As the rest of the crew debated about how to best rescue Shepard, Joker sat in the cockpit, staring at EDI's blue light orb. The holographic projection didn't move, or blink, or give any sign that EDI was aware of Joker staring at her. It.

Artificial Intelligences were illegal in Council space and highly disliked in the Terminus Systems. After what happened to the quarians when the geth rebelled, it was easy to see why. Yet this thing that had been installed into his ship had never shown the first sign of rebellion.

Still. Didn't mean he trusted her. It. Whatever. Loyal or no, useful or no, the thing had no business being on his ship. He had no need of help when he did an impossible Mako drop on Ilos, or when he led the fleet in the Battle of the Citadel, or when he pulled himself through Alliance flight school at the top of his class despite everything against him. Putting this thing on the Normandy felt like an insult. Here, Joker; a nice little helper for all those big, hard things you have to do that us normal people can do without a robot assistant. If it weren't for Shepard, he would quit; better to fly a cargo ship by himself than the best ship in the galaxy with help.

Now Shepard was missing, and he, the ship's wonderful XO, was completely useless to do anything.

He sighed and leaned back into his chair. "I hate these fucking bones," he said to nobody in particular.

"They do seem to be rather inconvenient," EDI replied, startling him. "Strong, but a single fracture can dismantle the whole system."

"I wasn't talking to you!"

"I am the only entity within hearing distance of your voice, Jeff. You can not possibly have been talking to someone else."

"A little thing called thinking out loud? Ever hear of it? Oh, wait, you haven't, because you can't think anything that wasn't pre-programmed into you for you to think."

"The phenomenon known as 'thought' is the subconscious processing of information. In this capacity, it is true that I do not think, only because I am fully aware of the information I process; as I am programmed to constantly process outside information, to say that I do not think is merely a matter of semantics. Pragmatically speaking, I think just as much as any organic being-arguably moreso."

Smartass.

The cockpit doors opened behind them. Miranda Lawson entered, the weight of the ship shifting due to the relocation of her chest. How the woman kept from getting shot when wearing something like that into battle was beyond him, but Joker sure as shit would never say anything about it. Not to her face, anyway.

"Joker," she said in her Australian accent, "we've made a plan."

"All right," he said, glad for some action. "What are we doing?"

"Wrex, Garrus and I will be leading three teams into the base. Wrex's team will be the frontal assault, Garrus will bring up the rear, and my team will serve as a distraction. We can't risk the ship, so we'll be taking the shuttles. You and the rest of the crew will remain here and wait for our evac notice."

EDI lit up next to him. "I will attempt to chart out possible landing zones and ideal evacuation areas."

Miranda nodded to the glowing ball. Joker saluted. "Roger Dodger. And if everything goes to shit? What am I saying, 'if.'"

"Save who you can and get the hell out of here."

It was unlikely that such a thing would happen; after all, they were taking the entire ground team with them. It usually took no more than three to dismantle an entire operation. The whole team all focused on one mission. . .the whole planet might blow up. Still, it was good to have a way out, just in case.

When everyone filed into the shuttle and took off, sending them down to their latest suicide mission, the ship felt strangely empty, almost light. Most of the areas in the ship would no longer be occupied: Miranda's office, the main battery, the armory, the tech lab, the cargo holds. The engineers would have to make do without Tali for a little while, but they also got a reprieve from Jack.

He leaned back in his comfy leather chair (real leather! Why did terrorism have to pay so well?) and looked out the windows on either side. On the right he could see the big gray ball that was Fathar looming down below; they were right smack on the dusky line that permanently separated day from night on the planet's tidally locked surface, hovering far enough above the atmosphere to (hopefully) remain undetected by any wary watchers. They couldn't be detected by any conventional means, of course, but if some scientifically curious batarian child whipped out his new telescope and looked up at just the right star in the sky. . .

Hey, they'd had worse luck.

He opened up the extranet and started leafing through holographic pages and articles, looking for nothing in particular. News about Collector abductions of human colonies was prominent. There was some news about a traffic delay across relays, causing the rich brats vacationing on Mars to complain about the ineffectiveness of the Council, some news about a famous asari pop singer Joker never liked, something about a blue phone box spotted in Earth's atmosphere before mysteriously vanishing, oh, look, the turians want to construct a new dreadnought and the Alliance is opposed to it, politics as usual. . .

"Mister Moreau," EDI chimed in. The thing never used his nickname for some reason. Maybe it didn't understand the concept of nicknames.

"What is it?"

"I have completed my analysis, and I believe that now may be a good time to install the IFF we obtained from the derelict Reaper."

Well, they weren't doing anything anyway. It'd be good to have them ready and raring to go into the uncharted tenth circle of Hell as soon as Shepard came back.

"Sure. How long will it take?"

"Only an hour. I will have to shut down all nonessential systems in order to complete the installation."

"What if the others need us while you're in the middle of installing?"

"In the event of an emergency, there are precautions we can take that will enable me to force-quit the install."

"Like on a Mac?"

"I do not know what that is."

Joker laughed. Nothing eases tension like laughter, though it could sometimes increase tension, he found.

"As long as it's safe, go ahead and do it."

The light vanished and several lights blinked out on the console, indicating that EDI had already started. He rested his head on his hands. He had to admit, the AI was efficient. . .too bad there was nothing left for him to do. He adjusted his seat, his bones creaking threateningly in his hips. He was born with broken legs and it was all downhill from there. A lifetime of calcium supplements and reparative therapies and entire months spent in bed recovering from fractures awaited him, accompanied by an overly protective father and sister who nearly shit a brick when he announced he was joining the Systems Alliance.

He rested his feet on the console, a major no-no back in the Alliance that Shepard unfortunately continued to enforce, and closed his eyes. Maybe when he woke up, her'd find the Reaper threat over and everybody just starting the celebration party in their honor.

Instead of celebrations, however, it was the alarm that woke him.

His sudden jerk of surprise nearly broke his shins. Not gonna be doing that anymore. "What's going on?"

EDI's light appeared next to him. "I believe I have encountered a trap within the code of the Reaper IFF."

Joker sat up straight, leaning into the console. "Show me what you found."

A moment passed before a wave of static fazed through the radio.

"It's just radiation bleed. White noise."

"I have detected a signal embedded in the static. We are transmitting the Normandy's location."

That couldn't be good. "Transmitting? To who?"

As if to answer his question in the most dramatic way possible, the impossibly large Collector ship that destroyed the Normandy SR1 suddenly appeared before them, ending a hyper drive jump, hovering over the ship like a man's finger hovers over an ant.

"Oh, shit. We're getting out of here!" He frantically pushed every button available, but nothing would happen.

"The propulsion systems are disabled," EDI said, her artificial voice unfazed by the escalating calamity surrounding them. "I'm detecting a virus in the ship's computers."

"From the IFF? Damn it, why didn't you scrub it?!" He could hear commotion from the CIC, crewmen gathering their weapons and bracing for conflict.

"Primary defense systems are offline," EDI continued. "I can save the ship, but you must help me."

Thunderous bangs came from the rear shuttle docks. The Collector ship was boarding.

"Give me the ship."

"What?! That's crazy!" He kept trying to use his controls, to no avail. "If you start singing Daisy Bell then I'm done." Not a time for jokes, Jeff. Stay calm. What would Shepard do? Oh, right, something nuts.

"Unlock my sealed databases, and I can initiate countermeasures. You will have to use the maintenance shaft in the science lab to reach the AI core."

Going through the maintenance shaft with his bones would be like going through a garbage disposal while it was turned on. As if sensing his objection, however, EDI persisted. "The main corridors are no longer safe. The Collectors have boarded."

Goddammit. There was nothing else he could do. He gave up the controls and rose to his feet as fast as he could. Blinking red lights on the floor sequentially illuminated a pathway.

"Emergency floor lighting will guide you, Mister Moreau," EDI said. She seemed too eager to get him to unlock her "do whatever you want" mode, but what choice did he have?

His hips protesting like never before, he moved in a hobbling trot into the CIC. The blinking red lights guided him to the left of the massive galaxy map; the right had already been swarmed with the monstrous Collectors. The sight of the buglike things spurred his legs into a motion he never thought possible.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

Three of the crewmen had stationed themselves at the elevator entrance to the CIC and were blocking the Collectors from getting through. "We'll hold them off as long as we can!" Hadley said, firing into the swarm. Just as Joker reached the door leading to the hall connecting the CIC to the tech labs, he heard one of them scream as a sickening puncturing sound splattered through the air. He didn't look back as the doors shut, but he couldn't help but hear Hadley's scream of terror.

He reached the tech lab, the lights guiding him to the back of the room where the maintenance shaft entrance lay, a ladder going down into a hole in the floor. Through a window overlooking the ship's massive drive core, he saw a Collector hovering around, tapping against the glass like a kid tapping a goldfish tank.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"

The creature couldn't get through the glass, but he heard a door slide open behind him, along with a monstrous rumble that screamed "dinnertime."

He slid into the shaft, gripping the bars of the ladder as tightly as he could. His knuckles and ankles groaned as they maintained his weight down into the next level of the ship. In the darkness of the shaft, through the walls, he could heard twisting metal, gunshots, rumbling, and the faint human sound of screams.

"Multiple hostiles detected on the crew deck," EDI blared into the radio as Joker exited the shaft. Crewman Hawthorne was there, waiting for him, gun in hand.

"Joker! The deck is crawling with those things! Stay close; I'll protect you!"

The idiot charged ahead without looking; he rounded the corner into the next hall, and the next thing Joker saw was his unconscious (he hoped) body of the man flailing through the air like a tossed doll. Collectors were mere inches from him, but their focus was on Yeoman Chambers, who's bloodcurdling shrieks pierced his brain. She looked at him for the briefest instant, her eyes wide in terror, as the Collectors dragged her into the elevator kicking and screaming.

He kept running. There was nothing he could do for her. For any of them.

Something in him snapped and he almost fell. "Shit, shit, shit!" He gritted through the sudden pain in his side and kept walking to the medical bay, where the emergency lights led into the AI core. Inside the core, the console on his right lit up. Now what?

"All right," he said to EDI, "I'm at, uh, you."

EDI's light orb appeared. "Connect the core to the Normandy's primary control module."

"Great," Joker muttered, half to himself as he typed. "See, this is how it starts, and when we're all just organic batteries, guess who they'll blame? 'This is all Joker's fault! What a tool he was! Now I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord."

When he finished inputting the commands, EDI's ball of light suddenly burst and the lights went out for a few horrifying moments. Just as he began to wonder if he didn't type the wrong thing and single-handedly break the ship, the lights came back on, and the servers around him beeped cheerily to life.

"I have access to the defense systems," EDI said. "Thank you Mister Moreau. Now you must reactivate the primary drive in engineering."

"Argh! You want me to go crawling through the ducts again?!"

The light bubble reappeared.

"I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees."

He stared at her for a moment.

"That is a joke."

He didn't know whether to be proud or mortified. Still, far be it from him to tell someone that a joke was uncalled for.

"Right," he said.

"The shaft behind you connects to the engineering deck. Good luck."

The light blinked out. The pain in Joker's side was starting to make itself more known as he looked down the dark shaft.

Of course, he could always go back the way he came and take the elevator Chambers was dragged into.

He steeled himself and began the long climb down to engineering.

Surprisingly, the climb down wasn't very long at all. The shaft ended abruptly in a duct that stretched from one end of the ship to the other, followed by two more ladders. His knees screamed in agony, but he finally made it to the engineering deck.

"Hostiles are present in engineering," EDI said. "They are heading toward the cargo bay."

He followed the blinking red lights up the steps, past Jack's sleeping spot. He never thought he'd wish for Jack of all people to be there, but life was funny like that.

A looming shadow brushed the walls at the top of the stairs, and Joker stopped. He could hear the hoarse breathing of the Collectors above him as they pushed into the cargo bay. He waited until the hissing stopped before continuing up the steps and into the engine room.

"Engineering is cleared of hostiles," EDI said. "Proceed immediately to minimize the chance for detection."

"No shit," he whispered.

The control consoles waited for him inside the engine room. "Activate the drive and I will open the airlocks as we accelerate. All hostiles will be killed."

"What? What about the crew?"

"They are gone, Jeff." Her voice seemed to carry a sorrowful tone, though it may have been just his imagination. "The Collectors took them."

His first time as XO and the entire crew was kidnapped or killed. "Shit." He hobbled in with the drive core and connected EDI's systems with the ship's primary drive. "I am sealing the engine room," EDI said as the doors sealed shut behind him.

The drive core lit up like a small sun. He heard EDI say "I have control" through the increasing whir of noise. Before he could be uncomfortable with the statement, the drive core flashed a wave of hot energy through the engine room that knocked Joker on his ass, possibly breaking it in the process, and the ship jumped through space.

Moments later, EDI's voice chimed through again. "Purge is complete. No other life forms on board. Securing airlocks and cargo bay doors."

He picked himself up off the floor. Various areas ached with the familiar feeling of broken bones, only now, there was no Doctor Chakwas to fix him up. "Send a message to the shuttle," he said. "Tell them what happened."

"Message away. Are you feeling well, Jeff?"

"No. But. . .thanks for asking."

He didn't make any jokes. The thing about jokes is that they were pointless with nobody around to hear them.

He limped and hobbled back to the cockpit to rest his bones in his leather chair. The whole way, the ship was completely silent. He was totally alone.