The shock of finding out that Reaper base meant actual Reaper wore off strangely fast in Shepard's mind. Maybe somewhere, in the very back where the most pragmatic of pragmatism resided, she'd suspected that there would be a real Reaper somewhere. After all, there weren't any in system, but the Reapers had definitely staked out Tuchanka.

They weren't stupid, and she suspected that they had shrewd ideas where she could be expected to show up, so they'd know where to shore up their plans…or leave someone to deal with her.

Although she was glad there wasn't one—they'd caught a break there, unless reinforcements were on the way—she did rather think a flagship might have been warranted after the last trooper like this was fed to a thresher maw.

Well, she didn't have a gun that shot out thresher maws but…

She squeezed the trigger on the heavy gun the shuttle was equipped with. She did have another kind of gun…but would it help?

"Shepard to Fleet—it's not a Reaper base! It's a live Reaper! Requesting immediate orbital strike!" Shepard almost shouted over the sound of the gun. It wasn't horrifically different from the heavy door-guns used by the Alliance, but different enough to feel alien to her.

The horror of seeing a Reaper that close, looming over her like a cat over a mouse, should have terrified her. Rather, it pissed her off, because crammed behind her, unable to do anything but watch, were people she cared about.

"Shepard. The quarian fleet is requesting confirmation that you are—" EDI began.

"We're clear! Fire!" Shepard barked as she watched the firing chamber opening, a glowing red pit in the heavy armor.

She barely finished the word before the orbital strike fell, knocking the Reaper almost to its knees.

For a few seconds, precious seconds Legion used to get further ahead of the Reaper, there was nothing but heavy weapon-fire making her ears ring.

"What was that? What did we hit?" Gerrel suddenly asked.

"Looks like one of you hit the firing chamber. Must be a weak point when it's priming," Shepard relayed back, glad EDI had opened direct lines.

"Dammit," Gerrel growled. "It's too fine a target—jamming towers have us targeting manually. We'll never manage a precision hit like that!"

"We may escape before it recovers," Legion announced.

Shepard's head reeled for a moment as she stared at the recovering Reaper, pain beginning to lance across the left hemisphere of her brain. Her eyes narrowed as something hot and mind-clearing surged up in her. It was suddenly more than she could stand to be chased off by the Reaper, thwarted by it.

Samara's assurance that the Justicar Code applied as much to Reapers as to anything else—size was too trivial for the Code to care about it—echoed in her head.

"Stop the rover!" she barked, unhooking from the gun. "Stop the damn car!" Legion did, the vehicle drifting a little, and Shepard jumped out. "No, no, everyone stay put!" Shepard waved to her crew, who had begun to pull themselves together, startled but ready to follow her.

"Shepard-Captain?" Legion asked.

"Legion, get them out of here!"

"Shepard, I'm questioning your sanity now!" Alenko barked.

"Seconded!" Vega agreed hastily, drowning out Tali's own agreement.

"Oh, trust me, I am at my sanest…" Shepard growled softly. Then, louder, "I've got this! If that thing doesn't go down, we're all fragged! We can't run fast enough and if we do run the geth stay under Reaper control and the quarians are dead!" It was unacceptable. "Go on! Go!"

Legion, ignoring the protests (and before Vega's mulish expression could become anything else), sent the vehicle rocketing forward, a little wasp-thing scuttling for cover. The simple fact that the conversation didn't continue via radio told her one of two things: either her team wasn't going to risk distracting her now that she was alone and on foot, or that EDI had put them on mute until it was safe for her to be distracted again.

She slung the target-painting device off her shoulder and checked the charge. "EDI! Patch every gun in this system into the Normandy's weapon system—I want this targeting laser synched up to the whole damn fleet."

"Understood. Done."

"Gimme the all-call."

"You now are on an open channel."

"Shepard to Fleet: I'm going to paint the weak spot for you. You should have been sent synch-up data for the Normandy's targeting system. Wait for my mark, then fire at will."

She took off on foot towards the Reaper, shouldering the weapon. "Come and get me, you son of a bitch…" she snarled, not fully paying attention to the words: defiance was too strong to be born in silence. For a moment she felt like she was all hatred, all rage, as massive in her emotions as the Reaper was in actuality.

Well. It had one massive canon and she was only one little human—what harm could she possibly do?

Well, it had one gun and she was synched up to the arsenal of a whole flippin' fleet: it had better kill her before she had it painted or it was going to have a really bad day. She hoped it knew how bad before it went totally offline.

She watched the Reaper get up dizzily, as the quarians checked off that their ships were ready to fire on her mark. Once risen, it looked around and she moved for the nearest open space, a wide ledge not unlike a stage looking out the way she and the others had come.

For an insane moment, she remembered dodgeball in school, a sport at which she had never excelled. She let go of the targeting device long enough to check that her backup shield module was running. Even a close shave with a laser like that would be devastating…if not fatal.

She hiked the targeting laser a little higher. This was where things got dicey…