"With respect, sir," Garrus replied impatiently, "Fist is as good as gone if we wait, along with any evidence we could use to take down his organisation."

Esecutor Palin bristled. He said, "Since when were you on that case, Garrus. You know that's Chellik's business."

Shepherd stepped forward and said, "Chellik has just agreed to shut down his operation in Chora's Den in exchange for some help from me on his case. He's pulling his contact out now."

"Sir, Fist is going to bolt," said Garrus, with urgency telling on his voice. "We both know he'll take any chance we have of tracking Chellick's arms dealer right along with him. We have to move quickly."

Executor Palin looked almost like he was in pain, but he finally gave the nod. "Alright. But Garrus you're in command of this raid, and if even one bystander gets hurt, I'll arrest you myself. And you, Commander Shepherd, this isn't Akuze. If you or anyone of your team so much as shows the muzzle of your gun to someone not pointing one back, you will answer to me in court, understand?"

Shepherd nodded respectfully.

"Of course, sir," Garrus said, already moving with the others to the waiting C-Sec fast response speeder.

"Where's Wrex?" Shepherd asked quietly as she caught up.

Garrus whispered back, "I didn't think it would be a good idea for Palin to find out he was with us. I sent him to the markets to make sure Fist doesn't get out of the Den. Wrex said if Fist came out or if we didn't get there by noon, he was going in alone."

Shepherd glanced at the time and cursed. That was literally zero wiggle room. "Right, step on it," she said, buckling in as Garrus opened up the throttle. "Know any shortcuts?"

Garrus dared to look away from the traffic for a split second in surprise. "Didn't peg you as the corner-cutting type, Commander. After your bother over those prisoners, I thought you played by the book."

"Up until it puts innocent lives at risk, yeah," she said. "Those crooks could have killed the cabby or put you in a crash. But if getting there one minute earlier means we get there before Jenna gets made, or before Wrex blows that whole area of the Citadel apart, you could speed through Citadel Tower and I wouldn't complain."

Garrus chuckled as he put the speeder into a gut wrenching dive. "There's a lot of people would love to crash a speeder through the Council chambers." Shepherd thought that might be preferable to the small the maintenance access tunnel Garrus seemed to be aiming for. Inside, it was bigger than she thought, but it was still terrifying doing these speeds around moving cranes and work platforms.

With a whine of overheated engines, the speeder emerged out of the tunnel and span to a stop from the high speed transit route under Chora's Den. Wrex looked back from where he had been about to kick in the doors, and it was probably disappointment Shepherd saw when he stepped back.

Shepherd took command, the Executor could screw over it all he liked; damned if she let a cowboy like Garrus take point on this one. "Garrus, Ashley, with me. Kaidan, Wrex, cover the speedway and the markets access, I don't want anyone coming in after us." She almost forgot, since normally she didn't need to say it, but with Garrus and Wrex, she said, "Check behind your targets, no civilian casualties, and minimum collateral so no explosives. Understood?" They were stacked up outside the door. Wrex was stood there, looking like he didn't know what to do or say. She looked right at him and raised her voice, "Understood, Wrex?"

He growled and nodded reluctantly, then hefted a shotgun the size of a small suitcase off his back. Shepherd breathed and closed her eyes, then gave the order to breach.

Hard target assault was not Shepherd's favourite mission profile, especially with no recon. From the doorway, she put five rounds into the shields of the guy across the room while Garrus unloaded on the closest target behind the bar. With his fire for cover, Shepherd moved and stayed low. Ashley stayed at the door for a moment to cover as well, then all of a sudden targets were dying everywhere as all three stood and moved in as one, muzzles seeking, finding and eliminating targets as fast as they appeared. That was when the krogan bouncer they'd seen earlier came from the back of the club.

"Ash, cover left!" Shepherd called, then dropped to one knee under a shotgun blast from the oncoming krogan. If he had charged, life would have been harrowing for a while, but he came on slow at first, taking concentrated fire from two highly trained operatives with military grade assault rifles. Not even krogan shields could take that for long, and when the shields flared and died, Shepherd began firing in bursts, alternating between the eyes. The krogan charged, but be couldn't see through the impacts on his helmet, and as he crashed past, Shepherd deftly stuck a tech grenade over the weakened armour of his right eye. There was an explosion of arcing, high voltage electricity, and the krogan collapsed, dead or unconscious from the shock to his brain.

"Nice!" Garrus exclaimed, looking thrilled with life. "I'll have to remember that one."

"If it's krogan, just use the nearest bomb," Ashley said.

There was a booming laugh from Wrex outside. "Ha! You got that right, kid! Wish you'd left him to me though. Could have gutted that punk like a varren."

Shepherd was moving quickly forwards, and Ashley and Garrus followed, spreading around the room, clearing all the hiding places as they went. "Wrex, if Fist has any friends on the way, they're all yours," Shepherd said. As she spoke, she signalled Ashley and Garrus to stack up on the corridor to the back.

There were two more in there. One stun grenade later, they withered under fire from three well aimed assault rifles.

The door ahead opened, and three guns flicked straight to the two targets behind it. "Stop right there!" one of the hostiles called in a desperate voice, with his outmoded pistol aimed roughly in Shepherd's direction. "Don't come any closer!" If he hadn't called out, he would be dead, along with his friend.

Shepherd lowered her gun and held up her hand to the others.

Garrus scoffed, "Warehouse workers. All the real guards must be dead."

"Stay back, or we'll shoot!" one of them said.

These guys were in the wrong place at the wrong time, given guns and made to use them for a boss they probably didn't like. "This would be a good time to find somewhere else to work," Shepherd told them, gesturing at them to get out.

They jumped at it. One of them tried to keep the gun, but as he ran past Shepherd, she smoothly relieved both it, and his ability to move his wrist without medical treatment. He cried out in pain, but he had lost her sympathy. She gave him a shove towards the exit and called after him, "Don't make me regret it."

"I'd have never thought of that," Garrus admitted.

Ashley surprised Shepherd by answering, "Shooting people isn't always the answer."

One more door later, and they found Fist with two combat drones for body gaurds. Garrus and Ashley targeted him, and so did Shepherd until she saw the armour he was wearing. The combat drones were much easier targets. With a signal from cover, she got Garrus to put out an overload charge from his omni-tool on one while she did the same on the other. Ashley rolled out of cover and held her trigger down on one of them. It was an impressive barrage. Garrus and Shepherd took the other down, which blew, and knocked Fist to the ground. As a team, they all moved up, guns trained right at him.

"Wait! Don't kill me! I surrender!" he cried.

Shepherd thought he sounded more desparate than his conscripts outside. She played to it, swapping out her rifle for the pistol as she stood right over him. "Where's the quarian?" she demanded, with the weapon aimed right at his face.

Fist's desperation waned, but it was still there when he told them, "She's not here. I don't know where she is. That's the truth!"

Ashley put her gun back in its mount on her back and said, "He's lying."

For her part, Shepherd just kept up the pressure. "You better start explaining before I lose my temper," she said.

He was really worried then, Shepherd could tell. "The quarian isn't here. Said she'd only deal with the Shadow Broker himself."

"Impossible," Garrus remarked. "the Shadow Broker only works through his agents."

Fist dared to get up and look Shepherd in the face to say, "Nobody meets the Shadow Broker, ever. Even I don't know his true identity. But she didn't know that. I told her I'd set a meeting up. But when she shows up, it'll be Saren's men waiting for her."

Barely managing to contain her rage, Shepherd gripped him by the throat and demanded, "Give me the location. Now." He hesitated and she threw him off.

"Here on the wards," Fist said, pointing to a point on the map he had on the bulkhead. "The back alley by the markets. She's supposed to meet them right now. You can make it if you hurry."

Shepherd swung a vicious right cross on his jaw that sent him staggering backwards. Before he recovered, she forced him back against the wall with her forearm at his throat, and with her left hand, she slipped the tracking tag into a seal of his armour. Armour like this, he would never let it out of his sight. "You're not my concern," she told him, nodding to the escape route Fist had been opening in the wall when they arrived.

Fist nodded and left like a dog with its tail between its legs, promising never to be seen again.

Then Shepherd was all action again, literally sprinting out through the club with the others struggling to keep up. "Kaidan!" she called over radio. "Get what you can off Fist's computers before C-Sec gets here with their red tape! Wrex, cover him! You two, with me!"

"We've got incoming, Commander!" Kaidan called. Not for long they didn't. Between the five of them, it was over as quickly as it began.

"Get to that office!" Shepherd shouted to Kaidan over the last few shots. "Make sure Fist doesn't erase anything, and get what you can." Then she started running again. Whatever was happening in Zakera Ward, it seemed Executor Palin had managed to get squad cars here anyway. By the number of approaching sirens, there were quite a few. Shepherd was already in the back alley as C-Sec deployed.

There was a conversation going on down there, reaching its end. Apparently this quarian had brains as well as guts, because she was calling the deal off. Before she could be attacked, she threw a tech grenade at two salarian assassins waiting nearby and bolted for cover. Thanks to fire from Shepherd's team, Saren's turian representative bugged out to cover too. He was a tough bastard, but with odds like these and on low ground, he didn't stand a chance. As he fell, the quarian emerged from hiding, exclaiming to herself, "Fist set me up! I knew I couldn't trust him!"

"Were you hurt in the fight?" Shepherd asked.

"I know how to look after myself," the quarian said. Then she carried on, sounding for all the world like this was all in a day's work. "Not that I don't appreciate the help. Who are you?"

"My name's Shepherd. I'm looking for evidence to prove Saren's a traitor."

"Then I have a chance to repay you for saving my life. But not here. We need to go somewhere safe."

"The ambassador's office," Ashley suggested. "It's safe there. He'll want to see this anyway."

The ambassador was waiting for them when they arrived, his back turned, looking dramatically over the Presidium below. "You're not making my life easy, Shepherd. Firefights in the wards? An all-out assault on Chora's Den. Do you know how many…" He turned around and saw the quarian. "Who's this?" he asked. "A quarian. What are you up to, Shepherd?"

"Making your day, Ambassador. She has information linking Saren to the geth."

Udina looked less than convinced. "Really? Maybe you better start from the beginning, Miss…?"

"My name is Tali. Tali Zorah nar Rayya."

Still cautious, Udina said, "We don't see many quarians here. Why did you leave the flotilla?"

"I was on my pilgrimage, my right of passage into adulthood," Tali explained.

"Tell us what you found," said Shepherd, eager to get to the point.

"During my travels I began hearing reports of geth. Since they drove my people into exile, the geth have never ventured beyond the Veil. I was curious. I tracked a patrol of geth to an uncharted world. I waited for one to become separated from its unit. Then I disabled it and removed its memory core."

Anderson said in doubting tones, "I thought the geth fried their memory cores when they died. Some kind of defence mechanism."

"What did you find out?" Shepherd asked Tali, not grateful at all for the interruption. If anyone could get at a geth memory core it was a quarian; the geth were their creations after all.

"Most of the core was wiped clean," Tali said, "but I salvaged something from its audio banks." She tapped a few buttons on her omni tool.

Saren's disembodied voice sounded in the room. He was saying, "Eden Prime was a major victory! The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the conduit."

Anderson got excited. "That's Saren's voice," he said. "This proves he was involved in the attack!"

Shepherd was more concerned with the not so obvious. "He said Eden Prime brought him one step closer to finding the conduit. Any idea what that means?"

"The conduit must have something to do with the beacon," Anderson said, unhelpfully. "Maybe it's some kind of prothean technology, like a weapon." Shepherd looked at her feet.

Tali interrupted, for which Shepherd was grateful. She said, "Wait. There's more. Saren wasn't working alone."

Saren repeated what they'd heard him say before, and then a second, female voice said, "And one step closer to the return of the reapers."

"I don't recognise that other voice, "Udina said. "The one talking about reapers."

Shepherd wondered where she'd heard about "Reapers" before. From where, she did not know, so she said, "I feel like I've heard that name before…"

"According to the memory core," Tali told her, "the reapers were a highly advanced machine race that existed fifty thousand years ago. The reapers hunted the protheans to total extinction, and then they vanished. At least, that's what the geth believe."

Udina folded his arms and grumbled, "Sounds a little far-fetched."

"The vision on Eden Prime… I understand it now," Shepherd said, half to herself. "I saw protheans being wiped out by the reapers."

Tali filled in the last missing piece by saying, "The geth revere the reapers as gods, the pinnacle of non-organic life. And they believe Saren knows how to bring the reapers back."

"The Council's just going to love this!" mumbled Udina.

Frankly, Shepherd wished he'd start worrying about what was true and what wasn't instead of what the Council would think. An entire race of sentient machines believed the reapers were real. Her vision was so real and vivid it burned itself into her mind every time she closed her eyes, and Saren's helper quite obviously also believed whatever evidence she had seen. The ambassador needed to get a grip, so Shepherd said, with feeling, "The reapers are a threat to every species in Citadel space. We have to tell them."

Anderson was still locked onto Saren. "No matter what they think about the rest of this," he said, "those audio files prove Saren's a traitor."

"The captain's right," Udina agreed. "We need to present this to the Council right away.

Ashley spoke up for the first time. "What about her; the quarian?" Shepherd would have to teach Ashley some lessons about xenophobia, it seemed.

"My name is Tali!" the offended quarian said, then turned to Shepherd. "You saw me in the alley, Commander. You know what I can do. Let me come with you."

That was easy. Shepherd replied, "I'll take all the help I can get."

"Thanks, you won't regret this."

Udina still looked unhappy, but then he always did. "Anderson and I will go ahead to get things ready with the Council," he said to the group. "Take a few minutes to collect yourself, then meet us in the Tower."

Once Udina and Anderson had left, Shepherd opened coms to Kaidan. "Kaidan, how's it going over there?"

"C-Sec were pretty fast, Commander. I think I got something off an OSD Fist dropped, but that's about all. Shepherd, we should just hand this to the authorities. We're Alliance soldiers, not C-Sec investigators."

"Relax, Kaidan. You didn't break the law. You just copied some files for Alliance intel. Fist was in with both Saren and the Shadow Broker. That data could be invaluable." A second thought came to Shepherd, and she said, "How's Wrex?"

Kaidan hesitated. "Um, he left before C-Sec could lock down the scene. He said he would meet you at the Normandy."

"Ok, thanks Kaidan. I'll meet you back there too."

"Aye-aye, Commander. If you don't mind me asking, how'd it go with the quarian?"

"Not now, Lieutenant. Anderson will debrief everyone when we get back." Speaking of Anderson, he seemed to have slipped seamlessly into position as Udina's right hand man in all this. He was higher up by far than his rank gave him any right to be. Was Harkin's gossip true? Had Anderson really been a Spectre before? Shepherd filed that question for later.

She decided to send Ashley back to the Normandy as well, since the Council wouldn't be impressed by too many armoured marines . Garrus and Tali she invited to join her in front of the Council. Both hesitated, but when Shepherd explained that they could each testify to critical evidence of Saren's wrong doing, both agreed. So the four of them headed down out of the embassy.