The Normandy's holographic projectors crackled to life. Admirals Hackett and Anderson flickered into view.

"Good to see you two," said Shepard. "What's our situation?"

"In a word, bad," replied Hackett. "I sacrificed the entire second fleet just to give the third and the fifth time to retreat. Everyone's taken heavy casualties, and we have very limited contact with Earth, just a few QEC's like the one Anderson's using. Unless we start pumping out Defiants in a hurry, we're not going to win this one conventionally."

"We don't have the infrastructure or resources to do that," added Anderson. "They've got whole areas of chemistry, physics, and even mathematics that we haven't discovered yet. We'd be jumping forward hundreds of years in technological progress. Even when you have all the scientific answers, engineering takes time. And it tends to take a lot longer when you've got reapers killing everyone in sight."

"So what, we're just going to roll over and die?" Shepard shook her head. "There's got to be something."

"We have managed to retrofit a few ships, like the Normandy," replied Anderson. "But power limitations remain. None of them hold a candle to the Defiant."

"I did have Liara on Mars," said Hackett. "We were hoping the Protheans had something, anything that we could use. But I haven't heard from her."

"She'll have a backup plan," replied Shepard. "She's too resourceful to die there now."

"I hope you're right, Commander," said Hackett.

"I'm a commander again?" asked Shepard.

"As far as we're concerned, yes. Those of us who survived Earth unanimously agreed to reinstate you and throw out the charges."

"Is that legal?" asked Anderson.

"We'll figure it out later," said Hackett. "With Arcturus gone, it's not like there's anyone left to tell us otherwise."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," said Shepard, "but I'm not even sure where to start. I don't think throwing another ship at Earth will really help."

"Start with the Council," suggested Anderson. "They're about to get bogged down in a lot of political infighting. We need the whole galaxy on one team here, so you have to get to them first."

The stealth ship dropped out of the sky, settling onto the roof of the Mars Archive. An asari dressed in white ran up to the vessel, her oxygen mask fogged from heavy breathing. The door popped open, revealing a masked turian pilot and one extra seat.

"Need a lift?" asked the turian. "Shadow Broker sends his regards."

The asari looked around for barely a moment, taking in the Cerberus tanks and shuttles which had besieged the facility just minutes ago. "Under the circumstances, yes. Name his price."

"No price. Said he owed you a favor. Now get in before the reapers get here, or I'm leaving you behind."

"Some of the humans might still be alive. We have to go back for them."

"Lady, are you out of your mind? This is a two-seater, the reapers are on their way, and I am not a patient man right now. Get in the ship."

She sighed. "Under protest." She climbed aboard. The doors shut and the ship took off. They rapidly cleared Mars's thin atmosphere.

Liara removed her mask. The pilot did not follow suit. "What's your name?" she asked.

"You know better than that, Dr. T'Soni. I don't have a name. I'm just the hand of the Broker."

"Do you... really believe that?"

The pilot snorted. "Hell no. But if I told people my name, it wouldn't exactly be healthy in my line of work."

"Fair enough." She looked out the window. "How many people do you think we're leaving behind?"

"Again, this is a two-seater. We are not leaving anyone behind because we were never going to bring them with us in the first place. Now shut up. We're passing through reaper-controlled space. I have to concentrate."

Liara glanced at the controls, did some mental arithmetic, and didn't like the answer. "This ship is too small for extended IES stealth," she said. "We'd only get an hour or so until it cooked us alive." Traversing a system at sublight normally took several hours.

"Bingo! You win a Captain Obvious no-prize. Now will you shut up and let me fly this thing? We have to get away from Mars before the stealth deactivates."

They flew on in silence for some time. The cabin began to warm up. Just when it was starting to become uncomfortable, the pilot announced "OK, we're a good distance from Mars," and turned off IES.

Cold air flowed into the cabin at a surprising rate. Liara looked through the window and saw refrigerant gas venting into space. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"Yeah, it has to be refilled once we dock somewhere," said the pilot. "The ship is designed to quickly dump a lot of heat and then turn IES back on before anyone notices. In interplanetary space like this, they'll probably think it's Alliance chaff or something."

"How many times can we do that before we run out of gas?"

"Once, so let's hope it's enough." He flipped the IES switch back on, and they continued on into the asteroid belt. The average distance between asteroids was enormous, so the flight was much less eventful than some old vids would have one believe. Again, the ship began to warm up, and again, the pilot turned off IES. This time, there was no blast of cold air; it just stopped getting worse.

"What if they see us?" asked Liara.

"They will. But we look like a deserting Alliance fighter. Not worth going after, at least not right away. The party's at Earth and Mars right now."

"'Party.' People are dying down there."

"Do you actually think I don't know that, Doctor? Of course people are fucking dying. This is a warzone."

Liara's gaze returned to the window. "Just drive."

Once again, Shepard slumped on the couch of Anderson's apartment. He wouldn't be using it much, given he was leading the Earth-side resistance.

There was a knock at the door. Shepard hit the remote open key, not caring enough to turn and greet at her guest.

"Shepard?" said a familiar voice.

The Commander sprang up and ran to embrace the Shadow Broker. "Liara! I knew you'd make it."

"I wish I shared your optimism," said Liara, disentangling herself from Shepard's arms. "Did you meet with the Council yet?"

"Yeah, they shot me down pretty quick," replied Shepard. "Apparently, going to a bunch of politicians with vague appeals to unity and no actual plan doesn't work really well."

"I may be able to help in that department-"

There was another knock at the door. Liara's info drone manifested. "That is Councilor Sparatus," announced Glyph. "He was photographed en route 47 times by various journalists and paparazzi."

"Shepard, may I eavesdrop?" asked Liara in a low voice. "He might say something useful..."

"Sure," replied Shepard. "If I he drops something and I miss it, I could use a recording of the conversation."

Liara deactivated Glyph and positioned herself out of sight. Shepard answered the door.

"Councilor, what an unexpected... pleasure," she said.

"You don't have to lie to me, Shepard," replied Sparatus. "I know you dislike me."

"Well, um... would you like to have a seat? Maybe something to drink? I don't actually have any turian-"

"No need, I won't be here long. Commander, I believe you remember that war summit we mentioned?"

"Yes," said Shepard. The one we're not invited to.

"I'm sure you've noticed that it's being conducted... outside the usual Council process. The Council is itself a defensive alliance, is it not?"

"What are you getting at?" she asked.

"The reapers are attacking Palaven," he replied. "If we do not get Primarch Fedorian off of Menae, the summit will not happen."

"Well, that would be unfortunate," replied Shepard without a shred of sincerity. "What do I have to do with it?"

"I thought that obvious. The Normandy is well-equipped for this kind of task. One might almost call her unique in that regard."

"Yes, she is," replied Shepard. "Let me put it another way: Why do I care about a summit to which humanity wasn't even invited?"

"The official reason, Commander, that humanity is not at this summit is strategic irrelevance. You no longer have a functioning government, and much of your navy has been destroyed. One assumes, then, that you have nothing to contribute to such a discussion. But, should the only human spectre rescue the Primarch of Palaven, that logic becomes a great deal less defensible."

"Official," said Shepard. "Meaning pretextual. Fake. Is there a real reason?"

"You didn't hear this from me," hissed Sparatus, his mandibles splaying with each word. "But the real reason is politics. The Primarch didn't want you at the summit, given my reports on humanity's trustworthiness. Reports I stand by, given some of the things I've observed recently."

"So, if you don't trust me, and the Primarch doesn't trust me, what are you even doing here?" asked Shepard.

"As strongly as I disagree with you, Shepard," said Sparatus, "you were right about the reapers, and you are right about the need for unity. We will not defeat the reapers by picking and choosing our allies. Officially, this is nothing more than a Spectre assignment. Unofficially... operate as you see fit."

Shepard folded her arms. "What, you expect me to convince him to change his mind? Isn't that Udina's job?"

"Your Councilor Udina is a gifted diplomat. But he is not one to inspire trust. He is bombastic and mercurial, a poor combination in any position, but particularly bad as a councilor during wartime. Shouting about what one is owed can be effective at negotiating trade agreements and such things, but it does not help when the enemy is at your door. Your temperament is far better suited to this work than Udina's, particularly when it is not your official duty. The Council has observed your talent for persuasion on a number of occasions. Time to put it to work."

"All right, Councilor, I'll see what I can do."

Sparatus nodded and departed. Several seconds after the door closed, Liara emerged from the bar area into the foyer.

"Interesting," she said. "I must admit, I was not expecting that."

"Not expecting what?" asked Shepard.

"I thought he hated you."

Shepard frowned. "I'm pretty sure he still hates me. He just hates getting killed by the reapers even more. Did you get anything good?"

"I recorded the whole conversation. We can go over it in detail later. A few things do jump out at me, though."

"Like what?"

Liara pulled up the notes she had taken on her omni-tool. "He implicitly confirmed your Spectre status. That may prove useful, assuming they follow it up with something more explicit. You'll want to ask for some kind of official documentation, or at least verify your Spectre codes are active. I may be able to lean on the Hierarchy a bit, given what he said about the Primarch. But I don't have as many insider turian contacts as I'd like, so I don't think I'll be able to secure a seat at the negotiating table for you. Most turians willing to sell secrets will cut ties and emigrate to Omega before they even think of contacting me. Hopefully, you won't need me for that seat. On the bright side, the conversation as a whole is potentially quite incriminating. If the summit falls apart and we need leverage, it could make good blackmail material, against either the Councilor or the Hierarchy."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Y'know, maybe if we stopped doing all these morally questionable things, the Hierarchy wouldn't hate us so much. What do you think?"

Liara closed her omni-tool. "I just want to ensure all of our options are on the table, Shepard. Wouldn't it be better to dirty our hands a bit, if it means the galaxy lives another day?"

"Yeah, but you know it pisses them off. Anyway, you said something about a plan?"

"Yes. I recovered some very interesting data on Mars. Glyph?"

Glyph projected a series of blueprints, annotated with half-translated prothean, asari, and human writing.

"The protheans intended to destroy the reapers with this," explained Liara. "Hackett and the remnants of the human fleets are starting construction as we speak. It's very fortunate that Legion warned me about Dr. Core. Otherwise, I might not have been able to backup this data before she stole it."

"Dr. Core?" asked Shepard.

"A Cerberus sleeper agent. Some kind of high-tech android run by an AI. She got away with a copy of the data. I expect we'll see her again."

"Right." Shepard studied the plans for a moment, but could make neither head nor tail of them. "So how does this thing work?"

"It plugs into the Citadel and... does... something. I think it relates to the 'endings' Nog told us about. But it would be too obvious to assemble it in-place. We're building it in a low-traffic region of interstellar space. Very few people know of it."

"Including the Council?"

Liara shook her head. "Not yet, but I recommend telling them sooner rather than later. It may make them more amenable to collaboration in the long run."

Shepard nodded. "I'll let them know. I'm sure your 'it does something' explanation will have them falling over themselves to support us."

Shepard, James, and Liara exited the elevator at docking bay D24.

"Don't Spectres get their own private docks?" asked James.

Shepard shrugged. "That'll be item number 347 on the list. Ordinarily, I'd put it a bit higher, but I'm sure you've noticed that some things are going on right now."

"Many of those docks have been converted to refugee housing," added Liara. "I wouldn't press the issue."

"Commander!" said a female voice. Turning, Shepard spotted Emily Wong in the waiting area.

She approached the journalist, offering her hand. Wong shook it.

"Ms. Wong. I hadn't expected to see you again," said Shepard.

"You were right," said Wong, "about everything. Commander, I owe you an apology. When we spoke on Tuchanka-"

"I had just destroyed the Bahak system," interrupted Shepard, "and you had no reason to trust me."

"That's... very gracious, Commander. Thank you. But, before you go, I did have one other thing. A proposition. It's a little bigger than bugging Citadel Traffic."

"Lola, you did what now?" said James.

Emily ignored him. "After I aired your Tuchanka interview, ANN was willing to give me practically any job in the galaxy. I picked Illium. There's a lot more organized crime there than on the Citadel, so I went undercover for a while and started chasing leads."

"Were you trying to get yourself killed?" asked Shepard.

"No, I just... the reaper situation was too weird. I had to get away from it. Clear my head. Go after people I knew were in the wrong. If Illium had worked out, I was looking at Omega next."

Shepard nodded. "And then the reapers attacked."

"Pretty much. I had the most domain knowledge, so they pulled me back. ANN had a lot of assets on Earth. A lot of stories got cancelled, a lot of people got laid off. I was lucky."

"All right," replied Shepard. "So what do they want you on now?"

"The Normandy. ANN had an old reality show, Battlespace, where they'd embed journalists on Alliance ships. It was heavily scripted and mostly propaganda, but it did have a few viewers, and they had just relaunched it right before the whole reaper thing. Their main star Diana Allers was on Earth at the time, between rotations, so now the show's in limbo. They handed it over to me, on the condition that I get myself attached to your ship. I'll be operating with no crew, and I've already cleared it with Hackett. I'm sure this will benefit the war effort. I just need your OK."

Shepard considered it for a moment. "I don't have a problem with that, given our history. I trust you. But I hope you realize what you're getting yourself into. The Normandy is a military frigate. It won't be up to civilian standards of comfort, and we are going into active war zones. I won't be able to guarantee your safety."

"I can live with sleeper pods and Alliance rations," replied Wong. "I've done it before. And as long as the reapers are around, there's no such thing as safety."

Shepard nodded. "Then welcome aboard, Emily."

[Small ships are particularly bad for IES stealth, thanks to the square-cube law. As you make a ship bigger, its surface area grows more slowly than its volume, meaning you have more space for heat sinking relative to the amount of hull you have to cool. Making a ship smaller has the opposite effect.

On the other hand, large ships usually have more people and equipment, which all generate more heat and can give you thermodynamic issues. So maybe the Normandy is just the right size for this tech.]