Chapter 10: Formulation

Shepard

Everything had started moving very fast; Shepard had requested the presence Emily Wong and of the remaining Council observers in what was now, effectively, a war-room, and presented the situation to them. Wong had gone pale, but nodded immediate agreement to going with Shepard to the rendezvous point. And while Kesh had been quick to ask how this all hadn't been caught beforehand, Rishayla had raised a hand to stop the salarian's words. "We didn't see the pattern, either," she told Kesh, her tone grave. "This is the second time I have failed to see treachery right under my fingers. The first mistake, Tela Vasir, you detected in an afternoon, when she had deceived me for two hundred years. Commander Shepard, please, allow me to work with your security techs. My experience in sorting and analyzing data may be useful."

Gratefully, Shepard waved her to the side of the room where Kasumi and half the security staff were re-tasking satellites and studying their feeds. Cohort was assisting, and she could hear the geth's oddly melodious voice now, cutting through the chatter. "Cunningham-deceiver spoke of how his people could see our vehicles, but suggested that we could not detect his. How is this possible?"

Kasumi frowned, hands flying over the consoles. "There's been some effort put into developing stealth generators large enough to conceal a small vehicle, the way we currently have tech that can stealth an individual humanoid. The problem with that kind of tech is that it's an enormous power drain."

Jaworski was leaning in from behind her, staring at the screen. "It also puts out a lot of heat," he pointed out. "Even standard stealth generators do that. One of the reasons I hate the damn things."

"Could they not compensate for this by installing heat-sinks in the vehicles, as Normandy-class ships have to conceal their passage through space?" Cohort asked.

Sam nodded. "Sure could. . . but that adds more weight to the vehicle, which in turn sucks down more power. Then you have to add in layers of dampening material to keep the noise level down, and that's more weight. Only thing a vehicle like that could possibly run on would be. . . " he thought about it for a minute, then swore. "An atomic slug, basically. Kasumi, can these satellites track down radiation, separate it from the normal stuff ambient in the atmosphere?"

"We can try," Kasumi said, and her hands, and Rishayla's, became very busy indeed.

Shepard could see that the analysts were busy for the moment, and there was nothing she could do for the next five or ten minutes but wait. She stepped out of the war-room, and walked, almost blind, back to her quarters, stopping in the children's room first. All their toys, in various degrees of disarray, sat around the room, looking at her, almost accusing her. She picked up Kaius' favorite blanket, the one with the red and white stripes, from off the bed. He couldn't go to sleep without it, and often cried for it in the morning as she got him dressed; his fussing would immediately resolve into a happy grin as soon as she returned his blanket to his loving grasp. Red had been his first real word, and red always meant blanket.

From Amara's bed, she took a small, bedraggled stuffed duck. There were no actual ducks on Mindoir, at least not yet. The creature might as well have been mythological. But Amara loved it, and had gnawed holes in it while teething, which Lilitu had awkwardly patched up, as best she could, anyway.

Then she walked back into their living area, and sat down, holding these mute tokens, in front of the family spirit table. She didn't pray; Shepard was, if anything, sort of a deist, and figured that whatever entity had started the universe off—if any—had given other creatures free will for a reason, and was probably waiting to see what they did with it. Besides, spirit tables weren't for praying. They were for thinking.

She sat there for a long moment, and a few moments later, Garrus joined her. He reached down and scooped two items off the table—two unmarked blocks of jalae wood from Palaven. While his mother, Pilana, had finished their statues before she died, and while she'd lived long enough to see the twins born, she'd sent them these two pieces of wood with a note indicating that Garrus would need to carve them for her grandchildren, since she could not. Shepard's eyes focused briefly on how Pilana had chosen to depict them. Garrus stood tall and proud and unbending, a sword in one hand, the other behind him, at the small of his back; her own figure stood behind him, back to back. Their poses mirrored one another, their hands gripping each others' wrists behind their backs, ready to swing each other out of the way of an attack, swords raised to fend off foes. She'd been afraid of how Pilana would see the alien woman in Garrus' life. Now, there were times when she wondered how his mother had seen so much.

Garrus was staring down at the blocks in his hands. "I haven't even started these," he said, his voice a dry whisper. "I haven't been able to get the shape of them in my head. They're all blocks and toys and blankets at this age. How can I see their spirits?"

She reached out and touched his elbow. "It's not your fault," she told him. "If anything, it's mine. I should have had all the families move to the next largest city."

He snorted. "And where does that end? When we move them off-planet, to someplace safer, like, say, Eden Prime?"

There is no safe place, she thought. "Urz? Urz, come here."

The varren scrambled out of his bed, and moved to her elbow. He could sense her mood, smell it on her skin, she was sure. She offered the toy and the blanket to him, and he dipped his vast head, sniffing them, recognizing the scent of pack. "Protect," she told him, and, with great care, put the little duck and the blanket on the spirit table, before leaning over to blow out the candles that burned there. She was starting to have the first inklings of a plan, but there were a lot of variables to consider.

They left the room then, Urz padding at their heels. From across the compound, she could hear the angry thought-rumble of Sings-to-the-Sky. A brood warrior had, after all, a genetic imperative to protect the young, and he was eager to take on the task. Protection for the young of the queen, what must be done? he demanded as they came back in. Arpeggios of vengeance, gray and black, blue harmonies of rescue and return.

Garrus muttered, "I think you just got promoted to rachni queen in his eyes."

Shepard grimaced slightly, but sat back down at the table. "All right," she said, briskly. "What have we got from the analysts?"

Rishalya pulled up a new screen, letting everyone see the results. "There are radiation trails in the vicinity," she stated. "Several come up to the edge of town, and from the dispersion levels and rate of decay, we can safely say that these trails were left when between one to three vehicles dropped off the men who stole the groundcar and then kidnapped the families. They have circled back to the east, towards the desert, and are well ahead of both the people on foot and where Cunningham's groundcar should be."

Kasumi superimposed all the locations on a terrain map. "We could take out Cunningham's vehicle with a guided missile strike from a shuttle before he gets to the group on foot, but then we'd risk them killing the hostages immediately."

"Not an option," Shepard said, immediately. "How many total cloaked vehicles?"

"We're counting four or five, total, with an unknown number of people inside them. At least one of them leaves trails along a z-axis, implying that it might be a Hammerhead or a gunship, instead of a groundcar," Rishayla replied, promptly. "Additionally, there's at least one more vehicle close to the base. Probably an observer team. They might not be in the vehicle at this point, may moved out on foot to keep an eye on our movements. If so, I think we can assume they're using personal stealth generators." The asari woman keyed up another terrain map, and Shepard could see that the likely vehicle location was on a hillside east of the base, about two kilometers away.

Kasumi added, "I fed the information to Argus," and her eyes shifted to the side, and Shepard nodded, knowing that Argus was the current code-name for Liara, the Shadow Broker. Our friend with all the eyes. "There are indications that the Blood Pack recently purchased similarly outfitted vehicles, but that none have seen use on any known world. Moving these vehicles quickly and discreetly would have been expensive. And it had to have been done in the last week, because that's how long ago the transmitters were planted. This was planned for a long time, but executed in a hurry. Argus is looking for the money trail right now."

Gris rumbled, "Why would the Blood Pack throw in with human supremacists?"

Kasumi shrugged. "They're mercs," she said, simply. "Mercs go where the credits are."

Gris shifted in his chair. Like most krogan, he'd spent a lot of time off-world, in just such mercenary endeavors, and it was plain that he didn't like his current reflections. "Not the point now," Grunt told him, firmly. "Do we have a plan?" he asked the rest of the room. "More mercs means more killing, which means more glory for all of us."

Shepard tried not to twitch visibly, and felt Garrus stir beside her, forcing down his instinctive response. Sidonis spoke first, and his voice was sharp, "Forgive me if I'm not thrilled with the idea of killing in the vicinity of my children and my mate." He locked eyes with Grunt, and to Shepard's surprise, the krogan looked away first.

"Right," Shepard said, "We need a way to unbalance them and delay them until we can get in position and control the situation. Right now, they think they're in control. We want them to still think they're in control, so they don't get jumpy, but take control away from them before they realize it. And we need to do it all without any scouts seeing us move." Summarized that way, she wasn't entirely sure how they'd do that.

"Shepard-Commander," Cohort said then, moving its eyeflaps minutely. "This unit has a recommendation regarding the stealth devices used by the infiltrators. A EM field large enough would knock out all of their shields at once. Addendum: if we can bring their forces close enough together, the blast radius of the weapon could be greatly reduced."

"I like it," Jaworski said, eyes narrow. "If we can force them into the right kind of terrain, the land itself could shield us from the blast, but still take them by surprise." He and Lantar were surprisingly focused, though she could see the nervous, anger-fueled energy in both of them in the way they fidgeted, looked at the screens, glanced at the door. They both wanted to be doing something. She shared their frustration, but this is what they could do, for now.

Garrus was already tapping on his omnitool, "The smallest NNEMP we have in the armory has a radius of 200 meters. Midrange is 500 meters." NNEMP meant, of course, a non-nuclear EMP; they didn't have any nuclear ones, not that those would have been an option under the circumstances.

Shepard winced. "Since I'm about forty percent cybernetic at this point, folks, I'm not fond of the thought of being at ground zero when one of those goes off. Whatever vehicle I take to the meeting will have to have some EM shielding on it." She sighed, and rubbed at the back of her neck. "But, we're ahead of ourselves. Let's see if we can move them around a little."

She tabbed at her own console now, opening a secure FTL channel to the Estallus. "Captain Jallus? I need to speak with Joker and EDI."

Joker's face appeared on the screen almost immediately. "Joker. Glad to see you're not in the brig."

"No, I'm in the medbay," he said, and his face was a little grim. "We've talked and talked, and the only way I see is for me to try to take control of the Normandy from here."

"I hope you can do it, Joker. A lot is riding on it. If they're in the vicinity of home base, they're probably looking for a landing zone in the eastern desert. You're not going to let them do that. I want them to land on the western slopes of the mountains, near the Painted Rock Caves." She tapped on the console, sending him the exact coordinates. She'd spent the last five years of her life on this land; she knew it very well, at this point. "Once you land, lock down all systems if you can, and get the hell out of there. You ready to try?"

Joker

"As ready as I'm going to be," he replied, and took a deep breath. The turian doctor was agitated, unsure of what she could do to help him in the case of a neural emergency. Joker gave her a feeble grin. "Just keep the icepacks coming," he told her. "The cooler we keep my brain, the happier I'll be. And the sooner we get this done, the sooner EDI can stop having an out-of-body experience." He grinned at the blue eyeball hovering near his head. "What's it like, being a ghost out of the machine?" he asked.

In his mind, EDI fretted, Jeff, there are other alternatives. I could send the 'Jeff Moreau' components of my database back to the Normandy by FTL transmission, as I sent myself here. Once there, the personality matrix would know all that we know, and could take control of the ship once more.

Yeah, not happening. First, we don't know if they've imposed physical shackles and barriers to the AI core again. Second, 'Little Jeff' has only two years of my experiences; we have no idea how stable an AI based on that would be at this point. Third, if he is sapient, he might kind of like being alive, and might not want to vacate the core for you to return. Fourth, if we force him to, wouldn't that be murder, in a sense?

Your logic is. . . unassailable, she said, and he could sense surprise in her tone.

I've had lots of time to think of these things. Besides, the lucky bastard gets to spend eternity with you when I die. He doesn't get to start that one damn minute before I'm gone.

Wordless distress, flickers of images, going by at nearly subliminal speeds.

He waited for her to calm, which took about two seconds—an eternity, by machine standards—and told her, It's okay. The part of me that's in this goddamn useless body won't know it, but the part of me that gets to stay with you will understand. I'm jealous of my own self, and isn't that just about the stupidest thing you've ever heard? But so long as you're not alone when I'm gone, I'm really okay with it. I just better appreciate what I'm doing, is all I'm saying. He took a deep breath. And I hope he doesn't get to take over today. "Okay, doc? I'm opening the gateways in the chip. You can start all your diagnostics."

Various monitors around his bed in the medbay began to chirp thoughtfully. Joker closed his eyes and opened the chip's gateways. He'd rarely used it in this mode before, and certainly never via FTL.

Steams, torrents of data overwhelmed him at first, and he fought to make sense of them. Then his mind found the right configuration, and adjusted to the input. Suddenly, it was as if he were sitting in the pilot seat of the Normandy after all. He could see the aerogel consoles around him, waiting for his touch.

You doing that, sweetheart?

I am attempting to create a construct for you to interpret the data and act upon it.

Good job, it's much easier now.

Joker was already starting to sweat profusely, but he reached up, physically, out of reflex, and began to touch the consoles in front of him. To his observers in the medbay and on the viewscreen, it probably looked as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra, but the chip interpreted his intentions much more easily this way. "Bypassing security lock-outs," Joker said, staring at nothing in front of him. "I have control." He grinned, suddenly, feeling a rivulet of sweat course down his cheek. "If I said I'm assuming control, would someone hit me?"

"Get on with it, Joker," Shepard said, on the viewscreen.

Slowly, carefully, to avoid any sort of detection or alarm, Joker brought up the navigation system first. "Yeah, we're close to home base. We're tucked behind the moon at the moment. They've had some problems resolving their landing zone, because EDI severed all the on-board networks. Their logs indicate that they were supposed to be following the beacons in, but you've moved those around, so they've been trying to get in touch with their ground team for extraction coordinates. It looks like they're trying to remain stealthy with just low-frequency radio transmissions that they're bouncing off a couple of satellites, but they haven't been able to get through. Frankly, I don't know how they got as far as they did with just manual control."

His head was beginning to ache fiercely. An alarm began to bing softly at his left elbow, and the turian doctor put a fresh icepack on his head, bringing a welcome coolness. Joker closed his eyes entirely now. "Bringing engines on-line. Maneuvering thrusters are go."

As he pulled out of orbit, he asked EDI silently, How do I get the secure cam feeds online and upload them to you through this chip?

Jeff, that is not a good idea, she warned him. You will be approaching the throughput limit of the connection, just controlling the ship. Upload and download simultaneously is an unacceptable risk!

Shepard and everyone else need to know what they've got on board and coming in. Anything I can send, is valuable and necessary. Now how the hell do I do it?

Reluctantly, EDI walked him through the steps, and Joker felt the first tremors in his hands begin. He steadied himself, and glanced at the images streaming past occasionally as he put the ship on approach for Minoir, a nice, steady, predictable approach. One that any autopilot would have made. From what he could gather from the secure cams, that's what the intruders thought was going on. Three of them had gathered in the cockpit, and were fiddling with the controls, trying to work the consoles, alter their course. . . something, anything. Not today, Joker thought giddily. I might not be the ship, the way EDI is, but this is my ship, you bastards. Shepard might command the ship, but it was his.

Vaguely, he could hear people talking over the comm channel, identifying faces from the video feed. "Yeah, that's Atieno," he heard Shepard say. "She has no prior connections to the AEC that we were able to find before, but hell, Cunningham checked out, too."

"Could be a highest bidder thing," Garrus suggested cynically.

"Okay," Joker said out loud, cutting through the chatter. "I can't do anything about the stealth system. They've got that online. But I can skip us over the atmosphere a couple of times as we come in, so we'll come in hot. You'll be able to track us that way, in case they manage to override EDI's lockouts and take control." Fresh rivers of sweat were pouring down his face, his body, and he felt something heavy and cold dumped on his chest, ungently. "Damnit, watch the ribs!" he shouted, and his control wavered for a moment.

"Sorry, sorry," the doctor apologized, and the next icepack was placed more carefully over his shoulders and the back of the neck. Joker was starting to shudder violently; the cold was shocking his system, and it was getting increasingly difficult to concentrate past the pain in his head.

"Entering the atmosphere in three. . . two. . . one. . . mark," Joker said, as crisply as he could, and maneuvered the Normandy expertly into Mindoir's atmosphere, altering the entry trajectory carefully forwards a couple of extra degrees—nothing that the ship couldn't handle, but enough to superheat the ablative armor and turn the descending ship into a blazing shooting star, even if just for a moment.

Alarms started to blip and ring annoying all around him in the med bay, but he ignored them, guiding his Normandy now into a gentler plane of descent. Over the comms, he could hear Kasumi saying, "We have a positive thermal track on the ship, Commander. Bearing looks right on target for the Painted Rock area."

Joker's entire world narrowed to the consoles only he could see under his hands. He brought the ship in for a graceful landing on a forested hillside near the caves, and began locking down systems.

"Break the damn connection!" the turian doctor said, with some force.

"Not yet!" Joker said sharply. "Engines, locked down, shields, disabled, weapons off-line and staying that way." He closed the chip in his mind, and sank back against the bed, opening his eyes for the first time in thirty minutes, staring vaguely at the far wall, breathing hard. He couldn't control the shudders wracking his body, and turned his head to face EDI's blue avatar. "Okay, baby," he told her, tiredly. "I got you home safe."

Unexpectedly, she flared out of her eyeball avatar, taking on her self-image in full view of the turian doctor, the captain, and everyone looking through the comm camera's field at the moment, and crossed the room to him. He looked up into those tawny hazel eyes, the ones that looked like finely aged brandy, partially concealed by the tumbled mass of soft brown hair, and reached out to touch her hand. It was holographic, of course; his fingers passed right through it.

"Focus, Jeff," she urged him. "Keep looking at me. I'm here. I'll catch you if you fall. But stay with me."

"Always, EDI. You know that." He closed his eyes for a moment, and then re-opened them again, a little wider. "You know, considering I'm taking a week's leave at the moment, I want my money back. This hotel sucks."

She emulated emotion so well now, that he honestly wondered if there were any difference between emulation and reality. At the moment, she didn't seem to know whether to laugh or to cry, and started to do both at the same time.

Garrus

"We're coming up on time for the next contact from Cunningham," Garrus noted clincally, looking at the clock. "Chances are, he'll delay the contact, to try to demonstrate how he's in control of the situation." He was concerned for Joker's condition, of course, but the helmsman was light-years away, in the care of a competent doctor. Garrus had other concerns on his plate at the moment that were more pressing.

Kasumi shook her head. "You've worked too many hostage situations before, Garrus."

"Knowing the drill doesn't help when it's your own kids out there," he replied, grimly.

The clock ticked forwards, and he watched his wife pull up the terrain map for the paths leading to the Painted Rocks region. The Normandy was neatly perched beside the cavern entrance, and he immediately understood why she'd wanted this particular landing zone. "The actual landing area is a wide, open field, with tumbled rock formations left by glaciers," he explained to everyone in the briefing room, pulling up vid feeds taken by the scientific team. "There was a fire in the vicinity a few years ago; that's why we've got about a kilometer or two of relatively open space leading up to the actual entrance. There are good vantage points from the tree line for snipers to set up, here, here, and here." He pointed them out, quickly. "There's some cover for anyone making a stealth approach; the grass has gotten fairly high in places, and there are fallen trees everywhere. The cave itself is narrow, more of a tunnel than a cave, really."

"A good place to plant the EM device," Jaworski commented thoughtfully. "The cavern shape should shape the pulse a little more to our requirements. Well, assuming we can get the bad guys to set up the way we want them to. Always a challenge." His mouth turned down sourly.

Kasumi spoke up. "Radio traffic, Commander. It's encrypted, but we're hacking it at the moment." After a few minutes, they replayed the exchange of transmissions, which were clearly between the Normandy's intruders and their ground team, now effectively stranded on the wrong side of the mountains from one another. Cunningham's voice crackled, "The ship's autopilot took you in? Any hint of a signal coming from the planet that set it off?"

"Negative. We think it was on some sort of a timer. Maybe it was waiting for a recognition signal or some command from the AI, and when the timer ran out, it defaulted to a secondary landing zone." That was Atieno's voice. She sounded crisp and proficient.

"Stay put, and see if you can unlock any of the damned systems. We'll head your way. Cunningham out."

Garrus sat back, relatively pleased. "Okay, they're off-balance now, and improvising." He glanced at the clock. "And overdue for their call. Try to sound anxious when Cunningham calls back," he advised his wife.

"That won't be a problem," she assured him. "Any movement from their scout vehicle?" she asked Rishayla.

"None at the moment. Can you deploy scouts to try to find their observers, without being seen?"

His wife's eyes were hard and cold. "I can do better than that, Rishayla. I'll open the damn varren cages and set the gelded males loose. They'll return when Urz calls them, because he's their alpha, but in the meantime, they get to do some hunting." Her smile was as chilly as her eyes. "I have warned people, time and again, that the forests around here are not safe."

She stood, and left the room. After a moment, Garrus could hear the baying and grunting of two dozen adult male varren being told that it was dinnertime. Every one of them was trained; every one of them had imprinted on his wife and on Urz for their dominance structure. And every one of them had champion-level bite strength, capable of shearing through krogan battle armor. The only reason they were culls was because they didn't enough of the intelligence that Shepard was actually breeding for.

His wife came back in the room, and sat back down again, Urz padding at her heels. The varren almost whined, looking at the door. "You'll get to play soon enough," she told the creature, and he sat up, watching her expectantly.

The comm panel chimed. "Fifteen minutes late," Garrus said. "Cunningham's day is not going well. Don't answer it for a moment; make him wait, but not too long. Don't ask to talk to the kids. Don't give him a chance to refuse." Yes. . . I've done this far, far too often, he thought, feeling old and tired for a moment.

Shepard waited, and then answered after fifteen seconds. "I've been waiting for your call," she said, sounding every bit the anxious, worried mother that she was.

"Are you playing games, Shepard?" Cunningham demanded, accusingly. "Because if you are, I will not hesitate to start taking out my displeasure on some of these . . . creatures."

Nice distancing word, Garrus thought, mind completely cold. Not people. Not captives. Not even hostages. Creatures. Things. Can they be turned back into people for him? Create a little dissonance in his mind? Hmm. Not at his level of fanaticism. But maybe for some of his other people.

"I'm not playing any games," Shepard said, fervently. It was, he knew, the exact, literal truth.

"Very well. There's a change in plans. We'll be contacting you in three hours with coordinates. When you receive them, you, your mate," and his word-choice was mocking, not giving the courtesy title of husband, "and Emily Wong will take a shuttle to the designated area. No weapons, Shepard. No games. We're watching you."

In the background, they could hear a baby screaming, and Lantar sat forward abruptly, his expression furious. They could also hear a human female's voice, pleading, and Lantar's crest began to extend, a low growl starting in his chest as the signal cut out. 'Steady," Garrus told him quietly, unwillingly empathizing. He knew the sound of that cry all too well. "She's hungry, from the sound of it, and very angry, but she's not hurt."

Lantar sat back. "Are we going to go get them now?" he demanded.

"Yes," Shepard told him. "It's fair to say they're on the move, and they know they've got a lot of ground to cover. They've got observers here, but I also think it's fair to say that they're watching for vehicle movement from us. They're also likely to be watching the Spectre buildings. Maybe not so much the candidate barracks."

Four-legs sing hunt-song, Sky noted suddenly, his mental voice becoming contented. Red song, white song, blood and teeth and pain.

"Sounds like our watchers may be a bit distracted at the moment," Grunt said, grinning. "They might not have time to notice much of anything."

"So, no vehicles. That leaves the stables or footspeed," Jaworski said. "I make it an hour's ride by horseback to those caves of yours, commander. Less, maybe, on one of those rlatae things, but I never rode one of 'em before." He looked at the rest of the candidates, assessing them. "Lantar, you can ride those beasts?"

Sidonis nodded, once, curtly. "Cohort can ride with one of us," he commented. "His weight and mine would not burden a rlata."

Wait, wait, wait a damn minute. Are the lives of my children going to be hanging in the balance with Sidonis in on the mission? Garrus sat up straight, taking breath to object. His wife put one hand on his forearm, and, at that silent, subtle signal, Garrus mastered his anger. If it comes down to it, his kids are there, too, he forced himself to realize. But he had better realize that if they are harmed and it is in any way his fault, there is no power in the universe that will stay my hand a second time.

"What about us?" Gris asked, eagerly. "Sings-to-the-Sky and I can be of assistance, Commander. Let us fight for you."

"Can you keep up on the trails? Horses are fast, and rlatae are faster," she asked, expression still stern as steel.

"Not a problem," the young krogan told her, grinning widely.

Endurance for the chase. We will all sing the songs of red and white, blood and teeth, Sky told her, firmly.

They began to set up how they wanted to approach the cave. Jaworski, as the best at stealth of any of the candidates, and the only person on the base who didn't rely on electronic methods of remaining unseen, was the natural choice to get in close to plant the EM device in the cave. Kasumi would go with him, hanging back out of range of the EM pulse until it was safe for her to move in and go after the hostages. "We'll land our shuttle off to the side if we can," Shepard told them. "Keep to radio silence unless it's an absolute emergency."

She glanced at her husband, and jerked her head to the side, signaling for a quiet side conference. "Sidonis isn't a sniper, like you. Where should he be put? You know him best," she said, eyes intent.

Anywhere but near our children, he wanted to answer, but sighed and thought for a moment. "He's assault rifles and heavy weapons, like you," he told her. "He'll be best from mid-range, covering the infiltration team. Gris and Sky will need covering fire to get into closer range, and will have to start from further back to avoid detection at the outset, so that means that Cohort will be our sniper, and cover them." He pointed to where he himself would have preferred to set up. He looked at the geth. "I wish I could back you up at that position, but they've got me pinned down in the shuttle." He shrugged. "I'd stick Sidonis in my armor and have him go with you on the shuttle, Lilu, but I think we both know it wouldn't work."

"Send me," Noratus Ferox put in, from the side of the room where he, the rest of the Council observers, and Emily Wong were sitting. "I'm more expendable at this point, and I'm taller than Sidonis, closer to Garrus' height." It meant something, that he even made the offer, Garrus knew. It was a declaration of loyalty, for a turian, the offer to join the unit, to stand side by side with them. It meant even more, because he'd be unarmed in the shuttle, nothing more than a target. He met the other turian's eyes, and gave a brief nod of respect.

Shepard shook her head, however. "Most humans can't tell most humans apart except by facepaint, so long as you don't talk," she agreed, but added, "But you, Garrus? You stand out, even to humans."

"The scars, huh?" He managed a tight grin for her, but his heart wasn't in it.

"No, it's all about the winning smile." She tilted her head to the side, clearly thinking. "So long as you have to be there, we might be able to use it to psychological advantage," she said, thoughtfully. "Cunningham and his merry band of mercs has mostly been restricted to Alliance space before this. But their Blood Pack hirelings haven't been." She smiled, eyes still chill, and he knew before she spoke what she was going to ask of him. "I think it's time they met Archangel, don't you think?"

Sidonis moved at the table, sitting back. He knew what the name meant, to a certain extent. It had been what the people on Omega had called Garrus, back in the day. What he didn't know was the very personal meaning it had for Lilitu and Garrus. Her name came from Earth's most ancient legends, a female spirit that had, after rejecting the first human male created, become the mate of the angel of death. . . an archangel.

When Lilitu called for Garrus' Archangel side, he knew that she was asking him to kill everything around her, as she'd felt, for most of her life, the real angel of death had done—the colonists on Mindoir, her family, her unit at Akuze. He had done much to establish his reputation before she'd returned from the dead; since re-establishing the Spectres, they'd used the identity sparingly, mostly to strike fear into the hearts of various mercenary bands. Fear of the damned turian who couldn't be killed. When he was Archangel, his face was concealed behind a mask; he wore old, battle-scarred armor that identified him across the galaxy now. When he was Archangel, he was ruthless, vengeance personified.

Garrus smiled tightly. "Sure. Let's see if we can get the Blood Pack, at least, to see me as the threat. The instant they turn their weapons away from the hostages, start moving in as best you can."

"'Bout the only problem I can see with this set-up," Sam drawled, "is that we're gonna be awful strung out for a while, more or less in a line."

Shepard grimaced. "Agreed. Everyone will naturally start to collapse inward when the action starts."

"What about my role?" Grunt asked, looking annoyed.

"You stay on base, with the other Spectres, and make sure you're seen staying on base. When we give you the all-clear, you'll move in and take out their scout ship and make a sweep for any of their people that may be outside the vehicle," Shepard told him. "Candidates, this is a hell of a thing we're asking of you. Hell of a final exam for some of you. Very personal for the rest of you." She met each of their eyes in turn. "Don't shoot near the hostages. Don't let them get killed. Jaworski, Sidonis, are you going to be okay with this?" She studied each of them. "Because, to be honest, I'm not sure I would be." She lifted her hand, and let everyone in the room see how it was trembling.

"I'll be fine," Sidonis said, his voice remote. Mor'loci, Garrus thought. The only thing he has left to live for, the only spirit he has left that animates him, is his family. Will it be enough? Would he die for them?

Jaworksi's voice cut through his musing. "We'll all be fine once it's go time, ma'am. An hour of planning for five minutes of hell, and the plan will probably get blown in the first thirty seconds anyway." He was putting something on his face, Garrus was interested to note. Paint. Not turian clan paint, no; it was green and brown, and broke up the pattern and outline of the human's features, leaving his eyes stark and deep.

"Then go to the barracks, pick up your gear, and get going. Kasumi, you're with them," she said. "The varren will only keep the scouts distracted for so much longer. Grunt? You, Garrus, and me, outside. We'll go for a walk and see if we can't coax our varren back into their pens. Damn shame the gate broke when it did, huh?"

Elijah

Eli awakened slowly, feeling as if he were coming out from under dark, oil-slick waters. His head hurt. His wrists hurt. His entire body ached. And his mind. . . it was so confusing. He couldn't think straight, and wasn't entirely sure why that mattered.

His aching head was resting on something soft and warm. He could hear crying. Caelia's hungry. Why isn't someone feeding her? Opening his eyes, which were gummed together, he saw a curtain of dark, curly hair hanging over his face at close range, and blinked rapidly to try to focus better. "Dara?" he managed, after a moment's thought.

"Shh, keep your voice down," she told him in a whisper, turning her head a little so he could see her face now. She was upside down, for some reason. After a painfully slow moment, he put the pieces together. His head was propped on her lap. Her hair tickled his face as she leaned down lower. "Are you okay, Eli? You hit your head awfully hard. They threw you in the back of the groundcar, and then they had to carry you in the underbrush for a while. I'm just glad they didn't leave you in the car or . . . do something worse." She gulped, and he could see that she'd been crying recently. A lot. Her eyes were swollen, and the tears had left tracks cut through the layers of grime on her face. "We're waiting for something right now. I don't know what."

He had the impression that they were out in the woods someplace. Insects buzzed and trilled everywhere around them, and they were in a dappled sort of shade, lights and darks moving across their bodies with the ebb and flow of the wind through the branches overhead. Everything was slow. He could see worry in her eyes, tension in her face. But none of it really seemed to matter. "You're really pretty," he told her, solemnly. She was, too. He'd seen it before, but it hadn't mattered. But now, it did. Her hair was so dark and curly, and he wondered what it felt like. Her eyes were dark, too, and the light smattering of freckles on her face was just. . . interesting. He wanted to touch her face, and he tried to move his arms, only to discover that they were tied behind him for some reason.

That seemed important, too.

Her eyes closed now, briefly, and she sounded exasperated when she whispered back, "Okay, you're acting weird. Solana and her family are completely out of it. They just act confused, can't really talk, and they just do what they're told at the moment. Your mom has been crying and begging to feed Caelia. The twins are crying, Caelia's crying, and now you're telling me that I'm pretty." She gave him a look. "You're just as messed up as they are."

"That's enough talking," a rough voice said from behind them, and Elijah grunted in pain as a boot came into contact with his ribs. "Good. You're awake. Tired of carrying you, boy. Get up. We've got miles to go.

He awkwardly rolled over and tried to get to his feet, which was difficult with his hands secured behind him. Sure enough, the turian family was already on their feet, and looked dazed, obediently moving forward in a line. The twins had a guard each, and were being forced to walk on their sturdy little legs, though they cried and cried, because they were tired. His mother's face was tear-streaked, and she was pleading with one of the men in armor. "Please, if you just let me feed her, she'll be quiet. I can even do it while we walk. Please." His mom's shirt was wet in patches, Eli noticed dimly. Her milk was oozing out of her in instinctive response to Caelia's urgent cries.

"Fine. Feed your mongrel brat, then." The man's helmet concealed his face and eyes, but Elijah heard contempt in the voice. The man took Caelia from the guard who was currently carrying her, and thrust her roughly at Eleanor. "Just shut her up." He then stood in front of her, watching, as Elijah's mom opened the front of her dress to let Caelia nurse. Eli realized that his fists were clenching behind his back, the band there cutting into his wrists. There was something wrong about this. He knew it. But in his dream-like state, he didn't understand it.

Beside him, Dara muttered very bad words. He was pretty sure her father wouldn't like to hear that kind of language from her. One of the guards nudged him in the small of the back—with something hard, maybe a rifle butt—and Eli stumbled forwards, starting to walk. "Dara," he said, very quietly, a moment later. "I can't think straight."

"I know," she said. "I don't know why I can." Her voice was a bare thread of sound, desperate and very, very scared. It spoke to primal emotions in the boy. He was supposed to do something about that sound. He was supposed to protect . . . something. Wasn't he?

She was a little ahead of him, and he looked down. The legs of her jeans were discolored along the inner thighs. "Dara, you're bleeding," he whispered, trying to keep up with her through the rough terrain. "Did they hurt you?" A growing sense of anger was building in him, rippling through the sense of distance and remoteness. He clung to that. It was making things clearer. Sharper. More real.

Her head jerked around. "No! Nothing like that." She looked embarrassed. "I'm, um. . . I'm bleeding for a different reason. And it's not like they're letting us stop to go to the damn bathroom."

On they trudged, finally coming to a clearing where a groundcar was waiting for them. The man inside of it didn't have a helmet on, so Eli could see that he had brown hair and eyes, and a neatly trimmed beard. "About time," he told their guards. "Everything about this operation has damned near been blown, but we've got a shielded car coming in shortly." He looked past them. "Who the hell let the woman carry her mutt, anyway? Her hands are untied, too. Shit, you are incompetent sons of bitches."

"Brat wouldn't shut up, Cunningham," replied one of the guards, his tone surly. "We let her feed it to keep it quiet. Figured if her hands were occupied holding it, one of us wouldn't be tied up, unable to get to our guns."

Cunningham thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. "Fair enough," he finally said, walking out among the various prisoners, studying them. He looked at Dara. "This kid's human. Maybe she can be re-educated." He crouched down. "She's bleeding, too." His expression went dangerous, and he looked at his various men. "Did any of you touch her?"

"No, sir!" came the chorus of voices. "Think she's on the rag," one guard supplied, after a moment.

"There are fucking varren in this woods," their leader responded, through gritted teeth. "They track by scent, and they go after blood-smell in preference to any other bait. They're fucking sharks on land. Did any of you think of that?"

He gestured, and the guards brought Eli's mother over. He took the now-sleeping Caelia from Eleanor's desperate grasp. "Clean up the girl as best you can, and you'll get your mongrel back," he told her, and as Eleanor turned to help Dara, using a blanket from the groundcar as a shield.

Cunningham turned to look at Elijah. "So, you look human." He smiled at Elijah, but as dizzy and confused as Eli was, he didn't trust the expression. This man was treating his mom and his baby sister with contempt, and Eli was supposed to protect them, too. Wasn't he? The man used his free hand to tip Elijah's face up, and his face tightened when he saw the violet paint on the boy's cheeks. "Son, why the hell are you putting that crap on your face? You're human. You should be proud of that. You shouldn't be pretending to be a damn animal."

The anger was really strong now. It made everything really very clear; everything had hard edges that almost glowed, before dropping off into stark shadows. "A varren is an animal," Elijah said, staring right back up into the human man's eyes. "Lantar is my dad."

One thing he had to admit; after two years of being required to look half a meter up to meet Lantar's eyes when his step-dad was mad, this guy's glare was nothing. Elijah was scared, sure, but he was a lot more mad-scared than scared-scared. Some of it could have been the weird fog his mind was still trapped in, but while this guy was scary, he wasn't intimidating. It was. . . odd.

"Your father was human," the man said, hunkering down a little to meet Elijah's eyes, putting a hand on his shoulder. Trying to be my buddy, Eli thought, distantly. Like a principal at school, trying to get you to admit to something or to tell on someone. "You remember your father, right? Your real father?"

The weird clarity in Eli's mind persisted, and only the absolute truth tumbled out of his mouth now. "Yeah, of course I remember my dad. I remember how he'd make my mom cry after I went to bed, and they thought I couldn't hear them arguing. I remember that he wasn't there for my ninth birthday party, or to watch me play handball, and that he'd fall asleep in his chair after dinner. I remember that he told me 'if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying hard enough.'" He looked steadfastly at the human male, tears in his eyes. He hated saying it, but it was all true. He'd loved his dad, big Darren Stockton, with his wide smile and his warm hands, but he hadn't liked his dad very much at all. And he hated this man for making him admit it. "Lantar has to work a lot, but when he comes home, he makes sure that I do my homework, and he checks it. He thinks everything in life is a duty. He makes my mom smile. He's teaching me to fight, to defend myself. And he eats triceratops for dinner." He gave Cunningham a big, bright, and if truth be told, slightly dazed smile. He knew he couldn't make the man see it. He didn't have the words to explain it to himself, let alone make anyone see that Lantar was about duty, honor, and loyalty. That that's what he thought mattered most in the world, and that he lived it. The thoughts were all inchoate, mostly made of emotion, and he wasn't at all surprised when the man brought back his hand and slapped him across the face.

His head ringing, Eli found himself back on the ground again, Dara hovering over him anxiously, his mom being held back from helping him. "I'm starting to understand why you kept getting beat up at school," Dara whispered to him. "You really don't know when to shut up, do you?"

"Not really," he admitted, leaning on her as he tried to stand up.

There was a muffled roar, as from engines, and something shimmery rolled into the clearing. There was a dull clank, and then a door opened in the shimmer, exposing the interior of a vehicle. A human male in armor was in there, beckoning to them all impatiently; behind him, Elijah could see vorcha and krogan in red armor, painted with white skulls.

Their guards impatiently pushed them into the vehicle, which was fairly large, almost the size of one of Bastion's mass transit air-buses, but which was still cramped with so many people on board. Eli wound up crushed between Dara on one side, Rellus on the other, near the back of the bus. Rellus looked dazed and vacant, staring around him in a befuddlement that went far beyond Elijah's own. The twins were just past him, scared and tired, so much so, that they were past the point of tears, just staring vacantly around them, too. "It's okay," Elijah leaned over to tell them, softly. "Our parents are going to come for us. You'll see."

Elijah hoped that what he'd told the twins was true. He didn't see much chance of getting out of this situation without their parents coming for them.

"There's been a change in plans," Cunningham told his mercenaries, loudly, at the front of the bus. "Landing zone is to the west, now, not the east."

"Don't like that," one of the krogan rumbled. "That'll take us past their base again. Sooner or later, they'll figure out that we're using stealth generators on these vehicles."

"You're not being paid to like it. If you'd been able to get our extraction vehicle out of impound, we wouldn't be relying on a stolen ship, and we'd have been able to proceed to the correct extraction point. Get this damn thing moving, already." Cunningham sat down now, facing the back of the bus, weapon in his hands, but pointed down at the ground, for the moment.

The trip took a long time. Some of the younger children weren't able to control themselves any longer, and the bus started to smell like urine, as well as sweat and fear. He was able to watch the various mercenaries as they moved around, though, and noticed that after a while, they stopped really watching the captives. Oh, their eyes were still open, and they'd look at them once in a while, but they weren't really watching them. Because we're things now, Elijah thought, dimly. We're cargo, boxes that occasionally make noises. He wasn't sure why this seemed important, but it was. Somehow.

Finally, the car bounced to a halt, and Elijah raised himself up enough to peer out a window. "That's the Normandy," he told Dara softly. "Do you think they're here to rescue us?"

She shook her head, looking worn and tired. "Not if we just parked right next to the ship."

They were bundled out of the car next. There was a dark-skinned woman directing the men in armor already here, around the Normandy, and she raised a hand in a sketchy salute in Cunningham's direction. "There's a cave back there," she reported. "Probably a good place to drop the hostages in the meantime. Easier access for exchange purposes than taking them off the ship while we get Shepard and whoever else you want on-board." She frowned a little as Caelia, in one of the guard's arms, started to cry again, urgently. "What's the matter with the little one?" she asked.

"She gets really bad stomachaches after she's eaten," Elijah called from the back.

"I can take care of her," Ellie said, reaching her hands forward imploringly. Unlike the rest of the captives, her hands were tied in front of her. "Please, let me just have my baby."

Cunningham growled, "This is more trouble than it's damned well worth. Maybe I should just put it out of its misery now. It's unnatural, and it'd be a hell of a lot quieter here without it."

Elijah's mom screamed then, dropping to her knees, and through that distancing, unnatural haze in his mind, Elijah realized that Cunningham wanted her to scream, wanted her to cry, wanted her to beg. "That's better," Cunningham told her. "You ought to know your place." He likes seeing her on her knees. he thought, distantly. He's a bully. They all are. But there are too many of them, and I can't even run.

The dark-skinned woman stepped forward, putting her body between Cunningham and Ellie. Elijah couldn't make out what she said, beyond, "That's isn't what I signed up for," but they seemed to be having some kind of an argument. Finally, Cunningham waved impatiently, and one of the guards gave Caelia to his mother. Then they were all shoved into the darkness of the cave.

Eli stumbled and fell somewhere near the back, winding up on his side. Dara dropped next to him, also on her side, her back to him. After the guards moved back up to the front, she whispered, "Eli, get closer."

He complied, wiggling over to her, close enough that he could just about put his face in her hair. It was soft, he realized, his senses still befuddled. "Your hair smells really nice," he told her, earnestly.

Dara sighed. "Mane-n-Tail shampoo," she told him. "I smell like a horse, Eli. Snap out of it." She paused. "Can you pull your legs up to your chest and lean down enough to step your hands through to the front?"

Puzzled, Elijah tried, keeping his movements slow. "Yeah," he replied, a little surprised.

"Yeah, my dad showed me how to do that when I was playing sheriffs and bandits with the neighbor kids years ago," she told him quietly. "Now, check my back pocket. I don't think they noticed it."

He slipped his numbed hands into her back pocket, and found a hard lump there. A knife? They missed a damn knife? Is it because Dara's a kid, or because she's a girl? It didn't matter. He pried the knifeblade out, moving carefully, using her body as a shield, and began to saw at the plastic flexcord that bound her wrists.