adventurer I get to help people and the people I shoot are almost always bad people. When I'm a soldier, I have to shoot whoever's on the other side. If you ever do end up doing this under someone other than me, make sure you believe in what you fight for, because you might end up killing a lot of people who aren't bad."

"It sounds like you don't enjoy being a soldier."

"No, I do. I mean, war is glorious. When you're in the middle of a firefight and you kill someone? There is no other feeling like it. But you can't turn it off. You can't say 'today I won't wear armor outside because I won't get shot at' because that's not your choice. I don't have control over many aspects of my life."

"But it's still fun, right?" asked Conrad.

"Oh, yeah. Definitely. Speaking of," Shepard pointed down.

"There's some kind of a commotion," Conrad observed, perhaps not realizing that was Shepard's whole point. "People are fighting."

"Here we go," said Shepard, jumping over the railing.

"You know," said Kaidan. "If Shepard were handling this case, she'd probably have us break into Urdnot Wrex's chambers."

"And she'd probably find a datapad of all his eezo-related activities," agreed Garrus. "But somehow I get the feeling that if you and I tried that, the results would be different."

"I'm not sure I'm prepared to believe that."

"Relax, I'm kidding. Well, mostly," Garrus hedged. "The point is, we have to do this our way, just like Shepard does things her way."

"Like at the Citadel. Right. I'll start by going on a trawl for any records of missing eezo or engine explosions. Krogan records are probably spotty, but it's better than nothing."

"I'll cross-reference it with their children's facilities."

Kaidan winced and then nodded wordlessly. If you were going to spill eezo on your own population, doing it near children made the most sense. The chance of successfully giving one of them powers was much higher and you'd have years to indoctrinate them before someone else came along and offered them a better deal.

It was why Kaidan privately hoped they were on a wild goose chase. Life was bound to be hard enough for a krogan child without adding a sudden, traumatic awakening of biotic powers and close government scrutiny into the mix.

Meanwhile Garrus had some thoughts of his own to contribute.

"If we were back on the Citadel, this would be easy. Once we got done with this part, we could just find the nearest sleazy bar and I'd lean on people until they gave me a name. But I'm not sure if I can lean on an untamed krogan hard enough for them to notice and I'm not sure Wrex's agents would be so easy to find. He didn't get to go from mercenary to king by being easy to outmaneuver."

"So we go deeper," suggested Kaidan.

"What do you have in mind?"

"We get more data. We create an algorithm to track down his potential agents. We trace every part of every eezo transport to see if it could be faulty. We figure out if using explosives to spread eezo dust is economical. We track down the beginnings of the biotic varren division. I don't think we can do this on omnitools. I'll need Maxson's main servers and we may have to remotely hack some computing grids too."

Garrus looked at Kaidan's burning eyes and did the turian version of a smile.

"You really think fixing a car will get Shepard off your case?" asked Ashley.

"I think it will," answered Tali. "Shepard's been looking up my people, so I looked up hers."

"Humans?"

"Couriers. All the way back to the first one. He was part of a team with three different mechanics on it. Together they repaired a solar power station and a rocket and the first of your Eyebots. I'm sure Shepard will be very happy if we fix something."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure how good I'll be at that," admitted Ashley. "It might have been better if Shepard paired you up with Kaidan instead."

"I'll teach you! Come on, it will be fun."

Her enthusiasm aside, privately Tali was going crazy trying to figure out how to do this. If she was back on the Migrant Fleet, she could just wander into any workshop or engine room and start helping out, and nobody would say anything. But things were different out here in the wider galaxy and krogan could be kind of intimidating. Her mind raced through a dozen complicated plans before she asked herself a simple question: What would Shepard do?

"My name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. I'm here to solve all your problems."

Tali held the pose – shoulders wide, hands on hips – and was very grateful that her helmet concealed her expression as the three krogan in the garage looked up at her. One in particular, old even for a krogan, face riddled with old scars and burns, seemed to have an appraising version of a sneer on his face.

"What kind of problems?" he finally asked, approaching her.

"Mechanical problems!" Tali declared, and began walking, sidestepping the old krogan before he could manage to loom over her. "Look, I know my way around a workshop, so I know there's something here you can't fix. You've never been able to fix it. But at this point you've invested so much time and effort into it you can't just throw it out or scrap it for parts. You're going to fix it if it kills you. Well, I'm here to save your lives!"

"Really," the krogan rumbled. "You're that good?"

"I'm. That. Good."

Tali discreetly wiped her forehead on a small sponge built into her helmet's inside as she pretended to stare down the krogan. After a moment's time he seemed to make a decision.

"Fine. Let's go."

With the gait of a bulldozer he passed by the vehicles hauled up into mid-air for inspection and reached the garage's back door. Placing his wide palm against it, he opened the way to an enormous junkyard overflowing with heaps of metal.

"You think being a quarian means you can fix anything?"

"I think being me lets me fix anything," Tali countered. The lines came easier and easier with each one she delivered.

"Okay then. Take a look at this thing," the krogan declared, grabbing the edge of a tarp and pulling it away.

"This was made before the war," he declared, gesturing at the mechanical monstrosity he'd had hidden away. "The big one. The reason you can't breathe without inhaling dust. Who knows what happened to it then, but it hasn't run right since. Generations of krogan mechanics tried to fix it. Legend says a previous chief mechanic got it to work during the krogan rebellions by adding Prothean parts, but then he tried firing the main gun and it hasn't moved since. You want to be the best? Fix this. You can use anything you find in this yard or the spare parts closet. You can use any tool in the garage. You can take apart the customers' cars if you have to. But when you can't fix it? We might have a problem."

"Ashley?" Tali turned to her friend, her voice not breaking a single bit, "Get me a blowtorch and pay attention. I'm going to teach you about cutting armor."

Kaidan's job had not been easy. Krogan were not, by and large, fans of bureaucracy. If something broke they just went out and got someone to fix it instead of filing a work order in triplicate. Which probably made their lives a lot easier, but meant that if an engine blew up it was impossible to tell whether it had been in perfect working condition or held together by string and prayer. There were gaps everywhere.

Still, a few things had become obvious.

First of all, half of First Grove was underground. Before it became First Grove, it was just another krogan city-state shielding itself from the never-ending dusty winds. The treeline broke the wind's teeth and captured the dust, slowly transforming it back into a nutritious soil covering, and allowing krogan to come out and live upstairs. But most of the subterranean architecture remained intact. It was used for storage, residential quarters for the less well-off segments of the population, and – vitally – children's crèches.

You couldn't get eezo onto the children just by blowing up a spaceship or dropping a crate, because they were housed in hardened subterranean forts with high security and the best air filters blood money could buy. And even if you could, the patterns didn't match up.

No, if Wrex was trying to turn children into biotics, he'd be doing it another way. Food additives or even the occasional shot would probably be the more reliable approach anyway. But it wouldn't create biotic varren. And it wouldn't account for the systematic mismatches in records, the higher than expected accident rate, some floating forum threads…someone was clearly moving large-ish quantities of eezo around, and if it wasn't Wrex, Kaidan wanted to know who it was.

Hence the warehouse.

He and Garrus were perched in the rafters, waiting for someone to show up. He had no idea how many people could be expected here normally, but his impromptu supercomputing grid had tracked down the omnitools of everyone even tangentially related to this location and sent the kind of messages that would encourage someone to come check up on things.

Of course there was every chance that they'd show up with a bunch of angry, well-armed krogan. If that happened, getting in the first punch would be important.

"Crates?" he asked, subvocalizing into his helmet and letting the computers sort it out and carry it to Garrus.

"Some of them are pure eezo. The others aren't, I think. Either they contain the payment or the end product of something made with eezo."

"Like what?"

"Almost anything, obviously, but done in secrecy like this? Guns or drugs."

"Let's hope it's drugs," suggested Kaidan.

"Let's not. They'll have guns no matter what, but some of the drugs you can make with eezo… they'll kill you in the long run, but in the short run? They might just kill us instead."

Kaidan nodded. Then, hearing the whoosh of an opening door, he raised a finger to his helmet's plate and looked down the sights of his gun again.

Tali started out with five robots and an Ashley. By now she had no idea how many little helpers were running, floating, and zipping all around her.

It had seemed like such a logical progression at the time. Having followed Shepard's advice, she spent most of her transit time to Tuchanka practicing robotics. As it turned out, Shepard had a lot of damaged Eyebots lying around and while it would have been nearly impossible to turn them into war machines again, making them into small floating assistants was the height of simplicity.

She released them here, to help carry tools and look through the parts. Then she found she needed some heavier-duty bots to look through the piles, so she rigged up a couple with chassis she found in the junkyard and some spare wiring. Then even they weren't enough to move the engine block, and it was just easier to give it little mechanical spider legs and a processor so it could move itself. Tali found that making sure each part could move under its own power really made the mix and matching faster, especially once she programmed the robots to build more robots without her direct intervention.

Around now she was wondering if she was creating the next geth. But putting down the next robot revolution could wait until the mystery machine was fully functional.

"The easiest thing would be to throw out most of this stuff and build a whole new vehicle under the armor. But that would be cheating. We'll be using as many of these parts as we can manage, prioritizing the oldest ones."

"You're making things hard on yourself for no reason. You know that, right?" asked Ashley.

"You wouldn't understand. It's a mechanic thing."

"I understand more than you think. Pointless challenges and ego inflating rituals are basically ninety percent of being a garrison soldier."

"Sorry if I'm not teaching you much. When I made the offer I didn't expect them to have anything this complex. I should have realized."

"It's okay. To be honest, I'm not all that interested in actually learning the process. I'm having fun watching you work, though."

"Oh. Good."

Tali stared back at the machine. She almost had it. It was like putting together an anagram – first she had to jumble the available parts up until something jumped out at her, and then she could proceed from there systematically. She had a couple different designs in mind already, but she decided that as an additional self-imposed challenge she would complete this task without taking apart the customers' cars. She just had to finish sorting through the junkyard. Catalogue all the parts that were whole or that could be repaired. Maybe sort them into neat piles. She could use some of the scrap metal for shelving…

"Hey!"

Tali turned her head to look at the krogan from earlier. The master mechanic with the messed-up face.

"If you actually manage this, could you make sure that the machine isn't made of robots?"

"Oh. Are you sure? Because I was thinking that a modular design would be good. That way it could break apart into a swarm if you needed it to…"

"We won't need it to. Just try to keep it as normal as you can, okay? We don't need it to be impossible to repair again."

"Mmm," Tali made a noise he chose to interpret as agreement. This requirement would mean more work for her in the short run, but it actually made the design a lot simpler. Really, if she was willing to forego the turbo option, she practically had all the parts she needed already…

"All right, Ash. If you think this was fun before, watch this!"

Tali pressed a button on her omnitool and the robots descended on the remains of the vehicle, each one bearing a different part.

Seven krogan. Five volus. An asari. Two humans, one of them in power armor. Probably the leader of the non-krogan contingent. The asari looked like merc types. And who knew with a volus.

Kaidan considered their odds if someone happened to look up. If anyone could kill a krogan in one shot, through armor and shields, it was Garrus. But the sniper rifle took a while to reload and if everyone started shooting back at once, it would be hard to dodge while straddling a rafter. He eyed the boxes, wondering. If they held weapons, they'd be pretty useless unless someone was in the business of shipping pre-loaded guns. Drugs, though? If nothing else, they'd make an excellent smokescreen.

All things considered, he didn't like those odds. It was time to get some better ones.

He turned his efforts to the power armor. An advanced suit like that was tremendously powerful. It could withstand a grazing hit from a tank's main weapon or a full-on barrage from most light arms even with its shields down. It had built-in weapons that could take out a small squad, and a massive power supply that could be used to temporarily boost the performance of its various subsystems, including shields and any heavy energy weapons the armored soldier might pick up. It also made the wearer strong enough to go toe to toe with any krogan in the galaxy. And yet…there was a reason why power armored troops had gone from secret weapon to glorified crowd control.

Kaidan raised his omnitool and considered his options. Making something short circuit or overheat was the easy route. It's what engineers normally did when faced with power armor. Only slightly more difficult were the servos. If one of them were made to move suddenly and dramatically enough, it could break a limb. The right type of sabotage could take out the optics or the shields. But none of that was really what Kaidan was after. He didn't just want a way to take out the power armored human – he wanted a way to even the very long odds the party was facing. It was time to take a lesson from Jack and The Seven Mutants. Kaidan sent his attack worms into the suit, deftly guiding them around the defenses and to the weapon systems and trying to concentrate on the conversation going on below at the same time. He still had a case to solve.

"Get it together, Brul!" boomed the power armored human. "I want to find out if we're going to need to move this stuff or blow it up."

"We're not blowing it up," rumbled one of the krogan. Kaidan assumed Garrus made a note to kill that one first.

"If this turns out to be connected to Wrex? Yes, we're absolutely blowing it up and building a fast food restaurant on the remains."

The krogan gave what Kaidan supposed was the krogan version of a snort. Kaidan quietly willed him to keep talking. Thankfully, he got his wish.

"Whatever we end up doing, you'd better not screw me on this, Sam."

"I'm the one who's in a position to get screwed here. I could have run this operation from any rock in the galaxy. You were the one who persuaded me that you could hide anything we did on Tuchanka so we could take advantage of the infrastructure."

"And you've been taking advantage of it ever since."

"Yes I have. And now I'm going to stop. I'm going to stick around exactly long enough to find out if we have time to sell what we already manufactured and maybe liquidate our equipment. And either way that works out, we're going to settle up and then I'm going to set up somewhere else."

There was a moment of silence as the work seemed to slow down and the krogan and humans looked up, surreptitiously eyeing each other.

"I trust you followed my advice about finances?" the human continued. "Because if you tell me you're broke and you need these last sales to keep going, we're going to have a problem."

"No. Losing out on this one score won't wipe us out. But it won't make my crew happy about losing out on a steady stream of income. So if you are planning to start over, I hope your plans include us."

"What do you have to offer?" Sam asked aggressively. "You had expertise and connections here. Somewhere else you'd just be some warm bodies holding guns. I'm not sure I want to spend partner level money on a security team. Especially not one who failed to keep this place secure."

Kaidan could practically feel the tension in the air. Things weren't quite bad enough to cause an armed falling out, but they were quickly approaching that point, and he prepared to throw one last turn on that wheel. His finger hovered over the omnitool as he waited for his perfect moment.

Just about…

Suddenly the suit fired several mini-missiles out of its shoulder. Kaidan stared at his omnitool in confusion. He was going to do that. He grumbled internally about bad guys never giving him a chance to show off.

The humans and volus took this as their signal to fire on the krogan. The krogan were confused for a second but started firing right back. The lone asari calmly stepped behind a box and began making her way out of the room.

Just as Kaidan began to think the problem might take care of itself, a stray shot hit his girder. He had just enough time to think something glib about karmic balance as he hit the hard floor face-first. He took back the 'balance' part as he looked up to see a confused-shifting-to-angry krogan towering over him.

The krogan's head exploded from Garrus's sniper bullet and Kaidan had a moment to stand up and orient himself. Krogan, human, human, krogan, volus – Sam. The power-armored smuggler was staring straight at him. Kaidan considered going for his omnitool and trying to jam as many weapons systems as he could, but decided it would take too long. Instead he reached out with his biotics and tossed one of the crates at Sam.

The crate crashed straight into the power armored figure, practically exploding in the process. Kaidan was actually surprised – he'd expected to hit the shields. He supposed some enterprising krogan must have whittled them down and he happened to catch the human leader while they were still regenerating.

While he was thinking that, Sam staggered back up, literally covered by brownish-red dust. The armored helmet was gone, presumably cracked by the crate, and a mane of wild red hair took its place. Kaidan realized that females could technically be named Sam too, but only as a point of curiosity – it certainly didn't make him less likely to shoot her.

The remains of her power armor flying apart like shrapnel as her body was enveloped by a field of blue energy did slow him down a little, though. He recovered momentarily and unloaded his weapon, but the bullets just bounced off the newly-formed biotic barrier.

Of course, he thought. Why wouldn't I give a biotic a face full of eezo based drugs right after knocking off the part of her suit that filtered air?

He ran for it as more crates took to the air.

"…Aaand done!"

Tali stepped back, admiring her handywork. From outside the great land hulk looked almost the same as before. She might have spontaneously agreed to fix machines for these people but she hadn't signed up to polish things. The inside, though…

Tali learned about contemporary krogan vehicles by examining the ones being repaired in the garage, but it quickly became obvious that the ancient design was more complex than that. She had to combine the krogan designs with human ones. Fortunately Chief Engineer Adams had shown her the innards of a crazy climbing tank and in the process told her about some of its predecessors, including pre-War cars powered by portable atomic generators and Wasteland vehicles cobbled together from spare parts and the occasional organic component. The hybrid design was about 90% complete and Tali was able to infer the rest by looking at Tuchanka's environment and imagining the kind of assemblies she'd want to deal with it. After that it was basically straightforward.

"Does it work?" asked Ashley, staring at the bulky machine.

Tali felt vaguely offended by the question but reminded herself that Ashley was not a quarian or a mechanic and that instead of explaining the social protocols she could prove her mettle the fun way.

"Only one way to find out!" she declared. "Come on, everyone. We're going for a ride."

Fifteen minutes and several arguments later, Ashley and the krogan were seated in a manner that was more or less acceptable to everyone, with Ashley retaining the position at the gun's controls. Tali pulled the appropriate levels and the refurbished war machine roared its way out of the junkyard and onto a road.

"I like it!" one of the krogan declared. "It's not too quiet."

"A good machine should always let you know it's working," agreed Tali. "Keep an eye for a good target. I'm sure Ashley would like to test out the guns."

"Just look for a pyjak that's not standing near anything important."

"Hey," interrupted Ashley. "How about that?"

Up ahead the ground exploded as a woman covered in a biotic-blue energy field rose into the sky. Crackling with energy, she biotically lifted a huge dumpster and threw it back down into the underground pit she came from.

"We should make sure she's the bad guy," hedged Tali. "But you'd better target her just in case."

"How is she not dead yet?" demanded Garrus.

"I don't know. I'm not sure what she's breathing in, but it has to be several times the lethal dose. Her nervous system is definitely going to fail!" answered Kaidan.

"Any second now," he added, barely dodging a forklift.

"Kaidan? Is that you?" an autotuned voice sounded in his helmet. "Are you here? Do you need any help?"

"Tali? What are you doing here?"

"It's a long story. I have a tank."

"Oh. Some help would be very welcome then. There's a majorly overclocked biotic trying to kill us. Any chance you could blast her out of the skies for us?"

"Already on it."

Tali turned her hand slightly to look at Ashley who didn't need an order. She pressed a large red button, and the newly-restored cannon unleashed a glowing blue shell.

The shell began to slow before reaching its target and totally stopped, frozen in mid-air, a dozen feet before Sam's outstretched palm. It dropped to the ground a moment later. Ashley was already following up with a large caliber machine gun, but the bullets bounced off as if they were frozen peas.

The flying biotic retaliated by throwing a crate at the tank. The impact rocked the vehicle but the armor absorbed the damage. The crate shattered, spilling computer parts everywhere.

Tali retaliated, unleashing the ace up her sleeve. The hatch popped open and a swarm of buzzing robots flew out, spreading out too thin to be caught by any one thrown object. They approached Sam, wheeling and zigzagging as they did. She responded by throwing out a large ball of biotic force. Catching most of the swarm in its gravitational pull, the singularity compressed the hapless robots to scrap metal. The remaining bots were being swatted out by sudden changes in their acceleration as they fell to earth or flew off into the horizon one by one. Ashley fired another shell and was again unsuccessful.

A blue field enveloped the tank itself. And though the great weight of the semi-ancient contraption seemed to strain even Sam's boosted biotics, the tank began to rise into the air, which spelled definite trouble in its passengers' near future.

At that moment Shepard fell from the sky.

She caught Sam on her way down and the two women fell about ten feet as they intertwined. With her arm around Sam's shoulder, Shepard pressed her gun to Sam's temple and pulled the trigger. The blue light enveloping them blinked out as Sam's body finally gave out and Shepard plunged back to the ground. She let go of the corpse and used it as a springboard to slow her freefall and at the last possible second was enveloped by yet another blue aura as Kaidan's biotics caught her and lowered her safely to the ground.

"I can't leave you people alone. Why is that?"

Kaidan and Garrus contrived to look sheepish while Tali quietly muttered something about just trying to help. But Shepard had already moved on, resuming her conversation with Conrad.

"Fight's over. I won. Jump down here."

She paused as he replied.

"No, it's okay. Kaidan is down here. Just jump."

"Please just let him walk," begged Kaidan.

Shepard shot him a dirty look. He stood up under it and refused to lower his own gaze. After several seconds Shepard relented.

"Fine. Conrad, you may go back to the ship. You will all come to the ship too. There is a story here I want to hear."