Ashley runs her hand through her long brown hair, pulling at the strands in frustration. "Are you sure she's telling the truth?"

"As sure as I can be under the circumstances, Ash," Shepard replies. "And it makes sense given the way these guys have acted."

"So it's really his psycho ex-girlfriend behind all of this?" It's not the easiest thing for the Spectre to contemplate. Sure, almost everybody has some choices they regret in their dating history, but the thought of Michael being with somebody who could do something like is… She doesn't even know how it makes her feel. There's no time to process that though. She has to keep moving forward.

"It's not just her," Shepard adds. "The other survivors of the cell are involved too, but Yin does claim that this Madeline is the one to really watch out for. She was the second in command, and not only is she a highly trained killer, but she's become pretty unhinged."

"And she's keeping him alive for what? To torture him?" Saying the words, Ashley feels a deep conflict. On the one hand, it's horrible to think of the man she loves being put through that kind of agony. The other side of the coin, though, is that it does mean the bitch will probably want to draw things out, which gives them a shot at finding Michael before they kill him.

"That's part of it, but they also want him to give up the names of the people in charge of the Alliance raid on their cell so they can hunt them down too. Those files are still classified and they don't have access."

"Shepard, he doesn't have that information either." She can feel her fear rising, tight across her chest. Once they realize that, Michael's odds of surviving much longer start plummeting. "He didn't set up the raid. He gave the Alliance what he had, but then he went to fight the Reapers. It was never personal, him selling out Cerberus, no matter what these goddamn terrorists think."

"Then we have to get him back fast," Wrex opines, as he joins the two of them by a stack of shipping crates.

Ashley nods grimly. "He'll hold out as long as he has to."

"I hope so," Wrex says with a grunt.

""He's tough," Ashley insists, trying to reassure herself along with the krogan leader. "Tali, did you find anything on her omni-tool?" Yin didn't know where they were taking Michael, but Shepard had gotten her to give up her password.

"Sort of. I found a couple of incoming calls from the Windward Orientation."

"Can you trace them?"

"Not really, not to a current location," she apologizes. "They stopped calling once they realized she was probably dead or captured."

"Even still," Shepard says. "It's better than nothing. Send the data back to Samantha. Maybe she can figure out their likely heading. Meanwhile, we better get back to the Normandy. We need to be able to leave as quickly as possible once we have a location."

"What about your new best friend?" Wrex gestures in the direction of Yin.

"We're bringing her along," Ashley answers. "If she's lying to us, she's going to regret it sooner rather than later."


"So, does this sort of thing happen to you and Shepard a lot?"

Sitting in the car on the way to the spaceport, Liara laughs a little at Nelia's question. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I've met your bondmate three times. The first time, cultists tried to murder her, and now we have a violent kidnapping at a wedding."

Liara gives the anxious asari an apologetic smile, trying to put her at ease. "I thought that we had a very nice visit the second time."

"We did," Nelia concedes. "But two out of three is still an alarming ratio."

Sam, sitting in the front, looks up from the comm signals she's working on triangulating with her omni-tool and turns around. "It used to be much worse, Nel. This is progress."

"Indeed," Liara agrees, "In the old days, we could hardly visit a strange world without being attacked by pirates, or sentient plants, or thresher maws."

Nelia looks slightly overwhelmed. Clearly, in her world, these are not the sorts of things that just happen to people. "How did you deal with it? Sam said you were just an archeologist before you met Shepard."

"I was, but it is remarkable how fast one can become accustomed to adventure." Especially when you're falling head over heels for the woman who brings you on those adventures, Liara adds to herself.

Sam interrupts their conversation with a whoop of triumph. "I've got it!"

"Horary!", Moira chimes in from the seat in-between Liara and Nelia, uncertain as to what's happening but wanting to share in the excitement.

Nelia reaches forward to rub Sam's shoulder affectionately while from the driver's seat, Joker asks, "What've you got, Traynor?"

"Their destination. I think they're going to the asteroid field near the outer edge of the system." She pauses, a new concern tempering her enthusiasm. "Which would be bad."

"Why's that, honey?", Nel asks.

"Because the whole area is badly mapped and filled with blind spots and sensor anomalies and that sort of thing. It's an ideal place for them to hide from us."

Joker just laughs. "And here I was worried they were going to retire the Normandy without one more desperate chase."


"Quite a crowd we've got here, Shepard," Garrus quips as the sky-cars begin to disgorge their passengers into the hanger containing the Normandy. "Almost feels like we should be assaulting the Collector Base."

"No kidding." Between the old team, Ashley's new crew members, and some of the Spectre's more insistent relatives, they have warriors to spare. Even the salarian, Varek, has insisted on coming, only letting the medics apply some medi-gel and a few bandages before heading out to join them. Not that Ashara can blame him; if she'd just watched her friends be murdered like that, she'd have to be missing both her legs and probably an arm before she'd stay out of the action.

One of the cars lands near her and Liara and their daughter disembark, joined by Nelia, Samantha, and Joker. She gives her bondmate a quick kiss before taking Moira by the hand and turning towards the ship. "Are you certain we should bring her along?", Liara asks.

"She'll be perfectly safe here," Shepard confirms. "I saw their ship; it's barely armed. We're not going to be in that kind of fight, and since we're both going, I'm just as happy to bring Moira along where we can keep an eye on her."

"Very well." Liara smiles in agreement, also clearly pleased to be keeping their daughter with them as long as she's not going to be in danger.

"Besides," Shepard adds, looking down at Moira, "You really should get a chance to fly on the Normandy before they turn it into a museum."

"What's Normandy?", Moira asks eagerly. She'd been excited about their trip to Sirona and is clearly enthused about the prospect of going into space again.

"This is it right here," Liara replies as they board the ship, heading up the gangplank and into the cargo hold. "Your father and I used to live here before you were born. In fact," she gestures at the space, filled with shuttles and crates, "It is right here that your parents were married."

"Wow!" Moira claps her hands in wide-eyed delight. "Right here?"

"Yup, kid," Shepard grins. Her daughter's innocent enthusiasm and the memory of that day are doing a fine job of distracting her from her present worries. "Me and your mom and your uncle Garrus and your aunts Tali and Ashley, we all used to live on this ship and some day I'll tell you about our adventures here." But not quite yet, she thinks. While there were certainly lighter moments, most of her tales of the Reaper War aren't exactly for little kids. Some day though, her daughter will want to know where she came from, and she should hear it from her parents before she gets her history from the vids.


With the bulk of the passengers set up in the observation lounges, an impromptu council consisting of Shepard, Ashley, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, and Magnus has been convened in the war room. The Normandy is on course to intercept the Windward Orientation, but whether or not they catch up with their prey before it makes it to the asteroid field, they'll still have the same problem, one that Garrus gives voice to first.

"Spirits, but I hate hostage situations," the turian sniper growls. "You can play them easy or play them hard, but either way, there's a real risk that it turns into a mess." Remembering their first fight together, rescuing Dr. Michel on the Citadel, Ashara knows which approach Garrus prefers, but a quick shot to the hostage-taker isn't a viable option here.

"The problem, Captain," Magnus says coolly to Ashley, "Is that it's uncertain either approach will work with these hostiles. Even if we disable their ship, that won't stop them from killing Michael before we can board, and negotiation may be fruitless, at least if this Yin woman is to be believed."

Unfortunately, Ashara agrees. "From what she tells me, there were four of them: her, Madeline, Eric, and another guy named Benson. They feel like Michael betrayed them, got their cell killed, and left them with nothing to live for now that they're branded as former Cerberus agents. They went into this job accepting that it was probably going to be their last one." That also eliminates Shepard's preferred approach of threatening the hostage-takers into backing down: Tela Vasir and Henry Lawson both were strongly interested in walking away from their confrontations with her, even if neither did so in the end.

"Only four people," Tali asks, "For a ship that size?"

"There are also three crew members who aren't part of the core group," Ashara adds, "People they picked up in the Terminus Systems. "

"Maybe we can use that," Wrex suggests. "Hired guns aren't generally that eager to die for credits."

"In theory," Liara shakes her head. "But I doubt they will be permitted on the comms to hear any offer we make or near the prisoner to act on one even if they did. We have to assume that is the former Cerberus operatives that we'll be dealing with."

"The problem," Shepard opines, "Is that to negotiate, we have to have something they want, but what they want is revenge. They already have Michael, and we can't give them the other Alliance officers involved in the raid so we don't have much to bargain with."

Ashley's said nothing all this time, lost in thought, but suddenly, a realization seems to dawn on her. "That's not true," she says, a calm determination filling her voice. "We have me."