Normandy SR2: CIC.

Miranda said, "Fire the Thanix cannons on the Collector cruiser. That should provide a distraction for Jessica to get out of the station where she's been pinned."

Garrus said, "Understood, prepping Thanix cannons to fire."

"Good, Joker, status report?"

"We're good. Haven't been hit by those little bastards, but I can't evade them forever. EDI's attacking them to the best of her ability, but we can't hold out forever."

"Understood." Miranda said, then said to two soldiers, "Take the shuttles and work as a distraction for the Normandy. We can't afford to lose the ship." They nodded, and took control of the shuttles. Then, the galaxy map vanished, and a reaper hologram appeared in it. It turned to Miranda, and said, "Surrender your vessel immediately, and we shall not destroy this entire world."

Miranda replied, "There aren't enough of you to destroy all of Illium. You lack the vessels to manage such an assault. I'm still confused as to how you managed to trick the defense network here. You're in dark space, so I assume your signal was weakened, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I suppose that you have a direct link to the Collector vessel using some form of QEC that we haven't discovered yet. The Normandy isn't your ship. Cut power to all systems."

The engineers asked, "What? That'll kill us!"

"You received your orders, engineers. Cut power to all systems. We need to get this reaper out of our systems."

"Understood." Lia said.

When the ship cut down power, and began to fall, Joker said, "What the fuck?"

"Restore power now." Miranda said.

The systems roared back to life, and Joker had control of the ship three hundred meters above the ground. It rose into the air, and the Thanix cannons fired right into the Collector vessel. The ship turned towards the Normandy, and the shuttles exited out of the shuttle bay. They flew in opposite directions, distracting the Collector fighters.

Illium.

Shepard, Javik, and Samara, fired their biotics into the massive group of Collectors. Shepard then fired her Reegar carbine into the group, clearing a path to an elevator where the team got in, and headed up. In the upper levels, there were a horde of abominations. Shepard lobbed several grenades into the group. The explosions sent the abominations flying, the explosions of the dying husks, knocked out Tali. Shepard grabbed the quarian, and the cop said, "We're pinned, there is no way to get out of here. How the hell did they get past the orbital defenses?"

Shepard stared out at the battle going on outside, and said, "Harbinger's helping them. He must have hacked the scanners, and the ship managed to sneak in through the distraction it created. We'll have to hold this position until the Normandy can drive the Collector Cruiser off."

Normandy SR2.

Miranda slid into a wall as the Normandy evaded the Collectors attacks. From the CIC, she saw that the Illium orbital defenses had been alerted to the deception that Harbinger had performed, and were now heading in. She also saw that the Collector cruiser was pulling out. She grinned, and said, "Joker, don't let that ship get away. We're taking them out now."

"Roger that." Joker said. While they flew towards the fleeing cruiser, one of the fighters flew right into a shuttle, and it careened into one of the buildings.

Miranda watched the building begin to burn, then Jessica came in through the comms and said, "What the hell just happened? This building just started to collapse. We've lost all of our extra clips!"

Miranda said, "The shuttles were sent out to distract the fighters so we could focus on the cruiser. We'll get to you asap."

Joker had been listening in, and switched course to Shepard's location. The building had begun to collapse, tilting towards the ground. The Normandy moved towards the building, firing on the few fighters that they came in their path. The remaining shuttle fired on the fighters, until the Normandy flew right up to the collapsing building. Inside, Shepard and the rest of the team were firing on the Collectors inside.

When the Normandy was near the building, Miranda said, "Jessica, jump out of the window."

"You trying to kill me, Miri?"

"You'll be fine. Just jump out. The Normandy will be there. But we can't stay still for a long time."

"Got it." Jessica replied, turning to everyone else, and saying, "We've got to take a jump out the window. The Normandy will be there for us to land on."

Tali said, "You know it was designed to prevent such maneuvers, right."

"We'll find a way to make it work, Tali." the Commander said as she dove through the window. The rest of the squad followed her down, but the detective stayed in the building, until she saw that Shepard and the others had simply jumped into the airlock of the Normandy. She tried to follow them, but missed by a few feet, and began plummeting towards the ground. When her body collided with the ground, every bone in her body snapped, and the bones in her legs were shattered into tiny fragments. Shepard winced when she saw what had happened to the detective, but went back into the Normandy. Inside, Miranda was waiting. Jessica said, "I see that you managed to handle the situation out here fairly well. Why'd you have the Normandy shut down all systems?"

"Harbinger had managed to hack into our systems. We had to cut all power or we'd probably have lost control of all systems. I had to cut all power temporarily to get it out of the ship."

"I should have thought about that. I didn't consider the possibility of it trying to hack our systems. We'll have to find a way to prevent it in the future."

Javik said, "That should be simple enough. During our war, we had to find a way to prevent the reapers from hacking, and we found that several simple encryptions being used together would prevent the reapers from hacking the system. I can give them to your ship's computer."

"That'll be good. I'm going to get out of this armor now." Jessica said, heading for the loft.

Normandy SR2: Kasumi's quarters.

Kasumi stood up, and saw that there were three people outside of her room. She asked, "What are you doing?"

"We're just trying to get a drink, Kasumi." The first one said. She nodded, and let them in. After a few drinks, they started rambling, and Kasumi left them to their booze. In the main battery, she saw that Garrus was working on the Thanix cannons. She asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm working on some calibrations." Garrus replied.

"What's wrong with the cannons current calibration?"

"It might help us with any future use of the Thanix. Also, it's relaxing." the turian replied.

Engineering.

Tali walked up to her post, and started working on making sure that all systems were running properly. She muttered to herself about how shutting all systems down in mid-flight would damage that it could have done to the systems. Luckily, most were running green, but she noticed that several systems on Lia's board were only running at 60%. She asked Lia, "Why are these systems running so poorly?"

"They were running fine before we did the whole system shutdown, but they didn't restart properly. I've been trying to get them back up to full functionality. Nothing I've done has had any effect." Lia replied.

Tali walked over, and after a few minutes said, "Yeah, that's pretty bad. We need to get them back up to 100% before we go after the Collectors."

Illium Spaceport: the next day.

Ashley walked out of the shuttle that she had spent the last four days in. She stretched out her cramped legs, and when she was in the information area, she saw up close what the viewport had shown. The area was in ruins, and it looked like one of the skyscrapers had collapsed for some reason. One of the news reports said, "After yesterday's devastating Collector attack, the Illium Defense Board has begun working on ways to improve the cyber defense networks, as the Collectors managed to trick the systems into not showing up on the scanners."

Shepard was standing by the terminal that had the report. Beside the Commander, Miranda stood, shaking her head. Also there, was an asari, and a bald, tattooed woman. Shepard said, "Williams."

"Shepard."

"Why the hell are you here? I received word from the Alliance that you were going to be coming onto the Normandy, but that was it."

"The Alliance told me that I would be on board as their representative."

Shepard shook her head, and said, "Typical Alliance. Well, follow us, the Normandy's this way."

Normandy SR2.

Shepard guided Ashley to the crew's quarters on deck 3, and said, "You can resume your duties handling the weapons. Taylor could probably use some help handling all the guns we've gathered."

Ashley nodded, and headed back to deck two. Miranda walked up to Jessica, and said, "That went well. I'm surprised she didn't attack you."

"Ash may not trust me, but she isn't going to try to attack me. I think she realizes that she wouldn't be on her feet for a few months if she tried it."

Miranda replied, "Still, she should know better. The Illusive Man wouldn't permit an Alliance officer on a Cerberus vessel. He'd be worried about systems being hacked, or control of the ship being lost somehow."

"She's just being cautious. She'll realize that we've left Cerberus sooner or later." Jessica said as she entered the elevator. Taking it up to the loft, she said, "But, let's not worry about that. I want to just relax, and completely forget the mission for a few hours before we reach Praggia."

Miranda collapsed into the bed beside Jessica, and said, "Well, what were you thinking of?"

Quarian quarters.

Tali sat down, and said to Lia, "Well, I've tried several different protocols on the systems that are running sub-par, and I think that we'll have to do a hard reset when we next dock. Then, we'll need to go through calibrations again to restore full functionality."

"We might want to try running a cleanup first, make sure it isn't a virus that Harbinger left in our systems before it was cut out." Lia said.

"That's a good idea. But, I think a reaper would have a more effective virus to take down our systems. We'll see though." Tali said.

Kasumi's room.

Kasumi was working on putting together a model ship that Shepard had picked up on the Citadel. Kelly walked in and asked, "What are you doing, Kasumi?"

"Working on one of Shep's models." the thief replied.

"Which one? She's bought like twelve of the things."

"Sovereign at the moment. Figured that I might as well put the reaper together. I'm guessing Shep will probably just shoot it, which seems like a waste of a couple thousand credits."

"Yeah." Kelly said while she sat down beside Kasumi and started helping build the model.

After an hour, the ship was complete, and Kasumi said, "Thanks, Kelly. That really sped up how long it would take to finish it. I'm going to take it up to Shep's room."

The Loft.

Kasumi walked in, and saw that Jessica and Miranda were playing poker. She said, "Shep, I've finished Sovereign."

Jessica turned around and said, "So you're the one who kept building my models for me. Thanks Kasumi."

"No problem. I remember when I was kid working on models of older ships like the original FTL ship that humanity built, the Victory."

"That thing was a piece of crap. It barely was able to safely exit FTL."

"It looked impressive though." Miranda said.

"Yeah, still don't understand why they thought they had to make it bigger than a dreadnought. Seriously, it was almost the size of Sovereign."

"It was an experimental ship. And remember, its drive core was almost the size of a cruiser." Kasumi replied, "You couldn't expect it to be highly effective when it was the first of its kind."

"And, was barely of reducing the mass to the point that it enabled FTL. At least the ones that followed it were fairly useful." Jessica said, "You interested in some poker?"

"Nah, just came up to put Sovereign in the display case. Don't shoot it, Shep."

"I wasn't planning on it. I don't waste money on models just to shoot them." Jessica replied, while Kasumi entered the elevator.

Kelly was sitting on Kasumi's couch, and the thief asked, "Is it time for another psych session?"

"Yes. I'd like to start where we left off last time. You were talking about how you ignored Keiji's worries, and went on a job. What happened next?"

"I pulled off the job without a problem, and when I came back home, Keiji was dead, a hole in his head where his greybox had been. He had left a message, saying that Donovan Hock had killed him to get his greybox. A few months passed while I planned on how to steal it back, until Cerberus started looking for me. When I found out about Shepard, I added her to my plans. Then, I met with Shep on the Citadel. After that, you know what happened."

"Yes, but, I would like to hear what you've thought about it."

"That isn't necessary." Kasumi said.

"If I'm going to help you, I need to know what you think."

Kasumi shook her head, and said, "That isn't important, Chambers."

Normandy SR2: Bridge.

The Normandy exited FTL over a jungle planet, and was immediately fired on by a Cerberus frigate. They had to dodge the missiles, and Joker said, "We've arrived at Praggia, but we're under fire from Cerberus. You should be able to take the shuttle down to the surface."

Jessica said, "Got it. EDI, tell Jack and Williams that Miri and I will meet them in the shuttle bay."

"Yes, Commander." EDI said.