"You did it, Shepard!" Gerrel crowed. "The geth fleet has stopped firing! They're completely vulnerable!"

Shepard bit her lip. Yep. He still hadn't figured it out: every time he started shooting, she ended up with a new problem to fix…didn't he ever think about his people? Didn't he care? Or was he like so many officers over the centuries who only wanted to leave their mark in history, to score a victory so big that people forgot how much they spent to obtain it?

"Shepard-Captain," Legion broke in. "The geth only acted in self-defense after the Creators attacked. Do we deserve death?"

"Suggestions?" Shepard asked simply. The answer was 'no, not on those grounds.'

Legion considered for a moment as Tali shifted nervously. "Our upgrades. With the Old Machine dead, we could upload—"

"Are you insane?!" Tali demanded sharply, her posture bristling.

"—them to all geth without sacrificing their independence."

"You want to upload the Reaper code?!" Tali's voice was strangled as if suffocated by the weight of a bad idea. "That would make the geth as smart as when the Reaper was controlling them!"

"Yes. But with free will," Legion argued before turning to Shepard. "Each geth unit would be a true intelligence. We could help you."

"Our fleet is already attacking! Uploading the code would destroy us!" Tali protested.

Shepard said nothing, merely regarded Legion. Part of her was so tired of quarian stupidity, but no part of her wanted to see Tali's people decimated. The only reason the quarians had a chance right now was because the geth weren't shooting back. She felt sure that Koris would be moving his civilians through the relay in the lull Legion had predicted.

But Legion was right: the geth had been minding their own synthetic business when the quarians sailed in to reclaim a world neither they nor their father's fathers' fathers had ever set foot on. And they'd done it in the middle of the biggest war the galaxy had ever known. They would keep coming after the geth, and everyone would complain that the geth had no right to defend themselves because they didn't exist according to the perceived definition of 'normal people.'

But history across the galaxy had examples of this mindset, a mindset that was eventually modified and rendered inoperative over time. Granted, these mindsets usually existed intraspecies, but Shepard considered species boundaries a minor technicality most days.

"Shepard!" Tali grabbed her by the shoulders. "You can't choose the geth over my people!"

A quote floated across Shepard's mind as she looked at her reflection in Tali's visor, the quarian's vivid eyes barely discernible. Many that live deserve death; some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?

She'd spared the Rachni. She'd helped cured the genophage. This was, in its core components, no different. The only difference was the assholes topside.

"Do you remember the question that caused the Creators to attack us, Tali'Zorah?" Legion asked simply. "Does this unit have a soul?"

Shepard blinked, shaking Tali off. Her stomach squirmed with nausea from the combined weight of the pain in her head and nerves over what she was about to do. "Legion, upload the code to the geth," she said resolutely. "Tali, get the Flotilla on the line. Tap me in."

Tali hesitated a moment.

"Tali! We're in a hurry!" Shepard barked.

"…right…" Tali immediately snapped into action.

Cold fear pooled in Shepard's stomach. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff and needing to jump, looking down into mist and wondering whether the fall would kill her. But she couldn't take the quarians' side. Not after all this. The bed was almost made, and now they would have to lie in it.

"This is Admiral Zorah—all units break off your attack!"

"Belay that order!" Gerrel barked.

Tali looked up at Shepard, shaking her head pleadingly.

Shepard made herself ignore it.

"Twenty percent," Legion announced.

"I'm begging you," this time Tali appealed to Legion. "Do not do this! Please!"

Legion's 'eyes' blinked. "We regret the deaths of the Creators. But we see no alternative. Forty percent."

"Am I connected?"

Tali nodded numbly.

"All ships," Shepard snapped. "This is Captain Shepard. The Reaper is dead. Stand down."

"This is Admiral Zorah—Shepard speaks with my authority."

Shepard nodded her thanks, assembling her argument. She had minutes to diffuse what could end up the worse choice of her career—of her life.

"And mine as well!" Koris put in, before Tali even finished speaking.

"Negative! We can win this war—"

"Will you think with your brain for one?!" Shepard almost shouted. "The geth are about to come back to full strength. If you keep attacking they will wipe you out. The entirety of quarian history is trying to kill the geth. You forced them to rebel, you forced them to ally with the Reapers and you're about to force them to defend themselves again!"

"Eighty percent."

Shepard felt sick, her headache ramping up in spite of the painkillers. "Please. The geth do not want to fight you. If you can believe that for thirty seconds this war is over." She heard herself panting, felt a silent scream building up in her throat.

"You have a choice," Shepard said with a firm kind of desperation. Her breathing was labored from her battle with the Reaper—a battle she'd dared on foot. "Please. Keelah se'lai." Her voice quavered at the end of the appeal.

The silence that followed was one of the loudest silences Shepard had ever heard. It was one of the few times Shepard understood how a Spectre could be corrupted. With quarian leadership making so many bad decisions, it was tempting to simply shoot two of them so they couldn't endanger the previously seventeen million sapients they were supposed to be leading.

Then, the silence finally broke with a long sigh. "All units…hold fire."

For a moment, Shepard thought she might actually pass out where she stood.