*** Assignments ***

Once out of the Convertible Clean Room, Shepard turned, put a hand to his ear as he walked through the medbay. "Pressly. Shepard here."

Navigator Pressly's face appeared in his ARO; the background showed he was on the bridge. "You have a call from Trident, sir. From Admiral Hackett."

"Hackett? All right, I'm on my way to my quarters. Pipe it to me." The door out of the MedBay opened automatically.

"Transferring him now."

There was a soft digital pop, and Pressly's face was replaced by Hackett's. He nodded once, "Commander."

"Shepard here, sir. Go ahead." He had nearly reached his stateroom; the door slid open as it detected his approach.

"Commander, I just read the Council report from your Therum landing, and I'm not impressed."

Shepard pinched an icon from his omnitool tray and tossed it toward the desk as he approached. "Sir?"

"With the Council. They whine too much." Hackett appeared on the main display. "They came down really hard on the damage to the site, which was trivial and irrelevant. Not part of the mission parameters. I know what you did, Commander, and it was a fine job."

"Thank you, sir. That is just the preliminary report."

"I know you're busy, Commander, so I'll get right to the point. We've got a situation here, and you're the only one who can handle it."

"Thanks for the vote of overconfidence, Admiral." Shepard moved the chair as he sat in it. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"An Alliance training ground on Luna, the Chaffee Testing Range, has VIs that we use to simulate enemy ranged tactics in the drills. It is in some kind of feedback loop; worse, it's no longer responding to our override commands. I suppose you could say it's 'gone rogue.'"

"Are you telling me the system is thinking on its own?"

Hackett scoffed. "We're not stupid, Commander. This is a Virtual Intelligence, not an AGI. It's not self-aware, and it can't access any external systems. We've been using them for decades; we didn't do anything the Citadel Council would consider illegal. VIs process thousands of status reports in milliseconds, control entire battlefields. No human can do that.

"I need you to fight your way across the training ground to the VI core, and manually disable it. As I said, I saw your Therum mission footage; I know how precise you and your team were, and technically proficient. That's the kind of work we need at the simputer range. The facility is a significant investment, and we don't want to just obliterate it. Even the crash files would be valuable, so we can prevent this sort of thing from happening again."

"Can't you disable it remotely?"

"It's on an isolated network, and our failsafes aren't responding. We've lost direct access to the DCE, and each of the three nodes has its own power supply. PV, backed up with an RTG. Any outside work would be shelled by the other nodes."

"Sounds like they really stepped in it this time," Shepard shook his head as he looked away in thought. "What else can you tell me about this thing, sir?"

"As advanced as it is, it's still just a VI. But we suspect the system itself detected the potential for external control, and shut the connections from its end. We can't access any of its processes. The systems architecture and design is shared across nearly all VI combat systems, so it's important that we find out why this happened. We need to get someone in there who can shut it down and allow us to perform a thorough failure analysis."

Hackett looked away to his left, nodded approvingly toward whatever it was. "And when I saw the report on Therum, I realized you've got the team we need. The VI controls all the facility's weapons, drones, and defences. We could bombard it from orbit, but as I said, the cost would be prohibitive, and we would lose any crash dump data."

"How long had the system been functioning correctly with the VI online?"

"The briefing should tell you all you need to know. I had one of my people put it together, she's very thorough. The VI...hm...the project lead calls it 'Zone Defense Intelligence', or ZDI – controls all the weapons on the grounds, giving us the ability to simulate multiple conditions by using or not using them. It manages multiple simulations across multiple zones simultaneously." Hackett glanced down at his own desk, and then up at Shepard again. "It looks like you should get a complete mission profile from my office shortly."

"Very good, sir. Is that all?"

"In fact, no. But I'm hopeful you can get to it immediately because it represents an opportunity to show you in a favourable light to the rest of the Alliance. It should also help with xenophobe groups like For All Mankind and Terra Firma becoming vocal about their misunderstanding of your relationship to the Citadel Council. Though I do have a list of other potential operations, none of them are quite as urgent as this.

"However, if you're looking to fill your dance card, there's another situation that has my attention. You might remember an Alliance officer named Lawrence Kyle."

"My CO at Torfan." Shepard inhaled through his teeth. "When we got back, he was…damaged. I thought he was judged unfit for duty. Honourably discharged, but still shown the door."

"He was. It seems he was not thrilled about it, and he's gotten involved with a group of biotics. He's ex-Alliance, which makes him our problem, but some of his people have apparently captured Chairman Martin Burns."

Shepard raised his eyebrows in surprise. "They what?"

Hackett looked down slightly and read from a briefing, "A group of his fanatical biotics have kidnapped the Chairman of the Parlaimentary Subcommittee on Transhuman Studies." He looked up at Shepard again, "We're pretty sure they put themselves and some equipment in his path and took over the ship he was on, one MSV Ontario. They got as far as the Farinata system's debris belt before their pilot – who wasn't a flight-rated pilot, it seems – got lost in the belt and the ship took some damage. They disabled the ship's transponder, but they're filling the 'net with loud propaganda."

"Yes they are, sir. And one of my Marines has been a recipient of said propaganda. He actually asked if we could go shut it down, and it sounds like you're asking us to do just that."

"I'm not surprised; the Major seems to have found a way to contact every biotic in the Alliance about this, so it's an especially important task to handle quickly. I'm glad to hear you're already aware of it."

"What do they want, sir? Or do we even know?"

"They're L2 biotics, and most of them are suffering major side effects from their implants. The Subcommittee denied a request for reparations to all L2 biotics." Hackett's face showed mild surprise. "Apparently they'd like the chairman to…reconsider."

"What kind of resistance should we expect?"

"Between eight and ten persons and several crates of equipment dropped off with them somehow. Any vehicle that did it would be subject to a criminal penalty for doing so, but apparently they managed to persuade some privateer to simply abandon them in space. They used a lifeboat transponder to attract Chairman Burns' ship as it was en route to the research station orbiting Nepneu, which was obliged to take them aboard. Camera data shows them taking over the ship, and then bringing their supplies and equipment aboard. I would expect traps and combat drones, but nothing you can't handle. We're sending you the last known coordinates of the freighter."

"I assume the priority is to save the Chairman?"

"Saving him would be my preference, of course, but we have to make it clear that the Alliance does not negotiate with people who use these kind of tactics. Officially, your primary objective is to neutralize the biotics. Saving the Chairman is secondary. But unofficially, and off the record, I'd add that I have a lot of faith in your ability to pull a rabbit out of this hat."

"I was not aware of the hostage situation, sir; his message had directed responders to Presrop. It sounds like I should address the hostage situation in the Farinata system before I confront the Major directly."

"True, but I'd appreciate it if you could handle the Chaffee Range situation first. That will give the biotics a chance to feel ignored, burn through some of their supplies, and it will get a lot of people in the Alliance noticing that a human Spectre is a good thing."

"Will do, sir." Shepard paused to think. "Though as long as I've got you online, I have a request."

"Name it."

"We haven't had a chance to get back to the Citadel to pick up the rest of the reverse chirality gear. I have two contractors who are going to be heavily reliant upon it. And we still have a civilian aboard; the asari…"

Hackett was already nodding. "Not to worry, Commander; the asari is probably safer with you than on Thessia, and I assume you're asking because Logistics hasn't answered. Normally I'd say the equipment will be waiting for you at your next port of call.

"But I appreciate you're pulling extra duty to get these things done, and I want to make it worth your while. In fact, the request response was delayed because it had been routed to my office. The supply tug has not left Arcturus yet, so I'll have the Captain jump to the Charon relay and wait for you at the transfer. You can pick it up on your way to or from Luna. Sound good?"

Shepard nodded. "Still sounds like you want us to handle the biotics immediately after. But I'd also have to say the supplies sound excellent, sir. I appreciate it."

"My pleasure, Commander."

"Sir, before I go, there's another issue I need to talk to you about."

Hackett glanced away and down for a moment, seemingly at a display nearby, then back up and into camera.

"Did you see the files from that Citadel bust of Horace Tinkell? I think he was using the name 'Fist' at the time."

"I saw that had happened, but didn't get the final on it yet."

"Sir, when I handed over that DCE to that reporter from the Washington Post, I had redacted out all the data involving the Alliance or Alliance personnel. But the version I sent to your office has a complete dataset, and I wanted to make sure you saw there is some Alliance involvement. To make sure that it gets shut down hard and fast."

"I assume you didn't look at the data yourself, Commander." It was hard to tell whether the Admiral thought he had and disapproved, or thought he hadn't and was relieved.

"Nothing I need to know, sir. I assume if there's something going on in my command, you'll inform me ASAP."

"Now that we have Fists's DCE, and you redacted it before releasing it, your duties are fulfilled. Frankly Commander, I don't know whether to order a court martial for you, or a month's paid leave. As a Spectre, it was mighty big of you to clean out Alliance involvement before releasing it, and we couldn't have touched you either way. If I'd had my way, we might have kept it quiet for intel purposes. But Tinkell was probably a small-timer, and the speed of your release made us look really good by appearing to just hand over the DCE on your own recognizance. As long as you keep doing the Alliance right, you should retain your rank and benefits."

Shepard looked down at his desk for a second. "I'm not sure I could have done it any other way and been true to myself, sir. The Council may have pinned a Spectre badge on me, but that doesn't make me stop being True Alliance Blue. I don't want to be an obvious leak of data for them, but I don't see how they couldn't already take that into account."

"Give it time, Commander. You and the Council are still getting to know each other. This is a first for all of us. Just keep doing the best you can. Work that the Council sees as good reflects well on humanity, and that works both ways."

"Very good, sir," Shepard nodded. "Is that all the stuff you have for Earth's new Spectre?

Hackett laughed wryly, shook his head. "Heh, not by a long shot, Commander. Those are just the time-sensitive things that the Joint Chiefs wanted gone yesterday, and that I thought made for a reasonable demonstration of your own abilities without overwhelming you. I've got dozens of issues if Saren leaves you time for them. The list is growing by the minute; everyone has an idea about how your time could best be used." He shook his head. "Don't worry about it, Commander. I have a couple of VIs keeping the junk mail to a minimum, but if you can inform me of the clusters your Council assignments are in, I'll probably have Alliance concerns that you might be able to help with, and not have to go too far out of your way."

"Before leaving the Citadel, Captain Anderson and I spoke with Ambassador Udina, and he had pointed us to leads on Noveria and Feros. But I don't have much information beyond that, sir."

"In that case, I'll monitor your relay transfer status and notify you if I see any possibilities."

"Thank you, Admiral."

"Thank you, Commander. Trident out." The display flicked to Normandy's Systems Status display as the console blipped, and popped up a notifier indicating the arrival of an MDP.

As he touched the packet's icon to open it, Shepard raised two fingers to his ear. "Joker, design us a course to the Chaffee Testing Range."

"Luna? Oh, boy. We're going to get mooned." Shepard could hear blips and dinks of the flight console being operated. "Plotted and laid in, Commander. ETA: two days, twenty hours at cruise. You want faster?"

Shepard's VI scrolled up a table comparing ship time to local time at Luna on his ARO. "What would it cost to get us there five hours earlier?"

Joker consulted a table that the nav system had generated when he had selected their destination. "Three percent over opticruise should do that. You want?"

"That'll do nicely, Flight. Put us there."

"On our way, Commander. We should hit the relay in about thirty-seven hours, twenty-nine minutes."

"Thank you, Flight." Shepard lowered his hand from his ear; the link closed. "Victor Indigo, create a meeting notice for a combat drop. 9A tomorrow. Alenko, Williams, nar Rayya, Vakarian, Urdnot." He smiled to himself. "Add the notation that, 'Only those who wish to survive the mission are required to attend.'"

The display showed the list and corrected Tali's surname to Zorah, highlighting this change.

"Accept proposed change." The highlight vanished.

"Where is Contractor Zorah?"

Tali'Zorah is in the Main Mess.

# # #

Shepard stepped out of his stateroom and looked left.

The envirosuit was obvious, not just for being different, but because the quarian was sitting opposite one of the Draven twins. The human was eating from a tray; it looked like a pork chop. Tali had a tray before her with what Shepard's wife would have called "bachelor chow;" 1-cm food pebbles in a variety of colours. She was picking them up one at a time and placing them into a tiny drawer that slid out of her helmet.

The human was speaking as she ate, "…I know what you mean, it feels so much more like a family with Roz here anyway; even better, the new skipper has been carrying on Captain Anderson's tradition of using first names. Me and Roz don't have to ask, "Which one?" when people say 'Draven.'"

Shepard stopped at the table's side. "May I join you?"

Both of them looked up, but Tali immediately looked toward the sitting human; Shepard's ARO identified her as WO-2 Talitha Draven.

"Sure thing, sir." Draven slid aside on the bench.

As he sat, Shepard pointed subtly at Draven, addressed the quarian, "She being nice to you?"

"Tal?!" The quarian seemed wholly taken aback. "Yes! Certainly! I never imagined humans were so friendly! We walked all over your ship, and it's gorgeous and futuristic! I would have thought all human ships might be like this, but you already said this was the newest ship in the fleet. Tal's been able to steer me away from sensitive areas, and we met your Chief Engineer, Gregory Adams, and your Navigator Charles Pressly, and your Pilot, Jeff Joker."

Tal Draven's expression changed to one of social shock, but it was Shepard's grin that made Tali stop.

"Wait…it's not Jeff Joker. It's…um, Jeff Moreau, but everyone calls him Joker. Which isn't a name, really, but it's his name. Anyway, she took the time to walk me all over the ship and answer my endless technical questions. If your other ships are like this, they must also be amazing and wonderful. I love it…love it love it love it. But would you believe the thing that surprises me most is how empty it feels in here?"

Draven shook her head, "You said the most amazing thing was that it smelled new. And everything works."

"Which it doesn't," Shepard deadpanned.

"That's just because it's new," Tali agreed. "You have to persuade things to work sometimes, especially if they don't have any experience."

Draven chuckled, "Ha! That's funny."

Shepard spoke to Tali, "I issued a meeting notice for tomorrow, and found I don't know how to properly use your name. I tried to put down 'nar Rayya' as your surname, and my VI corrected it to 'Zorah.' How is your name broken down, and how should I use it?"

"Oh! That's easy. Like I said to your ambassador, my name is Tali. My family is Zorah. And the ship I was born on is liveship Rayya."

"So how should we address you?"

"Just call me Tali. Like I said, that's my name. And it's not as if there are other quarians here I might be confused with."

"But there is a Talitha, who goes by 'Tali' as well."

"Tal," Draven corrected, pointing a thumb at herself; she pointed at the quarian. "Tali." She smiled, "See? No problem, sir."

"And why does my scheduler keep putting an apostrophe between Tali and Zorah?"

Tali tilted her head quizzically; she hesitated as she read from her HUD. "Oh…that. My given name is actually…um…longer than that. Because it's shortened, when written using your language, they add that apostrophe thing to show there's more."

"What is it?" Tal asked, "What's your full name?"

The quarian looked quickly from one human to the other. "It's um…"

"You don't have to tell us if it's like your soul name or something," Shepard interrupted.

"It's not like that," Tali said with difficulty, "But it's usually only known by family and close, close friends. It grows each year; on my birthday, I get a new syllable or two, depending on the new name."

"That's amazing!" Tal Draven was wide-eyed, "What does each syllable mean? Do you get to pick it yourself? Do they ever take a syllable away? Is it always just one syllable at a time?"

"Um…wait, I can tell you all about it." Tali paused, took a breath. "First, no, they never take a syllable away. That's silly, no one would do that…no one could do that. When you're born, you get your own name, it usually has one or two syllables. That's what everyone always calls you, and pretty much for your whole life.

"But when you get transferred out of your bubble and into your first suit, you get a new syllable, or two, depending. You can kind of tell how old someone is by how long their full given name is, but only those who are really close bother to remember your entire name, or how it's broken down.

"Most of the time, you get names from ancestors, and the histories of those people are often well known. Sometimes, you'll be told a story about them; a significant incident in their lives, something for which they were notable, or maybe a personal story. It's part of how we…um…remember the past."

"Do you ever get to choose it?"

"Um…your parents choose names for you when you're little. My father added my mother's name to mine after she died. I know I get to choose it on the birthday after my joining the crew of whatever ship accepts my pilgrimage gift…and I join that ship's crew…though it can be awkward if you don't at least ask your new captain for a recommendation. I'm pretty sure you choose them when you're crew, but you can ask friends and family for suggestions…names of people they want to be remembered. It's actually considered both complimentary and bad luck to add the name of someone living."

Shepard glanced quickly at Draven. "How interesting. Well we certainly don't want to pry, do we?" He flicked his eyes toward Draven, raised an eyebrow.

"Oh no sir," Draven answered quickly, "I wasn't…I didn't mean to offend or nothing, I've just never heard of nothing like this."

A single word appeared on Shepard's ARO: Talishamakrilatemokalirosemonjukamaerthe.

Shepard subvocalized, I'm honored; thank you. YSISWM. He turned toward Tali, "And what about when we need to be formal? Is 'Miss Zorah' the correct construction?"

"Well, if you simply must be formal, I suppose it's okay. I don't understand about human formal versus informal construction. It's not something we really use. If I'm being recognized for some good work or something, they would use 'Tali'Zorah nar Rayya' because my actions reflect on my ship-family, not just my blood-family." She performed a human shrug as advised by one of her VIs, "But if you want to talk to me, or about me...just use my name."

Shepard nodded. "Okay, good to know. Thanks for your time." He stood from the table.

Tal Draven smiled, "You bet, sir."

"And if you'll excuse me, I have only a hundred other things to get done." He stepped toward his stateroom, "Thank you for your time, ladies."

# # #

Shepard woke, exercised, showered, and ate PowerEggs and "facon" (rhymes with "bacon.") Dropping his tray into the sorter, he ascended the starboard ladder, saluted the CIC guard, and turned toward the CommCon. Approaching from the other side was Wrex.

"Never hurts to be a bit early," the krogan observed.

"Gotta be early to be on time," Shepard agreed.

The door opened, revealing four of the seats already filled.

"Well that's…stupid."

"No, it's good," Shepard led the way in, "We can get started early. Well done, everyone!"

Ash turned and whispered to Kaidan, "Crap, you're right. He is a morning person." She knocked back the rest of her tiny cup of espresso, crumpled the cup and tossed it toward the recycler inlet.

Shepard began speaking as he crossed through the CommCon, "Our mission is in the control centre of an Alliance testing ground on Earth's moon. For those who don't know, that one moon is large enough that it almost qualifies as a double planet. It has 0.16 gee at the surface, and essentially no atmosphere. It is also tidally locked, so the 'day' length is something like 320 hours. We'll be in full biosuit CEVA."

"The Testing Range is normally used for drilling. It supports everything from mock combat to live fire exercises." As Shepard approached it, the holographic display at the aft end of the room switched to a map of the grounds. "Unfortunately, it's protected by an armed autonomous control system that we're going to shut down. The system runs on a nine-node DCE, and each node is inside a pressure, protected by three to five FireBall cannons.

"We don't want to hit them from above because that would damage or destroy the pressures and related resources. The Mako should be able to take them out, but we'll have to be methodical and precise about it. Ash, based on your stellar performance on Therum, I'd like you in that seat."

Ash was already wearing a confident but lopsided grin. "Can do, sir."

"The FireBall launchers are all atop the drill-in structures, which are on level ground, but frequently near low hills. Garrus, I may have you go CEVA and harass them from second positions, take some of the heat off the Mako. You know how to use a Jump Pack?"

"I'm a Class-IV sniper scout with Crossed Swords." His fringe moved subtly; Shepard's ARO tagged the gesture with the callout Indicates pride, self-assurance.

"Right, then. And just in case it becomes an issue, if anyone gets separated from the group and you're under fire from them, these FireBall cannons won't be able to hit you if you're under their minus three, or beyond their range. Each firing is unguided, and you can be out of its way before it reaches you. So if you decide that closing with them is safer, spiral in and don't stop moving until you're safe. If they do manage to hit you, you'll be covered with self-oxidizing flame gel that's especially fond of armor and will burn through almost anything. You should have enough time to quench it if you get hit with splash."

He turned to Kaidan. "That applies to the Mako, too. You good to drive?"

The biotic nodded. "ERA, sir."

"By the way," Shepard looked up and addressed the rest of the team, "You are all welcome to take the PVR training for any Mako operations that interest you. Cross-training the team allows us to remain operational even if someone is out of action. Though Wrex, I must confess we might not be able to accommodate you in any of the seating."

The krogan laughed easily, "I'm no button pusher or truck driver. Put a weapon in my hands and point me at your problem."

Shepard continued, "For this mission, the fireteam will mostly be contending with the pressures' internal defenses, which looks like all tripod drones, nothing fixed. The height of the overhead won't allow for the drones to fly, which should make it easier to constrain them." He waved to his left, the wall display slid to the next page. "The nodes form a triangle about four kliks on a side. Each node has three subpressures, each with one or two FireBall launchers. Node Three, the northmost one, has the best protection from incoming linac fire, but the Zone Defense Intelligence can coordinate FireBall attacks with CobbleStone data from the node cameras. As far as we know, there are no linacs in use, so we'll approach that node first.

"We can kangaroo the Mako to stay in cover from the two south nodes, but we'll have to keep moving. Though we suspect it does, we don't know if the Intelligence has self-preservation in its utility function, but we assume it's not going to shell itself to stop us from doing so. But it means this could take some time."

Tali stood, "Do the nodes have or use wireless comms, or are they hard-wired?"

Shepard checked his omnitool. "Hard-wired, with LOSI as backup."

"But it's an Alliance facility. Do we have enough information to connect to its LOSI?"

"We do, but you would need to get cleared for it," Ash said.

Tali sat back down gingerly.

"Now wait," Kaidan leaned forward, pointing at Tali, but facing Ash, "If we are willing to trust her enough to let her crack into this system, or even just the Fire Control systems, we could potentially avoid taking out the launchers. Preserve the facility altogether."

Ash, now wide-eyed, looked from Kaidan to Shepard. "Bad idea, sir. It's a security compromise, completely unacceptable."

Shepard folded his arms. "True, but the benefits might be worth the risk. We might even be able to set up an environment for her that remains self-contained."

Ash was clearly not pleased. "Not approved for contractors, sir. Not even likely to work against base's security. Don't you think they'd have done something like that if they could? How did this even happen?"

"Hm." Shepard looked at the info on his omnitool, scrolled data on his ARO. "It looks like there was a live fire exercise running when the system went berserk; the team on exercise had been disabled and called the exercise off, but the medevac teams were fired on. The Intelligence calculated the location of the downed team based on convergence of the medevac, and took them and the SARs out. Seventeen marines." He shook his head bitterly.

Garrus shifted in his chair and sighed. "Sir, as a Spectre you aren't bound by Alliance rules. You can even delegate it and take responsibility for any fallout." He made eye contact with Shepard. "Or not."

Shepard touched his right thumb to the little finger, slid it up to the third joint, gesturing for 4x acceleration, considering what to do. An idea occurred to him, and he slid back down to "normal" speed. "I'll handle cracking the facility defences." He nodded toward Tali. "But that is an excellent idea; thank you. I should be cleared to get everything they have on the situation."

Tali sat back in her chair; the slump of defeat was subtle, but visible.

Shepard pointed into the holograph, "If we can disable the weapons from inside the nodes, we'll be able to exit without taking point blank fire. Disabling the second node will be the same sort of challenge. But it's that last node that may be a bigger challenge. At that point, the Intelligence will be operating from a single node. It's hard to say if that will significantly change the situation, but if we can get in, we should be able to depower the system. It would be helpful to recover the crash dump, but that would just be icing on the cake."

"That's it? That's the whole mission?" Wrex harrumphed. "Shut down an automatic weapons system? That's stupid. I could do that myself."

"You could probably shut the place down by yourself, but the mission is to get control of the system and save the facility. Otherwise, they could just glass it from orbit."

"And yet here you are going to all this extra trouble." Wrex sighed again and shook his head with just a hint of amusement. "You humans sure can be weird."

Shepard turned and studied the holographic map. "Tali, I'd like to spend some time with you and find out what sort of tools and techniques you have at your disposal that I might be able to put to use."

Tali sat up immediately, "Yes! Just message me when you are ready."

"Spirits, it's going to be tough making our approach to a cross-guarded installation like that," Garrus mused softly. "I suppose there's no way we're going to get a second Mako. Unless there's another nearby facility that would loan it to us?"

Shepard turned, saw Garrus looking at him, shook his head. "Though we have Admiral Hackett working on our behalf, no, we probably won't be able to get that." He turned to face the team again, "And that's the preliminary briefing. We'll have another briefing tomorrow morning. But once we're through the relay, we're already in the system; we'll be maybe two hours from the AO."

"We'll barely have time to get a LRSA report before we drop," Kaidan frowned. "Or…wait. Can't we get realtime data from Conrad?"

"Right." Shepard nodded, "I expect to have up-to-the-minute data by tomorrow's briefing." He switched off the display. "Thanks, everyone. I'll be available if you have any other questions."

# # #

Though the door to Shepard's stateroom was open, there was a knock on the bulkhead.

He looked to his right. "Please come in."

Liara peeked around the edge of the hatch, stepped carefully through the door.

"I have what's called an 'open-door' policy." He spun the chair slowly, scooting to the small conference table, allowing him to face the door as he explained, "If the door is open, you are welcome to come in. It's a way of making myself available to the crew. Normandy is small enough that I can get away with it; if the crew was larger, it might end up taking too much of my time."

As he spoke, the asari stepped farther into the stateroom; Shepard had time to notice the slender, elfin features and again, the large eyes so typical of the blue aliens.

"But now that you know how that works," he tried to smile reassuringly. "What can I do for you?"

"Ahm…I hope I am not speaking out of place. I understand we are headed to Earth. I have never been there, and I was wondering how long we would be there, and if there will be opportunity for me to experience any of it."

Shepard's smile turned regretful. "We're actually headed for Earth's natural satellite Luna. I've been asked to handle into a situation there."

"But perhaps when you are done, we would have opportunity?"

"I would not want to draw Saren there if I could avoid it. Even if we were going, we'd set down at an Alliance spaceport; you'd have to stay aboard, unless you were disembarking, which would mean going through customs and immigration and the usual bioscreening."

Liara was clearly disappointed. "I see."

"I suspect that my position as a Spectre might allow me to get away with something extraordinary like ignoring the usual protocols, but Earth has groups that are watching what I do…with great suspicion. It would be unwise to press my authority, even if it is legitimate."

"Perhaps after you have become more well known…"

"It would probably be easier to simply go through conventional channels, at least at this point. Once we have captured Saren, I assume you would be able to travel freely again, safe from attack."

At that, Liara looked up quickly. "Yes, and that is another cause for me to speak with you. I appreciate that you are providing me with safe haven here aboard your ship, and that to some degree, I may be able to draw Saren to you once he knows I am aboard. Though it remains for us to establish that I am here with one of Saren's sources, I also wanted to say that I do not feel I am providing anything in return. Are there any duties that I might be assigned so as to provide some compensation for the burden that my presence has introduced?"

Shepard's smile had been growing as the asari spoke. "You sure have a very exacting way of speaking."

Liara's reply was an expression of surprise and concern.

"Not that it's bad or wrong, but it's…unusual. And refreshing." He looked aside for a moment as he gestured for 4x acceleration, thought about what to say, and then returned to normal speed. "As for what you might do, I have to admit I'm not sure what capabilities you have that might be put to use. We have a full complement with two-and-a-half shifts, but most of the crew seems to be spending their time trying to get the ship fully squared away. Our launch from the Citadel was rather hurried, and this is the first ship of this class, so almost every day it seems we are learning something new.

"Almost every department is overtasked, at least for now. You might ask Kaidan if you can help him with something biotic-related." He paused to think for a moment. "Also, Doctor Chakwas has her MedTechs tied up with technical things, and you might see if she could use some technical help. That may be the best place to start, in fact; there's less chance of encountering restricted materials, and more chance that you may know something about non-human medicine than most of the crew."

"Lieutenant Alenko and I have been having meals together already, and he has been good company, but I think he is more technically proficient than I, certainly with Alliance equipment." Liara nodded as if deciding something, "But if Doctor Chakwas needs my help, I will do it. Thank you, Commander."

As the asari turned to leave, Shepard added, "And remember, if the door's open, I'm here, and you are welcome to bring any issues to my attention, or ask me any questions, especially if no one else has been able to answer them, or if you think of something that might help us locate or lure Saren."

Liara stopped with a hand on the threshold, looking back at him. "Thank you, Commander…and good morning."

Shepard rolled the chair back to his tech desk. After another moment, he looked up to the doorway again and replayed the memory of the asari standing in it. There was something noticeably sorrowful in her eyes.

She must still be feeling down about her mother.

# # #

Tali stepped through Shepard's door and stopped when she saw him look up at her. "Is this supposed to be open?"

"Yes it is, and welcome. I have what's called an "open-door" policy. I leave the door open if I'm here and available for discussion. It's something I learned from Captain Anderson, but it really only works on a small ship like a frigate or a light cruiser."

"I don't think captains, even on tiny ships, do that on the flotilla."

"Different culture, I suppose…more rigid military tradition like turians?"

"No, flotilla captains usually have their families living with them. You can't have people just…walking into your house, can you? Besides, RTM works just as well most of the time, and it's private enough." She continued into the room without stopping, grabbed the seat opposite him and plopped herself down into it. "Anyway, I'm so glad I can finally help! You had asked if I can put any tools at your disposal, and I'm sure I do, but I don't want to overwhelm you with my entire library."

Shepard had kept his eyes fixed on the quarian's helmet, trying to make eye contact; most humans did. His ARO added wireframe data to show him where to look. When she stopped and looked back at him, his expression was drawn; he touched a control on his omnitool. The door hissed closed and clicked softly.

Tali looked over her shoulder at this, then faced him more directly. "What?"

"I'm sorry, I kind of had to redirect the conversation during this morning's briefing. Ash is a fine soldier, and a by-the-book one at that. It's always good to have someone like that, and usually it's me. So I'm glad to have her, but I need to keep this conversation private from her.

"So I will say this explicitly, because I don't want there to be any confusion: Please don't discuss any of the plans we make about tech with Ash, okay?"

The quarian's fingers twiddled briefly. "Of course. She kind of scares me. She seems very…angry."

"There's a very good reason for that, but we'll talk about it another time." Shepard pointed to the holos on the wall above his desk, where some of the briefing imagery was displayed in holographs above it. "For now, I'd like to talk with you about what we know about the facility, and how we might exceed the Admiral's expectations. Which, I should add, are already pretty high."

Tali looked from Shepard to the desk displays. "Um…okay. What do we know so far about the hardware and network design?"

Shepard extended a hand, selected one holotile from the desk's display and enlarged it. "Here's the current map…unless the VI has started redesigning itself to be more robust and secure. Nine nodes in three clusters. Three data paths connecting the clusters. "

"What about the LOSI connection you mentioned?"

Shepard shook his head. "It's normally disabled for security; you can't crack what isn't there." He glanced at the map and then back to the quarian. "It also means we can't just tap the lines; no way to dig without getting shelled from three directions."

"Are we going to have to get into the facility itself? Can we do that, or has the artillect secured the doors?"

"We simply don't know yet. Conrad hasn't sent their update, so we may have to speak in fairly general terms for now. So exactly what sort of tools do you have for cracking Intelligent Systems?"

"It's not that simple," Tali said. "ummm…here, let me show you." She gripped her left forearm with her right hand and opened the palm of her left hand toward Shepard. A mitten-like shape appeared as a holograph above her open hand. It was a well-established offer to share a simulated or augmented environment recognized across the galaxy.

Shepard extended his left hand, placing it into the hologram. To him, the VR world appeared to spread out from the mitten, replacing the stateroom with Tali's augmented environment. The walls of the stateroom were still visible, but dim. As Tali stood and walked around the table, a 2m x 6m display had faded into place just in front of the wall, giving them space to stand before it and interact with it. The illustration on it was a generic system map, hanging before them like an enormous billboard.

Tali turned to him, "I'm assuming you have worked in VRS for deep cyber cracking."

"No, actually; I hardly touch the stuff. I'm an engineer, not a cybersecurity expert. Though I do keep a large collection of tools for things I need or think I could use. For this operation, I fully expect to do a pass-through and let you do the heavy lifting." He gave half a smile as he continued, "Because you worked so effectively against the geth, and from what I've seen, you have more experience with cracking Intelligent Systems generally.

"In fact, I think it was brilliant. You were responsible for most of the technical success of the mission, and I don't think Ash fully appreciates that. But it's something my superiors noticed, and one of the reasons we were asked to do this." He pointed at the network map without looking at it.

The quarian pulled back slightly. "I'm…um…thank you." She hesitated. "Um…I'm sorry, my Human Interaction VI is being useless right now, but with no one else here, I just have to ask: Why are you being so nice to me? I mean, it seems like you're nice to everyone, but you've really gone out of your way to…um…well, you bought me a set of combat armor that no one else can use, new weapons, and you let me sit in front in a taxi when you really should have let one of your soldiers – especially the one who was wearing the Predator Heavy, keelah, it's a wonder she doesn't waddle like a krogan – and now you're just trusting me to crack your own Alliance security. I hope it's not stupid of me to be asking, but I just don't get it, and it…makes me kind of nervous, you know? Like there's something really obvious that I'm missing, and it's going to make me look stupid, or someone will get hurt because I didn't, um…know something that I should have."

Shepard didn't resist the urge to smile, but he didn't want to reveal he had essentially been following Anderson's orders, "My skipper and I talked a few times about the flotilla – he knows a lot more about your people than I – and it disturbs me that the Council has been so unhelpful, even antagonistic toward your people." He scowled faintly, shook his head. "It seemed like something that could have been solved centuries ago, should have been solved centuries ago." He looked up at her. "So I'm doing what I can to help.

"As for your armor…you were equipped for a pilgrimage, not for combat. Frankly, if my VIs are correct, you're quite young, even to be on your pilgrimage. You might be legally an adult as far as Volition Accords stuff, and you clearly knew how to handle yourself until we met, but you were going to need arming before I'm comfortable letting you anywhere near a serious firefight."

Tali looked around at the VR environment, decided to leave it at that, and press on. "Well then lucky me. As for the VI systems cracking, you're still using binary systems, aren't you?"

"We have some kiewputing, but it's usually reserved for encryption/dercryption and complex finite systems analysis." He paused, stroking his chin. "Though as I think of it, they may well be using that for this application. It might explain how it got out from under them." He looked around at the VRS environment again before adding, "If you're running this whole environment locally, you must have significantly more local compute than I do."

Though she knew she did, and by almost an order of magnitude, the quarian answered, "Yeah. I probably do," Tali looked around as the desk twittered at him; a new message appeared in his queue. At his touch, it sprang open before him on the holo above the desk that he could still see. "Ah, good. The report's in from Conrad, and just in time for our little meeting here."

He flipped through a few pages of the briefing, made an icon out of one, and paused. Still holding the token in his hand, he turned slowly to Tali. "It would be unfair of me to not say I have been impressed with the way you have comported yourself. Your technical proficiency is not only extraordinary, but you've quite selflessly – and sometimes at personal risk – put it at my disposal. You've been willing even to hand over geth hardware and software that I know are extremely valuable to you and your people, simply trusting me and the people I represent to return them to you.

"Which is to say you have trusted me before I had given you any real reason to do so. And so now it's my turn to trust you. I also want to be very clear that this is highly sensitive and classified information that we're about to look at, and it should not be shared around to anyone else….unless you can check with me and get approval." He tossed the holographic icon toward the wall-spanning display, which immediately covered it with detailed technical information, and fractured the outer edges into movable tiles.

Tali nodded quickly, "Oh, I completely understand, and not just in a 'military secrets' kind of way. My people were not doing anything illegal in AI research when the geth started their rebellion and the Citadel Council didn't declare true AGIs to be illegal until after they did. But I don't want your people to go through what we did, and I don't want you to get in trouble by doing something that I know is likely to push your artillects over the edge into true AGI without warning you about it.

"But I also have to ask this as well: When we get done with this, and figure out what went wrong, may I have the core dumps? We're still trying to figure out exactly how the geth 'woke up,' and if you've stumbled onto something that could help us, I would very much like to be able to share it with my people."

"I'm not sure I can make any promises about that. But let's get to the end of this before we start figuring out how to divvy the spoils of war, shall we?" He pointed a finger into the centre of the map. "For starters, do you know if the Hannibal Twin-Eights are quantum-based?"

Tali didn't hesitate, "Yes, the Hannibals were using megabit-Q in '70, and broke the gigabit-Q barrier late last year, but they didn't make a big deal out of it because it might have compromised their military contracts. I have friends who have been watching it for years," she balked, looked at Shepard quickly, "though not because we're trying to steal your secrets; we're trying to get out ahead of the geth again.

"Anyway, if we're going to crack a Hannibal, I'll need a completely different set of tools. The blue kit should be a good fit to start with, though we may need some purple." The quarian wiped both hands from right to left, and the white billboard was replaced by a blue one. "Also, these tools will only work on the simputer hypervisor systems. The subsidiary controls will still be conventional binary compute, so it might be helpful if you handle them once I know enough about the artillect to either sequester it or disable it…"

*** Glossary ***

AO: Area of Operation

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CEVA: Combat EVA

CO: Commanding Officer

CobbleStone: a visual-data aggregation software module developed in the 2060s that allows swarms to collect environmental information from multiple camera angles (or other scanning media) and thereby build up a cohesive 3D map of an area relatively quickly

Conrad: Conrad Alliance Luna Central ("CALC"); base named for Pete Conrad, one of the first humans to walk on the moon.

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

ERA: Expert, Ready, and Able; usually said as the letters: "ee-arr-ay"

ETA: Estimated Time of Arrival

EVA: Extra-Vehicular Activity; an EVA suit allows for operations in hard vacuum

FireBall: Though they look like fireballs, the slow-moving weapons are actually unguided missiles that have large splash zones; the Chaffee Testing Range normally uses them to simulate and indicate the coverage of collateral damage. Guided variations exist.

glass (verb): use of nukes can turn rocks and sand into glass, hence this term

kiewputing: a portmanteau of QUantum and comPUTING; "Q-puting"

LRSA: Long Range Sensor Analysis

MDP: Mission Data Packet

MSV: Merchant Space Vessel; Ontario is a modular Kowloon-class freighter

PV: Photovoltaics (solar panels)

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality; a total-immersion VR technology with between two and five channels of data that stimulates multiple regions of the brain, allowing for a nearly complete reproduction of environments or experiences. Because it is a demanding, high-bandwidth technology, it became a measure of network capability, particularly among users who depend upon it. PVR games can be very addictive, particularly to the young.

RTG: Radiothermal isotope generators (fission-based power supply, used by deep space probes since the 1960s)

VI: Virtual Intelligence

VR: Virtual Reality

VRS: Virtual Reality Simulation

WO-2: Warrant Officer 2 (superior to WO-1)

YSISWM: Your secret is safe with me