Every fiber in Lauren's body was practically twitching as she watched Aria explain her plans to Shepard. She had protested and fought Aria at every turn when it came to their plans on retaking Omega in the last few weeks. Every mercenary that had been present during the first and only meeting, most of whom didn't know of their marriage, had respectfully kept their mouths shut as the two mercenary bosses had argued about the plans. Eventually the two had reached a stalemate that was only solved by factoring in Shepard.

Shepard.

Lauren looked at the brunette, who was asking intelligent and carefully guarded questions while Aria explained the different paths that the other mercs would be taking once they landed on Omega. She was tall, athletically built, and carried around this air of complete confidence. That air of confidence was why Aria needed her - Petrovsky had to scared in order to loose Omega. And Shepard made people uneasy. Mostly because she had the skills to back up her promises and threats.

But Lauren was unsure if Shepard would go with the plan when they landed. That was, of course, if they landed.

A sudden tap on her shoulder interrupted her thoughts. Sevah was standing at her elbow with a data pad in her hands. She held it out and Lauren picked it up, reading it's contents quickly.

"Thank you." Lauren said as she realized it was a weapon count. "Go back to your station."

The asari nodded and walked off. Lauren admired the mute asari. She'd been born with defunct vocal cords and never had them fixed - choosing instead as a young girl to speak through a combination of her Omni-tool and her ability to mind meld. Lauren glanced at the statistics that were running across the screen of her Omni-tool. Every single number and letter hadn't changed in the slightest in about five minutes. It still read the same thing.

Omega was still in the dark.

No news from Lauren's agents. No news from any kind of resistance.

Dark, dark, dark. No lights, no noise, no music. Omega was a quiet derelict station under complete control of an even quieter enemy.

"Any changes?" Aria suddenly asked.

Lauren looked up and shook her head the tiniest bit. "Not a sound."

"Is life-support still on?"

"Both environmental and oxygen, yes." Lauren scrolled through the list of numbers. "There is a high-power draw. I suspect heavy weapons."

"Your fleet could be torn to pieces, Aria." Shepard pointed out. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I've ever been. Bray, give word to the rest of the fleet. We're going on my signal and my signal only."

Lauren turned to watch the asari strut down to the batarian's side. "Derimus, relay to the fleet. We jump on Aria's signal."

"Yes ma'am."

Aria patted Bray on the shoulder. "Let's show Cerberus what we're made of."

"Looks like they're on their way." Joker craned his neck to look at Deacon, who was standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest, in the middle of the cockpit.

"Yes. Yes it does." Deacon's tone was flat. "EDI - get me a connection to Admiral Hackett. I want to speak to him as soon as he can secure a connection."

"Yes, Commander." EDI said as she looked over the internal systems of the Normandy. She assigned a sub-routine to Deacon's order and went back to working on calibrations with Garrus on the ship's other systems.

"Joker - keep Shepard's channel open. I want to know the moment you hear anything." Deacon said as he watched Aria's command ship hit the relay. "Ashley's god willing we hear something from her in exactly twelve hours or we'll have to follow through on Shepard's orders."

"Yeah, that'd suck." Joker tapped at the communications panel. "Because the last thing I'd want to do is go attack Omega and find Shepard amongst thousands of warring mercenaries and Cerberus agents. We might scratch the Normandy," He joked.

"That would be a tragedy." Deacon replied sarcastically. "Shepard would never forgive us if we scratched the Normandy."

Because creativity is at an all time low and there's quite a few one-shots on my computer, I'll be starting a one-shot series called Behind the Mirror that involves characters from Until the End. Look for it on my profile if you're interested - but don't be worried - this story is still ongoing! It's just taking a while to write the next chapter! ~Iehu