A/N: Tali never really demonstrated that she did much of anything in ME1, so I try and address that. Some of these convos are in the canon game - the dialogue was good and fit.

Edited 10-5-2017.

It took some time for Chakwas to release Shepard from medical, and then another hour to report to Alliance Command and the Citadel. The response from both was terse. Alliance Command was tracking geth movement on the fringes of the Perseus Veil, and wanted to be able to move the Normandy in to investigate once they pinned down a region. The Council's response instructed Shepard to move to real-time comms distance after dealing with the volus distress signal.

Shepard had returned to her quarters, after a fruitless half hour checking the status of the ship, and began reviewing her messages and reports. Her leg still ached interminably from the damage on Therum, but she ignored it, focusing on making sure she completed every task as commanding officer correctly.

She rubbed her eyes after finishing reviewing the reports on the geth wreckage, after using her omni-tool to translate some quarian terminology. Tali had done a very good job with it, and the analysis was both tactically useful and an interesting read. Shepard glanced through it again, just to make sure she understood it.

Commander, we've pulled back all the geth platforms that your Marines found above the tunnels and within them. The most basic design is that of the geth trooper and heavy trooper. These have not varied much beyond the original servant design my people originally came up with.

All known geth platforms are built around a hydraulic frame, which anchors to the torso unit. The torso contains power generation, backup memory storage, and hydraulic fluidic storage. The interior is a simplified skeletal structure that mirrors that of my people. Anchored to this framework are bundles of artificial muscle, myomer strands bundled together. The myomer reacts to electrical charges, amplifying the strength and smoothing out the motion of the hydraulic under-structure. The head is a multifunction sensor pod, the CPU taking up the head and continuing down the armored spine. The antenna pack on the back is the interface matrix, which allows any geth to communicate to the greater geth network.

All geth units grow in intellectual ability and processing speed, as well as complexity, when networked with more geth. In theory, enough geth networked together would produce something along the lines of a super AI. In reality, coding obfuscation and simple laws of diminishing returns prevent this.

The geth trooper is a basic infantry unit with a pulse rifle, firing plasma darts. The heavy trooper fires either anti-materiel missiles of shaped plasma flares or infantry suppression rockets. Some of these units also carry compact but very powerful missiles that are for light spacecraft interdiction. Garrus inspected one and said it was similar to the human Spearfish missiles the Normandy uses, only much smaller and with a VI providing guidance. Both basic troop types are dispatched most quickly by a headshot or a direct hit to the upper-middle back in the interface array. Torso and limb shots can incapacitate, but not always kill. Any severe damage will cause rupture of the hydraulic and cooling system, lowering combat speed, increasing heat load and crippling aim and response time.

There was a geth prime unit in the geth that attacked the 2nd Squad. I know you have killed two already, but you did it in a very non-optimal manner. The geth prime is built exactly like the geth troopers, just much, much bigger, with heavier armor, better myomer, thicker internal armoring, multiple backup systems, more intricate comm arrays, and more complex sensors.

While we estimate a standard geth platform only holds a few dozen to perhaps a hundred separate geth programs, working together to provide the unit guidance, the geth prime coordinates other groups of geth when away from the hubs. Geth primes house thousands of runtimes and should be treated like hostile AI. They can plan, adapt, improvise, and worst of all, they make all other geth around them smarter and quicker to react.

The geth prime has no real weakness. It is built with a multifunction plasma weapon, or a heavy plasma cannon. My advice is to weaken it with land mines or remote drones, or a spray of rockets, before engaging it with sniper fire. Close up, the plasma blast is (as you probably already know) devastating.

The other two platforms were new. This troubles me greatly – my people haven't seen new geth hardware since the deployment of geth primes two hundred years ago. That was clearly a response to early efforts at retaking Rannoch, using communications jammers and other primitive methods to ruin the geth's connectivity. These new units have clearly been created by geth, but I cannot fathom why.

The geth war machine I have decided to dub 'Armature.' It is basically a scaled-down Colossus. The Colossus and, to a degree, the Armature share all the same features. They aren't much different from geth troopers, except the larger torso contains powerful ME generators, and the legs are lined with batteries and backup shielding. And of course, the pulse cannon.

The pulse cannon is terrifying, and I sincerely hope the geth can't miniaturize it further. It is basically a focused pulse of plasma energy in a shaped mass effect delivery envelope. The envelope degrades at a rate depending on the speed, keeping the plasma hot and effective. This gives it a range of over six and a half thoustride [Automatic Xeno Translation: 6.28 kilometers] in optimal conditions.

The Colossus is clearly the geth armor unit. The Armature, given its smaller bulk, could be deployed in urban zones. Either way, given their very thick armor, powerful weapons, and all-terrain flexibility, they could overrun us at any time. I'm concerned about the development of the Armature, as its design has a number of anti-infantry influences (small armor shields over the joints, and armored reinforcement of the visual sensors) that make me wonder why the geth feel a need for a ground invasion platform. All the answers I come up with scare me.

The worst inventions are the white geth things you fought in the caverns. I have borrowed Detective Vakarian's designation for them, 'Hoppers,' and they are like nothing I've ever seen. The support, data storage, and cooling systems are internal to a pipe skeletal framework that uses small mass effect fields instead of hydraulics, and the artificial muscles are some kind of biosynthetic matrix of myomer and proteins. These things are grown, Commander. They are lightweight, but just as strong as a larger geth. If externally armored, they could bear armor almost three times the thickness of standard units. As close-quarters assault troops, they are terrifyingly fast and hard to kill. Only heavy shotguns and biotics have much chance of stopping them, most other weapons would just tear up the muscle without taking out the support systems…

O-OSaBC-O

Tali had gone into great tactical and technological detail about other geth functions, but the gist of it was that the technological sophistication of the geth had been increased a hundredfold in a small amount of time, and it was all focused on heavy infantry.

Doesn't make a lot of sense… if they wanted boarding troops, they would be optimized for armor and zero-g, not ground battle. And the geth tore up Eden Prime only because the heavy armor didn't respond. Those Armatures are nasty, but any tank could take them out.

Shepard left her quarters, thinking. She had often noticed that Anderson did what he called 'pep talk walk arounds.' He would talk to people, see how they were doing, ask about their kids, their friends, chit-chat, and make sure they all felt comfortable with him. Shepard had no intention of doing that. Her conversation with Williams still weighed heavily on her mind, not just because the young woman had made her angry enough to talk about Torfan, but because Williams had a point. I have to move beyond what I am or I have failed.

Rather than mimic Anderson, she decided all she could do is be herself, but the idea of talking to people and being visible was a good one. She started in the CIC, her leg a bit sore but otherwise healthy. She talked to the Ops Alley techs, Jackson and Friggs, asking about display times and reaction mass indicators, showing them that she could read a five-point ECM display. One of them timidly asked about her previous space service and she told them, like she had Joker, that she had memorized the material and tested out.

When they expressed amazement she folded her arms. "Captain Anderson was one of the most highly decorated command officers of the entire SA military. What I did isn't really amazing with him as my teacher."

Friggs, a fussy looking woman with very short, very straight white-blond hair and a perpetually sad expression, had shrugged. "It's just… like getting your aircar license by reading books and watching vids of how to drive, then participating in the GASCAR 5000 and winning. I'm sure it can be done… but… wow. Hey, if you have all the books memorized…"

Shepard spent almost fifteen minutes walking them through backscatter radar operations, something that only the more obscure tech manuals she had read had talked about. By the time she was done, half of Ops Alley was watching and the other half of the techs in the CIC were listening.

She looked around a bit self-conscious, and gave a smirk. "Alright, back to work. I'll be back later to… uh, cover something else."

O-OSaBC-O

Joker, at least, was more relaxed in his reaction to her. "Commander. That was pretty intense down there on Therum. I'd like my medal to be gold, I think."

Shepard blinked. "What?"

Joker tapped controls while craning his head to look at her, an almost arrogant display of skill. "You know, turning the Normandy into an atmospheric gunship and running ground support with GTS missiles everywhere? She's not really meant to do much more in atmo than drop things off, much less maneuver against ground tanks on legs and twenty or so geth with launchers that punch holes in our armor plate with a single hit. Just for future reference."

With a small, wry grin, she folded her arms. "Oh, this should be good. Leaving aside the fact that going above and beyond your job is why you are on the most advanced ship in the fleet; you want a medal, huh? I don't know, Mr. Moreau. Having sat through some truly excruciating award ceremonies, the two things that stand out in them is full dress uniform and standing a lot."

"Aw, geez, then I'd have to shave. And standing is… not a specialty of mine. Unlike awesome airborne assault and battle coordination." He smirked and turned back to his tasks, leaving Shepard to roll her eyes and glance around the cockpit.

Joker's voice sobered a moment later. "Seriously though, Pressly was up here buggin' me about the hits we took. My baby is nimble and hot off the mark, but flaffling around in air creates drag, and that turns my maneuverability into shit. We're not designed to go in slugging it out with ground forces that have missiles flecked with AM."

Joker's reference to the shockingly advanced geth missiles made Shepard frown, but she nodded a moment later, her mouth in a grim line. "I got that much, Joker. I guess we'll have to deploy further out. Still, for what it's worth?" Shepard waggled her hand. "Four out of five. Not the best air support I've seen. Once had a guy on Dirth take a UT-44 and take out two Mjolnir-A gunships, with nothing but the flares of his exhausts."

Joker's eyebrows drew toward each other under his SR1 hat, and he rubbed a finger between them roughly. "I could do that." Shepard shrugged. Joker smirked. "I could do that with the Normandy, even. Ma'am."

She burst out laughing. "Do they teach you how to BS like that in flight school, or is it something you're born with?

O-OSaBC-O

An hour later, and she had toured almost every space. Tali was exuberant to be put in charge of researching geth wreckage and to work in the engine room, almost bubbling over with enthusiasm and wide-eyed awe of the Tantalus Drive Core. The rest of the engineers smiled a lot when she would go into long explanations of how great certain things were, or make understated worries about too many automated systems.

Conversing with her was almost difficult. Some of it, Shepard suspected, was cultural. Raised by the most powerful man in the quarian fleet, in a society that valued hard choices and communal sacrifice for the greater good, Tali didn't, perhaps couldn't, see even the worst of Shepard's military actions as horrific. And Tali's brush with death had shaken her to her core. To her, Shepard was some kind of heroic figure of dark and mysterious properties.

Shepard shook her head at the conversation and how it had gone.

"The quarian fleet has nothing like this, Shepard. It's amazing! Clean. Quiet. The lines are so refined and businesslike. The whole ship is… wow." Her voice was a mix of awe, happiness and contented disbelief. "Thank you so much for letting me work here and take part in what you're doing."

Shepard tilted her head to one side, as she usually did when considering something. It was one of the first things she had learned from Anderson as he tried to remake her from a bloody thing into a human being.

Tali gave her an uncertain look. "Um, Commander… you look. Well, uncomfortable."

Shepard frowned, folded her arms, and raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say that, Tali?"

The little quarian finished typing some sort of equation into the system and then looked up at Shepard for a moment before her silver gaze faltered and fled to the deck. "I… that is, quarians. My people. We don't… get out of our suits much. I told you about our immune systems already, how it compromises us. That means we spend most of our lives sealed away from one another in featureless suits. We are good at figuring out body language, emotion from stance… it's sometimes all we have to go on."

Shepard smiled. "And that doesn't vary from culture to culture?"

Tali shrugged, the gesture oddly… human looking. "Not as much as you would think. Asari and quarians both shrug like humans. Asari smile. Turians nod. Krogan fold their arms. No one leans forward in a friendly manner." She spread her hands, and walked a bit to stare at the drive core before glancing back at Shepard. "I can't read you very well. It's like… a pile of preprogrammed stances that you rotate through. Fold arms, look stern, soften at end. Hands on hips, glare, waggle finger. Lift chin, smirk, walk off." Tali twisted her hands together and looked up again. "And around me, well… it's usually tilting your head, as if thinking, then telling me you're impressed."

Shepard didn't move for several seconds, before making a curiously flat gesture with a hand and giving an empty smile. "Anderson… my Captain, my… mentor, if you will… made me go to a class once on human relations. He thought it might help. It was like sending a person who barely understands addition and subtraction to a class on post-relativistic calculus. I… I don't get people, a lot of times."

Tali's head moved back, her stance becoming more narrow. The blue light of the Tantalus Core dappled strange patterns against the black smoothness of her suit. "But you are a successful commander, how can that be?"

Shepard gave a rueful smile. "Human military forces work on a… mm. A sense of personal respect and… I guess, power of a leader, and then interlocking personal relationships. The best leaders are not merely tactical geniuses or strategic masters, but those who can inspire and… develop others. Anderson has that knack. I don't."

Tali's hands unclenched, only to drop to her sides. "Quarian admirals can't manage that way. They have to be undivided, focused almost totally on the wellbeing of the fleet. The captain of a ship has to be the same way. Each one, especially the Liveships where we grow our food, and the nursery and medical ships, are so important, that a quarian who died defending one is considered a hero. Admirals…" Tali paused, her voice bruised with old pain. "…some of them can't even connect to family anymore. They are just… duty… made flesh."

Shepard gave a sad smile. "I'm very familiar with that sort of… burden. If I seem stiff, it's because I don't feel comfortable pretending to be something I'm not. I'll figure it out, if that is what is needed. But… when I reacted to what you said, earlier, I was just thinking about what it must be like to be in an alien starship. I wasn't trying to… feign interest."

Tali's voice was somehow small, quiet, hesitant. "It's too quiet sometimes. Our ships are loud, with ventilation fans and filters making things noisy, jury-rigged repairs rattling along, even the subtle slow failure of sound isolation joints now juddering with the rhythm of the drive core. Silence on a ship usually means power failure or environmental failure. It gets to me when I least expect it."

Shepard nodded. "Sounds like you wish you were back home."

Tali shook her head. "No. I mean… home… I do miss it. There are times I wish my Pilgrimage was done so I could go back to my people. But first, we have to stop Saren. Whatever he is doing with the geth is dangerous. My own silly wishes are not important. If we don't stop him, I may not have a home to return to."

Tali's hesitant, almost meek manner grated on something in Shepard's mindset. It made her feel vaguely protective, yet also as if she should be doing more to comfort the girl. Her voice was just so… broken… sometimes. Still, Shepard had to admit, the young quarian woman was definitely no slouch when it came to doing work. In just a few days, her aid had increased power yield by eight percent, shield stability by five percent, and allowed the Engineering crew to move to a real three-section watch rotation. Tali demanded she go through the qualifications tests to stand watch and 'contribute to the mission instead of standing around.' Shepard could not really complain about such focus. It reminded her of herself.

O-OSaBC-O

Garrus was also being busy and helpful, even more so than Tali in some ways. He seemed to have a need to be productive, to be part of the team. He had tuned the Mako, improving shields and tweaking the shocks, as well as patching battle damage. And the Normandy's twin forty millimeter cannons were calibrated down to just under half a degree of accuracy at the range of five light-seconds, which was very impressive. He seemed to be busy burying himself in fiddling with the Mako's engine, tools strewn about as he tinkered, but they had a chat about the nature of his work with C-Sec.

"It's hard to explain, now. And it seems almost silly. But most of what I did with C-Sec was go after cases that pissed me off."

Shepard laughed at that. "Well, criminals in general piss me off, but I don't think that's what you mean."

Garrus flicked a mandible. "It isn't. I mean, some crime on the Citadel is inevitable. Two hundred thousand policing fifteen million would be less than one cop per seventy people, but at least a quarter of C-Sec is support services or customs, and another fifth is off-station. The caseloads are enormous, and the dockets are overloaded as well. Special Ops clears out the worst of the worst – the slavers, body snatchers, organ and clone bootleggers, and Terminus gangs trying to get a foothold. But we can never stop it all."

Shepard tilted her head. "And how do you see your job? Is it just shooting down bad guys?"

Garrus frowned, mandibles flicking out then in. "I… that's a good question. I mean, in terms of why I joined… no different than anyone else. I wanted to fight injustice, wanted to help people. I… guess my father had something to do with it. He was C-Sec, one of the best. I grew up hearing about his accomplishments… seeing his picture on the vids after a big arrest." Garrus looked down. "He's… taking my suspension and resignation pretty hard." The blue eyes glanced up, searching for… something. "I… he and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, Commander. My father's a C-Sec man to the bone. He believes things should be done properly. More than most turians, I suppose. 'Do things right, or don't do them at all,' he always said." The big turian sighed, setting his mechanic's tools aside on the little bench next to the Mako, and he sat down on the metal sub-wall next to the tank. "He thinks I'm being too rash. Too impatient. He's worried I'll become just like Saren. He actually talked me out of becoming a Spectre when I was younger. For the same reason."

Shepard frowned. "They wanted you as a Spectre? When was this?"

"Well, I was targeted as a possible Spectre candidate when I was in, what do you humans call it… boot camp?" Garrus's expression turned wry, mandibles low and tight. "Me and about a thousand other turian military recruits. I could have received special training, but my father didn't like it. He despises the Spectres. He hates the idea of someone having unlimited power with no accountability. He wouldn't like you, Commander. No offense."

Shepard had shrugged. "None taken. He's right on a lot of that. Humanity has a very apt saying: 'absolute power corrupts absolutely.' I've seen criminals who forgot they weren't actual gods. I've seen good men do horrible things because no one stops them. I have very little doubt that Saren has some reason for going… bad, but the truth remains that without unlimited power, there are other things to keep normal people in line. But the more power you have, the easier it is to fall."

Garrus frowned and suddenly clamped his jaw shut, turning away to tinker with the engine again, saying nothing.

Shepard tilted her head. "Vakarian, I'm not a turian. You can say what you feel."

Garrus shrugged, his broad back hunching slightly. "Whatever you say, Commander. I was… just… I don't know. Saren's not going to play by our rules. He's not going to play by C-Sec's rules, or the Alliance's rules. If you want to nail Saren, you need to send someone who isn't restricted by policies and procedures."

Shepard shook her head. "That doesn't change the fact that in the end, without someone to rein people in, they lose control." Shepard paused. "I'm definitely not a by the book person. Usually with me it ends up on fire in a corner. But we all have to ask ourselves how to do something the right way, not just the quick or easy way."

Garrus turned and stared at her, his alien features harsh and angular in the dim light, the lambent glow of his visor illuminating his jaw. "And what happens when caution and restraint end up with innocents dead? What happens when in the name of following regs and red tape, the criminal escapes?"

Shepard smiled. "You can get things done that way, by ignoring the red tape. But the costs come back to haunt you just as much. I've run into that more than once. I don't break the law, or bend it. I do what I have to within it, or I'm as bad as the criminal I'm trying to take out."

Garrus had laughed, but it was a brittle sound, almost bitter. "Annnd now you sound like Pallin." The turian adjusted the bolt on a piece of armor plating almost angrily. "There's crimes that are so horrible, they must be paid for."

Shepard exhaled a long, tired breath. "There's no criminal worth becoming a criminal to bring down. I have to believe that. It's too easy to lose track of right and wrong without knowing where to stop before you even get moving. I plan to bring Saren in, or kill him. If that means I have to sacrifice people to do it, I will. If it means I die, so be it." Shepard turned to look the turian right in the eyes. "But I won't let him compromise who I am, what I believe in. Killing to stop a great evil is only the right choice when nothing else works."

Garrus's harmonics seemed sullen. "That doesn't sound like what I've heard of your career."

Shepard shook her head. "The people who write that stuff don't understand soldiers, or what pain you feel when you have to send off good men and women to die. All the killing I've done is a reaction, and… mostly, it's the only reaction that I know. But I'm not stupid enough to think that killing the pirates stops the piracy." She paused and gave Garrus a firm look. "I'm not a cop. There's a difference in what I did and what you did, Police Chicken."

Garrus made an arch movement with his face, looking down at her. "Detective Police Chicken to you." He smiled, tension easing a bit, and turned back to working on the Mako. "I understand where my father is coming from. Where Pallin is coming from. What you are saying. But I've had my own experiences with red tape and rules resulting in an evil man getting away to do more evil. No matter how you end up spelling it out, it's better to end evil now, even if it costs ten lives, or twenty, rather than let it continue and watch as the body count goes into the low hundreds."

Shepard scratched the back of her neck, and sighed. "I can't really argue with that, as long as you own up to being responsible for the lives you end up taking to do so. And most people won't. They'll say it was the only way, they'll talk about duty or whatever, but they won't take ownership for the people that get hurt or killed in the course of what they do. And you eventually start losing the connection to the cost of actions like that."

Garrus flung a taloned hand in the air, suddenly angry. "Who cares about that? Owning up to it? Who owns up to the people who suffer when you don't stop them? Who takes responsibility when you let the druggie go because of evidence rules and he sells some little girl enough hallex to fry her brains? Who is taking responsibility for when the slavers don't get taken out because they have hostages, and they go right on slaving?" He made a flicking motion with a single talon, as if discarding something. "Pallin is outraged at people going too far. My spirits-damned father thinks it's more important to be obedient than to fight for the people that get hurt. You talk about ownership? Who owns what happens to the victims? Who owns what happens to the people hurt by the criminals?" Harmonic ranges in his voice came unbound as he stalked back and forth, almost growling. "The only thing that matters is stopping the criminal."

Shepard stood, and planted herself in his way, jaw set. "And when you start thinking like that, your father is right. You end up fucked. Goddammit, I'm not talking from some bullshit philosophy course here! I've had to do that. I've had to sacrifice people to get the bad guy. It never, ever ends the way you want it to. I hate criminals. God, if you ever saw my own criminal record, you'd want to put a bullet in my head."

Garrus gave a frown. "What do you mean?"

Shepard's eyes were still hard, as she folded her arms. "Before I was in the military, I got mixed up with gangs. I had biotic power, and very few humans did. Most of the ones who had it were in the military, so I was like a goddamned nuke. They dragged me to a black market doctor and cut an L2 into me. I was a biotic assassin, the Tenth Street's secret weapon. They kept me high and fucked up most of the time, encouraging me to kill and terrify." She looked away, closing her eyes. "I killed… hundreds. Stole. Vandalized. Slung drugs. Arson, grand theft… all of it."

Garrus had a strange, pained expression on his face. "But… how did you get into the military? If you were a criminal…"

Shepard's smile was wry, bitter, twisted. "I found a conscience. I got saved from being jumped by over a dozen rival gangbangers by Anderson when he was on leave, and in turn I stopped him from getting his head blown off. And then the gang had the bright idea to try to ransom him. And wanted me to do it." Shepard's gaze was fixed on some distant, invisible point. "And for the first time in my life something in me just said… no. So, instead of getting him killed, I went on a red sand induced rampage through the gangs that ended only when SWAT teams in heavy armor took everything I could throw at them and cornered me, and Anderson got me to surrender. The human military takes violent, crazy people like me and puts them in what we call a Penal Legion. You fight until you die, or until the military feels you've proven you can work in the real military. You quit, they kill you. You fail too much, they kill you. You go crazy, or lose it, they kill you."

Shepard sighed. "I managed to… make myself better. I turned every bit of skill at killing innocents into killing enemies of my race. Slavers. Druggies. Marauders. I studied everything, mastered every weapon, pushed myself far beyond what anyone else had been driven to… because I was disgusted by what I had let myself be turned into by wicked, evil men."

Garrus was still silent, talons crosshatched over one leg, the plates over his eyes drawn down. She made a dismissive gesture with her hands. "And with all of that, you know what I took away from it all? Vengeance is satisfying. Doing things the quick way is satisfying. Blowing the no-good fucks away is satisfying. But it never stops them. You kill this one guy, and this one guy, and this one guy, and sooner or later someone innocent gets caught up in the fallout." She sighed. "You have to make your own decisions on how to approach it. It probably sounds… hypocritical for someone like me to even talk that way. But emulating me is not… ever… a good thing, Detective. You go after the bad guys to defend people and do things the right way, not to be some kind of goddamned turian version of Judge Dredd."

The turian had tilted his head, which sent them into another long discussion about human comic novels and their applicability to alien culture. She realized that the only place left in the ship she hadn't gone was to see the asari.

Oh, this ought to go well.