A/N: Originally this was going to be a nail-biting chase and piloting fight between Joker and Saren's pilot through an asteroid field, but I changed my mind and decided this would be more in line with what was realistic.

Updated 1-10-2018.


"This is Lieutenant Commander Pressly. All units, fall back to the Normandy in good order. Shepard is down, and we have geth ships incoming."

The XO's voice was firm but still slightly shaken sounding over the tinny comm-link in Kaidan's ear, and he closed his eyes for a moment before exhaling. The faces visible through the soldiers' faceplates were tense, and Kaidan worried about how they would take the news. He turned, looking around, and found who he was looking for.

"Jackson, status on the explosives." He turned to the Corporal who was wiring up incendiaries, and the younger man shrugged his shoulders, his armor smeared with dust and gunk from placing them inside the bunker.

"About done, LT." The man carefully was typing in codes to the haptic panel on a small detonator unit, his Avenger rifle lying on the cracked concrete next to him. Another soldier was trailing omni-gel lines from the detonator to the bright red-and-yellow striped charges set in the doorway of the bunker.

Kaidan nodded, triggering his omni-tool to pull up his local comms. "Cole, you get that transmission?"

The voice of the Master Chief came back strongly. "Sure did, LT. We're pulling back to the garage now. There's three scout cars here, each one seats six, I'll run them to your position pronto."

Kaidan glanced over his men, nodding. "Do that. That will cover most of it; the Mako can pick up stragglers. ETA till you reach the FOA?"

Cole spoke after a few seconds of silence. "Call it at… ten minutes, LT. The, uh, quarian lady is hot-wiring the scout cars, takes a minute. Are we secure or do we need to get ready for a fight?"

Kaidan glanced up nervously at the dust-choked skies of Feros, the filtered sunlight spearing across the clouds above in rays of burnished reds and golds. "I don't see any geth at the moment, Chief. I'd rather not stick around to find out if they're coming down for tea. Keep it tight, but put the pedal down."

"Aye, sir. Cole out."

Kaidan tapped off his comm and made a swirling 'gather round' motion with his right hand. "Alright, we're pulling out. According to our Flight Lieutenant monitoring comms and sensors, we have two problems. First, Commander Shepard and Commander Shields are both badly wounded, as well as Dr. T'Soni." He frowned as the ExoGeni mercs traded dark looks, but continued more firmly. "However, they're alive, just in critical condition. We need to get back to the Normandy ASAP to stabilize them. Worse, geth engine signatures were picked up coming out of FTL a few minutes ago. It won't be long until they can get into a position to stop us, not to mention we already have at least one geth destroyer up there."

The Captain of the ExoGeni mercs, Foster, cursed. "That's just great. So how the hell do we get out of here? We got one battle-suit back at the HQ, but we can't take another heavy geth assault like the one you broke up."

Kaidan nodded. "The Normandy is equipped with special technology that suppresses our vented heat in space, so it's a stealth system of sorts. And she's fast. We get past the geth and into either the local asteroids or the gas giant and we can make a getaway to the mass relay. We've got some of the scout cars coming in from the HQ building in a few minutes. We're going to blow the bunker per Shepard's orders, then fall back in good order." He paused. "ExoGeni personnel will take two of the cars. Cole's squad is in the third car, the rest of us will hook up with the Mako when it gets here."

There was no murmuring, only checks of the heat levels on guns and loosening of pockets where grenades were kept. Kaidan smiled grimly. "Jackson, get that place blown and let's move out."

O-OSaBC-O

Pressly stood behind Joker on the bridge, his own ops panel pulled up on the multifunction wall display to his right. "Ops, signal strength?"

One of the techs in ops tapped a few controls on her haptic keyboard, peering at the results, her features cast in the light of the readouts as she narrowed her eyes. "Intermittent signal from the destroyer, sir. Low orbit… no LADAR detected. The buoy reports…" She tapped more keys, and a mild curse flew from her lips as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. "…three geth heavy-cruisers, eleven cruisers, at least nine frigates, and five destroyers. ETA to orbit is four minutes, sir."

Pressly closed his eyes. "Flight Lieutenant. We're going to have to get the Normandy into cover; we're sitting ducks here at this docking port. Prepare to unmoor and shift to low-emission stealth."

Joker swallowed, half turning in his chair. "What about the Commander?"

Pressly's jaw pulsed in frustration and worry, and his right hand massaged the back of his neck tiredly. "We'll have to hope they can be stabilized in the Mako for now. Hopefully they won't land geth. If they do… I don't think we can outfly that many ships, do you, Joker?"

The helmsman was silent, closing his eyes. "Never thought it would end like this, sir."

Pressly opened his mouth to respond when there was a gleeful whoop from ops. "Holy hell! Mass relay just lit up like a fucking Christmas tree, sir! It's the Citadel Fleet!"

The XO whipped around, half-running back along the narrow ops corridor. "Bring up the main plot! Get me comms!"

The image of the Normandy's CIC display shifted to a stylized systems map, with contact runes popping into existence rapidly. His eyes narrowed as he took in the incoming ships. "Crap. That's not very many ships. Get me a transponder distribution, now."

The ops technician across from Pressly nodded, bringing up ship transponder codes. "Two heavy-cruisers, five cruisers, nine… no… ten frigates, fifteen destroyers." His hands flew across a haptic panel, frowning as he worked, then looked up, worry in his brown eyes evident. "Sir, with the exception of two frigates, the geth fleet has broken course. Now on a heading of 156, right at the Council Fleet, sir."

Pressly nodded, pulling up the comm-link status panel. "Council Fleet, this is Lieutenant Commander Pressly, Normandy SR-1's XO. We're pinned down on the surface of Feros. We are undamaged, but don't have enough missile munitions for a heavy fight. You have geth incoming, on a bearing of 324, be advised, enemy strength is one-four cruisers, nine frigates, five destroyers. Acknowledge, over."

The comms line crackled with geth jamming, but the voice was strong enough. "Understood, Normandy. This is Admiral Hierax of the 4th Citadel Strike Force. We received Commander Shepard's transmission. We are en route to you now; our orders are to engage any hostiles until the dreadnought Noxiosun arrives. What is the status of the mission?"

Pressly licked his lips and spoke carefully. "Our last report is that Commander Shepard had engaged Saren and that she was badly injured along with most of her team, but that Saren and Benezia were both wounded and one of their krogan allies was dead. Saren is believed to be critically injured from a headshot and we have not seen his ship break orbit."

After a long moment, Admiral Hierax spoke. "Very well. I suppose that's the best that can be expected in this situation. Focus on retrieving your Spectre, we'll handle the rest. Hierax out."

Joker spoke up over the comms system. "Well, that sounded lovely."

Pressly gritted his teeth and brought up the Mako's comm frequency. "Chief Williams, come in."

Ashley's voice sounded stressed and shaky. "Copy, Normandy. En route to the bunker to pick up Lieutenant Alenko's men. What's the sitrep, sir?"

"Council Fleet just got here. Once you reach Alenko, load up and get here at top rated speed. The Council is heavily outnumbered, but they have a dreadnought on the way. I want to use the combat to make sure we can get out of this mess alive."

"Aye, sir."

Pressly killed the comm-link, and then turned back to the display panel, watching the space as the battle was about to begin.

O-OSaBC-O

Benezia used her biotics to carefully maneuver Saren into the biomed crèche, grimacing as she felt the burn of overusing her powers erupt into red-hot pain along her spine. She blinked away sudden tears, the voice of Nazara whispering into her ear, stiffening her will. Saren was completely unconscious now, blue blood flowing slowly from his many wounds. Her own armor was now covered in it, blue streaks mingling with her own. She ignored the pain and walked around the unit to its controls.

She had gotten him out of the upper part of his armor, and winced at the huge contusions along his torso raised by the human Spectre's vicious biotic attacks. Saren's left wrist was broken, the plates actually cracked and sub-marrow visible, and his face was even more wrecked than before, one of his mandibles blown completely off, his right eye a pulped mess. If not for his helmet and the armor reinforcement of his face due to previous damage, his head would have been blown off by the big krogan's shotgun. As it was, pieces of facial plating had melted and fragments were embedded into the turian's skull.

With a sigh, she triggered the automated recovery systems, wincing again at the damage to his body. His armor had bent and buckled under the force of Shepard's biotically enhanced punches and kicks. In more than one place, bloody gouges were visible where the armor had been driven into his plates and through the skin beneath them. Benezia had seen Saren battered before, but not so severely. One thing was for certain, however – Shepard had clearly beaten him, had him at her mercy, and only the intervention of the Thorian's thrall had kept Saren from dying in the exact same manner as Nihlus had.

Shepard planned it that way. She not only took on Saren, but in such a way to beat him, enrage him, and then defeat him so she could kill him the same way he had to kill Nihlus. Monstrous. She sighed, rubbing her eyes wearily. And Liara. Such powerful hatred… such emotion… she got very, very close to being more than I could handle, my own daughter, barely an adult. Where did she get that kind of power from?

The computer chimed reassuringly, breaking her from her thoughts, green text on a pale dark gray background in turian script coming up. "Secondary liver: damaged. Eye: destroyed. Mandible: destroyed. Jaw plates II, III, and V: ruptured. Jaw plate I: destroyed. Six contusions of plating. Secondary fungal invasive infection at rupture sites. Foreign material fragments—"

With a grimace she shut off the audio, watching the machine flood the crèche with blue-tinted medi-gel tuned to dextro chiral biology. Saren had spent millions on an automated biomedical system, for all the times he had barely survived dangerous missions with no doctor or medical help nearby. It would stabilize him, at least until she could get him back to Virmire. She left the machine to its work, the voice in her head pushing her to new tasks even while she wanted to watch over her lover. The small part of her that was still her own was helpless as she calmly walked to the bridge. "Cera Pectoris, why haven't we lifted off yet?"

The turian pilot was watching the displays of local space in consternation. "The geth just diverted course. There's incoming Council ships, a lot of them. The geth have them outnumbered, but this is surely just the first jump wave. Dreadnoughts and heavy-cruisers are next, the relay will be cut off."

Benezia exhaled calmly, the wound in her thigh throbbing painfully beneath a medi-gel bandage. "FTL to the nearest system."

Rthar shrugged helplessly. "We can get to DR 939, Thorsia, and Gimalian 19. None of them have any fueling stations that would not open fire as soon as they scanned us, and we don't have the fuel to reach Carresaa. There's no secondary relays that lead anywhere but back deeper into Council Space except the one in this system."

Benezia frowned. "So what exactly are you planning to do?"

Rthar's white-plated face turned to face her. "We can wait until those two fleets start fighting, and leave the atmosphere from the far side of the planet, sticking below the clouds until we get there. Then we make a dash for the asteroid belt. It's full of heavy metals that will scatter and block any scan attempts. Heat will be a problem, but we can stick behind the bigger ones and out of direct line of sight."

He tapped a taloned finger on the mass relay. "If there are no reinforcements, then we're cool. If there are, we FTL to Suhalia. Uninhabited system with two gas giants with heavy electrostatic signatures. If we can get into that system without being seen, you can call for help from the geth to bring us some fuel."

Benezia shook her head. "Saren is badly wounded. He may die, even with the machine taking care of him, and he was already stressed from the Beacon and whatever the Thorian did to him. We have to get back to Virmire!"

Rthar shrugged… and gestured to a small black pyramid sitting on a shelf at the back of the bridge. "The only other option is to ask for… help."

Benezia stared at the ugly black pyramid for a long moment before calmly walking up to it and stroking her fingers over its matte surface. For a moment, there was nothingness, and then it was limned in a glowing red radiance.

You touch my mind. Why?

Benezia swallowed, steeling her mind against the shock of brushing up against something so… incomprehensible and massive. "We are trapped by enemy forces. Saren has obtained what you directed him to, and the Thorian is dead. But we cannot escape this system."

Await me. Prepare.

The pressure of its voice vanished suddenly, and the matriarch exhaled. "Get ready to move out."

O-OSaBC-O

The battle was joined within minutes of the Citadel Fleet moving into the system proper. The geth, seeing the enemy outnumbered, moved forward, long-range mass accelerator strikes and torpedoes ranging out. Most missed at the long ranges, as ships moved in computer-randomized patterns of thrusters to throw off such shots. Either by bad luck or poor timing, a salarian destroyer shifted itself downward in the line of battle and was struck directly by a shot from the lead geth heavy-cruiser, the blast snapping the delicate hawk-shaped salarian vessel nearly in half with its force. A few moments later the ship exploded violently as its mass effect core raced out of balance, fragments of hull pinging off kinetic barriers of the neighboring ships.

Admiral Hierax sat in the eyrie-seat at the head of the CIC on a high platform, overlooking his subordinates. The CIC was a bowl of interlaced slats, divided by workstations and operations consoles, done in gleaming silver with dark blue haptic screens and dim, pale blue overhead lights. His chair, draped in dark fabric representing his colony background, leaned back as he assayed the tactical map. His face was dark, plates almost black and barely highlighted with silvery clan markings, his fringe covered with an admiral's shawl, his legs crossed arrogantly and confidently.

"Time to second wave clearing the relay, Lieutenant?" His deep, flanged voice was almost grating, with the clicking growl of age creeping into it.

His aide, a young turian in light armor, with red markings, tapped silvery haptic panels. "Ten minutes, Admiral, sir. No sign of the Talon's Justice, if that is what Saren is flying."

"Hrmph. Very well. Enough of this farce. All ships: full barrage. Concentrate on the smaller ships, the dreadnoughts can crack those cruisers." He gave a turian smile, mandibles wide as hundreds of missiles lanced out in a wide arc, screaming toward the enemy. "Flag section one, oblique right, set course one seven eight mark two, ten degrees depression, for full torpedo spread. Flag section two, direct left to reface, maintain fire. Flag cruisers, follow me in. Helm! All ahead flank!"

The Council Fleet split apart like a blooming flower. Destroyers moved left and right, turning and firing as they went, alternating heavy accelerator fire and torpedoes from one side and swarms of missiles from the other, while the cruisers accelerated to maximum speed and opened up with everything. The space between the two fleets was alive with a moving tapestry of glowing death, as ships attempted to weave and dodge and counterfire, illuminated only by the distant star and the explosions of other vessels. The geth lost three ships immediately, and then withdrew slightly, several ships taking additional hits from the unexpected tactic; a geth cruiser attempting to turn and fire was hit with three torpedoes at once and literally evaporated under the massive explosions.

The geth ship formation became noticeably ragged, and Hierax nodded grimly. "So the old stories were right, you kill some and they get dumber. Hah. How the quarians lost to their own dishwashing machines still baffles me. Continue firing." He leaned back, content, as several more minutes of fire passed. Despite having better weapons and somewhat better ranges, the geth ships were not built to take heavy damage, unlike the more heavily built turian ships. And the salarian ECM and hyper-frequency GARDIAN laser systems were making a mockery of the geth attempts at missile attacks. Hierax lost another destroyer and two of his frigates, but dropped two cruisers, six geth destroyers, and had achieved hits on most of their frigates, in only a few minutes.

His Lieutenant spoke up. "Mass relay activating… the Noxiosun and her escort are here, sir."

The Admiral stood, looking out over his battle plot, his sharp talons ticking little marks into the metallic railing surrounding it as he did so. The Noxiosun was a turian dreadnought, and its escort was sixteen heavy-cruisers and five super-heavy missile destroyers. The drell were doing combined arms work with the Citadel this month, part of their obligations as directed by their hanar masters, and a drell heavy-cruiser, all narrow lines and smooth, pale green armor, was also escorting the dreadnought.

"Excellent news, Lieutenant."

Hierax grinned as the dreadnought immediately fired after stabilizing its position, the Fellstorm main guns launching a ball of sixteen, twenty kilogram slugs at a huge fraction of light-speed. The blast stormed across the battlespace to strike the lead geth cruiser amidships, tearing it apart and continuing on to shred the three small frigates next to it.

"So much for rumors of superior shielding, I see. This seems to be in hand, someone contact that human – Presser, Presthing, whatever his name is – and let him know he can stop hiding down on the planet now."

His aide dutifully suppressed a chuckle at his Admiral's distaste for humans and was about to open the comm channel when he noticed the mass relay giving off a bizarre energy reading. "Sir? The… the relay is configuring for incoming mass, but… I've never seen this outline before."

Hierax half turned, mandibles flickering in irritation. "Query the damn thing for the mass translation."

The Lieutenant turned to face him, eyes confused. "I did, sir, it said the mass was three times that of the Destiny Ascension."

Hierax barely had time to think before the answer hit him, snatching the comm unit at his side up with a hasty motion of his hand. "ALL SHIPS, EVASIVE MANEUVERS! PULL BACK FROM THE RELAY!"

Even as he spoke, the mass relay erupted into blue light, spreading like a small explosion, and a black, gigantic ship emerged into space, glowing with its own light as a ball of red energy began to build at the base of its leaf-shaped form.

The Lieutenant's eyes widened. "Oh, no."

O-OSaBC-O

Chakwas was rushing around the three medical beds, preparing them for use, as Alenko and Wrex brought in the wounded. Alenko was using his biotics to levitate Shepard, while Wrex was able to do the same for both Shields and Liara, even as he continued to bleed.

Chakwas frowned. "Wrex…"

The krogan grunted. "I'll be fine." His voice softened. "I shot the bastard. But they all took hard hits."

Alenko handed Chakwas the readout chip from the Mako's medical computer. "I… I did what I could, doctor…"

Chakwas took it as she waved forward her one orderly. "Lieutenant, see if you can find anyone on board with medical training, maybe some of the ExoGeni people. Hurry. Lynn, put up the stasis fields and… let's start with Shepard. Get her armor off."

Alenko and Wrex left the med-bay, Kaidan almost running into Williams, who stood outside, still in her armor. "Is…?"

Wrex merely pushed past her, heading for the elevator, his shoulders slumped and his shotgun booming on the floor as he used it as a cane, ignoring his other gaping wounds.

The human Lieutenant shook his head. "We don't know. I need to find people who may know medicine. What's our status, Chief?"

His eyes were dark with worry, but Ash straightened at the sound of her rank and exhaled. Focus on the task at hand / in abeyance of the heart's desire. "All the ExoGeni people are on board. In the main cargo areas, and the mess deck. The… asari woman is in Engineering with two Marines guarding her. Everyone went through full decon procedures and we've got a sampling unit checking for any of the Thorian's spores."

Alenko nodded. "Good job, Williams. Get down to the mess deck and keep things calm, and see if anyone knows medicine down there. Someone has to." Alenko turned and walked over to Pressly, who was watching the main combat map in horror. "Sir?"

Pressly wiped his hand over his eyes. "The black ship from Eden Prime just jumped into the system. It smashed the Noxiosun into a burning wreck with a single shot." Pressly bit his lip, and cursed. "Joker, power up everything. We're going to make a run for the system edge and FTL to one of the nearby systems."

The main ops analyst suddenly spoke up. "Sir, we have a signature, turian frigate or light-cruiser, accelerating towards the mass relay." She tapped her controls and brought it up on the main screen.

Pressly frowned, and tapped his comm. "Detective Vakarian, please come to the CIC immediately."

Alenko frowned. "You think that's Saren's ship?"

Pressly gave a shrug of his big shoulders, and wiped his balding forehead with the arm of his uniform. "I don't know, Lieutenant. It's turian. I, for one, am no expert on turian ships. I figure the detective would know Saren's ship the way I bet a lot of humans now know the Normandy."

His voice trailed off as Garrus entered the CIC, slightly huffing from having clearly run up the stairs to the space. "Reporting."

Pressly indicated the CIC view with his chin, and Garrus glanced at it, and immediately scowled. "That's the Talon's Justice. Saren's ship, custom built by the best shipwrights in the galaxy. Dual eezo core, self-repairing armor, adaptive heat reduction, salarian sensor suite, the works." His blue eyes shifted to bore into Pressly's. "The Commander gave clear orders to pursue it at all costs."

Pressly nodded. "We can't give chase, Detective. The super-dreadnought from Eden Prime is here, and the Citadel Fleet is pinned between it and the geth. We have to make a run for it, FTL out of the system, take a secondary relay back to the Citadel. I know Shepard gave orders to you and Joker otherwise, but…"

Garrus nodded, sighing. "I hate the logic, but you're right, sir. Chasing Saren now will just get us all vaporized." He glanced back at Pressly. "What did you need me to do, sir?"

Pressly bit his lip. "You said you are good with missiles. We still have some flares and ECM pods in the battery. I need you to rig up some noisemakers to throw off our profile. Can you do that?"

Garrus nodded firmly, and Pressly gave him a thin smile. "Get to it then, Detective."

The turian turned away, and Alenko gave the XO a strange look. "I can see asking him up here to ID the ship, but decoys?"

Pressly turned back to the plot. "Better safe than sorry, Lieutenant. This has turned from 'find out about what is going on' to the worst defeat in the Citadel Fleet's history in a long time. If that thing starts pursuing us, it's all over." He shook his head. "Jo— Flight Lieutenant. Engage full stealth, take us out slow, behind the planet, and set course for…"

He paused, and brought up the local starmap. He didn't have a lot of choices and he had severely wounded people on board, so he punched up 'medical facility: human, asari' and 'repair facility: light.' The system highlighted DR 939, which had a trauma center for the human and asari inhabitants. Small colony world of a few million people, mostly ship construction and drone building.

"Set course for DR 939. There's some medical facilities there that may help us."

The Normandy lifted from the sky dock, rapidly lancing through the thin atmosphere at that height and making a beeline for the system's terminator. As they moved, Garrus fired off a series of small drones that mimicked the EM and heat signature of an Alliance frigate moving into the nearby asteroid belt.

Pressly watched the nav-ops plot, wincing as signal after signal from the Citadel Fleet's remaining ships winked out over the next several minutes, lashed by the repeated, savage weapon of the huge black dreadnought. The core of the fleet, about half of the ships that had jumped in during the first wave, broke and ran for the system's edge, and the geth didn't pursue. The huge dreadnought didn't either, instead altering speed and suddenly heading for Feros. Pressly clenched his fist as Saren's vessel docked with the giant ship, and then frowned as the vessel continued to close on the planet.

Its speed was terrifying, as it easily moved over twice as fast as even the Normandy had done during Joker's insanely inspired charge at Feros earlier. It slowed, as if inertia was but an irritant, and then began to orbit, slowly. After several long moments, the black giant opened fire on the planet, blazing red bolts of power burning downwards through the atmosphere in long, heavy lines of devastation. Two giant blasts of yellowish plasma, crackling with contained electrical charge, belched out of its base.

A moment later, the ops sensor officer spoke. "Sir… good god. It just dumped… thousands of tons of pure plasma on the planet. The docking area we were at… the colony… the ExoGeni tower… all of it… everything within thirty kilometers of that is just vapor now."

Joker's voice was droll over the ship's intercom. "I don't think they like us very much, XO."

"Noted." Pressly turned away from the plot. "Notify me if it starts following, ops lead. Otherwise, stand down from full battle stations to alert two and minimize ship emissions." Pressly strode to the comms room, shutting the door behind him, and pulled up the comm menus. "Council Fleet, this is Normandy, do you still read?"

The voice of the same turian Admiral came on, grim and cold. "Yes, Normandy. We're withdrawing to FTL, I've lost almost all my ships and the entire second wave was destroyed. I presume you're doing the same?"

"Yes, Admiral. Our sensors show the geth are not pursuing you. Saren… escaped. And the dreadnought just glassed the colony site. Anyone still alive down there…"

The line was silent for several moments. "Spirits damn them. I'm FTL routing to Thorsia. There's a light interdiction unit there for going up against the Blood Pack raiders. There's a full comm relay there, I'll make my report to the Council then."

Pressly nodded. "We're routing to DR 939. They have medical facilities for humans and asari. Shepard's alive, but… touch and go. We'll rendezvous with your fleet once we get her stabilized."

The turian Admiral's voice was weary. "Acknowledged, Normandy… and I wish I had paid more attention to the Eden Prime footage. Hierax out."