If It Meant Living: Tales

"It's A Trap!"

July, 2183: One Week Before Sovereign's Attack on the Citadel

Xavin: Strennus System, Horse Head Nebula

Shepard knelt down beside the body, carefully removing the datapad clutched in the stiffened hand. She scanned it briefly, tapping the screen a few times. "Yep…this is him. His Journal says the ship was attacked and disabled by mercenaries; he and a few of his men fled in the escape shuttles, but the mercs tracked them down planetside." She slowly stood, hands resting against her knees as she stretched up.

Ashley was leaning against the wall to her left, arms crossed over her chest, head shaking slowly in disgust. "The man was just trying to make a living…fucking mercs."

Shepard glanced back down at the body. "The galaxy is a dangerous place, Ash. Captain Willem here learned that the hard way. I'll send his brother a message when we get back to the Normandy." She looked toward the far wall, where Kaidan was hacking the central terminal. "Got anything, Alenko?"

He held up a finger, signaling for another moment…then shut down the terminal and his Omni-tool and turned to her. "Not much. Looks like these guys were loosely affiliated with the Blue Suns, but there's no real structural organization – just small-time smugglers and thieves."

She nodded, sparing him a slight smile. "Alright. We'll forward what you found to the Alliance – this is ESA space, they should at least be able to increase patrols in this system if nothing else."

She glanced around the shabby, wrecked command center of the merc gang a final time, then sighed. "We have bigger fish to fry; let's get out of here."

Back aboard the Normandy, she took a quick shower then began her regular evening tour of the ship.

The crew was getting antsy, she knew. It had been weeks since they'd made any progress on finding Saren, or the Conduit, or figuring out what the Conduit even was. More than a month after receiving the 'Cipher' on Feros, the images in her brain were slowly beginning to coalesce into a coherent narrative…but that narrative only showed death and destruction on an unfathomable scale.

Nevertheless, she was still riding a bit of a high after destroying Cerberus' operations in the Voyager Cluster. Damn, but it had felt good to deal such a heavy blow to a group responsible for so much evil…

She quickly suppressed an instinctive frown as she rounded the corner on the Crew Deck only to find Kaidan's station empty. Oh well, he's probably off fixing something or other. She knew he spent far too much of his off-duty time helping the engineers and techs repair the variety of glitches that a prototype starship inevitably developed – but she also knew that asking him to work less would be futile. Of course, the same was true of every member of her team, and the crew; they were all doing whatever it took to get the job done and then some.

She thought about stopping in to see Liara…but the back of the Med Lab was darkened. Liara had been sleeping far too little of late – between dealing with her mother's death and the incredible pressure she was putting on herself to solve the mystery of the Conduit, she was stretching herself to the limit. If she happened to be sleeping now, Shepard wasn't going to disturb her.

She took the elevator down to the Cargo Bay, only to find Garrus absent from his usual location near the Mako. She glanced over at the Armory. No Ashley.

However, Wrex was over there, playing with the guns. "Where is everyone?"

He grunted distractedly, gesturing towards Engineering with an assault rifle.

"Thanks." She turned and headed down the ramp into Engineering…where she found Tali, Adams, Garrus and Kaidan huddled over a large object in the middle of the floor; Ashley sat on the floor against the wall, idly watching them while she tinkered with a sniper scope.

Shepard chuckled lightly as a hand fell to her hip. "Guys, the Normandy is not a junkyard – we can't keep picking up random space debris thinking it might be treasure."

Tali glanced up. "But Shepard, this probe is over 2,000 years old! We think it's Salarian; who knows what it might hold…" Kaidan looked over his shoulder briefly, giving her a slightly self-deprecating shrug. Can't help it, it said.

"Yeah, like deadly spores or self-replicating spider bots…" She rolled her eyes. "Alright, see if you can get it open, but be careful. We need to – "

Her Omni-tool beeped. "Commander, you've got an incoming call from Admiral Hackett."

"Okay, thank you, Joker. I'll be right up." She sighed dramatically. "Duty calls."

But as she walked away she was smiling, warmed by the sight of her team getting along so well, working together, helping each other out. It hadn't been that way at first, had been a bit of a bumpy ride getting here…but they were at last displaying a level of camaraderie and trust that would make them far stronger on the field of battle, something she had a sneaking suspicion they were going to need before the end.

... ... ...

Agebinium: Amazon System, Voyager Cluster

Kaidan gritted his teeth as the Mako bounced wildly over a ledge, hanging on to the stability bar tightly. But he didn't say anything, lest Shepard get it in her head to leave him behind on the ship next time.

Ashley laughed briefly at him before turning back to the driver's seat. "So how does the Alliance lose a nuclear bomb for twenty-six years, anyway?"

Shepard shrugged as she yanked the wheel to the left, avoiding a deep hole. "I think the Alliance did a lot of things in the early days of the First Contact War that in retrospect weren't necessarily smart. I suppose I can't fault them; we hadn't even met any aliens yet and we were already at war with them…on the other hand, I don't know what they expected to find at the other end of a massive, impossibly-advanced space teleportation device…"

She frowned as they crested a low hill. "The more pertinent question, however, is what is it doing here?"

A plain, unadorned structure protruded from the craggy hillside in front of them. She looked over her shoulder. "This is the location the sensors picked up, right?"

Kaidan nodded in affirmation. "It looks like it may be coming from inside that hill, but we'll need to get a little closer to be sure."

"Alright. Out we go. It's about -100⁰ out there, so grab a sweater." Then the hatch was open and she was standing in the freezing, blood-red air.

She stared up at the giant red sun dominating the sky. "Look at that…"

Kaidan came up beside her. "It's impressive, I'll give you that…shame it's slowly destroying the planet. So…do I put the sweater on over or under the enviro-suit?"

She looked over at him, a small smile pulling at her lips – as frequently seemed to happen these days when she looked at him – and could see the twinkle in his eye even through the helmet. "Given the circumstances, over." Her gaze drifted back to the artificial structure, the smile fading. "In there, huh?"

His shoulders lifted slightly. "Let's find out."

A moment later they stood at the base of a ramp leading up to a three-meter-wide hole cut into the hillside, held open by circular plating.

She frowned again. "You're sure the bomb's in there?"

Kaidan nodded, studying the readings on his Omni-tool. "The Alliance transponder code is pinging back; I'm also reading trace levels of plutonium about…fifty meters inside."

Ashley scowled. "How the hell does a bomb, probe, whatever, get inside a mineshaft?"

"Easy – someone puts it there." Shepard's eyes darted along the hillside. She spun around in a slow three-sixty…but behind them was only marginally uneven terrain for as far as the eye could see.

"Are you picking up anything else from inside?"

Kaidan exhaled slowly through pursed lips. "Maybe…there's a sort of low-level static, a diffuse signal. Can't pin it down from out here." He looked up at her. "Are we ready to go in?"

Her head shook as she looked around again. The hill the mineshaft was built into was steep but scalable; in the distance to the left a gentler slope peeked out.

"You guys hold here; anything comes out of the mine, point a gun at it. I'll be right back." And with that, she took off running up the hill.

Ashley sighed heavily and leaned against one of the crates scattered around the outside of the mine. "I hate it when she does that."

Kaidan didn't respond, his focus already back on his Omni-tool. She stared at him for a moment. "Don't you hate it when she does that?"

He glanced up briefly and shrugged. "Nah." He then returned to concentrating on whatever was scrolling across his Omni-tool display.

Ashley's nose scrunched up, a perplexed look on her face. "Why not?"

"Because inevitably, when she gets back she'll have a plan to kick-ass and look good doing it."

He could feel Ashley's smirk burning into his forehead. "I mean, a plan for us all to look…skilled and professional…while successfully completing the mission."

"Right…" Her teasing expression softened. "Does she know how you feel about her?"

He didn't look up. "Sort of."

"What does 'sort of' mean?"

He sighed and looked over at her. "It means 'sort of.' Now shouldn't you be, I don't know, 'standing watch' or something? I'm trying to memorize the schematics of a Mark IV Class B tactical fusion warhead that was designed when I was in diapers."

She idly crossed one ankle over the other. "There's some sort of animal burrow about thirty meters to our southwest; small though, shouldn't be a threat. Tire tracks over to the right here indicate someone has visited the mine recently – if this wind is typical, I'd say in the last twelve hours at most. These crates are all empty; whatever they carried has already been hauled inside. The construction of the mineshaft, or at least the outside of it, is shoddy – these supports were thrown together in a hurry." She gazed back over at him, a single eyebrow raised.

He huffed a laugh, head dipping dramatically in a gesture of exaggerated respect.

It was another fifteen minutes before Shepard returned, slipping and sliding down the hillside then hurrying over to them.

"So we've got about three dozen mercs on the other side of this hill; they've set up a moderate camp over there. There's another structure built into that side, right in front of their camp – if I had to guess I'd say it's an exit from the mine."

Kaidan frowned deeply. "So it's a trap, then?"

"Not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

She grinned wickedly. "What I mean is, a trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you do know about it, it's an opportunity."

Shepard flattened against the wall and peered around the corner. The alley was clear, and she motioned her team ahead. As the last one passed she fell in behind him, jogging quickly but quietly down the narrow passage.

"The target is two more blocks north, Lieutenant."

She hit her comm in reply as she returned to point. "Got it. Hold for my signal."

She exited the alley and into the darkened street, staying flush with the buildings. It was the middle of the night and the area was deserted, thankfully – she didn't need any messy civilian encounters fucking up the op. When she reached the next block she signaled for the rest to advance to her position.

"Two snipers on the roof, 11 and 1 o'clock. Jameson, you take right. On my mark – now." The two shadowy figures silently collapsed nearly simultaneously onto the rooftop.

She swung her scope down to ground level. "Two guards on the doors…maybe three. They're in the shadows, can't get a clear shot. Valon, Montsky, Miller, swing around back and take them out – quietly, please. Once they're down we'll move in."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

Her eyes swept across the area as she counted the minutes until her men reappeared, in a flash snapping the necks of the two guards. She turned to the other members of the squad. "Okay, remember, anyone inside could be a hostage, but they will probably have guards in there too. Check your targets. Let's go."

Once the doors and the entry room had been cleared, she pulled up the scanner on her Omni-tool. "Thermal signatures indicate 17 people in a central room on the second floor, two of them displaying the tell-tale outlines of weapons." That matched the information they'd been provided – 15 hostages. "Stairway is northwest. Only one entrance to the room, so clear the door and quick fan-out."

She shut down the Omni-tool and slowly climbed the wide staircase, hugging the wall, palm outstretched and ready. The building was eerily silent and pitch black; she pulled down a night-vision lens as she crested the stairs.

One turn of the hallway and the room where the hostages were being held was in front of them. She silently held up her hand, fingers dropping as she counted down to zero, then burst through the door and slid along the left wall, the rest of the squad behind her; in three seconds all dozen of them were inside, guns ready.

She signaled to Therry, and a spotlight flipped on, blinding both friend and foe in the center of the room. "Lower your weapons! You're surround– "

There was a loud boom, and the world turned red.

…she blinked rapidly, trying to clear the halos; she could see members of her team lying on the floor – some unmoving, some writhing in apparent agony.

"Motherfucker…I hate bombs!" Montsky grabbed at her knee.

Valon was closest to her; he looked up at her with plaintive eyes, hands covering his gut. "Tell my wife…I love her…"

Shepard ignored him, gritting her teeth as her eyes rapidly scanned the room.

Montsky rolled her eyes at Valon. "You don't have a wife."

He exhaled heavily. "Tell my mistress…I love her…oh wait, my mistress is dead, too!" He gave an exaggerated head nod and wink from his prone position on the floor.

Montsky groaned loudly. "In your dreams, Valon…"

"Ohhhh, rejected by my mistress as I bleed out on the floor…a terrible end to a – "

"Enough!" Shepard growled. "This is not a joke!"

The lights suddenly came on, revealing a spartan room with high ceilings and no furniture, humanoid shapes scattered in the center.

"You are correct, Lieutenant. This is most certainly not a joke." Major Nolan emerged from a door that shouldn't have been there; she noted out of the corner of her eye as Valon and the others scrambled up off the floor and into formal stances.

"Congratulations, Shepard. You're dead – as is your entire team."

She stood at attention and nodded tightly. "Yes, sir." Then her brow furrowed, eyes narrowing. "…I would love to know how, sir. The entrances were covered; thermal scans showed no further hostiles. Sensors indicated no explosive materials in the vicinity – "

"Did they, now?"

She frowned deeply, double-checking her Omni-tool. "Yes, sir. X-ray and infrared came back negative, as did eezo scans…" She looked up just in time to catch a small object he tossed to her. She turned the plain, pale clump of material over in her hand.

"Ceramic-beryllium composite alloy. Completely inert until hit with a targeted electrical pulse – then, 'boom.' Salarian STG invented it, crafty little lizards."

Her arm fell to her side as she looked around him to the center of the room. "And the hostages? The kidnappers? Am I supposed to believe they blew themselves up as well as us?"

He smiled craftily. "What hostages?"

She pursed her lips together, holding back the retort that had threatened to emerge from them. "Sir, I understand that those are just dummies as this was a training exercise, but thermal scans indicated 17 individuals in the room. For purposes of the exercise, there were people in here…"

He motioned over his shoulder and walked toward the center of the room. "Everybody, pay attention." He reached down and hefted up a limp form. "Your basic humanoid mech, fitted with a thermal unit designed to simulate a living being. Leave out the VI brain, and they're not even that expensive to acquire. They're not here because this was an exercise – they're part of the scenario."

She nodded slowly. "So it was a trap, then. Sir, is this another Kobayashi Maru-type test of some sort? Because, respectfully, I already did one of those last week, and – "

"And performed quite well – yes, I know. And no, it isn't. This scenario was entirely, if not easily, winnable."

His hands clasped behind his back as he began pacing slowly, all eyes now on him. "Lieutenant, I'm going to impart some words of wisdom shared with me many years ago by the best instructor I ever had. To quote: 'A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you do know about it, it's an opportunity.'"

Her head tilted a bit as she absorbed the words. "That's an excellent observation, sir – but how were we supposed to know this was a trap?"

He shrugged mildly. "You tell me."

That meant there was an answer. She ran back through the mission in her head, looking for anything out of sync…

"If they were really holding hostages here, the building should have been more heavily guarded. It was far too easy to get in."

He nodded. "Good. What else?"

She began pacing as well, hand at her chin. "Well, if they were smart kidnappers, they wouldn't have held the hostages in such a large room, where they might lose control of them; probably would have shackled them in some way, too."

He nodded again, silently encouraging her. He was a hard-ass, but this wasn't Basic. Everyone here was a talented soldier; his job was to make them better.

"They probably would have had sensors at the entrance to the room and elsewhere, just in case someone got past the guards; tripping them would have sent the kidnappers into full alert..." She stopped and looked back at him, holding up the blob in her hand. "But sir, how the hell were we supposed to detect this stuff, if it's undetectable?"

One side of his mouth quirked upward. "I didn't say it was undetectable. I said it was inert."

She just stared at him.

"Gamma rays."

She sighed heavily, her shoulders dropping. "I'm sorry, sir, but tech is not exactly my strong suit. You're going to have be more explicit."

"Then it's probably a good idea to always have someone with you for whom tech is their strong suit, Lieutenant. A skilled military tech will have the necessary mods to run a gamma sweep; it's not very healthy if you make it a habit, so we don't include it in the standard equipment." He smiled somewhat kindly then. "You don't have to know how all the tools at your disposal work – but you do have to know what they can do for you."

She nodded. "I understand, sir." She gazed around the room again. "So…what's the opportunity?"

He chuckled. "Now you're getting it. The pulse required to set off that alloy has to be a short-range, very specific high-frequency, directed signal. Be ready for it, and you can trace it to the perpetrators' location. Catch the bad guys."

She smiled slightly. "Always enjoy doing that, sir."

He turned to the larger audience, his voice raising so that it carried throughout the room. "Despite this extensive information session, the lesson of this exercise is not actually that this was a trap. The lesson you need to take away from the exercise is this: it could always be a trap."

He resumed pacing leisurely. "Anytime you have incomplete information, anytime you even think you might have incomplete or bad information, be prepared to be walking into a trap. Most of the time, you'll be pleasantly disappointed – right up until that time you're not."

He pointed at the mech bodies as he took the alloy back from her. "Always be scanning the engagement area, looking for anything that doesn't seem right, doesn't feel right. Be ready to use any tool you have on hand to uncover hidden factors at play. Hone your instincts – then trust them. It will save your life and the lives of those you protect."

She hit her comm. "Shepard to Normandy."

Joker responded. "This is Normandy. Whatcha need, Commander?"

"Comm in the rest of the team for me." She activated the speaker so Kaidan and Ashley could hear as well. Fifteen seconds later everyone was on the line. "Time to suit up, everyone. We've got a moderately-sized merc band of unknown origin, a live nuclear weapon, and a booby-trapped mine. This – "

Kaidan's eyes narrowed. "Shepard, what makes you think the mine is rigged?"

She grinned at him – deviously enough to send his heart racing – and muted her comm. "Trust me. It's rigged." She returned to the call. "This is a very elaborate setup just to kill me – or possibly anyone that wanders along – so I'm thinking something more is going on here, and I aim to find out what. Joker, you're going to ground-drop Garrus and Liara 2.5 kilometers west-northwest from my position, behind some hills, and Wrex and Tali 4.7 kilometers due east from them. Stay low and behind the terrain, because all the emissions stealth in the world isn't going to stop the mercs from seeing you. Guys, I'm sorry we can't drop you closer, but we can't risk the mercs being alerted."

She paused and glanced back over the terrain in the distance. "Once you're ground-side, proceed to within covered-sight of the coordinates I'm sending you. Let me know when you're there, then hold position until I signal you to move in. Any questions?"

"Clear." "I'm good." "Got it." "No, ma'am."

"Alright, you are a go." She cut the link and looked over at Kaidan and Ashley. "Alenko, odds are quite high that you're going to have to disarm that bomb, and rather quickly. It's an Alliance Model M4-CB – "

He nodded, smiling just a bit. "I know; I already pulled the specs. It won't be a problem."

"Excellent." She crossed in front of him, gloved fingers brushing ever-so-lightly against his similarly-gloved hand – the unexpected contact sending shivers up his arm despite two layers of thick material between them – before sitting down in between the two of them and leaning casually against the crate.

"Now, we wait."

... ... ...

Garrus glanced over at Liara as they hiked over the…it would be exaggerating to call it "mountainous" terrain, but not by much. "So how have you been doing, Dr. T'Soni? I haven't seen you out and about much since…in the last few weeks."

She smiled briefly at him. "We've known each other for several months now – please, call me Liara."

"Alright." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'm sure I said how sorry I was about your mother, but…you've handled it gracefully and with class."

"Thank you. I…there was no other choice, even she recognized that. The truth is, my mother died some time ago; the person we saw that day was a hollow shell, filled with Saren's poison."

She frowned slightly at the incline still in front of them, then continued on. "Anyway, I've been spending most of my time pouring over my files – everyone's files – on the Protheans, searching for anything that can point us toward the Conduit. Thus far to no avail, I'm afraid. For a species that spanned two-thirds of the galaxy at the height of their empire, the Protheans left remarkably little behind."

Garrus frowned slightly at the incline still in front of them, then continued on. "You'll find the answer, don't worry."

She breathed in deeply, feeling the chill in her lungs despite her helmet's air filtration system. "I have to…I only hope I'm not too late."

... ... ...

Wrex took off jogging up the slope as soon as their boots hit the ground.

Tali quickly started off after him. "Wrex, wait! I think it's quite some distance to our hold point – perhaps you should slow down?"

He grunted over his shoulder as he disappeared over the first crest. "Faster we get there, faster we can kick back and relax!"

She sucked in a breath and hurried after him, catching him midway up the next hill. He looked over at her briefly, subtly slowing his pace.

"So, you got some space toy to play with the other day?"

She nodded quickly. "Yes, it was a derelict space probe orbiting Yanthori, though its orbit was decaying rapidly; it wouldn't have lasted another fifty years. It's Salarian in origin, but over 2,000 years old, dating from around the time the Salarians found the Citadel, and thus, the Asari. We had to take a lot of precautions, but Engineer Adams and I were just about to get the inner capsule open when Shepard commed – I'm really excited about what we might find – "

"Goddamn Quarians…do you find anything you don't have to tinker with?" He didn't wait for an answer, once again lengthening his stride.

She hurried after him. "Well, no, not really…"

... ... ...

Garrus' comm came in less than five minutes after Wrex's. "We're in position, Shepard."

"Excellent." She opened the comm to include Wrex and Tali. "Everyone hold position for a bit, catch your breath. We'll be a little while – but be ready for my signal."

She cut the link. "Call."

"Dammit…" Ashley revealed two fours, a seven, an eight, and a Jack on her Omni-tool display, then shut it off.

Shepard looked over at Kaidan, an eyebrow raised. "Call…"

His expression was completely blank as he tapped his display and a Straight Flush appeared. Her eyes narrowed dangerously at him, threatening – and promising – retribution. "I'll be goddamn…fine. Two hundred credits have been deposited into your account, Lieutenant." His lips smacked in satisfaction.

She stood up, brushing off red dirt from much of her suit. "Alright, we're up. Alenko, from the minute we hit that door, I want you scanning for trips, explosives, anything – on every frequency we know. We find bad guys, Williams and I will handle them; Williams, obviously that means I want you scanning for bad guys. We good?" At their nods, she gazed up at the ramp into the mine.

"Let's do this."

They were less than a meter into the first chamber when Kaidan raised a hand. "I've got something."

Shepard couldn't help but grin in satisfaction – with herself for knowing that there would be something, and with Kaidan for finding it so quickly. "Where?"

He studied the reading for a moment. "The walls, mostly. We've got leads running along the walls up to…" he tapped quickly on his Omni-tool "…the pillars holding this room up." He pulled up a scope and stared through it at the ceiling. "There are clusters of…looks like a CH-6 compound. Crude, but effective." He put the scope away. "The other end of the leads converge on a transceiver in that far corner. After that, it's wireless."

She smiled at him. "Damn, Kaidan. I knew there was a reason I kept you around."

He opened his mouth, a witty and rather suggestive retort on his tongue…but he just couldn't quite bring himself to say it, still feeling constrained by heavily-ingrained protocol and formality. Instead he merely nodded. "Just glad I could help." He could see Ashley rolling her eyes exaggeratedly behind Shepard, and shot her a withering glare as soon as Shepard turned away.

"So can we take out the transceiver without whoever is on the other end knowing we did?"

He thought for a second. "I'll have to get a look at it to know."

"Okay. Is it going to go off before we reach it?"

He exhaled slowly. "Considering it hasn't gone off already, I don't think so. It's either controlled by the doors, tripwires, or a third party. Keep our eyes open for trips, and traversing this room should be safe."

She nodded. "Let's take it slow all the same."

Eight agonizing minutes later Kaidan stared intently at the transceiver. "It's triggered externally."

Shepard raised an eyebrow beside him. "And…that's a good thing, right?"

He nodded, chuckling lightly. "Yes. That means we can cut it and, if we do it right, whoever's on the other end won't know."

She gazed at the ceiling, and at nothing. "So they send the signal to detonate, and nothing happens…but maybe they don't know that. Unless the explosives are powerful enough to collapse the entire hillside. Are they?"

He shook his head quickly. "Not even close. Just enough to collapse this room." His mouth twitched. "The nuclear bomb in here, on the other hand…that's a twenty-kiloton warhead – if it goes off, those mercs outside are going to get caught in the blast. Surely they realize that?"

She took a half-step back, eyes narrowing slightly as she disappeared momentarily inside her own thoughts. Her mouth worked concertedly, teeth biting alternately on her lower and upper lips in a haphazard way that threatened to drive him mad and was not in any way helpful to the situation at hand. In desperation he focused back on the transceiver, keeping a watch on her out of the corner of his eye.

After an interminable few seconds, she nodded slowly. "Either they really are that stupid, in which case we have nothing to worry about, or…they expect us to be able to disarm the bomb…because they want to kill us themselves."

She grinned to herself – though both Kaidan and Ashley saw and enjoyed it – her eyes sparkling mischievously. "Pity the man who thinks he hasn't underestimated me…" Her eyes darted to Kaidan. "Kill the transceiver – as subtly as possible, of course."

He nodded quickly, turning back to it. He activated the electron probe attachment on his Omni-tool and carefully burned the wires' connection to the transceiver. Satisfied, he straightened up. "Done."

She smiled at him again, quickly but intimately. "Good job." Then she turned to Ashley, who was by now looking thoroughly bored, leaning against the rocky wall, idly twirling her rifle in her hands. "Don't worry, Ash – I promise, you will get your chance to wreak havoc soon enough. But first, we go in there." She nodded towards the circular door built into the mine wall. "Alenko, I expect there will be a nuclear bomb somewhere on the other side of that door, so…be ready."

He nodded sharply. "Always am…ma'am." Her eyes cut back at him for only the briefest split-second before she opened the door.

The door only revealed another tunnel, which revealed another door. That door, however, revealed a nuclear bomb. And a few other things.

As soon as the door closed behind them – Kaidan already kneeling beside the rather large probe/bomb in the corner – a holographic projection appeared in the middle of the small cavern, consisting primarily of the head-and-shoulders image of a rather unremarkable-looking human male. Hair shaved close enough to almost be considered bald, a scar cutting across his nose, pale blue eyes, pasty skin. She regarded the projection speculatively, and waited.

"Shepard...at last."

Her head tilted slightly, eyeing the projection at a studied angle. "You have me at a disadvantage, Mr.…"

The man laughed uproariously, looking absurd as his head bobbed up and down. "No matter. I know you." His gazed centered back on her. "The name is Elanos Haliat. You wouldn't know it, but I was once the king of the Terminus Systems underworld. My crowning achievement, and the first step in our larger conquest of the galaxy, was to be the takeover of Elysium."

She frowned in spite of herself. Elysium? But that was Batarians…no matter. Later. She returned her gaze to the projection, deliberately working the frown into a smirk. "You're saying that you were behind the Skyllian Blitz? Color me skeptical."

He scoffed, his visage clipping off the projection briefly. "I may not have been on the ground, leaving the scutwork to the Batarians, but I was the idea, the vision behind it…" His eyes narrowed, focusing on her to the point where they absurdly dominated the projection. "And it should have worked – it would have worked. Except for you. Right place, right time, an upstart young officer looking to prove her worth – I get it, Shepard, I do. And that's fine. You thwarted me that day…but you won't this day."

Her mind was reeling with unwelcome thoughts, but she held her expression. "Haliat, you won't get away – "

"Have fun with your little present, Shepard." He cut the link as the probe's display started blinking bright red.

10…

She immediately turned to Kaidan. "Do you have it?"

9…

He didn't respond, focused as he was on the 20-kiloton nuclear warhead in front of him.

8…

He stood up as the display vanished, exhaling sharply. "It's disarmed."

In another situation she might have thrown him a grin and a compliment. Here she just nodded sharply, already turning toward the exit. "They'll know in a few seconds it didn't go off. Let's move." She hit her comm as she hurried down the tunnel. "Get ready. On my signal, wipe them out."

They made a hard left, headed down the twin tunnel, out the back exit, and onto the hard dirt slope above the mercenary camp.

Elanos Haliat took several steps toward them before stopping twenty meters away, fingers twitching over the gun on his hip. "Nice job, Shepard. I should have known a simple nuclear warhead wouldn't pose a challenge for you." He shrugged. "No matter; just means I get to kill you myself."

She merely raised an eyebrow, arms crossing lightly over her stomach. "How did you know I would be the one to come for the probe? The Alliance could have sent anyone."

He smiled; it was an unpleasant sight. "I have more than one friend in the Alliance, and I know you're Hackett's errand girl these days. It wasn't that difficult to find out your ship had entered the Voyager Cluster. Only then did I activate the probe's signal."

"Fine. Why Elysium?"

"Why not Elysium? Smack in the middle of the Skyllian Verge, sitting at the vortex of so many simmering conflicts – take it out, and the whole region collapses into chaos. And pirates thrive on chaos. My wealth and power would multiply as my gangs fed on those hapless people caught in the middle of it all."

He sighed almost dreamily. "It was a beautiful plan…" Then he stared back at her, eyes full of hatred. "Why did you have to be there, Shepard? You could have gone anywhere…why did you have to go there?"

She met his stare coldly, eyes darkening. "I heard they had great seafood." She lightly touched the comm transceiver on her belt with her index finger. "Now."

The camp lit up with gunfire, explosions and biotic energy as Garrus and Liara appeared from the left, Wrex and Tali from the right, and Kaidan and Ashley stepped forward on either side of her. The mercs scrambled around, hunting for cover and targets while activating their shields, but it was all far too slow and far too late as the combined firepower of her team, coupled with superior position and the element of surprise, utterly overwhelmed their significantly greater numbers.

Shepard didn't even raise her weapon. She just stood there, arms crossed, smiling malevolently at Haliat as he looked around in panic. After several seconds he turned back to her, boiling over with rage. "Bitch! You'll pay fo– "

He fell to a headshot from Ash.

... ... ...

Kaidan exited the showers following a late night workout, slipping on his BDUs and heading for the mess for a quick snack before finally, maybe, going to bed. The mission today had left him keyed up, the punishing workout only slightly taking the edge off.

The ship was quiet, a few members of the skeleton night crew moving about the only signs of activity. He rounded the corner, running his fingers through his still damp hair…and saw Shepard sitting at the table in the corner, hands wrapped around a steaming mug, staring down at its contents as if the secrets to the universe could be found within.

He was standing there debating whether to approach her or leave her be when she looked over at him, smiling just a bit. "Kaidan."

He returned the smile, heading to the cabinets behind the counter and grabbing a snack. "Mind if I join you for a few?"

She leaned back in the chair, bringing the mug to her lips. "Please do."

He sat down across from her, watching her out of the corner of his eye as he opened the package of granola and nuts. She wore an expression that was not at all typical for her – heavy, troubled. Unsure of what to do with it, he searched for something to say. "So what do you – "

"I'm such an idiot."

He frowned, brow furrowing in consternation. "What? How could you possibly think that? You were amazing today."

Her eyes rose from her cup – of tea, he could now see – and met his. They were even more troubled than her expression, dark and turbulent, pale violet swirling into indigo. It made for a stark, shocking contrast to their usual dazzling vivacity.

"Elysium. I've spent all this time hating the Batarians for what they tried to do, linking it in my mind with Mindoir, thinking I had a personal vendetta. But it turns out it was Haliat…just some two-bit thug…just another criminal power play."

"The Batarians were still at the forefront of the attack, that hasn't changed…" he replied hesitantly.

Her head shook slowly. "They were just following orders. Another day on the job." She sighed heavily. "No…I was wrong. Maybe not about Mindoir, but about Elysium…who knows what else."

She huffed a sad, desperate laugh; the sound of it tore at his heart. "I wonder, would Kate Bowman and nineteen other people be alive today if I had known that when we went to Terra Nova? I think maybe they would be." She gazed off into the distance. "I wonder how long I'll pay for that mistake."

He smiled gently. "For as long as you choose to. You've put that burden on yourself, Shepard."

Her head tilted to the side as she looked back at him curiously, as if she had no idea what to make of his words. Then she shook it off, taking a quick sip of her tea. "I'm sorry, you don't need to hear me wallow in pathetic self-pity. I should – "

"It's okay." He instinctively reached out and placed a hand over hers, ignoring the resulting spike in his heartbeat. "All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I do actually know you're human."

She smiled softly at him then, tinged with chagrin at being called out. "Don't tell anyone, okay? It can just be between you and I."

He chuckled lightly. "It's a deal." As her eyes flitted away he quickly pulled his hand back, and the moment passed.

She cleared her throat as she stood. "Try and get some rest; it looks like we're going to have a busy day tomorrow. I got a call from the Council a few hours ago – they received a high priority message from one of their STG teams. It was too garbled to decipher, but the team was gathering intel on Saren. We're headed to their last known location, a planet in the Sentry Omega – Virmire."

She sighed tiredly as she placed her mug in the washer. "The good news is, the climate there is a lot nicer than it was on Agebinium. We may even get some sun."

He twisted around in his chair to face her. "Do you think this might be the break we've been looking for?"

She shrugged. "It could hold the key to finding the Conduit…it could be another dead end…" She started toward her quarters, then paused and looked back at him, an eyebrow raised slightly and the hint of a smile on her lips.

"…it could be a trap."