Chapter 20: Grasp

The blue giant spun, spraying waves of energy off even in its holographic representation. The Grissom System was a harsh place. All three terrestrial worlds, two planets and one moon, were extremely inhospitable places to say the least. Blasted by heat and other forms of radiation, their atmospheres leaking off into space, each of their surfaces a giant kiln. Today, they were joined by hundreds more sensor contacts. The entire Alliance Second Fleet, in fact, the hunters for a most elusive and vicious prey. One made more dangerous by the fact that it was now wounded and cornered. The geth fleet, and below, trapped on a world inhospitable even to a non-organic race, the army of synthetics.

Shepard watched with a smile, as the sensor data poured in, resting in her comfy chair raised above the CIC in front of the command hologram. She hadn't left out the crew either, who now worked from chairs or stools with padding and better ergonomic designs more commonly spotted on civilian designs. Not exactly a standard sight on an Alliance warship, but the Commander had thought that the situation merited it. It had been three months since the Battle of Ket'osh, where her mother had nearly gotten herself killed to cut the geth forces in half. Much of that time had been spent in command of the Normandy itself, whether it was following up on missions for Hackett for the first month, or joining the search for Saren for the two afterwards. Standing still in front of a hologram for a full double shift was something she decided to abandon quickly, and had the new upholstery requisitioned from her large pot of private Spectre funds.

Money that she had won through bounties and looting the dead after hard combat.

Admiral Hackett had no small number of tasks for her. Pirates, missing ships, Prothean data drives, distress calls... The Fifth Fleet had taken a serious battering at Ket'osh, and only Anderson's flotilla had been fully operational afterwards. To which the Normandy was technically assigned. At first, Shepard had thought she would hate the distraction from the hunt for Saren. It seemed idiotic to be dealing with what she thought was small-fries when the real enemy was free to roam. While she could have gotten out of it, she changed her mind soon enough.

One of the first assignments saw her run into someone she had always wanted to meet. After tracking a First Contact Era nuclear-probe to Agebinium, she fell into the trap of perhaps the most infamous enemy of humanity until Saren had shown up on Eden Prime. Elanos Haliat himself had attempted to blow her up with a half-century old nuke. The very same man who had attacked Elysium with the help of the batarians, the man who had ordered the hostage taking at Illyria. The man whose plans Shepard had helped to dismantle on her first combat orbital drop mission as an N7. She managed to dismantle the bomb in time.

An omniblade through the throat stopped his wasted threats and empty bravado, which was all he had left.

It wasn't the only unfinished business that she had taken care of. Courtesy of her official discretion as a Spectre, she had went on missions of her own as well. On the word of Officer Vakarian, she liquidated an organ cloning ring with extreme prejudice, including a certain "Dr. Heart". The turian cop was just Garrus to her after that, though he refused to call her Jane due to her rank. Even Wrex saw some benefits, as they recovered his family armour from a smuggler, two reasons Shepard saw to deal with the situation. Alongside recovering plenty of geth tech for Tali and Haider, as well as Prothean data disks with Liara, it was a productive and busy month.

Anything to stay away from the Citadel, and the swarms of journalists.

They weren't all bad. There was Emily Wong, at least. Regardless, when the time to resume the hunt for Saren came, Shepard and the crew were immensely relieved. Even Joker had been mobbed by paparazzi when he had wandered into Chora's Den with a couple of the younger male ensigns. Which he didn't find embarrassing in the slightest, to Shepard's great amusement. The krogan bouncers tossing them all out helped, thus saving the ensigns from Joker's poor example.

As for the hunt itself, they had found a geth base pretty quickly. The problem is that it wasn't the only one. After planning the attack, launching it and then scouring the base on Maji in the Vamshi System, another was discovered. The process repeated itself three more times, the bases getting progressively harder to take. Finally, in the Gagarin System, they had found the communication signal that would lead them to the real staging ground.

So, it was with no small degree of satisfaction that Commander Shepard watched as the Second Fleet moved into formation for a combat jump.

"The last flotilla just arrived, Commander," reported Pressly, "The flagship is asking for an advisory."

"We'll go in first," said Shepard, knowing her plan was risky otherwise, "Get into position before we start lifting rocks and sending bugs scurrying away. Once we're ready to storm the geth bunker, the fleet can attack."

"Aye, ma'am," said Pressly, before tapping at his console.

Shepard continued watching the hologram, for any sign of trouble from the geth fleet. The stealth probes relaying back the information revealed no change in their behaviour. They remained in their geosynchronous orbit. Sovereign was conspicuously missing, but that didn't mean Saren was absent too. She began to hope. She wasn't the only one.

"Advisory, huh," Joker chimed in, "You'd think they'd just call it what it is, an order. Not like an Admiral is going to tell a murderer-hunting Spectre to shove it. 'You know what Miss Kickass Spectre Angel of Death, I don't like your tone of voice.'"

Shepard snorted, doubting that Admirals would hesitate to do so at all.

"Don't be so sure," she replied, "Admirals are close to being God. No need to insult anyone by telling them otherwise. Especially when we can get their help by calling an order by another name."

"See, I knew you were better at politics than I am," the flight lieutenant continued, "That's why you're the Spectre and not me."

Shepard chuckled a little with half the CIC crew. The pilot's jokes were a defence mechanism, she knew, but the guy was just too much to be disliked for it. He was a little scared perhaps, or nervous. That didn't help his cause, however. Pressly looked decidedly irritated at the man's behaviour, as usual. Unsurprising, considering he could hear every word, just like the rest.

"Flight Lieutenant Moreau, continue your duties with less lip," the XO said sternly, "Or I'll go forward and put my boot in your yapping mouth!"

"Yes, sir!" Joker replied enthusiastically, "Permission to proceed to Solcrum."

"Granted," Shepard said, before Pressly could add another amusing rebuke, "Engage Tantalus when we arrive and bring us about for an orbital drop. XO, you have the bridge."

Pressly saluted, as Shepard raised herself from her chair and proceeded back down the ramp to the stairway. It was well past time for some wetwork, and she sincerely hoped to put Saren under her blade, as she had with Haliat.

"Clear the cargobay," came the order from the bridge, as the emergency bulkheads came down to separate the engineering deck more safely. The mechanics finished up their last minute checks on the Makos, and proceeded into the elevator quickly. Shepard watched them scurry away, hoping that they had outdid themselves with their tweaks of the two vehicles her squads would take to the surface. They would need it. The geth had chosen a real bitch of a world to hide out on.

The Commander approached her team as they put the finishing touches on preparing themselves for the fight to come. They were all decked out in HEV armour, which was more bulky and heavy than the adaptive-ablative armour with plating that was standard issue with the Alliance. It was necessary, as they were about to fight in an oven of a planet against a large number of enemies. The temperature would be over 300 degrees Celsius. Not a place for a suit rupture or a kinetic barrier failure. A problem for more than just their health.

Shepard pat the side of her RAM-rifle as it sat upright in her arms locker, where it would remain. The scope was too sensitive to heat to be used, and although she could use ironsights or a hightemp scope of a different kind, it wasn't quite the same. And so, her favoured weapon was staying behind.

"You're disappointed that you can't take it, aren't you?" said Garrus, glancing at her with a twitch of his mandibles. A smirk, or the turian equivalent of one. Shepard couldn't help but return the smirk. It was obvious he was feeling the same loss for his own favourite weapon, which was unusable for the same reason.

"Well, it is fun," remarked Wrex from behind, "Gotta get one of those myself." He had enjoyed himself with her own briefly, on Feros.

"Ask, and you shall receive," Shepard said, eliciting a gleeful look from the krogan as he grabbed hold of his shotgun. She wondered for a moment if he could actually hit anything, before remembering that he had shot a geth prime to pieces while she fell from the top of a building with Liara. The plan didn't sound good to everyone though.

"Are you allowed to give away valuable military hardware ma'am?" asked Ashley, only half-joking. Shepard took her meaning immediately. Was she allowed to give away powerful weapons to an alien, was what the Gunnery Chief meant. The answer was no, of course, but 'allowed' had a different meaning for a Spectre.

"Exceptions can be made," replied Shepard. Ashley frowned at that.

"Look on the bright side Williams," said Kaidan, wading in to defuse the issue, "Wrex with more firepower means more dead geth." Shepard found herself impressed with the intervention. She wondered why Alenko had not been promoted yet, before Wrex banged his chest loudly.

"Wrex with more firepower means no geth at all," growled the krogan himself. No argument there, thought Shepard.

"Amen to that," Ashley replied, placated somewhat.

"Does that mean I can get an upgrade too?" asked Tali, hopefully.

"You mean another upgrade," replied Kaidan, "It seems everyone is getting one around here."

Which was true enough. The funds gathered during the missions for Hackett had went almost entirely on outfitting the crew with the latest and best gear. Haider had even sprung for some in-development weapon mods from the Small Arms Division of the DID. With the demand that Shepard send back reports on how well they worked on geth.

The Commander looked at her crew as they continued talking, and saw Liara at the back. The asari was oddly quiet, which wasn't exactly unlike her but set Shepard worrying anyway. Probably because of Benezia. Where Saren was, the Matriarch would likely be nearby. It couldn't avoided, Shepard decided, and shouldn't be, however problematic that was.

"Alright, gather around," the Commander said, ending the banter as she checked the time, "Tali, Wrex, Ashley, you'll go in Mako Two under Kaidan's command. Garrus, Liara, you're with me in Mako One. Let's load up! Today's the day we get Saren!" Pointedly leaving out Benezia from mention. The squads seem to stand straighter, which of course was the objective.

"Hooah, ma'am!" declared Ashley. Shepard smiled at her enthusiasm, the Chief speaking for the rest. She nodded, and waved them on.

The group split up and climbing into their vehicles, more awkwardly than usual as a result of the body armour. Garrus crouched into the Mako's space with difficulty, before pulling himself into the driver's seat. Shepard raised an eyebrow at that.

"Do you know how to drive this thing?" she asked sincerely. Garrus laughed, and turned his head back towards her as Liara entered.

"Last I checked, you didn't," the turian said, before his eyes flickered to the asari, "I'll take care of it."

Shepard got his meaning immediately. He was trying to be considerate, not just to her but to Liara as well. The man fronted as a hardass cop, and he was one, but she knew he was far from hard at heart. It was the subtleties that gave it away. "If you insist," she said, before taking a seat.

Liara took the seat next to the commander absent-mindedly, still caught in her own thoughts. She fidgeted, first with her helmet, before moving on to her pistol until finally running out of things and falling back on her hands. Shepard felt a pang of guilt. She dreaded what she might have to do if Benezia was with Saren. Resistance had to be met with naked and absolute force in her case, capturing an asari matriarch was almost certainly beyond Shepard's powers. It was obvious that Liara had realised this as much as anyone.

Going with her first instinct, Shepard took Liara's left hand in her right and squeezed it a little. Liara turned her gaze from the floor, and squeezed back with a small smile. Crisis averted. The Commander strapped herself in with her free hand, as Garrus manoeuvred the Mako to the launch position with its sister vehicle, just in front of the Normandy's ramp. No issue with his driving so far. It was almost time.

"On final approach," Joker said over the radio, "Opening cargobay door."

The sound of the ramp lowering and the mild electric buzz of the mass effect field echoed around softly for a moment. Shepard inhaled a breath, held it for a second, and then let it go. She liked diving out of a ship in an assault pod or wingsuit, but vehicle drops just felt boring by comparison. There was no thrill to it. Usually. This time was different.

"Makos, away!"

The vehicle lurched forward, mass effect fields activated as they fell from the Normandy. The hunt was on.

The landing was as soft as could be expected, the hull bouncing on its wheels as it impacted the ground, thrusters screaming at full power before dying abruptly. The forces acting changed from vertical to horizontal as Garrus floored the accelerator. The landing zone wasn't exactly a place they wanted to get caught in, so moving on quickly was part of the plan. Shepard donned her helmet, the others doing so quickly as well.

"Verdun is on the ground," Shepard reported back to the ship.

"Mako Two is moving," replied Kaidan from the other APC.

Shepard got up and climbed to the gunner seat, the suspension taking away the big dips that would have made doing so awkward. After doing the restraints up, she activated the targeting systems and cycled through the optics settings. The blue light pouring onto the planet changed to white on black, green, black on white pulses, and then back again with glitching icons.

"IRNV, SNV, HiLo Frequency emissions, enhanced visible, Type-1 Eyeball, all check," she said as she worked, checking that they were all functioning, "Motion tracking is down, no atmospheric medium. Looks like no problems."

"You were expecting the tank to break down?" asked Garrus.

"Just the targeting systems," Shepard replied, "We're at the higher end of the operating range for temperature here. Normally, we'd just blast an enemy base from orbit if we found these conditions."

"We would drop an asteroid," said Garrus, like it was a competition. Shepard smirked in her mask, shaking her head. The turians would indeed have dropped an asteroid, but they wouldn't be able to examine any wreckage if they did. The Hierarchy, always using a sledgehammer when a scalpel will do. Though the Alliance could be accused of the opposite problem, Shepard thought, on the occasions where it didn't lay waste to its enemies with nuclear fire.

"Does the method of destruction really matter that much?" asked Liara, in a confused tone.

Shepard glanced at Garrus, finding her look returned. They both shook with laughter. "Absolutely!" came the reply to the asari's question, delivered with no small amount of merriment.

"Heads up, we have geth armatures dead ahead!" said Kaidan.

Shepard shut up, and grabbed the controls. Searching the horizon for a moment, swivelling the gunsights, she soon found the armatures settled down in a defensive circle ahead. They were very difficult to spot in the blue light, their silver-grey tones folding into the background with ease, but their shapes were impossible to mistake once they could be picked out. The Commander winced as she saw several of their head-lamps glow to life, and the things began to stand up.

"Yeah, we see them too," she reported, "Pressly, can you patch me through to the Second Fleet?"

"Yes ma'am," the XO replied, before barking orders at the crew. Shepard watched as the geth armatures got closer, the Makos closing to an optimum firing range. More of the things were shaking the dust off themselves, rising from pits in the radiation-blasted rock. Sighing wearily, she could tell already that it would be a pain in the ass to fight them all. The geth's purpose was obvious. Stop their advance.

"You are go for Second Fleet," said Pressly.

"Second Fleet, this is Verdun," Shepard said, "We have been compromised. Advise immediately engagement with the enemy."

"Advisement received and acknowledged," said an excited-sounding comms officer, "Second Fleet inbound on Solcrum orbit." The line cut out afterwards, Admiral Brennan obviously being too busy for a chat. Considering he would be facing off against the remains of the geth expeditionary force, the Commander held no grudge on that count.

"Alright kids, now the fun begins," said Shepard, turning the one-five-five cannon safeties off, and activating the autoloader.

"We can pick them off one by one from range," Ashley said from the gunner seat of Mako Two, "Manoeuvre between the rocks for cover."

"It would take too long," replied Garrus, "If Saren's there, he's going to want to get the hell out as soon as he realises there's a fleet on top of him."

"Agreed," said Shepard, "I think it's time to take a page out of my mother's book. We barrel straight through the middle of them, disrupt their formations for when the Army arrives and get to Saren as soon as possible."

"We're ready to support you, Commander," said Joker, chiming in.

"Let's do it!" shouted Wrex.

"I'll try my best to keep the shields up..." said Tali quietly.

"Charge!"

Following the order, Garrus swung the nose of the Mako from its diagonal trajectory straight towards the main group of geth mechs. Kaidan followed directly behind, the standard procedure for penetrating an enemy line. Shepard fell into her battle trance, all of her attention moving to the targeting equipment, as she swung the turret left.

The first armature was powering up its plasma projector, the glow appearing as if it was attempting to spit at her.

"Oh no you don't," she muttered, as the first shell shot out of the mass accelerator. It impacted the shields, which fizzled as they deflected the energies of the shot and explosive away. Fortunately, they had also been overwhelmed. Shepard could smell the kill already. She squeezed the trigger of the co-axial machinegun hard, far harder than required, and riddled the metal beast. It sparked and twitched as the rounds made their mark, one-by-one. Five seconds later and it was down, collapsing as if someone had clawed its battery out.

The geth didn't rely on quality to get the job done on the ground, however.

Another dozen armatures, perhaps more, ran to engage. Those already in good cover and with clear lanes of fire began shooting the now-too-familiar blue balls of superheated energy. Shepard returned fire, concentrating on the targets near their path to the geth base as the Mako got closer. One enemy attack burst against the frontal barriers, shaking the vehicle violently.

"Barriers at 68%," intoned the VI.

Shepard kept firing, the booming of her own cannon punctuated both with the machinegun and Mako Two's main gun. They were making good progress. It would be less than a minute before they passed the enemy line. She almost felt like cackling, as they passed by some of the pits where the machines had been hiding. The strange curves of geth towers were clearly visible against the backdrop of more distant mountains.

Another two geth mechs stepped up, firing as they did so. Garrus jerked the controls, before Shepard could respond with the cannon. The first plasma shot from the enemy went wide, the second glanced the side. The Mako powered past them, and they scuttled on their legs to turn.

"Sons of..." Shepard muttered, before rotating the gun to the rear to shoot. The cannon blasted and the machinegun chattered, ripping the first and then the second to pieces before they could line up another wave of retaliation. Satisfied with her handiwork, the Commander kept firing to the rear targets, which had better firing positions as a result of her team's own progress.

"We're going to make it!" said Tali, between the cannon shots.

"Don't jinx it!" replied Ashley.

The young quarian did not have such power over the laws of fate as that, but what happened next had Shepard wondering whether the opposite was the case. As they passed the enemy line, dodging broken or disabled armatures, there was a brief rumbling accompanied by mounds of dirt rising into the sky. The warning lights lit up like a Christmas tree, compelling Shepard to turn the turret forward again.

Out of the ground, three geth titans were rising slowly, engines pouring power downwards to lift them. They were carbon-copies of the one on Feros, looking like flat, wide beetles with claws and guns for legs. They looked even more menacing in numbers, the blue light almost merging their profiles with the blue-black sky. A mix of fear and utter exasperation flooded Shepard's senses as she saw the machines halt, hovering right in front of her objective. The entrance to the geth bunker sat just beyond, tantalising.

She had many options. Retreat and call for backup, hug cover and call in an orbital strike, skirt around the geth positions... But all of them had a fatal flaw. She could see herself carrying out any such plans, as if she already had, only to find that Saren had escaped. She could already see the sneer of contempt on his face.

"Keep moving forward!" Shepard ordered, "We can't let Saren escape!"

"Ma'am," acknowledged Kaidan.

The Makos sped towards their goal over the rocky terrain. The geth manoeuvred effortlessly in the air to bracket them. The firing started soon after, the weapons hanging off the bellies of the titans opening up with all had. Shepard watched as the ground nearby and in front of the vehicle was blasted and shook, the accelerator weapons delivering high explosive shells to the vicinity. Cursing, she at least had the relief to see that Garrus and Kaidan weren't idly driving into the firestorm. Swerving and changing speed at random, activating the thrusters to hop over small ridges to throw off the geth targeting, they were weaving the teams ever closer to the big metal gateway to the complex below.

It wasn't enough.

A geth round detonated against the barriers, throwing the Mako a distance to the left as it was jumping. If they all hadn't been strapped into their seats, Shepard, Garrus and Liara would all certainly have been tossed about inside and gravely injured.

"Barriers at 21%." said the VI, oblivious to the danger.

"This is going to be close," said Garrus through his teeth, as he spun the wheel to the right to get back on track towards the target, "At least this thing is a lot faster than the Groundhog on Feros."

Shepard turned her attention away from the flying fortresses trying to kill her, and focused on the doorway ahead. It was hard to make out in the flying dust of the geth attacks, but the way was definitely blocked. And there was no longer even a minute to spare for Tali to breach the geth computers to open it. Which meant the brute force approach had to be used. It was more fun anyway.

"Ashley, target the middle of the gateway," the Commander said, moving the turret to do the same.

"Can-opener ready, ma'am!" replied the Gunnery-Chief, getting the idea. Her shot came just before Shepard's. Boom, boom, boom went the cannons as they placed round after round into the gates. The barriers protecting them failed quickly, and the metal began to twist and warp with both the penetrations and the repeated explosive forces.

"The geth have stopped firing," reported Kaidan nonchalantly, as if the shooting was never a real concern in the first place.

"That is strange," said Liara, "Won't their best chance be when we try to get through the entrance?"

"Maybe that's what they're waiting for," replied Shepard as the mass-accelerator loaded in another shot to fire.

The gate was a mess, barely standing but still up nonetheless. The more they shot at it, the less effective it was. Some of the fire was passing through the holes they had already made. Meanwhile, the geth hovered above and the critical moment hurried ever closer. Shepard knew what had to happen.

"Garrus, straight through!" she shouted.

The turian ceased his dodging manoeuvres. He pushed the APC's engines to their limits, and headed straight for the gateway. Shepard turned the turret back towards the geth as they passed underneath the middle titan. The synthetics did nothing, just watching. As if ordered to. Disturbed that she was out of the loop, she fired off a few speculative shots at the titan's emplacements to little effect. Might as well tweak the tin bastards' noses if they were up to something.

The Mako crashed into the gate with spine-jarring force, breaching into the interior of the bunker. Thrown forwards in her seat, the impact winded Shepard. Her ears will filled with the screeching of metal on metal, as the barriers failed and the remains of the gate scraped along the hull. Finally, the whole thing tumbled on its side, finally coming to rest on its back, the turret torn clean off.

Hanging groggily from her seat, Shepard rubbed her face to regain full consciousness.

The world was upside down, but everyone seemed to be alive. That was something, at least, along with the lack of chasing shots into the bunker from the geth. Carefully, she grabbed a hold of the bottom of her seat with one hand and slapped the seatbelt release with the other. This caused her to fall, but she caught herself, hung from her seat and placed her feet down on the roof.

Garrus shook his head rapidly and blinked, but looked like he could take care of himself. Liara on the other hand was groaning loudly, craning her neck and keeping her eyes closed. Shepard didn't even have to think who to help, though not thinking made her choose badly. She approached T'soni.

"Need any help there?" she said, as Liara's eyes turned to look at her.

To respond, the asari pushed the button on her seatbelt and flared her biotics around her, resulting in a graceful mid-air turn in a seating position followed by an equally graceful landing. Shepard let out an amused sigh. She had forgotten about the biotics in her worry. To make matters worse, a dull thud came from behind her in the direction of the controls. Garrus had fallen from his seat.

"I could use some," he said, as he recovered from a crumpled position. Shepard held out her hand, which the turian took quickly, and together they managed to get him up to a crouching position. Which was about as good as they could get in the low ceiling of the vehicle.

"Commander, are you all alive in there?" asked Kaidan via the comms.

"Somehow," Shepard replied, "Did you get through okay?"

"The doors fell when you crashed into them," the lieutenant replied, "We were able to drive in without trouble."

The Commander kicked the rear door of the Mako open, and stepped into the darkness. "Excellent," she said, satisfied at both his response and her own action.

"You guys might want to come take a look at this," said Wrex.

The krogan was peering around the edge of the exit, looking up. Afraid that some calamity was about to fall on their heads, Shepard rushed to join him, taking her autoshotgun into her hand. Pacing through the darkness towards the blue light, she stopped dead in her tracks when she finally saw what Wrex had been talking about.

The Second Fleet had deployed its own titans, and they were coasting in to fight the geth, gunships deploying to duel with geth fighters that had followed the motherships down.

Shepard watched with little interest, as the firing started. Saren was not outside, after all. She turned around quickly and got the others moving. The Alliance could take care of the enemy outside. Her business was beneath.

The squad made good progress through the geth base. It was surprisingly unremarkable, being constructed of standard mining platforms and underground habitation modules, as opposed to anything exotic. The spaces were still filled with the unique geth equipment that had become ubiquitous in their quest to win the war. Shepard was encouraged by the sight of the latter. It meant that this was not a decoy base or a secondary location. The other bunkers had been little more than storage facilities.

They met only minimal resistance from only the most basic geth platforms, which acted in a predictable manner. For all their capabilities, imagination was not among the synthetics' greatest. Every intersection saw the team fight off an ambush, with the geth appearing out of random nooks and crannies. It would have been a problem, except every intersection was exactly the same in layout, and the number of places to hide were limited. Shepard was almost bored by the time they got to the main control room. A couple of speculative buckshot spreads into the likely points, and the tinheads popped up like a jack-in-the-box, ready to be tossed about by Liara and Wrex, or shredded with fire from Garrus and Ashley. Tali took care of an entire ambush herself when she hacked half of the aggressors into shooting the other half to pieces. At which point the Commander had a go of killing five compromised geth with a single shot. It passed through three. Wrex stepped on the remainder.

Infuriatingly, their main objective was empty of Saren or Benezia. It was a standard enough CIC-style space, with a central holographic projector, computers on the periphery and consoles in between. Something persons from many species would find familiar. Shepard felt like tearing the place apart with her omniblade, as if Saren was hiding in some hidden alcove behind the equipment. She paced around, tapping the interfaces to find some clue as to where the turian traitor was hiding. Kaidan, Tali and Liara followed her lead, while the others covered the exits.

"Commander, you'll want to see this," said Alenko, waving his superior officer over. Shepard stopped what she was doing and made her way to the screen, along with a curious Tali.

The display seemed to show a dozen or so surveillance camera feeds from elsewhere in the base, with dozens more on standby mode. Shepard pat the lieutenant on the shoulder.

"Good work Lieutenant," she said, "Flick through the other cameras, maybe we'll find what we're looking for."

"That's not what I meant, Commander," he said, before pointing at several of the feeds, "Look at these rooms. They're huge. Big enough to store tens of thousands of geth in stasis."

Tali leaned in quickly, her head moving slightly as she scanned the images, before recoiling backwards with the realisation that Kaidan was right. Shepard felt a cold shiver down her spine, as the quarian's reactions confirmed the idea's veracity. Where there was one facility, there could be others. The geth had raised an army of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. The question had to be asked.

"If there is space for an army, where is the army?" she asked.

"Evacuated already, maybe," said Tali, "If Saren knew that we were coming, he would try and get as much of his forces out before we arrived. Perhaps he has already left too."

"Not a chance," said Shepard immediately, "Sovereign hasn't been spotted coming in or out of the cluster, and he wouldn't fly in anything else. Too dangerous now, with the war. Keep looking."

The others did as they were told, frantically working to discover the enemy's secrets. The fact the computers had not been wiped yet encouraged Shepard to believe that they had caught the geth entirely by surprise, but there was a niggling doubt at the back of her mind. That the whole base was a trap or a ruse of some kind. Yet nothing she had seen would suggest such a thing except for the ease with which they had gotten this far. Frustrated by the contradiction, she made her way to Liara, to see if there was any progress there.

"Find anything about Benezia?" the Commander asked, peeking over the young asari's shoulder. She glanced over, with an appreciative look.

"Only in reference to Feros," Liara replied, "Nothing to explain why she would cooperate with Saren in the first place, or what their plan might be."

Shepard scanned the display. The translation was garbled, but seemed to talk a lot about melding with the Thorian, whether or not it would be wise to do so directly and what side effects could be expected. There were sideways allusions to indoctrination, and the similarities between it and the control exercised by the Thorian. It was potentially useful information. Old data, but anything on the supposed mind control power at the fingertips of Saren was golden.

"Save it," the Commander said, "Maybe the DID or the Council's people can make something of it."

Liara nodded, copying the data over to her omnitool and streaming it to the Normandy's secure server. Satisfied, Shepard went to check on Ashley, Garrus and Wrex by the doors.

"Any company?" she asked.

"Nothing," grunted Garrus, "I can't believe I'm actually getting bored in the middle of Saren's base." He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, keeping his weapon squarely aimed through the open doorway to the left. Shepard shared his discomfort.

"Something's up, Commander," added Ashley, "They wouldn't just let us get this far." Apparently, they had, but the possible consequences were not lost on the Chief. Or Shepard for that matter. The attack on Eden Prime and the geth assault had been planned years in advance, with every possible outcome carefully measured. While the Commander believed that the Alliance had put those plans into their worst case scenarios, she doubted that Saren was so stupid as to leave such setbacks out of his thinking. For the moment however, there was nothing to do but press onwards.

"I agree," replied Shepard, "Be ready for anything."

"I was born ready," complained Wrex, "I am krogan. Hurry up and find that turian already."

"Shepard, come look at this!" said Tali, her voice rising in excitement, her hands working furiously.

The Commander rushed over, hoping the engineer had found Saren. She quickly realised that wasn't the case, as the screen was filled with programming in a language she couldn't understand but recognised instantly. It was encoded in an unusual fashion, as far as she could tell. Shepard was unsure whether or not it was important.

"This is geth base code!" proclaimed Tali, practically bouncing on the spot, "We haven't been able to see how the geth have modified themselves over the centuries, because they never come outside the Veil, but here we have a fully working operating system as a template for the creation of new geth! Do you know what this means?"

"We can hack them more easily?" guessed Shepard, not quite sure. She had extensive tech training as part of the N7 courses, but it went as far as hacking drones and not much further. Geth base code wasn't her area of expertise by a long shot.

"Not only that, but it might be the key to defeating the geth and reclaiming Rannoch!" Tali continued, "We need to send this to the Migrant Fleet!"

"I'll give you a copy to send home when we get out of here," said Shepard, getting excited herself, "Grab everything you can. I'm sure the Alliance High Command will be very interested too."

Tali looked over, clearly hopeful that she had found the key to defeating the geth before Saren and the Reapers could act. Shepard felt like hugging her crewmate as the quarian ran the download. She had a home and a homeworld, it seemed right to help Tali take back hers. The good news did not stop there, however. Just as the data streaming finished, there was more.

"Commander, I've found him," said Kaidan from across the room, "Saren is waiting in the shuttle bay with a squad of asari!" The HUD on her helmet began showing a marker, as the lieutenant patched the directions to the target into her suit. Shepard's heart began pumping faster, the anticipation of the fight to come bolstering her physically.

"Double time it people!" roared Shepard, unslinging her shotgun again, as the others gathered to the door at pace, before padding out the door as fast as their legs could take them.

The gate to the hanger bay opened, revealing the outlines of stacked crates and pitch darkness. No sign of Saren, or his escort. Not a sound could be heard, not even the fighting above rumbled in the distance anymore. The ex-Spectre knew they were coming. It was the only explanation. It was a trap.

Shepard stepped forwards into the gloom, setting her visor to infrared heat-sight to allow her to spot any of the asari commandos she imagined were hiding around every corner. Wordlessly, her squad followed, weapons at the ready and biotics prepared to be unleashed in a split-second. Walking straight down the most direct path to the middle of the space as far as she could tell, weaving through the rows of boxes, the Commander had an unsettling thought. Her gut clenched with fear, and she held her fist up to stop the advance. Kaidan made his way to the front.

"What is it, Commander?" he asked quietly, crouching at the opposite corner to her own.

"The crates," whispered Shepard, "What do you think is in them?"

Kaidan's helmet twitched to the side as he thought about it for a second, before his entire body flinched away from the boxes he was leaning on. He had understood the problem. There was only one thing the geth would be storing in crates, and that was geth mobile platforms. The bodies of their soldiers, without the software to run them. Who could say when their minds would be downloaded?

Shepard waved Tali up. The quarian moved forwards, before crouching down with her shotgun.

"The boxes," said Shepard, "I think they're full of geth."

Tali glanced at her omnitool for a second, without any outward sign of fear. She finished checking its readings, before looking up again. Shepard felt a little better, thanks to the engineer's professionalism in the face of possibly being surrounded.

"I'm not detecting any active programmes, Shepard," she said, "If they're in there, they're not activated."

"Any way you can stop them from activating?" asked Shepard, "We can't move any further if geth are going to come from behind."

Tali waved her omnitool at the nearest crate, and an image of several geth in fetal positions packed together appeared on its screen. She began tapping away, doing … something. The text was in a quarian cursive. Shepard couldn't read it properly. After a minute, and with a nod to herself, the quarian finally waved her omnitool again.

"You were right, they were combat platforms," Tali explained, "I've hacked them so that they will turn on each other."

"For how long," Kaidan asked.

"Ten seconds," replied Tali, "Maybe."

"That doesn't seem like enough," said Kaidan, undoubtedly frowning under his armour. Shepard was getting impatient again. The chit-chat was annoying her more than usual.

"It's time we wouldn't have otherwise," she said, "Let's move."

"The geth can do a lot in ten seconds," Tali added, as Shepard signalled the others to approach.

The next intersection allowed two paths forward. The others paired off into two combat teams again, and they split up. Kaidan took his team to the right, leaving Shepard, Liara and Garrus alone again to proceed into the dark pathway to the left. Liara took point, where she could unleash her biotics without worrying about hitting either of the sharpshooters.

Shepard watched the young asari go through the motions she had been taught as part of her time on the Normandy, checking corners with brisk efficiency. Things were moving quickly, to the Commander's gratification. Her blood was rising with every step. Her hatred for Saren. It was a familiar sensation, one that had overwhelmed her once before but had allowed her to survive the worst the galaxy had to throw.

The radio crackled.

"Commander, Sovereign has arrived!" said Joker, through the haze of interference, "It's just blowing through our fleet like it isn't there!"

"Crap," said Shepard, "Enough sneaking around. Alenko, go loud."

"Aye, ma'am!"

Shepard nodded to Liara, and they picked up the pace. Their footfalls echoed loudly around the room, as more sounded from the other side of the space. The Commander hoped they were those of her crewmates, and not those of commandos, taking care to cover the approaches from that direction as they advanced.

When they cleared the crates, the huge space beyond was almost empty. There were docking ports for dozens of shuttles, and the place was large enough for some standard cargoships, but there was only one small vessel in sight, a couple of hundred yards in the distance. Figures lit up on Shepard's visor, their body heat overlaid onto the gloom. She couldn't tell if it was Saren, but who else could it be? She began closing the distance, coming level with Liara as they moved, Garrus following suit. A quick glance confirmed that Kaidan's team had arrived too, and were spreading out.

They were half way across the floor when the lights came on again.

The figures were revealed. Most were asari, in impressive looking environmental armour and packing an arsenal enough to wipe out a platoon. They stood at ease, weapons shouldered or cradled, just watching. They drew the least attention. Ahead of them stood a tall asari, in black armour with a transparent faceplate. She was the spitting image of Liara. It was Benezia. Yet Shepard's eyes were torn to the sight of the augmented turian, standing in his grey-silver armour and holding his heavy pistol at his side. She raised her weapon, speechless.

"Mother..." said Liara, hardly believing her eyes.

"Ah, Shepard," said Saren, turning to see the new arrivals as his gravelly voice projected from all around, "You are just in time."

The ground shook violently, a series of impacts rocking the room. Shepard staggered, struggling to regain her balance. It did not bode well. The asari and her crewmates lost their footing too, only Benezia and Saren seeming to remain entirely upright throughout. As the Commander stood up again, the hanger roof began to retract. The blue light of the sky poured down into the space, starting with a thin slit and expanding outwards.

Sovereign stood directly overhead atop giant metal limbs, red beams lancing into the Alliance titans hovering around, obliterating them in a single stroke. A ship like no other.

It was Shepard's breaking point.

She raised her automatic shotgun and fired from the shoulder, pacing forwards as she slung bursts at the traitor to the galaxy and his thralls. The entire squad opened up with all they had immediately; assault rifles, shotguns, pistols and biotic attacks flying at the enemy. Shepard's jaw clenched shut with concentration as she ploughed the fire as best she could, but it wasn't good enough.

The asari's shields held long enough for Benezia to hold out her hand and throw up an immense barrier, protecting the entire shuttle. The power of an asari matriarch stood against all the firepower, for the moment. It would for long enough to enable the escape, Shepard realised. The shuttle's doors opened, and the commandos filed into it.

The Commander stopped firing, as Saren and Benezia stepped inside the shuttle.

"Foolish human," Saren taunted, as he activated his omnitool and the doors shut. The transport dusted off hard, flying up towards Sovereign, chased by pot-shots from Garrus and Ashley. Shepard felt like collapsing to the ground, like smashing her fists against it until she broke her knuckles and wrists. He had escaped.

There was no time to do so, as rattling and banging started from behind. The geth were exiting their storage crates, grabbing weapons and advancing. As expected. Wrex tossed a couple of grenades, as Tali's hack started, to the Commander's relief. The geth began firing into each other at point-blank range, but she could tell it wouldn't be enough. They needed to run.

"Retreat," said Shepard, "Back off to the other side of the hanger, we'll get out the other way."

Miserable, she began to follow her own order, sprinting away from the firefight. If Saren lived, she needed to survive. So she could kill him in the most intimate and painful fashion possible.