Mass Effect: Beginnings

by Lilivati

"Spectres, well, that's what they look for- initiative, sound judgment, a dash of insanity." My novelization of Mass Effect 1, featuring Commander Nathaly Shepard and the rest of the crew, with an eventual Shenko romance. This fic takes a deeper dive into the story and characters, as well as adding or altering some events.

38. Little Wing

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Little Wing

The maintenance tunnel proved to be little more than a crudely hacked passage through the ice, sized for large machinery, but without installed walls, ceiling or floor, few support beams, and no climate control. It was a manmade cave. They hurried through as fast as they dared, boots sliding on the ice. Shepard swiped Cohen's badge through a door at the far end marked "Secure Lab". There was a pause as the security protocols processed the input, a small eternity to wonder whether it would work, before the hatch slid into the wall on a screech of chilled rails.

The team raced along a suspended metal pathway, enclosed in gerbil tube prefabs like the rest of this place, until it widened into a large, vaulted room humming with sensitive equipment. In the center a platform rose a full story, bearing a cylindrical glass tank the size of a small truck. Next to it stood a tall asari woman. Her back was to Shepard's squad, arms wrapped about her waist as she pondered the tank's contents. She was swathed in an elegant black dress of an outdated style, and over it an odd ascetic jacket with a close-fit hood that left no skin visible- no pinstriped suit in sight. A good actress, then.

Shepard could tell by the way Liara went rigid as soon as the asari came into view that this must be Benezia. Of her commandos, there was no sign. This was a bad situation. They'd be sitting ducks on the platform, but she needed to talk to Benezia, not simply shoot her. She sucked in a breath and mounted the stairs, her team following behind.

The matriarch did not turn at their approach. Indeed, she seemed quite unconcerned, gaze fixed on the tank. Her voice was cadenced, almost professorial. "You do not know the privilege of being a mother. There is power in creation, the oldest kind of power there is, the making and shaping of life. Primal." Benezia gestured towards the tank. "Her children were to be ours, raised to hunt and slay Saren's enemies, a screaming insatiable horde of overwhelming destruction."

She looked at the ground and shook her head, chuckling softly. "How foolish we were. How arrogant. She is so much more than that."

Shepard's eyes strayed to the tank. The glass walls were so thick they distorted the light passing through, but the outline of a rachni was clear, though one quite unlike any seen previously. It was three times larger, jet black rather than lobster red, with a heavy abdomen that dragged against the bottom of the tube. It held itself lengthwise, the graceful segments of its thorax rising in pyramidal slopes. Spots of white and lines of deep purple decorated the carapace. Two luminous eyes fixed above the creature's six mandibles, perfectly round, gazed back with a keen and penetrating stare.

Beside her, Liara could no longer hold her tongue. "And what do you know about the privileges of motherhood, except the privilege to dictate however you please?"

Benezia turned then, startled beyond all expectation. The jacket clasped at her throat, displaying an impressive spread of cleavage, and left her gaunt face bare. She didn't look like Liara's mother; she barely looked alive, so stark were her cheekbones and sunken were her eyes. But they were the same blue, enormous and full of sentiment, and they had the same out-of-place markings across the brow. Benezia's lips were stained a severe black. Deep lines etched around her nose, mouth, and along the fine bones of her hands betrayed her great age, though there was nothing of frailty about her. "Liara…"

For a moment, just a moment, her stony expression flickered with something that might have been repulsion, or regret, but it was gone as soon as it came, before Shepard could be certain it was there at all. The matriarch's hands clasped behind her back. "I will not be moved by sympathy, no matter who you drag into this confrontation."

Believe me, I'd rather she wasn't. But aloud, Shepard merely said, "Liara's here of her own volition. From what I hear, compelling people against their will is more your style."

She ignored the barb. "Indeed? And tell me, sweet Liara, what secrets have you whispered into the commander's ears about me?"

"What could I say?" There was an edge of hysteria, of defeat, to Liara's voice. "Should I tell her about the trips, the ones where you'd leave for weeks without warning? How you'll stop at nothing if you think it gains asari an advantage? Should I perhaps itemize your strengths and weaknesses, inventory your biotics, explain how to kill you? Tell me, mother, you who always knows best- what could I say?"

"You were always weak. You couldn't even outthink a krogan and handful of machines on your own." Benezia's lips pressed together. She deliberately turned her gaze back to Shepard, a dismissal as cold as it was cruel, and smiled indulgently. "So, Commander, Spectre, this little human girl who stands before me wearing the titles and trappings of things so old she can barely understand them, the child who found a single bottled message whilst playing in the sandbox and now wants to stop a war- tell me, what is it that you want? I'm in a mood to be entertained."

Shepard refused to rise to the bait. "I don't think your puppet master sends his most important asset to fix an accident at the lab. What does Saren really want with this place? What was so important that he sent you to rescue it?"

"It would appear the reports are accurate. You have neither grace nor subtlety," the matriarch said smoothly. "I wonder if they spoke equally true of your combat prowess?"

Somewhere in the depths of the lab, a hatch opened. Shepard felt her stomach clench. Shit, she was stalling us. Adrenaline shot through her body and time seemed to slow as she assessed their surroundings. They were far too exposed up here.

Benezia was still talking. "Fortunately, I have arranged a small test. Have you faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have." She shifted her weight, crossing her arms carelessly, as if nothing Shepard did could possibly impress her and it wouldn't matter even if she were mistaken, and offered a beguiling smile.

Shepard longed to wipe the smug expression off her face. "You might want to ask your sleeper agent for a detailed report of my skills." Then she smiled maniacally. "Oh wait! You can't."

Benezia snarled and flung out her left hand, glowing blue, but Shepard was already diving behind a steel cart. It turned out not to matter. The matriarch swept her arm over her head and slammed her palm into the floor.

Immediately, an enormous shock front of dark energy swept clear the platform, sending equipment, tables, datapads, and people flying. The cart tumbled end over end and pinned Shepard underneath it. It was heavy, a few hundred kilos of heavy-gauge metal sheeting and laden drawers, and she couldn't immediately move it.

A second burst of raw biotic energy tore a hole the size of Shepard's head in the floor inches from her face. She could hear her squad shouting as shots began to fill the air. Most of them were pushed off the platform. She struggled with the cart, watching Benezia's feet through a thin gap between it and the floor.

The matriarch advanced on her position. She could see the hem of her dress brushing the ground. "Your insolence is a poor mask for your fear."

There was another set of feet at the edge of Shepard's vision, coming up behind Benezia- black hard suit boots, generic navy grunt equipment, the exact suit they'd fitted for Liara when she joined the crew. Shepard, annoyed beyond all belief by this woman's theatrics and after that comment feeling rather like she'd slipped sideways into a Star Wars movie, growled from beneath the cart. "Maybe, but you forgot something."

Laughter. "And what is that?"

The boots crept closer. "Luke kicks Vader's ass."

Benezia paused in her step, utterly confused. "What?"

And then, without warning, she was knocked flat to the ground by the force of Liara's biotic attack.

Shepard didn't wait for her to recover. With one last grunt she shoved the cart up and forward, enough to slide out from under it, and snagged Liara by the arm. "Come on!"

They stumbled down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Benezia yelled something unintelligible from the platform. Shepard herded them towards the sound of gunfire.

Liara struggled. "We need to go back. We have to stop my mother from finishing her plan!"

"No, what we need to do now is regroup. If her team divides us we're toast."

The asari stared back over her shoulder. "But-"

"First rule of combat situations." Shepard hauled her forward. "Never argue with your C.O."

They found Williams and Alenko crouched behind a set of lab benches divided by an aisle, trading off taking shots at the asari squad and allowing their weapons to cool. She drew her rifle and squatted beside to the lieutenant, taking aim even as she spoke. "Status?"

"Three here. Two now." His pistol barked twice. "Biotics are no good, their barriers are too solid. I think Wrex landed on the other side of the platform. Another two commandos ran off that way- probably chasing each other's tails across the lab."

Shepard ducked as one of the asari let off a shotgun blast squarely in her direction. It shattered a glass-fronted cabinet above her head. Shards rained down on her hair. Most of it stuck in the strands. She popped back up over the top of the bench and let off three rounds into the asari's chest, all deflected. The woman ran behind a row of storage lockers. "We left Benezia up by the tank. She won't stay out of the fight long."

Williams leaned out of cover, fired, and slid back just before a ball of dark energy could rip her arm from its socket. "The last thing we need is a fucking matriarch in this mess."

Biotic barriers were nasty business. They had to be worn down, until the amount of energy battering them exceeded what the biotic was capable of staving off, much worse than a shield. And even then, it was only a matter of time until the creator regained her stamina and put it back up. There was only a narrow window to put in any shots that counted and with all the cover in the lab, Shepard wasn't sure they had that kind of time.

"Geth?" she asked.

Alenko took another shot. "No sign of them."

There was a tremendous crash from the other side of the platform, followed by kind of yell only a krogan could produce. Shepard's head jerked towards the noise- which was also when she realized Liara was nowhere to be seen. "Can you hold here?"

His face was strained but honest. "For now. Try to hurry."

She gave him a curt nod and scuttled away from the fight, straightening into a run as she exceeded the asari's likely range. The platform was both the quickest route to the other side of the lab and the most likely place to find Liara. Her feet pounded up the stairs.

Benezia had assumed a fighter's stance on the platform, no less elegant or dangerous for it, her face a hard, cold mask. One hand was extended towards Liara, who was frozen in place under her mother's biotic sway, a painful posture raised up on her toes as if she was caught preparing a strike. Her blue eyes darted about, trapped, scared, but she didn't seem in immediate danger. Benezia had her free hand to her ear, murmuring into her comm.

Her merciless gaze swept over Shepard like a fire as she mounted the platform. Shepard had no idea what to expect; in trying to coddle Liara, she'd never asked after Benezia's combat capabilities. That was a mistake, not one she was likely to make again, but that didn't exactly help her now. So she simply raised her rifle and held down the trigger.

The rounds ricocheted off Benezia's barrier. She dropped her transmission and flung out her arm. The wave of dark energy caught Shepard around her middle and tossed her savagely against a support column, smacking her head once- her vision flickered- and then, with a second jerk, over the railing. Shepard landed flat and hard on her back.

Sometime later, the world faded back in. It could have been seconds or minutes. Her ears rang.

Get up. Her head spun. She stared at the ceiling, woozy. Get up or you're dead.

Shepard lurched to a sitting position. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, and something wet trickled down her neck. No time to worry about it now.

Sound returned, fuzzy at first. Bangs, warbles, and flashes of blue light came from the platform above. Liara was free. Apparently, trying to hold a barrier, a stasis field, and fling Shepard around like a rag doll exceeded the limits of Benezia's concentration. She stumbled to her feet just as one of the pair of absent asari commandos went sailing past her face.

She shot at her automatically before she even fully registered what was happening. The woman groaned as the rounds pinned her to the wall, and slumped into stillness.

"Nice one!" Wrex yelled, and threw a filing cabinet at another, unseen assailant. The right side of his face looked like it got a brush with one of their shotguns, trailing blood from a half dozen grazing wounds. He was grinning madly.

Shepard glanced at the platform, and then starting making progress towards Alenko and Williams' position, from the other direction. It was clear the only way they'd take Benezia was everyone together. She just hoped she'd read the matriarch's intentions towards Liara correctly. It didn't seem like she wanted to kill her.

The two commandos were still alive, fighting conservatively but expertly. The tactic was effective. With the advantage of barriers, familiarity with the lab's layout, and centuries of experience, they'd wear down her squad long before they tired themselves. They were not, however, expecting Shepard to come at them from the side. The asari were caught in a ninety-degree crossfire between the commander and her marines.

Shepard lay down a cover fire as she advanced, forcing the asari to retreat, but there was nowhere to go. She smiled. This was going to be over quickly.

And then one of the asari lit up like a blue beacon and streaked forward.

Shepard had no time to ponder what happened; one second the commando was the better part of eight meters away, and the next, she was in Shepard's face, swinging a biotically-augmented fist. Shepard ducked under the blow and swept the asari's legs out from under her. They both hit the floor heavily. Her vision went to gray.

The asari recovered first and scrambled on top of her, managing to circle her neck with her hands. Shepard was immediately concerned. The woman knew enough to press on the artery, not the windpipe, and kept her knee planted firmly on her center of mass to make herself difficult to dislodge. She had seconds at most.

They fell behind a cabinet, where nobody could see them to help. Her rifle was too large, no room for a shot, and battering her with it did no good. Her hand scrabbled at the ground, looking for something, anything, and among the jumble of strewn lab equipment, closed on a hard and slender bit of trash.

Her hand swung up and drove the broken stirring rod straight through the asari's temple. Her violet eyes flew wide. Then her hands went slack and she collapsed on top of Shepard. The commander rolled her off with a groan.

Her head cleared the top of the cabinet just in time to see the second commando toss Alenko in the air and drive him back to the floor face-down with considerable force. Shepard ran at her, shooting. Most of the shots went wide and the rest hit her barrier, but the point was to get her attention.

She took a good long look at Shepard's face and her colleague on the ground, and spun on her heel and ran.

Shepard let her go. Her team desperately needed to regroup. She ran to Alenko's location and hauled him to his feet. He bent double, coughing, as he tried to force air back into his lungs. A cracked rib or two seemed likely. "Shepard-"

"Where's Williams?" she demanded.

He stumbled past her, back towards the lab benches. Shepard turned.

Williams had collapsed against the cabinetry, ashen faced and clutching at her side, between the chest guard and the leg plating. Her brown eyes lifted to Shepard's. "Sorry, ma'am. I got sloppy."

Alenko crouched in front of her and opened an omni-tool diagnostic, administering medi-gel. He, too, glanced at Shepard. "One got away."

"The rest are dead. Just Benezia now." Or so she hoped. Wrex seemed on a warpath. "Can you walk?"

The chief groaned. "I think so."

Alenko shook his head, examining the diagnostic results. "She's down for the count, ma'am. She can't fight."

Williams started to protest, but Shepard overrode her. "No, but we can't leave her here, not with a commando still running around." Shepard knelt down and held out her hand. "Come on. Easy does it."

"Commander." Alenko swallowed. "You're, uh, you're kind of bleeding. A lot."

She touched the back of her head. Her fingertips came away wet and sticky. It throbbed and oozed, but the room wasn't spinning anymore. "It's not bad. Just enthusiastic."

"It's going to get bad if you let it keep going like that. You've got it all down the back of your suit." Stubborn, like always.

Liara was still alone. Wrex was still across the room. Shepard squeezed a palmful of medi-gel into her hand and smeared it onto the back of her scalp. It stung like hell and made a sticky mess of her hair. "There, done. Let's get the hell out of here."

They got Ash to her feet and started towards the platform. Halfway there, Shepard heard the sound of a hatch opening and feet- metallic feet- clattering on the lab floor. "Oh, shit."

Overhead, there was a whirring noise. The ceiling mounted turrets were coming to life. Shepard couldn't even find it in her to groan. "Double shit."

The comm crackled in her ear. Garrus. "Shepard?"

"Kind of busy at the mome-"

"Duck."

The turrets spun towards the inbound geth from all four corners of the lab. Shepard pulled Alenko and Williams into the shadow of the staircase a half-second before the guns opened fire. Dust and shrapnel filled the air.

She settled Ash on the floor, out of the line of fire, and shouted over the noise. "Stay put."

"Commander-"

"That's an order, Chief." Shepard risked her comm link, no longer caring if Benezia eavesdropped. "Wrex, get your ass to the platform, ASAP."

"On my way." He sounded quite pleased with himself. She hoped that meant both his commandos were dead. Maybe the last one too, if they were lucky.

She looked at Alenko. "She's got some kind of stasis field thing in addition to the telekinetic shit, and some serious biotic firepower. Get your shots in, keep your back to something solid, and stay the fuck out of her line of sight."

"Yes, ma'am." He drew his pistol and they took the stairs two at a time.

The platform was in chaos. Benezia stood at the heart of it, her skirts torn and tattered, revolving slowly on the spot as she tracked her daughter's movements. Sensing opportunity, she swept away an overturned table hiding Liara, and followed it immediately with a shot of raw biotic power. Liara darted desperately for a support column and the energy ball hit the concrete with enough kick to crack it.

Before the crack's report even began to fade, Liara leaned out from behind the column and hurled her own bolt directly at her mother. It ripped a gash along her arm. She responded with another stasis field, but missed her target, temporarily freezing a datapad in midair before she dismissed it as useless.

Shepard started shooting before she reached the top of the stairs. Most of the shots went wide, but it did get Benezia's attention and provide Liara some relief. Wrex clamored up the other side, shotgun firmly in hand, and on the lab floor below nothing but bits and pieces remained of the geth. The turrets spun in place and snicked to a stop, aimed squarely at the asari matriarch.

"It's over, Benezia," Shepard said, as her squad lined up alongside her, weapons drawn.

The matriarch made as if to attack. There was a bark of gunfire and suddenly her shoulder was bleeding freely, oozing through her fingers. She stared at her daughter in shock.

Liara's armor protected her from the worst, but she was sorely battered, plating chipped, webbing torn, and a greenish-purple bruise covered half her face, squeezing shut one eye. Still, her voice was strong.

"Until just now, I never believed it. The reports had to be mistaken. It had to be someone else. My mother would never do such a thing." Liara's pistol beeped softly as it finished its cooling cycle. "And then you attacked my friends and tried to kill me. Why, mother? Why did you help Saren instead of warning the Council?"

"These... people are not your friends," Benezia sneered. "They wish to use you, because you're my only child. Why do you think you're standing here now? Compassion for your plight?"

"That's where you're wrong, mother." Her words rang in the silence of the lab. "These people you so disdain took me onto their ship and treated me like an equal when they had no reason to trust me. Shepard did everything in her power to dissuade me coming here because she didn't want to subject me to this." Liara wrapped her free hand around that holding the pistol, steadying her aim. "The only one in this room who ever defined my worth by your parentage is you."

Then she added, with a note of surprise and wonder, "And, at one time, me."

Shepard glanced between them, feeling rather unnaturally proud, and fixed her stare on Benezia. "Here's how it's going to be. You can start talking, now, or we can live with the satisfaction of depriving Saren of his favorite lieutenant. Your choice."

Benezia staggered against the tank, clutching at her wound, and shut her eyes. "Saren is unstoppable. My mind is filled with his light. Everything is clear."

"I guess that's it then." Shepard raised her gun a little higher, preparing for the shot.

The matriarch's bloodied hand rose to her forehead, leaving red streaks across her blue skin. She shook her head as though to clear it. "You will- you-" The proud woman half fell to her knees. Her fingers brushed the floor. "You must listen. Saren still whispers in my mind. I can fight his compulsions, but the indoctrination is… strong. We do not have much time."

Shepard meant to do this respectfully, but this was simply pathetic and it overrode her sense of decorum. "Holy fuck, lady, I wasn't born yesterday."

"No, wait-" She struggled for a breath. "I sealed away a part of my mind when I understood what was to be done with me. I… saved it, against a chance to destroy him. You are that chance. Please."

"Shepard," Liara said, urgently. Her unswollen eye was wide. "Please. She sounds… she sounds like herself."

Shepard trusted nothing about this exercise, and disliked allowing a biotic who so recently handed all of them their asses simultaneously time to find her second wind, but whether for Liara or the sake of the information they desperately needed, what she said was, "We met Shiala on Feros. I know about indoctrination and I know that it can be fought. Prove it to me."

Benezia shuddered elaborately. "It is a terror to be trapped in your own mind. To beat upon the glass as your hands do the unspeakable. I was nothing but a tool for him."

Wrex grunted, impatient. Shepard quelled him with a glance. "Enough with the drama. Why were you here, Benezia? What did Saren want?"

"He sent me to find the location of the Mu Relay. Its position was lost thousands of years ago." She looked away, wrapped her arms about herself. "A star went supernova. Not its host star- I doubt even a relay could survive that fury- but close. The shockwave propelled the relay out of its system."

Alenko shifted his weight. "This relay takes him somewhere he wants to go?"

"I presume so." Benezia shook her head. "He was not so free with his reasons. The expulsion of the relay was chaotic. It could not be tracked, though goddess knows I tried to reconstruct its trajectory… And finding a cold object in space is next to impossible."

Shepard remained mindful of the time this was taking. Benezia stalled them once. It wouldn't work again. "Cut to the chase. What does this have to do with a rachni breeding lab? And what the hell- a rachni breeding lab? That's insane even by your colleague's standards."

"I understand your confusion. The answers that we sought lay in the memories of the rachni queen. She is old enough to remember." Benezia caressed the tank, gazing a long moment at the creature within, who had never turned its head from the tableau. "I used the gifts of my goddess to extract them."

Shepard was out of patience. "Give me the coordinates."

"Of course." She reached into a tattered pocket and extracted an OSD. "But you must hurry. I transmitted the data to Sovereign as soon as I had it, because I knew your arrival was imminent. You have to- ahh."

Benezia clutched her head. Liara started. "Wait-"

"His teeth are at my ear. Fingers on my spine. You have to- you-" Benezia was almost sobbing, and seeing such an elegant and arrogant woman reduced to that unnerved Shepard more than anything else about this encounter. It spoke volumes about Saren's- or Sovereign's- power.

Liara stumbled forward, her pistol clanging to the floor. "Mother- please- don't leave- fight him-"

Benezia smiled, an expression sad and brave. "I'm sorry for how things ended between us. Perhaps I should have… You've always made me proud, Liara."

Nathaly, I also wanted to say this- I'm so very proud of you. I don't think I tell you that enough. Shepard shoved Hannah's voice out of her head. "Liara, stay back."

Benezia met Shepard's eyes, stricken. "You knew what needs to be done. Perhaps I do not deserve it, but please, do me this service."

Shepard nodded, and replaced her rifle with a pistol. Smaller caliber, more precise. Cleaner.

Liara interposed herself. "No. Don't do this. We can save her."

It was unclear to whom she was pleading. Her mother gently pushed her aside. "I am sorry, my daughter. I am not entirely myself. I never will be again. Spare me this."

A sob escaped the archaeologist. Her voice broke. "Mother-"

Benezia stepped towards Shepard, half a step away, but her eyes were for Liara. "Good night, Little Wing. I will see you again with the dawn."

Shepard put the muzzle of her pistol up against the matriarch's chest and pulled the trigger before anyone had time to think about it.

It wasn't her first kill, at any range. Nor her hundredth, maybe not even her thousandth depending on how they were counted. But somehow it was wholly unexpected- the hot, sticky spray, coating her chest, splattering her face, the way the body fell back, twisting, the expression of surprise and fading light in Benezia's eyes. She had been a beautiful woman. Shepard had killed people who deserved it, and people who didn't, but she rarely had to deal with the families. Certainly never for weeks at a time, sharing her food and her nightmares, living shoulder-to-shoulder. Benezia was unique.

Some instinct in her caught Benezia as she fell and laid her gently on the ground. The matriarch coughed. "No light? They always said there would be- ahhh."

Benezia tensed once, and was gone.

Shepard was aware of Liara sinking to the floor and taking the weight of the body from her. Everything seemed to be happening through a veil of cotton gauze, though she couldn't say if it was the magnitude of events or simply the head wound catching up to her. Alenko put his hand on her shoulder, drawing her back from mother and daughter.

Her hand tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear. She swallowed, and holstered the pistol. Benezia's blood was sticky on her cheek.

"You did what you had to do," Alenko was saying, pulling her away another step. Shepard couldn't tear her eyes from Liara, whose head was bent low over her mother's face. "It's going to be ok."

"No," Shepard said. "It won't."

They stood like that for god knew how long, until Wrex of all people interrupted with his usual lack of tact. He pointed crudely with his shotgun. "What are we going to do about that?"

The rachni queen, regal in her tank, stared out at them and wriggled her tentacle feelers.

Time sped back up to its usual rate. The atmosphere cleared. Shepard found she could think again. She took a breath. "Kaidan, go see to Ash. I'll take care of this mess."

His eyes searched her, checking whether she was ok, a gesture that at once warmed her because she truly wasn't fine, and irritated her in the same way a wounded dog snaps at anyone who comes near. But he merely nodded, squeezed her shoulder once, and slipped away. Liara was crying quietly over her mother. Shepard stepped around them both and approached the tank. Surreal was the only word for any of this.

The queen prodded at the glass with a tentacle. Shepard braced herself against the tank and ducked her head, examining the interior, trying to glean any information regarding Saren's broader plans. They couldn't have known the queen carried the Mu Relay coordinates when they located the egg. So what was the point of establishing a lab, or a breeding program?

At the base of the stairs, on the far end of the lab, something stood and began dragging itself along the metal floor. Ker-thunk. Ker-thunk. Ker-thunk. Soft at first, but growing louder.

Immersed as she was, it took Shepard a minute to pick up on the noise. Her hand slid to her sidearm. "What the hell is that?"

Wrex turned towards it. "Want me to check it out?"

Shepard glanced at Liara, still on her knees bent over Benezia, and then towards the stairs where Alenko and Williams were out of sight. The team was being split again, purposefully or not. She didn't like it. "Guard the top. If you see something coming up, give a shout."

She resumed her inspection of the tank. The intent, unwavering way the rachni stared at her was starting to get under her skin.

"Shepard," Wrex said again. "This is- you need to see this."

Shepard turned around, exasperated. "Wrex, just spit it-"

Her eyes widened. The irritation died on her lips. "-out."

One of the dead commandos, the bullet hole in her head clearly visible above her closed eyes, was shambling towards her, tripping over her own feet but making steady progress. Wrex had his shotgun fixed on her back, and the way she knew he was truly unnerved was that he waited for orders instead of simply shooting her. The problem was, Shepard wasn't certain which ones to give. How do you kill something already dead?

"I am so tired," she said, thinking of the geth and the husks both, and drawing her gun for good measure, "Of fighting a war against this kind of zombie crap."

The woman dragged past Shepard and arrayed herself against the tank, no more than a meter from the muzzle of Shepard's pistol. Her head lolled on her shoulders until it was oriented in a normal speaking posture, and her eyes flickered open. The voice that flowed from her lips was like no asari Shepard ever heard- low, echoing, shaky on the ends of the words, and cadenced like someone speaking for the very first time. "This one. Serves as our voice. We cannot sing. Not in these low spaces. Your musics are colorless."

Behind the asari, the queen's six mandibles flared about her maw.

Shepard glanced between them, not lowering her gun. "To whom am I speaking?"

The asari stared forward unseeing. "We are the mother. We sing for those left behind. The children you thought silenced."

Even Liara looked up at that. Wrex couldn't hold his peace. "Shoot the damn thing. That'll shut her mouth."

Shepard looked around the lab, half-expecting rachni soldiers to pour from the vents at any moment. "Did you order your… children to attack the science team?"

The dead woman shook as she talked, jelly in a pan, like her skeleton was little more than a bag of bones. "No. The children are beyond our songs. Stolen from us as they were birthed, before we could teach them to sing. They are lost to silence."

More footsteps on the stairs. Shepard whirled. Williams staggered onto the platform, assisted by Alenko. He looked exasperated. "Sorry, ma'am. I told her what happened and she insisted."

Williams made it to the railing and leaned against it heavily, pointing. "What the hell is that?"

"Apparently rachni queens can speak through the dead." Shepard shook her head. "I don't understand it either."

The dead asari shambled forward a step. "What are children without a mother? End the suffering of our lost ones. Though it grieves us, they cannot be saved. They will cause only harm."

Alenko raised his eyebrows. "Catch me up?"

Shepard looked over her shoulder. "Rachni grow up crazy without influence from their queen. That's why the ones in the labs are acting so recklessly."

He shrugged. "Makes sense. Lock a baby in a closet for sixteen years and it's not going to be very sane, either."

Somehow, the asari's bizarre intonation became almost sad. "These needle-men. They raised our children as beasts of war. Claws with no songs of their own. Fear has shattered their minds."

"Eliminating them won't be a problem." Shepard tried to move back to the subject at hand. "Saren stole your eggs and Benezia stole the history of the Mu Relay. Was there anything else?"

"No." The asari's dead eyes twitched in her skull, looking in different directions. "What will you sing? Will you release us? Are we to fade away once more?"

Wrex glanced towards the ceiling. "Those tanks. They look like acid. Strong acid judging by those warning labels."

Liara followed them with her eyes. "Their lines lead into the tank. Shepard, you're not seriously considering this?"

Shepard, too, stared at the lines, her arms folded, thinking dark and ugly thoughts. "How did you survive the war?"

"We- I know nothing of the war. We heard discordance, songs the color of oily shadows… tones from space hushing all voices, forcing singers to resonate with its own sour yellow note. We were but an egg, hearing Mother cry in our dreams. The sky now is silent. We wish only to find a secret place, to teach our children harmony."

Shepard had been a spectre for three and a half months. In that time many things had occurred requiring immediate strategic decisions, and less urgent political ones. But politics was fluid and strategy was only mathematics dressed in colors of blood. For the first time, she felt the full mantle of the office on her shoulders, here in this trashed lab.

She wanted nuance. She wanted to be conflicted. A decision with consequences like this, the final death of an entire race, should require heavy deliberation. But there were only two thoughts in her head. The queen doesn't know what happened in the Rachni Wars. What is she going to think when she finds out? And the reapers are coming. There is no way, none, the galaxy survives a two front war of that magnitude. Rachni included.

But those were simply nightmares, dreams from the beacon of Eden Prime patched together with shoddy rationale. There was no direct evidence. How sure was she? How sure could anyone be? Surer than anything she'd ever felt in her life, but that was a gut thing, emotional, not logical- but it undeniably stemmed from the same instinct that kept her alive through nine kinds of hell over the years.

In her tank, the queen waited, her tentacles waving gently. Shepard regarded her.

Wrex checked his shotgun. "Let's get this overwith, Shepard. These bastards had their chance. That war was won with krogan blood and we scraped them off our boots long ago."

Williams slid to the floor with a small groan of pain, helped by Alenko, who brought up another diagnostic. She batted it away. Her head rolled towards the tank. "I'm with Wrex. Fuck this bug shit."

Liara looked from one face to another, the pitch of her voice rising. "We cannot be considering this. Shepard, this is genocide. The Council of fourteen hundred years ago went too far. We can make this right."

Shepard rubbed her eyes and forced patience. "I know what this is, Liara."

"Could leave it to the Council," Alenko suggested tentatively. "They're going to want a long hard look at this place anyway."

She dropped her hand and went to the terminal. "No. This has to be done, and the Council doesn't have the stomach."

Liara scrambled to her feet. "Shepard-"

Her expression was a solid leaden wall. "You've had a hard day, but this isn't about right and wrong. Of course this is wrong. But I can't risk the galaxy on the goodwill of a species that has no reason to like us, and we can't fight rachni and reapers at the same time. We'll lose, and that'll be the end of everything, for every race, not just one."

"You can't know that-"

"I do know that," she said sharply. "This is kind of my field."

The queen as heard through the dead asari commando was alarmed. "Are we really so frightening? You seek our silence because of a shadow of a threat?"

"I'm truly sorry." Shepard located the controls for the acid tanks in the terminal interface. "I'm aware that doesn't mean anything."

Her voice was suffused with rage. "We will not embrace the great silence!"

Her puppet shambled forward and tried to knock Shepard away from the console. Unfortunately for the queen, the dead lacked stamina. Shepard threw her to the floor one-handed. "Restrain that thing."

"Gladly," said Wrex, coming forward and planting one giant boot on the commando's chest. She struggled like a pinned bug.

Liara made one last attempt. "Goddess, Shepard, think. This is something you will carry until you die."

"It can join the collection." Shepard flipped the cover off the switch. "Believe me, Liara, if there is a goddess, she gave up on my soul a long time ago."

She pressed down. There was a rushing sound, and clouds of green smoke filled the tank, partially obscuring the queen. She skittered away from the shower of acid but there was nowhere to run. Shepard folded her arms and waited without looking away, not even after the queen's screams of rage turned to screams of agony, allowing the images to burn into her memory. She didn't deserve to be spared witness. The rachni held her gaze to the very last, laced with such hatred and pain that it should have left Shepard a pile of ashes, until her eyes ran down her face like runny eggs and the smoke covered her entirely.

When it was over, some minutes later, nothing but thick black sludge remained. Sprinklers of water activated within the tank and began to wash it away. Nobody spoke.

Shepard let out a breath, thinking she should feel something, satisfaction, regret, guilt- but all she felt was tired, and not even soul-tired so much as the standard weariness of someone who'd been awake and fighting terrain first and monsters later for over twenty two hours. She ran a hand over her hair, catching her fingers in the sticky medi-gel. Her head ached horribly. "Alright. We need to clear out the last of the rachni soldiers- maybe the lab has a protocol- and get Williams patched up before we head back down the mountain."

"I'm fine, ma'am," Williams objected from the floor.

She ignored her. "How's the weather? Can we order a shuttle evac?"

Alenko tapped at his omni-tool. "Negative, ma'am. If anything the storm's still getting worse."

"Copy that." She moved on to the next problem. "Liara?"

The asari still wouldn't look at her. Shepard tried to ignore that, too. "Liara, I need to know what to do with your mother."

Her voice was quiet and seemed to come from very far away. She curled in on herself, arms wrapped around her waist, shoulders slumped, making her body as small a thing as possible. "I can't just leave her here."

"Understood. Wrex?"

He rolled his eyes, stubborn. "She's an enemy. A defeated one, Saren's toy, not worthy of songs. We should leave her to rot."

Shepard didn't want to hear about songs right now, not after what she'd just done to the rachni queen. "And when we kill your mother, you can dictate how we handle it. Pick her up and move out."

She and Alenko got Ash propped up between them. The bleeding had stopped, but she was still in a bad way. Wrex retrieved the body, though not without an excess of snorting and muttered comments. Liara trailed behind lost to her own thoughts.

The team wound back through the tunnels of Rift Station, this time avoiding the maintenance shaft, and almost made it down the stairs to the med bay before Shepard, entirely without warning, stumbled and nearly dropped their gunnery chief.

"Commander!" Alenko struggled to keep Ash from tumbling down the stairs.

"I'm…" Shepard's head was reeling. For a half-second there, she completely blacked out. "I think I'll just go in and sit down for a moment."

Dr. Cohen was clearly surprised to see them. His eyes widened as he took in the sticky refuse splayed across Shepard and her armor. "Spectre, what on earth-"

She brushed by him and perched on the edge of one of the lab tables, speaking past the nausea that was now playing gleeful counterpart to her headache. "Cohen, you have a VI operating theater installed?"

"Yes, but-"

"Prep it. I've got a marine who requires its services." She nodded to Alenko. "Get her settled."

He ma'am'd her and helped Ash through the hatch. Cohen made another stab at resuming control of his med bay. "Commander Shepard, I must insist-"

Wrex came in hauling Benezia's body. "Where the hell do I set this thing down?"

"We've been putting all the bodies in the auxiliary station." Cohen pointed. "But-"

The krogan ambled in the indicated direction, closely followed by Liara, who kept her head down and her expression hidden. Shepard put her finger to her ear and activated her comm. "Tali, Garrus, it's over. Come on home. Bring Olar if you can find him."

"Thank goodness," said Tali, relieved. "Is Chief Williams-"

"I think she'll be fine. We're going to plug the leaks before we roll. Shepard out." She looked up at Cohen. "I'm not asking for miracles. You can suture?"

He drew himself up, a visible effort to calm himself. "Yes. I'm sadly out of practice, however."

"The VI can put her under and find damaged tissue. All you need to do is stitch, glue, and medi-gel the crap out of anything that's bleeding, enough to keep her stable when we drive to the port. We'll have our own expert physician attend to the permanent repairs when we're back aboard ship." She gave him a firm nod that made her vision fade momentarily at the edges. "I have every confidence in you. Also, I may need a head scan."

Cohen nodded. "I'll just… go see to your friend, then. Excuse me."

He hurried off. Garrus and Tali entered the med bay, along with the stout volus. Olar peered up at her. "What do you want?"

Shepard got straight to business. "Unless you want an antimatter warhead shot up your ass, we need to knock out the remaining rachni. Soon. Other than sinking the lab, which sounds like it takes forever without guaranteeing the rachni will die, are there any protocols that will terminate out-of-control experiments?"

His ventilator hissed and clunked as he considered. "Yes. A neutron purge should accomplish what you need." Another breath, in and out, accompanied by the heavy whine of machinery. "You will need to search for the access codes to activate the protocol. I don't have them. And it can only be initiated from within the hot labs. The terminal is right outside the elevator, across a foyer."

"Understood." Her eyes drifted to Wrex as he returned. "Garrus, Wrex, go take care of this problem. Evacuating the lab is out of the question with the available vehicles, so if this doesn't work, a lot more people are going to die. Where's Liara?"

Wrex jerked his hand towards the auxiliary bay. "With her mom. It's giving me the creeps."

"You have to get to that hot lab anyway." She looked at both of them in turn. "Good luck."

"We'll get it done," Garrus promised, and they herded Han Olar with them as they left.

Shepard closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, massaging her temple. She wasn't quite brave enough yet to assess the damage at the back. Tali touched her arm. "Shepard? Are you alright?"

"Nasty bump on the head." A half-smile, forced. "That's all."

"We were watching on the security feeds while we tried to hack the defenses. It looked brutal in there."

"We accomplished our objective and everyone made it out. Might not sound like much, but that's good day." Shepard glanced back towards the hatch, trying to believe it. Liara was only just visible at the edges of the window with her back to them. "You might want to go see our archaeologist. She could use a friend."

"You should go see her, too."

She remembered the shock on Benezia's face as she pulled the trigger, and the heartache in Liara's voice as she begged her to spare the queen. "I don't think she wants to see me right now."

"Alright." Tali took a steadying breath. "I'm glad Ash is going to be ok."

"Me too." She watched Tali move into the next room and put her arm around Liara. This was why Shepard's friends numbered so few; she took so much and gave back so little. Without Liara, they'd be nowhere close to understanding reapers or the coming war. And today she'd not only killed her mother but made her an accomplice to genocide. Shepard wouldn't blame her in the slightest if the next time they were on the Citadel, she left and never came back.

The hatch to the OR split open, ejecting Cohen and Alenko. The doctor stripped off his gloves and reached for a fresh pair. "Chief Williams is undergoing the anesthetic now. We need to give it time to suffuse her system and stabilize. Meanwhile, let's have a look at that head injury of yours."

He set up the scanner equipment while Alenko leaned against the end of the exam table. "You just can't seem to stop getting hit over the head."

"Very funny."

"No, seriously, I used to wonder why you were so hard-headed, but now I can see it's just a survival mechanism."

"Keep talking, L.T. I can make sure the Normandy never restocks the frozen lasagna you seem to like so much."

Cohen shifted her minutely and advised her to hold still. She stared straight ahead as he took the data.

The scanner beeped. Shepard read the output on the terminal with faint disbelief. "Cranial fracture?"

"Small one, yes." Cohen opened a drawer and withdrew a large pair of surgical shears. "We're not equipped to do much about that, but you've also got a number of small fragments of glass imbedded in your scalp which must be excised."

The asari's shot raining glass from a shattered cabinet down on her head. Benezia throwing her. Waking up on the floor seeing stars. The combination must have crushed them into her skin. It explained the bleeding. Shepard stifled a groan. "Great."

"Hold still," Cohen said, and raised the shears. "We need to clear the site of the wound to get a better look."

Shepard fixed him with the kind of stare that could freeze plasma. "You'd best not be putting those things anywhere near my hair."

He paled. Alenko intervened. "Go deal with Ash, doc. Worry about this later."

Cohen gave Shepard a last nervous glance and hastened to the OR. Alenko went to the medical supply cart flanking the exam table and opened a drawer, withdrawing a pair of long-handled tweezers, a sterile metal pan, and a tube of surgical glue. "Lean forward."

Shepard eyed the supplies with a fair amount of skepticism. "Do you have any medical training at all?"

"First responder field training and a truckload of experience disassembling tiny electronic components. I'll manage." His mouth turned up at the corner.

Shepard felt suddenly quite self-conscious. It wasn't doubt- pulling glass out of a scalp couldn't possibly be complicated- but her reaction to the doctor's scissors had been instinctual, immediate, and more revealing than she liked. It was only hair. She bit her lip.

"Look," Alenko said, shrugging. "You can let me give it a stab, or you can wait for the microbiologist to come back and spend another ten years growing your hair out again. Your choice."

Vulnerability and vanity warred. Vanity won. She heaved a grudging sigh. "Fine."

She bent forward as requested, eyes riveted to the floor and her face burning, so hot even her skin would show a flush. She was glad he couldn't see it. His fingers moved through the heavy strands of her thick red hair, searching for shards, a gentle touch but inevitably pulling a bit here and there. "Holy shit, Shepard, this is a mess."

The medi-gel did a wonderful job of gobbing it all together; it was worse than bubble gum, though easier to dissolve. And she could only imagine the strange tic-tac-toe inscribed by the shards. She swallowed and attempted a weak joke. "Yeah, I'm kind of a magnet for catastrophe."

There came a soft clink as Alenko picked up the tweezers, a sharp tug that left her wincing, a rattle as the glass hit the pan, and then the wet, numbing chill of the glue as he smeared it over the cut. His hands resumed their search, slowly roaming over her scalp. "How'd you end up with a head full of glass anyway?"

It was strangely intimate. His fingers were starting to feel nice, tangled against her head, as the glue numbed the pain. It was a long time since someone knotted their fingers in her hair- a thought she firmly shunted back into the trap it crawled out of. "One of the asari shot out a glass cabinet front right over me, and then Benezia slammed me into the ground head-first."

"Ouch." He started tugging at an especially stubborn bit of debris. "I told you wrecking your shield generator to power those servers was a bad idea."

She forced herself to hold still despite the discomfort and snorted. "Alright. You've had several hours now to think about it. What's your better plan?"

"Not wrecking your shield generator to power those servers."

"So, no better ideas, then. Check. Ow!" A trickle of something hot ran down her neck. She clamped her hand to the back of her head without thinking and twisted around. "Are you performing a biopsy now, too?"

He presented the object clutched in the tweezer's grasp. "When hair buns attack?"

Shepard took the bloody hairpin between her thumb and forefinger, in utter disbelief. "I've been wearing it like that in combat for almost a decade. This is a first."

"It cut you pretty good. Move your hand." He wiped away the blood and used more of the glue.

Shepard sat through it silently, so embarrassed she could die, wishing she'd let the doctor do what he wanted- wishing that she'd grabbed the shears and done it herself. She was a naval officer, a marine, a spectre- where the hell did balking at a medically mandated haircut fit into that? This was a waste of both their time. There were still rachni running wild through the facility and other loose ends to tie up. Her friend just lost her mother and she was sitting here worried about losing her hair. It was pathetic.

But it was the only part of her that was even a little pretty. And the fact that mattered was pathetic, too.

Alenko paused in his work. "Sorry, I'm trying not to hurt, but some of these pieces are really wedged in there."

Shepard was confused. "It's not hurting. Stings a little."

"Your shoulders are really tense, so I thought-"

"Oh. Sorry." Shepard forcibly relaxed. "I can't help thinking I should be working, not sitting here doing… this."

"Your skull is cracked. You aren't going anywhere."

Another bit of glass tinkled in the pan. She stammered a bit. "We should go sit with Ash-"

"The OR's a sterile environment. We'll see her when she's out. And we're right here if something happens." He tugged at a particularly large piece.

Shepard bit her lip all the way through extraction, wondering how Wrex and Garrus were coming along and almost wishing they'd radio for backup, anything to focus attention away from this room.

Alenko was almost amused at her rigidity. "What's the problem?"

"This is… this is very undignified," she said at last, flustered.

"Stop being so defensive," he chided, prodding at her head with the tweezers. "Perfect people are boring, anyway. The undignified parts, the human parts- that's the good stuff."

Her cheeks flushed a deeper red, hidden by the hanks of hair draped to either side. "You of all people lecturing me on being defensive."

"Hey, I know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Too damn well," Shepard muttered. She couldn't help laughing a little. "God, we're like the poster children for repression."

"Well, don't tell DMHS. They love a good charity case." Another tug, another piece added to the pan.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Her head chose that moment to throb with pain, a lance that reached down into her stomach and churned the acid. She rubbed it with a small groan. "I'm not on death's door or anything, but between you and me, L.T., I am feeling extremely unwell right now."

"Head injury, moderate blood loss, sleep deprivation, traumatic mission, and I think the last time we ate anything was a couple of candy bars back in the Mako. I wonder why." He shook his head. "I'm not feeling great, either. That commando sure knocked the wind out of me, and…. This one's going to stick with me a long time. I don't think I've really started processing it yet. Hell of a way to spell mission accomplished."

She let him finish removing the next piece of glass before asking the question. "No chain-of-command bullshit- do you think it was the right call?"

"Benezia asked you to do it. It was the only way she could be free. I'm sorry Liara had to be there- you were right about that too. Just awful." He sucked in a breath. "As for the queen… I don't know. That's a once in a lifetime situation. I don't know how you deal with it. Usually, I'm glad I can pass the buck up the chain on the hard calls. You don't have many superiors left to give you orders anymore."

"Nice way to evade the question," she observed, sardonic.

"What you said about a two-front war made sense. And the rachni… they were already dead, in all the important ways. No society left. Not enough diversity to ever truly repopulate. What kind of survival is that?" He came around her side, just enough to look at her. "I trust you, Shepard. So do a lot of people who know better than me."

Shepard started to reply, but without warning the floor shook hard, violent enough to knock the pan full of glass over. "What the hell?"

He backed away from the table, hands held up. "I think we got most of it. Go."

"Check on Ash." That kind of jarring could be catastrophic during surgery. "I'm going to find out what happened."

She hurried up the stairs, ignoring the way her vision was going fuzzy at the edges and her stomach threatened mutiny with every step. Her wild appearance garnered several startled glances from the Binary Helix survivors as she dragged herself to the security barricade. "Ventralis, I need a status update."

He turned and started to speak, but when he caught sight of her, he could only gape. Her mouth settled into a hard line. "Yeah, I look like shit, but you're not asking me to fucking homecoming, you're giving me an emergency report on our security systems. Start talking."

That snapped him out of it. "Seemed like it came from the hot labs two floors down, ma'am. Our scanners aren't reporting any breaches. I can't say I appreciate how your men overpowered central security."

"It was necessary. I didn't have time to argue the point with you." Shepard wanted nothing more than to sit down and close her eyes for a spell, but she was unwilling to let it show.

Ventralis frowned. "What the hell happened down there, anyway?"

"Benezia's dead," Shepard said succinctly. "Ten-century-old asari matriarchs make formidable opponents. Do not recommend."

"Lady Benezia is…" He swore. "Spectre, a few hours ago I'd have you detained for that."

"You could try." Shepard didn't disguise her evaluation of his odds of success. "But you won't, because that turian guard her sleeper agent killed was one of yours, and you're not stupid so you've probably worked out that when she left her orders, she hoped you'd slow us down."

He shook his head, not disagreeing. "I always figured if I met a spectre it'd be like in the movies, you know?"

"Brawn, body counts, and lots of good one-liners? Somebody who just gets in the way of the people doing the real work?" she asked, eyebrows raised. She sat down on a crate and leaned into the wall.

"Something like that." He gave her a sidelong glance. "I didn't think they'd be crazy amazon women who manage smart, capable, and right all at the same time. I'm sorry."

Shepard rolled her head tiredly. Her neck was getting in on the action now, too, a deep stabbing ache of its own, but her reply retained a certain cocky airiness. "Don't let it get you down. For the moment in spectre-land I'm one of a kind."

She didn't know why she was trying so hard. Because years down the road, when Ventralis was telling his cronies about That Time He Met a Spectre, he'd say she took down an asari matriarch like squashing a spider, no big deal? There was an unspoken rule to make it look easy, no matter what, because weakness was abhorrent and if people knew how hard it actually was to keep the galaxy safe it would scare them to death- one more thing it was her duty to spare them- but joking like this made her feel twelve years old.

The elevator opened. A rather ruffled-looking Garrus and Wrex exited the carriage. Wrex wore the biggest shit-eating grin Shepard ever saw in her life. "We got them. All of them."

She took in the gore plastered over his hardsuit with a jaded eye. "What, you head-butted them all to death?"

"Not quite," Garrus said. "We got the codes for the neutron purge- long story- but once we started the timer it was like we dropped a cluster-bomb of rachni pheromones. I don't know how they knew, but they swarmed the room, coming out of every vent and crevice."

"We had to fight our way out." Wrex radiated contentment. "Only three minutes, and there had to be hundreds of them between us and the exit. I never thought in all my years I'd get a chance to fight the old enemy, like my ancestors before me. This is a good day to be krogan."

Shepard was beyond skeptical of this story, particularly the numbers cited, but decided against stealing Wrex's glory. The day was long enough. "Ash is in surgery. Once she's stable, we hit the road. Try to find something to eat and get some rest, if you can."

Garrus looked her up and down. "I could say the same to you."

Nothing sounded better, but she sighed. "Wouldn't that be nice."

She was positive Chakwas would have apoplexy if she did much of anything before allowing the doctor to check her over, including eat or sleep. Given her low reserves, however, Shepard might not have a choice. They returned to the barracks.

From there, events started to move quickly. Williams sailed through her surgery with flying colors, though Cohen looked like he'd aged three years by the end of it. Shepard tried to eat a microwave cup of soup from the scientists' stores, promptly threw it up, and gave up in favor of an IV bag of glucose followed by one of saline. Cohen tried to stop her and then tried to help her, but she growled him away. Shepard was certain she had more practice at finding a vein than him and she had enough new bruises already. That lone bath in the Noveria hotel seemed eons ago.

Scans confirmed the neutron purge had done its job. The hot labs would be unusable until a clean-up team could be summoned, but Port Hanshan agreed to call off the antimatter strike. The interim administrator seemed more relieved than disappointed. Shepard had some faint hope his tenure would be less punctuated by personal greed. For her part, she couldn't put this planet behind her fast enough. With luck nothing would ever force her to return.

They got Benezia into a body bag- a facility as remote as Peak 15 had to be prepared for anything- and trudged back to the Makos. Ash complained bitterly the whole way, stuck in a wheelchair, shutting up only when Shepard threatened to exchange it for a body board. Garrus joked that they could prop her up on the roof to scare off wildlife and lingering geth. Wrex added that they'd probably run just to get away from the endless talking, which caused Williams to throw a roll of gauze at his head. Tali cautioned her to take it easy, while Alenko hung back with Liara, so she wouldn't have to sit by herself.

And that was the problem, Shepard realized, as they began the journey back to port. This wasn't a crew anymore, if it ever had been. The seven of them were something else entirely. She was the commander, sure, but only in the most cursory way imaginable. They watched each other's backs, squabbled like family, and took the piss out of each other on a regular basis- but somehow it worked. Contrary to every navy tenet about professionalism, it worked.

The two Mako teams were forced to reorganize. Neither Shepard nor Williams were in any condition to drive. Liara was out as well, for other reasons, and Mako controls weren't designed for operation by someone of Wrex's size. Tali confessed that while she could pilot a variety of small ships, she'd never driven a land vehicle in her life. That left Garrus and Alenko.

As Shepard settled in the back with Liara, Alenko fired up the engine. He caught her expression in the reflection of the windshield. "Relax. I'm not going to drive us off a cliff."

"There are two types of people in this world. Those who can handle my car and those I don't want driving on the same planet as my car."

"I've sat in your car," he protested.

"Yeah, and you stiffened up and leaned the wrong way every time we took a hard turn." Shepard rolled her eyes; a mistake, as her stomach instantly threatened rebellion once more. "You are good at many things, but this? You have no instinct for this. And don't give me some bullshit about being a station kid because so am I and I am crazy good."

"That bump on your head is making you say the silliest things." He rolled the Mako out of the garage.

"We are all going to die," she pronounced, stoically.

Tali turned around in the navigator's seat. "Don't worry, Shepard. I know where the override switch is."

"No faith, any of you," Alenko groused.

The jests died as they got out on the ice and Alenko and Tali both were consumed in keeping them on the road. They followed Garrus. The snow had not let up, but it was mid-morning now, and the sunlight was beginning to brighten the air to a lighter shade of gray.

Shepard tried to put the long drop into the valley below from her mind. She and the asari were wedged in beside the gun sights. Liara curled into a corner, her head bumping lightly against the bulkhead with every jounce, expressionless. Benezia's body lay across from them, on the other side of the turret, sealed in its black bag.

The bruise on Liara's face had grown only more spectacular as hours passed since the fight. After a while, Shepard reached over, gingerly. "Has anyone looked at that?"

Liara flinched away. "A warp got too close to me. The distortion drew my blood towards it. All it requires for treatment are the attentions of time."

Shepard didn't say anything, but continued to explore the bruise, gently brushing her fingers over it. Liara consented to the evaluation with icy dignity, not moving even when Shepard pried open her swollen eye. "Well, it's not pretty, but you seem to be right. No lasting harm."

She moved away. Liara kept still. Shepard sighed. "That was no way to live, what Saren was doing to your mother. Or his ship, or whatever. If you hate me for it, I under-"

Liara did look at her then. "I don't hate you. I hate her." Her face swung towards the bag. "She's the one who did this. She knew she was walking into a deadly situation with Saren and she didn't think what it would do to me if she disappeared. She never did, and I never saw it. I thought it was about me. Goddess, what a fool I am."

"You're not a fool." Shepard draped her hands over her knees as the Mako jounced along and looked at Liara. "You're a daughter who wants her mother to be the same person as when you were five years old, and the damnedest thing about it is realizing she never changed- you did."

Liara covered her eyes with her hand and bowed her head. Shepard kept talking even though it seemed like a bad idea. She didn't know what else to do. Silence worried her. "My mother was such a hero to me, you know, larger than life. She'd take me aboard her ship when they were in port and everyone would salute her, like she was really something, and the skipper used to sit me in the CIC and let me play with the galaxy map. And I got older and realized that for her that was just another way of showing off. Perfect officer, perfect family."

"My mother kept me out of her professional life. It took me forever to realize how important she was." Liara made a little sound that might have been halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I was at school, telling a friend about a bonding ceremony we attended. The food was so beautiful. I'd smuggled away a cake to show her." She shook her head. "It was for the then-Councilor, the one before Tevos. It wasn't until I noticed everyone in the classroom staring at me that I realized most families didn't get that kind of invitation."

Shepard reached over and took her hand. "She protected you. In her last lucid moments, her heart was with you. They're not perfect mothers, either of them, but they did their best."

And then Liara, slow as time, tired as dust, simply lay down on the floor of the Mako, her head in Shepard's lap. Shepard, startled and touched, wasn't sure how to react. Liara had no hair to stroke, so she settled for resting her hand against her head crenellations. Liara didn't cry or even sigh; just lay there, quietly.

So it was that they made their way down the mountain back to the Normandy, with Liara cradled gently against Shepard's armor, still sticky with Benezia's blood.