Author's Note: I know that a lot of you are wondering if I'm just keeping on pushing off the red thread of coming clean to Shepard...rest assured, there is a point to it, something I had planned for the coming few chapters, and I hope you'll enjoy it when it comes out. Also, expect some major changes to be occurring...beginning right about...now. Enjoy the ride!

Chapter Thirty-Seven

As the days pass, my apprehension about the upcoming confrontation with the Collector ship over Alchera slowly fades, mainly because our course takes us far, far away from that frozen ball of ice. And unless the Collectors are actively hunting for the Normandy, well, then there's no way in hell we'll be running into them unless we're bloody unlucky. And the way I see it, after all the shit that's happened lately, we're about due some good luck.

Still, I'm wrestling with the decision to tell Shepard about them every single goddamn day. It hasn't made it any easier. After our little drinking night things have gone back to normal. Well, as normal as things can get on our crazy little frigate. I've been on the verge of telling her a few times, and chickened out every single time. Not the right time, not the right place, I've rationalized it. Didn't want to jeopardize my place on this ship, not until I can get a look at the big picture. Truth of the matter is, I don't want to jeopardize what I have right now, this easy cameraderie, this friendship I have with Shepard and the rest of the crew, something that I've been missing since Thessia. I don't want to rock the boat, change the status quo, and lose all this, because in some way, it keeps me sane.

At least, that's what I tell myself. And so far, I've gotten away with it. We've been back in space for two weeks now, without ground deployment, and I think Shepard's getting antsy. Let's face it, that woman isn't comfortable unless she's in the thick of it, kicking ass and taking names. But aside from a few pirate ships, all of which surrendered at the mere sight of the Normandy, and a few geth cruisers, which were summarily blown out of space, all's been quiet on the proverbial western front.

It's the shuddering of the floor below me that catches my attention as I'm making my way out of the shower one morning, followed immediately by the howling of the alert klaxon. Joker's voice crackles over the intercom.

"All hands, action stations, all hands, action stations."

I shoot up from where I've been towelling off, rushing into my clothes and make a mad dash for the bridge as the ship tilts slightly from Joker firewalling the throttle. The engines underneath the deck plating rumble as the Tantalus core is unleashed, propelling the Normandy as she surges forward through space. I'm barely done buttoning up my uniform shirt when I arrive, Tali and Kaidan behind me. Garrus and Wrex are already there, standing behind Shepard as she leans over Joker's shoulder.

"Can you catch them?" she asks him.

"Maybe." The pilot is unusually quiet as his hands fly across the holographic controls, coaxing every little bit of acceleration out of the Normandy's engines and inertial gravity field. "Looks bad. Do we really want to catch them, Commander?"

"We've got to."

"Right, then." Joker's focus returns to the tiny speck of light in the distance that's the target ship which, despite everything, is steadily pulling away from the Normandy. "How the hell are they going so fast?"

I look over Tali's shoulder as she brings up a sensor readout. "Looks like an oversized mass effect core. Strange," she mutters, more to herself than anyone else.

"How so?" Shepard asks.

Our quarian engineer turns her attention away from the console. "The geth operate in synchronicity. It's one of their strengths. It also makes it very difficult for them to purpose-build a ship, unless a decision is made by consensus. The collective has no need for modified vessels unless there is a very good reason."

"What could be the reason for building something that can outrun the fastest ship in the fleet? That thing doesn't look much bigger than a shuttle."

"Surveillance," Tali concludes after a moment. "It has no combat purpose, it's too small to be a scientific platform, but geth long-range surveillance equipment is extremely compact."

"I don't think I'll be able to catch up to it before they make the relay at the other end of the system, Commander."

"Keep trying. We in range for a warning shot?"

"Not even close."

Ten seconds pass in terse silence, then Joker finally announces, "she's gone."

"Dammit." Shepard grimaces and turns around, and I can practically see the stress and tension in her body from having to chase geth and pirates around in space, out of her element, for weeks. It's a boring, frustrating duty, because there's very little out here that can match the Normandy's arsenal and even if there was, let's face it: she won't be satisfied until she gets her boots on the ground again.

"Did we get a transit vector off of him?" she finally asks.

Tali shakes her head and works her omni-tool. "Negative. Entry vector was much too general, and this relay node branches out too far."

With a sigh, the Commander steps back from the cockpit and leans against the wall. "All right, stand down. Joker, get us back on our patrol route. I'll be in my office."

You know, for a supposed war, this war is actually rather boring. I mean, I know that there's more to war than space battles and ground battles and action and all that...but there really isn't enough left of the geth forces in Council space to really call this a war. Maybe a highly asymmetric war, if the geth were so inclined to attempt to wage asymmetric warfare in the first place...which they aren't.

I look over at Wrex, who huffs in disappointment. The big krogan, I think, is getting as fed up with being cooped up onboard as Shepard, but unlike our intrepid Commander, I think he'd be happy with just seeing things blow up from here. For a while, at least. "Hey, maybe next time we'll actually find a base, or something," I tell him quietly. "Then you and the Commander can go have some fun demolishing the place."

Wrex just rotates one eye to look at me with a toothy half-grin that's almost wry, shrugs, and ambles away. Well...guess I'll actually get that breakfast I've been meaning to have. My shift in engineering doesn't start for another few hours, and I can tell that even Tali is getting a little agitated by the lack of...well, anything to do.

Yeah. That's right. Tali. Bored. In an engine room.

What's the world coming to?

I suppose this can't really be called a war. It's really more like the Alliance and turians are mopping up the remainder of the geth and cleaning house. Oh, there's still pockets of resistance left, but for the most part the need for a dedicated ground strike team is not really there anymore. The need for ships is, though, which is why the Normandy has been relegated to patrol and search-and-destroy operations.

There's upsides to this, I suppose. It's quiet, and Cerberus isn't really rearing its head yet. In fact, I haven't heard from Miranda ever since her departure from the Citadel, wherever she's going. The main one is, though, that we're nowhere near Alchera, and aren't supposed to be. At all. Which means no Collectors. When I saw our patrol route for the next three months, I could've cheered. And contrary to the soldiers aboard the Normandy, unlike Kaidan, or Wrex, or Shepard, or even Garrus, I'm perfectly happy spending my days in routine, without life or death situations.

It's nice to be able to slow down and unwind after the hectic, mad dash to stop Saren and like, actually be able to take my time to plan shit out instead of flying by the seat of my pants all the time. I don't really know much of what happens between Shepard's death and resurrection beyond a few key events. I mean, I know that Aria T'Loak will find some Collectors on Omega that are striking a deal with the Blue Suns...or was it the other way around? And there was that assassination attempt from Mass Effect Galaxy by that batarian ambassador...Jarth, Jarry, Jerry, or whatever his name was. Jagammemnon? Jagaraty? Whatever. I should probably warn Miranda about that one, too, but I have no idea when it's going to take place and more importantly, I don't actually have to do anything, because between her and Jacob that got handled just fine. Of course, that's assuming the shit I've done so far hasn't completely fucked that up, too.

And you know what? Having a bit of time to think about things, to put them in perspective...we aren't really in that bad a place right now. I mean, look at it. We managed to stop Saren and Sovereign, the Alliance is taking the Reaper threat more seriously than they ever did in canon - mainly thanks to the fact that Alliance brass actually have confirmation that Sovereign was a Reaper from the prothean war records I handed to Hackett and Kohaku. The Normandy isn't going anywhere close to Alchera, so she isn't going to be blown out of the sky, Shepard's not going to die, and the Systems Alliance military is gearing up something fierce.

And we're mopping up the geth, have some peace and quiet, and all seems to be going well. Looks like it's smooth sailing ahead for a few weeks, at least. Right? Right?

T

"Tell me again why you thought this was a good idea, Commander?" I yell over the gunfire at Shepard as a burst from the juggernaut's pulse rifle carves a neat hole through the console I'm using for cover.

The woman in question doesn't immediately answer as she charges her biotics and sends a wave of pressure at the big, red geth that's got me pinned down, followed by the bark of her shotgun as it chews its way through the poor geth's chestplate and internal circuitry. Her head pops over the console with a shit-eating grin. "Don't tell me you're not having fun, Grayson."

"I'm not, as a matter of fact."

"Well, I am. Commander's prerogative."

And with that she's gone, having Charged at her next unfortunate target. You know what I said last time about shit getting boring and all? Yeah, I was wrong. Very, very wrong, because the Alliance discovered a number of geth listening posts and assembly plants on the border of Citadel space. Similar to the heretic geth central manufacturing station you fight your way through in Legion's loyalty mission? Yeah, like that. Only, mostly on the ground.

What's the first thing they came up with? Blow them to hell - and I would've been perfectly fine with that. It's a good plan. Hell, it's a great plan. But no, someone had to have a smart idea and mention that perhaps we could find some valuable intel down there? Geth troop movements beyond the Veil, their relative strengths, communications protocols, the works. And so what should've been a simple get-into-orbit-and-blow-the-crap-out-of-them mission turned into a slightly more complicated and vastly more entertaining - for Shepard and Wrex, at least - get-on-the-surface-and-blow-the-crap-out-of-most-of-them-and-recover-what's-left mission.

The problem with that?

There's a whole shitload of geth here. Because, you know, they kind of don't want anyone taking their stuff. So they guard it. With geth. Lots of geth. Did I mention there's a lot of geth here yet?

Of course, the whole thing is made considerably easier by the fact that Shepard brought Wrex along. Kaidan, Garrus, and Tali are on the other side of the planet trying to sabotage the maintenance facility the geth are using to repair...well, themselves, I guess, while Shepard decided it'd be a good idea to storm the communications array. Admittedly, it is a really good idea, I'd just prefer if there wasn't so many bullets flying through the damn air.

My cloak fizzles at another near-miss as I move into position across the corridor and raise my pistol. There's just three geth at the other end, plus the juggernaut that Shepard just trashed. Easy targets, right? Line up the shot, pull the trigger, quickly transition to the next target, repeat.

All that before they realize where the shots are coming from and return fire.

I'm actually getting quite good at this, which I suppose is a good thing. Actually, good may not be the right word here. Efficient would be a better term, because good would imply I'm taking pleasure in doing this. I'm not...it's more of a detached indifference, really. I tap my radio. "We're clear."

"All right. Let's keep looking, then."

"Looking for what, exactly, Commander?"

"The control room, of course."

Of course it's the control room. It's always the control room. Why does everything in science fiction always have to have a goddamned control room where all the base functions are conveniently centralized? I mean, it's not exactly like this is the bloody Johnson Space Center where Mission Control is at the heart of all operations. With a wry grin, I click my radio back on. "Let me guess...you have no idea where you're going."

Shepard's reply comes back immediately, and full of cheek. "Of course I do. We're going this way."

And naturally, she's fully aware of the fact that I can't see her and thus know if she is actually pointing in the correct direction. With a sigh, I pack up, toggle my cloak, and set off after her and Wrex. It really isn't hard to follow those two. I swear, they're kindred spirits of mass destruction, or something.

It's really strange, though, because compared to what Kaidan is reporting in from the other site, there is a ridiculous amount of opposition. I mean, I know a comm relay station is important, especially so for geth to maintain their consensus and network capabilities, but I would think a production and maintenance facility would have priority. But we're being positively swarmed by them, as if something put them on high alert.

I mean, aside from the Alliance sending in a strike team, who the hell else runs any sort of combat operations here at the back end of the Skyllian Verge? Oh, wait, the-

"Commander?" Joker's voice comes over the radio. "I have three ships entering the system. Batarian Hegemony IFF. They're in full combat mode, I think someone's looking for trouble."

"Stay in stealth. Keep an eye on them and keep me updated."

"You got it, Commander."

Great, as if the geth weren't enough trouble, now we have bloody batarians in orbit. They probably won't take long to figure out there's an awful lot of action going on on the ground. I wonder if they're here because of the geth, or because they spotted the Normandy. From what I remember, they're not exactly friendly with the Alliance, especially after the Skyllian Blitz.

"We have a problem. They know we're here, Commander. Listen to this."

"Attention human vessels. This is Commodore Baranik of the Hegemony battlecruiser Vengeance. You are under arrest for acts of military aggression against Hegemony space, illegal entry into sovereign territory, and terrorism. Prepare to surrender and be boarded." The voice is distorted slightly by the translator, but it still makes me want to laugh incredulously. Batarians, accusing other people of terrorism? The freaking space-jihadists of the Mass Effect universe?

And how'd they even spot the Normandy in the first place? The ship has been running silent since we hit orbit. There's little time to think about it further, though, as more geth come rounding the corner. Shepard and Wrex Charge forward, causing lead rank of geth platforms to implode into itself. Just behind them is a large blast door leading outside and to the base's communications array.

Sneaking past the fight that has devolved into a melee brawl, I set my omni-tool up to run a quick scan to see what's on the other side. It's clear, for now, so I start hacking the door controls. The last of the geth drops even before the hack finishes, and both of my squadmates come waltzing up towards the bulkhead with satisfied grins on their faces. Oh, Shepard and Wrex...two peas in a pod, so easily amused by violence. The lock beeps angrily as the geth firewalls struggle against Cerberus software, but seeing that the Commander is there, I figure I may as well let her have some fun.

Stepping back from the door, I pick out a brick of explosives off my belt and hand it to her. "There. Have at it, Commander."

She doesn't need to be told twice and starts lining up pieces of explosive along the structural supports of the blast door. Thirty seconds later, she joins me and Wrex around a corner and presses down on the remote detonator with a gleeful smile that belies the violence with which she likes to open doors.

Speaking of doors, there isn't much left of the blast door, by the way. I guess moderation isn't exactly a word Shepard knows when it comes to explosives. I mean, the door isn't just gone as in blasted off its hinges or blown open like you'd expect, but it's gone. As in, completely and utterly obliterated. Reduced to a pile of molten scraps and smoldering pieces all over the place. That kind of gone.

The comm array is right in front of us, a simple radio tower-like structure that stretches a transmission dish towards the heavens with a mainframe near ground level. It makes sense, the geth have very little use for habitable structures or life support systems beyond anything that'll keep their platforms out of enviromental dangers or defensive structures. This place is a little more hospitable than Haestrom - as in, we're not cooking out in the direct sunlight - but the atmosphere is toxic as hell.

Not that that particularly troubles the geth, seeing as they don't need to breathe. From what I can gather, this planet used to have a breathable atmosphere, at least until half a century of heavy batarian development and industrialization completely polluted it to the point where even the batarians had to abandon it. That was about the time of the First Contact War, as far as I can gather from the Citadel's historical records. Not nearly long enough for what little remains of the ecosystem to recover.

It's the perfect hideout for the geth, though. It's out of the way from major space lanes, has very little in terms of resources other than heavy metal deposits that would make it attractive for colonization, and then there's the whole toxic atmo thing. Yeah, little chance of running into people here.

Plus, it's deep in batarian space, or what the Batarian Hegemony claims as its sovereign space, so no one in their right mind actually wants to go there if they can avoid it. Yeah, the batarians are that unpleasant. I'm usually not one to condemn an entire race quickly, but the few I've run into were...less than pleasant. You think an empire run as a totalitarian state is fiction in the age of space travel? The batarians are living it. It's like freaking Lybia in space.

Shepard brings a gloved hand up to shield her eyes from the unmitigated glare of the sun high above us as she looks over the concrete plain ahead of us. "Look pretty clear," she mutters, more to herself than to us. It's a clean run over there, no geth as far as the eye can see - and as flat as this surface is, stamped down and laid with mechanical precision, that's pretty dang far. Still, something's telling me that's not all there is to it.

Apparently I'm not the only one as even Wrex takes his time before stepping out fully.

"Anyone else smell a trap?"

"Yeah," Shepard acknowledges. "But not from the geth."

Right on cue, Joker's voice comes over the radio again, a little more agitated than last time. "Commander?"

"Go ahead."

"They know someone's here, at least. One of the ships is heading down to the surface, right towards you. The other two are maintaining orbit. Weapons hot and barriers up."

"Can you take them?"

"I think so, but I'd rather not find out. These aren't slavers or pirates, Commander. These are military." Joker rustles around for a moment. "But yeah, I can take them."

"Be ready. Let's hope we don't have to shoot our way out of this, but-" Shepard's further orders are cut off by another transmission from the batarian ships as they blanket every comm frequency.

"Attention, human vessels. This is your last opportunity to surrender. If you do not-"

I just tune him out and switch my radio back to our squad channel. "Commander?"

"Yeah?"

There's just something odd about the way that batarian is talking. "I've got the strange feeling he isn't here for us. He keeps talking about ships, as in plural. If they tailed us, they wouldn't be insisting on arresting us for stuff we haven't done yet, and they know it."

She cocks her head to the side and glances up at the sky. "I get the same feeling. We're missing something here. That ship's going to be down in a couple of minutes, we better get our answers before then."

"Guess we should move it, then."

Shepard takes off across the tarmac with me right behind her and Wrex bringing up the rear. There's a few scattered geth turrets out there that try and stop us, but my cloak mostly negates their ability to target me. How the hell Cerberus managed to not only make a near-complete optical cloak but also a thermal cloak and package it into something I can actually wear on my armor is still beyond me. Our two wrecking balls, however, take a more direct approach. We may as well have brought rocket launchers the way Shepard and Wrex are demolishing everything that stands in their way without even slowing down.

"Remind me again what exactly we're looking for here?" I ask absently as I initiate the hack, something that's gotten to be standard procedure for me over the last couple of weeks.

It's a rhethorical question, but Shepard replies, anyway. "See if you can get a starmap. Communications to other outposts, platforms, the works."

"Aye, Commander." I start the search routine and then for good measure decide to dump the entire memory core, or as much of the logs as I can fit, anyway. An opportunity like this doesn't come often, and who knows what Tali can figure out from whatever I manage to grab. I've long stopped questioning that woman's almost innate ability to figure out technology, both hardware and software.

It's almost like playing one of those RPGs or JRPGs that send you on stupid fetch quests. Go kill x-amount of y-monster to get z-drops. In this case, it's a hunt for geth communications and encryption protocols. Even two hundred years in the future, knowing the enemy's communications is still key to victory. And the geth might as well have been the bloody Rebel Alliance considering how well they're hiding. It's not that they're hard to dig out once you find them, it's the finding them part that's difficult. They're so decentralized and spread out it's more a matter of sheer dumb luck of stumbling across some of them that determines our ability to find their bases more than anything else.

That alone has told us something about them. The geth have scouted this region of space exhaustively, probably for several decades, mapping and determining the best places to hide from organics. Sometimes that's the most inhospitable worlds you can think of...other times its right in the middle of population centers, where no one would think to look. Their ability to stay hidden in the local cluster is something a lot of military strategists would give their left arm for.

The download bar moves at its usual excruciatingly slow pace while the omni-tool tries to deal with the geth I/O protocols. I'm pretty much tethered to the mainframe access while the damn thing chuggs away; since the geth don't really use compatible hardware access, the omni-tool's connected via the geth version of a wifi network. Which has a very limited range, let me tell you. It's using a shortwave signal to limit the range of remote access for security reasons.

Still, it's a heck of a lot better than being connected by a USB cable, or something, even if it's slower. Still, with quantum computing it doesn't take long before it dings and announces that it's filled up its memory. There's something weird in the geth sensor logs. I'm almost tempted to look at them further, but it can wait, at least till we're off this planet and away from three batarian warships. Then Joker's voice makes a new announcement.

"Commander? We have an unknown contact up here, breaking from the far side of the third planet. It's making a run for the relay. She's fast." There's a little pause, probably as he watches his scanners. "One of the batarians is turning to pursue, but I don't think they'll catch them."

It's a strange flashback to our encounter not too long ago. Shepard apparently seems to think the same thing. "Is it the same contact we've been chasing the last couple of days?" she asks from her position as she casually sweeps the area for geth, shooting occasionally as some unfortunate platform comes into her field of view. I swear, that woman makes holding a position in the middle of hostile territory look easy.

"I don't think so. It's sensor shadow's too big to be our runner. This thing's massive. Probably larger than a cruiser."

"Is it a geth ship?" Kaidan chimes into the conversation for the first time from the other side of the compound. "We've swept the area, there's little left here. It would appear the geth packed up and left. The maintenance facility is completely inactive."

"Negative, it's not geth. Power signature and silhouette are all wrong. It's-" Joker pauses for a moment, then the sky lights up above us. That other batarian ship is getting awfully close. Probably too close now for us to make a run for it back to the Kodiak and make it off-planet before they find us. "She's turned around and is heading for the batarian, Commander. Her reactors are lighting my thermal view up like a Christmas tree."

"Get a good look at them, those scans might prove useful for later," Tali adds.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure I want to be getting in between these two, because - holy freaking Christ!" Joker's reply is interrupted by a sudden outburst that gives even Wrex pause.

"Joker? What's going on up there? Joker, come in." Shepard fumbles with her omni-tool's transmission controls. "Dammit, Shepard to Normandy, come in. Shepard to Normandy."

"Fuck!" Joker's voice is unusually strained as it finally returns through the crackle of static. "Whatever they are, they just took out that batarian cruiser in a single shot. You better get out of there, Commander, because I don't rate our chances very well going up against that thing if it decides to come after us."

A massive ship of unknown design.

Ridiculous power output.

The firepower to take out a cruiser in a single shot.

My blood runs cold as I realize just who that is in orbit.

"Commander?" I call, almost desperately. "We gotta go. We gotta go now."

"What?"

"I'll explain later. We've got to go."

She looks at me strangely, and for a moment I'm terrified that she'll question me, call me out on this sudden insight, but apparently the fear in my voice is enough to convince her that any line of questioning can wait until we're safely off this planet, and hopefully out of this solar system. She gives a brief nod and flicks her radio back onto the channel we share with the other squad and the Normandy. "Akameka, you read me? Drop what you're doing and double-time it back to the shuttle."

"Spectre, Akameka, copy. We're on our way."

"Wrex!" Shepard yells over at the big krogan who's having a field day just smashing up the place. "Time to go!"

He pauses and cranes his neck around, absently backhanding a geth trooper into the wall. "Already? The kid finished?"

"Yeah, I'm done," I confirm after a questioning look from Shepard.

"We've got batarians about to land on our heads and something going on in space," she explains as we head for his position.

"We're running from batarians?" Wrex asks incredulously.

"No, we're running from the big nasty ship that just smoked a batarian battlecruiser in a single shot."

"Oh." The krogan shrugs and starts jogging towards us. "We going to take it out?"

"Not from down here, we aren't," Shepard chuckles.

"All right. Up there, then?" Wrex sounds almost hopeful at the prospect of more destruction and dead batarians. I guess I can't fault him, no one in the galaxy seems to like the batarians. Granted, it's mostly their own fault, but still...

"Commander." I point to the sky where a fireball is rapidly getting bigger. Goddamn batarians are making an unpowered re-entry. "We're about to have company."

She looks up through her helmet's visor, focusing on the tiny shape of the approaching ship for a split second, before snapping her head around. "Get inside, now! On the fucking double!"

Neither Wrex nor I are stupid enough to question her when she's using that tone of voice, and we start off at a dead run for the compound we came out of, spurred on by the crazy pace Shepard is setting ahead of us. We're barely at the large blast door leading into the compound's hangar when Shepard looks over her shoulder and throws herself forward.

"Hit the deck!"

A glance behind me finally tells why she was hurrying us along as a pair of torpedos released from the batarian frigate slams into the ground right on top of the communications relay, blasting the fragile structure into a million pieces. We're far enough from the shaped warheads to not be caught in the explosion, but the blast wave, even in this thin atmosphere, washes over us, crumpling parts of our armors and a piece of gravel hits my faceplate with an impossibly loud crack.

It leaves me breathing heavily and staring at a spider-webbing, palm-sized crack in the cover of my helmet that is about a micron from giving out, but hasn't. I hold my breath a second longer to get my heartrate under control and make sure that there isn't anything toxic inside my suit - though if there is, there's not a damn thing I can do about it anyway, if the thing's been breached.

Holy.

Fucking.

Cow.

I hate these close calls. They're gonna be the end of me yet. Literally.

Before the dust has even settled, I can feel Shepard's hand on my arm, hauling me to my feet. "You both all right?" she asks over the radio, which is now a bit muffled from the distortion in the air. I just nod my head, while Wrex bellows an affirmative.

I wave my hands around, trying to clear out the dust in front of me as Shepard's form swims into view. "The fuck?" I manage to croak out.

"I guess they didn't take kindly to the destruction of one of their ships."

"But it wasn't us!"

"You wanna go out there and tell them that?"

I shudder briefly. "Not particularly, no."

"Then get your ass moving to the shuttle."

"Yes, ma'am."