"This waiting is the worst," Vael said some hours later as she sat down by Kerranus. The squad sat in a rough circle out on the concourse, upon improvised benches made from the remains of skycar doors. One of the homing transponders sat next to the impromptu rest area. Rizzi and Wu shared one of their last packets of nutrient gel while Marx and K'Thane split a packaged bar. Bottles of water lay at their feet. "Two more hours of this? I'm going to go suit-loose at this rate."

"Ugh," Marx said after a bite. She looked at the wrapping and frowned. "Yeah, that is not Grape Caramel." She paused, frowned some more. "Why is there a Grape Caramel flavor?"

"Maybe so you don't know what it tastes like," K'Thane smirked.

"So, what do you mean about the waiting?" Kerranus said to Vael. "Is it worse than being shot at?"

"Well, at least when you're being shot at you know what's happening." Vael sighed. "This… not knowing if there's actually evac coming, or when the Reapers might attack, it's agonizing."

"You get used to it," Kerranus said as he chewed on a protein bar. "The waiting really isn't so bad. It's not one of those things you can control, so you might as well relax while you can."

"Easy for you to say, mister turian hotshot." Vael sneezed, a subdued sound within her environmental suit. "Hey, not so cold."

The others looked blankly at her. "Something wrong, Maletha?" Kerranus asked.

"Huh? Oh! Gilbert's been interfacing with my suit systems. It's been tinkering with some of the environmental controls, to see if it can reduce my energy usage, things like that." Vael cocked her head to the left for a moment. "Yes, that's better. Thank you."

Kerranus stared at Vael with a curious expression. "You're okay with a geth messing with your suit systems?"

"Gilbert means well." She shrugged. "It's already improved my suit efficiency by about fourteen percent. I like the conversations we have, too."

"Huh."

"It's quite nice, actually. Normally I feel so isolated in this suit… now it's like I have somebody to share it with."

"But it's a program. There's no... physical body to actually, uh, do anything with. No offense, Gilbert."

Vael cocked her head again. "None taken, Gilbert says. And maybe one day we'll be able to go without suits on the homeworld, but for now we're all stuck in these, so any company is good." She paused. "Oh, that's interesting. Maybe not while we're in a war zone, but perhaps later?"

"What now?" Kerranus said.

"Gilbert can… interface with my suit to simulate minor infections to stimulate my immune system. The geth can do this for all quarians," she said in a surprised and awed tone. "I… we could be looking at quarians able to go without our suits- in my lifetime!"

"So…" Kerranus cleared his throat. "We could get to see what you look like under that mask?"

Vael nodded as Rizzi glanced across at Kerranus and hid her grin behind a sip of water. "Possibly. Oh, it would be so nice to let my hair free!"

"Quarians have hair?" Marx said.

"Yes. Mine is actually a similar color to yours, Lieutenant Marx."

"Really?" Kerranus said. He looked speculatively at Marx's hair and then back at Vael. Susan exchanged glances with Elijah and didn't bother to hide her grin this time.

"No, we don't have internal visual systems in these suits," Vael said. "I've never had an AI in my suit systems trying to look at me. Tell you what, I'll record an image and upload it to my suit systems the next time we're in a clean room, okay?"

Marx shook her head surreptitiously as Kerranus opened and closed his mouth several times. "You should give a copy to-"

"Husks!" The call went out from a sentry post covering the north approach. The squad grabbed their weapons and rushed for the barricades. Rizzi heard the whine of a heavy machine gun powering up at the closest post.

"Hold fire!" Colonel Brishana called as she ran for the barricades herself from a different direction. "We can't afford to attract attention!"

The colonel made it to the barricades at the same time as Rizzi's squad. Together they clambered up to the elevated platforms and looked out at the ruined city.

"There!" said one of the sentries, pointing. Rizzi clicked her faceplate on and looked at the ruined building the sentry pointed at. An entire half of it was gone, as if a deity's scalpel had sliced it away to reveal a remarkably intact cross-section. Movement within reminded her of maggots crawling through a carcass. She zoomed in: her helmet's distance readout placed the ruin at nearly three-quarters of a kilometer away. She saw them; clambering up walls and ceilings like spiders, pale limbs twitching jerkily as their heads swiveled around.

"Are they… searching for something?" Vael said.

"I don't see any Marauders or other higher Reaper troop forms," Wu said. "Maybe it's a feral pack?"

"Do they do that?" Brishana asked. "Go feral?"

"That's our best term for it," Rizzi said. "Our experience has been that in the absence of other controlling Reaper influences, like Marauders, husks appear to exhibit some instinctive behaviors. They group up in packs and just… roam around, attacking things they come across."

"Do they serve as scouts?"

"We're not sure," Wu said. "There's no consistent pattern we've seen where a husk pack causes other Reaper forces to follow. But I'd rather not put it to the test right now."

"Me neither." Brishana signaled the barricades and sentry posts. "Hold your fire. Engage only if they attack." Everybody on the barricade hunched down lower, hoping the husks wouldn't notice them.

Marx settled her Widow bipod on the barricade and sighted in on the pack of husks. They continued moving around the building. "How many would you say there are?"

Rizzi adjusted her zoom volume several times, trying to find the best overall distance to judge. The way the husks crawled and writhed over each other made it difficult to tell, but- "I'd say about… thirty to forty?"

"Probably more." K'Thane pointed towards the top of the building. "See how the structure originally curved away from us? There's likely a floor there we can't see. And you see how they're moving up and down from there?"

"Yeah. I see what you mean now." Rizzi zoomed in on one husk climbing down a wall headfirst. Its head lolled around seemingly at random and suddenly it looked directly towards her, seemingly making eye contact through the magnified view. She ducked behind the barricade reflexively, even though she knew that it was just in her head, there was no way that-

Marx swore quietly. "They're looking this way."

Rizzi peeked back up over the edge of the barricade. Her blood ran cold as she saw more and more pairs of glowing eyes turn towards their position. As one, the husks started clambering out and down the building. It wasn't hard to guess where they were headed.

"Permission to engage?" Marx said as she adjusted her rifle's position.

"No, hold your fire," Brishana said.

"Ma'am, that would be the husks attacking."

"I know." Brishana signaled the lines again. "Weapons fire as a last resort! Let them close and engage with biotics! Keep this as quiet as you can!"

The husks clambered across the city ruins in a wave of frenzied, emaciated forms. As they clambered and ran out of the building Rizzi saw she had indeed underestimated their numbers. There were more than forty; much more. There were closer to eighty or ninety of the reanimated humanoids charging towards them. She drew a deep breath, thankful she'd gotten the chance to restore some of her energy as she dug within to summon her biotics.

"Watch it!" Marx called. "They're splitting up!"

At least a quarter of the husks split away from the main pack and ran towards the edge of a channel running parallel to the road they followed towards the temple ramp. They dropped out of sight behind the lip; Rizzi guessed it was one of the ubiquitous canals the city streets boasted.

"Oh, blind goddess," Brishana said. "That canal runs up right underneath the temple!"

"Can they get in that way?" Rizzi said.

"Theoretically, no."

"Theoretically, the Reapers shouldn't exist."

"True." Brishana eyed the approaching husks. "We don't have much time."

"We can secure it," Wu said. "Our squad: we slip out, move down that embankment." He pointed off to the side of the ramp. "Cut them off before they get to the temple."

Brishana nodded. "Go."

Rizzi vaulted over the barricade and hit the ground with a roll. She came up and sprinted towards the edge of the ramp. Shattered glass, metal, and plastic crunched underfoot.

"Oh sure, let's drag the sniper into a close-quarters fight, mister swordsman!" Marx said as she paced Rizzi.

"You could have stayed at the barricade!" K'Thane called back.

"And leave you guys alone?"

They leapt down over the edge of the ramp and half-ran, half-skidded down the embankment. From here Rizzi could see the course of the canal, cutting down seemingly straight towards the temple. She saw movement in the distance, still at least half a kilometer away.

"Check the entrance!" she called and pointed to the nearby end of the canal. She and Wu turned towards it. She racked her brain for some way to seal any entrances: demolitions would be far too loud.

They needn't have worried. Somebody had plowed a gunship into the canal, carving out the last thirty meters and ramming halfway through whatever entrance had once existed to the lower levels of the temple. The tail of the gunship stuck out into the air like a lopsided obelisk. She doubted even a Brute could get through it any reasonable time.

"Looks like we just need to kill some husks then," Wu said as he drew his sword from his back. His voice rang with a fierce joy that sent shivers down Rizzi's back. They joined K'Thane and Marx forward at a crashed skycar.

"Let's pull them up and out here," K'Thane suggested as her Tech Armor encased her in glowing orange panels. They had a good angle looking down the canal, and the pack rushing down the canal resolved themselves into individual husks as they drew closer.

Wu stood in the open and held up his left hand, curled into a claw as he judged the distance. The husks closed. He flicked his palm outward, channeling his barriers into a burst of energy that lanced out and blew the first three husks apart in a tangle of limbs. The others instantly refocused on him, redirecting their charge and clambering out of the canal onto the embankment with remarkable adroitness.

Wu stood still, content to let the husks come to them. Rizzi and K'Thane took positions abreast of him to the left and right, spread out to form a loose line. Marx stood several paces behind them, ready to catch any that got past the trio. The howling of the husks echoed up to them. Rizzi called up her biotic aura with a grunt of effort. Despite her exhaustion she felt the thrill of adrenaline surging through her as she faced down the approaching pack of husks. Here was an enemy she knew she could beat.

Another Phase Disruptor blast from Wu tore into two husks as Rizzi channeled a warp field around the closest one rushing for her. The simple-minded killers fixated on the targets standing calmly before them and split into groups, each rushing one of the assembled soldiers.

The husk rushing for Rizzi tore itself apart at the joints as her channeled warp rent its molecules down. The warp effect leapt to the husk behind it and she hurled a biotic pulse into its face to trigger a blast that tore it apart and flattened the husk next to it. Another Throw triggered another biotic explosion and then the husks swarmed over her. She danced to the left out of the way of the first husk lunging at her. In her adrenaline-fueled state its howling face appeared to disintegrate in slow-motion as the swirling aura around her flayed it through and through.

A quick back shuffle bought her the space to blow back an incoming husk to her left. She heard the sound of the others fighting their own battles: K'Thane's biotics singing in a measured cadence to her dancelike dashes, the crackle of Marx's twinned omni-blade punctuating her snarled curses as she disemboweled a husk, and the little pops of air displacement in sync with the sound of Wu's blade slicing through cybernetic flesh.

Rizzi sidestepped to the left, balancing the press of husks against how many she could catch in her aura to rend them apart. She dropped into a crouch as a husk leapt for her head and hit it with a Throw. The force of the resulting blast threw her backwards and she turned it into a roll, coming up as still more husks piled towards her. She sucked in a hard breath of air, feeling the rapid trembling in her muscles as they protested the efforts of the last week. In her tired state the passing seconds of the furious melee felt like hours as husks fell apart in her Annihilation Field or flew apart in biotic explosions. She stepped around the remains of a husk missing its legs from the knee down, kicking aside the disintegrating hand reaching for her.

She looked over to see Wu tear his blade up and out of a husk's chest through its head. The powered edge of his sword sheared through its head without noticeably slowing, and the husk fell away, top half flopping in opposite directions. He blinked past the collapsing husk to the next one, ending in a lunge with his blade transfixing the husk's skull. Ripping the sword out of its head, he turned into a spinning swing and blinked partway through it to the last husk he faced. He finished the spin coming out of the blink; the blade sheared through the charging husk's neck and its head went soaring. The headless body continued on for several steps before collapsing to the ground.

"Showoff," Marx called from where she stood with dismembered husk corpses around her. She brushed vainly at the sticky husk blood splattered over her. "One of the perks of killing things from range: you don't make a mess of your armor."

"Are we done here?" K'Thane said. Similarly disintegrating husks surrounded her as she let her Annihilation Field fade away. "Let's see if the barricade needs help."

Rizzi took another breath as they climbed up the embankment. Going back up was much harder than heading down. As it turned out, the barricades didn't need help. Husk corpses littered the ramp near the barricades, all ravaged by biotics. Asari soldiers stood up and cheered as they approached. She paused, puzzled. Then she looked back down the embankment and realized they'd been in full view of the barricade during their battle with the husks. Holed up in the ruins of their most sacred site, amongst the ashes of their homeworld, they'd needed the morale boost.

Enthusiastic greetings and compliments heralded their return once they came back through the barricades. Rizzi received praise from two asari about her display of biotic prowess. Nonplussed, she thanked them for the words. Others gathered around K'Thane, impressed by her skill. Rizzi looked over and realized the young commando was rapidly making a name for herself with her exploits in the Special Ops teams. She felt a twinge of jealousy as an even larger group gathered around Wu.

"Hey there," an asari she didn't recognize said to Wu. "Nice work. Are you as good with your sword… in bed? I'd love to find out…"

Wu tilted his head. "Sorry miss, I'm spoken for." Susan felt a warm surge flow through her and she relaxed the fist she hadn't realized she was clenching. She smiled at him through her facemask as he glanced her way, his own expression hidden by his helmet.

"That's a shame," the soldier pouted. "You would have known eternity like never before."

Marx elbowed Rizzi gently. "Wonder who he's talking about, hmm? Must be serious if he's turning down eager asari…"

The cheers and conversations died as a faint wail sounded in the distance, from the depths of the city. Soldiers rushed back to the barricades, many of them muttering, "Banshee."

"Tell me that was a coincidence," Marx said.

Another wail echoed the first. Then another. Another. Another. The Banshee screams echoed and blended together into one long chorus that drove an icy spike through Rizzi's heart. "I don't think that's a coincidence."

"I guess this batch were scouts," Wu said.

"Take positions!" Colonel Brishana called. "Get those heavy guns ready! Sareni, make sure we've got enough ammo for each station! Missile teams to the temple entrance! That's the fallback position! We don't have many so use them only if you have to, but keep them away from the civilians at all costs!"

Special Ops teams joined the asari soldiers at both barricades. The Banshee wails sounded all together once more in unison, forming a crescendo that Rizzi remembered to her dying day. Then they all stopped, with a suddenness that left a pregnant silence. The ratcheting sound of small arms being readied sounded across the barricade, underpinned by the lower metallic clunks of heavy machine guns. Electric whines pierced the air as gunners traversed them back and forth.

"That's a lot of Banshees," Vael said. "If they all come at us at the same time…"

"Then we take as many of them with us as we can," Wu said.

Rizzi checked the thermal clip on her Suppressor and how many spares she had. She thought back to her father's favorite quote about facing doom. "Blow wind, come wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back!"

Vael looked over at Rizzi like she'd sprouted an extra head. "What?" The quarian cocked her head, listening to something only she could hear. "Thanks, Gilbert." She looked back at Rizzi. "That's not very encouraging."

"This isn't exactly an encouraging situation, Vael."

"I…" Vael trailed off. She turned back towards the ruined city. Rizzi pushed other thoughts out of her mind and thought about the coming storm. At least the weather's clear, she thought. It'd be too cliché for it to be raining during a last stand.

The seconds and minutes ticked by. The silence after the Banshee chorus felt even more oppressive. It was the knowledge, Rizzi decided. The knowledge of what was out there, and what was coming. She saw Marx stretched out in a prone shooting position and shifted in place to ease some of her sore leg muscles. The wait dragged out, like staring at a faulty reactor ready to detonate at any second.

The wait broke without fanfare. Flickers of motion marked the appearance of the first Banshees in the cross-sectioned building: one, two, three, four, five of them spread across three floors. Their tall stretched forms remained still except for their heads, which tilted upwards like they were catching scents in the air. The closest Banshee rotated its head slowly and brought its eyes to rest on the barricades. It blinked closer a second later, the other four following in near unison. Grips tightened on weapons across the barricades as soldiers sighted in.

"Watch your ammo!" Brishana shouted. "Time your shots with their jumps!"

The lead Banshee jumped again – and a Widow round lanced towards its head. Marx's first shot shattered off the Banshee's biotic barriers; the strobing field reduced the anti-materiel round to a spray of microscopic fragments the harvested asari ignored. Like the first stream of a shattering dam, the shot heralded the line of allied soldiers opening fire. Sniper and assault rifle rounds slammed into the Banshees an instant before the heavier machine guns drew their bearings. The mounted guns sent streams of high-velocity rounds drilling through the Banshees. The roar of the volleys drowned out all other noises, overwhelming the aural dampening systems of Rizzi's armor. The reports of individual weapons blended into the orchestra of the firing line, and even that was only a series of accompanying cracks to the chattering screeches of the crew-served weapons spitting tracers at the approaching monsters.

The first Banshee died before it reached the five-hundred meter mark from the barricades. The storm of gunfire whittled its barriers to nothing and tore its armored flesh to shreds moments later. The Banshee collapsed slowly and imploded in a cloud of blue light. It had still absorbed more firepower than anything so spindly and fragile-looking had any right to. The four remaining Banshees continued jumping closer in a ragged line as the gunfire split between them.

"Snipers," Marx called. "Staggered Shieldbreaker volleys, far left target! On my shot!"

A flurry of acknowledgements came back at her as the snipers loaded the little coordinator program in their HUDs. One Banshee jump later Marx loosed another shot. A split second later the next marksman to the right of her position fired his shot into the same target. The next instant after that an asari reservist to his right, armed with a Mantis rifle, launched her shot. Then the sniper to her right fired. On it went, a coordinated chain of sniper shots into the leftmost Banshee that wrapped around from the last sniper on the right to the leftmost one in their positions, all the way back to Marx, who'd finished reloading before the final sniper in the sequence fired. Colloquially known as the Shieldbreaker technique among sniper teams, it had been designed by turian sharpshooters as a way for slow-firing sniper rifles to demolish shields and barriers and give them no opportunity to recharge.

Marx's next shot tore through the Banshee's cheek, gouging out a large chunk of its head. Incredibly, it kept coming. Rifle rounds spattered into its chest and another sniper shot lanced in after them. Another pair of sniper shots ripped away most of the Banshee's remaining head and it finally died, keening as it too dissolved.

Heavy machine gun fire bracketed the third Banshee as it blinked towards the left, attempting to juke the streams of shots. The guns paused for a second as their operators reacquired their target. Another three bursts to its torso and the Banshee collapsed in two pieces. The last two Banshees kept jumping closer, finally into practical range of the assembled soldiers' biotics.

Rizzi and K'Thane popped up over the edge of the barricade alongside dozens of others, mostly asari. A hurricane of biotic effects engulfed the Banshees: Warps, Throws, and Reaves predominantly. The last Banshee closed to nearly a hundred meters before succumbing to the blitz of weapons fire and biotics. The soldiers ceased fire as soon as they saw it imploding in biotic sparkles. The silence stretched on as they watched for more approaching Reapers from the city ruins, but none emerged.

"That wasn't so bad," Vael said as they stood up from the barricades.

"That was just a test of our defenses," Rizzi said with a shake of his head. "They'll come again, and they'll have others."

"You know," Wu said an hour later as he grabbed a Marauder by its throat and shoved his blade through its left eye, "sometimes I hate it when you're right!"

Rizzi's reply was an incoherent snarl as she wrestled the dissolving husk and Cannibal off her and let her biotic aura finish tearing them apart. Twenty meters behind them the heavy machine guns at the barricade fired another burst; the staccato blurt drowned out the warbling roars of the Cannibals and Marauders rushing up the ramp. She launched a Throw that hurled a Cannibal backwards, its spine snapped and shattered. At the same time she brought her other arm up, holding her pistol, and shot an onrushing husk through the head. Another Banshee screech sounded through the air as the echoes of the machine guns faded.

Reaper troops choked the ramps leading to the temple. The past hour had been a series of escalating battles as Banshees scattered around the city gathered entourages of other Reaper forces and launched attack after attack on the Temple of Athame. The barricades still stood, to Rizzi's relief, but were pockmarked and scarred by weapons fire. Rizzi and more than four dozen other close-quarters specialists fought out on the ramp before the barricades. The multiple piles of debris and wreckage formed abundant cover for approaching the temple; it was their responsibility to clear out weaker Reaper troops and allow heavier weapons to focus on bigger threats.

"Look out!" Wu's call came as he tackled her from the right. His lunge carried them both over to the side and they hit the ground rolling as a Brute charged past them like an out-of-control freighter. The Brute plowed through a pile of debris, sending skycar pieces flying and trampling the krogan who'd been kneeling behind it. The krogan pushed himself up to his feet, raised his shotgun, and then jerked once and collapsed again as a Marauder ten meters away shot him.

Rizzi rolled up to one knee and encased the Marauder in a warp field as Wu launched himself into a Biotic Charge and slammed into it. The resulting detonation staggered the Marauder and overloaded its shields. It lost its weapon a second later as Wu swung his sword up in a diagonal arc and lopped off its arm. A downward swing took its leg off at the hip and Rizzi turned away towards the Brute.

She spun around just in time to see K'Thane leap into a flip over the Brute as it swung at her, biotic aura swirling around her and eating away at the hulking monstrosity. She threw a Warp at the apex of her leap while she was inverted, and landed on the opposite side of the Brute as it rocked from the biotic explosion. Faster than it looked, the Brute swung around and lashed out with its claw; the blow sparked off her Tech Armor but still hurled the asari to the ground.

A crackling, frost-rimmed projectile soared into the Brute's side and burst in a directed spray, encasing half the Brute in a coat of rime. It roared and took another step towards K'Thane, the sheen of ice cracking and sloughing off it in sheets as it flexed and shook. A shot lanced into the Brute's head from the side; it was travelling so fast it left a trail of distortion in the air behind it. The round travelled through the Brute's head and out the other side, taking that half of the head with it. The Brute slumped over soundlessly.

"Got you covered, sweetie," Marx said.

"What did I say about calling me that?" K'Thane said as she rolled to her feet.

"You don't seem to mind when I have my tongue-"

"Whoa!" Rizzi said. "Too much information!"

"Gilbert suggests settling this when we aren't fighting Banshees," Vael added as another wail sliced through the air. A pause. "I agree!"

Rizzi ran over to the downed krogan, who'd been well-served by the legendary krogan resilience. He wasn't in any shape to fight, though. "Medic!" she called as she administered a half-dose of precious medi-gel to his gunshot wound.

A trio of asari soldiers ran out from the barricades to the krogan. The lead one threw up a spherical biotic barrier while the other two used their powers to lift the krogan up into a hover and pull him back towards the barricades. Rizzi shot an approaching Marauder twice through the head.

She heard the multiple biotic distorts of a teleporting Banshee and looked further down the ramp. It leapt around in different directions, avoiding bursts of weapons fire and steadily drawing closer to the barricade. Her HUD flickered as it attempted to keep the status overlay over the towering creature. An Overload crackled over the Banshee, tendrils of lightning stripping a major portion of its barriers.

Rizzi channeled a warp field through the Banshee an instant before K'Thane's Warp slammed into it and set off an explosion. The Banshee turned its dead red eyes towards Rizzi and blinked through a metal outcropping, making a beeline for her. Wu's Charge carried him into the corrupted asari and he swung his sword down in a two-handed swing. Foiled by the Banshee's remaining barriers, the blow merely scored a thin line down its forearm. Rizzi's breath caught in her throat as the Banshee turned towards Wu and scooped upwards with its arm – but the Slayer wasn't there anymore. Wu had back-blinked away as soon as he saw how little his swing had done.

"Are you crazy?" she shouted at Wu as he sent a rippling biotic wave at the Banshee. It shrieked at him as it extended an arm and flicked its fingers, as if it were doing nothing more than swatting at a fly. An orb of biotic force emerged and soared towards Wu; he blinked to the side, barely dodging it. The orb curved back around and down, attempting to track its target. The biotic orb sizzled into the ground and churned a square meter of steel and concrete into particles of dust. She realized Wu was laughing.

"Get down!" Kerranus called from the barricades. The squad flung themselves away from the Banshee as volleys of rifle fire tore into it. The Banshee managed another biotic hop before a stream of heavy machine gun fire raked up its torso and tore its upper half to pieces. The weapon fire died down and Rizzi realized that with the exception of several krogan and batarians executing Reaper stragglers, they'd beaten the attack.

Rizzi sagged down to one knee as the adrenaline faded slowly from her system. She breathed hard, sucking in deep gulps of air as she felt the heat bleeding off her biotic implants. K'Thane pushed herself to her feet a dozen meters away from Rizzi. She didn't look much better than Rizzi felt.

"Come on back," Brishana said over the comm. "Rearm and reload: we're not done here."

Their comms all crackled about half an hour later and then came the announcement Rizzi had doubted would actually happen.

"This is Admiral Hackett to all allied forces on Thessia: we're coming. Activate your homing transponders and hold on. We're coming for you."

A ragged cheer went up from Thessia troops and Special Ops teams alike. With the first real ray of hope shining before them for nearly a week, the soldiers manning the barricades at the battered Temple of Athame redoubled their fire towards Reaper troops approaching from the surrounding ruins. Out on the ramp again, Rizzi felt numb to it all – the blaring of gunfire, cries of the wounded and calls for aid, muzzle flashes that left imprints in the vision. She felt like a machine, methodically calling on her biotics to engage target after target. Husks, Cannibals, Marauders, she lost track. Her muscles screamed with exhaustion where she'd run through the physical mnemonics beyond counting.

The heavy machine gun post at the right end of the barricade line hammered out a steady rhythm of shots. It was already on its seventeenth heavy-duty thermal clip and quickly burning through it. The gun crew had drawn buckets of water from the lake during their setup and had resorted to dropping overheated thermal clips into the water to cool them down faster. The red-hot clips had cooked away four buckets worth of water already.

The machine gun never got to its eighteenth thermal clip. A cannon shot crackling with a pale blue corona sizzled through the biotic sphere encasing the gun and slammed into the heavy plate shielding the crew. Half a second later, a second shot slagged the overworked gun's barrel and fused it to a useless lump of molten metal. The third shot burned through the gun shield and sent molten metal spalling into the asari gunner an instant before the energy-wreathed shot pierced through her chest and threw her backwards off the gun tower. Sightless eyes stared up into the sky out of her charred face. Had she been alive, the gunner would have seen the tiny dots dancing in the sky.

"Where did that come from?!" Rizzi heard the cry from the barricade line. She turned back to the ramp and took down an onrushing husk, only belatedly noticing its angry red glow. Her biotic pulse hurled it back in a tangle of shattered limbs – and the red husk exploded in a burst of flames. She saw a similar husk, churning red and leaking flames, take two rifle shots and detonate mid-run.

"Don't let the red husks get close!" she said. "They're some kind of suicide bomb!"

"Scions!" Marx called. "Tower ruins, second right from the base of the ramp!"

As if angered at being revealed, a quartet of the lumbering hulks opened up with a volley that sent soldiers on the barricades diving for cover and threw some of them off with their armor in smoking ruins. Their operators wary of drawing the attention of the walking artillery platforms, the other two machine guns on the line fell silent.

"Snipers, target the Scions!" Marx ordered. By virtue of her experience fighting the Collectors, the other sharpshooters had agreed to defer to her lead if they encountered the enigmatic enemies. "Alpha and Bravo Teams, sequential takedown starting from the left. Charlie Team, take out the sacs on the backs of the others. And call it if any of them start glowing!"

Precision fire started lancing into the ruins in question and the intensity of the Scion volleys dropped. Rizzi was not in a position to appreciate it, however. She called a warning as bulbous-headed Collector troopers leapt down from buildings at the base of the ramp and charged up. She snarled in frustration as soldiers on both sides maneuvered for position and launched volleys of suppressive fire: the Collectors demonstrated more self-preservation than Reaper forces. At least Cannibals reliably charged straight into prepared guns.

"These things," K'Thane said with a grunt as she wrestled a Collector trooper to the ground in a rear chokehold, "take a lot of killing!" She held the struggling trooper in place as she let her biotic aura dissolve it.

As always for Rizzi, the fury of combat condensed into snippets: moments of clarity in the midst of chaos and anecdotes against the backdrop of battle.

She saw K'Thane knock a Collector Captain prone with a dance-like sweep of her leg. The commando pressed the barrel of her Carnifex into its chest and left a spray of fluid and viscera in a star pattern a meter across from the Captain. She cursed as it swung an arm at her, shoved her weapon into its head, and pulled the trigger twice. The resulting semi-circle of viscous matter splattered even further out.

She saw a vorcha pounce over a wrecked AFV, omni-claws glowing on both arms. Hissing tracers intercepted him in mid-air and he landed as a steaming pile of bloody flesh.

She saw a krogan turn his face away from a grenade as it detonated near him. He hurled an oblong projectile of his own into the group of troopers who'd attacked him. A wave of liquid fire splashed out from where it landed and Collector troopers staggered out of the inferno, twitching and jerking as the burning chemical adhesive washed into their joints. The krogan ended their suffering, if indeed they felt pain, with blasts from his Eviscerator shotgun: One, Two, Three.

She saw Wu parry a Collector's arm-blade and take its arm off at the elbow with his riposte in one fluid move. He kept his grip on the arm, spun close to the next approaching trooper, and plunged the wickedly curved blade up through its throat. The twitching Collector blocked the shots from the trooper behind it; Wu released the arm, extended his hand from underneath its armpit, and destroyed the shooter's head with a Disruptor blast. Then he stepped back and almost like an afterthought, lopped off the still-twitching trooper's head with a backhand swing before blurring away in a Biotic Charge.

She saw the magenta sky and beige concrete of the ground spinning as she rolled on the ground, frantically slapping out flames. One of the volatile red husks had gotten too close to her and exploded as her Annihilation Field flensed it to the molecular level. She cursed her own lapse in vigilance. Curiously, dots and streaks crossed the sky…

She saw the heavy machine guns open fire on a Brute charging up the temple ramp on all fours. For some reason the sight made her think of Toffee, the Alaskan malamute they'd had when she was nine. The dog used to rush for the door at a dead run whenever they came home, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth- The Brute slumped to a halt as the heavy guns tore fist-sized holes out it.

She heard the cry of "Harvester!" as she blinked into a squad of Collector troopers. She landed in a crouch and jabbed down into the ground with an open palm. The mnemonic gesture detonated her Annihilation Field in a radial shockwave that sent heads and limbs flying away from her in all directions. She looked up in time to see the winged Reaper transport soar by – and a stream of cannon fire hammer it from the air. A blue and white blur lanced past, its screaming engines audible even over the din of battle.

She saw a trio of Praetorians floating through the air towards them at the base of the ramp, stately and unhurried. Spherical biotic barriers shrugged off biotic and tech attacks with terrifying impunity while their conventional barriers soaked up gunfire. The leftmost Praetorian paused and unleashed a pair of incandescent beams from its eyes; the hapless batarian it targeted fell apart in wet pieces.

"Fall back! Fall back to the barricades!" Colonel Brishana's order cut through the adrenaline haze of battle. Breathing hard, Rizzi looked around the scene of carnage – and then looked up to see the enormous vessels thundering through the sky towards them. She stared at them as best she could while running for the barricades. Three blocky, rectangular ships that looked more like frying bricks than even the Alliance's Kodiaks powered down towards them on fat, squat thrusters that looked like they could double as weapons. They were all various shades of dirty, streaked red and had inverted trapezoidal cross-sections. Heavy ribbed ramp doors, currently closed, jutted from the bottom half of their prow sections like some angry god had punched them from within and left the imprint of his fist sticking out.

Her inattention nearly cost her life. "Watch it!" K'Thane snapped, returning Rizzi's attention to the approaching Praetorians. She looked back just in time to see the lead center Praetorian lance out with those eye-searing beams. It swept the pair of beams up and out from its position as Rizzi threw herself out of the way behind a pile of rubble. The proximity still burst her barriers and she choked back a cry of pain at the sudden searing heat as the beams swept past her and carved a set of barricades in two. The crab-like monstrosities ignored the volleys of gunfire hammering into them as the last operatives outside ran for the barricades. More Collector troopers advanced behind the cover of the Praetorians as Rizzi reached the closest barricade and threw herself into a biotic blink through it. She landed on the other side in a roll and came back up to see Wu blink through the barricade himself, sword held in a reverse grip. K'Thane dashed through a gap in the barricade line as more particle beams sliced through them and soldiers scrambled out of their lethal path.

A series of thunder cracks split the sky and the Praetorians vanished in a cluster of explosions that threw smoke, dust, and debris twenty meters into the air. Rizzi looked up: the forward ship had maneuvered so its port side squarely faced the ramp. Another series of rippling flashes winked across the length of the ship and more explosions engulfed the Collector troops behind. Cheers sprang out from the embattled soldiers on the ground, then died away as the smoke from the first volley cleared to reveal one Praetorian pushing itself to its feet. Its shell was charred and torn, but it stepped over the dissolving remains of its brethren almost daintily – then convulsed violently and floated upwards a meter as crackling glowing yellow lines snaked across its limbs and body. Its four eyes tinted yellow as its legs gave one final shudder and it turned its gaze upon the barricades with faceless malice.

"Oh, crap." Marx's Widow shot splashed off the glowing Praetorian's barriers, as did the barrage of other weapons as soldiers got back into position. The Praetorian slammed into the ground as a glowing streak lanced into it from above. Two more streaks hammered down, sending out visible shockwaves through the dust as the approaching ship unleashed a broadside into the Praetorian. It took another nine shots before the Praetorian collapsed, two of its legs torn off and the shell of its body holed and twisted beyond recognition.

The sound of weapons fire faded, leaving the approaching roar of the ships. Rizzi looked back up at them. They were close enough now for her to see the thick landing struts extending from the four corners. She tried to get a scale for the vessel sizes and their design origins. The long blocky shapes brought to mind-

"Krogan dropships," Kerranus said. His helmeted face was also turned towards the descending ships. "What are they doing here?"

"I think they're our rides," Wu said. He cocked his head. "That could be a problem…"

Rizzi's tired mind finally figured out the size of the approaching ships and her eyes widened behind her facemask. "Unless those things have shuttles onboard… there's nowhere for them to land."

The pilot of the lead dropship didn't seem to care that his vessel was larger than the concourse he headed towards. It kept plunging towards the surface and for a moment Rizzi was worried that it would just plow straight into them. Looking around, she saw Colonel Brishana speaking frantically into her comm. Retro-thrusters screeched and the dropship shed forward velocity. She frowned; there was nowhere for it to go but…

The dusky red dropship practically dropped the last ten meters into the lake. Up closer, Rizzi saw that it was nearly three stories high. The impact jolted people from their feet and sent a cloud of steam billowing into the air. A small tidal wave lashed out of the lake and sent corpses and debris bobbing away. The other two kept their distance and circled in a holding pattern over a hundred meters up in the air, sending occasional salvoes down into the ruined city.

Rizzi climbed back to her feet. "Okay, that's closer, but not by much."

The lip of the concourse stood over thirty meters above the edge of the water below. She looked back at the entrance of the temple, where asari soldiers were already heading in for the refugees who'd been sheltering in the temple's under levels. How to get the civilians out? The only practical answer appeared to be the large ramps curving down around the edge of the lake. She turned towards the ramp they'd come up to enter the temple from hours earlier; it hadn't seen nearly as much combat, and hopefully provided a better-

Cascading shockwaves threw a wall of dust and gravel into the air. Rizzi reflexively threw an arm up before her face. She gazed at the ramp with horror. Or rather, what was left of it. One of the circling dropships continued raining mass accelerator rounds and rockets down the length of the ramp and into the buildings at the bottom. The deluge of firepower shattered towers, collapsed rooftops, and rendered three square blocks into an impassable wasteland.

"What the hell are they doing?!" Rizzi yelled.

K'Thane brought a hand to her ear, speaking rapidly. She listened, eyes wide, and turned to Rizzi. "Be glad they did that."

"Why?! That was our best way to the dropship!"

"No it wasn't, trust me. You remember all those Banshee screams?"

"We didn't get them all?"

K'Thane laughed weakly. "Not even remotely."

Colonel Brishana gave clipped orders to her soldiers as they prepared to move the civilians to the dropship sitting at the shore of the lake, its rear half partially submerged. Asari troops unbolted the barricades from the ground and biotically levitated them out and down the ramp. They relocated the barricades to form a corridor running partway down the ramp. Reaper troops were rallying and the sporadic counterattacks were growing in frequency and intensity, something Rizzi knew was happening across the planet. The thought crossed her mind about all the regions the allies hadn't been able to reinforce or evacuate; she pushed it out of her mind as irrelevant to surviving the current moment.

A dozen asari levitated a massive metal plate down the ramp. Rizzi thought it must have come from the temple at some point. The pitted rectangular sheet was nearly five meters wide and over twice as long. The asari crew floated it down the ramp in a biotic field and then maneuvered it out over the edge of the curving temple ramp to the lake. They let the metal plate drop with a whump of displaced air and water, and formed a secondary ramp down to the water and the dropship.

Stationed at the end of the barricade, Rizzi ducked as a burst of gunfire chewed into the angled metal by her head. She rolled away and peeked up, looking for the attacker. Another burst hammered her previous position and she tracked it back to a Marauder firing from a second story window – right as a sniper round popped its head. She switched targets to the charging pack of husks.

A screeching whiz overhead heralded Ravager attacks. A trio of the bloated former rachni took up position on a roof overlooking the temple ramp and managed to loose two shots apiece. A multi-barrel rotary cannon mounted on the lake-borne dropship's port gunwale spun up; it stitched a burst of rounds so dense it looked more like a beam across the assembled Ravagers. The Ravagers popped like soap bubbles while the torrent blasted away the roof – and the floor below it, leaving the ruined building looking remarkably scalped.

Rizzi gaped for a second. "How many guns does that thing have?"

"I'm just happy the firepower is on our side for once," Wu said as he placed a Phase Disruptor blast through a shattered window.

"Gilbert says that if it's krogan, we probably haven't seen everything yet," Vael said.

"The first group of civilians is on the way!" Brishana's voice crackled over their comms as her transmission overrode squad level communications. "Keep them safe!"

Panicked screams and cries preceded the civilians' arrival. At least, they would have, had they been audible. By the time the stream of refugees arrived at the top of the ramp the racket of dozens of different weapons drowned out any sounds made by organic throats.

Asari troops in battered light armor escorted the refugees, pacing them and leapfrogging Biotic Spheres to provide as much protection as they could. The Special Ops teams focused on protecting the civilians by killing Reaper troops.

Rizzi found herself beyond the barriers before long, as teams pushed out to create a buffer zone for the evacuation. At one point she was pressed back-to-back with Wu in the middle of a group of Cannibals. She spun her Annihilation Field around herself, dissolving reaching limbs and gnashing faces as Wu plunged his sword into twisted organs. The rotary cannon screamed again. Its rate of fire was so high the individual gunshots were indistinguishable; it sounded more like the whir of a power tool, scaled up and drilling out whole buildings at a time.

She was kneeling behind the remains of an armored vehicle, panting with all her biotics on cooldown, and trading shots with two Marauders directing half a dozen Cannibals when the low background hum of the dropship changed pitch. A rising roar signaled the transport lifting off even as a Marauder's shot went through her weakened barriers and nicked the right cheek of her faceplate. The round ricocheted off and tore a hole through her hood by her ear. She rolled to her right and back up to one knee, drawing a bead on the closer Marauder-

An explosion of light and debris engulfed the Marauders and scattered Cannibal pieces over dozens of meters. The concussive force flattened Rizzi and she shook her head drunkenly as she sat up, brushing a length of intestine off her chest. She looked up at the departing dropship with a mixture of gratitude and exasperation as its under-mounted guns continued blazing away. The shot had certainly been danger close, but it had also handily dealt with that particular pile of Reaper troops.

"First transport away!" Brishana said. "Second ship inbound – brace for impact!"

The world shook again as the second of the circling dropships plowed into the lake- Rizzi couldn't bring herself to call it a landing. She hopped up onto the vehicle carcass as another wave of water surged past. A chorus of Reaper cries sounded from deeper within the city: the warbles of Marauders directing other troops, the angry roars of Brutes, and the piercing screams of Banshees. Rizzi knew with cold certainty the Reaper forces understood their prey was escaping.

"All forces back to the escape corridor!" Brishana ordered. "The second group is on its way!" Rizzi found herself falling back with K'Thane at her side and combined her biotics with the asari's to lethal effect against a pack of husks and Cannibals.

They regrouped at the line of barricades running down the temple ramp. The second group of civilians, strung in a ragged line, ran for the metal plate leading down to the lake under the direction of more soldiers. There were many less than in the first group. Rizzi gritted her teeth as she saw the group's composition and opened a channel to Brishana, who stood at the end of the barricades directing the combat and evacuation simultaneously.

"Why are the kids in the second group? Why weren't they evacuated first?"

"Orders." Brishana's reply was clipped, and equally unhappy. "Corporate executives, civilian leaders, and such were pulled out first."

"And they didn't have room for children?" Wu said calmly. He half-turned and shot a charging Cannibal thirty meters away through the head. "Really?"

Marx took a long step away from him.

"Not my call," Brishana said. "Not what I wanted either, believe me. But the children can't contribute to the war effort."

"They're kids," Rizzi said.

Screams sounded throughout the line of refugees as a volley of Scion shots sizzled overhead and splashed off the steaming dropship. Dorsal mounted cannons opened up in response and flattened out buildings. Tracers and streaks lanced out into the post-apocalyptic city and painted it with detonations. The roar and crack of the guns felt like physical shocks to Rizzi in her armor, and she winced at what the civilians must have been experiencing.

"Keep them moving!" Brishana called to the escorting soldiers as various civilians huddled down in response to the firepower the dropship spewed out. Rizzi looked around and blanched; the temple concourse looked empty. All the surviving soldiers were strung across the line of barricades or holding the end against increasing attacks.

"More Collectors," Marx said. She loosed a rifle shot, then cursed and sprinted for the resupply station behind the last barricade section. Rizzi took one last glance at the dropship as it lowered its massive bow door.

She sprinted out past the barricade line for the wasteland of rubble beyond, tagging a Collector Captain with a warp field and throwing herself down under the storm of return fire. She snarled as she saw the Collector soldiers hunker down behind cover and snap off shots while Seeker Swarms buzzed across the killing ground. Meter by meter, the insect-like aliens advanced as their Seekers swarmed over allied soldiers, stinging and distracting.

Something bounced into the ground a meter away from her and she jerked away before recognizing the package. The little flash-manufactured turret flipped over and hovered up a meter and a half into the air. It floated in place like an oblong disc with a miniature barrel protruding from the end. The turret spun around once, scanning for targets, and then fired a shot at a Collector trooper vaulting over a skycar wreck. A second later it launched a small rocket that streaked out and took off its right arm at the shoulder. Rizzi popped up and knocked its head off with a Throw.

"Oops, I meant to throw that a little farther," Vael said.

"I don't mind," Rizzi replied. The little turret fired another rocket. At least somebody's putting micro-rocket manufacturing training to use, she thought.

A Scion shot burned into the ground near her and she blinked away two meters to her left, sprinting for more cover. The dropship hammered more shots into the desolate buildings around, seeking the Scion. After its firepower had reduced the first three to scraps of organic residue smeared across the ground, the Collectors had taken to moving and hiding each Scion after firing single shots.

"Friendlies coming in!" a low-pitched shout came as she tried to locate the Scion. Another shot crackled overhead and she saw a glimpse of movement in the shadows of a half-collapsed tower. Heavy steps thudded down near her. Rizzi turned, her eyes widening as she saw the line of five krogan in battered heavy armor. They hefted massive slab-like shields as tall as them that looked like they had begun life as tank armor. Shimmering kinetic barriers danced across the surface, deflecting prodigious quantities of fire. Ports cut out of the shields allowed the krogan to fire out with shotguns of various models. Four armored turians wearing marksmen's visors followed close behind, using the shield wall as cover as they peeked out to snap off shots from their worn-looking Raptor rifles.

One of them beckoned to Rizzi. "Fall back to the dropship! We can't hold this position long!" As if reinforcing his words, a Scion round smashed into the leftmost shield. It burst the kinetic barriers with a crack and added a fresh burn scar to its battered surface. The krogan wielding it fell back a step as the others shifted to cover him while the shield recharged. She shook her head as they broke out laughing, like they were swapping stories at a bar.

Rizzi took the opportunity to retreat as the turian sharpshooters hammered out suppressive volleys. The Collectors stayed hunkered down behind cover which limited what she could do with biotics, but she found herself grateful for the reprieve as she felt her implants throbbing with overuse. She fell back to the barricade line and grimaced at how many operatives lay sprawled in the wasteland, motionless.

The civilians had finally all gotten down the metal ramp- and were mired down in the mud churned up by the dropships and the treading of the first group. "Get to the ship!" Brishana called. Asari soldiers and Special Ops teams retreated from the barricades and backed away down the metal ramp. The krogan shield line was last down; they held position at the head of the ramp as the dropship hammered rounds over and past them.

Rizzi pulled her foot out of the steaming mud that sucked at it. The water was a churned gray mess, and she was thankful they hadn't been fighting in the lake as they closed with the last civilians struggling for the dropship. Three asari children struggled in the mud and muck, the thigh-high water for Rizzi proving a greater obstacle for the shorter kids. Adult civilians struggled to pull them through, but many of them were panicking and near-catatonic in the midst of the desperate fight.

"Come on!" Rizzi waded over to the nearest asari girl and scooped her up with one arm.

"Susan!" Irila clasped her arms around Rizzi's neck. Her eyes were wide and frightened in her mud-stained face.

"Close your eyes, sweetie!"

Wu sheathed his sword and picked up the second child as K'Thane deactivated her Tech Armor and swooped up the third. They waded for the cavernous mouth of the dropship, rounds thudding overhead all the while. Marx kept pace with them; rifle sweeping over the ruined buildings as they finally reached the dropship's open ramp. The shield bearers backed towards the ship, fending off shots the whole way.

Rizzi carried Irila up the textured, heavily reinforced ramp. It led to a deep chamber nearly two stories tall and heavily armored on the inside. Civilians and soldiers alike crowded the assault chamber and she kept her grip on Irila, fearful of the crush. Two hatches on opposite sides at the rear of the chamber led deeper within the ship and a human and salarian tried to direct people in to clear space in the chamber. The chatter of civilians, cries of the wounded, and roars of the dropship's weapons drowned out their shouted instructions. The ramp closed with a mechanical whirr that ended in a resounding thud, plunging them into darkness. Overhead lights snapped on a second later as the roar of the engines and surge of inertial dampeners started.

"Irila! Irila, where are you?!" Rizzi picked the call out amidst the continuing chatter as she heard more and more explanations of relief and joy. She found Irila's aunt Jali moving through the crowd and set the girl down. "Oh you're safe, praise the goddess! Thank you, thank you!"

"It's my pleasure, really." Rizzi nodded as Irila hugged her legs. "I'm glad you're both safe."

With the dropship powering towards the atmosphere and the ruckus of battle shut out, the soldiers restored relative order surprisingly quickly. Civilians formed into lines and moved through the hatches under the guidance of Colonel Brishana. Irila followed her aunt through a hatch after making Susan promise to see her later. The girl was giddy at the prospect of going into space, and Rizzi couldn't help but smile at her innocent exuberance. The horrors of the war seemed to just slide right off the child. She didn't hold the same confidence for some of the other civilians, walking around with shell-shocked expressions.

She staggered over to her squad, who were leaning against one of the armored bulkheads. She felt her hand trembling as the burn of adrenaline began to fade from her system and reached up and detached her faceplate.

Rizzi immediately regretted the action. A pungent reptilian odor hit her nostrils like a shot of pepper spray and she scrunched her face up. "I didn't realize we smelled this bad," she said as she pinched her nose. She'd known none of them could lay claim to being odorless, but this… The smell managed to combine the worst notes of wet dog and rotting vegetation, along with a strange hint of… antiseptic?

"I'm pretty sure that isn't us," K'Thane said. She'd also wrinkled her nose in distaste. The commando pointed at the deck; Rizzi looked down at the center where K'Thane indicated and wrinkled her nose more. Several large brown streaks ran across the deck towards the ramp exit. "I'm also pretty sure that wasn't us. I hope."

Vael and Kerranus walked over, avoiding the streaks. "Judging by your expressions," Vael said, "I should be thankful this suit has olfactory filters, shouldn't I?"

Rizzi nodded.

"I guess I'm keeping my helmet on then," Kerranus said.

Marx took her helm off and scratched at her unwashed hair. She took a breath, then froze in horror and clapped a hand over her nose and mouth. "Wow. What is that?"

"Ah, that would be the kakliosaur smell." The salarian who'd been ushering people through one of their hatches approached. "Don't worry, you get used to it."

Rizzi gave the salarian a blank look. "Okay: first, what's a kakliosaur, and second, why would I want to get used to this smell?"

"Ah." The salarian went dreamy-eyed. It reminded Rizzi strongly of a krogan who'd just been offered a barrel of ryncol, a Claymore, and as many complimentary thermal clips as needed. "A kakliosaur… is a miracle."

Now they all stared blankly at the salarian. "A very foul smelling miracle," K'Thane said.

"Kakliosaurs were extinct war-mounts the krogan rode in ages past. Very tough, very fierce. Immune to toxins, which made them quite an asset during the Rachni Wars. Apparently, also very odorous. None of the records mentioned that."

"You said they were extinct," Wu remarked.

"Yes! Were being the operative term! We always thought they had a relatively uncomplicated genetic structure. Should be simple enough to clone, if we had viable genetic samples. Then one day Commander Shepard shows up at the Citadel and tells my colleague he's found a fossilized kakliosaur skull! Commander Shepard! Just shows up with a kakliosaur skull!" The salarian was rubbing his hands together in glee at this point.

Rizzi rubbed her eyes. The adrenaline had worn off and the better part of a week's exhaustion was starting to sink in. "You… cloned dinosaurs for the krogan to ride like ponies?"

"And who's 'we'?" Vael said.

"Uh… call it interested parties in a certain… tasks group. And they're not ponies. They're… well alright, dinosaur is not an inaccurate description." The salarian straightened. "Forgive me; where are my manners? I'm Doctor Lorim Nar, one of the project heads."

The dropship shuddered gently. Rizzi recognized the feeling of a ship leaving atmosphere. She arched an eyebrow at Lorim Nar. "So what's a salarian doctor of a dinosaur cloning project doing on a krogan dropship in asari space?"

"Evacuating teams comprised of asari, humans, turians, and quarians, of course."

Rizzi opened her mouth, shut it. Nodded. "Good point."

Lorim smiled. "It's quite the multi-species galactic effort these days. But to answer your question earnestly, I was overseeing the housing and transport of the first batch of kakliosaur clones to Tuchanka. As it turns out, they needed the transport ships in a hurry. We barely had time to get the kakliosaurs unloaded. They're quite hostile when riled, but that strikes me as a desirable trait in a war-mount."

"Why wouldn't you stay with them?" Kerranus said. "They sound like quite the pet project for you."

"Well, the dropships needed the manpower. I thought I could do some good. Maybe provide medical assistance, though it has been a while since I've gotten hands-on. Or as it happened, man the dropship guns. Surprisingly fun. I understand a little better now why the krogan appear to enjoy weapons so much."

"That was you on the guns?" One of the shield-bearing krogan stomped over. He and the others had hung up the massive shields on a rack along the opposite side of the chamber. His pale gray armor hummed with audible servos. "Hah! Good shooting, Narwhal! We'll make a proper warrior out of you yet!" The krogan walked off towards the hatch leading deeper into the ship.

"Narwhal?"

"Kakliosaurs have a single horn protruding from their heads. Combined with my name and a sudden popularity for all things from Earth after Shepard's role in curing the genophage…" Lorim sighed. "Sometimes I think it was a mistake to give the krogan Extranet access."

Rizzi nodded mechanically. In truth, the conversation was getting very hard to follow- she could barely keep her eyes open. She tried to stifle a yawn and failed. The yawn triggered a chain reaction among the operatives which did not go unnoticed by Lorim. "Follow me, I'll show you to some quarters."

Lorim led them through the hatch and into the innards of the dropship. Like nearly everything krogan-designed, the interior was sparse, functional, and battered. Unpainted steel comprised the decks and bulkheads while pipes and ducts ran overhead. At least the krogan design meant it was relatively spacious for the squad. They passed civilians wandering around as Lorim explained how they were in the process of setting up an improvised mess hall and latrines. Rizzi was just thankful that the corridors didn't smell as strongly of kakliosaur.

A loud clank and shudder reverberated through the ship and the squad started. "Don't worry," said Lorim. "That's just us attaching to the umbilical ship."

"Umbilical ship?"

"These vessels don't have FTL capability," Lorim said as waved around at their surroundings. "Probably something to do with all that power going to weapons. So they have special ships that we hook up to for long-distance travel. Each of them can tow a dozen of these dropships. It's not pretty, but it works."

Rizzi nodded once.

"Here we are." Lorim popped open a hatch to a chamber that was designed for four krogan. Who would have to really get along; it was cramped even by human standards. "Ah, I forgot there were only four beds. I can try to-"

"It's not a problem," Rizzi said.

"It's not?"

"Nope."

"I see. Well actually I don't, but… anyways, enjoy your rest. Remember, the mess is down that corridor." Lorim headed off.

The six tired operatives squeezed into the cabin. The bulkheads sported various scrawls and graffiti carved by bored krogan, denigrating the ancestry of rival clans or turians. Four wide beds folded out of one bulkhead; they might as well have been steel tables for how hard they were. Rizzi didn't care at the moment. Another jolt from the inertial dampeners ran through the ship.

She tugged Wu over to one of the beds gently and collapsed onto it, feeling the last of her strength draining away. Wu sank down beside her and slid an arm under head; she snuggled up against him and sighed. They were both still in their armor but were inured to it after nearly a week of living that way. They laid their helmets beside their heads.

"Oh, that's what you meant," Vael said. "That doesn't look very comfortable."

K'Thane eyed Marx's up and down before looking down at her own commando leathers. "This seems an unequal arrangement."

Marx gave her a crooked grin. "Fine, you get to be on top this time."

Rizzi stopped paying attention to the others as they hashed out the sleeping arrangements. She reached and brushed an errant lock of hair from Wu's forehead. He opened his eyes and gave her a tired smile before closing them again. She laid her head down on his shoulder. This was a temporary reprieve, she knew. Soon they'd come face-to-face with what the whole endeavor on Thessia had cost them. Soon would come the grieving and the guilt. For now, she'd be content with escaping alive. Rizzi closed her eyes and sleep claimed her.